iDesign Lab Podcast 14

Financial Design Ross Mandell’s Blueprint for Success and Redemption

Guest Ross Mandell

The following podcast, iDesignLab, is an SW Group production in association with 5 Star and TW Interiors. This is iDesignLab, a podcast where creativity and curiosity meet style and design. Curator of interiors, furnishings, and lifestyles.

Hosted by Tiffany Woolley, an interior designer, and a style enthusiast, along with her serial entrepreneur husband, Scott. iDesignLab is your ultimate design podcast, where we explore the rich and vibrant world of design, and its constant evolution in style and trends. iDesignLab provides industry insight, discussing the latest trends, styles, and everything in between, to better help you style your life.

Through advice from trendsetters, designers, influencers, innovators, fabricators, and manufacturers, as well as personal stories that inspire, motivate, and excite. So whether you're listening to iDesignLab during your commute, or in a cozy nook in your home or office, grab a coffee or a chardonnay, and join us on this elevated, informative, and lively journey into the world of all things design. Today, we're excited to welcome Ross Mandel, a dynamic figure with a compelling life story.

Known for his intelligence and charisma, Ross has taken over 140 companies public, and has been featured in over 130 newspapers worldwide. His journey reflects the highs and lows of films like Wall Street. After losing his father at a young age, Ross faced addiction, but thrived as a stockbroker, earning up to $250,000 a month by 26.

He earned the title, Lord of London, for his bold moves, including taking American companies public on the London Stock Exchange. However, his success led to scrutiny and a nine-year prison sentence. Now free, Ross is dedicated to giving back through an online course that teaches financial literacy and entrepreneurship.

Join us as he shares his story of resilience and his vision for the future. Welcome to the iDesignLab, Ross. Welcome to the iDesignLab podcast.

Today, we have a special guest, Ross Mandel, who Scott and I have known for the last 15 years. We've had the privilege to know his family, his fantastic wife. He is a very interesting individual.

He has a very long career and is a pioneer on Wall Street. And you might be wondering what this has to do with design. But as we've stated through this podcast, and we also talk about designing lifestyle, designing career habits, and anything that we need to curate in our life.

So Scott's going to discuss Ross's intro a little further. We first met Ross 15, 16 years ago when Ross was, I'll say, designing and creating an MMA league. And I was in the production business.

Ross came to me and said, I'm going to be doing this. I'm creating this MMA league. I need a production entity.

I've got all these ideas and creatively, I need you to help me design this, launch this and produce this. And that's what we set out to do. So again, it's design very much involved in even creating an MMA league.

But I think the really interesting thing about Ross is the fact that as a Wall Street pioneer and someone who's done the most amazing things in Wall Street and taking hundreds of companies public. They say 140. 140 companies public.

I mean, that's just astonishing. That's not me. That's the United States government.

But when you're taking a company public, there's a design aspect involved in putting the pitch together, designing the pitch. 100%. I mean, designing who you're going to take this to.

And what you're going to wear to the pitch. Well, you know, I have a dear friend that on deal day, he has deal shoes. I love that.

A friend of mine named Frank. And he had these, you know, sort of ugly shoes. But every time he had a deal closing, he put those shoes on because the one time he didn't have those shoes on, the deal fell apart.

The last minute. That's a true story. But I just want to say for the purposes of this meeting, this conversation, I'll never forget how I met Scott.

That was a very interesting day. So I'm launching this MMA league and Don King, you know, the famous boxing, Ali and Tyson, one of the most, maybe the most famous promoter in history. Was a partner of mine in that particular promotion.

Really? Yes. And Don King, Malky Cow, who now is one of the biggest fight managers in the world, if not the biggest, with many, many world champions and all those different things. And and Don, I was I hired a production team to design the advertising and handle the reality show and make all that happen.

But he was in Tampa and I'd already had an agreement with him and I was going forward with him. And Don King calls me and he says, listen, why are you going all the way to Tampa? I want to introduce you to a guy who's been doing things for me and he's the best. He's the biggest.

He's the brightest. And he's right here in Boca. You're driving four hours.

And I know it's where I just drove back and forth to Tampa on Monday to appear on a big podcast. And so, you know, begrudgingly, because Don has something to say about everything, he's a pain in the neck. And so myself and a couple of members of my team go over to Five Star Entertainment.

And when I walk in, it's like twenty five thousand square feet. There's a little waiting area. Then there's a long hallway.

Yes. Before you get into the, you know, all the studios and the offices and everything. And on the wall are a collection of plaques.

Leo Awards, this award, that award, you know, Grammys, Tonys, Emmys, just every single thing you could think of. Astro and I'm like, this is a scam. Nobody could be this close to my house.

And I don't know about all this stuff. And so these are these are all fake plaques, props. I give you I give you credit if that's true.

Right. But the truth is that he is an award winning, highly established, highly respected, highly thought of producer and designer of projects, because every project is not merely produced. It's designed from start to finish things that I didn't really understand.

I'll tell you, there was a period of time that my focus in business was so much about winning and earning those awards. The recognition. Yeah, I've I focused more on trying to win as many awards and not as much on the profitable side.

I get the business. But I also looked at it as the more awards that I can win and get and get noted for what only increased the business as well. Well, your resume is second to none.

And, you know, the quality of your work is amazing. And then let's talk about your home. I've been to the studio.

What? But let's talk about you. Let's talk about your work. I mean, let's talk about taking a company public, taking 100 company, 140 companies public.

Correct. I mean, so I talk about the three most important things in real estate. Almost every single person can answer that question.

It's an adage location, location, location. Right. But if I suggest to somebody what is the most important three elements of business profits and this a million different answers, it's just one answer.

Structure, structure, structure. You know, you can't build a 10,000 square foot house on a 2,000 square foot foundation. Correct.

Can't do it. And so if you really are thinking properly, strategy, strategy. But if you're looking especially for design, when you're designing a company from the beginning.

