← Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Loading summary
Transcript312 lines
- [00:00]
Dan Pena
Five or six years ago they got the biggest computers that were, you know, around at the time to play the four top chess masters and a five day chess tournament and human beings won. And Bill Gates asked the computer, is there anything you'd like to say in closing? And the computer, unprompted, said, don't trust us.
- [00:15]
Scott Clary
Dan Pena doesn't believe in comfort. He believes in pressure. From growing up with nothing to building and advising companies worth billions. Dan earned a reputation as the most feared and respected mentor in high performance entrepreneurship.
- [00:28]
Dan Pena
I bought a company quite by accident, Christmas Eve, less money that was in the bank account. I went to look at the assets in England and So I found 4 million acres non producing oil reserves. So I bought a 6 month option for 60 grand and I said I'll be back.
- [00:42]
Scott Clary
Direct, brutally honest, zero tolerance for excuses. Dan doesn't motivate, he confronts, he strips away fear, entitlement and self doubt until all that's left is execution.
- [00:52]
Dan Pena
When I started all this, I didn't give a fuck about anybody. I'm on board, pull up the gang plank. All I wanted to do is shove money as much as I could in my pockets. I didn't give a about anybody else. The last 15 or 20 years I've realized I've created 25 million jobs. I didn't start this thinking that I was going to help humanity. Everybody talks about change, but nobody wants to change themselves. It's easier to stay focused. Not easy, but it's easier if you're passionate about it.
- [01:24]
Scott Clary
Dan, you turned a $60,000 option into a $450 million company in 99 days. So walk me through how that happened.
- [01:32]
Dan Pena
There was nothing serendipity about it when I, I went, I bought a company quite by accident Christmas Eve for less money that was in the bank account for one of the billionaire guys I used to run with or hang out as you would say now. And I went to look at the assets in England it was. And so on my board that I inherited was the father of the North Sea, guy named Robert Dyke, who founded the North Sea at Argyle and some very distinguished guys. And so I said, well, UK had just been saved from bankruptcy by the oil taxation in the North Sea. So I got to find something to go public. So I ran back to the United first of all, I put the team together one layer better than the current teams that were taking secondary and tertiary companies public. I went back to the United States and I looked for assets and So I found 3 1/2, almost 4 million acres of UN Prod non producing oil reserves in the Denver Julesburg Basin in Wyoming. And I had 60 grand left in the bank. So I, I went to the guy. Now he has been selling options on this property for decades. He collects the option money and they never come back. So I bought a six month option for 60 grand and I said, I'll be back. And he said yeah. And this is before Schwarzenegger was saying this, I'll be back. And he said, yeah, sure you will, kid. So I went zoomed back to the United States and I told my team, how do I monetize this? And so they, there was a genius kid who's now gone dead, a guy named Jeremy Knight. And he said, you have an option. Well, I don't believe an option's ever been taken public for we'll check with the bank of England. So he went and checked and he came back a day or two later and he said an option never been taken public. But we're not sure that the yellow book, which is the rules of the stock exchange at that time will allow it. Well, why can't we be the first? And it's going to cost legal this, that. And then I said, well I'll get do it on a delayed fee basis. Okay. And so we got the lawyers that at that time were Fresh Fields and the Fresh Fields were the leading law firm in Europe and they used to say we represent the bank of England, the Church of England, the Queen of England and Dan Pena. Okay. And so we got it to the bank of England. But at that meeting, that crucial meeting on Friday afternoon about 2 or 2:30, they said, Mr. Pena, we suggest you don't come to this meeting because I, I will neither confirm nor deny. I used to lay hands on people, choke them and shit like I'm accused of. And you can't do that at the bank of England. So I, I screamed and yelled and I said okay. So they went. So about one minute to five that, that afternoon I get a phone call from Jeremy N. Got it through. We're going to take an option public. What are we pricing it at? What do you want to price it at? 400 million? Who cares?
- [04:22]
Scott Clary
Doesn't matter.
- [04:22]
Dan Pena
Yeah, doesn't matter. Okay. And so we, and that was, and it, it actually went public on my 39th birthday at 10 in the morning, 1984. And when they hit the hammer down, you know that 60 grand was worth about 400 million bucks.
- [04:39]
Scott Clary
That's insane. That's insane.
- [04:41]
Dan Pena
Now we tried it again. We went to the Netherlands. We're Going to do it again. We got it away. And then they put in the pen rule as it's called where you have to own what you take public on the stock exchange in England and in Amsterdam.
- [04:54]
Scott Clary
Before that didn't exist.
- [04:55]
Dan Pena
No, didn't exist.
- [04:57]
Scott Clary
So you the whole system up?
- [04:58]
Dan Pena
Yeah. And now and some of my mentees have tried in Hong Kong, Beijing, Vancouver, etc. And of course they, they figure out the research and of course now with Google and you can't do it anymore. But it was one of the, the deals of the 80s, the great deals of the 80s. And so it was kind of my first claw at financial greatness, so to speak. And but I've done a bunch of deals like that. That's the biggest one that I get credit for because I virtually put 60 grand in and turned it in, you know, hundreds of millions.
- [05:31]
Scott Clary
Were you you from a young age you were always, you were aggressive about anything you did.
- [05:36]
Dan Pena
Though my that came from your mouth overloaded my hummingbird ass on a daily basis.
- [05:41]
Scott Clary
Was that your dad?
- [05:43]
Dan Pena
Well, my dad used to beat me. He'd be in jail for child abuse because there was a right way or wrong way in my dad's way and he believed in tough love. He didn't know what that meant at the time. He didn't have a father. His father died before, just before he was born. And my dad was a cop, a high profile cop. Then he went into the CIA and he was an allegedly an assassin in the CIA. And he just, when he got home once or five or six or seven times a year, my mother used to put on the refrigerator with magnets. The nuns beat Dan for this, the priest beat him for this. He got thrown out of school for this. And so when my dad would catch up, he'd do all the beatings at once even though he wasn't there for five months, you know. And he used to tell me this hurts me more than it hurts you. And I said that's horseshit. Bam. He'd hit me again. And I said, tell my mother I said how can he, how can he lie to me like that? It can't possibly. He says emotionally your father has no emotional, you know, emotions. I mean he's just hard ass guy.
- [06:42]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [06:42]
Dan Pena
You know, fought in two wars, blah blah blah. He's just a hard ass. And he, he knows that you should be more disciplined. The only goal my parents, especially my father had and I just had dinner with my 84 year old cousin in Tampa a few days ago who reflected a lot of this the only goal they had for me is to keep me alive until I reached the age of reason. And they were not sure if that would ever happen because I was doing crazy all the time. All the time. And I was, I had leadership skills that I learned from my dad initially. Then I honed my leadership skills when I went through OCS during the Vietnam crisis and the. I could talk guys into anything. I mean I could talk girls into anything.
- [07:18]
Scott Clary
You were just sales.
- [07:19]
Dan Pena
I was a hard closer. I never took no for an answer. I just had my 60 year high school reunion a year ago and the girls would come up to my wife and say, Danny didn't know kno w. No, no, he didn't understand. No. And all the mothers of the girls I dated hated me. Okay, all the fathers hated me because they knew what I was up to. And that's just the way it was. I was, as I reminded my class, I was the only one that got up to speak at my 60 high school. I reminded him, you voted me class clown. You voted me for least likely to succeed. And they did. And so little girl that I used to date said, we were wrong, weren't we Danny?
- [08:01]
Scott Clary
Why do you think when you look at, you know, I know you talk about younger population or younger generation a lot and I even feel I'm 35, I'm, I'm young, I'm not, I'm not even, you know, halfway to 80 yet. But I even feel when I look at a younger generation that they are more insecure, more uncomfortable with hard work than even I was. Like, I've worked. I didn't do physical labor my whole life, but I've worked non stop. Even when I was going to university, I would work 9 to 5 and then I take my classes at night and on the weekends because I always liked work. I always thought that work on the other side of work was like a better life. Now I find that, and this is a generalization, but I've had so many friends, and myself included, try and hire kids like, you know, like 20, 25, only 10 years younger than me. And they value different things, but I also don't think that they understand that a good life is on the other side of work. So they want balance. I don't know what that means, I don't know what balance means, but I just know that if you don't put reps in at a young age, you, you're going to wake up when you're 35, 40, and wonder what the happened in your life, what happened? How did this happen?
- [09:18]
Dan Pena
Jack Welsh, who arguably in my opinion was the best CEO in corporate world in the last 50 years, said it better than I. He says there is no work life balance. There's work life choices and they have consequences.
- [09:32]
Scott Clary
I like that.
- [09:32]
Dan Pena
Okay. And he was a super, super manager. And I competed against GE when I was with Siemens and Clouse. Okay. When I was helping clients to become CEO. And they did it with less people, they had a higher revenue per employee. He took GE from 360 or 70,000 employees down to 170, while he tripled their EBITDA and their revenue, etc. Whereas Siemens had 450,000 employees and it stayed with 450. In fact, the biggest thing that Klaus used to be accused of when he became CEO of Siemens is he manages like an American.
- [10:10]
Scott Clary
Okay, Interesting.
- [10:11]
Dan Pena
Okay.
- [10:11]
Scott Clary
That was supposed to be a bad thing.
- [10:13]
Dan Pena
Oh, absolutely bad. Because we did it with less employees. Okay. And they were more productive. Even though the Germanic people are very productive, they like to work hard. But the problem, one of the problems Siemens had is they had unions. Okay. And which the was death knell for Jack Welch or ge? We're just in the process of hiring a guy to be coo, one of the companies I'm chairman of who, who was 15, 20 years with GE. And without even interviewing him, I knew that he was the right guy because he had been trained by Jack Welch. Okay. And so the. And there's, there's four or five guys out there, most of which aren't managing anymore because they're so old. Sandy Wheel in the insurance business from Prudential Fame was one of those guys. But they're all. I was the young guy in the group and they were all 15, 20, 25 years older than I am. So if I'm 80, they're 90 or 100 are dead. Okay. But they feel entitled. Now my own children feel entitled. They had entitled life all the years that they've been alive. I've had a lot of money. None. Not nuns, excuse me, butlers, governesses, etc, and so they, they didn't have to work that hard. And although the today's kids. I was privileged. I. I trained six of the nine oligarchs of Putin, six of the nine I trained. We just had the first son of one of the oligarchs come through the program last November. He says, thank you very much, Mr. Penny, for not embarrassing me by saying who I was. I would never, you know, I made the deal with your dad 25 years ago and. But the Russians love my Program. It's the mafia model without a gun.
- [12:02]
Scott Clary
Explain. What does that mean?
