Building a Business When You Don’t Feel Ready 🏭 EP139

Summary

The Money Mondays — “Building a Business When You Don’t Feel Ready”

Episode 139 | Host: Dan Fleyshman | Guests: Yash Daftary (FanBasis CEO), Dr. Jay Feldman (Otter PR, LeadGenJ) | September 15, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Money Mondays dives into the journey of building businesses, even before you "feel ready." Host Dan Fleyshman chats with two accomplished entrepreneurs:

• Yash Daftary, founder & CEO of FanBasis (“the Shopify for digital creators”)
• Dr. Jay Feldman, medical doctor turned marketing agency founder (Otter PR) and lead generation educator (LeadGenJ)

The conversation covers:

• Modern ways to make money online
• Investing and protecting your capital
• Building unbreakable company culture
• The real impact of omnipresent marketing
• Charity and building success that gives back
• Advice for creators, side hustlers, and future entrepreneurs

Throughout, Dan and his guests blend actionable tactics with insightful, sometimes blunt, wisdom for both new and seasoned entrepreneurs.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. FanBasis: Empowering Digital Entrepreneurs

Timestamp: 01:54 – 03:40

• Yash Daftary’s Bio: Serial entrepreneur since age 13, exited his first startup in college, extensive VC and agency background.

• FanBasis Platform:

  • "Shopify for selling anything online."
  • All-in-one tools for digital products, communities, and services
  • Handles payments, integrations with platforms like Discord/Telegram
  • Helps sellers double business size—“Our whole concept and mission is to help digital entrepreneurs make more money and streamline their operations.” ([02:39] Yash)

• Who FanBasis is For:

  • “The creator or internet entrepreneur” running their brand as a business
  • Community-based businesses (e.g., crypto trading, sports picks)
  • Online businesses/marketing agencies—anyone selling digital products or services

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2. The New Generation of Online Wealth

Timestamp: 05:02 – 08:00

• Explosion of young earners: “There are 15-year-olds on our platform generating six figures a month.” ([05:43] Yash)

• TikTok & short-form content make building audiences (and monetizing) easier than ever.

• Memorable anecdote:

  • Negotiating merchant rates with a 15-year-old making $60–$70k/month:
    • “2.6, I need 2.44.” ([06:37] Dan, imitating young entrepreneur’s bargaining)

• Peer relatability fuels the education economy:

  • “People that are younger and even older see a 20-year-old succeeding and think, I want to learn and do the same thing.” ([07:25] Yash)

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3. Culture: Hiring and Retaining a Winning Team

Timestamp: 08:00 – 09:42

• FanBasis has never had an employee quit—anomaly in tech
• Secret:
  • Ultra-young, driven team (average age 25–26)
  • Only hire people who “want to be here until exit or IPO.”
  • “We don’t like to hire people who just want a job. We want people who want to be a part of what we’re building.” ([09:25] Yash)
• Employees see their own impact on explosive company growth

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4. Smart Investing for New Wealth

Timestamp: 09:42 – 16:38 (continues in later segments)

• Mistake: Young earners often hoard cash (“five or six million in a checking account”) out of fear/ignorance

• Advice:

  • “Start learning how to invest that…Compound interest is real. You can make a lot over time.” ([10:07] Yash)
  • “You have to invest to fight with inflation.” ([11:02] Dan)
  • Dan shares his “40/40/20” investing rule:
    • 40% low risk (5–9% annual, just to beat inflation)
    • 40% medium risk (real estate, businesses, S&P 500)
    • 20% high risk (angel investing, crypto, etc.)

• When to invest? “The best time to raise [money] is when you don’t need a raise.” ([18:55] Yash)

• On angel investing: Only do it if you have access to elite deal flow and expertise.

Notable Quote:

“The average person in America has $5,500 saved up. What if your kid lives to 104 and wants to retire at 74? They need 30 years of money saved up. It’s a scary thought.” – Dan ([67:32])

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5. Operating a Creator Business—Follower Count vs. Operator Skills

Timestamp: 21:11 – 24:26

• When can you monetize?
  • “If you have 50k–100k followers, the real question is: Am I a good operator? Do I know how to build a business?” ([21:25] Yash)
  • Some with millions of followers make little; some with 6k are millionaires.
  • Secret: Build a team ("put the right people around you"). Partner up if you lack operations skills.
  • JV (Joint Venture) model: Partner with someone who’s built the infrastructure—“Be an extension of their business and split everything 50/50. Eventually, start your own.” ([23:58] Yash)

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6. Product Development: Features vs. Innovation

Timestamp: 24:26 – 26:27

• FanBasis moved from ‘must-have’ features to innovating “what people don’t know they need”—mirroring Steve Jobs’ approach.
• They poach clients for their inside knowledge, building executive and advisory teams from industry leaders.

Notable Moment:

“If we can show them ways to get from $100,000 a month to $200,000 a month…they’re never going to leave.” ([25:48] Yash)

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7. Charity as Business Practice

Timestamp: 26:27 – 28:08

• Yash’s upbringing: Giving back was family tradition—soup kitchens on birthdays.
• Charity humble founders and gives back karmically:
  • “Anything you put into the world always ends up coming back to you.” ([27:49] Yash)
• FanBasis integrates charity sweepstakes and supports real-world causes.

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8. The Legacy Question: How Much Do You Leave to Your Kids?

Timestamp: 28:08 – 29:58 (Yash) & 64:02 – 68:26 (Jay)

• Yash: “If I raise my kids right…I’m happy to give them all of my wealth…If that’s not the case, they’re not getting anything. Everyone needs to earn it.” ([28:41] Yash)
• Jay: “The goal is to make your kids independent…just enough to accomplish their dreams and no more.” ([64:02] Jay)

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9. Lead Generation, Marketing, and Agency vs. In-House

Timestamp: 33:35 – 39:34

• Lead generation = awareness for people who don’t know you.
• Agency vs. in-house: Agencies bring wisdom, experience, relationships, and collective learning.
• “Good marketers don’t need to work for you—they’re making a killing on their own.” ([37:06] Dan)
• Alex Hormozi’s model: Learn from an agency, train in-house, but beware: you make those employees ultra-valuable, and they may leave ("I'll invest in them if they do!"). ([38:13] Dan)

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10. What Holds People Back from Making More Money?

Timestamp: 41:02 – 42:42

• “You’re the sum of the people you surround yourself with…Change who’s in the room.” ([41:24] Jay)

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11. Marketing Playbook: Building Omnipresence

Timestamp: 42:42 – 45:54

• Start with free exposure: Optimize social profiles, make searchable content.
• Paid ads/meta/Google once you have revenue.
• PR is the “halo effect”—enhances all marketing, retargeting ads crucial for omnipresence.
• “People need to see you seven times before buying.” ([44:52] Dan)

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12. Personal Investing Philosophies

Timestamp: 45:54 – 54:54

• Jay: Outsourced investments to a trusted financial advisor after losses on Robinhood.
• Dan: “I just buy the same 10 stocks. No plans of selling, ever. Why would I sell Apple?”
• Both emphasize: Invest in products you use and understand.
• “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.”
  ([49:31] Dan, referencing Einstein/quasi-misattributed)

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13. Crypto & High-Risk Assets

Timestamp: 54:54 – 56:46

• Dan: Bitcoin and Ethereum, “The supply is getting less, demand is getting more, that’s why it’s the number one performing asset.”
• Jay: "Gary Cardone literally made me start my bitcoin buy on-air." ([55:18] Jay)

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14. Charity & Personal Fulfillment

Timestamp: 57:48 – 63:05

• Dr. Jay’s story: Retired his mom, together are opening an animal rescue.
• “I want people to be a part of it. I’d rather you show up.” ([61:56] Dan)
• Dan’s “building in public”—transparency and involvement create a sense of meaning for supporters.

