Leverage & Legacy: Derik Fay’s Winning Formula

00:00

 

The truth of the matter is most of the things I was doing and some of the things I'm doing now, there are a slew of people that can do them better.

 

 

 

00:08

 

You're listening to the Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast. If it's radical, we cover it.

 

 

 

00:19

 

Here's your host, Ryan Alford. What's up, guys? Welcome to the Radcast. We say if it's radical, we cover it. I'm Ryan Alford, your host. I'm fucking radical. So that's why I like to have guests like my good friend, Derek Faye, founder and CEO of 3F Management. What's up, Derek? My man, how are you? Thanks for having me on. I got to tell you.

 

 

 

00:43

 

You have the best podcast voice I think I've ever heard. I get excited just listening to you intro me. Hey, we like to kick it off with a bang. I say I don't have a lot of skills. I don't have a lot of talents, but God gave me a, at least a voice for radio. I got a face for radio too. I had a face for radio, so we could have balanced it out. We'll be the radio guys today, but now man.

 

 

 

01:11

 

appreciate it. We talked pre-episode, love the game balls behind you. That's good backdrop. Yeah. Everybody listening, we do film these episodes. So if you're not watching on YouTube, you're missing out. But you'll have to go check out the basketball collection behind Derek. He's got, I know you mentioned him. Let's name drop for everybody before, we'll talk a little later about maybe the guilty pleasure of collecting you got into in COVID, but let's name those balls. From left, we've got LeBron James.

 

 

 

01:40

 

Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, and Wilt Chamberlain. Boom. Now I'm a Boston guy, so I may be biased a little bit. Bird is one of my favorites. Obviously Jordan is the best. I don't care what anybody says. I think he's better than LeBron. And let the comments flow. I grew up, I'm 6'5", and grew up, I played basketball my whole life. And literally growing up, my neighbor,

 

 

 

02:09

 

was five years older than me, he was a guy. And I didn't have a basketball goal, but they did. And so I had to go over with him and play. This was when I was probably like seven or eight till I was probably like 14. He was always five years older than me. And we would pretend each one of us, we were players. And this is when Boston Hay Day, Bird, McHale, Parrish.

 

 

 

02:33

 

You had Dr. J play and you had Michael playing. Obviously Jordan was young, like when Jordan first came around, like early years. And I was always Larry Bird. That was my guy. Larry legend. I guess I was a cross because every time I did a layup, I would stick my tongue out. So I guess I thought I was Jordan, but God knows I didn't play like him. And my neighbor, to this day, his name was David Bergen. And he made me better because he was older than me.

 

 

 

03:03

 

And then my height finally started catching up. He was five years older, but he was of average to below average height overall. But being five years older, he was always taller than me. Of course. Then I hit like the growth spurt, like 12, 13, and he didn't like it too much because he's 16, 17 then he'd still play with me. I give him a lot of credit dealing with little shit like me. Yeah. But I have a similar story. I have a similar story. My father, so I'm 45 and he's 64.

 

 

 

03:33

 

So that's pretty close in age, which meant we played basketball every day after school, like from, I don't know, maybe 12 to like 16. So when I'm 12, he is 31. Still very much a young man, just swatting the shit out of every ball that I throw up at 12 years old. No, like today is probably considered child abuse. Going up the layups, getting checked into the cement.

 

 

 

03:59

 

But I'm gonna tell you what, I kept going in the down still to this day. Remember the first day I beat that son of a bitch and then never looked back. The same thing. I got older and bigger and yeah. I love it. It's the rite of passage. And one way or another. I'm passing on to my kids. I've beaten the shit out of them for a while. Now they're starting to catch up with me. I'm like, here it comes in reverse. But the other side of it. I know. Derek, you're known as the deal structure guy.

 

 

 

04:29

 

I know you close a lot of deals, you venture capital, all those things, but let's set the table for everybody. Who the fuck is Derek Fay? Some people might know you. We got a lot of movers and shakers that listen to the show. They, yeah, that's what happens with your number one, baby. Number one on Apple in business and marketing, but no man, who is Derek? Talk to me.

 

 

 

04:53

 

So who I am is way different than what I do. So let's start with what I do. It's far more serious than actually who I am, which I think is a really important distinction. Listen, I started, we don't have to get into it, although we can certainly deep dive, but I come from single mom, welfare, section eight, abuse, poverty, blah, blah, blah. And I say that just to preface, some people say they were born with a golden, or a silver spoon, I like to joke, that I was born with a spork.

 

 

 

05:22

 

Right. So I had to fight and claw in my even like preteen years. My biggest concern was, how do I figure out a way so that my younger sister can eat this evening? And so what that does is besides not ever really being a kid in the general regard, which is why I'm a child today at 45, it made me look at things in ways that most people don't. And I really hone that skill over time. And so I became very successful, very young.

 

 

 

05:51

 

for reasons that most people don't really ever understand. And so by 22, I had put myself in a position, I was a multimillionaire at 22, and I started my own firm and started building companies and between 22 and now 45, we're north of 30 companies of my own concept from the ground up, built, sold, exited, invested in many more. I do.

