From the Bronx to Building an Empire: Vince Ricci on Business, Investing & Giving Back 🏰 E166

0:05Dan Fleyshman:Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays podcast where we cover three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give away a charity. This gentleman has been a part of my life for many, many, many years. Over 12 years ago, we started this charity called the Trina's Kids Foundation. So the charity part of this episode at the end, you're going to hear from someone that broke the Guinness Book World Record for the world's largest toy drive. We're actually inside of the building where it all started called the Hubble Studio in downtown Los Angeles where when the charity first started there was eight volunteers on the floor now filling up stadiums, the Miami basketball arena, etc, etc.

0:42Dan Fleyshman:We'll get into that later. On the make money side, Hubble Studio also has multiple buildings. There's tens of thousands of square feet, multiple different studios, so we're going to dive into that. This will be one of those episodes that it's not just for you. It could be for someone from your past, present, or future. It could be for someone four months from now or four years from now where you remember, I need to show this episode and share it with them because you might be able to change their life with what this guest tells you today. So without further ado, Vince Ritchie, give us the quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money.

1:12What's going on, Dan? My name is Vince Ritchie, and I'm an Italian-American from the Bronx, New York. Migrated out to California 13 years ago, seeking opportunity. This is when I felt like a lot of people were coming this way. Production industry was coming back. They had just recently lowered a bunch of taxes on bringing a lot of stuff back from Canada, opened Hubble Studio. Hubble Studio exploded within photo and film industry. So we created Hubble Agency which then produced the content, built assets to different marketing campaigns for people. And then under that, I ended up getting involved in a couple other ventures, different brands, cannabis brand, a coffee brand, a clothing brand, makeup brand, different things like that.

1:52All right.

1:53Dan Fleyshman:That's a lot to unpack there. On the make money side of this podcast, how does a studio like couple studio, how do you make money? What's the business here? Like if a client was listening, what would they utilize you guys for? So we're a full service production company. So basically more high end, high demanding companies like Avog, Harper's Zah, Nike, Aloe, Hyperice would want to use us because we're a one stop shop. You don't need a huge team. You could show up we provide all the production, all digital, all lighting, down to craft, catering, valet parking, every single aspect that you need to do.

2:30A production is pretty much a mini event. It's going to be a 12-hour day. You have talent that you have to entertain. You have celebrity photographers you have to entertain, celebrity directors you have to entertain. Some of these people that are very high paid, they have very high maintenance. Everybody's a celebrity that day. We cater our uniqueness in our business is that we treat everybody triple A, everybody that walks on. Everybody's important. Nobody gets felt like they don't understand what's going on. So it makes your job very easy as a producer that you come in and you know that we have it covered.

3:02And at any minute, we could cover whatever problem you have. That's really uniqueness in what we do as a business.

3:09Dan Fleyshman:So when a brand calls and they don't know what to do how do you guide them like you know hey we have a hundred thousand dollar budget or two hundred thousand dollar budget how do you guide them to figure out what the heck they're supposed to be doing well break down how many assets they want what do they really want to achieve how to do it and really we try to help them save money which doesn't behoove me as a business owner but i try i want to come back to you after that that's why we have loyalty with our customers because people know i'm like hey you definitely don't need to do this for this let's do this unpack it and say what do you really need to spend on you don't need to spend on that you You don't need to spend on this.

3:42You don't need all the models all day. You can book them throughout the day, especially if they're not shooting together. Just different ways of having them save money. We come in and help them budget, and that's really where the longevity has been for us with our clientele.

3:55Dan Fleyshman:So someone like a brand like Vogue magazine, they can choose from a lot of studios all over Los Angeles. Why do they keep coming back to you over and over over the years? Strictly relationships, because most likely they've been on set and something went wrong, and we were like, don't worry about it. We'll cover it. we've had goat here one time and they literally like tom brady or goat like a no no like go like this this thing company and their talent just didn't show up and the producer started to cry and i was here late that day and i was like you know what don't worry about it i said rebook in the budget this and i said everything was in house everything we did wow we didn't lose that much.

4:34It was a day. It was a working day. But they were a great partner. We had done collabs with them together. And I was like, you know what? Just don't worry about it. Just come back. It's on us. Wow. I felt like that was a strategic business move.

