← Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Ross Mandell - The Real Wolf of Wall Street | Rock Bottom to Wall Street Royalty
01:49:42
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- [00:00]
Scott Clary
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- [00:58]
Ross Mandel
I don't care much for money. I think money is overblown. It doesn't have that much meaning to me. Even though a house goes up, you got to pay taxes on it. There are costs associated with it and these are costly things. Money is actually costly. When you put money in the bank, you don't realize it's not your money. It becomes the bank's money instantly.
- [01:15]
Scott Clary
He was once the Wall street maverick. The man who lived fast, played hard and made millions. Ross Mandel built a reputation as the bad boy of Wall Street. Fearless, bold and larger than Life.
- [01:26]
Ross Mandel
I turned $1,500 into 30 million do and I spent 5 or 10 million along the way. I was nuts. But I was in my 20s, I was young. I just thought this is great. Mentorship for me was huge throughout my time on Wall street and makes all the difference in the world.
- [01:41]
Scott Clary
But behind the headlines of excess and controversy was a story of ambition, downfall and redemption. He tasted both the heights of success and the depths of consequence. And now he's here to tell the truth. Unfiltered, raw, and unlike anything you've heard before.
- [01:55]
Ross Mandel
The way I was able to climb the ladder, so to speak, of success, my rap was listening. Can I just come in? I won't say a word. I just want to listen to you. In order to get next to somebody that's meaningful, substantial, he knows what he can do for you. The question is, what can you do for me? Invest in yourself. Believe in yourself. Don't buy what everybody's selling. Don't buy the illusion.
- [02:25]
Scott Clary
Most people are afraid of money. The People that have it have it because they're not afraid of it. Why are most people afraid of money?
- [02:32]
Ross Mandel
The reason they're afraid of it is because they need to make an excuse why they don't have it or they don't chase it aggressively. So, you know, it's become something that's relatively unattainable, and it's things that, you know, create fear over those kind of things.
- [02:48]
Scott Clary
Yeah. Were you ever afraid of money?
- [02:51]
Ross Mandel
Never. I never afraid of money. But here's the funny thing about me. I don't care much for money. I think money is overblown. It doesn't have that much meaning to me. The only person ever heard speak about this openly is Robert Kiyosaki, who I think is rich dad, poor Dad. I think he's one of the smartest guys in the world. And we have a lot of very similar philosophies. Interesting enough, our stores on Lightspeed, on Lightspeed's platform, happen to be right next to each other, actually, for real, and Grant Cardone's on the other side. But this Robert Kiyosaki, I think, has fundamentally, he. He's managed to put in words what I. What I seem to know. So, like, most of us will say, you know, I own my house, right? That's an asset. And I. I own my car. I don't lease it. That's an asset. And, you know, nothing can be further from the truth. These are not assets. And if they are assets, they. They're characterized as depreciating assets. And even though a house goes up, you got to pay taxes on it. You know, there's. There are costs associated with it. It actually cost you money. And unless you're getting interest because of financial interest, meaning you rent it out, let's say it's a property that you rent out. Now, that's interesting. He focuses on. On the income statement of a balance sheet because he feels that certain things that he categorizes, assets really aren't. And I actually get that. So to me, money is always been just a tool to acquire things that I find necessary, comfort, things of that nature, security. These are things that I use money to acquire, and these are costly things. Money's actually costly.
- [04:54]
Scott Clary
What do you mean by that?
- [04:55]
Ross Mandel
Let's just say you're in the podcast business.
- [04:57]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [04:58]
Ross Mandel
Okay, so you had.
- [04:59]
Scott Clary
Which I am. I happen to be.
- [05:00]
Ross Mandel
Just coincidence and just. We were talking about putting together a studio.
- [05:05]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [05:05]
Ross Mandel
Right. You might have spent $50,000. So you're. You're actually. It's your business. And you spent, let's say, 50, 125,000, whatever the numbers are for the mixer and the camera and the Rodecaster and all the microphones, et cetera, the business itself, until it generates income. It's a bunch of expenses, right? But we're willing to invest in a business because in theory, the business by definition is an entity that is formed to create a profit. And so, so when you look at things like so, so to, to have money, people think the idea is to have money and to put it in the bank and save it. I was talking to a guy yesterday, he's got a few hundred grand saved. And I said, what do you do with the money? He says, I keep it in the bank. I said, really? It's in the bank? I said, okay. I said, what do you think? Why in the bank? Because, you know, it's safety and I get interest. I said, what kind of interest are you getting? And he goes, I think I'm getting like 3.8% or something like that. I said, a week? A month? No, a year. Okay, and who pays you that interest? Well, the bank pays me that interest. Well, do you think the bank is losing money by paying you? So do you know anything about banking? So bank, when your real bank, you know, goes to the window and gets 33 times whatever the money is. And by the way, when you put money in the bank, you don't realize it's not your money. It becomes the bank's money instantly making.
- [06:50]
Scott Clary
Money off of it too.
- [06:51]
Ross Mandel
And you get a chit, you get a receipt like a coat check. And yes, if you come back, they can honor it up until 250,000, because that's what the FDIC says, they immediately take your money, leverage it up, they borrow against your money and get 33 times that money. So if it's 10 grand now that it's turned into 330 grand, and they invest that money, and I promise you, banks make more than three and a half percent a year on your money. I said, have you considered looking at a very conservative blue chip dividend paying stock? He says, what do you mean? I said, well, I put money sometimes in the market. That shouldn't be a surprise. Okay? I said, safe money. I said, you ever buy Walmart? You heard of Walmart? Biggest retailer in the world?
- [07:38]
Scott Clary
Once or twice.
- [07:39]
Ross Mandel
Okay. You think there's any chance they're gonna have any problems paying, paying you out? Because every 90 days that you hold their stock, they're paying you a dividend. Do you know that Walmart's Dividend is equivalent to 5% a year plus the stock continuously.
- [07:58]
Scott Clary
So you get the appreciate on the appreciation plus the dividend payout.
- [08:01]
Ross Mandel
Right? So like buying, owning a stock and sitting with it, that doesn't pay you a dividend is like owning a piece of real estate. You have no tenants in it. You know, it's, it's, it's unoccupied. Now. Is that the way you.
- [08:16]
Scott Clary
No, but it's, but you know, it's funny because you're, you're saying, yeah, owning a stock doesn't pay you dividends is a dumb idea, which I agree. But at the same time, the majority of people have such, have such insignificant understanding of money and finance that they're going to leave money in the bank.
- [08:32]
Ross Mandel
They know what we teach you, what we sell. You buy and hold, buy a stock and hold it for 30 or 40 years. So the, the, when you buy, people don't even understand this. You know, every bank, stock broker, professional trades from the short side. What does that mean? You're going to call up your broker later, Scott, and you say, I want to buy a thousand shares of Nvidia. Let's just say for argument, takes 100. It's really about $113,000, right? And you say, okay, and you help your broker when I want to buy a thousand shares, he calls you back a minute later and says, you bought a thousand shares at, at 100, that's 100,000, right? And you feel good. You feel like the brokerage firm just went out and bought you that stock, but they did not buy you that stock. That's what we want you to think. They looked at the market and they shorted it to you. They borrowed it from stock loan department somewhere and they sold it to you. Why? Because they can always buy it back cheaper. So I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to sell it to you for 100 only because I know that I could probably buy, buy it back at 99, 98, 97, whatever the numbers are, but cheaper because they're closer to the market than you. So things are illusory. You think you see something and nobody.
- [09:54]
Scott Clary
Knows what they're doing.
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Ross Mandel
And it's not, we're sitting on a chair that I would swear I'm sitting on a solid item. But if we look under an electron microscope, it's billions of subatomic particles moving it, you know, 186,000 miles a second in speed. It's moving, it's active. So, you know, be careful. You know, you're understanding of the world isn't always as factual as you might believe. So with money especially and things like investing, you've been programmed to believe what we've been telling you to believe. I'm part of that machine that went ahead and pitched and sold the story. Just like, you know, hundreds of thousands of other people and hundreds of thousands of books, etc, you know, we're talking.
- [10:42]
Scott Clary
About, we just briefly touched on investing in stocks and dividends. People's financial education is so far from yours, it's unbelievable. It's almost like, it's almost funny if it wasn't sad how far people's financial education is. Because there's a lot of different reasons. It could be our school system doesn't teach us. It could be that our parents never taught us anything. They didn't know any better, they didn't know themselves. How many people retire and they go trust an investment advisor from a bank and that's their one retirement strategy.
- [11:12]
Ross Mandel
Right.
- [11:12]
Scott Clary
In the US you got your 401ks. In the, in Canada you got RRSPs or you got a whole bunch of different things, right?
- [11:18]
Ross Mandel
Correct.
- [11:19]
Scott Clary
But you've been in this game for a long time. Not everybody's been in this game since what, the early 80s, 1983, you were making, you were making money. You were making good money. So I have here you're making $200,000 a month as a stockbroker in your 20s. Is that correct?
- [11:33]
Ross Mandel
Yeah, correct.
- [11:34]
Scott Clary
That's not bad. That's not bad.
- [11:36]
Ross Mandel
No, it was very good actually. And it was, I, I felt invincible. I felt, you know, Thomas Wolf. Thomas Wolf wrote a book.
