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You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the show where it's just me, you and the mic on this episode. Today we're continuing our series of the things that I've learned from some of the people I've had here on the podcast. And today's episode's all about my buddy, Dan Fleishman. Dan's an angel investor and founder. He's one of the most well connected people that I've ever met in my life. And, you know, I've heard some people talk bad about Dan online. I. My thing is like, look, I've always had great experiences with Dan. He's always been very helpful to me. He's always been a mentor to me. He's always been, he's sent me a ton of business over the years. And I genuinely believe that he just wants the best for people and he's rooting for you. And there's not, I can't say that about everybody. Of everybody that I've met over the years, I can't say that everybody's rooting for you, which is a crazy thing because they will do it publicly, they'll look like they're doing it publicly, but you can kind of read, read between the lines privately and understand that like, oh, they're only doing this because they want to make sure that they're in with you in case you make it big. Whereas there's other people who are just rooting for you because they want to see people do well. And that's, that's how I feel Dan has always been. So I appreciate Dan and his mentorship and his friendship in my life. Here's a few of the lessons that I took away from our most recent conversation. We've had probably, I don't know, three or four, maybe five different podcast conversations, both on his show and on my show. But this some of my lessons and takeaways from the most recent conversation I had with him. The three investing filters. This is number one, the three investing filters. Does anybody care? Are they voting with their wallets? Do they have real sales? And this is specifically talking about angel investing, which is the, in my opinion, riskiest form of investing. And I'm not even sure that's my opinion. I think that's factual. I'm really thinking about It, I guess maybe like crypto altcoins or NFTs or something might be a little bit more that way, but, but angel investing is one of the riskiest categories out there. And Dan has put in money to over 60 something companies now at this point. So he's somebody who has done a lot more of this than anybody else that I personally have a real relationship with. So does anybody care? Are they voting with their wallets? Do they have real sales? So Dan's framework is very simple. First, it's the founder, who's the person, who's the team, who is like the, the, at the, the thing that I like about founder investors is that they understand the game. They know that the original idea probably is not going to be the thing that ends up making money, which is why they invest so heavily into teams who can be adaptive, who can change, who can collect feedback from an obstacle and then change the product a little bit. Tweak and test over here and then build a new landing page and get some more leads from this. There, there are people who can just figure it out. So first the founder. Second, does anybody actually care about the product? Not your family, not your friends, but strangers, People who will pull out their credit card without you in the room and actually pay and vote with their wallets. Are people voting with their wallets. That's one of the things that I learned. Probably the most running software company is that anybody and everybody will tell you it's a great idea. They'll just be like, oh, this is so great, man. I can't believe this doesn't exist. Wow. Well, let me know when you're a billionaire. You don't, don't forget about me when you're on the yacht, you know what I mean? Then you sink a half a million dollars into a product, building it, and then go back to those same people and they're like, well, you know, it's, it's a cool idea, but it's not for me. And all of a sudden they ghost you. So getting votes, getting yeses and no's and taking surveys, like all of that is somewhat important. But the most important thing is to get somebody to vote with their wallet. If somebody will actually pay you for the thing, that's how you know that there's something there, even if it's discounted, you know what I mean? Like before you have the final product even done, before you even have the offer finished, before you even know exactly what it's going to look like, how it's going to work, et CETERA et cetera, get on the phone with a bunch of people and offer the thing and try to actually get them to pay with their cred credit card and give them a massive discount, give them a big incentive. So you'll be the first person we're going to work with you, we're going to make it more custom to your needs, whatever you got, whatever you got to do to get those first people in the door and where they're actually paying money and they're invested financially and, and with their energy into the project, then you know that there's something there. You know that somebody's willing to spend some money on this in order to solve the problem that they have. Now you can move forward with the solution and try to iterate on the product and make it deliverable in a way that actually makes sense for them to use on a day to basis. And then finally, he prefers his. His particular investment strategy is investing in