Why Most People Aren’t Built for CEO Pressure (And That’s Okay) 💼 E162

we cover three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give away the charity. As you guys know, these episodes are under 40 minutes for your listening pleasure because damage workout is 45 minutes, damage commute to work is 45 minutes, so this episode will be between 34 and 38 minutes.

We want this, not just for you. Keep in mind, your friends, family, and followers, people from your past, present, and future

might want to listen to this next episode because this gentleman sold his company for $115 million

and he's going to do it again and probably do it again and again after that. So we're going to dive into this episode and as you're listening, it's not just for you. Think about the people in your life, two months from now, two years from now, you might share this episode with.

Without further ado, Eric Spoffard, give us the quick two-minute bio so you can get straight to the money. Born and raised just outside of Boston, troubled youth was a really, really bad kid. Got caught selling weed.

“My first entrepreneurial endeavor at, I think, 11 years old, fifth grade, North Salem elementary”

school, got caught up in addiction, oxy cotton turned heroin addicts, 100 tried and failed the temps at sobriety and change in my life, December 7th, 2006, finally find recovery and sobriety for God willing the last time went on the run for some criminal stuff after our drug deal combat, crawled into recovery, 135, 140 pounds high school dropout without a single dollar left of my name, unemployable, you know, worse credit score.

Just, I mean, as bad of a shape as a human could be in was me at that period of time, worked on recovery, worked on personal development, worked on becoming a better version of my self every single day since then that was more than 19 years ago, started a recovery business which was my home state's very first soul living house in 2008, scaled that from one location,

one guy running it me to multiple locations, 325 employees, $55 million a top line revenue,

I sold that for $150 million off of a $13 million, almost $13 million TTM EBITDA, so trailing 12 months earnings before interest taxes depreciation and amirization, if you want to get rich and you don't know what I just said and you don't understand that, you better learn that shit because that is how real wealth, fuck you money, generational money is created, sold that company December 21st of 2021, have taken those proceeds, had a hell

of a time, can't deny that, did made every wrong move that you would make or right move depending on your perspective on it after selling the company, but back, you know, building businesses own and operate a portfolio of companies at real estate today. So, you mentioned something to actually just triggered in my mind of when you said the entrepreneur your first entrepreneur part of your career was something we'd, yeah.

I think drug dealers would be amazing business people in other categories outside of

drug dealers. And though many former drug dealers that are amazing business people in other categories,

“I think there are two types of entrepreneurs in the world, right?”

One is the type that stayed in school, they got good grades, they went to college, they got an MBA, and they went to a traditional path, and then the second type of entrepreneur sold weed, right? When you're really thinking about when I say that, they have distribution, they have dealing with collections, they have to have the capital to either take it on credit, or hopefully

they don't get their legs broken if they take it on credit and something that happens, or they have the money to buy it in advance, they got to have inventory, wrist management, the territories and the situation they go on to expansion, scale them with you in multiple cities, like really think about it and go back to like the mafia days, the same concept of like, they had real companies, real businesses, they just happen to be selling illicit

things, but they could be selling chest sets or books or put in another widget in there, and I think those same drug dealers could become resilientaires and other categories. 100%. Really great. Okay, on the make money side, what would you say holds most people back?

Like most people in our society, they're making their 60K here, they get their two weeks, each year to go on vacation, they got their pension plan, they're having 36 years from now, like they have it all planned out, but they're kind of captainist thing because it's easy and consistent. Why do you think most of us will just take that route in life?

Because most people take that route in life because it is easy and consistent.

“You have to have hunger, you have to have the desire to want more, and that desire has to be”

so large that you're willing to do everything that it takes to create wealth, to build businesses, and to break out of the slave trap of a nine to five.

you see a lot of people there out there in the streets, on social, online, etc.

Do you think that most people should be the CEO or an entrepreneur? No. No, I think most people have important parts in organizations, but to be an entrepreneur, to be a CEO, to be a number one, takes a very, very peculiar archetype of person, right?

“You have to be, I think the main thing that separates a real entrepreneur, real CEO from”

the rest of folks, it's not intelligence, it's not skill set, it is their ability to navigate stress and pressure. And if you are not willing to live your life in a pressure cooker, and find a way to get comfortable there, then this game is not for you. You should be a W2 employee, which is nothing wrong with that, I know people that have made

more money than me as employees in organizations, right? There's a path to a lot of people that are less than they're happier than you. Or they make less than they're happier, and they're not dealing with the stress. The real deal entrepreneur, the real deal operator, I believe, and I am this person, is not only able to navigate and handle stress and pressure, they kind of fall apart without

it. You know, it's, you look at when I sold my company, I had enough money that I, in many

generations of Spoffords after me, never had to work again.

And I made it months in 2022, and I was bored out of my skull. I could not handle the quiet, the silence, I had to get back in the game, not from money, because the game, that, and I guess that's a real great way of saying it is, the real entrepreneur, the real operator, has just a fucking thorough bread, love for the game.

Right. And a lot of people get that twisted. They get a fucked up that they think that, oh, look at this person, like how many

“people have said to me, Eric, why do you need more money?”

Why do you need more cores? Why do you need this? Why do you need that? I'm sorry. Do you think this is about the money?

Right. I fucking, you know, Tom Brady didn't need another Super Bowl ring, but he loves to play. It wants to go play today, 100% and that's the same thing with me and most real operators that I know in this game is that we just love to play, we love the game, we love the pressure, we love everything that comes with it.

So we live in an interesting time in society where there's a lot of wantch printers on social media, and a lot of guys flexing, the things you just mentioned that may at least, it might not be theirs, it might be someone's on the street for, you know, in front of these Lamborghinis. Why do you think that there's a lot of guys that are creating the perception of success

before they built it? The perception of success opens doors, right? It gets, you know, when you look successful, more people are willing to meet with you, they want to, you know, open the door for you, girls are interested in you, it has benefits. And so I think that intrinsically is the reason why people try to fake it until they make

it. But for, and listen, to be honest, to be candid, most girls don't know the different difference between a guy that is actually wealthy, that has built something real, that has a Lambo in a nice place, or a guy that is leasing Lambo, leasing the place, it's safe, it's same car, same car, same car, same apartment, same house, and they can't really

tell the difference.

