Big Brass Balls and a Bag of Cash with Brad Blazar

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We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and caching checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up guys? Welcome to right about now. We're always getting right. And it's always about what is important today and now in business and marketing. And look, we're all about trailblazing. That's what we got. Brad Blazer here today. What's up, Brad? How you doing there, Ryan? It's great to be here with you. Yeah, man. It's good to have you. I'm, I'm ready to talk about how to raise some capital. You know, we always need it. People thought you don't ever know what you got. To start Odin businesses, you never know when you have to raise some money. You know, it's a good, good skill to have in the entrepreneur tool bag. Whether you end up using it or not, it's important that you understand it because you'll probably get involved with something even if you're not like the primary owners that a capital raises happen and understand the dynamics of all that. It should definitely sort of be in every entrepreneur's tool kit. And even if you're not an entrepreneur, understanding how business work, how money exchange his hands for some of these deals happening. I'm sure you could talk about that quite a bit, Brad. Absolutely, absolutely. You know, it's funny. I've been doing it for so long. It's one of those things I can almost do naturally in my sleep. But I think it's one of the skills that a lot of people just overlook. You know, so many entrepreneurs, business owners, they want to do something big. They go to the bank. They don't get approved. They either don't have credit. They don't have the experience. They kind of give up on those dreams. And you know, never pursue the things that they're capable of. And they never really realize that every day when we get out of bed, we're pretty much surrounded by all the money we need. We just call these other people investors. And most people just don't understand how to build the interest, how to talk to people. You know, the things they need to have, obviously, to do it successfully. And, you know, having literally coach thousands of people and raised over $2 billion dollars, it's just one of those skills where I tell people, look, my past helps build your future, man. That's one way to learn how to do this. Let's have a conversation about it. Knowledge is power. And wisdom is at the king of the castle. So, Brad, let's set the table at least for a minute for an audience to talk about where some of that wisdom came from. I know you're in Texas. Ex oil guy. Are you ever in an ex oil guy? Are you always an old guy? You're always an oil guy, man. I'll tell you, I love the business. I still love getting out there in the oil patch and I still invest in it. Got a lot of friends that are doing really well. And I think once it gets under your skin, it's always there. You know, I'm going to give you, I'm going to age myself a little bit and talk about like growing up, the Beverly Hill billies. Texas tea. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Growing up. Oh, great. You know, old death row shooting or whatever, dude, whatever they're doing. But now the, yeah, the oil boom. I can just, I think to this of, you know, that's not how it works. But like, we're my mind goes thinking. You're going to shoot your shotgun down there at the earth and oil just comes out of the ground. I wish it was that easy. You know, like I think as a kid, you're going, oh, yeah, buy some land and find some oil on it. It's nothing. What is that? But we're going to talk a lot about capital. But what is the state of the old business? It's actually pretty damn good right now. You know, I think that you look at kind of what's going on over there in the Middle East. There's a lot of people obviously thinking that if Israel does go in there and kind of bomb the Iranian oil fields, or at least take out some of the distribution there, that oil prices are definitely going to spike. And, you know, you kind of have seen that a little bit in some of the stocks and some of the ETFs that track oil prices. But overall, it's, you know, doing roll on here's the thing. I keep telling people, yeah, you know, we get Tesla, we get Rivian, you know, everyone's kind of going in that direction. We're never ever going to get rid of fossil fuels in a lifetime. Like we always, you know, have a need to have oil, you know, and up there in New England or wherever the hell you are, and they'll be doing coal or whatever it is they do. They'll always be, you know, people that are doing coal. But we will always have a need for fossilized fuels around the world. And so, you know, as they say, you know, in real estate, there's only so much. Obviously in oil, there's only so much oil, you know, in the ground. And it's a depleting resource. So, you know, I think that the future outlook for the energy space is pretty healthy. Obviously, a lot of it is tied politically to, you know, who obviously wins the election. But overall, the people that are in it, let's just say they ain't complaining. Yeah. I've mentioned to the old people that are hurting. Honestly, that. But also, that's what they have. That's what those jets before. Yeah. Look at all this. Oh, money. So, man, you got to have that gold Rolex had big old Stenson hat and then fancy ostrich boots. Yeah, exactly. Are we a Cowboys fan or a Houston fan? More of the Houston side. I actually knew about Adam's fairly well before he passed away. But was a good guy. You know, he made his fortune in the oil field. And, you know, obviously, of course, only oilers. And, you know, that was a whole big issue. But the city of Houston, not wanting to build him a new stadium. And he just kind of stuck up the middle finger and said, I'll just take my team someplace else. And the oilers became the Tennessee Titans. And, you know, great guy. But, you know, I'm more on the football side. I follow, I follow football more. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I used to watch the Cowboys back in the old 8-minute Landry days. Oh, yeah. When you look at coaches and you look at the grades, you know, the guys like Landry that used to be always out there in a suit coat. You know, he's had the hat on. Yeah, yeah. Phil Jackson, you know, running up and down the sidelines and the lakers. He'd have on his, you know, jacket and stuff like that. You know, not kind of missed those guys. You know, those were the good old boys. You know, you see guys doing like Nick Sabin and some of the grades. But, you know, old Phil Jackson. Oh, he's fed on that double breasted. And of course, Landry with his hat. That's when I like the Cowboys back in those days, but they've changed a lot since then. Yeah. Yeah. They have old Jerry Jones sometimes. Yeah. You know, he doesn't know. He can't get out of his way sometimes. But I mean, he's been successful. So who am I to judge? Yeah. But I will say he has got more casual in the sidelines with the warm up suits and whatever else they're wearing. You know. But you still looks like they got a winner this year. They got a good quarterback and they got a good coach there in Ryan. No. So, uh, yeah, might be a good time to be a Houston fan. But, uh, so let's talk about some capital. Like, where did your passion for, you know, sharing knowledge around this come from? And, you know, like some of your own endeavors that led to all this wisdom. You know, it's really funny. I went to school not to be in the oil business. I actually was studying architecture. And, uh, had I not stumbled into the oil industry. I'd probably be designing buildings and houses and stuff like that. But, you know, just one day responded to an ad and went to work in the oil field. And, uh, the CEO of the company kind of took a liking to me. I'm showing me how to raise capital from investors. And so that's what I did. And after a couple of years, just kind of decided to that on myself. I started a company, built it up over the course of about a decade. Great business to be in. And then, uh, you know, as I say, uh, the shit hit the fan. Man, oil places plummeted. Uh, the tax laws dramatically changed. And so investment capital dried up. That's when I went back to school and I came out. And, uh, I realized that my primary skill. What I was really good at was knowing how to raise capital. And so I just kind of said to myself, I bet that's a skill that a lot of people pay a lot of good money for. And, uh, it's been great. Work for some of the biggest financial services firms. Uh, in the world, some of the largest multi-billion dollar real estate sponsors. Now, phrase, you know, two billion dollars. And today even raised money for deals in my own. We just put an offering yesterday on a 252 unit self storage property. Just worth your Houston year. Kind of keep my fingers crossed that the seller likes the offer. We get to raise some capital and take down that deal. But, you know, the whole thing about raising capital. This is actually in the book, Rich Dad Portid, Robert Kiyosaki says. The key to really building sizeable wealth. Uh, it's not to try to do it on your own. Because, you know, it'll take you such a much longer time. It's to understand the principle of OPM, other people's money. And when you understand that fundamental principle, like we're talking earlier, right? You know, there's, there's, there's wealth as knowledge or there's knowledge as power. Um, you know, once you understand that and then more importantly, you know how to do that. Ryan, the sky is the limit. I mean, I know guys literally that are in their 30s, 40s that are sitting there with companies where, you know, they have multiple hundreds of millions of dollars. Uh, that they own and control and, you know, they're set. Yeah. Is, uh, it's always interesting to me. I mean, I'm not sure where I own multiple business and none of them with anyone else. And I will, I will both be a great lesson for, for this episode. Probably, I mean, I've built eight bigger companies. I'm doing well, but I can't sit here and deny. Well, so what you're saying that if I could let go of some control and think about it to a degree, you'll probably give me a lesson on that as well that maybe, you know, things could go faster. And I think for a lot of people, it's not just control. I don't even consider myself necessarily control freak as much as just, I like my own freedom. I like controlling my own time and no one telling me otherwise. And the moment I, you know, I think the notion for me is always the moment you have someone else's money in the deal. You don't control your own time. I don't know if that's true either, but enlighten me. Well, you gotta realize that, you know, most of these guys that are doing stuff that are, you know, real estate entrepreneurs or they're raising money to buy businesses, they're not giving up control. You know, the investors are all passive. So they have absolutely no say in the business. They really don't have any ownership in the business. Think of it this way, your company is the sponsor of a fund or another entity that's raising money to do something else. So if your company is up here, this is not what people are investing in. They're investing in what your company is sponsoring that they invest in. And so, you know, if I've got a real estate investment firm and I want to go out and buy this apartment building, I'll syndicate that building and I'll bring investors in to go out and buy that. And now my company owns an interest in that building alongside the investors. Or if we're going to buy a business, my company owns an interest alongside investors that now own and operate that business. And I get my proportionate share for putting the deal together, but the investors themselves don't have any control of my parent company. They don't have any say in really what it is we're doing. They're totally passive and what they're essentially doing is they're relying on my expertise, my track record, the team of people that we put together and assembled. And so it's a beautiful thing. What's that? So define the difference, you know, something like with real estate where you're buying an asset, you know, versus the idea of a business. Or like, okay, I use my own businesses. I want a digital ad agency, I own a media network, I own co-working soon to be franchise. You know, like there's a few different things. So those don't have necessarily the asset at the center of it, i.e. land or something like that. Walk me through that path, you know, the idea of business versus the tangible, you know, of real estate. Well, I mean, let's agree that if I'm going out and I'm