If You Want To Know How to Invest, Try THIS! (My Strategy Revealed)💸E74

ladies and gentlemen welcome to the money mondays we are here i'm just recording right now on father's day so it's sunday tomorrow this episode comes out which is today for you in real time that's why i'm wearing this dad hat that trevor got me i'm not officially a father yet i got 60 days left until around august 17th or so that this baby named Ariana Ocean, she will be joining me

on these adventures and you will see her here on the podcast. You will see her on stages with me, not right away, obviously, but as soon as she's allowed to be, she'll be traveling on tour.
And her Instagram is babygirlboss. I'm going to try to inspire more women to come into the investing world, podcasting, speaking, everything in between.
And so I'm going to take a little baby girl boss out onto the world and showcase why women should dive into investing and learning about everything in this category and kind of whole concept of the Money Mondays. I started it because I wanted to teach, showcase why we should have these important discussions about money.
Typically, we cover three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, away to charity. Today's topic is going to be a shorter form episode, a solo episode.
We're here at the ranch right now on Father's Day where I want to dive into how do I, for myself, think about investing into companies, which is called private equity investments or angel investing for you to consider for yourself. If you ever want to invest into a company, what are some of the things that you should look for and decide for yourself? Because typically angel investing is considered high risk.
I have lowered my risk by these main categories. Is there still risk? Of course there is.
However, if I can think about the four things I'm going to go over with you before I make

my investment decision, it will reduce my risk drastically.

I've done 43 angel investments.

I raised $44 million the last couple of years for investments into mostly food and beverage

brands or what's called CPG, consumer product goods.

I typically invest $3 to $6 million per deal. I put in a portion of that and I raise that type of amount, three to $6 million per deal.
I'll walk you through some real life companies that I've done in the past, present and future. And I do that into companies doing between two and $20 million in sales.
Why do I like the 2 million to $20 million in sales range is because the hardest part of business is zero to 1 million. I mean, zero to a hundred thousand is really hard, but zero to 1 million, really, really hard.
Zero to 2 million. The reason I wait until 2 million is they got past the hard stuff, the zero to 1 million, like figuring out if people buy their stuff, figuring out their website, e-commerce, shipping, their goods, services, brand, product, app, whatever is the thing that they do, zero to one million means, wow, they already surpassed most of the free world.
It's like most anybody that tries to start a company doesn't ever get to one million. So if they get to two million, well, now they kind of figured it out, right? They're about to get into their groove.
They probably have the right staff involved. They're hiring some more people.
When they started at three, four, five, six, seven million, obviously now it's something that I can really scale. I can come in and pour gasoline on the fire.
If you're doing 6 million, if you're doing zero, I can't pour gas in the fire. The floor just gets wet because there's no spark.
And so for me, I'm trying to find companies doing at least $2 million in sales that I can pour gasoline on their fire. So I'll walk you through some real life examples.
I'll walk you through my theories of how I come up with and decide investing in these companies. So you can think for yourself, maybe one day you want to invest.
It could be today, tomorrow, next year, 10 years from now, but I want to walk you through it. So whether you're thinking about it or maybe a significant other, a parent, a friend, a kid, a coworker, they might be thinking about investing into companies.
Typically, angel investing is a $25,000 minimum. Can you invest a thousand bucks, five grand, 10 grand? Of course you can in different types of deals.
Some deals have larger minimums, but for the most part, people consider an angel investment check around $25,000. You have a complete option of how much you want to invest into it.
However, what I think about is it's a one-to-one loss risk ratio. So let's say you're investing $25,000.
Your only loss risk ratio is that 25 grand. All you can lose is $25,000, okay? Which is a lot of money.
I'm just saying in the math part of it. 25 grand could be five grand, 500,000, 5 million.
The concept is the same. One to one risk ratio.

That's what you can lose.

But the win could be 50,000, 100,000, 500,000,

a million, 2 million, 5 million.

The win rate can be very, very high

depending on the type of company you're investing into.

If you invest into one individual location,

it will never become a billion dollar company.

If you invest into a franchise, maybe it could.

