How to Build Wealth & Influence Fast w/ Rudy Mawer & Christopher Kai 🌍EP127
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And then I realized like, hey, you know, we're making millions of dollars when I don't have a big brand. You know, this was seven years ago. Let me try and do it with a big brand and put it on steroids. And we did, you know, the first celebrity we did, we did a million dollar launch. Now we've grown a lot of big celebrities to multi millions and big brands. So we basically partner with them. We create a new whole business, a new LLC, 50-50 partners, and we build brands around them, right?

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays, where we cover three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give away to charity. Typically, I do this podcast inside of an RV motorhome traveling around the country, but we're on a special trip to Miami, so I'm going to knock out half a dozen podcasts today. And this gentleman has just set up a beautiful office here in Miami, so I'm very excited to have him here, Mr. Rudy Maurer. I'm going to have him do a quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money.

Yeah, my bio and story, so entrepreneur from the UK, realized I love money and I'm very loud and outrageous, which is the opposite of every British person. So I moved here and fast forward to today, we have 100 staff.

You know, my main company does about $30 million a year in revenue. We have a production arm, a celebrity arm, and then a coaching consulting arm. And we work with a lot of the biggest celebrities on the planet, thousands of, you know, normal entrepreneurs that we help grow and scale. And we produce TV shows, and we're moving on to movies as well. I have my own show on Amazon Prime. We just filmed season two called 60 Day Hustle. And we're producing five more shows right now.

And yeah, I live on Miami Beach, have a big office there, 12,000 square foot office there. I used to have one in Tampa, moved it down here. And we have an office just outside of London as well. Very cool. There's a lot that happened in that 90 second breakdown. So on the creator's side...

When you're helping and coaching creators, what do you mean by that? What are you doing with them? Yeah, I mean, we've been, you know, I became successful by joining Masterminds, right? I was, I think for about six years of my life when I moved to America, I was spending about 150 grand a year in like five or six different companies.

masterminds and coaching programs. So I and all my best friends are from those groups probably met you from this group and everyone I know. Yeah. So I saw the power of it and eventually I built a big audience. I wanted to do my own and we made it a little more marketing strategy focus because that's what I was really good at. So we teach, you know, social media marketing, but more around direct response, a paid acquisition, paid ads,

landing pages, email marketing, copywriting, all the things that I've used to do about 100 million my own product sales and then much more for other companies. We now teach business owners. Very cool. And on the celebrity and influencer side, walk me through what you do there. Yeah, so we started that. I mean, I dabbled in that many years ago and then I realized like, hey, what's

you know, we're making millions of dollars when I don't have a big brand. You know, this was seven years ago. Let me try and do it with a big brand and put it on steroids. And we did, you know, the first celebrity we did, we did a million dollar launch. Now we've grown a lot of big celebrities to multi-millions and Brit,

big brands. So we basically partner with them. We create a new whole business, a new LLC, 50/50 partners, and we build brands around them. So this can be clothing lines, supplement lines, info products, educations. We work with some of the sharks from Shark Tank, people like Daymond John, big A-listers, movie stars, and then obviously

industry experts too that do really well. People like Les Brown and people that are like famous, you know, the professor of basketball, influencer. So like people that are very well known in an industry as well. Why do you think it's important to have a personal brand?

Yeah, I mean, I think personal brands, everything kind of thing. A lot of those marketers kind of realize that maybe five, six years ago, you know, and and obviously people like yourself have seen it with celebrities for many years because you've worked with so many. That's kind of the writing on the wall that

everyone because of instagram social media people were resonating more and more with an identity in a person and the personality behind someone versus you know for the last 50 years it was people buying into brands right whereas now people are buying into people so uh even the biggest brands on on the planet are now bringing in celebrities to kind of become the face of the brand um

And I think if you don't have that personal brand, you're going to struggle these days. You know, 10 years ago I used to teach you could just run ads to a good landing page with a good offer, a good promise, a good hook, and you'd make crazy money. Now it's like you make crazy money from being like an influencer with millions of followers and doing product launches. So yeah, I think just the social media landscape has changed and the psychology of human beings want to resonate with tribes and people and belief systems.

it's been around for hundreds of years, right? That's how tribes were formed. That's how politics is formed. And it's the same with buying. So let's say there's someone out there that's an influencer and they're listening to us right now. They've got 62,000 followers. They're on their way to 100,000 followers. They're just not really making much money. They don't know really what to do. What would you say to them to start to make some money? Yeah, two things. I mean, number one,

Keep doing what you're amazing at, which is growing content, going viral and growing that audience. Right. And making them loyal to you because that's like your foundation. That's your, you know, your bread and butter. To me, that's like investing in real estate. Like you just keep growing that and growing that tribe. You can make so much money for such a long time and don't jeopardize it doing crappy stuff. Like that's a big mistake people make is they do these random shout outs or sponsored things for five grand here and there.

And it's like, hey, you could make a multi-million dollar business that's sellable one day, so don't waste it. So number one is keep growing and protect the tribe. And then number two is create products or services that your audience is interested in that relates to why they followed you. So if you have 62,000 followers and you were teaching

how to lose weight through fasting, right? You can launch products related around that. If you have 62,000 followers and you teach women how to have confidence, you can launch a coaching program and live events and a mastermind around how to have more confidence. So you just can launch stuff around what you're well known for, what you're passionate about and what people follow you for.

So why do you think that celebrities and really large influencers need guys like us? Why do they come to an agency to do these 50-50 deals? I've been doing it for 14 years and I've watched you do it with some really, really great people. Why do you think that someone that has the celebrity background and everyone knows who they are, why do they do 50-50 joint ventures? Yeah, two reasons. Reason number one is as you become wildly successful. Like I've worked some movie stars I've worked with I can't even mention, but they're like the biggest movie stars on the planet worth...

maybe a half a billion up to a billion dollars if they launch a product line and it makes 5 million 10 million 50 million

It's pretty cool for them, right? Five, 10 million, but it's not maybe that like great compared to their net worth. So number one, it's like optimizing time like a billionaire would. It's like Richard Branson has so many arms of Virgin, but he can't run every single one of them. So part of it is a business logic of actually like, hey, I can launch this product, not really be involved and make a bunch of money.

