How I started a 7 figure Business with Tommie Battaglia Ep 81
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- From the art of the deal to keeping it real. - Keeping it real. - Live from the Simply Vegas studios, it's The Power Move with Jon Gafford. - Back again, back again, back again for another episode of The Power Move. I'm your host, my name is Jon Gafford, to my left.

is Colt El Scorcho. - Oh, Scorcho. - I like that one. - How's that? - Well, you said Jesus and you're like, oh, I got a new nickname. I thought you were going to call me Jesus. - Yeah, I just, when people are walking up to you asking you if you're from Bulgaria, I think we may have played it out too long. I think it's a Bulgarian mongoose. And they just hit me like a bolt of lightning. - El Scorcho.

I love it. I think it's got to. I should have worn my hat. Yeah, you should have. You're trying to get me killed, bud. Sounds like a WWE wrestler. It is. Colt El Scorcho Amadan. It was supposed to change every week, by the way. But we just got stuck on. You got stuck. He was the polo assassin. I tried. You did try. I tried. You did try. Well, never lacking for a nickname across from us is also the counselor. How are you, Dr. Connell? Very good. Very good. Doctor of law.

In the studio with us today is Tommy Battaglia.

Is that correct? Yes, sir. All right. Tommy is our guest today that has a little biz that's been doing pretty well. We want to talk about some insights with that. So we're going to bring him on. But we're going to get back to you in a second, Tommy, because there's lots of stuff to unpack. So first of all, trapped on a cruise ship. Holy shitballs, man. Told you not to go. You did. You did tell me not to go. You did tell me not to go. And I've come to the conclusion with cruises, which is there are like how many days...

you should be on a cruise ship. And if it's like a four-day cruise ship- Four days too much? No, no. If it's like four days, you're good. You're cruising around. You're doing the water slides. You're playing the bingo. You're watching the comedian. You're doing what you're doing, right? The problem is when you're on a four-day cruise ship for seven days, and that's when you're walking around and people are just sitting there playing cards with each other and everybody's looking at their watch a little bit like, hey, what time we get off this? But

One of the stops, I was not aware of this, Colt. One of the stops was in Mazatlan, and we went to a place called Stone Island.

and it's your standard you know sit at the at the beach place watering the toes with the corona in your hand and then the you know the the people come and just hawk wares as you go along i was not aware that they sell mexican cartel uh like hats memorabilia as they would like baseball teams here in the states oh yeah yeah that's very and me be careful yeah i didn't i didn't take my i didn't take a hat so i was like man i need a baseball hat and this dude had like one yankees hat and i was like

"Oh man, if you could find me like an angel's hat, or you can find me like Raiders, you find me something for Vegas, I'll buy it." And the guy, "Oh, I'll be right back, senor." So he runs down the beach and comes back and he's got, "I found it, hey, hey." And I'm like, "No, that's a Diamondbacks hat, dude. I'm not buying that one." Then he's like, "Oh," takes off again and he comes back and now he's got like something else that didn't make any sense. And I was like, "No," and he comes back, he's like, "Senor, I can't find anything." Now I feel bad 'cause the guy's run up and down the beach. So I'm like, "All right."

So I'm looking at all of the cartel merchandise. Can I take an El Chapo? No, he had it. He had El Chapo merch, right? So I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, which cartel is Colt root for? I don't know. I don't know Colt that well. So I went with the Sonola hat, which apparently is going to get him killed. No, you shouldn't have done that. I don't know. No, La Juntas. La Juntas is his team. He's a cheer for La Juntas. Well, this is what I thought. I don't cheer for anybody. I don't need to end up.

Everybody knows why I smoke cigars. I love Mexico. As a whole, I support everybody. He also represents the Eastside Crips. I don't know. Any Bloods out there that find that objectionable? You guys are trying to get me killed. I know. So if you're listening to this, and I think we're simulcast in Mexico. I believe we are.

If you're listening to this and you see Colt in the Sonola hat, understand he's wearing it not so much for supporting your cartel, but because it was a gift. It would hurt my feelings if he did not. It was $10, the cheapest hat they had. It was. It was. It was the cheapest hat they had. We went with that. Yeah, he's trying to get me killed out here. I'll trade you a Papi Chulo extra small for your large El Chapo. Go right for it. Go ahead. I'm like, because they had like, I think the hat said J-

JGL on them. Yeah, the Junta's Guard National, like whatever. Yeah, I said, and they said, oh, and the guy's like, you know how old Chapo is? And I'm like, yeah. And I'm like, I didn't know he had merch. I wasn't aware. What's the seven, they got like an area code too, not that they rep to. You don't want to be caught in that either. There's a lot of stuff. You got to be careful. It's pretty much he gave me a blood hat making me walk down a crypt. Let's see.

Well, here's, but here's, are you going to get shanked from like random people? Or is this like a, your wife is going to like shake you when you go home? Probably both. No, just the bloods. The dogs will get you. Just the dogs. The dogs will get you. All right. Informational gang gangland. Yeah. That was literally the highlight of the cruise, which is there, but I told you not to go. I don't know why you go on. Well, you know, I told my wife I'm retired. Well, here's the thing though, man. It's not,

If it was just me, and I hate to say this because I love my family, I love my kids, and if it was just me and my wife, it would have been okay. Because I'm fine to do nothing sometimes because we're doing so much all the time. But it was a kid's spring break, and it's kind of what they wanted to do. And they were looking at me like, what do we do now? What do we do now? Dance monkey dance. And I'm like, I'm exhausted. I don't want to try to figure out where we're going next or this or that. And it was a lot. Tommy, you like cruises? Because...