See the difference? If you invest into one thing, it only has X amount of cap that it can get to. There's a maximum.
If you invest into something that's very scalable, it can go very, very big. Now, the things that I invest into, I'm not always looking for grand slams.
I don't need it to be billion dollar companies. I'm happy with what they call like a base hit, a single or double.
I might invest in one location and it goes on to do six figures or seven figures. That's fantastic.
I'm not looking for everything to go become an eight figure, nine figure, 10 figure, billion dollar company. It's unnecessary.
Sometimes I want that. I want that high risk.
Sometimes I just want to make something that I can put in 25 grand, 50 grand, a hundred grand, 200 grand, and it just makes back some money. 10%, 20%, 50%.
Other times I'm putting in that same amount of capital, hoping for 500%, 900%, 2000%, something crazy to happen because I'm angel investing, hoping for a big return. Now, let me give you real life examples.
Rumble Boxing, boom. They have over 90 locations, but I only invested into one.
So you might have seen me post on social media a couple of months ago, buying 50% of the West Hollywood location of rumble boxing. Why did I do that? Well, that individual location can only do X.
X being, let's call it six figures a month, the lowest six figures a month. Because we're capped out on how many classes we can have per day.
It's around $25 to $40 a class, depending on the class or the package that you buy. And so we're maxed out at what it could ever do gross sales wise.
So why did I do it? Why at this stage of my career, would I invest into one location when over here at Everbowl, I invested and we've got 94, 95, 96 locations now and growing. Why not invest more into that thing? Well, let me explain it.
So with Rumble Boxing, this example, the founder, his name is Noah Nyman. Well, he created this business with some really interesting investors.
Very cool. Brought a lot of celebrities and DJs and musicians and models into Rumble Boxing.
He scaled it to around 12, 13 locations, sold to a private equity group. They've now scaled to over 90 locations.
That's an interesting story. Typically, I would have liked to invest into that in the beginning, right? When he would have gone to like four, five, six locations, not one.
When he got to four, five, six, I would have wanted to invest in around there. That's around that two, three, $4 million, right? You see where I'm going? Why did I invest into just one location when there's already 90 out there now? Because it's a proven business, but I see things in that location that I can improve or increase revenue on.
Here's a real life example. The West Holly location is right there on Sunset Boulevard.
And I noticed when I went inside there, there was no refrigerator, selling water, drinks, supplements, snacks, food, anything. So that was a pretty obvious thing.
That's not rocket science. I just thought about, well, people are boxing and working out for 45 minutes.
I'm sure they want some water or juice or, you know, something healthy that they could drink, maybe a quick snack, maybe some food, maybe some food to go. So I brought in Icon Meals.

So iconmeals.com is very healthy meals.

We raised $3 million for them a couple years ago.

So I went on both sides, right?

I helped raise $3 million for Icon Meals.

The UFC also invested into the company at the same time.

I now place Icon Meals inside of Rumble Boxing.

And now I've got hundreds of people a week,

sometimes hundreds of people a day looking at icon meals. That's cool for me.
It's cool for icon meals. And so I'm double dipping in that scenario.
Right. But that's added extra revenue

when people buy those meals, which has been doing really well in that refrigerator. Well, great.

That's extra revenue. I'm bringing in first form supplements.
I don't own a piece of first form,

