The Entrepreneur’s Playbook: From Living Room Startups to Billion-Dollar Brands 🏢 EP140

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a very special edition of the Money Mondays podcast where we cover three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity.

Our guest today, I've known for many, many, many, many years.

He's built a zillion-dollar company.

He's now building his next zillion-dollar company.

So we're going to have fun diving into all things about money and investing, but also about building the brand.

And why, going into his next venture, why did he choose this category and why he's going to scale it to such a big big big business now as you guys know as we're covering those three core topics this podcast will be under 40 minutes because the average commute to work is 45 minutes the average workout is 45 minutes this episode will be between 32 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure i like to tell you that because we have a 92 listen-through rate that means that people actually listen to the whole podcast unlike a lot of podcasts where people just kind of rant and rave for a long time we keep this very streamlined very focused and also this podcast it's not just about you.

It could be for people from your past, present, and future.

There might be people that are going to be very, very beneficial if you share this podcast with them because of what happens today from Cameron Forney.

So, without further ado, Cameron, give me the quick two-minute bio so we get straight to the money.

All right.

Thank you, Dan, for having me.

Appreciate it.

My name is Cameron Forney.

My last company that I built, I'm a serial entrepreneur.

My last company was

Select Oil, Select Cannabis.

That was also Cure Partners.

I sold that to Cure Leaf.

So if you know those vaporizers with a little S circle on it,

that was kind of my creation and built that up,

started my living room, 80, 90,000 my first two months, 900,000 next year, 9 million next year, 40 million, 117 million.

I said for $980 million US, $1.27 billion Canadian to CureLeaf, which is a publicly traded cannabis company, still largest cannabis company in the world.

They do about $1.3 billion a year.

I stayed on as the president of Selected Cure Leaf, did that as long as possible, and then

waived

a a non-compete to get back into the space and really

batting down the hatches on what I wanted to do next.

So I spent about five years

investing in companies.

I made 27 different investments and realized I really love building brands and I really love operating.

So I've been at this for about two and a half years now.

I've spent about $2 million just in formulation and taste and function.

I started this because my mom was basically

going through dementia and Alzheimer's.

And so is, I think, a lot of people's parents these days, your parents as as well.

And

sugar brain is killing us.

And, you know, thank God we have RFK in office now, right?

He's giving new motivation and inspiration to life.

But sugar brain is killing us.

So I wanted to make something that me and my mom could get along with.

You know, three grams of sugar, sugars from agave, monk fruit, antidepressant, anti-anxiety beverage.

It's a functional, high-functioning hemp seltzer.

So I know you asked what I do, but this is what I do now.

So I just want to kind of bring it all together.

So we have these products on the table.

for people that are watching on YouTube and other platforms visually.

They can actually see that right now on this table, there's four packs of different drinks, the different flavors.

Talk us through why did you dive into this category?

Absolutely.

So the functional space, and by the way, this brand is called Adaptophoria.

For all you watching at home, Adaptophoria, helping you adapt to a new euphoric state.

We have

two functions.

We have unwind and we have energize.

And these are two different functions that you just need at night.

One time you get home from a tough day at work, crack it, you need to unwind, right?

You want to go back out and be socializing.

We've actually trademarked the modern socializer.

We've trademarked Hangout without the hangover.

So if you're a modern socializer and you're not drinking anymore, which you know the alcohol category is just getting decimated right now.

If you look at Gen Z is drinking one-tenth of the amount of alcohol that any other generation has drank in history,

that's a big swing.

It's a $30 billion swing in that category.

Wow.

And you're seeing even a larger swing than that.

Look at Anheuser-Busch.

Look what's happening in that industry.

You're seeing that people are tired of sugar.

They're tired of sugar brain.

And they're trying to be intricked to lie to.

And they were lied to it.

dextrose, sucralose, high fructose corn syrup, zygum.

There's a million different trade names for sugar.

And I think we've all just had enough.

And I think Gen Z is really, really kind of bringing it home there that they say, I don't want to be hungover.

I don't want to be dehydrated.

I want to be happy.

And, you know, what touched me a lot was, you look at my, I've got three kids now.

I've got a daughter that's five.

And I was looking around the table going, by college, 20% of all college students are going to be on antidepressants.

Wow.

Like, why?

Like, college was the most happy, exciting time of my life.

Like, why is the world so bad now that you have to be on antidepressants at this age?

And then you're actually reducing your dopamine receptors.

So, you're never actually going to be as happy as you were prior to these antidepressants.

So, I said, all right, stop it.

A retired life is over.

Investing life is over.

I got to make a beverage.

It's going to work.

And we did a partnership with the University of Oregon, 10,000 surveys and studies.

What is depressing people?

What is going on in the world?

And depression was number one.

Anxiety was number two.

It's causing trillions of dollars of damage in our economy right now.

We're seeing suicide rates at all time high, divorce rates at all time high,

and addiction rates at all time high.

So we said, how do we do something about this in a low calorie, 15 calories, three grams of sugar?

We have ashwagandha, lowers your cortisol levels, we have rhodiola, anti-anxiety, anti-depression.

We used all ancient Chinese herbs.

And we're the first EnviroCan certified beverage on the market, meaning we're OCal certified organic all the way through to the top.

Can't say organic because it's still hemp, but we are EnviroCan clean.

So I said, all right, how do we do this?

How do we impact our community?

You've been such a motivation, inspiration for our community and giving back.

So we give 2% of our revenue back to you: mental health and wellness, dealing with addiction, and encouraging and inspiring entrepreneurship.

So, our first check went to the University of Oregon, helping kids that have dealt through their hardships, which we call it your time-to-adapt moment.

What was your time-to-adapt moment where you had a hardship and you had to overcome it?

So, we're helping people adapt to the new world.

So, yeah, it's a lot.

So, back in my days, I had an energy drink,

43 distributors, 55,000 retail stores.

I took a public in 2005, so exactly 20 years ago.

And over those course of those four years, I don't remember anything but selling drinks.

Nothing.

I don't remember a date.

I don't remember a birthday.

Nothing.

I drove around to every distributor.

I did what's called ride-alongs, where I would literally get in the semi-truck with the drivers on a Budweiser truck.

How do you do it?

And I would go store to store and I'd pitch them.

While they're putting Budweiser in the cooler, I'm pitching them by my energy drink.

You are up against thousands of brands.

How do you stand out in the beverage category?

Great question.

I mean, shipping liquid is quite a challenge.

So, yeah, it's heavy.

And, you know, luckily, I've, you know, capital is obviously very important, right?

We have incredible investors.

I've capitalized a lot of this myself.

But you're right.

You have to go out door to door, store to store, and select it, which is $1,700.

But the difference is I was bringing a box, you know, one foot by one foot, and that was $20,000.

Now I'm shipping...

fifth, you know, four pallets that it's $20,000.

It's a big difference, right?

So that is quite difficult.

But, But, you know,

I'm just so inspired by running out of options to drink.

You know, Ollipop and Poppy, I love, right?

Those came out of nowhere.

I became instant fans.

And then I'm like, you know, I still,

I'm a cannabis person.

I love flour.

And, you know, I've got three kids now.