- [12:03]
Dan Pena
Oh, that means I'm giving you a deal. You can't refuse and not can't refuse because I'm going to shoot your kids. Can't refuse because it makes so much economic sense. The I was asked the question when I was on the Patrick's show a couple days ago about bitcoin and I said my answer is like Jamie Dimons, even though I don't believe in it. And Jamie Dimon says I'll make a market in it because my, my customers want it. We'll give them a market. So I've had to learn a lot about bitcoin. I alluded to it a few minutes ago that I've got four or five, maybe six billionaires from bitcoin not because of me, but because they, they happen to be involved in that end of the financial continuum. But my QLA is 70, 80, 90% seller finance. We don't indulge or involve commercial banking unless we have to. Commercial banking is our default. If we can't get it funded any other way, we use commercial banking. And the TV program that came out six or seven years ago, succession tripled my business because even small companies have succession problems. You don't have to be a billionaire to have succession problems, okay? You can't say families without saying lies, okay? And so even a guy that's got a little two million dollar business, I'm not scoffing at the two million dollar business. You know, my kid don't want my kids. My grandkids don't want to be involved. My wife says I'm working.
- [13:29]
Scott Clary
I've heard this a lot, a lot of kids. I, I, there was a business that I was, that when I was early on in my career, I joined, I was just working for them and it was a 10 million dollar business. And the guy had built this business up from scratch since, since the 90s and his kids wanted nothing to do with it. And this is, I see this again and again and again and again. Now is this because they hate the, the, the relationship they had with their parents is because it's too much.
- [13:53]
Dan Pena
Poor role models. Their parents, kids don't do what you tell them to do. They do what they see you do as a parent. And most parents are poor role models. Where the average of the five people who spend most of the time, let's say we have a loving, nourishing mom, probably single mom, we've got a brother, a sister, we've got maybe one Grandparent, We've got the next door neighbor and somebody else. What the do they know about creating high performance people? Nothing. Nothing. Now, there are exceptions. The William Sisters. The father beat him. Okay. Tiger Woods. The father beat him. I can go on and on and on, okay? Tough love, okay? And my dad and my kid brother, who just retired as the number two guy. The LA County Fire Department. After 40 years. He didn't get beat as much as I did, but my dad was tough on him. But my dad was getting old. He was running out of energy by the time my kid brother came along who's 15 years my junior, and, and he made it to the number two guy in the third largest fire department in the country. I made it whatever I've done, but laterally, now I get credit. Although I want to be clear, when I started all this, I didn't give a. About anybody. I'm on board. Pull up the gangplank. All I wanted to do is shove money as much as I could in my pockets and be filthy rich. I didn't give a shit about anybody else. The last 15 or 20 years, I've realized I've created 25 million jobs. That's more than Amazon, Walmart. 25 million jobs. A lot of jobs. A lot of jobs. I didn't start this thinking that I was going to help humanity, but as it turns out, you know, I've created $2.4 trillion in equity, okay. Which is bigger than most countries. And the. Just recently, in the last couple years, I'm involved with the Catholic Church. I'm the unappointed apostle of finance for the Catholic Church, trying, you know, to keep them from going bankrupt. Their Catholic Church is one recession away from bankruptcy. One recession. That's it.
- [16:02]
Scott Clary
Not, not to go off on a ramp. But how, how is the Catholic Church doing so poorly?
- [16:06]
Dan Pena
Because they paid out 11 or 12 billion dollars in reparations for all the kids they raped.
- [16:12]
Scott Clary
This is why they can't.
- [16:13]
Dan Pena
There's no. And within the laws of the Catholic Church, you can't hypothecates the word they use. You can't borrow against the assets and you can't sell the assets. So all the trillions of dollars they have in assets, and it's estimated they have between 3 and 7 trillion dollars.
- [16:29]
Scott Clary
In assets and they can't borrow against it. So they have no cash.
- [16:34]
Dan Pena
They're asset rich and cash poor. The, the.
- [16:37]
Scott Clary
You've all. You've always been Catholic, so yeah, I was raised Catholic.
- [16:40]
Dan Pena
And in fact, the little church that I had My first communion and I was baptized in, which is in the hood in east la, which is Sal that my wife and I support now. They used to collect. Father Albert used to collect $8,000 a week in the plate. When you pass the plate around. Okay. He now collects 800.
- [16:57]
Scott Clary
Oh, that's a, that's a conversation how society is becoming secular and moving away.
- [17:01]
Dan Pena
Absolutely. And, and the school in the hood, which Sally and I also support in that same little district. And we've gone to the local bishop and we just met with the, the local cardinal with a program. Everybody says that you're right, we'll pray for you. But they have no money. I'm not making this for money. But they said, what do you Want for this, Mr. Pena? You save the church. You're 87 years old. I want to be canonized as a saint while I'm alive. And they look at me, it can be done. I want to be the first saint alive.
- [17:41]
Scott Clary
I was wondering if religion in general is growing by leaps and bounds in the US Because I see, I don't have data. You know this stuff better than me. I just made the assumption.
- [17:51]
Dan Pena
Well, I'm going to make a joke. None of the other posters have any data either. They just make up.
- [17:56]
Scott Clary
That's valid. I, I don't doubt that. But I was wondering if just general religion, especially in, in US Western society, is on a decline. Because I've also thought, I've had conversations about this. I don't think that's a positive thing. Because then if you don't have the religion, then it gets replaced with some other version of God, which is usually.
- [18:16]
Dan Pena
It's not religion, it's the family household is in decline. The father and the mother, the two and a half kids, one, one dog in the picket fence. That dream is dead. And it's been dead for, oh, 40, 50 years.
- [18:31]
Scott Clary
It's not just religion, it's American dream.
- [18:33]
Dan Pena
Correct. You, your grandfather went to work for General motors, worked for 40 years, got a gold watch at the end of the thing, and he actually had a pension he could live off of. And now that's not the case. Now you have to supplement your income. And the Joke to me, LinkedIn is the greatest tool for my model. Okay. And they say that they're interested in charity work. Etc. Etc. 99% of the people on LinkedIn are looking for secondary and tertiary sources of income because if they did retire, they don't have enough money to live on. The, the corporate villa they used to use the corporate credit card. The corporate Cars are all gone now. And so when you're, when you, you get tired of bouncing your grandkids on your knee, eventually you do get tired. I never started, so I, I can't tell you I'm tired. I was a mediocre father and I'm a worse grandfather. But now the, there's not, there's not enough income and we just went over the 38 trillion dollar mark I believe for national debt. 38 trillion, that's a lot of money, you know, But I created 2.4 trillion, so it's not that much money. I know how to do this.
- [19:43]
Scott Clary
Why do so many people have issues making money? Living a new American?
- [19:46]
Dan Pena
Well, I mean I was, I came from a dirt poor family, but people, money was equated. Only ugly things happen when you make a lot of money. We used to have mortgage burning parties on my street. You pay off your mortgage after 25, 30 years, you get a 55 gallon barrel drum, you have a barbecue and you burn the mortgage. I used to tell my dad when I was 12, 13, 14, are we stupid? That's the only proof we've got that we own the house. And then my dad would say, I'm just a cop. But you're right, we are stupid. Why would you burn it? Nobody believe my 84 year old cousin who I just had dinner with a couple nights ago. She remembers that, you know, she says, and she verified, you know, Danny's not exaggerating, he says, you know, you know, it's unbelievable, but now we, we've set our standards so low. When they announced Trump's SAT score, supposedly 978 or 90, I got the same with the scores one year before he did. Okay, and the, and whether that's true or not, I don't know. But the, and you couldn't get into any kind of good school when scores of 970 out of 1600. And I'm sure it's not much different now, but the way he was raised, whether he got 4 million or 400 million from his dad is significantly different than 99.99 of the people on the planet. Of course my kids were raised like Baron Trump. So my, my kids can relate to, to, you know.
- [21:20]
Scott Clary
Yeah, but do you think your kids are going to be more screwed up because they had that upbringing?
- [21:23]
Dan Pena
Yes, they have. Two of my kids have big jobs in the corporate world. Okay. I have a special needs son which he, he didn't give a, and he's supported by me, so. But he's got special needs. But the two have big jobs. They make big six figure money in my opinion for doing all nothing. I forgot more about what they do individually when I took a this morning. This is my own flesh and blood. Okay? And they're ahead of the group. They're considered in the top 1% of their I have a 41 year old son and a 39 year old daughter and they're considered at the top of the heap.
- [22:06]
Scott Clary
Delay is a Success Story partner. Now are you spinning your wheels on low value tasks? Do you spend more time putting out fires and planning your long term goals? And as your business grew you brought on more people and booked more meetings. But focus became even harder to find. Here's the truth. Business leaders shouldn't lose hours to emails, scheduling, project tracking and avoidable interruptions. Just because it all has to get done doesn't mean it needs to be done by you. That's where our friends at Belay can help. Belay's US Based Remote Executive Assistants don't just take work off your plate. They learn how you operate, what slows you down, and where things tend to go sideways. Then they get ahead of it. So if you're looking for a practical tool to help you start leading with clearer purpose, download Belay CEO Tricia Shortino's free resource the 40 Hour CEO Workweek Planning Guide. Just text the word Scott to 55123 for your free copy today. That is S C O T T to 55123 to start accomplishing more while juggling less with Belay. Northwest Registered Agent is a success story partner. Now when I first started my business I had no idea how much goes into just existing legally, right? LLC paperwork, Registered Agent, Business Address compliance. I was googling at 2am trying to figure out what all this meant. And if you're starting something right now, I am telling you, don't do it that way. Northwest Registered Agent lets you build your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. We're talking LLC formation to domain name, business, email, phone number, business address, registered agent and compliance all for just $39 plus state fees. They've been doing this for almost 30 years. Largest registered agent service in the country with over 1,500 corporate guides who are actual humans who know your state's laws and will walk you through it. Don't wait. Protect your privacy, build your brand and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com paid success and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent@northwestregisteredagent.com paid success. Lennar is a success story. Partner. Now, if you've ever been interested in real estate investment, listen up. Whether or not you're just researching or you're buying your first rental property or your 15th, you know the pain. Sourcing deals, pulling comps from five different sites, building your own underwriting spreadsheets, and hoping the numbers are right. It is a grind. Lennar Investor Marketplace simplifies the whole thing. They've got new construction homes, rental ready, pre inspected across over 90 markets. And every listing comes with a full underwriting dashboard built in. That means rental comps, neighborhood data, school scores, projected expenses, estimated NOI expected returns. It's all there. So if you're new, you're not flying blind. But if you're experienced, it's also saving you hours. And Lennar is one of the biggest home builders in the country. Over 1.5 million homes built through the marketplace. You get interest of vetted property managers at below market rates, warranty coverage, title and closing services. The whole back end is handled. New investors get the guidance, experienced investors get the speed. Either way, you're not duct taping 10 different tools together. So if you are investing in real estate, check out Lennar Investor Marketplace and see what's available in your market.
- [25:29]
Dan Pena
What kind of heat?
- [25:30]
Scott Clary
I mean, I'll tell you something. So those people that make the six figure jobs, if they're laid off, those are the people that are in the most trouble.
- [25:38]
Dan Pena
Correct.
- [25:39]
Scott Clary
Because for 30 years after they got the job, they've never learned a new skill.
- [25:43]
Dan Pena
Correct.
- [25:44]
Scott Clary
Those are the people that are going to be. You talk about this replaced by AI and then they're, they're really.
