The Money Mondays
STOP Wasting Time Brandon Stevens' Proven Business Formula REVEALED! 📈 E95
Mon, 11 Nov 2024
If you're in California or Kansas, Brandon Steven is your go-to guy for anything related to cars. Not only that, he's also successful in the fitness and F&B industries, and he's here with us to spill his secrets on how he became so successful. Watch until the end because he knows BUSINESS... --- Brandon Steven is the founder and owner of Brandon Steven Motors, a leading automotive dealership based in Wichita, Kansas. Known for his entrepreneurial success and commitment to customer satisfaction, Steven has built a reputation for offering high-quality vehicles and exceptional service. Under his leadership, Brandon Steven Motors has grown into a trusted name in the industry, offering a wide range of new and pre-owned cars, trucks, and SUVs. https://www.brandonsteven.com/ --- Like this episode? Watch more like it 👇 Dan Martell: The Man with the Cheat Code to Money: https://youtu.be/xj_y30BXEyo Men ONLY Need These 2 Simple Things In Life w/ Garrett J. White: https://youtu.be/f-iacHAO3VQ Peter Voogd & Dan Zrihen: Sales Strategies That Made Them Millions: https://youtu.be/HlT3MVS1jig What Erik Huberman Knows About Marketing That You Don't!: https://youtu.be/aN-prmzV20Y Watch ALL Full Episodes Here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6k --- The Money Mondays is a business podcast here to teach you how to make money, invest money, and donate money by showcasing some of the world's most successful people and how they do the same. Hosted by serial entrepreneur Dan Fleyshman, the youngest founder of a publicly traded company in history, this money podcast gives you an exclusive behind the scenes look at how the wealthiest celebrities, entrepreneurs, athletes and influencers make, invest and donate money. If you want to learn more business and investing while you work to improve your financial life, you're in the right place! Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneymondays?sub_confirmation=1 Dan Fleyshman, The Money Mondays Learn more here: https://themoneymondays.com Watch all the podcast episodes: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6k Let’s Connect... Website: https://themoneymondays.com Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-money-mondays/id1663564091 Twitter: https://twitter.com/themoneymondays LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-money-mondays/about/ TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@themoneymondays FB: https://www.facebook.com/The-Money-Mondays-110233585203220/
Chapter 1: What are the core topics covered in this episode?
from the heart of Beverly Hills, take on this huge undertaking. Why did he do it? How did he do it? Talk through the concept of building such a gorgeous place and spending three years of his life when he already has massive amounts, I don't know, 17, 18 car dealerships we'll talk about. I think he's got like 50 or 60 gyms, probably more by now. Might've opened one just yesterday for all I know.
We're going to go through all of those things. But as you guys know, these podcasts average a little bit under 40 minutes because the average workout is 45 minutes. The average commute to work is 45 minutes. This episode will be between 34 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure.
So without further ado, I'm going to bring on Brandon Steven to give you a quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money.
First of all, this is your first podcast outside of the motorhome?
Yeah, hopefully the last. Oh, my God. Just for you.
And this is my first podcast, and this is the first podcast in the Gravitas podcast. Exactly. That's three firsts.
That's a lot. That's a lot of firsts. We've got to make it extra, extra good.
Okay, so two-minute bio. Yes. Which I hate, so I probably won't even use the whole two minutes. I'm Brandon Stephen. I am from Wichita, Kansas. I still live in Wichita, Kansas. People from Beverly Hills that have known me just from doing Gravitas are amazed that I still live in Kansas, but I love it there. Yeah. I think first I'm a father, husband.
I have six kids, six amazing kids, five daughters and a boy. I did start in the car business early on, like in my teenage years, working at my best friend's dad's car dealership. And then I just fell in love with the car business. Then my brother and I were partners. We opened up a health club. So I think I opened up my first, we opened up our first health club in 95.
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Chapter 2: How did Brandon Steven start his journey in the automotive industry?
And 21 car dealerships.
You had 18 car dealerships last time I saw him, which was a week ago. Dan's exaggerating again. Okay, nine days ago.