I can't smoke into the house.

I can't smoke, you know, anywhere around them.

And I want to be social.

So how do we do that?

And how do we have fun, you know,

at home with the kids, with the family, with your parents at Thanksgiving?

So really what we're doing is we're kind kind of creating these moments and these moments of family, these moments of togetherness.

And that's really where we're marketing.

So, we're doing everything from affiliate marketing, where you can come in.

My goal is to make a thousand millionaires in this company.

I made several millionaires in the last, but I want to make a thousand millionaires.

And the only way to do that is to teach people how to make money, as you do in this podcast, and encourage and inspire entrepreneurs.

So, we do, you know, a referral program, which not only gives a discount on shipping, but it also gives 15%

referral income to someone.

So, let's say you just got laid off.

Oh man, time to adapt, right?

Let's not stress.

Let's not go hit the bottle.

Let's adapt.

Let's come up with a clear image of what we want to do and where we want to go in the future.

So we teach people how to become an influencer, right?

How to influence and talk to your peer groups about it and how to say, hey, you know, I had a great experience on this product.

All of our beverages are five milligrams.

I want everyone to have a great experience their first time, no matter what.

I never want someone to be cross-faded or too high or too stoned.

My goal is great experience, customer experience every single time and if you can do that you can win customers so where i say i set myself apart in the other beverages not only the target of the high functional self sermarket that we're going after but also where we offer a unique product experience we've won best thc drink of 2025 by tide water go ask chat gbt go ask llama uh about adaptophoria it'll tell you it's the best THC drink out there.

And that's because we're targeting this by anxiety, depression, give back,

and it's just how to make people happy.

And I think that's that's really where we find our unique area.

And our method is the monster method, which is liquid ellipse.

Let people try it and then they buy it.

So we are sampling.

We've got some big announcements with one of the largest alcohol retailers in Florida coming.

We've got one of the biggest announcements with,

I probably could announce it, DoorDash.

It's going to be very, very large and very broad.

And then we have some other unique opportunities with some big boxers coming up that we're looking forward to.

So we're looking at specific ways to get to the customer.

We really love direct-to-consumer, but we also are ready to distribute when that time comes.

So, if you know, if you just go straight to the shelf,

this has got to talk off the shelf.

It's got to literally stand off the shelf and buy it.

And it's such a mouthful talking about all the

nutraceutical-grade

ancient Chinese herbs in here and all the functions that I really need to talk to people to sell the beverage.

So, I think the DTC is your best option for that.

Very cool.

Yeah.

So

with your previous brand, you were also up against thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of brands that all, a lot of them came and went.

But you built one of the only ones to actually go exit and have this huge impact and still out there, obviously, big in the market.

Talk us through that experience, like going out there and fighting the good fight.

Also, at the same time, dealing with legislation, dealing with rules, what you're not allowed to spend money on marketing, you can't pay for commercials or meta.

Like, how did you scale that brand to be that big?

I mean,

it was a lot of work.

You know, one, quality product and consistency always wins, and compliance wins.

So what we've done with this product, for instance, is we've ensured that when all the cards fall, this still remains under the USDA Farm Bill 2018 Act, saying it's only 10 milligrams maximum per 12-ounce can to be 0.03%, 0.3% by dry weight.

And no one else is doing that.

Everyone's doing 50 milligrams, 100 milligrams, milligrams, right?

They're doing that with edibles too.

So, our job has always been compliance.

I was on regulatory advisory commissions setting pesticide regulations and standards.

So, SELECT set a standard that sets itself apart from everyone else.

That's the same thing we're doing here.

The second was the right people.

You have to have the right people involved in your business.

I was lucky enough to partner with one of the greatest entrepreneurs in Oregon.

I was also

honored to partner with people like Rich Paula, who's a good friend of ours, who's an incredible Master Network, Jake Allslop, and so many others that were great Sam Nap.

And, you know, these guys helped us expand this brand so rapidly.

And now what we're seeing is

you also need to be capitalized, right?

And we have some incredible investors behind us.

We just did a very, very small friends and family round.

So we've taken in just over 3 million, 3.5 billion.

And we are looking at, now that we've generated about just under half a million dollars of revenue in just under four months, that now we'd be looking at a roughly 10X round in a Q1.

So, you know, I think that being capitalized is absolutely critical to your success and to stay alive.

So,

you know, I think as long as you're maintaining the

appropriate products, quality standards, you're showing sales growth, you know, you're not being greedy, and you're growing in a company that investors are happy to be a part of, you're going to be successful.

So as a business starts to make more and more revenue, especially in beverages, that means you actually need way more capital.

I'm going to give you guys a quick story.

So my Andrews drink, it was called Who's Your Daddy.

I had that slogan back in the days.

And on year two, we were just crushing it.

We're in all these distributors.

We got a bunch more Budweiser distributors to help us.

And we get finally, the phone call that we wanted was Costco.

And the way we got into Costco was I would send four packs of drinks to the security guards and the secretaries.

Never to the buyers, never to the executives, never to the staff.

Security guards and secretaries.

Why?

Because everyone interacts and sees them.

you walk in you walk out what do you say bye to security guards or secure secretaries and so we finally got the phone call and the guy was like i know what you did he knew i was i was sending them over and over and over

but they liked it it was cranberry pineapple and it was green tea and we had the zero sugar zero calories and zero carbs

so 41 stores was 2.4 million dollars for an opening order at first we did one store obviously there's still testing

Yeah, but then the first actual order $2.4 million.

Okay,

sounds cool.

Let me give you guys an example.

Let's say that they order on January 1st.

Okay.

Let's say you get a phone call from Costco.

It's January 1st.

I want a $2.4 million dollars.

You're giving me PTSD right now, but keep going.

So to make $2.4 million, you got to put up around a million dollars to manufacture it.

Let's call it anywhere from 30 to 50% is your cost to manufacture it, then factory and shipping, et cetera.

So let's say you need a million dollars for that 2.4.

That's That's January 1st.

They want you to ship it usually 60 to 90 days later.

So let's call it March 1st or April 1st.

They then pay you net 30 or net 60 after delivery.

So now you're at May 1st or June 1st to get paid.

But wait, what if your drink's really good?

Time to adapt.

Right?

What if your drink tastes like Adapt?

What if your drink's really good and you sell through?

That's what happened for us.

They reordered 5.5 million.

Oh no.

I didn't get paid for the first one.

You're like, woo, but no.

And so I had to scramble, call everyone, figure out 5.5 million order.

I needed almost $2.5 million to make it and ship it, plus merchandising fees, marketing fees, displays.

They wanted like different displays outside the stores.

POP, which is point of purchase display, like all these things.

So let's call it 2.5 million.

I didn't get paid on the first one yet.

So I scrambled around to get the 2.5 million.

We got it.

Hold on.

And then they're like, okay, we're ready for all-star buy.

Oh, no.

I mean, yay.

I mean, no.

This is what makes the CFO cringe, by the way.

And we couldn't do it.

We literally, they were too big.

We had to turn down all-store buy.

And for them, they're like, okay, well, we're going to call Red Bull Monster Rockstar just like normal.

And that's what they'll do.