“I think that's why there's so many people at a very fake environment on social media,”

looking and pretending to be the part that really aren't. So a lot of times people are pitching your deals, but you're mostly investing into your own things. When someone's pitching a company, whether it's ad in events, in your DMs, in your email, in the elevator, oh, Eric, I'm going to meet you, I got this idea, how do you say no?

Me, I'm pretty straightforward, I just, I say no. And I just say, listen, respect and love, and, you know, it's just not something, it's not part of my investment thesis at this time. I invest mostly in my own stuff. I have recently, in the last year, started to make direct investments into companies.

But for the amount of investments that I've made and equity that I've taken in operating companies, compared to opportunities that hit my desk, it's a very, very small minority of what I see that I go in on. But for the ones that I do go and make the investment in, I'm looking at the market, the opportunity, the ability to survive, it's not going to be disrupted by AI, by tech, and

the operator. Yep. So you guys have heard me say these numbers before, I've done 43 angel investments, sounds like a lot. That's over a decade.

It's like four years, the last four years, I raised $56 million for different brands.

It sounds like a lot, let's say 18 companies, four years, three or four a year.

Yeah. Think about the success rate. That means one or two percent are getting through for me to want to invest or raise capital to invest into those companies. It is hard to have an exit and so I'm trying to reduce my risk by finding entrepreneurs

“that I believe in, products that I believe in, that have a version of them having a chance”

at exiting. And so three or four hundred pitches, three or four are getting through. So when you guys are out there considering your messaging error, your messaging me, message a hundred investors, I don't care if you're copy and pasting, DMing, tweeting at them, LinkedIn, whatever, costume nothing, but so often people are coming to me about raising

capital and they've done like, oh, I've been trying to raise money for weeks, weeks. They might take you six months or a year, it's even get the meetings for it. How many people did you pitch? Oh, I message that four different people, my uncle and his friends. And I'll tell you, and maybe you're different at this day and maybe not, I don't know,

but I think the days of cold messaging on any of the platforms, emailing or even calling

me are dead, you weren't, you were never going to get over, you know, across the

vote into my world by coming in, it's known to all of those. That is a hundred percent rejection rate because the amount of noise and the amount of work that it would take to filter through all of those opportunities, it's just, it's untenable. It's impossible.

I think for anyone trying to raise capital or find investors or move the needle in a strategic way like that, get in the room, thank you, throw 42 events a year. I will tell you that if you message me, email me or call me, the answer is automatically no. If you show up at Dan's events and you're able to connect with Dan or someone else

I have a relationship with and Dan is like, hey, Eric, you know, like home service businesses

“or healthcare, you should meet Eric, I will at least take the time to get a job because”

you come on the back of someone else's credibility, even if they just met you. Like, oh, I know, and you know, and so I think being very strategic and finding ways to stand out is incredibly important in business in today's environment. Why do you think it's important for people to invest into themselves? Why should they get coaching, masterminds, what are you doing?

That's, God, that's really the conversation I want to have, like how to make money is technical and, you know, I could talk on it all day long and creating wealth and starting businesses and creating, you know, a framework within the company that makes it a business that is able to sell and then playing the EBITDA multiple game, right? I make a dollar and because of the level of this company it trades at a 6x, 8x, 10x, a

12x, I make a million, I apply the multiple, it's worth 8 million, 10 million, 12 million,

I make 2 million, that whole thing. But what people, people want to focus on that and what they miss is the person you have to become to be able to do it. The personal development work, right? Like, I don't know what the odds are or the statistics.

I do know that 4% of the American workforce makes over $100,000 a year, 2% makes over 200. So, if you're looking to make a million dollars a year, you are like the 0.0, 1%.

“You have to become the fucking 0.01% then.”

You have to build yourself up and develop the internal assets, the tools and the resiliency to manage the stress and pressure, to become an interesting, important person that people want to do business with. It is just, it is the one thing that I see people fail on the most is there, like, I want to make money.

I want to get rich. What the fuck does personal development have anything to do with that, right? What does that have to do with this? It has everything to do with it, everything. I like to tell people that, listen, I became, I was a homeless, broke, drug addict with,

you know, nothing at 22 years old, I was a millionaire at 27.

And what happened between 22 and 27 is not that I made a million dollars first is that

I had to become a guy that makes a million dollars and then I made a million dollars. And that's the process. And so my original focus in changing my life was not, I'm going to get sober, I'm going to give up drugs and alcohol and I'm going to get rich. My original focus was I'm going to get sober and I'm going to come the best version of myself

fucking humanly possible. And then I took that and channeled it into business, entrepreneurship and wanting to better myself. But the focus was always recreating myself over and over and over again, because it went

to the guy that could make 10 million to the guy that could amass an enormous net worth

and walk in a room confidently and hold that space. The wealthiest guys in girls that I know, especially the billionaires, let me just ask questions the whole time, they're still coachable, they want to know because let's say you're doing a hundred million dollars in sales or a billion dollars, whatever the number is, a one percent change is a lot of money and literally at dinner, lunches, breakfast, text

messages, I get from the billionaires in the world, it's just questions, because they know that if they learn something, it changed everything, well I say that as it leads into it, there's a guy out there doing 1.5 million in sales, who thinks he knows everything. And he won't listen to you who's sold for a hundred million plus, and we'll listen to him, listen to that person or even Tony Robbins, because he thinks to know is it all,

we'll just say to that kid that's doing 1.5 million, that thinks he knows everything.