Number two is the skill set, right? We have a very specific skill set and team that they maybe don't have. They have the brand, the reputation, the fan base, but they don't know how to build the website, pick the products, and they don't probably want to get involved in the day-to-day, especially if they're famous. So it's really a great partnership because we bring the skill set, but at the same time, they bring the fame and the fan base that would take 20, 30 years to grow. So when an influencer starts making money, what would you say to them to not waste it all?

That's different, right? They always say in business, the first hardest part is making the money, then the next hardest part is keeping the money, right? And I've worked with some big celebrities, and they've told me, you know, when we're filming or behind the scenes, like, they made tens of millions, lost it, made tens of millions. You know, so it happens whether you're an influencer, an entrepreneur, or an A-lister. And I think it's about...

uh investing smart right so if you're making a bunch of money uh hire people just like you would hire a health coach or a personal trainer a dietician hire people be in the right rooms with people that are great at utilizing money and keeping it safe okay and then you know obviously you might

Every investment strategy is different, but you want to keep some money in the business to grow the business. And then when you've exhausted that, you want to invest money into multiple different assets, some that are maybe higher risk, some that are lower risk but grow slower. And I think it's about not getting too excited and spending it all. It's easy to do. You go buy all these things because...

business is up and down and money comes and goes. So yeah, definitely being good at like, I invested in real estate at 19. I bought my first property and I bought a few more in my early 20s in the UK. So I've always loved real estate. So I like to put money in real estate. I like to put money back into my business. So and I like to do some higher risk stuff. I've lost half a million dollars before investing in a company, but it could have turned into 5 million or 50 million if it won, right? So you want to have that diverse pool of investments.

So I call that a one-to-one risk-loss ratio. What Rudy was describing is he lost $500,000, but if he gets it right, it could be a 10x, 20x, 50x, even 100x return. So one-to-one risk-loss ratio means the 500k, he cannot lose more than that outside of that investment.

But if that company works out, that stock works out, that real estate deal works out, it can be a much higher return. That's why typically when you're an angel investor, you need to have three, four, 10, 15 types of investments because you only need one or two to work out on a big scale, even if a few of them or most of them lose along the way. Yeah, I think they say of angel investors, on average, the hundred they invest in, if one or two win, especially Silicon Valley companies, they don't even care. Yeah, they return the whole fund. Yeah. So...

With Elevator Syndicate, we've done 17 investments. We do one every around two months. We do $3 to $6 million per deal.

Mostly food and beverage and consumer products because we can help them. And when you get it right, big valuations. Yeah, some of these food and beverage brands, you guys see it like that new protein bar, David, just raised $75 million, right? That was a year ago. It just started a year ago. You'll see some of these brands like RX Bar sold for $640 million. That was only a few years old. Or AG1 is worth like a billion dollars. It's massive to see when you get it right. And so you can have a one-to-one loss ratio, but when you get it right...

It was a big victory.

take off the make money side on the investing side you are bombarded with deal flow because you have an agency with 100 employees you work with everyone you're speaking events left and right you're bombarded with deals all the time how do you pick and choose between real estate stock market angel investing this there's so many things you could be doing cryptocurrency how do you choose what you invest into yeah and i've gone through phases like one phase of our company a few years ago we actually took equity in like five six smaller brands and helped grow them uh and

And it's a double-edged sword, as you know, too, like keeping the blinders on almost, right? So right now, like one of my companies, I think we'll hit 100 million revenue in the next two years. So I'm like in this phase right now, my blinders are on to drive that to 100 mil. And I think it's going to be valued at hundreds of millions in the next three or four years. So I'm really focused on that.

And then all the investment stuff, I want it to be more passive, right? That's easy. So I can stay laser focused. So I might do like, you know, I've done real estate deals where I'm investing in funds and I have someone leading that fund that I trust, right? Or private deals. So I try and I think what that's what's so important is it's not just about the best deal. It's about the ROI for your time. And most people don't look at it that

way, right? So they might do these real estate deals or these other investments that sound great, but it takes a lot of time. Whereas half the time for me, I just want to put my money somewhere that's safe and maybe making a little more than the inflation and interest rate. And honestly, a lot of my investments, it's also tax. I'm looking at tax depreciation and tax advantages too. Very cool. So when you're talking with your staff or influencers or friends,

and they say, "Hey, I just made my first 100 grand. What should I invest into?" What would you say to someone that's just making their first money? I mean, for many years, I put all my money back in my business. That's how we grew to 100 staff. We grew the offices. We were spending... We grew our ad spend in my own company to 20, 30 grand a day. I've spent up to 250 grand a day on other brands. So I think ad spend is a great place to put it because it's customer acquisition.

When you talk about multiples and exits in the company and valuation, how many customers you have and your ability to scale that is what private equity or most firms care about. So I always put it back in the business first. And you're always going to get the highest ROI from that if you really grow the company to sell. And then after that, I think it's about an investment strategy that's

probably safer to start that's less stressful because you don't want to be distracted by that, right? And I think when you make your first 100K, the worst thing you can do is invest it and then you lose it because you put it in this random deal with this random guy because it's kind of like it's the energy it sucks out of you and the heartbreak. It's like when you lose that. So I would put it somewhere that's more safe and

uh, and maybe accessible too. Cause you only a hundred K is not a lot of money, you know, like where'd you grow your business? You have a bad couple of months, you might need to pull out of that too. So maybe something accessible. So I might do, you know, a bit in real estate, keep some just accessible liquid for my company. I might put some into my company. Uh, and then I think another thing that I've not talked about that's important as you grow the company is actually buying other companies to roll into your enterprise, to grow the valuation and grow it quicker. Uh,

