← The Money Mondays
The Money Mondays
The Entrepreneur’s Playbook: From Living Room Startups to Billion-Dollar Brands 🏢 EP140
01:05:55
Loading summary
Transcript178 lines
- [00:00]
Cameron Forney
Foreign.
- [00:06]
Dan De Silva
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a very special edition of the Money Mondays podcast where we cover three core topics. How to make money. How to invest money. How to give it away to charity. Our guest today, I've known for many, many, many, many years. He's built a zillion dollar company. He's now building this next zillion dollar company. So we're gonna have fun diving into all things about money and investing, but also about building the brand and, and why, going into his next venture, why did he choose this category and why he's going to scale it to such a big, big, big business. Now, as you guys know, as we're covering those three core topics, this podcast will be under 40 minutes. Because the average commute to work is 45 minutes. The average workout is 45 minutes. This episode will be between 32 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure. I like to tell you that because we have a 92% listen through rate, that means that people actually listen to the whole podcast. Unlike a lot of podcasts where people just kind of rant and rave for a long time, we keep this very streamlined, very focused. And also this podcast is not just about you. It could be for people from your past, present and future. There might be people that are going to be very, very beneficial if you share this podcast with them because of what happens today from Cameron Forney. So without further ado, Cameron, give him the quick 2 minute bio so we get straight to the money.
- [01:16]
Cameron Forney
All right, thank you Dan for having me. Appreciate it. My name is Cameron Forney. My last company that I built, I'm a serial entrepreneur. My last company was Select Select Oil, Select Cannabis. That was also Cure Partners. I sold that to Cure Leaf. So if you know those vaporizers with a little less circle on it, that was kind of my creation and built that up. Did start in my living room. 90,000 my first two months, 900,000 next year 9 million. Next year 40 million. 117 million. Exit for 980 million US 1.27 billion Canadian to Cureleaf, which is a publicly traded cannabis company, still largest cannabis company in the world. They do about 1.3 billion a year. I stayed on as the president of selected cureleaf, did that as long as possible and then waived non compete to get back into the space and really batten down the hatches on what I wanted to do next. So I spent about five years investing in companies, made 27 different investments and realized I really love building brands and I really love operating. So I've been at this for about two and a half years now. I've spent about $2 million just in formulation and taste and function. I started this because my mom was basically going through dementia and Alzheimer's. And so I think a lot of people's parents these days. Your parents as well, my grandparents. Sugar brain is killing us. And thank God we have RFK in office now. He's giving him new motivation, inspiration to life. But Sugar brain is killing us. So I wanted to make something that me and my mom could get along with.3 grams of sugar. Sugars from agave, monk fruit, antidepressant, anti anxiety beverage. Um, it's a functional, high functioning hemp seltzer. So I know you asked what I do, but this is what I do now. So I just want to kind of bring it all together.
- [02:53]
Dan De Silva
So we have these products on the table for people that are watching on YouTube and other platforms. Visually, they can actually see that right now on this table. There's four packs of different drinks, there's different flavors. Talk us through. Why did you dive into this category?
- [03:05]
Cameron Forney
Absolutely. So the functional space. And by the way, this brand is called Adaptophoria. For all you watching at home. Adaptophoria, helping you adapt to a new euphoric state. We have two functions. We have unwind and we have energize. And these are two different functions that you just need at night. One time you get home from a tough day at work, crack it. You need to unwind. Right. You want to go back out and be socializing. We've actually trademarked the modern socializer. We've trademarked hang out without the hangover. So if you're a modern socializer and you're not drinking anymore, as you know, the alcohol category is just getting decimated right now. If you look at Gen Z is drinking one tenth of the amount of alcohol that any other generation has drank in history. That's a big swing. It's a $30 billion swing in that category. W And you're seeing even a larger swing than that. Look at Anheuser Busch. Look what's happening in that industry. You're seeing that people are tired of sugar. They're tired of sugar brain, and they're tired of being tricked and lied to. And they were lied to with dextrose, sucralose, high fructose corn syrup, Zygum. There's a million different trade names for sugar. And I think we've all just had enough. And I think Gen Z is really, really kind of bringing it home there that they say, I don't want to be hungover. I don't want to be dehydrated. I want to be happy. And what touched me a lot was, you look at my. I've got three kids now. I've got a daughter that's five. And I was looking around the table, going by college, 20% of all college students are going to be on antidepressants. Like, why? Like, college was the most happy, exciting time of my life. Why is the world so bad now that you have to be on antidepressants at this age? And then you're actually reducing your dopamine receptors so you're never actually going to be as happy as you were prior to these antidepressants. So I said, all right, stop it. A retired life is over. Investing life is over. I got to make a beverage that's going to work. And we did a partnership with the University of Oregon fed 10,000 surveys and studies what is depressing people, what is going on in the world. And depression was number one. Anxiety was number two. It's causing trillions of dollars of damage in our economy right now. We're seeing suicide rates at all time high, divorce rates at all time high, and addiction rates at all time high. So we said, how do we do something about this In a low calorie, 15 calories, 3 grams of sugar, we have ashwagandha, lowers your cortisol levels. We have rhodiola, anti anxiety, anti depression. We used all ancient Chinese herbs. We're the first Envirocan certified beverage on the market, meaning we're OCAL certified organic all the way through to the top. Can't say organic because it still hemp, but we are envirocam clean. So I said, all right, how do we do this? How do we impact our community? You've been such a motivation, inspiration for our community and giving back. So we give 2% of our revenue back to you. Mental health and wellness, dealing with addiction and encouraging, inspiring entrepreneurship. So our first check went to University of Oregon, helping kids that have dealt through their hardships, which we call it your time to adapt moment. What was your time to adapt moment? Where you had a hardship and you had to overcome it. So we're helping people adapt to the new world. So, yeah, it's a lot.
- [05:51]
Dan De Silva
So back in my days, I had an energy drink, 43 distributors, 55,000 retail stores. I took it public in 2005, so exactly 20 years ago. And over the course of those four years, I don't remember anything but selling drinks. Nothing. I don't remember a date. I don't remember a birthday. Nothing. I drove around to every distributor. I did what's called ride alongs, where I would literally get in the semi truck with the drivers on a Budweiser truck.
- [06:16]
Cameron Forney
So you do it.
- [06:17]
Dan De Silva
And I would go store to store and I'd pitch them. While they're putting Budweiser in the cooler, I'm pitching them by my energy drink. You were up against thousands of brands. How do you stand out in the beverage category?
- [06:29]
Cameron Forney
Great question. I mean, shipping liquid is quite a challenge.
- [06:33]
Dan De Silva
Heavy.