but I've been helping with social media campaigns since 2016 they built up this humongous brand you know multi-billion dollar brand and so if i can help them even more for free just to place it there that's great i get more friends seeing it i get all these new you know class members seeing it hundreds of people a day hundreds of people a week get to check out first form great it's just a nice thing nice thing to do for my friend. Cool.
And if they start buying it, I don't make any money from it, but it's nice to do it. And it increases the revenue here at Rambo Boxing.
And I can go on and on with the different snacks you'll see there. We have BLK water that's in there now.
We're going to be putting in RISE coffee. We have Glow water in there from our friend Kev, like a bunch of different brands that I'm friendly with are now placed there, you know, getting lots of people seeing it, posting on social media.
So by doing that, I'm increasing the revenue of a business that already has a good amount of members in it. Then start adding social media content, start adding branded deals, getting corporations to start throwing events there, adding all this, you know, more social media content.
We've already increased the revenue by 28% in just like two months. Why? Just more action, more eyeballs, more ways for people to spend money to buy drinks, snacks, supplements, et cetera.
Nothing I'm doing is rocket science. I just found a business that the founder, Noah, already knows it inside out.
He loves it. He's passionate about it.
It's a great product. All I can do is, boom, look and analyze, how can I fix this business to increase the revenue? You can do the same thing in your niche.
You might be really good as an accountant. You might be really good as a doctor or a lawyer or a health specialist or a fashion designer.
You might see a company or project or something that you might wanna invest into or consult for or advise for and get some equity in that you can help fix and increase the already existing business. That one location, now that I can take it to, let's call it six figures a month, low six figures a month, if it can go up a little bit more, you know, 28% and then eventually 30, 40%, that's fantastic.
Will that impact my life forever financially? No, not not one location but what if i call corporate a year from now and say hey by the way this revenue was at this and now we increase it to 30 40 50 higher by doing these things would you sell me more or do a deal with me to help you on your stores that could be interesting and if it doesn't work out and the parent company never says anything and they don't want to do anything, no problem. I'm happy taking my investment into this one location, increasing it by 30, 40, 50%.
And that's cool. That's perfectly fine.
That's considered what's called a base hit. Now on the other side, going for a grand slam is Everbull.
Everbull is the acai bull chain. I invested $500,000 back in 2018.
I brought a friend of mine to put in $500,000, another friend to put in $500,000. 2019, I raised them $5 million for the company to take these acai bull locations that there was around 17, 18, 19, 20 locations at the time and help them scale.
Fast forward a couple of years later, now here we are in 2024. They have around 94, 95, 96 locations.
Hard to keep up because they open a new location every six days, which is wild. They just built another warehouse called WeBuild.
They built another warehouse called WeBuild in Atlanta, 45,000 square feet. And so now they'll start to open locations every three or four days, which is even wilder.
And so I helped, you know, invest into the company. I helped raise capital for the company.
Me and some friends bought a bunch of locations. Like I'm really into this company.
This I'm looking for a grand slam. I don't want to sell that company right now.
I hope, you know, I don't own the whole company. I'm saying that I'm hoping that they don't sell right now because I believe in this business.
There's already 400 locations from franchisees that have been paid for Drew Brees has like 160 locations Jason Tatum who's probably going to win tonight who knows when you guys listen this tomorrow probably going to win Boston Celtics are going to take you know game five and finish this off well if he might be the MVP and he just invested a lot of money into the company and bought locations for boston and st louis so i got jason tatum drew breeze gary v's involved in everbowl now we got kamaru usman the ufc fighter like all our investors partners advisors of this company i'm looking at a grand slam for this one right i'm hoping for something huge to happen here and i've been in it for over half a decade now. That's okay.
This is the one that it's worth it. I don't want to make 20, 30, 40%.
I want to take what's called my strata glory. And it comes back to be a thousand percent, 2000%, something crazy and wild happens for this business financially, because a year and a half ago, they also raised an additional $15 million in funding to have a war chest of capital.
So it's quite a safe investment now for me because there's no

debt. The company has a bunch of money.
It's called a war chest. It took a war chest round

so that it could fade any situation. Anything that happens out there in the markets,

it's got the capital to do whatever it needs to. But at the same time of the war chest round,

also selling over 400 locations to franchisees, holy smokes, a lot of income coming in and tens of millions of dollars in gross sales. And so for me, that one is very compelling because if we have hundreds of locations, not if, when we have hundreds of locations, this could become a very large exit.
It's very compelling because I invested quite early into the business. So this could be 10x, 20x, 30x, who knows? That's called a grand slam.
I'm waiting for a grand slam. So one franchise has almost the exact amount of locations, I think 94, 95 of Rumble Boxing.
I only invested in one and I only have 50% of one location. On the other side, I own a bunch of locations of Everbowl, like physical locations.
I invest into the parent company for equity. Like I'm helping on every different angle to really be integrated into the business, hoping for a grand slam.
You see the two different dynamics? I just want to talk you through real life, real financials, real numbers of what I'm really doing with these things. So you can pick and choose things for yourself and things that might be relatable to you or open your eyes up to be like, you know what? Maybe I do want to invest into a company.
Maybe there is someone in my world that has seven gyms. Maybe you want to invest in number eight.
Maybe you know someone that has six, you know, dry cleanings or they have 17 landscapings. Well, those are interesting for you to consider.
Maybe investing into those. If your friend isn't opening up number one, dry cleaning or number one laundromat or number one taco shop or their first pizza restaurant, that is really high risk investing.
Lowering your risk is when they have five and eight and 12. See that difference? Going from location 12 to 13, not that hard.
Going from location zero to one, super hard, like super hard. Let me back it up.
Back when I was saying I wanted to be at least $2 million in revenue, going from 11 million revenue to 19 million revenue, not hard at all. Like literally not hard at all.
And I don't want to downplay it, but I'm going to downplay it. 11 million, 19 million, not hard.
Going from zero to 1 million, super duper hard. Barely anybody ever does it.
So if you find someone's already doing a couple million revenue, well, they've already shown you so many things on my list. So that brings me to the list.
And then we'll go back to some other companies and I'll walk you through real life investments. So my list is four core topics to make a decision if I'm going to invest into a business or brand or person.
Number one, do I believe that this person, the CEO, the top executives are what I call ride or die? Will this person at one in the morning at a convention booth find out that the plumbing fell and there's flooding all over their booth, will they go there and fix it? Willingly. Or, they're like, you know what, let's just go at

