Stripping Off with Matt Haycox
Welcome to 'Stripping Off with Matt Haycox,' where we bare it all on business, money, and life. Get ready to peel back the layers of success with entrepreneur, investor, funding expert, and mentor with over 20 years of experience building and growing businesses, Matt Haycox.
Tune into steamy conversations with industry titans, celebrities, and successful entrepreneurs as they strip down their stories of triumphs, setbacks, and the raw realities of their journey to the top. Matt is going down on business, money, and life, and will take DMCs to new heights!
Stripping Off with Matt Haycox
Ross Mandell: From $1,500 to $30 Million, Prison & The Untold Story of Wall Street's Most Feared Trader.
Tell us what you like or dislike about this episode!! Be honest, we don't bite!
In this brutally honest episode, Matt Haycox sits down with Ross Mandel, a former Wall Street high-flyer who went from building a $30M empire to serving time behind bars. This isn’t just a story about money. It’s about power, addiction, ego, and redemption.
Ross opens up about how a “normal” childhood spiralled into a life driven by money, fuelled by personal tragedy, and eventually cracked wide open by government scrutiny. He shares what it was really like inside Wall Street’s golden age, how fortunes were made (and lost), how client relationships shaped everything, and what no one tells you about the financial system.
From shady legal grey areas to personal run-ins with Donald Trump, Ross doesn’t hold back. He talks openly about prison life, the brutal truth of starting over, and how he rebuilt his mindset through mentoring others on the inside.
Now? He measures success through his daughters, not a bank balance.
If you’ve ever glamorised Wall Street, this episode is your reality check.
Timestamps:
00:00: Introduction to Ross Mandel's Journey
06:50: Chasing Money and Lifestyle
12:21: The Rise to Success
21:20: Navigating Market Conditions
26:27: Turning $1,500 into $30 Million
42:09: The Birth of Sky Capital
47:10: The Power of Imitation in Wealth Creation
54:03: Surviving the Financial Crisis
01:01:29: The Flaws in Rating Agencies
01:10:39: Personal Experiences with Donald Trump
01:23:30: Life in Prison and Its Challenges
01:31:03: Teaching and Learning in Prison
01:39:48: Safety and Leadership in Prison
01:46:02: Rebuilding Life After Prison
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Welcome to Stripping Off with Matt Haycox
This isn’t your average business podcast. It’s where real entrepreneurs, celebs, and industry leaders strip back the polished PR, and get brutally honest about the journeys that made them.
Hosted by entrepreneur and investor Matt Haycox, Stripping Off dives into the raw, unfiltered realities behind success: the wins, the fuck-ups, the breakthroughs, and everything in between. No scripts. No sugar-coating. Just real talk from people who’ve lived it.
Whether you’re hustling to scale your business or just love a behind-the-scenes look at how people really make it, this podcast is your front-row seat to the truth behind the triumphs.
Who Is Matt Haycox? - Click for BADASS Trailer
Hey guys, welcome back to Stripping Off with me, Matt Haycox. Now you know, this show has never been about sugarcoating success, and today's guest, ross Mandel, might just be the most brutally honest conversation that we've had in a long, long time. Ross went from turning $1,500 into $30 million. That is, $30 million in three years. He did that on Wall Street and he then went on to do prison time. He's a former broker, he's an entrepreneur and and he then went on to do prison time. He's a former broker, he's an entrepreneur and he's a self-proclaimed survivor of the system. And, trust me, this episode is packed with that and more. We talk about the dark side of high finance, what really goes on behind the scenes in the world of brokers and billions and the price you pay when you chase success at all costs. Ross opens up about addiction, grief, ego and facing and doing a 12-year sentence and how it became the catalyst for his transformation. But this is not just a redemption story. It's a wake-up call and we get into authenticity in business, the problem with the media, mentorship, building wealth legally and, yes, his time around Donald Trump, which, by the way, was an exclusive story here on this podcast. So make sure you listen carefully for that one. We talk about the financial crash and teaching fellow inmates how to sell like sharks. So if you think resilience is built in boardrooms, this one is going to change your mind forever.
Speaker 1:Guys Haycox here, and welcome to an episode of Stripping Off with me, Matt Haycox, and this is an episode that I have been looking forward to for a long time. We've had it in the diary for maybe a few weeks, but I was looking forward to it long before then because I knew one day I would land this guy as a guest. I first heard I guest on another podcast, a podcast where I go to enjoy and pick up a lot of great guests Bradley, who was a guest on on this show in the past, but ross mandel is in the house. Unfortunately it's the virtual house, because I know if we were sat face to face we would be. We would be hours deep in conversation, sharing stories and, uh, drinking some wine, or I certainly would be anyway, because this guy has got a tale to tell and uh, and the way he tells it is awesome. I've enjoyed listening to his content before he's been here and I know I'm going to enjoy hearing stuff from the horse's mouth I don't want to take too much of Ross's story away.
Speaker 1:He's going to tell you it himself, but I would describe him as the Wolf of Wall Street before the Wolf of Wall Street existed. The Wolf of Wall Street before the Wolf of Wall Street existed. He's lived a high and low career of Wall Street, success, of ultimate downfall in a fraudulent operation that then ultimately ended up in his imprisonment, or incarceration, as they say on Ross's side of the world, and he's subsequently come out. He is a reformed character. He's teaching others, I guess, from his mistakes and the things that they need to learn. So he's an educator, he's a storyteller and he is a man who is going to entertain us all. So, ross, thanks a lot for being here, buddy, all the way across the virtual sea, and I'm really looking forward to talking to you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, matt. It's a privilege to be here and it is fairly incredible when you think about it, ron. You're on the other side of the world and we're just chatting like right, we're next door to each other. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Well, listen, I've given a bit of context to who you are. I'm sure some of my audience will have already seen you or already come across you, but where do you want to begin? How do you tell the story of who Ross was originally and what's created the man he is today, and the stories that we've got to listen to?
Speaker 2:You know I love to start my story by letting people know that I was a good kid. I was a fairly normal kid. I liked to read books. So I was academically a very, very advanced achiever, you know, in school. And I was very athletic. I was blessed with some gifts as an athlete. Early on I discovered I loved contact sports, you know, american football, and then wrestling and that turned into, you know, some sort of MMA fighting and boxing, et cetera. But I was always very fit, very athletic and I was a very, very good student.
Speaker 2:And when I was at a nice, you know, my parents were married I have a younger brother and three years younger and I grew up in a very nice middle class, upper middle class neighborhood right outside of New York City it's on Long Island, it's called the Five Towns, and my life was fairly routine and organized. And when I was 16 years old my father died right after a holiday dinner, holiday meal. He got sick during dinner he thought it was indigestion, went upstairs middle of the night, went to the hospital and he died in the hospital of a massive heart attack. And that really began a journey, I like to say, for me, through my own personal kind of hell. You know I didn't deal with it well and I immediately became a very active drug and alcohol user.
Speaker 1:I mean instantly and I mean, do you think that was an excuse, for want of a better word? I mean, I mean, you know, had everything been amazing before that point and then, for some reason, a switch happened? Or do you think there'd been something that was making you teeter on the edge and then and then, when that tragedy happened with your father, it was the permission you needed to to to let loose with whatever had been building up inside you and I've done a lot of real work.
Speaker 2:I was in psychotherapy and I spent years actively using drugs and alcohol and then I got sober through the 12-step programs. But I had actually pot, I had drank, just like a guy like you. In the neighborhood we stole some alcohol from our parents' bars, we borrowed it, we drank, we smoked in the neighborhood and you know it was a thing to do, but I wasn't particularly fond of it. It wasn't part of my life at all. That's when I say I was normal. I was a regular kid.
Speaker 2:When my, my father passed away, I was in a lot of pain. I had tremendous internal grief. I was confused. I was a very big believer in God, a just, fair and loving God. All of a sudden, greatest person I knew, the most honest, decent person I knew, was gone. And I find out over the course of the next couple of days that all my life's plans now were altered. We were living the American dream. Everything was mortgaged, leased or borrowed and we had nothing little or no equity, little or no capital, you know, planning on my dad having another great year and a better year, and he was doing all those things. He was 48 years old. My mother was 38 when he passed. I was literally traumatized.
Speaker 2:I used drugs and alcohol to medicate myself. It's what you would call a reactive addict. I wasn't in my family Nobody ever drank or did drugs. I don't have a history of alcoholism. That's another form where it's passed down from generation to generation. That's very real, but in my case, no, I was like a good kid and I was going to go to an Ivy League school and all those plans went out the window the second my father passed. So the pain, the uncertainty, et cetera.
Speaker 1:How was your relationship or interest in money at that point? I give a bit of context around it. I came from what I would describe as probably not a wildly dissimilar background to you. You know, as you're telling that story, I mean my parents were, let's say, first generation money insofar as they came from very, very poor backgrounds. You know, my father was the first person to go to university in his bloodline and he started his own business and ultimately became very successful in a business he sold when I was about 18. Now, when I say very successful, I mean, you know, relative to where he'd come from. Before we weren't flying around in private jets, but you know we had a holiday home abroad. You know he went to private school. I never wanted for anything. I guess I saw, let's say, a taste of it and I saw his success and wanted to build on it so much more.
Speaker 1:Typically, when you hear stories of successful people, particularly wildly successful people, they've come from a background of poverty and or lack of, and they really want to fight their way out of that. And it was. You know I don't have that story to tell. Everything was great. My parents couldn't have treated me better, money we couldn't have. You know, I don't have that story to tell. Everything was great. My parents couldn't have treated me better. Money we couldn't have, you know, we never went without. But I was obsessed with having so much more and ultimately since you know 12, 13, 14 years old, that you know I wanted to have my own businesses. I wanted the private jets, the bigger houses, you know, to attract the girls, and that's what sent me off on my, I guess, on my journey of of chasing money, which then ultimately, I guess, makes me make good and bad decisions at various points in my life.
Speaker 2:you know where, where was your head at that point and and what led you into making money originally I began to chase money immediately because if you're an addict or an alcoholic and you want to hang with the cool guys and the best-looking women and go to the finest places and have a cool car and go on holiday and all that, it's expensive. It was expensive, you know, 50 years ago and the price everything is just gonna get more expensive, so I never really cared too much for actual money. I have learned that, you know, there's a great difference between my attitude and the people that just basically collect money for money's sake. I was never that guy. I was the guy that money was a means to an end. It gave me a certain amount of freedom and opportunity to play in the league that I wanted to play in and I was attracted to the most beautiful girls and I wanted to play in and I was attracted to, like the most beautiful girls and I wanted, you know, the coolest cars. And I became very aware of the men that had those things. And now my father figure was gone from my life. So I started to pattern myself after people I saw in movies and on television. Like most young men, I wanted to be James Bond. Well, james Bond, you know, always had great-looking women. And you know he did daring things and was sort of on the edge. And that's what I chased that whole sort of lifestyle that the world sells us. And like many young men today and young women, you know you're chasing what you see in magazines and what you see on television, etc. So money in and of itself was never the thing that drove me, but it was necessary, it was part of my.