Yeah. I love cruises. Going on cruises for a long time. Been on about nine or 10 of them. Gee, I've never been on one. They've probably been on never 40 cruises. My parents. Really? They love it, dude. Love it. Well, this was the thing that was terrified. This was the thing that was terrifying to me as we're, as the last night at dinner, right? We're at dinner the last night. And then the cruise director is like, thank you everyone for coming on Royal Caribbean, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. How many,

of you will be continue sailing with us tomorrow. And it was like, I'm like, where are they going to go? You're staying on this boat. Like I'm, I can't wait to get off. I've seen the guy that's retired and just living on the boat. And that's all he does. One of my clients, who are we talking to now? This is going to bother me. They paid. Oh, it was a friend of ours. I don't know if you know, um, the coutures, one of their friends. Wait, wait, wait. You just dropped that name. No, no. Emily couture. I'm sorry.

good friends. I don't know if you know them, but the Kennedys, the Kennedy family. I found out I come from Kennedy bloodline. So do I, but I'm old in Ireland. All right, go. No, so we're talking to one of her friends at her baby shower, and she says, she's like, oh, my parents, blah, blah, blah, I've been driving their EV. I don't

I don't know when the hell they're going to come back because they went on a four-month cruise. It was $120,000. Now, see, here's the thing. Okay, back up. Let's talk about that.

Cause they do have like a cruise ship. That's like a year cruise or something, but you go to 129 countries. So you're getting off of that thing almost every day. Oh, but that's still got to get back on. Let's say you don't like it. Let's say you didn't like it. Or you're stuck with a lot of horrible people. It's either you're stuck with a bunch of hot babes or you're not. I guess they're extending by three months. Right.

Well, I think, but I don't think that's your first cruise. I don't think you're like, you know, you know, we should try this out. Let's go on this 365 day. John, let's do that. I mean, that sounds miserable. Like absolute. I'd rather watch a Tom Hanks movie.

and do that. You know what's funny? What do you feel about Tom Hanks? I got sucked in this morning into one of the Ranker things and it was talking about Tom Hanks and it was things you didn't know about Castaway. And I'm like, look at, I was expecting like 10, 9, 8, 7, 4. Colt Amidon hates this movie. That's what I expected to see in there.

And I didn't. And it was a, yeah, I'll send you the link. I'll send you the link. I can't believe that movie made money. I'm telling you guys, we should be in the film industry. Tommy Cole despises, doesn't just dislike Tom Hanks. You like Tom Hanks? You think he's got good movies? I enjoy a lot of his films. I was thinking about what? I don't think Castaway was one of the best ones. Name one good one.

Saving Private Ryan? Great. The only thing that came from that is the knockoff porn. The only thing good. Bachelor Party? No, that's Saving Ryan's Private Ryan. Yeah. It's a different movie. It's a whole different thing. Oh, man. Well, there you go. You know, I was watching. It's funny. Did you guys see the Ben Shapiro kind of...

kind of hubbub about the oscars when he was like nobody will ever watch this movie again did you see this the everywhere every now that thing oh everything have you watched it one of the worst movies i've ever seen holy smokes it was difficult to watch i watched it over the weekend on h on the old hbo there and it was hard to watch man it was like what in the absolute is going on yeah in this movie my

My wife's Korean, and she absolutely loved it. And I think that's where we're both lost. Is it culturally? Is that when Datto won? It's a big Asian thing. It is, but I think it's an Asian thing just because it stars a bunch of Asian folks. I think the whole premise of the...

Multiverse cracking and all of these things happening in different alternate dimensions and it's the same scene conception It was really hard to be on that really really hard to watch but I but you watch Oscar or something Not a clue It did but he was talking about if you look at the movies that win best movie every year Nobody ever goes back and watches them again. They're like they're movies that stepbrother should have won Yeah, like god forbid god forbid, right? No

No, he says the last 15 years he was talking about. And he was naming off the movies, and you're like, yeah, wouldn't even see that. John, pull them out. What are the last 15 best-winning films before we get to Tommy? Because I want to see how legitimate I feel this is. Yeah, no, no, and some of them are right. The one of them I know that I have watched again was The Green Book. I have watched that movie again. Never heard of it. I have. I thought it was a good movie. But it's like one of them was Particle, that Korean movie about, you know,

The contagions was, Oh, okay. That one best picture. One best picture. Yes. I haven't watched the Oscars in. Yeah. One of them was like the shape of water. Yeah. Like when she fell in love with the alien fish or something. I watched the award shows for read them off. Call them off, buddy. Uh, Coda. Nope. I don't know what that is. Yeah. Uh,

Parasite. Don't know what that is. Green Book. Don't know what it is. Shape of Water. Horrible sounding. Moonlight. Don't know. Spotlight. Don't know. This one I'll give it. Birdman. Even though I never watched it. But you haven't watched it again. There is one on here that I will say. There's a couple. Spotlight. I'd watch that again. Birdman. I'll give Birdman.