- [25:49]
Dan Pena
How is, how are potsters to be replaced by AI? Well, I'm not so sure about that. You know, you could be a hologram and I just, you know, I don't know it.
- [25:57]
Scott Clary
You know, it's true, it's true. But will last longer than all the other jobs. Creative people that look at the world differently will last longer than creative people.
- [26:06]
Dan Pena
Will always wind up on top.
- [26:08]
Scott Clary
Yeah, yeah, but it could be a different version of creative. But that's the thing. So to your point, is, is a podcast going to be the same in five years? Well, no, then it wouldn't be good. Is. It's got to. Everything has to evolve.
- [26:18]
Dan Pena
Correct.
- [26:19]
Scott Clary
Or else you're dead.
- [26:20]
Dan Pena
And, but right now, everybody talks about change, but nobody wants to change themselves.
- [26:25]
Scott Clary
Because change is scary for people.
- [26:26]
Dan Pena
Absolutely. I, we look for change opportunities. I, I signed a artificial Intelligence contract in Tampa two days ago. And they're talking about this is pre money valuation based on revenue. 60 to 120 times revenue. 60 to 120 times revenue. And I said for my interest, I'll just take a billion dollars today and I'll walk away. Thank you. You know, it's, it's all up to you kids and they're all kids. You know, the oldest guy in the room after me was 36 and the youngest was 21. I'll just give me, I'll take a billion today and walk.
- [27:11]
Scott Clary
Do you think that, do you think that, you know, everyone's saying AI is going to change the world, going to replace whatever most jobs. Do you think the valuations are worth what they're worth or do you think because like if you look at OpenAI, they're betting that Google won't beat them, they're betting that Claude by Anthropic won't beat them and they're raising more money and they don't have the revenue to support it.
- [27:32]
Dan Pena
You're not old enough to remember the dot com bubble. I, I was part of that bubble. I was part of that.
- [27:37]
Scott Clary
You've seen this play out.
- [27:38]
Dan Pena
Absolutely. Okay. And then it was like 10 to 20 times revenue.
- [27:44]
Scott Clary
Yeah, yeah.
- [27:45]
Dan Pena
Okay. The low end was 40. The high end was 118 times revenue. I go. And so the, the, my guy. Do you think the revenue estimates should be higher? Let's just sign the papers. Let's, let's get this part done quick before somebody changes their mind.
- [28:07]
Scott Clary
That's crazy.
- [28:08]
Dan Pena
Yeah, it is crazy. And, and the lawyers and the accountants didn't live through the dot com. Sally and I used to be one of the largest Advertisers on Google. 100 million a year. 1999, 2000.ish. The other guys that were spending that kind of money on Google advertising were porn. Okay. So we sit in a room of 15 of the biggest guys that spent money for AdSense. We used to make 70 to 80 thousand dollars a day on AdSense. Then somebody woke up some 22 year old guy decided that change the algorithm. So we went from $75,000 on Monday to $82 on Tuesday. Why are we giving them that money? Even though they had the money.
- [28:55]
Scott Clary
But.
- [28:55]
Dan Pena
I predict between 20, 40% in the next 10 years of all entry level jobs are going to be gone. And I love telling this story about five or six years ago they got the biggest computers that were around at the time to play the three, four top chess masters and a five day Chess tournament and human beings won. And Bill Gates asked, because he was there, the computer, is there anything you'd like to say in closing to the computer? And the computer, unprompted, said, don't trust us now. Jesus Christ. Am I the only guy that know read that? The other thing that I, I read and everybody passed over during the Corona Rona Covid, the Bank of England came within a hundred thousand dollars of closing, £100,000 of closing. They had a little teeny thing in the bottom of the Financial Times, you know, on page 51 or something. We're up in 1972, MIT wrote a paper, basically said a long, long paper, they'd done a lot of studying that before the end of the next century, which is the century we're in, there will not be any Homo sapiens. So that's 75 years from now, okay, four or five years ago they did an update to that paper. We're ahead of schedule of doing Homo sapiens away. Did you ever see the movie Robot with Will Smith?
- [30:27]
Scott Clary
Of course. Yeah, of course. Yeah.
- [30:29]
Dan Pena
That's our future.
- [30:30]
Scott Clary
You know, there's robotic companies now like that, like Figure AI with Brett Adcock. And they're putting robots in car dealerships to do all the manual work at the. Putting it on the assembly line at Amazon to replace all the people.
- [30:41]
Dan Pena
We have two robots in the castle. You have two robots now, Gordon 1 and Gordon 2. And by this time next year we're going to have three or four robots in the castle. Not working on the yard.
- [30:52]
Scott Clary
Are they replacing stuff?
- [30:53]
Dan Pena
Yeah, well, no, not yet. Next month I'm having an all hands meeting because we have too many people. The robots don't eat, they don't get sick, they don't sleep, they don't take vacations, no sick days.
- [31:09]
Scott Clary
But what happens when there's no more jobs left?
- [31:11]
Dan Pena
I'll be gone. I don't give a. I'll be, I'll be a saint by then. So I don't give a. I'll look down on you or look up you wherever I am, and I'll just say, you know, poor bastards, you know, if I had to start over again, see, I give my product away free. And for 20 years I don't monetize anything. Okay, I didn't know you could monetize, you know, but I didn't realize I'd be still doing this though. Also. I would monetize. I do like everybody else does, just like you explained to me very nicely. I don't know any of that. And I haven't had any of my employees be required to know any of that. But now that I'm starting a podcast in a few weeks, the. We're going to look at things differently, but I'm still going to give all my product away free. And one of the things I'm going to do when I die is I'm. Is it called open source or.
- [32:03]
Scott Clary
Yeah, open source. Yeah.
- [32:05]
Dan Pena
Everything I have.
- [32:05]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [32:06]
Dan Pena
Because it's only 2% that's not online that you get in the seminar. Everything is going online. And you know, I've got a bunch of guys, mentees of mine, I train. I'll be the second, you know, you're not going to be the second me. Okay. You're a, you just happen to get rich, but you're not, you're not another me. And the, But a lot of these guys, and God bless them, you know, they figured out a twist or turn the way you explained. And I, I might add, you explained it more clearly to me. Just when we started here, I, you.
- [32:39]
Scott Clary
Know, I didn't know because I obsess over the. I've always found that, like, whatever I'm going to succeed at, if I obsess over it, I'll figure it out. I also don't like wasting my time on. If I'm going to do a business, I don't like wasting my time not making money on it. Like, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to obsess over it. I'm going to find a way to make money on it. I think that people should, like, there's nothing wrong with making money.
- [32:59]
Dan Pena
No.
- [32:59]
Scott Clary
At all. But I think that sometimes people don't. They feel uncomfortable and they feel uncomfortable.
- [33:06]
Dan Pena
Based on probably what their parents felt about it.
- [33:09]
Scott Clary
Because you get all these beliefs, these beliefs about money, about whatever, whatever. From.
- [33:12]
Dan Pena
Correct.
- [33:13]
Scott Clary
From, from, from people that only lived a certain way. So you have, you know, I love, I love my parents, but they weren't entrepreneurs. They worked. My dad worked in the government, my mom worked for, for universities. So a lot of the things I had to figure out, I had to reframe my relationship with money, with success, with, with entrepreneurship, with hard work. I had to reprogram.
- [33:36]
Dan Pena
And what happens. You rarely step away from those five people that you spent most of your time with in childhood. Self esteem is built the first seven or eight years in life. Now the Catholic Church, which I reminded him of in recent weeks, used to Pre Vatican Council 2 in 1965, when the Mass was still in Latin and the priest used to Stand with his back to you. Okay. Part of the homily, which is their, their sales pitch, it says, you give us your child the first seven or eight years and we will own them as a Catholic servant for life. Because they knew self esteem was built, the Spartans took the kids away from their parents at seven or eight years and the kids that couldn't go to be Spartan warriors were thrown in a ditch. And I, I say it a little different. Most of you should have rolled down your fat mama's leg and never conceived anything.
- [34:25]
Scott Clary
So you have all the people that come through your program, this is qla. For people that don't know your program, this is qla. And I know that a lot of what you do with qla, you're talking about strategic asset purchases, seller financing. That's like one way to make a lot of money if you're successful at it. But ultimately it's not just how to make money. It's like, how do you tackle life?
- [34:44]
Dan Pena
Correct.
- [34:45]
Scott Clary
So what do people get wrong when they try and tackle life? Like, what are the issues that you see with the younger generation?
- [34:53]
Dan Pena
First of all, they underestimate how hard it is change we alluded to five or 10 minutes ago. People talk about it, but it's tough. Okay. And they underestimate. That's number one. I'm often asked by, you know, some bright kids, can you be a part time high performance person? I kind of chuckle and say, no, I've never met a part time high performance person. I mean, is there some way, Although we have people that work out jobs, Finish off their PhD, finish medical school and still do this, but they're working 100, 120 hours a week. Okay, for nine years, 11 months and three weeks. I work between a hundred and 120 hours a week. That last week of the tenth year, I got behind my desk and I looked at the phone and I couldn't do it anymore. I crapped out one week short of 10 years. Okay. But a great deal of my net worth that I gained in those years is I still attribute to my, my wealth today. But I mean, I was a focus. You know, I say, let me back up. Bill Gates wanted to meet Warren Buffett 35, 40 years ago. So Mrs. Gates is not his wife, but his mother had a dinner, invited Warren Buffett over. This is a famous story. They're sitting around the dinner with Bill Gates Senior, which is who's a lawyer till he passed away, Bill's lawyer. And he said if you and she had an open ended question, it was a lull in conversation and she was talking to all people at the table. What would you attribute your success to? Bill Gates Jr. The Bill Gates we know and Warren Buffett both said simultaneously focus and what I say. Those who get laser being focused first say stay laser being focused longest, win the most. But I mean we have so many. Information is almost instantaneous now or it is instantaneous vis a vis the Internet, okay. And we have so many distractions. I see little three and four year old kids with their tablet, okay, Instead of, you know, I don't know what they should be doing, but they shouldn't be with a tablet, that's for goddamn sure. And now people are becoming the last five or ten years aware more and more and more that little kids are seeing bad things on those. Because it's very difficult to restrict what the little kid sees. And the, you know, I'm not so sure when the right time for a little kid should be able to see porn, but I mean it's certainly not when he's three and four.
- [37:21]
Scott Clary
Definitely not. No, I think that, I think the technology, social media has up so many people and we're not even seeing the. Listen, technology, social media, AI, I don't even know. I don't. I'm scared about what it's going to do to a younger generation that grows up with it. Because now even my generation, we have issues with focus and with attention and we can't pay attention to anything. And we're watching TV and then we have our phone here, then we have our laptop and we can't sit and just be with our thoughts for more than 30 seconds. So what happens when you. And now AI is making us dumber because we're not even thinking for ourselves anymore. What happens when a whole generation grows up with this?