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15. The Future: Financial Longevity and Lifespan

Timestamp: 64:53 – 68:26

• With modern technology, today’s children may live to 104 or more.
• Saving/inheriting enough for 30 years+ of retirement will be crucial.
• “There’s a joke: when you look at your account, you see $1 million, but every year inflation makes it spend like nine-fifty, then eight-thirty…" ([56:46] Dan)

16. Health Advances and Financial Preparedness

Timestamp: 66:16 – 67:32

• New biotech and medicine will radically extend healthspan.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Dan (on talking about money):

  “We grew up thinking it’s rude to talk about money. I think that’s ridiculous. We have to have discussions for your finances, taxes, FICO score. Should I rent? … There’s nothing rude about it.” ([00:53])

• Yash (on successful creators):

  “You should be generating minimum seven figures a month...It comes down to the ability to be an operator.” ([21:45])

• Jay (on lead generation):

  “Biggest pain point in most companies is: how do you market, how do you get people to know your thing?” ([35:03])

• Dan (on investing):

  “I don’t have rocket science to my investments. I just look at companies I use. I see Tesla everywhere; I’m going to buy some Tesla stock.” ([12:46])

• Jay (on surrounding yourself):

  “If you want to make more money, surround yourself by people who are making more than you.” ([41:24])

• Dan (on charity):

  “I wanted to create charities people could see, feel, and touch. Rather you show up and bring your staff than just send money.” ([61:56])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:54–03:40] Yash Daftary’s bio & FanBasis explained
• [05:02–08:00] The rise of young online millionaires
• [08:00–09:42] Building and retaining a team
• [09:42–16:38] Investing mindsets for new money
• [21:11–24:26] Who can monetize and how
• [24:26–26:27] Innovating in product and building customer loyalty
• [26:27–28:08] Charity and giving back
• [33:35–41:02] Lead generation, agencies vs. in-house
• [41:02–42:42] What holds people back from making more
• [42:42–45:54] Omnipresent marketing & PR’s “halo effect”
• [45:54–56:46] Real-world investment strategies & crypto
• [57:48–63:05] Building personal fulfillment through charity
• [64:02–68:26] Legacy: Inheritance, planning for future generations, and advances in longevity

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Final Takeaways

• You don’t need to “feel ready” to build something big—operator skills and the right relationships are more valuable than follower counts or initial resources.
• The online economy is booming with new, young wealth—a radical shift in who can earn, educate, and build businesses.
• Successful businesses and modern entrepreneurship thrive on transparency, team culture, smart investments, continual marketing experimentation, and an emphasis on giving back.
• Invest in what you know, build relationships intentionally, and make your success mean something beyond the numbers.

Where to find the guests:

• FanBasis: fanbasis.com | IG: @fanbasis | Yash Daftary: @yashdaftary
• Dr. Jay Feldman: IG: @dr.j.feldman, @leadgenj | leadgenj.com | otterpr.com

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This summary maintains the conversational, candid, and motivational tone of the podcast, bringing to light actionable strategies and timeless principles for listeners at any stage of their wealth journey.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays podcast where we cover three core how to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. This next guest has built up a very, very impressive company. So much so that I actually joined as one of the executives to help on the advisory, to help them scale, because I was so impressed with everything they were doing. So we're going to go into how to scale a company, how to raise funding, and a lot of things of why he even decided to build this company. Because what's really important for you guys is these podcasts are not just for you. It's people in your past, present and future. You might be at a lunch, you might be playing pickleball, and someone wants to learn about building a tech company or being in a course or creator or someone wants to understand how to raise money or exit a company, you might be able to share this podcast with them. So don't just listen to these podcasts for yourself. Think about the people in your life from your past, present, future. The whole reason for this podcast is we grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think that's ridiculous. We have to have discussions about money for your finances, taxes, FICO score. Should I rent? Should I buy? Should I lease? There's so many questions we have that are part of our daily life. This is how you take care of your mom with her medical bills, or your friends or your kids or dinners, lunches. There's so many things that you just spend money on that we need to have discussion about it. There's nothing rude about it. We have to be able to talk about it. And that's why this podcast has done so well, because of you guys liking commenting, subscribing, sharing, et cetera. That's helped us drive us to be staying consistently the top 50 podcasts on the planet. It's because of you. So I want to thank you guys for that. Now, without further ado, as you guys know, these podcasts are under 40 minutes because the average commute to work is 45 minutes. The average workout is 45 minutes. This episode will be between 32 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure. Yash, if you can please give a quick 2 minute bio so we get straight to the money.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. Juan, I appreciate you having me on.

[A]

Of course.

[B]

So, quick background on myself. I'm the founder and CEO of fan basis. I've been a serial entrepreneur, started multiple different businesses, had some sort of business running since I was about 13 years old at any given point. Prior to starting Fan Basis, worked in the venture capital space for a few years and then also built another startup which I was able to exit at a pretty young age right when I was in college. And after that I had a lot of experience in the info product and agency world as well. I've had my own info products and agencies specifically on the marketing side. So very, very well versed in the Internet economy space and how to make money online space, which is kind of what led me to start Fan Bases.

[A]

What the heck is Fan Bases?

[B]

So it's a good question basically what Fan Basis is. Is the all in one tool set to sell digital products, services and communities? The best way to think about us is we've created the Shopify for selling anything online where not only do we handle your payments and processing, give you the ability to collect as much cash as possible, but we give you all the tools you need to actually host your business online, whether it be your course, your community, or integrating with about 10,000 different software platforms like a Discord or a Telegram. And on top of that, you know, what we love to do is help everyone that's on our platform make more money. So we give you all the tools to build out an affiliate program or, you know, increase conversions on your checkout funnel. Our whole concept and mission is to help digital entrepreneurs make more money and streamline their operations. So, you know, we see a lot of people that join our platform that are already generating hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars a month online. And, and our mission is to have it so that we can enable them to double the size of their business after being on our platform for 12 months.

[A]

So who is the perfect avatar? Who is the perfect person that should be on something like Fan bases?

[B]

There's three types of users on our platforms and sellers. The first is someone that's got a personal brand and an audience where they might be a quote unquote influencer, but they're not the influencers that you grew your career working with that have the managers and the agents. Instead they have a CEO, they have a head of sales, they have media buyers, and they're running their personal brand as a true business where all the content they're posting is kind of funneling towards whatever offer and business they're hosting on our platform. So that's one which is what we call like the creator or the Internet entrepreneur. Second is more of a community based business where they have, you know, maybe they have no face to the brand, but they have a large social media presence and they have hundreds of thousands of followers across Instagram, YouTube, TikTok. Think like a crypto trading group or a sports picks group or something along those lines, where there is real community there and they've built a really solid platform and they utilize fan bases to monetize all of that and help them make more money. And then the third type is more of a just an online business of some sort where it could be a marketing agency, it could be a faceless YouTube consulting channel, whatever it might be. They're selling digital products and digital services and they can utilize fan bases to not only handle their payments, but everything else in between as well.

[A]

So you are spearheading the new world of making money, which is the main topic at the beginning of these podcasts is about making money. There's 15 year old kids and 22 year olds, et cetera, that are making real money from selling things online. Whether it's what's in their mind, what's in their hearts, what they're passionate about and they're teaching people and making serious money. They're making courses, they're creating amazing content, et cetera. Walk us through the new age when you see these 15 year olds and 22 year olds and 25 year olds, et cetera, start making $500,000, $46,000, $120,000 in a month. What changes for someone as a young kid as they start making that kind of money?

[B]

So it's really, really interesting because we have a very unique perspective on how people make money online. We have a bird's eye view on how tens of thousands of different businesses are operating. And we also know what the guys that are making, you know, 1 to $10 million a month are doing compared to the guys making 10 to 20k a month are doing when it comes to this younger generation. It's crazy. There are like, there's 15 year olds that are on our platform generating six figures a month. One of, one of the hardest crazy. One of the hardest negotiations our chief growth officer had was like three weeks ago he was speaking to a kid that was a soft sophomore in high school. He was selling a program on how to build an E commerce business, doing a phenomenal job doing that, generating about 60 to $70,000 a month was giving him 15 years old, 15 years old, giving him an extremely hard time about the rates on every single.

[A]

No, I mean 2.6, I need 2.44.

[B]

Exactly. So it's, it's wild. I think, you know, there's been a shift Right. Where you've been in the space for a while, info has been something that's existed for 15, 20 years now and it's obviously evolved over time. I think post Covid and this is when I kind of got involved in the space and I didn't even know what info products were until, you know, probably 2021. I think post Covid there was an actual shift in not only the way people consume knowledge from, you know, utilizing the Internet or you know, what really I think caused that was TikTok where, you know, people became really addicted to short form content and were consuming information. Quick, very quickly, before Chad, when I had a question about something, I'd honestly go on TikTok before even anything else. So I think what that, what that's done is also made it really, really easy for people to acquire audiences. And some of these younger guys, it's not like they're going, they're like, oh, I'm going to build up my audience to sell something online. You know, they're already building something online and then they share their story utilizing different social media platforms and, and people that are younger than them, even older than them, can relate and they're like, wow, this 20 year old kid can do it or this 18 year old kid can do it. I want to learn from them and be able to do the same thing and they're able to really cause a large ripple effect and get thousands of people the information and knowledge they need in order to build their own business and potentially change their life.

[A]

So you scale this company. Every time I talk to you, you go from 40 employees to 50 employees and 60 employees. And every time I go there, I see there's just more and more employees. How you attract employees to come work at fan bases and how do you keep them?

[B]

It's a great question. We've actually never had anyone quit.

[A]

Wow. Yeah, wow.

[B]

I think that's really rare in tech.

[A]

Space by the way, because everyone gets poached and recruited and they're constantly getting messages in their DMs and LinkedIn like, come, come on, come work for us.