Speaker 2:You know the things that I must have and you know, once my addictions and my alcoholism really kicked in, I had really no interest in working. To be candid, you know, I have friends that dreamed of having restaurants. They love cooking, they spent their lives in the kitchen, you know what I'm saying. They go to farmer's markets and see kids and shop for certain fruit and vegetables.
Speaker 2:And I have a friend that loved the shoe ladies shoes, my friend Steve Madden, who all his life he knew he was going to be in the shoe business. He dreamed of having his own shoe line and, as we all know, he became very successful at it. I never had any of that. Some guys wanted to go into law enforcement, you know, and work undercover and have a badge and a gun and all that I could care less. I just wanted to be in nice cars with beautiful women in great spots, and that costs money. So for me, when I was turned on to the concept of Wall Street, when my friend came to me and said, you know, I made 400 grand my first year, I'll make 800 my second year, and I was like what?
Speaker 1:Hey, matt here. Thanks for listening to Stripping Off with Matt Haycox, but did you also know I've got another podcast, no Bollocks, with Matt Haycox Both of these very different. If you're enjoying the deep dives with the guests that I have every week on Stripping Off, then you're going to love the quick, short business tips, strategies and tactics I give you on no Bollocks. This comes out nearly every day. Make sure you go and check it out on iTunes, spotify, youtube, wherever you listen to your content, and I'll see you in a future episode.
Speaker 2:You know, I was at that time 23 years old, making 150,000 a year. I was a top salesman.
Speaker 1:Which is great money in today's world, even for a 23 year old. But I mean, I think we're talking mid eighties now at this point, aren't we? I mean, that must be like a million bucks today.
Speaker 2:I was thick, I thought I was great. You know, I had a car and paid for and I had a credit card. I could bang out for four grand a month and I thought I was the man. And then my closest friend, like sort of my running partner. He's talking about 400 grand a year his first year and he never had to fly anywhere or travel. He basically just went to his office, drank a lot of coffee and sold opportunities, investment opportunities, shares, et cetera, as we talked earlier. So I said you know what? It's no knock against him, but I said I can do that. I mean, if he can do it, I can do it.
Speaker 2:This was my running mate, my best friend from university, et cetera. And so the interesting thing is, when I asked him to help me, he said no, he's my best friend, you know, we were doing everything together, but he was in a different world now and he was very aware of my use and abuse of drugs, alcohol, my crazy lifestyle, and that should have been the first tip off that I had a problem because he was my best friend and I hooked this guy up with a million different things in a lot of different ways and you know, instead of getting that message, I just said, all right, well, screw you, and I'm a resourceful kid and I found a way to get into like the best training program in America at that time, which was EF.
Speaker 2:Hutton and I would receive very, very good and proper training. And I started out competing with like 150 people in a big boardroom and I was very intimidated. For the first time in my life I said, wow, these guys are freaking great. These guys are so slick. They talk to people like they're doing it a hundred years, like they're sophisticated, and all these different things. I didn't know the difference between a stock and a bond. I had no money. I started out with $1,500 in my account.
Speaker 1:In a few years I turned that to 30 million dollars, so so when we, when we talk about, or rather when people listen to, stories of the mid 80s, late 80s, of stocks and shares of wall street, of hearing names like ef hutton, which I remember that from the was that where belfort worked, or something as well, no, no he came in he.
Speaker 2:He started much later at a at his firm that I was at at that time. He came into the business in in into the business in 86 at a place called DH. Ef Hutton was known for their advertising. I've heard it all. When EF Hutton talks, people listen. That was a slogan that was everywhere on the TV every two minutes, billboards et cetera. Radio Everybody knows EF Hutton from that advertising, that tagline, etc well when?
Speaker 1:so to me, when you talk about that time, you know it's that perception of of people making a fast buck, of of of young, you know of young brokers running running around and ultimately, you know cutting corners, getting people to probably buy things that they don't want to buy, and I, you know this is probably a lot of disservice done to very good people because of movies like Wall Street and you know, people like you know, belfort and the Wolf of Wall Street, et cetera. How much of that was reality at the time? How much of this money was made, let's say, completely clean? You know, doing your clients a great service as opposed to doing them a disservice.
Speaker 2:Well, what happened was right around 1980, the end of the 70s, a group of brokers approached the Federal Trade Commission in Washington and, for the first time in history, cold calling, telemarketing, was allowed when it came to securities, and that began an entirely new facet of that business Meaning. Prior to that, you actually had to seek out financial counseling, financial help, and now, for the first time, you know a group of young men that are trained in advanced sales, real sales training, no joke. Like ninjas or special forces marines, green beret types, we were trained to sell, to overcome objections, to close deals and basically, if you stayed on the phone with me, I win. I would win. You would have to literally hang up the phone, and the faster you hung up was the better for me, because next, next is my favorite word in English language. There's always another call, there's always another deal, there's always another woman, there's always another house, there's always next Next to me became the word that I focused on. So if a guy hung on the phone for a half hour and then hung up, it was a waste of my time. I wanted to get to know as quickly as possible so I could move on to somebody that was more receptive.
Speaker 2:This was legitimate business. None of this was illegal or improper, etc. Some of the practices turned out to be in the best interest of the customers, that's for sure. But the actual business itself was entirely above board, white shoe and legitimate, and we were trained by. We received training not and this is the flaw, I think, in the business was that we were trained to sell. We were never trained to produce the best financial results. It's almost like nobody cared, just bring them in, you bring them in and then we'll figure out what to do with them. And we weren't trained in proper financial money management. That came much later in my life, in my travels, you know that became of great concern to me. But again, a guy named Thomas Wolfe, a very famous American writer, wrote a book called Bonfire of the Vanities and he talked about guys like me in the least. They called us masters of the universe and we were. We were in Manhattan, new York City, the greatest city in the world, arguably at that time, I think for sure, the hub of the financial world, and we were highly touted, highly trained and we were just ripping. We were in the city making all kinds of money. Now we're not just making money selling.
Speaker 2:I learned, and many of us learned quickly, how to use the market to multiply our own money. You know the stock market. You know I talk to young people today and, as you know, I'm an influencer today, an educator, online social media. You as well, young people understand the virality of social media. You as well, young people understand the virality of social media. You know, if I have, you know, a thousand followers and they all repost something. Next thing you know, you know it's ten thousand followers the multiplier effect of social media. They use words like viral. We went viral, my post went viral.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm very familiar with that concept because that's what happens in the stock market. When you're good, you can use the stock market as a great multiplier of capital, and I learned that pretty early on and use that to enhance my own capital as well as many clients. It's a fallacy to suggest you're going to do all this great business and make all this great money if you can't make people money. You know you don't have to, but when you win for people in the markets, you win for yourself, for your firm. It's win, win, win for everybody, and so that's what you strive for, of course.
Speaker 1:Obviously these two you know. Success in the underlying business and sales skills go hand in hand. But in what will have undoubtedly been a climate of bull market for many let's say, a large period of time back then, how much of your success and the success of people around you do you put down to the market itself and how much down to your actual sales ability? I mean, if the market was trading like shit all the time, do you think you know you, because you're undoubtedly a very charismatic guy, which I'm sure you were back then as you are now do you think even with shit markets, you could have had tremendous success in getting people to do what you wanted on the telephone?
Speaker 2:a hundred percent. You see, for me a great market is a tough thing, because in a great market, every dope, every dummy looks smart, every deal looks like it's going to work, everybody seems happy-happy with their relationships. I've found that in the bad markets what we call bear markets where markets are down, you come in every day. It's down, down, down. It seems like nothing's happening. The value of your capital is actually going down on a steady basis, instead of the other way. In bad markets it's guys like me that really shine, because I'm not afraid to approach people. I'm always, you know, the proverbial bull in a china shop. That's when real talent becomes exposed and when average people become exposed in a different way. They get scared of the phone. Many salespeople or financial people if things are not working out, they don't want to talk to their customer.
Speaker 2:I really love people. Generally speaking, I enjoy people. I think you do too. We're not shy. Quiet, wallflower types you know wallpaper types I go out. I'm the guy that's. You know keeping things. You know jo types I go out. I'm the guy that's you know keeping things. You know jovial and keeping conversations going.
Speaker 2:When a bunch of guys go into a spot and then there's a bunch of women on the other side, I'm inevitably the guy that approaches them and says hey, ladies, that's sort of a thing, I enjoy it. I enjoy people. I don't have anxiety, insecurity and fear like that. I have my own stuff, don't get me wrong. Plenty of my own stuff, but when it comes to certain things it just seems very natural and normal to me. So in bad times that's when men like me shine.
Speaker 2:So to give you an example, when the first end of the world, the dot-com crash, march of 2000, companies like WorldCom, the biggest phone company in the world, went bankrupt. Enron, the biggest energy trading company, fourth biggest company in the United States, went bankrupt. Ellucian Technologies, a Bell A-plus rated stock, went from 82 to zero. The Amazon we all now know and love, amazon, went from 300 to three in six weeks. That's when I went public on the AIM Stock Exchange, on the London Stock Exchange.
Speaker 2:Right after that right after 9-11, I was the deal. My Sky Capital Holdings went public in London, was a 40% and was the number one performing stock in all of Europe for two and a half years. There was no fraud. It was all horseshit, because nobody else was trying to go public in those days Nobody was trying to pitch. They told me the only reason they let me go public is because they thought I would fail. He said, just let him do what he wants to do, he's no chance anyway. So I've managed to create all my capital in the worst of times. In 1987 I didn't know any of that. So from 83 to 87, eddie f hutton, and then at oppenheimer and dh blair, I turned 1500 into 30 million dollars, where I turned $1,500 into $30 million.
Speaker 2:By 1990, when I went to rehab and got clean and sober, I was broke, I was zeroed out. I had lost that $30 million. I owed a million. That's a true story. But I learned, I learned from that experience. I learned I've seen the signs. I understand when bad is coming, when everybody's all happy and hunky-dory, et cetera. I learned how to conduct myself and how to present myself following the big crashes, the big corrections, the downturns, etc. When everybody else is hiding at their desk, afraid to take calls and tell their clients. You know things went bad. So you know my life story has been a real learning experience.
Speaker 1:Let's just talk about this $1,500 to $30 million for a minute, because I mean, obviously these are wild numbers Even today, never mind back in the mid-'80s.