- [38:00]
Dan Pena
Well, we've seen what happened since WOKE and the COVID crisis. I mean we've got at least a half a generation, if not a whole generation that didn't learn anything. And, and we're suffering because of now. And the real reason people like Google and Facebook interview 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13 times because nobody wants to make a decision and be wrong. So they do consensus hiring. I had a kid, one of my whiz kids, seven or eight years ago, he moved to San Francisco to be close to his chairman on a QLA roll up. He had no money, he was not a programmer. He studied programming from Thursday night till Monday morning, went in and applied for a job. He went through three interviews and got hired by Google. Three. Okay, Had Never read a piece of code and he learned how to code Friday, Saturday and Sunday and early Monday morning. Now I, I hired a guy yesterday, I knew within 20, 25 minutes and it was a zoom. I don't like zoom interviews because I wasn't in the room with him 20, 25 minutes. This was the right guy. I talked to him 30, 40 more minutes and I knew it was the right guy to be president of one of my deals. It's a 400 million dollar company and the, and I, I could just tell he had the right answers. He had enough scar tissue and no matter how genius you are, and Zuckerberg is a great example, smart, did, no doubt about it, but in the beginning he had some speed bumps that he made into Mount Everest. He did some fuck ups and they had to change this and that and the other thing, but they're not experienced people hiring people. Now I had a board, same board for 10 years. I lost one board member because he dropped dead. The kids, I have kids that have 23 different board members over a five year period because they don't know how to hire. They don't, you know, what can a 24 year old kid know? Nothing. You know, and we have, but we have 17, 18, 19 year old multimillionaires. Okay, that they got lucky. They got lucky. But you don't need to go through 25 people building a board. But one of the things that the company that takes you or the board or the advisors that you have for the first 5 million are not the ones that get you to 500 million. Okay. It's transition. Not just a transition of what they know and learn about your model. It's a transition of what you learn and accept and the changes. Because no model is perfect no matter what it is.
- [40:36]
Scott Clary
Quick question. What's your go to when you got 10 minutes before a meeting or a workout? For me, it just used to be whatever I could grab. Which usually meant skipping meals entirely or just grabbing something that left me crashing an hour later because it was just full of garbage. That's why I'm partnering with Huel. This black edition ready to drink is a complete meal. So it has 35 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber, 35 essential vitamins and minerals. It is no sugar added, gluten free, under five bucks. I always keep a few of these in my fridge and honestly it solved the whole back to back meetings. Go, go, go nonstop, no time to eat problem. Super well. And this one's new for me. It's Huels Daily Greens I had the Blueberry this morning. Honestly first impression it was way better than I expected. It's developed by registered nutritionists and diet. There are 42 vitamins, minerals and superfoods. Only 25 calories, 4 grams of fiber and just 1 gram of sugar. I throw one back first thing before my morning calls. Every single morning look, if you're running a business, time is the most valuable asset. Kyul makes healthy eating simple and they also just launched into target stores nationwide. So you can get it everywhere. Try both products today with 15 off your purchase for new customers with my exclusive code Scott@huell.com Scott SL Scott try both products today with 15 off your purchase for new customers with my exclusive code Scott S C O t t@hu.com Scott use my code fill out the post checkout survey to help support the show that is hu.com Scott they really make healthy living taste amazing. Even if you're on the go. Healthy eating, healthy lifestyle doesn't have to taste bad. It doesn't have to suck. NetSuite is a success story Partner. Now, every business owner I talk to is asking the exact same question. How do we make AI work? For us, the possibilities are endless. Guessing is a little bit too risky, but sitting on the sidelines isn't an option either, because your competitors are already making their move. The answer is NetSuite by Oracle. You can put AI to work today. NetSuite is the number one AI Cloud ERP. It's trusted by over 43,000 businesses. It brings your financials, your inventory, your commerce, your HR and CRM into a single source of truth. And that connected data is what makes your AI smarter. It automates routine tasks, delivers actionable insights, helps you cut costs and make confident decisions. And you've got total flexibility. And with the NetSuite AI connector, you can use the AI of your choice, connect it to your actual business data, and automate all those manual processes. This isn't a bolted on tool, it's AI built into the systems that run your business. So whether you're doing millions or hundreds of millions, netsuite keeps you ahead. And if I needed this product, this is what I'd use. Now, if your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get the free business guide demystifying AI at netsuite.com scottclary the guide is free to you at netsuite.com ScottClary that's netsuite.com SL Scott Clary so what? So if you were going to talk to a mentee that goes through this pro or if you look at the most successful mentees, because the guys that come through your program, the ones that are successful, they make good money, they're, they're financially successful, they, they figure out how to, how to succeed. What's the personality trait of somebody that can be successful?
- [43:36]
Dan Pena
98% of the high performance people on the planet today are not alpha males like me. They're introverts. Gates, Zuckerberg, I can go down the list. Okay, Klaus. Okay. Are introverts. Only 2% or less are extroverts like myself. Okay. People misinterpret extra extroverts like the president or myself. Not putting myself in, in the president's category. But you don't have to be like that. I mean, Bill Gates wouldn't say if it was in his mouth, I mean, dribbling down the side of his mouth, he wouldn't say, okay. And most of the high performance people are like that. When you look at the Fortune 500 or Fortune 200 companies, you know, 40 or 50 of the CEOs are Indian, from India. Okay. Jack Welch, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, years ago. And Sally and I had a big business in southern India for a long time. The smartest people on the planet come from southern India. Between Mangalore and Bangalore. There's a strip there. And we had a big tech company there and we had, you know, a couple thousand employees. We had people riding on a scooter from Punjab in the north, 900 miles for a job interview in Bangalore. Okay. Here, if it's convenient. I was on a Sunday. I, I can't do an interview on Sunday, you know, not because they're going to church. Yeah. Or Saturday if they're going to synagogue or a temple, whatever. Because, you know, I want to see the Lakers. I want to see who, Miami, whoever the hell. Kids are lazy.
- [45:13]
Scott Clary
It's. So is that, I mean, like you mentioned, it's not extroverts. Is it just. Is it laziness? Is it accountability? Like what is it?
- [45:19]
Dan Pena
No, I mean, it's determination, focus. You know, it's. We had a kid come to the seminar a couple years ago. He saved up two and a half years before the seven 7A cheap. And he just because he wanted to have the gumption. He'd been working out at 24 Hour Fitness in Manhattan for several years. And every morning at 4:30 gets on the running machine and the girl next to him is there on the running machine. Just have the gumption, the balls, the temerity to ask her for a cup of coffee. So he comes back from the seminar, she says no. And she says back, after all the time that we've spent on the running machine next to each other, if I wanted to have a cup of coffee, don't you think I'd ask you off?
- [46:07]
Scott Clary
But you need to be able to ask the question.
- [46:11]
Dan Pena
Well, yeah, if you don't ask, you don't get.
- [46:12]
Scott Clary
You don't get.
- [46:13]
Dan Pena
Now, he was crestfallen for four or five months.
- [46:16]
Scott Clary
Yeah, but then, but then, listen, I'm a big fan of like, just running towards things that will run.
- [46:24]
Dan Pena
Touch the gunfire.
- [46:25]
Scott Clary
100. Because the more you fail, the more you learn, the better you are. Like everything that I've done in my life and I am not even a fraction as, as hard as you are when it comes to, like, my message and what I, and what I sort of teach people. But one thing that I, I am 100% behind is if you suck at something, do it a thousand more times and fail a thousand more times. And then somewhere along that journey, you'll find out that you don't suck so much. And that's everything I've done in life. Working out, relationships, podcast business. I mean, when I interview the first person, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I have no idea. If I jump on stage the first time ever in front of a thousand people, I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm scared shitless. You know what then I'll do? I'll find 200, 300 more events that will have me on their stage. And you know what's funny? By the time I do the third hundred, the 300th speech, I'm not nervous anymore.
- [47:23]
Dan Pena
I started the first financial planning department on Wall street, and they said, you can do whatever you want. Don't embarrass us. You have no budget. And I made speeches from Bangor, Maine to the Keys, from La Jolla to Washington, Seattle, Washington. But I got through about 100, 120 speeches. I was a world class speaker.
- [47:44]
Scott Clary
That's it.
- [47:44]
Dan Pena
I mean, they threw plates at me. I mean, you know, I was a world class speaker. And the scar, scar tissue. And I showed up two days early, one day late. The. But, you know, I, you know, I, I got used to being uncomfortable. I got comfortable being uncomfortable. And the kids today don't want to do that. They just don't. If it has, you know, they have these training programs that they're tantamount to nothing really. The. When, when I was on Patrick's show a couple days ago, the A lot of general topics. But if like I watch cnn, Al Jazeera in Bloomberg all day, from the time I get up in the morning to the time I go to bed at night at 11 o', clock, Sally comes in and we watch a movie for an hour, an hour and a half and have a glass of wine. But up until then, I'm watching news the whole time. Okay. And I've got screens like this through the different news programs and the. So I have a general knowledge of what's going on. They had a survey year before last in Washington D.C. high School, who's the first president of the United States? 67 failed. They're in Washington D.C. who is the President of the United States?
- [49:05]
Scott Clary
Why is it, why is it so bad? Why is education so bad?
- [49:08]
Dan Pena
Well, I mean, and well now the teachers, a lot of the teachers and almost all of them have a liberal bent. You saw when the president of Harvard and the various schools, a couple of which stepped down because they wouldn't take a position on whether, you know, when we're talking about Palestine, etc, they wouldn't take a position because once you dig in your heels and you take a position, you're either going to be right or you're going to be wrong. But if you just give a general answer, I mean, yeah, but that's how.
- [49:37]
Scott Clary
That'S where, that's where education wisdom goes to die. Like true education is when you challenge ideas.
- [49:45]
Dan Pena
Correct.
- [49:45]
Scott Clary
Because that's how you get better.
- [49:46]
Dan Pena
Correct.
- [49:47]
Scott Clary
That's how, that's how you look.
- [49:49]
Dan Pena
Those days are, you know, two or 300 years ago. Not today. They're not today.
- [49:54]
Scott Clary
I mean, even though you have strong opinions, I bet you respect the. Out of somebody that comes out with a counter opinion that's well researched.
- [50:00]
Dan Pena
And I'll listen and I'll listen, you know, and, and while he's talking or she's talking or in this case, it's talking, you know, I said, well, he didn't think of this, he didn't think of that. And I'll bring it up when it's time. When it's my time. When I was young like you, I wouldn't let a negative sentence come out of your mouth. I would jump in and stop you right away and say, well, you haven't thought about this. And what about this? What you know, interest rates or the velocity of money. And when you talk about like that, nobody knows what you're talking about, okay? The. I've been in cash Since I'm 60 years old, from my 60th birthday till my 64th or 5th birthday, my wife and I sold all our assets off, I call it. We had a lot of penthouses and that all the. And so the only thing we have now is the estate that we live in. And we don't own it. A trust owns it. But anyway, that's the only thing, of course, as.
- [50:57]
Scott Clary
As it should, okay?
- [50:59]
Dan Pena
Cash. And people ask me, what about inflation?
- [51:03]
Scott Clary
Okay?
