He's Worth $50M and Spends $110K a Month on a Zoo That Makes $0

0:00At 17, Dan Fleischman snuck into a Las Vegas clothing convention he was too young to register for, using$5 business cards from a vending machine. He walked out with a million dollars in orders, and the next year he did nine and a half million. At 23 years old, he took his energy drink company public. And today, Dan has 43 angel investments. He's raised$56 million across 18 different companies through his syndicate, and only three of them have failed. One acai chain he backed with a$500 ,000 check has gone from 13 locations to 104. Under oath, he says his net worth is for sure over 50 million, but he can't give me the exact number.

0:36And by the end of this episode, you'll understand exactly why. This conversation fits Hampton so well. Hampton is a private network of high growth founders doing on average 25 million in revenue. And a lot of them have started and sold companies just like this. Dan's whole philosophy fits into one sentence. Go all in on one company with your time, then spread your money everywhere else. Founders inside of Hampton argue about that exact trade-off all the time. I get to bring those conversations out into the open on this show money-wise. If that sounds like your world, check it out at joinhampton.com.

1:03In this episode, we're going to go over a lot. First, how a kid whose family lived on two grand a month flipped candy bars, saved$43 ,000, and then spent it all on a clothing brand instead of college. Then we'll get into the full money breakdown, the syndicate, the carry, a$9 million ranch with a lake and a zoo and over a million dollars a year in travel. Dan's awesome. I can't wait for you to listen to this episode. This is Money Wise. I'm your host, Daniel Burke. Here's your guest, Dan. Welcome back to another episode of Money Wise. I have an awesome guest today, Dan Fleischman. Really excited to hear your story.

1:34I wanted to start from the beginning. I was doing a little bit of digging on you, and it looks like early on you were selling baseball cards, and you were only four years old. Walk me through that story and really even what went through your mind at four years old that led to, hey, I'm going to start being an entrepreneur is really what that was. So my parents, we just didn't have much money, so they were selling Levi's jeans out of the baccala van every Saturday and Sunday at the swap meet in L.A. And so while they were selling their jeans at the back of a van, I had a little table a few feet away and I had my baseball cards.

2:08First I had like 20 cards, then I had 100 cards and I had 400 cards. You know, I'd make like$4 and$21 and$18 and one time like$100,$200. And I would just like buy and flip and sell my way. And because I was so little, a lot of fun deals would happen because people would overpay. You know, they pay me 10 bucks for a$6 card. Doesn't sound like a big difference when you do that you know multiple times a day every day you know every weekend rain or shine it adds up and so I had people give me like trades of cards like hey take this card that's like 50 bucks for your card that's 30 bucks and blah blah blah and so this just kept happening and I'd be five years old six years old seven years old and now I had experience and so anyways I hustled my way up to getting a pretty big collection through those first few years and then I started buying magic the gathering cards and pogs and all these other things too So you've been an entrepreneur your entire life.

3:04Oh, yeah. Walk me through your money story. You've had a very successful career. You've done a lot of different things. I think almost 50 different angel investments. Is that correct? Yeah, 43. Yep. So you're leveraged in like kind of every direction of the universe. Walk me through your thinking there. Why? And lead me up to today and we'll have a good conversation. Yep. So we didn't have much money growing up. And, you know,$24 ,000 to support a family of four in Los Angeles back then. You know, my mom and dad were making two grand a month between working at Century 21 real estate and my dad driving a taxi.

3:41There just wasn't much capital. And then when they got divorced, my mom and I lived in this 92-year-old lady's one bedroom. And they just slept on, you know, slept on the couch. And so money to me was like, I need to make money to help my mom and to not be a burden to her. so like eight nine ten years old i was selling candy out of my backpack at school my mom would give me 13 to buy candy at costco i then flip it for 30 give her her 13 bucks back have seven and was she teaching you how to do this like the economics behind flipping or were you just taking her 13 bucks and choosing oh wait i can turn this into 26 if i try this way and that bought it for the 32 cents to 34 cents depending on the candy size per bar and i was selling for one dollar so I was flipping at a, you know, 200 to 300%.

4:27And that was just your, your own nine-year-old brain came up with that. I just want to sell for a dollar. I don't want chains. I don't want quarters. Yeah. Okay. And so, uh, I would sell my candy bars for, and I did the same with cereal boxes, like mini cereal boxes. Um, I sold those really well. Same thing that would range from like 24 cents to 42 cents. Yeah. Sell them for a dollar each. And so my backyard was just full of like candy and cereal and I had to avoid the sun, avoid rainy days. Like I had to, you know, and um and that was just a natural progression and everyone knew to come to me for candy bars and cereal because i had it in my backpack at all times and i would just it was a walk-in grocery store yes literally if i could carry apple juice boxes i would you know like anything i could in my backpack and i would just roam around the school all the time there was no sign but everyone knew right word spreads yeah and so that's how my initial hustle was and then 15 years old i started working my first job then three jobs at the same time i was working the stadium in san diego he knows cracker jacks here cotton candy here like i was that was you i was there i was that guy no and then i was working at ruby's diner with the sailor's cap on and i was working for a stock broker for 20 bucks per session for four hours at a time 20 bucks under the table in cash and so i worked these three jobs simultaneously over the next three years i saved up 43 000 during those three years.