We have a couple of restaurants. We have a hockey team. We have a lot of things. But our core business are health clubs and car dealerships. That's our core business. And my advice to most people is, Stay in your lane, stay in your lane, stay in your lane. And then I keep going outside my lane and doing restaurants and hockey teams and Membership Club.
What business do I have going in the heart of the Golden Triangle and building this massive project? So it was less than two minutes, right?
So you already had a steakhouse in Wichita. That was kind of like practice, right? Practice of this fancy steakhouse you built there years ago. But why this? Why go build 28,000 square feet in the heart of Beverly Hills right next to Mr. Chow and Chip Riani and all these fancy places? How did you decide, you know what?
I'm going to stake my ground right here in the corner of Camden and Santa Monica Boulevard.
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Chapter 3: What inspired Brandon to build a membership club in Beverly Hills?
The answer to that question is pathetic. There is no answer because I didn't plan this. It started out as I literally came to pick up my buddy Paul for lunch. And they had this patio outside that was very underwhelming for where it was at. And they were getting ready to put a restaurant inside in this little 4,000 square foot vacant space they had that was Wells Fargo. And I was talking to him.
I'm like, I just don't understand. It just didn't work for me. It didn't make sense. And I was like, you should put a bar. This should be like a garden bar. This should be an outside bar. I mean, look where you're at. He just kind of shrugged his shoulders like, whatever, you're from Kansas. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, it's not going to happen.
You're not going to put, the city's not going to approve that. Okay, well, my question to myself was, well, how? How would they approve it? And that's literally how we started. And so it started out to be 12,000 square feet. And now once we started going, I'm like, we need this.
We need this. That's a good idea. Let's do that.
And as my business was growing, this was literally 37 months ago. That's when this project started. And I was like, I need this for my business. I need this. And that's kind of where it's kind of dwarfed to. So it's open. Time has come. Today is day number nine. Wow. Wow is right.
Are you happy? Are you happy as a business person?
I get a lot of congratulations, you know, because I've been doing this for so long, building this. And so people congratulate me so long. And I don't want to say it just frustrates me. It irritates me when people congratulate me because I've done nothing. We are open. We are open. That's only one-third of it. We built this amazing facility, but that's only one-third of it.
Great service and great food are the other. And the club is 95% done construction-wise. So, Dan, you know me well enough to know what do I see.
Everything to fix.
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Chapter 4: What unique features does the membership club offer?
Do you think it matters as a brand? Like why did it click in your mind? Like I'm going to hang a fancy car from the ceiling.
I like people to tell me no and then to overcome it. I love the challenge. Literally, everybody, my designers, everyone says, you're not going to be able to hang an 18-foot F1 car from the ceiling.
It sounds silly.
It sounds silly. And then now with that, there's all kinds of sponsorships. Like I get to wrap the car. It's going to be a Red Bull car. I just found that yesterday. I'm doing a deal with Honda Racing Club. It's going to be a Red Bull car. 18 foot, hanging from the ceiling, actual Red Bull car. Why not, right? I mean, that's a separate room. That's called the vault. Later, we're going to sell it.
I'm going to sell naming rights to that room. I've built a huge... So to get Beverly Hills for me to prove to drive a car through the... Curb, up to the curb, into the building was a whole other task, a whole other world. But why not? Why not have a place where people can unveil their cars?
Whether you're buying a car, whether it's an F1 unveiling, whether it's Bentley releasing their new model, that's what that room's for. Come to find out, we've only been open for nine days. That room's been running out three nights. It's not even done. It's the room that's the most incomplete, and it's the room that people want the most. So that was the last, last addition.
And on the wine side of it, talk us through. It seems like people can actually leave their wine here. They can store their wine here. Yeah.
So that was something I did not know. Advice from Paul, who's my buddy with this building. He's like, Brandon, there's a huge need for wine storage in L.A. People will pay whatever for wine storage. I'm like, yeah. Okay, Paul. Sure enough. So we built these almost 400 wine lockers. I don't know if you know the memberships.