7am tomorrow and maybe I'll get some of the guys to take care of it for us. Okay.
I want someone

that at one in the morning, immediately throws their clothes on and runs over to the convention

and starts figuring it out. Because they don't want their brand representation the next morning

when you're talking about immediately throws their clothes on and runs over to the convention and starts figuring it out because they don't want their brand representation the next morning when thousands of people come in that are there for the convention see your booth in disarray because you don't want you can even imagine people seeing your brand like that i want someone ride or die now i'm not saying you have to work 24 hours a day and blood, sweat, and tears all the time, but kind of because if you want me to give you $500,000 into your business, I don't want to see you in the Maldives. I don't want to see you in Bali on a yacht.
I don't. I gave you money for your company and I want you to be invested into that business.
I want you to care about your business. So part one is, do I believe that this person is ride or die? Are they willing to work morning, noon, and night on their business because they care and they want to? Can they do it? Do they have experience? Now they don't always

have to have experience. Let me be clear about that.
Having experience is nice and sometimes

in some categories, but not always. And they can fix that with advisors, executives, other people

around them. They can be, the CEO could just be the visionary that's passionate about that thing, but they don't necessarily have to have wide array of experience.
Give me a real quick example. So let's say there's a Harvard graduate that's selling red cups and his red cups are typically $3.
He's selling for 250 to beat the market. And he knows he can sell it because XYZ amount of cups for college campuses and homes and everyone wants these red solo cups.
He made a more efficient version, 50 cents cheaper, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This girl over here is selling green cups with a percentage going to help rescue the planet.
Her green cups are biodegradable. They 0% this, no carbon footprint, blah, blah, blah.
Her thing is passion. She cares about saving the planet.
She cares about being carbon neutral. She cares about everywhere, how they make these cups, how they sell these cups, and everything about it.
In this example, the Harvard graduate has real experience. You know, he's got the pedigree.
He knows all the numbers. He's got the stats, the business plan, the financials.
Everything is dialed in. Who do you think Dan wants to invest into? Well, it's not the Harvard one.
Why? The obvious choice would be Harvard Wright from a financial safety perspective. This Harvard graduate to me is unlikely to be ride or die.

There's no offense to Harvard.

He's very smart, very well put together.

But if Gary V calls him and says, hey, buddy, I'll give you $1 million to travel around

to be the president of my company.

And I want you to take on this new category.

What's he going to do?

He's going to take off his red cup hat and flip it around. And he's going to go work for Gary V for a million bucks.
Why? Well, that's the financially prudent thing for him to do for his career. He knows he can go build a career and maybe I don't fault him for that.
But if I just invest into his company and he goes off and leaves, what happens to my $500,000? Wah, wah, wah. Some new person that also probably doesn't care about red cups, they take on CEO, might not work out.
What about her? She wants to save the planet. She doesn't care about a million dollars.
She doesn't. Not saying that she doesn't care about money.
She cares about saving the earth. She has a deeper meaning for this business.
She will be at every convention, every trade show, every retail store speaking with passion. Her blood is green because she cares about her green cups so much.
And she will tell everyone about her green cups morning, noon, and night. Well, the Harvard graduate, again, no offense to Harvard.
That's not the concept of it, that he has this opportunity to do something else because the cup is just a widget. He could be selling pillows or phone cases or tables and it's just math and money to him.
You could replace the red cup with anything and he would be happy to sell it for money and for generating business and to generate a return for his investors. Nothing wrong with anything about that guy except for me.
I don't feel like he's going to be ride or die if he's just selling red cups because of the financials. Just because he can save 50 cents

a cup, you think that's what he's going to stand on. She's standing on passion.
She cares about

saving the planet. And so the first thing I think about deciding about investing into a company