 

 

 

06:16

 

I do CEO services, I do leverage buyouts, mergers and acquisitions, real estate arbitrage. I like to say that if I find out tomorrow that hot dogs is the most profitable thing in the country, there will be a Derek's dogs on every corner in the US, trademark pending. So in a word, I'm a hustler from day one. I wear that term as a badge of honor. I love the art of the deal. Stop being about money a long time ago. Not to be disingenuous. I love making money.

 

 

 

06:44

 

but I do it now for a different reason. Okay, I respect that. Hey, money's a tool. For me, it's a tool of freedom. Nobody gets to tell me what to do and to do it. We can all hate money, we can all talk bad about it, but it's a tool, and especially in today's world, so it's less about stacking it and looking at it and faking it or whatever. It's more like what can allow, what can it allow? Money's more about what it allows me not to have to do.

 

 

 

07:12

 

I've been poor and I've been rich and I'll take rich every day. I like to say that money solves every problem except for the one inside of you. We can revisit that, right? But listen, we talked about a little bit just prior. I pursued money initially because I just wanted to be rich. That's all I ever told people when I was a kid coming up, what do you want to be? Rich. People would laugh at me and I didn't care, but it afforded me a lot of bandwidth. As I got older, I realized what I really wanted was...

 

 

 

07:38

 

And why I pursue more money now is what it affords me is time. And then what I get to do with that time is what really I think makes me wealthy. 100%. Couldn't agree more. And I will say I, we might be cut from the same cloth, brother, cause I, I don't know that I haven't had maybe the success you have with 30 companies, a lot of close outs want to get to those, but the, I use the joke all the time. People say, you got old money and you got new money.

 

 

 

08:03

 

Are you from old money or new money? I said, oh shit, I was from old money. I knew that was coming. I come from borrowed money. Yeah, lover of financed money. No, man. But talk about government money. It wasn't that bad. I'd say lower, I can always say lower middle class. I didn't want, I did not want for meals, but we did have a Dodge Dart in the driveway.

 

 

 

08:29

 

I'm talking about like a 1970 Dodge start, not that new model they came out with in what, like 2010 or something, I don't know. Yeah, but Derek, so 30, 30 of your own brands, what kind of companies are we talking about here? Can we name drop or like vertical drop? Like what types of companies? So what's afforded me a lot of flexibility and bandwidth is I believe to my core that every business, at least from a foundational standpoint is nearly identical.

 

 

 

09:00

 

And so that's what I focus on. And then I hire around specificity. And so if I know how to build the foundation of any successful company, and I'm very good at surrounding myself in leading people that are here in the niche, and that allows me to operate in really any vertical period. And so that's really what I've done. And it hasn't been necessarily by design more by opportunity.

 

 

 

09:28

 

that I recognize as I've gone through the years. And sometimes it's been fitness, sometimes it's been fintech, sometimes it's been an electric company, sometimes it's been a sub shop. So it's been all over the place. And my personality, it feeds my personality, at least I tend to get very bored, very quick, which is great in business, not so great in your personal life, but everything's a balance. And so everything I build with the intent to sell as quickly as possible.

 

 

 

09:57

 

I'm the guy that always sells when no one else wants to sell because I know what most people should recognize. That is exactly when you sell. You don't wait until things level off or declining. And initially I was selfish in the sense that I think it comes from my childhood. I wanted recognition to being the guy that owned everything. Who owns the company? I always say I own 100% equity. I just say that sentence every single time. I want everyone to know. Now.

 

 

 

10:27

 

I lean, I don't lean, I prefer and search for really good JVs. Obviously that affords me even greater bandwidth because I'm not the day-to-day guy. But I'm also now enjoying building these really fruitful relationships with young entrepreneurs, bridging that success gap and making more money than I ever have with less stress and more, they sound corny, but more fulfillment than I ever have.

 

 

 

10:57

 

It's real. Like it's funny, but it flipped for me. I was like the hotshot 20 year old, 20 to 30 year old ad executive. And it was all me. And at some point you realize that's not as very fulfilling and your family will do that to having kids and having a wife and all those things, especially when you're happy, but it certainly, but in professional, when that switch flips, it gets, you get

 

 

 

11:28

 

You get more fulfilled, but you get real powerful too, because it turns two things on, because you get some empathy and you get understanding and you get a lot of things, but then we can do more as a team than I could ever do. That's right. My first taste of that was with my COO who's been with me now, geez, 12, 13 years, probably one of the best operators on the globe.

 

 

 

11:58

 

I hired him 12 years ago and we're like a year or so in, and I'm still in that young phase of everything. I'm micromanaging everybody, including him. I'm hiring really sophisticated, talented people, not letting them make any decisions. And he comes to me and he says, listen, D, I respect everything you do. You're super talented. I'll stay with you my entire career, but you have to recognize based on what you're paying me that I might have some skills too.

