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

23:51What you should do is find people that you see having a ton of success. And instead of building something completely on your own, partner up with them. Do a JV. It's called a joint venture, you know, where they've already built the infrastructure. They have a sales team. They have a marketing team. They have leads coming in. Instead of building everything from scratch when you have to be true to yourself and know, I don't have the ability to do that on my own, you can partner up with someone else and then be an extension of their business and split everything 50-50. And then eventually, you can start your own business.

24:22So that's kind of, I think, the two best ways to think about it. So why invest so much money into the tech, right? not like come up with your four or five main features, scale the business and have this lean, mean machine. Why go out and scale all the different versions and verticals and things that people are asking for for fan bases? Yeah, it's a great question. And there's kind of two approaches that people take. You know, up until probably two months ago, three months ago, we were trying to just get every feature that everyone on our platform needed. What is a must-have? Where these are the things that they need to have in their business to be able to operate it and scale it efficiently.

25:02Now, the way that we're thinking about it and where a lot of the investment is coming from is, what can we add into the product that people don't know they need? And that's where real innovation comes. That's what Steve Jobs' whole thesis was, is how can we innovate and tell people and show them what they need? So that's how we're thinking about it. And the real advantage that we have over really anyone else in the space is our whole team is built from people that come from the space. We've poached some of our clients that have joined our executive team and leadership team. And we've partnered up with individuals like yourself that can give us that advice that we need for everything that we're thinking about.

25:41So we can validate the market for every single idea and product that we have before we actually build it. And then when we release features like that, that's where we get insane customer loyalty. Because if someone's making$100 ,000 a month, for example, and they come and join our platform, and they're making$100 ,000 a month for the next six months, they're like, okay, great. I'm using this service. It works. It's getting the job done for me. But if we can show them ways to get from$100 ,000 a month to$200 ,000 a month, that's where I can charge them whatever fees they want. They're never going to leave because we've been able to provide them with an immense amount of value.

26:16So that's how we're, you know, that's where all the investment is coming in, where we're spending millions of dollars. But we're also making it back on the back end because it's helping all of our sellers make more money as well, which comes back to us eventually, too. Right. Let's talk to me about the charity side of things. Why do you think that a company like yours should have either a charity event or go support a charity, go to a homeless shelter, go to a children's hospital, go feed at a senior citizen or homeless shelter? They're like, why do you think that companies should have some type of charity component?

26:45Not necessarily the check, but getting the people together. Yeah. I think it's super important. One, we'll be supporting your toy drive as well. So excited about that. But the actual original version of Fanbase is we used to host a lot of charity sweepstakes. So we partnered up with people like Dennis Rodman, Mandy Sachs. We did an event with Floyd Mayweather where a good chunk of that all went to charity. One, obviously, was for those individuals wanting to support their causes as well, but we wanted to enable all of that and be able to spread those messages across. The way I really look at it is I've also grew up in a way where I understood the importance of giving back pretty early.

27:30My dad, for example, when we were growing up, he would never do anything fun on his birthday. he would always go to the soup kitchen, which when I was a kid, I was like, what the hell? Let's do something fun. Chuck your cheese. But now I get it, you know, and it was inspiring as I grew up to think about things like that. So, you know, I see a lot of people that are very, very charitable and they're silent about it too, which, you know, I think it helps you, one, humble yourself and also give you more satisfaction in long run and just better karma. Anything that you put into the world always ends up coming back to you.

28:08So there's only one question I ask on every episode, and I've never gotten the same answer in 200 plus episodes. Fanbases becomes a multi-billion dollar company. But you're young, so you might start another company, another company, and you might invest into a lot of other companies. And so you end up becoming this multi-billionaire over the course of time. At the end of the day, you finally pass away. What percentage of your net worth do you leave to your children?

28:39That's a good question. You know, there's a few different kind of models I've seen some multi-billionaires take. At the end of the day, I think the most important thing for anyone raising kids, because I went to private schools growing up and I saw some people that were absolutely spoiled and were driving Bentleys in high school. And people that their families were very, very wealthy, but they were all very humble and their kids were raised properly. I would want to put my kids in the position to be able to have everything that they need, go to the best schools and, you know, be able to live comfortably to where, you know, when they're in college, you don't need to worry about working four jobs to be able to pay for it and things of that nature and be focused, but they need to have that level of ambition.

29:38So I think, you know, I can't give you an answer on that right now because I don't know what my kids are going to be like yet. If I raise them right, then I'm more than happy to give them all of my wealth. Because, you know, I know that they're not going to be motivated by my wealth. They're going to have their ambition, their own ambition to achieve things that are much further beyond what I've been able to achieve myself. But if that's not the case, they're not getting anything. Everyone needs to earn it. All right. So where can people find FanBasis? You tell us everything. Yeah, absolutely.