And I don't think many people look at that, but that's how you grow a billion dollar brand or hundreds of millions is start actually acquiring companies to roll into yours. Let's walk through so we can explain to the audience. What does that mean? So let's say you have an agency, you get 200 employees and you're focused on influencer celebrity deals. Are you saying you go buy a PR firm or you go buy a video editing company or you go buy something that's

Relatable or do they have to be not relatable? Yeah, I mean both. I mean, relatable generally makes more sense because if you have a business model, you already have the customer base. Most businesses out there, like most entrepreneurs can't get a company past 10 million because to get to 10 million and beyond, it's a totally different skill than most entrepreneurs have. It's leadership operation system legal skills.

all those things. So there's a lot of companies in that sweet spot, I think, the two to 10 million, where they have a good product, they have a good offer, but it's like they're never gonna scale it to tens of millions 'cause they don't have the leadership side. So that can be a great add-on, right? Say you already have 50,000 customers,

and you're a tax firm right if if that was a good time to attack some well you could buy a bookkeeping service as well to do all the books for your clients that you do in the taxes for right so there's lots of opportunities and then say i have an agency like it acquire a payment processing company because i all my clients are probably using stripe and pay palmer and the money for us to the hate it right

So, yeah, I always like to look at more synergistic stuff that I can roll in. You know, I acquired, as I was scaling my agency, we acquired a podcast agency because most entrepreneurs wanted a podcast. We acquired a referral LTV sort of system that helped increase referrals and back-end revenue. And we acquired a data tracking software because no one tracks their data well. And I was so big on data and I was teaching everyone how to do it with Google Analytics.

and custom builds, I'm like, I'll just buy a software that already does it and plug them in. So there's three examples of how we increased, you know, not only the, and we Forex all on average, those companies revenue within the first year by rolling them into our ecosystem.

So you buy a company that's doing $3 million, you're saying you can go get them to $9 million, $12 million, et cetera? I mean, these examples were smaller at the time, but yeah, we 4X'd them. And that's not always the case. That's an average. One of them was a software company, so the revenue didn't grow as much. But the ones that we could grow faster, which were service-based, like the podcast, yeah, we 4, 5, 6X'd.

Because we have, A, the ability, the cash flow, the skill set to scale them with ads, and the customer base to drive thousands of people from our database, our email list, and our current customers into that business. Got it. So what I typically recommend is called 40-40-20. So for the new listeners that maybe haven't heard me say this before, I do 40% low-risk investing.

40% medium risk investing and 20% high risk. So let's say the $100,000 example. $40,000 goes into low risk. I want to make between 5% and 9% for the year. This is like S&P 500, CDs. These are things that are very safe. They could have small losses, but CDs can't have a small loss. But S&P 500 could have a small loss. Over the course of time, it typically returns almost 11% on average.

The medium risk, this is real estate, stock market, cash flowing businesses. I'm hoping to make 10% to 30% for the year. That's where most people like is here because there's a lot more action here. It's not so boring as CDs and S&P 500. The 20% high risk, I'm hoping for something crazy to happen. This is Bitcoin, angel investing. I want an 8x return, 12x return. If I lose or it takes a long time, I'm hoping the medium risk and the small risk will

covers that. But if I get it right, it's a big deal, right? If I put 20 grand here and get 100 grand back or 200 grand back, it could literally change my financial life. Yeah, I mean, that's...

Pretty much the structure I follow, and I love that. And I think the other big one is like if you're not smart about tax advantages and looking at tax stuff too, there's a lot of investments that, especially if you're into real estate, that can give great tax advantages too. And often the tax breaks and advantages are actually better than the returns. So that's something to consider.

Talk about investing into yourself, right? You're spending money to build your personal brand, ads, going on podcasts, traveling to events, masterminds. Talk to us about investing into yourself. Yeah, it's funny because that's ultimately the best investment you'll ever make, which everyone says.

I don't even like I didn't even bring it up because it's so natural to me. I don't even it's like brushing your teeth at night or eating, you know, like being healthy. Right. It's like if you're an entrepreneur, like most of your money should go there. I've always said, you know, no matter what happens to me, I can go bankrupt. I could go to jail. The one thing that unless I die is myself will always be here. Right. I can always come back and rebound.

So yeah, you should always upgrade yourself, you know, massive and your network, right? I mean, as long as you don't do something stupid or horrible or illegal, your network should always stay there too if you add value and you're a good person. So I think they're so important. And as you get bigger and bigger,

building your network, for example, going to masterminds, joining groups, traveling, getting on a flight. I mean, you travel more than me. You travel more than pretty much everyone I know, but I travel more than most people I know. Like, uh, and half the time I don't want to leave the house and the offices and my great routine. But every time I do, I make one connection, you know, and those one connections can be worth millions of dollars at times. So I think a lot of people are lazy. They don't want to get on the flight. Uh, so get on the flight. Uh,

And then, yeah, invest in yourself because that's where the magic happens. You know, like right now we're building out a big studio and getting into Hollywood and building a big entertainment division. And I'm like going to L.A. pretty much every week. You know, I was there for two months filming my TV show season two.

We're building an advisory board of big Hollywood exec producers and movie stars right now, so I'm flying to them. We're filming with all these big celebrities for TV shows, so I'm flying more than ever. But those connections can compound into millions of dollars. Talk us through the show. It takes a lot of time and energy to do a TV show. Walk us through that.

Yeah, so, well, yeah. And we're filming six or seven this year, so it's real crazy. Whoa, really? Yeah, real crazy. So I film next week on an island. I just finished two months of filming season two of my main Amazon show. It's called 60 Day Hustle. So it's kind of like The Apprentice, but modern day with social media, right? So we have live TikTok challenges and live street selling, but they're promoting it through social media. So it's really cool. It's like modern day.