Speaker 1:I mean, what were you actually doing to make that quantum of spin-up, you know, from $1,500 to $30 million Are we talking about? You know, let's say little, because when you've only got 1,500 bucks I guess you're not doing much. So, you know, are you talking about little trades in companies that you know you're running 1,500 up to 3,000, 3,000 to 10,000, you know, betting the ranch and doubling, shuffling, doubling, and then, I guess, making commissions, acting as a broker for your clients, and then parlaying and reinvesting. And I mean, it just sounds such a wild growth in money that, you know, it sounds like to me you must have been betting the house on every transaction and winning big so many times. But, know, maybe I'm totally wrong. You know, I'd love to understand more about exactly what was going on with that, with that journey of money along the way so you know trading, you know, with 1500 you can't really own too much equity, as you've you've mentioned.
Speaker 2:But uh, we, I was down in, in, in lower manhattan, in the what we call the wall street area, what they call um the city, in l the financial capital. We didn't have the technology we have today. We had no cell phones, we had no personal computers. You really, if you wanted to be in the game, so to speak, you had to be as close as you could be to the exchanges, et cetera. And so I was a young guy, I was drinking and drugging every day and night and I was working all day and then going out every night in Manhattan.
Speaker 2:And because I was now a stockbroker, I gravitated towards, I went out with the boys, so to speak. You know what I'm saying. And I went to those spots and, over drinks and you know pills and snorts, we would get tips. I would be out there with all the big market makers, all the big traders, all the big investment bankers, all the big arbitrageurs. Many household names today were just regular guys that were hanging out. And one of my first stock trades, I got a tip on a company. I was told to buy these call options and they were like an eighth of a dollar $12.50, $12.50. And I basically I bet the house, but it was only $1,500. I bet the house, but it was only $1,500. And that turned into like $18,000 within like a month maybe less, to be honest, I mean I don't really remember. And then I had a little capital and because I'm an addict, I'm addicted now to this great feeling and this is wild. This is wild. I've never even had, you know, never had, you know, $1,000 in one spot Because as fast as I make it, I was spending it just so, you know, wildly.
Speaker 2:I was really, you know, spending whatever I could get my hands on, because, you know, it was New York City, the nightlife, it was the disco days, early 80s, mid 80s, the whole thing Studio 54, xenon, magique, the limelight, you know all these famous places. So I had a series of very clever investments that worked out, you know, and not what you would call inside information, because these were, but I was really at the hub of where the smartest, most intelligent traders, bankers and brokers were congregating and we were sort of I was in that crowd and over some time my abilities became touted within the industry. If it was sport, I would. It was like a top athlete and so I was coveted. I was constantly being recruited to leave EF Hutton to go to Oppenheimer, to go to Bear Stearns, to go to Lehman Brothers. Everybody wanted this wild young dude who opens up an account every day and raises money. Unlike others. It was really found a home and I like to say that I have a trade.
Speaker 2:Even today, all that selling on the telephone, the ability to make presentations, helps me in chit-chatting with you. You know we understand the oral interaction, the verbal interaction, whereas today everybody's afraid of the phone. Like when I call somebody, they say to me is everything okay? And I'm like, yeah, why? Because you're calling me. I said what does that mean? They said, well, you know, usually everybody texts. I mean I've recently had a conversation with a woman who I have interest in and I could feel that she's almost uncomfortable and I just call her and I said is this like too personal?
Speaker 2:I'm like because you know, I was in prison, for I was in federal custody for 112 months and the world's changed a lot. I'm only out a year and change and change. And she says, yeah, yeah, it's a little personal. You know, calling people text with dm, and I was staggered by that comment because the this is what I think is a negative of technology we no longer we think just by typing in a few words in a cell phone is communicating, and I disagree with that vehemently, you know it's just sort of like you think.
Speaker 1:Do you think people are? I mean, you just think it's the way society's gone, so people don't know any different. Or do you think people are, particularly in a business context, they're lazy because it takes effort to pick up the phone. What do you think causes it? Because I totally agree with what you're saying and you know, in a business context people are like oh, I've contacted him, I've sent an email, but he's not got back to me yet. Of course he's not fucking got back to you yet. Call him, call him a hundred times.
Speaker 1:Go and stand on his doorstep, go and kick his door in, do whatever you need to do to get yourself in front of that person. And for me it's the same with the girls as well. You know, look a DM, a door opener. Then it's time to jump on the phone and you know, let my personality shine or do whatever I think it is to seal the deal. And if she's not replying to the dm, then we'll try a different platform, then we'll send the flowers, then we'll send the ferrari, then we'll, then we'll go and kick the door in. But, um, I mean, do you think it's fear, laziness, just the way?
Speaker 2:things have gone. You know, matt, that's why you're my kind of guy. You get it. You know. I mean people, I believe, and this is it pertains to women. I think that men, because of this pornography thing and all these different come-ons, I think men forgot what it takes to woo or get a woman's interest. And in business it's all about being persistent and getting people. You know, listen, if I'm reaching out to you because you're successful and I'm trying to collaborate with you, do something with you, I mean you've got a million people texting you, dming you, emailing you.
Speaker 2:I feel people are afraid of the phone. I do. I saw that in the 80s, these amazing, brilliant, knowledgeable people. They knew what they forgot about financial instruments I didn't know for 20 years. They were brilliant but they couldn't communicate on the phone. They were sort of afraid of verbal and I would walk in and I'd be like, oh, I just barge in and approach them and hock them if they really had some information I wanted.
Speaker 2:And to this day I think people are afraid of the phone, of interpersonal communications. Not everybody is like you and me that when we have something on our mind we'll pick. You reached out to me. I forget even how I ended up on this podcast. But I felt, like you know, I appreciate, I appreciated the approach. I can't explain it any other way. And now, meeting you, I get it because you are me, with an English accent, with darker hair and a beautiful smile, etc. You know, we're a version of each other, let's say, but a lot of people are just not like us. They're tense, they're terse, they're uncomfortable with sort of this kind of close engagement and you know. So I found a business that my lack of fear and anxiety serves me very well.
Speaker 1:If you were teaching, whether it's a sales team, your company or you know, just a young struggling guy comes to ask you for advice on it. What is your advice to people of how to become like us, if you want to put it like that? Do you think, do you think it's just a confidence muscle that needs to be, to be exercised, and then you'll realize it's not a tough thing, you know? I mean I mean like, yeah, my, my view on it is like most fears, they're unnecessary and irrational fears. You know, when people always go like what, what's a great pickup line for a girl? And For me, there is no great pickup line. You just need to start talking.
Speaker 1:Listen, if pickup lines and funny jokes is your thing and that works for you, cool. But if it's just hey, I'm Matt, then that's a bit, because 90% of the job is done as soon as that first sentence has left your mouth, people just don't know how to say it. But for me, me it's an irrational fear because whatever you say, 99 times out of 100 it's not going to be a bad thing, it's not going to be a stupid thing. You know that that person's not going to laugh and go oh, my god, that Matt guy. Do you know what he just said to me?
Speaker 2:they'll, they'll, probably be interested to engage in conversation anyway and people forget what you say, they forget what you do, but they never forget how you make them feel. And confidence is 90% of the battle 90%. And people have insecurities and fears and I don't think they're all irrational. I think if you get to know somebody, most of the time I understand why they have these fears and insecurities etc. And you know, the greatest thing for me was mentorship, what we call masterminds in our business. Today People are hiring me and I'm open for that and I don't ask for a lot of money and I mentor guys and in 10 hours I change their lives for the rest of their lives, and a lot of it is. You know some of them. The bravest thing they ever did was reach out to me and hire me and send the money to the company.
Speaker 2:You know, I feel like I'm the greatest teacher of sales that exists right now on planet earth. I really believe that. I believe there's nobody I can't take and turn into a top, top gun, a top tier guy, and that's because and I've I've been through every sales course, I've had every sales trainer, I've read every book, every document. You know every journal, et cetera. I've watched the videos and you know, back in my time we didn't have videos. We had, you know, every journal et cetera. I've watched the videos and you know, back in my time we didn't have videos. We had, you know, ehs tapes and we had cassettes we put in our car guys like Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins who's still going, et cetera. You know some of the great sales guys and you know reading all the books, like you know Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie, you know David Schwartz, et cetera. But I feel like in a very short period of time you can learn enough to change the rest of your life and I have yet to meet anybody that sort of gets it and can sort of download it, share it with another human being. I'm good at that and it doesn't matter what lovely I mean.
Speaker 2:A lot of men come to me when I was on Wall Street, my last sort of 10 years in the business, and they were making a half a million a year, 800,000 a year. But they were like Ross. I just you know I can't make a million bucks and you make a million bucks a month. You know how do you do that. I mean, what am I missing? Where's the gap? That's more difficult, believe it or not, to take a guy, because now it's much more detail when you meet somebody that's just trying to get on the board, wants to make $150,000 a year, $200,000 a year, etc. That's much easier for me. I mean because these are big, big, obvious things to me and I've been doing this my whole adult life.
Speaker 2:Really, I've made the art of selling the primary focus of my life because, again, I was driven by addictions. Addictions are very powerful. I had to get my stuff. It wasn't like I gave myself wiggle room. It was either go through withdrawals and suffer terribly or get money and do my thing.
Speaker 2:You know, believe it or not, I'm not a criminal. I didn't do illegal things. Now, I did a lot of things early on in my life and in my career that I was never punished for and never, you know, found out, et cetera. And so a lot of people that really know me, you know my close circle, you know think that I got prosecuted because of my karma. But I was a disruptor on Wall Street. I took an American business, regulated in America, heavily regulated the financial business, most heavily regulated business in the world and I took it public on the London Stock Exchange. It had never been done. They said it was impossible. I didn't have an office in London and I ended up going public there and getting 40 percent return for everybody that invested.
Speaker 2:I was the talk of the town and two years later I took my fund public and that also. That was up 100% day one and was up until the feds basically created the crime. They raided my place and caused the crime. The government said they acted as judge, jury and executioner and they felt like they were right in doing so. That's my story and anybody that examines my case gets it and says right away you know, we don't know what you did wrong. Now I've done plenty wrong, matt. I'm not trying to say I'm an angel, but in the case of my prosecution and cause, it had nothing to do with reality. They was a vendetta against me because I was a big disruptor. I showed very smart people in America how they could avoid billions of dollars in costs and regulation and how they could go public on a foreign stock exchange and still trade in America.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about what the actual business was, because I don't even know myself. So just I guess, closing off the previous part of the story, you finished being a stockbroker or finished trading etc. And then you went on what? Circa 2000? To start Sky Capital.