30:09Anyone that's looking to build a business online, go to FanBasis.com. Go and sign up. You'll be able to hop on with a member of our growth team. Put referral code Dan Fleischman in and we'll take extra good care of you and make sure you get the best rates, just as a favor for anyone that's listening to this podcast. And then on top of that, you know, what our team likes to do is not only help you get set up and run your own business on our platform, but like I said many times, we want to help you grow your business and get to that next level, whether it be at$20 ,000 a month or a million dollars a month.

30:39And you can also find us on Instagram at FanBasis or my personal Instagram at Yash Daftri. Always looking to connect with like-minded entrepreneurs and people that are interesting to have a conversation with. all right guys you're listening to the money mondays and again the concept of this podcast when you hear something like this there might be someone in your world that wants to start selling a course they want to be a creator they want to start selling how to do stock trading they want to start teaching how to make custom sneakers they want to start teaching about food diet fitness health etc you might be able to send them here and then they can learn about fan bases and all of a sudden they have one of the best companies as their platform all because of your referral your recommendation.

31:19So keep your ears out. Keep your eyes. When you're seeing people on posts on social like looking for a new company to work with on this, this, and this, you might be like, oh man, I remember fan bases. Hey, I'm looking for this, this, and this. Oh, wait a minute. And you forward them a website or you forward them this podcast episode. This is really important. Your sharing of information and that communication, the butterfly effect can literally change their world and a lot of other people's simply by you helping them with referrals. So as always, liking, commenting, subscribing is what helps us stay on the top of the charts.

31:52So I appreciate you guys for doing that. It really helps us. When you're checking things out, check out some entrepreneurs like Yash. When you see their social media, when you see the company that they built, watching those type of things, watching that type of information will help you learn compared to a lot of the noise and a lot of the bad stuff that people are following on social media. Try to filter out the same way you filter out what you eat, what you drink. Filter out the things that are going into your mind so you can focus and learn from people that you are inspired by here at The Money Mondays.

32:19And we'll see you guys next Monday at themoneymondays.com.

32:28Ladies 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 away to charity. As you guys know, I keep these podcasts to under 40 minutes because the average workout is 45 minutes, the average commute to work is 45 minutes, This episode will be between 32 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure. Now, this is very important. When you listen to these podcasts, keep in mind it's not just about you. The things that you hear and the people that I interview might be for someone from your past, present, or future. We have to think about and talk about money because it's part of our daily lives.

33:01We all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think that's ridiculous. It's part of your rent, insurance, taxes, medical bills, for your mom, kids, friends, employees. so many things come up with money. It is not the root of all evil. It is part of your daily life. And it's really just a utility and a tool, the things that you want in life and the things that you need in life. And as we grow through inflation and all the things that are going to be happening in our society, you're going to need more and more capital. So we have to have blunt discussions about how you can make more money, invest more money.

33:30And so without further ado, I'm going to have Mr. Dr. Jay Feldman give a quick two-minute bio and get straight to the money. All right, Dan, let's have some fun. Thanks for having me. So really quick bio. Went all the way through medical school. So parents pushed me that direction probably because of money, money and respect. It's pretty much guaranteed as long as you make it through. About halfway through medical school, I started a supplement company. Supplement company took off, got really good at marketing, started a marketing agency. By the time I graduated medical school my fourth year, we were making more than most of the doctors were making, and they were miserable.

34:01Every day I would show up to the clinic and just be surrounded by people that hated their lives. So I was distracted, became a family medicine resident, which was a three-year track, only did the first year, and then left to pursue marketing full-time. Started a PR agency, Otter PR. We grew that to 60 employees, eight figures in three years. And then I started teaching a lot of what I was doing to market that PR agency. So now if you Google me, you'll probably see me as Lead Gen J on YouTube. We teach B2B lead generation, and we install cold outreach systems for SMBs and medium-sized companies.

34:36Okay. What is lead gen? Lead gen is making people aware of your product and offer that don't know who you are in the first place. That's the difference between lead generation and sales, essentially. Somebody who doesn't know who you are versus somebody who knows who you are. We handle that top of the funnel, people who have never heard of you before. We put your product, your offer out in front of those people. What percentage of entrepreneurs and business owners should have some form of lead generation? A hundred and fifty percent, if there was. I'd say it's the biggest pain point in most companies is how do you market?

35:11How do you get people to know about your thing? Some of the best companies and products in the world go under the radar because they don't know how to get people's attention. So we've gotten really good at that and doing it at scale. So let's say an entrepreneur, business owner is listening to this podcast, and they're like, you know what? I do need PR, but I want to hire in-house. What's the difference between hiring someone to work in-house versus hiring an agency like Otter? Sure. So now we're talking about PR. And this is true of everything, lead generation, PR agencies. If you hire an agency, you're usually hiring years of experience and processes and relationships, and you're hiring all of the mistakes that they've made with past clients.