- [11:45]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [11:45]
Ross Mandel
Called Bonfire, the Vanities, Best number one bestseller. They made movies out of it. One movie a series, shows, all the whole thing. And they talk about guys that were Wall Streeters at that time in the 80s, and they called them masters of the Universe. And I was one of those guys. And in the 90s, they talked about the bad boys of Wall street in the 80s, prior to the 87 crash. Yeah, because starting in 1982, the market went straight up. Imagine a chart. So you get in here by my elbow and it went just like straight up for five years. I turned fifteen hundred dollars into thirty million and I spent five or ten million along the way. I was nuts. But I was in my 20s, I was young and I just thought, this is great. Like, I didn't even understand it could ever end or even change because I was, you know, I was, I was hooked in with some of the most famous guys in the history of Wall street that today are on the Forbes billionaire list, et cetera. Guys that created nasdaq, they created electronic trading, they created the ideas of the fundamental way markets are made today, the way you understand venture capital, private equity, all these different things. So again, mentorship for me was huge throughout my, my, my time on, on Wall street and makes all the difference in the world. I had guys that taught me, that showed me, that allowed me to listen in, took the time out to structure deals, invited me in deals once they saw I had value and I was talented. I, you know, people, I'm going to give this is a little tidbit for your listeners because I know you have a substantial audience. I'm getting a lot of people right now because I'm on the come up in the sort of influence of podcasting space, right? I so online education, the wealth formula podcast. I'm mentoring a lot of people and people are coming to me out of the woodwork right now and everybody's like, they see now that I, I'm out of prison, short period of time, and I'm on the come up my charts going like this now and people are saying, you know, I know you've signed to produce a movie. My brother wrote a script, a screenplay, a book. Can I please send it to you? Another guy wrote a book and he sees that I'm about to get a big publishing deal and he wants to send me the book so I could maybe get him a publishing deal. I have literally two, three dozen people, and I'm sure you do too. Reaching out, telling me what I could do for them. Yeah. And the way I was able to, to climb the ladder, so to speak, of success, my, my rap was, listen, can I just come in? I won't say a word. I just want to listen to you. There's nothing I won't do for you. What can I do for you? In order to get next to somebody that's meaningful or substantial, somebody that is on that trajectory, he knows what he can do for you. I know what I can do for you. I know what I can do for him. The question is, what can you do for me? So if you want to get next to a big guy, you want to pick his brain, you want to see how he moves, how he operates, how he handles things. What can you do for the person that says to me, I want to handle all your social media, Nelson, I got this. You don't worry about it. I'll take care of this. Now that's somebody that has value to me and If I look you up and down and I say, you offer value to me and I think, and if I'm willing to accept that value, a real guy, a real dude in life won't even accept value unless he knows he's going to pay it back, he's going to offer it back. I know what I could do for a young man. I already know. I know what I could do for middle aged man or guys my age. The question is, why would I? What am I? I'm not a charity. I do do a lot of charitable work. I'm a philanthropist.
- [15:54]
Scott Clary
I know what you're saying, though. When you started, you just gave everything that you had to these guys that were the mentors and the people that were, you know, tenured in the game.
- [16:02]
Ross Mandel
How can I serve you? Yeah, what can I do for you? When I, when I speak to anybody that has, in my opinion, real value and I want to get with him in some way, if I want to get him to do something for me, I don't say, can you do something for me? I say, how can I serve you? I want you to know there's a willingness to give. Those are the people that end up getting people that are willing to serve.
- [16:33]
Scott Clary
I, I know a lot of people that have made a lot of money and I've been a little bit successful. Not compared to some people have had, you know, nine figure exits and whatnot. But for me, it's like a different kind of success because you have a little bit of fame and you have an audience, so people are interested in you for that reason as well. But whether or not it's money or fame that you bring to the table, obviously very privileged to have that. But it's hard to, it's hard to figure out whose intentions are true when you're trying to figure out who to work with, who to spend time with. It's very difficult.
- [17:02]
Ross Mandel
You are on your way. I mean, a lot of say, oh, a podcaster, another podcaster. It's like such a crowded space. We've done, we've, we've analyzed this space. This may be a thousand people doing it. Serious people. How many doctors, how many lawyers, how many stockbrokers, how many engineers, how many plumbers, how many electricians? There's nobody podcasting the minimus on a pinhead. Nothing unregulated business. You can have your own network, virtually no barrier to entry. If you have Wi fi and you have a phone with a camera, you can be a podcaster. One of the things that really swayed me a lot of people were saying you were meant for this kind of thing, your podcast, you were speakers, you helped so many people, et cetera, you. And I said, what do I know from this kind of thing? And then my ex wife sat me down and showed me his woman. She was like a sales clerk, checkout person at Walmart or one of the big, big box stores and she has a iPhone and she sits at a kitchen table and she started a podcast and now she's making 70,000amonth and she didn't even believe that it could work like that. And she stayed as a, like a cashier at one of these big box stores until she's making 50,000amonth on a continuing basis.
- [18:31]
Scott Clary
She makes annual salary monthly.
- [18:34]
Ross Mandel
That's what she says. And you know, she just, at some point, you know, it hit a. Why are you killing yourself? You know, getting up early in the morning, going to work 8, 10 hours and then you have kids and a husband and then when you squeeze in your podcast and meanwhile this is what's paying everybody's bills and all that kind of thing. Because it was almost like she couldn't believe it. And I believe this is where we're at in this particular business. You have a great name, you're smart, you're young, you're good looking, you married well. I mean, you know, you're on solid footing. The world is yours, bro.
- [19:05]
Scott Clary
You think about, you think about opportunity, right? I mean there was opportunity with leverage and money and finance when you started out. There's still that opportunity too. But now I think that the opportunity is with media and reach. Because then you, you combine these things, right? You've, there's, there's this concept from a guy, Naval Ravikant. He's a modern day philosopher, very successful entrepreneur. He built, one of the companies he built was Angellist, which is a big like startup company. You can invest through it. But the point is he speaks about four kinds of leverage. There's like technology, there's finance, there's people, and then there's media as like the four things that if you figure out how to tap into those things, like the sky's the limit, right? You're golden now. Well, you will, you know, is, you know, financial and you know, people, you know how to use those two types of leverage and technology to a degree because you've like also built a massive audience yourself. But media is something that people are, there's, there's a lot of creators out there. But I don't think people understand how powerful media is. I don't think there's really been a play where somebody has understood the power of media plus public markets. I see a lot of technology plus public markets for sure. Right. People taking companies public all the time that are software companies, aipo, they're unicorns or you know, trillion dollar companies. Now forget a billion, 3 trillion even. Yeah, but media, I don't see that people have figured that alignment out yet.
- [20:38]
Ross Mandel
You know, there was a guy named Sumner Redstone who figured that out and he formed Viacom and he had A and B shares and Sherry Redstone, his daughter now runs Viacom B and she's in the midst of. They're in the midst of a lot of. There's a lot of noise going on regarding that company and Paramount and they're going to spin it off. It's.
- [20:58]
Scott Clary
Yeah, so that's, that's incorrect. So there are news media, I think I meant not traditional media, new media.
- [21:05]
Ross Mandel
Well, there has really been no play yet with the new media. And that's why I formed Raw Media. Because my plan is to introduce the world of new media to the world of Wall street and stock market virality. And I mean there were guys like Patrick, bet David that I think understand it. Yeah. And moving that way, my guess is at some point valuetainment will, will go public. That's my guess. I don't know that he would be interested just in selling, but you never know because he might command a price of 3, 4, 5, 6 billion. You know who understood this? And really there was a guy named Mark Cuban.
- [21:55]
Scott Clary
Yeah, yeah. Of course.
- [21:57]
Ross Mandel
In the 90s he created a broadcast media. It was a company that at its height did 25 million in revenues in the media space. He sold that for $5.9 billion. 90% of all his employees became millionaires. But when you are talking about a new innovative technology media which offers its own virality and the virality of the stock market as witnessed by anything with.com was being valued at, you know, a billion dollars. What I'm trying to give you is a virality, the virality aspect of money. The stock market. You think if Yahoo would offered Mark Cuban a billion dollars, he wouldn't have taken it? He would have said no. That would have said, see you later, Mark. An hour later he would have been like, you know, I was just thinking about this. Can we do a billion two? Because I really have my eyes on a basketball team in Dallas and they want 200 million. Imagine that was 200 million for the Dallas Mavericks and he sold them at a value of 6, 5 or 6 billion. So he's pretty good at understanding virality and value. So raw media it is, it is our intention as a group to roll up podcasters, people in the space, mentors, etc. Things that encompass what I call the social media, the new media, the influencer space. And we're going to bring that to the market. What's that going to be worth? Well, let me, let me ask you a question. If we can control 20 million eyeballs, what's that worth?
- [23:43]
Scott Clary
A lot.
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Ross Mandel
Well, let me just tell you something. If there's a, a game or an event that gets 20 million eyeballs on, on television, let's just say, or a movie, do you understand the value? It's enormous.
- [23:58]
Scott Clary
It's, it's, it's enormous.
- [24:00]
Ross Mandel
The super bowl is the single biggest event in the world and they get about 100 million eyeballs worldwide.
- [24:04]
Scott Clary
So what happens? You get 20 million.
- [24:06]
Ross Mandel
Think about that.
- [24:07]
Scott Clary
20 million on command.
- [24:08]
Ross Mandel
And command, that's. Yeah, you listen good. See, you understand the value. Nobody knows what, what, what the value really is. It hasn't been done. After it's been done, tried and tested a few times, then we'll have a better idea. But the idea is to be avant garde, to introduce the whole thing. Because that, I got that idea, you know, because guys like Mr. Beast were complaining. And he's making money, a lot of money.
- [24:36]
Scott Clary
He's had offers though, for over a billion.
- [24:38]
Ross Mandel
Correct. Now, but I'm talking about, believe it or not, only about, about 10 months ago that he, you know, he's just not making that Wall street money. It's not making that Wall street money. You got companies that are sorry ass companies. The average IPO from a big firm is valued at a billion dollars.
- [25:00]
Scott Clary
I don't think people really can comprehend how much money is in Wall Street. I don't think they've ever lived it.
- [25:06]
Ross Mandel
They understand $3 trillion a day trades a day on Wall Street. I forget. I was in prison. And one of the big questions, when you first get to prison, guys see on the yard, they see you walking around the compound, hey, a new guy, a og, a old man used to call me Rock Solid because that was the name of a book I wrote. And I had like, you know, don't ask like 150 books sent in and they were gone in 10 minutes. I was shocked to find there were thieves in prison. You know what I mean? And so they would say, so what institutions were you with, what institutions you've been at? And I'm like, New York Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange. And they're talking about, like, what prisons have you been?
- [25:57]
Scott Clary
Of course.
- [25:58]
Ross Mandel
Yeah, you say, of course. I had no idea.
- [26:00]
Scott Clary
No, I was like, for the second you said that, I'm like, are they talking about prisons?