 

 

 

12:25

 

If you just let me show you, you might be surprised. And I remember feeling insulted, which I knew that meant that I was wrong. And so then I started to slowly let go and things got better and better until I finally became a true founder versus day-to-day CEO. And that's when my career just took off into space. Yeah, exactly. And is...

 

 

 

12:53

 

well-rounded as you seem and the skills that you seem to have, we can't do it all. We can't be the best at everything, right? When we think we are in our 20s, some of us longer than we should, but we're dead wrong. The truth of the matter is most of the things I was doing and some of the things I'm doing now, there are a slew of people that can do them better. Yeah. What do you think? I always go to this question with guys.

 

 

 

13:22

 

successful guys like you driven it nature nurture. Were you born? You had the variables that probably made you want that because you didn't have it growing up. So I'm sure that's a nature thing, but were you just born to be this guy or did it like develop? No, I would tell you that I am. I was definitely not born. I don't think to be this guy. How could I say that I was right? I went through

 

 

 

13:52

 

one of the most horrific childhoods you could ever imagine. And we can get into that if you want to hear it. It's not a great story, but I've told it before just to add some context. But with this question, it might be important. At a very young age, my innocence, my security, all of the things that make you a stable boy, and as you get older, stable man, were stripped from me. And I had to literally scotch tape that shit together.

 

 

 

14:19

 

And I think I only was able to do it because I was so concerned about my younger sister. Because absent that, I don't know that I could have. And both of my siblings, one went to prison for 10 years. One is still in prison. Product of the same environment. So sometimes there's no explanation other than just who was born first. Maybe, maybe some makeup of my father in me. There, there are a lot of things you never know, but it made me as resilient as hell. It made me the guy that when things are at their worst and everybody is panicking.

 

 

 

14:49

 

I am at my best. I'm at my clearest. And that's because I've been through some shit so that when there's like business stressors, the volume so turned down on it, I'm able to really laser focus and cut through the fog. Yeah. Nah, man, it's hard to say. We all go through things, but a few, but the percentages of people that go through things that we don't have to beleaguer or nail like.

 

 

 

15:18

 

Not having to go through what you went through to think about others so young versus yourself. Because think about most kids. You think you're so self-centered. Like we all are, and we talked about that a little bit in early adulthood. But normally as a kid, you're only worried about numero uno, right? But having to think and concern yourself and be that concerned with someone else probably instilled something in you that's made you what you are today.

 

 

 

15:44

 

Yeah, listen, the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life made me the best man I think I ever could have ended up. And it's wild to think about that, right? Talk to me about how do you identify opportunities now? Think our listeners trying to give value to maybe some of the successful people of the world. Like what are, what are things that you look for? What are the triggers now?

 

 

 

16:12

 

maybe in either in the past or now for deals or things or what do you keep your eye on?

 

 

 

16:20

 

Boy, so the answer I think that would be different on my 20s, 30s, and now 40s. And so for me, I love the analogy. I'm gonna use it as cliche as it is because now you've heard it. If you go and buy a yellow car, well, prior to doing that, you're like, boy, I don't see many yellow cars. You buy yourself a yellow car, all of a sudden you see 35 yellow cars on the way home from the dealership. So I've always been a guy that's looking for the yellow car. And that yellow car for me was opportunity because I had to as a kid.

 

 

 

16:50

 

And so what's a lethal trait in life in a good way, which I teach my children in a lot of different unique ways is identifying opportunity. There's so much opportunity out there that people literally walk by every day that I think that's the core problem. And by the way, that doesn't matter if you're 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 80. Opportunity is opportunity. And I think the problem is that everybody thinks that opportunity is transactional,

 

 

 

17:20

 

I see a way that someone could make money. Can I do it? No, done. Versus speed to opportunity is everything. If you're first to something, you win. Not sometimes, not most of the time, every goddamn time. Because it's more about value, leverage and value. So if you're first to an opportunity, you have the leverage. If you have the leverage, you possess the value. If you have the value, you can either execute on it or you can disperse it. And so can I execute on this opportunity? No?

 

 

 

17:50

 

Can I partner with someone? No, okay. Do I know someone that can partner with someone? And so I've always gone to the opportunity, back filled to execution, and then either I can do one of these 14, 12 steps, or I'll find someone that can, or I'll find someone that no one that can, and then I'll arbitrage, or I'll execute, or I'll profit share. And that's how I built the foundation of my wealth. Yeah, I think...

 

 

 

18:18

 

I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's like self-limiting, like for people. It's a combination like self-limiting, resourcefulness, grit. There's some combination of those things that go into what you just described. Sometimes there's like these things like, and I'll have this too, and I pray my kids have it, and I want it for everyone, where you just see obvious things. Like when I was in my 20s,

 

 

 

18:43

 

and grew a book of business from 3 million to 40 million for someone else in the ad business. It was just walking into the room. I'd be sitting there and something would get said over here. And something would get on a boardroom of 20 people over here and over here. And I would hear, yeah, because we were like an ad agency. And we did, we had this vertical of things that we did. We did a lot of newspaper advertising, TV commercials, that kind of thing. I'd be sitting in the room and.