Right. And your aim is to sell it, to do a merger, an exit strategy. So like I said to everybody, even in this room, what's your favorite sign in this room? Tiffany might say that my beautiful neon sign.

I see the exit sign. I want to know in any room I get into, I can get out. And in business, you always want to know.

Design feature. Correct. You always want to know.

In a deal, how can you get out? In a business, how can you get out? So most people, they don't think about these things until they're well into the game. And then essentially they have to redesign their structure, their whole proposition. So I've learned through literally 40 years of doing this, that if I look at that exit sign, that big red sign you're going to see pretty much every room.

I'm going to design the business and the company first because I know where I want to go. I want to be, I don't want to marry this business. I don't want it to be on my tombstone.

I want to build it. I want to earn. I want to make.

I want it to be a legacy. But I want to know how I can eventually get out. I don't want to be stuck in the business because that's what happened to me.

You know, I don't want to ever be that guy. So it's another form, as we keep talking about in this podcast, about design. Designing on how to, you're going to open a business and how you're going to get out and how you're going to sell the business.

I mean, that's really important. Yesterday, I met with my dearest friend, Steven Freifeld, who happens to be waiting in the green room and making sure I come out of this alive, the exit. And we talked for an hour about the structure of a company called Raw Media that we're building.

Right. And that's another. And we had literally, you know, I ran a few things by him.

He didn't like it. The structure, the design of the company. As much as it is a science, it's an art.

Right. It's an art. It's so true.

And every deal is different. Every proposition is different. Every exit strategy is different.

So, you know, if you find yourself designing your exit strategy when you're first founding the company, you have a thousand times better shot of actually accomplishing it than if you figure out how you're going to do things along the way. So, you know, you're engineering your design. And I love it.

I never thought of it like this. Which is part of like an interior design, which we're heavily involved in. A hundred percent.

You've got engineers that are, you know, taking care of the mechanical aspects of, you know, redesigning a house or building a house or a building. Right. When I'm building my next property, actually my next two properties, the first stop I'm going to make is with Tiffany.

Because I don't want to have to do something. And she says, well, I wish you would have done this and you would have put the wall here. And if you would have done this, you would have had the light and you could have had the big room.

So, you know, you come to somebody that has that sort of expertise up front because I don't want to have to pay three times over. I'd rather go to Tiffany and pay just twice over. But I'm going to tell you, that's the biggest thing that we find with clients that we have.

Is coming late, too late to the. Correct. Now they got to knock down walls.

Correct. They got to add a wing. It's painful.

Right. As a former homeowner, you know, I know these things. Right.

You know, I've dealt with this. I actually found it better to buy the model home. Right.

Because of, you know. I remember you telling me that story. She has a new client that came in that had redid their whole bathroom, did it all themselves.

And now I've come to her and said, they hate what they did. They spent $50,000. How can we redo it, reuse what we have, some of it, you know.

And it's like. What you might not want to do. No.

You're stuck with it now. So it's all not found great foundational. Right.

You know. I would come to you and say, this is the bathroom I envision. Right.

Make it happen. Right. And in fact, I came to Scott and said, this is what we're going to do.

You're going to build me a podcast. Right. And this is the room.

And I didn't get it till today, but it's asymmetrical. Asymmetrical is our new word. And that's attractive to the eye.

It's the new thing. Yeah. That's our new word for today.

It's asymmetrical. And curate. Curate is our word here.

In your intro. I love this stuff. It's a buzzword for me.

I'm a wordsmith. That's brilliant. Well, that's why I say about curating lifestyle, curating business, curating behaviors, obviously curating your home, curating yourself.

So as you're diving into this new venture with raw media, what was your first step in creating or curating where you wanted to take it to the ultimate exit strategy? To be candid? Yeah. I mean, to be totally candid, the first thing I thought about is how much money I wanted to make out of this deal. Okay.

So that's like your exit strategy type thing. Why else would I go into business? Business. If you look up business, I was going to say the dictionary, but there's no such thing really as a dictionary.

It's like Google or eDictionary. I know. And you can't trust those either.

Correct. Exactly. It's a liberal definition.

But Webster said, business is an entity that is created to make a profit. So the first thing I wanted to do was figure out if I'm going to spend X amount of years and I'm 67, I don't have time for a lot of errors and to make a lot of different moves. If you're younger, you don't have these concerns, but I would advise you to still curate as much as possible and make sure that your planning is essential.

One of the greatest pieces of wisdom is failing to plan. There's planning to fail. There's planning to fail, right.

You know, a lot of people say, well, I'm a seat in my pants kind of guy. Right. You know, it's cute, but when you're 65 and you have no money and you have no business and you have no job and you're not in a great relationship, it's not so cute.

No. So plan. Time to make a. Plan.

Use your. Structured. God gave us an intellect.

And I just want to say one thing. These people are not for everyone. These people are for the top gun, the elite.

The people that want the most to get the most out of their lives. If you just wake up every day and say, what am I going to do today? You know, to get by. Yeah.

I don't know if you want to be with the Woolies, but, and T.W. enters, but if you're a winner, if you're a serious person, if you want to get the most out of life, out of your home, I mean, it's a lifestyle, really. A home is a lifestyle. Correct.

Um, you have, you know, you're not an a-lister in this town unless you've been to a Wooly party. Oh, that's true. That's another thing we design.

Correct. Your parties, your backyard. I mean, it's just the experience of the evening.

Correct. I can't wait for the next Superbowl. I don't care who plays.

I just want to come to your party. You know what I mean? It's a, it's amazing. And, uh, and, uh, we get people during the year that texts saying the party that's coming up, when is the next one coming up? How do we get invited? Yep, exactly.

And I'll tell you, you know, they have a beautiful daughter, Kensington, who I know since basically she's born, call her Kenny. And she's not a big smiler, but I'll never forget it. That Superbowl party, right.

