The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex
Wall Street to Dubai: How Tan Gera Turned $57K Into Millions After a Total Crypto Crash
22 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Well, welcome to the show where we're shedding expectations, setting aside the shoulds, giving our finger to the supposed tos. So I turned $57,000 in crypto into $1.87 million.
What we did is we actually priced people out aggressively. We're extremely expensive. We're happy to be because we're the Harvard of crypto. And that brings only the top of the top quality people. And what happens when you bring top quality people at a high price? They're engaged. They're smart. They put in the effort. They get results. Once you get the results, what happens?
You use those customer results everywhere in your marketing. You don't have to market because your customers...
to bring more customers, and that's it. What would you say is the perfect price point, especially when you are starting up a startup like this, to charge? Hey guys, and welcome back to Level of Podcast. This is Paul Alex. And today we have a great interview with the CEO and co-founder of Decentralized Masters.
It's a nine-figure global finance company dedicated to making fair and accessible financial services available to everyone, guys.
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Chapter 2: How did Tan Gera turn $57,000 into millions after the crypto crash?
We're going to be talking about crypto, okay? And I'm here with the man, the myth, the legend, Tan Gara. How are you doing, my man? Good. Thank you for having me, my friend. No, absolutely, man. What time is it where you're at right now? So Dubai, 5 p.m., sunset coming together. It's looking nice. I love it. I love it.
Yeah, I got a piece of property over there that I'm selling over there at Business Bay, brother. Let me know if you're interested after the podcast.
I'm more of a Palm Jumeirah person, you know, Business Bay. I'll have to see.
Yeah, yeah. No, but let's get into it, brother. So for my audience that does not know you, who are you?
So I'm Tan Gira, founder of Decentralized Masters. Basically, I'm an ex-investment banker that saw the light. And then I decided to switch my focus to actually digital assets or crypto because I recognize that actually it's a great technology. And despite people calling it a scam, it definitely isn't. So, you know, I decided to go my own way despite having a promising career, let's say.
And so far, so good. It actually paid off. And today we're the world's leader in crypto education in the world.
I love that. I love that. I have actually a mentee and a really good friend that is a crypto enthusiast. And he was very excited that I was actually interviewing you because essentially what you do is what he's trying to do, but here based in the US. So it should be a very good conversation.
So when did you first start getting into this niche of, hey, you know what, I'm going to go ahead and exchange the regular nine to five to starting my own startup?
Okay, so basically in the 2017-18 cycle, I tasted what money was, right? I was starting my career in investment banking, but I did really well with crypto. I went to seven figures and then I lost it all with the 2018 crash. So all my profits vanished, but at least I tasted what freedom could be, even though it was just numbers.
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Chapter 3: What lessons did Tan learn from losing seven figures in crypto?
Okay, for us, it's different, I feel.
So look, our thing is crypto is such a, there's like maybe 10 to 15,000 tokens that get launched every single day, right? For me to keep growing, first of all, I realized that I needed a team. A team comes expensive. Like if I want to have my own research team, I have to pay a payroll fee. it's a drag, right?
So I was like, first of all, even to recover that cost, I need to bring clients in so that I can share that knowledge of that research team. But that became a thing where they were doing so well, they were loving it. I was like, hey, this is a business, right? And I can teach them my strategy. Now, that research team went on to become the literal, one of the top research teams in the world.
And so we scaled the business with it because then your brain starts thinking differently and you're like, wait a minute, This can actually become way more than I ever anticipated. Now the real value stands in the community. We have 4,000 people who are like high net worth. It's so valuable. Like one connection, one handshake, one business deal. Boom, done. So those who say, why do you teach it?
They don't realize that actually teaching and education, teaching someone how to fish instead of just giving them a fish once triggers what we call the principle of reciprocity. If they succeed, thanks to you, they will
love you for the rest of your life and they will buy any other product that you create and they will be your top ambassador and they will be your supporter and the fulfillment you get from doing that i get goosebumps every single time one of our customers just writes me on linkedin on any of my posts you just wake up happy right you're you're making a difference so that's why i actually encourage anyone if you have a skill go and teach it you'll see
Yeah, no, absolutely, man. So you went from dropshipping, you sold a successful brand, and you reinvested all your earnings back into launching this great platform. And when was that aha moment when you knew this was going to be big? When you started going ahead and actually teaching that community of 4,000 people, you were like, dude, this is going to be what takes me to the moon.
You will not believe it, but actually the first six months of when we launched this were a nightmare. And I lost a lot of money. We poured, you know, mid six figures into this with my co-founder to really do it well. Like, you know, we invested into the platform in our course, like everything. Okay. First employees, et cetera, because we had money.