 

 

 

19:10

 

Someone from the sponsorship team would be over there. We really need to think about sports sponsors. And this is Verizon Wireless, by the way. And I'd go, you should hire us to do that. We do that. Do you think we did it? Absolutely, fucking, literally not. It didn't matter. Because I knew I had people that I could call, or I could call my agency owner, who would say, we'll put in a sports sponsorship division tomorrow. But those things are like, and that's just an example for my own.

 

 

 

19:37

 

But I think those things are all around us sometimes. If we're like listening and just paying attention of connecting dots, right? It's such a, that's such a beautiful example cause I've used something similar to that. Say yes to everything because just because you can't do it doesn't mean you can't find someone that can. Like if someone walks up and says, oh man, my website sucks. I wish I had a new one. I would say, oh, I can do that. This is a kid, I can do that. I didn't even know anything about websites.

 

 

 

20:04

 

But I went to a website company and I said, hey, what if I bring you leads? Like there's money everywhere. Just say yes. Yeah. Cause they're not explaining it done today. You have people think get anxious because they think they've committed to something like it's there's certain. Yeah. It's like you, if they want their leaves done and you got to go do that right this second and you don't have time. Okay. Fine. But like most things, like we're talking about, you've got some runway to put it together.

 

 

 

20:33

 

Listen, I have a story I think that demonstrates recognizing opportunity. If you want to hear it. Let's do it. So I was 22 years old. Let me preface it by saying it took me $70. So 68, 69, 70, less than 100. And you know this story? No. And I turned it into 5 million profit in 35 days.

 

 

 

21:03

 

at 22 just by recognizing opportunities. So here we go. I moved to Florida. First thing I do, I've just moved to Florida. I want to meet everybody that I can possibly meet. So I'm going all the high end bars. I'm going to country clubs. I'm going to events just to shake hands and introduce myself. Listen people. So I made the two top realtors from WCI at the time, largest real estate company in the U S now defunct. Make friends with the husband and wife team.

 

 

 

21:31

 

They asked me out to lunch a couple of days later. So in their car on the way to Naples to have lunch, they get a phone call and they ask if, do you mind if we stop somewhere? Sure. So they pull into a 450, 500 unit, low income housing apartments. And so we go in the room, I'm just in the back of the room listening, just like you would be at 22. Is there anything here for me? How can I take everything? And a reed had just bought this from the original owner.

 

 

 

21:59

 

And they've gathered all the top realtors and said, we're converting these low income units to high end condominiums. We're going to have about 150,000 margin in each. Do you want, how many do you want? So we leave. I say, do you have any interest? They say, we don't give a shit. We sell $10 million homes in Naples. We don't want it. Perfect. Go to lunch, come back. This is 2002. I do literally 10 minutes of research and I find that then 2002 low income tenants, if their unit is going to be converted to a high end condo, first right of refusal. Okay.

 

 

 

22:29

 

First of all, how many people would have gone this far? Almost none. So here's what I do. I draft letters. I say, dear tenant, great news. You may not know this, but your unit is going to be converted to a high-end condo and you have first right of refusal. If you have the ability, I highly recommend you do it. If you don't and you assign your rights to me, I'll give you $1,000 to relocate. Now I wait. One day goes by, nothing. Demon, I thought that was...

 

 

 

22:57

 

Like I thought I was brilliant. I thought I was like Einstein discovered equals MC squared.

 

 

 

23:03

 

Couple days go by, phone starts ringing. Fast forward two weeks, I have 252 assignments to me. So now the REIT is going batshit bananas. We're gonna sue you, you're doing, nothing was illegal. And so the more they pushed, the more I pushed the other way and I said, listen, I'm ready to close. Send me the wire instruction, I'm gonna close it off. Now, all they had to do was call my bluff. I couldn't buy 250 units. If they had said buy it, I was done. So.

 

 

 

23:32

 

Week goes by and they go, listen, what do you want here? And I said, I'm guessing you have about 150,000 per unit. They didn't know I was in the room. And I said, I'll tell you what, you give me 20,000 per unit, it's yours. They agreed, brought me a check for $5 million. Holy shit. The arbitrage of all time is awesome. Listen, opportunity is everywhere. Yes, it is. And you did, you worked hard.

 

 

 

24:00

 

But you really just weren't smart. Come on. I drafted one letter, hit print, paid $70 for a courier to knock on people's doors. And then I bullshitted and played poker for two weeks. And at worst they call you on it and you go, oh, I don't have it. And you putt. You putt. Well, lesson learned. But man, that taught me a really valuable lesson. I knew I had skills. I knew that there really weren't any rules in business. And then I did this and I said, aha.