[B]

Yeah, it's really funny. I mean, you know, one of our competitors that is also in this space probably on a weekly basis, desperately tries to offer one of our employees half a million dollars or million dollars a year. No one's ever that though, and leave. What I think we've done a phenomenal job at is creating a culture that I've never seen before. 1. You know, the average age at our company is about 25 years. Old, 26 years old on our growth team is probably like 20 to 23, which is crazy to begin with. It's crazy to me that half the people that we have at our organization are younger than myself. So that's one. And then second is, you know, anyone that's been here for more than two or three months has seen growth and been able to contribute towards explosive growth that they wouldn't be able to replicate anywhere else. And everyone knows that. So, you know, I think what we do a really good job at is before someone joins organization, we filter out tons of people that, you know, might have the right talent and they might be a good fit for the job on paper. But we know there's, you know, they're not that individual that wants to be with fan bases until, you know, exit or IPO or the next 10 years where they're coming. We don't really like to hire people that just want a job. We want to hire people that want to be a part of what we're building.

[A]

Very cool. So as people start making money and you go from making 60 grand, 80 grand, 120 grand, 150 grand, 200 grand, etc. When is it time to start to consider, maybe I should start to invest my money rather than just keep hoarding and putting my savings account?

[B]

I think, you know, this is the most fundamental flaw that I see with some of these younger info guys. I have friends that just have like five or six million dollars sitting in a checking account. That's it. I tell them all the time, like, hey, I'm going to make some introductions for you. They just. They just know they're really, really good at making money, but they don't like to do things they don't understand in a lot of cases, and that scares them. So I think one piece of advice I would give to anyone that's, you know, under the age of 30 that has generated over seven figures or even over half a million dollars and has that sitting in a bank account is start learning how to invest that. Because you can, you know, compound interest is a real thing. Like you can make a lot of money over time. I think that is a huge gap. You know, there's a info product to be built just here alone on teaching other info guys and agency owners, you know, how to invest their capital and make more money with that.

[A]

I mean, that's my main speech. It's called 40, 40, 20. Low risk investing, medium risk investing, high risk investing. I walk people through during my speeches from stage why you should Invest to make 5 to 9% a year on your low risk investing just to fight with inflation. Someone you mentioned has $5 million in their savings account. That means next year that 5 million spends like it's 4.5 million. The next year it spends like it's 4.1 million. Three years from now it's spend like it's 3.6 million. It's literally losing value. It'll still save 5 million in his savings account, but it spends less. 8 to 9% a year less. They go, try to buy a Ford truck, it was 50 grand, now it's 54,000. They go, try to buy this microphone, it was 200, now it's 240. They don't realize everything got more expensive. And it's happened year after year after year. No matter who's the president in between, it's still been around 8 or 9% a year. And so you have to invest to fight with inflation. And on the medium risk side, that's where you can make that 10 to 30% a year on like real estate business, you know, cash flowing businesses and the stock market. A lot of people think of the stock market as the super risky thing. I look at it for the basics, rocket science. Do you shop at Amazon? Maybe you should buy some Amazon stock. Do you have an iPhone? Maybe you should buy one of the best performing stocks in human history. Apple.

[B]

It's the Warren Buffett model. You know, he invests in things that he uses on a day to day basis.

[A]

He likes Coca Cola, so he owns a lot of it. Yeah, right. He likes chocolate, so he bought a huge chocolate company. Right.

[B]

It's, I think what happened or what happens is some of these guys go, and they're like, okay, I'm going to invest in stocks. They go on Robinhood. I've seen it firsthand, right? And they'll go and degenerately gamble $100,000 on a random company, lose 30 or 40 grand. And now they're like, oh.

[A]

And they try to trade it and then it goes back up and they try to buy it again and they sell it when it goes down. And it's called catching a knife. Like they're just like going through the roller coasters. I invest into things that I never plan on selling.

[B]

That's, that's, yeah, that's exactly how, you know, my dad taught me how to invest as well.

[A]

Why would I ever sell Amazon stock? Yeah, I think Amazon's gonna slow down next year. I think Apple's gonna not be as good. The iPhone 17 came out. What happened? There's three hour waits outside of the store. I want to own that stock. Yeah, right. If Netflix, everyone we know is watching Netflix. I want to own Netflix stock. I don't have rocket science to my investments theory. I just look at companies, I see Tesla everywhere. I'm going to buy some Tesla stock.

[B]

At the very, very least, you know, get a, get a private banker. If you have seven figures in an account, you'll get a private banker at any bank that you're at and you know, they'll be able to help you at the bare minimum, get into a money market fund or get 5% a year.

[A]

Something, just something. Because it does compound, especially when you start to make and have real capital. All right, so on the investing side of things, you can get bombarded with options, real estate, stock market, cash flow in businesses, Angel Investments, cryptocurrency, NFTs, investing into your buddy's restaurant or nightclub. There's so many things people can do. How do you decide when there's so many different options, what you like to invest into?

[B]

So, one, it really depends on the deal flow that you have access to. Right. That is the most important thing. It's like I can't tell someone. Like, I personally like to allocate, you know, 10% of my funds to more like angel and venture style deals, which have astronomically high returns.

[A]

Right? Yeah, yeah.

[B]

But it's, you know, way, way more risky. I worked in VC. The whole strategy was you invest in 10 companies hoping that one succeeds and you expect the other nine to fail. That's kind of how it works. Now the issue that people do is like, oh, I want to start angel investing and then they have access to shit deal flow. And you know, it's not like, like I'm investing in one out of five deals I look at. It's more like one out of like 50 to 100, if that. Where you need to have connections in the space that can get you access to these opportunities that make sense. And if you don't go and invest in a really good fund yourself and don't, you know, don't try to be. This is way more risky than being a stock picker. You know, try to do it with people that are, you know, professional investors. So I think, you know, angel and venture, that's something that a lot of guys in our space also like really get excited about and look at. It's very difficult to do that.

[A]

Well.

[B]

Most people end up losing money because they don't have access to good deal flow. They also don't know what to look for. If you, it's, it's hard to. Now as a, you know, someone that's been in the tech space and has built a tech company for many, many years, I understand what things to be looking for because I've also gone through that myself. I've made those mistakes, you know, I can see when you know, is this founder the person that's going to be able to build this into a nine or ten figure business but you know, most of the time you're not able to really do that if you haven't had those experiences. If you build an info product, the same knowledge that you have doesn't really relate to building a tech company. You don't know about raising capital, you don't know how to burn capital and invest that properly in growth. So you know, I think it's important for anyone that's in the Internet economy space that's used to building cash flow businesses to understand that there's a lot more risk when it comes to angel and venture investing. Outside of that, personally, you know I like to have my different private banks set up. They, you know, the other thing about private banks is now obviously you know this but most people don't realize it's not like they're just investing your capital into the markets. They have their own different products that they give access to high net worth individuals for and that they have, you know, allocated towards only a select group of people. So I like, you know, opportunities like that because some of them are very, very exclusive and have you know, basically like nothing has guaranteed returns. But you know, if you know this investment bank is putting multiple billions of dollars into their own product, you know, I'm okay with putting a couple hundred grand into it.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Yeah. So you know, I personally am not fully invested in, in real estate or anything like that. My, my father has a larger portfolio but I like to stick to things that you know, I know well.

[A]

So on the raising capital side, I saw a press release. You guys raised $20 million from some cool people like Ryan Serhant, venture capital firms, etc. Why raise capital? Walk us through the concept of raising capital. Someone listening that might want to raise capital. Should they be thinking about.

[B]

Yeah, it's a great question. So you have to think about it differently depending on the phase that you're in. When you're at a pre seed or a seed, you know, round basically at this point you've gotten some sort of initial traction or if you're preeed, maybe you just built the Product out. The people that you're going to get to invest here, they're more, they're, they're investing in you. That's purely what it comes down to. They're, they like the idea that you have, but you have to sell them on yourself. You know, this is, you're not betting on the horse, you're betting on the jockey. That's just how it works.

[A]

Mostly friends and family.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. You know, for pre seed, friends and family is the best way to go about it. For seed, try to get strategic investors. I found a lot of success with that. And they, one, if they're strategic, they'll understand what you're building. Second, if they're strategic, they'll also be much more likely to invest if they, if you show them an opportunity and you show them that you're solving a real problem that especially they face when it comes to raising a Series A. You know, in our personal case, or my personal case, we were at the point where we were cash flowing pretty significantly where, which means we were profitable. We didn't have to raise around. It was more of, you know, with the competitive landscape that we had, some other companies raised a lot of capital. We didn't want to be outgunned. And then at the same time we had a plan for how every single dollar was going to be allocated to, you know, turn us from where at that point we were maybe an 80-100 million dollars company. We saw a real opportunity to, you know, take a little bit of dilution on, take $20 million in and grow it to a multiple billion dollar business with just that round alone. So, you know, you really have to understand the roi. I, I see a lot of founders make mistakes and really a lot of founders even now, especially now are making the mistake of just raising too much capital for the sake of raising capital. And, and they want to announce around and get the pr Headlines like that can't be the reason that you're doing it. You know, you really have to have a really solid plan in place and show, okay, like, you know, don't skip out on that financial model. Invest in that properly. Understand like where every single dollar is going to go and how you're going to make sure you get to that next goal.