- [51:04]
Dan Pena
Bunker Hunt told me when I was a kid, Danny, if you're worried about inflation, you're not making enough money. What about taxes? I pay taxes both in the United States and the UK because I'm a dual citizen. He said the same thing. If you're worried about taxes, Danny, you're not making enough money. Okay? It's the same thing about getting down the property ladder, which I alluded to when they were talking on the panel that I was just a member of. You know, this is not the first time that it takes you four or five times your salary to buy a house. This is not the first time, like they make it sound, okay, you just went out, you worked overtime. In some cases, people borrowed money from their parents. My parents didn't have any money to loan me, and so I just went out. I had to work harder. Unfortunately, a lot of people, they live together, okay? As two guys living together, you know, horn around. Of course, guys don't hoe around anymore. They don't consume alcohol. They don't, you know, I'm not suggesting that you have to consume alcohol, but there's places in the United States of America today, this very hour in the south, if a man won't have a goddamn drink with him, him, I'm not doing any goddamn business with him today.
- [52:16]
Scott Clary
Yeah, I know.
- [52:17]
Dan Pena
And, and what do the kids do? They don't go down there. Some, the fastest growing economies right now, Florida, Texas, and a couple others. Now, I can't speak for Florida, even though I was born here, but in Texas, you go to Addison, Texas, or Elector Texas, you know, I mean, and, and I'm not suggesting people should drink if it's. They're on the 12 step program and stuff like that, but I, I find someplace else to do business because you're going to be restricted, whether you need to or not, by the fact that, you know, I had guys were Muslims back in the day, and they would order a drink and just leave it there.
- [52:57]
Scott Clary
You know, they want to build the relationship.
- [52:59]
Dan Pena
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
- [53:01]
Scott Clary
But ultimately you're talking about it's not the first time when it's taken four or five times Your annual salary to buy a house. But the issue is, years ago, there was no not working when you were 20, 21, 20.
- [53:18]
Dan Pena
And you weren't living at home when you're 35.
- [53:21]
Scott Clary
No. And these are things that are reality now. So I was talking, you know, at the beginning, I was talking about how not everybody. But I find that even people that are younger, they don't have the same work ethic, and they seem to just drift for longer. They seem to be confused about where they're going to end up, what they're going to do. They're not excited about sort of working as hard as what I was doing when I was younger. And I feel like that's going to them twice as much when the cost of living goes up.
- [53:49]
Dan Pena
I couldn't agree more.
- [53:50]
Scott Clary
And then you're gonna have this whole generation of people that can't afford to live on their own. They're all renting. And then, and then, listen, you're, you, you're, you're in. Well, actually, you're not so invested anymore because you sold off a lot of your. But you understand basic investing principles like, you make money, you invest it. It compounds over time. Time is always to your benefit. So if you waste time, then you're gonna have a very hard life.
- [54:15]
Dan Pena
Warren Buffett says the secret to his success is time.
- [54:18]
Scott Clary
That's it.
- [54:18]
Dan Pena
You know, he says, you know, I've been around a gazillion years, and so, you know, it's given even bad investments time to get good.
- [54:27]
Scott Clary
Well, that's it. You only lose if you sell.
- [54:28]
Dan Pena
Correct. And he's not a big seller of anything.
- [54:31]
Scott Clary
He doesn't sell anything. No, no. What else do you see with the people that go through your program? We spoke about accountability. We spoke about termination. We focus about, like, how to be good at making money. What about the idea of balance, if.
- [54:47]
Dan Pena
There is a balance? I, I quoted Jack Welch earlier. I've never found it. And, but I never look for it either.
- [54:54]
Scott Clary
Explain that.
- [54:54]
Dan Pena
Okay. Meaning that when, when I got married, I said, I'm gonna, I said, metaphorically speaking, I'm gonna make you a queen and put you in a castle. I didn't realize that I was really going to do that. And I said, I.
- [55:08]
Scott Clary
Beautiful castle, too.
- [55:09]
Dan Pena
I, I, I, I, I, I want a few kids. I don't know how many. I don't know how many will be able to conceive because I'm not going to be around. Okay, but, and we're going to raise them strictly, and, you know, we're gonna the kids will be good at whatever they do now. I overdid it. I had professional tennis players come and give them tennis lessons in the snow. I had professional before mma, you know, karate and taekwondo, et cetera. The. We used to dress for dinner every night. Tuxedo look. My kids hate to dress up to this day. They hate it. At my 80th birthday, I had. A few months ago, I have. I was surprised they showed up in tuxedos. I mean, I was surprised, pleasantly surprised. But I'm sure somebody said, well, you won't be let in the door if you're not wearing a black tie, so there's some things you can overdo and I. If you should do. Back when I was a big weightlifter or big, you know, I. I weighed 60 pounds more than I do today. I weighed 287. I'm now 237, 240, 227 if you're, you know. And I was on antibiotic steroids and I went that whole route, you know, if two shots are good, five or better, you know, if, if 5,000 milligrams is good, 25,000 is better, you know, and a regular guy couldn't afford my, my drug bill for keeping me big. It took me seven months to gain 80 pounds, about probably 65 or 70 pounds more muscle. Took me five years to lose it.
- [56:51]
Scott Clary
It's a lot of muscle.
- [56:52]
Dan Pena
Yeah. And the. But I always do. I overdo everything in life. I ran 40 marathons in one month in October 1976.
- [57:05]
Scott Clary
You know what, though? I think that I've said this a lot. I think that anybody who's good at being an entrepreneur, the same traits that make you good at being an entrepreneur, can lead you to just being obsessed about everything in your life. Because you got to be obsessed.
- [57:19]
Dan Pena
I am. I am obsessed. I still am. And it kills me why I should have. On my last trip to America, I decided, I wonder if I can keep the schedule I used to. So on one day I had eight meetings. Next day I had nine meetings. The next day I had 11 meetings. And the last day before we went home, I had 12 meetings. And I come back to the hotel at 1 o' clock in the morning. The last night we're there and I sit down in the living room of our suite. My wife comes out. Are you okay? No, I can't do this anymore. I just wanted to see if I could.
- [57:56]
Scott Clary
That's funny.
- [57:57]
Dan Pena
And. And she says, do we have to go to the hospital? How? I said, I'm just beach I haven't been beat like this. I mean, to the bone marrow on beach.
- [58:07]
Scott Clary
Yeah, but it's a good feeling.
- [58:08]
Dan Pena
Yeah, it is a great. But you don't need to do that. I was 79. You don't need to do that at 79, you know.
- [58:13]
Scott Clary
No, no, but. So I asked you about balance and you know, it's so funny.
- [58:17]
Dan Pena
The high performance people I have the privilege of being around had none.
- [58:20]
Scott Clary
But why? Okay, so I have a question. Why do you say that when you have a wife that you're still in love with and married to for I don't even know how many years?
- [58:28]
Dan Pena
30.
- [58:28]
Scott Clary
30 years. You have kids, you have family, you still work.
- [58:32]
Dan Pena
Estranged. But yes.
- [58:34]
Scott Clary
You say you don't have balance, but I know guys that have sold companies for well over nine figures and some billionaires and they have so many ex wives and their kids all hate them.
- [58:45]
Dan Pena
I'm a good picker of talent. I thought, this is my second wife. I thought I was a good picker. I was obsessed of marrying a kindergarten teacher virgin. That was what you wanted first. Exactly. That's what I wanted. A kindergarten. Meaning didn't know anything. You know, a virgin didn't know anything. And I was going to show her the ropes that I was obsessed about that. I married one and it lasted about 20 some years, but, I mean, she got tired of being rich. You know, I can make my own coffee. I don't need the butler too. You know, I. I can make my own bed. I don't need the maids. And there's a point I didn't think. I, I haven't. Like my first butler. I get out of the bath and he's standing there with a towel. I don't need a guy to wrap a towel around me when I step out of the bath.
- [59:33]
Scott Clary
That's. That's fair.
- [59:35]
Dan Pena
Okay. Now women. That's okay. Not with a butler. I made.
- [59:39]
Scott Clary
Yeah, yeah, I understand.
- [59:40]
Dan Pena
Okay. And I like when I want a martini robot next year. Gordon 3. A Vesper, please. And that I can do. Okay. That I can do. And the, the challenge we're going to have is because we have a lot of steps in the castle, okay? And so some of the basic robots can handle the steps, but these sophisticated robots can.
- [60:06]
Scott Clary
Of course they can. The new ones definitely can.
- [60:09]
Dan Pena
Getting back to balance. And. And when I was around with the Onassis people, Constantine Gratos, the CEO, was my mentor for a long time. And when I've been around the hunts and when I ran around Ross Pero, and I've Been around T. Boon Pickens and these guys, they work like dogs, you know. And to the extent, like Ross Perot had a deal for the Naval Academy. He went there. Okay. T. Boon Pickens had a thing for Universal Oklahoma because he went there. Okay. So the time that he would maybe should have spent or could have spent time with his family, he was at some Oklahoma game or something. And. And so I went to a school. You got to explain about. I have no athletic ability other than I can run a long distance because I found out that 80% of my muscles are slow twitch muscles. Slow twitch, which means you're a good sprinter. No, slow twitch means you, you have no fast twitch muscles. No sprinting, but it's good for long distance running.
- [61:08]
Scott Clary
I get the mix up.
- [61:09]
Dan Pena
Okay.
- [61:09]
Scott Clary
Okay.
- [61:10]
Dan Pena
And the, the fact that I, I was able to. I didn't figure this out until I was in my early 30s. If I known, you know, that I had slow twitch muscles, I'm uncoordinated. They used to tease me. The football coach used to say, pea, you're so slow, you should board the other team's jersey. You know. And when I went to Ranger school, I was slow. I was in the last 10%. They used to let me run out ahead of the. When we were on maneuvers.
- [61:35]
Scott Clary
Give you a head start.
- [61:35]
Dan Pena
A head start. And they said, run towards the gunfire, Peanut. And they all thought, well, I didn't go to Vietnam. But they all thought, penny's going to get a medal of monitor because he's running towards the gunfire. And when I'm slow and I'm clumsy, I'm clumsy. I don't have the same nerve endings in my hands and feet. But I didn't know that until I was an adult and I paid a bunch of doctors, you know, when you. When I volunteered for the draft in 1966 at more or less one of the heights of the Vietnam War. And. But once I got. The first high performance thing I ever did was graduate from OCS when OCS was tough. Now Ranger School, Seal School, etc. That you're off for the weekends. Now, when I went to the training that, you know, weekends we're off, but I went, I volunteered a private. I was an officer in less than a year, which is unheard of. Okay. And I started competing against other people and I realized whether they went to West Point or. And I befriended generals because they saw them in me. Okay? And that's history.
- [62:37]
Scott Clary
When you look at, when you look at men in society today, you said many times you think men have Become weak. Why do you think men have become weak?
- [62:45]
Dan Pena
I'm going to give you an example. We have a success test. Three actually. One of the first questions is, you're walking down the street and somebody spits in your wife's or your girlfriend's face. What do you do? There's four options. The first option is a. I try to ascertain what kind of day he's having. That's option one.
- [63:06]
Scott Clary
Like ask him how his day is going.