- [06:33]
Cameron Forney
Yeah, it's heavy. And, you know, luckily, I've, you know, capital is obviously very important. Right. We have incredible investors. I've capitalized a lot of this myself. But you're right, you have to go out door to door, store to store, and select them, which is 1700 doors. But the difference is I was bringing a box, you know, one foot by one foot, and that was $20,000. Now I'm shipping, you know, four pallets that it's $20,000. There's a big difference. Right? So that. That is quite difficult. But, you know, I'm just so inspired by running out of options to drink. You know, Ollie Pop and Poppy, I love. Right. Those came out of nowhere. I became instant fans. And then I'm like, you know, I still. I'm a cannabis person. I love flour. And, you know, I've got three kids now. I can't smoke in the house. I can't smoke, you know, anywhere around them. And I want to be social. So how do we do that? And how do we have fun, you know, you know, at home with the kids, with the family, with your parents, Thanksgiving? So really what we're doing is we're kind of creating these moments and these moments of family, these moments of togetherness, and that's really where we're marketing. So we're doing everything from affiliate marketing where you can come in. My goal is to make a thousand millionaires in this company. I made several millionaires the last. But I want to make a thousand millionaires. And the only way to do that is to teach people how to make money as you do in this podcast and encourage and inspire entrepreneurs. So we do, you know, a referral program which not only gives a discount on shipping, but it also gives 15% referral income to someone. So let's say you just got laid off. Oh, man. Time to adapt, right? Let's not stress. Let's not go hit the bottle. Let's adapt, and let's come up with a clear image of what we want to do and where we want to go in the future. So we teach people how to become an influencer, right? How to influence and talk to your peer groups about it and how to say, hey, you know, I had a great experience on this product. All of our beverages are 5 milligrams. I want everyone to have a great experience their first time, no matter what. I never want someone to be crossfaded or too high or too stoned or my goal is great experience, customer experience, every single time. And if you can do that, you can win customers. So where I say I set myself apart in the other beverages, not only the target of the high functional seltzer market that we're going after, but also where we offer a unique product experience. We've won best THC drink of 2025 by Tidewater. Go ask ChatGPT, go ask Llama, go about Adaptophoria and it'll tell you it's the best THC drink out there. And that's because we're targeting this by anxiety, depression, give back and just how to make people happy. And I think that's really where we find our unique area. And our method is the monster method, which is liquid to lips. Let people try it and then they buy it. So we are sampling. We've got some big announcements with one of the largest alcohol retailers in Florida coming. We've got one of the biggest announcements with I probably can announce it doordash. It's going to be very, very large and very broad. And then we have some other unique opportunities with some big boxers coming up that we're looking forward to. So we're looking at specific ways to get to the customer. We really love direct to consumer but we also are ready to distribute when that time comes. So if, you know, if you just go straight to the shelf, this has got to talk off the shelf. It's got to literally stand off the shelf and buy it. And it's such a mouthful talking about all the nutraceutical grade ancient Chinese herbs in here and all the functions that I really need to talk to people to sell the beverage. So I think that DTC is your best option for that.
- [10:00]
Dan De Silva
Very cool. So with your previous brand, you were also up against thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of brands. A lot of them came in wents but you built one of the only ones to actually go exit and have this huge impact and still out there obviously big in the market. Talk us through that experience like going out there and fighting the good fight. Also, at the same time, dealing with legislation, dealing with rules, what you're not allowed to spend money on marketing. You can't pay for commercials or meta like, how did you scale that brand to be that big?
- [10:33]
Cameron Forney
I mean, it was a lot of work. You know, one quality product and consistency always wins and compliance wins. So what we've done with this product, for instance, is we've ensured that when all the cards fall, this still remains under the USDA Farm Bill 2018 act saying it's only fought 10 milligrams maximum per 12 ounce can to be 0.03%, 0.3% by dry weight. And no one else is doing that. Everyone's doing 50 milligrams, 100 milligrams. Right. They're doing that with edibles too. So our job has always been compliance. I was on regulatory advisory commission setting pesticide regulations standards. So select set a standard that set itself apart from everyone else. That's the same thing we're doing here. The second was the right people. You have to have the right people involved in your business. I was lucky enough to partner with one of the greatest entrepreneurs in Oregon. I was also honored to partner with people like, you know, Rich Paula, who's a good friend of ours, who's an incredible master network, Jake Allsop and so many others that were great, Sam Knapp and, you know, these guys helped us expand this brand so rapidly. And now what we're seeing is, you know, you also need to be capitalized, right? And we have some incredible investors behind us. We just did a very, very small friends and family round. So we've taken in just over 3 million, 3.5 billion. And we are looking at now that we've generated about just under half a million dollars in revenue in just under four months that now we'd be looking at a, you know, roughly 10x round in Q1. So, you know, I think that, you know, being capitalized is absolutely critical to, to your success and to stay alive. So, you know, I think as long as you're maintaining the, you know, appropriate products, quality standards, you're showing sales growth. You know, you're not being greedy and you're, you're growing in a company that investors are happy to be a part of, you're going to be successful.
- [12:18]
Dan De Silva
So as the business starts to make more and more revenue, especially in beverages, that means you actually need way more capital. I'm going to give you guys a quick story. So my energy drink was called who's your daddy? Had that slogan back in the days. And on year two, we were just crushing it. We're in all these distributors, we got a bunch more Budweiser distributors to help us. And we get to finally, the phone call that we wanted was Costco. And the way we got into Costco was I would send four packs of drinks to the security guards and the secretaries. Never to the buyers, never to the executives, never to the staff, security guards and secretaries. Why? Because everyone interacts and sees them. You walk in, you walk out. What do you say? Bye to security guards or secretaries? And so we finally got the phone call and the guy was like, I know what you did. He knew I was sending them over and over and over, but they liked it. It was cranberry, pineapple, and it was green tea. And we had the zero sugar, zero calories, and zero carbs. So 41 stores was $2.4 million for an opening order. At first we did one store, obviously there's three sells through, but then the first actual order, $2.4 million. Okay, sounds cool. Let me give you guys an example. Let's say that they order on January 1st. Okay? Let's say you get a phone call from Costco. It's January 1st. I want $2.4 million.
- [13:44]
Cameron Forney
You're giving PTSD right now, but keep going.
- [13:47]
Dan De Silva
To make it 2.4 million, you got to put up around a million dollars to manufacture, let's call it anywhere from 30 to 50% is your cost to manufacture it. Then factor in shipping, etc. So let's say you need a million dollars for that 2.4. That's January 1st. They want you to ship it usually 60 to 90 days later. So let's call it March 1st, April 1st. They then pay you net 30 or net 60 after delivery. So now you're at May 1st or June 1st to get paid. But wait, what if your drink's really good?
- [14:17]
Cameron Forney
Time to adapt, right?
- [14:18]
Dan De Silva
What if your drink tastes like adapt, right? What if your drink's really good and you sell through? That's what happened for us. They reordered 5.5 million. Oh, no, I didn't get paid for the first one. They're like, woo, but no. And so I had to scramble, call everyone, figure out 5.5 million order. I needed almost two and a half million dollars to make it and ship it. Plus merchandising fees, marketing fees, displays. They wanted, like different displays outside the stores, pop, which is point of purchase display, like all these things. So let's call it two and a half million. I didn't get paid on the first one yet. So I scrambled around to get the 2.5 million. We got it. Hold on. And then they're like, okay, we're ready for all star buy.
- [14:58]
Cameron Forney
Oh no. I mean, yay. I mean, no. This is what makes the CFO cringe, by the way.
- [15:04]
Dan De Silva
And we couldn't do it. We literally, they were too big that we had to turn down all store buy. And for them like, okay, well, we're going to call Red Bull Monster Rockstar just like normal. And that's what they'll do. And so why is that important to you? Either have to be capitalized in advance. You have to do what's called factoring. Factoring is where you'll pay sometimes 2% per month. And a factor is someone will say, I'll buy your paper, I'll buy your order, your invoice from Costco. So let's say the order was 5.5 million. They'll pay you 5.1 million, for example, on the 5.5. So you're taking a haircut, you're losing out on money, but you're getting the money up front. Or they're staggering the payments, depending. But then they're taking the risk that Costco is going to pay. Well, Costco is what's called a paper. Yeah, right. They know they're going to pay. It's Costco, so they know they're going to pay.
- [15:52]
Cameron Forney
Problem is, you're at 10 to 12% interest already.
- [15:55]
Dan De Silva
Yes.
- [15:55]
Cameron Forney
By the time they pay, five months.
- [15:56]
Dan De Silva
At 2% is 10%. Uh oh. That can get very expensive when your margins are only 20 to 40% depending on your shipping, etc. So I want you guys to think about this. When you're making a brand, a product or a service, think about the capital you need when things go well. People always talk about things when they're screwing up or sucking. What happens when things go right? As you scale, things can break. So you got to have capital for that. All right, let's talk about the investing side. You had this exit and you mentioned 27 different investments. You get bombarded by offers, real estate, stock market, cash flowing businesses, your friends opening a restaurant, a nightclub, a membership club, a golf course, your friends doing a high rise, a building. There's Bitcoin, there's Ethereum, there's. There's so many things you could be investing into. How do you decide with all those different variables what to put your money into?