[A]

How do you decide when the right.

[B]

Time is the best time to raise is when you don't need a raise. You know, that's, that is really what it comes down to. And, and I've gotten that advice from a few people. We were cash flow positive. We had 20 investors knocking on our door that wanted a lead or series A. When you have two months of Runway left and you're burning a million dollars a month, it's a little bit tougher to raise around at that point because you're not as attractive of an asset.

[A]

And even if people like to invest in momentum.

[B]

Exactly. And maybe you do have that momentum, but you didn't plan properly. Now you're going to get screwed on your terms. You're in a position not of power. You know, that's, that's really what it comes down to. So the best time to do it is like if you, you know, you see that you have like 12 months of Runway or 16 months of Runway left, assuming you're burning capital, then you know, this is where you start planning for this. At least have those conversations. Maybe you can like, I, you know, I think a good approach is also going to these VC funds and say, hey, we're not raising right now, but it's still good for us to connect. And then, you know, show them what you're building, get them excited about it. And, and when you, you know, everyone wants the, everyone wants something that they can't have. Right. So if you can position yourself as that hot girl in school, they're going to be following up with you for months and months and months. And then when you are ready to raise that round, you know, instead of taking a whole three month process to go and speak to every single fund, you already have 10 people that are ready to write you a check. Also, I think something that's a huge win is if you can give them projections that you know, at that time when you connect that you end up beating. We are the first company that Left Lane invested in, or I don't know if the first, but they told us we were one of the few companies that gave them, gave them projections that we absolutely blew through. And this is not like, I mean, one, we did this before. We raised from them, we connected with them about seven months prior and we gave them those projections then. But also the model that we built out, I mean, we beat our own projections for the sake of doing that. We look at our projections as like, worst case scenario, this is what we, you know, we have to hit. And then we have our own internal projections of like what we actually want to achieve and do. This is something where, like if VCs don't see that very often, so if you can show them projections that you're able to beat and then you actually stay true to that, they're going to be so impressed with you that they're going to, you know, they're going to prioritize your deal.

[A]

So someone has built up a following. They're listening. They're like, you know What? I have 55,000 followers, and my girlfriend or boyfriend, they have 100,000 followers. At what point can someone start making money as a coach, course creator, or influencer?

[B]

So I think the first question you have to really ask yourself and understand is, am I a good operator? Do I know how to build a business? Because we see a lot of cases where you might find someone that has 2 or 3 million followers, has hundreds of thousands of views and likes on every single post that they have, and they're only making 50 to 100 grand a month. And, and you know, I'm saying only making 50 to 100 grand a month because it's all relative, right? You know, 50 to 100 grand a month is a lot for a lot of people. But if you have 4 million followers and you're only making 5,000 to 100 grand a month, you have a serious issue with the way that you're building your business. At that point, you should be generating minimum seven figures a month. So what that comes down to is the, the ability of that individual to be an operator, right? Do they have the ability to put the right people in front of them and, you know, around them to lead their sales team, lead their marketing initiatives, create funnels and ideas? I think, you know, you don't. And then at the same time, I was just telling you about a guy that's generating over a million dollars a month. He's got 6,000 followers on Instagram and 70,000 subscribers on YouTube. It's, you know, it can scale very differently. It's how strategic you can get with it. So I think the best way to look at this is if you have a following of, call it 50 to 100,000 people on whatever social platform it might be. You know, at the end of the day, Instagram and YouTube are probably the, the two best. One follower. Instagram is worth 10 followers on Tik Tok. That's the kind of the rule of thumb, what you have to evaluate. Do you think you're, you know, the person that can be a CEO? If not, find someone that, you know, that can be actually leading the business endeavors and you can be that marketing engine. You just need to really be true to yourself and understand what are your skill sets and what are not your skill sets. That's what a CEO does at the end of the day, with what I do, you know, even for fan bases is I bring in the best people I can find for leading my sales team, leading marketing, leading customer success. You know, they're all hopefully better than me at all of those things. If not, I didn't do my job well. So that's how everyone that's building any sort of business should be thinking about it. And at the same time, something that we've been seeing work really, really well and what we're actually productizing this right now is, you know, if you have a large following, say you have a 100,000 followers in the fitness space. In the fitness space, we see this all the time because you get a lot of meatheads that actually like do a good job. They post interesting content, but they are not the guys to run their own business. What you should do is find people that you see having a ton of success and instead of building something completely on your own, partner up with them. Do a jv. It's, it's called a joint venture, you know, where they've already built the infrastructure. They have a sales team, they have a marketing team, they have leads coming in. Instead of building everything from scratch, when you have to be true to yourself and know I don't have the ability to do that on my own, you can partner up with someone else and then be an extension of their business and split everything 50, 50, and then eventually you can start your own business. So that's kind of, I think, the two best ways to think about it.

[A]

So why invest so much money into the tech, right? Not like come up with your four or five main features, scale the business and have this lean, mean machine. Why go out and scale all the different versions, verticals and things that people are asking for, for fan bases?

[B]

Yeah, it's a, it's a great question. And there's kind of two approaches that people take, you know, up, up, up until probably two months ago, three months ago, we were trying to just get every feature that everyone on our platform needed. What is a must have, where these are the things that they need to have on their, you know, in their business to be able to operate it and scale it, you know, efficiently. Now the way that we're thinking about it and where a lot of the investment is coming from is what can we add into the product that people don't know they need. And that's where real innovation comes. That's what, you know, that's what Steve Jobs whole thesis was, is how can we innovate, you know, and tell people and show them what they need. So that's how we're thinking about it. And the real advantage that we have over really anyone else in the space is we've. Our whole team is built from people that come from the space. You know, we've poached some of our clients that have joined and joined our executive team and leadership team. And, you know, we've partnered up with individuals like yourself that can give us that advice that we need for everything that we're thinking about so we can validate the, you know, market for every single idea and product that we have before we actually build it. And then when we release features like that, that's where we get insane customer loyalty. Because, you know, if someone's making $100,000 a month, for example, and they come and join our platform and they're making 100,000amonth for the next six months, they're like, okay, great. You know, I'm using the service. It works. It's getting the job done for me. But if we can show them ways to get from 100,000amonth to 200,000amonth, that's where I can charge them whatever fees they want. They're not never going to leave because, you know, we've been able to provide them with an immense amount of value. So that's how we're, you know, that's where all the investment is coming in, where we're spending millions of dollars, but we're also making it back on the back end because it's helping all of our sellers make more money as well, which comes back to us eventually, too.

[A]

Right. Talk to me about the charity side of things. Why do you think that a company like yours should have either a charity event or go support a charity, go to a homeless shelter, go to a children's hospital, go feed at a senior citizen or homeless shelter? Like, why do you think that companies should have some type of charity component, not necessarily the check, but getting the people together?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I think it's super important one, you know, we'll be supporting your toy drive as well. So excited. Excited about that. But the actual original version of Fan Base is we used to host a lot of charity sweepstakes, so we partnered up with people like Dennis Rodman, Mandy Sachs. We did an event with Floyd Mayweather where, you know, a good chunk of that all went to charity. Wanted, you know, obviously was for those individuals wanting to support their causes as well. But we wanted to enable all of that and be able to spread those messages across. The way I really look at it is you know, I, I've also grew up from, I grew up in a way where I understood the importance of giving back pretty early. My dad for example, when we were growing up, he would never do anything fun on his birthday. He'd always go to the soup kitchen. Which at, when I was a kid, I was like, what the hell, let's do something fun, Chuck E. Cheese. But now I get it, you know, and it's, it, it was inspiring as I grew up to like think about things like that. So you know, I, I see a lot of people that are very, very charitable and they're silent about it too. Which, you know, I think it helps you one humble yourself and also give you more satisfaction in the long run and just better karma, you know, every, anything that you put into the world always ends up coming back to you.

[A]

So there's only one question I ask on every episode and I've never gotten the Same answer in 200 plus episodes. Fan bases becomes a multi billion dollar company. But you're young so you might start another company, another company and you might invest into a lot of other companies. And so you end up becoming this multi billionaire over the course of time. At the end of the day, you finally pass away. What percentage of your net worth do you leave to your children?