companies that are already doing 2 to 20 million dollars in revenue. So he's not gambling on the idea, he's betting on proof. Now, in the world of angel investing, the valuations that you're going to get are significantly worse in that scenario, but you are also getting a better bet because you've moved past the product market fit stage. So you know the angel investors with the most successful portfolios, sometimes the ones who call this out before the company has any revenue, you know the Jason Calacanis of the world who made a killing on, on companies like Facebook and, and like Calm, the meditation app, he invests in a lot of these companies pre revenue. And so when you invest in a pre revenue startup you get a very favorable valuation. However, the odds of the company being becoming successful are extremely low. And most angel investors that I've talked to understand that 9 out of 10 of the investments that they make are probably going to go to. But when they take those big bets on pre revenue startups, they're hoping that the one that does do well is going to return more than a 10x to them and more than make up for all the losses they took along the way. So does anybody care? Are they voting with their wallets? Do they have real sales? This episode of the show is brought
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number two. An idea is never the business the founder is. We kind of talked about this a little bit earlier, but he's, you know, dozens and dozens of investments deep at this point. And his number one qualifier still to this day is the founder. The product is going to change 14, 20, 25, 30 times before it finds its actual real form. What doesn't change is whether or not that founder has the passion to stick with that idea through the hard times, the good times and all the times in between. Are they going to be the one that's hustling to get to next convention to sell out of the product on the floor? And they're booking meetings and they're they, they did. They're just. They do what it takes. And he, I talked about, actually a friend of mine, Jeff Fenster, whose company I invested into, and then I ended up opening up a franchise as well of the same company, Everbowl, and he talked about how they had 30 to 40 locations, something like that, around Covid time. And it's a quick service restaurant, it's acai bowl business. And obviously they had to shut down all of their stores during COVID and because the vast majority of them were in Southern California, which was one of the most strict places in country in terms of COVID shutdowns. So what did they do? They pivoted and they, and they made a bundle of like a frozen Acai product and then they went to QVC and ended up selling like 2, 2 million, $3 million worth of, of frozen Acai product that they shipped to direct to consumer during COVID to stay afloat during that time. Like, it's that, it's that founder mentality of somebody who's just going to be like, okay, this black swan event happened. What are we going to do to do to tackle that rather than just being like, you know, it is what it is. I guess, you know, we, we tried it. It's not going to work now we're going to lose money. We have to lay off all these employees. Instead of doing that, they just figured out another path forward. So an idea is never the business. The founder is the business. Number three. We talked a little bit about crypto and bitcoin because I know Dan's big in that space. And so I was asking a little bit about this. He said bitcoin is inevitable. It's just a factor of time. And he's not pitching this, by the way. And neither one of us are financial advisors. You do the work, you do the math. You figure out if bitcoin's a good investment for you. I still like it. He still likes it. Plenty of people. But he was just, he was, he was not pitching. He's just doing the math. He was saying that there's the, the biggest advantage is that there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. That's. It's. A, it's by definition, it's coded into the product. It is a by definition, limited supply. And 4 1/2 million of the 21 million Bitcoin are already permanently lost. People are dying. They lose their laptop, they send to the wrong wallet, they leave micro fractions unrecovered every day. The real total supply actually Shrin rings. Meanwhile, institutions, governments, individuals, they keep accumulating so, so supply goes down, demand goes up. It's not super complicated to, to think about what the future could look like. And he started installing Bitcoin ATMs and casinos back in, in Vegas back in 2014. So Dan, somebody who's been around that space for a really long time, he's not thinking in terms of cycles like every, you know, because bitcoin is, is very, very cyclical and volatile. It's all over the place. I mean right now I think it's down to 50% of its all time high which was I think right around this time last year, maybe a little bit earlier last year it hit that all time high of like 128,000 or something and now it's down to like 63. So it's literally cut in half. But I have not touched any of my bitcoin or my crypto. In fact I bought some more yesterday because in my mind I'm not. I don't care what it does in the next 12 months. I don't care what it does in the past six months or the next 18 months. I believe that in 10 years from now it's going to be worth a lot more than it's currently worth today. And the only