And so, why is that important to you?

Either you have to be capitalized in advance.

You have to do what's called factoring.

Factoring is where you'll pay sometimes 2%.

per month.

And a factor is someone will say, I'll buy your paper.

I'll buy your order, your invoice from Costco.

So let's say the order was 5.5 million.

They'll pay you 5.1 million, for example, on the 5.5.

So you're taking a haircut, you're losing out on money, but you're getting the money up front.

Or they're staggering the payments depending.

But then they're taking the risk that Costco's going to pay.

Well, Costco is what's called a paper.

Yeah.

Right?

They know they're going to pay.

It's Costco.

So they know they're going to pay.

Problem is, you're at 10 to 12% interest already.

Yes.

By the time they pay.

Five months at 2% is 10%.

Uh-oh.

That can get very expensive when your margins are only 20% to 40% depending on your shipping, et cetera.

So I want you guys to think about this.

When you're making a brand, a product, or a service, think about the capital you need when things go well.

People always talk about things when they're screwing up or sucking.

What happens when things go right?

As you scale, things can break.

So you've got to have capital for that.

All right, let's talk about the investing side.

You had this exit and you mentioned 27 different investments.

You get bombarded by offers.

Real estate, stock market, cash businesses, your friends opening a restaurant, a nightclub, a membership club, a golf course, your friends doing a high-rise, a building.

There's Bitcoin, there's Ethereum.

There's so many things you can be investing into.

How do you decide with all those different variables what to put your money into?

I mean,

it was quite difficult, especially as a cannabis entrepreneur.

I wasn't allowed in UBS yet.

I wasn't allowed a financial advisor.

So that left me as my own financial advisor for quite some time there.

And we know we've, I created $2.2 billion in value from my living room and um you know uh made uh hundreds of millions of dollars lost hundreds of millions of dollars as well so you know it's part about being an entrepreneur you know you have to learn the playbook and learn how that works um but um you know it's

okay so i mean

when you get bombarded by deals how do you pick what you'd like to invest into It's got to be something you're passionate about.

And it's got to be something that you are driven by or that you have done enough research in that market that you know that there's going to be an overall sector growth in.

And I really doubled down on cannabis.

I'd done brands for like Jay-Z, Post Malone, Birdman,

Jim Belushi, Rohan Marley, Marley Naturals.

We do Ricky Williams.

I've done a lot of these celebrities brands and we kind of got bombarded by a lot of that and wanted to look at it.

And celebrity brands aren't a bad thing.

It's just in cannabis, you can't really market and advertise.

So to have that megaphone was a good thing.

So I did several investments in those spaces.

And then I did several investos in crypto.

I think, as you know, crypto is going to be something that's going to be around for a while, and I've been very successful in that.

But it was difficult.

It was just, I had to do some things that I was very interested in.

And honestly, you should invest in something you're knowledgeable in.

So I invested in several things I was not knowledgeable in, and those have turned out to be complete horror stores.

So I think knowledge, passion, and

analytics.

Why do you think it's important for people to invest into themselves?

It's either study, read, go to courses, hire mentors, coaches.

Like, why do you think people should invest into their minds and into their bodies?

That's number one.

You got to invest in yourself.

And that's how you invest in wealth.

If you're not investing in yourself weekly, you know, like you have eight hours, right, for work, you have eight hours for sleep, you have eight hours to do something.

And, you know, again, hopefully it's not doom scrolling.

You know, I've heard some people say this, but I'm watching my kids do that as well.

So you have to really make time.

I'm taking, you know, work leadership, executive leadership courses right now during my free time.

And as an entrepreneur startup where I'm focused on not only looking at my investments, but I'm also focused on operationally running this as CEO and founder founder and going store to store still.

You almost think that there's no time in a day and it's not possible.

It's not possible for new opportunities, but there is.

And it's really about time allocation.

Learn where your time goes.

Invest it in yourself as investing in wealth and put yourself first.

You've got to put yourself first in your education first and everything else will come.

So sacrifice to the time and it all pays off.

Yeah.

So as people are...

Growing their businesses, they're going to get pitched a lot of different things.

This is going to be sometimes an awkward or hard question for people.

How do you say no to deals?

I mean,

it depends.

Are you an investment fund?

Are you a family office?

You know, because it could go with your thesis.

Just a person.

Just a person.

How do you say no?

You know, it's not the right time.

It's not the right sector for me.

It's not the right business for me.

You know, I think that's probably the best way to say no.

But saying no is quite important.

It really has to be something that you've done the research on and you've done your diligence on.

And, you know, the investor class has to be

significant

and you have to know leverage and understand where your point of leverage is understand if you can add value and create accretive value to this business or if you're just going to be a blank check or you know

dumb money dumb money yeah so I never want to be dumb money I always want to be you know value add or creative value so I always try to loop in some sort of advisory role as well and help guide and steer the company so yeah so you mentioned some really big names with the Jay-Zs and Post Malones talk about investing into talent like why have a face a celebrity like a Ricky Williams?

Like, why invest into talent rather than just scale a generic brand?

So, you know, Jay-Z is a big name, right?

And I've lost $9 million with Jay-Z.

But, you know, Jim Belushi is a much, much smaller name than Jay-Z.

And Jim Belushi got the number one cannabis product in the state of Oregon.

Come on.

Jim Belushi, yeah.

You know why?

Because he cares.

He cares about people.

He hustles.

He goes to the stores.

He plays his harmonica.

He takes pictures of every butt tender.

When he leaves, people are so electric with his brand and what he's done that they want more.

And that's what I love.

Ricky Williams, the same way.

We have Ricky Williams here at Goldflower in Florida.

And, you know, Ricky Williams draws an enormous crowd.

Rohan Marley draws an enormous crowd, right?

And we can't advertise in Florida.

So there's no way to advertise or even talk about it.

So I can just tell you that the partners of that brand, of Goldflower, of one of our companies, are these two celebrities.

And they can put it out on their Instagram, but they can't market it.

So it's very unique.

And state by state is different.

There's different rules and regulations.

You have a different set of rules in every single state.

And the hemp beverage is one of the first that it's a little bit more even playing field, but there's still subtleties.

Like Oregon, you can only, you can have a five milligram can, but it's got to be two servings of 2.5 milligrams each.

Guess what?

I've made one run of five milligram, one serving.

So now I can't, you know, actively, you know, go after that market without stickering every can.

You know, Georgia needed a special sticker on the back.

It's only Georgia related, right?

So, you know, there's all these different little nuances that you have to be ready to adapt.

And that's why we own time to adapt.com, right?

When things get hard, when life throws you a curveball,

how you change and how you accept that change is going to be what's going to make you succeed or fail in life.

So we say time to adapt.

And that actually brings me to my point of we want your biggest time to adapt moment where I'm actually doing a $10,000 giveaway to whoever has the best time to adapt moment.

And what that means is just lost my job.

Oh, time to adapt, right?

Instead of hitting the bottle, I took a different option.

Or, oh, I just lost my girlfriend to OnlyFans.

Time to adapt.

Mine was, you know, my car,

my wife was driving a car and it had a suicide door on it.

And she's taking the kids to school and she drove out with the door open and just chicken-winged it.