When I was at the Superbowl party, I'm screaming, Kenny, Kenny. She was smiling. She had a great time.

And so that was, you know, that was something that really, uh, sort of got me high in the moment because it was just such a great feeling, but I would call it the Wooly lifestyle for real. So let's, let's get back to, let's get back to raw media. Okay.

Let's talk about the wealth formula. So believe it or not, the first thing I thought of is how many shares I want, how I'm going to go from A to Z. Z is my cash out, cha-ching the register. Okay.

I had already decided that, uh, I wanted to be, I see I'm a very, very, uh, fortunate because I spent so many years on the street that I'm able to see trends evolving because I've been able to see where money flows. Okay. And I hate to say it, but you know, where the money flows, the trends happen or where the cool people are like in California.

See a lot of trends. When I was a young guy, we used to go down to Soho. It was a shithole, but that became the trends, the trends.

I'm in Miami. You have the district. What's it called? The art district.

Well, there's an art district. There's a name for it now. It's when, when, when I was down there looking at property.

Uh, 15 years ago, and it was just, it was a ghetto and I'm, people took me to the one restaurant down there. It says, this is what I see this, that, and you know, if I had my druthers, I would have owned a lot of properties down there, but some things happened in my life. So, you know, you always look at the horizon.

No, when they teach you to drive, you're not supposed to look right in front of you. You're supposed to look high and the windshield. When sometimes you lose your bearings, when you're looking like this, you look high in the windshield.

So it's like looking out at a horizon. You have a better view of the world and of business. And so I saw the evolution of, uh, broadcast television and I saw these corporate giant corporations, the NBC, ABC, they're all owned now by, by massive corporations and they have massive legacy issues.

And then one day all of a sudden I'm living in Manhattan, cable TV, all these guys came to Wall Street and said, listen, this is going to be a great investment. We're going to lay cable. I said, what do you mean? You don't like cable.

This is New York city. Well, we're going to run this cable to every building to here, there, and everywhere. And I'm like thinking, how much money is that going to cost? Correct.

How much frigging time is that going to take? But I started seeing cable TV and I got it. I got it. Remember they said cable TV was commercial free.

I don't know if you know, that was the beginning commercial. Right. And, uh, for those of you that are my age, the Robin bird show, channel 35, Manhattan cable TV, it was the first sort of active, uh, uh, soft porn type saying, Oh geez.

Yeah. But that's what really helped build cable TV. Believe it or not, just like the internet was all pornography and gambling initially.

Right. And that, that blew up everything. Every site that was in the top five was somehow pornography related, dating related, uh, gambling related, you know, devices.

And then they, I guess it goes with the phone now too, between all these games and apps. The video games developed. So, uh, I saw cable TV and then I saw everybody pivot and now they had to go to pay cable broadcast.

TV was now a thing that was in the background. Everything became cable. And then they became, then there's streaming.

Now they're streaming, streaming comes online. So now you have all these companies, these major broadcast companies that went to cable, spend all this time and money and now they got to adjust again and go to streaming. In the meantime, a group of men, clever men around 1999, 98 said, listen, we don't want any of those issues.

We'll start our own company and we don't have any of these legacy issues. We don't have to pay anyone's a 401ks or retirements and all these obligations and leaseholds and old equipment and hundreds of thousands of people. And they call themselves Netflix and they send videos in the mail.

Now it's one of the biggest companies on earth and most successful because they, they saw what was coming and said, you know what? I don't want to be involved with CBS or ABC. That's old. That's old.

And your hands are tied. Well, you have what you call legacy issues in accounting. When you understand business, you understand, you know, when you become sort of institutionalized, you create a lot of sort of issues that are, that are cemented or rooted.

You can't just unwind them. Right. Sometimes better to start a new thing.

So then you had streaming and streaming's big and that's the way media video was going to be translated. But now you have social media utilizing streaming and the internet and mobile technology. Yeah.

I mean, people are, people are, are young people don't even buy televisions and if they do, it's to watch Hulu and even with designing, it's very, you know, people don't even care to have them as much in certain locations anymore in their homes in general. I'm telling you, young people around the world don't even buy televisions. They watch everything on their phone.

And maybe they buy it when they have televisions, they're watching on their phone. We're in the family room watching something as a family, trying everybody's still watching their own screen. When they're turning the TV on, they're watching YouTube.

They're not watching CBS, NBC, Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, Discovery. Well, and they're not even watching, you know, shows. They're watching curated clips, clips.

Well, and that, you know, families, people who are truly just putting themselves out there and they are creating their own content. So let's get back to raw media. Cause let's, so I saw, I saw this, there's a new venture that you're launching.

I saw the evolution of media and now you're seeing that the streaming service, everybody's pivoting again. There's another pivot. Right.

And I would say to you, my proposition is that the social media is here to stay. Correct. This is not going anywhere until they put chips in your head and you can hear already happening.

I understand, but it's different. I mean, I read about Musk's Neuralink and all these wonderful things that are coming, but, uh, social media for the first time in the history of the world, everybody is going to be connected was 5 billion, 6 billion. It's going to be soon 8 billion people.

Thanks to people, brilliant men like Elon Musk that have launching satellites, building rockets and, and, and he's, he owns, I mean, three or four or five, maybe a thousand satellites. And he's providing internet connectivity, wifi all around the world for everybody. So now when you have, uh, that phenomenon occurring, you know, you could, a lot of, a lot of the naysayers and negative people, ah, the poo poo, you know, I know people that still think the internet is just like a trend.

I mean, and in an odd way, an odd way it is, but, um, communication, the ability for human beings to communicate and, and it's not lost on me. So, you know, if you go back 5,000 years, 7,000 years, you know, human beings were on this earth. There's a lot of discussion and theory with, between religion and all these different things, but human beings crave social content contact.