35:52So if you bring someone in-house, you better hope that they're going to be able to do everything and they're not going to be able to fall back on people with more experience. So by hiring Otter PR, my PR agency, we've got 60 employees. A lot of our publicists have 20, 30 years of experience. Yeah, we've got a whole staff of writing staff. We've dealt with clients across multiple industries. We've got publicists that specialize across multiple industries and have relationships at media channels that cater specifically to those industries. So if you hire Otter PR, you're hiring all of that. Versus bringing somebody in-house, you'll probably end up paying about the same that you would pay the agency.

36:31So although that one person is dedicated exclusively to you, are they going to be able to deliver the same results that an agency of 60 people and 200 clients? and all of those industry relationships are going to be able to deliver? Sometimes. So oftentimes I say when someone wants to hire in-houses, when you want someone for paid media or PR, especially like dealing with meta and Facebook ads, someone that's really good at it doesn't need to work for you. They can make two grand a day selling pillows or tables or microphones or water bottles. This is the problem with hiring people for the lead gen agency.

37:09Sure, right? Yeah, you want to find people who are good to work for me? Good luck. They're already making a killing on their own. It's the same thing across every other marketing. So I'm often, almost always, recommending agencies because wisdom of the crowd. When you've got 60 employees, it's not just the fact of one employee or one good person. There's a lot of people in that room. And you get to deal with your hundreds of clients. You understand and learn from what worked for them, what was bad for them, what sucked for them, what was great for them. And so when they start running ads on TikTok or Facebook or press or whatever, you know which ones are working because you have the wisdom of the crowd from all that experience.

37:47Alex Srimozzi actually made a good point here. What he does is he hires an agency and is very transparent with them at the beginning. He's like, I'm going to hire you. I want to know exactly what you're doing. I want to learn your processes. I want to be involved every step of the way. And he's intaking all of this, and he's training somebody in-house to eventually take over from that agency. And I actually really like that model, and I've done it a few times. The risk is you train someone in-house on what that agency is doing. Now you make that person ultra valuable. They're going to go start an agency.

38:14They're gone. They're for sure going to start an agency. And if they go start an agency, I'll invest in them because they're so well trained. Yeah, exactly. So it's making somebody ultra valuable in marketing is hard. So that's why I feel like the job of marketing usually falls on the founder. So I have an influencer agency, and I have the exact same employees for five years, eight years, 12 years, and some of them the full 14 years that still work for me. I've only ever had two people leave, and I forced them to go. Good, yeah. Because one of them was to go work for ClickUp, a$4 billion company.

38:46Go, I get it. And the other one wanted to go start a company, and I was like, I'll be an investor or a partner or send you clients, and they went and did that. And outside of that, everyone's the same. Like I named them off the top of my head all day long, like family, because it's been with me for so many years. How do you hold on to them? There's a couple of key things. One is compensation, but it actually isn't the number one driving force. Paying someone$80 ,000 versus$92 ,000 is not like, oh my God, they're going to leave me right away. Now, if I pay them$80 ,000, someone offers them$120 ,000, I better step it up because they should leave.

39:18I understand if there's that big of a gap. Having some way to either have equity or some way to earn compensation based on their work. So if they can get some type of percentage for something that they're doing or something that they're creating, that very much incentivizes them. And the third thing is they're inspired to work there. Either I inspire them, the brand inspires them, or they inspire themselves. Their work creates something. Their work creates magic. Their work helps their clients. There is another fourth, which is the community, which is the other staff, but that's not always the case because there could be working remote or working in a silo, so it's not always getting to work with a bunch of other people.

39:54And if you do those things, and if any one is missing, you might lose them. but I've been really focused on having all four things all the time. I'm constantly inspiring them. I'm constantly giving them ways to make extra money. I'm constantly like, I want them to win. And also, I will say, if you give them respect and autonomy, they definitely don't want to leave. Right. Because they don't expect that at other companies. I've learned that a lot through the Lead Gen J brand. Both companies are very separate, Otter PR and Lead Gen J. Otter PR is very much not like a hiring machine. We've got HR.

40:24We've got a whole recruiting arm. and all the publicists, they're paid what publicists typically get paid. And we have a lot of turnover. We're always trying to get them to stay by giving them raises. The inspiration piece isn't quite there the way that it is for my lead Gen J brand. And I feel like a core piece of that, and you can probably attest to this, is the personal brand. They want to work with Dan Fleischman. They want to learn from you. So as long as they feel like they're learning and they're a part of your inner circle, your team, I feel like that's a big drive to draw them there and to keep them there.

40:56I've felt like that's the case with the lead gen J brand too. I've built such an amazing team and they don't go anywhere. On the make money side of this podcast, there's a question I like to ask, which is what do you think people are held back by from making more money? Why do you think people go through life and they're making their 40 grand or 50 grand, 60 grand, 100 grand, and they're just complacent? They don't want to go to 120 or 150 or 200. They don't want a side gig or a side hustle. So what do you think holds people back from making more money? I mean, they always say you're the sum of the people you surround yourself with.