hesitation that I have on bitcoin is that there's nothing real behind it. It's basically propped up by the perception of value. But most things are propped up by the perception of value these days. Even the dollar doesn't have any actual backing. It's propped up by the perception of value. So in terms of the store of value, in terms of a potential currency, I think that more people like the fact that it's not as regulated. I think they like the fact that it's not bogged down by banking institutions, interest rates and things like that. So I, I still ultimately am bullish on bitcoin personally. Again, not a financial advisor. Do your own research and make the decision that's best for you. But Dan believes in it. I believe in it. I think it's, you know, like I said 10 years from now. I don't see how it's not, you know, a 5 or 10x of what it is, you know, currently, today, even of what it, of what it was at its all time high just a few months ago. So do it, do it, do what you will with that. But I'm a believer. Number four, show up when you say you're going to up. I've known Dan for a really long Time. And this is honestly one of the things that separates him from, from a lot of other people. He drove, he drove a half an hour in the wrong direction to make it to this recording. The, the interview that I'm talking about right now, just because he said he would do it. He, he was literally in la. I was in la, we were both kind of there for different reasons. And then he almost missed his flight in burbank out of LA that day by driving 30 minutes out of the way to come to the studio location that I had in order to do this interview because he said he was going to do it. So his whole thing is, you know, I won't say that I'm going to do it unless I'm going to do it. And once I say it, I'm going to do it. No matter what it costs me in time or inconvenience or money, I'm just going to do it. And that compounding effect of follow through over 20, 30 years of his career is exactly how you end up with the kind of relationships and reputation that he has. Because again, he's probably one of the most well connected people I've ever met. And it shows because this is who he is, this is what he does. If he, if he says he's going to do something, he does it. He treats people in relationships the way that he wants to be treated and he's done it for decades now, which will compound significantly over time. Number five, do a thousand little things every day and trust the math, do the little things, essentially, is what I'm saying. And this is how he thinks about relationships and business development in general. 3, 4, 5 connections a day is what he talks about. A thousand a year. 20 years of that is 20,000 activities that he's done to, to ensure that he's built himself an incredible network over that duration of time. It doesn't feel like a crazy amount of activity in the moment. When you look up over the course of a year, two years, five years, 10 years, you've built this network reputation, a business that almost looks effortless from the outside because the work was distributed across two decades. And so in this particular instance, what he's talking about is he does a couple of things every day that, that moves this needle for him and it's basically this like he'll just text three, four people a day, that's it. Three, four people a day that he hasn't talked to in a while and just say, hey, what's going on? How can I help? What are you up to, you know, is there anything I can do to help you? And just that one activity again, compounded over enough period of time, you've helped a significant amount of people do a lot of really cool things. And, and then you're, you're, you're just, you're, you're always in people's awareness when you're reaching out like that. And it makes people ultimately want to root for you. It makes people like, I've this in the past, which is why I believe in generosity so much and being willing to be a giver. It's never a bad thing to have a high volume of high quality people conspiring for your good. It's never a bad thing. And this is one of the activities that Dan has done in his life to ensure that he has dug his well before he's thirsty. So he very rarely has an ask. But when he does, there's no shortage of people that will come and be there for him at the drop of a hat, at a single text message because of all the stuff that he's done for them over the years. So he just made a name for himself, reputation for himself being the generous guy. And so, you know, Dan has done a lot of things in entrepreneurial space on his own. And then with all the volume of things that he invests in, the events that he does, the masterminds he does, he's doing like 40, 50 events a year. He's got his podcasts content. He's just somebody who truly lives out the things that he talks about other people living out. He's a practice what you preach type of guy, which I've always appreciated about Dan. So anyway, go check out my full conversation with Dan either on my podcast or my full conversation with Dan over on his podcast, Money Mondays, which is, which is always up on the top charts for marketing and business and personal finance and things like that. So go check out some of the stuff from Dan. But that's it for this episode of the show. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll catch you guys in the next one.
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Peace.