- [16:44]
Cameron Forney
I mean, it was quite difficult, especially as a, as a cannabis entrepreneur. I wasn't allowed in ubs Yet I wasn't allowed a financial advisor. So that left me as my own financial advisor for quite some time there. And we know, we, I created $2.2 billion in value for my living room and you know, made hundreds of millions of dollars, lost hundreds of millions of dollars as well. So you know, it's part about being an entrepreneur. You have to learn the playbook and learn how that works, but you know, it's okay. So I mean, when you get bombarded.
- [17:17]
Dan De Silva
By deals, how do you pick what you'd like to invest into?
- [17:20]
Cameron Forney
Gotta be something you're passionate about and it's gotta be something that you are driven by or that you have done enough research in that market that you know that there's gonna be an overall sector growth in. And I really, you know, doubled down on cannabis. You know, I'd done brands for like Jay Z, Post Malone, Birdman, Jim Belushi, Rohan, Marley Marley, Naturals, we do Ricky Williams, you know, I've done a lot of these celebrities brands and you kind of got bombarded by a lot of that and you know one to look at it and celebrity brands aren't a bad thing. It's just, you know, in cannabis you can't really market and advertise. So to have that megaphone, it was a good thing. So I did several investments in those spaces and then I did several investos in crypto. I think, you know, as you know, crypto is going to be something that's going to be around for a while and I've been very successful in that. But it was difficult. It was just I had to do some things that I was very interested in. And honestly you should invest in something you're knowledgeable in. So I invested in several things I was not knowledgeable in and those have turned out to be completely horror stores. So I think knowledge, passion and analytics.
- [18:20]
Dan De Silva
Why do you think it's important for people to invest into themselves to either study, read, go to courses, hire mentors, coaches? Like why do you think people should invest into their minds, into their bodies?
- [18:30]
Cameron Forney
That's number one. You got to invest in yourself and that's how you invest in wealth. If you're not investing in yourself weekly, you know, like you have eight hours right for work, you have eight hours for sleep, you have eight hours to do something. And you know, again, hopefully it's not doom scrolling. You know, I've heard people say this, but I'm watching my kids do that as well. So you have to really make time. I'm taking, you know, Wharton Leadership Executive Leadership courses right now during my free time and as an entrepreneur startup where I'm focused on not only looking at my investments, but I'm also focused on operationally running this as CEO and founder and going store to store. Still there's you. You almost think that there's no time in a day and it's not possible, it's not possible for new opportunities. But, but there is. And it's really about time allocation. Learn where your time goes. Investing in yourself is investing in wealth and put yourself first. You gotta put yourself first in your education first and everything else will come. So sacrifice, do the time and it all pays off.
- [19:20]
Dan De Silva
Yeah, so as people are growing their businesses, they're gonna get pitched a lot of different things. This is gonna be sometimes a awkward or hard question for people. How do you say no to deals?
- [19:35]
Cameron Forney
I mean, it depends. Are you a investment fund? Are you a family office? You know, because it could go with your thesis.
- [19:42]
Dan De Silva
Just a person.
- [19:42]
Cameron Forney
Just a person. How do you say no? You know, it's not the right, right time, it's not the right sector for me, it's not the right business for me. You know, I think that's, that's probably your best way to say no. But say no is quite important. It really has to be something that you've done the research on and you've done your diligence on and you know, the investor class has to be, you know, significant and you have to know leverage and understand where your point of leverage is. Understand if you can add value and create accretive value to this business or if you're just going to be a blank check or, you know.
- [20:12]
Dan De Silva
Dumb money.
- [20:13]
Cameron Forney
Dumb money, yeah. So I never want to be dumb money. I always want to be, you know, value add and create a value. So I always try to loop in some sort of advisory role as well and help guide and steer the company.
- [20:22]
Dan De Silva
So, yeah, so you mentioned some really big names with the Jay Z's and Post Malone's talk about investing into talent. Like why have a face, a celebrity like a Ricky Williams? Like, why invest into talent rather than just scale a generic brand?
- [20:36]
Cameron Forney
So you know, you know, Jay Z's a big name, right? And I've lost $9 million with Jay Z. But you know, Jim Belushi is a, is a much, much smaller name than Jay Z. And Jim Belushi got the number one cannabis product in the state of Oregon.
- [20:49]
Dan De Silva
Come on.
- [20:49]
Cameron Forney
Jim Belushi. Yeah. You know why? Because he cares. He cares about people. He hustles, he goes to the stores. He plays his harmonica, takes pictures. Bud Tender when he leaves. People are so electric with his brand and what he's done that they want more. And that's what I love. Ricky Williams. The same way we have Ricky Williams here at Goldflower in Florida. And you know, Ricky Williams draws an enormous crowd. Rohan Marley draws an enormous crowd. Right. And we can't advertise in Florida, so there's no way to advertise or even talk about it. So I can just tell you that the partners of that brand of Goldflower, of one of our companies are these two celebrities. And they can put it out on their Instagram, but they can't market it. So it's very unique. And state by state is different. There's different rules and regulations. You have a different set of rules in every single state. And the hemp beverage is one of the first that it's a little bit more even playing field, but there's still subtleties. Like Oregon, you can have a 5 milligram can, but it's got to be two servings of 2.5 milligrams each. Guess what? I've made one run of 5 milligram, one serving. So now I can't actively go after that market without stickering every can. Georgia needed a special sticker on the back. That's only Georgia related. Right. So, you know, there's all these different little nuances that you have to be ready to adapt. And that's why we own Time to adapt dot com. Right. When things get hard, when life throws you a curveball, how you change and how you accept that change is going to be what's going to make you succeed or fail in life. So we say time to adapt. And that actually brings me to my point of we want your biggest time to adapt moment, where I'm actually doing a $10,000 giveaway to whoever has the best time to adapt moment. And what that means is just lost my job. Oh, time to adapt. Right. Instead of hitting the bottle, I took a different option. Or I just lost my girlfriend to onlyfans. Time to adapt. Mine was, you know, my car, my wife was driving a car and it had a suicide door on it and she's taking the kids to school and she drove out with the door open and just chicken winged it. Instead of getting mad or upset. Yeah, it's nice. Very nice car. And started getting mad or upset. You know, I just said, made it into a Time to adapt moment, which I'll be posting later this week, announcing the competition. And, you know, it was funny. And we made a good play out of it. So I'm going to do a $10,000 giveaway to whoever gets the most likes Most shares by April 14th of 2026. So we're going to launch that campaign and I think that could be something cool for people. Just remember, when times are hard and something goes down, just remember your time to adapt moment. When life throws you a curveball, how are you going to overcome it? Time to adapt.
- [23:16]
Dan De Silva
So a lot of products can get onto a shelf and they might sell once, but they don't get reordered because of taste or quality or something about them. Why is it important to invest in so quality? Like you mentioned spending almost $2 million on the quality of the product.