Instead of getting mad or upset, yeah, it's a nice, very nice car.

And instead of getting mad or upset, you know, I just said, made it into a time to adapt moment, which I'll be posting later this week announcing the competition.

And, you know, it was funny and we made a good play out of it.

So I'm going to do a $10,000

giveaway to whoever gets the most likes most shares by April 14th of 2026.

So we're going to launch that campaign.

I think that could be something cool for people to just remember when times are hard and something goes down.

Just remember your time to adapt moment.

When life throws you a curveball, how are you going to overcome it?

Time to adapt.

So a lot of products can get onto a shelf and they might sell once, but they don't get reordered because of taste.

or quality or something about them.

Why is it important to invest into quality, like you mentioned, spending almost $2 million on on the quality of the product?

Taste is everything.

At the end of the day, like, you know, there is a massive shift going on in our community with health and wellness, and we're all seeing that, right?

And we've had, if you look at Coke, Coke's got like 39 grams of sugar, right, in 12 ounces, right?

And 150 calories.

We're 15 calories, right, and three grams of sugar.

And it's all like nutraceutical-grade, you know, ingredients.

And,

you know, what I'm basically seeing out there is if you can overcome the taste of cannabis, you're going to win.

Because everyone out in this market is making a weed soda pump.

I call it a weed soda.

You're taking soda water, you're adding simple syrup, or they're taking soda, they're adding a juice concentrate, and then there are no other functions, you know?

And we're, you know,

not only rapid onset, which I think one of the biggest things that we've really achieved.

you know, coming from my background as select oil, I owned 30% of the global oil supply at one point.

We did oil for every major brand.

I I gave Wild their first oil, right?

I gave Marley National's their first oil in Oregon.

So I've been, you know, in the oil market for so long that I've learned

nanoemulsions, microemulsions, and different onset times.

And what we've created here is a five-minute onset, which is so unique because I've always said a cannabis beverage will never work until I can share someone drinking a beer and then we can drink it and we can both feel the effects together.

So we can feel the effects together, but typically you get a bitterness that runs down the middle of your tongue and that lingers in the back of your throat.

And that's just something that

if you want to be a mass market brand, you can't taste the cannabis.

And that's why we were one of the first companies to put distillate in edibles.

And that started making our edibles go off the shelf because it didn't taste like cannabis.

And I know there's a lot of people that, oh, I want to taste the indica, the sutiva, the hybrid.

That's not the mass market.

The mass market is how do we create something socially acceptable?

How do we create something that my mom can drink?

It's a 65-year-old Southern Baptist who believes it was the devil's lettuce.

And now she's going, oh my gosh, I like this.

This makes me feel good.

It's better than a you know vodka or something and how do we make something that you know uh uh every generation basically thinks tastes good and that's really what we've done here is we've absolutely nailed the taste i'd love to get your reaction on it too i'd love for you to try one of course so on the charity side

why do you think it's important for a household for you as the father to have some type of charity involvement for those kids to see whether not about the money part but actually be a part of something.

Why do you think it's important for kids to see charity?

It's critical to building their character and who they are as a person.

You know, you've been so inspiring with that is, you know, we give back, you know, to motivate and encourage and inspire because so many people now are at their all-time lows.

And just like what you do with the world's largest toy drive, right?

You bring so many smiles to people's faces.

You're the real Santa Claus.

You're like they don't, you know, Santa Claus isn't real, but you are the real Santa Claus.

The amount of joy that you bring through, how many toys do you guys do?

Oh my God, hundreds of thousands.

Hundreds of thousands of toys during Christmas.

Like there's so many kids out there, and you know the numbers of that aren't getting those toys, that aren't feeling gratified during these times.

And that's what it's about, is making people happy,

leaving the world a better place than

where we came.

And I think that's what's so unique with RFK.

You know,

he says you judge a civilization based on how they treat

their weakest among the population.

And that's really what we're doing.

We're helping anxiety, we're helping mental health.

You know, this is great for war veterans and people with PTSD.

And that's why we gave the 2% give back component.

So my kids can be there with me as we're giving a check to encourage and inspire entrepreneurship and help drive through addiction and mental health.

So I've been through mental health challenges myself.

So, you know, sold the company and thought I was on top of the world and, you know, had unlimited money.

And, you know, it's never been more lonely in my life than being at the very top.

You know, lost friends, lost resource, lost a lot of things.

And to help kind of heal from that by also helping others

is tremendous for me, for my family, and I think for the entire entrepreneurial community.

So I'd like to see more of that and like people to follow your lead, Dan.

So someone out there listening, you know, there's been this kind of weird feeling about billionaires and people being wealthy this last few years, in particular in the media.

And it's frustrating because

the amount of people that Amazon employs.

So when people look at Jeff Bezos, like, oh, I can't believe he has a $400 million yacht.

That's nothing financially for Jeff Bezos.

But then they look at him and they think, oh, well, he's too wealthy, too rich.

Well, he employs millions of people.

That's almost a form of charity to me.

When you're employing people and you're giving them 60 grand a year, 80 grand a year, 200 grand a year, et cetera, times that by millions, he's literally changing the entire global economy from the inside out.

And so I say that because there's this weird connotation that billionaire is a bad word.

So you have this exit for nearly a billion dollars, 1.27 Canadian billion.

And you said you got lonely or quiet or some of your friends went away.

What do you think that is when someone hears that that's like well I make 60 grand a year screw that I want that problem Talk about the reality of like what happens in life look it's it's it's lonely at the top the loneliest job in the world is the CEO position as you know right you're you're everyone's best friend though when they get the paycheck you're everyone's enemy when times are tough and there's budget crest cuts and crisis

and then the only person you can really have a conversation with or depend on is you know yourself a lot of times or your wife

and and that can make it very difficult you only want to tell her yeah yeah and sometimes you don't want to tell her because you don't want to stress her out because she's raising the three kids.

So you're right.

I use Michael Phelps as a perfect example of this.

The most awarded Olympian in history, right?

Yeah.

Dealt with massive mental health crisis.

Use cannabis, use

cannabis products instead of alcohol.

And Vlauke got arrested in trouble with alcohol.

And Phelps stayed home, ate his 7,000 calories, and then pumped out American Olympic gold medal championships.

He's an inspiration to me.

Apollo Ono is an inspiration and a good friend.

And I'm trying to get him on board with this.

And, you know, it's once you get to that top, it's, it's amazing.

You're celebrated.

Your picture's on all these magazines.

And now you're the person paying for every single bill.

You're the person that's always being mooched on.

You're the person that's

always the enemy if something goes wrong in the company.

And then if you're a really good company, you're under lawsuits.

You're going to get sued.

For sure.

And it's just for people that want.

quick handouts and easy money.

And, you know, it's just, it just, it gets very difficult, it gets very lonely.

So you've got to have a good routine of, you know, getting sunlight, working out,

talking to people you know when covet people lost i mean i sold my company in february 2020 like whoa yeah so imagine like now i'm locked up with all this money it's like what do we do you know um i got into poker which is a really bad idea don't get into poker after you sell your company phil helmet you've all right um so um you know and

he joined the advisory board of one of my companies oh did he great at poker he put me in the dragon's den poker game and i lost a lot of money very rapidly it was like it was interesting people draymont green all these guys i'm just getting smoked

But you know, I think that people lost their community, lost their safety net there, lost their communion and their community when COVID took place because everyone was locked down.