41:28I think that's the number one thing holding people back is they see what's around them and they don't feel inspired. They don't feel like it's possible for them to go make more money. If you want to make more money, surround yourself by people who are making more than you. I think that's the ultimate principle here. And I know it's probably everyone says that. It's true. By me sitting here with you, you make more money than I do. That inspires me. That shows me what is possible. Like, what are you doing to make that money? Things that I never even imagined were ways to earn. What you're doing with your companies is unique.

41:59So I'm now made aware of new ideas, new models. And when I think I'm killing it and I surround myself with people who are at that next level, now I know it's possible and now I have a trajectory to get there. If you're surrounded by people who are making minimum wage or people who are working in your office job and everyone's under$100K, you don't see the ways people are making a million dollars a month. They're not talking about tax strategies. They're not talking about investments. You don't even know how to get there. You don't know the channels to listen to. You don't know the Make Money podcast.

42:33So if you're listening to this podcast, it's probably a good indicator that you're well on your way. So the biggest thing is changing who's in the room. So at what point for a company is it time to start doing meta ads, start running ads on TikTok or go TikTok live or start doing PR or start doing SEO? There's so many different options of marketing that are out there. How do you know? Should you just do it on one or when is it time to start building omnipresence and start spending money across the board? It's funny you ask. It's actually the theme of my book that I'm in the process of writing.

43:07It's the marketing playbook. Like which plays to implement when. There's so many free ways to get exposure now that you should start with those. Make yourself searchable. Make yourself findable. Every social media platform now is a search engine. On Instagram, TikTok, all you've got to do is optimize your profile and your videos, and now people will start finding you for what you're doing. Obviously, making content is great for driving free traffic. So do the free things first. And then once you've got a good way to – predictable revenue coming in, then you can start experimenting with marketing budget.

43:41And I think some really good ways to experiment are meta ads and Google ads. Obviously, that's changing a lot now with AI. Cold outreach is another really good way for B2B companies to scale top of funnel marketing, make people aware of your offer for the lowest possible price. Then there's some like to haves. I'd say PR is one of those things that you probably shouldn't start with, but it's going to enhance all of the other forms of marketing. If you get featured in Forbes, that itself isn't going to drive you business. What's going to drive you business is saying featured on Forbes and all your meta ads.

44:14It's going to be posting it on all those social media platforms. So all of the marketing channels then work symbiotically once you implement them in the right orders. So what Jay's talking about is called the halo effect. The halo effect is I see you in the press, I see you pop up on a podcast, and then when I see your ad, I want to buy from you more. There's some reason that I remember you, whether I saw you on the billboard, the podcast, the press, etc. When I then see your ad or I see your call to action, I'm more inclined to buy from you. There's a famous quote or theory or statistic that may or may not be true, but maybe it's kind of close, is, you need to see something seven times before making a purchasing decision.

44:52Whether that number is four times or 12 times, who actually knows? Let's just say seven times is the number. If I need to see you seven times, you've got to advertise to me a lot. I might not see your ad seven times. That's why you want to build omnipresence and pop up in that article, be on the news, be on the podcast. And a lot of these things you can do for free, but it'll ultimately help you on the places that you spend money on. Yes. And just to add to that really quickly, I think a big missed opportunity that most companies miss out on is that retargeting traffic. Sure. So the hardest thing to do is get people to your website for the first time.

45:23Get people to your social media account for the first time. People do need to interact seven times, according to that study, before they make a purchasing decision. The easiest and cheapest way to get them back to your site, back to your social channels, is retargeting ads. You're hunting them. Follow them everywhere, the omnipresent marketing. So set them with retargeting ads up everywhere. Facebook, Google, Reddit, Quora, TikTok, Snapchat, all of these platforms you can retarget on for pennies on the dollar compared to running top-of-funnel marketing campaigns. All right, let's put on our investor hats.

45:55Investor hats. We've been making money, building up our business. We went from$1 million gross sales to$3 million. At what point do I start to look at what the heck to invest into? There's real estate, the stock market, cryptocurrency, angel investments, S &P 500. There's so many things I could invest into, cash flowing businesses. There's so much. How the heck do you decide when there's so many options what the heck to invest into? That's a good question. I'll tell you what's worked for me and what doesn't work for me. So I'm probably a little bit my earlier stages of making money. We've been making real money for about five years now.

46:28I feel like when I started to have an overflow of money, meaning there's so much coming in that I can't invest anymore in my business without just wasting it. Like, I'm not going to hire these, like,$500 ,000 employees. I don't have any big machinery to buy. So I started investing it into the stock market. And what I learned quickly by doing that, I was on Robinhood just pushing buttons and buying stocks, listening to YouTube videos and listening to other people on what stocks to buy, did not work out well. I took a bunch of margin because Robinhood made it really easy, and then stocks crashed, lost all my money.

47:01Brought in my friend who's a financial advisor, and what's worked for me to this day is any overflow I send to him. He's like, ready for another stack? Yeah, cool. Take another stack. And he puts it into specific stocks that we pick every two weeks. We put it into a couple of safe ETFs that we've picked, and that's been really effective. Our money's grown. He protects me from myself, and his full-time job is figuring out where to put my money. And I get all these inbound, I'm sure you get them more than me, people asking for investments in random real estate deals, investments in these random companies.