buying something like an apartment building, at the end of the day, that is a tangible asset, but it's a business, right? The attendance that live there are my customers. So much like your business where you have customers that you've got to keep happy, I got to keep them happy. So they keep paying rent and they want to continue living there. So I look at real estate assets as a business, I'm buying a business, cash flows, you know, and all the other reasons, expenses, things like that. When you look at raising money from investors to buy businesses, and then maybe buy another business that's complimentary, you start building something very similar to maybe like a private equity firm, right? Like when you look at a private equity firm, what a private equity firms ultimately own, they own businesses, and they scale those businesses. There's a lot of synergy where businesses are complimentary to one another, and we see a lot of people that will do that. They'll go out, for example, and start a company and they're like, I just want to raise money and buy cash flowing businesses, you know, things that are boring, let cash flow make profit like laundromats, HVAC companies, power washes. And so imagine if you've got this company in over a couple years, you now own and operate 8, 10, 12 cash flowing businesses, and you know, you're doing pretty good. So there's really no difference in raising money from investors to buy cash flowing businesses or buy real estate assets, because at the end of the day, real estate is a business. Just, you know, you look at it a little differently. What about like, and I know there's more risk, because I have friends that are literally knee deep in this, you know, buying existing business. You got all the baby boomers kind of ready to sell, and you got a lot of these businesses that are cash flow positive. Yeah, so I have some friends that are very heavy in that side of buying, you know, businesses that are already proven. Right. Well, not like capital raising for ideas of business, you know, like of, okay, maybe it's within an existing industry. Right. But sort of like, the theory of the idea of the business, but you don't necessarily have a million customers built in day one. You know, like, or even a thousand or a hundred. Right. Talk to me about that evaluation, and do you counsel that side of capital raising? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, in my book, I talk about, you know, the different types of investors. When you're raising money, you have to look at kind of the avatar. And where you are in the growth curve, you know, you a startup, are you a more mature business? Are you kind of on a trajectory where you've been around a couple of years and have a track record, prior performance? And so when you look at a true startup, you know, somebody that's got this idea that's really unfounded or unproven, you know, you're primarily looking for venture capital firms. They invest in startups or, you know, maybe you're looking for what we call an angel investor. That's typically a very wealthy person that may have been a business owner that sold their business, you know, and now there were, I don't know, you know, $10, $20, $50 million. They're willing to take those types of risks because they know if they could hit a home run, you know, obviously the return on investment is going to be substantial. But when you look at the different types of investors, you know, family offices, private equity, venture capital, each one of these different groups likes to focus on different things. Private equity firm likes to buy traditionally existing cash flowing businesses. They come in, they put in some capital, they make some management tweaks, they scale the business, then they ends it. The venture capital firm knows, okay, we're going to invest in five companies. Realistically, we're going to lose money on one. We're probably going to get singles and doubles on the other three. And then that one, boom, is the home run that makes up for the others. And that's just the investment model. And so it depends when you're a business owner and you're going out there trying to race capital. That the first thing you do is you might identify the type of investor that you want to be focusing your efforts on. Because if you're out there, you know, for example, with a startup and you're talking to investors over here that like to invest in more season, more established businesses. Chances are you're not going to be very successful because your message is not related to that audience. Yeah. And to that end, and I think that's part of it, people might be listening. So identifying the right people to target. But even more so, should people when raising capital have different expectations for kind of back to what I said, be it control, be it, you know, whatever it might be, depending on the stage of the business. Whether it's start up established, but unrealized. And then maybe, you know, towards the end of the cycle, but steady. Absolutely. I think that if you're coming in more on the earlier stage and you're taking on more risk, right? You definitely want a higher return because there's more risk. If you're investing in something that's a little bit more mature, that's a little bit more proven. The the the host or the sponsor or the person that is offering that investment doesn't have to give up this much. Or offer a significant return because they're like, look, man, you know, this is not nearly as risky as investing in the startup. That's not yet proven. So when you look at investing, there's, you know, this theory, we call it the risk adjusted rate or return more risk, more return. And obviously, as people get older, as they mature, their risk profile changes, you know, people that are in their late 20s, 30s, some degree in their early 40s, they can afford to take risk early in life. Their attitude is like, look, man, I'm making great money. If I lose 50 hundred grand, I can earn that back over the next couple of years or my other investments will replenish that. But when I get up into my late 50s and 60s, I'm much more conservative. Why? Because I'm beyond my peak earning years or maybe I'm a couple years away from retirement. So I got to play it a lot safer and I got to go into things that don't have that same risk profile. Yep. That's a higher risk, the