Michael Keane, 12 years slave. I don't know. Argo, can't stand him, but that was a great pitcher. I'll give Argo. He's handsome as hell, but that's... You think so? Well... Oh, come on, no. Dude, he is a...

six at best. Have you seen the Louis CK bit where he's talking about how irritating Good Will Hunting is? No. I've never watched it. I tried to watch it last Saturday. I couldn't. He's like, the reason I hate that movie is because Matt Damon also wrote the movie. He's like, so Matt Damon's sitting there and he's like...

Number one, I'm awesome. I'm a construction worker and I fight a lot. Like I fight a lot. And my friends are like, oh my God, you're out of control. You fight so much. I'm like, I don't care because it's just the way I am. But I'm also a genius. I try to watch it. I don't even have to study. I just know these things. And the people that are real geniuses, other geniuses have to study. They're like, oh, you're so smart. He's like, it just wouldn't happen.

I would say it's from 2010 on. The King's Speech. Slumdog Millionaire. That's a great movie. We're getting in some decent ones. No Country for Old Men. No Country for Old Men is good. Great movie, but see, what year was that? We're past the 15th. Yeah, yeah, that was... 08? 09, 08 thing. The party. There will be blood. See, 08? Like, look it, let's go from 95...

- No. - You're not gonna find Die Hard in there. - Welcome back to the power film. - Let's go from '91 on. Dances with Wolves, good. Silence of the Lamb, great. Unforgiving, Schindler's List. - Perfect. - Forrest Gump, get the hell out of here. Braveheart, The English Patient, Titanic, Shakespeare's in Love, American Beauty.

Gladiator. I've seen all of these again. Chicago. Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings. Million Dollar Baby. Crash. The Parted. Terrible. Worst movie ever made. What? Million Dollar Baby. Million Dollar Baby. Didn't like it. Didn't like it. Jay-Z's got a great. That was a pile of shit. But Jay-Z has one of the best lines in rap history using Million Dollar Baby. Another Billion Dollar Baby. Million Dollar Baby. All right. Sorry, but that's it.

As we go through, that's what these people suck at making movies. I think we could make a movie and get Best Picture Awarded in 24 months. I think we could.

And we'll do it on a Samsung. Oh, yeah. This is the movie where you were going to hunt people. No, that was Get Me On a Seven Episode of Netflix. Survivor. That's right. We could easily write a Netflix. There is so much shit on Netflix. That is shit. I got to tell you, I had my eyes opened huge this weekend. I had a meeting this weekend. I won't go too far into it because it still hasn't produced anything great yet. But I had a good meeting this weekend.

And some people flew into town and meet with me. And we were talking about the state of television with non scripted television is what we're talking about. And apparently I didn't know this, but Warner brothers has, has purchased discovery and,

And like every channel that's out there, there's really only two players in the non-scripted television genre. There's Viacom, which owns MTV and Real World and all that stuff. And then there's Discovery, which owns TLC, HGTV, I mean, all of those channels. And apparently Warner Brothers had bought Discovery.

And essentially just started just consolidating and hacking everything out of there. So it used to be like, if you had a development project, you would take it to like one of the networks and talk to them. But now apparently you walk into a room and they're all sitting there and they're all like double chops. And then they're like, oh, that would work for me. Wouldn't work for you. And it's just, it's very strange thing. So yeah, it just, it's, it's amazing how quickly, uh,

things are evolving in the entertainment world. Cause I got to believe they're losing Iowa. They're losing eyeballs to, to the web. I mean, you know how much longer content, but how exactly, how much longer can these, you know, TV can TV channels even exist anymore. If you think about like when friends went off there, like how many millions of people watch that? When's the last time that many millions of people watched anything? Um, and,

Only fans. Okay, there you go. What's the Tiger King? The Tiger King. Yeah, okay. They have contents, but they've just put them out in bingeable chunks. Have you watched Gunther's Millions? Not yet. That's a pretty good one. You guys should watch that. It's a little messed up in the head. Just before we get to... Tommy, I promise we're going to get to you. One more thing. No, one more thing, because I have these things I want to talk about, and I think I find them interesting, but they just launched the first human-less...

McDonald's in Denver, Colorado this week. There's not one human that works in the building. It's like a giant vending machine at McDonald's. So there's people that are outraged at this, that somehow they're replacing humans and killing jobs and this and that. Don't go there. Well, here's my thing. So this is the discussion I want to have about McDonald's. And it's not really what you think. So

I am, I am of the, I am of the camp that that job was never designed to be a job where you can earn a living wage. It's not what it's designed for. It's designed for 16 year old kids. It's like,

to go after school and make some money. - It's your first job. - Your first job. - I'll push back on that. I don't think it was designed to be anything. I think it's inputs just don't require a high level of training. - Got it, okay, fair enough. But the question is, if you think about it, I've thought about this a lot. When did it become a job that you could not hire 16-year-old kids? And it's when McDonald's started serving breakfast.

when it started having to open at six o'clock in the morning five o'clock in the morning you had to get there and then they went to 24 hours now you can't have kids working there

So whose fault is this, Connell? What say you? Is it the greedy corporations that don't want to acquiesce to the living wage of their employees? Is it the store for being open 24 hours? Is it the unions or whatever else that push so much for these increases in minimum wage that this is the result of that? What says you?