47:34I haven't done any of those yet, but I run them by my financial advisor. He tells me this is good, this is risky, this is eh. And I trust him. He protects me. I know a lot of people who have gotten involved in weird deals and now their money's locked up and they might never see a return. So as you're getting started, I think you should put all of your money back into your business to a reasonable degree, as long as you have something that you think is going to grow the company or make you more successful in the long run. The best thing you can invest in is yourself and your business first. Then bring on a financial advisor to help guide those investments.

48:09And now I'm at a point where it's like, crap, I'm going to have to pay a ton of money in taxes this year. My tax bill is looking real scary. So what do you do about that? bonus depreciation. You buy real estate, short-term rentals, and every year, I guess you find a new project to do that with. And that's kind of where I'm at this year. We're buying real estate and we're taking bonus depreciation on it to mitigate my tax liability. Love to hear what you're doing. That was a fantastic breakdown. Thank you. So what I preach on stage and on social is the same thing over and over and over for many, many years.

48:45It's called 40-40-20. I do 40 % low risk. I want to make between 5 % and 9 % for the year. I do 40 % medium risk, where I want to make between 10 % and 30 % for the year. I do 20 % high risk. I'm crossing my fingers. I want something crazy to happen. 400%, 1 ,000%, something crazy. And if this doesn't work out or takes a long time, I'm hoping that this and this covers the high risk. And so what happens is the low risk sounds boring. So I actually call it the boring side. 5 % to 9 % seems boring. Until you take out a compound calculator. Right. If anyone's listening right now, after the show's over, look up compound calculator.

49:26There's a joke that Albert Einstein says, compound math is the eighth wonder of the world. Compound interest. That was an Einstein quote? I don't think it actually was, but that's what I said. When you look on Google, that's what it says. So don't believe everything Google says. But that theory is, put in your age. let's say you're 34 years old, and put it when you want to retire, let's say it's 74 years old, so 40 years, then put in a number like 8 % a year. If you now contributed$10 ,000 and you do that for 40 years, it is staggering what that number is going to be. It's not 500k, it's not a million dollars.

50:03It's literally going to be three to five million dollars, depending if you put 8 % or 9 % or 10%. One little percent difference over the course of 40 years and compounded, will literally blow your mind. And so just put in your age, put in when you want to retire, put in how much you can contribute. And by the way, you want to get really crazy? What if you went from 10 grand to 11 grand? What if like seven years later, you had a little more money, put in 13 grand that year, 14 grand. What if you have a four-year-old child and you put in a thousand bucks a year for that child and throw in two grand or three grand, four grand for that child and they're four?

50:36What happens when they retire? They will have five, 10, 15,$20 million. It's not fake numbers. These are very real with just that 6%, 7%, 8%, 9 % type of interest rate. And so that's the low risk side. So that's for me is the S &P 500. That's CDs at your bank. CDs at your bank are paying 4 % or 5 % now, which is crazy, at household name banks. We're in a municipal bond ETF. There you go. Yeah, tax-free, and it's earning like 5%, 6%. Perfect. In the middle side, it's real estate, stock market, and cash flow in businesses. Those three main categories. Real estate, there's a lot of options. That would take me hours to talk about all the different options.

51:14But essentially, fix and flipping, long-term holds, or cash flow like Airbnb and rentals. The cash flow in business side, to me, it's Everbull. I invested a lot into Everbull in 2018. Raised a bunch of money in 2019. Bought a bunch of locations in 2020. Sold the locations back to them in 2023. I'm very active in Everbull because that's a cash flow in business. I invested when there was 13 locations. Now there's 104. One new one every six days. I invested when there was a 10, 20 million valuation. Now it's 175 million and growing. And so to me, that's an angel investment, but also cash flow in business.

51:50On the stock market side, I just invest in the same 10 stocks over and over and over and over with no plans of ever selling ever. Why would I ever sell Apple? Do I think it's going to be bad next year or the year after? No. Why would I sell the stock? Why would I ever sell Walmart or Meta or household names like Tesla and Amazon? Why would I ever sell my Amazon stock? Is that five? Will you give the other five? Yes. I'm curious. They're just the household name companies. There's no rocket science to what I invest into. It's Amazon and Tesla and Walmart and Shopify and Meta and Google. I'll pull my phone up and find those.

52:31Those are good. You don't pick new stocks based on what the economy market's doing? I don't look at things like Nvidia, which, amazing what it did. Yeah. But it was also around for many, many years where it didn't. All of my losses in 2022, countered by my choice of Nvidia. We held that, and it's done crazy. Yeah. Yeah, it's been fun. And so I don't look at the shiny objects. Yeah. There's. That's key. Yes. Super key. Don't get distracted. I'm not a day trader. Right. I want to buy things that I invest into or I'm a buyer of. I have Netflix stock. Why? Because I spend money on Netflix for the last two decades.

