How do you view personal brands
'cause over the years your name, Dan Peña,
it is a personal brand.
Doesn't matter what deals that you do.
But, it's your brand.
How do you view personal branding,
and over the years what did you do
to build your personal brand?
Well the, almost 10 years ago,
when we came up with the 50 Billion Dollar Man,
one of the, you not you, but one
of the devotees came forward
because he saw one of the gurus out there say
that he had created so many billions in revenue.
I think I know what that is,
who that is. Yeah, you know who it is.
And then my staff came to me with the number 34 billion.
And I said, what is this?
Well this is one guy of your mentees, one guy.
And I said, interesting,
continued to do the research.
So they did some more research
and came back three, four weeks later.
56 billion.
Who is it?
One guy.
One guy?
So if I'm in court with my hand on my heart,
I swear to tell the truth, one guy.
Then it dawned on me who it was.
So I said, okay, and so
50 Billion Dollar Man was born.
If I have to go to court to prove it,
I list one guy, it's a manager of public record.
Everybody knows his name, one guy.
Then, we started keeping track.
And this is document, by the way.
Yeah, this is document.
So, we started keeping track.
And on my 25th anniversary which was last May of QLA,
we got 80, or 85, or 90 guys.
I made 108 million, I made this and that.
We got one guy, I have 840,
and he sent me a certified document
from one of the three big banks in the world
from the bank's board of directors as a source of funds.
He had 841 million cash in his bank account.
And he said, I hope this helps, Dan.
I hadn't heard from him since 2002, okay?
I'm just assuming if he's got 841 million cash in the bank,
he's got a bunch of other shit,
so he must be a billionaire.
But he didn't say, he didn't claim to be a billionaire.
So we got all kinds of tons.
Then, of course, last year we got the 500 billion deal.
Deal, talk to us about that deal.
Klaus Kleinfeld has been a mentee of mine since 1997.
And he came to me as a middle manager
of the healthcare division of Siemens
which was the 20th largest company
of the world at the time.
And he wanted to be CEO,
and so we worked on a program
because QLA works in corporate world,
not just an entrepreneur.
It also works in politics.
In February 2002, thereabouts, he was appointed CEO
of the 20th largest company in the world.
Then he went on to be CEO of other companies,
and then a year ago in November,
coincidentally almost exactly on his birthday,
they announced him being CEO of the largest deal,
a joint venture between Saudi government,
Egyptian government, and Jordan.
It's mostly Saudi government.
They committed to fund $500 billion
to start the first major city of the future.
You know Dubai and those kind of countries?
But no $500 billion commitment has ever been made.
And to fund it, and Klaus would be its first CEO.
In addition to that, the IMF, International Monetary Fund,
and the World Bank had both committed trillions.
So it's really not a $500 billion deal now.
It's about a $2.1 trillion deal.
We don't take credit of that.
I didn't mentor the IMF or the World Bank.
I'd like to have, but I didn't.
Although I did meet the CEO of the World Bank
a long time ago, but I certainly can't claim it.
So that $500 billion is now being used,
and they've already spent about 5.2 billion
of the 500 billion to build the city of the future.
25,000 square acre land mass that mostly Saudi Arabia,
a little bit Jordan, and a little bit Egypt.
And Klaus is there.
They couldn't have picked a better guy.
He believes in saving the world.
He believes that we're not past the precipice.
He believes, and a lot of that stuff I don't believe in.
I think we're past it, okay?
We cannot make up, there's too many snowflakes
to get past that.
He is there running that deal.
So we've got deals from teenage multimillionaire
to the largest deal in recorded history.
And then we've got guys like you,
very successful on the continuum.
But the money that I made,
the 800 bucks into 450 million 30 years ago,
pales in complexion.
Now I've got, not a gazillion,
but I've got many, many, many kids
that have created more wealth than I have.
So when we say 50 Billion Dollar Man,
it means it's not only yourself created wealth,
but for your mentees.
Mentees and devotees have created now 665 billion.
But take the 5500 away.
165 billion, but $50 billion has got
a good ring to it,
and I can prove it with one phone call.
One guy, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
we didn't know that's your mentee.
We've got several guys that have done 10 billion,
a few 20 billion, a whole plethora,
a shit load of 1 billion.
I'm not tossing around loosely.
A billion is not what it used to be,
but it's still more money
than 99.99% watching this thing for sure.
True, true. (laughs)
And I'm pushing for towards, and I will achieve
before they put dirt on me, a trillion, okay?
And I wanna be known as the greatest,
high performance, wealth creator
that has ever lived.