We're doing what we call GEM, gym memberships, which is only selling a few of them. They're lifetime memberships. With that lifetime membership, you also get a huge 12 by 12 wine locker by biometrics. So you walk up, you put your thumbprint in it, and the wine locker comes out. It's a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous room. That room won't be done for another month.
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Chapter 5: What advice does Brandon have for aspiring entrepreneurs?
Because what happens? Well, 50% of it goes to the cost of manufacturing, production, shipping. 12% is going to go to the marketing. 5% on the paid ad spend. We're going to get a convention booth. We're going to have staff. We're going to have employees. But then for year two, we're going to go from $1.5 million to $4 million. We crush a brand night.
crush it guess how much brand i pull out negative negative exactly you know why because it's working so if your business sucks you're not gonna make money and if it's working you pour all the money back in and you take on debt or investors or loans or something to scale the business because it's working you didn't get paid year one year two year three etc
And so when I tell people that, it's hard for them to grasp. They just see fancy numbers on social media like, oh, they did $4 million in sales. That's gross sales. That's not net profit. And you, as the entrepreneur or CEO, are dead last to get paid from staff, from vendors, from lawyers, accountants, leases, and everything between. They're all first, and you are dead last.
And even when you're dead last, you're probably not going to get paid. All right, but I digress.
So Brandon, Steven, there's an exception to every rule. Of course, there's an exception to that as well. And I do agree completely what you said. Not everyone is meant to be entrepreneurs. And that's not a negative thing. Right. There's you can make so much money working for a company like myself where you're actually we actually enhance you being an entrepreneur inside of our company.
when that company already has the infrastructure, already has all the things you need to expand your database, which in essence is your business inside of my company, our company. And that's what I've done inside my car business is I've enabled great people to market inside my company.
Instead of doing everything you're talking about, building their own infrastructure, having all these resources, not having the funds to advertise and market, IT funds. I mean, there's so many things inside of my company that an entrepreneur can come in and just expand his business inside. which is good for some people. And some people want the pain. How did you know I was going to say that?
They want the pain. They want the pain.
And some people will just get lucky and have a great product that costs very little, and they get to produce a lot of income off it, and they get to take money home right away. But I would definitely say that's the exception to the rule.
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Chapter 6: What are the challenges of being an entrepreneur?
Great money, but it does not mean they're not stressed.
Of course.
Because if they're there and they're that high up inside of our company, they are like us. They want more. They see the 5% that's not done. They see the 12% that they could have got, they should have got.
They see the crumbs. What they don't have to pay your rent, your insurance, your payroll, your liabilities, your lawyers. Stop making it sound worse than it is. Did I exaggerate something?
You didn't exaggerate it, but I think the people that are that high up that have been with me for 30 years... They fill it with me.
I love that. Yeah. I love that.
And that's great for them.
I want people to be okay being employee number four, getting some equity, making six figures a year.
Sometimes that's even better. For sure. Because you do get to go home at night and have a different – the meal tastes better sometimes. Your sleep – you do get a better night's sleep, I would say, for sure.
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Chapter 7: How does investment play a role in Brandon's business decisions?
Is it advisors or partners, friends? Or is it you on a whiteboard like, okay, this is my crazy plan.
Yeah.
I did not do a very good job of investing in this bar. So I would definitely tell everybody, everything I did in Gravitas, you should not do.
It's gorgeous, though.
Like I would say, actually, everything that I did, you should do the exact opposite. I started out with a great plan. I was going to make it small. My budget, I'm embarrassed to tell you guys this, but I'm going to tell you. My budget for the first 12,000 square feet was $13 million. And I spent two months value engineering, with my team two months to get it from $13 million to $11.4 million.
And I'm like, I did it. I was really proud of myself. I signed the contract. Let's go. $11.4 million. Now, it's ironic that we went from $13 to $11.4, not $11. Let's not round off to $11. And we're at $37 million is what I spent. And guess what? I'm still going.
Right. You still have 5% to finish.
But I'm so happy that I got it to $11.4 by spending two months to value engineer.
The whiteboard says $11.4.
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