53:05And so do you. So does she. So does he. So does he. Everyone does. Yes. And more and more people are going to. If everyone in the world is spending 15 to 20 bucks a month, I want to own that. Right. You know that the number one performing stock of all time is Monster Energy Drink? No. Really. More than any other company on the planet, Monster Energy Drink, which is called Hanson's, the parent company. Why? Because they're in hundreds of thousands of stores, probably a million gazillion stores by now. They've just been doing the same thing for 25, 30 years. and they're in all the stores on the planet.

53:34That's it. If Red Bull was public, it would be the same story. And so my stock market is very, very simple and very straightforward. If you shop on Amazon, you should consider some Amazon stock. If you own a Tesla, how dare you not have Tesla stock? Agreed. If you're listening to this on an Apple product, a laptop or an iPhone or AirPods, what on earth are you doing not having some Apple stock? That's all. I noticed a lot of my biggest losers were companies that I had no idea what they did, no interactions with them. And some of my biggest winners have been the companies I interact with and spend money with.

54:06So that's a really good philosophy. And then the last part is the high risk. And to me, it's just angel investing and cryptocurrency. And really on crypto, it's just Bitcoin, Ethereum. I've been saying the same thing since 2014 and 2017 for Ethereum. I've just been saying the same thing over and over. I bought it at Bitcoin at 300 bucks, and I'll buy it now at$115 ,000. I'm still a buyer. I made the very first news article about Ethereum, and it was$19. I'm still a buyer at$4 ,500. Are you dollar cost averaging into those things? I just buy because Bitcoin is inevitable. The supply is getting less and less and less because people die.

54:42People lose their phones. They lose their wallets. They lose their laptops. And so as more people lose their lives and lose their phones and lose their wallets, less of that 21 billion Bitcoin will ever exist, will ever be in circulation. Less quantum computing cracks the network. But we got other problems at that point. Exactly. You need guns and water at that point. And on the other side of it, the demand keeps growing, growing, growing, growing. The people that have always liked Bitcoin buy more. People that get attracted to it start to buy it. And so if the supply is getting less and less and less and demand gets more and more and more, that's why Bitcoin is the number one performing investment asset in human history.

55:18I was interviewing Gary Cardone, Grant Cardone's twin brother. He's the biggest Bitcoin bull that I know. And we were talking about investing in Bitcoin. I'm like, man, I sold it all. When Voyager went down, I lost all my cryptocurrency. I think Bitcoin is at like$30 ,000 at that time. It makes me whip out my phone on the podcast. It's like I'm not saying another word until you start buying some Bitcoin. So I whipped out my Coinbase and I set up a recurring purchase for Bitcoin at$30 ,000. And it was probably the highest yielding investment I've ever made. We're still dollar cost averaging in now.

55:51It's like$115 ,000. Okay. Yes. Let's focus on you again. So on the investing side, people have all these different options. You've started to deploy capital. What happens is you get to a point where you can't invest back into your company or you've got too much cash sitting in the bank. What people don't realize is they get this idea like, I want to have millions of dollars in the bank. You've heard myself, Grant Cardone, and so many people, we never have a lot of money in the bank because we're deploying that into investments. And here's why. Anything over 6 to 12 months in the bank is losing money to inflation.

56:31So let's say you did have a million dollars in your bank account. Next year, it spends like$920 ,000. The year after, it spends like$830 ,000. So it still says$1 million in your savings account, but it spends like$920 ,000. It spends like$830 ,000. It spends like$740 ,000. The value of that million is going down. Correct. You try to buy a Ford truck for$50 ,000, now it's$54 ,000. You try to park in Valet, it was$20 ,000, now it's$24 ,000. You try to buy muffins, it was$4, now they're$5. All these 5%, 10 % increments, increases, makes your dollar literally spend less. And so that's why I'm so adamant, and so many wealthy people are adamant about the concept, make that million go to$1 ,050 ,000,$1 ,100 ,000,$1.115.

57:13Just those small increases will fight against inflation. Yeah, that's, I think, where a financial advisor is so helpful. Because we have, not millions in the bank, but it's a lot. And I'm worried about it losing the value to inflation. It is happening. But there's options. There's money market accounts that are essentially cash that have been earning 5%. Sure. Yeah, we're now on municipal bond ETFs. It's also earning like 5%, 6%. So you have access to it. And hopefully, it's growing with compounding. I would have no idea what to do with that if it weren't for a financial advisor. It would just be sitting there.

57:46Right. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about the charity side. Yes. From a PR side, why do you think it's important for personal brands or for companies to have some sort of philanthropic, whether they're part of a charity or get their people, their family, or their employees to be involved in charity? From a PR side, it's an easy answer. It's actually one of the first things we do for some of our clients. If they're not otherwise interesting or doing anything really impactful that the media is going to take interest in, well, we need to do some charity work for you ASAP. We need to find a cause and throw an event or do something to make you philanthropic, make you interesting.