[B]

That's a good question. You know, there's a few different kind of models I've seen some multi billionaires take. At the end of the day, I think the most important thing for anyone raising kids is because I, you know, I went to private schools growing up and I saw some people that were absolutely spoiled for sure and were driving Bentleys and you know, in high school and you know, my, and people that, their families were very, very wealthy but they were all very humble and their kids were raised properly. I would want to put my kids in the position to be able to, you know, have everything that they need, go to the best schools and you know, be able to live comfortably to where, you know, when they're in college, you don't need to worry about working four jobs to be able to pay for it and things of that nature and be focused. But they need to have that level of ambition. So I think, you know, I can't give you an answer on that right now because I don't know what my kids are going to be like yet. If I raise them right, then I'm more than happy to give them all of my wealth because, you know, I know that they're not going to be motivated by my wealth. They're going to want, you know, have their ambition, their own ambition to achieve things that are much further beyond what I've been able to achieve myself. But if that's not the case, they're not getting anything, you know, they. Everyone needs to earn it.

[A]

Yeah. All right, so where can people find fan basis? You tell us everything?

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. Anyone that's looking to build a business online, go to fan bases.com go and sign up. You'll be able to hop on with one of our a member of our growth team. Put referral code Dan Fleischman in and we'll take extra good care of you and make sure you get the best rates. Just as a favor for anyone that's listening to this podcast. And then on top of that, you know, what our team likes to do is not only help you get set up and run your own business on our platform, but like I said many times, we want to help you grow your business and get to that next level, whether it be at $20,000 a month or a million dollars a month. And you can also find us on Instagram at Fan basis or my personal Instagram at Yash Daftary. Always looking to connect with like minded entrepreneurs and people that are interesting to have a conversation with.

[A]

Alright guys, you're listening to the Money Mondays and again, the concept of this podcast, when you hear something like this, there might be someone in your world that wants to start selling a course, they want to be a creator, they want to start selling how to do stock trading, they want to start teaching how to make custom sneakers, they want to start teaching about food, diet, fitness, health, et cetera. You might be able to send them here and then they can learn about fan basis and all of a sudden they have one of the best companies as their platform, all because of your referral, your recommendation. So keep your ears out, keep your eyes. When you're seeing people post on social like looking for a new company to work with on this, this and this, you might be like, oh man, I remember fan bases. Hey, I'm looking for this, this and this. Oh, wait a minute. And then you forward them a website or you forward them this podcast episode. This is really important, your sharing of information and that communication. The butterfly effect can literally change their world and a lot of other people's simply by you helping them with referrals. So as always liking commenting subscribing is what helps us stay on the top of the charts. So I appreciate you guys for doing that. It really helps us when you're checking things out, check out. Some entrepreneurs like Yash, when you see their social media, when you see the company that they built, watching those type of things, watching that type of information will help you learn. Compared to a lot of the noise and a lot of the bad stuff that people are following on social media, try to filter out the same way you filter out what you eat, what you drink, filter out the things that are going into your mind so you can focus and learn from people that you are inspired by here at the Money Mondays. And we'll see you guys next Monday@themoney Mondays.com Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays podcast where we cover three core topics. How to make money and invest money, and how to give it away to charity. As you guys know, I keep these podcasts to under 40 minutes because the average workout is 45 minutes. The average commute to work is 45 minutes. This episode will be between 32 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure. Now, this is very important. When you listen to these podcasts, keep in mind it's not just about you. The things that you hear and the people that I interview might be for someone from your past, present or future. We have to think about and talk about money because it's part of our daily lives. We all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think that's ridiculous. It's part of your rent, insurance, taxes, medical bills for your mom, kids, friends, employees. So many things come up with money. It is not the root of all evil. It is part of your daily life. And it's really just a utility and a tool. The things that you want in life and the things that you need in life. And as we grow through inflation and all the things that are going to be happening in our society, you're going to need more and more capital. So we have to have blunt discussions about how you can make more money, invest more money. And so, without further ado, I'm going to have Mr. Dr. Jay Feldman give a quick two minute bio so we can get straight to the money.

[C]

All right, Dan, let's have some fun. Thanks for having me. So, really quick bio went all the way through medical school. Parents pushed me that direction, probably because of money. Money and respect, that's pretty much guaranteed as long as you make it through. About halfway through medical school, I started a supplement company. Supplement company took off, got really good at marketing, started a marketing agency. By the time I graduated medical school my fourth year, we were making more than most of the doctors were making, and they were miserable every day I would show up to the clinic and just be surrounded by people that hated their lives. So I was distracted. Became a family medicine resident, which is a three year track. Only did the first year and then left to pursue marketing full time. Started a PR agency, Otter PR. We grew that to 60 employees, eight figures. And in three years. And then I started teaching a lot of what I was doing to market that PR agency. So now if you Google me, you'll probably see me as lead gen J on YouTube. We teach B2B lead generation and we install cold outreach systems for SMBs and medium sized companies.

[A]

Okay, what is lead gen?

[C]

Lead gen is making people aware of your product and offer that don't know who you are in the first place. That's the difference between lead generation and sales. Essentially somebody who doesn't know who you are versus somebody who knows who you are. We handle that top of the funnel, people who have never heard of you before. We put your product, your offer out in front of those people.

[A]

What percentage of entrepreneurs and business owners should have some form of lead generation?

[C]

150%. If there was, I'd say it's the biggest pain point in most companies is how do you market, how do you get people to know about your thing? Some of the best companies and products in the world are, you know, go under the radar because they don't know how to get people's attention. So we've gotten really good at that and doing it at scale.

[A]

So let's say entrepreneur business owners listen to this podcast and they're like, you know what, I do need pr, but I want to hire in house. What's the difference between hiring someone to work in house versus hiring an agency like Otter?

[C]

Sure. So now we're talking about pr. And this is true of everything lead generation PR agencies. If you hire an agency, you're usually hiring years of experience and processes and relationships and you're hiring all of the mistakes that they've made with past clients. So if you bring someone in house, you better hope that they're going to be able to do everything and they're not going to be able to fall back on people with more experience. So by hiring Otter PR, my PR agency, you know, we've got 60 employees. A lot of our publicists have 20, 30 years of experience. Yeah, we've got a whole staff of writing staff. We've dealt with clients across multiple industries. We've got publicists that specialize across multiple industries and have relationships at media, media channels that cater specifically to those industries. So if you Hire otter pr. You're hiring all of that versus bringing somebody in house, you'll probably end up paying about the same that you would pay the agency. So although that one person is dedicated exclusively to you, are they going to be able to deliver the same results that an agency of 60 people and 200 clients and all of those industry relationships are going to be able to deliver? Sometimes.

[A]

So oftentimes I say when someone wants to hire in houses, when you want someone for paid media or pr, especially like dealing with Meta and Facebook ads. Right. Someone that's really good at it doesn't need to work for you. They can make two grand a day selling pillows or tables or microphones or water bottles.

[C]

This is the problem with hiring people for the lead gen agency.

[A]

Sure. Right, yeah.

[C]

You want to find people who are good to work for me, good luck. They're already making a killing on their own. It's the same thing across every other marketing.

[A]

So I'm often, almost always recommending agencies because wisdom of the crowd. When you've got 60 employees, it's not just the fact of one employee or one good person. There's a lot of people in that room and you get to deal with your hundreds of clients. You understand and learn from what worked for them, what was bad for them, what sucked for them, what was great for them. And so when they start running ads on TikTok or Facebook or press or whatever, you know which ones are working because you have the wisdom of the crowd from all that experience.

[C]

Alex Hormozi actually made a good point here. What he does is he hires an agency and is very transparent with them. At the beginning, he's like, I'm going to hire you. I want to know exactly what you're doing. I want to learn your processes. I want to be involved every step of the way. And he's intaking all of this and he's training somebody in house to eventually take over from that agency and actually really like that model. And I've done it a few times. The risk is you train someone in house on what that agency is doing now you make that person ultra valuable.

[A]

They're going to start an agency, they're gone, holding on for sure. Going to start an agency. Yes. And if they go start an agency, I'll invest in them. Yeah. Because they're so well trained.

[C]

Yeah, exactly. So it's a, you know, making somebody ultra valuable and marketing is hard. So that's why I feel like the job of marketing usually falls on the founder.

[A]

So I have an influencer agency. And I have the exact same employees for 5 years, 8 years, 12 years, and some of them the full 14 years that still work for me. I've only ever had two people leave and I forced them to go.

[C]

Good.

[A]

Yeah. Because one of them was to go work for ClickUp $4 billion company. Go, I get it. And the other one wanted to go start a company. And I was like, I'll be an investor or partner or send you clients. And they went and did that. And outside of that, everyone's the same. Like I name them off the top of my head all day long, like family. Because it's been with me for so many years.

[C]

How do you hold onto them?