is the person, the people, the executives. Will they be ride or die? Number two, does anybody care? Well, I can tell you that they care because people vote with their wallets.
So if someone has $2.7 million in sales, I know that people care and their product is 10 bucks. Well, that means that 270,000 people spend 10 bucks on their thing i'm in right i know that they care people care and i can pour a lot of gasoline in that fire because they've proven that people care before i even got there to help make it more efficient ship the package more you know faster manufacture for cheaper anything that i might be able to help with social media or paid ads or whatever i just know that people care because they voted with their wallets.
Number three, is it scalable? Can I pour gas in the fire? Can they make enough of the thing? Is it scalable? Meaning, can it go bigger than that city, that state, that online, that niche? Is it scalable? Now, not everything has to be scalable. Like I said, sometimes it might just be a base hit or a double, like I'm hoping that it does okay or well, but it's not scalable to become a billion dollar thing.
And that's okay. But I need to know that in the early stages for how much money I'm going to deploy.
I don't want to put $500,000 into something that's not really scalable, right? Unless I'm just looking to make a 10 or 20, 30% return, which could be okay. Typically, I'm not looking for that on an angel investment side.
And so is it scalable? And if it is, how big is it? It's called a TAM, a TAM, Total Adjustable Market. The total adjustable market, some people mess that up a bit.
Let me give you an example. You've seen Mark Cuban and Damon John get really mad on Shark Tank when someone says, well, did you know that the pillow market is $17 billion? Okay, dude, if we just get 1% of the 17 billion, we're going to be, you know, stop.
And you'll literally see there's, there's like highlight reels of Mark Cuban, Damon John, just ripping these people to shred. The total adjustable market for furniture is not you.
Like you are a product inside of an entire universe of a total adjustable market. To me, a total adjustable market is what is that niche specifically around that similar price point of that thing in your country or wherever you can ship to or whatever you can execute on.
That's your total adjustable market in reality. Can you take on the entire furniture market when you're just selling pillows? No.
And even if you did, there's a heck of a lot of competitors that have a ton of funding and they're going to keep growing bigger and bigger and bigger. And so when people say, I just got to get 1% of the car market because I got a new car window shield.
Okay, dude, like that's not just because cars is worth hundreds of billions does not mean that your window shields is worth hundreds of billions in that market. So is it scalable is number three.
Like what level do I believe that this thing can get to and how can I help it? Again, you can also be called dumb money. I could throw a check into something that I can't help.
That's okay. Maybe there's something that I just want to put money into.
I don't invest like that. Meaning I don't want to just throw money into something that I can't really help because I want to help.
I want to roll my sleeves up and let's go. Let's do these things to help protect my investment.
And if I bring in friends or my elevator syndicate investors to join me on something, I really want to be able to help it. I don't want to be dumb money and just throw money in.
It's okay if you are and you want to be very passive and not think about it. Perfectly fine.
That's just not how I am built. I want to be really actively involved in these deals.
Fourth and final thing that I really truly passionately care about to make a decision if I'm going to invest into a business or raise capital for a business through the elevator syndicate. Can they back it up? The things that they told me, CEO, president, executives, can they back it up and prove it to my lawyer, my accountant, and my CEO? These are three very important people in this structure.
Why? Lawyer, well, that's obvious for the legal investment paperwork, for the details, the documents, the financials, like I need my lawyer to agree that the things that they said is true. And by the way, not that they were necessarily lying, but sometimes entrepreneurs get excited.
They're like, oh yeah, we're going to sell to all thousands and thousands of Walmart stores. Great.
I'd like to see an email from the buyer saying they want to purchase. Well, we, I mean, we met with him at a convention.
He was in the same line at us at Starbucks. That is not an order for thousands of stores.
Very big difference of you meeting the buyer from Walmart versus getting a purchase order form filled out, processed for you to make manufacture and ship to Walmart. And so backing it up is my lawyer is going to check out the things that they said on the accounting team.
So my older brother, he has a whole accounting firm, accounting office, and they will analyze the financials and tell me how profitable it is, what's their debt, things like that. Again, not all businesses will be profitable.
Even when they're doing $5 million in revenue, it doesn't mean that they're profitable, but I want to understand their financials. How can I fix things? Are there redundant things that should be removed? Are there people I can help bring in to save them money? Could they use, you know, like the Minimus Warehouse in Thousand Oaks, California? Could I send them to Minimus Warehouse to save them money? Could I help them with shipping or web design or, you know, any little feature, paid media, anything that they're spending money on.
Could I help them with it to reduce their overhead to make them become profitable if they're not profitable or make them more profitable if they are profitable. And then Joey Carson, my CEO, to just look through the BS.
Like, okay, buddy, you said you're going to be in thousands of Walmart stores. Show me.
You know, Joey's going to be very straightforward, very blunt, and you'll have your own versions of these type of people, or you have trusted friends in your circle or advisors or someone that you could ask to check out a deal. If you decide you might want to invest into a company, showing someone away from you and don't lead the witness.
Let them look at the business plan, the financials, the story, and don't lead the witness. Just show them the things and let them rip it apart.
Let

them tell you because you can't see the picture when you're inside of the frame. So when you're