Not being sacrilegious, they talk about Moses,
Buddha, Christ, and maybe Dan.
Not this Dan, but this Dan.
But I want 'em to talk
about Dan, Christ, Buddha, Allah, and wealth creation.
And you know that just as you have successful mentees,
you know that you're at the top
of your game when you've got guys,
kids like Dan here, I'm privileged
to sit next to,
who has changed the lives of a lot of people.
Yes.
And there are not that many people out there
that can say that.
20 years from now, he's gonna be sitting here,
and somebody else is gonna be interviewing him.
With my gray hair. (laughing)
Yeah, yeah, well.
And so we've created a lot of, a lot of wealth.
But just in the last year,
we got so many kids,
I call him the half breed,
the kid from Costa Rica who turned in ten months,
he made his investment in the seminar
into 30 million.
Because the money's out there kids.
If you don't take anything from this YouTube,
if all of a sudden you don't love Dan anymore,
and you never loved me,
money is almost free.
It is just unbelievable the amounts of money
you can get out of banks legally.
Absolutely 1,000% legal.
I was doing this when interest rates were 15, 18%.
And down, the market was down, it was horrible.
And now the kids are doing it
with interest rates at 2, 3, 4%.
We were privileged at the last Hard Core in December
to have a new Hall of Famer, Marcus Bauer,
who is in property.
He came to the seminar.
Luckily for him, he came to first program in 2010
within the mentor program.
He's the first guy--
Wow.
that was able to take advantage
of the systems, procedures,
and all the seven.
He was at the Hard Core.
He couldn't speak a word of English.
The first two or three seminars, he came to six seminars,
the first two or three we had an interpreter
sitting next to him.
And then he came to the Hard Core
which was his seventh.
He was in there yelling, and he also said
I've gotten easier.
He's yelling at everybody saying,
"Jesus Christ, I mean Dan hasn't yelled
at anybody this morning, you know?!"
Yes, we need some yelling. (laughing)
And he said, he's based in Austria.
He's doing a property deal.
The money's free up there.
Not free free, but almost free.
Compared to 18, 20% interest,
2 or 3 or 4% is free.
It's free.
So to circle back to personal brand.
The 50 Billion Dollar Man
and over the years you've developed
your personal brand. Correct.
Was that intentional or was it just
you doing what you're doing and somehow this--
In the beginning, it was unintentional.
In the last couple of years, it's been intentional
because, I didn't work today,
but I have suits that say the pinstripe,
50 Billion Dollar Man.
But now the brand, for me, has really got ahead
of when I planned on it because of the notoriety.
Having dinner potentially,
if the government shutdown doesn't stop it--
(laughing)
Dinner with President Trump-- Yeah.
And getting asked to
these famous universities to speak.
And they know the speech I give
to the kids and universities,
wealth, risk, reward, not.
In other words, the same system that your parents
may have been taught.
You work for a company 40 years, you retire,
hopefully with a pension,
that system doesn't work anymore.
And the kids know it.
You don't have to go to university,
but for the kids that go to university,
they get out, and they can't get a job.
Something's wrong with that system.
And the way that we link
in the 50 Billion Dollar Man brand,
is that barrio bad boy, lot of trouble,
tried to kill his teacher
while I was still in grade school,
and I'm not bragging.
It was the wrong thing to do.
Fortunately, I was not such a great killer
when I was 11, 12 years old 'cause he's alive,
or he was alive.
And to now, living in a castle,
and getting my investiture by the Queen of England
a year and a half ago where I am a member
of Saint John's, and I didn't wear my little emblem today.
But it's all part of a knowing brand,
just like you are the brand. Yes, yes.
But both you and I share the same.
Who do you sell the Dan Lok brand to?
Who do you sell the Dan Peña brand to?
There's not gonna be any replacement.
Yes, yes.
And we know that.
You've got a lot more years to run the brand.
And you'll have a lot of disciples.
And you'll have tons and tons of YouTube.
And when the Martians come down to look at us,
and they see your YouTube and my YouTube,
and they go, what the fuck were those guys doing?
Yeah.
Because you're not gonna pass
the Dan Lok brand off to anybody.
No, yeah.
Just as I'm not gonna pass
the 50 Billion Dollar Man off to anybody.
But branding is crucial,
especially in today's social media environment, especially.
And now, although, you have to do it in the right way,
it's not as hard as building a brand.
As you were talking about,
you built your brand in a short period of time.
Two years.
It's not like Revlon that took 75 years
to build a brand name.
True, very true.
Because of social media,
that we can get distribution
so much faster, right?
We can get out story, our message,
in front of so many people.