- [63:07]
Dan Pena
Yeah. Option two, Baba. Fourth option. I might seriously consider an altercation. When we came up with the test 20 some years ago, we had a 91.6% failure rate of the test in general. Now 20 years later, we have a 98.6% failure rate. So we become more of a cunt. In 20 years, where I come from, if I can't physically, with my own hands, beat him to death, I find something to beat him to death. And there's no other answer. At my high school reunion, the guys all laughing. He says, who are these must be white cunts? Well, they're not all white, but I mean, in the hood, I mean, even making a joke. My favorite cousin, his girlfriend, when he was a junior, we were juniors in high school. He went to Lincoln High School in the hood, east la. Somebody said that his girlfriend's ass looked like two pigs in a gunny sack. Okay, now it's prominent to have a big ass. Now they, they want you to have a big ass. You know, not then. Okay, not then. And so he stabbed the guy 17 times. By the grace of God, he didn't kill him. He went off to the Junior San Quentin of the time. San Quentin's a big prison in California for just saying, not to his face, but to somebody else. And it got around my cousin Ronnie and stabbed him 17 times to save. You know, it was a different world. I mean, those were more than fighting words. I mean, Jesus Christ, if you were.
- [64:49]
Scott Clary
Going to be the perfect dad to a young boy, what do you have to do so that they grow up?
- [64:56]
Dan Pena
Show by example. Do. It's hard to even say what are manly endeavors, Baseball games, stuff like that. The I I attended and my youngest son was a super athlete. I attended one football game and one baseball game. He batted.640. Baseball. I went to one game. And then the coach comes to me, says, can you tune Derek down a little? What the does that mean? Well, he's batting more than twice the average of anybody in the league. He batted 215 the next year and quit baseball.
- [65:37]
Scott Clary
Why would he. Why?
- [65:38]
Dan Pena
Because. Because he wanted to be liked by the other players.
- [65:44]
Scott Clary
So will you see, he wants them 640.
- [65:47]
Dan Pena
I know quit baseball.
- [65:50]
Scott Clary
So everybody is dumbing themselves down.
- [65:52]
Dan Pena
Correct. Oh, I, I gave a big speech. I was a keynote speaker at a big deal in Scotland a few months ago and I made a special effort to go to the awards dinner. I was a keynote speaker. Normally I'm the keen, the last speaker. I'm the anchor to make sure people stay for the whole event. And there was a 80 or 90 people and they were there to meet me at dinner. Now, one person came up to my table because the two hours prior to that I beat him. I skinned him like a banana about their, you know, and these are supposed to be high performance wealthy people. And I said, my wife said, nobody's coming up to talk to you. So the, the, the founder of the deal who I trained, he said, you scared him. They're. They're afraid to come up and talk to you. Mr. Pena Costa Grazo says on asses group said if you're not afraid of Pena, you're stupid. When I, I get things done that nobody can get done, for example, and I'm not trying to intimidate anybody, but when I say I'm going to you up, that's exactly what I'm. I mean, and that's exactly what's going to happen, whether it's your business, you personally, your family. I erase the DNA of your family. And that's how the big boys play. Guys, I'm. You're here, so I'm going to use you as an example. That's not what you want in your life.
- [67:21]
Scott Clary
No, of course not.
- [67:23]
Dan Pena
But I mean, I can show you how to get four or five billion dollars. You want to play with the big boys, you get off the porch and stop licking your balls. You want to hunt with the big dogs. That's what happens and that's what still happens today. And everybody knows it. Just because you don't know it. Just because Klaus won't admit it.
- [67:43]
Scott Clary
Not everybody wants to deal with that in their life.
- [67:46]
Dan Pena
No, nobody. And that's why it's open market for people like me.
- [67:50]
Scott Clary
But there's a sliding scale.
- [67:52]
Dan Pena
Yes, there is, absolutely.
- [67:54]
Scott Clary
Where people who can't even deal with confrontation and talking to you at a dinner and then whatever the that is on the other end of the scale. And you have people that are all the way over here and you have you all the way over here. And people can.
- [68:07]
Dan Pena
No, no, there's. People lie to me.
- [68:09]
Scott Clary
Fine. You have here and you have. Yeah, but, but how do you get somebody who's too scared to even take action in their life to get to a little. Not, not, you know, not everybody needs to be this aggressive. Not everybody, but a little bit aggressive so that you can grab life.
- [68:30]
Dan Pena
Stand up for yourself.
- [68:31]
Scott Clary
Yeah. 100.
- [68:32]
Dan Pena
Have some self confidence. Have some self awareness.
- [68:35]
Scott Clary
Go shake your hand at a dinner. What the gonna happen at a day.
- [68:40]
Dan Pena
85 of the people that shake my hand, their hands wet. Not because. Not because they piss themselves. And part of the classes we teach them before you, you. You dry your hands.
- [68:54]
Scott Clary
How do you.
- [68:54]
Dan Pena
And I haven't. I, I haven't. I haven't done anything real ugly in a long time. But I will. You know, they didn't want me to go to the bank of England when we were discussing taking an option public because they, you know, I might, I might do something that I'd be sorry for. But in the old days when the investment banking. You said something on handshake. For real?
- [69:18]
Scott Clary
Yeah, of course. Yeah. By the way, people still do deals like that outside of the U.S. now everybody's.
- [69:22]
Dan Pena
No, no, but I'm in the U.S. i mean, I want a contract that thick. I'm not interested in this Lily. Medium mouth handshake.
- [69:30]
Scott Clary
I know.
- [69:30]
Dan Pena
And, and the, and there's certain businesses, oil and gas business is, is. Is still. Handshake deals are. Are still pretty good. When the former chairman of Exxon Mobil became the chief of staff for Trump first time around. I knew him when he was a middle manager. Hey, John, give me some coffee, you lard ass. And then he's, you know, he's a chief of staff for the president. The. But people have their limits. Mad Dog Mattis, who was the chief of staff for a while, and the other general, I forget his name now. They have limits. Okay, that. But I, I was privileged to sit on a board not too long ago with a former commandant of the Marine Corps, General Naylor. And he said that yours kind of military, Mr. Pena, doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't exist anymore because let's say I were in a firefight. I say, okay, we're just sweep. And then all you guys get killed, okay. And then they come back for the court martial. Gonna court martial you because you wasted all these lives. And you say that General Pena. I don't know this kid. Who is this kid? I didn't tell him to do all. He did it his own volition. He's an idiot. That's what we have now. So consequently you're not going to run around over there because you know that the chances are 50, 50, I'm not going to back you up when the hits the fan. And now in business people don't back people up. I tape all my phone calls and have taped all my phone calls for 25 years. I've only had to use it a couple times, but people know I tape it. So if they don't want, if they don't want me to tape, I said we don't have anything to talk about then see I, that's a red flag to me that you don't want me to tape the phone call. I'm not worried about anything I say. So that means by definition you're worried about something you're going to say.
- [71:28]
Scott Clary
So, so the rules of life are different.
- [71:30]
Dan Pena
Correct. The game's changing and then the, the what are the rules of engagement?
- [71:38]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [71:39]
Dan Pena
In some cases don't exist anymore. And that's why I have young kids, 23 to 35 that are able to build 506, 800 billion dollar companies. And not overnight because it always takes longer than you plan, but almost overnight. When it used to be a 25, 30 year program, how I was able to assist Klaus become CEO of Siemens against all the competitors. Klaus used to say I'm not, not Bavarian. And they never had a CEO that wasn't Bavarian. I speak German with an accent, which you and I couldn't tell. But I mean anyone. But when, the day he became CEO. I mean all that is history. Rick Scott building the largest healthcare company in the history of the world, who put his wave through college and law school by owning Dunkin 2 Dunkin Donuts shops or stores, whatever you call them. But that's still possible.
- [72:41]
Scott Clary
What do you want to tell people who are just starting out on their journey right now?
- [72:45]
Dan Pena
Young kids, it's easier to stay focused. Laser beam focus. Not easy, but it's easier if you're passionate about it. I'm a transaction junkie. I mean deals, I get off on deals. I happen to have a lot of expertise in health care. When, when I told Rick Scott before he founded Columbia Healthcare, Healthcare was going to 3% a year back in the late 80s, is now going at about 30% a year. Okay. If it's, if you're not in a tech related business, AI, cyber security and that kind of thing. If you're passionate about that, if you're not passionate about it, then you're pissing in the wind. But. And you can roll up anything. I mean back in the 90s. We used to take the yellow pages, which they don't have anymore. A yellow page. And you throw it on the ground. Whichever page you'd open it up to, that's what we're buying. Doesn't make a difference when during the. The classes I'd give. And of course, they were skeptical, to say the least. And then I'd help them and I'd get through the first gatekeeper. The second gatekeeper. Okay, to the principal. Best time to call people that you want to buy their business is Friday afternoon, Saturday, Sunday, early Monday morning because nobody's working except the owner. Okay. Hey, I guess you must own the place, otherwise you wouldn't be there on Sunday morning. Yeah, it's a real. I can't get anybody to work. When was the last time you thought about selling your business, mister? Today. I'll be right over. Now, I used to use a line which was slightly not true. I'm in your neighborhood. I'm in Cleveland, he's in Chicago. So. But I used to travel around the country in Greyhound buses.
- [74:27]
Scott Clary
Used to do what it has to do.
- [74:28]
Dan Pena
Yeah, no matter. And I was never late for an appointment. Okay. And the. But I was hungry. I was hungry.
- [74:38]
Scott Clary
The hunger anymore?
- [74:38]
Dan Pena
No, no. Oh, there's two books out in the last few years, both called Enough. One is a woke guy. How much do you have to earn? Enough. I mean, you know, are you feeding in the kids and by Africa, etc. The other enough is written by Navy Seal, ex seal. Never enough, you can never do enough for freedom, etc. Freedom is not free, etc. Etc. And the. But now, I mean, they, they get lazy. I gave a speech in New Zealand several years ago and success to a guy just getting out of university, said 100 grand a year. Two beamers, meaning BMWs for him and his wife and a ski chalet or someplace. Someplace. And that, that was success to them today. You know, I don't know what it would be, but it's certainly not what's available. We, you know, we have 13, 14, 15, 16 year olds that are making $2 million a year.
- [75:42]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [75:43]
Dan Pena
They have to have their mom sign the. Because they're, they're, they're, they're not, they're all, they're all.
- [75:47]
Scott Clary
By the way, they're all social media too.
- [75:48]
Dan Pena
Yeah.
- [75:49]
Scott Clary
Yeah, they're all social media and they're making tons of money.
- [75:51]
Dan Pena
Yeah. And the. One of my superstar families, the Carlins, I trained their son who just turned 18. He's on his third acquisition. He's rolling up sports bars now. I think it's because of titty bars myself. This is my opinion. He never told me that. And I did his first podcast. He's a podster on top of. Yeah, yeah.
- [76:13]
Scott Clary
What's his name?
- [76:14]
Dan Pena
Michael Carling.
- [76:15]
Scott Clary
I'll watch his stuff.