I remember when we were doing these, um, these deals with, uh, uh, movie theaters and, and, and, and streaming deals. And they said, no, it's going to go to the movies anymore. And I said, I disagree experience.

So married my wife and I would have sit at home. We're not drinkers. We don't want to go to the bar.

Uh, there's only so many parties that you go to a night out was dinner in the movie. Now, listen, I could cook at home all day. We should, we could cook at home.

Maybe not my wife, but maybe not Tiffany. But, um, what I'm saying is that, uh, um, people go to restaurants. Why? To get, you can cook at home, go to a Woolley supermarket, you buy stuff.

Well, now it's very expensive. Be thanks to the administration and inflation and the nonsense that's going on, but, uh, you know, it's a fraction of the cost of the restaurant. Why did, uh, my friend Stevie and I go sit in Carmela's and have a salad and a cappuccino for $40 because it was social human beings form towns, villages, cities, everyone didn't just go move in the middle of nowhere.

Cause there's plenty of property around the world. Um, even in the frigging desert, people still find each other. And so they crave that and that's not lost on me.

So anything I do, any business I do consider, um, I look at the history that, that affects it. And I believe that there's going to be an enormous amount of, of, uh, connectivity, even from where we're at. We believe it or not, we're really just at the beginning stages.

So then I looked at, um, uh, that's a phenomenon and that's where raw media comes in because people are tired of the canned bullshit was sold on broadcast media and now cable media. But if you watch the presidential, the vice presidential debate last night, CBS, uh, moderators would totally, it was like Vance was fighting three people. Correct.

They're only speaking to, right. So there's an agenda and all these different things, but you know, I go on TikTok and I look at stuff and I go on Facebook and I go on Instagram and I go on Twitter and you get to think for yourself. There's a lot of nonsense, but you know, it's up to me to decide.

I like these, these, uh, sort of corporate media giants. Now the streaming media giants, you unfortunately are looking at their agenda, Google, you know, this is a great story that, uh, Grant Cardone ran an ad, uh, for Donald Trump. I love how he's been speaking up a lot lately.

It was rejected by Facebook. Really? Yup. And so then he did, he did something very interesting.

He just took Trump's picture out. He left the same video and he put Kamala Harris's picture on it. Yeah.

Just, that's all he did. There was not one other change and Meta accepted it right away. Huh.

So it shows there's even bias everywhere, everywhere. However, you know, raw media is raw by definition. I'm a raw type guy.

It's not lost on me that RM or media, the initials, my initials, very interesting stuff. And, um, so the first thing I do is look at the industry. I, I understand this media is a great place to be.

Here's why for me. Um, I was a big name on wall street for a lot of years. I made a lot of money.

I was very sought after as a speaker, as a, uh, as, as a broker, as a trader, as a deal guy, all these different things and make it happen. Guy. And, uh, I helped launch a lot of companies, a ton of companies.

And, but even more importantly, a lot of the young men that I've trained, mentored and tutored who became millionaires, not all, but a huge amount, probably some guy wrote a book on the history of wall street. It puts me in there stating that I've created, I'm responsible more wall street millionaires than any one person. That's so cool.

Yeah. I would never say that, but I'm repeating a kiss. It's a now in writing somewhere.

Google says it, it must be true. And the United States government claimed that I'm a, I'm a cult leader, that I have a minions that, that will buy and sell anything that I do. Anyone that doesn't group, you know, group think like, right.

So, cause I wasn't part of some country club or I didn't go to Yale and I didn't go to Harvard law school and all these different things. I'm not a member of a bar association. I'm not affiliated with any big political party.

I'm politically agnostic. And, uh, you know, the, so I'm looking at, at the media business and I'm looking at who I am, what I can genuinely offer because, you know, for about the last 35 years, if I don't believe in something, a thousand percent, I can't sell it. Right.

I don't want to sell it. And I can't even sell it because as a younger man, I was naive. I went into the business world.

I met a guy and he says, dude, here's what we're doing. It's a great thing. And I was like, okay, what's my cut? And I went out and I just did it.

And you learn a lot of hard lessons in life, especially when you were talented at that particular kind of field, selling and persuading and, uh, pitching and presenting, et cetera. Right. But you're about to launch your own platform.

Correct. And you're already out there on social media. Correct.

Promoting. Correct. So let's talk about what you're launching because it's fascinating in what you're about to do and how it's going to change millions of lives, especially if people get involved and they sign up because you're about to launch something that's going to give the ability to educate millions of people.

Every person who wants to go into business and every person who's in business who needs that boost and that little bit of help and doesn't know how to do it. Guy who owns a pizza place and makes a fantastic pizza, but knows that he's doing a really great amount of business, but he could open up two or three, but he doesn't know how because all he knows how to do is make a great pizza. Right.

But you're about to give the world a formula of how to do all that. Let's talk about that. Right.

So it's like we've established that formula. Thank you. We've established designing something to help the masses.

Course has been designed with a tremendous attention to detail. It's extremely comprehensive. It's called the wealth formula.

It's a 114 page text, which will be digitally downloaded. It includes, but it's broken into modules, 13 different chapters, 13 different modules. Each module is a, is, is actually me in a studio explaining the material in a very entertaining and personal way.

I, I, but, but extremely educational beyond education or individual. Yeah, it's life changing, life changing. I mean, it's actually life changing.

And we've established over the last few minutes that the world is going to be connected. Correct. Everyone's going to have access.

Yeah. Think about the millions of young people. The world is already connected.

But I mean, I mean, millions of people are going to have access now to secrets, to knowledge, to experience, and who better than me to share my experience, my credentials, my resume in life, not just on wall street. You know, I've had a crazy life. I lost my father at 16.

I became a wild drug addict and alcoholic. I went on a 17 year run. So I understand that whole underworld, the netherworld, the dark side of the I got sober when I was 30, got sober when I was 33, pioneered a lot of things in AA and NA and CA and the 12 step program, sponsored and, and, and ran so many different meetings and spoke at so many places all around the world.