Speaker 2:What happened was I had several lives in my life and several lives in my Wall Street career From 1983, when I started at EF Hutton, through 1990, those were the years that I was actively using drugs and alcohol. I had taken $1,500 and turned it to $30 million and spent probably $10 million. So you know I went crazy. You know I spent money. I was flying in private jets in the 80s that was unheard of and then I got clean in 1990. I came back into the business in 1991. Got out of rehab Now I'm stone cold, sober, going to AA meetings every single day, usually twice a day, and going to the gym, you know, five days a week and got myself into really top shape. When I looked at the business now, sober for the first time, with clarity clarity was the gift for me I realized that I had missed a great opportunity. All the fellas that were sort of in my class as stockbrokers, traders, bank et cetera, had now graduated. They all had their own firms, their own funds. They were now running the big boys, big firms, and I had lost that opportunity because I was just happy making, you know, 100 grand a month, 200 grand a month, and just partying. That's really what I did from 1983 to 1990.
Speaker 2:1991, I was very serious-minded and I looked at what was happening in America and there was a brokerage firm on every corner, in every town, in every city, in every state in this country and they were like tripping over each other and they had something called geographical integrity. So if I was, let's say, a broker with the Abhutton in New York, I couldn't call Boston because there was brokerage firms in Boston and then there would be complaints stay within your region. And so I looked abroad. I saw a bunch of guys, young guys, trying to do some business in the UK but they had laws against cold calling et cetera. But just like the Lehman 7 at the end of the 70s that approached the authorities properly and got permission to cold call within America, I approached authorities in England, in the UK, and found out the proper way to be able to entice UK residents into investing over the telephone.
Speaker 2:Again, there was a lot involved. There was procedures put in place. I had approached compliance offices and we spearheaded that. So I now realized and this is a great lesson for people the greatest wealth, matt, in this world is not created by innovation. It's not, it's created by imitation. You take something that works and you bring it somewhere they don't have it. Dubai is a great example. Nothing the sheikh is doing, the family is doing, is that innovative. They just looked at the world and saw what worked and they brought it to Dubai and they just do it and did it better.
Speaker 1:And they well, that's what happens, you do it better. Well, that's what happens, you do it better, you do it better.
Speaker 2:You bring it somewhere they don't have it. I like to say, in the business I'm in now, I'm doing this, now I'm about to do something, I'm going to reveal something in about three months that's never been done and it's going to change the way we perceive what we do, just so you know. But so I looked at the landscape and said you know, there's a whole world out there that speaks English, that answers the telephone, that would love an opportunity to make money and within just three years I became the biggest exporter of United States investment opportunities to people around the world. And that, eventually, is what caused my downfall with the United States government, because I brought the world into America. You know, I showed people in the world what we do, how we do it, and I took a lot of heat for that and ultimately I was prosecuted. So all I did was took the parts of the security business that worked and brought them other places you know, england, scotland, ireland, wales, new Zealand, australia, south Africa, wherever they spoke English, where I could actively, openly communicate and go visit. By the way, and go visit Because ultimately I became that confident that, all right, getting you on the phone, I'm like a ninja warrior, the phone is my arena right.
Speaker 2:I would have been a gladiator back in those days if they had that kind of a thing, but at some point I became a man and I was sober and I had my feet on the ground and I know how to make sense and I know how to create a proposition. And so I'm best off sitting with you face to face in your backyard, in your office, in a hotel in your city where they speak English, they speak the King's English, et cetera, because I became that confident in my ability to convey my proposition to you and I would structure a deal in such a way that only a fool would say no, or if he just really had no money, if you were just unqualified and that shame on me if I'm talking to somebody that's just not not fit or able to participate, because there's a lot that goes into qualifying people.
Speaker 1:That was the proposition that I built within that industry and so who would a typical client be or what was a typical opportunity? Because obviously in some of my research for this podcast and obviously I'm I'm the first to know that, uh, you know what you, what you read is is often not true at all, but you know that the way let's say you know that the crime was presented is is that you were selling worthless opportunities to retail investors and obviously I noticed in england, it noticed in England. So obviously, being English, I thought I'll be able to understand it around this area. It basically talks about that. You and your, I think, alan, or whatever your partner was called, were flying to England. You had great success raising capital in England from retail investors, but people who had no idea that they were investing in what was allegedly a worthless opportunity with an allegedly very, very high interest rate. Was there any truth around?
Speaker 2:that All that lie. It's just a complete lie. We only dealt with what we call in the United States Reg D exemption from regulation D high net worth sophisticated.
Speaker 1:We call that high net worth individual, someone who effectively doesn't need advice because they've already got the sophisticated knowledge Right, not just high net worth but sophisticated that's a part of it.
Speaker 2:Okay, and they have to sign off on it and everybody signed and we didn't deal with people that had a few dollars. Now, when I went public, ultimately and Rose Atwater from Surrey bought 500 shares of my stock and the feds came in, raided my place and when the London Stock Exchange called the Southern District of New York, the Southern District never called them back. So my shares were suspended from trading because everybody thought you don't raid a public company's headquarters and not indict people. The serious fraud police of Scotland Yard Unit in Scotland wouldn't raid a place in the middle of the day that was traded on the stock market unless they had real evidence and they were going to bring indictments and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:The United States, the feds, came into my office 40 people deep November of 06, and said nobody's getting arrested, nobody's getting indicted, and that was true, but we're just here to execute a search warrant and they left with 300 boxes after 12 hours of going through all that. But what you don't know is they called every member of the press, which in New York City is every member of every press all around the world. They were all waiting downstairs in my lobby by the time the feds came into my office. They blocked out the elevators. So you know that's wrong and I would say illegal. And so then there was no indictments and no arrests made for almost three years, until July of 2009. And I was running two public companies at that time.
Speaker 1:I was going to say what happened to the business during those three years. Did the business still exist?
Speaker 2:Well, they actually tried to put me out of business so then they could bring charges easier. But I'm an animal, I'm a beast and it didn't put me out of it. I stayed in business, I raised a lot of capital and then 08, 09. And the government said in March of 08 that they were not going to indict me or the business because I sold the business to very wealthy investors in England in the UK and institutions, by the way and they went to the government. They went to the Southern District of New York and said listen, we don't want to close on this deal with Mandel. If you guys are going to indict the business, we're buying a worthless company. We're paying real money. And the government called my lawyers and called me and asked me a few questions and said no, it's a good sale. Mandel can go, take his money and go down, you know, go to the beach in Florida and retire. And you guys, we're not going to indict the company. We're done. That was in March of 08.
Speaker 2:But then in 08, if you know, 09, the too-big-to-fail correction the Dow Jones went from over $14,000 when I actually engaged into my letter of intent to sell. And I actually engaged into my letter of intent to sell. The end of 2009, the Dow Jones was down to 6,600 from 14,000. It's like the equivalent of it going down now 21,000 points and all these big banks and big broker-dealers all failed. They needed bailouts. Biggest insurance company in the world, goldman Sachs, morgan Stanley, citibank they all took money from the government Sky Capital.
Speaker 2:My company didn't run out of money. I saw it coming. I was ready for it. My company didn't need a bailout. It had plenty of capital. In fact, I sold it and when I sold it we closed March 31st of 08. Government allowed that to happen, said nothing. There's going to be no indictment, nothing at all. The new buyers put $10 million I believe it was 10 million, it could have been 10 million pounds, it was real money into the company that already had capital good capital and began operating the business without me. I was in Florida, semi-retired in the fight business, going into the fight business with Don King.
Speaker 1:How much did you you sold the business? For what did you receive? How much did you sell the business for what did you receive? A great deal of money.
Speaker 2:It's confidential. Well, the government ended up taking tens of millions from me. So you understand. But I was allowed to get that money and I was told that I was done with the government. My lawyer said you know, you can go to sleep because you can sleep tonight, because the government said you're free and clear. And I was. But then when the markets failed, when all the big banks failed, all of them failed and they all paid fines, billions of dollars in fines, but nobody got arrested.
Speaker 2:There was a directive audit issued to the DOJ, to the SEC you better get us some, bring some cases and the SEC bragged From 08 to 09, they brought more cases in one year than they did in the whole history of the SEC, just so you know. They bragged about it. They made press releases. Not one banker broker executive from all those companies that failed, that went under, needed bailouts to stay open, got arrested, got indicted, got charged. Let me give you a great example. You're a smart guy no-transcript. $130 billion or $100 plus billion to stay open open. They were A plus rated by Moody's and Standard Poor's. Nobody got indicted. They were told. They told this country they needed a hundred billion dollars to stay open, but they need on a Tuesday and they needed the money by the following Monday. It was the biggest insurance company at that time in America and they indicted me and at my trial, pablo Canones addressed the jury and said I was responsible for the 0809 crash. Pointing I represent I'm the United States government. I'm telling you what's his fault. One lie after the next, and then they put on the show American Greed. They covered my case, my life, et cetera.
Speaker 2:I'm the finale of season nine. It's called the Sky's the Limit and people watch it and say I don't know what you did wrong. So they put one guy in there that lost money. What they don't tell you is I only spoke to that guy twice. I never did a deal with him. I tried to after a stockbroker at another firm wiped him out. I gave him stock in Sky Capital to try and make him whole, because that broker worked for Sky Capital now and I didn't want any trouble. So I gave him shares for free in Sky Capital now and I don't want any trouble. So I gave him shares for free in Sky Capital value that is always over a million dollars and he never had an account at Sky Capital and never did a deal with Sky Capital, not once, never came to Sky Capital and yet they put him in the show and he says he forgives me, forgives me, I gave him over a million dollars worth of stock just to settle a claim that he had against someone else.
Speaker 2:Nothing to do with me, and no lawsuits, no civil lawsuits. One guy sued me from England. This was before I went to prison. Before my trial I wasn't even allowed to attend. It was an arbitration and he admits that. He never met me, never spoke to me, never did business with me, but he was advised to put my name in the lawsuit because I was a deep pocket. That's what his attorney told me and they found against me because I wasn't even able to. No one was allowed to attend this lawsuit. I couldn't even defend myself because I was now in the federal system. So I was wrong terribly and you know it's important to get that part of the story out.
Speaker 2:I don't like to live in the past. I always move forward. You know I always look forward because you know, if you know, in a car the front windshield is this big and the rearview mirror is this big and God puts your eyes in front of your head to tell you something. You know what I'm saying Absolutely. So you know that's how I live my life. But if I have a chance like this to share what really happened and I'm an open book, you know, watch American Greed I invite anybody to examine my case. It was happy horse shit. They were just looking to hang heads because the government, the Department of Justice, the SEC, law enforcement, all the rating agencies failed miserably. Failed just miserably because none of them saw what was happening and that's why the government, the american government, had to bail everybody out you.
Speaker 1:You talk about the rating agencies, as I've. I've only dealt with rating agencies in a, let's say, in a lesser brand. You know I've never dealt with your smps and your moodies, whatever, um, but you know I've dealt with rating agencies for listed products that I've been involved in. Listen, I don't want to go as far as to use the word scam, but to me it's the most fucking mental business model because they aren't going to get paid by the companies unless they are saying what the companies want them to say. Now, okay, there might be levels. You know.