5:46So like 12 to 15 grand a year for a kid and making, you know, it was a lot of money. It's not bad at all. Saved up 43 ,000 to pay for San Diego State University, but I never went to San Diego State. I am spending the 43 ,000 when I was 17 and a half to start a clothing brand called Who's Your Daddy? I trademarked the catchphrase Uzi Daddy like the slogan. I was selling Who's Your Daddy t-shirts at lunch at school for 15 bucks each. I was buying them for$4 to$5 each and then selling them at school well i sold over 150 shirts i now have over two grand i'm basically a millionaire right i'm 15 years old 15 years old 17 years old slinging t-shirts and um i went to a clothing convention in las vegas called magic i wasn't even allowed to go inside because you have to be 18 to register i was 17 and three quarters of the time and so i got lucky that a taxi cab driver knew to take me to this vending machine where you can make business cards for five bucks you just type in your name and it literally give you like generic business cards for five bucks go back to the convention center like oh shoot i don't have my driver's license but i have my business card and so i snuck into this convention i got a booth there we do one million dollars in sales this is the same time the same day that sean john pup daddy's company sean john launched in 1999 his booth was like a million dollars next to me on my left was a brand called fubu Damon John's walking by with LL Cool J, Mary J Blige, Evander Holyfield.

7:11And I'm just a little kid like, anyone about it? I write a million dollars in orders because the buyers for Fugu and Sean John are standing in front of my booth waiting for their appointments. And so I just, you know, anyways, do a million dollars in orders. Don't even have a manufacturer to make that much clothing. And then build up from there. And to give you the fast forward version, the next year, we do$9.5 million in sales and just scale the company. This is 2000? What year is this? 2000, yep. 2000. And then over the next couple of years, just focus on clothing and preparing to launch an energy drink.

7:44Energy drinks under the same brand name, Who's Your Daddy? Make a zero sugar, zero carb, zero calorie energy drink. Make an 8.4 ounce and a 16 ounce and a shot version. Win flavor of the year on BevNet Magazine, which is the number one magazine in the beverage industry. 900 competitors, we win number one. Take that, go pitch a bunch of chain stores, go public on the stock market on April 1st, 2005. I'm 23 years old at the time. I'm a child. How does a 23-year-old go public? I want you to explain this to me. Like I have no idea what the stock market is. I've never listened to any business podcast.

8:24Like what does that process look like in a nutshell? So to go public takes about two years and$2 million of accounting, legal, and auditors. It is a very strenuous process and very few companies have ever gone public because of how hard it is and how much scrutiny there is about every detail. You literally hire an auditor to audit your auditor that the SEC auditor audits the auditor auditor. Just a bunch of auditors just auditing. That is the most miserable thing I could possibly imagine doing with my brain. Actual torture. It is so frustrating. And again, this is 2005. Really 2003 and 2004 leading up to it.

9:01And so it's not like you've got social media or fancy emails or mobile apps or AI. It's like, I'm going to mail you in the mail and send a carrier pigeon to bring it to you. Like it was real slow. No one's texting each other updates. It's like 100 % offline. There was no smartphones. And so that process, I had investment bankers and lawyers and accountants and auditors help me with the process. And it was very, very, very expensive. $2 million on average to go public. And it's two a year, so you got to be willing to fight the good fight. While you're spending this money with no return, you're willing to go fight and do that.

9:39So I did. We went public. And that allowed for us to do a lot of strategic deals. It made us stand out to our competitors, made us stand out to the retailers because now they trusted in us. A lot of distributors, Budweiser, Coors, Miller, Pepsi, started buying from us because there's 900 drinks. How can you get more trusted than being public, right? you know that the SEC goes through so much to prove you. And because we were already in Ralph's, Vaughn, 7-Eleven, car washes, chain stores, et cetera, we had a NASCAR at the time. So we had a Hoosnady NASCAR racing. We won the Baja, the Baja 1000, the buggy thing.

10:16We won that. So I would use those things as leverage, right? We're on the cover of a video game because we won first place. We have a NASCAR, did not win, but we had a NASCAR in the races. And we had all these different sponsorship deals, endorsement deals with like randy couture versus chuck liddell the ufc fight you know big championship randy couture on his shorts like we were doing creative things to fight red bull monster and rockstar these guys are bazillion dollar 800 pound gorillas and so that's how the story came to be uh to get you to when we went public and tell me about that day you're finally public the ticker's right there people can buy how does that feel what went through your mind what do you do first so it's very interesting because again it's not a social media era so like you're reading about it on cnn.com you're waiting i literally i don't want to date myself i literally can't imagine yeah and so it was just like waiting to watch on fox news waiting to watch on the wall street journal to come out the next day the new york times to come out the next day like it was you know it was a moment of like calling people or them calling me but it's literally like calling wasn't much of texting obviously and so this was like a big day for us but it felt like all right well now we really got to get to work because now the world is watching and there's a lot of scrutiny when you're publicly traded you got to file a 10q and an 8k filing every single quarter so it feels like every single month and so because of that we're just doing taxes like constantly non-stop our cfo would make us sit in the office every wednesday for hours and hours and hours.