58:24That way you've got a story. You've got a company doing some good in the world. So that's super important for PR. Most companies aren't interesting. A lot of them aren't. Aren't doing anything media worthy. So you want to do something media worthy, get some media attention, do something philanthropic, find a charity. So from a PR side, easy win. There are millions of charities out there on a personal level or for your company level. How do you decide what you would want to be involved in, whether it's financially, time, or energy with a charity?

58:58Totally separate from PR. How do I decide what I want to invest in? First, it's personal. So is there anything in my life or people that I really want to take care of? And that's kind of where I'm at now. And then there's the, what is your cause? I think people need to have a cause that they're investing in and working towards to make success more than just collecting money. So on a personal side, this year, I was finally able to retire my mom. She was going to the office, working in a cubicle with a bunch of 20-year-olds every day. And I had offered a year ago, but she's like, no, I'm not ready to be retired.

59:32It feels weird. And then probably two months ago, she hit me up and she's like, is the offer still on the table? like I'm miserable. Like, can you help? So my mom's now on payroll, tax deductible. She helps me where she can, but I was able to retire my mom. And the thing that I'm doing with her is the philanthropy side. So my cause is animals. I've always been an animal guy. I know you love animals too, but I grew up with, you know, a whole garage full of rabbits, mini kangaroos, prairie dogs. Animals are very close to my heart. And it's all because of my mom. She loves animals. So me and my mom together are opening a rescue.

1:00:12Oh, really? Yeah. That's going to be her new project. One of the stipulations for retiring my mom is you can't sit on your butt. Like, we need to find you a cause. We need to find you a purpose. Let's stay active. Yes. So I think this makes a lot of sense. It's going to be a great funnel for a lot of my overflow money that's going to fulfill my purpose and her purpose, which is help animals. So I think when you're deciding what to invest in, it's going to be what's closest to you so that you can feel the impacts of your money and your investment. I think donating to some random charity that you heard of that someone says is good, I think is going to not have a long timeline on it if you can't immediately see or feel the impact of your money.

1:00:54The reason I started my charity was that exact moment. Many years ago 2009 doesn't I Through a charity poker tournament at my store in San Diego. I had 150 150 people show up thousand bucks each some people put a little more so it was like we have to present this big check for like let's call it $165 ,000 Post the picture the next day everyone's like wow, it's so cool 165 ,000 so other people started donating so they actually get like a quarter million because everyone saw it super exciting A few days goes by, I never hear what happens with the money. A week goes by, and I don't hear anything.

1:01:30Two weeks goes by. I'm not saying they did anything nefarious, but I got nothing to report back to all my friends I invited to my store to play in this trade poker tournament. What happened? What did the kids get? Or what happened with the homeless? Or what happened? Like, what happened? And so I decided to make very visual charities. I make backpacks for the homeless with 150 items inside. It's been 15 or 16 years now. Model citizen funds world's largest toy drive. It's been 12 years now We're going to our 12th year now at the Miami Heat Arena coming up soon like I Created visuals toys backpacks for the homeless things that you can see feel in touch You don't even have to donate to my charity.

1:02:09You can go donate toys You can make backpacks with homeless, right? You actually don't have to send us money to do that. You can do it We're just efficient at it if you want to do it at scale, right? Right and more importantly I want people to be a part of it. I'd rather you show up, right? I'd rather you bring all 60 staff with you. I'd rather you tell your 200 clients, hey, let's all bring toys to the Miami Heat Arena. That's more than you throwing in$1 ,000 or$10 ,000 or whatever, you know, like, rather than the money part. And so I wanted to create charities that people could see, feel in touch for exactly what you said.

1:02:38And sometimes you just donated, you know, you swipe your credit card, that's easy. Right. You donated$500 to this charity, and you feel good for seven seconds, and then you don't even think about it because there was no, like, emotion to it. You give a kid a toy, You give a homeless person a backpack with supplies poof right be tangible. Yes, you can feel it Yes, and I've seen the toy drives you guys do a great job of showcasing Like where the money is going and who you're helping. Yes, I think that's so important. I Call it building in public. I want them to see like we just got the stadium. Here's us at the stadium All right.

1:03:11This is when the setup is gonna happen. Here's how we're gonna walk it in Here's when the trucks are gonna come in. I'm showing it so either people can replicate it on their own do their own toy drives or they know that the work it takes to execute it and they feel a part of it. When they show up they feel a part of it. They're there wrapping toys for nine hours. They're there walking around with the kids and their parents. They want to feel a part of it. Alright, so there's only one question I ask on every single episode and I've never gotten the same answer before. We're at 200 plus episodes now.

1:03:43You build up your companies. You build up your investments. Your stock portfolio becomes worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of time. You build up all these different companies. You do joint ventures. But at the end of the day, at some point, you finally pass away. What percentage of your net worth do you leave to your children? It's the ultimate dilemma, right? Do you spoil your kids rotten? Or do you give it all away? Depends on what net worth is. I think if it's billions, do I want to leave them half? No. If it's a$10 million, then you want to leave them half. I think the goal is to make your kids independent and don't give them enough to live on, because that's when you really, I guess, ruin any opportunity of them learning and building for themselves.