- [26:03]
Ross Mandel
They're laughing at me because I'm like literally saying, you know, stock exchange, Remember the Boca Raton Hotel and Beach Club? And I'm trying to think of where I'm a member, like, you know, Friars Club. And then they say, you know, they talk, they brag. You know, I was the man in Hialeah. I had, you know, 18th and, and vine. I was my block, bro. I mean, we were doing, we were doing two, two keys a week, bro. Two keys a week. Another guy be like, yeah, well, I'm a, I'm from DC Man. Right? Two blocks from the White House, Avenue G and H Street. You know, we would turn it three keys a week and this would go around like a whole thing, you know. And they'd say, I'd be like, you guys are punk ass bitches. I'm from Wall street, bro. We do $3 trillion a day.
- [26:54]
Scott Clary
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- [29:12]
Ross Mandel
Working hard, playing hard.
- [29:13]
Scott Clary
Yeah. But just briefly. You don't have to go through everything but briefly. Talk about sort of like what you were able to accomplish before the government came after you for 140 million and also why, with the moves that you made over your career, did they choose to come after you?
- [29:33]
Ross Mandel
Early in my career, largely due to drugs and alcohol, being young, stupid and not having a good idea, not, not, not understanding how I was supposed to really conduct myself or handle myself, I got advice. My father passed away when I was 16 and I lacked a North Star, a moral compass, a figure that would, you know, say, hey, tighten up, get in here, you know. My father was one of the most honest, decent, hard working men I've ever. He was the most that I had ever encountered in my life and I was very angry when he passed. I, I was medicating myself with, I'm a garbage head, you know, drugs, alcohol. But the cocaine really is what brought me to my knees ultimately. And I started out at a, what they call a Wirehouse. Merrill Lynch, E.F. hutton Smith, Barney Payne Weber did big recognizable names. And we basically like a supermarket or a smorgasbord. We could sell your car insurance, life insurance, health insurance. I could build your stock portfolio, do your ira, your keel plan. If you have a business, own an operated business. I was a bond salesman. I did T bills and munis and corporates and you know, everything you could think of. If, if you said to me, this is what I want to do. I'd say, you know what, I'm an expert in that field. But I was at a firm that trained me and licensed me in all these areas. And I was very frustrated after a year because I had opened 300 plus accounts, which is like some sort of.
- [31:15]
Scott Clary
Like, is that a record?
- [31:17]
Ross Mandel
When I tell the story, people like, oh my God, like guys in the business 25 years, never, never.
- [31:22]
Scott Clary
What's a dollar value when you do something like that, like how much money you bring the firm?
- [31:26]
Ross Mandel
Well, what happens is the firm just wants customers. I brought in 330 customers cold from scratch with no help, no leads, you know, no, nothing special, no cost to the firm. And I generate like 325, 330,000 my first year. And the firm gets. I can't even tell you how much they make. Now here's the funny thing. So, you know, I didn't understand then how much the firm is making on me or anything. You just know, like for every dollar you're in commission, the firm is keeping half, you're getting half. Something like that. But what happens is every time you buy or sell something at a bank or a firm, they're making money in ways you don't have any. You don't. Haven't even thought about this. This is a business. This is a business about money. They curate. Every transaction affects, maybe, or kicks off is a catalyst for another five transactions you don't even know about. They short. They short you the stock, they short you the unit trust. Then they have to go in trade and get. So now they have some power. They have now no paying customers willing to pay for a certain amount of shares of stock or units of a trust or membership interest in llc, et cetera. It gets very technical, but, you know, it's broken down 15 ways by Tuesday that very smart guys have been analyzing for 100 years to see how they can use that to their advantage. And they have figured it out. So I, I was ranked number one out of a class of like, out of 150 guys starting out in 1984 at E.F. hutton, which was the number one and number two training platform ever. And to this day, everybody's, wow, bro, you were an E.F. hutton guy. It was the best training program, and that's why I picked it, because I, it had that reputation. So I became a very hot prospect instantly. So I'm like a ball player in my first year. I'm making, I'm scoring 20 points a game. I'm a lockdown defender. I'm getting rebounds, I'm getting Assists. I'm a team player. I don't cause any trouble for anybody. Now in the meantime, I'm doing what I'm doing. I'm drinking, I'm smoking, I'm snorting every day. But I'm young and I can do it. But you know what? Everybody's doing it. That's what I'm thinking. Everybody's doing it. And I found my crowd of people that were doing it. There are people at every single firm partying like that. Just a fact. And the funny thing is, flash forward when I did get clean. Nobody wanted to hire me when I was clean. You're an aa. What does that mean? Aa? You don't drink. You don't drink during the day, you don't drink during the week. I don't understand. I mean, what do you. What do you mean? Friday night I'm having people over. You know, my daughter's, you know, she's being bat mitzvah. She's getting christening and we're going to be serving wine. You're not gonna have a drink? I'm like, no. Like you would think that would make me more attractive to serious people. They wanted big balls. Ross Mandel, who's buying drinks for everybody at the bar and who's hungover smoking cigarettes, going through a pack or two a day at my desk, back in those days, you could smoke. Everybody had big ashtrays. Everybody had flasks and bottles, you know, in their desk. We were all drinking.
- [34:49]
Scott Clary
Funny how times change. Wild.
- [34:51]
Ross Mandel
It's amazing how the media was able to influence so many people. Like, smoking is the devil today. People that smoke today tell me I'm like the devil. I have. They have a little box in Manhattan outside. They go on the curve. You know, it's 10ft from the entrance and it's a little thing like a penalty box.
- [35:08]
Scott Clary
Exactly.
- [35:08]
Ross Mandel
And they sit there and they suck down their cigarettes and they, you know, they feel like I'm an idiot.
- [35:13]
Scott Clary
People don't drink as much anymore either.
- [35:14]
Ross Mandel
They don't.
- [35:15]
Scott Clary
I found. I just heard an interesting stat. One of my friends works with cruise lines and he says that the drinking's down significantly on the cruise lines. But you know what happens when the drinking is good? That people are so funny. This is a total aside, but I thought it was an interesting point. So they expect that when people drink less, they'd spend less money at the casino. And he says that's not the case. Because when people now know that if they drink, they're expecting to get at the casino. So they Go to the casino thinking, I'm sober, I'm gonna win. And they get 3x exactly, right? Yes. So now drinking's down on cruises and casino revenues like 3 or 4x. What it was before COVID is that crazy people are so funny. And they always try and beat the system, but the system always beats them regardless.
- [35:59]
Ross Mandel
But anyways, it's funny because I have friends that play poker and they purposely don't. They drink, they like to drink. But when they go play poker, they won't drink.
- [36:05]
Scott Clary
Yeah, but the average gambler thinks if they're sober, they're going to beat the house and they never win.
- [36:09]
Ross Mandel
The odds are the odds.
- [36:10]
Scott Clary
The odds are the pure man anyway.
- [36:12]
Ross Mandel
Exactly.
- [36:13]
Scott Clary
Back to yourself. So this is the, this is a different time than what a lot of people live in right now. Obviously not. People aren't smoking at their desk. People aren't drinking. Well, some. I'm sure people still. I'm sure people in finance still drink and do a whole bunch of blow. Like, I'm pretty sure this has not changed that much.
- [36:28]
Ross Mandel
All happening right now. By the way, if you're in finance and you have a guy that has a problem, call me. I do. I do consulting for some Fortune 500 companies. And if you have an executive that you want to protect, you don't know how to handle him. He's very valuable to the organization. But, you know, he might suffer from the disease of addiction or alcoholism. We can help you. Ross Mandel. Reach out infoross. Mandel.com will help you.
- [36:56]
Scott Clary
When you were going through the more stressful parts of your story, you never went back and felt that you had to let go rely on substances or anything like that to get through it.
- [37:10]
Ross Mandel
I actually wanted to swallow a bullet if that's. I don't know if you get to that substance, you know, many times and I share this a lot, you know, I, I pray to God, don't. I don't want to wake up tomorrow. I don't want to face tomorrow. I found guilty. Four counts. I'm going in with my family to be sentenced by the judge. The Lawyers tell me 50%. 50, 50. They're going to take remand. You either take you into custody right then and there. So put all your valuables in a plastic bag and be prepared to hand it to your, your wife or your lawyer because they're going to take you right in and whatever you have on you is probably going to end up missing. And you know, I was one of Rolex, all these, you know, expensive things and I. I just don't want to, you know. God, I just don't want to wake up tomorrow that, you know, I've had pressure that's been that big where drinking or taking a pill wouldn't do anything. I'm facing real stress. You know, a lot of. We have a lot of manufactured stress. A lot of that's part of the disease of addiction. In your mind, whatever the stress is in real life, whatever's going on in your mind, it makes it. There's a virality effect. It's magnified times a thousand and now if I felt like any of that would have helped me, I would have. I would have picked up.
- [38:29]
Scott Clary
Tell me the rest of the story about what made them want to come after you.
- [38:34]
Ross Mandel
I will explain it to you. So by the time I got clean, 1990, I had racked up about nine arbitration, customer arbitrations.
- [38:43]
Scott Clary
These are not. These are civil.
- [38:45]
Ross Mandel
All civil.
- [38:46]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [38:47]
Ross Mandel
And I'll give you an example. We do million dollar deals on the phone.
- [38:53]
Scott Clary
You're asking somebody to invest.
- [38:55]
Ross Mandel
I say, scott, look, you have it. You have an account with me. I say, scott, look, I got a very good feeling about steel. US steel, symbol X. Member the dot 30. I call icons when buying stock. I got a very good feeling. It's something I want you to own. And you say, all right, Ross, it's a real company. I know steel. Let's, let's. I want you on 10,000 shares. It's 30 bucks a share. Can you get me 300 grand in the next week? But I'm buying them. If you say yes, I'm buying it right there, 10,000 shares. You say, you know what? Let's do it. I said, thank you. I'll call you back or have my girl call you back with an execution. So I buy you the 10,000 shares. It's 300 grand. You know, I just made like a 6, $9,000 commission. My assistant calls you up. It's the trades confirmed, okay? Two, three weeks go by. Stock goes down three points. It's now 27. Now you have had it confirmed by my assistant. You told me, let's do it. You got a confirmation in the mail and very well might have got a monthly statement in between. You call me up and you say, bro, what's going on? I thought you really, you know, I thought you really knew something. I had a good feeling. I said, I do. Okay? It didn't happen as quickly. Oftentimes there were delays. Sometimes my information is so fresh it takes a minute for it to sift through. The market. But I just want you to, you know, be patient. It's a great company. When we're going to come out of this more than whole, you're going to be very happy with me. You say, you know, I don't really remember authorizing this trade. What do you mean? You know, I was excited because he was so passionate, but I really wanted to think about it. I'm like, you put 300,000 in the account. The trade was confirmed. He said, yeah, Ross, don't. Don't be like that. I wasn't sure. And I say, listen. So now whatever I was doing the night before is wet, worn off. I'm thinking about meeting my coke guy, you know, later tonight. I'm all edgy, and here you are with me. And I'm like, scott, go yourself. You say, I don't want the stock. I said, you want me to sell out the stock? Yeah. There's a $30,000 hit if you sell it, right? I strongly advise you not to do that. I never authorized that trade. So now I'm doing literally, sometimes a hundred trades a day, dozens of trades with dozens of different guys. And there were times these kind of things happen, these kind of disagreements, but amongst two gentlemen in the heat of battle, things can be said, things can be discussed, things can be worked out. The odds of this going to a legal issue down the road is very rare.