Well, so that's a very complicated economic question. Answer the question, Connell. 20 seconds. So I worked at Burger King at lunchtime. They paid for my hour of work, plus I got a free lunch and I could go do it, whatever. So I did that at lunchtime. I spent my lunch working at Burger King, flipping burgers, literally. Yeah.

I worked very menial jobs when I was 15, 16, and happy to have them. And a lot of people didn't. I worked graveyards when I was 16 on weekends. I worked the midnight shift. In the graveyards? No, no, no. Sorry. Just for fun. I'm like, damn, Kyle, that's hard. My life would have probably been threatened less frequently.

Working in the graveyard. If I'd be attacked by knives and stuff. Yeah, Colts like is the graveyard hiring? No, but Bill Gates talked about that a long time ago about the unintended consequences of pushing a minimum wage because in economics, in pure economics, I don't know any good economist who is neutral, who sits there and says that yes, minimum wages or economic floors are good.

They're bad because there's what's called, you know, dead weight loss. If I don't want to break up the chart, but there's a supply curve and a demand curve and where they intersect is it's natural balance point, right? Now there's people that will be willing to work for less and there's people that want to work for more and there's, and then it'll decrease demand and supply this whole thing. So when you increase the cost, right, of a unit of labor,

to a certain point, there will be less demand and there's more people that would do it for that price and there's fewer people that will pay you to do it. So it creates this triangle of deadweight loss. So what that does is it's actually a net detriment to your economy. Okay. Colt. I would have said the same thing. Colt, rebuttal. I think that it's, those are good jobs, right, for a lot of immigrants, right, stuff that come into it.

No, it is. It's a lot of dude, right? Like language, why you're trying to learn language. Do not reflect. No, there is. If you go, especially around my neighborhood or into LA, there are people that are learning the language and it is a good job for them to be able to have. Can they read the word Sonola? Yeah.

I think that there is always going to be replacements for stuff that can be odd, you know, just bam, here it is flipping burgers, cooking stuff that can be done at,

but those jobs, there's going to be other jobs created, right? That people can go make money. But yeah, I mean, or there won't be, or there won't. And then you better be educated and you better figure stuff out. But I don't think at least in our lifetime that we're going to see a lot of people, you know, if you look back in the thirties and forties, they had this big fear too. Right. And there was probably just as much,

you know, going on during those times as there is now with robots, with the assembly lines, with stuff like that. So I think that a lot of people, John is just chomping at the bit. We have literally AI right now. 1950s robots. All the pictures that one from lost in space is spitting around. If you were sitting there in 1920,

and you hear all these new things coming to, they thought the exact same thing. So yeah. Is it more is AI crazy? Yeah. I think AI you're not, I told my son, you want to be a computer designer and stuff. I'd probably re look at that. If I want to be a lender,

I would probably rethink that because all this stuff's going to be auto. Right. 1920s, though, they were worried about the Irish and Italians taking their jobs. I'm saying if you go back. Storm the docks. There was a big change and a lot of stuff that was they took our jobs type of deal. That was Henry Ford. Henry Ford and the automation of the car plant. There was so much at that point. It wasn't just that, right? There is that.

thousands of inventions in that 20 years. With true AI, though, and true automation, that was Andrew Yang, his whole premise of the universal basic income. You're going to get to a point where people actually, there are no jobs for you. It's not just a, there are these shifts, right? And John, when we were talking about, we didn't get through the whole thing, but you talked about the exponential shifts in societal pressures and exponential shifts in a technology that it's not just technology.

slightly different. It's a paradigm way. So this type of thing with true AI and automation, right? With almost sentient things that can start building themselves, that's going to cause a massive decrease in employment for a ton of jobs. Like today, before you guys got here, what was I doing?

I unemployed a graphic artist. I unemployed a web designer and employed all of those people using AI today. And just, and it was, it's easy and simple to do. But you're an early adopter. It'll take time. You're an early adopter of technology. Yeah. Right. But this, so, so was my dad, but now my dad's on the internet has Facebook. He, he is truly a Luddite. We, he was on a typewriter in the two thousands. Yeah.

So, but even he has adopted, right? It takes time for a lot of people, but the next generation that is raised with it, it won't take them much time. Can you imagine trying to explain AI to Nana? I mean, we just got the blink in 12 on the BCR. Try to explain it to fricking 30, 40 year olds. I don't like, it's not old. Just like those old people. Like, oh, they can't work in fact, they're, they're trying fax machines. These people still like you,

You know how many people have asked me, do you use AI? What's this chat GPT? Like, how does this work? And you try to explain them. They're like, I don't understand. It's really strange. I mean, honestly, like- We just had a conversation. It's really strange to me when people are like, what is this? Like, I mean, I had somebody this week hit me up and be like, hey, what was that site that you've, exactly the process I outlined for you earlier? And they said, what was that site that would do that? And I'm like-