4:49Dan Fleyshman:Sure. You know, that kept the relationship. And people want to come back because of the relationship. When you're dealing with a human, you come back. When you go to the Beverly Hills Hotel and then the concierge knows who you are, you come back. When you go to the Equinox hotel in New York and they greet you downstairs, you come back. When you go somewhere else and they're like, who are you? Oh, we're sorry that they didn't show up today, but here's your invoice for the day. You still got to owe us$45 ,000. Yeah, exactly. You take the human aspect out of it. We make everything human. And that's why Trina's kids have been so successful here.

5:18So many of our clients show up. So many of our volunteers show up, work with us, previous employees, previous clients, existing clients, future clients come, and it just creates this ecosystem.

5:30Dan Fleyshman:So as you're building up over the years, first there was the one main building over here, and then there's a second building, a third building. I think we're number three or number four buildings that you have here. When did you decide, you know what, I'm going to start expanding some more buildings? Well, two things happened. I knew that they were knocking down the old bridge, so I purchased the original buildings. And they were building this colossal 6th Street Bridge and this big park underneath it. I don't know if you've walked by. It's going to be this monumental thing for the city of Los Angeles.

5:56Dan Fleyshman:And I said, you know, this is going to be key for the city and for this area down here. I want to, you know, kind of make my mark right here. Put your flag on the ground. Yeah, and we're adjacent to Boyle Heights. That's a big community that we invite in for a lot of our events. So I know these kids. I watch these kids grow up. And I was already so invested into the community. I said, let's just start to expand. And I seen the business going somewhere. I seen that I was good at it. And I seen that people like to deal with me. And I can figure things out on the fly. And I said, all right, let's start to expand.

6:27Dan Fleyshman:so the cannabis brand the clothing brand are all the same names with these different brands walk us through the different brands they're all different brands uh we have a kids clothing line called can be a kids that my wife actually created that's completely separate for the people who know know that's on the hubble studio we have the hubble brand and then we have balance which is a cannabis brand balance became its own thing and it really took off during covid and we watched it skyrocket i think that the bespoke part about it is that people that know the exclusivity of hubble and what we've done then know that balance is under it they're like oh that makes sense that's why their branding is so good that's why they have a very sexy appeal it's very very modern when you know you know so it's kind of like a what is italian fashion houses that own a bunch of other brands but when you know it's part of that that's how you know lvmh yeah so there are thousands and thousands and thousands of cannabis brands there are thousands and thousands of kids clothing brands how do you stand out from these competitors for the clothing brand side it's our it's our blends that my wife hand pures goes through yeah the material that it's it's more of a higher end it's what we want to put our kids in it's durable until i had kids i didn't realize how good it was and then one i realized you needed to be durable yeah i needed to be durable one and And two, I'm physically grabbing that.

7:49Not because it's mine, not because we own the brand. Because I personally like it. I like the way it drapes off my kids. I like the way it's constantly reusable and it still looks great. You know, it's expensive, but it continues to look great. And I'd rather buy stuff that lasts 68 washes as opposed to something that lasts four washes. Or a shirt that my daughter got at a kid's birthday party that she loves, but literally three times in it looks distorted. The collars are messed up. But from the cannabis side, it's a whole different business because that business has evolved. Now it's just about shortening an operating cycle and being cash flow positive and being able to maintain.

8:25Cannabis business is in a rough spot right now before it goes federally legal. And I think that they're strongly going to survive.

8:33Dan Fleyshman:So for many years, federally legal has been on everyone's minds. Do you think it's actually approaching? 100%. It will be within the next two, three years. but as the regulations got a little tighter, as we expanded in multiple states, the overproduction, a lot of other products are like production controlled, whether it's milk or eggs. Cannabis wasn't like that. You just gave out tons of licenses and you overproduced and nobody knew what the addressable market was. Now we've kind of seen that peak and people are starting to go out of business as the prices drop down and if you weren't able to manage your cogs, you weren't able to exist and especially if you weren't able to ramp up in volume, you couldn't exist.

9:11What we've recently done was shorten our terms from 30 days to one week, went completely wholesale. We've cut out all of our marketing budget, all of our other stuff to deal more direct, less direct to consumer, more direct B2B. And it's skyrocketed our business. It's been insane. All right.