- [23:32]
Cameron Forney
Taste is everything at the end of the day. Like, you know, there's a massive shift going on in our community with health and wellness and we're all seeing that, right? And we've had. If you look at Coke, Coke's got like 39 grams of sugar, right? And 12 ounces, right. And 150 calories. We're 15 calories, right. And 3 grams of sugar. And it's all like nutraceutical grade, you know, ingredients and Forbes. And you know, what I'm basically seeing out there is if you can overcome the taste of cannabis, you're going to win. Because everyone out in this market is making a weed soda pop. I call it a weed soda. You're taking soda water, you're adding simple syrup, or they're taking soda, they're adding a juice concentrate, and then there are no other functions. And we're not only rapid onset, which I think one of the biggest things that we've really achieved coming from my background is select oil. I owned 30% of the global oil supply at one point. We did oil for every major brand. I gave Wild their first oil. I gave them Marley Naturals their first oil in Oregon. So I've been in the oil market for so long that I've learned nanoemulsions, micro emulsions and different onset times. And what we've created here is a five minute onset, which is so unique because I've always said a cannabis beverage will never work until I can cheer someone drinking a beer. And then we can drink it and we can both feel the effects together. So we can feel the effects together. But typically you get a bitterness that runs down the middle of your tongue and that lingers in the back of your face, throat. And that's just something that if you want to be a mass market brand, you can't taste the cannabis. And that's why we were one of the first companies to put distillate and edibles and that started making our edibles go off the shelf because it didn't taste like cannabis. And I know there's a lot of people that, oh, I want to taste the indica, the sativa, the hybrid. That's not the mass market. The mass market is how do we create something socially acceptable? How do we create something that my mom can drink that's a 65 year old Southern Baptist who believes it was the devil's lettuce and now she's going, oh my gosh, I like this. This makes me feel good. That's better than, you know, vodka or something. And how do we make something that, you know, every generation basically thinks tastes good? And that's really what we've done here is we've absolutely nailed the taste. I'd love to get your reaction on it too. Love for you to try one, of course.
- [25:43]
Dan De Silva
So on the charity side, why do you think it's important for a household for you as a father to have some type of charity involvement for those kids to see whether not about the money part, but actually be a part of something? Why do you think it's important for kids to see charity?
- [25:58]
Cameron Forney
It's critical to building their character and who they are as a person. You know, you're been so inspiring with that is, you know, we give back, you know, to motivate and encourage and inspire. Because so many people now are at their all time lows and just like what you do with the world's largest toy drive, right? You bring so many smiles to people's faces. You're the real Santa Claus. You're like, they don't, you know, Santa Claus isn't real, but you are the real Santa Claus. The amount of joy that you bring through how many toys you guys do.
- [26:22]
Dan De Silva
Oh my God. Hundreds of thousands.
- [26:23]
Cameron Forney
Hundreds of thousands of toys during Christmas. Like there's so many kids out there and you know, the numbers of that aren't getting those toys that aren't feeling gratified during these times. And you know, that's what it's about is making people happy, leaving the world a better place than where we came. And you know, I think that's what's so unique with rfk, you know, is, you know, he says you judge a civilization based on how they treat their weakest among the population. And that's really what we're doing, is we're helping anxiety, we're Having mental health, you know, this is great for war veterans and people with PTSD. And, you know, that's why we gave the 2% give back component, so my kids can be there with me as we're giving a check, you know, to encourage, inspire entrepreneurship and help drive through addiction and mental health. So I've been through mental health challenges myself. So, you know, sold the company and thought I was on top of the world and, you know, had unlimited money and, you know, it's never been more lonely in my life than being at the very top. Lost friends, lost resource, lost a lot of things. And to help kind of heal from that by also helping others is tremendous for me, for my family, and I think, for the entire entrepreneurial community. So I'd like to see more of that and, like, people to follow your lead. Dan.
- [27:32]
Dan De Silva
So someone out there listening. You know, there's been this kind of weird feeling about billionaires and people being wealthy this last few years, in particular in the media. And it's frustrating because the amount of people that Amazon employs. So when people look at Jeff Bezos like, oh, I can't believe he has a $400 million yacht. That's nothing financially for Jeff Bezos. But then they look at him and they think, oh, well, he's too wealthy, too rich. Well, he employs millions of people. That's almost a form of charity to me. When you're employing people and you're giving them 60 grand a year, 80 grand a year, 200 grand a year, etcetera, times that by millions, he's literally changing the entire global economy from the inside out. And so I say that because there's this weird connotation that billionaire is a bad word. So you have this exit for nearly a billion dollars, 1.27 Canadian billion. And you said you got lonely or quiet or some of your friends went away. What do you think that is? When someone hears that, that's like, Well, I make 60 grand a year. Screw that. I want that problem. Talk about the reality of, like, what happens in life.
- [28:38]
Cameron Forney
Look, it's lonely at the top. The loneliest job in the world is the CEO position, as you know, right? You're everyone's best friend, though, when they get their paycheck, you're everyone's enemy when times are tough and there's budget cuts and crisis, and then the only person you can really have a conversation with or depend on is yourself a lot of times, or your wife, and that can make it very difficult.
- [28:57]
Dan De Silva
You only want to tell her, yeah, yeah.
- [28:58]
Cameron Forney
And sometimes you don't want to tell her because you don't want to stress her out because she's raising the three kids. So you're right. You know, I use Michael Phelps as a perfect example of this. The most awarded Olympian in history. Right?
- [29:08]
Dan De Silva
Legend. Yeah.
- [29:09]
Cameron Forney
Dealt with massive mental health crisis. Used cannabis. Used cannabis products instead of alcohol. And Lockey got arrested in trouble with alcohol. And Phillips stayed home, ate his 7,000 calories, and then pumped out American Olympic gold medal championships. He's an inspiration to me. Apollo Ono is an inspiration, a good friend, and I'm trying to get him on board with this. And, you know, it's. Once you get to that top, it's amazing. You're celebr pictures on all these magazines, and now you're the person paying for every single bill. You're the person that's always being mooched on. You're the person that's always the enemy if something goes wrong in the company. And then if you're a really good company, you're under lawsuits, you're going to get sued for sure. And it's just for people that want quick handouts and easy money. And, you know, it's just. It just. It's very difficult, gets very lonely. So you got to have a good routine of, you know, getting sunlight, working out, talking to people. You know, when Covid people lost, I mean, I sold my company in February 2020.
- [30:05]
Dan De Silva
Like, wow.
- [30:06]
Cameron Forney
Yeah. So imagine, like, now I'm locked up with all this money. It's like, what do we do? You know, I got into poker, which is a really bad idea. Don't get into poker after you saw your company. Phil Hellmuth. All right, so, you know, and he.
- [30:19]
Dan De Silva
Joined the advisory board of one of my companies.
- [30:21]
Cameron Forney
Oh, did he great at poker. He put me in the Dragon's Den poker game, and I lost a lot of money very rapidly. It was like. It was interesting people, Draymond Green, all these guys. I'm just getting smoked. But, you know, I think that people lost their. Their community, lost their safety net. They're lost their. Their. Their community. Their community when Covid took place, because everyone was locked down. People still haven't really rebuilt that. You know, the socializing and then marketing and the networking has gone down a lot. I mean, you're a master. It's different for you. You're still probably pumping the same numbers as you were. But there's a lot of people that fell out of those relationships and got lonely and depressed. And, you know, why we say this for the modern socializers, because we want to create happy hours that are non alcoholic happy hours. So modern socializer hours where people are coming, they're ordering adaptophoria at their favorite restaurant or Maison Mira right here in Brickell in Miami. And you can sit with other entrepreneurs. We do an entrepreneur meetup at Maison Mira once a month and we sit and we talk and we have speakers come in, we have pro athletes come in. And we just find a new way to socialize with a different product than just alcohol. But you can drink alcohol too. Nothing against it. Love alcohol, love my champagne, love my tequila. But I just find myself drinking this at the end of the night. Two of these two, two unwinds at the end of the night make me sleep like a baby. I sleep better than I've ever slept. And then an energizer too, before I go out is lovely. So I try to, try to have my balance. If I do a couple of tequilas, then it's like, Dan, it's 12 o'.
- [31:42]
Dan De Silva
Clock.
- [31:42]
Cameron Forney
What are you doing? Do you want to go out? So I've got to learn how to balance myself for sure.
- [31:48]
Dan De Silva
All right, so there's only one question I ask at the end of every episode, and I've never gotten the same answer in over 200 episodes. You've already sold one company for a billion dollars. You're gonna sell this one for $2 billion, for example, and you're probably gonna do more companies because you got the itch, right? You love the game. So billions and billions of dollars of revenue generated and exits, etc. At the end of the day when you pass away, what percentage of your net worth do you leave to those three kids?