 

 

 

24:29

 

Everything I suspected was right. It doesn't matter how small you are, how big they are. If you make your moves and your timing is right, you can outdo and beat anybody. Yeah. It changed my life forever. It also, one thing I heard, and some people talk about this. I don't know if it's talked about enough, but you put yourself in the environment in the room with some movers and shakers and you didn't know you might

 

 

 

24:56

 

outfoxed them at some point. That probably wasn't necessarily an intent, but you just knew that you surround yourself with people that are a higher level than you. And that's right. And lo and behold, you're now at a higher level than them. I call that opportunity adjacent. I try to always put myself into that situation. And listen, you can look at that and call it luck, but nothing about it was luck.

 

 

 

25:24

 

It wasn't luck that I, first thing I did when I got to Florida was I sought out connections. It wasn't luck that I went to lunch, all of these types of things. So anyway, you get the drill, but for listeners, it's super important. And really, I'm even ashamed to say this word platform now that I'm a social media guy, but my whole platform is really, if I can do this, if I can be here today on your podcast at the Aspire stage last week, there's not a script that Hollywood could have written. It puts.

 

 

 

25:53

 

a young Derek from where I started to hear. In fact, if they made that movie, which Netflix is, you'd watch it and go, that's unbelievable. Like they've gone too far. Yeah, it's just opportunity. And here we are taking advantage of it, talking with Derek Fay, founder and CEO of 3F Management. I know we've danced around it, we've talked about it, but what is 3F Management? What does 3F Management do?

 

 

 

26:21

 

So it starts, I say we're a startup. What we do today is we invest, partner, JV, with mostly established companies. But if there's a special startup company, we'll do that too. And in a word, we help them scale and exit at far greater than they would. I would say one of my specialties is selling companies for more than they are worth.

 

 

 

26:46

 

And that's not magical. It's not because I'm smarter than most. In fact, I'm really the smartest guy in the room, but I know how to, I know how to position and again, we get back to the dealer situation, it's about timing. People buy the sizzle, not the steak. There are people that have really great companies. I sit down with them, reorganize their financials in a way better suited to sell. And they get two times more than they would have. And so we're a full service. We'll provide management services.

 

 

 

27:14

 

We'll take equity in the company. We'll consult. We'll do all of those types of things. And that's 3F management. And then independently myself, I do things, I call them shadow CEO services. So I'll go into fortune 500 companies or publicly traded companies and either consult or step in as an interim CEO, help with board deadlocks or take an advisory board position. And again, let's not miss the fact that I dropped out of college in 60 days. Don't have a degree.

 

 

 

27:42

 

This is street smarts versus book smarts. And it's important for people to hear, and I'm not knocking a college degree. Maybe I would have done 10 times better if I'd had it. Maybe not. MIT grads work for me. And we're going back to, it's just a matter of perseverance. What makes you happy? Other than my daughters? Yeah. Well, that's actually a really great question. And I didn't have the answer to that until.

 

 

 

28:12

 

after COVID. COVID saved my life. Up until COVID, we talked about a little bit, I just pursued money for more. I just wanted more. I thought it was going to make me, that I was going to fill the hole that my childhood made in me. I put my head down, put it away, didn't look at it. In 2019, I sold another really large company that I'd built, getting a divorce, in my massive home, garage filled with cars. This doesn't feel bad for the rich guy, but just some context. And I'm alone.

 

 

 

28:41

 

I've got nothing. I realize that everything I felt more empty at 39, 40 with everything I thought I always wanted than I did as a little kid. And so that's why I say COVID saved my life. I had a year of reflection and really looking at what I thought would make me happy. And then that's when I transitioned to partnering with people, helping young entrepreneurs, not completely selfless. I make money when I help young entrepreneurs. It's still about making money, but it's about making money for a different reason.

 

 

 

29:11

 

And today, outside of my children, what makes me the happiest, and I've just stumbled into it, is now speaking on stages is really, I'm a visual thinker. So I like to say, before I started speaking on stages, I was filling that hole in me with a spoon. And now that I'm speaking on stages, it's a goddamn backhoe. And so speaking to these people about where I came from, how I've gotten here, stepping off stage and having three hours in a line of people just asking me questions, that's really feeding my soul.

 

 

 

29:41

 

That's great, man. I love it. Yeah. And I respect the hell out of you didn't even like pause your daughters. Like you'd be surprised. I've talked to a lot of people, asked some people that question. I know they have kids. They think a lot harder than you did longer than you did about family. I respect you for that. That's a miss. My daughters are my life. They've they grew up in boardrooms with me. I was the dad that, you know, two, three years old with a pad and a crayon. They don't know what the hell they're writing and they're acting, but it was getting in.

 

 

 

30:11

 

And I was the founder and CEO and I've had instances where someone said, no, I don't think it's appropriate that you've got your children in this boardroom. And I said, great news. You no longer have to be here. Really easy solution. Get the fuck out. And so they've tasted entrepreneurship their whole life and they have become just a, such a better glowing, shining example of myself and probably everything I could have been. But.

 

 

 

30:40

 

absent the stuff from my childhood. So it's so great to watch. And this is a father. Oh, I don't understand parents that compete with their children. All I've ever wanted was my children to not be as good as me, but to be so much better than me. That's a success as a father, I think. And so they're both, they both have their independent passions. They both own their own company. They're both entrepreneurs, not because I pushed it, because that's what they want. And so we've got a great relationship. I bring them all my deals. We talk about it.