And yeah, the whole idea behind me getting into TV is, you know, obviously content's king, right? And everyone said that, but it's also very saturated. So I looked at it and go, how can I do cool content that everyone isn't doing? Well, the only thing people aren't really doing a lot of is TV because it's very unaccessible, right? Whereas podcast, YouTube, social is accessible to every entrepreneur.

So I really pursued that, you know, and it wasn't easy. It took two and a half years. First show cost over a million dollars. But it's really cool content. It's a great way to teach entrepreneurship, to show my skill set and make it entertaining. So our whole mission of our studio that we're building right now is to become, we call it the Netflix of business. So we want to build a studio that we're working on some movies for next year.

like the social network all for wall street where we're teaching entrepreneurship and business through movies we're working on over 100 documentaries with celebrities right now so like yeah so this week we're filming a famous nfl athlete alan iverson the basketball player and just different celebrities where they're teaching their life lessons uh and next week i'm filming uh on a

private island in the Caribbean right next to Necker Island, Richard Branson's island, a show for a business. We're filming one for Alibaba, the company right now, showing how entrepreneurs can create products easier than ever before with their warehouses and how Alibaba works. So yeah, it's like my new...

focus in the last year. I'm very excited about it because I'm very creative. I love content and I think we can do a lot of amazing things through this new network and studio. That's so cool. So you're also invest time to be speaking at events regularly

and hosting your own events, why do you think someone should consider learning the skills of speaking and communication? Yeah, I mean, speaking and communicating, like, I didn't used to be a good speaker, right? And I would only say right now I'm, like, a decent speaker. I'm not, you know, I work with people like Les Brown, who I'd say is a phenomenal speaker. Phenomenal, for sure. So, yeah. But, no, look, speaking is...

so important because whether you're on a stage with 500 or a thousand people or 5,000 people, or you're speaking to your phone and you're going to reach a thousand people on Instagram, or you're going to film an ad that's going to run on a Facebook ad, that's like one of the biggest skills now, right? So, or even just being able to communicate while on a podcast, you know, uh,

I interview a lot of people on podcasts and some people are great at speaking and they give condensed answers and they don't waffle. Some people, you ask them a question, eight minutes later, you're like, where am I? What are we even talking about here? So yeah, communication skills are a key part of life. Being able to speak on stages and influence people is a great way to make money. Like we've done, you know, not big numbers compared to real stage people and speakers, but we've done 900 grand in...

in an event with less than 100 people in. And it's like, that's pretty awesome to make 900K in your office with less than 100 people over a weekend, right? So it's obviously financially it's great, but also beyond the finances, and most times I speak for not

without money or a small amount of money. It's like I love to just impact people, right? I was 10 years ago when I moved to America, I sat at the back of those events. I didn't know anyone. I just was this kid with a dream, you know, very entrepreneurial. And I got to learn from people and it inspired me to become who I am today. So I love to do that for entrepreneurs out there to teach what I know.

So on the charity side of things, why do you think it's important for brands to have some form of charity for their staff or their brand? Yeah, I love that question. We're so big on that, but we're only really just touching the iceberg of it now because we've been so focused on actually building our brands and cash flowing and getting them to a level. So we're

We're doing a lot and I'll explain what we're doing. But I think it's got to link into the mission. At the end of the day, your business will never really survive long term or be as great as it can be if there's not a mission behind it. So our studio and network, our mission has become the Netflix of business to inspire millions of people and educate them for entrepreneurship.

and to redefine how television works to make, we want to do what I call feel good TV. There's been a move to healthy eating these days. Well, I want to have a move on TV to healthy content because everyone watches toxic dating stuff and all this crap. And most entrepreneurs don't even watch TV right now because there's nothing good on there. But imagine if there was good stuff on there, you'd watch it. So that's what I want to create there. So it's a mission to help people, right? To help inspire entrepreneurs, right?

And my private passions is dogs and animals. So a lot of, I've been speaking with Richard Branson about opening a safari one day next to his safari.

the other side of the world in Africa. So that's a goal of mine and I'm looking at opening rescues here in Miami called Red Rescues. We've already mapped it all out and it's just, you know, it's one of those things we want to do but it's the time. So yeah, to me the mission's everything and I mean, I think every business should have that mission and then once you've got the mission, how do you link it to the charities and the philanthropy behind it? Yep.

Well, if you ever want, we've got the wild jungle. I know you guys do. I love that. 209 animals there. And even our documentaries. So we're filming these two documentary series now. One's called Women in Power. So it's featuring female. We've got Olympic gold medalists, pro athletes, movie stars, really big entrepreneurs.

entrepreneurs and every episode we launch we donate to two charities to help with sex trafficking and help with women empowerment and entrepreneur female entrepreneurship so we like to build in causes that relate to my mission what i'm passionate about through what we're doing for sure so there's one question i ask on every episode and i've never gotten the same answer

So you're out there doing all these companies, all these businesses, scaling products, tens of millions here, 20 million here, 100 million here, and hopefully hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. Then at the end of the day, maybe it's 50 years, 100 years from now, hopefully even longer with modern technology, Rudy finally passes away. But you've got $2 billion. What percentage of your net worth would you leave to children? To my children? It's a great question, and I've never even thought about it because I don't even have kids yet.

Yeah, I mean, my hope by then is that, you know, I would leave some to family and stuff, but I don't really...

I want to build my family where they're self-sufficient, you know, and I'm sure that is somewhat of a common answer within entrepreneurs. Like, you know, I think I want to leave a legacy and like the impact I've made, I think is better to leave with my children, not the financial side. Right. So, you know, I'm sure I'll leave them more physical things, maybe houses and stuff like that and pass me downs. But I think a lot of the money should, should be left to the,

the charities and the things I'm passionate about, you know? I think if I've done a good job as a father, my kids will be more than sufficient themselves and have plenty of money by that time that they won't need my money, you know? And I've, I don't want, I told my parents, I don't want any money from them. They're not necessarily rich, but I've already, you know, I have two half sisters and stuff. I said, give them all the money. I'm fine. I don't need any. Right.