Speaker 1:Look, giving someone an A plus instead of an A plus plus or something we can maybe argue, is not the most you know criminal or offensive thing ever. But you know, I guess, like any business, the smaller the businesses are, the more they're willing to bend perception. And you know when I would deal with these agencies, you can be a brand new business with nothing more than you know, a few pretty pieces of paper and a business model, and because they want the 30K, 50k, x amount a year to have the ratings, they'll say anything, and I don't imagine it's any different for an S&P or for it's just bigger numbers. You know, I'm paying someone 30K a year and they're doing whatever. These guys are probably paying them 3 million a year.
Speaker 2:It's entirely sketchy and scammy, entirely Just like the notion that there is self-regulating industry. In America, the brokerage industry, the stock market, et cetera, is self-regulating. Don't worry, we'll take care. We got this. Just like the mafia, you know. They're self-regulating in every city. If you try to hijack a truck in a neighborhood, that's mafia-run, you know. Next thing, you know you're going to be in prison. But because you're not allowed to hijack trucks, only they can hijack trucks. You know what I'm saying. Law enforcement comes to an agreement to keep the crime civil and manageable. But you know, the idea of being self-regulating is happy horse shit. It's a joke.
Speaker 2:But and you know if it did, if you know, one of the reasons that I speak out now is because of what was done to me. I was so wronged and I tried to conduct myself. The sky capital was properly run, were heavily, heavily regulated. Because of my past, because of the things that I did wrong in the 80s, you know, and the 90s, before I got sober, et cetera. But you know, I'm happy to speak out now and just tell the truth. I'm not looking to skewer anybody or hurt anybody, but you know, I have to tell the truth. I'm authentic. You know, they say that we all vibrate at certain frequencies. It's recently been revealed by science and I quote science because, who knows, he's one of the more rating agency types that you know, love was the highest frequency, but now they're saying authenticity If you speak an authentic truth, you vibrate at the highest frequency and it's like double triple of love, which was the highest. And I actually believe that. And I believe that the human ear and the brain is very sensitized that when we hear people that are lying or telling untruths, et cetera, somehow we know, many of us know At some level. We know and we also know when we're telling the truth. And that's why I think some of the great podcasters, matt like Joe Rogan. While he's not the most intelligent, he's not the most verbose, he's not the smartest, but there's something so authentic about Joe Rogan which is why he's achieved the highest status level in the podcast world. You know, making $250 million from Spotify for three years, non-exclusive. So I think guys like us are rewarded for being real and authentic and that's the value of podcasting. And I noticed because I've not studied this industry like I've studied Wall Street. I've studied this industry because this is now my new. This is my new life and I've done a really, really deep dive and I'm learning every day. But the authentic people podcasting.
Speaker 2:When Trump wanted to get his message out before the election, he didn't go on ABC, nbc 60 Minutes because they're all full of shit, they're all agenda-driven, they're heavily edited. It's crazy. He went on Joe Rogan's podcast. He got 30 million downloads 30 million downloads in 12 hours. Nothing like that ever happened before. And he won every swing state. He crushed this Kamala Harris, who had no business doing this anyway. She was unfit to be a candidate. But regardless, you know, trump is sort of a weird guy. He offends a lot of people, he's narcissistic. But you know, I've done two deals with him. I lived in a Trump building. I lived in Trump World Tower for five years. I've done several deals with the Trump organization and with Donald himself and he's a stud, he's our director.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, oh yes, I lived in apartment 36C at Trump World Tower for almost six years and I bought two apartments in that building and I've done deals with the Trump organization and they're stand-up people, they're honest, they know how to run a building. But I'll tell you, like this, trump is authentic. He is real. He tells you what he thinks, whether it's politically smart or stupid. He tells you what he feels. He's never shy in front of a camera. People love that at a level that they're not even aware of, and when you come up with this packaged political jargon, people had enough of that. It's just that we never had a choice before. We never had such an authentic candidate. We have all these politically, you know, organized and their messages are carefully crafted by people that sit in the back room that don't like people that just sit there and write, you know, copy for them. So authenticity rules. It really rocks and I think that's why I'm becoming so popular. I really believe that Donald.
Speaker 1:Trump. What's he like to deal with? I mean, I guess you know I've been a Trump fan all my life. It's interesting. I'm just working on a course myself at the moment about negotiation and the person I'm co-writing it with literally just this morning asked me to list four or five books about business or negotiation that I like, and two of the ones I put on there were the art of the deal and the art of the comeback.
Speaker 1:You know both Donald Trump books and I did it for two reasons. One, because I think they're interesting books with, with things that you can learn about negotiation and branding and business from, but also just from a personal perspective. I was reading these books at 10 years old, 11 years old, and, like I loved business long before the internet and influencers and YouTube and anything ever existed. So I had to consume my knowledge the old school way and I'd, you know I'd be going to bed with the reading for the second, third, fourth, eighth time these books. So I've always been a Trump studier, but you know, I guess to me I would imagine doing a deal he comes across, you know, very blusterful and bombastic and you know a talker, not a listener, etc. But I'd be fascinated to know what it's like to be on the other side of him you know, I've never told this story, but it's a great story.
Speaker 2:So and I was I had a big edge on him in this particular negotiation and I'll explain it to you. So I, after 9-11 I'm sorry, yeah, after 9-11 I've been looking to buy an apartment in manhattan, uh, for my family. I had a. My daughter was born in 2000, my first, my first child and um, we were shopping around and we really really liked an apartment. We liked the Trump Tower, this Trump World Tower. It was unbelievable, and we set our sights on a particular apartment. And so, in order to even make a bid on an apartment, you had to buy a book. You had to pay $500 just if you wanted to get this book. So it talked about what you know, the details, let's say, of the apartment you know, and it was a giant, and I said what is this guy kidding, is this guy? And if you close on the apartment, the $500 gets absorbed into the cost.
Speaker 1:You get it back how?
Speaker 2:generous Right, but if you don't buy the apartment, you're out 500. And I was like, what kind of nonsense is this? And so we looked it up. It was a turnoff to me. We looked at other apartments and we said you know what? This is the? This is my wife's like. Did we want? This is the best one, this is where we want to live. But then you know, at the end of the day, at that time $500 didn't really mean much to me, but I just thought the other goal you had to pay the money up front just to really try and make a deal. But he was hurting after 9-11. So there was.
Speaker 2:You know, I've had I have many law firms I do business with. He has, of course, many law firms, but there was a particular law firm that was handling this particular building. That's why my lawyer called me one day and said listen, trump's in trouble, there's a great building. That's why my lawyer called me one day and said listen, trump's in trouble, there's a great building. I know you want to buy an apartment, go look there. That's why I went there. My lawyer and Trump's lawyer were in the same firm, at the same office, and so I had done a deal and I had like 2 million sitting in escrow. That was what I was getting on that deal. That was my sort of take and my pay and it was sitting in the escrow account and I left it there, thinking that I would use that money to buy an apartment. It's already in escrow and they're great lawyers and you know I gave.
Speaker 2:So I go to this apartment and they're asking original price was $3,999,000. And then it was marked down to like $3,700,000. Some number like that, down to like 3 million, 7, some number like that. But I was told by my attorney, in confidence, that Trump was having a big liquidity problem and he needs cash. I was advised to I could get a great deal. It wasn't all me and so I saw this woman that showed me this apartment, this lovely girl, andrea, and I said I'll tell you what I pay $2 million for this apartment right now. I could close in 12 hours, 24 hours. They said you're making a bid for $2 million, let me make a. I want to. You know, let the office know. I said no, I'm not bidding. I said I'm willing to pay $2 million for this apartment right now. Cash. The money's sitting in Trump's lawyer's escrow account. He could have the money in an hour. I knew that he was tight. She said, all right, well, I have to go tell the people in the office. They're not going to understand this.
Speaker 2:I said go ahead. So that night later, that night, I caught a red-eyed British air. I was flying to London. I was flying to the UK. I was staying at the Dorchester Hotel. I had a car and a driver over there. A guy picked me up. A little shout out to Mark Picks me up at Heathrow. I'm in the car, the sun's coming up, we're entering Hyde Park and literally I could see the Dorchester Hotel from where I am. I'm already exhausted. I don't sleep well on planes and my phone rings. I answer it. It says hello Ross. I said yes, he goes.
Speaker 2:Donald Trump, and I'm like I completely forgot so much had happened since I made that deal. I offered that deal. It's unbelievable. Now you know, all these hours later he's reaching out to me and it's like the middle of the night in New York. He goes.
Speaker 2:I spoke to Andrea this and that one and said that you were interested in apartment 36C at the Trump World Tower, et cetera. He goes. I understand you want to make a bid for $2 million. I said no, I'm sorry, donald, I'm not making a bid. I was pretty clear with my words. I'm precise and forgive me, I haven't slept, I just landed in London. I'm about to go into the hotel but I have two million. I told them the name of my attorney, rick Gruder, and he's at the firm and we have two million. I just did a deal. I have $2 million in cash sitting right now and it was even more than $2 million. But I said $2 million. I said it's sitting in your lawyer's escrow account right now. You could have that money like in an hour. It's just a clean closing. You know, it was a new apartment. Never no one had lived there previously. There was no questions with title and all these different things. So he said you know, that apartment was listed at 3,000,000,999. We made sales on the C line for 3,000,000,89, 3,000,000,07.
Speaker 2:He goes, you know, and he starts talking to me and he's a great salesman, he's a great negotiator, he uses every trick in the book, he's a tough guy and I'm like but I was really tired, I was cranky, I just wanted to go into the hotel and lay down and I said listen, donald, I get $2 million, it's yours, you'll have the money in two hours. I already signed power of attorney, my lawyer has the power of attorney and he goes. You know you're killing me. You know this is all public information. It's going to cause a markdown and all the whole building. And it did. He goes. You're taking, you're knocking 18, 28% or some number off the price. We're going to have to reprice everything. He goes. You're killing me, like making me feel bad, and I actually felt bad. That's how good he is. I actually felt bad. That's the mark of a great salesman that he can get you emotional. He brings your ties, your emotions, into something that you think is intellectual. And I felt bad. But I said, look, it's the money sitting there, it's yours, I'll trade you the money for the apartment. And he says, okay, and that was the first deal I did with them, another one which was less of a story but also equally as profitable for me, and I ended up selling that apartment for three and a half million or more five years later and living there.
Speaker 2:And I got to meet Donald and his whole family a few times and just a great guy he is who he is and in fact, when he does this political thing, he becomes a little bit not Donald Trump. He has to put on this whole bullshit. You know, slick, he's not that kind of guy. He's a Queens kid, grew up on Long Island in Queens, not too far from where I was raised. So I get him rich dad, but he's a builder, he builds things and he runs things. His building was the greatest residence I owned and I've owned many, many apartments, homes, condos, everything you can think of. It was a privilege to live there and I wrote a book called Rock Solid which is for sale Rossmandelcom. Two S's, two L's. You can buy the e-version. It's available right now.