higher reward, you know. And a lot of times, you know, people are willing to take those calculated risks. But at the end of the day, you really got to do diligence on the people you're getting in bed with, the people that you're investing with. You know, I see so many people out there doing stuff and I look at people that are investing with them. And I just model and I said, man, this is going to blow up because they don't have really a foundation for some of the things in place that a guy like me knows has been doing this so long. They need to have in place. And so, you know, the most important thing really is the regulatory and the compliance side when you take somebody else's money and you do something with that to create a return on investment for them. You're in the security business. I don't mind. I don't care if it's two investors or whether it's a hundred investors. And so, you know, you get state regulators, you got, of course, the SEC. And you don't want to get on their bad side because that can get real ugly real fast. Yeah. What's the, maybe tell me everybody likes stories. Talking with Brad Blazer. I know you do, brother. I saw how I wanted to go here. Tell me, you know, both maybe a good one and a bad one and maybe, and maybe a bad one was just going to boring, but it made a lot of money. But a good one might be a blow up. I don't know, but tell me something. Tell us some good stories of some stuff you've done on the capital side or things you've seen that, you know, would be interesting. Yeah. So, you know, back when I was about a 26, 27 year old cocky little kid in the oil business, you know, live in high on the hog, you know, had the Porsche, had the nice watch, had a nice house. I had this very wealthy doctor. Okay. The guy was a retired neurosurgeon. He told me that he was a business partner of Sheldon Adelson. Right. The guy, of course, that just passed away that owned the Sam's corporation. Yeah. But for whatever reason, the guy would just not invest with us. You know, I don't know what it was. I think it might have been the fear of investing in a dry hole in just, you know, losing the whole investment. So I'm like, look, you know, doctor, come on out here. You know, meet me. Go out in the field with us. We'll show you the whole operation. We'll get you to a place to comfort where hopefully you can make a better decision. And so I said, you know, what are lunches? I said, oh, no, no, I got a private jet. I'll come out on my own jet. So I knew this guy was a major player. You know, I come into the airport. You know, I was playing lands. He taxes in, gets out, introduces himself. You know, I get them in my nice suburban. Go out to the oil field. We spend the day, treat them to lunch, goes home. And again, just when not invest. And so I had my sales team that worked for him. And I always told my sales team, you remember the first time you climbed up the ladder to the high dive at that neighborhood pool. And you crawled out to the end and you're like, whoa, you know, if you look back and there's a line of kids going, jump, you pussy. It ain't that hungry. Finally, you know, it's about 36 o'clock. And you know, what I used to do, Ryan, is I used to let my guys go home at three. Couple days we'd come in. We get some beers. We get some pizzas. We sit there dialing out to the west coast or dialing to Hawaii. Because there's a five hour time, dear friends. Dr. Schnecke just takes two things to invest in oil well. Then he said, what? I said, big brass balls and lots of money, dude, which of the two don't you have? I just didn't have time. And I'm sitting there. There's silence. And he goes, he goes, tell me again, Brad, how much are three units in your drill? I said, doctor, go hit your checkbook. Welcome aboard. And then you became one of my best investors, Ryan. But, you know, I rang the bell and I got my sales team together. And I told him, man, you guys have my permission to use this closing line anytime you choose to. Because it will absolutely work. And he became one of my best investors, really great guy. But, you know, the whole thing about getting people to make a buying decision. Sometimes, you know, you got to squeeze the harness a little bit and kick them where it hurts. No, people think with their head and they buy with their heart. And Brianna, I'm telling you right now to make some sure notes. The name of this episode is big brass balls and a bag of cash. I think that's one of the mad blazer. That's a really good one. You know, the funny one, too, is I had a guy that came to work with me. I was looking to hire some closers and get them on my team. And, you know, my office at the time was in a huge, very prestigious office building. Like we had the whole third floor of a nice building in downtown Austin. And everybody in the building is pretty much suits. It firms like credential-based securities, big law firms, etc. So everyone's all dressed up. So this guy, probably in his mid-30s, shows up for an interview. And he looks like Chowder. And he had on jeans with holes in the knees, workbooks that were covered in dust and mud, a fume and chew mustache, the mallet. I mean, he was a train wreck. And the most people in the interview never would have just taken place. But, you know, I started interviewing him, got him some coffee. And I finally just said, you know, hey, Jack, why do you want to come to work for me? And his answer was probably the best answer I've ever heard. He just said, look, Mr. Blazer, you know, real humble, real simple. But my wife and my daughter have real big dreams and real big visions. And I just wanted to give them everything in life that they deserve. And I was like, wow, like this guy will do just about anything for his wife and his daughter, who he loves. So I said, man, I'll take a big chance because, you know, you don't look the part. But if you can come back here, come Monday morning, I'll put you to work. So after being in the office and seeing where he'd be working, you think he'd show up better. He showed up the same way. Here I am, Monday morning. And I'm looking at Joe Derb going, how in the hell is this guy going to get on the phone and convince people to send him 100,000, 200,000 looking like a train wreck. And he said, they're going, man, teach me something. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to do this. And so I said, come with me. We got downstairs, put them in my sports car. I took them to the department store, treated them the two suits, took them in my barber. And I said, hey, man, clean this guy. A little bit of a game of Hollywood makeover. You see, I'm TV. So, you know, next day he comes in and, you know, if you know what the expression means swag, he has some swag. He was feeling pretty good about himself, you know. And literally I taught him everything I teach people. And that year he was $25 million for an affordable million dollars in commission. And, you know, he was sporting a nice little stainless and gold Rolex. And the big off Texas belt buckle that, you know, you see all the guys with. And we're still great friends. Really, really good guy. Definitely changes life for the better. Hey, man. You know, dress for success. But really, it's really less about dress for success. And more about changing his mindset, I think. It sounds like you had to get in his head that he need to think of himself in a different way. You know, elevate, elevate the game and give him some confidence. You know, it's good. And look, you know, knowledge is power. Knowledge is growing. You know, back in those days, you know, I don't know if you remember, but you know, old Dallas was the biggest show on TV. And everybody wanted to be old J.R. Oh, J.R. Till he got a shot. You can see their chopping on his cigar. You know, he'd have on his little hat and be on the telephone pitch and oil deals. And I think in his mind, he just saw himself as Bobby Ewing or J.R. Ewing. And, you know, that was the guy he actually became. I mean, 25 million dollars for a guy to risk that kind of money coming from his past. That's a major accomplishment. But the guy worked hard. He did everything I told him to do. So tell people if I can teach old Joe dirt, I don't raise 25 million dollars. I can teach just about anybody. Oh, talking with Brad Blazer. He is the capital catalyst to show he's got a podcast and capital school, which we're going to talk about here shortly. What's the, can you make money just raising? You just kind of answered the question with with old Joe dirt. I remember a lot of several things from this episode, brass balls, bags of cash and Joe dirt. But the, you could make some money, just raise a capital if you don't have your own. It sounds like if you're good at it. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people do that. Ryan, you know, you can become what we call the coGP in other people's deals. You know, just say, look, man, I just want to raise capital for you. Your experience, you're the operator. And, you know, what we do is we give up some of the deal, give it to that person that brings some of the capital. Of course, the other thing you can do is, you know, you can study and get your securities licenses. And then you can get paid a commission on what you raise. And so a lot of people do that as well. They're become what we call placement agents. But yeah, you can make a really, really good living, depending on, of course, how much money you can raise. And the ability to do that. And then bring that capital to somebody else's deal as a coGP, you know, now you're participating in the deal. You're getting pass of income. You know, you're getting the upside appreciation of that business or that piece of real estate. And, you know, that's really attractive to the right people. You can really do well. And we know a lot of people that actually do exactly that. What's the biggest misconception in raising capital, perhaps, you know, like the people assume, like, what bugs are you squashing? You know, like every day, like of misconceptions. Well, I mean, I think a lot of people think, oh, I got to have great hair or I've got to have a track record. Or, you know, I've got to have done this and I've got to have done that. And, you know, I say bullshit all of that. You know, here I was a little 23 old cocky kid that didn't know the first thing about drilling an oil well. You know, the first thing about building multi-million dollar business. All I knew how to do was just raise capital. That I could find the team, right? You get a CPA, you get an attorney, you build the team of people. A couple of raising is a team sport. You know, most investors are going to look at somebody. And if you're doing everything in the business, there's going to be down. And, you know, I've established some pretty good relationships with some of the sharks. And, you know, I've talked to Kevin here, he didn't about this. And Robert Hurtjevack. And they said, look, man, you know, as we all know, a lot of great people come into the shark tank. They're PhDs, they're doctors, and they don't get a deal. And it's not because of them, it's because of one word. It comes down to execution. Can you execute on what you're trying to do? And if we see down that, naturally, why would we want to invest? And so when you're talking to an investor, what you have to be able to communicate is, hey, the collective experience of my team is this. We've done these things. Our track record is this. And so you eliminate the uncertainty that allows an investor potentially to move forward. Because at the end of the day, kind of like you said earlier, you know, people invest emotionally. They invest in people they know, like, and trust. And so if you're good at building relationships and understand how to do that, the world becomes your oyster. But I think it really comes down to that. I mean, we have a lot of people literally that are in their 20s that are raising millions of dollars. And these people are financially set. They're not even 30 yet. Like I was at an event speaking a couple of years ago when the host of the event said, hey, I want to point out a kid here in this audience. He said, oh, where the hell are you? This little, you know, Middle Eastern dude popped up. He said, tell the audience how much real estate you only said about $140 million. He said, oh, I have 28. And I was like, my head just, I was like, shit. Get an even 30 yet. He's already sitting there with $140 million real estate portfolio. You know, with investors, obviously, you know, he's a network of investors because he's been doing it for a couple of years. But, you know, here's the problem. I'm so pissed off at our educational system because we don't teach people