How We Went From a Beat-Up Van to 200+ Franchises w/ Nick Friedman & Vince Ricci 📈 EP113
01:14:23 Share

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays. Now, as you guys know, over 110 episodes have happened inside of the RV Motorhome, but we're in Miami. Wanted to do something different. We just threw six events over the last three days, and I wanted to bring people together that happened to be in town. And our next guest actually flew into town, which is really exciting because this guy has a $300

million a year company with over 200 franchises. So for him to come out here and spend some time with us, I'm very excited. What I'm going to do is have Nick Friedman give a quick one minute bio so we can get straight to the money.

Awesome. So I'm the founder of College Hunks, Hauling Junk and Moving. We've got over 200 franchises, as you mentioned, started from really humble beginnings, a beat up cargo van that we borrowed when we were in college. I describe it as a 20 year overnight success. At the beginning, we were doing all the work, answering the phone, driving the truck, hauling the junk. People would call to complain about driving. I'd be in the driver's seat answering the phone. So it's been a fun journey and we feel like we're just getting started.

So as you guys know, on these podcasts, I cover three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give away to charity. So we're going to go over these different topics over the next 32 to 38 minutes. The reason we keep the podcast under 40 minutes is because the average workout is 45 minutes. The average commute to work is 45 minutes. So this podcast will be under 40 minutes for your listening pleasure. We are trending as the number one entrepreneur podcast right now. So we've got to hit it while it's hot. This podcast is going to come out this week. Number one spot, baby. Nick.

Got lots of them up, so we gotta stay number one. Ready for this? - That's right, ready. - When you were first building up, did you actually think you'd become 200 franchises, $300 million? Did you have a vision in your mind or were you just like, I'm gonna do a truck or two and see what happens?

So at the beginning, it was like I didn't even know what an entrepreneur was. It was actually my friend from high school. His mom had a beat up cargo van. She let us borrow it to stay out of trouble before our senior year of college. And she looked us up and down. She goes, you guys could be like college hunks who haul junk. And then that actually put the vision in my head. As soon as she said that, I was like, that's catchy. That's a pattern interrupt. That's not what people associate with moving and hauling. It's more clean cut. It's funny. It's catchy.

So from that point on, after we graduated college, I knew I didn't want to have a regular job. And we had very aspirational dreams, really, at the time. We didn't want to be just two guys driving around a truck all day. So we envisioned, you know, imagine if we could land in another city and see our trucks driving around. And now today it's, you know, people are texting me photos of the truck anytime they see. I think I got a text from you as well.

And and so I think having that that lofty aspiration was was part of the foundation of what got us really excited at the beginning. It got us motivated. And we actually pursued franchising as a way to expand. I think we had a little bit of a naive view of what that would mean. We thought it might be an easier path. There's no easy path in business. And so, you know, we had to become students of entrepreneurship and just, you know, grind it out.

So on the make money side, franchising, why does someone go franchise from college hunks versus just go buy a truck or two and go do it themselves with their own brand? So I think anybody who starts a business, they have to learn very quickly how to work on the business, not just in the business. And in our case, you know, like I said, we were answering the phone, hauling the junk. People would call to complain about driving. I'd be the one answering the phone in the driver's seat. I think anybody who started a business can relate to doing every single thing from top to bottom. But if you want to grow a business and not just be self-employed by your own

you've got to learn how to create systems and processes. And so we read a book called The E-Myth Revisited by a guy named Michael Gerber. It talks about people not failing, systems failing, and creating those systems and processes so you can scale. And it talked about franchising and this franchise model. And I think a lot of people maybe have a...

like we did a naive view of what franchising means. Really what it is, it's a way to expand the brand without having to deploy your own capital because we didn't have capital, we didn't have a lot of human management personnel that we could deploy, but we did have this lofty vision of taking a brand and making it nationwide. So in order to package up what we had made successful locally, we went down the franchise path where every time somebody purchases a franchise,

we get a small injection of capital that we can reinvest into building out the infrastructure, the support, the branding, the marketing and everything else that goes along with the business model. And so that's the path that we chose because again, we wanted to expand the brand quickly. We want to give people an opportunity to own their own business and we didn't have the capital to do it. So I think what people don't say about franchising, though, is you need at least, I would say, 30, 40, 50 franchisees for it to make sense because the royalty stream

doesn't really aggregate until you've got a critical mass number of franchise owners. And as the franchisor, our responsibility is to help our franchise owners be successful because if they're unsuccessful, they're going to blame us. And sometimes when they are successful, they might resent us because they're paying fees. And so it's almost kind of like the government. You got to make sure you're providing the right goods and services that they can appreciate if they're investing in your concept. For sure.

So to give you guys a breakdown on franchises, they can range in fees of anywhere from 6% to 13%, depending on the type of brand, company, service, or product. So if you have a restaurant chain, if you have a dry cleaning chain, or you want to go franchise like a Century 21 or an insurance company,

Typically, they want 6% to 13% of gross sales and 1% to 3% of what's called a marketing fee that helps go to the budget to do nationwide or worldwide marketing that'll help the franchisee, which would be you in this example. Also, it can range anywhere from $0 to $150,000 on average. Typically, around $50K is kind of like the normal deposit for a franchise. Now, if you're going to get McDonald's, that number is much bigger, right? It could be hundreds of thousands, if not $1.5 million in some cases for really big name franchises.

What you want to think about when you're researching is what type of product, brand, service, restaurant, trucking company, et cetera, do you believe in the brand, has experience? I don't recommend going to franchise someone that has two or three locations.

That happens often. Someone opens up two or three locations, they're like, "We're gonna start franchising, rolling out." They don't have their systems in place yet. The reason you would want to franchise is someone has a really good brand and really good systems. Those are called SOPs, systems and procedures. And you need those things to happen, otherwise I'd rather you wait until they have five, 10, 15, 20, 30 locations where they really have experience.

You hit it on the head. I mean, when we first started franchising, our early franchisees were kind of the early adopters and we were still building the plane in flight. We didn't have it all figured out. And so they were kind of taking a bigger risk and we actually had to give them a little bit better deal than we do now because we didn't have it figured out. We were

confident it was going to work but we didn't know and they didn't know it was going to work there's actually 3 000 different franchise opportunities out there across all the different industries and sectors that you mentioned a lot of people think a mcdonald's or a burger king but you know there's not just restaurants there's retail there's service there's aesthetics there's real estate and if somebody's got a great successful business their own they could become a franchisor where they develop it but there's a lot of heavy lifting involved in that

or if they're thinking about a business opportunity, like you said, they might invest. But spending the time talking to the existing franchise owners to see would they do it again? What would they do different? Are they making money? Because there's a lot of sizzle out there, but you got to have the stake behind it. For sure.

Yeah, so I invested in one called Ever Bowl, the acai bowl chain. I first invested, there was 13 locations. I threw in 500K. They went to 17 locations, 21 locations, 25 locations. Bam, bam, bam, scaling, scaling. Me and my friends, we raised at our mastermind $5 million for the company. Boom, 27 locations. And then March happens, 2020. Oh no. All the restaurants in the country are closed down. Most of the world is closed down.

And what was cool is the owner, Jeff Fenster, went and signed over 300 new leases. Why? Well, because while everyone is retracting and no one's signing leases, he went out and negotiated six months of free rent, 12 months of TI and tenant improvements, like 100K free build outs. And now it's sold 400 franchise and done. I think there's 96 locations now. - That's awesome. - By fighting through the struggles, fighting through the hard parts like you guys did. You're on your 20 year anniversary.

Talk us through like the journey of like beginning, middle and now being in 20 years. Well, I kind of share the startup piece. I will tell you when we started franchising was 2008, 2009 timeframe. And if you wanted to pick a time to launch a home services franchise, the start of the housing crash was probably not the right time. Right. But kind of to the example you just gave from your guys at the Ever Bowl, I

I think it made us better entrepreneurs, better business owners, because when times are good, anybody can win. When times are challenging, it exercises the resilience muscle. You got to get smart, gritty. You got to learn how to survive. And it felt like we were pulling an anchor through the sand or running up a snowy hill, whatever analogy you want to use. So that was probably the biggest test for us where we were like, is this thing really going to make it? But at the time we were younger. Again, we were just so passionate about trying to make this thing work that

Failure wasn't an option. We became students of entrepreneurship. Podcast didn't exist back then. Social media was really kind of in its nascent phase. So, you know, we'd go to entrepreneurship conferences and mastermind groups and just try to learn as much as we could from the franchise industry, from peer groups like Entrepreneurs Organization or Young Presidents Organization or, you know, some of the newer ones that have popped up.