- [32:15]
Cameron Forney
It's a great question, but one thing that you should be clear on as an entrepreneur, like you were saying, to raise money, I only ended up with 8% of my company when I sold it. Right. You know, and then less than that after taxes. So it sounds like you sold it for all this money. And then you own stock at the company and the stock does, does well or does not well when you leave, you know, there's a lot of variance. But you know, for your kids, that is like the most critical thing is how are you leaving that next generation? How's that next generation going to bring up? And, you know, I've already planned all this out luckily, and it's, you know, their college is funded. They're, you know, they're never going to worry about a home, they're never going to have to worry about college, never going to worry about Health care. Those are already done and set forever. Now it's. It's, you know, again, they're. I drive my kids to be entrepreneurial, so my daughter has to work to make money to buy an iPhone or app on her tablet or she has to donate some toys and then other toys that she just got bored with quick. She has to sell and then buy a new toy and capitalize.
- [33:08]
Dan De Silva
I love it.
- [33:09]
Cameron Forney
So we do do our donation, but we also are teaching and instilling commerce into our kids. So I've set a fund together where they can invest money into businesses that they believe in and then they can live off the income of those companies, but they do not get a check. They can get a check for their home to get that, but then they owe the trust money. So they have to work.
- [33:29]
Dan De Silva
Told you guys weren't going to get the same answer. This is great.
- [33:31]
Cameron Forney
They have to be entrepreneurial. They have to work, and they. Nothing is given. They have to earn it. But I think health care is given and I think education should be given.
- [33:38]
Dan De Silva
So very cool.
- [33:39]
Cameron Forney
Those two I'm on. Yeah.
- [33:40]
Dan De Silva
All right. So where can people find you on social media? Where can they find the brands? The products tell us everything.
- [33:44]
Cameron Forney
Time to adapt.com Time to adapt or adaptoria.com and I would go even you were so nice. If you do Time to adapt forward slash Money Mondays. We pay for your shipping, so we just want to do that for Dan and take care of it. So. Time to adapt.com moneymondays we'll pay for your shipping and you can find me at Ameronforney and you'll see some stuff from, like, the University of Oregon. We're the first beverage on the history of the planet hemp beverage on a university campus. That was with the University of Oregon last weekend. So we were in the dean's invitational suite on college campus. The dean said he'd rather have kids drinking college students drinking our beverage than he would alcohol. And as you know, you can't sell, you know, I don't sell this to under 21. Cancel alcohol at under 21. But alcohol is just, you know, run amok kind of on college campuses for sure. So this is a very unique trial with the University of Oregon Ducks, who, you know, is my alma mater. I'm on the 40 under 40 advisory there, and I think it's very unique. And we'll be doing some stuff with the Rolling Stone Culture Council on this as well.
- [34:46]
Dan De Silva
So that's so cool.
- [34:47]
Cameron Forney
Timetoadapt.com moneymonday moneymondays and money Monday. Well, both and amronforney.com all right, guys.
- [34:55]
Dan De Silva
As I mentioned, these podcasts are not just for you, is for people from your past, present and future. Your friends might bring up, they want to be in the beverage space. And you forward this podcast with Cameron, they might bring up, oh, I want to do something in the cannabis space. You could forward this podcast with Cameron. There are people that are going to be around you. It could be at dinner, at lunch, playing basketball or pickleball, and things like this come up. You share podcasts like this with them and the butterfly effect can literally change their life. They might hear things because we got pretty granular here from factoring and financing and marketing and the shelf space and dealing with celebrities like these things could literally help save them a lot of money or make them a lot of money. So keep these podcasts in mind. Visit us next Monday@themoney Mondays.com and we'll see you guys very soon. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays podcast where we cover three core topics. How to make money. How to invest money. How to give. Some of the way to charity. Here's what's really important when you're listening to podcasts like this. It's not always just about you. It could be for people from your past, present or future. You might be able to forward an episode like this to someone that likes this topic or likes this person that's on that episode. So keep that in mind as you're listening because not every time you're going to be caring about real estate or stock market or E commerce or Facebook ads. Maybe it's not applying to you, but it could be to someone from your past, present or future. The whole point of this podcast is we grew up thinking that it's rude to talk about money. I think that's ridiculous. We got to be able to talk about taxes and salary and should I rent? Should I buy? Should I lease? What happens if my friend borrowed $400? How do I get it back? Like, these are things that happen in your real life. We just don't talk about it because we think about it being rude. It is not rude to be able to cover your mom's medical benefits. It is not rude to be able to buy toys for your kids. It's not rude to be able to cover your travel and things that go on in your daily life because it's part of your daily life. So make sure to understand this with your friends, family and followers. We have to be able to talk about money. That's part of why this podcast has stayed in the top 50 in the world is because of you liking commenting, subscribing and sharing and talking with your friends about money. So without further ado, as you guys know, these podcasts are under 40 minutes because the average workout is 45 minutes. Average commute to work is 45 minutes. This episode will be between 32 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure. So Dan De Silva, if you can give us a quick 2 minute bio so we get straight to the money. Perfect.
- [37:10]
Dan Silva
Okay, so my name is Dan Silva. I dropped out of high school, but it's kind of cliche to say these days. I guess I started online when I was 15. Like literally I was learning at 15, 19, made my first million and since then just kind of like rode the wave. I started off buying traffic as an affiliate and then I went into the e commerce space. I kind of had that leg up because I already knew like how to buy traffic. So you know, dropshipping was this new thing so I kind of just went into dropshipping was the first one on YouTube to talk about it. Had like major success in both realms doing and teachings and then from there just kind of everything just kind of grew from there. Yeah.
- [37:52]
Dan De Silva
What's the main thing you're working on now?
- [37:55]
Dan Silva
So I started my own fin pub, so financial publishing company a few years ago. Four or five years ago was a ride. I'm winding it down now more so because of compliance more than anything. It is just a headache for that industry. So my main thing is winding that down and just heading back into affiliate like hardcore. Just focusing all my attention on affiliate launching and publishing, but not necessarily in finance anymore.
- [38:23]
Dan De Silva
So fun fact, back in the days I had an online poker site and I'd go to the gaming convention and be thousands and thousands and thousands of people there that owned poker sites. And the richest people in the room were the affiliates because they were sending all the traffic to these poker sites. So they're getting like $200 CPA, $3 CPA which is cost per acquisition. And so they were sending traffic to poker stars and full tilt and me, my victory poker site. And we're paying them two or three dollars a player before we ever got $1. And so it was fun to see at these events where you'd see the 21 year old, the 28 year old zillionaires because they were sending traffic to these gambling sites.
- [38:59]
Dan Silva
So there's certain affiliates, I mean even now, you know you get percentage of losses and all that. Like you Know those under the table type of deals where I know some guys over in Asia.
- [39:11]
Dan De Silva
Like on sports betting sites?
- [39:13]
Dan Silva
Oh, yeah, just in general. Like those online casinos where they not only get a cpa, they get a percentage of First Depot, and then they also get a percentage of losses in perpetuity. And they're just. They're raking in cash like crazy. So.
- [39:28]
Dan De Silva
So you've got a zillion offers that you could go through, right? You can pick from anything you want from financial markets, stock trading, teaching people how to sell, custom sneakers. You can teach people about anything. So you could showcase for your traffic any of these topics. Section 8. There's just so many. There's infinite options. How the heck do you decide what you pick from? Is it just the financial part of it? Is there marketing part of it? Is something that is exciting for you or is it just a part of.
- [39:53]
Dan Silva
The game, quite frankly?
- [39:55]
Dan De Silva
That's a.