how to become financially independent. What we do is we teach people how to assimilate and fit in with the rest of society, which is get your asset job, work your 40 to 50 years, script and save and hopefully you'll have a decent retirement. The option, which a lot of my buddies, you know, you probably know many of them like the Carlos Reyes is and, you know, basically, you know, the Nick Perry's the world. They're like, no, screw that shit, man. Work your ass off for three to five years. And I'll show you can be done in five to seven years. Boom. Yeah. You just go out and post sale or you're getting some real estate meals like we do and you get some positive income. Then you can double down and start focusing on the wealth creation. Or like you're doing, you just start building some businesses. You get one business to multiple seven figures and you focus on another than another. And you just, you know, keep doing that. And that's, that's the answer. We don't teach people in our country how to be entrepreneurs. No. And I have four boys that are young. And I look, the education setup system is set up to make you average. That's it. That's it. Average. It's, and it's set up on memorizing knowledge that now, yeah. I mean, we had, I love it. The experience is going to make me rich. Yeah. Like, yeah, it's like, I get it. They need the discipline of memory and the lessons. Like, I believe in some of the lessons of school, you know, like that it teaches you to discipline. They're going to class the structure of it, but the content of it is outdated. And I have a wife that's in the education system, a principal to middle school. God bless her. You know, like, and I think she's crazy because she doesn't have to do it, but she does it. And, but I just think it's so outdated because we're learning things and I get it. Oh, we had calculators 30 years ago, but we still learn math. Yeah. But now the knowledge is so there and I'm not saying you shouldn't have a core level of understanding of certain, like, I don't know, education that is classical education, but it, that's, that switch needs to be happening a lot faster to how you make an above average life in 2025 with this education and not, you know, how you learn to be average in 1984. Right. Nothing great. You know, I mean, I, I can literally see a bunch of ballers all partnering up, you know, you get the Patrick Bet Davids, you got the Milets, the Cardones, the Bradleys, the you, me and we create something called a wealth economy. And it just becomes basically a two-year university. We charge people basically 30, 40 grand, they pay tuition. They come out the other end and boom, man, you know, they're doing stuff, they're investing in real estate, they're buying businesses, they know how to raise capital. I mean, literally, we could change a lot of people's lives. And I think that's one of the reasons that coaching and mentoring is such a big business today. A lot of people out there starting to realize, man, I don't need to go to college and screw that shit. That ain't been working for most people. I'm going to get on YouTube. I'm going to start listening to podcasts. I'm going to start getting in proximity to some of these guys that have already been there, don't they? And it gets down to basically this concept is, you know, let's break down the barriers and turn them into breakthroughs and let's use people's paths that have done a lot of stuff and allow that to build people's future because you know, that's, that's what I'm all about. I told people, man, you know, you're paying me a lot of money from a past, like I've raised two billion dollars, you know, I know how to do this a little bit. Yeah. Exactly. And you've been through the, you know, I tell people like, you're paying, you're paying more from, yeah, you're paying more from my failures than my successes because I'm going to teach you what not to do exactly unintended consequences of mistakes and talk with Brad Blazer. Talk to me about capital school. I know we've been talking to dancing all around it, but let's get this in specifics. Yeah. Oh, I love it. Yeah. We got people all around the globe. You know, if you told me when we started this thing that I'd be sharing stages with some of the most famous people and, you know, you know, building multiple seven figure businesses, I would have said, yeah, right. But, you know, here we are, three books later, you know, top follow podcast, you know, speaking all over the place. We got students all around the globe, you know, it's not just here in the U.S. we got people in Australia, New Zealand, over in the UK, Canada, Middle East. It's pretty cool because when we get on Zoom in the day, you know, I'll be talking to someone there. It's already the next day in the morning, over in the UK, New Zealand, and so it really gives us kind of this global perspective of what's going on around the world and, you know, I kind of hate to say it, but we have become the laughing stock of the globe. You know, people around the world are just laughing at all this political bullshit between Harris and Trump and just how our country is just kind of that war domestically. And then we see all the other stuff going on around the world as well. But, you know, it's really just kind of this global perspective. The cool thing about it is there is a need, I believe, to race capital. Here's why. I don't know if you follow or you know, my good buddy, Coach Michael Bert, who talks about activating people's prey drive and really inspiring people. But I believe that most people have a dream or desire to do more in life. Like you got this big goal. There's something inside you where you know there's this other gear that you're capable of doing so much more. And I talk to people, I'm like, like, like, like, what's your big thing, man? Like, what would you really prefer to be doing if you weren't doing this? Oh, man, I'd love to start a restaurant where I love to buy business or I'd love to go out and buy real estate on level. What's holding you back? Here's the funny thing, right? It's not the fear. Nine out of 10 times they don't have fucking two nickels to rub together. And I'm like, you're letting the fact you don't have money hold you back from your dreams. Like, do you not realize just go out there and raise the money from investors? That's something I could teach