I was like two months ago, like really like Google. It's so far in the rear view of what I've figured out how to do with this thing. Now I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. And I was like, oh yeah, yeah, it's this. And they were like, oh my God, this is amazing. Yeah. When I came in today, I was like, oh, who did this website? What is this design? He's like, uh, just AI did it. Just a lot of bloody graphic designers. I was like, this is amazing. This is somebody who went to school for 20 years for this. That's why I told my kid, like,

look how this is already changing it and this is three or four years into it right imagine this is when it's 10 years into it 15 years into it i mean i remember being on google's first little gmail beta like it was cool not that cool now you know everybody's got gmail like it's moved so quick and stuff will move that quickly but i was only ever alpha cool yeah well like like i've said

like that's an alpha move right there i'm telling you hey we are 23 minutes in it 23 minutes in it's just you said his name i wouldn't talk to el scorcho like that i know it's gonna be serious yeah i like the new nickname spell it for me so i can write a great weezer song by the way well that's why i heard it and i was like oh el scorcho

Oh my God, that should be called. I think Weezer is coming in concert soon. I think they are. Anyway, back to this. So I tell my kids all the time, I'm like, look, if you want to, if you want a job, that's going to, it's going to be around for a while. You have one skill set. I think I would develop. And that is the ability to sit in front of somebody else and connect with them on a deep and personal level and move them over because all your friends who have their faces in their phones are not going to have that skill. That's it. And speaking, speaking, see that that's a segue right there. Speaking of the ability to sit with someone and, and,

Grant needs and get them what they need. I want to talk to Tommy. We forgot. I almost forgot you were here. How you doing? I'm here. I can't forget it to you though. Cause your name is tattooed on your leg. That's right. And the question becomes,

Is that so if we find you, we know who you are, if you're terribly burned, is it like a dog tag? No. My mom told me when I was 22 years old, she's like, never get a tattoo, disown you from the family. So when I moved to Vegas, the first thing I did was got tattoos. Not a lot of them, just things that were important to me. My last name, the name of my company, Guy Tano. Got it.

My wife's name. Well, Guy Tano. Ooh, your wife. I'm all fired up on that one. I'm branded. It's in Korean, so, you know. If that doesn't work out, then, you know. No, it just means soup. It means dragon. Yeah.

I had this random Korean guy come up to me in the gym and he would tap me on the back and he's like, Oh, what's that? And I was like, my wife's name. He goes, Oh man, she's a lucky lady. And I was like, how do you know that about her by coming up to me in the gym? This is weird. Cause it actually says her name. And then the word bitch.

It says that you are her bitch is what it says. That's what I meant to say. It does not. How would you know? I think he just thought you were cute, Tommy. That's it. She's a lucky lady. Keep up the good work. A little smack on the ass as you head over to squat rack. Let me turn around first. Anything to talk to this guy.

he was thinking about it for weeks i need it i got my opportunity you might want to go to a different gym after this every time i go shower he's there oh god well tell us about guy tano man tell us about what the business does uh so guy tano is a custom handmade soup company uh we take about 22 different points and measurements we designed for a lot of athletes a bunch of the golden knights and raiders steve aoki in town

Chris Connolly right next to me. - Connell Law, yeah, Connell Law, 702 Connell. - Absolutely, and then Mr. Gafford as well. So we do a great job. It's all about you being your own designer. So you get to pick the fabric, you get to pick the inside lining, the buttons, it's amazing. People that were off the rack shoppers now come and they get custom suits and they feel honestly way better about themselves. A really great fitted suit.

is what every guy needs. So that's what you do. And that's what he did. But let's go back before that and get to how we got there. Because part of the podcast here and part of what we try to do is help people

escape what I like to call the drift. There's a lot of people out there that are maybe just moving through life aimlessly and they're not attacking in a way that makes sense. And you're a guy that's obviously done that. So this is a company that you built from the ground up. This was an idea you had and you just went and got it done. Yeah, absolutely. So what were you doing before this? So I was working in the nightclubs for Vegas, Chateau, Open Hakasa Nightclub, and slowly I

decided that yes you're making 120 000 a year being you know just pouring drinks whatever you're doing going through the motions working four days a week it's it's super easy but you went to college you're not doing or amounting anything of yourself right like back home i'm from long island new york and back home my parents would go out to dinner with their friends and jimmy joey and tony they're all lawyers doctors whatever right yeah what's tommy do he's a busser in vegas

Great for me making the money I am, but it's not like a respectable thing, right? And I'm Italian from New York, all about family. You're shaming the family. Yeah, you know, it's terrible. I'm the only child. I want to make a name, you know, for myself, you know, and make my parents proud. I told you that stuff in common. Meanwhile, Bobby, Tony, and Johnny are sitting there going, God, I wish I lived Tommy's life. I wasn't paying 4,000 rent in the island. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, I...

i decided that i needed to do something else while i was working there so i met this guy and he was from thailand and he had um a multi-general generation family business right four or five years generation and uh they did it all and he was like i want to expand my business to america and i was like i have a little loose change let's start a business together and we opened up a brick and mortar store here in las vegas

And that went on for a really long time. But you're missing a lot of steps there. So you open a brick and mortar shop selling suits. Like off the rack suits or custom suits? Custom handmade suits. The same thing I'm doing now. But here's the thing, though. You didn't just say, we're going to open up a... Oh, here we are. We're open. There's a process that goes into that. Of course, yeah. So did you have to raise capital? Did you have to... What was that process? Did you bootstrap this yourself? Yeah. It was going to be... The financials were coming from...