[A]

There's a couple of key things. One is compensation, but it actually isn't the number one driving force. Right. Paying someone 80 grand versus 92 grand is not like, oh my God, they're gonna leave me right away. Now if I pay them 80 grand, someone offers them 120, I better step it up. Cause they should leave. I understand if there's that big of a gap having some way to either have equity or some way to earn compensation based on their work. So if they can get some type of percentage for something that they're doing or something that they're creating, that very much incentivizes them. And the third thing is they are inspired to work there.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Right. Either I inspire them, the brand inspires them, or they inspire themselves. Their work creates something, Their work creates magic, their work helps their clients. There is another fourth, which is the community, which is the other staff. But that's not always the case because there could be working remote or working in a silo. So it's not always getting to work with a bunch of other people. And if you do those things and if any one is missing, you might lose them. But I've been really focused on having all four things all the time. I'm constantly inspiring them and constantly giving them ways to make extra money. I'm constantly like, I want them to win because. And also I will say, if you give them respect and autonomy, they definitely don't want to leave. Right. Because they don't expect that other companies.

[C]

I've learned that a lot through the Lead Gen J brand. Both companies are very separate. Otter PR and Lead Gen J. Otter PR is very much now like a hiring machine. We've got hr, we've got a whole recruiting arm and all the publicists, they're paid what publicists typically get paid. And we have a lot of turnover. We're Always trying to get them to stay by giving them raises. The inspiration piece isn't quite there the way that it is for my lead Gen J brand, and I feel like a core piece of that. And you can probably attest to this is the personal brand.

[A]

Sure.

[C]

They want to work with Dan Fleishman. They want to learn from you. So as long as they feel like they're learning and they're a part of your inner circle, your team, I feel like that's a big drive to draw them there and to keep them there. And I've felt like that's the case with the lead Gen J brand, too. I've built such an amazing team and they don't go anywhere.

[A]

Yep. On the make money side of this podcast, there's a question I'd like to ask, which is what do you think people are held back by from making more money? Why do you think people go through life and they're making their 40 grand or 50 grand, 60 grand, 100 grand, and they're just complacent. They don't want to go to 120 or 150 or 200 or they don't want a side gig or a side hustle. Like, what do you think holds people back from making more money?

[C]

I mean, they always say you're the sum of the people you surround yourself with. I think that's the number one thing holding people back is they see what's around them and they don't feel inspired. They don't feel like it's possible for them to go make more money. If you want to make more money, surround yourself by people who are making more than you. I think that's the ultimate principle here. And I know it's probably everyone says that. It's true. By me sitting here with you, you make more money than I do. That inspires me. That shows me what is possible. Like, what are you doing to make that money? Things that I never even imagined were ways to earn. What you're doing with your companies is unique. So I'm now made aware of new ideas, new models, and when I think I'm killing it and I surround myself with people who are at that next level, now I know it's possible. And now I know. I know I have a trajectory to get there. If you're surrounded by people who are making minimum wage or people who are working in your office job and everyone's under 100k, you don't see the ways people are getting, you know, making a.

[A]

Million dollars a month, they're not Talking about tax strategies. They're not talking about.

[C]

No, you don't even know how to get there. You don't know the channels to listen to. You don't know the Make Money podcast. So if you're listening to this podcast, it's probably a good, you know, indicator that you're well on your way. So the biggest thing is changing who's in the room.

[A]

So at what point for a company is it time to like start doing meta ads, start running ads on TikTok or go TikTok Live or start doing PR, start doing SEO? There's so many different options of marketing that are out there. Yeah, how do you know she just do it on one or when is the time to start building omnipresence and start spending money across the board?

[C]

It's funny you asked. It's actually the theme of my book that I'm in the process of writing. It's the marketing playbook, like which plays to implement when there's so many free ways to get exposure now that you should start with those. Make yourself searchable, make yourself findable. Every social media platform now is a search engine. On Instagram, TikTok, all you gotta do is optimize your profile and your videos and now people will start finding you for what you're doing. Obviously making content is great for driving free traffic. So do the free things first. And then once you've got a good way to predictable revenue coming in, then you can start experimenting with marketing budget. And I think some really good ways to experiment are meta ads and Google Ads. Obviously that's changing a lot now with AI. Cold outreach is another really good way for B2B companies to scale top of funnel marketing. Make people aware of your offer for the lowest possible price. Then there's some like to haves. I'd say PR is one of those things that you probably shouldn't start with, but it's going to enhance all of the other forms of marketing. It's if you get featured in Forbes, that itself isn't going to drive you business. What's going to drive you business is saying featured on Forbes and all your meta ads, it's going to be posting it on all those social media platforms. So all of the marketing channels then work symbiotically once you implement them in the right orders.

[A]

So what Jay's talking about is called the halo effect. The halo effect is I see you in the press, I see you pop up on a podcast, and then when I see your ad, I want to buy from you more. There's some reason that I remember you. Whether I saw you on the billboard, the podcast, the press, et cetera. When I then see your ad or I see your call to action, I'm more inclined to buy from you. There's a famous quote or theory or statistic that may or may not be true, but maybe it's kind of close is you need to see something seven times before making a purchasing decision.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Whether that number is 4 times or 12 times, who actually knows? But let's just say 7 times is the number. If I need to see you seven times, well, you gotta advertise to me a lot. I might not see your ad seven times. That's why you want to build omnipresence and pop up in that article, be on the news, be on the podcast and a lot of these things you can do for free. But it'll ultimately help you on the places that you spend money on.

[C]

Yes. And just to add to that really quickly, I think a big missed opportunity that most companies miss out on is that retargeting traffic. So the hardest thing to do is get people to your website for the first time, get people to your social media account for the first time. People do need to interact seven times as according to that study, before they make a purchasing decision. The easiest and cheapest way to get them back to your site, back to your social channels is retargeting ads. You're hunting them, follow them everywhere. The omnipresent marketing. So set them at retargeting ads up everywhere. Facebook, Google, Reddit, Quora, TikTok, Snapchat, all of these platforms you can retarget on for pennies on the dollar compared to running top of funnel marketing campaigns.

[A]

All right, let's put on our investor hats.

[C]

Investor hats.

[A]

We've been making money building up our business. We went from 1 million gross sales to 3 million. At what point do I start to look at what the heck to invest into? There's real estate, there's stock market cryptocurrency, angel investments, S&P 500. There's so many things I can invest into, cash flowing businesses. There's so much. How the heck do you decide when there's so many options, what the heck to invest into?

[C]

That's a good question. I'll tell you what's worked for me and what doesn't work for me. So I'm probably a little bit my earlier stages of making money. We've been making real money for about five years now. I feel like when I started to have an overflow of money, meaning there's so much coming in that I can't invest any more in my business without just wasting it. Like I'm not going to hire these like $500,000 employees. I don't have any big machinery to buy. So I started investing it into the stock market. And what I learned quickly by doing that, I was on Robinhood, just pushing buttons and buying stocks, listening to YouTube videos and listening to other people on what stocks to buy did not work out well. I took a bunch of margin because Robinhood made it really easy. And then stocks crashed, lost all my money, brought in my friend who's a financial advisor. And what's worked for me to this day is any overflow I sent to him, he's like ready for another stack? Yeah, cool, take another stack. And he puts it into specific stocks that we pick. Every two weeks we put it into a couple safe ETFs that we've picked. And that's been really effective. Our money's grown. He protects me from myself and his full time job is figuring out where to put my money. And I get all these inbound. I'm sure you get them more than me. People asking for investments in, you know, random real estate deals. Investments in these random companies. I haven't done any of those yet, but I just, I run them by my financial advisor. He tells me this is good, this is risky, this is eh. And I trust him. He protects me. I know a lot of people who have gotten involved in weird deals and now their money's locked up and they might never see a return. So as you're getting started, I think you should put all of your money back into your business to a reasonable degree. As long as you have something that you think is going to grow the company or make you more successful in the long run, the best thing you can invest in is yourself and your business first. Then bring on a financial advisor to help guide those investments. And now I'm at a point where it's like, crap, I'm going to have to pay a ton of money in taxes this year. My tax bill's looking real scary. So what do you do about that bonus depreciation? You buy real estate, short term rentals and every year I guess you find a new project to do that with and that's kind of where I'm at. This year we're buying real estate and we're taking bonus depreciation on it to mitigate my tax liability. Love to hear what you're doing.

[A]

That was a fantastic breakdown. Thank you so what I preach on stage and on social is the same thing over and over and over for many, many years. It's called 40, 40, 20. I do 40% low risk. I want to make between 5 and 9% for the year. I do 40% medium risk, where I want to make between 10 and 30% for the year. I do 20% high risk. I'm crossing my fingers. I want something crazy to happen, 400%, 1,000% something crazy. If this doesn't work out or takes a long time, I'm hoping that this and this covers the high risk. What happens is the low risk sounds boring. So I actually call it the boring side. 5 to 9% seems boring until you take out a compound calculator. Right? If anyone's listening right now, after the show's over, look up compound calculator. There's a joke that Albert Einstein says compound math is the eighth wonder of the world. Compound interest.

[C]

That was an Einstein quote.