So Rudy, where can people find you across social media? Where can they find any of your companies, projects, TV shows? Tell them everything. Yeah, well, we made it that it's easy to find because if you see red, it's generally me or Coca-Cola maybe. So yeah, just look for the red. If it's within Entrepreneur World, it's probably me or my team. But yeah, go to my Instagram, RudyMoreLife. I'm doing an official name change soon to Rudy Red. Really? Yes. That's fun. Yes, going all in. So it might be Rudy Red. But yeah.

More Capital is our holding company. Inside Success TV is our studios. Google me, Rudy Moore, and everything will come up. Look for the red. And I always say, if you click anything, warn you in advance, we'll follow you around the internet for all eternity after that. So you won't miss me. Yes, forever after that. Yes.

All right, guys, you're listening to the Money Mondays. It's important because we cover those three core topics, but it's important for you to have discussions with your friends, family, and followers about money. We grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think that's insane. We have to have discussions about accounting, taxes, debts, rent, loan, lease. There's so many things that go on in our financial day-to-day lives. We have to be okay with talking about money over and over and over throughout our lives as if it's a normal topic because it is part of your day. Check out Rudy Maurer across all social media.

Make sure to follow the Money Mondays. Like, comment, subscribe, do all the things because you are the reason that we are able to stay top of the charts and people having these long discussions with their friends and family and followers all around the world. It's because of you liking, commenting, and subscribing. So I thank you guys. I appreciate it. We'll see you guys next Monday on the MoneyMondays.com.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays podcast. We are here in Miami at the Move Studio because normally I record this podcast inside of an RV motorhome, but today is a special day. I'm trying to record six podcasts back to back to back to back to back. It's too hot outside. So I decided to come into the Move Studio. This place is amazing. They have three locations all in one building. Okay.

As you guys know, we covered three core topics: how to make money, how to invest money, how to give away to charity. Our guest has done all those things and he's actually written books about it, so I want to dive right in. So Christopher Kai, if you can give us a quick two minute bio, so we can get straight to the money.

Awesome. Thank you, Dan, for this moment. It's 10 years in the making. I was a kid in Queens, New York, six-year-old kid getting punished for talking too much in class. And now I travel all around the world speaking, whether for corporate stages, for eBay, Amazon. But I help people in the personal development space understand how to frame their story so they can make millions on stage. Wow, there's a lot already in there. So when it comes to speaking on the make money side, how does someone go from speaking for free to start getting paid like you?

So it's three things, and you know this. It's networking, the connections you have. But if you have the connections, let's say you literally have one of the biggest events in the world called Aspire, you have credibility. So I help them build their personal brand. And lastly, I have to communicate the value to you. So it's credibility, communication, and connections.

So when they want to go get a speaking gig, how do they reach out to someone? How do they reach out to the event organizer? How do they get paid? Yeah. I mean, the first thing, again, you have to build credibility. No one cares who you are unless you hook them in. So if you have not been established, like you, one of the youngest people was at IPO, you have to have some kind of anchor statement that says to them, oh, wow, I actually want to hear about Dan. Or in my case, when

When Inc. Magazine profiled me as the billionaire networker and I wrote a number of bestselling books, it's credibility. So it actually is harder to find stages to speak on if you don't have the credibility to hook them in. Got it. So build the credibility first. So you've written multiple books. Walk us through. Yeah. The two ones I'm most well-known for is this one. It's about how do you network at the highest levels?

For a kid growing up in Queens, New York, I had no money or connections or access. And I realized when I started going to events like with Brad Pittson, Leonardo DiCaprio, or billionaires like Ray Dalio, it was understanding, oh wow, these people exist. And so what if I wrote a book to be like Robin Hood? I want to be the Robin Hood of networking, where I help people. I don't know if you had money growing up, Dan, but I didn't.

But you and I are in these rooms of insane wealth and influence. So why not write a book that literally helps them research the events, find the events, follow up with people, and ultimately do business or make money and do better stuff in the world, meaning making a difference? What was the other book? I've written seven, but the one that's coming out this year. Seven books? Yeah, yeah. Whoa. But the one that's coming out this year is called Wizard of Words, How to Speak, Persuade, and Sell Like Steve Jobs. Hmm.

That's fantastic. So when someone's out there, they're thinking like, I want to write my first book. Maybe not write seven books like Christopher, but I want to write my first book. What are the steps they need to go through to actually go do that? So the thing is, ideally you think about your end audience in mind. So before they even write a book, I would suggest they speak three times to an audience and whatever the audience says,

and they're interested, then you write a book about it. Because I write books for people that want to actually make money and make a difference. And so it depends on if it's a passion project or you want to make money. If you want to make money, you really have to focus on what does the client want? Clients want online marketing. Clients want PR. Clients want networking. So you have to be really clear on your purpose. If it's for business owners that want to use a book as a platform, as a brand, you have to understand it's not about you.

It's about them. So what would they pay you for? So I'd really reverse engineer and say, you know, what do people pay for? They pay for networking, they pay for relationships, they pay for how to make money. So it's really understanding what the audience will pay for and then write a book that's in line with who you are and then present it that way. Because otherwise what happens is if they just write a book because they're thinking about it, it doesn't go anywhere. That's how I was my first book 20 plus years ago. No one cared.

I had a book that took me eight years, had a website, had speeches, no one cared. Until I started really, oh wow, people kept asking about networking. People kept asking about speaking. I'm like, okay, now I write books in terms of what people want, what they'll pay for, because I'm a businessman, I want to help people. But if you're going to write a book, make sure you write a book that people actually want to read and think about and buy. So someone writes their book, like, okay, I did it. I took Christopher's advice. I spent a year and a half. I wrote my book. It's time to get it out there. What are the first things I should do to try to get some buzz about it?