Speaker 2:And I say anybody that says that money can't buy happiness never did a deal with Donald Trump and Kenneth Walker. Kenneth Walker was my interior decorator. I ended up spending over half a million dollars just to decorate the apartment. I loved it and you know, when I got, when I found out I was going to have a problem with the government, I got small. On the advice, I took advice and I sold. I owned four residences at that time, including I owned a townhouse in London, in Belgravia. So he is a real guy. You don't have to guess what he's thinking. You don't have to guess what he's feeling. You don't have to try and figure out who he is. And that's a very, I think, an interesting lesson for all of us and that's one of the reasons why I think I've been successful in business and successful in sales and the brokerage world is because you know I am who I am.
Speaker 2:I'm not for everybody, I'm not for everybody, but there are people that are attracted to me and will always sort of buy me, and so that's.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that the reality is, whoever you are, you're always going to not be for everybody. I mean, that's just the nature of life. You're always going to not be for everybody. I mean, that's just the nature of life. So you may as well not be for everybody, but be authentic, than not be for everybody and be inauthentic.
Speaker 2:It's true, but you want to know something very interesting, because we've been talking now for an hour and a half or so. I just want to say like this you know, a lot of people are very authentic, but as soon as you put the camera on them, they get funny, they act different. It's because of the camera. I have, dear friends that you know, when I'm out and I'm doing a story in a restaurant, I introduce them, they get all funny, they talk in a, their tone changes. You know what I'm saying. All of a sudden they have a high voice, like you could tell that they're nervous, and so you know you could be authentic, but not, you know, able to convey that on a camera, and that's something you do very well. I'm going to say it's our first time meeting right, first time chatting, and you know this confirms that.
Speaker 2:And Trump is, you know, is, I think, a little funny in the camera. He was. He's very different. You know he was, he had his first term and he was extremely, I think, different. He's a lot, a lot more polished right now. He's still trump, but he's got a lot more experience and you know, experience is, uh, the best teacher in my opinion so talk to me about uh.
Speaker 1:Talk to me about uh jail, about prison times. I read was it 12 years that you were, that you were 11?
Speaker 2:12 years. I got a 12-year sentence and under the federal rules in America, which are absolutely firm, you get 15% off a good time.
Speaker 1:And then there are different programs.
Speaker 2:So, you're serving 85% of your sentence and then you get I got 12 months off because I completed a drug program. Because, as I just talked about earlier, I actually had a drug issue. And it's funny because if you don't have a drug problem or an alcohol problem, you can't get that 12 months off. You have to actually have that problem and then you get a benefit. But if you're actually a sober guy, you can't benefit from that 12 months. It's so crazy. Some of the laws in America are just ridiculous. You can't benefit from that 12 months. It's so crazy. Some of the laws in America are just ridiculous. And I don't know what Congress is doing or not doing, because they should fix certain things that are just blatant common sense. But I ended up doing 112 months, which is nine years and four months.
Speaker 1:I can't do the math. Nine years and four months.
Speaker 2:So I went in September of 14 and my sentence ended January of 24. And it was brutal. It was brutal, it was absolutely brutal.
Speaker 1:Before we talk about, let's say, life in there. Just to set the scene, what were your circumstances at that point going into, as in? I know you have two daughters. Were you in a relationship at that point? Did you still have money? What were you walking away from?
Speaker 2:Well, I was married still and my daughters were 14 and 11. And I walked out of a 10,000-square-foot mansion in Boca Raton and I went into a 66-square-foot cell with two very fit black men with a toilet bowl right in the middle. It was a three-tiered bunk bed. I had the lowest bunk I was what they call. I had a lower bunk pass because of my age, medical issues et cetera and there's a toilet smack dab in the middle of the room, no wall around it or anything like that. And I was in a real prison at first, not a camp. I spent 33 months in the prison. It was in Miami. It's called FDC Miami. There's FDC. It was in Miami. It's called FDC Miami. There's FDC. There's federal, the Federal FCI Miami. That's Federal Correctional Institute. And I can tell you and your audience there's nothing correctional about it. They lock you up, throw away the key, there's virtually no medical care, the food is not fit for animals, there's no real classes, no rehabilitation. Not that I needed that, but you know I'm not the norm. You know I was highly abnormal and I did a very cute clip on social media that when I first walked into that room, two very fit black guys looked at me and said put your shit down, put your papers on the desk and go take a walk. And that I swear. I came within a second of punching someone in the face Because you know, if you watch American movies and TV, you know you're supposed to hit a big guy and then no one fools, you know no one checks. But I said you know, I just got here, I'm literally in prison for 20 minutes and they say go take a walk, but get out or leave your paperwork on the desk. I said why? They said just go take a walk. I just made a decision not to hit somebody, which was a good thing. So I go for a walk. I come back in and their attitude is very different and they say Ross, welcome, You're welcome to bunk here with us. I'm Henry, this is Mike, and you know we've been down between the two of us 23 years.
Speaker 2:They came from penitentiaries and you work your way down if you have good behavior, and as time gets shorter, they can. You can you start at a penitentiary, you end up at a camp. But it also works the other way you come to in a camp and end up in a penitentiary if you do the wrong thing. So I said, guys, if you don't mind me asking, after we show one guy, this guy, henry, actually makes my bed, helps me unpack. You know we have. He had a little locker. You have to fit everything in you, your worldly goods, in this little metal locker, which is very small.
Speaker 2:And I said, guys, if you don't mind me asking, like, what happened? What changed? Like you know, I don't want to say you guys were hostile, but you told me to get the fuck out and take a walk. They said, ross, let me tell you. You know, when an older white guy walks into federal prison, 90% of the time he's either a chomo or a rat. But we've looked at your paperwork and now we know you're neither. So I'm sitting there going what the hell are these guys talking? I know what a rat, I said I know what a rat is and I'm not a rat. I'm still fighting the government. I didn't even take a plea deal because I didn't. I'm not guilty, so I'm not. Why should I plead to something just to get a cheap sentence? I figured I'm in america, I can't be convicted of something I didn't do. That really didn't even happen. But I found out that's a lie about America. I said but what's a chomo? They look at each other Child molester.
Speaker 1:They said we don't bunk with child molesters. I knew this was coming.
Speaker 2:We don't bunk. We've been down 23 years between the two of us. We don't bunk with child molesters, rapists and all that. But they were confined to a special unit. And it turns out at one point I was teaching, I really became a teacher almost immediately. They also said which is very funny they saw my paperwork. They said I'm Henry, I got 20 years for $14,000 and a gun. You robbed $140 million without a gun. Can you teach us how to do that? And I was on American Greed and they put it on when I was in prison. So that's a whole other story.
Speaker 2:You become like a celebrity, like people there's nothing doing in prison and you're calling your loved ones year in, year out, year in year, day in, day out, month in month. And then you know, and day out, month in, month out Listen, I'm with Ross Mandel, he's on American Greed. You've got to watch that show. It's coming on next. And so you become a little bit of a celebrity.
Speaker 2:But also, I'd say about a third of all these prisoners have cell phones or access to cell phones Illegally Not allowed to have a cell phone in prison. But they smuggle them in and they sell them for crazy money or crazy money, or they rent them to you and they provide, you know, security, all these things. The inmates basically run the prison. There's only a few cops in, like thousands of prisoners, and so it's very hard to enforce the rules the way they would like to, and so people were quickly Googling me and saw who I was and the deals that I had accomplished and all these different things, and so I became a teacher of. It started out with three guys, and that's where my course, the wealth formula, comes in. It started out with three guys and that's where my course, the Wealth Formula comes in. It's available for sale. Click on any of the training links in any of my bios and social media. The Wealth Formula I have with Brad Lee and Lightspeed on the system.
Speaker 1:And that course was developed like the genesis of it was from content you were delivering in jail.
Speaker 2:Correct, because at some point it became the most popular course in the entire federal prison system. People would line up outside myself just for lessons and ultimately a prison staff saw this, brought me in and asked me to teach business classes. Formally they're called ACE classes and if you took my classes you got credit towards an early release, an early home confinement and at some point, when I was teaching the stock market, even the cops would come. The cops would come and I would build model portfolios and show people how to make money and do things, and so I never had problems with getting commissary, if you know what I mean, because I made sure the cops made money too, and they would come to my class and take notes and all these different things. And a bunch of guys would say, if you would, just, you know, get online and teach this kind of thing out. When you get out, you'll make millions. And so you know, I didn't really understand the power of social media, even the internet, at that point. But you know, I dressed the course up a little bit, but the core of it, yes, was develop, teaching regular people business, because most guys don't have Ivy League educations. They didn't go to the Wharton School of Business or have a Harvard, you know master's degree, mba. You know, if nobody ever showed you and you're not like a go-getter like you or like me, you know you need a place to learn.
Speaker 2:And so, for $300, I teach a 14-unit class which has got incredible video done in a real studio, produced by serious executives that have been doing this for you know, 50 years, literally, and we created a 114-page curriculum with all kinds of links to all the source material. There's nothing like it in the world, nothing, nothing. There's nothing like it in the world, nothing. There's no business class that compares to it. I stand on it. I challenge anybody. In fact, I would challenge any Ivy League master's program.
Speaker 2:My prediction is, one day this class will be the core material for every MBA program and university in the United States. It's that thorough and we give away $5,000 worth of documents for free. You buy the course for $300. If you go on to LegalZoom or you incorporate in America, there's a fortune of money that they charge you for documents, incorporation papers, llcs, mlps, trust documents, both onshore, offshore. Each and every state in America has different documents, different requirements, different rules. We cover everything in this one course. I've yet to speak to anybody that's actually completed the course. It's that in-depth. Yeah, it's that in-depth.
Speaker 1:And tell me in life, and obviously particularly in your situation, quality of information, tactics, strategies one thing, but mindset is utterly essential as well. Where was your mindset at in prison, looking at those 9, 10, 11 years, et cetera, ahead of you? Were you down? Were you positive? Did you have a light at the end of the tunnel? What was keeping you going?
Speaker 2:You know, I learned through my program of sobriety to take life one day at a time, and since I'm 33 years old, since 1990, that's how I live my life, one day at a time. And since I'm 33 years old, since 1990, that's how I live my life one day at a time. And I have a very, very powerful connection to God, to what I call the creator. I call him God because it's easy and I studied, you know, one of the things throughout this is interesting. So, throughout the course of my life, I love to read.