- [41:44]
Scott Clary
Cost you more than 30 grand.
- [41:46]
Ross Mandel
The whole thing, too. I mean, it's going to be a nightmare for you, the whole thing. And. But I'm very abrasive, edgy. I'm hungover. I need some more. Some more drugs in me or a drink. The stock is down three points, and I didn't expect that. And I own it, too, and everybody owns it. I'm getting a lot of calls like this, and I'm like, you know, and now all of a sudden, it went from. I'm not sure if I authorize it to. It's not. I didn't authorize this trade. I want my money back. And I'm like, you know what, Scott? Go fuck yourself. This is bullshit. You know it, and I know you go, I'm going to sue your ass, Ross. I'm going to complain. And I'm like, you know what? I'll see you in. I'll see an arbitration in six years. Go fuck yourself. And I'd hang up the phone instead of trying to be, you know, you just wanted your handheld. You wanted to be coddled. You want. You understand, things happen in business all the time, right? But I wasn't having it. I was very edgy. The markets did go up and down like crazy. And I just. I just was. And so one guy, actually, we went to arbitration. We show up, my lawyer. He's there with his lawyer. The panel's there, this whole thing. He goes, I told you I'd see you in six years. And he quoted me. And it became a topic in this arbitration. And. But this isn't.
- [43:11]
Scott Clary
When the government.
- [43:12]
Ross Mandel
No, this is. This is just. This is. This is an example. So they say, like this. They never close the file. When you're in this kind of. It's a regulated industry. It's heavily regulated. For them to say I was doing something wrong is ridiculous. Because they said before they ever came at me criminally. They had nine different examiners and different regulators come in, including the sec, who cleared me on every audit. We never had a problem. We never had an issue. We were completely mindful and in good order and all that kind of stuff. There was documents. I spent the most money on legal fees. And. Because by the time I had my own firm and I was in business for myself at the time the government got interested in me. I had already had these issues I was dealing with. Eventually, everything was settled. I settled every arbitration, dealt with everything. One most lost a couple. Everybody was paid. Everybody was whole. And then the stock exchange came at me, and I made a blanket settlement with them for all the activity that happened pre1990 while I was still using. Because they knew my story very well. And they said, Mr. Mandel is the New York Stock Exchange. We offered the money this. They said, we know you have a lot of money, and we know you're a great earner. We follow you very closely. I'm a member of the exchange. They were unregulated. They said, we don't want your money. We want you to take six weeks off and go to the beach and think about how fortunate you are to still be in this business. So I was suspended by the New York Stock Exchange. No, fine. I had the money. But I went to Puerto Rico with my girlfriend for a month. And just so you guys all know, I made more money trading the market during that six weeks. At any other time in my life, I was so determined to make money. I was so you. And, you know, I'll show you. I'm like that kind of guy. Tell me. I'm like Dana White. Tell me. I can't. Go ahead. Tell me. I can't. I love that shit. I live for that. Like, that's like giving me extra motivation.
- [45:22]
Scott Clary
I know.
- [45:24]
Ross Mandel
So now, by the time the 90s come along, I'm sober, I'm killing it, and life is easy. Business is easy.
- [45:33]
Scott Clary
You're back with nyse.
- [45:35]
Ross Mandel
I'm fully, I'm fully good. And I'm at a firm. I'm waiting for my firm to be approved, but I'm working at a firm I was at, went out of business, and they were acquired by a big firm. And the big firm fired a lot of people. But they paid me. Not only did they keep me, they gave me $150,000 to stay. I was okay with that. You know, I'm working on my own firm. They don't know this. I take the money and I'm doing business. They call me in one day. It was the president of the firm, the owner of the firm, big shot. His partner is a guy named Paul Fitzgerald, who's the former president of the New York Stock Exchange, the chairman right before this guy Dick Grosso, who was very well known because of 9. Oh, he was the chairman during 9 11, this guy before that in the 90s. And they had a deal and they were offering me tens of millions of dollars to do this deal. And that's why they gave me the 150 grand up front, because they knew I was the only one capable of doing this deal. And it was a very sexy little company out of New Jersey. They had some sort of cure, a treatment for a disease, and it looked really great on paper. It was already public. It had a following, you know, stockholders, all these different things. Great irpr. When you look at the company, it looks great. And they say, we want you to, to take, start buying and take a position with your clients. I had hundreds and hundreds of clients. I'm representing, you know, several hundred million dollars at this time in my, my client money, plus my own money, et cetera. They said we, we want me to, they want me to take over this particular company. So typically, when you're a public company, you have investment banks that you pay to keep pumping out research on your company, keeping the shareholders up to date, et cetera. If you're not a giant like a McDonald's or a Microsoft, you, you know, there's a game you play. This protocol is a ways to do things. You don't have to reinvent the wheel companies, go public, you hire a couple of investment banks, you pay. If there's a big stock issue, you know, there's a guy that can step in and maybe clean up the stock, meaning some of the guys bought the stock for a dollar and now it's $5 and want to sell half a million shares of stock. There' buy is for that kind of size. But they find a guy to position the stock because he believes in the story, etc. And they wanted me to be that guy for this company. And they were willing to give me $10 million cash on top of anything I could earn. And this is from a guy that was the president of New York Stock Exchange and the CEO of this big, big brokerage company. And I'm like, what's the catch? I'm thinking, this is not taking. This is real money. I might have had money, but this is real money to do a deal that I, you know, that sounded great, looked great and everything else. Right?
- [48:47]
Scott Clary
Yeah, of course.
- [48:49]
Ross Mandel
But it was a scam. They had all their partners and friends and their own money in it. And whatever this technology was, it turns out it was a bust.
- [48:58]
Scott Clary
And you were going to be the skateboard.
- [48:59]
Ross Mandel
They wanted me to be the guy that took all of their friends out, their partners, their best customers, them. My guys would come in and buy millions of shares. I would be promoting and by the way, when I started buying. So I was the kind of guy on Wall street at some point at this time, if I decided to buy something and take a big position, there was like 30, 40 guys around Wall street that followed my lead, thought I have very good sense of value that. And they would jump in. So at my trial years later, they said that I was a cult leader on Wall street and that if Ross Mandel decided to raise his staff, the stock would go up $3. That's power. And that's true, but not because I fucked people. I bought scams that I knew were bad and got every. I bagged everybody so I can get a payday under the table. And that's ultimately the crime that my couple of brokers, that my firm got involved in. And that's what brought the feds into my firm. And that's what they try to pin on me later. But I turned down this deal. And then they threatened me. They said, if you don't do this deal, because now I was. They showed me, like, what's wrong with this company?
- [50:13]
Scott Clary
But they showed you what was wrong.
- [50:15]
Ross Mandel
They admitted to me, they said, listen, we want to be up front. It's not going to be a great ending, but you'll have 10 million cash, plus you'll probably make another 5 or 10 million during the, you know, buying all the stock and doing all these Things. And I said, no, I didn't get sober. I live by those principles to this day. To cheat people, to lie to people, to rob people for money. I make money. I earn money. I don't need to beg people in a bad stock deal. I buy real stocks and I get paid for it. I have good information. I get great information, folks, this minute. And they said, well, the Wall Street Journal's been calling us and they want to do a story, a big story on rogue brokers. And your name came up. You're very famous in the business, but we can protect you.
- [51:12]
Scott Clary
So they were threatening you. They were blocking me, extorted me, sorting you.
- [51:16]
Ross Mandel
And what did I do? I said, fellas, thanks, but no thanks. Go fuck yourself. And I left. And they made my life miserable. But they didn't know I had already applied to have my own firm. I had already done all the work. I'd already raised millions of dollars. All these different things. And so we get. I get a call by the. This guy, Jeffrey Taylor, Wall Street Journal. It's the first time I really make this paper. He's writing a front page story. He wrote the biggest story. March 14, 1996. It came out. This all started in 1995. I managed to stall the Journal. And this, this writer was a hit.
- [52:06]
Scott Clary
Piece on just you.
