Show Notes:

Learning on the entrepreneurial job. “When I say I was thrown into it, I’m throwing myself into the fire because there’s no other choice and there’s nobody else to look at. It’s like me and my business partner or my friend. That was it. There were no high-level CEOs. There were no masterminds and mentors and podcasts. There were books that existed, but I wasn’t in the reading mode. I was a 23- or 24-year-old kid. I’m in full steam ahead mode. I learned from experience and asking the advice. There were mentors in the fact that in every meeting I was asking questions and advice all the time, because the meetings were long — like really long, because again, it’s legal accounting, SEC, public filings, investment bankers, huge amounts of capital; there’s a lot involved — and so during those meetings, I was asking questions left and right, and I never tried to act like I knew anything or everything, especially in the room with all these smart people.”

Turning rock bottom into a learning opportunity. “That moment made me realize the scoreboard is a scoreboard. My loss is there, whether I want to sit and blame my competitors, or blame the government, or blame the media. You can blame whoever you want. The scoreboard is the scoreboard. The L is still there, however you want to call it. And so, instead of sitting on the floor and crying, I was licking my wounds and moved forward.”

Why do joint ventures? “I like collaborations. I like 50/50 joint ventures. I don’t do any deals unless I have a quarterback, which is like the CEO. I don’t do anything, no matter what, unless there’s a quarterback to run that business. Even when I have joint ventures, I want someone that’s going to be running the business and running the operation. I just don’t have any greed factor. I’d rather just split up 50/50, even if I’m going to do more of the work or put up more of the money. I mean, I’m negotiating against myself here. People are listening that might do deals with me later. I just want to make cool things happen. As long as I know someone can run it efficiently, to me, it’s like, what’s the difference? I don’t want to say I’m not doing it for the money, but I’m not really doing it for the money on most of these deals because I just like the action and what they do, what they create, etc.”

What to look for in an Operator. “The human factor is that they’re passionate about what the thing is — whether it’s sports cards, live events, acai bowls, social media, whatever that thing is. Then I look for are they like ride or die? And ride or die means it’s 11 pm at night, they’re at home, and we just found out that the water pipe exploded over the convention booth. Do they get up and try to fix it and figure it out? Or are they like, ‘Hey, I’ll call the place at 8 am tomorrow, and I’m sure we’ll just get it cleaned up.’ Big difference in humans, right? And so I’m looking for people that are ride or die, that are willing to do whatever it takes to take care of things, and they actually want to do it proactively.”

How Dan defines success. “It’s freedom. The freedom of like being able to do whatever you choose to do at any time, day and night, and that freedom is hard to come by. In order to gain freedom, financially, you have to have some type of money — again, it’s all relative to your situation, but some type of money that can allow you to be able to make decisions based off of wants and not needs. From a time perspective, you have to have people that you trust. If I didn’t have quarterback CEOs to run these things, I would just have a bunch of businesses that were running morning, noon, and night. If I wanted to not answer my phone for the whole day or the whole weekend, everything would still run. I’m just the cherry on top or helping or connecting or giving some advice, but ultimately they would all still run. And so,  my definition is I have the ability to choose any time to go to any city anywhere, and if I want to make the world’s largest toy drive, the world’s largest pizza festival, the world’s largest mastermind, the world’s largest sports card store chain or acai bowl chain, whatever that thing is, I can do it because of the decades of work that led to that to give me the time and ability to make those situations happen.”

Just get started. “When people have these hesitations, they’re like, ‘Yeah, one day I’ll do that when things are right.’ There’s never a perfect time. There’s never a perfect time to get married. There’s never a perfect time to have a kid. There’s never a perfect time to start a business. You just start. You just get started in that moment. I think it’ll change a lot of people’s lives if they realize that not that much bad can happen from getting started on your dreams. Like, you’re going to learn something, even if it doesn’t work out. Things aren’t going to work out, like some of the stories we talked about. As long as more things work out than don’t, and some of them have that big, huge win for you, you have a really fun, fulfilling life.”

What does being a game changer mean to you? “The way you become a game changer is you literally go change the game. How do you do that? Analyze what’s right and wrong about an industry. Analyze what’s right and wrong about a business. Research everything about it and see what do people like, what do they not like, what do they hate, what are they amazed by of that niche thing — and go do that. Do way less of what people don’t like. Do way more of what they do like. All of a sudden, you’re going to stand out. You’re going to change the game.”

RESOURCES & REFERENCES
Levi’s
Gary Vaynerchuk
Qualcomm Stadium
Cracker Jack
Ruby’s Diner
San Diego State University (SDSU)
MAGIC Trade Show
Las Vegas, Nevada
Red Bull
Monster
Rockstar
Facebook
CNN
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Forbes Magazine
Maxim
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
Dan Bilzerian
Steve Aoki
Playboy
PokerStars
Full Tilt
Elevator Night
Costa Rica
Bellagio
Wheel of Fortune slot machine
Jeopardy slot machine
Malta
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Absolute Poker
Edward Fishman
Hard Rock Casino
Steve Wynn
Model Citizen Fund
COVID-19 pandemic
Everbowl
San Diego, California
Jeff Fenster
ICON Meals
Todd Abrams
QVC
Chicago, Illinois
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WhatsApp
Lewis Howes
Logan Paul
Pokémon cards
eBay
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The Wyld Jungle
The Real Tarzann
Miami, Florida
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Bedros Keuilian
Operation Blacksite
Harvard University
ClickUp
Alex “A Rod” Rodriguez
Magic Johnson
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Aspire Tour
100 Dollar Dinner Club
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