[A]

I don't think it actually was, but that's what I said. When you look on Google, that's what it says. Don't believe everything Google says, but that theory is put in your age, let's say you're 34 years old and put in when you want to retire, let's say at 74 years old. So 40 years, then put in a number like 8% a year. If you now contributed $10,000 and you do that for 40 years, it is staggering what that number is going to be. It's not 500k, it's not a million dollars. It's literally going to be 3 to 5 million dollars depending if you put 8% or 9% or 10%. One little percent difference over the course of 40 years and compounded will literally blow your mind. And so just put in your age, put in when you want to retire, put in how much you can contribute and by the way, you want to get really crazy. What if you went from ten grand to eleven grand? What if like seven years later you had a little more money, you put in 13 grand that year, 14 grand. What if you have a 4 year old child and you put in a thousand bucks a year for that child and throw in 2 grand or 3 grand, 4 grand for that child and they're 4. What happens when they retire? They will have 5, 10, 15, 20 million dollars. It's not fake numbers. These are very real with just that 6, 7, 8, 9% type of interest rate. And so that's the low risk side. So that's for me is the S&P 500. Right. That's CDs at your bank. CDs at your bank are paying 4 or 5% now, which is crazy.

[C]

At household name banks we're in a municipal bond etf.

[A]

There you go.

[C]

Yeah. Tax free and it's earning like 5, 6%.

[A]

Perfect. In the middle side, it's real estate, stock market and cash flowing businesses. Those three main categories. Real estate, there's a lot of options. That would take me hours to talk about all the different options, but essentially fix and flipping long term holds or cash flow like Airbnb and rentals. The cash flowing business side to me is Ever Bull. I invested a lot into Everbowl 2018, raised a bunch of money. 2019, bought a bunch of locations in 2020, sold the locations back to them 2023. I'm very active in Everbowl because that's a cash flowing business. I invested when there was 13 locations. Now there's 104 and one new one every six days. I invested when there was a 10, 20 million valuation. Now it's 175 million and growing. And so to me that's an angel investment but also cash flowing business. On the stock market side, I just invest in the same 10 stocks over and over and over and over with no plans of ever selling ever. Why would I ever sell Apple? I think it's gonna be bad next year, the year after. No, why would I sell the stock? Why would I ever sell Walmart or Meta or household names like Tesla and Amazon? Why would I ever sell my Amazon stock?

[C]

Is that five? Will you give the other five?

[A]

Yes.

[C]

I'm curious.

[A]

They're just the household name companies. There's no rocket science to what I invest into. It's Amazon and Tesla and Walmart and Shopify and Meta and Google. I'll think of that. I'll pull my phone up and find those are good.

[C]

You don't pick new stocks based on what the economy market's doing.

[A]

I don't look at things like Nvidia, which amazing what it did, but it was also around for many, many years where it didn't.

[C]

All of my losses in 2022 countered by my choice of Nvidia. We held that. No, it's done. Crazy. I mean, yeah, it's been fun and.

[A]

So I don't look at the shiny objects. There's.

[C]

That's key.

[A]

Yes, super key.

[C]

Don't get distracted.

[A]

I'm not a day trader. Right. I want to buy things that I invest into or I'm a buyer of. I Have Netflix stock. Why? Because I spend money on Netflix for the last two decades. And so do you. So does she, so does he. So does he. Everyone does.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And more and more people are going to. If everyone in the world is spending 15 to 20 bucks a month, I want to own that. Right. You know the number one performing stock of all time is Monster Energy Drink. No.

[C]

Really?

[A]

More than any other company on the planet, Monster Energy, which is called Hanson's, the parent company. Why? Because they're in hundreds of thousands of stores, probably a million gazillion stores by now, and they've just been doing the same thing for 25, 30 years. And they're in all the stores on the planet. That's it. If Red Bull was public, it'd be the same story. Right, Right. And so my stock market is very, very simple, very straightforward. If you shop on Amazon, you should consider some Amazon stock. If you own a Tesla, how dare you not have Tesla stock?

[C]

Agreed.

[A]

You're listening to this on an Apple products, a laptop or an iPhone or AirPods. What on earth are you doing not having some Apple stock? That's all I noticed.

[C]

A lot of my biggest losers were companies that I had no idea what they did, no interactions with them. And some of my biggest winners have been the companies I interact with and spend money with. So that's a really good philosophy.

[A]

And then the last part is the high risk. To me, it's just angel investing and cryptocurrency. And really on crypto, it's just Bitcoin, Ethereum. I've been saying the same things in 2014 and 2017 for Ethereum. I've just been saying the same thing over and over. Yeah, I bought it at Bitcoin at 300 bucks and I'll buy it now at 115,000. I'm still a buyer. I made the very first news article about ethereum. It was $19. I'm still a buyer at 4500.

[C]

Are you $ cost averaging into those things?

[A]

I just buy because Bitcoin is inevitable. Yeah. The supply is getting less and less and less because people die. People lose their phones, they lose their wallets, they lose their laptops. And so as more people lose their lives and lose their phones and lose their wallets, less of that 21 billion Bitcoin will ever exist, will ever be in circulation.

[C]

Less quantum computing cracks the network. But that's. We got other problems at that point.

[A]

Exactly. You need guns and water at that point. And on the other side of it, the demand keeps growing, growing. Growing, growing. The people that have always liked bitcoin buy more. People that get attracted to it start to buy it. And so if the supply is getting less and less and less and demand gets more and more and more, that's why bitcoin is the number one performing investment asset in human history.

[C]

I was interviewing Gary Cardone, Grant Cardone's twin brother. He's the biggest bitcoin bull that I know. And we were talking about investing in bitcoin. I'm like, man, I sold it all. Come on. Like, voyager went down. I lost all my cryptocurrency. I think bitcoin is at like 30,000 at that time. It makes me whip out my phone on the podcast. Like, I'm not saying another word until you start buying some bitcoin. So I whipped up my coinbase, and I set up a recurring purchase for Bitcoin at 30,000, and it was the probably the highest yielding investment I've ever made. Sure, we're still dollar cost averaging in now it's like 115,000.

[A]

Yep. Okay.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Let's focus on you again. So on the investing side, people have all these different options. You started to deploy capital. What happens is you get to a point where you can't invest back into your company or you got too much cash sitting in the bank. What people don't realize is they get this idea like, I want to have millions of dollars in the bank. You've heard myself, Grant Cardone, and so many people. We never have a lot of money in the bank because we're deploying that into investments. And here's why. Anything over six to 12 months in the bank is losing money to inflation. So let's say you did have a million dollars in your bank account. Next year it spends like 980,000. 920,000. Right. The year after, it spends like 830,000. So it still says 1 million in your savings account, but it spends like 920. It spends like 830. Spends like 740,000.

[C]

Value of that million, it's going down.

[A]

Correct. You try to buy a ford truck for 50 grand, now it's 54,000. You try to park in valet, it was 20 bucks, now it's 24. You try to buy muffins, it was $4, now they're $5. All these five 10% increases makes your dollar literally spend less. And so that's why I'm so adamant and so many wealthy people are adamant about the concept. Make that million go to 1,051,100,001.115. Like just those small increases will fight against inflation.

[C]

Yeah, that's I think where a financial advisor is so helpful because we have not millions in the bank, but it's a lot and I'm worried about it losing the value to inflation. It is happening, but there's options, there's money market accounts that are essentially cash that have been earning 5%.

[A]

Sure.

[C]

Yeah. We're now on municipal bond ETFs that's also running like 5, 6%. So you have access to it and hopefully it's growing with compounding. I would have no idea what to do with that if it weren't for a financial advice advisor. Just be sitting there.

[A]

Right?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Let's talk about the charity side.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

From a PR side, why do you think it's important for personal brands or for companies to have some sort of philanthropic, whether they're part of a charity or get their people, their family or their employees to be involved in charity?

[C]

From a PR side, it's an easy answer. It's actually one of the first things we do for some of our clients if they're not otherwise interesting or doing anything really impactful that the media is going to take interest in. Well, like we need to do some charity work for you asap. We need to find a cause and throw an event or do something to make make you philanthropic, make you interesting. That way you got a story, you've got a company doing some good in the world. So that's super important for pr. Most companies aren't interesting. A lot of them aren't aren't doing anything media worthy. So you want to do something media worthy, get some media attention, do something philanthropic. Find a charity. So from a PR side, easy win.

[A]

There are millions of charities out there. On a personal level or for your company level, how do you decide what you would want to be involved in? Whether it's financially, time or energy. With a charity.

[C]

Totally separate from pr, how do I decide what I want to invest in first? It's personal. So is there anything in my life or people that I really want to take care of? And that's kind of where I'm at now. And then there's the what is your cause? I think people need to have a cause that they're investing in and working towards to make success more than just collecting money. So on a personal side, I was this year I was finally able to retire my mom, she was going to the office, working in a cubicle with a bunch of 20 year olds every day and I had offered a year ago, but she's like, no, I'm not ready to, like, be retired. It feels weird. And then probably two months ago, she hit me up and she's like, is the offer still on the table? Like, I'm miserable. Like, can you help? So my mom's now on payroll tax deductible. She helps me where, where she can. But I was able to retire my mom, and the thing that I'm doing with her is the philanthropy side. So my cause is animals. I've always been an animal guy. I know you love animals too, but I grew up with a whole garage full of rabbits, mini kangaroos, prairie dogs. Animals are very close to my heart, and it's all because of my mom. She loves animals. So me and my mom together are opening a rescue.