- [52:09]
Ross Mandel
Well, I'll explain it to you. It used me. They wrote my entire life story to indict the regulatory system of Wall street. And they used me. My whole life story, 5250 words. They literally went to my hometown and knocked on doors. They went to my high school, interviewed my teachers. They interviewed customers that I had issues with. You know, some of these stories I told you earlier and front page Wall Street Journal. And they used my story like, how could this guy still be in the business? He said, nine arbitrations. He was an admitted drug dealer. He was doing cocaine. He admits that he was abrasive, this and that. And I submitted myself to three 8 hour interviews with this writer sharing my life story. Because my lawyer said, you're gonna be approved for this firm in the next couple of months. But if this guy puts this story out, they're gonna deny you. You'll never own a firm. So I said, what should I do? They said, the best thing to do is stall. I said, how do I stall? They said, nobody can talk like you, Ross. He's gonna sit down and you start telling him your life story. And by the end of the day, you'll be up to like, high school, first year in college, and you you're so interested they're going to want to come back and get more. They think they're getting more information on you, what you're doing, you're stalling. And then when all the lawyers. Because the Wall Street Journal had three lawyers, I had three lawyers with all their scheduling, you know, they get on their little blackberries at the time we could kick it. We'll stall them a few more months. So, so in the. So he writes three grueling after three grueling eight hour interviews. And I even said to the guy, I said look, I don't know why you using me for this. I could be a great source for you as a reporter. If you don't skewer me with this story, I could be a valuable story. I'm on the inside of. So I'm a big, I'm a big guy in this scam. I'm. I'm on the come up. That's my graph. Yeah, right. I'm like Scott Clary's friggin podcast career. I'm on that somewhere. And he wrote that. I tried to, I offered him that deal in the front page Wall Street Journal. I tried to like bribe him, you know what I mean? And so eventually the story comes out. March 14th, 1996. I'm on the front page of the newspaper, I'm the headline on the news. I was living in a, an apartment in Manhattan in a very fancy building. And when I walked downstairs we had a big desk, you know, like, like a fan. Imagine a very fancy kind of hotel, but it's a co op, a big apartment and you know the guy had the. Everyone had the papers, everyone in the building at Wall Street Journal, they all asked me if I would autograph it. The girl that was working for me, this stunning young sales assistant that was working for me, this gorgeous blue eyed blonde, built like nobody's business was working for me. You know she actually slept with me that week because I was now like a big celebrity and of course I married her. Steffi, I just want to say to forget you. And I was like, what's the name of that men's man? GQ wanted to make me a cover story. The bad boy of Wall Street. And I should have done it because I would have had it forever. But my lawyers talked me out of all that because by now I'd been approved already and I owned my own firm. And when that story came out, friggin 500 guys came to my. So in the movie the Wolf of Wall street. Yeah Jordy Belford talks About how he was in Forbes and they called him the Wolf of Wall Street. That's an entirely fabricated story. He used my story for that scene. He was never called the Wolf of Wall Street. He made that name up all by himself. He was not enforced into a story on him. That's my honest to true story. You don't believe. March 14, 1996. And the title of the story was. You know, they use my high school yearbook quote lately. It occurs to me what a long, strange trip has been. That was my high school quote. I was only 17 and already I felt like, what a long, strange trip it's been. I was 17 years old. That's my high school quote, yearbook quote. And they had my yearbook picture and they wrote this entire 5250 word story. The biggest story in the history of the Dow Jones Corporation that owned the Wall Street Journal at that time was the number one selling paper in the whole world on planet Earth. And I. It was the biggest story at that time ever written on somebody. But all of a sudden, every regulator in this business and in government put my picture up. The SEC called later that day and said, Mr. Mandel, we just want to call you. And we just opened up an investigation of you. I'm like, why? They said, son, you're on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. And it's not a good look because in that business any press is considered bad press. And I fought like hell not to be in this paper. That's what began my journey as sort of becoming a household name in that industry.
- [57:31]
Scott Clary
And when something like that happens, they have to investigate.
- [57:36]
Ross Mandel
Of course they do.
- [57:37]
Scott Clary
They have to investigate. It's not even a choice at that.
- [57:40]
Ross Mandel
No, they told the guy the guy was a lovely guy. They called me. I never spoke to the SC again until they charged me. And they charged me. It's the same thing. They would have charged me with the 1996.
- [57:51]
Scott Clary
So did the SEC lead to the FBI?
- [57:55]
Ross Mandel
What? Well, that's the misnomer. So, you know, because the SEC had done an investigation and found everything we did, every T was crossed and every. Because of that story, I was the most analyzed registered representative in the history of the industry. So when you open a brokerage firm, if you and Nelson were brokers, he started your own firm. You know, the, the FINRA would say for every 15 brokers yard, you have to have a compliance officer. Compliance guy gets like 180 grand a year. Yeah, okay. For every 15 brokers you have to have one. I had to have one for Every four brokers.
- [58:33]
Scott Clary
Because you're.
- [58:34]
Ross Mandel
Because I'm Ross Mandel.
- [58:35]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [58:35]
Ross Mandel
And I did. And we were squeaky fucking clean because by the time I was already a wealthy guy, you know, and. And you know, I was being audited five times more normally than anybody else. But even after that story, and then there was several other stories written about me as a result. But then what happened was I had my own firm and I started doing really great business and I got into some great deals. And at some point the Wall Street Journal, we. I was doing a deal and we wanted to call one of my partners. I'm going to call the Journal. He goes, I wanted to see what they think about Ross Mandel. Otherwise we don't want to put out a story. And he goes, wow, there. Now the Wall Street Journal is Ross Mandel neutral. So the next time I was on the COVID of the Wall Street Journal was a good story. And I went into the homeland security business right after 911 and I was funding companies that were helping the American public deal with national security. Tom Homan, who is now the border czar of the United States and Trump's cabinet, he's on TV like every two days. Thomas Homan, he was the number two man at the new organization called the Department of Homeland Security. People don't realize that's only been around since 2002. It was formed as a result of the failures of 9 11. Allowed 911 to happen. They made the biggest agency in the history of this country called the Department of Homeland Security. And Tom Homan was the number two guy and he came to work for me. He served on my boards because I was in the homeland security business and the government had a very positive view of me at this point.
- [60:15]
Scott Clary
So that. So everything was good.
- [60:19]
Ross Mandel
Hunky dory, killing.
- [60:20]
Scott Clary
Everything was good.
- [60:21]
Ross Mandel
I'm killing it. And then I take my brokerage firm, I go to London and I get public in London big. There hadn't been a deal on either side of the Atlantic since 9 11.
- [60:36]
Scott Clary
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- [62:51]
Ross Mandel
Okay, so what happened?
- [62:52]
Scott Clary
That was kind of like the first thing that started to get this whole fucking FBI thing.
- [62:57]
Ross Mandel
Well, what happened was this. I. The company that I formed in 95 during this whole fiasco, that story being written. Yeah, that I was stalling. I got approved. It was called Roan Capital. Roan. A guy named Jerry Roth. Jerry, I hope you're okay. Bedford, New York. He's a rich guy who's a trader at Spielheads Kellogg. Goldman Sachs bought out Spielheads Kellogg. He became a very, very wealthy guy. I bought this stock brokerage from. From him. I called it Roan Capital. He's a horse breeder. Roan colored horses were his favorite color. That's where the name comes from. There's always a lot of people trying to think, what's R O A N ro is for Ross. Who's the a N? Who's the secret partner? It was the color of a horse. He was a horse collector. It was his whole thing. Crazy people are so crazy. And I bought that company in 95. I got approved to own it. That's what I was waiting for, that approval and run it. And within 20 months, less than two years, I sold it. It was the hottest brokerage firm in New York City. Blackstone. Everybody knows who Blackstone is. Blackstone is sitting in my space in the office that I had decorated by a very famous interior decorator in New York named Ken Walker. And probably the third biggest private equity firm in the world right now. They took my space. That's the space that I decorated and designed. And so I retired. I built this firm. I made a lot of money. An exit and. But I had it. When I sold the company, my personal clients didn't want to go with these guys that were buying the company. And I had a huge business, 12 guys working for me, my own book. So Mike Nelson came to me at the time and said, listen, you're done. I get it. We know you made a lot of money. I make sure everybody get paid. But I really. And I had met my. My. My future wife at this place. So I was involved in, like, in a Hollywood type fantasy romance and courtship. And we're traveling and just doing all kinds of great things together and settling down, planning a family. And the guys that worked for me said, listen, I parked them. I made sure they were okay. They didn't want to work at the people that bought the firm. There was a little. A couple of guys I knew very well, I call them friends, were working at a. Owned a small investment bank called Thornwater. Was a limited partnership llp. And it was right across the street. It was in a brownstone. They owned a brownstone in New York, which probably today worth, you know, 150 million. It was right across the street from my apartment where I was living. So I parked my 12 guys in that space. I let them continue with the business, you know, the brokerage, our brokerage business, just our client business was generating, you know, probably half a million a month. And I was the biggest beneficiary of that. And that was just like, you know, I let the guys have most of it. And at some Point. They said, they came to me and said, listen, you're so good at this. You put together a firm, the Wall Street Journal, everybody's hunting you, and you put together the hottest firm in New York. And in less than two years, you walked away $50 million. You understand? This whole thing, I mean, we don't want to work for these people. We're the only. We do all this business. These guys go out to lunch, they smoke cigars, they drink all day, and we're giving them 150 grand a month. He said, we want to have our own firm. I said, I didn't want to do that. I had just done that. I wasn't interested, really. It's a lot of work.
- [66:52]
Scott Clary
You can retire.