- [39:55]
Dan Silva
That's a good question. It's a lot of. So it's a very small community of people that are super affiliates, if you will. And everybody talks there. So you know exactly what is working at that time. So it's essentially just kind of like, hey, I heard X, Y and Z is doing X, Y and Z. And then I'll go to said person and they'll be like, yeah, yeah, 100%. And like, you know, one of my good friends, Carter, he's a huge affiliate, Huge affiliate. And I asked him all the time, like, on things that are working. He's like, yeah, this is working. We were doing like $400,000 a day for weeks. And then I'm like, okay. He's like, yeah, but we kind of like, you know, we moved on because of, you know, processing issues, whatever it is. I'm like, okay, so like, what's hot right now? And then he's like, oh, well, we're onto this. I'm like, oh, well, I don't want to do this. So then I have to start shopping around because there's some things that I don't want to touch and other thing, because it's not in my circle of competence. But, you know, I typically will go ahead and always focus on vanity driven or aside from vanity health. So. And again, health. You got to kind of figure out your line of ethics and morals, certain.
- [41:03]
Dan De Silva
Type of weight loss versus Exactly.
- [41:05]
Dan Silva
So and more than anything, it's the affiliate's job is to get somebody to the, to the page, the vsl, to the order, order form, whatever it is, but if it doesn't convert you Know it's move on to the next offer.
- [41:19]
Dan De Silva
What is a vso?
- [41:20]
Dan Silva
A visual sales letter. So it's just a, you know, 45, 60 minute plus video selling. It's an emotional story that really pulls strings, that sells a supplement at the very end that's supposed to do X, Y and Z based on, you know, whatever that story is. But yeah, they, they sell very, very well. Very, very well.
- [41:43]
Dan De Silva
So people will watch 45 to 60 minutes.
- [41:45]
Dan Silva
Oh yeah, they'll sit there for a really long time. It's funny because it was really, really, really good at a certain point probably 20, 19, 20, 2020, even up till now as well, you can get away with it. You could run just the VSL alone on YouTube, like run it as a YouTube ad and then when they click they go to the order form. So it's not even like they have to go to another page and then go to the order form. Because if you think about it, people on YouTube are already accustomed to watching long form videos. So you just put like a 45 minute video. They don't know how long it is cuz it's an ad. Right. So.
- [42:18]
Dan De Silva
So there's no timer.
- [42:19]
Dan Silva
No. Because of how long it is.
- [42:20]
Dan De Silva
Right.
- [42:21]
Dan Silva
So they'll sit there and they'll watch it and then they'll click. And from there you can do the same thing with Facebook. So there was, I think, I think Peter Kel did this. Actually I know Peter Kill did this. He ran VSLs on, on Facebook so successfully. And by the time like I heard about it, I never even thought to do that. I was like, it makes so much sense. You know, everyone was doing it at that point. It still works but it's really about finding that VSLs are like the thing right now. Like everybody's hyper focusing on that.
- [42:51]
Dan De Silva
So. All right, so let's talk about the make money side.
- [42:54]
Dan Silva
Okay.
- [42:56]
Dan De Silva
You can make your own products. It could be an affiliate, you could try to work for another company, you could consult, you could take equity. How do you decide on a personal level? Like you've got all the options because you've got so much experience and you're one of the best in the game. Like how do you decide what you actually spend your time on?
- [43:10]
Dan Silva
I'm going to be totally honest with you. I am extremely lazy and I think it's because of just I'm complacent. So I know if I want something how much it is and I'll work that. Exactly. So that's a gift and a curse if you will, because it doesn't push me further than what I want. So once. And that's why, like things now like I sold like all my cars and all that, like, because I stopped caring necessarily. The only thing I really like is watches. That's my thing. But the make money aspect, to answer your question is I really don't know how to define that. Ask me one more time so I can process it.
- [44:00]
Dan De Silva
When you have all these options where you can be a consultant, be an affiliate, you can create your own product or brand or service, how do you decide what you spend your time on?
- [44:11]
Dan Silva
What I know will pay me the most for the energy in. So energy in and the output that I get. So I already know what I'm really good at. And that's, that's mainly more than anything. Copy funnels is relatively easy and whatnot. It's essentially getting somebody to read something and get them to take an action that they didn't otherwise think they wanted to do or you want them to do so and whatever that is. There's two realms that I play in. It's more so than anything. Biz op, so you know, mmo, like make money online and in the health space. So those are like the two that I absolutely know. The pain points. Like right away I can just spin something up and that's what I'll. That's what I'll lean towards. But consulting, I don't, I don't do it. I don't like, just. I don't think that I know my time is worth, you know, a lot, but I just don't want to give up my time. I'd rather be playing video games or doing something else, like just enjoying life.
- [45:11]
Dan De Silva
So did that come from complacency? From money?
- [45:14]
Dan Silva
Yeah, yeah. It came from. It came from the fact that I had nothing really growing up. And then 18 to 19, literally, it was from nothing to millions. Exactly. So my first car was an i8 that I bought in cash. The insurance was $3,500 a month.
- [45:35]
Dan De Silva
Okay, okay. Right.
- [45:37]
Dan Silva
We laugh at it now.
- [45:39]
Dan De Silva
Wow.
- [45:39]
Dan Silva
But at 19, I just turned 19. I thought $3,500 a month for insurance was normal. Normal, like okay. And everyone's like, what? And I thought a six month insurance, you know, whatever it is.
- [45:54]
Dan De Silva
Like premium.
- [45:55]
Dan Silva
Exactly.
- [45:55]
Dan De Silva
Yeah.
- [45:56]
Dan Silva
Because they want it all up front.
- [45:58]
Dan De Silva
Yeah. 21,000. Yeah.
- [45:59]
Dan Silva
And I'm like, okay. So I just spent like 140,000 for an I that came from Idaho. Exactly. The specs that I wanted. And then I dropped, you know, 20 something thousand on insurance only for six months. And everyone was like, what? But what do I know? Because that was my first car. Like I didn't have anything to correlate it to. So then, you know, the following year with you know, Tanner J. Fox, all that stuff, I got rid of the i8, bought a Lambo cash. Two weeks later, bought a G wagon cash. And I was just like, again, this is the whole like money just kept coming. And so it came to a point where the money didn't stop.
- [46:44]
Dan De Silva
It's, it's.
- [46:45]
Dan Silva
I think I actually know. I know that 19 year old me versus almost 30 in a few months me. I realized that I was just everybody's piggy bank that they could just shake at any given time. And that was like one of the hardest pills to swallow. And so I got rid of everything. I left New York, like all that. I just told people I'm broke, just cause I wanted to, I wanted to see who'd stick around. Like, oh, I have nothing anymore. So I just put my dogs in a car, went to Canada, went to Rice Lake or Lake Rice, whatever it's called. And I just kind of like faded away. Exactly. Just I needed peace, I needed to get away. And funny enough, nobody ever like, nobody was there. And that's when I was like interesting. And so, and so just over that time I kind of just like realigned and I stopped caring about the money, which then also. Cause I said the drive was always money.
- [47:44]
Dan De Silva
Sure.
- [47:45]
Dan Silva
And you know, I'd had talks with like Jimmy, you know, from St. Louis and whatnot. And I'm like, Jimmy, like I want to build. So he's like, I want to build something. He's like, you don't need to know right now what you want to build. It'll come to you eventually. And I guess he's. That's what I've been kind of like waiting for, I guess. But yeah, it's just I realized everybody works so hard for money, but at the end of the day it's like.
- [48:12]
Dan De Silva
To buy stuff that they don't actually care about.
- [48:14]
Dan Silva
Not only that, but to impress people.
- [48:15]
Dan De Silva
That don't care about them.
- [48:16]
Dan Silva
Exactly. They're just there for the good time. And you can't blame those people either. So like everybody inherently is for themselves, if you will. So that's just human nature. So I can't blame, you know, my friends then. So I just look at it as I learned I was gonna do it regardless. So at that time it is what it is.