People still haven't really rebuilt that.

You know, the socializing and the marketing and the networking has gone down a lot.

I mean, you're a master.

It's different for you.

You're still probably pumping the same numbers as you were, but there's a lot of people that fell out of those relationships and got lonely and depressed.

And why we say this for the modern socializer is because we want to create happy hours that are non-alcoholic happy hours.

So modern socializer hours where people are coming, they're ordering adaptive foria at their favorite restaurant or Maison Murat right here in Bricole in Miami.

And you can sit with other entrepreneurs.

We do an entrepreneur meetup at Maison Murat once, and we sit and we talk, and we have speakers come in, we have pro-athletes come in, and we just find a new way to socialize

with a different product than just alcohol.

But you can drink alcohol too, nothing against it.

Love alcohol, love my champagne, love my tequila.

But I just find myself drinking this at the end of the night.

Two of these,

two unwinds at the end of the night make me sleep like a baby.

I sleep better than I've ever slept.

And then an energizer too before I go out is lovely.

So I try to try to have my balance.

If I do a couple tequilas and it's like, Dan, it's 12 o'clock.

What are you doing?

Do you want to go out?

So I've got to like learn how to balance myself.

Sure.

All right.

So there's only one question that I ask at the end of every episode, and I've never gotten the same answer in over 200 episodes.

You've already sold one company for a billion dollars.

You're going to sell this one for $2 billion, for example.

And you're probably going to do more companies because you got the itch, right?

You love the game.

So billions and billions of dollars of revenue generated and exits, et cetera.

At the end of the day, when you pass away, what percentage of your net worth do you leave to those three kids?

It's a great question.

But one thing that you should be clear on as an entrepreneur, like you were saying, to raise money, I only ended up with 8% of my company when I sold it, right?

You know, and then less than that after taxes.

So it sounds like you sold it for all this money and then you own stock at the company and the stock does well or does not well when you leave.

You know, there's a lot of variance.

But, you know, for your kids, that is like the most critical thing: how are you leaving that next generation?

How is that next generation going to bring up?

And, you know, I've already planned all this out luckily.

And it's, you know, their college is funded.

They're, you know, they're never going to have to worry about a home.

They're never going to have to worry about college.

They're never going to worry about healthcare.

Those are already done and set forever.

Now it's, it's, you know, again, they're,

I drive my kids to be entrepreneurial.

So my daughter has to work to make money to buy an iPhone or app on her tablet, or she has to donate some toys and then other toys that she just got bored with quick, she has to sell and then buy a new toy and capitalize.

I love it.

So we do do our donation, but we also are teaching and instilling commerce into our kids.

So I've set a fund together where they can invest money into businesses that they believe in and then they can live off the income of those companies.

But they do not get a check.

They can get a check for.

their home to get that, but then they owe the trust money.

So they have to work.

They have to work.

I told you guys we weren't going to get the same answer.

This is great.

They have to be entrepreneurial.

They have to work.

And nothing is given.

They have to earn it.

But I think healthcare is given, and I think education should be given.

So those two I'm on.

All right.

So where can people find you on social media?

Where can they find the brands, the products?

Tell us everything.

Timetoadapt.com.

Timetoadapt or adaptophoria.com.

And I would go even,

you are so nice.

If you do TimeToAdapt forward slash money Mondays, we pay for your shipping.

So we just wanted to do that for Dan and take care of it.

So time to adapt.com forward slash money Mondays.

We'll pay for your shipping.

And you can find me at Cameron Forney underscore.

And, you know, you'll see some stuff from like the University of Oregon.

We're the first beverage on the history of the planet, hemp beverage on a university campus.

And that was with the University of Oregon last weekend.

So we were in the Dean's Invitational Suite on college campus.

The dean said he'd rather have kids drinking, college students drinking our beverage than he would alcohol.

And as you know, you can't sell, you know, I don't sell this to under 21, can't sell alcohol to under 21.

But alcohol is just, you know, run a buck kind of on college campuses.

For sure.

So this is a very unique trial with the University of Oregon Ducks, who, you know, is my alma mater.

I'm on the 40 under 40 advisory there.

And I think it's very unique.

And we'll be doing some stuff with the Rolling Stone Culture Council on this as well.

So that's so cool.

Time2adapt.com forward slash money Mondays.

And Money Mondays and Money Monday, well, both.

And at CameronForney.com.

All right, guys.

As I mentioned, these podcasts are not just for you.

It's for people from your past, present, and future.

Your friends might bring up, they want to be in the beverage space, and you forward this podcast with Cameron.

They might bring up, oh, I want to do something in the cannabis space.

You could forward this podcast with Cameron.

There's people that are going to be around you.

It could be a dinner, a lunch, playing basketball or pickleball, and things like this come up.

You share podcasts like this with them and the butterfly effect can literally change their life.

They might hear things because we got pretty granular here from factoring and financing and marketing and the shelf space and dealing with celebrities.

Like these things could literally help save them a lot of money or make them a lot of money so keep these podcasts in mind visit us next Monday at the moneymondays.com and we'll see you guys very soon

ladies and gentlemen welcome to the money mondays podcast where we cover three core topics how to make money how to invest money how to give some away to charity here's what's really important when you're listening to podcasts like this it's not always just about you it could be for people from your past present or future you might be able to forward an episode like this this to someone that likes this topic or likes this person that's on that episode.

So keep that in mind as you're listening, because not every time you're going to be caring about real estate or stock market or e-commerce or Facebook ads.

Maybe it's not applying to you, but it could be to someone from your past, present, or future.

The whole point of this podcast is we grew up thinking that it's rude to talk about money.

I think that's ridiculous.

We got to be able to talk about taxes and salary and should I rent?

Should I buy?

Should I lease?

What happens if my friend borrowed $400?

How do I get it back?

Like these are things that happen in your real life.

We just don't talk about it because we think about it being rude.

It is not rude to be able to cover your mom's medical benefits.

It is not rude to be able to buy toys for your kids.

It's not rude to be able to cover your travel and things that go on in your daily life because it's part of your daily life.

So make sure to understand this with your friends, family, and followers.

We have to be able to talk about money.

That's part of why this podcast has stayed in the top 50 in the world.

It's because of you liking, commenting, subscribing, and sharing, and talking with your friends about money.

So without further ado, as you guys know, these podcasts are under 40 minutes because the average workout is 45 minutes.

the average commute to work is 45 minutes.

This episode will be between 32 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure.

So, Dana Silva, if you can give us a quick two-minute bio, so we get straight to the money.

Perfect.

Okay, so my name is Dana Silva.

I dropped out of high school, but it's kind of cliche to say these days, I guess.

I started online when I was 15, like literally, I was learning at 15, 19, made my first million.

And since then, just kind of like rode the wave.

I started off buying traffic as an affiliate.

And then I went into the e-comm space.

I kind of had that leg up because I already knew how to buy traffic.