- [66:53]
Ross Mandel
At this point, I was retired. I was sort of retired. I wasn't really working. I wasn't. So they said, look, I get engaged, I get married, I buy my wife a big house on Long island, on the beach. We have a beautiful apartment in Manhattan. We start making babies and we get dogs and all these good things. And then these guys are begging me. So I said, I'll tell you what I'll do. I don't want to own shit. I don't want to own shit. But if you want it in your name and you want to run it and this and that, I'll help you. So I, I did. I walked them through the whole thing. Now, later on, the government would accuse me of secretly owning the firm. Why would I have to secretly own this firm? I owned a firm five minutes before and 10 minutes after in my name. Why would I secretly own this little shit bucket of a. Of a firm? Do you understand how they try and I do understand, they try and find the crime when there was none. That's their big thing. You secretly ran this broker dealer. I didn't secretly own anything. Anything I own, I own. And if I don't want to own, I don't own it. Not interested. I mean, it's the stupidest thing in the world. If it's worth doing, owning, I'm gonna own it. But if I'm helping a guy, I'm helping a guy. So now these guys that worked for me were not the sharpest guys, the hard working, good guys. The second they had their own firm, drinking, smoking, snorting, because now they're making real money making a couple of million a month. We're killing it. Any place I seem to go in the brokerage world, everybody wanted to come. I'm just like a guy's guy. I'm a broker's broker. I know the game. I'm very verbal. I'm a. I'm very good at orating, and I'm a natural leader. And so once I got the hang of it, I don't need anybody else. I just do. And then if guys want to come in, the more the merrier. Let's go. As long as you're clean and you're a decent guy, these guys stop being decent guys. Stop being clean guys. And at some point along the way, I said, you know what? I don't even want to be associated with these guys anymore. This came up my trial. I said, you guys want to get rid of me? Because I started. I complained, but it's not my firm. I don't have the power. But I'm a Russ Mandel, and I'm like, I don't like this. I don't approve that. They started doing things, sneaking around, domestic violence, beating up their girlfriends because they're stoned. They're doing all kinds of crazy. Guys went crazy. They went crazy. Like when I was in my early 20s, when I went crazy, they went crazy. They were going crazy. They never would have ever had access to this kind of money or power. But I showed them. I gave them. And I put the key in the engine. I showed them how to do all these different things. So I said, I got to get out of this. I got to get myself extricated from this. So I said, I'll tell you what, guys. We made a deal, a legitimate deal. They were lawyered. I was lawyered. It was, you know, it was, you know, adversarial. But we came to a deal. They pay me 70 grand a month, you know, ad infinitum for them. It's a great deal because the business is making 700 grand a month with my business that I let them run. I took 70 grand a month. I said, I'm out. We have a baby. We're at the beach. 2000, the end of the 90s. I'm making money in the market. I'm trading this, I'm trading that. Everything dot com, dot com. I'm very content. I'm set up. I'm now married. I've got a child. I have two dogs, a beach house, and a beautiful Manhattan apartment. Four car. I'm just. I have the perfect life, and I'm sitting at my. So one day, my. My. My daughter was. She was born in February of 2000. She's a few months old. And in March of 2000 was the big dot com crash. The dot com bubble burst. And to give you an example, the biggest company in the world was called WorldCom telephone company went to zero. Fraud. Biggest company in the world. The fourth biggest company in America. The biggest energy company zero. Enron zeroed out Lucent Technologies A plus rated a Bell company from 82 to zero. The Amazon, the Jeff Bezos Amazon, you guys all know, $330 to 3. It's been revealed now by Jeff Bezos himself was that he was close to going out of business for months after months, close to going to bankruptcy, almost missed payroll, all these different things, the end of the world apparently. And they're parading people on television. I'm sitting there babysitting for my newly born kid and I'm watching CNBC at a beautiful office at a beach house. 5,000 square feet. I put 800,000 into the backyard with multi level decks and gardens and all kinds of great stuff. And I'm watching all these guys, they're parading on television trying to promote the market. It's just a quick downturn by the dip. It's going to come back. If you got quality, everything comes back. It's the stock market. Moron after moron after moron. They're parading and I'm looking at this going, I don't, I can't. Nobody gets it. I don't get it. I can't imagine how stupid everybody is. Every once in a while the deck is reshuffled in every industry. It's just the law of business. If you study business, if you study industry, you'll see it happens all the time. And I'm listening to these people and I take out a pad and I start doing what I do. I, Stephanie will always say I always know by how many pads you have out and how much money we're going to make. And so I have my pads out and I'm sketching some shit. And I realized something at that moment, I already have the house, the wife, the kid, the cars, the dogs. I'm happy. My drug of choice has always been more pick up the phone, I call one of my favorite lawyers and I say, Rick, let me tell you what I want to do. And I walk him through the structure of a brand new international investment bank and brokerage business. I said nobody gets it. We're going to be able to buy assets for $0.05 on the dollar in the burnt out brokerage sector. And I create a prospectus, a document and I give them the structure. I'm going to own 7 million shares. There's going to be another 7 million shares in the comp. In the, in the treasury. I'm going to sell 6 million shares for A$50. We'll bring in $9 million. We'll pay a million in commissions and then I want to get a million shares I'm going to give out to people I care about that have value and I'm going to take that company public on a foreign stock exchange. He's like, you drinking again?
- [74:45]
Scott Clary
So this is really not a thing when you're doing, when you're pitching this idea to him.
- [74:50]
Ross Mandel
I'm not pitching him, I'm telling him what I'm going to do.
- [74:52]
Scott Clary
But it's not an idea that anyone's done before.
- [74:54]
Ross Mandel
No, no, but I, I feel like people just don't get certain things and it was just a wide open opportunity. It's like what I see in the media game. Yeah, but you see, it's what I see today.
- [75:10]
Scott Clary
You see things different.
- [75:11]
Ross Mandel
Of course I do.
- [75:12]
Scott Clary
That's why you make money.
- [75:13]
Ross Mandel
I have a different sense of vision. I've been in a different game than most people. I actually see the field. I see how the plays evolve. You know, it's like, listen, I never played hockey and I go to watch a hockey game and I love it so quick, I have no idea what the fuck's going on. But they have like organized plays and guys have positions and guys position themselves up and down the ice.
- [75:33]
Scott Clary
I'll tell you something. When you play hockey, there's a sense that you develop when you play hockey and it only comes from doing it for long enough. But when you're on the ice, because hockey moves like that, it's insanely fast. And when you're on the ice, you know exactly what's going to happen. It's like there's nothing else except you've just seen that thing a thousand times and you know exactly what's going to happen. Every single sequence of events before it happens about 5 to 10 seconds or 30 seconds before. And you have this sense. So I know when one guy dumps a puck in, I know where the. I don't even have it in my vision, but I can tell you feel it without, without looking where every single person is on the ice behind me and exactly where they're going and exactly where they've been and exact play they're going to do next. But when you're playing with the pros, everyone has that exactly right. Competing with all that, everyone has it, but it's like you have this sixth sense, this, you know, you can see.
- [76:32]
Ross Mandel
Into the future and an instinct, a sense, a vision. So just so you know, I have that with the stock market. Yeah. And I have that.
- [76:39]
Scott Clary
What you mean?
- [76:39]
Ross Mandel
But even better than that, I have it. I specifically have it, you know. So you're talking about like situational hockey. Yeah, right. They dump the, you know, they dump the puck, they get into the crease, you know, you know the moves of that. Okay, so I see what's coming with media technology and the stock market. I see it. You see a podcaster named Joe Rogan who gets a $200 million contract for Spotify. And people say to me, how could they Pay Joe Rogan $200 million? Were they crazy? And I see what Spotify is going to do.
- [77:20]
Scott Clary
But you also see what Spotify made on their market cap.
- [77:23]
Ross Mandel
I know. Well, that's secondary.
- [77:25]
Scott Clary
Yeah, I know.
- [77:26]
Ross Mandel
I see where this is going.
- [77:28]
Scott Clary
Yes.
- [77:29]
Ross Mandel
I see all the offshoots that are coming. I get it. I see it like I see the two of you sitting here. It's crystal clear to me. And in 2000, in 2000, I saw the same thing and so I created it. I created like almost a thesis and I wrote it. And that's called Sky Capital. I'm writing one now for Raw Media, the same thing. I just want you to understand that I'm saying this live. Hello, how are you? To his 700,000 followers and subscribers, I see it clear as day. And that's why I'm doing Raw Media, because I don't need this. You know what I mean? I should just go to some people. Why don't you just go buy a boat and go around the world and this and that. Because this is a legacy thing for me. I don't want the last big chapter and verse written on the story of Ross Mandel to be went to prison, made a lot of noise in the stock market and then they got him because he's a crook. I ain't gonna. That's not my legacy. That's not, that's not the way I'm going out. I want something that my family, my kids, everybody else can see. That my years of being wrongfully prosecuted, wrongfully incarcerated, they illegally marshaled the evidence against me. I want that record to say this is just an asterisk in the story of Ross Mandel. Just like Donald Trump's story is not going to be that he was a 77 year old ex president billionaire who was convicted of 92 counts, felony counts, and then they took away his business, it took away the money from his children, all the different things that they were going to do to him if he didn't win this election. Donald Trump is in prison right now, just so you know. And you know, he. You can change the past by doing things today. That's what Kabbalah says. And I gave someone an example of that recently. And to make a long story short, so it's 2000, I sketch out a proposition and people laughed at me. They laughed at me. All the guys that were paying the 70 grand a month, that were cheating customers and getting jailed for domestic violence and doing drugs during the day at the. All the things that are ridiculous, they laughed at me. They all thought, you know, market collapsed in March of 2000. It's coming back soon. Mm. I ended up buying their firm for paper. I signed them all up. I gave none of them an upfront dollar. I bought the assets of nine different firms in a year for no money paper. Turns out the paper had a lot of value because I'm good at this kind of thing. I bought a whole bank for $120 million. I only pay it was the bank had had a hundred thousand customers with accounts and had done 500 million in turnover the year before. I only spent 2 million cash. I bought them for 20 million shares of stock at $6. And they got the money, they got the whole 122 million because I'm good at it. But so I made this proposition. They laughed. I created a document, I created a website. I lined up people that I respect, like and know could add value. I saw, pitched it and then a couple of guys put money in. Then all of a sudden, and I was doing this, I took a space. I didn't want to be associated with this other firm, the one I'm accused of secretly controlling. I took a space down the block, 110 Wall street, nice building. I took a room about this big, a thousand a month. I hired a little Puerto Rican girl that needed a job. She never, she was no good, but. Mary, I'm sorry, but how are you, baby? Hope you're good. She's like a great grandmother and she's like 30. The girls in her family, they sexually acted very early apparently, or I don't know how they do it, but they have kids, you know, and she's like this good looking 35 year old girl and she's already a grandmother. I understand the math right? Math on that, right? It's so crazy. So from that room, that 1000, that $1000 month suite, next thing you know, the guys across the street see, I take A whole floor at 110 Wall street and I send Dell $2 million and buy order all the best equipment they have. Because my network guy, for the plan that I was, a very ambitious plan. Global trading, cross border etc, different currencies, all that I needed. You know, we didn't have the cloud then. Everything was the land, the local, you know, everything was, you had your own network, had to be locked out. The room was like, you know, it was like a holy temple. It had to be like 60, 63 degrees. I had a guy, 24, seven alarms, this, this, that, back and forth. So I get this Dell equipment delivered a month later, nine, 11 hits. I'm the only one on Wall street that has equipment.
- [82:50]
Scott Clary
When you think about after everything you've gone through, how do you wake up and still want to build after all the that you've been through? Is it a legacy play? Is it a people? What drives you?
- [83:03]
Ross Mandel
I'm going to tell you the truth. You know, I could give you some canned answers.
- [83:06]
Scott Clary
No, the truth.
- [83:08]
Ross Mandel
But like my people are very nice to me generally. I'm a nice guy. First of all, you've gotten to know me a little. We've spent a lot of hours together. I'm respectful, I'm kind.
- [83:22]
Scott Clary
I can verify the RNA's guy.