But what ended up happening that we didn't expect is that the entire industry fought back. Basically, Stripe refunded all our customers. We got debanked. So our banks were shutting our accounts. We're like, what's going on, right? Ad accounts. So Facebook was shutting us down. YouTube was shutting us down. So it was literally impossible to do anything.
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Chapter 4: How did Tan leverage dropshipping to fuel his crypto investments?
And our customers sent emails to Stripe saying, hey, I don't want to be refunded. I love the service. I don't want the refund. And they're like, no, no, no. So you know what they did? They didn't even refund. They kept the money for three months. It was just locked. So thank God we had funds and I had made my, you know, my money beforehand.
Because if I was a new entrepreneur, wow, that was tough.
What a wipe you out, man. And it happens to so many entrepreneurs. I mean, I think it was the same story with me on Stripe back in the middle of 2023. They locked up about 700K of my funds with one of my ventures. So it's a story that happens to everybody, guys, that if you guys are listening and watching this right now.
I mean, what Tan is going through is exactly what I went through with literally thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of other entrepreneurs in the online space went through as well. So that's crazy to hear. That's crazy to hear. So when that happened, what was the next move for you guys, which is very critical at the store?
Well, first of all, we didn't break. And that taught me something that is super important, is that this guy is going to be my business partner for the rest of my lifetime, which is very difficult to find, right? So Salim, if you're hearing this, we're together, bro. The thing is, when you start with the hardship, And then you start getting some success because we just fought, right?
We opened new accounts and we just found solutions to problems. That's what an entrepreneur needs to do in the first year or so, I would say, is just fix the problems from yesterday. That's it. So just keep fixing, keep fixing, right? Be a problem solver. So we did that and eventually it clicked. And from, you know, after the first six months where it was tough,
Then we scaled from zero to over $3 million a month in the span of 17 months. Every single month was a record-breaking month. We just kept scaling, kept scaling because the demand was huge. And we realized everyone wants this. Everyone wants to learn how to take control of their money, right? How to manage this and how to use liquidity pools and how to invest in this world.
It's just that it's difficult and they need someone to teach them. And the demand was insane, like really insane. And to this day, I mean, it's been what, three years now? And fast forward today, we're like 130 employees in the company. It's wild.
Yeah, 130 employees, man. You guys are changing lives. You guys are getting the fulfillment of helping literally thousands of entrepreneurs out there get educated in this space. With that being said, brother, What would you say was one of the most pivotal moves to get that type of growth? Like what type of marketing were you guys doing? Was your organic marketing strong?
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Chapter 5: What role does environment play in building wealth according to Tan?
We have a middle tier as well in the 16-ish range. We have a one-on-one at 150,000 to work with me, right? So having all those price tiers is good, but you need to know which one is the one you want to go after. And that only comes after a certain time.
Initially, if someone is starting out, if you can try and sell for anywhere between $8,000 to $10,000 and then have a higher tier at $15,000, I think that's what you should aim for.
Yeah, no, absolutely. And are you guys doing any type of like recurring model as far as just like after you do like an initial price, 15K, 25K, 150K? And what do you typically go ahead and incentivize your current clients to go ahead and pay that recurring model with you guys?
So it's not, it's more of a, do you want to renew your mentorship? Because they have lifetime access to the community and like some of the stuff, you know, they get from the get go. It's more, do you want to have more one-on-one mentorship? Do you want to renew that? And then do you want extra services?
Because we have a lot of services that we can only give them after their first six months because now they're advanced enough to even take advantage of those, right? And so they get very excited because you're always solving the next problem. And so we help them solve the next problem and solve the next problem because the markets, We're in FinPAP, we're in financial markets.
So the markets change every day, the markets are open every day, the market trades every day. So there's so much to learn and so much to do because you want to keep growing your net worth literally every day, right? As long as in the first six months, they make an ROI back. which I'm very confident we help them do, of course they're going to stay. It's a no brainer. So like, why would you not?
And, uh, what we do is we make sure that our customer service, our delivery and the results are so good that, um, After six months, they're going to renew. And the result we get right now is we have around 60% retention rate, which in the industry is wild, right? It's like unheard of because we just concentrate on that. When you charge a lot of money, you don't have to run after acquisition.
you're healthy in your business, right? You don't have to run after shitty customers that you don't want. And so when you have good customers and you have healthy margins, if you focus on them, they're going to renew much better. Much better.
It's the path of least resistance because they already know that you're providing good work. They like the customer service. They like you, right? And ultimately, it's easier to retain them than to go ahead and sell someone new, which is – I mean it makes total sense, man. I know that you're running short on time right now. So with that being said, let's go ahead and ask you.
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