 

 

 

31:08

 

So it was an easy answer. Ha ha. I love it, man. What's the economy headed? I imagine, I don't know, that's maybe not your specialty, but I'm sure with your financial position and what you do, you have at least your, I don't know, future vision cap. What do you think next year's looking like? I'm gonna answer that in a way, and this isn't to avoid it, because I can give you a technical answer, but before I do that, I like to give answers that I think are helpful to people.

 

 

 

31:35

 

Yeah. And there may be some nine figure people listening and we can talk about the best possible allocation, blah, blah, blah, who gives a shit, right? Those are rich people problems. But I want to look at it more like when I, in 2008, when I didn't have a fraction of what I had, how did I push through that? And I think the problem is that we all pay far too much attention to all the noise and all the things that are going on because good, bad inflation, high inflation, low gas prices up, gas prices down.

 

 

 

32:03

 

You still need to put your head down and get shit done. And if you do that and only focus on your life and what you're doing, you'll be amazed how little all that stuff actually matters. Dude, yeah. You're playing off the playbook, brother. Like I'm just saying, I asked that because I got a business and marketing show and you're a smart guy. And maybe there's some nugget that is worth it, but there's no more important nugget than that. Like it's so true. Like it...

 

 

 

32:32

 

Look, inflation matters and it has impact, but you can't control it. And there's so many opportunities and things that you can control if you really want to stick your nose in it. You just have to do it though. And you may have picked up, I'm a bit of a smart ass, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but somebody the other day or other week, whatever, was going on and on about the Fed and the decisions he's going to make. And I do the same thing when people get really juiced up about sports. I'm like,

 

 

 

33:02

 

What position do you play? Oh, I'm sorry. Are you the one making the decision on inflation? Because if you are, then let's continue this conversation. Otherwise, why don't we talk about something we can control? People get just swallowed up by it. Yeah, exactly. But is there anything that you're actually watching or worried about next year? Listen, I'm not a guy that worries for all the reasons that we just said. Yes. Comma. I do have a lot of money in the market. It's funny. I.

 

 

 

33:31

 

didn't invest a dollar into the market until three months before COVID. I told everybody that ever met me, it's the casino of the world, don't do it. And then of course, sold a bunch of companies and did the opposite of what got me there because that's what we all do because we're stupid as many times. And promptly lost 40%. So there you go. We've rallied. I look in a sentence, I suspect something like the roaring 20s is going to happen. I don't think it's next year. I think 2025.

 

 

 

34:01

 

I think next year, depending on what the Fed does, people think he's going to drop the rates Q1. I don't think that. I think he's going to hold as long as he can, maybe mid-year, end of year. And if that's the way it plays out, and he's dropping rates, the Fed's dropping rates through the end of next year into 2025, I think we're going to see a massive surge in the markets. I think we're going to see spending in unprecedented ways. And I compare it to the 1920s, where we're coming out of the Great Depression, not that we're in a Great Depression.

 

 

 

34:30

 

But there are a lot of similarities. And I think if you're heavy in the market, just like you should always do, regardless of anything, if you hold on, I think 2025 could be a very exciting year. Outside of being in the market, I stand by my advice. Just do what you're doing. Double down on your successes and keep your head down. Bingo. I love it, brother. Where can everybody keep up with everything that Derek Faye is doing and call you if they need a good speaker?

 

 

 

35:00

 

Yeah, I'm on all platforms. Very simple. Just my name at Derek Fay, D-E-R-I-K-F-A-Y. I do my very best to keep up with all the DMs and requests. Because as we mentioned, I think before we went on, I don't have anything to sell. I am looking for deal flow. I am looking for good partners. I'm never going to sell you a goddamn course. In fact, if you go on my pages about once a week, I give away for free things that I've done very simply put how you can do this and make real money.

 

 

 

35:30

 

And why not? Like other people's success doesn't affect me. It makes me feel good. So hop on there, take my ideas. I like to say that if you think they're bullshit and they could never be done, they weren't for you anyway. So just promptly ignore them. It's the people that wanna try it that will see that it works. Yeah. The wise Chinese proverb. The person saying it can't get done better get the fuck out of the way of the person doing it.

 

 

 

35:57

 

That's right. He's not going to do it. I added some conjecture to the Chinese proverb. I'm not sure the F bomb was in there, but you know, Hey brother, I've really enjoyed this. I'd like to pick your brain sometime on, on some deals. Anytime, bro. Appreciate it. Hey guys, find us the radcast.com search for Derek Fay. You'll find the highlight clips, the links and how to get in touch with Derek on social media. I'm at Ryan Alford on all the social media platforms.