“You have to be a student to the game, some of the most valuable moments of my life that”

have unlocked millions and perhaps tens of millions of value were what I call aha moments. They were that light bulb, that eureka moment, right? And it's just taken view from here and looking at it just a little bit different. And if I do it this way, I can do it that, that comes from being teachable, being a student of the game, being, you know, hungry for information and having the humility to be able

to learn from others.

You know, the guy that knows it all is always the fucking poorest guy of the world.

What points did you know is time to sell? Is there the right time to sell or is it just like you're on your progress and then companies come to you or private equity comes to you or is it like, you know what? Let me start to package this thing up and prepare it to sell.

“For me, my journey with selling the company was as much a business aligned with business”

thesis as it was personal and spiritual to me. I, you know, ran the one of the largest addiction treatment businesses in the country. I was on the front lines of America's opioid epidemic and addiction crisis. It was a law, it just became to a point where I felt God was nudging me that it was time to move on.

It was time to do other things and I started that process. I started being interested in selling my in selling businesses and private equity and mergers and acquisitions in 2017 is when I started obsessively studying it.

I completed my first minority transaction in 2019 knowing that I was going to chip

away and build the company and divest into other things with an eventual exit and then in March of 2021 sitting in my backyard in my house at the time in Fort Lauderdale, it hit me and I was just like, when you know you know and I just knew and I was like, it's time to go. Interestingly enough, it was at that same time period where I was like, I wanted to start

building a personal brand, I want to get on social media, I wanted to be influential to people and use my story and my life experience to get out there and show other people that if a fucked up, you know, drug addict can turn his life around and become successful that absolutely anybody can and so I was just it I listen to my heart and so strategically could I have grown that business larger and sold it for more money yes but it was just

time for me to go and so I made the decision in March of 2021, made the call to the teams and guys were going to market called the investment banker and said let's go and signed a contract with him took it to market it was a 10 month process and then we sold in late December four days before Christmas. So oftentimes people think that's the goal but they actually are not watching part of the journey

meaning they just think one day I'm going to sell the cover and take a public and then I realize how rare that is very hard to have an exit in the company yes it is not just even if you have a good EBITDA or you have a good business not like they're just a line of buyers just because

“you did X amount of dollars and sales you have to package it up and be prepared for it you said”

is a 10 month process what parts of that can you tell us about those 10 months I think the 10 month process might be misleading it was several years prior to that process that I spent professionalising the company and so when I started professional and I'll talk about the 10 month process of the transaction but when I started professionalising the company in preparation for its sale what the company looked like was it was the Eric Spockford show I had to show up to work every

single day. I had a dozen direct reports I was central to the company it was very mom and

talking about it's my company I'm here to run it like and so I had to learn the information first

and then I had to execute in the business and the things that I learned was businesses with the institutional knowledge is written down in written policy standard operating procedures

“that operates with a dashboard of key performance indicators, KPIs and metrics that has a”

leadership team that could run the business if the owner and founder got hit by a boss that operated professionally one were able to transact period not every business is a sellable business in the state that it's in and two would sell for instrumentally more money than something that didn't have and there's a lot more that goes into it but didn't have those core factors of professionalising the company installed and so when I saw that and understood the equation right

it is earnings, EBITDA and a multiple a lot of people think about the value of their company and they focus exclusively on how much money we make the variable is also the multiple the multiple is driven by professionalisation of the company and how well packaged this is so if

you have a company that does say $10 million a year in earnings but it runs like a sloppy piece of

shit a buyer might come in and look at it and go well they have earnings it has a lot of potential we're going to have to command we're going to have to take the risk we have to build the leadership team we have to protect ourselves in our investment against the owner founder and start to build the team around him replace him as the CEO we're going to take a lot of risk we'll pay you five to six x this company great 50 60 million but if you as the owner of the company

understand that this business is worth more without you than it is with with you and all these other

“key factors of how to professionalise the company and you take the time to do that work”

you can take that same company without ever increasing earnings professionalise it and go out to

market and get a 10 to 12x the earnings are the same the business valuation can be double at times based a huge and so I took the time to start to professionalise the company I documented everything I hired the biggest thing that I did was I hired a leadership team and onboarded them and trained them and hired the right people and got them in the right seats when I brought all of that stuff into the realm of professionalisation leadership team and all of that what actually interestingly

happened with the company as well is I had less and less time obligation to it so much so that I was fucking bored and revenue exploded we doubled and revenue and doubled in EBITDA and so when we made the decision to go to market I hired the banker the investment banker that is someone who represents your company typically they work for a success fee it's a percentage anywhere two to four percent is market on the transaction value of the business they came in they started to work with the team

they they compiled what's called the data room which is exhaustive you know I mean it is burning you know burning midnight oil getting all this information together on your business you think you have everything together until you see that request list right that data room is then put into a teaser which is a no name of document that says it's in the businesses in the Northeast here some key facts about it and you know it does this service this revenue this

employees this that the other thing that that teaser goes out to a buyer list and we went out to like

“I think 130 different people buyers private equity firms and strategic buyers”

about 80 of those folks came back and said we're interested next they're you send out a non-disclosure agreement the NDA some these folks just sign it a lot of them you wouldn't believe it they want to go back and forth and volley this NDA over minor details it's like it's it's very annoying it's an NDA it's not a big deal you get the NDA signed and you send them a full deck this is you know has full financials everything about the company is in this packaged brochure essentially about

the company but it's very extensive and deep information and then you schedule what's called an IOI due date which is indication of interest due date and then the companies get to look at the financials and look at the company and they come back with IOI letters on this day you know it's a fun fact about buyers and private equity companies is they all do the same thing and they wait till the last 10 minutes it's all like you'll say it's due on you know Tuesday February whatever

a buy 5 p.m. they're going to come in between 445 and 5 p.m. it's so weird you're open you're like

in the company here's who we are here's where we're sourcing the money this is what we plan for the business and here's a range of value so you're just sitting there on IOI day clicking email opening open in pdf's reading scanning look just look at for the numbers okay 100 million great great great and our IOI's ranged from like 65 million to 185 million oh it was such a brawl yeah

and I was like well I'm never selling to 65 million and I don't really believe that person at