And we finally got cranking, got things on track. And then, of course, nothing is linear because then COVID hits. And I think to myself, wow, you know, we're going to lose everything that we spent our entire life building. We got a nice little COVID snapback when people started moving again and buying.

buying houses and there was a little bit of a post COVID boom. And now we're kind of in a challenging time again with the high interest rates, people aren't moving as much. And so we have to expand the sandbox. I always say, look, if, if there's three months of no rain, that's called a drought and you're like, okay, we're going to just wait until it starts raining again. But if it's, you know, three years of a,

drought, you live in a desert now, the environments, the climate's different. So, you know, how are we going to survive and thrive in this environment, not hope that something's going to come and it's going to rain again. And so I think that's kind of the mindset that we've got to have is understanding the environment that you're in, what's going to suit the customer, what's going to suit your team and how you can adapt as the, as the environment changes as well. So can you give us ballpark numbers? Like what does someone need to have when they're thinking about getting a franchise? So they have like,

a 50 grand nest egg saved up or a hundred grand or 200 grand. Should they be planning for more money than just the deposit to go get the franchise? Like what should they be thinking about when they're going to get a franchise? Yeah. So there is a wide range. I mean, you mentioned McDonald's, you're going to need over a million dollars to be able to invest in. You know, our concept is probably between 150 and 200,000 because you need trucks, you need warehousing, you need deposits on insurance and things like that. But there's actually a low cost franchise I'm invested in called kiddo kinetics, where it's a work from home youth sports enrichment franchise where you

you need less than $80,000 including the franchise fee to get up and going. And there's even smaller ones, I think, you know, vending franchises and printing franchises, promotional product franchises where you need even less than that. There's another company I'm involved with called Franchise123. It's a website, uses AI where you can put in different criteria, investment levels,

and it'll help you sort of compare and contrast what concepts are out there based on those different investment levels. Generally speaking, the amount of the investment is usually going to be somewhat congruent with the type of return that you might want to be able to get. So a really low investment franchise may have limited upside unless you own multiple or unless you really blow it out of the water. You become an empire builder, as we call them,

But if you've got a great amount of capital and you can buy, you know, kind of a blue chip franchise concept, as long as you get the right location and the right team in place, then you should be able to make your money back as well. We always say, you know, franchising isn't a guarantee you're going to make money.

It's an opportunity to make money. It's a playbook, right? And if you get the keys to a race car and you don't follow the instruction manual on how to drive it, you're going to crash into the wall or drive it very slowly and not get anywhere with it. Right. And so, you know, we say it's really critical that you got the right systems, but then also the right operator to be able to execute the playbook. Very cool.

So someone is, they're in. Okay, I got it. I've saved up some capital. I've been working at my core job for four years. I got an extra 200K put aside. I'm ready to get a franchise. How do I now decide from all 3,000 different options what's right for me? How do I go down the rabbit hole and figure out what fits for me? Yeah. I mean, I would say the fit, family, financial, and fun. So the fit is do I have a...

relevant experience or background that would allow me to have some sort of applicable skill set in this business model hair salons restaurants right like in our business you don't need moving experience but you need some sort of leadership acumen or ability to develop leaders because you're hiring guys to go out and provide a service to the community so you got to be willing to build leaders in doing that uh so do you have a skill set that you could apply to this business uh is

Is your family behind you in this idea? Your spouse, your friends, your neighbors, your parents, do they believe in this concept that you're excited about? Can you make the return on the investment? That's the financial side. And then the fun factor or fulfillment factor is like, life is short. Is this something you could see yourself getting up every day, even if things are challenging to do? And so I

I think talking to some mentors, there's actually franchise brokers that are kind of like real estate agents. But for the franchise industry, we work with a lot of them in our business where they'll do personality profiles and background assessments to identify. Is this you know, let me present a couple different concepts to you based on your background, your interests.

what you said you're not interested in and help people kind of land on the decision of the type of concept they might be interested in owning and running. The other thing I'll mention, a lot of times this word comes up in franchising called absentee ownership or semi-absentee ownership. And I will tell you, it's a buzzword. It's somewhat cliche, especially in the broker communities. Everybody wants passive income, but it's not easy. There's, in my mind, very, very few people

business ventures are truly passive unless you have a significant amount of capital and somebody that's a CEO that's going to execute, right? That you, you know, it's, it's ask who, not how, who's going to do it if I have to deploy this money. And so, you know, the franchisor is not going to do it for you. So you got to have somebody that's going to run it, who you can trust that, you know, is going to produce the business. And can you make a return if you're paying him on top of that?

So I have this rule that I won't invest in any company or do any partnership or deal without a quarterback, without someone running that business. So people say, oh, you've got 43 investments and all these companies are doing, you're posting about mortgages and sports cards and Everbulls and blah, blah, blah, blah. Sports cards has a CEO, elevator mortgage has a CEO, elevator funding has a CEO, my live events has a CEO. Dan runs a bunch of group chats. I'm not out there trying to run every single company. I'm involved in the group chats. I'm giving my advice.

I'm there to give the sizzle to the steak when they need it. But ultimately, every company I just mentioned can run without me. Yeah. I'm going to help them. Yeah. It's my company. I'm going to help it. But ultimately, I won't even do a deal. Like if Nick was like, hey, let's start a brand new vodka company. All right. Who's going to be the CEO? Right. Oh, we'll figure that later. Yeah. I love Nick. He's got a humongous company, but I don't I don't want to run that. And he doesn't want to run it. We're busy. That's right. So if there's not a CEO or quarterback to run it, I'm not in. I think that's that, man. That's it.

That's something I wish I had learned a lot earlier. I think entrepreneurs, we all have a little bit of ADD. I call it all damn day because you can't turn it off. You've mastered this notion of I'm going to tackle multiple businesses, stuff that I'm excited about or want to be involved in or put money into, but you know that

You're not going to invest in it unless you have somebody you trust that is going to be able to execute that you can hold accountable. And it's going to, you know, be a good steward of whatever that venture and idea is. And like you said, you're going to be a facilitator, a consultant, a visionary with the team and with that particular project.

channel. I think in my early stages, I would chase a lot of shiny objects and shiny ideas because they sounded good, they sounded exciting, or maybe they sounded, in my case, might be easier than what I was doing. And I never really mastered the notion of talent acquisition and talent alignment with partners that could go in and pursue that. And I think learning early on, if you are going to diversify or do other businesses, and it's something that you're taking your eye off

the road of what you're already doing, you can only divide yourself so many times. You can't ride multiple bicycles yourself. You got to have somebody else that's going to ride that bicycle and report back how it's going or where he's going. Let me give you guys a real life example.

Let's say Nick and I decide we're going to open up a chain of gyms called College Hunks. And we're going to place them in all the colleges around the country. And we put up a million dollars each, and we're like, okay, let's do this. And we open up four locations, right? 250K, 500K per location, got a little bit of operating capital, everything sounds good. And we go out and crush it and do $4 million revenue the first year. And the next year, we do $12 million revenue. Holy smokes, we're on pace for something crazy.

Do you know how much money that Nick probably lost by spending time and energy on this company doing $4 million and then $12 million? His company's doing $300 million in sales. And so you can factor that in for yourself. If you've got a business doing $1 million, $2 million, $3 million in revenue, and you go spend time on the shiny object, you're taking away money, time, staff, energy, and resources over here on the shiny object and not fixing the core thing that you could be scaling. Yeah.

There's a compound effect of focus. We all know that, you know, whether it's, you know, specific fitness goal you have or specific business or financial goal, it's grooving those habits. And I have a saying that I'll bring up because my business partner and I will come up with ideas all the time if we're out and about or having a drink or whatever. And I'll pause for a second. I'll be like, you know, we can make tens of dollars doing that. Yeah.