 

 

 

36:27

 

And hey, get on my newsletter, man. It's free, it's daily, it's million dollar advice. RyanAlford.com backslash newsletter. We'll see you ne00:00

 

 

 

The truth of the matter is most of the things I was doing and some of the things I'm doing now, there are a slew of people that can do them better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

00:08

 

 

 

You're listening to the Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast. If it's radical, we cover it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

00:19

 

 

 

Here's your host, Ryan Alford. What's up, guys? Welcome to the Radcast. We say if it's radical, we cover it. I'm Ryan Alford, your host. I'm fucking radical. So that's why I like to have guests like my good friend, Derek Faye, founder and CEO of 3F Management. What's up, Derek? My man, how are you? Thanks for having me on. I got to tell you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

00:43

 

 

 

You have the best podcast voice I think I've ever heard. I get excited just listening to you intro me. Hey, we like to kick it off with a bang. I say I don't have a lot of skills. I don't have a lot of talents, but God gave me a, at least a voice for radio. I got a face for radio too. I had a face for radio, so we could have balanced it out. We'll be the radio guys today, but now man.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

01:11

 

 

 

appreciate it. We talked pre-episode, love the game balls behind you. That's good backdrop. Yeah. Everybody listening, we do film these episodes. So if you're not watching on YouTube, you're missing out. But you'll have to go check out the basketball collection behind Derek. He's got, I know you mentioned him. Let's name drop for everybody before, we'll talk a little later about maybe the guilty pleasure of collecting you got into in COVID, but let's name those balls. From left, we've got LeBron James.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

01:40

 

 

 

Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, and Wilt Chamberlain. Boom. Now I'm a Boston guy, so I may be biased a little bit. Bird is one of my favorites. Obviously Jordan is the best. I don't care what anybody says. I think he's better than LeBron. And let the comments flow. I grew up, I'm 6'5", and grew up, I played basketball my whole life. And literally growing up, my neighbor,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

02:09

 

 

 

was five years older than me, he was a guy. And I didn't have a basketball goal, but they did. And so I had to go over with him and play. This was when I was probably like seven or eight till I was probably like 14. He was always five years older than me. And we would pretend each one of us, we were players. And this is when Boston Hay Day, Bird, McHale, Parrish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

02:33

 

 

 

You had Dr. J play and you had Michael playing. Obviously Jordan was young, like when Jordan first came around, like early years. And I was always Larry Bird. That was my guy. Larry legend. I guess I was a cross because every time I did a layup, I would stick my tongue out. So I guess I thought I was Jordan, but God knows I didn't play like him. And my neighbor, to this day, his name was David Bergen. And he made me better because he was older than me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

03:03

 

 

 

And then my height finally started catching up. He was five years older, but he was of average to below average height overall. But being five years older, he was always taller than me. Of course. Then I hit like the growth spurt, like 12, 13, and he didn't like it too much because he's 16, 17 then he'd still play with me. I give him a lot of credit dealing with little shit like me. Yeah. But I have a similar story. I have a similar story. My father, so I'm 45 and he's 64.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

03:33

 

 

 

So that's pretty close in age, which meant we played basketball every day after school, like from, I don't know, maybe 12 to like 16. So when I'm 12, he is 31. Still very much a young man, just swatting the shit out of every ball that I throw up at 12 years old. No, like today is probably considered child abuse. Going up the layups, getting checked into the cement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

03:59

 

 

 

But I'm gonna tell you what, I kept going in the down still to this day. Remember the first day I beat that son of a bitch and then never looked back. The same thing. I got older and bigger and yeah. I love it. It's the rite of passage. And one way or another. I'm passing on to my kids. I've beaten the shit out of them for a while. Now they're starting to catch up with me. I'm like, here it comes in reverse. But the other side of it. I know. Derek, you're known as the deal structure guy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

04:29

 

 

 

I know you close a lot of deals, you venture capital, all those things, but let's set the table for everybody. Who the fuck is Derek Fay? Some people might know you. We got a lot of movers and shakers that listen to the show. They, yeah, that's what happens with your number one, baby. Number one on Apple in business and marketing, but no man, who is Derek? Talk to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

04:53

 

 

 

So who I am is way different than what I do. So let's start with what I do. It's far more serious than actually who I am, which I think is a really important distinction. Listen, I started, we don't have to get into it, although we can certainly deep dive, but I come from single mom, welfare, section eight, abuse, poverty, blah, blah, blah. And I say that just to preface, some people say they were born with a golden, or a silver spoon, I like to joke, that I was born with a spork.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

05:22

 

 

 

Right. So I had to fight and claw in my even like preteen years. My biggest concern was, how do I figure out a way so that my younger sister can eat this evening? And so what that does is besides not ever really being a kid in the general regard, which is why I'm a child today at 45, it made me look at things in ways that most people don't. And I really hone that skill over time. And so I became very successful, very young.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

05:51

 

 

 

for reasons that most people don't really ever understand. And so by 22, I had put myself in a position, I was a multimillionaire at 22, and I started my own firm and started building companies and between 22 and now 45, we're north of 30 companies of my own concept from the ground up, built, sold, exited, invested in many more. I do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

06:16

 

 

 