- [48:40]
Dan De Silva
So you guys have heard me say this before. It's okay. To have that materialistic goal of getting that one watch, getting that one car, getting that one thing. When you buy your second and third watch and your second and third car, you're gonna have that feeling that Dan just described. Like you're not gonna care about the Lamborghini and the G wagon, this car, that car. At some point, it fades away, sometimes within weeks. And some friends of ours go buy 5, 10, 20, 30 cars looking for that feeling. And then it starts to go within days, because they've already had 10, 15, 20 different cars. And so I'm not saying to not have a goal, because, by the way, the goal can be really, really useful for you, to have that driving force like Dan described in his own life. But at some point, it will literally feel meaningless. It'll just be another car in the garage catching dust. It'll just be another watch sitting in the drawer that you don't wire because you wear your main watch every single day. The other seven watches just kind of sit there. At some point, you start to realize, like, the things that you're buying don't have any actual meaning, and they don't give you what you want, which is happiness. You think you want it. Like, as soon as I get to a million dollars, I'm going to be happy. When you get to a million, you're like, wait, it's just Wednesday. As soon as I get to 2.5.
- [49:48]
Dan Silva
Million, it's the downward treadmill.
- [49:50]
Dan De Silva
Yep. And the goal line keeps moving, and the goal line keeps moving. And the thing that you're chasing is never actually there. It's an enigma. It's not real. And so I say this because I want you to have that goal of the thing that you want that you're aspirational for, Whether it's taking that big travel trip, maybe it's buying that fancy watch. But I pinky swear that second, third, and fourth thing will not. Will not even one iota matter to you a few weeks later. All right, so you're making money. You're buying the cars, you're having fun. You take this time, you go disappear for a little bit. Then you come back to one of the most coolest cities on the planet, which is Miami. Why do you reemerge?
- [50:30]
Dan Silva
Well, I went to. I was moving around for a bit. Like, went to Tampa, back home just to see parents. Toronto, and then back to Miami. Why choose Miami? Here's the thing. I don't party anymore. I don't like to go out and club. I'll go get dinners. That's It. Why Miami? I can't answer that. I don't know. To be honest, I came here with an intention to network. Then I realized the people that I wanted to network with weren't the people that I wanted to be around. And now I'm here. So I guess that really answers. To be totally honest, I was supposed to go this upcoming year. Supposed to head to Nashville, but yeah, plans change a little bit.
- [51:27]
Dan De Silva
So as you're making money, people start to bombard you with investments. Hey, bro, invest into my restaurant or my nightclub or my clothing line or my new thing, my new hat company, blah, blah, blah, blah. How do you decide once you start making that type of cash, what you might throw in 25k, 50k, 100k or whatever amount into as an investment?
- [51:44]
Dan Silva
I look at the person more than anything. The person and then the idea. Because everybody has ideas, right? It's the person behind the idea that can execute to the finish line. So again, there's no necessarily unique idea, but there are extremely unique people. That's where I will decide whether or not I put my energy, time, resources and capital behind you. So that's, that's the end all, be all. It's. Who are you? And like, I want to know not necessarily what you have accomplished, because maybe this is your first time trying to build something or, you know, whatever it is, but who are you as a person? And if you have done something in the past, what have you done? And I'm not talking like college or anything. I'm talking way more beyond like, hey, I built this. I just couldn't get it off the ground. And that's, that's fine because people that are builders aren't necessarily marketers. So.
- [52:38]
Dan De Silva
So someone out there is listening and they're like, man, I want to sell a course or I want to sell something like a vso. How do I do that? Where can people research to try to figure out how to actually do this stuff?
- [52:50]
Dan Silva
That's such a good question. I wouldn't, I would. Honestly, I wouldn't even know how to, how to answer that. Because it is, it is a very particular skill set. It's writing copy for a video that you have to either, you know, hire an actor for, or now we can use AI to do it. But the skill set is copywriting. So VSL broken down is just long form, which is a long form piece of paper or a document that sells something, whatever it is. And if somebody really wants to go ahead and learn how to do it, you just simply flat out have to find VSLs out there and they're everywhere. Like, if you go on cnn, you click on these ads and then there's like a video of some doctor talking for like, for like an eternity. You could download that video, have it transcribed, read it and see exactly what, what's happening there. See the, see what they're doing, the pain points, the, the nlp, the language. So that's the differentiating factor between somebody successful selling something as an affiliate and not. Is if you know how to sell it. Right. So. Because we all have the same ability to look at the same product and sell the same way. But the difference between me and you is that I might know how to find an angle from the current, from the current page, from the current video and, and how to just kind of take that out and sell that part while everyone else is just selling what's in the video. I sell something that he says in the video and I just harp on that point and make it a bigger deal. So people watch.
- [54:20]
Dan De Silva
So, so what about investing into themselves? Why do you think people should invest into their minds, their personal brand, into their world?
- [54:26]
Dan Silva
You know the cliche answers. Because like you're going to. There's no other better investment. It's cliche to say there's no other better investment than you. No higher roi, but it's true. So what I figured out a long time ago is by accident, I think I don't like networking. I'm not really a big networker. People have and do come to me because of my skill set. So I see kids all the time, people all the time going to networking events. Networking does not equate to, to necessarily in, in the long term. Sure can equate to, you know, a lot of money if you start networking a lot and know what you're doing. But at the end of the day, it's. I rather focus on a skill like a skill set. And Becker thinks the same way, because I've talked to Becker about this as well, is that all I ever did was focus on my skill set, which was copy, et cetera.
- [55:26]
Cameron Forney
Right.
- [55:26]
Dan Silva
And where that copy was deployed could have been E Commerce, you know, drop shipping or vsl, an affiliate promo, whatever it is. Right. But I just focused on that. That is my skill. The funnels, the launches and deploying copy into that. That's something that people have come to and still come to me for on. Hey, what do you think about this? And that Just like I'll go to somebody like Jason, like Jay Flat. Right. About webinar stuff.
- [55:52]
Dan De Silva
Of course.
- [55:53]
Dan Silva
So it's the same thing. He's the best at what he does, but people have to go to him. So it's not like he's out there at events and whatnot saying, hey, I know how to do webinars. We know, we know you know how to do webinars. So I kind of adopted that philosophy.
- [56:12]
Dan De Silva
Really? So is there a goal? Like if you got to a certain number, you're like, you know what, I'm done. I'm going to retire. I'm going to give up the E Commerce and I'm going to give up being an affiliate. Like if someone said, hey, you know what, here's $80 million, that's it, you can't work anymore ever again.
- [56:28]
Dan Silva
No, no, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. That's. That sounds. There's no purpose. What's. I want it. I need to do something.
- [56:36]
Dan De Silva
I need to be stimulated.
- [56:37]
Dan Silva
Like, all right, maybe like, is there a cap on this? So I mean, it'd have to be a wild number, like something. If I'd say it, you'd be like, okay, be realistic. But like I just. The constant stimulation of needing to figure out new things and needing to build and wanting to build and that's like, that's the game.
- [56:58]
Dan De Silva
Yeah.
- [56:58]
Dan Silva
That's the thrill. So there's really no number.
- [57:01]
Dan De Silva
From on a personal perspective, is there anything that you like in the charity space? Philanthropy?
- [57:06]
Dan Silva
Yeah. I'm looking to build an animal sanctuary.
- [57:10]
Dan De Silva
Really?
- [57:10]
Dan Silva
Yeah, yeah. So it's actually a reason that I came here. So. But I've said this already for like two years to my parents and whatnot. It was either here or in Nashville and I was not. Well, Nashville area, somewhere in Tennessee. Right. Cuz land is fairly affordable, you know, so. And then I have to work with compliance, like regulatory. But yeah, an animal sanctuary is, is my thing. I. I love animals. So.