And, uh, I understand what it's like to get married, to have children, to buy homes, to be on the come up in business. And then I got into legal trouble. I know what it's like to fight the awesome United States government.

I know what it's like to be convicted of a crime. It'd be a felon. I know what it's like to go to prison and still not lose hope, not lose my motivation in prison.

I taught classes. I ran AA meetings. I, I, but you're out there now motivating and helping people.

You're doing mentorships. You're doing masterminds. The people are signing up.

People are, I know, logging into your website, the Matt, the Ross Mandel dot Rossman dot two S's, two L's, but, but to be educated by all that you've learned. Thank you. And now you're about to launch this course, which I understand is like, it's already launched.

Well, when I can already sign up, you can sign up for it. Now it'll be officially launched. Look at about a week.

And, uh, I'm in partnership with a guy named Bradley LEA from lightspeed virtual training in Las Vegas, Nevada, who's pretty much the guy behind every other mode, major motivational speaker. Who's got course through, you know, individuals who have courses and correct and whatnot, the Tony Robbins and the grand Cardones and Andy Elliott's Russell Brunson, Damon, John Robert Kiyosaki, rich dad, poor dad. So pretty much even Caesar, the dog whisperer.

So you teamed up with him to launch yours, right? He became designing, putting yours together. You've put together a world-class team, a world-class team at every facet is, we checked, we've checked, we've ticked every box and we're going, uh, it'll be a fully interactive course. But what are some of the modules about like, where does the person got to, you know, what is, okay.

So we talk about, we talk about the, the, the alchemy of today's world. The alchemy is the ancient art of trying to turn a worthless metal into solid gold. Okay.

And my proposition is alchemy is happening right now. And we're giving you examples from zero to 700 million in two years. I'm going to say that from zero to 700 million in two years for a product that didn't even exist.

That's alchemy to be able to take something out of your mind, your imagination, and just take, making a few, taking a few steps, uh, running a Facebook ad, running to wall street, showing you have 3 million views. You have 80,000 followers, bing, bang, boom. You're launching liquid death.

Okay. Michael Cesario. We talk about a primer on capital is the most important chapter.

It's the first chapter. If I ask you, what is capital? You say money, currency. What is capital? Capital, uh, machinery.

We explain what capital really is and how to utilize, how to utilize human capital, physical capital, intellectual capital. Then we teach you how to create a vision board and a vision plan for your life. Then we talk about how to select the proper, uh, legal entity for your vision.

So an LLC or a C corp, an S corp, uh, a master limited partnership. And I use examples in every chapter of how I learned this stuff. You're breaking it down, designing it in a way that is in layman's terms for the average person to understand this and to help them pick what they should be and how they should be setting it up.

I'm not a Harvard educated kid. I was stoned the whole time in college. I just wanted to meet women and party and have fun.

I really didn't learn one thing in college except how to socialize with other guys and women. And that worked for you. And don't knock it.

I don't knock it, uh, because I was a hopeless drug addict, but I connected with some, uh, very, very aggressive, smart sort of come up type guys that are very ambitious and I just sort of followed them to Wall Street. But, um, we talk about how to select the proper legal entity. We talk about how to structure that entity for your vision, for your business.

Now I'm not a trust fund kid. I was sort of a rough type kid from a sort of a middle-class neighborhood in Long Island. And, um, when I started with the drugs and alcohol, I was really thrust into sort of the, the netherworld.

The, the, I have it saying, I say, if you're looking for bad in this world, you're going to find it. And when I got clean, I discovered it. If you're looking for good in the world, you're going to find it.

And so, you know, I, I, that's, uh, something that I pass, I posit all the time, uh, to people that struggle and say, everybody sucks and they're very jaded and everybody's a scumbag. And it's, it's, it's what you seek, you will find. And, um, so we talk about how to value your proposition, how to structure it, how to, how to organize it, how to, uh, pitch it, how to create a pitch deck, a business plan.

You think, you know, but you don't know. I promise you this is the most comprehensive business curriculum that was ever written or introduced to the world. I challenge Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, anywhere else.

I put our curriculum, my curriculum up against any single text ever produced or written anywhere in the world. I'm challenging you all out there. All you educators.

Okay. Well, it's an authentic curriculum. This is real.

It's based on me. I'm not a trust fund kid. I didn't go to Wharton.

I had to learn all these lessons in a hard way to experience. But the curriculum is interactive. So when a person's listening and they're watching you, they're learning, there's questions that are being, that you're basically giving the viewer, the person.

We're guiding you live on the screen, sort of quizzing you along the way, encouraging you, offering you other advice, you know, and then, then there's an opportunity to engage me personally in what we call a mastermind and, uh, you know, I just, we just started with this, but I can tell you that I've changed the lives already of two young men that will testify to that. Yeah. These are young men that have little businesses.

They have nice little businesses. They make like, you know, 10 grand a month. I'm familiar with the two that did a mastermind, but I know of others.

We were, Tiffany and I, two weeks ago, we were at an event for the George Snow Foundation, big fundraiser. Guy went up, people dancing, raising money for the George Snow Foundation. The gentleman who won for the male, best male dancer, like Dancing with the Stars, his whole story is, you helped him.

I, I mentored him for over 15 years. And it's a crazy story that even when I went to federal prison, he would come once every month or two and sit with me at federal prison. He would lay out what's going on in his life.

And I would explain to him what I think he should do, what he shouldn't do. I helped guide him through a lot of the processes. He now owns, his name is Matthew Williams.

He's got a very successful business. 2019, he was the Foot Locker Man of the Year. Out of a hundred thousand entrants, he was the Man of the Year.

This was, he had an, it was on a national TV commercial, produced by Foot Locker. Gave him a hundred grand. They ferried him around the country and all that good stuff.