I would hire someone like you, Dan. Now, literally, you're a branding guy, right? But it really, I mean, let's say the title of my book, right? It's called Big Game Hunting, Networking with Billionaires, Executing Celebrities. So the first thing is really to think of a title. And I would research hundreds of books from my most recent book that's coming out. Again, Wizard of Words, How to Speak, Persuade, and Sell Like Steve Jobs.

And the word wizard of words, Bill Gates once said that he was a minor wizard because he would see Steve Jobs mesmerizing the crowd. So the first thing, even before writing your book, is coming up with a cool title that captures your essence. But for sure, I'd hire someone like you who's an expert in branding, expert in online marketing, where you as an online marketing expert, you would split test and figure out, okay, what does work?

So after they have written the book and before they actually hire someone like you as your expertise. So that way is they waste so much time if they don't have someone like yourself or myself on their side. So it absolutely encourages them to actually measure the actual audience they want to reach. So does having a personal brand, speaking on events, writing a book, becoming an author, et cetera, does that make them more money? Absolutely. I mean, before I wrote my book, the first book, no one cared.

I didn't make a lot of money or more money until I had a brand. So again, the first book I wrote was a college success guide. And people kept asking me, oh, wow, you wrote a book? I want to invite you. I want to hire you. So you don't need a book to be a speaker, but it's helpful. And when you're a speaker, let's say I was on a stage a few weeks ago and the conference itself was a lot of money, like $300 billion worth of money. And when you're on stage, you're

Do you have any issues finding clients? Do I have any issue with clients finding credibility? Because people who unfortunately don't go on stages, they're just trying to build credibility. When you're on stage, you have what I call unquestionable credibility because when you're on a stage or you're on this amazing podcast where you have a brand,

You charge more money. You meet more high-caliber people. It just saves you more time and money and resources because you don't want to do what I did. Like I said, eight years for my first book, no one cared. Had a speech, had a website, had all that stuff, no one cared until I started figuring out I got to build a global brand like Dan Fleischman.

All right. So they took your advice. They got their book. They hired an agency. They got some press. They sold some books. Now they got some money coming in. Put on your investing hat. They got some money now and they got their first hundred grand in their bank account. They got their bills covered. How did they decide what to invest into when there's real estate, stock market, cash line businesses, angel investing, Bitcoin? They're bombarded by options. How would you say someone should be considering to research what to invest into?

You know this. I mean, if it's only 100 grand, which, well, it might be not a lot for us, but other people. But if it's 100 grand, it's more of like the Warren Buffett model. Just put it in like index funds. But if you go into the 1 million, 10 million, 100 million, it's a little different conversation. But really depending on how much net worth and disposable assets you have. But for me, I just invested back in my business and I do do some real estate. I do some private lending. But for me, I actually really enjoy my business. So if you are an entrepreneur, I would just highly encourage you to

We're living in a time where if an AI company called OpenAI, which created ChatGPT less than three years ago, is worth $300 billion, right now, if you're listening to this, you would definitely consider looking into any AI-related company or any company that is around AI because

If Jeff Bezos talks about how AI is like electricity, this is one of those times in history where just like post-World War II, Warren Buffett built his billions, just like in the 70s where Steve Jobs and Bill Gates built the computer industry, just like Jeff Bezos built the e-commerce in the 1990s, now is a time if you have any money at all, you should invest in AI or anything related to AI. Wow.

I think there's going to be AI podcasters. There's going to be people making a billion bucks with AI with zero employees in the next five years. Mark my words. There's already people making millions of bucks from literally writing books using AI. Right. A young guy, like 21 years old. I saw him on YouTube recently. He's making a million bucks using AI to write a book. Wow. Yeah.

Okay, so on the investing side, why is it important to invest into themselves? Someone's out there and they're not sure what they invest into the stock market, real estate, et cetera, but they want to invest into themselves. Why is that important? And what could they do? The thing is school teaches us all the wrong things. School teaches us to go to class, take a test. You forget it. Even colleges, anyone with a smartphone AI has more knowledge than the smartest professor in the world at Harvard. Yeah. Right. So the reason is

Every generation changes, but with technology, you have to invest in yourself, specifically sales, persuasion, marketing, because they don't teach that in school. You can get a PhD at Harvard, that means nothing in terms of your earning potential. If you invest in yourself, specifically in sales and marketing, you will never ever worry about your life,

your family's life, your kid's life, your multi-generational, so that if they taught us the right way in school, we would know this. But then again, life is life and school is formal and traditional. So if you don't invest yourself, you're pretty much going to be broke or never be truly happy. And it's not just financial freedom. It's having a clarity that if you know you can actually pay your own way, have your own life, not have a boss, why would you not want to invest in yourself? And what are your thoughts about investing into masterminds, coaches, and mentors?

I wish I did it sooner. I was that arrogant, ignorant guy when I first started writing my first book. It took me eight years, but it's in the last eight weeks when I did hire a guy named Dan, same name as you, Dan, but his name is Pointer. He wrote a hundred books. I didn't have the money. I invested in a seminar in Santa Barbara, didn't have the money. He upsold me, didn't have the money, but I bought that. So I absolutely, because one of my mentees named Joanne one time said, Christopher, I

Are there shortcuts? I said, Joanne, there's no shortcuts, but there are carpool lanes. So when you hire mentors, hire coaches, you're in that carpool lane. You've been in LA, you live in LA. When you're stuck in that four or five or 10 for a week, you're like dead. I want to be in that carpool lane so bad. Exactly. So make investments because as my clients say, you buy speed. So absolutely recommend masterminds, coaches, absolutely.

So in that example, let's say that Christopher was starting a clothing brand and Dan was starting a clothing brand, but Christopher hires Damon John and I don't. Well, Christopher is going to do so many things right that I'm not. I'm going to pay the dummy tax because he's going to know because of his mentor, Damon John, how to do manufacturing better, how much to pay for the samples, how to get the shipping prices better, how to deal with warehouse space, how to deal with graphic designers, how to deal with sales team, conventions, boots, marketing commissions, etc.