dealing with it and you're immersed into it, you can't see all the details that are going on. You can't see the picture when you're inside of the frame.
Okay. So those are the four things that I look for beside, you know, when I'm making a decision, if I'm going to invest into a company or raise capital through the elevator syndicate for a deal.
Let me walk you through a couple more real life deals that will wrap up this episode. Real life deal.
I told you about Icon Meals. We raised $3 million from them and then UFC invested.
You can check them out at iconmeals.com for very healthy meals. They have a massive warehouse in Dallas, Texas.
I'll actually be out there with them next week at the warehouse. BLK water, black water, tall black bottle.
Is there something in the refrigerator? Maybe we'll check. Trevor's going to check real quick.
BLK water is already in 29,000 stores and growing. We just raised millions of dollars for that brand.
They already had millions of dollars, obviously, because they're already in 29,000 stores. They have different flavors of BLK water with fulvic acid inside of it.
You got one over there? All right. Oh, they got the canned version.
So BLK water, here's the canned version if you're watching on YouTube. This is the sparkling elderberry.
They have plain versions of the water as well. This is good for gut health, fulvic acid is really interesting if you want to Google search it.
F-U-L-V-I-C, fulvic acid. So I raised millions of dollars for this business a few months ago.
I've known the founder and I've known some of the executives for years and watching them get into 29,000 stores and growing and watching them build up dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of distributors made me feel very confident in the business and the brand. So we were able to raise the funding with them very quickly through Elevator Syndicate.
You can check that out at elevatorsyndicate.com. It's free to join.
You have to be an accredited investor, but Elevator Syndicate is where I send out deals like BLK Water, like Icon Meals, like Cars and Coffee, Ever Bowl, et cetera. There's no plug there, by the way, it's free to join if you want to just get text message emails about elevator syndicate deals so be okay was interesting because it had all the check marks an established business 29,000 stores great executive team has over 100 employees great social media check check check check does anybody care, they're in 29,000 stores.
Not only are they in the stores, but they sell through at number one, two, or number three in that specific category for beverages. Well, you just prove that people care.
Is it scalable? Of course, it's freaking water. It's very scalable to hundreds of thousand stores around the country and hopefully around the world.
And can they back it up? Well, yes, obviously the financials were great. They have a serious team behind them.
They had tens of millions of dollars invested into this business before us. The Rise Beverage Group.
I'm working on that right now. Ready to drink coffee brand, working with BLK, distribution deals.
They're already in 30,000 stores. I mean, that sounds fantastic check check check selling at number one number two number three the rise beverage group and their their different products nitro nitro brew cold coffee like it sells at number one number two number three in tens of thousands of stores 30,000 stores and growing okay well check check check good executive team good distribution great packaging the guys at BOK have great distribution they can help with Rise Coffee, Rise Coffee can help with BOK bada bing bada boom everybody wins I like that and so I'm actively raising capital for that.
Cars and Coffee I put in 1.6 million dollars October 2020 to start Cars and Coffee because Gary V V had an idea called cars and coffee and I ran with it and it was fun. And then all of a sudden it became a $10 million business in eight months.
And then I was like, wow, this is more than fun. It's the middle of the shutdown and we did $10 million in gross sales.
So I raised $4 million for the business. Then I raised $6 million more a year later to scale it to do over $32 million in sales now selling sports cards and Pokemon.
Well, I had to be the check marks for myself in that one. It's really rare that I've been starting my own companies.
I've just been investing in companies for many years now and trying to buy big chunks of pieces of other companies, not necessarily starting my own, except the summer of summer of 2020 when Gary V mentioned Cards & Coffee and the concept of just kind of being like the Netflix versus blockbuster of the card space well that became compelling to me and so I put up my own capital because I didn't want to raise capital at the time because it was the middle of the shutdown summer of 2020 and so only once i hit 10 million dollars in sales that i decided to go do a round and bring in you know post malone and the owners of forever 21 and executives and hedge fund people in you know ed my let all these type of characters to invest marshall lynch into the business later once i knew that it people cared it was i was my own barometer for myself i didn't want to raise money for my own company at the time because I wanted things to be right. Who are the executives? Well, it's me and my guys.
Does anybody care? Yeah, we did $10 million in sales in eight months. Check, check.
Is it scalable? Yes, it's sports cards and Pokemon and we're selling 24 hours a day online. You can go visit thecoffeebreakers.com or thepokebreakers.com.
Thecoffeebreakers.com is 24 hours a day where people can live stream and buy sports cards. Thepokebreakers.com is to buy Pokemon 24 hours a day.
And not just Pokemon. You can buy variations of Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, etc.
So, and then can it back it up? Yes, it's my own CEO, my own accountant, my own brother, my own lawyer, obviously are all overseeing and watching my craziness scaling this business to now do over $32 million in sales for Cards & Coffee, building a national chain store. I still wanted to make sure the check marks were there for my own business before I raised capital for it.
All right, so we talked about cars and coffee. We talked a bit about Everbowl.
We got BLK water, the rise beverage group, icon meals. Gosh, there's more companies that we've done the last year.
Oh, it's skinny pasta. It's skinny pasta.
Last year did over $9 million in sales. I raised $3 million for the company through the elevator syndicate a couple of years ago.
And then right this second, literally right now, raising another $3 million to tag onto their round. They're raising a bigger round.
$3 million. We already raised a couple of million of it.
I think like 2.3 or 2.5 of that 3 million. So it's wrapping up as we speak over the last few weeks.
It's Skinny Pasta is what you can imagine by the brand name, a healthier for you pasta selling through really well at chain stores, selling through really well online. Why would I raise a round a second time? I'm doubling down on my own investments.
That's now proven success. The founder, Brian has a great track record.
He loves financials, which it's hard for me to say that for most people. He loves the accounting.
He loves the financials. He loves the numbers.
He loves the percentages and every little stat. He has a good executive team and they went and proved it because when I first raised the 3 million, they obviously weren't at 9 million sales.
He went and proved it. He could scale it to grow the business.
And a little over a year ago, he went onto a TV show with over 4,000 applicants onto this TV show with Tim Draper. Tim Draper being the main judge, the main character.
Tim Draper is one of the most well-known, respected investors of our lifetimes. Over 4,000 applications.
He makes it onto the TV show. Not only does he make it onto the TV show, he wins first place.
And Tim Draper invests $1 million into the round. Holy smokes.
When you're talking about checkmark, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. He beat out, imagine like just beating out thousands of people, winning first place versus some of the best of the best on the planet, and then getting a million dollar investment from an iconic investor like Tim Draper.
Well, what do I want to do? I want to put more money into that. So we're raising $3 million more right this second through my elevator syndicate.
Again, you can go to elevatorsyndicate.com and you can get texts and emails about deals like It's Skinny Pasta. And we just bring in accredited investors to these rounds to help beverage brands, food brands, product brands, et cetera, to help them scale.
They already have good amounts of revenue that we can pour gas in the fire. Why do I want to raise a round from a bunch of different people through a syndicate? Elevator Syndicate has 846 investors in my group.
Through the Elevator Syndicate, what I get is a lot of smart people that also have businesses that can throw