11:51And I, it was a very fresh aim process, but it's worth it. The juice is worth the squeeze. So let's do this properly. I want to know now, where does your money come from? And let's go stream by stream because I know there's Elevator Studio. There's what you do with the Mastermind. Like let's kind of break down one. I would love to know your overall net worth now, 15, 20 years removed from that story. And then also like where you're leveraged because you mentioned almost 50 different companies that you have investments in and you're operating some still to this day. So my net worth, we can figure out together because I don't know the exact number.

12:28We can talk through it because there's a lot of investments that my net worth is based on stock in private companies. And so most of my investments are not into public stocks. I do investments in public stocks. There's 10 main stocks, but my investments are into physical brands and products that I raise capital for and cut checks into. And then I have what's called a carry. I get a 20 % carry on what I raised. So I raised$56 million for 18 companies, averaging$3 million to$6 million per raise. Out of those companies, only three have failed. Normally, it's the other way around. It's three wins, 15 failures.

13:06We've had three losses, and we have these other 15 companies that are still doing well. And the$56 million raised across how many companies? 18 companies. 18 companies. 18 companies. And so the average check size is between three to six million. Some of them were only one to two million, but most of them are three to six million bucks. And then we did follow on rounds for some of the brands like skinny pasta. We did three million twice for them. Now it's called it's skinny. We did four million for joyride candy, which is a great because we did four million and 18 million valuation. Their last round was 30 to 135.

13:41So that's a big win for my investors. and also for me, since I get a 20 % carry on that deal. And this fund, this is like a syndicate that you have investors paying you to then go invest in companies? Yeah, so Elevator Studio is my main agency. That's the business that fuels my life for the last 15 years. And what does that company do? Elevator Studio has 3 ,500 influencers and celebrities that we pay brands, products, and mobile apps. The brands get us the money. We then pay the influencers to do those social media posts. So Elevator Studio, I use like a venture studio. That's where I do my investments into those 43 companies.

14:19That's where the investments came from. Either a check from me personally or a check from Elevator Studio or a trade from Elevator Studio for services. So instead of me doing 100K in services, they might give us 100K in equity instead of me in lieu of cash. Other times I might do a combination. I'll give you a quarter million dollars in cash, but I also want a bonus quarter million. So I get 500 ,000 in stock for doing this because I'm going to help you get more famous with the brand. So we did that for - Do you like that type of barter or is that typically where you land after trying to just sell the service outright?

14:51So typically I'm trying to invest in companies that are my clients. If I see success or I see that they're good, or - That makes sense. I'm pitching brands to invest or I'm pitching them to present at my events, or I just get 300 to 400 pitches throughout the year. I probably read 80 to 120 of them. and then that actually like fit my, you know, my ethos. And then from there, I do about six to 10 investments per year that I either raise money for or invest in personally. And when you invest in personally, how much liquid cash do you have access to for investments like that? Yep. So my personal investments range from 25 ,000 to 250 ,000, 50K and 100K being the normal check from a personal check.

15:36When we do it through the syndicate, it's 3 million to 6 million. and then I get a 20 % carry from doing that, that all the investors know about. Obviously, I have 2 ,214 investors in the elevator syndicate, which is free for people to join. And then they pay a carry only on profits that they make. So if they invest 100K, get back 300K, they would pay 20 % carry on the 200K profit part, not the 100K that they deployed initially. If they make no money, they'll just get an average return or just get their money back. We make nothing. and I don't take a 2 % carry even though I totally can and no one would complain.

16:13I don't take the 2 % carry. I pay for all legal accounting, marketing services, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that is going to be even more often soon. Like I'm doing one tomorrow and then I'm doing another one 10 days later. And so I'm raising money for like a Sprouts, a seed company. They did 10.4 million revenue. They'll do 18 million this year. I'm raising for them tomorrow morning. 10 days later, I'm doing it for like a healthy shot beverage for hangovers and things like that that did five and a half bills. And so I want companies doing 5 million to 20 million revenue because it reduces my risk rate, especially bringing other investors in.

16:49I don't want egg on my face from failures. It still can happen, obviously. But my success rate is much higher when a company is already doing 12 million rather than just getting started. Dan talks a lot about carry. So I'm going to break down exactly what carry is for the few of us who don't know. Most investment funds charge two and 20. That's a 2 % management fee every year on the money they manage, plus 20 % of the profits, which is called the carry. Dan only takes the carry. On$56 million raised, the 2 % he's skipping comes to more than a million dollars a year. His syndicate put in$4 million at an$18 million valuation, and the next round came in at$135 million.

17:26Dan gets 20 % of that gain, and he only gets paid when his investors get paid. So I started taking notes to try to help you come to a net worth number here uh i'm lost as much as you probably are but it sounds like you have access to a lot of collateral through elevator studio and like is there a cap of what you're at liberty to go invest in through elevator studio syndicate like you can't go invest more than x amount per check yeah so we do three million to six million per deal and then can you do more than that no we could but we never that's never would i always say the same thing We find companies doing 5 million, 20 million revenue.