- [83:25]
Ross Mandel
I believe in elevating people and saying nice things to people. I can make jokes, all these different things, but I'm considered a funny guy. But I really care what my family thinks of me. I have children, I have two daughters. One day they're gonna have children. And I worked hard. I'm a hard worker like you. I'm a hard worker. You know, when I put my head down, I could look up and the whole day's gone. I don't even know what happened. Yeah, and like I had a whole day before I even came to see you today. A whole day. Then drove to Miami. To make a long story short, it's really important to me. And if I needed the money right now, I'd work. I like, you know, I know guys that sell car, I can sell anything. But I'm 68 years old. I feel like God gave me the strength, the moxie and the fortitude to do something with my life the rest of my life. When I was in prison, I helped a little. Helped hundreds of people, hundreds of inmates, including officers. I, many officers in the BOP will, will testify to that. Many of them follow me on social media and DM me and stuff, and they're not allowed to do that and all that, but they do it. And I feel like God has given me some gifts and my program when I got clean. There's like I told you, it's called 12 steps, right? Well, the 12th step is to give back. If you want to keep what you have, you have to give it away. It was freely given to you, you have to give it away. And it's the old adage like whatever I give, I get back tenfold. I could, I could testify to that on my light and the lives of my children. There's like a principle in the universe that is hold like gravity for me. And I feel like I can help. I feel like I can help almost everybody. I hate to say it like that. I don't mean to be. I am full of myself and I'm probably a narcissist and all these. I am and it's probably true. But at this point in my life, I think, I think if I didn't feel that way then what have I really done in my life? And you know, the greatest feeling I've had in my life is when I help other people and I see the light go on in their eyes. I have a mastermind program that we do charge for and it's been the greatest gift to me because I'm not in the, in my industry, I'm not in the Wall Street. I can help anybody when it comes to the markets. And I do, I do help people, but I'm helping people, men navigate life, business, family, stress, anxiety, legal stuff, everything. And, and women too now. And it's just one of the most rewarding things ever. My ex wife was listening in on a couple of these masterminds and she goes, this is your calling. You could sit in your apartment tier in your 80s and just help people as long as you could talk. And so I feel like I have a higher calling. I do. All the things that I've just shared with is very honest from my heart. I can't what I care what my kids think. When I got out of prison, my kids wanted very little to do with me. So you know, I wasn't allowed to appear in a picture with them. Putting them in social media. Forget it, Dad, I, I would. There was some point when they first started going out, meeting me for family dinner. Remember they lived without me for 10 years. They were little girls, 11 and 14 when I went in. And they were highly embarrassed. Kids are cruel. They had to get off social media for a while. American greed came out. To this day, if you say American greed to my wife, she gets tear out she's not crying. Like it's affected her deeply. What did she do wrong? And people come at her because people are cruel. And I want to change the narrative. I want to leave a legacy that's positive, that's reflective of. To the life I've actually lived, not some horseshit. I mean, if Donald Trump didn't win this election, he would go down as, like, one of the biggest scoundrels in the history of America. Instead, he might very well go down as one of the greatest presidents in the history of America.
- [88:11]
Scott Clary
Wild how?
- [88:12]
Ross Mandel
Think about that. That's like my story, you know, so, so. But. But I'm going to say like this now because I want to get very honest with you guys. I sort of love this shit. I don't feel 68. I'm, like, invested now in this podcast business. I'm invested in this sort of mentorship and building a media company. I could smell, you know, they sell. Shark can smell the blood in the water from a mile away. If you're flapping your arms, it splashes. They can sense the sound from a mile. I feel like I can see what's coming with raw media from a mile away, I see it. Anything in my life that I've seen that clearly happens. So now I'm sort of, like, hooked. Because I will say, up until a few months ago, I could have walked away. I could have just said it. It's not worth. Just not worth it. Even if I needed money, I know how to make get money. I don't need to do all this shit to make money. I sit in front of my computer. It's easy for me do this my whole life, but I feel like I can do something really great. And you know this. You, Scott Clary, hockey player from. From Toronto, right. An executive from Ottawa. Right. You now command the eyeballs of more than a million. You command over a million eyeballs. You.
- [89:42]
Scott Clary
It's crazy.
- [89:43]
Ross Mandel
How great is that, though?
- [89:44]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [89:45]
Ross Mandel
That's the miracle of what we're all doing here today. How many people are going to see this and the clips and all these different things. So if you really intent on changing a narrative or doing good, what a platform this is, if you really want to help people, what a plat. God has given us this gift. When I was growing up, there was, like, black and white TV and there was three channels. Three channels. Now there's a thousand channels and nothing interesting to watch.
- [90:17]
Scott Clary
You know, you've been through the highest of highs, lowest of lows in your.
- [90:23]
Ross Mandel
Life, by the way. Literally.
- [90:25]
Scott Clary
Literally, yeah.
- [90:25]
Ross Mandel
A lot of guys use these phrases. Yeah, I've known. I've been to the top of the mountain and I've been to the depths of hell. I have been.
- [90:34]
Scott Clary
Have you. What's your, what's your definition of success and a life well lived after you've.
- [90:40]
Ross Mandel
Been to both, I'm gonna tell you. So depending who you are and where you are in life, depending on your definition of success is going to change. And this is a big thing in prison. Guys talk about this a lot. A lot of prison philosophers, you know, well, there's a lot of dummies in prison, but there's some really brilliant minds in prison, too. It's interesting in other points of view, but I have a very specific definition of success today. And I'm really, by my definition, I'm becoming very successful. And that's really what makes me, that's what drives me the most right now. Let's share that with your audience. And you, after spending, you know, a lot of time in prison with nothing to do but read and pray and do push ups and try and better myself, it's a lot of time wasted. My definition of success today for Ross Mandel, and this is specifically to me, is to have such a life that my adult children want to hang out with me. When's the last time you wanted to hang out with your parents? Not talking to you specifically, but when's the last time you wanted to hang out with your parents? It's not too often. Generally speaking, we do it as an obligation.
- [92:03]
Scott Clary
Then it's sad because you can actually count how many times you're gonna spend with your parents for the rest of your life. And it's not a lot.
- [92:09]
Ross Mandel
Well, it depends. So my definition. My kids today want to hang out with me.
- [92:15]
Scott Clary
I was gonna ask.
- [92:17]
Ross Mandel
My daughter called me up, dad, Elliot's going to, you know, the soccer game with his friends. So I'll be alone. You think he could pick me up? We can hang out. We go out to lunch. Maybe we go shopping. Went to Pura Vida in Fort Lauderdale last Sunday. A little shopping, walking around, hung out in her apartment. We took a nap. We both fell asleep on the couch, took a little snooze. I mean, you know, I said, you know, if you're a young woman, who are you going to feel comfortable taking a nap with besides your boyfriend? Not many people like your dad, right? Well, we both, we ate so much and we both took.
- [92:52]
Scott Clary
That's the best kind of lunch, by the way.
- [92:54]
Ross Mandel
The best. My other daughter's like, dad, listen I have a date. I'm going to be in Miami for the weekend. Could you go feed my cat and sit with him for like an hour? Very spoiled cat.
- [93:06]
Scott Clary
Very spoiled cat.
- [93:07]
Ross Mandel
So I go over there, she calls me up that way. I thought you're going to. He said anywhere between nine and, you know, nine or ten. So I was gonna go with ten. Oh, okay. Now when you're there, dad, can you take some video, take some pictures? She's, you know, hold. Making sure I don't know where. And I, you know, come in and run out. But it. What a gift that I can do this for my kids. And we go out for dinners and, you know, I told you I made a deal to produce a movie called Blind Greed starring Michael Kapan, who's one of the original Power Rangers. He's got the blue Power Ranger called Time Force.
- [93:42]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [93:43]
Ross Mandel
And he was in One Tree Hill, the teen drama, the show on TV. And he made. He's made two movies last year and five movies since 2020 and about 100 TV commercials. He's. I'm a real guy. And he was. We had signed. We had made the deal, signed the deal. But everything was on Zoom and you know, online, etc. On the phone. And he was. I insisted he come in and meet my family and my close team because we're all now going to produce this film and we're all part of it. And there's this moving parts. And I said to my kids, I'd love for you guys to come. And they were psyched to come to the dinner. We went to Prezo's, Prezo Shout Out North Military Trail in Boca Raton. And we had an amazing dinner. Like over 14 people came and left and. But it's. To me, that's what success is because in order for your children, your adult children to want to spend time with you, a, you got to be pretty cool. You got to be doing some pretty cool things because everybody's, you know, everybody, you know, wants to have a good time. They don't want to just be, you know, spend that obligatory couple hours with their parents. And so to me, that's really great. And when my ex wife wants to do things for me.
- [95:07]
Scott Clary
Yes.
- [95:08]
Ross Mandel
She still works with you and hang out with me. I know I'm winning. Boy, I'm winning. Because she's a true. A true yacht, a true measure of what is successful. She has her own definition. And it's a much more substantial definition.
- [95:25]
Scott Clary
No, but I liked your definition a lot.
- [95:27]
Ross Mandel
That's how I feel today. When I was your age, I had a different feel. You know, it was all different. But I'm just letting you know I like that.
- [95:32]
Scott Clary
I like that. One of, one of your favorite ideas that you have that I think will really hit with people after they know your story. Now, this is not a dress rehearsal. You don't get a mulligan. There are no do overs.
- [95:45]
Ross Mandel
This is your life. This is it. We're here. You know, I mean, people sitting there. Let me think about it. Think about what? You, you know, another one to me has become my favorite. You know, life is not a spectator sport. Get off the bench and get in there. You're the star of your life. You're the star of your life. You know, if your life was put on the big screen, would you be excited? Is it meaningful? Was it a dud? I mean, get in there, enjoy. Mix it up. Do some things, take a chance, have some fun. I mean, we don't get another chance at this. You know, I play, used to play golf with my friends. You know, we're hackers, you know, and, you know, guy will tee off. We don't like the shot. I'm taking a mulligan. I'm like, what's a mulligan? I thought it was like an Irish stew. It's a do over. I said, I don't understand. Where did this. What rulebook is this in? Everybody knows it's a mulligan. You know, it's like funny and. And that's what. That's. That's. That's life. Yeah, get in there, baby.
- [96:53]
Scott Clary
You lost nearly a decade of your life.