you how to do in a matter of a couple of months. And then when we do it, boom, there they go. They buy that restaurant or they start that business. And so the whole premise of our platform is really geared about this transformational change that we can bring about to help people's big goals or big dreams become a reality. Because it's not the fear. It's that those goals kind of get diminished and you ask, like you said earlier, to a place of average. You just like give up. This is all life's going to give me. This is like, you know, God's dream or whatever you want to call it if you believe in that kind of stuff. It's my predestined future. Well, shit, it is. Go out and create the future that you define and go out there and do the big things in life that you dream of. And there are industries out there that are willing to help you get there. I'll tell you this, Brad, that what you just said and like back to what you said earlier about execution. Let's not, for anyone listening, let's not, let's not like high-duty punches here. Like, it's not easy to do anything and ideas are cheap, like everybody's got an idea. But not everybody wants to build the execution plan and the confidence plan if it's something new to sell or if you've got an existing business, you know, building the structure and having the true execution plan for how that growth would take place again and selling and trying to raise capital. Because I think I think the misconcept because I get this a lot, I'll, hey, how many DMs or texts or, you know, being what I'm in and what I do and exposure, I get a lot of people telling me ideas. And I'm like, you know, that's a great idea, you know, but there's no real substance behind how to like, I had that idea, like in the shower two years ago. Like, I love it. I'm with you. It's an amazing idea, but having owned and operated multiple businesses now, like ideas, most of them are cheap. Right. Well, I think the other big issue and I was having this conversation the other day with a good body of mind, everybody today is looking for an easy way out, man, you know, we're on a digital society, everyone's connected around the world to their damn phones, the internet and everybody wants it done for themselves. They want someone else to do it. Most people are just not willing to put in the work. Let's face it, you know, raising couples, hard work, building a business like you have, hard work. Most people just don't want to do the work. And, you know, it's just that little effort, that little extra that makes all the big difference. It's not that it's harder. It's just you show up more frequently, you put in more effort. And, you know, I tell people, like when I see someone walking down the damn beach with the six pack, man, I really admire that person because I know they busted their ass. I know it's hard work. I know they're disciplined. I know, you know, what it takes to be at that level of fitness, you know, and I'm kind of okay with my dad mod, but the funny thing is it's in everything. It's business, you know, and it's in fitness, it's in sports, it's in, you know, any decision we make, and this is, of course, Tim Grover that's coped some of the best out there. He said the one thing that separated the guys like the Jordan, the Kobe's, the Shaq's, was just one decision. They just looked at themselves in the mirror one day and they said, I'm going to put my amateurish ways aside, and I'm going to go pro in every area of my life. And they did. And if you ever read the book, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, where Covey talks about this thing called the whole person theory, we're made up of a mind, a body, or spirit, and our soul. Those dudes became pros at all four of them. Like they were great at the game, they were great in how they taught and interacted with other people. And so, you know, they became super human, but it was just because of one decision. And, you know, sometimes you have to get to a low place in your life for you to emotionally snap. And you know, Tony Robbins talks about this in his book. He's like, man, I just got to a low point, you know, I was eating mac and cheese and my life sucked. And I just snapped. And I said, no more. And look who the dude is today. Hopefully most people don't have to get that low, but, you know, again, here's the funny thing. And we've all, if he's been super successful up there with this, I mean, I see it all the time in social media, and we always have the naysayers. We always have the haters. We always have the people that comment on our post, oh, this is a scam or this is a bunch of bullshit or don't, you know, dump in mind, whatever. And I just smile on us. And then you must be at a really low point in your life to have to take a second comment on something like that. And it was actually in my lap that said, hurt people, hurt other people, think about that for a moment. I've never seen anybody that's a baller or that's doing great in life. Be little somebody else for doing something. Never. You never see that. Never. But you see all these little people that have a sucky ass life that are doing just jack shit and nothing. And they're the ones that say, oh, you know, you're a scam or a this don't work. And I'm like, dude, man, I got so many testimonials to disprove that. Like, why don't you do your research and do your fact check? Yeah. That takes work too. They're not willing to do that. That's why. But you know, it is like, and I get, I'll get on toes and you get to the success question and all that. And I don't even think I've made it. I mean, because if I, I didn't hit my goals, you know, I'm still, yeah. But I, but I answer that question, similar to what you just said, like, one day you just got to look in the mirror and go, this ain't good enough. Like I won't more like you. And we want to make it about this and about that. Make it complicated and it, it's either, that either happens for you or it doesn't and it doesn't mean you won't be happy in life if it doesn't. I'm not, who am I to judge happiness? But man, just to look back and I think you maximize potential. Well, I mean, I think I think the big reality that people have to realize is, and I always hear this, you know, it's, oh, I don't have time for that. And that is the biggest bullshit cop out. I tell people, if it's important to you, you will