- [76:16]
Dan Pena
Okay. And he, he says he just turned. He had his 18th birthday, so now he doesn't have to have his mom sign. He can sign now. He's 18. He dropped out of school at 16, which you can do in Europe, most countries, mandatory school till 16. And, and I'm, you know, I'm fortunate enough to be able to be training second generation now. Like I say, because I'm going to be alive when I'm 100 and something. I may live long enough to do third generation of these kids, but it's the same message. The only new thing financial tools we have in the world today are crowdfunding and the blockchain. I don't mean, I don't mean, but I mean blockchain, those are the only new things. Everything else is the same 25 or 30 instruments that we've had for a century. And what I did is I took the Andrew Carnegie model from the late, the mid, the late 1800s. I put some bells and whistles on it to bring it up to the last century, more currently to this century. And, and he refrained from commercial debt he liked because. And he never took equity in because he didn't want to reduce his ownership. And if he. His default was commercial debt. And now our default, our regular methodology is sellers finance and commercial. And commercial debt is our default. And there's tons of money right now. There's 75 of all transactions in the world are done the last 60 days of the year. 75 of all financial transactions are done the last 60 days of the year.
- [77:52]
Scott Clary
And by the way, biggest wealth transfer ever. With all the boomers retiring and no kids are taking over their business too.
- [77:57]
Dan Pena
Yep. And that's going to be trillions of dollars. And that generation is not ready, you know. You know, they've got to level up. The retiring senior wealth manager of JP Morgan came to the center seminar about a year ago. She retired and she's got a Rolodex like, like nobody has in the world. And I mean, the first day in business, she probably did $100 million in revenue. But you don't have to have that. You don't have to have that kind of entree. It doesn't hurt, obviously. But the, and a lot of guys, I believe Patrick was A stockbroker or financial advisory calls him financial. Yeah, okay. I mean stockbroker back in the day. But you don't have to have that kind of knowledge. You just have to have the will and determination and don't give up. And then if worst come push comes to worse, I'm saying this time in the cheek, you can always be a potter.
- [78:56]
Scott Clary
Indeed is a success story Partner. Now if you're hiring, Indeed is all you need. Let me give you an example. If I needed to hire a new editor for this show, I'd go to Indeed and be super specific. Not just can you edit audio. I'd say I need someone who's edited a conversational podcast for for at least three years, gets our style and knows our software. Someone who's done this before. And here's the thing with Indeed Sponsored Jobs, I'd get people who fit that description. I'm not digging through resumes from people who've edited one YouTube video. I'm getting actual podcast editors who know what they're doing. People who've worked on shows like ours and can prove it. That's what makes a difference. You get people who actually are what you're looking for. According to Indeed data, Sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed are 90% more likely to report a higher than non sponsored job jobs. And people are finding quality hires right now. In the minute that I've been speaking to you, companies like yours have made 27 hires on Indeed. According to Indeed data worldwide. Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all the boxes. Less stress, less time and more results. Now with Indeed Sponsored Jobs and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help you get your job the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com Clary just go to Indeed.com Clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast ind indeed.com Clary terms and conditions apply. Hiring do it the Right Way with Indeed. HubSpot is a success story Partner. Now if you're looking for a new podcast, one of my favorite shows right now is Demand Decoded. If you're in the B2B marketing space, you need to be listening to this. It's hosted by the team at Blend. They are a demand gen agency. They know what they're doing. They're also part of the HubSpot Podcast Network. What I love about it is they skip all the theory and they just tell you what's actually working today. So demand gen marketing, content, LinkedIn, ads, attribution. They talk about real strategies that they are Using that you can use today that are working. So if you're an entrepreneur, if you're building a business, if you're really selling anything to anyone, go search demand decoded wherever you get your podcast. I don't think I've ever heard anybody ask you this, but I'm more curious now because everybody who I speak to is an entrepreneur. And you, you are an entrepreneur. And the people that go through QLA are entrepreneurs. But you don't tell them to build a company from scratch. You tell them to buy company.
- [80:56]
Dan Pena
It's easier to. Organic growth is painful. It's easier to buy revenue than create it. Because when you come in with a company that's got 10 million revenue, the bank, to the extent they use commercial banking, the bank already knows, they don't care if it took 50 years to create that 10 million or five days. It's already de risked de levered because you've already got it and you can show them, you know, and you've got three or four or five years of tax returns and they plus or minus the same as your net books or whatever the thing you use internally. Occasionally 1 in 10 has some audited numbers, which is rare, but it's easier to buy revenue than it is. And you, you can discount the revenue. When they tell you it took me 25 years to build this, I said, well that's not my problem, sir. With the greatest respect, you know, we're buying companies at two to three and a half, four times EBITDA. We have them 10 miles deep and a thousand across. I mean, and that's just it. And the AI is an exception to that rule because that they're selling for times revenue, which is wild. Yeah. And that's why my hand rarely shakes when I'm signing documents. But on Monday when I signed that document, I said, let's quit talking about, let's just sign the papers.
- [82:11]
Scott Clary
So you, you closed on this.
- [82:12]
Dan Pena
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [82:14]
Scott Clary
When you, when you look at the roll ups, you don't care because like, like strategically if somebody's listening to this and is like, oh, this is an interesting strategy because a lot of stuff we talk about is build a business slow, painful for sure. You buy revenue instead. That's a.
- [82:28]
Dan Pena
You, you discussed how it was painful starting this podcast.
- [82:30]
Scott Clary
Painful as hell. I know it's painful as hell. Yeah, it's the most work I've ever done for something for the least amount of return. But it compounds over time. I understand that now if I wanted to buy revenue immediately. But the thing is A podcast. You build media to use it to launch other businesses. So now what I can do, because I have eyeballs, I can buy businesses, and then I can take a business that's underperforming but as a good product, and then I can drive rev. I can drive eyeballs to it, and then I can take that revenue and almost turn into predictable cash machine. That's why you build the media. That's the real reason. I mean, I don't. You. You can go become the next Fox or MSNBC or whatever podcast network you want to. You want to become. But I don't think that's really why most people start to become, you know, like influencers or potters or whatever. The smartest ones, the. The Jake Paul, the LOGAN Paul, the Mr. Beast. Yeah. They make money on their content, but then they make money on their product, too. You got to have the product. But you think about if you have. If you have the podcast, if you have. I mean, you already have a good YouTube channel and a good following. You don't even use it.
- [83:33]
Dan Pena
No.
- [83:34]
Scott Clary
For your portfolio companies. But you could.
- [83:37]
Dan Pena
I could.
- [83:38]
Scott Clary
You could.
- [83:38]
Dan Pena
And this is some of the things we're looking at changing next year. I was on Paul's.
- [83:43]
Scott Clary
Yeah. Impulsive. I saw it.
- [83:45]
Dan Pena
Yeah. Yeah. And before his brother's first fight. Yeah. And he was training in the back. They had a ring in their house. This is when they lived in Los Angeles area. And I looked at the kid and, you know, his father was there. His father is a driving force. I mean, tough as nails. And I said, well, I don't know anything about that. But at that time, he was skinny. He's put on 20, 30 pounds of muscle now. It looks a little skinny to me now. He says, well, that's not our plan. The first couple fights, he may be skinny, but by the time he gets to where he wants to go, you know, he's going to be the light heavyweight or a heavyweight. And now I hear he's gonna fight the guy, the former champion from England.
- [84:27]
Scott Clary
Oh, I know who. I know who you're talking.
- [84:30]
Dan Pena
Yeah. I can't remember his name. Now, that'll be. That should be. I don't know about its first test, but, I mean, that guy's not some wump, wimp, retired boxer. Yeah, well, no, no, but. And he's still young.
- [84:42]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [84:42]
Dan Pena
I mean, and so.
- [84:44]
Scott Clary
But that's a good point. You know, you mentioned that the father is a driving force in, like, a young man's life. And 100%, that is like, I think that dads have to pay more attention to the life they live and the influence they have on their kids, especially their boys.
- [84:59]
Dan Pena
And that's why single mothers do have a harder time, okay, when there's not a man in their life, etc.
- [85:05]
Scott Clary
And you know why? Success. Success is not. Is not an accident. One of my favorite examples, I'm Canadian, so I played a lot of hockey, so I know a lot of hockey players. And there's three brothers, the Stahl brothers, and they all played professional hockey, and they all made it to the NHL. You can't tell. And the chance for a random kid playing hockey to go pro is very rare. Right. I mean, how many hockey players, how, like basketball, football? What's the percentage of the people that go pro get big contracts? Small. Right. So how do 3p. How do three brothers all make it almost impossible? Well, it's. It's because it's like, that's the environment. That's the family they grew up in. That's the dad. That's them pushing themselves. It's not chance that three brothers make it. It's that the environment they grew up in made it impossible not to succeed. And I think that's. So that's such a. In my opinion, that's a powerful lesson because it just shows how important proximity to greatness really is. If you have one brother that makes it, the next brother wants to make it, the third brother wants to make it. It means that if you want to be successful at something you mentioned before, like, the people who you surround yourself with are so important. You spend your. You spend your life with, you know, five people that make no money, you're going to be the six. You spend your life with five millionaires, you're going to be the six. Spend your life with five entrepreneurs, you'll be like, this is so.
- [86:22]
Dan Pena
That's exactly what Denzel Washington said in his recent. I don't know if it's a podcast, but Denzel Washington said, okay, you're the sixth, you'll be the sixth, etc. If you hang around with five idiots, you'll be the sixth.
- [86:34]
Scott Clary
But it's so true.
- [86:35]
Dan Pena
Yeah.
- [86:36]
Scott Clary
And if you think that, like, if you think that life is tough or you're not making enough money, you're not happy with whatever it is your life is right now, you feel like your life is shit. Like, why don't you just change who you spend the money?
- [86:46]
Dan Pena
Absolutely correct. Correct. And when I. When I left the United States in 81 to go to Europe, the. I didn't want to Be part of the Hispanic familia. Because I saw, even though, you know, my dad was a successful cop, but I mean, nobody made any money. Success to them was becoming a principal of a high school. And that's fine, that's great. That's a great professional, honorable. But that's not what I wanted. And I always, you know, flat my lips that I wanted this. And the example I used to use at the beginning of Muhammad Ali, who used to be Cassius Clay, he was saying he was the greatest before he fought a fight.
- [87:24]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [87:25]
Dan Pena
He was always flapping his mouth. Okay. His alligator mouth overloading his hummingbird ass. And he performed. And so the. But it's. You don't see that. You see. Once in a while you see it in, in, in boxing. Once in a while you see it in basketball. But I mean, you normally, unless you, you come from those elite elitist sports, you don't see it at all. And in my particular case, my dad was an all state, all American athlete in three sports. And I couldn't catch a baseball. I mean, literally, it must have been painful for him or, you know, I still remember I couldn't make the varsity baseball. I made the JV Junior. And I'm sitting in center field and we're winning 3 to 2, the bottom of the night, the bases are loaded and some big power heater comes up. And I said, please God, don't let him hit it to center field. Please God. And who would the do. He had it to center field and I dropped it. Now, my teammates and the coach said the sun got my. Whether the sun got my. I dropped the ball. That's all I know. And we lost that. And so fortunately, my dad wasn't at that game. He only came to one game. And fortunately it wasn't that game. But the athlete would have caught the ball.