you know, the hawk is on money, maybe a couple little investors here and there. And then the guy, Bob, he was going to teach everything right. You know how to measure, uh, bring the sample. Cause he'd done this. This is what he does. Oh yeah. And he was going to have, uh, us use his production company over in Thailand. Okay, cool. So that, so you got your, your, your, your seamstress folks, uh,

From him my tailoring my measuring skills. I would no no, but I met the people that actually manufacture the suits Oh, yes, absolutely. So you didn't so you didn't have to go wander the streets in Thailand No, like I just picture it like raining and you're on like a tuk-tuk and you're like, oh

I need a seamstress. Where should I go? Yeah. And then like, you know, someone took pity on you. Come in, come in child. Yes. Come in. Let them guide me in. So it's not, so not take this lost American boy and show him the way. Yeah, that was it. Didn't happen. It was already set up. They had the production and everything. And it was all right. So the, the, the lesson there then is if you want to get into a business, it's better to find somebody that already knows what the hell they're doing and partner with them. Exactly. So,

What did you bring to that partnership? How did how did you land this guy to get him to agree to do this with you? What were you bringing to the table my friend? He always wanted to create American business, but he did not have an American at the nightclub Okay, like at the table. I was serving his table He bought bottles and stuff and I was pouring him drinks and we were shooting the shit and I found out what he was doing and I

And then I was like, okay, well, if you want an American person to help you out do this, I'm kind of the guy. You could just say I'm a silver-tongued devil and he just went, that guy. How much of that conversation happened that night at the club? Very loose conversation. Obviously, he was in town for about a week and a half, so we had several meetings after that. How are we going to execute what he was going to bring to the table, what I was bringing to the table, how we were going to find the brick-and-mortar spot. Did we really need that?

All those things. Awesome. So he, so he went back to Thailand, I'm assuming he was there and you're in your, you're here. What he did before was he had clients and then he would go to San Francisco, LA, meet those people, sell them suits out of his suitcase basically, and do what we were going to be doing just in a centralized location in Las Vegas. In one place. Yeah.

So the lesson there kids is the more hands you shake, as Bradley would say, the more money you make just from being out, being around and sparking up a conversation. You never know. But I would think also you had to have been pretty confident in your sales, your sales skills at that point, which is what you were bringing to the table. Yep. 1000%. So, you know, the people that I knew from Hakkasan, I knew, well, boom, I was going to start there and then it was going to branch off from there. And did you try to, cause Hakkasan's buy, they buy all their suits for their guys, right?

No, not in the beginning. They were buying them on their own. Okay. So they were buying them on their own and I was giving them the greatest deal. So it wasn't about making a lot of money in the beginning. It was about more suits on people's bodies. It was like free advertising, right? Yeah, of course. So yeah, hook them up with a suit. They're wearing it. They love it. They tell somebody. Complete word of mouth business for like the first five years. Wow. You know what? I just had a genius idea. Check this out, Colt.

Here's what it needs to do. Every suit you make, right? You just write suits by Guy Tano on the back of it with a highlighter. And then when they go to the nightclub, you just walk around with a black light. You just hit them and they'll have no idea. They'll be right there. They'll have no clue. This is why I make the big bucks. You know, Alexander McQueen was a very famous designer. He got his start on high street making suits, but he was making suits for like princes and all that stuff on high street. And he would graffiti and spray paint on the inside of the suit.

talking shit. See, this is, yeah, this is not a bad idea. Eat the rich, all this stuff inside the suit so nobody would ever know, right? And you'd get it. It would be Prince Charles wearing this suit and meanwhile, it's like, eat the rich, like, fuck the monarchy. Oh, so inside the line. Inside the nobody sauce was like a silent protest. No shit. That's awesome. Well, good for him. So,

You get the business going with this guy. So of the capitalization of the business, how much did you bring to the table? What did he bring to the table initially? He brought zero physical dollars. Okay. Because he was going to produce the suits. He was the connection. That was it. Exactly, yeah. Without him, the business does not exist, right? Okay. And then the raised capital to open the brick and mortar was about $35,000. Okay, so there you go. $35,000. Not too bad. Didn't break the bank. Where'd you sign up? Yeah.

It was, we started at LLC and then it was on Jones and Bedora. It was...

600 square foot place just walk in no real foot traffic or anything and that was that and that was that and then I'll tell you what happened moving. Yeah, so you get open you have that you have the brick and mortar It's going great. How are you? So if you guys agreed everything you generate you're splitting the profits 50/50 was one other partner It was three thirty three and a half percent to each. Yep. What did the other partner bring to the table? I

a little bit more capital later on down the line and then sales ability. Okay. So you, you would, so you and your other partner were working in the store or other partners off in Thailand coming back and forth from time to time, like helped us get the shop set up, brought all the,

suit samples over there like so current jackets like he brought all the inventory of like you know the show pieces because it was all custom handmade we didn't have like 42 regular off the rack sizes so we didn't need any physical inventory we needed uh lookability right and then what went what went wrong um so we are in business for about um

- About eight months, about eight months, and we find out because somebody went to Thailand that it did not cost what he was saying it cost to make the suit. - Yeah, that's what I was worried about. - Yep, and so he was triple-X-ing whatever it was to make the suit, so he was making double money

on top of the 33 and a half percent sales. So he was double dipping and none of the sales were brought by this man. Like it was by everybody else. - Yeah, you could backdoor that on a one-way. - Yeah, it's rough. - Yeah. - Yeah, here's the lesson on that kids.