in 25 K 50 K a hundred K.

They can throw in more 200 K 500 K a million,

et cetera.

But for the most part,

it's a lot of 25 K 50 K a hundred K checks,

but you can do the math.

If I get like 42 people to throw in 25 K a hundred K 50 K,

well,

all of a sudden I'm raising $3 million to $6 million rounds rounds and then i go have certain people that want to throw in bigger checks 500k million dollars 250k 500k type checks to what's called round out the round they're rounding it out so let's say i'm doing a four million dollar round i'll go get 2.6 million from a bunch of 25k 50k 100k checks and then i'll go get some big checks 250 500k a million to round it out and finish off that 4 million bucks and so i'm typically able to raise in about 15 days from the start you know from start of publicly announcing a raise when all the paperwork is ready doing the presentation raising the round for a company very fast and efficiently and effectively i will tell you guys on one of the upcoming episodes, I'm about to raise capital for someone very, very interesting, someone very, very famous, but I want to say it when it's public information. And I'm finding consumer brands, food and beverage brands, CPG, consumer product goods that I can help scale.
As you're listening through the real life investments that I've done, Joyride Candy, we did $4 million for them. Joyride Candy is in most Target stores and a lot of health food stores.
It's literally called Joyride. And it's a better for your kids version of candy.
It's less sugar, less carbs, less calories, etc. All across the board, zero on some of the products.
And so why would I do that? Well, I wouldn't typically raise money for a candy brand because that's not something I totally believe in. Right.
And that same reason I don't really raise money for like a, I don't know, like a cigarette, I would never raise money for a cigarette brand. I don't want to raise money for a lot of those like hard alcohol brands.
Maybe it feels like a cool brand or something like that. But outside of that, I try to just invest in things I would want to publicly be posting about all the time i don't really feel like posting i'm never going to post about cigarettes obviously and so and i wouldn't be proud to post about a certain type of candy brand but this one i like joyride because it's healthier for you and he made a and that's why he's doing so well and why he's in so many thousands of stores because the healthier for you candy you can check that that out at Joyride.
So I find companies like that.

We did it for Creatures of Habit.

Creatures of Habit is spelled with a K.

Creatures of Habit.

The founder already sold multiple restaurants in New York City.

And Creatures of Habit, that brand, Gary Vee was an advisor to the company.

So there's a check mark.

The name is cool.

Creatures of Habit with a K.

So you can go to CreaturesofHabit.com. It's a healthiermark.
The name is cool. Creatures of Habit with a K.
So you can go to creaturesofhabit.com.

It's a healthier protein oatmeal brand.