He created a company called FroPro. Because necessity sometimes is the mother of invention. And he couldn't afford store-bought proteins that were shitty anyway.

And so he created his own little brand of protein and then soon everybody wanted it and he would drop it off at stores. And he knew that I was running around all these stores and then buying it at retail. So I started that demand for him early on and coached him.

And you know, he won this Dancing with the Stars award. He raised the most money for a great charity. To help other children.

And people don't know that they read a lot of negative things about me. And a lot of my sort of, my e-commerce guys have discovered this. I made a donation to the University of Maryland, where I did graduate from, even though I barely remember it.

I'm told I had a great time. I gave them a half a million dollars and created this scholarship called the Leadership for Tomorrow's Program, where some unfortunate kids get to go to their master's program, their business school. Most incredible people you ever saw.

Three every year go on my scholarship money. You know, you're familiar with the St. Andrew's School. I mean, Tiffany was called the Paris Hilton of Boca because of her time in St. Andrew's.

That's a compliment, by the way. I love Paris Hilton. It's definitely, I love Paris Hilton.

And I gave them a- I'll tell you something. Our youngest child, her name is Paris. Right.

And it was the one thing, for me, I was undecided of that name because of Paris Hilton. But that's a great name. Paris is a great action.

And our little girl fits the name perfectly. So listen, I was at a restaurant with an old Wall Street friend of mine, Joseph Safina, Joseph Safina, Casa D'Angelo in Fort Lauderdale two weeks ago. And we had a very cute little waitress.

Her name was Louisiana. That's funny. And I said, that's not your real name.

She goes, yeah, you know, my family is so grateful. We were from Brazil and we- from Colombia. And we emigrated here legally.

And after 10 or 12 years, my parents finally got citizens. So my sister's name is Dakota. I love it.

And when I have children, they're going to be all named after states because this country, I want this country to always know what I want. My children to always know how grateful we are to this country, to the great United States of America. The American dream.

So getting back to the wealth formula, the wealth formula is out there. People can go to rossmandel.com and they can sign up and change their life. Or any of my social media sites that you click on a link in the bio.

And then you're doing mastermind classes. We're doing mastermind. So what else is coming down the road for Ross Mandel? What are you designing now? What's the next thing that you're designing? Okay.

So here's the sort of brutal reality for Ross Mandel. I'm 67 years old. I'll be 68 in March.

And I figure I have, this is my last run in business. This is it for me. And it's not so much about the profit side and how much money I can make and all these different things.

I want to, I want to build a legacy. So I, I did a video on, on, on all my social media sites. I'm on Instagram.

I'm a tick tock. I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram.

I'm on across every single social media site. And I talk about my why. And my what, when I went to a prison in 2014, I left a young wife, two young children, two young daughters, 14 and 11, both now going to like sort of middle school and high school and kids are brutal.

And I was a very active figure in their school lives. And I'm the loudest guy in auditorium screaming, you know, Skylar pretty. And, um, I used to go to drop off and pick up and all those different things.

And all the kids know me, the boys know me cause I used to do MMA stuff. And I was on social media years ago in the beginning. And, uh, I left these girls and went away and they were getting a lot of shit from kids in school.

And then there'll be like daddy daughter dances, daddy daughter day, parents visiting weekend when they went to college and they meet kids. So what does your daddy do? And, uh, we taught them how to deflect, how to change the subject, how to step out of a conversation when somebody asked uncomfortable questions. So we had to, in the visiting room at, at, at, at, at a federal institution, how to coach my poor children, how to avoid the embarrassment and the pain of, of just facing questions.

And they got, they became fairly good at it. I was going to say it makes them, that'll be their superpower one day. They say, listen, hard times make strong people, strong people.

And, uh, and, uh, but somewhere in that, somewhere in that during the course of the last 10 years, I've really been deflected and I've been pushed to the side. The subject has been changed and they don't want to talk about their dad because whenever you're, uh, found in a negative way in the media or in court, uh, you know, I'm not the guy that they thought I was when I was young in there, but they knew who I was, but they read the papers too. And they read, you know, social media and all these different things.

It's pretty cruel. So I am determined to make my legal issues an asterisk in the story of my life. I am, I am devoted to creating a lasting legacy.

So when someone says to my daughter, is that your dad? Yes, it is. That's my dad. And I want them to be proud and I want them to be able to stand up.

And I'm going to tell you guys, that's quite the exit strategy. So for you, correct. Thank you.

And I'm designing that. So this is all part of a lifestyle design by choice. And, um, um, for years, you know, I'm out, I'm a home confinement.

I get out, I finished my, my, uh, my stint, my bid, as they say. And, but for years I wasn't allowed to be in a social media post with my children. They unfriended me on Facebook, unfriended me because they didn't want to be associated and now they're in business and they, you know, like that.

And it's only recently that I've been allowed to appear in photos with them. And to, you know, be in a post with them and, you know, my family, uh, Stephanie and the kids went up to, uh, a New York for 10 days, they had a, uh, a wedding shower, a birthday party, and then the following week was a wedding. So they didn't want to go back and forth twice.

They stayed. And while, while they were away, I, I was invited. It was proposed to me by the family.

I take out the two boys, their boyfriends, just me and the boyfriends. And my dear friend, Stevie, of course came and I just want to say that to me, that was just like one of the best moments of my adult life because that meant my girls trusted me that I wasn't going to do anything stupid. I wasn't going to say anything stupid because what happens with kids, uh, they listen to their parents, they see and they hear everything.

You don't know how much they know about you because you're their whole world. We were doing a million things. We are running businesses.

We're dealing with each other and we're in other relationships. Things are happening. Life is moving quickly.

We live in this kind of world today. The velocity of life is accelerated with technology and all these different things. And your children, you're the life and they know everything.