1:04:30I want to leave them just enough to be able to accomplish their dreams, to build their future, to build their company, but not enough where they never have to worry about money again. And I don't know what that number is going to be by the time I pass. Hopefully it's at 150 years old with modern technology. I plan on it being. If they can keep me alive artificially, I'll do that too. I want to give them enough to accomplish their dreams and no more. So I open up my speeches with what you just said. I scare the audience by saying, raise your hand if you have kids. Most of the room raises their hand.

1:05:02I say, your children are likely to live to over 100 years old. Our parents typically live to 73 to 77 years old in my era. At your age, they probably live to 83 to 85 years old. 85 and a half, technically, for women. Your children will probably live to 104, 112, and some of them 120 plus. Hopefully. And here's why. When I grew up, there was 7-Eleven, Jack in the Box, and McDonald's. There was no Whole Foods and Erewhon. There was no smoothies. What do you mean smoothie? We had Slurpees at 7-Eleven. There was no such thing as a smoothie with fruit in it. There was no cold plunges and saunas. You'd be a laughing stock if you got into a cold plunge.

1:05:43We'd think you're insane to get in a cold plunge when we were kids. And now it's cool. It's fun. And now saunas are part of life and we realize the health benefits. Modern technology. Think about the difference. 15, 20 years ago, there was no smartphone. So think about what our parents and what our families went through when they were trying to get medical advice in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, 2010s. That sounds like a long time ago. That was 20 years ago, right? And think about what's going to happen in 10 or 20 years and 30 years and 40 years for our children. From a medical perspective, this is the only part of being a doctor that I stay very involved in.

1:06:21It's the new science that's emerging. You open my refrigerator, it's just all vials of peptides. On my couch, I've got a$50 ,000 pulsed electromagnetic frequency unit. So there's some technologies and medications and pharmaceuticals coming out that are just next level. We're going to be growing and harvesting organs. There's DNA treatments that are going to cause you to be able to bulk. Steroids are going to be gone. Just really unbelievable things that I completely corroborate. 120, 130, 140 is going to be very viable in our future. We're not even talking about the AI side of it. We're not talking about robot doctors.

1:06:59We're not talking about those things. I firmly believe that some of the major, major, major diseases will be eradicated. Yes. I can almost guarantee it. There's some that won't like cancer because it's trillions of dollars. So maybe there's some controversy there. There's some like AIDS, which obviously have been manageable. Pretty much eradicated. Look at Madger Johnson. He got it like 30 years ago, 40 years ago. And look how healthy and amazing he is. But I believe that the brain ones will be gone. I think the things that my grandparents, both of my grandparents passed away from, like Alzheimer's, will be eradicated.

1:07:32I hope so. I have a grandfather, too, 10 years. Very bad Alzheimer's. Half of my family is in danger. And so why I say that, why do I lead an investment speech with that? The average person currently has$5 ,500 saved up in America. What if your kid wants to retire at 74 and lives to 104? for? They need 30 years of money saved up. What if they want to get by on$5 ,000 a month? I'm not talking about inflation or medical expenses. Let's just say$5 ,000 a month. Well,$5 ,000 a month times 12 is$60. Times 30 years is a lot. $1.8 million. It's a scary thought. So just get by. Right. Well, unless you want them to be 84, 10 years later, working somewhere to make $5 ,000 a month, who knows if they'll have those type of jobs then because of AIs and robots and things like that.

1:08:23and so I literally tried to scare the audience at the beginning by saying I'm scared just sitting here yeah yeah it works that if your kid's gonna live to 104 they need to have money and we need to be able to bluntly talk about it which is the whole point of this podcast all right tell them where they can find you on social media where can they find your companies tell them everything all right on social media either dr. Jay Feldman or lead at Jen both on instagram lead Jen Jay on my website or otterpr.com I'm everywhere if you search Jay Feldman I'll pop right up I love it Yeah, it's been a lot of fun.

1:08:52All right, guys. This is truly important. The reason that we're doing so well on the podcast charts is you. Liking, commenting, subscribing. When you're in the situation, you're at a lunch, you're at a dinner with your friends playing basketball, and they talk about a certain topic, you're going to hopefully remember episodes like this. When it comes to someone bringing up lead gen or PR, you're like, oh, yeah, you should follow Dr. J. This happened here? Boom. Oh, you should listen to this episode. I remember they talked about this. It's not just about you. These things are going to come up in your life all the time.

1:09:21People are going to bring up things about paid ads, real estate, the stock market, health, and all the things in between. So when you hear guests on podcasts, whether it's the Money Mondays or different podcasts, make sure you are referring these things to your friends to help make their lives better too. I appreciate you guys. We'll see you next week on Monday on themoneymondays.com.