“185 million I think it and it ended up being I was like the right numbers probably in the”

middle exactly and that's where we ended up 115 after IOI day you schedule management meetings where all the key players of the private equity group of the buyer come and visit the business they want to meet the team they want to see the business they want to dig in they want to meet the team it's typically a dinner the night before and then all day the next day with a schedule you're going to meet marketing you're going to meet sales in operations you're going to and you're just

running people through meeting them and they're just drilling them with questions we we boiled it

down from 130 buyers in the buyer list 80 IOI's we got a we cut out half of those and then picked the top nine told others to go back to drawing board and picked the top nine ahead manage meetings

“with them and then went on to LOLI letter of intent which is a binding document they're like okay”

we're really in this here's the exact number and if you sign this you're exclusive with us and we're entering a due diligence period to purchase the company and then you go into due diligence where they're going it's a full rectible exam and simultaneously you're negotiating and drafting purchase documents and and other necessary things to get over the finish line of closing and then you schedule closing and on closing day God the amount of anxiety and the amount of like

just electric energy right like I don't care you can be a stoic and as disciplined as you want to be when you're in this process you're spending the money in your head you're like I can't believe this my life gets life this is about to change this family forever and so December 21st of 2021 I woke up

“I was like it was closing day and it was scheduled for 10 a.m. and I went to my new office which I had”

set up and I set it a conference room with my right hand at work and we got on this call and they you know they go around they have the bankers the lawyers the buyers me the seller the executive team that's staying behind and they sign off and they they sound off they go around and everyone has to verbally commit to closing and so they got to me and said Eric you're good to close they said yeah clear to close and everyone else clear to close clear to close clear close close

close like 20 people and at the end they said all right graduation guys this deal is closed in my fucking hood ass was like hey guys uh when do I get my money you know what I mean back back up the brink's truck I'm getting out of here it's been a bank robbery you know I'm out and they said the wires have been initiated and I waited all day and it was like 5 30 at night refresh the banking app right the banking app over and over and over and over and over again

waiting for that wire to hit and about 5 30 at night and I was like get pissed I was ready to start call people because I'm like banking hours over where the fuck is the money we close at 10 a.m. and you know you just wait there's all this tens and tens of dollars just where is it like why why is it when you press the button here doesn't just show up mayor it takes all day and so I thought I was going to have to wait till the next day I was sitting in my kitchen table with my

feet up in a refreshed one more time and fuck it boom numbers were just like nine numbers and I was like god to be clear is eight numbers because I've already sold three minority shares and didn't make the whole 115 people get that fucked up but nonetheless it was more money than I've

never seen or thought I was going to see and I just sat back and I was like holy shit we did it

this is fucking crazy I immediately turned to prayer it's a god thank you this is unbelievable you know what to test the money of what someone can do when they put their mind to it and make to make the right decisions next morning the next morning listen I never took it that off the next

very very close person to me that's been with me a long time and we drove like almost two hours to a city called Fall River Massachusetts to look at these brick buildings come on the next morning the next morning yeah December 22 it's cold it's cold as fuck out and we're looking at these brick buildings that I'm I'm looking at buying them and developing them into fucking apartment buildings I have a hot dunk in donuts coffee in my hand I'm all bundled up it's freezing and my

right hand at work literally elbows me it's 9 a.m. we've been up since 530 in together we're looking at these big buildings and have architects and engineers with me and all that and she

looks at me and goes we're never going to take a fucking day off on me it's a fair question I

agree with it I just laughed and I was like no no was certainly not all right let's go to the final chapter let's talk about the charity side but I'm gonna do a different twist with you so obviously you're passionate about the sober industry and getting people sober yeah that's not exactly philanthropy but there are philanthropy versions of that there are ways to donate to that but it's more about the message you send and energy you put into it and I've actually told me about

stories of guys that have come to you and that you've guided on and push them to go get sober which is which is the butterfly effect if they fix their life obviously it helps their family

their friends their communities etc how did someone find that for themselves like to get behind

something because it's very different just here donate a hundred bucks thousand bucks 10 grand whatever to a charity versus find some of their passion about I'm gonna answer your question

“with the question because I think it's a board and if you had pain in your life yes the pain is the”

purpose the pain is the purpose right whatever it is that you've been up against whether it was childhood abuse homelessness you know the hundreds and thousands of problems that's you know people sickness illness health problems you lost someone to cancer fucking degree is overwhelming like I advise people to look to what is personally impacted you and caused you pain and if you can't find a way to get excited to have some sort of purpose that is driven by the pain that you've

been through like do you think it's coincidence that we struggled that way right like God fucking himself chose that I was a drug addict or however fate works right fate brought me to addiction and it was unbelievably painful it destroyed my life it destroyed the lives of fucking people around me it caused a lot a lot of chaos and a lot of harm but but it inevitably became the greatest gift

“that I could possibly have because it gave me a purpose for my life my life is important and my”

life is meaningful because I was able to take the most painful experience of my life and turn it into a purpose I don't know a person that I've met yet that hasn't had their own story of pain at some level doesn't need to be addiction it can be anything right your purpose and the thing you can get excited about and where you can make a difference is there it's it's on the other side of your pain I might be something to happen to significant other a child of the parent and grandpa I'll

ever get impacted someone who's influential to your life you know all right so you're one of my only repeat guests because I really have repeat guests so you you've already answered this question

but we're gonna ask it again it's the only question I ask I've ever single episode and I've never

“gotten the same answer and I think I'm gonna actually get a different version of the same answer”

from you because over time people think about things different you would just had another baby I did yeah and so you sell more companies for another hundred million here hundred million there hopefully got willing a billion and two billion over the course of time but eventually Eric's bothered past the way unfortunately what percentage of your net worth do you leave to those children it's an interesting question on how do you think and I've just recently because I just

had my third child I went back and have started in and again right now back in my trust the state and will dox redoing them because I have two boys and so the rules that I had in place from my two sons don't really translate to my daughter right these are very different things and revisiting them the my wealth will all go into my trust and my trust is left to all three of my children but they do not have open access to it there is a criteria that for them to even

important piece central fact of how I made this wealth and what's important to me I give them the