So, you know, dropshipping was this new thing.

So I kind of just went into dropshipping, was the first one on YouTube to talk about it.

I had like major success in both Realms Doing and Teachings.

And then from there, just kind of everything

just kind of grew from there.

Yeah.

What's the main thing you're working on now?

So I started my own FinPub, so financial publishing company, a few years ago, four or five years ago.

It was a ride.

I'm winding it down now, more so because of compliance more than anything.

It is just a headache for that industry.

So

my main thing is winding that down and just heading back into affiliate like hardcore, just focusing all my attention on affiliate launching and publishing, but not necessarily in finance anymore.

So fun fact.

Back in the days I had an online poker site and I'd go to the gaming convention.

There'd be thousands and thousands and thousands of people there that own poker sites.

And the richest people in the room were the affiliates.

Because they were sending all the traffic to these poker sites, but they're getting like $200 CPA, $300 CPA, which is cost per acquisition.

And so they were sending traffic to poker stars and Full Tilt and me, my victory poker site.

And we're paying them two or three hundred dollars a player before we ever got one dollar.

And so it was fun to see at these events where you'd see the 21-year-old, the 28-year-old, zillionaires, because they were sending traffic to these gambling sites.

There's certain affiliates, I mean, even even now,

you know, you get percentage of losses and all that.

Like, you know, those under-the-table type of deals where I know some guys over in Asia.

Oh, like on sports betting sites.

Oh, yeah, we just got it.

Just in general, like those online casinos where they not only get a CPA, they get a percentage of first depot, and then they also get a percentage of losses in perpetuity.

And they're just...

They're raking in cash like crazy.

So you've got a zillion offers that you could go through, right?

You can pick from anything you want from financial markets, stock trading, teaching people how to sell custom sneakers.

You can teach people about anything.

And so you could showcase for your traffic any of these topics, Section A.

There's just so many, there's infinite options.

How the heck do you decide what you pick from?

Is it just the financial part of it?

Is there a marketing part of it?

Is it something that is exciting for you?

Or is it just a part of the game?

Quite frank, that's a good question.

It's a lot of, so it's a very small community community of people that are super affiliates, if you will.

And everybody talks there.

So

you know exactly what is working at that time.

So it's essentially just kind of like, hey, I heard X, Y, and Z is doing X, Y, and Z.

And then I'll go to the said person and they'll be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%.

And like, you know, one of my good friends, Carter,

he's a huge affiliate, huge affiliate.

And I ask him all the time, like on things that are working.

He's like, yeah, this is working.

We were doing like $400,000 a day for this amount of weeks.

And then I'm like, okay.

He's like, yeah, but we kind of like, you know, we moved on because of, you know, processing issues, whatever it is.

I'm like, okay, so like, what's hot right now?

Exactly.

And then he's like, oh, well, we're onto this.

I'm like, oh, well, I don't want to do this.

So then I have to start shopping around because there's some things that I don't want to touch

and other things, because it's not in my circle of competence.

But, you know, I typically will go ahead and always focus on vanity driven or aside from vanity, health.

So, and again, health you got to kind of figure out your line of ethics and morals certain type of weight loss versus exactly so it and more than anything it's the affiliate's job is to get somebody to the to the page the VSL to the to the order order form whatever it is

but if it doesn't convert you know it's move on to the next offer what is a VSL a visual sales letter so it's just a you know 45 60 minute plus video selling

it's an emotional story

that really pulls strings that sells a supplement at the very end that's supposed to do X Y and Z

based on you know whatever that story is but yeah they they sell very very well very very well so people will watch 45 to 60 minutes oh yeah they'll sit there for a really long time it's funny because

it was really really really good at a certain point probably like 2019 2000 2020

even up till now as well you can get away with it you could run run just the VSL alone on YouTube, like run it as a YouTube ad.

And then when they click, they go to the order form.

So it's not even like they have to go to another page and then go to the order form.

Because if you think about it, people on YouTube are already accustomed to watching long form videos.

So you just put like a 45-minute video, they don't know how long it is because it's an ad, right?

So

there's no timer.

No, no, because of how long it is.

So they'll sit there and they'll watch it and then they'll click.

And from there, you can do the same thing with Facebook.

So there was a, I think, I think Peter Kell did this.

Actually, I know Peter Kell did this.

He ran VSLs on

Facebook so successfully.

And by the time I heard about it, I never even thought to do that.

I was like, it makes so much sense.

You know, everyone was doing it at that point.

It still works, but it's really about finding that VSLs are like the thing right now.

Everybody's hyper-focusing on that.

All right.

So let's talk about the make money side.

Okay.

You can make your own products.

You can.

You could be an affiliate.

You could try to work for another company.

You could consult.

You could take equity.

How do you decide on a personal level?

Like, you've got all the options because you've got so much experience and you're one of the best in the game.

Like, how do you decide what you actually spend your time on?

I'm going to be totally honest with you.

I am extremely lazy, and I think it's because of

just

I'm complacent.

So I know if I want something, how much it is, and I'll work that exactly.

So that's a gift and a curse, if you will,

because it doesn't push me further than what I want.

So once, and that's why things now,

I sold all my cars and all that, because I stopped caring necessarily.

The only thing I really like is watches.

That's my thing.

But

the make money aspect to answer your question is

I really don't know how to define that.

Ask me one more time so I can process it.

When you have all these options where you could be a consultant, you could be an affiliate, you could create your own product or brand or service.

How do you decide what you spend your time on?

What I know will pay me the most for the energy in.

So energy in and the output that I get.

So I already know what I'm really good at, and that's mainly more than anything, copy.

Funnels is relatively easy and whatnot.

It's essentially getting somebody to read something and get them to take an action that they didn't otherwise think they wanted to do or you want them to do.

So,

and whatever that is, there's two realms that I play in.

It's more so than anything biz op.

So, you know, MMO, like make money online, and

in the health space.

So, those are like the two that I absolutely know the pain points, like right away I can just spin something up.

And that's what I'll, that's what I'll lean towards.

But, consulting, I don't, I don't do it.

I don't like, just, I don't think that,

I know my time is worth, you know, a lot, but I just don't want to give up my time.

I'd rather be playing video games or doing something else, like just enjoying life.

So did that come from complacency from money?

Yeah.

I think.

Yeah.

It came from the fact that I had nothing really growing up.

And then 18 to 19,

literally, it was from nothing to

exactly.

So, my first car was an I-8 that I bought in cash.

The insurance was $3,500 a month.

Okay.

Okay.

Right.

We laugh at it now.

But at 19, I've just turned 19,

I thought $3,500 a month for insurance was normal.

Like, okay.

And everyone's like, what?

And I thought a six-month insurance, you know, whatever it is, like.

Premium.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Because they wanted it all up front.

Yeah, they're right.

$21,000, yeah.

And I'm like, okay.

So I just spent like $140,000 for an I-8 that came from Idaho, exactly the specs that I wanted.

And then I dropped 20-something thousand on insurance, only for six months.

And everyone was like, what?

But what do I know?

Because that was my first car.

Like, I didn't have anything to correlate it to.

So then, you know, the following year, with, you know, Tanner J.