And so trust becomes a very important word between a parent and a child. And when I was gone for nine years, they lost trust. Daddy's not there when I'm sick.

Daddy's not there when I fuck up. Daddy's not there when somebody is bullying me in school. How could I be there? I'm locked away and I'm allowed 15 minutes every other day to call.

It's crazy. So I want to build a legacy that they're proud. So much like when I was, uh, took myself public and made $150 million and all those good things.

And I wrote a check for 500,000 to Maryland and 100,000 to St. Andrews and gave hundreds of thousands away to other institutions. I did a lot of anonymous giving as part of my program because, you know, I'm, I'm unhumble, I'm arrogant, I'm narcissistic. I don't want everyone to know that I want everyone to know I'm doing these things.

It's almost more important that, that people know then I actually do them. So my sponsor made me give away money anonymously, which was the most painful thing of all time, because I'm, I'm sending some lady, you know, who lost everything, you know, 20 grand and, uh, she has no idea it's from me. Right.

You know what I mean? Can you imagine how painful that is for me? And I want her to say, Russ Mendel's so great and all these things. But, uh, have you told her yet? What have you let her know? But I'm thinking about it. I have a box, I have a record of all that somewhere just so you guys know, but you know, I did some things like save guys' lives.

I, I made a suicide line on and off for 10 years. And, uh, when I went to my sentencing, two guys showed up out of nowhere and said, this guy saved my life. He came to a crack house and he put me over his shoulder, threw me in his car, which I did.

It was, you know, things like that. Like I say, if you're looking for good, you'll find it. You'll find good.

And good will happen to you. And I learned something amazing happened to me. I was always told, um, if you do good things, good will come back to you.

And it comes back tenfold. Here's what they say, uh, in scripture and, uh, in the core of my program, they say, the more you give, the more you're going to get, right? I'm a business guy. I don't get that.

No. I'm giving out half a million here, a hundred thousand here, 50,000 here, 20,000 here. And you want to know what? When I gave, I never, I never attached the two theories because to me when I'm earning it's because I'm great, you know, the great I am and all these different things.

But when I stopped giving as much, I'll get periods of my life when I didn't. I'll never forget when I was dead broke and I had my first, I made my first couple of thousand dollars when I came back after I got sober and my, uh, my sponsor says, how much are you going to give? I said, give, I owe a half a million dollars. And he goes, no, no, you're going to give.

The question is how much? And I gave 20% of that check away and I wanted to kill myself. But you know what? I just had almost a series, a sequence of, of fortunate things happening to me unrelated, seemingly unrelated to those events. But I promise you the more you give, the more generosity in your heart, the more you're going to get, you know, the man that squeezes the sand in his hand and holds on tight, the sand creeps out to his fingertips.

The man that cups sand loosely will hold that sand, retain that sand. And it's like that with capital, which is not just currency. And we teach you that.

And I, in the wealth formula, in the wealth formula, it's in a very, it's a very, um, a comprehensive entertaining program and the few people that have already purchased it have nothing to say, but, oh my God, this is so life changing. And it's not the kind of, like when you buy things online, you hear all these big advertisements, then you buy it and you go through the whole thing in one day. You can't do that with the wealth formula.

This is going to take you, we designed each module. If you work at the module and you study it a week, a week, you just watch the videos. But if you go to the website now, you can see and read about all of this.

Correct. And then we're launching, uh, through, through Lightspeed very shortly. Um, there's a free page.

By the time this podcast is, is out there, it'll be out there. People will be able to, well, that means John's editing it. We might be on the next part, the next curriculum.

I'll play it. Johnny D I'm playing, but you understand. So yes.

But as we, so we're going to, we're going to wrap up today's podcast, but I just want to mention one other thing is that you're also working in designing another course that I guess we won't talk about it, but people go to the website to learn more about it, but we'll kind of leave the, the sneak, you know, overview that it's got to do with the stock market. Well, he's the player, right? The vast majority of, I mean, people in America, I'll just use it. North America are fascinated.

So many people have money in the stock market, but so few really understand it. Correct. You're putting together.

Now you're designing a course. That's really the ABCs or the one, two, three of, of the stock market to educate people on a level that they've never been able to correct. Well, let me explain it to you real quick.

So we're teaching you how to take an idea, a product or service, or if you're in business and even making, we're going to show you how to make your business better. More complete. We're going to give you things, teach you things that even millionaires are saying, well, I wish I would have seen this information.

I wish I would have had this course, which is the wealth formula out there. Now we're going to take the average person. I'm going to show you if you want, if you're interested, not for everybody, if you don't want to be wealthy, if you don't want to be in business, if you just want to be a drone and go to work for a salary and work for some guy and show up nine to five and just go fishing or whatever, it might not be for you, but if you're interested in really learning how the world works, how business works and how to take an idea and turn it to a million dollar business, it's for you.

Now, what happens when you have that million dollar business? 99% of every business owner is involved in the stock market, right? In some way, shape or form. It affects over three, almost 300 million Americans every day. Your pension, your 401k, your state that you live in the benefits because some, some, most people don't understand.

I do not understand anything about relying on someone else to manage their money. There is no course called introduction to the stock market. So a beautiful woman like Tiffany, the average housewife in Kansas, the rancher's wife in Montana, all the kids in this country can learn the truth about what is the stock market, where it comes from, how it was created.

If you don't know where something came from, you have no idea what it's effect has on you. We're going to teach you again in a very entertaining, excuse me, interactive way. The ABCs, the one, two threes of the stock market and how to get started.

The odds are you're already in the market already affects your life. You just don't know about it. We're going to show you exactly what to do and how to do it.

I taught this, this, uh, this, uh, course oddly enough when I was in prison and I was told I'm only allowed to have 20 people. They were actually giving credit for early release. It's called ACE courses.

Really? Okay. From you teaching this. Well, everybody wanted me to teach it because I, everyone was coming to me privately for advice.