“choice that if they want to be you know on drugs smoke and pot you know doing whatever it is”

with their life they can do that on their own time they get nothing for me they also need to be you know gainfully employed in school like this all this stuff that is a requirement for them to participate in the wealth but one of the things that that terrifies me is that we'll pass you know we pass this wealth down to them and you know we work our whole lives to create it we don't live long enough to get to spend it all and we pass it down to them and they

fuck it up and it doesn't benefit my grandchildren my great grandchildren my you know it's centered centered centered generational and so how I currently am setting mine up is that they're only allowed to access 4% of the total value of my trust the the wealth annually right and so how that how that works is that you know if you invest the money you can safely predict over time and average return of 8% right 3% can stays in the portfolio and

“it grows to grow the basis to compound it and to keep up with and hopefully beat inflation”

1% so 5% comes out they cannot access more than 5% of the wealth in any one annual calendar year 5% is distributed 1% pays the tax capital gains and 4% is the net so they have to meet

all of this requirement but this is never going to be guns blazing yahu there's a 100 million

dead here's millions of millions of dollars it's going to be enough to and my dear now with that 4% needs to get divided at this time amongst three and so it's an assistance it's a guide it's something I could do I can ensure that they'll never be hungry and hopefully they'll never be homeless as long as they aren't fucking losers and don't fuck it up for themselves but I could also ensure that it will proceed them it will survive them and it will survive the next generation

and the next generation and the next generation yep all right work if you will find you on social media or anything that's going on in your world at Eric Spofford it's easy nice dropped the

“like boom all right guys as I mentioned earlier this podcast is not just for you you might be”

sitting somewhere four months or now and someone's going through something that they might need to get sober or they might want to be getting some help in their life and you might refer them to start following Eric at cross social media you might some of the things we talked about here on this episode maybe a friend is trying to sell their company come here and listen to the master class Eric just put on about preparing this 10 month situation to prepare for an exit and the

years before that it's actually be dialed in for it because it could save your friend a lot of time money and I could it will save a lot of time money energy because if you're not packed to prepare at Pinky's where you're going to go through a long headache before that even allows you to exit your company as you guys know we run this commercial free I am sponsored by fan bases because actually use fan bases.com for years but there's no affiliate code it's just a company that

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pretty sure you guys see you guys next Monday here at the monday mondays dot com ladies and gentlemen welcome to a special edition of the monday monday podcast we cover three core topics had it make money and invest money at a giveaway charity as you guys know these podcasts are under 40 minutes because the average workout is 45 minutes the average commute to work is 40 minutes this episode will be between 34 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure why do I say that

because we have a 93% listen to rate which keeps us way high up there on the podcast rankings because you like comment subscribe and share so when you see these clips when you're listening it might not just be for you you might hear something from our guest today that you're like oh wow this is interesting two months from now or two years from now for the podcast

never know what might happen you might help them learn something new get a new job fix something

their company just with a little tips and tricks that you hear today on this podcast so it's not always just about you it could be for someone from your past present or future as you guys know

been using for years that's fan bases dot com there's no affiliate code it's just a great company in high level I happen to be wearing the sweater as we speak because go high level how

is the world my entire back in system multi-billion dollar company so check out high go high level

if you are affiliate agency coach course creator etc all right let's dive right in the goal is to cover all things money related because we grew up thinking it's rude

“it's talk about money I think it's ridiculous we have to talk about it loans pieces taxes investing”

should I buy should I rent should I rent should that what that's so many question what if my brand friend borrow six hundred dollars how do I ask for it back there's a real life things that go on our daily life and for so many years we grew up thinking it's rude talk about it we have to talk about it or about to talk about it right this second just this give us the quick two minute bio so we get straight to the money sure so and then thank you so much Dan great to see you

thanks for having me on this beautiful set quick two minute bio I'll give it even quicker than that um I was very blessed in life I was born in Canada I was born on third base if you're born in Canada or America you're already born on third base you might not realize that I mean I might not believe that really because maybe you grew up in a lower middle class or or even maybe a welfare

state or well for household but the reality is if you were born one of these two great countries

you're ahead of 80% of the population so my first day when I was born in Canada I actually was

“fortunate I was um blessed to to be born in Canada now I you know I I did grow up in a lower middle”

class household I struggled I you know I I lost my father at a very young age I became enamored with money because of the fact that we had money then we kind of lost her the money that we had father passed away so I went on this pursuit to trying to obtain money and figure out some tips and techniques not having a father around to really not only help myself but to help my family and my friends around me so I've had this pursuit I'm 33 years old now I've done exceptionally well I've co-founded

and founded many companies that have gone to hundreds of millions of dollars of value and actually even a couple that have gone to billions of dollars of value what's the primary focus now what's

what's been working on in this time for me well the primary focus I mean so I you know I used to be

you know my firm we used to be global investors um for a long period of time but four or five years ago when I came down to Miami here we opened up operations and offices and in the US I looked around this beautiful country and I realized holy crap this country doesn't make anything anymore am I talking about t-shirts and blue jeans and things like that I'm talking with a real bread and butter the stuff that's going to carry this country forward uh 50 a hundred years so I

went on this very aggressive pursuit to change our investing focus and we started buying great things like you know we bought a rare a rare earth mine for example sounds crazy but we bought a rare earth mine in Texas uh we bought the largest uranium measured and indicated deposit in the country and so if you know anything about energy you probably realize you need your nuclear to sustain the energy in the future and so uranium is the byproduct that goes into

nuclear for example and so um a little bit less high tech and SaaS types of things but I guess you could call you know myself more of an industrialist so we've been you know very aggressive in those industries aerospace defense all sorts of things like that and so those areas are very important for our number reasons one they're going to help us to sustain this country for the