He who controls the inventory controls the business. That's how it works. Know your shop. Yeah, exactly. And if you can create your own factory or do everything in house, then that is the absolute way to go. Cause you control everything. But you don't know from the start. Yeah. You don't know. You don't know. You don't know what you don't know. So, so figure this out. And,

And then. So what happens? You figure this out. Are you fucking, are you kidding me? You know what I mean? Um, can you do it more in New York for me? Are you fucking kidding me, bro? Like, honestly, get out of here, dude. You're double dipping. Like, dude, this isn't going to fly. Like go back to Thailand. We'll see you later. And then we basically X'd him out of the company, uh, figured out what we needed to figure out. Did you fold the company and start a new one?

We did not, it didn't get this brash. We were a little calmer in the beginning because we knew that if we ended this right now, we have nothing to back us up. So we needed to play it off. So the other partner went to Thailand as I'm playing it off cool that we really don't know anything. And he finds the current partner

that we use for production. Okay. Yep. And so once that was established and good, and I'm saying he did the research of hundreds and hundreds of companies that are over there. It's pretty overwhelming and found these amazing. Was he in the tuck tuck? Was it raining? On the back of a scooter. Now I get, now, yes. Now I get there.

food poisoning absolutely so find that company he comes back once we're established and you know we start having a good relationship with this new company then we hit Bob with

What the fuck are you doing? And that's it. He left. Basically, literally, we took he had a working visa. He had a working green card. So he could only be here if the business was open. So he had a. So you folded the business at that point? Exact close. Yes. So you shut down the store, but you're still trading on the same name. Yes. Opened a new LLC with me and the other 33 and a half percent partner.

Okay. And he never came back and legal up over that? No, he couldn't. His name wasn't really on anything. Okay. So there's a business lesson. Do business with immigrants because no, I'm kidding. It's a terrible thing to say. Don't not do business with immigrants. You're getting mad at me. John's getting us canceled. Yeah, we're getting canceled. No, no. The point being is consult an attorney before you make any dissolvable. I have a case right now that's going through the same thing. These people are going over it.

There was an agreement that one would sell to the other, but he needed to pay this person. He didn't pay this person, yet he's taken off the bank account, started taking money out of the table, all this other stuff. I'm like, you're both still partners. There's no transference of assets. There's no transference. There's no purchase agreements that have been executed and performed. There's no membership share agreement transfers. You need to take ownership of shares.

Yeah. Of membership interest. I would say, I would say very lucky you pulled that off. If you're dealing with a lot of people that are all based in this country, do not fold your country, your, your LLC and then try to open another one to try to trade them the same name. I knew that is what I knew who my partner was and what I was doing. You know what I mean? I'm sure if it was, I just didn't want anybody to hear this and think, well, yeah, I got this dead meat. I'll just fold it, move.

But again, to Tommy's point, you would have a breach of fiduciary duty. They could sue him too. So in that thing, when you're trading against your own company, you're breaching the fiduciary duties of good faith and fair dealing. Tommy would actually have a cause of action against him. So this empty LLC that doesn't have any money isn't worth anything for this guy to come in combat when they could sue him for unjust enrichment for prior income made.

And have it laid out in the partnership agreements too, right? Absolutely. There's a lot of different angles to this. I got your back, Tom. It sounded really – no, no. I wasn't trying to make him sound terrible. It was a little clean. I'm a brash New Yorker. I don't know how to sugarcoat it. That was it. Beat it, pal.

No, no, no. Hit the bricks. So moving on now, you guys are open just yourself. You folded the store. Yep. You obviously see that being one-on-one, being mobile is the better way to do this business, not having to be anchored to a store. Yep. Too much overhead. $6,000 in overhead at that store. Got zero walk-in clients because the business is…

personal relationship and it's also on an appointment only relationship. Yeah. You know, unless you're in the mall or in one of the casinos, you don't have foot traffic really. There's not a lot of foot traffic out here in Vegas. Yeah. So you guys have built a pretty, pretty large clientele here in town now. I know here in Vegas you do over a hundred suits a month. I think you said about a hundred a month, a hundred suits a month. And how do you leverage your existing business to create new relationships? The,

the athletes, the celebrities, the people like yourself, right? Hey, I do suits for John Gadford and Chris, right? Those are all reputable names. Two. I got two. One, I got a Con La logo inside my suit. It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen in a suit. It's my logo for my business. Yeah, guys like you, people look up to you in the city, right? Well, it's just because I'm tall. I mean, yeah.

Chris looks down on me. He looks down on me all the time. Because your seats are way up there. Oh, wow. Yeah, there it is. Wow. Can you get one with Woody in your... Hey, Colt. Colt, Colt. You know we're 40 minutes in and we haven't talked about jiu-jitsu yet. Did you notice that? I didn't want to say anything, but... You know what I started doing? I had class this morning at jiu-jitsu at 8. There it is. I started playing tennis.