9:29Dan Fleyshman:So the investing side of the podcast, I like to understand evolution. You start to start, you know, you had, you were making money, then you started building businesses. Now you've got this brand, this brand, this brand. At what point do you say you know what I'm gonna start investing into some real estate Maybe I'll do some apartments or maybe I'll do some fix and flips or maybe I'll do the stock market Like at what point you decide I'm gonna start investing other things Well, it was less of an emotional decision on Do I want to do real estate right now was was per deal when I felt like it was a good opportunity?

9:57I did it. I've been investing into real estate since 2008 I was pretty young when I started doing it and I've continued to do it I'm divesting from New York right now because I feel like the residential housing is going to take a little dip because of certain things that are going on there. So I'm going to get out of that. And then 1031 down to some more commercial opportunities in Los Angeles because I'm here. I'm able to do it. I can control my construction team. I can go through it. The opportunities are more unique here because it was, when I see an opportunity, I had the capital to jump on it and I went after it.

10:32Now, it's like if you want to buy a GT3, a car, a Porsche for instance, it oversells right now for$250 ,000 over sticker. If you really want that car, you're going to go buy that car right now. You're going to pay$550 ,000 for the car. But if you're willing to make a deal, if you're willing to go get an allocation, take care of somebody and wait, you'll get the car for$30 ,000 over MSRP and you'll be walking$200 ,000 equity the minute you buy the car. Same thing with real estate.

11:02Dan Fleyshman:So you get pitched a lot. People come to you all the time because you throw events. here, you're out and about, you're at the conventions, events, everyone's coming here. When someone pitches you, hey, invest into my clothing brand, invest into my shoe company, invest into my plant company, how do you talk to them? How do you decide what you want to invest into? I think I'm betting on the jockey and not the horse at that point. It's how much I believe in the person. And one, I need radical transparency. The minute me and you talk about this all the time, the minute I catch somebody in some sort of fib, some sort of lie, I don't care what you're pitching.

11:38I'm not doing it. Literally. If you start off in a lie within the first minute, the rest of the conversation is just like I'm tuning it out. I think that we've seen thousands and thousands of different opportunities come our way and just around us in our ecosystem. It comes down to the person who could stick it out, the person who's going to evolve and understand that what worked for Jerry Lorenzo in fashion in 2015 is not going to work today. What worked for Teddy Santos with ADL in the early 2000s is not going to work now. How are they changing? How are they pivoting? Paying attention all the time and knowing you most likely are not the market maker.

12:22You're not going to be the guys doing it. I also want the humility in person that's pitching to me to say I know that what I know right now only lasts me today. I need to constantly change every single day and evolve. That's like the number one rule I've seen, want to partner up with somebody. Are they willing to learn?

12:40Dan Fleyshman:Also on the investing side, you have to make decisions about investing to yourself. You work out every single day. You're posting the content sometimes, but I know that you're working out daily. You're training on shooting. You're constantly reading. You're constantly making yourself into a human weapon. Why do you spend so much time investing into yourself? Emotionally, it keeps me always ready. emotionally makes me be able to deal with bad clients. You know, when you have someone who owes you money, tells you they're going to send you a wire for$300 ,000 on Monday, and it's six Mondays from now, and they still haven't sent you, it's very draining.

13:16It's very emotionally draining. You fight with your spouse. You get annoyed by your kids. You get annoyed by your employees. You've got to make another wire. You're counting on this to do that. When you're fully optimizing your health, it makes it a lot easier to handle a lot of that, and I could tune it out. And I think it just ups my threshold. I want to keep my hair as long as possible. I don't want to lose it from stress. And dealing with so many different clients and so many different vendors and it's constantly money in, money out with so many different businesses, it can cause a lot of stress.

13:48And if I do it at 165 pounds, feeling real good about myself, it makes it a little easier.

13:55Dan Fleyshman:So normally I don't talk outside of the money investing and business side. but I want to ask you a question because you did have a video that went viral getting hundreds of millions of views on Every major television news station. They were interviewing about this shooting that took place in front of your house Dealing with that from a logical perspective of you know the police Taking away your gun for a little while or for your permit for a while Walk us through getting that many hundreds of millions of views on you Especially knowing that you stopped to run your businesses used up to run your operations but now the world saw you shoot back at three gentlemen, I don't call them gentlemen, three criminals in front of your house, not gentlemen.