“next 50 and a hundred years uh I think that's extremely important I think it's you know America's”

falling behind in a certain way I think we've lost our way to a certain capacity it's not that we can't get it back on track but you know we've got 39 trillion dollars in debt some would say the the next generations lays here than the previous generation so there's some structural issues I'm a man of faith um faith is not as prevalent you know church and things like that in inner society and values having families that are you know husband and wife and having kids

we're not reproducing like we were or are and so there's a lot of things that are fundamentally I think that need to get better if we want to continue to grow this thing through but from a financial perspective I've been really aggressively trying to find great world-class American assets build them grow them take them public or exit them and along the way we create some great American jobs so there's so many different options and categories to invest into real estate stock market

cultural and businesses tech companies AI companies crypto currency oh my gosh there's so many things how do you guys filter down to the things that you want to focus your money time and energy into that's a great question and so you know I don't I go to Vegas a lot for uh for different reasons I actually have season tickets to the Vegas Raiders I know they're they're not a great team but I still support them I love the underdog but the reason I say that is like even so for example

when I go to Vegas I don't gamble could I gamble sure like have I gambled yeah but I don't enjoy it because you know psychologically I know I don't have an edge right at best case it's 51 49 give or take that's the best it's ever gonna get your perfect yeah yeah and that's the best it's ever gonna get and so for me just you know I think life is also what having an edge right so if you grew up and

industry in the world but you're gonna learn a requisite skill set or you got certain advantages

“that 99% of the population won't have and I think it's gonna be who view if you're not aware of that”

and you don't embrace that in a certain ability because you kind of have a leg up and so life is also about math and probability it's about more than that it's what skill and luck and timing but if you've got an edge on on on something you want to use that and so going back to my I guess gambling you know analogy right so I don't gamble because I I don't think I'll win over time and answer your question Dan so the reasons we operate in the arena as we do

first and foremost it's because I believe the country needs these things and if the country needs

them that's a great starting point but I don't live in Silicon Valley so we're not in deep heavy tech because I don't have an edge most of the folks in Silicon Valley are gonna be able to develop a better AI technology and I'll ever be able to fathom or my team will be able to fathom and we try to find these areas with an edge and so the industrialist nature of me is I grew up in Canada I was fully a manager we invested hundreds of millions and billions of dollars into industrial projects

so that's primarily why I like the industrial stuff and I think because of the administration there's been a return to let's say greatness and doing things the old way the new way

“but the old way and so in the in the limelight there's the commodities business and so that's why”

you know I pick the commodities because I've got an edge over 99% of the people out there I believe

so let's say someone wants to get into finance they want to go work for a company like yours or a firm like yours they want to work on Wall Street or Silicon Valley etc how do they start how do they go down that path to go work in the financial services firm that's a great question and one thing you know I'm a big proponent of education I do think education generally speaking it's not perfect but it's a great equalizer if you can learn and do things better than other folks but

you know I've gotten to great colleges and things like that but they don't really teach you the Manusha VC and some of these really important things and certainly I think you alluded to earlier in grade school they don't teach you about a balance sheet or peer credit cards or is this good dad is this bad dad you got to kind of ask yourself why I don't want to turn this into conspiracy corner but it's just not set up the right way and so fortunately because of people like you

podcast like yours the the information that's readily out there on podcast you can educate yourself and I encourage the people at home to educate yourselves because no one's going to do it for you nobody's going to do anything for you and so ironically you know I find people spend more time on booking their next vacation than they do about their own life plan or their life goals or their balance sheet so you've got to you've got to spend your own time and energy to kind of figure

this stuff out and so what I will say is in regards to finance it's extremely lucrative if you can figure it out but it's not for everyone per se and so if you have that burning desire the information is out there maybe you catch a breaker too you can do exceptionally well and finance absolutely well you've been on television press building up your social etc so as more people see you and they hear oh he's got a VC firm he's investing in deals you get pitched you get

bombarded you get DM's text emails people approach you at events etc how do you filter through to make something stand out like what what would stand out to you if I said hey invest in my chessboard company or invest in my AI coming won't make it stand out to you so the interesting thing is I mean you know much like everything in life we evolve right so wherever we started hopefully isn't gonna be where we end and maybe it's gonna be somewhere in the in the middle

I and we pride ourselves about being fluid being evolving you know kind of always you know

moving and adapting so we are a typical VC firm so we want kind of hypergrowth let's call it but we're also more of a PE firm we're blend between VC and PE and I only say that and all of maybe educate some of the viewers at home is that PE they take a little bit more of a pragmatic approach VC basically looks like this you make 10 investments it's usually somebody else's money you make 10 investments one skyrock it's does 10 a 10,000 x more percentage you can never imagine maybe

the next two did do quite well and the balance of more pretty much zeros so the idea is that the one that shoots the lights out takes care of the entire portfolio and that's the way VC works generally I've never really loved the genesis of that maybe because I hate losing data after

“why but I just I don't want to be wrong eight times and being super right once I think that's junk”

what we've kind of gravitated towards is maybe we won't hit the 10,000 x returns we don't necessarily we don't need this yeah we're not running the outside portfolio runs and inside portfolio and so what we're trying to do is we're trying to take a more pragmatic approach and we're trying to find companies that are let's say out of proof concept they can be in any arena that helps America that's the only mandate they've got to be American companies we take a very active approach

right so we'll put a board member or two we'll be there 24/7 as little or as much as you need us to

from 43 years of life some of our team members who've learned great expertise and great adjoining skill sets we want to be there complimentary and and I guess what I'm saying is we were we're looking for companies in private equity as well they don't have to have crazy cash flow but they've had they go out of a growth propensity and if we can fund them if we can build them

if we can get in there sub 50 million dollars so market cap or valuation and we can help to build

and grow them into many hundreds of millions and and as I was mentioning before if we get lucky it's in no billion or two or four billion dollars of the value we don't need much more than that and so that's kind of the framework that's to genesis that said we're not you know we're not it's crazy that sounds we're not here to compete against Silicon Valley there's better and recent there's a lot better Silicon Valley firms that would take your business on but we're we're a blend between

the VC and in private equity so how much is AI changed what you look at investments when some companies or some categories could be disrupted how's AI changed what you're looking at