Speaker 2:I started out this podcast with you. I said I like to read, which is why I was always very good academically, because all the information you ever wanted to know was in books. We didn't have all this stuff when I was a kid. We didn't have Google and you know Amazon and you know e-books and all this kind of stuff. You had to actually go to a library and get books. We joined book clubs and I did all that stuff and so all my life I always wanted to read the classics and study scripture and study business and things that I never really had time for, and I found myself over the course of my life saying, you know, one day, when I have the time, when I retire, I'm just going to read Shakespeare and Chaucer and you know Hemingway and Robert Frost and understand what is so about great literature Tolstoy. One day, oh God, I swear I'm going to do these things and God must have been listening because he gave me the time.
Speaker 2:There's really nothing to do in prison. I never really worked in prison because I had enough money to survive in prison and my family was okay. Both my children went to major universities and graduated with honors. In fact, my youngest is starting law school in August and both of them are magna cum laude, graduated early, and they're both very, very successful young women now and I'm so proud of my family. And she was my wife, now my ex-wife, but we're still business partners, we're best friends and extremely close family and I had a huge amount of support when I was inside because I'm a good guy and I'm not this guy. They tried to make me out to be like and you know, when I was sentenced, over 200 people either came or wrote amazing letters and testimonies about all the good I've done, how much I've given to charity, how many people I've saved. Hands-on, I'm a hands-on kind of guy. I've helped people literally. I've dragged guys out of crack houses and saved their lives. Really, and it's part of my program. I, I, I, I manned a suicide hotline for 10 years that I never talk about, but now I will because I'm being authentic and I'm being real and that's my truth Helping people, literally, talking people.
Speaker 2:You know off the ledge, so to speak, and you know I find that you know people that know me believe that I got. This happened to me. It was karmic. God did this for a reason. But if you read scripture you'll understand.
Speaker 2:Some of the greatest men in the history of mankind were incarcerated. Well, look at Nelson Mandela you know he ended up becoming president of South Africa, wrongfully locked up, etc. You look at Joseph you know the son of Jacob, who ended up advising and running Egypt. He did also 12 years in prison. So you look at the people that suffered. In Scripture you know they say steel sharpens steel. You know God, for whatever the reason, this happened to me and I'll tell you very candidly I didn't really think I would survive.
Speaker 2:There were many times I was sick, I had medical conditions going in and you get no care, no love, no medical help. They don't care if you die or if you become completely. You know you're a vegetable. I've seen the worst of the worst things happen. I saw the worst side of humanity in prison and you know basically the guys that run the prisons and the people that are in charge of the people that run the prisons. They just don't give a shit. They're not good people. Nobody nobody mad in my opinion grows up and says I want to be a cop in a man's prison.
Speaker 1:It's just not the kind of thing we want to be safe in there, or did you always feel safe? Because I mean, I know obviously you were. You were popular for the teaching, you know for teaching and you know you're a respected guy. But I guess the flip side of that is, as a guy who still had some money and perceptionally probably had 140 million, I would imagine you were also a target for taxing.
Speaker 2:You never feel safe in prison and anybody tells you that is a liar. It's a very unsafe place. The cops you're not safe from the police, bad people. And now all these scandals are coming out. They were raping women, the wardens, the chaplains raping women in a woman's prison. The week I got there, the FBI came to the prison and arrested the food service administrator, who was an officer of the prison, for raping an inmate a man inmate, male inmate. A lot of rape goes on. It's a stunning amount of rape, extortion, violence.
Speaker 2:I've seen people get stabbed literally in the neck, right in front of me, because a guy cut in line. But I will tell you I was protected and highly revered because I'm a good, decent guy. I'm a good guy. I'm not a funny guy, I'm just me. I'm the same guy. I am here as I was in prison. It's no different. And I was often teaching people how to read, how to write, helping them with legal work.
Speaker 2:When there was an issue between the police and the inmates, they would come to me and say, ross, would you? You know? Here's what we were trying to accomplish Can you speak to the warden, can you speak to the assistant warden, et cetera. That's when I felt the most unsafe, because when you're a leader, when you looked at as a leader, the cops want to get rid of you. They want to hurt you. It's like you are. You know you can cause problems because, remember, there's a few cops and thousands of inmates, but not that I was a risk. But you have to be extremely careful when you're thought of like that, because they'll just transfer you around to torture you. And I was tortured a few times, not by the inmates, but by the United States Marshal Service. I was what you call. They did diesel therapy on me and that's a very common practice, goes on every day. They put something in your jacket which is your, you know your file, and they put you in a county jail. So they're told to pick me up, right, for a violation that I didn't commit. And they pick me up, they put me in handcuffs and they say don't get mad at us, mr Mandel, we're just doing what you know the government told us. And they take me to a county jail. They put me in a cell and say okay, here's your cell, go to sleep and I lay down. And an hour later they wake me up and say all right, mr Mandel, you got to get up, pack your things, you're being transferred. I say, what things? I've been here an hour, I don't have anything, and they would handcuff me and black box me, chain me to my waist chains, chains around my feet.
Speaker 2:I'm a banker. I'm, at the time, a 60 plus year old banker, trader, stockbroker. Black boxing me, put me in a van, drive me around for 10, 12 hours, then bring me to another county jail. So I never got medicine, I never got food. My family didn't know where I was, lawyers didn't know where I was. They take me to another jail. Same thing, drop me off in a room, they give me maybe a bologna sandwich, that's it. And then they leave me there for six hours, wake me up and say all right, mandel, let's go, you're being transferred. I went to five county jails in seven days and the prison that I was being sent to was only 40 minutes away. But they kept. They were told to just drive me around.
Speaker 1:This is an official practice or this is under the table?
Speaker 2:No, of course it's not official. If you talk to the government it doesn't exist. But everybody knows it exists. It's a very listen, it's a common practice. It is not uncommon, it is common, a common practice.
Speaker 2:There were people. They get told they're in New York, they're being transferred to California. It takes them eight months to get there. They do. They take them from county jail to county jail to county jail all the way to California. They're gone for nine months. They're never in one spot for more than three or four days. They don't get medicine. You don't eat.
Speaker 2:There was one point I went from 210 pounds to 172 because I was getting no food and I wrote to my lawyer. I wrote an email saying they killed me. Someone was they? This might be, you might not hear from me again that I'm being tortured. And this is in FDC Miami, the Federal Detention Center Miami. They call it the building. And of course there's an investigation now about that whole building because six or seven people in like one month and everybody knows that they were killed by the cops. And you know there's such terrible things that go on within the system, horrible, terrible things, and there were times I did not believe that I would survive and I can only say that God's hand. For whatever the reason, god wanted me to survive, wanted me to podcast, wanted me to build a platform so that I could share a message of some type. I'm not quite sure yet, but I know that I'm on like a divine mission. I don't want to sound hokey, or you know.
Speaker 1:Tell me when you were coming out, did you know exactly what you were going into? By that point, you clearly become an educator. You started to write the course. Now is written partially in prison. Did you know that when I come out, I am going to be pursuing this as both for passion and for profit, and that this is going to be my next business career?
Speaker 2:I did not. I did not. I'm not going to be untruthful. One of the greatest things about coming out was I was starting from zero, ground zero. Again, I could do anything or nothing.
Speaker 1:Did you have any money?
Speaker 2:You know, depends who's asking. I have a loving family and I have friends that love me and are supportive of me, et cetera. But I'm starting over. I'm starting in a new industry and fresh. I didn't really know I have the ability to pivot because I'm not carrying a lot of baggage, I don't have a lot of overhead, all these kinds of things, and so I can pivot. But I have created a site rossmandelcom, two S's, two L's and again I made a deal with Bradley last year. Last July I flew to Las Vegas, met with Brad, did dropping bombs is how you came across me right and then I went back to see Brad again in September and we launched the wealth formula officially, I think, in October or November. I started podcasting around November. I mean I've done like 60 or 65 podcast, like when you said it early on that you've done like 600 podcasts.
Speaker 1:I was like whoa, what a stud, but you know you can, I'm sure, say the same thing. You know, said on the other side that I could do 6,000. And you know, when they're like this, it's not work. It's not a number of quantity, it's just, you know, living another day, having a great conversation with a great person, and that's why you can do 600. You know, I couldn't, I can't do 600 pull-ups or 600 sit-ups or something, because that's real work, that's real punishment. But you know, getting to talk to amazing people is, you know, I guess it's the love of it, isn't it?
Speaker 2:That's my favorite thing about this. The podcast really was just like an add-on for me, an ancillary thing. I was more into selling things online, educating people, moving product and sense, but I've come to love podcasting because I'm meeting, I get to pick, we get my team picks who I'm going to speak to, who I'm going to meet, and if there's somebody that I'm interested in meeting or talking to, you know I send it to my team. I said I like this, I like that guy. And so when you reached out to me and I looked you up and I watched some of your stuff, I said I like this guy. I mean this is my first international podcast and I want to be honest. I've been pitched by a lot of people. Come on to me a lot. You know it's amazing.
Speaker 2:The first day we launched the website, I had 400 people, uh, email. I mean I don't know who all these people come from, how anybody knew. But, um, you know we get to. I get to meet guys like you, men like you and women that are just spectacular and it, like you say, it's not work. Before you know it, two hours go by. You know what I'm saying. It's like beautiful and I'm learning so much about people and their stories and everybody's got this. You not work. Before you know it, two hours go by. You know what I'm saying. It's like beautiful, and I'm learning so much about people and their stories and everybody's got these. You know different amazing journeys and I just, I, just, I just, truly, I love it. I've truly loved the podcasting. I always thought it would be. You know, again, it's not about the money, right? It costs me money to podcast. It actually costs me money. At this point, at some point I know I'll be monetizing and all that kind of thing, but for now we sell some products.
Speaker 2:I do a lot of mentoring and this is another thing that I love. I'm taking guys and women to new levels quickly. Quickly, I mean, it's unbelievable. Some people are so close to the next level of their lives and they don't. They don't know. They don't know, they're unsure, they're not confident. I'm not quite sure what it is, but over the course of my life and you asked me how I went from 1500 to 30 million. Most of that was because I had an opportunity to speak with and get mentored by people that had been doing it much longer than I had been and were at a higher level and they allowed me to like sort of hang out with them. You know they allowed me to sit in their office and listen to them on the phone. You know, not formal mentoring and masterminds, we didn't have that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Now any young man in the world you know has the ability to reach Matt Haycox and approach you and say listen, matt, I want to be like you, I want what you have. You know, I want to go to Dubai and meet a beautiful woman to get married, have a very successful podcast and do business. Would you mentor me? And I'm sure, if that's something that you're offering, it can happen. Today, because of the brilliant technology, the brilliant people we have in the world, like guys like Elon Musk, we could reach anybody on planet Earth and approach them and, by the grace of God, get them to mentor us and respond. And you know I would say that Brad Lee was a mentor to me when I started at podcast. He was my first. I never did a podcast and you know it was like you say, it was fun.