Listen, Ross, uh, I'll buy you $20 in commissary if you teach me this or you know, I'll do this. I'll do that for you. Whatever.

Um, can you teach me about this? Teach me about that. I want to make money in the stock market. I want to be a broker.

I want to be a trader. I want to be a banker. So I, I created a course for the average guy for a regular, I'm a plain speak guy.

I'm not a highfalutin slick wordsmith. I'm a real authentic down to earth, gritty guy. And if I'm going to show you something, I want to make sure that you understand it because I have a big ego.

And if you don't succeed and you don't get it, then it's like shame on me. I feel, I feel people should start following you on social media because in the short period of time, they're going to start learning about this new or other curriculum that you'll be coming out with. The whole world is going to be able to see the wealth formula.

And then once you have some money, you have a business, you want to stay in business and we're going to teach you the stock market. We're going to teach you how to have your money work for you. One of the greatest things I ever heard when I first came down to wall street in 1982 was that everybody makes money when they're working.

The CEO, the editor, the janitor, the teacher. The secret is to make money when you're sleeping. And they talk about, you know, they used to talk about how to understand what compound interest is compound.

You know, do you know that if you take a penny and you save it today and every day you double it for one month, you have over $10 billion. That's the magic of company, a penny, two pennies, four pennies, eight pennies. At the end of 30 days, you have $10 billion.

And that's the magic of compounding. OK, it's geometry. It's not arithmetic.

So if you can put money and have it work for you and leave it uninterrupted, you're going to be you're going to have a big, big, big batch of capital to do whatever you'd like to spoil your children, to buy homes, to travel, to go on private jets, to go do whatever you want to do. Buy an island like Richard Branson or Elon Musk. So people need to start following Ross Mandel.

They want to learn more about this. One hundred percent. So we so we everybody's invited.

We end all of our podcasts by asking our guests a couple of questions. Oh, favorite hotel. My favorite hotel.

Was is the Dorchester Hotel. Why? Because when I went over there originally, I stayed at the most expensive hotel called the Lanesboro, which is a former hospital. Every room comes with its own private butler.

It's very expensive. I mean, you know, it's thousands a night. And but then I went to the Dorchester Hotel and I heard an amazing fact.

It's like one acre under the most gorgeous roof and most gorgeous lobby. It's not one by the Sultan of Brunei or something. The Irish.

Hold on. They say that more deals are done every day in the lobby of the Dorchester Hotel. Then anywhere else in the rest of the world.

That's pretty unbelievable. And I can tell you it's 100 percent true. You can't imagine how much action goes on.

So the questions, these few couple of questions that we ask, almost every person answers them based off of really design. Correct. Yeah.

What's a lobby is designed to do business. It's not like that. Exactly.

A favorite restaurant. My favorite restaurant. Is it because of the food or is it because of the design? Close.

When you walk in there with all the flowers and whatnot. What I like about, you know, is when you sit down, they already have, you know, all the best, the best Parmesan cheese, the best prosciutto, the tomato, you know, prosciutto, bruschetta, everything. Like my father in law said, a real Italian guy from the Bronx said to me, you know, I'm going to go to a restaurant.

OK, just get the check. He had a Coca-Cola and we ate everything on the table that they put out for free, and he's ready. And it's a very homey feeling.

It is cozy. You know, some people like my wife likes such privacy. She wants to be a table that, you know, nobody's business.

I like a piano bar. I like I like the music in the background, like New York Prime. Yeah.

And this great restaurant. I went and Stevie taught me about in Federal Highway. It escapes my mind right now.

They have a great piano player and he plays, you know, all the good songs that I come from our generation. And I like tables that are closer and more cozy feeling. People interact more that way.

I prefer that because I'm a very sort of social guy. I love people. I love to see.

Right. And not everybody's like me. But so I would say El Molino or like places like New York Prime, et cetera.

I like that. Well, that's a good way to wrap up. Do you know the other questions or? Well, you have a third one, don't you? We could do.

That's enough. We just kind of talked about design. Just the place that you think of at the top of your head that, you know.

I'm going to answer that question. I'm going to answer it honestly. You know, I've owned apartments.

I lived in Trump Tower. I bought two apartments from Donald Trump. I had beach houses.

I owned a townhouse in London, all kinds of condos, co-ops, everything. And I've had all kinds of furniture and designs and everything else. But eight hundred thousand designing a twenty two hundred square foot apartment in Trump Tower, eight Kenneth Walker designs.

And my favorite designer in the world is Tiffany. And I tell you, my favorite house that I go to is the Wooley, the Wooley Mansion in Delray. And your backyard is something that is just epic.

The way it was designed. It's designed for social events. Almost.

It's a great family home. You have a beautiful family, but, you know, to be a kid in your backyard, it's like, you know, next to Never Neverland. Yeah.

And Michael Jackson, if you got rid of the pedophilia, you know, it's an amazing thing. Your house is we want our kids to stay at our house. We want them to bring all their friends to the house.

And that's what my house was all about. That's what my beach house was about. Everybody came to my I had to fifty five hundred dollar grills on my outdoor deck.

And I used to hire people to come and cook every weekend. And we had a big such great six hundred grand in that backyard. And we would have massage tables at custom designed people used to come for the day and they'd get massages in my backyard.

I mean, you know, I was crazy. But everybody wanted to come over. Everybody wanted that mandela invite.

Well, we appreciate your spending some time with us on the eye design lab. Really, Mike, it's my privilege. And I learned some new things today.

I curate my asymmetric things now. I'm so excited by the metrics. OK.

Thank you for having me. Thank you, Ross. Really appreciate Scott.

Thank you for having me today. Anytime. Really been a privilege.

OK. I design labs podcast is an SW group production in association with the five star and T.W. interiors. To learn more about I design lab or TW interiors, please visit TWinteriors.com.