I might pay 20% commission. They pay 12 because that's the standard rate, but I didn't know. I might pay $14 for the sweater sample and they pay 11 because I don't know. Like he gets to fast forward all those things because I'm paying the dummy tax. That's why mentors and coaches are super, super, super valuable. Okay. When it comes to investing into businesses, you get bombarded with options because you're speaking at these events, you're traveling, you got social media, everyone's hitting you up. How do you choose what it, when people pitch you, what businesses you would actually invest into or buy?

I just defer to a team that I have, that's the projects. Because I know my lane of competency. As an artist, I actually love speaking. But from that type of investments in terms of EBITDA and all the various things you have to learn about in terms of selling a company and deciding a company, I really defer to a team. I love that.

Some of my team is more VC, some of them more private equity, some are more hedge fund. It's a different thing. So I really defer to a team that has that experience that I don't, nor do I want to have. So I stay in my lane of competency. When I do invest in certain companies, I'm just, hey, team, what do you think?

So when you're investing your time and your likeness to go do an event, obviously eBay, Amazon, those are massive corporations. But let's say there's a small or mid-sized event that wants to book you. Hey, Christopher, here's 25K, 50K, 100K, whatever that price point is. They want to book you to speak at their event.

How do you decide what you're putting your time and energy into? Because going to an event, people think it's just, oh yeah, you're just there for an hour for a speech. No, you've got to fly the day before. Sometimes you fly the night of or the day after. That's typically three days to go to a one-hour event. How do you decide what you put your time into? For me, it's all about vibe.

Like I spoke at your Aspire tour, right? It's the vibe of people because I'm at a point in my business and career where I have a client who's a prince in Thailand. His father is the king of Thailand. So you know what? I'll help him speak at his event. Of course. Because at this point, it's really about, as Ray Dalio says, biggest hedge fund manager in the world.

Meaningful work, meaningful relationships. So for me, I find this meaningful. I love what you're doing, whether with the backpacks for kids that are homeless. So when you get to a certain point, and you should do this everywhere, frankly, it's like, is it meaningful?

and are the relationships you want. We have literally known each other for 10 years. So that's how I define it. It's less about the money on the front end and money by the people. It's less about the money now. It's more about the meaning. Like I was in Ljubljana, Slovenia. They couldn't afford me for my rates, but I went because I've never spoken in Ljubljana, Slovenia. So it's about the experience for me at this point. Fascinating. Yeah.

Have you ever considered throwing your own events, masterminds? Have you done it before? I do. I have an event called Gifter X Talks. It's been called the TED Talks for Entrepreneurs. We recently had the Reebok co-founder at my event. We've had the TED founder at my event. Perhaps you can come to my event as well. But I absolutely encourage people to do their own events because you

yes, you can go and try to get other people's events, but why not have your own? Whether it's for 10 people, 100, 1,000 or 10,000 people. So I do have an event called Gifter X Talks because I believe your story is gift to the world, which is why it's called Gifter X Talks.

So when you're thinking about your books, you mentioned that you're kind of wisdom of the crowd, right? You're speaking at events and then you're hearing and getting feedback on it. You've written seven books. Is there any one that you're like, that's the book, like that's the one right now? Well, they're like my babies, you know, every single one at the time is my baby. Right. So who's your favorite baby? Yeah. Well, the wisdom of where it's for me, again, I want to write books that impact people. And the things that impact people most is connections, right?

networking, communication, Wizard of Words, and the one after the Wizard of Words, which I've already begun writing, it's called Boss Bio.

"How to write an executive bio that attracts clients, fans, investors, and followers forever." Because again, going back to connections, communication, and credibility. I've already written them, but I'm releasing the Wizard of Words this year, and then the Boss bio, credibility one, perhaps within six to nine months. Who knows? I'm not sure yet. But I want to write books that impact people, because I have no interest in just writing a book for the sake of writing a book. And for people listening and watching, you'll serve yourself well if you focus for the business mind like Dan does, because you'll just help more people.

So when you're networking and someone's out there, they're at a party or an event and they do meet a billionaire or a zillionaire or someone that's famous, etc. What are those initial discussions or how do they actually build a relationship rather than just being another fan that shakes their hand? I wouldn't even suggest they go for the billionaires. But if they're going to go for the billionaires, I would just start with their charities because

because if you think long game, it's really about understanding who they are. And with billionaires, you know this, it's not just the billionaire, it's the mindset. It's the mindset that you're going to track or go toward the people that you think is unreachable. Hence the word big gamer. It's a concept, right? So it's really, if they even decide to go to a networking event that has a billionaire, kudos to you because you've already won.

But if you want to actually meet them, it's really meeting their team because they're up here, but the team is around them So if they're gonna meet a billionaire They're better off meeting the team because you don't want to do what I had what happened when I was in Davos a few years back and Jamie diamond was there who's a billionaire who creates who a CEO of JP Morgan Chase You had a whole group of people surrounding JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie diamond He's like one of the smartest guys in the world is one jackass who kept all

Rambling on I'm like dude you're like standing in front of Jamie Dimon one of the most impressive Smart richest guys in the world and all you're doing is rambling off trying probably to impress him So what I would suggest anyone that wants to meet billionaires or more important have the mindset you just Google whatever billionaire it is find out the nonprofit and You ideally do things that you love like when I interview Elon Musk he came to my charity function called I

months of the mission. So ideally you find things you're passionate about that are aligned with billionaires. And when you go there, you meet their team and think long-term and just think service, service, service, service. Because if you're not at a institution level or a country level, they don't care who you are. So you've made this connection, you made this relationship.

I just use billionaire as an example. It could be a millionaire. It could be a big real estate person, someone interesting or compelling. How do you upkeep a relationship with someone for years and years and years? That's why I wrote this book, because to keep it simple, it's about having high touch points. For instance, you're a high level guy. Hey, Dan, I got an event in three weeks. Want to come?