Speaker 1:It wasn't like a chore. It was a great one to start with Getting Bradley as number one podcast. It's hard to go uphill from there.
Speaker 2:His courses are how Tony Robbins became Nate Worldwide. Tony was one of his first people. Grant Cardone there was no Grant Cardone without Bradley I mean he's put him on the map, you know went to his own pocket and funded Grant initially he became a partner with me, like he did with Grant with the wealth formula and with what's coming. I'm going to have some very big announcements coming soon and I'll be on the phone with you sharing them with you.
Speaker 1:Well, I was going to say I'd love to. We should talk about bringing you to Dubai sometime as well. I'd love to get you out here, get you talking. A percent.
Speaker 2:Now I thought you were in London and I was excited, but I'm more excited now because you are in London. Really right, you have a following everywhere, I'm guessing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I was doing this in England long before Dubai, so my audience is UK and UAE. I mean obviously a bit of the rest of the world, but these are my core places.
Speaker 2:Right and I've met. I told you I have a good friend, scott Clary C-L-A-R-Y. Brilliant podcast, 1,700,000 organic subscribers. Definitely heard that name. He's become a dear, dear friend.
Speaker 2:He just bought an apartment in Dubai. In fact, his wife is coming home today. They had a close on it. It took a lot of time. Apparently, they still close in the old-fashioned way in Dubai. When you buy an apartment, they got to have original signatures and it's got to be original documents. No, no e-signing. You got to be there.
Speaker 2:I mean, I went through this with him. He shared the journey, but you know, dubai is going to be first on my list, I think, because of the quality of guys that I'm meeting and what I'm what I'm about to do in this influencer space, celebrity space, podcasting space has never been done. Think about what Uber did for the transportation business. One little app changed the transportation business in the whole world and certainly in America, and I'm going to do the same thing now in the celebrity influencer type space and there's going to be a repercussion. I'm a disruptor, but this is win-win for everybody. This is a win-win proposition and I've learned that in business, if something's right, it could be win-win, and that's the only thing I'm considering at this point in my life, the idea that we're going to do a trade and I'm going to win and you're going to lose. That doesn't exist now in my world. In my mind, it's not satisfactory anymore. Things that I do at this point in my life have to be win-win for both parties.
Speaker 2:And I've cracked that code, matt, I'm telling you you've talked to me now for two hours. I'm a very real, authentic, truthful man. I've cracked the code and everybody that I've shared this with every single person and I'm going to the smartest people I know have said wow, this is so brilliant, I'm in and it's simple. It's not a complicated thing. I could explain it in a minute. And people are like oh my God, you know, the greatest things that have ever been introduced to mankind were always the most simple things, I learned. The more complicated they are, the less you know Absolutely. The less real they are.
Speaker 1:The less you know absolutely, the less real they are, you know, at the end of the day, well, I'm looking forward to seeing it and I'm looking, looking, looking forward to sharing it. I mean, we have before, before we wrap up, I guess I've got a question which, um, I think it's an interesting question, but also some something that I, uh, would like to know from a personal perspective as well. You, you have two daughters. I have two daughters too. You saw one of mine sneaking around in the background on a scooter.
Speaker 1:I managed to get rid of her, but I have an 18-year-old and I have a two-year-old, and whilst I've not been to prison, I have had my fair share of ups and downs. I've had bad press, i've've had bad press, I've been done things I'm not always proud of and I've been accused of doing many things I haven't done as well. And I know that's not easy for the kids. I say the kids, obviously the youngest ones, not really old enough to understand anything, but my elder daughter, she's a very calm I know obviously very much. You know, with yours it's something even more prolific and even more public. And when I was doing a bit of research for this, I noticed that a comment you said, or a comment about you was that you know, after everything you've done, your goal now is to make your two daughters proud, and I'm just curious what that looks like to you and what their view of the last you know 10 or 12 years has been.
Speaker 2:And I understand it's a lifelong process. Now, it took me a minute to learn that. It took me a minute to learn that. You know it's a lifelong process of getting to re-know them and for them to know me. But you know, in prison, you know one of the great things is we talk about success. You know what is success and you know my definition of success is quite simple. Today, when your adult children want to hang out with you, that's success. So one thing I've learned is they have their own lives, their own boyfriends, their own girlfriends, their own situations, but when the girls say to me Dad, you know, this is a great story. So this past Saturday night a young man that podcasted with me was extremely successful, has a similar story to me regarding addiction and recovery and also in business. He was in my business and he bombed out and now he's got a multi-million dollar business, very successful guy. He owns 12 rehabs and now just went national controls thousands of beds healing people. You know legacy. It's a rehab recovery for addiction and for different type of diseases like that, and he has Inter-Miami is the soccer club, what you call football around the rest of the world. In America American football is different, but we call it soccer. So he has a luxury box right on the floor at Chase Stadium, which is where Inter-Miami plays Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest footballer of all time. He just won the World Cup with Argentina. He's the highest paid athlete in the world. It goes back and forth between him and Ronaldo. So he has a box and he came on the show my podcast and he invited me and my family to a game because he has this box. It's a magnificent luxury thing on the field.
Speaker 2:My youngest daughter, sydney, has a boyfriend called Elliot, who was born and raised in Europe. He's from Belgium and he was a footballer and when he was 15, actually got to try out for Barcelona and made it. But his family's a tech family. They're very big in technology. They were Google's first partner, just so you know, when Google was started as an information company A serious tech family and his family didn't want him playing soccer for a living, playing football for a living. But he's a footballer, he's a football fan. He followed. Lionel Messi is his favorite celebrity in the world and I said I was offered an opportunity to invite you guys to a game.
Speaker 2:Would you be interested? Yes, dad, are you serious, dad? And they really wanted to go. They'd actually gone to a few games, you know they bought tickets.
Speaker 2:Now I'm inviting them on a Saturday night to come as a family, and so I made arrangements for me and my future son-in-law and my daughter to go. And then my wife, my ex-wife who were very close saw footage of what their luxury suite is like and that we're going to probably meet. A lot of the players from the team came in, guys from Barcelona, some of the guys that were injured. Then they would follow me on social media come into the suite. We're having lobster rolls and you know delicious food and drinks, whatever you want, and just it's extremely luxurious. It's sort of like a taste of Dubai in Miami.
Speaker 2:And my ex-wife calls me up and says you know what? I'd like to come. I said I invited you, but you know you wanted me just to take our daughter and her boyfriend. She says well, you know, I thought about it when she saw the video of how luxurious it is. So she came.
Speaker 2:My oldest daughter then reaches out to me this past Sunday and says dad, if you ever get to do that again, I'd like to come. So it's an example of what I call success when you're adult. Children and I'll even throw in the ex-wife for that matter, because she could be my child, 17 years younger than me want to hang out with you. That's my definition of success, meaning I have to craft a life, a world, a lifestyle that affords them to come and hang out with dad. Otherwise, you know, you see them once in a year on your birthday, on Father's Day and maybe Christmas and a couple of holidays. You know they like to say weddings and funerals. Families get together. I am, you know, I'm 68 years old. I'm not a kid anymore. I can't even say I'm middle-aged anymore. Matt, it's killing me.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I think you've got lots of life left in you.
Speaker 2:I do, but middle-aged I'd have to literally be like you know, I have to live to 135. So, to be truthful, I'm in the second half, I'm in the fourth quarter, but I do have a lot of life in me. So you know, that's an example of success because I'm a podcaster. I'm a podcaster, I have a studio and this young man came on to my podcast and we had an instant connection. It was great. He wanted me to meet his wife and family.
Speaker 2:And I'll say this to you because you just revealed some things about your past. You show me a successful man, a very successful man. I'll show you a guy that had a very tough road. People think it's so hunky-dory. You know, in America they say the average millionaire has gone bankrupt twice. I believe that I've never gone bankrupt, but technically I've been insolvent and all that. I know what it's like to have nothing, well, less than nothing, really, when I was in prison. But because I have this podcast and this young man came on young man, he's 49, but everybody's young to me at this point and he invited me to this event and I was able to bring my family and they had the greatest time. They're still talking about it. And because some of the players came in and now they're all in touch with Elliot and they're following me this and that on social media and we're still talking about it. The kids are still high up from this event.
Speaker 2:This, to me, is really the most important thing in my life and it's it's funny how the podcast turned out to be the platform that offered this opportunity, and I see that because this podcast today is going to afford me a trip to dubai to hang out with you and meet your daughters and you'll see your lovely, your lovely wife and all that good stuff. You know, know, because my, my other friend, this guy, scott Clary, c-l-a-r-y. You should talk to him. He'd be a great guest and vice versa. I'll mention you.
Speaker 2:He also just bought a place in Dubai and you know his wife, I told you, is this comedian. He met her. She was performing standup in Toronto. They're Canadian and she has over 8 million organic followers on Instagram. They're real, this is real stuff. And so now I have two people that I care about in Dubai that I would get to hang out with if I make that trip. And, of course, when I share with you what I'm doing in business, you're going to say you better get your ass here. And I somehow feel that pull because they seem to have an affinity for influencers. Absolutely, I'm about the world upside down. I mean that, I'm not just saying it, it's wild.
Speaker 1:Well, look, we're going to make Dubai happen. I can't wait to see what the next chapter of the journey is that takes you into the second half of your life, not the fourth quarter, ross. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you, buddy life. Not the fourth quarter ross, it's been a. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you, buddy. Um, you know, definitely one of my longest episodes and one that could easily have gone on longer, and I'm sure when, when we meet in dubai, we'll do a round two. I know, uh, obviously, throughout the course of this, you've you've kind of dropped your website a couple of times, and, and your course, but and we'll put all that in the show notes as well. But just one more time time to round up Just tell people where they can connect with you, what they can buy, where they can buy it.
Speaker 2:My site is RossMandelcom Two S's, two L's and on Instagram I'm Ross Mandel I live in Boca Raton, florida Clearly the US and on YouTube it's the Real Ross Mandel and I'm now part of Raw Media, raw Media Inc. The website will be up within two weeks. I'm told. I'll actually see a beta site on Friday, and the Raw Media Group Inc is going to be a company that turns the influence of the world upside down. I was just incorporated yesterday in the state of Nevada Amazing. Yeah, I'm really excited to share that with you. I want to share with you my details. I want to make sure I get all your contact details off camera. I want to be able to contact you privately and confidentially as well. Fantastic, thank you so much. I'm so grateful.
Speaker 1:This happened no me well, Fantastic. Thank you so much. I'm so grateful this happened. No, me too, Ross, thank you. Thank you very much for replying to that DM. We'll wrap this up and then we can talk when I press cancel. So thanks again, ross. It's been an absolute pleasure, buddy. Thank you, matt, I appreciate you.
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