14:34I think, you know, the biggest stress of that was how it impacted my wife. It didn't bother me, it bothered me, but it didn't bother me as much as it might have bothered other people because I'm able to put things behind me. I've learned to deal with grief burying my parents. I've learned to deal with hard times. and grew up in the Bronx, a very definitely privilege was not in my vocabulary.

15:00Dan Fleyshman:I think that, you know, I feel like I've motivated a lot of people when they've seen their video to learn that they have to stand up for themselves. And I received a lot of negative feedback, a lot of flack. But then they issued me my gun permit again two years later. And things got better. And I walk in my house without any trauma from the past. People are like, how do you still live in that house? I said, I don't think we even fixed the fence. I'm pretty sure the gun holes are still there. I haven't looked in a while, but I know my guys went there, but I don't think it's fixed because it doesn't bother me because sometimes you've got to put things behind you.

15:33Now, am I happy that I was able to do exactly what I said I would do? When push came to shove, yes, but that comes from every day showing up to be exactly who I am. I train every single day. It's like somebody posting about being a fitness guy and this and there's certain other people that we both know that their whole presence is this masculinity, this and that. And then they're going out and getting high on the weekends because they can't deal with their problems or they're drinking their problems away doing that. It's not being masculine. It's not being a man. It's not being a father. I think that, you know, I dealt with my issues like a man.

16:10I dealt with my issues like a boss. And when people see that and when they want to invest with me, they know he could turn around. He could deal with a major issue. He could handle the publicity about it. good and bad, and he can get right back to work. I've buried my mother. I went to work the next day. I buried my father. I went to work the next day because people still depended on me. My kids need me to show up. My employees need me to show up. My clients need me to show up. Just because I'm going through something doesn't mean the world stops. We need to show up every single day, and that's the number one rule about being an entrepreneur.

16:40You got to show up every day.

16:42Dan Fleyshman:So if you guys want to see that, just put in Vince Ritchie's shooting. You'll see him defending his household with his wife and children inside and fighting off three gunmen that approached his house that he successfully shot back at. During the Man in the Arena tour, you gave a speech called Pull the Trigger. Can you walk us through the concept of what is pull the trigger? What does that mean to you? You just got to do what you got to make a decision, a decisive decision. You need to handle it and deal with it. I mean, you've spoken about different. We're in a, we've both been in different situations with previous partners, people that we did a deal with, we might have sold something with, and now we're waiting to get paid or something's happening.

17:22All right, let's make a deal right now. Let's execute the deal. What we think we should do. I call you up. You say, go left. I'm not waiting to go left. I'm turning left immediately. I'm pulling the trigger right now. Even though that may not be the best plan, it's not the most thought out plan, but it's what two reasonably well thought out people made up right now. Let's do it. Sometimes you're better off just pulling the trigger and getting through the problem and finding out what's going on and fixing it before somebody else would've even started. You know what I mean? If we get to a race, I'm not sitting there warming up.

17:59I'm warming up on the first mile. I'm gonna stretch while I'm warming up, while I'm going. I'd rather just get this thing going and get it started. So I'm showing up, I'm pulling the trigger, Let's launch. Let's do it. Let's see what's going on. And there's so many people that waste so many years of being scared to launch this thing or being scared to do this. And their life's wasted. I'm 40 years old. I'm just scratching the surface at being a really good CEO, understanding executive level mindset, really having my hands in the sand of saying, like, I've done a good amount of things that I know what's going on.

18:35Am I on the Jamie Dimon level? No. He's the best. But I'm now just getting at the level where I really got a seat at the table.

18:44Dan Fleyshman:So we've had friends around us that have either been lazy or got fat and things like that. And you've taken it upon yourself to check them and jeopardize your relationship with them by being so stern with them. But now we see them become fit, healthy, and some of them even become their whole persona now about being fit and healthy. Talk us through why you're willing to risk your relationship and why it's important to be able to tell your friends the truth, the blunt truth. My mother was a physical trainer. When she was younger, she helped a lot of women around her. She really trained other women, lose weight and change their lives.