18:04We deploy 3 million to 6 million to that company. We'll do the follow-on round for the same amount as well. Even if they're like that 10 or 20 million, we'll only put in 3 to 6 million. I just like that sweet spot. I have no reason to change it. Even when there's like a superstar company, I still want to do the same thing. I just like the repetitive. Yeah, let's put that to the side then. And then liquid net worth, all the syndicate investments and private equity aside, what is your cash, public stock equity, What does that look like if you were to break it down for me? Public stock equity, I don't really invest that much.

18:36I put in like a couple hundred grand a year for the last 14 years. I don't really, and I never sell. On the real estate side, I did the big transaction with the ranch. I bought a$6.6 million ranch, spent$5 million. All cash? Yeah. Spent$5 million total construction,$3 million personally on building a lake, building the wedding venue building a zoo with 200 208 animals there at the zoo building the the property wow i spent a lot of money on energy on it but that comes a lot of carrying costs i cover 110 000 to 140 000 a month in overhead and there's not really much income on the property so that's a big financial burden so that's like nine million their asset yeah uh that was more labor of love i was hoping there'd be income from weddings and from the zoo but the county wouldn't let me host weddings.

19:27And so I spent 1.5 million dollars building a lake, a 240 ,000 gallon lake for a wedding venue. I've never done a wedding. And so I've never met someone who's built a lake. So that is a first for that. 220 animals. Is that like a typical zoo? I have no idea how many animal zoos have. So we're not a public facing zoo because of the fact that the county won't let us be. And so it's a private zoo, but we're much more of a rescue. You're like Tiger king uh we're most of our rescue uh we we rescue the animals um okay that's cool they live an amazing life there and we've done it for a lot are they exotic animals like like lions and tigers and stuff or is it more like domestic we can't have lions and tigers uh but we do have uh zebras we have uh what's it called uh emus and ostriches and oh cool 14 foot snakes and 16 foot snakes and 18 foot snakes and 14 foot pythons and awesome those type of things but no lions and tigers embarrassed just look at the numbers of that ranch he bought it for 6.6 million dollars and put another 5 million into construction with 3 million coming from him personally then it cost him somewhere between 110 and 140 thousand dollars a month to run which works out to about a million and a half dollars a year and almost none of it comes back in he calls it a labor of love but this same guy is going to spend the next 20 minutes explaining why he won't pay three thousand dollars for a nicer plane seat.

20:49I feel like everyone that comes on the show has that one thing they spend a bunch of money on without doing all the calculations. It's just something that's important to them. His is 208 rescued animals and a lake, a big lake. I ask every guest on this show what their net worth is. Most of them have to think about it. And it's not because they're hiding something. It's because their money is in dozens of different places. Two brokerages, a business account, some real estate, a crypto wallet they forgot about, a syndicate, and so much more. But we know that personal finance really is not that simple.

21:19Sylvia fixes that. Sylvia is an AI built for one very specific and important job, managing your money. You connect your bank accounts, your brokerage, your credit cards, your crypto. You add your real estate and whatever else you own. And now it knows your entire financial picture. And you can just ask it questions in plain English, like, should I refinance? Or how do I lower my tax rate? Or what's actually risky in my portfolio? where you can ask, what's the smartest way to pass this to my kids? You could ask ChatGPT those questions, but ChatGPT doesn't know what you own. It also isn't trained on personal finance.

21:54Sylvia is. In accuracy tests on tax, mortgages, and credit cards, it beat ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok. In all three categories, Sylvia won. The more complicated your money is, the better Sylvia gets. Their data shows people who use Sylvia regularly grow their network faster than people who don't. And this is the case at every income level and net worth bracket. Go to Sylvia.com, connect to your accounts, ask it the question you've been avoiding, and start understanding your personal finance more accurately than you ever have. So you spent, let's say,$9 million on all that. Yeah. Lake, ranch, zoo.

22:33And then what else? And then real estate outside there, I don't do because I'm always investing into companies. We have two houses, primary houses, correct? In LA and in Vegas? Both are rentals. I don't buy real estate outside of where I bought the ranch. My capital is designed for private equity investments. I like buying pieces of companies. And because I'm good at it and I can help the success because of my network, it's better for me than buying a$2 million building or a$10 million building or$80 million building and waiting over time. I'm not against real estate investing whatsoever. It's just not for me because I'm so connected to angel investments, which is what I enjoy doing.

23:16I have$500 ,000 I put in one check 2018 into Everbowl, an acai bull chain. That chain had 13 locations at the time. Now we have 104. And we open one new location every six days. That company, I put in$500 ,000 in 2018. I raised$5 million in 2019. I bought all the stores, 23 locations in 2020 during the shutdown, during COVID. And then my friends and I did like a trade. We had other restaurants and we traded the equity, traded for equity into the company later for those locations so that the company could manage them. And so that will be a big one for me because that company is poised to exit. You know, we're 104 locations running a debt free.