“what we're still so early days right I mean I just I think we're you know we're still so early”

into it there's so many abs and flows I think people now you really think it's going to happen overnight like I just I can't see it at this point time as a for my user perspective you know we're investors are chat GPT it's a passive investment I'm sure it's going to do well open AI but like the user experience is is to better train search at the moment that's the capability of it and so I think in this coming year 2026 I think it's going to evolve for the user perspective

not the founder perspective but the user perspective actually it could be the founder perspective where if you can work with AI it'll help to train your firm meaning that you're be able to use assistance internal assistance they can go through all your documentation all your emails if you can prompt it right it can make help you be more efficient as a founder of your firm it could be any type of firm so I think we're going to start to see a lot more of those real work applications

in 2026 but in the grand scheme of life in the grand scheme of things Dan we're still so early from any meaningful headway and so for us that's obviously very exciting you know I'm a large shareholder of space X space X is going public this year there's been talk over last week or so that X AI might actually merge with with space X which is you know blows your mind

but this this is a guy who's blown our mind for for very long time because the reality is is that

with his old with his X AI I mean his goal now is he's trying to get he's he's solved the problem of the launch right he can get things up and down on cadence in the other space and so Falcon 9 goes up three times a week when the Starship comes online unless let's say next 18 months or so and to give you perspective I think you'll enjoy this you're you're an interesting data guy so when you hear but the Starship this is the Elon's Mars rocket you might hear about it I don't

think anybody really knows the perspective of it but to give you some sort of breath the Starship rocket that Elon Musk is building that he will have operational is bigger than the statue of liberty so it's bigger than the statue of liberty and it's gonna fly 16 to 18,000 miles an hour whoa and downs like wow that's pretty fast but to give you better context a bullet and a gun travels three four thousand miles an hour so it's gonna travel four times the speed of a bullet and it's

“gonna be bigger than the statue of liberty that's what this guy is building and so if that doesn't”

blow your mind out airplane airplanes are four hundred miles an hour so that's four times 40 yes 16,000 16,000 16,000 40 times faster airplane yeah that's nuts yeah yeah whoa our humans gonna be on them humans will be on them there's debate whether they put the the optimist robots on

them first to start doing things but absolutely that there's gonna be payload and never leaves

going to humans because he wants to he wants to use that rocket to initially develop the lunar surface right so they want to go back to the moon they want to build colony there and then they also want to go in the Mars and then the interesting thing they want Mars is you can't just launch a rocket whenever you want there's only a window once every two years with the trajectory of the solar system and the way the planets are and that's that the launch window is going to happen

in and around December of twenty twenty six if he's able to hit this two-year window if he's on the other two years to try and get out of it totally fascinating okay on the investing side I can talk about that all day let's focus on money on the investing side when you find a company

“when do you decide if you're going to do follow-on rounds like that's what you invested the first”

I mean three and five million bucks into this company it was a forty-million dollar round you you and your guys three and five million bucks but now they're doing it two and a million dollar round later on what things make you decide you know what I want to invest again or you know what I'm good with our initial small investment that's it so I mean as the evolution of you know

traditional VC back to your gambling analogy and playing blackjack you always want to buy that if

it's an up-round and there's momentum you always want to double down your winners you want to let your winners ride as counter-intuitive as it might sound we're like all of the things up it's it's three x from where I put my money in I'm already positioned cheaply this too much risk traditional and mathematically the better VC performers always buy the higher rounds because they're trying to find the thing that takes off as quick as it can for us we we kind of look at it

a little bit differently because we we don't invest as passively anymore it just it takes so much energy we're small you know I mean um and so we we try not to invest as passively and so we back to the PE we want to take more meaningful stakes and the answer to that question is is unfortunately whether it's a up-round middle-round or sometimes even down-round we you know we're all and we we we put our chips on the table so we you know we take the shot and we we battle in the

trenches with these folks and we celebrate on rooftops with these folks but we're all in so we we don't necessarily discriminate unless there's something so wrong with the company or the management or the industry or something that we're just we physically camp but we're we we back companies got it all right let's talk about the charity side of things why do you think it's important for a brand product or service to have some type of charity for their staff or their employees

their clients vendors investors why do you think it's important to have some type of charity

“whether it's money time or energy involved in a company and I think you hit on that a little bit”

earlier when I when I walked in it was I think it's more to do with the butterfly effect and just paying things forward right and so we don't I don't live in a scarcity you know mentality or aspect

I always try and pay things forward I think you know making that culture sometimes you don't

even know what's going to come from a why it's going to come but as long as you keep giving I'm a big you know a spiritual guy I'm a universe guy I'm thinking you know and and there's been so me in my life where I didn't know something really good was going to happen but I just inadvertently did something good for somebody and you can never you know Steve Jobs as you can never connect the dots moving forward you've always got to look backwards to connect the dots and I'm sure

yourself Dan I'm sure some of the viewers you've seen things where you've just done something nicer kind not expecting anything or maybe even did expecting anything that's fine too but then you look back and in some time and that's opened a door or made a relationship or got you a job or got your promotion or got your flight or an interview on a podcast or something really really nice and so I think not being open minded to doing that and pushing that forward is very naive

very self-serving very close minded and so I'm of the camp that you wanted to as much as that within reason as humanly possible yeah why do you think it's important for people to invest into themselves invest into their mind whether it's coaches courses colleges personal brand why should they be investing to themselves that's a great question and I'm a big fan of your friend Tony Robbins I I actually start reading his his his mentor Jim Marone years even before I got into you know