- [96:56]
Ross Mandel
Even more than that.
- [96:57]
Scott Clary
More than that. What's the. That's. That's just tough. I mean, what do you see? Now, you mentioned your family, which, you know, that's probably going to be part of this answer, but what's the most precious thing in the time that you do have left on this earth?
- [97:14]
Ross Mandel
You know, I like to be productive.
- [97:16]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [97:18]
Ross Mandel
There's a difference between actually being productive and feeling productive. If you ever thought about it, you'd be able to come up with your own. Your own concepts of that. But I like to feel productive not just to be productive, because sometimes you just go through the motions of life, of business, and you're really not feeling productive. Once you just go into the motions, you're phoning it in. That's why I like people say, like.
- [97:46]
Scott Clary
Live, like truly live.
- [97:47]
Ross Mandel
Why? Listen, you could do anything. Why are you driving to Miami to do. You just would. Scott Clay, Why are you going driving you're driving. You're 68 years old. You're going to drive to Miami and do this. I'll tell you a good story about this. One day I get invited to Matt Cox's podcast.
- [98:03]
Scott Clary
I love his podcast.
- [98:04]
Ross Mandel
Me too.
- [98:05]
Scott Clary
Yeah, he's a good guy.
- [98:06]
Ross Mandel
So he's in Tampa, I'm in Boca. It's about a four hour ride. This is right after the most recent hurricane. My plan was to get up early in the morning and drive from Boca to Tampa, do his podcast. Maybe an hour, maybe 90 minutes, whatever. Everyone's got different. And then I'll drive back. And when I got out of prison, I was. I had some health issues. I had a couple at a scare or two. I had some things that I'm fine. But there was no explanation for what happened. But, you know, they say, Mr. Mandel, your Speedo days are over. You know, it's. You know, I said, I'm 68. I'm not 88. But, you know, shit happens. But, you know, I'm. I'm a believer that, you know, if you're gonna play in the big leagues, if you're a big guy, you gotta play hurt. You don't just sit on the bench. You don't just phone it in. So I. I said, I want to do this. And Nelson will say, you know, Stephanie's like, call Nelson. He'll drive you. I said. I said, of course he would, but I want to do this. She goes, I don't understand. Are you crazy? You're going to drive across the state, do a podcast and drive home in one day? Really give a great thought, but yeah, what the hell? What the. What do I do? What am I not. I'm not, you know, doing construction in the hot sun.
- [99:37]
Scott Clary
Yeah, you're just driving.
- [99:38]
Ross Mandel
I'm not laying cinder box. Right. So little did I know. So I got up, I drove there. It was a good four hours, and there was shit all over the roads. When you got towards the west coast of Florida, it was bad. It's a couple of detours. And I get there and I said, Fridays were sitting to start. I said, so, like, what do you like to keep it to an hour? I was new at this. I had no idea. 40 minutes. I mean, what's the time limit? He goes. He goes, bro, you're fucking Russ Mandela. We're going to be here until you can't find another word to say. We want whatever. You're going to talk, we're going to record. You're here. And you guys know I could probably talk. They said, we've been here for four hours before. Five hours and 13 minutes later, you.
- [100:31]
Scott Clary
Did a five hour podcast with him.
- [100:33]
Ross Mandel
Five hours and 13 minutes.
- [100:36]
Scott Clary
I thought I was. It wasn't five hours that he published it.
- [100:38]
Ross Mandel
Listen. Okay, 46,000 views, five hours and 13 minutes. Just recently. I. I just discovered this yesterday, but I see he did it in January. He cut out a 20 minute clip specifically about the stock market and just posted that. But it was five hours and 13 minutes. Now. We spoke for a half hour before and about a half hour after then I first had to drive home four hours. And it was a great day. It was a great day. And you know, stuff. He's like, pull over, get a hotel room. You know what I mean? Like people. It's funny. So I drove, you know, of course, my counterpart over there, he goes to Orlando, he takes a hotel. You know, it's a manicure, pedicure while he's there, you know.
- [101:29]
Scott Clary
Yeah.
- [101:30]
Ross Mandel
My brother Nelson, you know, I'm just saying. So I. We were eight hours of driving, five hours of podcasting, an hour, half hour, half hour. So it's a big day, right? And I wasn't really feeling great, but I did it. And you want to know what? It was a great day. It was a great day. And he asked me, why'd you do that? I said I wanted to see if I could. I wanted to test myself. I've been locked up for 10 years. I didn't drive a car for 10 years. The only time I was in a car was when they chained me up and they moved me from place to place. You know what I mean? Back of a van, leg chains, waist chain, you wouldn't believe it. So I said, here, I could drive. And did I get paid for that? No. Did it cost me money to do this? It did. Two full tanks of gas. And I don't know what the hell I. But the point I make to you is that it was a great feeling coming to see you like today. This is great. Is great. I mean, you're a great guy. The great studio. You know, it's my story. I heard your story. I feel like I got to know you and it's, it's. But, you know, we're not doing heavy construction. We're not welding, you know, 3,000ft below sea level. You know, we're chatting and it's air conditioned. It's nice, bro. And so I think it's really. And if we help one person, if one person gets any sort of help or comfort from this. We entertain them. We did a good thing.
- [103:12]
Scott Clary
You've given a lot to the audience, and I appreciate you. What's one last sort of some words of wisdom that you want to leave them with or something that we didn't go into that you think would be helpful for the audience when they're trying to navigate life, business, or just outside of business? Just life in general.
- [103:28]
Ross Mandel
You know, I'm going to borrow this from someone that was revealed to be one of the smartest men in the history of the world. And on his deathbed, he said, and I repeat this to the audience as mine. You know, anything that can be solved or cured by by either time or money is an issue, not a problem. It's very important to understand this. In the general routine of life, people believe they have these problems. They don't have problems. Most people don't have problems, but they have issues. And if you can cure. If you can cure a circumstance with money or with time, it's not a problem. You have an issue. So I did time. I literally checked into a prison in 2014, and I essentially didn't get released to 2024. That wasn't a problem. It was an issue. Now, issues are serious, but it was an issue. A problem is different. You have a brain tumor. Your days are numbered. That's a problem. So these are things that people should really consider. Because I believe that we're the masters of our own fate, largely, I feel that God, our creator, our maker, gives us an opportunity to conquer lives. Our own lives. We can conquer our own lives. I believe everybody has the ability to become very successful, whatever their own definition of success is. It's very important that you try and define success. I was on the phone with a beautiful woman who you met last week, and I said, what are the five most important things to you in the world? Think about it. Don't answer. What are the five most important? If I was a genie, I'm Aladdin's genie. Rub the lamp. I come out. You'd have anything in the world. What are the five things you want? What are the five most important things to you? And that's your starting point in life. That's how you triangulate where you are. So a lot of people want to be successful. They want to be successful in business, they want to be successful in life, in relation, in podcasts, on the stock market, it. In, you know, basically in any endeavor. And I think that everybody would be successful, because I think people. Just about everybody wants to be successful, but nobody understands. And there's a million books, there's a million shows, there's a million podcasts, there's a million theories about how to be successful in the stock market, in relationships. I mean, they had stories for everything. But people don't know where the starting line is. Where do I. Just show me where, you know, just show me where. I show up, where the race starts. And I can run the race because I'm armed with Google and books and wisdom and philosophers and mentors. People don't understand where they show up, where's the starting line? And I think that's one of the most important things. And anything that can be solved with time or money, it's just an issue. People don't have problems like they think they do. Can't pay the rent, my job, I don't have enough to live. How am I going to support my children? I mean, these are issues. Don't make them more than they are. Because when you see a hill, no problem. When you see a fucking mountain, you're like, oh, God, I can't do it. It. And that's very important to put things into perspective.
- [107:27]
Scott Clary
That's very wise. When people see problems, when people see issues as problems that can sabotage their.
- [107:36]
Ross Mandel
Whole life, well, that's what hap. That is sabotage. That's what happens. And so that's why I tried to put that into perspective. It takes a lot of thinking and understanding, and I don't want to start defining the different specific problems because then the people that are listening that actually have problems are going to panic. Did we tell you you look a little bit like Ben Affleck?
- [107:55]
Scott Clary
I have heard this before.
- [107:55]
Ross Mandel
I'm staring at you and I feel like I'm looking at Ben Affleck.
- [107:58]
Scott Clary
It's not the worst.
- [107:59]
Ross Mandel
Listen. Yeah, you know, that's a good thing.
- [108:04]
Scott Clary
A good thing. That's definitely not a problem or an issue. I'll take that.
- [108:08]
Ross Mandel
Every more I look at you, the more I see Ben Affleck. Is that crazy?
- [108:12]
Scott Clary
Where can people connect with you? Where could people find out more about Raw Media, about some of the content you're working on, all that.
- [108:19]
Ross Mandel
Thank you. Rossmandel.com is a website. Ross is double S Mandela was m a n d double l dot com. Just like it sounds. Ross Mandel on Instagram, on Facebook. I have a friend page and a fan page. Follow me. Hit me up. Tell me a friend request. I'm on YouTube. The real Ross Mandela. Please subscribe infoross mandel.com. my team is 24 7. They'll respond. I promise you within a few hours. At. At worst we have a mentorship program where I mentor people, I master my program, I consult if you have a business, if you have a company, if you have an issue, or if you have a problem.
- [109:05]
Scott Clary
Last thing I always like to ask you, even over a lot of wisdom and you mentioned a few times how important your family, your kids are. If you had to pick out of all the different things that you've learned over your life and you could only pass on, you're only allowed in this exercise to pass on one lesson to your kids. What would that lesson be and why?
- [109:24]
Ross Mandel
Invest in yourself. Believe in yourself. Don't buy what everybody's selling. Don't buy the illusion. Foreign.
- [109:40]
Scott Clary
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- [110:38]
Ross Mandel
What do you think makes the perfect snack? Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient. Could you be more specific when it's cravenient? Okay, like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right down the street at a.m. p.m. Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at ampm. I'm seeing a pattern here. Well yeah, we're talking about what I crave, which is anything from ampm. What more could you want?
- [111:01]
Scott Clary
Stop by AMPM where the snacks and.
- [111:02]
Ross Mandel
Drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient. That's Cravinience ampm.
- [111:07]
Scott Clary
Too much good stuff.