24:02And you have majority ownership in that? Not the majority. There's still a founder and... Okay. the guys from GoFundMe, they put in$15 million in one check. So they do have more than I do. But we are one of the largest shareholders, yes. Myself and my syndicate, both. And so that business to me is one of my passion projects. I help them a lot scale. It's a great founder running that business. But that one will be a big one. The Joyride Candy will be a really big one because we're number one in Target for over a year now in the$100 million sales range. Like it's a big business. And we came in early on that one um i invested and got the the carry on that one which would be a big deal and there's other highlight companies that we own i have a sports card store chain with gary vaynerchuk and steve aoki uh called cards and coffee uh we have multiple multiple locations selling sports cards and pokemon um i have elevator mortgage which is we do mortgages we have elevator funding which we do we've done 28 million dollars in loans so you're kind of didn't involve the real estate to your point earlier just through elevator mortgage yeah but just as a service provider not as a not buying real estate uh elevator funding we do loans uh typically like five thousand to 250 thousand dollar type loans i've done 28 million dollars in loans through elevator funding uh two small businesses but it's very high interest um for that for like short-term loans um that's in partnership with a large loan company they do they've done$8 billion in loans to their company.

25:33We have the Elevator AI company literally launched yesterday. So I haven't even announced that publicly on. We've finished it after many, many months of doing that. There you go. And then Elevator Studio itself is the main business, right? We throw 42 events a year, Elevator events. The 42 events a year is my, I'd say my most active business that I'm most actively involved in. I'm throwing one in 34 hours from now. throwing live events is my main core business from like a collecting people perspective where the investors come from the donations to charity come from booking me as a speaker to at their events i also have elevator speakers my as a sub agency of elevator studio elevator speak so you're just i mean leveraged all over the place is it um i'm curious because i i resonate with some of that I don't know if generalist is the right word, but why not, you know, if you were to tell a founder or even an upcoming founder, someone wants to go all in on something, you as someone who has kind of gone all in all over the place, what would you tell that person about, hey, double down on this business and 100 exit or maybe leverage yourself across 10 to 100 businesses and 5x all of those?

26:48What's your opinion on this? So the first 13 years of my life was only one company and one company. So for 10 years from 1999 to 2009, I only did one company. I was completely all in. You wouldn't see me even at a wedding or a funeral not wearing the clothes or having the drink in my pocket. Never. I always had the brand on. When I did the online poker site, I only had the poker patch on. I put the poker patch on my suits. I put it on my sweatsuits. I put it on my sleeping pajamas. My logo was everywhere at Albert Cram. So I only invest into founders that are like the old version of Dan. once I had my events and had built up enough capital I then started becoming angel investor a bunch of companies the turning point was in 2011 when online poker was shut down my company was worth 65 million dollars on that day and so I never want to have all my eggs in one basket again once the government shut down poker and I lost zillions of dollars in one one day I just felt like I'm going to become an angel investor from that moment and never have that situation ever again.

27:47So my sentiment is you should focus all in on your core business, your core business, the capital you receive from it. After you're done investing into and loaning money to your main core company, you've got to diversify with investments, not with attention. So I would not invest into a founder that has two or three other businesses or any side hustles. I won't because I need them to be all in on that thing because I'm bringing other investors too. I don't want my other investors would be like, why is that guy also a DJ? Why does he also have a clothing brand when he's selling healthy kombucha brand, you know, beverages?

28:21That doesn't make any sense. And they don't want the attention going away. However, the same guy investing into a clothing brand or investing into a music studio, investing capital, perfectly fine. And I would suggest invest into the stock market, invest in the real estate. I would want them to invest in other things, but not invest their time and energy because their time and energy is so much more useful and so much bigger return all in on that one company. If you're old enough to remember 2011, in April of that year, the U.S. government shut down the major online poker sites overnight. People in the poker world still call it Black Friday.

28:54Dan said his company was worth$65 million the morning it happened. The next day, it was effectively gone. His main investment rule came out from that day. Diversify with your investments, not your attention. He won't back a founder who has a side hustle, but he wants that founder's money spread across a lot of things. His whole philosophy is that one company should get your time, but your money should go everywhere else. So add it all up for me. If you had to put one number on what Dan Fleischman is worth today, not what the internet says and not what you are... List here. I mean, I'm trying to come up with it.

29:28Is it 10 million? Is it 50 million? Do you have a number that you would communicate if under oath on the stand? Oh, my net worth is for sure over 50 million, for sure. from that's from the syndicate and from what's liquid and do you have an approximate breakdown let's say 60 million non-liquid and 10 million liquid would that be fair i don't know the numbers it's higher than 50 to 60 million because the stock in some of the companies has grown dramatically especially some of the the ones that we highlight give a range um but the carry is what it's hard for me to figure out because i have to figure out from the 56 million let's say the 45 million is still at work what is all that worth is that 45 million is worth let's call it 500 million well i get 20 of that right some of it i split because some of it was with a partner the majority of it wasn't that's why there's a it would take me like two not two hours but like two days to like write all of it out because there's so many different investments that have different percentages and carries and so yeah some of those investments like for example the candy one going from 18 million so then a 135 to now the nose it's worth hundreds of millions my carrying that is substantial because you know it's a very big difference four million dollars if that four million dollars turns into a hundred i literally get you know 20 of 96 million in one right one day right so the low end let's conservatively look at what you've put into those and then what you have available to liquid what would that number be so the low end is 56 million is what was deployed into the syndicate the 43 investments let's call it a 100k average some of them were 250s and 500s but some of them were free so let's say 100k average across those that's 4.3 million out of the 43 investments pretty much every single company is still here so but i don't it'd take me a while to figure out valuations some of them are Yeah, and I'm not concerned about valuation as much as where the initial - Well, the valuation matters because I have my percentage based, my stock is worth that.