Fox, all that stuff,

I got rid of the I-8, bought a Lambo cache, two weeks later, bought a G-Wagon cache.

And I was just like, again, this is the whole, like, money just kept coming.

And so it came to a point where

the money didn't stop.

I think I actually know I know that

19-year-old me versus almost 30 in a few months me, I realized that I was.

just everybody's piggybank that they could just shake at any given time.

And

that was like, it was like one of the hardest pills to swallow.

And so I got rid of everything.

Like, I left New York, like all that.

I just told people I'm broke.

Just because I wanted to, I want to see who'd stick around.

Like, oh, I have nothing anymore.

So I just put my dogs in a car, went to Canada, went to Rice Lake or Lake Rice, whatever, whatever it's called.

And I just kind of like.

Faded away.

Exactly.

Just, I needed peace.

I needed to get away.

And funny enough,

nobody ever, like,

nobody was there.

And that's when I was like, interesting.

And so

just over that time, I kind of just like realigned.

And I stopped caring about the money, which then also, because I said the drive was always money.

And, you know, I'd had talks with like Jimmy, you know, from Satellite and whatnot.

And I'm like, Jimmy, like, I want to build something.

He's like, I want to build something.

And he's like, you don't need to know right now what you want to build.

It'll come to you eventually.

And

I guess that's what I've been kind of like waiting for, I guess.

But

yeah, it's just,

I realized everybody works so hard for money, but at the end of the day, it's like.

To buy stuff that they don't actually care about.

Not only that, but to impress people that don't care about them.

Exactly.

They're just there for the good time.

And you can't blame those people either.

So like everybody inherently is for themselves, if you will.

So that's just human nature.

So I can't blame, you know, my friends then.

So I just look at it as I learned.

I was going to do it regardless.

So at that time,

it is what it is.

So you guys have heard me say this before.

It's okay to have that materialistic goal of getting that one watch, getting that one car, getting that one thing.

But when you buy your second and third watch and your second and third car, you're going to have that feeling that Dan just described.

You're not going to care about the Lamborghini and the G-Wagon, this car, that car.

At some point, it fades away, sometimes within weeks.

And some some friends of ours go buy five ten twenty thirty cars looking for that that

that feeling and then it starts to go within days because they've already had 10 15 20 different cars and so I'm not saying to not have a goal because by the way the goal can be really really useful for you to have that driving force like Dan described in his own life but at some point it will literally feel meaningless you it'll just be another car in the garage catching dust it'll just be another watch sitting in the in the drawer that you don't wire because you wear your main watch every single day The other seven watches just kind of sit there at some point You start to realize like the things that you're buying don't have any actual meaning and they don't give you what you want, which is happiness You think you want it like well as soon as I get to a million dollars.

I'm gonna be happy when you get to a million you're like wait It's just Wednesday as soon as I get to 2.5 million It's the daughter treadmill.

Yep.

And the goal line keeps moving and the goal line keeps moving and the thing that you're chasing is never actually there.

It's an enigma.

It's not real.

And so I I say this because I want you to have that goal of the thing that you want, that you're aspirational for, whether it's taking that big travel trip, maybe it's buying that fancy watch.

But I pinky swear, that second, third, and fourth thing will not,

will not, even one iota, matter to you a few weeks later.

All right, so you're making money, you're buying the cars, you're having fun.

You take this time and you go disappear for a little bit.

Then you come back to one of the most coolest cities on the planet, which is Miami.

Why do you re-emerge?

Well, I went to,

I was moving around for a bit.

Like, went to Tampa, back home just to see parents,

Toronto, and then

back to Miami.

Why choose Miami?

Here's the thing.

I don't party anymore.

Like, I don't like to go out and club.

I'll go get dinners.

Like, that's it.

Why Miami?

I can't answer that.

I don't know.

To be honest, I came here with

an intention to network then I realized the people that I wanted to network with weren't the people that I wanted to be around

and now now I'm here

so

I guess that that really answers

to be to be totally honest I was supposed to go

this upcoming year supposed to

head head to Nashville but um

yeah plans plans change I Yeah, plans, plans change a little bit.

So as you're making money, people start to bombard you with investments.

Hey, bro, invest into my restaurant or my nightclub or my clothing line or my new thing, my new hat company, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

How do you decide, once you start making that type of cash, what you might throw in 25K, 50K, 100K, or whatever amount into as an investment?

I look at the person more than anything.

The person and then the idea, because everybody has ideas, right?

It's the person behind the idea that can execute to the finish line.

So

again, there's no necessarily unique idea, but there are extremely unique people.

That's where I will decide whether or not I put my energy, time, resources, and capital behind you.

So that's the end-all be-all.

It's who are you?

And like, I want to know not necessarily what you have accomplished, because maybe this is your first time trying to build something or whatever it is, but who are you as a person?

And if you have done something in the past, what have you done?

And I'm not talking like college or anything.

I'm talking way more beyond like, hey, I built this.

I just couldn't get it off the ground.

And that's fine because people that are builders aren't necessarily marketers.

So someone out there is listening and they're like, man, I want to sell the course or I want to sell something like a VSO.

Like, how do I do that?

Where can people research to try to figure out how to actually do this stuff?

That's such a good question.

I wouldn't, I would,

honestly, I wouldn't even know how to answer that because it is a very particular skill set.

It's writing copy for a video that you have to either hire an actor for, or now we can use AI to do it.

But the skill set is copywriting.

So VSL broken down is just long form.

It's just a long form piece of paper or a document that sells something, whatever it is.

And if somebody really wants to go ahead and learn how to do it, you just simply flat out have to find VSLs out there, and they're everywhere.

Like if you go on CNN, you click on these ads and then there's like a video of some doctor talking for like, for like an eternity, you could download that video, have it transcribed, read it and see exactly what, what's happening there.

See what they're doing, the pain points, the NLP, the language.

So that's the differentiating factor between somebody successful selling something as an affiliate and not is if you know

how to sell it, right?

So because we all have the same ability to look at the same product and sell the same way.

But the difference between me and you is that I might know how to find an angle from the current

page, from the current video, and how to just kind of take that out and sell that part.

While everyone else is just selling what's in the video, I sell something that he says in the video, and I just harp on that point and make it a bigger deal so people watch.

So what about investing into themselves?

Why do you think people should invest into their minds, their personal brand, into their world?

The cliche answers, because like you're gonna, there's no other better investment.

It's cliche to say there's no other better investment than you no higher roi but it's true so and i think like

if you

what i figured out a long time ago is by accident i think um i don't like networking i'm not really like a big networker um

people

have have and do come to me because of my skill set so

I see kids all the time, people all the time going to networking events.

Like networking does not equate to necessarily

in the long term, sure can equate to a lot of money if you start networking a lot and know what you're doing.

But at the end of the day,

I rather focus on a skill, like a skill set, and Becker thinks the same way.

I've talked to Becker about this as well, is that

all I ever did was focus on my skill set.

which was copy, et cetera, right?

And where that copy was deployed could have been e-commerce, you know, drop shipping or a VSL, an affiliate promo, whatever it is, right?

But I just focused on that.

That is my skill.