- [57:36]
Dan De Silva
So I built an Animal Sanctuary 30, 37 months ago.
- [57:38]
Dan Silva
Did you really?
- [57:39]
Dan De Silva
Yeah, that's where I came. That's where I came from this morning. Oh. So I just flew from. So we have 206 animals in Temecula, California, 26 acres.
- [57:47]
Dan Silva
Oh, that's. So your ranch is actually like a sanctuary.
- [57:49]
Dan De Silva
Yes.
- [57:50]
Dan Silva
I never knew that. I thought you just loved animals. I guess a personal sanctuary then. So.
- [57:55]
Dan De Silva
Yeah, we're not open to the public. You can't. There's no website.
- [57:57]
Dan Silva
Yeah.
- [57:58]
Dan De Silva
You can't buy tickets. Obviously our friends and everyone can go and feed the animals, but. So the real Tarzan, obviously, you know, it's getting 2.2 billion views last month alone. On social. He lives there. He lives at the ranch.
- [58:10]
Dan Silva
Oh, really?
- [58:11]
Dan De Silva
Yeah. That's how it evolved. At first I was buying it because I wanted to. I had like a checklist of things to build on a ranch, to be able to host masterminds and events and my operation black site, the military training stuff. And I wanted some animals. And then I was gonna do one with Tarzan here in, in Miami. And then Covid happened, the shutdown happened. And so like, we scrapped the idea for a while because we're like, well, I don't know if we can have tourism at, you know, at the ranch, at the animal sanctuary. And then like a year later, I found this ranch in California. I'm like, wow. And so when I messaged him, I had the keys. I waited till it was for sure that I had it and I was like, hey, you're moving to California? That's awesome. We're set up all these animals here. And then it just kind of evolved because he started getting everything from 16 foot snakes to. We rescued these two bulls from the FBI. The FBI was going to kill these two bulls. We rescued 900 pound pigs, we rescued horses, rescued so many things. And you know, it's expensive, obviously to take care of 206 animals. It's 140,000amonth from staff and food and things to keep them alive and happy. But it's my favorite thing to do and it's my favorite thing to talk about. I could talk about it for ages. And like, the difference of like, when you're interacting with the animals versus humans is fascinating.
- [59:33]
Dan Silva
We can get into this, okay, we'll get real emotional real quick. But I agree, it's just, it's unconditional love. Like, yes, now I'm talking like dogs and whatnot. But even big cats, like, you know what I found fascinating I saw? I got really ingrained and infatuated with this story of a golden retriever mother raising father, five or four or five tiger cubs. And then they became full grown tigers. And you know, the, the golden retriever, that mother was still a mother to them. Like, they could, they could maul her, but they respected her like a, like. And I was just like, that's still. It's just so amazing. Like, and there's one thing that I can't stand is like, no animal should be put down because of some, some other human's mistakes or faults. So. Exactly. It's just not fair. And then it like, to me it's just like, it's so unfair. I just thought it doesn't sit right with me. So that's, that's been the end goal of it all. So.
- [60:39]
Dan De Silva
So there's one question I ask on every single episode and I've never gotten the same answer ever before. Before I ask it, I'm going to ask you, do you have children or do you ever want to have children?
- [60:48]
Dan Silva
I do want children.
- [60:50]
Dan De Silva
So the one question I ask on every episode is, Dan, over the course of time, you're going to build up tens of millions, hundreds of millions, God willing, billions of dollars in your career from the brands, products, services that you create. But unfortunately, at some point you do pass away. What percentage of that net worth do you leave to your.
- [61:17]
Dan Silva
Great question I've.
- [61:19]
Dan De Silva
Heard 0%, 100% and everything in between.
- [61:25]
Dan Silva
You'd have to be vested. If not, then it would be donated, But I wouldn't leave all 100%. Probably 80% be donated to philanthropy. 20% would be left, but that 20% would have to be vested based on what they achieve and how many, you know, children. Right. So.
- [61:44]
Dan De Silva
So giving them milestones of things to do throughout the course of their life.
- [61:50]
Dan Silva
Marriage at least five years to have probably like 60% of whatever is allocated to be unlocked, if you will, at least bare minimum.
- [62:05]
Dan De Silva
Bonuses for children.
- [62:10]
Dan Silva
No, I would. Because again, not everybody's blessed to be able to. So imagine like just having an infertile wife and then like, your money's locked. That'd be terrible. Definitely something to do with marriage, building a family, building something sustainable.
- [62:31]
Dan De Silva
Carefully go to college.
- [62:34]
Dan Silva
No, I don't. I want them to do something, though. And when I say do something, I mean follow what they want to do, but not. It has to be progressive in the world, if that makes sense. Like it has to help in some way. Like, I don't want you to be. I don't know if it's bad to say, but like, kind of like a hippie, if you will, just like free roaming around, doing ayahuasca in like Columbia. Like, like, I need you to be proactive and be a part of something or start building something and, and whatnot. But yeah, it's such a good question. I don't, I, I would say you broke it down.
- [63:09]
Dan De Silva
That was good. A lot of people can't even say with clarity, like the 8020 concept you just mentioned or having parameters, some people say very detailed of like the concept of what they want, but they can't say numbers or they say the number but they don't know why. Like it's, it's been very interesting. I've asked the same question 200 times. Literally 200 times. And I. I'm always fascinated because it. It. Some little pieces of it evolve how I think about it, right? How I want to do it, how I want to structure over the course of time. And so I'm always fascinated to hear. Because no one's gonna have the same answer. Yeah. And no one just ever just says, like, yeah, 100 or, yeah, 0%. There's a reason behind it. Because it's such a big decision.
- [63:44]
Dan Silva
Right.
- [63:45]
Dan De Silva
Because part of our legacy is part of our, you know, when we have children. And the other reasoning is, like, some people think it spoils the child. Some people think it's, you know, changes their. It steals from them, like, their skills and their. Their grit and things that come with it. And most people that I know and most people I interviewed didn't come from money. It's very rare. You know, I just think about it.
- [64:07]
Dan Silva
Like, the tension it could create, like, if I have four kids. And again, if we go with the vesting idea, what if one of them can't find love or just doesn't. Isn't. You know, has a hard time, like, then it creates animosity for the others. So it's a really hard decision to. Exactly so. Because not everyone's created the same and shouldn't have to punish somebody because of something that they, you know, they lack. So it's a hard. It's a hard question.
- [64:35]
Dan De Silva
Are there any products, brand services that you have going on?
- [64:39]
Dan Silva
Not to the public. I don't really sell anything to the.
- [64:42]
Dan De Silva
The public.
- [64:43]
Dan Silva
Just exist.
- [64:44]
Dan De Silva
It just exists. Okay. Where can people find you on social. What are the things.
- [64:49]
Dan Silva
Anything at Da Silva, on Instagram and some random YouTube channel I'll create again. So not my old one, just new one. I'll be. I'll be around.
- [64:58]
Dan De Silva
You'll be around.
- [64:59]
Dan Silva
You guys will see me.
- [65:00]
Dan De Silva
All right, guys, I appreciate you listening here. Again, it's really important when you, like, comment, subscribe. It obviously helps us share this message. Keeping us in the top 50 in the world is because of you guys. When you hear certain things and some of the things, the messages that pop up, just keep in mind, share it with your friend. Talk to them about it. They might be wanting to get it and become an affiliate, and you could send them this video, and all of a sudden, you might change the course of their life. They might go from making four grand a month at their job to four grand a day because you sent them something. Learning from him about being an affiliate. So when you hear things from these episodes. Just keep it in mind that by sharing, communicating and talking about money and talking about business, talking about salaries, talking about being an affiliate or talking about building a course or creative program, et cetera, having those discussions with your friends could literally change the course of their life by having open discussions. I appreciate you guys. We'll see you next Monday here@themoney Mondays.com.