- [88:33]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [88:33]
Dan Pena
You know, and then paraded around, of course.
- [88:36]
Scott Clary
Of course.
- [88:36]
Dan Pena
But may I drop the ball anyway? But I'm going to come back as a poer.
- [88:42]
Scott Clary
Like when you look back at everything you've done in your life, what do you want to.
- [88:46]
Dan Pena
Saving the Catholic Church. Saving the Catholic sainthood while I'm still alive. Canonized. And I say it seriously.
- [88:53]
Scott Clary
I know you say it seriously.
- [88:54]
Dan Pena
I'm not around.
- [88:55]
Scott Clary
I know around.
- [88:58]
Dan Pena
I tell Sally, if she had died 10, 20 years ago, I would have gone back to the seminary, become a priest. I'd be a boy today.
- [89:07]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [89:09]
Dan Pena
You know, and I'll show you how to clean up the. The goddamn church. And I, you know, and. But there's Never an easy time to make a hard decision. And right now 75 or 80% of the people that are in the hierarchy of not just the Catholic Church, but for sure the Catholic Church, you know, want to be liked. They're in the business of being liked. Penance now when, when you, when you.
- [89:32]
Scott Clary
That's everyone, it's not just a church.
- [89:34]
Dan Pena
Yeah, well, I understand, but penance now, when I was a kid, I used to get a penance that would take three or four hours to say all the prayers. So I did absolution for my sins. Now they gave you two Hail Marys as penance. And so I asked the priest and because I know a lot of them now, we can't give the kind of penance that you got when you were a kid. Nobody's come to confession. So now you're reducing penance to get people to come to confession so they can go to communion. Exactly. The model's changed. Jesus. Well, you're not just in financial trouble, you're in emotional trouble. And I can fix that too. Too bad, too bad I'm not 60 instead of 80. The. I like the ring of. I'm going to become a prince of the Church first. That's my next step because I've got, I've got three knighthoods and I've got this that I want to. It's a prince pena and then Saint.
- [90:32]
Scott Clary
Pena and then you're good.
- [90:34]
Dan Pena
And then I'm good. I'm cool. Yeah.
- [90:36]
Scott Clary
Would you, would you say that if somebody else could live a different life than you, they should like was your life. The best life to live was your life. I mean, because you.
- [90:46]
Dan Pena
What I wanted, it was the only life to live. I, I couldn't have done the stuff that I've done without. I couldn't have been met and interfaced with the people that. I have five presidents, the king, the queen, you know, the Pope. I mean, kids from the hood, where I came from, that's not the life. When I try to kill my teacher in the fifth grade and my cousin at dinner told my wife, yeah, we were afraid we were going to lose them then, meaning going to prison. But they don't send 10 year olds to prison. If they had sent it to. And if the teacher hadn't moved. I dropped it from the second floor. I got aquarium about this big, weighed about 40 pounds. He moved and it hit him in the shoulder and it drove his shoulder down here. I dislocated his shoulder and if it hit him in the head, he'd be dead. On dead on arrival. And then that teacher, because we support that school now, got the teacher of the decade because he was a hard ass. Every day I'd come to class, penny, you're going to be a good boy today. No, put the dunce cap on. So I stand in the corner with dunce cap for an hour or two and he says, have you got to change your attitude? No. Get in the closet. And then I used to myself in the closet. I can still feel the running down the inside of my leg. And then I'd be in the headmaster's office three or four times a week before noon. And my dad was a cop and the police car used to come and collect me from school. Always in a fight. Every single day I got in a fight. I used to protect a little weak cunts. They'd come to me, Danny, Danny and I, I remember they walked me around the yard. This is a good thing, a segue to close on with my wife. Two or three years ago, didn't you used to have a four square thing here? Yeah. Why do you have. Why is it gone? He says, because it caused too many fights amongst the kids. And I broke a kid's arm seven places. Sitting right here, standing right here. And so the principal said, wow, he called the ball in when it was out, so I knocked him down. And we heard a snap. And then he's crying, crying, crying. I think I broke my arm. And then I jumped on his arm and broke it in six more places. The teacher's crying, my wife's crying. So we go over to the tetherball, a thing that you hit around here. Didn't there be used to be a tetherball here? Yeah, yeah. Why is it gone? It caused too many fights. What'd you do here? I put a guy's eyes out, I thought. Fortunately it didn't put his eyes out because I hit him in the glasses and those glasses were real glass. And what about over here? I used to go around and girls and grandmas used to wear trainer bras, you know, little brassieres where their tits are going to grow into. And I used to, I played doctor. I was a monster. They used to call me a hellion. Hellion. I don't know what that means.
- [93:46]
Scott Clary
It's not a good thing.
- [93:47]
Dan Pena
No, but I was a monster. And then my mother used to have to buy two and three day old bread and. And so she would cut the crust off the bread. So when she. I go to school with my sandwich, you know, and so the, the teacher, the schoolyard monitor would come and say, there's people that's starving in China. What did you do with that crust? Now I was embarrassed. I don't want to say we're buying two and three day old bread. And it's green. You know, the bread's green. And so I, I had a teacher, my daughter, when she was in the same grade, a different school, very posh school, broke the thigh of the headmaster by giving her a, a, a spin karate thing. And you wonder why the kids. The worst day of my life was the day that my two sons went into the same jail cell. I did 40 years before county jail, Los Angeles. I got arrested and they both went into the same jail for different actions. It broke my heart, but they saw that I was a monster and I.
- [94:51]
Scott Clary
Got successful to try to copy that.
- [94:54]
Dan Pena
And they, in a couple of cases, they did.
- [94:57]
Scott Clary
You know what? Listen, not everybody's going to be you.
- [95:01]
Dan Pena
No, I don't want them to. God help us.
- [95:03]
Scott Clary
But, but like I said, they can do a couple more hard things in their life.
- [95:07]
Dan Pena
Correct You. If you come 1% closer to my end of the continuum, you're rich. If you come 5% closer to my end of the continuum, you're a billionaire.
- [95:18]
Scott Clary
Can you tell when someone's going to be successful?
- [95:23]
Dan Pena
Not in a billion, no, but I can tell because we have homework during the seminar, et cetera, et cetera. And, and we have, I have 2800 slides. I use between 16, 100 slides depending. And every night I change the slides depending on the input from the group. But some people, mostly because of communication skills, take longer. The program is built to get rich in one deal a month. So at the end of 30 months, you've done 30 deals and you're worth 4 or 500 million bucks. We've only had maybe 50 or 100 people in 30 years do that. But we have. It's possible. You can do it. You got to work, but you got to work your balls off. You got to work your balls off. But I'm going to turn them all to potsters now. I could give a pots to school, I guess.
- [96:21]
Scott Clary
Last thing. You know, you mentioned you would not want somebody to live the life that you lived. And then no one really could or will.
- [96:30]
Dan Pena
Just let me stop you. Yeah, on my side, you'll see a thing. The bionic man. All the artificial parts I have, okay, Knees, hip, shoulders, I've got, I've had 51 operations on doing crazy. Run over by a 2500 pound bull, killed a bear with a knife. I'VE done some crazy. Crazy. Okay. I wouldn't wish that on anybody. Okay. Again, trying to be the athlete my dad was and I wasn't. So you could grind. Pin it down to daddy issues. I still remember the only one time my dad came to my house, he didn't feel comfortable. He stood in our living room under the Napoleonic chandelier. It cost, I don't know, 100 grand, 150 grand. And I had my arm around him. He said, dan, just tell me it's not drugs. And I said, dad, it's kind of like drugs. It's oil and gas, but it's addictive. But my dad made friends with my head of security and my head gardener while he was there. Sat in the front of the limo, not the back of the limo. My mother died there. She never came in the castle. Never? No. She'd look in the window and make. See me at my office, because the big window behind me. And she'd ask the cook or whoever was coming and going from work, is he. Is he doing well? But she didn't feel comfortable being in the house.
- [97:55]
Scott Clary
Why not?
- [97:56]
Dan Pena
Because she was a servant. Scrub toilets.
- [98:02]
Scott Clary
And. And you making money was just.
- [98:04]
Dan Pena
No, no. Having that house. And even though, yeah, I brought her there and she died there. You know, my wife thinks that she died there on purpose. You know, to haunt you, maybe to haunt me. But my cousins, nobody is. I asked my cousin the other day at dinner, we all know where you live. We've had some of the cousins have showed up at the gates, security. How's he doing? I make people. If I make meat has listening to this uncomfortable, I make my relatives ten times more uncomfortable.
- [98:36]
Scott Clary
They ask you for money, huh?
- [98:37]
Dan Pena
No. Nobody's ever asked me because they know what the answer is. No.
- [98:43]
Scott Clary
Yeah, I was just listening to you. You know, Kevin o', Leary, obviously. And I was listening to a podcast with him, and he said the worst thing about being rich is people asking. Family asking you for money?
- [98:52]
Dan Pena
No, they don't. But my family's too afraid to ask me for money.
- [98:56]
Scott Clary
Now.
- [98:57]
Dan Pena
Kevin o' Leary is supposed to be tough. You know, he talks about me. Trust me, in my world, he'd be shining somebody's shoes. Plus, he's got no real money on top of it all.
- [99:16]
Scott Clary
I feel like the people that are in your world, the oligarchs, the people don't know their names.
- [99:23]
Dan Pena
No, I'll never tell you. Yeah, but they. They play hard. Hard ball.
- [99:29]
Scott Clary
No, the last thing I was going to ask, I was gonna. I was gonna ask you to tell people if they want to connect with you or, or go.
- [99:36]
Dan Pena
Dan Pena. I know Dan. Dan Pena.co.uk Anyway, my website, it doesn't.
- [99:42]
Scott Clary
Matter because I'll figure it out and I'll put it.
- [99:44]
Dan Pena
Yeah, yeah, I don't know what it is. The. I do three or four seminars a year. All my products free. The thing that you should start with, there's a thing called QLA for Dummies. We wrote it for kids 20 years ago. It's the most popular thing that adults read, QLA for Dummies. It's read like, it's written like for a 1012 year old. You start there. My book, best selling book. Your first 100 million is free. You can download it free. It's been updated a couple years ago and you follow the steps and, and, and you stay focused and, and, and you can get rich. But it's, it's, it's not just a business building thing. It's a way of life. When I get up in the morning, people ask my kids, at my 80th birthday, at my 70th birthday, at my 60th birthday, at my 50th and 40th birthday, is your father really like this in person? So at my 70th birthday my daughter got up and I want to make an announcement. Please quit asking me if my dad's like this. He's like this every minute of his day. When he gets up till he goes to sleep, he's just hard and he doesn't. They used to call me Danbo. There's a video online called Danbo. When I went to Africa and I went with film crew, BBC film crew. And I was like Tarzan, animal eating the hearts of animals, still pumping.
- [101:09]
Scott Clary
You're a different level, man. You're a different level.