Right. You know, there's a lot of great ideas, but, you know, like what's the time worth? What's the energy worth? We've got a platform. We've got something that's compounding any energy and effort that I put outside of my three hundred dollar business is taking away from it becoming a billion dollar business at this point. And so, yeah, I couldn't agree more on on that notion of, you know, focus on what you think is going to make.

things happen and double down and let that thing compound over time. I would say urgency of effort, patience for results, because a lot of times we get very impatient, especially in this, you know, immediacy world of instant gratification. You know, we want to see something happen overnight. And, you know, I think you hear about the unicorns to the glamorized billion dollar, you know, brands that become unicorns overnight. That's, you know, that's like getting drafted to the NFL or NBA or winning a lottery. Yes, it can happen. But the reality is most business successes happen

are probably like mine and yours. It just happened over decades of time that took hard work. People don't see behind the scenes how much losses went into the early days, the investment that went into it. And eventually you come out the other side and everybody touts you an overnight success, but they don't realize how long it took you to get there, how much learning took place along the way. Absolutely.

All right. So let's talk about the real life of the business. What does it cost for someone, a customer to come rent from College Hunks? Like what's the cheap side and what's the full size? Like, Hey, I'm moving a big house. Yeah. So, you know, we, we pride ourselves on being a, a, uh,

I would say premium style experiential brand. There's a book I read called The Purple Cow by Seth Godin. He says if you're driving down a country road, you see a bunch of brown cows, you've seen it before, you're not going to notice it. If there's a purple cow in that field, this was before social media that the book came out. He says you're going to pull over. It's remarkable. You're going to tell your friends and neighbors about it, talk about it at the dinner table, put it on social media. And then it goes further to say, we talked about this a second ago, it needs the sizzle, which is the brand image, the name, the colors, but it also needs the steak, meaning the service has to live up to

whatever promises that you're making to the customers or the team members. And so, you know, we're the only one-stop solution for both moving and junk removal. We say we help people move the items they love, get rid of the stuff they don't. We leverage our trucks and labor to deliver donations for folks, you know, install furniture and so forth.

And so pricing is hourly for the moving side of things. Call it a two-man move, anywhere from $100 to $150 an hour. Obviously, if we add a third or fourth guy, it can increase from there. Junk removal is volume-based, how much space the items fill up in the truck. So if we're cleaning out a whole garage that takes four to five pickup trucks worth, which is about the size of our trucks, it'd be like $500, $600, $700, depending on the geography. But that includes all the labor, the disposal, the loading fees, everything.

And so, you know, the moving industry is antiquated, right? I mean, we didn't invent moving. It's probably been around since the wheel got invented. And so we took a simple concept, put a creative image on the external side of it, a very focused, intentional on the inside of it. And so we're not the cheapest. You know, probably somebody could find a less expensive move on Craigslist or, you know, Facebook Marketplace or what have you. But we say, look, you know, there's a lot of options to go buy coffee, right? You could go pay four or five dollars for Starbucks or you could go

pay 50, 75 cents at the gas station, but it's a very different experience between the two. Uh, they may even taste somewhat similar, but the experience is very different. So we, you know, we made hunks a brand, uh, promise. It's an acronym, honest, uniformed, nice, knowledgeable service because with moving, you're letting a complete stranger into your home. You're there handling your personal belongings. Uh,

Even if they're getting rid of your junk, these might have things that you have emotional attachments to or grandma might be moving into assisted living and these are her lifetime belongings that are being hauled away to be donated. So you need somebody that's empathetic and mindful. So that's what we're always consistently training our frontline guys on is how we can be different, how we can be the Starbucks or the Chick-fil-A or the Ritz of moving and junk removal. Yeah.

So surprisingly, Starbucks is not a franchise. That's right. That's mind-blowing how big they would be if it was, but they weren't. It's a very fascinating business model. In-N-Out is not a franchise. A lot of people think it is. There are certain brands that are not a franchise. And then you go to Chick-fil-A...

And you've got to have millions of dollars. You have to work there for a year. It's very fascinating. But they go do $8 million a year on average if you own one. And then you have to own one before you get your second one. And it's like a very... Yeah, they're very discerning and disciplined as to who they'll align with because they want their brand to be upheld. They want everybody in those Chick-fil-A's to say, my pleasure, instead of you're welcome. And they want the experience to be different than your typical fast food experience. Yeah.

A lot of people will come to me when they have a successful small business and be like, hey, can you help me learn how to franchise my business the way you did? And I'll actually spend maybe the first five, six minutes talking them out of that, saying, you know, listen, to be a franchisor, it does cost money up front. It costs a lot of headache and injury, you know, trying to get those first,

five, 10, 15, 20 franchises off the ground. And, you know, a lot of people don't make it to the other side where you've got 40, 50 to the point where the brand is recognized, the royalty stream is sufficient. So I sometimes encourage them like open two or three or four locations yourself, get the model proven and maybe you won't need a franchise or maybe you'll bring in some investor capital to go and open more yourself and you don't have to have that extra layer of complexity. So, you know, there's a reason In-N-Out or Starbucks maybe chose not to, they didn't want that extra layer of liability or,

people dynamics that has to be dealt with. And it's just really a crossroads, like an expansion strategy. Do you wanna build these and own these yourself? Do you wanna bring in investors to help you do it or do joint ventures? Like Outback Steakhouse, believe it or not, it's not a franchise. They have a similar to Chick-fil-A, a managing partner model. So all their general managers of the restaurants have a percentage of equity of that restaurant, but they didn't actually buy the franchise, but they run that, like it's its own small business. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

2006, I won something called the CEO Poker Championship. And the guy that got second place was the head of Outback Steakhouse. - Oh wow, there you go. - It's so random, I haven't heard the name in so long. But it was funny because just seven years before that, I was applying to work at Outback Steakhouse. - Wow. - I was working at Ruby's Diner and I was hoping to get the job at Outback Steakhouse. - That's awesome. - I was 17 years old and I ended up starting my clothing company. - Then you beat him in the World Series of Poker. - Okay, on the investing side. So you're building your business,

It's 2008, nine, you go to the franchise model. Now you got 30, 40, 50 franchises. Now you start making some serious revenue, some serious money. When you decide, okay, I'm going to invest into these other, you mentioned three or four brands you've invested into, or maybe advising for when you decide, okay, I've invested a lot of capital into my core business. I can take some money and throw in 25 K a hundred K a million, whatever the number is into something else. Yeah.

So early on when we were in the business, of course, I started reading different books. Robert Kiyosaki's Cashflow Quadrants was one that I read where he talks about elevating from employee to self-employed to business owner to investor. And so in my mind, I was always kind of like, that's the gradual elevation and transition that I want to get to. So once we had enough capital, once I wasn't as active in the day-to-day business, I started thinking of myself as an investor. My very first

successful investments was real estate. And I'm still a big believer in that as an asset class. You know, one of the quotes I've heard and used regularly is don't wait to buy real estate, buy real estate and wait. And, you know, obviously, you know, if you look at it year by year, it may fluctuate. But at the end of the day, it's an asset. You can rent it out. You can fix it up. You could sell it, live in it if you need to. And so we did that early on. We own

probably 20, $30 million worth of real estate at this time, maybe more at this point, but our commercial properties and our few residential rentals and so forth,

I'll say when I started investing in businesses, I had some some skin knee decisions. And I'll say the reason is because, you know, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail to an entrepreneur. Everything looks like an amazing opportunity. Like we're very optimistic by nature because and that's what helps us be successful when we pursue our own vision, because we believe it's going to work, even though others may not or even though it may be against all odds. Now, when you're investing in other people, you're investing in other people.

You have to realize you're not just investing in the idea, but you're investing in the person too. And actually, I don't think I mentioned this earlier. We were on the very first episode of the very first season of Shark Tank. Awesome experience, kind of maybe my first experience pitching to investors. We didn't end up taking a deal, by the way. And quick side note, we were pitching a sister company. We were going to call it College Foxes Packing Boxes. Yeah, the sharks didn't think that was a great idea either, but that's another story. But nevertheless...

I think what I did learn from that experience and what I've learned in talking to some of the sharks from the show since then is a majority of the deals they do on television don't actually take place after they stop videotaping. And the ones that do take place after they stop videotaping, less than 20% of those actually have been successful or moneymakers. I thought it was really fascinating. And so, yeah,

You know, recognizing that early stage investing, small business or venture is very risky and you've got to be willing to spread ships out across a lot of different, you know, ventures. And also, I think it's important to invest in stuff that you know, stuff that you can influence or have a pattern recognition of. Like I said, I'm invested in some franchise concepts. I understand youth sports. I understand the franchise model. I have experience.

become versed in real estate. So I think those sorts of things have allowed me to have successful investments. If I'm just sort of taking a, you know, writing a check on a tip, whether it be publicly traded or some private business that somebody told me about might do well, it's like going to Vegas and rolling the dice. You really don't have much influence on it. So there's a famous theory that 90% of startups fail, which is true. The reason for it is they have lack of capital, lack of experience, lack of knowledge,

And so what I do is I focus on companies that are doing at least $2 million in revenue up to $20 million. The reason I like that $2 million and $20 million is they got past the hardest part. Going from zero to $1 million, super hard. Major failure rate. Most people don't want to do it. $1 million to $2 million is where you're like, OK, I'm getting some operations. I'm finally making some hires. I'm getting a better lawyer and a better accountant, a better executive. That $1 million, $2 million is where you start to really kind of like, you can hear like you're figuring it out.

We started to get to 3 million, 5 million, 7 million. Okay, now we're getting a swing of things here. And so I raised 56 million the last three years, all 3 to 6 million bucks at a time in a company that's doing 2 to 20 million. So Elevator Syndicate, our concept is find businesses that are already doing 5 million, 12 million, 8 million, 15 million, that range, and we pour gasoline on the fire. There's amazing startups that are out there, even with amazing founders, and we don't do it for a couple reasons. One is...

It typically takes five to seven years on average to have an ex-wit or liquidity vent. And so if I come in on year two, three or four, I've shortened my time span as an investor. The first couple of years,

I can help too much from like scaling, but at the first couple years I can't help too much because you're just getting their systems and operations and making your first relationships at conventions and trade shows. Like you're still figuring things out. I'm gonna help you way more if you're doing six million revenue to get to six million going to 13 million, not hard at all. Yeah. Zero to one million, super hard.

And so Elevator Syndicate, our concept is get guys like us, right? I've got 960 investors. So guys like Nick, hey, you throw in 25K, 100K, 500K, whatever the number is, we'll all pitch in together. But this company is already doing 9 million revenue. How can Nick help? How can Dan help? How can the other 32 investors? How can we all pitch in and help this business? You might find investments that you can do with some friends, co-investors. That's why people ask, who are the other investors?

Because if Nick was already an investor in a company, I'm more inclined to want to invest, right? Because him and his circle have experience. They built a huge business. So when people pitch you, because they're going to pitch you, people pitch you, ask them some key questions. Where are their revenue at?

what's their actual experience, who else is involved, who's on the advisory board, who's an actual investor. There's a big difference between advisory board and investor. Someone that cuts a check versus just puts their name on it. There's a lot of differences. Just ask a lot of these questions before you make your investment because when you get it right, you can have a 6X, 12X, 20X,

When you get it wrong, which is going to happen, you're only having a 1x loss. That's why Nick mentioned you've got to have multiple investments when you're taking an angel investment risk. You can't just do one angel investment. You've got to do three, four, 10, 20. I've done 43. Wow. 43 sounds like a lot, but it's been a decade. Yeah. It's really only four or five a year if you think about it. Yep. Because I'm seeing 200 deals and I'm picking four or five. Mm-hmm. All right, Nick. So...

you're investing a lot back into the business. A lot of people don't realize someone goes and does 10 million in revenue,

they're probably broke, right? They're in debt. Sounds good. Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. Cash flow is king. And that's something I learned after a few years. Like we used to tout our revenue numbers. And yeah, even at the beginning of this, talking about what we're doing in Topline, it's exciting. It sounds like a big impact. But to your point, especially in the early days, you're plowing that money back in. Of course. And you're making small bets and sometimes big bets along the way. Not all of them pay off. So...

In this scenario, there's very, very, very, very, very, very, very few companies that go off to do $300 million revenue.

At what point do you think about should I exit the business? Should I go acquire a bunch of other companies that are in the moving space? Should I do other ancillary companies? Should I become like a trucking company here? Or should I do it? You know, there's, should I be a box manufacturer? Cause you probably go through millions of boxes. Like what are the things should we do? Like the wrapping tape? Should you have a wrapping tape company? Like I could sit here and rattle off and I'm sure you guys have thought about all of them over 20 years. Like,

Sometimes when you have a core business like what they're doing for the moving space, sometimes you think about what are the vendors we use? What do we spend money on? If you're spending money going and buying tape and you go through freaking, I can't even imagine how much tape you go through to tape up the boxes, maybe we should do that. When you go through literally millions of boxes, maybe we should have our own

and sell the boxes to our customers or to our franchisees. Talk us through that concept. - Yeah, so the short answer is yes to all the above. All of those thoughts that you just rattled off is the stuff that wakes me up in the middle of the night and I got the hamster wheel running. It's like, oh, we could do this, we could do that, we should do this, we should do that.

There's a Jim Collins quote, I think, where he said, once companies hit levels of success, they don't die of starvation, they die of indigestion, trying to do too much. And so I think the idea is identifying that list, and we charted out on how much money can you make on one axis, and how much heavy lifting, money, resources, time, distraction is going to be on the X axis. And if something is really high,

earning potential, doesn't take a lot of effort, that's a no-brainer. And I'll give you an example of something we did was, or we're doing now, long distance moving. We've got the trucks, we've got the labor, we've got the network now with 200 locations. We can start offering that and leveraging our network. Or we started an accounting service, bookkeeping service for our franchise owners that works so well, we're gonna offer it to other franchise systems as well because we already got that set up. It's something we're doing internally as an internal service. It's a no-brainer for us to use

AI and offshore VAs to be able to offer it to franchise systems to have clear transparent books and accounting. But then there's stuff that might be a little bit more far reaching truck manufacturing or truck sales. I don't know the first thing about truck sales aside from when we buy them and trying to negotiate a good rate and a good rebate.

to your point having a quarterback if we were to go down that route we'd have to find somebody who understands truck fleet management that could be our quarterback or ceo of our trucking division uh that could help us source inventory floor plan and sell and or lease them to our franchisees so that's something that we've thought about talked about it's on the the vision road map but we haven't pursued it yet just because we've got kind of the lower hanging fruit in front of us so i think that's the way to approach you know when you've got these different opportunities that present themselves

Make some small bets and then if it's something that's gonna take a heavy lift You've got to have somebody that's gonna do it or it's gonna distract you or your team from your core That's already working. So as you go from 300 million to 340 to 400 to 500 Is there a number in your head? They're like, okay. This is my goal number. Does the goalpost always move? I

Also, yes, the goalposts always moves. But I will say we took some chips off the table. We did a minority private equity transaction shortly after COVID. And the reason for that was, you know, COVID was such a wake up call for me. I had 99 percent of my net worth in one asset, which is our main business. And I was like, man, if something a black swan event like this happens again, it could wipe out everything I've worked for. So let me de-risk, take some money out of the business.

bring in an institutional partner that can help give us some infrastructure to help prepare us for the future exit. And just quick side note, the guys that invested with us is these three self-made billionaires that are actually the largest shareholders of TikTok here in the U.S. These three dudes up in Philadelphia, I think their net worth went from $5 billion to $50 billion as a result of their TikTok investment. Oh, my God.

Um, but anyway, so whatever they're invested in college hunks is a rounding year for them. Uh, so they're not too worried about how quickly we exit. Um, so which is a nice partner to have from a minority standpoint, cause they're not pushing us for, for an exit anytime. You know, it's our timeline, not theirs. Uh, but I do think at some point we'll, we'll look to recapitalize the business, uh,

you know, as I approach, I'm in my early 40s now, if I could get to 50 and have another meaningful transaction to be able to be more of an investor and facilitator for other businesses, I think that would be exciting. Also,

And so I think that's all part of the journey. But, you know, this brand still remains kind of a part of my identity. And I think a lot of times, you know, as entrepreneurs, especially in the early days for me, I was approaching business from a point of scarcity. Like if I could just get to a million in revenue, if I could just get to 10 million in revenue, if I could just get to 100 million in revenue, if I could just get to a million in profit. Right.

You know, we'd be good. And every time we hit those milestones, it's like you said, the goalpost moves. And I feel like I'm just chasing this, something that's always out of reach. So I've had to reframe and realign my mind from a paradigm standpoint, because as you get more successful, you get surrounded by more successful people. And everybody's got a bigger boat. Somebody's always got a bigger plane. And it always makes you feel like you've got to

get to that person's level. And I think unless you're Bezos or Elon, you know, it's going to be hard to not be always looking up at who's ahead of you. So we think of things from a point of abundance and say, OK, look how far we've come to where we are. That doesn't mean we're going to stop and get off the ride. We want to keep pushing and growing. And I think what excites me and gets me excited and passionate as a

as opposed to feeling like I'm missing out on something is this notion of potential maximization or optimization. Like how could I maximize my potential as a leader, as an entrepreneur, as a father, husband, business owner, all of those categories that I'm, you know, I guess you could label me as.

But also, how can I maximize the potential of this brand, this platform, what it can do in the communities that it services, what it can do for the franchise owners who invest in it, how much it can allow them to provide for their families, how much it can, you know, employ into our into our overall, you know, employee community as well. And so that's the stuff that keeps me excited and going, no matter how far reaching the goalpost keeps extending from a number standpoint, because once we hit a billion in revenue, it's

I'm going to want to hit 2 billion or 3 billion. And so that never stops. But taking it from a point of abundance and not feeling like I'm missing out or lacking, that makes the journey that much more exciting, I think. So let's picture this. It's your 50th birthday. $1 billion gets wired in for the big acquisition for 80% of your company. You get to keep 20% because they want to give you what's called golden handcuffs. They want to keep you on. They need you for the next couple of years. What do you do the next day after $1 billion shows up on the Monday morning? What do you do on Tuesday?

Oh, man. You know, I guess I would pinch myself first. Then I'd probably look at my bank account about 25 times just to make sure it was real. And I think shut my phone off and just take a moment to like breathe and soak it in and spend time with the family, the wife, the kids, fire up the jet and go around the world for a couple of months. And I think that'll be allowing me to just sort of reflect, have that little mini sabbatical moment and

And I think I would get bored out of that very quickly and say, well, what am I coming back to do? And how can I be more impactful on this next go round? I've never met an entrepreneur who has officially retired. They may not be grinding it out day to day like they did at the beginning, but they're still involved in something because, you know, the moment you start, you stop growing, you're dying in all effects. And so.

You know, I've met 80, 90 year old guys that are still grinding out. I met a guy, one of my neighbors, he's got a big horse farm now. And I was like, oh, that's an interesting hobby. He got very mad at me. I said, that's an interesting hobby. He goes, no, it's a business. It's not a hobby. And I was like, oh, gotcha. My apologies, because I'm thinking this guy's in his, you know, almost 90 years old and he's got all these horses that he's breeding and selling. But he's running it just like a business. And he's, you know, just as fired up about it as he was the publicly traded company that he grew as well.

Yeah, my ranch is not a business. That's right. 140,000 a month of feeding animals. They're very hungry. That's right. Well, there's nonprofit benefits as well out there that you can get involved in too. And no margin, no mission. So if you didn't have a successful business, you couldn't do things like that. They weren't businesses that were nonprofit or community-driven initiatives as well. All right, last two questions on the charity side.

So make money, invest money, give away to charity. Why do you think corporations, when you start to get hundreds of employees or thousands of employees, et cetera, why should they have some type of philanthropic component to them? Not just the money part, but why should they have some type of philanthropic initiative within the company?

Well, you know, there's a quote we always say, you know, don't chase the money, chase the dream or the purpose of the impact. Chase something that's broader than just making money because money is a powerful tool. It's a facilitator. It can create your lifestyle, but it can also create impact for the people that you care about, whether it's a community, your family or your employees. And so having some sort of purpose driven impact, uh,

is critical. But without margin, there's no mission, like I just said. So you've got to have a profitable business. You don't want to donate yourself out of business. I tell our early franchisees that a lot. Don't just start giving free moving or free junk removal because people are asking you because you've got trucks. You've got to build a business first, and then you can create a give-back program. And the reason is, to answer your question, because

People are passionate about making an impact. People care that they mattered and that they made a difference. And if you're getting up every day and your pure motivation is making money, you may be disappointed several days out of the year because not every day is easy. Not every day did you make the money you hoped to make personally or professionally. Right.

And so for us, we have a two for one giving campaign. We obviously borrowed it from the Tom's Shoes concept. We said, well, instead of one for one, let's give two for one. We donate two meals for every completed job that we've completed. And we started that a few years ago. We've donated over 5 million meals to U.S. Hunger. We also, during COVID, saw the reports of the domestic violence that was happening and people being stuck with their sort of abusers. And we offered free moves for survivors of domestic violence. We've done over 150 free moves for survivors of domestic violence.

And so, and it doesn't have to be something financial or pro bono like that. Through our junk removal, we've formed partnerships with nonprofits where we donate over 70% of the items we haul to Goodwill, Salvation Army, Habitat, just to be able to try to keep the stuff out of the landfill and give it into a, you know, a reuse cycle as well. So it's,

it motivates, inspires your employees. They're going to want to be part of something bigger than themselves, bigger than the business. And I think that's why social initiatives and giving is that much more critical. So the last question is one question that I ask on most every single episode, and I've never gotten the same answer once.

All right, so let's go to the 50th birthday concept. You get the $1 billion, but you got 20%. So then later you get another couple billion dollars and all of a sudden, many, many years from now, you finally pass away and you've got billions of dollars you've accumulated over this long career. What percentage do you leave to those children when you pass away? Ooh, great question.

Well, hopefully my parents or hopefully my children are adults by the time I pass away. And so I've been able to at least steward and observe their ability to be high functioning members of society, not, you know, degenerates or whatever other, you know, bad paths that in some cases you fear your kids could go down. Given that they're assuming that they're high impact, high performing members of society, I don't think I would be afraid to

bestow them my estate to invest and to impact and to give how they would see fit. 100%. Let them write it. Yeah, I mean, obviously, maybe not 100%. I would allocate a significant amount to charitable causes that I'm passionate about or charitable trusts that would have a trustee to help disseminate over time. But yeah, I think...

I think the, you know, the ability for your kids to carry things forward is important. The Mike Tyson quote recently I loved, he was getting interviewed by like a 13-year-old girl and he just goes off the rails. He goes, legacy is another word for ego. And I thought that was interesting because, you know, a lot of people talk about wanting to make, you know, leave a legacy and,

you know, when he said that, it actually made me think a little bit like, you know, is it really, am I trying to leave a legacy that just so people remember me or am I trying to leave a legacy of actually, you know, making an impact and helping empowering others. So as I think about what that future looks like, stuff that I'm passionate about, entrepreneurship, building leaders, lifting up, empowering communities that maybe don't have the opportunities that we

that we all had, whether it's through mentorship or investment, then I think those would be the channels that I would deploy money to. And then hopefully my kids are good stewards and would want to start businesses or make a difference as well with whatever there is left for them.

And of course, there's the Bill Perkins concept, you know, spend it all before you die. And I don't know if I subscribe to that totally, but I get the point of, you know, you're not going to be here and you don't want people to mismanage it while you're gone. So why not be the steward of it while you're here? Yeah. Well, I think what you framed it as is basically if your kids are high impact and they know what they're doing, then you let them run, you know,

Run the world. That's right compared to I'm just gonna leave my kid thirty million dollars or hundred million dollars to million dollars in there Don't have the experience or the know-how I could put them actually in a predicament a lot of people think that when they hear You know something very wealthy not leaving a lot of money their kids or a small amount of money their kids They think that it's rude or why would you do that? I?

But we've had answers from 0% to 100%. Yeah. And they have very passionate reasons why. I'll say my answer today will be 50%. I'll split the difference on that one. I like that. That's a good number. All right, guys. If you can...

If you could tell everyone, where can they find you on social? Where can they find College Hunks on social? If they're considering a franchise, how can they research things like that? Yeah, so my personal social is Nick Friedman, the number one. And so Nick Friedman one. And our business social is at College Hunks. You can visit college hunks dot com. You can visit Nick Friedman dot com. Both of those sites have information on franchising, on moving or hauling services, on connecting with me just for, you know, business advice or otherwise. And, you know, I'm here for it.

All right, guys, you're listening to the Money Mondays. It's mission critical to have conversations with your friends, family, and followers about money. We grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think that's ridiculous. We have to have discussions about accounting and finances and taxes. And what do you do if someone borrows money from you? How do I sign a contract? Should I get a loan? Should I refinance? Should I lease a car or buy a car? There's so many questions that we have and we think that it's rude to talk about it. It's crazy not to talk about it. You have to have discussions because that will lead to...

so many things in your life where you don't pay the dummy tax or you have a very big problem later because you didn't do your taxes or you didn't save up money for your thing or you didn't understand that this lease is very, very expensive or this contract is done this way because you didn't ask your family, your friends about it. Have discussions, do your research. Check us out on the moneymondays.com and we'll see you guys next Monday.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays. As you guys know, this podcast takes place inside of an RV motorhome, but we're in Miami. And since I have someone from Los Angeles in Miami, I want to do a special edition episode. We're just throwing six events over the last three days. The whirlwind is complete. And so I wanted to grab Vince Ritchie before he flies back. I want to knock out a podcast with him. And so...

Vince has created Hubbell Studio. He's done over 5,000 photo shoots there. It's nearly 60,000 square feet with multiple buildings. He created Balance, a brand that we're gonna get to talking about shortly. Just created a whole partnership with The Wind, doing branding and marketing with them. And he's the founder of Trinis Kids Foundation. I've been helping him along this journey for the last 11 years.

We raised hundreds and hundreds of thousands of toys, almost 200,000 toys just last year in December, doing 11 cities in 17 days like psychopaths flying around the country together to go make sure we give the toys out in person all over the country. Now I'm addicted to it, so I'm going to be flying around to toy drives, I don't know for how many more years, but it feels like we're going to be doing it for decades. So without further ado, I'm going to have Vince Ritchie give a quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money. So my name is Vince Ritchie.

from the Bronx, New York, Italian-American. And I always like to preface that with kind of really diving deep into my culture. And that's what gives me a lot of integrity, why I work so hard, my legacy and my family, why I care to do what we do. We created Hubble Studios over a decade ago. Kind of took off super fast with the level of people we were working with because we were dead smack in the middle of Los Angeles.

Vogue, Disney, all these other commercials, Apple started coming to us and then we decided to make couple agency which was in the full time production company that stepped in to produce whatever they needed from A to Z. We could either do just A or we could do all the way A to Z.

Then under that, we became kind of a venture studio that started to find deals that we liked and invested into the deals or provided the service in exchange for equity. And we all know a lot of those deals, they're really, you're going for a grand slam. You know, you're really hoping, just like any other venture.

Now, our entire business is a mix of all of them, but our main business is producing content, is producing high-end valued content. We are a branding company. We help make sure that this brand is congruent, the assets that we're building are congruent, and you believe what we make is real. And that's ultimately what we do. So you have everything from CanBeAKids clothing brands to cannabis brands,

Casinos that you're working with throwing events toy drives. There's a lot of moving parts How do you manage this whole whirlwind of things you guys are up to I think a good work-life balance, you know Jack Walsh talks about there's no worse life's balance as work-life decisions, you know and

Because so much of my business is loosely coupled in the creative agency side where we're making decisions, we're being creative, we're letting it speak to me, like paying attention to what billboards draw your attention to what other assets draw your attention to what's trending right now.

That has to fill my creative void. And then when the cannabis side or just the operation side of business is very tightly coupled, it's centralized to me as a CEO. I get to make very strategic decisions. Those decisions happen between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. Then I take like a little in between where I'm working on both. And then anything after 3 p.m. is a super creative decisions. It's one of them around from the day and able to deal with it. I go home, I see my daughter, I'm like,

my two daughters, and it gets me creative. And then by the time 7:00 PM rolls around, they go to sleep, then I can really open up my creative juices. So it's able to really use the whole day because I'm using different parts of my brain. - So on balance side, there's thousands and thousands of cannabis and CBD related companies out there. Yours is ultra premium, high quality look and feel. How do you stand out from this ocean, this big sea of different brands? - Really maintaining quality, going after a boutique customer.

We have this certain niche because Balance, we were kind of ahead of the game in 2018 when we created our logos, our branding, it was very cartoony and compliance stopped people from being able to brand like that because it felt like it was going after kids. We were super premium, super makeup looking because I came from the beauty industry of shooting so much beauty content.

Then I knew that our product really had to back that up. So I really dove back deep into operations the last few years and maintaining one going after really high-end botanists and high-end plant health specialist people, then letting them know this is how we structure our company. This is organizational in short. This is how we work.

And we're chasing one thing to be the Yankees. We're chasing one thing to be the best of the best. We're not growing just to grow mass market ahead of smaller midsection price point. We want to have the best of the best. Now, are the people better? Of course. There's a bunch of small growers at a super boutique that are selling, you know, it's like selling $30,000 handbags. There's other companies doing it, not just Birkin. No, well, Hermes.

And we'll kind of find that niche of being like not the top, top, top, top guy because they just like such a small market. But right there, we're like A plus in quality. And you really can't tell the difference. You know what I mean? But it's the top, top, top.

So on the creative agency side, you have someone like the Wynn Casino. This is literally the most premium brand in the casino space in history. And you have such a long legacy there. It looks great, it feels great, it smells great. Everything about the Wynn is already a high-level brand. Why does something that has such a high-level brand then spend the money and choose you guys to go out there and make them even better?

Think because we were already working with them in the beginning shooting a ton of stuff for marshmallows shooting some stuff for that artist and then they got exposed to us as a company Then they got exposed to a little bit of the legacy brand of Hubble, you know Hubble started making clothes in 2015 just to distinguish who we were a staff one day somebody on set X to borrow a shirt and

We gave them a shirt, they wore another photo shoot somewhere else. This one wore it, that one wore it. You know, I don't know if every single, every single high end celebrity you could imagine of the top top tier was wearing it almost to where I couldn't believe it was happening. And then they were like, Oh, now we have to make clothing brand. I said, let's keep it small because it still keeps the culture of the studio of what we create here. And the clothing was a reflection of our perception of what was hot at the time.

We were behind the scenes on every Apple commercial, Nike commercial, a ton of other, every Vogue shoot. Some of the highest end Vogue shoots that are like the most controversial ones in the last 10 years were shot at Hubble Studio. And we were behind the scenes on how it happened, how we made that production. So then when we made things, it was just super in line with what was trending. So then people seeing that and the win, there's some people in the creative team at the win that knew about it. And then they came to us and said, hey, we want to create the same thing for the

Wynn has a legacy brand. It's amazing. They have all these celebrities that stay there, all these people, but nobody knows about it. Nobody's dying to wear this exclusive Wynn hat. Now imagine there was only certain hats from the Wynn that you could only get a certain way if you were gifted and you won it. People would be craving it. They'd be dying over it. And that's what we're trying to create.

But also in fashion, you have a kids line with Cambia Kids. Why do you create a kids line when you've got high-end fashion, cannabis, Hubble Studio? You've got all these things. Why now have a kids division? So the truth be told, when me and my wife got together, she came over to Hubble, grew in the ranks. Now she's the director of Hubble Studio. She runs the agency. She had created the kids line when she was in college at FIT. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

She cut and made the patterns on my floor in my apartment in New York City when we first started dating and made a mess everywhere, literally. And she's a seamstress. She made all the patterns herself, did it. She understands the brand top to bottom, exactly what blends are in there. I learned it because, you know, when we first started dating, I was going with her to all these places.

And it just worked. It was the best. It was a bamboo blend. It was just the best quality. Like, I only want to put my kids in our stuff, not because it's ours, because it really feels the best and looks the best. It looks so swaggy. Then with Hubble, she was able to work with, you know, Kardashians, this one, that one, and have all these people in their stuff. There was a quarterback that won the Super Bowl. He had his kids on the field with him. I'm not going to say who it is. And he was holding his kid, and they were in a Canbya set at the Super Bowl.

And it's like, it's the way that our culture just touches so many different people on such a high level. So in between all these things, you also 11 years ago create Trina's Kids Foundation. Can you walk us through when you're already so busy with all these different businesses, why create this foundation? Why not just donate to other people's charities?

So I wanted to create a foundation that we were making a direct impact. From the Bronx, New York, I came from a very low-income area. I was affected by alcoholism, drug abuse. Not myself. I was never addicted to anything. But the impact it makes on you from being surrounded by you. And all these kids in these areas, whether it's East LA, certain areas in San Diego, certain areas obviously in Miami, everywhere, every single city deals with the same thing, are impacted by drug abuse, whether they know it or don't know it.

So I wanted to affect those kids. I wanted to show them that people care, especially, you know, you bring in so many different groups of people, different minorities, different races together, and you bring all these high-end people that work with the studio, and then you bring the whole inner city youth to come in. Everybody, you know, they deal with each other. They talk, and it's the little piece of your heart when you're extending yourself to them. Ultimately, I really did build it because of our first meeting, me and you. And I didn't believe that it could ever be as big as it was until I met you. And then you came in and helped me do the whole thing.

So why are you crazy enough to go to 10, 11 cities now for the toy? Because I have a crazy partner, Dan, that then does it and convinces me, even though I'm in the back end yelling at Roger, like, this is never going to work. It's not going to work. The production's not going to work. You're the one who, you know, you, the real, you know, it's almost like the American dream.

Sometimes I say to this guy, Dan, he's either naive and doesn't know what's really going to happen, or he really does believe it, and somehow we pull it off. We filled stadiums. We filled arenas. We filled thousands of toys, track to trails going all over, and I'm dying in the background because I'm an operations guy. I'm like, it's never going to work. It's like, don't worry about it. You're like, the event's tomorrow. It's at an arena. It's at the Miami Heat Arena. We don't even have a random show yet. Yeah, nothing. What time did everybody show up? You're like, oh, who knows? I'm like, oh my God. But

Then a thousand kids showed up. Yeah, literally. We had way more volunteers than we even needed. Thousands of kids showed up. It was amazing. It was great. It was a great experience because you're so ambitious. And then couple that together with some ability to do operations very fast on the spot, and it works. So besides the toy drives, which we've done for 11 years now, people, you can check it out at Trina's Kids Foundation, trinaskids.org.

The toy drives, you have that part, but also inside of your own building at Hubbell Studio, you've got report card day, back to school day, Thanksgiving food drive, walk through having inviting over 400 to 1,000 families multiple times a year, literally inside of your place of work. I come from an events background also. I worked at a catering hall when I was younger.

It's just it's just drawn like any other event, you know, you have to be extremely hospitable that everybody comes in Do I care about every single person that walks through the door they get the same exact experience they get greeted with a smile they agree to a love whatever they need we handle and Because these people know that I'm welcoming them in and now it's been so long. They kind of already know they're not skeptical of us They come with such a warm heart. So it's gotten a lot easier as a time has went on and

And it brings a community together. When I invite our clients down, I invite other producers, other celebrities, other people down, and I see them walk through the door and they listen to me and you get on stage and speak. What we're about to do, we're about to extend in your heart. And then they do it and they give back. It really brings that community together. And now that this client is not just a client, they're a friend. They believe in what we're doing. And that builds the culture of what we do.

So how do you get the streets involved? You know, like you're getting the people to come show up and getting the word out. The police are there to help protect it. They're also out there to help donate and literally serving food. The local vendors are coming. There's a lot of moving parts. How do you get so many different people involved to support you and your mission? I'm going to say a line and tell me what movie it's from. Get on the phone and start dialing. Yeah. Get on the phone and start dialing. I'm calling, I'm calling, I'm calling, constantly calling.

The local police department, I just funded their race to Vegas literally two days ago. I'm just constantly involved in the community because I care about the community because I'm a part of this community. They've embraced me and I came and built my business there. So I just, I call them. I constantly call everybody. Hey, you coming? You coming? You coming? You coming? Let's have it coming. Oh, bring more people. Oh, can I bring this person? Yeah, of course. Oh, you got more kids? 50 more kids? Okay, of course. All right. 60 over the limit? Sure, why not? Bring them. Oh, we got no more toys? All right, we'll find more toys. We'll figure it out.

Because I love the growth. I love the game and me and you do such a great job of doing that together We just kind of want to build build build and make more of impact All right, let's take off our charity hats and put on the Hubble studio Why build this, you know 10,000 square feet then 20,000 square feet then 30,000 square feet and a fourth building 50 or 60,000 square feet I can't even count anymore There's so many buildings across the street and over here and over there like why keep building expanding Hubble studio. I

Because, you know, I felt like, well, one, we're in downtown Autisticia. It's right next to the warehouse area. It's growing. It's multiplying exponentially. Every single big clothing brand is down there. Everybody's located down there. I move and shake with all the best people down there. Have we had time to take over new buildings? I had to take it. Because if I didn't take the opportunity, I would have missed the opportunity.

And the building, the business was growing because we only could have so many stages. If you fill three stages tomorrow and Nike calls you up and says, oh, I needed 10 days, but I'm literally packed in the middle. I just can't do the job. But as we grew more stages, we had more opportunity to help more people. And when you're producing on one stage, one thing, three times a week, it's cool. When you're producing on four stages, five stages, digital room, this, that,

Every single day, it's so much more fun. For somebody who's creative like me and my team,

We get to execute so many different things every day. It's like you get home and you don't have this buildup anxiety because you've fully let off all your creative juices. And I work with my wife. So it's not like a normal relationship where you go home and you say, oh, what'd you do today? If my wife had dad asked me what I did today, I'd be like, you knew what I did. I was with you all day. We spoke all day. But I love that. If I come home and we have this transparent relationship and that's the way our entire team works. We have radical transparency at work.

So what's the goal for Hubbell Studio? Is this a business that you build up to exit one day or this is a business that you just keep integrating, adding, becoming a venture studio and keep doing all your own divisions? I think that we had an opportunity a few years ago with somebody big to acquire a portion of the company. I decided not to do it. We spoke about that.

Why I decided not to do it was because I still feel like I have so much control over the company and how we could pivot. We're very agile and we can go into what we want. And I didn't want any other businesses reputation to affect the culture of what we do. Now, if Nike bought us, for instance, as a creative agency, Adidas will never shoot with us again. Adidas shoots with us.

none of these other shoe brands will shoot with us. Represent probably won't shoot with us and Represent is a huge emerging company that is killing the fitness space with their live activations and their content. They're great, nothing bad to say about them. But they'll never shoot with me if Nike bought us. So we really have to be open to everybody and I love being that person for this community. I'm such a fan of the arts, I'm such a fan of fashion that being who we are for them

I couldn't ask for a better job. And I love it. I have no plan on exiting anytime soon. - So if someone has a brand, a product, a service, and they're thinking about booking a studio for a photo shoot, but they don't really understand why they're able to charge 400 bucks for the hour, 1,000 bucks for the hour, 10,000 or 20,000 bucks for the day, can you explain the behind the scenes, how there's lighting, equipment, staff, experienced people that are actually running the show, why it's so expensive sometimes? - So when you're creating these high-end assets as opposed to just user-generated assets, or just something simple,

You got to keep every single detail in mind. One, it has to be formatted to every single aspect that you're going to be able to market it. You know what I mean? Whether it's phone, digital, whatever way. You got...

Lighting crews digital crews post-production crews in-house crews and you got 60 people on set you have to feed all these people You have to handle that then you have to create this environment that everybody feels super creative That's a whole different experience and when you're creating like that and your photographer alone is a celebrity within themselves because they should be You're housing this magical moment then create this thing that will live in time when Billy Eilish shot in lingerie and

She literally has only shot like that one time that was there. It was a whole moment It was weeks in advance of planning to make her comfortable to make the team comfortable make everything happen - it had the highest end production possible But it was it was a moment that will live in history, you know, we were a part of that so to create that moment and

It costs money. It's a luxury tax. And you're guaranteed to get exactly what you want. You get married at the Beverly Hills Hotel because you get exactly what you want. You're going to pay, but they're going to do everything for you and you're going to get exactly what you want. That's what it's like coming to Hubble Studios. We give you exactly what you want. So if someone is trying to figure out, I want to hire an agency, how do they decide between this agency, that agency versus a premium one like yours?

You know, it's really, there's a lot of great people out there doing great stuff. I don't knock any of these other agencies. You go with someone who understands branding. You know, I wouldn't say that we should digitally market your stuff. I would push them towards you or a handful of other people that were on the panel yesterday. We build brands because I understand what's real because I'm paying attention to what's real.

At any given time, I know what companies are doing well, what companies aren't doing well, what's hot, why someone's wearing the Miri shirt or Rivington shirt. I think that Miri's great. He was one of our first clients 10 years ago. I think we did our first few photo shoots with him for free because I believed in him. Now we do everything for him. And he's got more global sales than St. Laurent.

is because we're paying attention to who's good so I'm able to put you in line with what's going to work. And I'm going to give you advice as a company and say, "I truly believe this is going to work." You may like that, you may like that, you know, canary yellow shirt, but not many other people are going to like it. So let's not make your packaging that color. You know what I mean? And making it congruent with what's happening and picking us as a company and believing in us as a team. That's why you're going to go with us.

So the packaging design for Cambia Kids, Hubbell Studio, your agency, all the things, balanced, all the things, the different products you have is very, very, very high quality. Why do you think it's important for someone to consider to go with an expert to actually make their brand rather than just do it on AI or chat GPT or hire someone off of Fiverr for $100? Why should someone consider going with the high-end version of their brand, product, or logo? I'll give you a perfect instance.

- He asked me what the best coffee is in New York City. - What's the best coffee in New York City? - Ninth Street Coffee. You wanna know why? 'Cause I bought a t-shirt from them 10 years ago, and I liked the quality so much that I've worn that t-shirt to Craig's out for dinner multiple times. I've wore it out, and it just says Ninth Street Coffee on it. But the placement, the logo, everything was great. And then I was watching Billions, and they talked about Ninth Street Coffee. Then I was reading Unreasonable Hospitality, and he talked about one of the best espresso pulls in New York City. It was Ninth Street Coffee. If I never bought that shirt,

When I watched it on the TV show, I read it in a book, it would have been irrelevant to me. I wouldn't have remembered. But because I had something that I picked up every day and wore it, it makes it more sticky. It makes it where now I believe in this brand. I've reached for that. I've worn it. I've bought into the culture. It's part of who I am now. It's weaving into the fabric of me right now in my life and what I like to wear.

That's branding, how you make somebody feel. When you're making things for someone to wear, especially, or packaging for them to pick up, nothing feels good as opening that brand new iPhone box. When you peel the little thing and then you pull it off, you know you have a brand new phone, but the packaging is the experience. You're selling someone that experience and they feel better about themselves and happier because they got it. That's why you pay for that. That's why you pick high end for that.

So you read a lot of books on business. A lot of times people think that they're either too good for books or too good for masterminds or too good for events or too good for courses or too good to keep learning. Why is it important for you to keep learning and why should people consider spending more time investing into their minds? Because it's like if I'm going to scale the Alps, there's so many people who have done it before me. They know the exact routes to take. Let me go through it. It's always going to be different. There's going to be different weather. You may not be able to take that route. It's always going to be a little different, but they've made their way through.

They can give you advice. That's why I talk about loosely coupled or tightly coupled businesses is because I read it. Because I read a lot of these management ideology books, a lot of these CEO books, and they've built behemoths of companies. And they've went through a lot of the same problems that me and you both go through in building these companies. And it gives us the confidence to know that someone else has did it and they're paving the way for us. I have more mentors that I've never even met.

that don't even know that I look up to. You know, Michael Ovitz talked about when he built his agency, he was so behind the scenes of the movie industry that he seen what was coming out before it did and it made me even more convinced that I had to build Hubble Agency because I was on set every day for the best of the best stuff. I was behind the scenes. If I never read Michael Ovitz's book, I would never know. I would never have seen that vision, you know what I mean?

And you read all these books and do these things. If you don't think that you need to, and your arrogance or your hubris is going to just say that you just know exactly how to do it, good luck. You may be the exception that gets through, but most likely the person who studied and learned is going to do better. I'm going to give you guys a real life example. Let's say I want to start a clothing line and Vince wants to start a clothing line. But Vince hires Damon John. And Damon John has done almost $4 billion in clothing sales. Vince has experience with clothing. I don't.

If they go out and decide which manufacturer to use, Vince and Damon are going to be texting manufacturer, "Hey, Robert, can you do this clothing for me?" "Hey, tech pack designer, can you design this tech pack for me?" What I'm going to be doing?

What is a manufacturer in Los Angeles? Oh, sorry, sorry. Who is a manufacturer in Los Angeles? Wait, what is a tech pack designer? Oh, here's a bunch of websites. Hello, tech pack designer. I'm going to be paying the dummy tax because when I call them or I email them, they're going to charge me full price or more. When Vince and Damon John call them,

They're going to get discounts and things for free and friendships and favors because Damon's been doing it for decades. Vince has been doing it for a decade. They have the experience. And so while I'm trying to figure out how to start a clothing line, and I'm like, should I order small, medium, large, XL, XXL, XXXL, XXXL? How many should I order? Should I order 3,000 samples or 1,000 samples? Wait, I only need 40 samples? I'm going to be paying the dummy tax. You know how I know? When I was 18 years old, I paid the dummy tax. I paid $36,000 for 12 sweaters.

When I was 18 years old, I paid $36,000 for 12 sweaters. And a leather jacket manufacturer charged me $21,000 for 12 jackets. Why? I was 18 years old. So they saw me coming from all the way. I had just done a million in sales. I was on pace to do 9 million in sales. And so we had some money and I was a kid. And I went to these manufacturers, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and they just overcharged me.

And I paid the dummy tax. And then later it led me to my real manufacturer, Christopher Wicks, who I'm still friends with today. And he was the guiding light to help me with every little detail to save me 10 cents on things. Every little reason why the plastic should be this way, why the box is this way, why is the hanger this way. By the way, quick side note, if you sell to Walmart and your hanger is facing left instead of right, they'll charge you 25 cents per unit.

If you ship them 120,000 units, they just send you an actual bill to pay them back 30 grand because your hanger is the wrong way. Every little detail you learn in this example where Damon and Vince, for example, are having the experience is why books are important. It's why masterminds are important. It's why video courses and YouTube. There's so much information for free that you can consume to help you not pay the dummy tax. All right, Vince, go ahead. Also, real quick, if you're utilizing your time, if you're an entrepreneur,

What's the best use of my time, right? Are you either going to drive and listen to music or are you going to drive and listen to an audio book? Are you going to drive and listen to a mastermind that you're watching or something like that? Your entertainment, your new entertainment should be watching masterminds and learning. Why not? It's the best. I drive 35 minutes to work and 35 minutes back I listen to audio books. I don't listen to music anymore. I only listen to music if I want to go out. I want to get into a good mood. If I'm going to work, I want to get thrilled about being at work. I want to be inspired, excited. Oh, that's a good idea. I'm going to apply that today. This is great.

Use your time wisely because we only have a few years doing this. Ultimately, with a 40-year run and within just doing business, how can I use every single day? The last question is related to charity. Why do you think it's important for people to have a charity philanthropic part of their company, their brand, or with their employees? Why is it important for the culture to have some type of charity component? Because you've got to feel like you're giving back because it's the right thing to do. I don't care what Bible you read. If it's a Torah...

Quran or the Bible, it all talks about giving back. You have to give back. It's part of your soul. It just makes you feel more fulfilled. We are so stressed out the month of December. It's literally going nuts. We had a three-hour meeting, arguing in Vegas about the Miami Heat Arena, what's going to happen.

It's so stressful the morning of the day if we don't have enough toys, this happens. But the minute it ends and we walked out and we went and sat down at Carbone, so many smiling faces, so many kids, so many things, and everybody came together for one cause. If you build that, that's building a culture. And that's what changes people's lives. And when you do that together with your team, they want to be a part of it. They feel good. My holidays...

You know, I've buried both my parents. There is no going home to the Bronx. That part of my life is gone. But the new part of my life is me and you and my kids and your daughter and our wives going out and doing these together. And our kids are going to grow up knowing the holidays are not about what we get. It's about what we give back and how we give back. And there's smiles that we share with everybody and we share that with our employees and our business. It breathes life into it. And it makes it fun. It really does.

So where can people find you? This is going to be a lot of different companies. Where can they find you, your companies, the charity? Just give us the quick breakdown. My Instagram is at Vince Ritchie, R-I-C-C-I, my last name. Trina's Kids is at Trina's Kids. Hubble Studios is at Hubble Studio. And Balance is at Balance Los Angeles. You can pretty much navigate from one to the other from there. Super easy.

All right, guys. Really, really important to have discussions with your friends, family, and followers about money. We all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think that's ridiculous. You have to have discussions about accounting, taxes, loans. What happens if I don't pay this? What happens if I borrow money from my friend and I don't get a contract? Should I split the rents? Should I split the bills?

It's real life. Bills are your real life. Medical bills, insurance, these are all part of your daily life. So you have to have discussions with people around you from your past, present, and your future about money things so that you can be ahead of the curve and you don't pay those dummy taxes. Every single year, you've seen us for the last two years now,

not having sponsors, not having logos, not reading you long commercials. So I want to give you direct information. We have a 93% listen-through rate. And right now, this week alone, we are rated the number one entrepreneur podcast and we are trending as number one. So we need your help. Like, comment, subscribe, share. Check out Vince Richie across social media and we'll see you guys next Monday on themoneymondays.com.