31:32Right. Right? Yeah, exactly. However, it's not liquid. So if I invested into Daniel's Clothing Brand and Daniel's Clothing Brand is worth 20 million and I have 10%, theoretically I have 2 million, but it's not liquid. I couldn't go on the street and sell my stock in Daniel's Clothing Brand for$2 million, right? And so I have to wait and hope for a liquidity event for Daniel to exit the company. I get it. I have private equity and I'm crossing my fingers. every day. Yeah. So that's why I'm not dancing around. That's fair. Mathematically, it's 43 angel investments for sure. It's 18 from the syndicate.

32:05And in between there, there's a lot of just deals. I also sit on the board of companies. We have a company called, we have a company called Commas, which I invested into. Our next round is 80 million at a 700 million valuation. I invest a lot. I never go. It's a lot less than 700 million. In every episode of Money Wise, I get the guests to share their exact net worth with me. And in this case, Dan wasn't dodging. When most of your wealth is stock in private companies, plus 20 % of the upside on$56 million you raised for other people, your net worth is a guess until somebody exits. A ton of people inside Hampton have balance sheets like this.

32:39Hampton's a private community of founders and CEOs doing on average 25 million a year, and members compare notes on all this stuff. How to value illiquid equity, how much to keep in cash, when to stop writing checks. This show is me bringing some of those conversations public. If you're living on a balance sheet just like this and trying to figure out the math of your actual net worth, you got to check out joinhampton.com. Hampton's the community just for you. So it's not a calculation that's just, you know, do a couple math tricks and then come up with a number. Yeah. That's okay. That's fine.

33:06I'm curious, the poker angle. You mentioned the poker online. You live in Vegas. I'm sure you're walking through casinos. Tell me more about poker. Do you still play? Are you still doing any large buy-ins or anything crazy? Or are you mostly, is that behind you? so I played even after the online poker site was shut down in America after Black Friday I still played in house games and I still played in casinos and still played in tournaments I like playing the high stakes cash games in spurts so sometimes I'll play them one or twice once or twice in a week sometimes I won't play them for two three four months in either way it's fine I don't have an addiction or a game like I gotta play yeah but when there's scenarios that I can go play with celebrities or athletes or business people I want to play because I have an advantage in the game and I want to network with them.

33:52I go to a lot of charity poker tournaments. When I go to those charity poker tournaments, I then want to play in a cash game before or after. October 1st, I'll be there in New York, 400 hedge fund guys, charity poker tournament for over a decade. I never miss it because it was also a game before and after that cash game wise. And we raise over $2 million for charity. It's the one from the show Billions, that poker game. That's the the charity poker tournament. I never miss it for many, many years. And so I still actively play in poker, especially charity tournaments, and then also in cash games.

34:23That's cool. I've played some cash games and some tournaments, and I wouldn't want to be in the same room as you because I would lose all my money, but it would be fun. It would be fun. Next time I'm in Vegas, maybe. I'd love to know more about the cards in coffee. I read the Form C revenue. where you guys went from 8.8 to 5.7 and lost some money, had some burns. Yeah, it wasn't a great story, I mean, from my vantage point, but I'm not as close to it as you are. I'd love for you to tell me more about that story. Speak that story a little bit. So we opened multiple stores, and some of the stores were partnership stores.

35:04We did it with Marshawn Lynch at the Mandalay Bay. We did some with sneakers, like a sneaker combination, where it's half sneakers, half cards, and those stores just didn't work. And so our business that had like a$12 million,$15 million a year dramatically dropped down to like$6 or$7 million. Simply because we had to shutter stores. And that overhead actually made us profitable. Meaning like closing the store that we're losing$500K million a year on because of covering the sneakers, covering extra employees, covering extra insurance, paying for 24-hour security at$30 an hour,$720 a day. Times that by$30, it's$22 ,000 a month.

35:44times up by 12 to a quarter million dollars a year for one guy to stand outside because we've got sneakers and cards we probably were never gonna lose a quarter million dollars in sneakers even with a robbery right so like those type of things going away actually made us more profitable because we shuttered those stores but the reality is the online breaking was the best part of the business the retail stores were not so now we just have our la store our hollywood store our calabasas store and then we're looking at doing it in certain, we want to reopen in certain cities, but much more strategic as far as the location and no partnerships.