Tony and and so I think Jim does the best job of kind of our articulating that where it's the only and I kind of articulate as well see himself prayer paraphrase it but at the end of the you can't rely on other people and you've got to make your own skill set right and it's back to the kind of the kind of the hunting and fishing and having that kind of sense of yourself of sense of sense of self sense of self worth and self being and that's how you

become I think a provider I'm old school I'm traditional if you look back to the lineage of human beings to you know caveman days where hunters and gathers right and so you can't just

“is it important to rely on on the on the team absolutely you have to rely on the team but”

it's really that person the the man or the girl looking yourself in the mirror and having that ability and confidence and and just going through the motions like it's everyone I think one of the biggest problems I think also in this day and age is everyone's so scared of failure but right

you meet these young 30 year old kids and they've never asked anybody out they've been hiding

behind this computer and they're socially awkward and I'm like what chance do you have to I think reproduce I mean it's it's tough right and you know guys like take talk about this stuff quite a bit where it's like you've got 80% of the women chasing 20% of the men something like that and so I think just going back into and again I'm not a trip back men were leading but just like more traditional more like you know getting out there failing embarrassing yourself

trying to ask a girl out the you have a crush on maybe she shoots you down and you feel like crap for a week or two but somewhere something inside you that's really good as a human being and there's good examples for women as well too but I think going back to the just a traditional not everything I mean obviously things are good in some capacity but just going back to being self-servant self-sufficient is really going to help our civilization out do you think that most people are

cut out to be CEO of a startup company I don't think so I wouldn't actually I wouldn't

“encourage it for everyone you have to be you have to have a certain kind of you know a little bit”

psycho you know you know there's something's obviously off if you you think you can do something

like in a good way it's obvious but the the math isn't on your side generally speaking I think you're

“trying something really hard I think I would actually implore and encourage people to not even be CEO”

because maybe you're not you don't have that right skill set or you're 60 percent of that skill set

you're just as good being somebody's number two if you're at somebody's number two or four a great CEOs you're going to learn way more and you'll be more collaborative and you'll create more value because you're more conducive to work with somebody who might have a better skill set for that and I'm right here that you know shattered people's dreams that's not what I'm saying but I'm just saying be real on who you are and if you're willing to you know get hit in the

face and fail and fail on the mat for an indefinite future with no guarantee of success and by the way as a CEO I'm and you're CEO of many companies down like it's very selfless right and so if you have any level of like you people pleasing or you want people to give you accolades it's tough as a CEO sure a couple people give you accolades but usually there's a longer list of vendors or somebody you

“that's true there's lots and so you have to and I say kind of tongue-in-cheek because I've got”

tough skin but like you have to be okay to do that and if you get a lawsuit or you something hit the fan you can't buckle because it's not just you at that point it's the rest of your company right and so you have to have that kind of kind of strength within you yeah all right so I'm going to say something very blunt employ number six is better than employ number one if you want to get paid yeah employ number one the founder would see you is literally the last of the list of getting paid

not just of humans vendors bills rent lawyer bills accounting vendors shipping food for the office every little thing is first before you get paid if you're employ number one that's exactly right stone cold last and by the way when there's extra money to pay employ number one guess what you do there's too many but back in the company yeah and if things are going good you put all the way back in the company so I say that because sometimes people should actually consider just be employ number

six get paid your salary on time and don't try to be that see your entrepreneur because you're elected to get paid unless you have a good success later on down the road except right all right let's talk about the last and final key piece there's only one question I ask on every single episode

I've never gotten the same answer out of a couple hundred episodes now wow ready for this one

okay you build up this VC firm you build up some of these companies you're part of you build up these investments and you have billions of dollars of exits over the course of your career but unfortunately at some day you finally pass away what percentage of your net worth do you leave to your children wow what a great question so I'll maybe answer it a different way and I don't know if the other hundred people say the same thing or not but the key thing for me is

I'm not sure what the percentage is as of yet but I want to make sure that whatever I leave behind it's not just a check it's not just a here take x amount of money and figure it out if there's got to be something that's parameters not even parameters what some level of sustainability I'm not that much sustainability for the earth but sustainability for the business and because again the idea that you want things to reoccur and compound and grow over time and I've seen so many

examples of you know friends of mine who've got kids who give a lot of money to their kids and they struggle because they they lose the value of money because they know there's more behind it

and if you let's say arbitrarily give a billion dollars to your kids they're not stupid people they know

if they can they can eat to this because they're still four hundred million left or three hundred million and two hundred million and so I don't think it's actually the percentage for me at least it's more can we set something up that they're so passionate about that they want to run and build and grow hopefully it's my business maybe it's their own business I don't know but it's got some sort of sustainability future where their kids are going to be able to inherit that and so there's a lot of

planning around generational stuff and and trusts and you know I'm a member of milk and institute and all these you know foundations I bought my own foundation so we do some planning around that sort of stuff but again the key for me is more so just like what does that look like that's what the dollar amount dollar amount but how do we ensure that this business has the right footing so when my kids who are one and four now when they're 84 and you know 89 I guess right

or 88 is that still a business that they can pass down to whoever's coming behind them yeah where can people find you on social or can they find any of the companies or any of the

“fun investments that they can look at yeah I think probably the best way just at just this”

JUSTUS Palmer P.A.R. M.A.R. that's the Instagram handle it connects to a lot of stuff I'm going to bug you about the Omni presence which is well and then yeah and you can find a lot of stuff on my on the company website invest fortuna.com invest f_o_r_t_u_n_a.com all right guys as I mentioned earlier in this podcast this is not just for you it might be for

someone might be thinking about investing someone might be thinking about raising capital you might

“want to forward this episode to them in the butterfly flight could occur they might start pitching”

him boom they get a 10 million investment because you passed along this podcast episode so just keep

in mind as you listen to these episodes it's not just for you it's also for your friends family and

followers. Appreciate you guys we'll see you guys next Monday here at TheMoneyMundays.com