The funnels, the launches, and deploying copy into that, that's something that people have come to and still come to me for

on, hey, what do you think about this and that?

Just like I'll go to somebody like Jason, like J Flatt, right?

About webinar stuff.

Of course.

So it's the same thing.

He's the best at what he does.

People have to go to him.

So it's not like he's out there at events and whatnot saying, hey, I know how to do webinars.

Like, well, we know.

We know you know how to do webinars.

So I kind of adopted that

philosophy, really.

So.

Is there a goal?

Like, if you got to a certain number, you're like, you know what?

I'm done.

I'm going to retire.

I'm going to give up the e-commerce.

Then I'm going to give up being an affiliate.

Like, if someone had said, hey, you know what?

Here's $80 million.

That's it.

You can't work anymore ever again.

No, no, absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

absolutely not that's that sounds there's no purpose what's

i want it i need to do something i need to be stimulated like

all right maybe like is there a cap on this like

so i mean it have to have to be a wild number like something if i'd say it you'd be like okay be realistic right but like i just the constant stimulation of needing to figure out new things and needing to build and wanting to build and that's like that's the game yeah that's the thrill so there's really no number

from on a personal perspective is there anything that you like in the charity space philanthropy yeah um i'm looking to build an animal sanctuary really yeah yeah so it's actually a reason that i came here so but i've said this already for like two years to my parents and whatnot um it was either here or in nashville and i was um not well nashville area somewhere in tennessee right because land is fairly affordable yeah you know so um and then i have to work with compliance like regulatory but

yeah, an animal sanctuary is my thing.

I love animals.

So I built an animal sanctuary 37 months ago.

Did you really?

Yeah.

That's where I came from.

That's where I came from this morning.

Oh.

That's what I just flew from.

So we have 206 animals in Temecula, California.

It's 26 acres.

Oh, that's so your ranch is actually like a sanctuary.

I never knew that.

I thought you just loved animals.

I guess a personal sanctuary that I didn't know.

Yeah, we're not open to the public.

You can't, there's no website.

You can't buy tickets.

Obviously, our friends can, everyone can go and feed the animals.

But so the real Tarzan, obviously, you know, is getting he did 2.2 billion views last month alone on social.

He lives there.

He lives at the ranch.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

That's how it evolved.

At first I was buying it'cause I wanted to I had like a checklist of things to build on a ranch to be able to host Masterminds and events and my Operation Black site, the military training stuff.

And I wanted some animals.

And then I I was gonna do one with Tarzan here in in Miami and then COVID happened.

The shutdown happened.

happened and so like we scrapped the idea for a while because we're like well i don't know if we can have tourism at you know at the ranch at the animal sanctuary and then like a year later i found this ranch in california i'm like wow and so when i messaged him i had the keys i waited till it was for sure that i had it and i was like hey you're moving to california that's awesome we're gonna set up all these animals here and then it just kind of evolved because he started getting everything from 16 foot snakes to we rescued these two bulls from the FBI.

The FBI was going to kill these two bulls.

We rescued 900-pound pigs.

We rescued horses.

We rescued so many things.

And,

you know,

it's expensive, obviously, to take care of

206 animals.

It's $140,000 a month from staff and food and things to keep them alive and happy.

But it's my favorite thing to do.

It's my favorite thing to talk about.

I could talk about it for ages.

And like,

the difference of like when you're interacting with the animals versus humans is fascinating.

We can get into this.

Okay, we'll get real emotional real quick.

But I agree.

It's just, it's unconditional love.

Like, yes, now I'm talking like dogs and whatnot, but even big cats.

Like, you know what I found fascinating?

I saw, I got really ingrained and infatuated with this story of a golden retriever mother raising five or four or five tiger cubs.

And then they became full-grown tigers.

and you know the the golden retriever that mother was still a mother to them like they could they could maul her but they respected her like a like the and I was just like

that's still

it's just so amazing like and there's one thing that I can't stand is like

no animal should be put down because of some

some other human's mistakes or faults.

Fair decisions, yeah.

So exactly.

It's just not fair.

And then it like to me, it's just like, it's so unfair.

I just thought it doesn't sit right with me.

So

that's been the end goal of it all.

So there's one question I ask on every single episode, and I've never gotten the same answer ever before.

Before I ask it, I'm going to ask you, do you have children or do you ever want to have children?

I do want children.

So the one question I ask on every episode is, Dan, over the course of time, you're going to build up tens of millions, hundreds of millions, God willing, billions of dollars in your career from the brands, products, services that you create.

But unfortunately, at some point, you do pass away.

What percentage of that net worth do you leave to your children?

Great question.

I've heard 0%, 100%, everything in between.

You would have to be vested.

If not, then it would be donated.

But I wouldn't leave all 100%.

Probably 80%

would be donated to philanthropy, 20% would be left.

But that 20% would have to be vested based on what they achieve and how many, you know, children, right?

So.

So giving them milestones of things to do throughout the course of their life.

Marriage, at least five years to have probably like

60%

of whatever is allocated to be unlocked, unlocked, if you will.

At least, bare minimum.

Bonuses for children?

No, I would, because, again, not everybody's blessed to be able to.

So

imagine just having an infertile wife and then

your money's locked up.

That'd be terrible.

Definitely something to do with

marriage, building a family, building something something sustainable.

Care if they go to college?

No, I don't.

I want them to do something though.

And when I say do something, I mean

follow what they want to do, but not, it has to be progressive in the world, if that makes sense.

Like it has to help in some way.

Like I don't want you to be,

I don't know if it's bad to say, but like kind of like a hippie, if you will, just like free roaming around doing ayahuasca in like Columbia.

I need you to be proactive and be a part of something or start building something and and whatnot but um

yeah it's such a good question I don't I I would say

you broke it down that was good a lot of people can't even say with clarity like the 80 20 concept you just mentioned or having parameters some people say very detailed of like the concept of what they want but they can't say numbers or they say the number but they don't know why like it's it's been very interesting I've asked the same question 200 times literally 200 times And I'm always fascinated because

some little pieces of it evolve how I think about it, right?

How I wanna do it, how I wanna structure over the course of time.

And so I'm always fascinated to hear it because no one's gonna have the same answer.

And no one just ever just says like, yeah, 100% or yeah, 0%.

There's a reason behind it, because it's such a big decision.

Right.

Because it's part of our legacy.

It's part of our,

you know, when we have children.

And the other reasoning is like, some people think it spoils the child.

Some people think it's, you know, changes their, it, it steals from them like their skills and their their grit and things that come with it and most people that I know and most people I interviewed didn't come for money it's very rare you know I just think about it like the the tension it could create like if I have four kids and again if we go with the vesting idea what if one of them can't find love or just doesn't isn't you know has a hard time like then it creates animosity for the others.

So it it's a really hard decision to

exactly.

So'cause not everyone's created the same and you you shouldn't have to punish somebody because of something that they you know they lack so it's a hard it's a hard question are there any products brand services that you have going on um not to the public really sell anything to the public just exist

okay uh where can people find you on social what are the things anything uh at de silva on instagram um and some random youtube channel i'll create again so not my old one just a new one i'll be i'll be around

you guys

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