[A]

Oh, really?

[C]

Yeah. That's going to be her new project. One of the stipulations for retiring my mom is you can't sit on your butt. Like, we need to find you a cause, we need to find you a purpose, Stay active. Yes. So I think this makes a lot of sense. It's going to be a great funnel for a lot of my overflow money that's going to fulfill my purpose and her purpose, which is help animals. So I think when you're deciding what to invest in, it's going to be what's closest to you so that you can feel the impacts of your money and your investment. I think donating to some random charity that you heard of that someone says is good, I think is going to not have a long timeline on it if you can't immediately see or feel the impact of your money.

[A]

Yep. The reason I started my charity was that exact moment, many years ago, 2009, not 2009, I threw a charity poker tournament at my store in San Diego. I had 150 people show up, 1,000 bucks each. Some people put in a little more. So it was like we had to present this big check for like, let's call it $165,000. Post the picture. The next day, everyone's like, wow, that's so cool. 165,000. Some other people started donating, so they actually get like a quarter million because everyone saw. Super exciting. Few days goes by, I never hear what happens with the money. A week goes by, don't hear anything. Two weeks goes by. I'm not saying they did anything nefarious, but I got nothing to report back to all my friends I invited to my store to play in this traded poker tournament. What happened right what did the kids get? Or what happened with the homeless? Or what happened? Like, what happened? And so I decided to make very visual charities. I mean, I make backpacks for the homeless with 150 items inside. It's been 15 or 16 years now called Model Citizen Funds. World's largest toy drive. That's been 12 years now. We're going into our 12th year now, the Miami Heat Arena. Coming up soon. Like, I created visuals, toys, backpacks for the homeless. Things that you can see, feel, and touch. You don't even have to donate to my charity. You can go donate toys. You can make backpacks for the homeless. You actually don't have to send us money to do that. You can do it. We're just efficient at it. If you want to do it at scale. Right, right. And more importantly, I want people to be a part of it. I'd rather you show up. Right. I'd rather you bring out 60 staff with you. I'd rather you tell your 200 clients, hey, let's all bring toys to the Miami Heat Arena. That's more than you throwing in a $thousand dollars or $10,000 or whatever, you know, like, rather than the money part. And so I wanted to create charities that people could see, feel in touch for exactly what you said. And sometimes you just donate, you know, you swipe your credit card. That's easy, right? You donated 500 bucks to this charity. You feel good for seven seconds, and then you don't even think about it because there was no, like, emotion to it. You give a kid a toy, you give a homeless person a backpack with supplies, it's tangible. Yes.

[C]

You can feel it.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

And I've seen the toy drives. You guys do a great job of showcasing, like, where the money is going and who you're helping.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

I think that's so important.

[A]

I call it building in public. I want them to see, like, we just got the stadium. Here's us at the stadium. All right, this is when the setup is going to happen. Here's how we're going to walk it in. Here's when the trucks are going to come in. I'm showing it. So either people can replicate it on their own, do their own toy drives, or they know that the work it takes to execute it, and they feel a part of it. When they show up, they feel a part of it. They're there wrapping toys for nine hours. They're there walking around with the kids and their parents like they want to feel a part of it. All right? So there's only One question I ask in every single episode and I've never gotten the same answer before. We're at 200 plus episodes now. You build up your companies, build up your investments, your stock portfolio becomes worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of time. You build up all these different companies, do joint ventures, but at the end of the day, at some point, you finally pass away. What percentage of your net worth do you leave to your children?

[C]

It's the ultimate dilemma, right? Do you spoil your kids rotten or do you give it all away? Depends on what net worth is, I think. If it's billions, do I want to leave them half? No, if it's a 10 million, then you want to leave them half. I think the goal is to make your kids independent and don't give them enough to live on because that's when you really, I guess, ruin any opportunity of them learning and building for themselves. I want to leave them just enough to be be able to accomplish their dreams, to build their future, to build their company, but not enough where they never have to worry about money again. And I don't know what that number is going to be by the time I pass. Hopefully it's at 150 years old. With modern technology, I plan on it being if they can keep me alive artificially, I'll do that too. I want to give them enough to accomplish their dreams and no more.

[A]

So I open up my speeches with what you just said. I scare the audience by saying, raise your hand if you have kids. Most of the room raises their hand. Your children are likely to live to over 100 years old. Our parents typically live to 73 to 77 years old. In my era, at your age, they probably live to 83 to 85 years old. 85 and a half, technically, for women, your children will probably live to 104, 112 and some of them 120 plus, hopefully. And here's why. When I grew up, there was 7 11, Jack in the Box and McDonald's. There was no Whole Foods and Erewhon. There was no smoothies. What do you mean smoothie? We had Slurpees at 7:11. There was no such thing as a smoothie with fruit in it. There was no cold plunges and saunas. You'd be a laughing stock if you got into a cold plunge. We'd think you're insane to get into cold plunge. When we were kids, right? And now it's cool, it's fun, right? And now saunas are part of life. And we realize the health benefits modern Technology, Think about the difference. Fifteen, twenty years ago there was no smartphone. So think about what our parents and what our families went through when they were trying to get medical advice in the 80s, 90s and 2000s, 2010s. That sounds like a long time ago. That was 20 years ago. Right. And think about what's gonna happen in 10 or 20 years and 30 years and 40 years for our children.

[C]

From a medical perspective. This is the only part of being a doctor that I stay very involved in. It's the new science that's emerging. You open my refrigerator, it's just all vials of peptides. On my couch, I've got a fifty thousand dollar pulsed electromagnetic frequency unit. So there's some technologies and medications and pharmaceuticals coming out that are just next level. We're going to be growing and harvesting organs. There's DNA treatments that are going to cause you to be able to bulk steroids are going to be gone. Just really unbelievable things that I completely corroborate. 120, 130, 140 is going to be very viable in our future.

[A]

We're not even talking about the AI side of it. We're not talking about robot doctors. We're not talking about those things. I firmly believe that some of the major, major, major diseases will be eradicated.

[C]

Yes. I can almost guarantee it.

[A]

There's some that won't, like cancer because it's trillions of dollars. So maybe there's some controversy there. There's some like aids, which obviously have.

[C]

Been manageable, pretty much eradicated.

[A]

Look at Magic Johnson, he got it like 30 years ago, 40 years ago, and look how healthy and amazing he is. But I believe that the brain ones will be gone. I think the things that my grandparents, both my grandparents passed away from, like Alzheimer's, will be eradicated.

[C]

I hope so. I have a grandfather too. 10 years, very bad Alzheimer's. Half of my family's in danger.

[A]

And so why I say that, why do I lead an investment speech with that? The average person currently has $5,500 saved up in America. What if your kid wants to retire at 74 and lives to 104? They need 30 years of money saved up. What if they want to get by on five grand a month? I'm not talking about inflation or medical expenses. Let's just say five grand a month. Well, five grand a month times 12 is 60 times by 30 years is a lot. $1.8 million. It's a scary thought to just get by, right? Well, unless you want them to be 84, ten years later, working somewhere to make five grand a month. Who knows if they'll have those type of jobs then because of AIs and robots and things like that. And so I literally tried to scare the audience at the beginning by saying.

[C]

I'm scared just sitting here.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, it works that if your kid's Gonna Live to 104, they need to have money and we need to be able to bluntly talk about it, which is the whole point of this podcast. All right, tell them where they can find you on social media. Where can they find your companies? Tell them everything.

[C]

All right, on social media, either Dr. J. Feldman or lead gen, both on Instagram, leadgenj on my website or otterpr.com I'm everywhere. If you search Jay Feldman, I'll pop right up.

[A]

I love it.

[C]

Yeah, it's been a lot of fun.

[A]

All right, guys, this is truly important. The reason that we're doing so well in the podcast charts is you liking commenting subscribing. When you're in the situation, you're at a lunch, you're at a dinner with your friends playing basketball, and they talk about a certain topic, you're going to hopefully remember episodes like this. When it comes to someone bringing up lead gen or PR, you're like, oh, yeah, you should follow Dr. J. This happened here. Boom. Oh, you should listen to this episode. I remember they talked about this. It's not just about you. These things are going to come up in your life all the time. People are going to bring up things about paid ads, real estate, the stock market, health, and all the things in between. So when you hear guests on podcasts, whether it's the Money Mondays or different podcasts, make sure you are referring these things to your friends to help make their lives better, too. I appreciate you guys. We'll see you next week on Monday on themoneymondays.com.