You did start playing tennis. I did. I'm going to hijack this for a minute because it's something we didn't talk about that was very important already over the weekend, which is

Basically, as I sit here and give Chris shit for being a Canadian in this podcast every week, and he acts like none of my stereotypes are true, he takes me out with six Canadians, six Canadian construction workers on St. Patrick's Day night, and every single one of my stereotypes is dead on. Yes or no, Kelsey? Hard to defend. What does it mean? Hard to defend. Yeah, what are you looking at? Hey there, tooter.

Which was one of the guys names. There you go. All right. I digress back to you. Sorry. So you built this business. Where do you see this business going, man? Where do you see it? How are you going to scale it up? Are you happy where it's at? Are you trying to scale it bigger? What, what do you, what do you, what is the plan? Yeah. So right now, um,

I do it all by myself. My wife runs the social, but other than that, it is a very logistical company planning the fittings, et cetera, et cetera. Where it goes next is get an assistant to help do all those things and make the suit sales go easier, go from 100 to 200. It can be 500 suits a month. The production company can handle that. That's not a big deal.

Franchising. That's where I was going is franchising the business. So I got a guy in LA, I got a guy in New York now, and basically I teach you the business. So I teach you how to measure. I teach you, you know, I give you, get you the sample. What does that non-compete look like?

What does the non-compete look like? For these guys you're training. Non-circumvent. Non-compete, non-circumvent in place? Exactly. And then also per location, you can't be in a certain amount of radius. So if two guys are in Long Island and they're in five towns over from each other, they can't open the franchise there. It wouldn't work.

because two guys would be selling the same, if not similar, suits. - Cannibalizing the geographic area. - Yeah, exactly. You put it great. So that is the next and the steps that we're taking now for the franchising. - Got it. - What's your website size? - Okay, well hang on real quick. When you say I'm selling franchises, wouldn't it make more sense just to have employees in these markets?

Because the employees don't have the passion as the owner does. The employee needs to have some sort of skin in the game to be doing. This is a very personable thing, right? Measuring people. You have personal clients. It's really the franchisee making this decision.

his dream or his passion. What about commission? What about commission? Yes. Commission based, 100% works depending on what the, that's what I, that's what I, when I say employees, I mean, commission based, commission based employees. I don't, yeah, no, not an hourly employee. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's eat what you kill. That's what I mean. Yeah. But also that person has to have connections really. Yeah. Passion connections, you know, and really,

you know, eat, breathe and sleep the business. - Bro, I'll throw it out to you. If it was me, I would be getting on a plane. I'd be going to Dallas. I'd say, what's the best nightclub in Dallas? I would go to the door guy at that club and I'd say, bro, I can make you twice as much money as you're making here.

because that's a guy that knows everybody already anyway and i would just hit all the best door guys in every every big market guys or like like tommy was doing like if you're inside doing internal bottle sales you weren't busting right you were the guy at the door knows i think yeah it was uh you would know this tommy because you who knows more the guy the guy that's really controlling the front door or the people in the club

The guy at the front door. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Because he knows everybody. Yeah. Do you know the story about Craig? Craig's in LA. He was the maitre d' for a very famous restaurant. And he got...

So famous doing that like hey, I'll get your reservation celebrities, whatever I do Yeah called Craig's like one of the most famous Yeah, and that's the story Craig started as a maitre d' Dorman and that's where he is now Joe Stone Well, dude, I'm so glad you came in man. I'm proud of the business. I think it's great I think it's gonna keep going good. There's a lot of lessons in there. I

um, for things to do with things not to do. Obviously, you know, anytime you have a partnership that falls apart, you want to learn from that as well and do that. Absolutely. So we're, we're going to start doing 45 minute podcasts instead of an hour. And here's why, because my good friend, Dan Fleischman, who just started his podcast, it's already up to number four on the, uh, the, uh,

on the Apple deal money Monday. So check that out for Dan. If he wasn't such a nice human, I would hate him that he's been doing this for like a minute and it's already up to number four, but Dan's a great human. So, but Dan says, he's like, no, I do my podcast 40, 45 minutes. Cause the average community United States is 40 to 45 minutes. The average workouts, 40, 45 minutes.

So I like it. If you've been working out of the treadmill, listen to this and you're starting to sweat. I'm going to, I'm going to let you get off because we're going to be done with this. So tell me, how do they find you? Go to at Guy Tano fashion. It's a G A E T A N O fashion. One word. And that's the website. That's the Instagram.

And that's how you find me. There you go. Connell, how do they find you? 702 Connell. 702 Connell. For all your car accident needs. 702 Connell. Connell. Connelllaw.com. There it is. Colt. Amadingroup.com or 702roofing.com. 702 Roofing. No, not Roofing. Is it Roofing or Roofing? That's my next business. 702 Roofing. Got some guy in the alley. I'm pretty sure that's my next one. I already had that kid. All right, guys. We'll see you next week. All right. Thanks a lot.

Hey, it's John Gafford. If you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go to thejohngafford.com where we'll share any links that we have things we talked about on the show, as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live. And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout.