STOP Wasting Time Brandon Stevens' Proven Business Formula REVEALED! 📈 E95

Speaker 1 Dad, still today, gives us the same advice, the only advice he's ever given us, and that is just keep on trucking. And so, we just kept on trucking.
We never had a plan.

Speaker 1 If you talk to my dad today, you're looking and you'll see me all stressed out, and they're coming. So,

Speaker 1 just keep on trucking. That's really good advice.

Speaker 2 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the most specialist Money Mondays in history.

Speaker 2 Because this is the first time, hopefully, the only time we do this podcast, not inside of the RV Motorhome, but inside of the massive, fantastic, gorgeous Gravitas membership club here in Beverly Hills, California.

Speaker 2 28,000 square feet. And we are inside the poke room, the podcast room that they built.

Speaker 1 That is freaking gorgeous.

Speaker 2 Like the quality, the content, everything you guys have created here. The details of it is mind-blowing.

Speaker 2 Okay, as you guys know on the Money Mondays podcast, we cover three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity.

Speaker 2 But because this is a very special episode, and I have one of my best friends on the planet here with me right now, we're going to mix in about business of building a membership club

Speaker 2 in the heart of Beverly Hills to take on this huge undertaking. Why did he do it? How did he do it?

Speaker 2 Talk through the concept of building such a gorgeous place and spending three years of his life when he already has massive amounts. I don't know, 17, 18 car dealerships we'll talk about.

Speaker 2 I think he's got like 50 or 60 gyms, probably more by now. Might have opened one just yesterday for all I know.
We're going to go through all those things.

Speaker 2 But as you guys know, these podcasts average a little bit under 40 minutes because the average workout is 45 minutes, the average commute to work is 45 minutes.

Speaker 2 This episode will be between 34 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure.

Speaker 2 So, without further ado, I'm going to bring on Brandon Stephen to give you a quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money.

Speaker 1 First of all, this is your first podcast outside of the motorhome? Yeah, and hopefully, the last. Oh, my God.
Just for you. And this is my first podcast.

Speaker 1 And this is the first podcast in the Gravitas podcast. Exactly.
That's three first. That's a lot.
It's a lot of first.

Speaker 2 We got to make it extra, extra good.

Speaker 1 Okay, so two-minute bio. Yes.
Which I hate. So I probably won't even use the whole two minutes.
I'm Brandon Steven. I am from Wichita, Kansas.
I still live in Wichita, Kansas.

Speaker 1 People from Beverly Hills that have known me just from doing Gravitas or amaze that I still live in Kansas, but I love it there.

Speaker 1 I think first I'm a father, husband. I have six kids, six amazing kids, five daughters, and a boy.

Speaker 1 I did start in the car business early on, like in my teenage years, working at my best friend's dad's car dealership.

Speaker 1 And then I just fell in love with the car business. Then I kind of, my brother and I were partners.
We opened up a health club.

Speaker 1 So I think I opened opened up my first, we opened up our first health club in 95 and my first, no, my 94 in my first used car lot, which is a little bit bigger in this room

Speaker 1 in 95. And fast forward to 2024, we have 74 health clubs.

Speaker 2 74?

Speaker 1 74.

Speaker 2 I had like 60, like a week ago.

Speaker 1 Not a week ago, Dan. All right, eight days ago.
And 21 car dealerships.

Speaker 2 We had 18 car dealerships last time I saw him. which was a week ago.

Speaker 1 So Dan's exaggerating again. Okay, nine days ago.
We have a couple restaurants. We We have a hockey team.

Speaker 1 We have a lot of things, but our core business are health clubs and car dealerships. That's our core business.
And my advice to most people is

Speaker 1 stay in your lane. Stay in your lane.
Stay in your lane. And then I keep going outside my lane and doing restaurants and hockey teams and

Speaker 1 a membership club.

Speaker 1 What business do I have going in the heart of the Golden Triangle and building this massive project? So it's less than two minutes, right? It was pretty much less than two minutes.

Speaker 2 So you already had a steakhouse in Wichita. That was kind of like practice, right? Practice of this fancy steakhouse you built there years ago.
But why this?

Speaker 2 Why go build 28,000 square feet in the heart of Beverly Hills right next to Mr. Chow and Cipriani and all these fancy places? How did you decide, you know what?

Speaker 2 I'm going to stake my ground right here on the corner of Camden and Santa Monica Boulevard.

Speaker 1 The answer to that question is pathetic.

Speaker 1 There is no answer because I didn't plan this. It started out as I literally came to pick up my buddy Paul for lunch.

Speaker 1 And they had this patio outside that was very underwhelming for where it was at and they were getting ready to put a restaurant inside in this little 4,000 square foot vacant space they had that was Wells Fargo and I was talking to him I'm like I just don't understand this didn't it just didn't work for me it didn't make sense and I was like you should put a bar this should be like a garden bar this should be an outside bar I mean look where you're at he just kind of shrugged his shoulders like whatever you're from Kansas I'm like what do you mean he's like

Speaker 1 It's not going to happen. You're not going to put, the city's not going to approve that.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, my question to myself was, well, how? How would they approve it? And that's literally how we started. And so it started out to be 12,000 square feet.

Speaker 1 And now, once we started going, I'm like, we need this. We need this.

Speaker 1 We need this.

Speaker 2 That's a good idea. Let's do that.

Speaker 1 And as my business was growing, this was literally over, this was three, this was three years, 37 months ago. That's when this project started.

Speaker 1 And I was like, I need this for my business. I need this.
And that's kind of where it just kind of dwarfed to.

Speaker 2 So it's open.

Speaker 1 Time is open. It's open.
Today is day day number nine. Wow.
Wow, I was right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Are you happy?

Speaker 2 Are you happy as a business person?

Speaker 1 I get a lot of congratulations, you know, because I've been doing this for so long, building this. And so people are congratulating me so long.
And it just, I don't want to say it just frustrates me.

Speaker 1 It irritates me when people congratulate me because I've done nothing.

Speaker 1 We are open. We are open.
That's only one-third of it. You know, I built this amazing, we built this amazing facility, but that's only one-third of it.

Speaker 1 You know, great service and great food or the other. And the club is 95%

Speaker 1 done

Speaker 1 construction-wise. So, Dan, you know me well enough to know what do I see? Everything to fix.
Yeah, I see the five percent that's not done. So, that's just the way I've always been.

Speaker 1 So, I do need to relax. I do need to appreciate how far I've come and how fun this is.

Speaker 2 So, walk me through why restaurant and not membership club. Like, why did you decide I'm going to go with membership club and go that route?

Speaker 1 As it got bigger, and so I started expanding here, you know, five, six years years ago, my car business, I started expanding to Los Angeles. And as, you know,

Speaker 1 I build a family like in my car business. My team.
My team is my team, and they're very important to me. And my meetings are super important to me.

Speaker 1 And my celebration dinners with my employees are super. So it kind of dwarfed to like, I need a space for this.

Speaker 1 I need a space for this.

Speaker 1 There was a need for this in Beverly Hills. And so that's how it kind of dwarfed.
And as I was building this restaurant and taking on more and more space, it just became a membership club.

Speaker 1 Like it became like, okay, I can't just have everyone use this. I mean, I just walked you through and showed you that gorgeous, it's called the poor room, the comforts room.

Speaker 1 Like this is a gorgeous room that I need for myself, which means other businessmen also need that for themselves. And that was not going to be just open to the public.

Speaker 1 It needs to be just exclusive to our members.

Speaker 2 So as you're building it, it's getting bigger, goes from 12,000 square feet to 20,000 square feet. You build this retractable roof.
in the middle of Beverly Hills. You build this huge patio.

Speaker 2 But then you start talking to about like cars hanging from the ceilings and like walk us through some of the extravagant parts. Like, why do those things? Do you think it matters to members?

Speaker 2 Do you think it matters to the brand? Like, why did it click in your mind? Like, I'm going to hang a fancy car from the ceiling.

Speaker 1 I like being, I like people to tell me no and then to overcome. And I love the challenge.
Like, nobody, everyone says you cannot.

Speaker 1 I mean, literally everybody, my designers, everyone says you're not going to be able to hang an 18-foot F1 car

Speaker 1 from the ceiling.

Speaker 2 I mean, it sounds silly.

Speaker 1 It sounds silly.

Speaker 1 And then now, with that, there's all kinds of sponsorships. Like, I get to wrap the car.
It's going to be a Red Bull car. I just found that yesterday.

Speaker 1 I'm doing a deal with Honda Racing Club. It's going to be a Red Bull car, 18-foot hanging from the ceiling, actual Red Bull car.
Why not? Right? I mean, why not? That's a separate room.

Speaker 1 That's called the vault.

Speaker 1 Later, we're going to sell. I'm going to sell Nami Rice to that room.

Speaker 1 I've built a huge...

Speaker 1 So to get Beverly Hills for me to prove to drive a car through the curb, up to the curb. into the building was a whole nother task, a whole nother world.
But why not?

Speaker 1 Why not have a place where people could unveil their cars, whether you're buying a car, whether it's a F1 unveiling, whether it's Bentley releasing their new model, that's what that room's for.

Speaker 1 Come to find out, we've only been open for nine days. That room's been rented out three nights.
It's not even done. It's like it's the room that's the most incomplete.

Speaker 1 And it's been the room that people want the most. So that was the last, last addition.

Speaker 2 And on the wine side of it, talk us through. It seems like people can actually leave their wine here.
They can store their wine here.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So that was something I did not know.

Speaker 1 Advice advice from paul who's my buddy here that with this building he's like brand there's a huge need for wine wine storage in la people will pay whatever for wine storage i'm like yeah okay paul um sure enough so we built these almost 400 wine lockers um i don't know if you know anything about memberships we're doing what we call gem gym memberships which is we're only selling a few of them they're lifetime memberships with that lifetime membership you also get in life's i mean like a huge 12 by 12 wine locker by biometric so you walk up you put your thumbprint in it and the wine locker comes out it's a gorgeous gorgeous, gorgeous room.

Speaker 1 That room won't be done for the month. But we just started renting out those wine lockers, and they're almost sold out.

Speaker 2 So, to the entrepreneurs that are out there, like, I want to open a restaurant. Obviously, not necessarily a 28,000 square foot wine, but let's say they're 2,800 square feet.

Speaker 2 They want to open up their first thing. What was advice you would tell them when they're first planning? Not to do it.

Speaker 1 Not to do it. Not to do it.
There you go.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Not to do it.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 That's probably not a good answer. Ask me again.
I'm sorry. No, it's a great answer.

Speaker 2 By the way, I've been going very hard the last two years saying most people should not be entrepreneurs. They're not built for it.

Speaker 2 They don't realize that they're trying to be the entrepreneur because they heard someone fancy on social media say, you should just tell your boss that you're going to quit and go become an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2 They don't realize that you're not going to make money for one, two, three, four years, even when your business makes money. Let me explain real quick, guys.

Speaker 2 Let's say Brand and I decide to start whitete shirts.com. And whitethirts.com, Brandon and I crush it.
We put in 100K each to start it. We got 200 grand in capital.

Speaker 2 We go do $1.5 million in sales our first year. Brand and I should be happy, right? Does anyone know out there how much money that Brandon and I pull out out of the 1.5 million sales?

Speaker 1 Zero.

Speaker 2 It rhymes with zero. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because what happens? Well, 50% of it goes to the cost of manufacturing, production, shipping. 12% is going to go to the marketing.
5% on the paid ad spend. We're going to get a convention booth.

Speaker 2 We're going to have staff. We're going to have employees.
But then for a year or two, we're going to go from $1.5 million to $4 million.

Speaker 2 We crush it. Brand and I freaking crush it.
Guess how much brand I pull out?

Speaker 1 Negative.

Speaker 2 Negative, exactly. You know why? Because it's working.
So if your business sucks, you're not gonna make money.

Speaker 2 And if it's working, you pour all the money back in and you take on debt or investors or loans or something to scale the business because it's working.

Speaker 2 You didn't get paid year one, year two, year three, et cetera. And so when I tell people that, it's hard for them to grasp.

Speaker 2 They just see fancy numbers on social media like, oh, they did 4 million in sales. That's gross sales.
That's not net profit.

Speaker 2 And you, as the entrepreneur or CEO, are dead last to get paid from staff, from vendors, from lawyers, accountants, leases, and everything between. They're all first, and you are dead last.

Speaker 2 And even when you're dead last, you're probably not going to get paid. All right, but I digress.
So, Brandon Stevens.

Speaker 1 There's an exception to every rule. Of course.
There's an exception to that as well. And I do agree completely with you said.
Not everyone is meant to be entrepreneurs.

Speaker 1 And that's not a negative thing.

Speaker 1 You can make so much money working for a company like myself where

Speaker 1 we actually enhance you being an entrepreneur inside of our company when that company already has the infrastructure, already has all the things you need to expand your database, which in essence is your business inside of my company, our company.

Speaker 1 And that's what I've done inside my car business: I've enabled great people to market inside my company instead of doing everything you're talking about, building on infrastructure, having all these resources, not having the funds to advertise and market, IT funds.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's so many things inside of my company that an entrepreneur can come in and just expand his business inside, which is good for some people. And some people want the

Speaker 1 pain. How'd you know?

Speaker 1 They want the pain. They want the pain.

Speaker 1 And some people will just get lucky and have a great product that costs very little, and they get to produce a lot of income off it. And they get to take money home right away.

Speaker 1 But I would definitely say that's the exception to the rule.

Speaker 2 So some of you listening, after I went on my tirade about entrepreneurs hard.

Speaker 1 You definitely did, by the way.

Speaker 2 Very passionate about it.

Speaker 1 I can see that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I see a lot of people get stressed out.

Speaker 2 And I don't want society to think that you should just quit your job.

Speaker 2 I think you should save up money, have six to 12 months saved up in your piggy bank, because you're probably not going to make money for a long time, even when it works.

Speaker 1 It's interesting you say the word stressed out.

Speaker 1 I'm 51. I've been opening up my own.
I opened up my first business at 11 years old, believe it or not. Wow.
And it's crazy. And I kept on opening, and I'm still opening businesses.

Speaker 1 I'm still stressed out. Like, it's crazy.
My poor wife and my kids see me stressed out all the time. And some people will come up to me me and say, Gosh, celebrate, relax.

Speaker 1 And a true entrepreneur just is not, it's just never, it's always.

Speaker 1 I remember somebody told me 25 years ago, an entrepreneur in Kansas, a real estate guy that I just immensely still admire, he kept on saying, Brandon, it's just more zeros. And you're right.

Speaker 1 It's just bigger zeros. But the things that stress me out now would have literally murdered me 25 years ago.
And the things 25 years ago that stressed me out now are like nothing to me.

Speaker 1 So it's just, it's just, they just get bigger. And the stress, unfortunately, gets bigger.

Speaker 2 So employee number two, four, seven, you can live a really good life. There's nothing wrong with not being employee number one.
Imagine, think about it for this, be realistic.

Speaker 2 Employee number four at your car dealerships or employee number four at your gyms. They make good money, right?

Speaker 1 They make great money, but it does not mean they're not stressed. Of course.

Speaker 1 Because if they're there and they're that high up inside of our company, they are like us. They want more.
They see the 5% that's not done. They see the 12% that

Speaker 1 they could have got, they should have got. They see the crumbs.

Speaker 2 What they don't have to pay your rent, your insurance, your payroll, your liabilities, your lawyers.

Speaker 1 Stop making it sound worse than it is. It is bad.

Speaker 2 Did I exaggerate something?

Speaker 1 You didn't exaggerate it, but I think the people that are that high up that have been with me for 30 years,

Speaker 1 they fill it with me.

Speaker 1 I love that. Yeah.
I love that. And that's...

Speaker 2 I just want people. I want people to be okay being employee number four, getting some equity, making six figures a year.

Speaker 1 Sometimes that's even better. For sure.
Because you do get to to go home at night and have a different, the meal tastes better sometimes.

Speaker 1 Your sleep, you do get a better night's sleep, I would say for sure.

Speaker 2 Okay, so the tirade is over for that part of it.

Speaker 1 I'm guessing you're going to come back to the tirade, though. Well, yeah, it's been passionate about it.

Speaker 2 On the investing side of the world, you've chosen to invest a lot of capital into this project, 20,000 square feet.

Speaker 2 When you're making investment decisions, whether it's real estate, more car dealerships, more gyms, a massive location in the middle of Beverly Hills, how are you thinking about it?

Speaker 2 Are you talking to other people? Is it our advisors or partners, friends? Or is it you on a whiteboard like, okay, this is my crazy plan. This is what I'm going to do.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that $25 whiteboard has cost me a lot of money.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I did not do a very good job of investing in this part. So I would definitely tell everybody everything I did in Gravitas, you should not do.

Speaker 1 It's gorgeous, though.

Speaker 1 Like I would say, actually, everything that I did, you should do the exact opposite. I started out with a great plan.
I was going to make it small.

Speaker 1 My budget, I'm embarrassed to tell you guys this, but I'm going to tell you. My budget for the first 12,000 square feet was $13 million.

Speaker 1 And I spent two months value engineering with my team, two months to get it from $13 million to $11.4. And I'm like, I did it.
I was really proud of myself. I signed the contract.
Let's go.

Speaker 1 $11.4 million. Now, it's ironic that we got from $13 to $11.4 million.
Not $11. Let's not round off to $11.

Speaker 1 And we're at $37 million is what I spent.

Speaker 1 And guess what? I'm still going.

Speaker 2 Right. You still have 5% to finish.
$37.

Speaker 1 But I'm so happy that I got it to $11.4 by spending two months to valuing it.

Speaker 2 The whiteboard says 11.4.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So back to your question. This is a horrible investment.
Idea.

Speaker 1 And then when I got it down to 11, I was going to get 20 partners, friends of mine, and say, hey, this is going to be a passion project for all of us.

Speaker 1 We're going to build this great thing and we're going to use it for ourselves. And then as it got bigger and it got bigger, the number got to 23 million.
I was for sure. That's it.
We're done.

Speaker 1 23 million. I'm done.
I went ahead and talked to some of my buddies about it. I said, here's what we're going to do.
And I said, we're close and

Speaker 1 I'll get the information to you when we get closer. And the number got so big that I just said, I can never bring somebody else in as a partner in this deal.
And so I own 100% of it.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, when I say I, my brother and I are partners, we own 100% of that.

Speaker 1 Interesting enough, Rodney, my partner, my brother, I kept on telling him for the last, you know, 16, 18 months, you need to come to LA to see what you're doing.

Speaker 1 He's like, I'm busy. You got that part.
I'm like, you need to come to LA to see what we're doing. And as the numbers got bigger, he came last week, by the way.
Oh, finally. Three years later.

Speaker 1 Yeah, three years later.

Speaker 2 On month 36, he came by?

Speaker 1 He had dinner. That's nice.
Was it good? He loved the food, yeah. It is fantastic.

Speaker 2 Okay, from an investing perspective, when you have infinite options because you are surrounded by so many people,

Speaker 2 relationships, you travel a lot, how do you decide between real estate, stock market, investing in companies, outside of just investing in your own business?

Speaker 1 So I know a lot of people, you know a lot of people. We have a lot of friends.
We're very passionate with our friends.

Speaker 1 One thing I'll tell you is when you're in the position that we're in, everybody comes to you with their new idea to invest in.

Speaker 1 If it's not once a week anymore, it used to be once a week. People would come to me and say, hey, I want you to invest in this.

Speaker 1 And now it's not as often because people know very clearly that I do not invest in other people's business. I know that you're very good at that.
I am not.

Speaker 1 I've done it a lot in the past, and I'm telling you, I'm zero for whatever.

Speaker 1 That's not true. Maybe I'm one for whatever.

Speaker 1 I have decided, Rodney and I have decided we're going to invest in us. So we're going to invest in projects we do.

Speaker 1 I have no problem spending an infinite amount of money borrowing it or in my own capital of a car dealership or a health club because I know for certain that I will win. That's not arrogant.

Speaker 1 It's because we have solid processes. We have an incredible team that's been with us, number four employees.
They've been with us since the 90s.

Speaker 1 So we have confidence in our team for our two core businesses, health clubs and car dealerships. We know for sure that I can go buy a car dealership that's broken and fix it.
That's not arrogant.

Speaker 1 Trust me, it's really not arrogant because it's just a proven process. And it's the team that we've built, built, the teams we built.

Speaker 1 We know for sure that we can go into market for health clubs and we're going to do very well. Health clubs are a little different because it takes us years to curate the market.
But

Speaker 1 we're really good at buying the real estate and then putting the best health clubs in the best places.

Speaker 1 So real estate is, it's interesting because we're in the car business, in the health club business, but we own all of our facilities. Oh, wow.
So we're really real estate developers, but not really.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 Like the McDonald's, McDonald's model. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But for car dealerships and health clubs.

Speaker 1 Interesting enough, Gravitas is the only thing in the world that I don't own. I'm leasing this space, which is very

Speaker 1 frustrating that I spent all that money on leased space.

Speaker 2 Leased space. So if the developer, if you're listening, Brandon would like to buy this building at some point.

Speaker 1 Not now. I should have bought it in 2021 and it was worth a lot less after I spent all this money.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 2 when you have brother focusing on the gyms, your self-focusing on the car dealerships, where does the trust come in? At what what point are you like, you know what?

Speaker 2 I'm not going to play around your business. You're not playing around my business.

Speaker 2 You obviously listen to each other because you're brothers, but how do you get someone to stay focused on their thing?

Speaker 1 That's never there. And I still help Rodney, and he still helps me.
It's hard. Like, Rodney is the face of the health clubs, and I'm the face of the car dealerships.
But

Speaker 1 it's interesting enough, we are both in the same business. Like, it's about retention.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's so much cheaper and so much better for us to spend money retaining a customer and retaining a team member versus hiring a new team member and trying to get a new customer.

Speaker 1 It's easier to retain a health club member. You know, anybody that's just come to work out, everyone comes in, right, Roger?

Speaker 1 They come in and they get all excited to work out for the first, and they do for the first six weeks, seven weeks, and they go crazy, and then they start to work less. That's where we come in.

Speaker 1 We're like, hey, listen, we've built the software. We know that Dan came in an average of three times a week.
Now it's two times a week, and now it's one time a week.

Speaker 1 Well, we're going to spend the money to retain Dan now.

Speaker 1 Let's give Dan a personal training session, right? Let's get Dan back in here and try to keep Dan as a member. Same with the car customers.
People come to our dealership.

Speaker 1 Nobody wants to shop for a car. I mean, it's really, it's like they actually equate it to going to the dentist, going to the car dealership.
It's scary. People hate going to the car dealership.

Speaker 1 We've tried to change that, where people come in. We try to make it more of a personal experience where your sales professional, your sales professional, you get to know them.

Speaker 1 And they need to know the manager. And that's the easiest and best way to retain a customer.
And guess what? It's also the best way to retain a team. I spent my whole life building the culture.

Speaker 1 Building the culture around you. Making sure your environment's perfect.
If you do that and your customers fill it from your team, you win.

Speaker 2 So when you build a place like Gravitas, or you build a chain of gyms or chain of car dealerships, is there an end in mind?

Speaker 2 Do you build it with an exit in mind, or you build them as legacy for the family? Like, what are your thoughts on it?

Speaker 1 That's a great question.

Speaker 2 Do you get the answer? It's my job.

Speaker 1 I was hoping you had the answer to that question because I don't.

Speaker 1 We've talked about it a lot. It's tough because our kids are getting older now.
Rodney's, you know, we have Rodney's three of his kids, four of his kids now working in the gyms.

Speaker 1 I have three of my kids now working in the business.

Speaker 1 It's interesting. It's like, because

Speaker 1 we didn't do a good job of thinking about legacy. We just started working.
We kept working. We kept on plowing for it.

Speaker 1 My dad still today gives us the same advice, the only advice he's ever given us, and that is just keep on trucking. And so we just kept on trucking.
We never had a plan. If you talk to my dad today,

Speaker 1 you'll see me all stressed out, and they're coming. So

Speaker 1 just keep on trucking. It's really good advice.
So I don't have a great answer about legacy. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Let's go to the charity side of things. Why do you think it's important for businesses? So let's say that car dealerships, gyms, or someone out there has a restaurant or insurance agency.

Speaker 2 Why should they have some type of charity component if they have to or not? Why should they have some type of charity component for their staff, investors, partners, or vendors to be able to see?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know if I have a good answer to why they should.

Speaker 1 I've seen a lot in this realm. Like,

Speaker 1 not only did,

Speaker 1 I would say not only, not only did I used to be hit a lot about, and like people would always come to me and say donations, donations, donations. And I never said no.

Speaker 1 I hated being the guy that said no, but I didn't enjoy it as much. Like writing a check to me is not that big of a deal.
I don't mean that negative way.

Speaker 1 Like I never got great pleasure out of it because I never really saw the effects of it.

Speaker 1 So about 15 years ago,

Speaker 1 I started, I had a poker tournament in Wichita, Kansas for kids.

Speaker 1 At the time, it wasn't called GIFT, which is GFFT, Genesis for Fitness and Tennis, but it was just for these underprivileged kids.

Speaker 1 And I saw my team, my staff couldn't wait to volunteer their time to help. They just couldn't wait.

Speaker 1 They loved to see me passionate about helping. Now it's this huge foundation that we started, but it's only for local, local kids.
And I get a lot of,

Speaker 1 it's pretty rewarding. That's all I can tell you.
It's pretty rewarding. It's like, for an example, we give shoes to kids every year.

Speaker 1 It used to start out as a couple hundred and we ran out. And then now it's a couple thousand pairs of shoes we give kids to under you know these underprivileged areas in Wichita.

Speaker 1 My mom goes all the time and it's like, she cries every time. It's like kids have, it's amazing.
It's sad, but it's still amazing when you give somebody their first brand new pair of shoes.

Speaker 1 Now, Dan, we're talking about somebody that's 13 or 14 years old, and they get their first brand new pair of shoes. And it just blows your mind of how

Speaker 1 the things that we take for granted. And so

Speaker 1 to answer your question, How is it important?

Speaker 1 I don't know if it's important for everyone, but it was amazing when now how much of our team, our big team, they look forward to volunteering their time because they got that same feeling inside when they see it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 A lot of people think about charity. They think about it money.
They think about the initial reaction what Brandon said was like just writing a check.

Speaker 2 But charity really is more about the time and energy, the passion.

Speaker 1 Which is more important. For sure.
It's unbelievable. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because you can do those type of things.

Speaker 2 Like most of the charities that we've created are about people going out and giving out backpacks to the homeless or giving toys to kids or doing Thanksgiving food drives.

Speaker 2 Like it's not about, you don't see me doing like, hey, we're raised $1 million and ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Like, we don't do that stuff.

Speaker 2 Like, we do, hey, we want you to do a toy drive in your city. We want you to do backpacks for the homeless.

Speaker 2 We want you to go do a tipping dinner and tip, surprise tip staff, like give away your clothes in your closet. Like our stuff is not about money.

Speaker 2 The things that I post about, it's about people replicating for their own version. What do they like? What do they want to see? And then you find the thing that you like.

Speaker 2 You might have done three or four different charities before finally like, wait, this is the one that all the staff likes.

Speaker 1 So this is the one that you individually like what about on the family side are are the kids ever involved in charity stuff do they like anything in particular yeah they do um they've been part of the foundation that we've done forever and you know doing all this and being in wichita for my whole life and a lot of these other foundations i volunteer some of my time for other people's stuff and events and i i'll stumble along a family that's like wow just sometimes a family will blow your mind like like he's working two jobs she's working two jobs i got five kids at home and they're barely cutting it

Speaker 1 and so i'll just very very anonymously go in and just

Speaker 1 help the family. And

Speaker 1 I'll always take my kids with me. And then it comes to the point where one year you do it and the next year you do it.
Now it's like they're part of your deal. Like you just do that.

Speaker 1 And my kids do that for me now. My assistant, God bless her, because she does it, like she or like she handles all.

Speaker 1 And like every once in a while, she'll tell me, hey, listen, this person I just found out is struggling. And I'm like, Send him to this bog, whatever.
And like, we just do random stuff.

Speaker 1 And that's all anonymous. And it's like,

Speaker 1 as bad as it is, I get a lot of pleasure out of that. That makes me feel good about me, I don't want to say wasting money, but some of the silly things that I do waste money on.

Speaker 1 It makes me feel better when I get to do that for somebody else.

Speaker 2 Last question, we didn't really cover about the concept of the membership club. How do people apply for membership clubs? What does a company look for when they're thinking about how to curate?

Speaker 2 Because there's different types of membership clubs. There's obviously chains like Soho House that are

Speaker 1 around the world.

Speaker 2 And then there's some smaller format ones that are like restaurants mixed with a health club or something.

Speaker 1 Walk us through the concept of like people being onboarded what's the concept of a membership club in general it's been interesting and i don't want to say that we're figuring it out as we go but we're kind of figuring it out as we go um

Speaker 1 i know what i don't want to be how about that sure i don't want to be snobs um i'm trying to bring midwestern hospitality into gravitas uh i'm being like i just you saw me downstairs i told Seth that I'm going to be at the front door all night tonight and I will be at the front door all night.

Speaker 1 And the only reason I'm going to be there tonight is I want to make sure that nobody comes off the street and our our hostess says, Oh, we're membership only.

Speaker 1 And they're going to say it the nicest, sweetest way as possible. I want to shake their hand and say, Oh man, welcome to Gravitas.
Tonight's night number eight or nine. Let me show you.

Speaker 1 We are a club, and we have to be respectful of our members. We're not going to be given tours, but I want to make sure that they feel like we're not snobs.

Speaker 1 I know that Beverly Hills is Beverly Hills, and everyone deserves that sense of exclusivity. And we're going to have that.
We're definitely going to have that.

Speaker 1 But we've been fortunate where we've put a lot of applications in. And right now, we're only approving referrals.

Speaker 1 So like if you're a member, you can refer somebody, then we're going to look at them and treat them. But everyone else has kind of been on the wait list.

Speaker 1 And we're going to open that up here in a couple of weeks. I just want to get open, make sure our food is great, which is great.
Our services. Our services out is incredible.

Speaker 1 So I'm really comfortable now to start letting members in.

Speaker 2 Can you talk about the pricing?

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's very, very, very affordable.

Speaker 1 I didn't want to go crazy high. I wanted to

Speaker 1 appeal to me at 20 years old.

Speaker 2 25 years old.

Speaker 1 We could have, for sure. But this place you could have.
This is a gorgeous thing. I didn't want to be that.
I didn't want to be about the money.

Speaker 1 I wanted it, like I told somebody the other day, this club represents everything that I needed in almost all of my stages of my business life and my personal life.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's a whole sports bar right there.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Right next to it.
As we walk through here, yeah. So it represents all that.
So it's only $2,500 to sign up, which is cheap. That's one time you fee.
It's an initiation fee.

Speaker 1 And it's $5,500 per person.

Speaker 1 I know everyone told me, yo, you don't have spousal memberships in LA. I'm like, why?

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 1 I want the wives here. I want the wives to be able to come without the husbands.

Speaker 1 Let's face it, women get shit done.

Speaker 1 And women plan things. And we show up.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 Exactly. And women are,

Speaker 1 they have opinions, and they have no problem expressing their opinions. And we need that here.
And so it's $7,500 for a spouse for a year. It's cheap.

Speaker 2 Is there corporate versions also?

Speaker 1 No. No.
Not yet. Not say there won't be, but we just don't have any corporate right now.
Got it.

Speaker 2 Brandon Steven.

Speaker 2 I have a question I ask everyone that comes on the podcast, and I've never ever gotten the same answer.

Speaker 2 I don't think I'm going to get the same answer in this case as well. So you're a healthy guy.
So hopefully it takes 100 years, 200 years with modern technology.

Speaker 2 Maybe you'll have bionic arms and bionic different organs and you survive to 162 years old.

Speaker 2 But unfortunately at some point you pass away and Gravitas, maybe it ends up being in 10, 20, 30 cities for all we know. Maybe there's hundreds of car dealerships, maybe there's hundreds of gyms, and

Speaker 2 you build this multi-billion dollar legacy, and it's finally time to pass away. What do you leave to those six kids? Oh, what percentage?

Speaker 1 What a great question.

Speaker 1 And I have heard you say it before, but it sounds different when you're sitting right here.

Speaker 1 If I was to ever write a book,

Speaker 1 I would title it, I started with everything.

Speaker 1 What do you think I mean by that?

Speaker 1 Or do you know what I mean by that?

Speaker 2 I have a version of what I think it is.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so many success stories you hear, and they always start with the same thing. Oh, I started with nothing.

Speaker 1 I started with literally everything I needed,

Speaker 1 both in my business and my personal life. My parents gave it to me.
My grandparents gave it to me.

Speaker 1 My grandparents on both sides of my family gave it to me. I mean, I am extremely lucky to be raised the way I was.

Speaker 1 When I was raised by my dad, I couldn't wait to go to work at his dad, my grandfather's car wash. I just, I mean, I'm talking about nine, 10, 11 years old.

Speaker 1 I couldn't wait to go work there because the whole family worked there because they worked hard.

Speaker 1 I couldn't wait to go to my grandparents' house for Christmas to set up the Christmas decorations. It was because it was open to the whole city and the whole city during all of December.

Speaker 1 You could wait in 20 minutes of line to get to my grandparents' Christmas place, but every single night we had to work to keep this thing going. And I just couldn't wait to do it.

Speaker 1 And it wasn't about the money. It was about I didn't want to be out and worked by my grandparents or by my uncles or my brothers and my dad, especially.

Speaker 1 And so, and then they taught me how to be a good person all the time. You know, having integrity is not situational,

Speaker 1 which unfortunately a lot of people think it's a situational thing. And I learned that early on.

Speaker 1 I don't know if I was rich or poor growing up. I don't know.
We didn't know. It wasn't about the money.
It was about being together with family.

Speaker 1 My parents made it very.

Speaker 1 I don't know if they did it, but we always wanted to be with our cousins and our uncles and our aunts. Still today, we are with our cousins, our uncles and aunts.

Speaker 1 And my kids are today, their best friends are their cousins and their uncles and aunts. And so the best thing they gave me was that.
The ability to know good from bad, which is a big deal.

Speaker 1 Because a lot of people will know the difference, but they choose bad, which is scary. But

Speaker 1 my parents taught me everything I needed about being a good person. And with that became the work ethic.
I mean, I remember my dad used to take us out of school.

Speaker 1 He used to come to grade school and get Rodney and I out of school because he had self-service car washes and they would freeze up. And he needed hands to get him to not freeze up.

Speaker 1 And so we just didn't know any better. I mean, that's just what we did.
We worked and we loved it.

Speaker 1 So literally, I started with everything. So if I could give my kids something, I think I've done that.

Speaker 1 My wife has done that, is they have that same goodness inside their heart and that same work ethic.

Speaker 2 All right. So if people want to come to Gravitas, apply to Gravitas, walk us through how do they find this place? How do they apply?

Speaker 1 I want everyone to take a tour. I don't want people to sign up.
It makes me sad.

Speaker 1 A friend of mine came in when I was walking up here for this. I saw Lee and I was like, he's like, oh, I was explaining the floor to him because the floor has all these lines on it.

Speaker 1 It's travatine floor, and it has all these lines in it, and they go like this. And I'm like, oh, you know, that's to scale the streets of Beverly Hills.
And you can see all the names.

Speaker 1 And like, all three of them are like, oh, my God. That made me sad because I spent so much energy and time to make that.

Speaker 1 And there's so many cool things like that in this restaurant that are specific to Beverly Hills. I want everyone to take a tour.
I don't want people to sign up. It's like, oh, I'm already a member.

Speaker 1 I'm like,

Speaker 1 I've not done my job. He's a good friend of mine, but I'm like, he should be taking a tour.
So I want everyone to take a tour.

Speaker 1 You can go to gravitas.com, gravitasbeverlyhills.com, either way, you'll get to the same place, and you can apply.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 it's going to ask you to take a tour. The best thing you can do is go there and just say, request a tour.
Or you can come in, come in during the day and just take a tour.

Speaker 1 From two to four is probably the best for us.

Speaker 2 How was your first podcast?

Speaker 1 It went fast. Is that 40 minutes? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh, good. I didn't have a clock, but I can tell you it's 40 minutes.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm not good about talking about myself, so it's good you actually have me talk about the company and stuff, which is which is interesting.

Speaker 2 All right, guys, as you know, the whole concept of the Money Mondays is we all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think it's rude not to talk about it.

Speaker 2 I think it's a problem in our society. People can't talk about FICO scores and loans, and if their friend borrows money for rent, what should they do to get it back? Should they sign a contract?

Speaker 2 Should they lease a car or buy a car? So many questions people have because they turn 18 years old and wee, we just throw them out into society.

Speaker 2 And they don't know, because they didn't learn in high school, and they're not even learning in college, what to do about money. They can't spell IRS.
They don't know how to pay their taxes.

Speaker 2 They don't know how to open a bank account. They don't know how to manage a budget, anything because we think it's rude to talk about it.

Speaker 2 So it's important for us on this podcast for you guys to like, comment, subscribe, share it. As you know, we've been running this ad-free.
We want you guys to enjoy the experiences.

Speaker 2 We have a 93% listen-through rate because of this. We're not sitting here reading these two minute-long, three-minute-long commercials.

Speaker 2 I want you to enjoy these experiences, especially with someone like Brandon Steven, who's built up in multiple verticals, these huge companies.

Speaker 2 These are the type of podcasts for you to share with your friends, talk with your staff, talk with your family, talk with your followers about money.

Speaker 2 So, visit us at themoneymondays.com and we'll see you guys next Monday.