Okay.

It has a cool brand.

It has a guy that sold multiple restaurants that he built.

It has Gary Vee as an advisor.

I raised a couple million bucks for the company because I liked it.

Checkmark, checkmark, checkmark.

They have the right size business.

People like it.

People reorder it. Packaging looks good.
It converts well on ads. I want to invest into the company.
And so as you think through and listen to the things I'm talking about in real life investments, I'm raising 3 million, 4 million, 5 million, $6 million for these businesses. I'm finding the categories of people that I believe in.
I'm finding the products that I can help. And for you listening, whether you're in the

car, you're in the gym, you're at home, wherever you're watching this or listening to this right

this second, think for yourself and you're going to start to notice it in your mind when you're

scrolling through social media, especially on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn. That friend

from school, that coworker that you knew they were going to start a company one day, that person in

your world or in your life that's got seven gyms or 13 whatever locations, you'll start to notice those type of deals popping up and you might want to consider angel investing. Think about the things that I do to reduce my risk.
Study for yourself investments for you. Make sure it's an affordable amount because even when you invest and it does really, really well, you don't necessarily get money back along the way.
Quick example, Icon Meals, Creatures of Habit, BLK Water. These are brands that are scaling consistently.
I invested in a company called Sneaker Con, the big sneaker conference. These are conferences, businesses, products, consumer brands that are scaling quickly.
I typically don't get any capital back along the way. Sometimes you get distributions like Everbowl.
Everbowl did multiple distributions where I just get these big random deposits or big checks or wires from them because Everbowl has a ton of capital. They're profitable, debt-free, opening stores left and right.
Business, you know, people are signing up revenue. What is it called? Signing up franchise deals left and right.
Like there's money coming in left and right for the business. And so they can do distribution deals.
Most businesses have a few core products. They're reinvesting their capital all the time.
And you actually don't want them to take capital out to give you a portion of your money back. You want it to reinvest in the business to help make it grow bigger and bigger and bigger.
With something like Everbowl, they just had too much capital coming in left and right. They had that $15 million round, so they didn't have any debts or anything to worry about.
And so that one has done distributions multiple times because of that situation. But for the most part, most businesses, even when they're very scalable and doing well, they're going to reinvest their capital back into the business, which you want to happen for the long-term growth.
And so I say that because you might throw in a hundred grand into a business. It's crushing it for three years, but you're not getting money back along the way.
You're hoping for an angel investment that three years from now, four years from now, five years from now, that hundred grand becomes worth a million or two million. Something crazy happens.
If it doesn't work out, like I mentioned, you lose the hundred000, one to one loss ratio. But if it works out, holy smokes, it can be a very big financial impact for your life.
You just have to understand when you're researching the things I'm talking about for yourself, what fits you? What style investor are you? What did you like when you listen to food brands, consumer products, the craziness, the base hit concept of just investing in one location, investing in a bus in locations, doubling down like it's skinny pasta, raising money twice. Like what were the things that triggered for you in your mind that you liked or didn't like or resonated with you? And then do research about that research angel investing.
I do things through AngelList. AngelList is a multi-billion dollar company in the background that helps me with my financials,

my paperwork, et cetera, to raise capital for deals.

If you want to get the text and emails

about elevatorsyndicate.com, go there and you can receive.

You have to be a credit investor, please.

It's important.

We only raise capital from our credit investors

in these types of brands and businesses.

There are some deals out there

that you can not be a credit investor and still be able to invest into deals. the ones that i'm raising for or the ones i've told you about are focused on credit investors research as much as you can about the business about the brand about the person make decisions wisely and you might find out for yourself that you enjoy becoming an angel investor all right guys as i wrap this up it's very important to have discussions with your friends family and followers about money talk about finances talk about accounting talk about car notes and loans and why you shouldn't loan your friends x amount of dollars without a contract why you should make sure you're not co-signing leases left and right for people because that comes back on your credit what is credit what is a fico score have discussions with with the people around you about money.
We grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think it's rude and ridiculous to not talk about it because otherwise if we don't tell you, hey, if you co-sign for that girl and you guys break up, that's on your credit.
Hey, you co-sign for your friend that lease on that car and you get an argument, that's on your credit. We have to have discussion about it because if i don't say that to you and you're my friend or my kid or my boss or my neighbor or whatever and i don't have a blunt discussion with you about it well it's partially my fault that you went out there and did that when i could have helped protect you in that situation so we need to have discussion about money and we need to remove this concept that's rude there's nothing rude about talking about talking about reality.
The reality is loans come up, leases come up, co-signing comes up, credit comes up because it's part of our daily lives. So please go out there and talk about it.
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