find the time. See, most people that, you know, are ballers and doing big things, you know, they're up at four, four, 35 o'clock, like they've got more shit done by noon. And some people will do all day and day long, you know, you get your fitness and how you just wake up an hour earlier, and now you found an hour to go out there and walk or go to the fitness center or, you know, you work an extra hour to change your schedule up. You can always find time for the shit that's important to you. So when people tell me, oh, I don't have time, I say that's the biggest cop out I've ever heard because if you really are interested in doing this, you will definitely find the time. Same thing with money, you know, price is always an issue in the absence of value. You will pay for something. If you perceive the value, you're going to get out of that to have a major impact in your life. And so a lot of it is just, you know, it's mindset, you know, it's getting around the right people, you know, and by being exposed or creating proximity to a network and listening to the right shows and reading the right books, you can definitely get on that trajectory. And the sad thing unfortunately is that, you know, you kind of say goodbye to a lot of the people in your past if they don't want to come along for that ride with you, and that's fine. I still have friends, but what I find is I have a different group of friends because we've all heard this. You become the average of the five to seven people. You spend most of your time with. You start talking about big ideas. You start talking about the execution of those ideas. Now what I've always found is little people, they talk about other people. Ryan, did you hear what so and so did last week? Did you hear about this? And they start, you know, basically gossiping, I'm fucking so down with gossiping. Oh, God. I just turn that. I don't have time for that shit. I'm most like, no, there's always hard stuff on that road. I'm like, okay, I'm in this, let's talk about what we're going to do. I will. And then it is really quickly like how we're going to get it done. I'm an execution word. It can't be more hit by but more than anything because I'm like, and even to a fault sometimes, I'm like, let's get to work. Let's get it. Let's not talking about it. Let's get there. Exactly. I'm 100% there. Absolutely. You bet. Brad, talk to me about where everybody can learn more about capital school. Keep up with you and anything else going on there. Well, I mean, I'm easy to find. If you just Google me, I pop up all over the internet. You know, there's a couple of pages there. Yep. I cast episodes, books, of course, information about our program. You know, the easiest thing is just follow me on the website. It's just my first and last name, you know, Brad Blazar.com. There are no ease in the spelling of my name. It's just Brad Blazar, B-L-A-Z-A-R. So go there and check it out. You know, follow me on Instagram. Just look for that little blue check or whatever that says you're following the right dude because we've had a couple of imposter's. And shoot me at the end. You know, love to get on a call, love to invite you to some of the events that we do throughout the year. We do some big, cool events. We do some masterminds and we just love connecting with people. I love it, brother. I love to connect some more. I become just some of those events and get involved with you. Oh, we have a blast, man. It's a lot of fun. We do a lot of really, really cool stuff. We bring in some unbelievable, I was just standing in the van out in Beverly Hills. We have William Shatton or there. I mean, how cool is it to hang out with him? Yes. And then we had we're on our test meta, you know, he's played for B-Lakers, you know, and of course, in the world of race and capital, we've got some pretty cool people. We've had Nicole Buffett, you know, Warren Buffett's granddaughter. We've had John Najari and you know, the Najari and brothers are down in Puerto Rico. They're the big option guys. You just get the beard and always wears that beany, real cool dude. So we just hang out with a bunch of really cool cats, man, because that's what it's all about. I love it, man. I really appreciate you coming on and dropping all the knowledge and look forward to staying in touch. Yeah. Well, let's get ya, you know, one of our events and let's, like you said, figure out what we can do together. You know, maybe go and buy a piece of real estate or get a big deal, we'll get you know. I like this education idea. I got an idea around that myself. I know Bradley and Andy Elliott now are partnered up. You know, these guys are some of the top sales coaches and they're some of the top real estate coaches because they've been hanging around guys like Carlos Reyes and Nick Perry and you know, all these guys have have a lifestyle, a passive income because the tenants pay rent and they live off the excess and they're like, man, you guys never work. It's like, dude, we don't have a need to work. You know, my buddy Bobby Castro, if you know Bobby and Sophie, you know, shit, they make probably 60, 90,000 a month, just all passive, just off their multi family, you know, their jet set and around, traveling all the time, you know, that's the life you can lead when you understand this OPM game and, you know, it's really funny. I said, man, do a lot of people that are not doing big things in life or that are the dream is awesome. And you're on a big powerful drug and they're like, I don't do drugs and I'm like, no, no, you're on a big powerful drug, dude. It's called Hopium. You ever heard that before? Yeah. Yeah. Hopium is not a strategy. We got to learn the better one, which is OPM. It's the same thing without the age and that's learning how to use other people's money to come build your dreams, do something big in life, but now, man, it's been a great show. Thank you so much for hosting me. It's been a pleasure. We dropped some great nuggets here and shared some really, really good, funny stories. Hopefully everybody gets a chocolate, really enjoy the episode. Five bees, baby, big brass balls and bad blazer. Appreciate you brother. Hey guys, you don't find us Ryan is right dot com because we're always right. We're always now. We're always here for you. Thank you for making us number one. We'll see you next time or right about now.