36:18We're not doing any more sneaker stores, collabs, because those are what really hurt us. Yeah. Okay. What's your monthly spend look like now as you're launching, you know, almost 50 different masterminds a year, doing events, you're on a plane full-time. Are you traveling private or are you doing coach? Walk me through what a typical month looks like. Yep. So my overhead is, ranges, The ranch is obviously the big headache part of it, but that's phasing out now finally. But on a personal level, I fly private 20 to 30 % of the time, but I'm perfectly fine. Do you have your own jet or are you chartering everything?

36:55Charter or with friends or business associated. I am perfectly fine on Southwest Airlines. I fly Southwest all the time and fly JetBlue. And the same night I jump on a big fancy jet with my friend. but I'm perfectly fine. As long as I got a window seat and a Wi-Fi, I'm perfectly fine. There you go. Sometimes I'm fly first class. Sometimes I fly business class. Sometimes I'm in the exit row on Southwest. No qualms about it and I have no ego about it whatsoever and I do it all the time. Remember, I'm traveling 250 days a year. So if I were to - You're just doing whatever gets you there at some point.

37:33If I were to fly private, you're talking about 20K to 60K a flight times 250, that would be, I don't care how rich you are yeah it's a lot you know it's five ten million dollars a year in travel yeah so I spend a lot because of hotels um you know and I also have other people right if I have other people family members or staff members etc now you're getting two three four five rooms and you're staying somewhere for two three four five days the math gets very excessive and traveling is my biggest expense because it's non-stop and do you know what you spend annually on travel alone i mean over a million dollars but i don't know the exact number yeah because it fluctuates based on light events uh based on sure but i also make money from travel too because there are a lot of my speaking gigs they pay for travel or they'll give me an allotment like five grand or three grand what's for the travel buyout but my travel is less than that so it's extra revenue for me and so um my speaking engagements help cover a lot of that number because they'll reimburse me.

38:36And sometimes I'll actually even have a net profit from it. And on the far events where I charge more, so let's say I charge$25 ,000 to speak, I'll charge$50 ,000 for some of the farther events or$25 ,000 plus a jet, but then not take the jet. So I get the travel buyout and then fly there on JetBlue perfectly fine. And they understand, they know that. I'm getting that allotment to add to my net revenue and then I fly it normal. and so um it's just an extra way especially because of the sheer quantity yeah of flights that i take throughout the year uh yeah and also again i want my daughter to be places so i fly her and her in the squad to be wherever i am as often as i can that adds up when you times it by 100 she doesn't go to everywhere i go obviously um but if i'm flying somewhere for three or four days or longer.

39:25I like to bring my daughter to be there to hang out. So I want to be part of her. She's only two years old. So I want to be part of her upbringing. And I love that. So that added expense to me is something that I'm perfectly happy doing, obviously. And I try to incorporate it. My rule is basically three days or more. I want them to be flying in. So yeah, travel is one of my biggest expenses. Every year when summer ends, you tell yourself it's finally time to start taking health seriously. But work picks up, schedules fill, and your health slips down the priority list again. Does this sound familiar?

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40:21The result is a highly personalized operating system that's guaranteed to deliver results. If you want to avoid falling off, restarting, and repeating the same old cycle, you need a system that can work long-term, which means it needs to be designed around your existing habits. That's what Daily Body Coach builds for you. So if you want to transform the way you look and feel and start taking your health seriously over the long-term, you've got to try Daily Body Coach. Click the link in the description or go to dailybodycoach.com slash moneywise, and I'll connect you directly with Anthony. Food is quite a big expense because I'm entertaining in every city I go to.

40:52I host breakfast, lunch, and dinner all the time with people that live in the city, people that are part of the events, or I'm throwing the event, et cetera. Also keep in mind, when I throw events, there's a lot of the business expense that comes from it to pay for some of the things that I'm talking about. So that lower Dan's personal expense in this regard. But I own 90 % of the events business. I own 90 % of the studio. I don't have any investors in these things. So I'm not hurting anyone when I pay for it from the business perspective. And the other 10 % is only one person, my CEO. And so there's no investors in these things.

41:26So I can do as I please if you want. Yeah. But the overhead is still the overhead because I own all of it. I can still say that I'm paying for it because it's me, right? But whether it's a company expense or a damn expense, it's still Dan ultimately because it's my business. Yeah. Yep. And so I am efficient in that. Like I'm not going and renting the biggest suites places. I listen if a jet blue mint seat is three grand I'm not there I'm gonna fly the 400 seat perfectly fine if it's an overnight flight I will go for it but I'm not paying 3k for it yeah again 3k times 200 is 600 ,000 dollars there's a lot better yeah you know that's a pass so if I do red eyes I want first class but if I'm doing like a Monday 9 a.m.