So the best way is to invite them to things because you can easily text them or email them, but when you're actually offering value and Adam Grant wrote a book called Give and Take and Robert Cialdini talks about the law of reciprocity. So when you actually understand the science persuasion and to build relationships, which is a science,

Just invite them to things within your budget. But ideally, the more expensive it is, the more value you perceive. But even if let's say I had a time when one of my mentors, she was a former CEO of Coffee Bean, which for those of you who don't know, it's like the competitor of Starbucks.

There was an event where Jack Welch, who no longer is here, but he was speaking. I think it was like a hundred bucks. Say, hey, Angie, my mentor at the time, would you like to come to this event? So the best way to connect with high-level people, not taking out them from coffee, it's having events with high-level people that they can invite them to. And you do this all the time, by the way, with your Aspire. So you do literally what I'm saying, but for the people that are watching, give them value that they might want. Don't just ask them for a freak phone call unless...

you really want to just get rejected. So someone makes a decision, they finally hire a mentor or a coach. How do you treat the relationship to make the mentor or coach focus on you outside of just paying them? Really, I have a client right now, actually. He's an oil and gas guy, speaker, author, coach. He loves hunting. And I said to him, his name is Luke Beekman. Luke, giving you a shout out.

The reason why I like working with him, he actually takes my advice. So I'm teaching him scripting, I'm teaching him framing. So if you're a mentee hiring some mentor or coach, just do the actual advice that they're saying to you. Because if you do more of what they say, they're more compelled to actually help you more. It sounds so simple, but you know this, if you're a coach or mentor, people spend a lot of money. A coach is mentors.

And they don't really use them. So for me, I'm always more keen on working with people that actually do what I ask them to do because the world is a better place than just making money. They're actually impacting people, motivating people, inspiring people. And that for me is at the end of the day what I'm here for. Which leads me to our third topic, which is about charity.

Why do you think it's important for people, I'll ask you multiple questions about this, why do you think it's important for people to have it for their families, to have some type of charity component so that their husbands, wives, kids, parents, the people in the family unit could see them doing philanthropy? Yeah. Let's say my parents didn't have a lot of money growing up. My mom was a school teacher, my dad worked for the city of New York. And my mom and dad would always say, "Eat your food, eat your food, eat your food, there's people starving."

She didn't really, again, she's an immigrant from Hong Kong, so she didn't think about this, but if she had bought me to a homeless shelter and literally had me feed kids with the same age as me, that same lesson, eat your food, would have landed much more because now I did start a homeless youth program over 10 years ago. And when I have parents coming there, it's one thing to tell a kid, hey, please be fortunate and be grateful. Another thing to tell and show a kid, wow, this kid is the same age as I am. And the pair of shoes that he is wearing isn't even his own.

So the best way to lead is by example. And that's why someone like Mahatma Gandhi, the guy would be like, you know what? I'm going to wear a loincloth and go wherever I want to go. I'm going to cut my own hair. I'm going to scrub toilets. So the reason why it's so important to be charitable and to volunteer, not when you have a lot of money. You can have a one-hour volunteer service.

goal every week. Meaning if there's 168 hours a week, if you volunteer just one hour a week, you'll already start seeing that you feel better about yourself and you'll feel better about the people you're helping. And if you don't do it, why should you have anyone else want to do what you're not doing? It's about leading by example and helping the world out.

Similar question. Why do you think that businesses or brands should have a philanthropy component to them? It's funny you ask that, Dan, because at one point I was pitching volunteerism in corporations. And if you literally Google

Benefits of volunteerism in corporations, they had a whole laundry list. They feel more purposeful, they trust their bosses more, they feel a sense of purpose. And so quantifiably, if corporations want to have more cohesive team, more ownership, more leadership, more loyalty from the employees, it's scientifically proven by studies that you'll just have a better loyal team.

What about, last question about this category, from the brand perspective, why is it important for them, brand related, to showcase to the world that they're doing some type of charity component? The reality is, I remember, I'm not going to name the celebrity, but when I was reaching out to celebrities and people that are successful for my Homeless Youth program, some of them said it's a PR thing. It just feels better.

Optics, right? You look at politicians, whether you're Republican or Democrat, it doesn't really matter. They always have, oh, they're holding the little cute baby. It's just from a persuasion standpoint, ideally you're doing it because you want to, but really it just looks good to know that you're helping people. Because we live in a world where it's very hard to lie about your brand anymore because if you don't have an actual emotional appeal, you're not going to have a brand. Do you have an iPhone? Oh, yeah.

Steve Jobs died 14 years ago. Yet his legacy, his brand lives on because he was a man that believed in quality, about sexiness, about thinking different. And so it just matters that you have an emotional connection because if you don't, you're just not going to have an actual brand. You just have a hobby. So there's one question that I ask on every single episode and I've never gotten the same answer before. So Christopher Carr, you go off to make hundreds of millions of dollars and God willing, billions of dollars. At some point, it's time to pass away.

What percentage of that net worth would you leave to children? That's a great question. I'm not sure because what I'd give to is a nonprofit or my own foundation where it's more about student leaders that would impact children otherwise. So I don't know if it'd be for children specifically because they're so young. It'd be more for student leaders that can impact everyone, including children. So I don't know. That's a great question.

Where can people find you online? Where can they find the book? Tell us everything. So my website is ChristopherKai.com. Last name is K-A-I. LinkedIn, Christopher Kai. Instagram, Christopher Kaidom. K-A-I-D-O-M.

Very cool. Appreciate it, guys. So as you guys know, the Money Mondays, we cover those three core topics because it's important to have these discussions with your friends, family, and followers. We have to talk about money because we grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. That is ridiculous. You got to talk about loans, leases, rent, debt, taxes, accounting, bank accounts, salary. These are all part of our normal daily lives. There's nothing evil about any of this stuff. It's just real life. So have these discussions with your friends, family, and followers. Check out Christopher Kai across social media. Check out his book for sure.

And we will see you guys next Monday on TheMoneyMondays.com.