42:10landing at 12 I'm perfectly flying on something Yeah, who cares? Who cares? You mentioned your daughter. I have two kids of my own. I have a third on the way. And I think a lot about how to grow professionally and stay in the game while still being a present dad. Yes. How do you think about that? It sounds amazing you're bringing her along the way. I think that's awesome that you're doing that. But how else? How do you think about legacy and also really just staying present while you're in 30 ,000 feet vehicles almost constantly? so I'm trying to incorporate her into my life right so I want her I've when I first had her on her first day on the planet she was on a zoom call teaching my mastermind she sat on my lap and she was not even that's awesome she's like hours old and to me it was like the perfect storm because once a week for the last five years at that time now it's been seven years the last five years at time I host that call so guess what I'm still gonna host that call in the hospital room with her in my arm right i had her on a podcast with on for jen gottlieb when she was like a month old or two months old same thing any of my arms doesn't fry sat through a one hour long podcast right like i had her on stage our baby shower our baby reveal the gender reveal was on stage and arena events in utah no way yep that's cool the whole stadium turned pink like i just that's awesome feel part of it so that later in life i can show her look at your baby reveal right your gender reveal look you were on a podcast when you were two months old look you were on stage when you were one look that's you running a three years old right i want her a part of the journey and i don't want to pretend to be blunt like i'm gonna slow down i'm not and so yeah i don't want to fake it to people like oh that's it i had a baby i'm just gonna stop everything and sit at home i'm not and so because of that i'm just trying to incorporate her into it because what I don't want to do is regret it later that I didn't see her in XYZ.

44:05And so I'm coming to a point though where when she's bigger, when she's 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, I'm going to be in my 50s and I will have some of these exits that are part of this whole companies that I've been mentioning to you. And I won't be operating my agency anymore. I won't be operating the restaurants. I won't be operating the car stores. I currently don't really operate many of them anyways. I have a CEO for every company, but I won't even be like the they won't need me in X amount of years because I do want to be for her then when she's 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 I do want to be at cheerleading or soccer or the championships you know like I want to be at those things when she's two let's just be blunt like I she's not going to remember those things I will remember those things but she's not and so but when she's 11 I don't want her having daddy I will be there that's cool what is one thing we can bring it in here for a landing what is one thing you wish people knew about dan fleishman that you don't tell people often um the reason i'm so passionate about charity and the reason i'm so active with everything is i've had 39 people pass away in my life and i have a list in my phone of family friends athletes entertainers people in my inner circle not strangers not acquaintances but 39 people that are actually part of my life that passed away.

45:25And so I think about time as a very, very visceral thing to me, like time is critical. And so the reason that I look like I'm the crazy guy doing so many different things is, I don't know if I'm going to die in six hours, six years or 60 years, but even if it was 60 years, that's still really short in the grand scheme of things. So I want to do as much as humanly possible, but it all stems from the pain. It all stems from the loss. And so I say that sometimes, but I don't think people really realize why is Dan doing so many different things is I don't know if I'm going to come back as a plants, if I'm going to be reincarnated as a dog.

45:59I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen once I pass away. So I do as much as I can while I'm here. That's awesome. A lot of the people I ask similar questions to on this show typically say something about time is I don't know how much time I have left or in some cases with even the older guests, they realize as they get older that their most valuable asset is not money it actually is time and i think that's something we can probably all resonate with for sure well dan this has been uh man this has been a great episode you have so much going on you're literally going and speaking at an event in like a couple hours so i appreciate you jumping on this episode with me today but thanks so much for joining money wise man this was great that was dan fleischman he started with baseball cards at a swap meet when he was just four years old by nine he was selling candy bars out of his backpack.

46:47By 17, he'd saved$43 ,000 and spent every bit of it on a t-shirt brand instead of college. His company went public when he was only 23 years old. In 2011, he lost a$65 million business in one day. And today, he owns pieces of 43 companies, runs a syndicate with more than 2 ,000 investors, and says he's worth well past$50 million. He just can't tell you the exact number because a lot of it's in private equity across these companies in a syndicate. I'm taking three things from this episode. First, his rule. Give your time to one company and spread your money everywhere else. He paid$65 million to learn this lesson, and so I'm going to take it for free.

47:21Second thing is everyone has an expense they never run all the different numbers on. For Dan, it's a ranch that costs them$140 ,000 a month. That's fine, just know which expense is yours and pick it on purpose. A lot of people don't know where their money is going. If you know where your money is going and you want it to keep going there, that's great. Third, how much time you have left. He has 39 names on his phone of people he's lost. He doesn't know how much time he has, and so he's using the time he has right now and saving the slower years for when his daughter is old enough to remember them.

47:48At the end of the day, none of us actually know how much time we have left. And so this is a real point that resonates with me. I'm a dad of two with a third on the way and I'm nowhere near Dan's number. That last part doesn't cost anything. Anyone can decide who gets their time. So you need to decide who gets yours. If conversations like this are your world, Hampton is where they happen first. Hampton's a private community of founders and CEOs. They do at least 3 million in revenue, but most of them do 25 million or even hundreds of millions. Members of Hampton have built companies and sold them, and now they're working through the same questions that Dan answered for us today.

48:18How to value stock you can't sell, where to keep your cash, and how much of your time the business should actually get. I'm lucky because I get to have those conversations a lot of people don't have in public on Money Wise with these awesome guests like Dan. And if you want to be in the room where these conversations happen, go check out joinhampton.com. This is Money Wise. I'm Daniel Burke. See you next week.