I do CEO services, I do leverage buyouts, mergers and acquisitions, real estate arbitrage. I like to say that if I find out tomorrow that hot dogs is the most profitable thing in the country, there will be a Derek's dogs on every corner in the US, trademark pending. So in a word, I'm a hustler from day one. I wear that term as a badge of honor. I love the art of the deal. Stop being about money a long time ago. Not to be disingenuous. I love making money.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

06:44

 

 

 

but I do it now for a different reason. Okay, I respect that. Hey, money's a tool. For me, it's a tool of freedom. Nobody gets to tell me what to do and to do it. We can all hate money, we can all talk bad about it, but it's a tool, and especially in today's world, so it's less about stacking it and looking at it and faking it or whatever. It's more like what can allow, what can it allow? Money's more about what it allows me not to have to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

07:12

 

 

 

I've been poor and I've been rich and I'll take rich every day. I like to say that money solves every problem except for the one inside of you. We can revisit that, right? But listen, we talked about a little bit just prior. I pursued money initially because I just wanted to be rich. That's all I ever told people when I was a kid coming up, what do you want to be? Rich. People would laugh at me and I didn't care, but it afforded me a lot of bandwidth. As I got older, I realized what I really wanted was...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

07:38

 

 

 

And why I pursue more money now is what it affords me is time. And then what I get to do with that time is what really I think makes me wealthy. 100%. Couldn't agree more. And I will say I, we might be cut from the same cloth, brother, cause I, I don't know that I haven't had maybe the success you have with 30 companies, a lot of close outs want to get to those, but the, I use the joke all the time. People say, you got old money and you got new money.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08:03

 

 

 

Are you from old money or new money? I said, oh shit, I was from old money. I knew that was coming. I come from borrowed money. Yeah, lover of financed money. No, man. But talk about government money. It wasn't that bad. I'd say lower, I can always say lower middle class. I didn't want, I did not want for meals, but we did have a Dodge Dart in the driveway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

08:29

 

 

 

I'm talking about like a 1970 Dodge start, not that new model they came out with in what, like 2010 or something, I don't know. Yeah, but Derek, so 30, 30 of your own brands, what kind of companies are we talking about here? Can we name drop or like vertical drop? Like what types of companies? So what's afforded me a lot of flexibility and bandwidth is I believe to my core that every business, at least from a foundational standpoint is nearly identical.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09:00

 

 

 

And so that's what I focus on. And then I hire around specificity. And so if I know how to build the foundation of any successful company, and I'm very good at surrounding myself in leading people that are here in the niche, and that allows me to operate in really any vertical period. And so that's really what I've done. And it hasn't been necessarily by design more by opportunity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09:28

 

 

 

that I recognize as I've gone through the years. And sometimes it's been fitness, sometimes it's been fintech, sometimes it's been an electric company, sometimes it's been a sub shop. So it's been all over the place. And my personality, it feeds my personality, at least I tend to get very bored, very quick, which is great in business, not so great in your personal life, but everything's a balance. And so everything I build with the intent to sell as quickly as possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09:57

 

 

 

I'm the guy that always sells when no one else wants to sell because I know what most people should recognize. That is exactly when you sell. You don't wait until things level off or declining. And initially I was selfish in the sense that I think it comes from my childhood. I wanted recognition to being the guy that owned everything. Who owns the company? I always say I own 100% equity. I just say that sentence every single time. I want everyone to know. Now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10:27

 

 

 

I lean, I don't lean, I prefer and search for really good JVs. Obviously that affords me even greater bandwidth because I'm not the day-to-day guy. But I'm also now enjoying building these really fruitful relationships with young entrepreneurs, bridging that success gap and making more money than I ever have with less stress and more, they sound corny, but more fulfillment than I ever have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10:57

 

 

 

It's real. Like it's funny, but it flipped for me. I was like the hotshot 20 year old, 20 to 30 year old ad executive. And it was all me. And at some point you realize that's not as very fulfilling and your family will do that to having kids and having a wife and all those things, especially when you're happy, but it certainly, but in professional, when that switch flips, it gets, you get

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11:28

 

 

 

You get more fulfilled, but you get real powerful too, because it turns two things on, because you get some empathy and you get understanding and you get a lot of things, but then we can do more as a team than I could ever do. That's right. My first taste of that was with my COO who's been with me now, geez, 12, 13 years, probably one of the best operators on the globe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11:58

 

 

 

I hired him 12 years ago and we're like a year or so in, and I'm still in that young phase of everything. I'm micromanaging everybody, including him. I'm hiring really sophisticated, talented people, not letting them make any decisions. And he comes to me and he says, listen, D, I respect everything you do. You're super talented. I'll stay with you my entire career, but you have to recognize based on what you're paying me that I might have some skills too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12:25

 

 

 

If you just let me show you, you might be surprised. And I remember feeling insulted, which I knew that meant that I was wrong. And so then I started to slowly let go and things got better and better until I finally became a true founder versus day-to-day CEO. And that's when my career just took off into space. Yeah, exactly. And is...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12:53

 

 

 

well-rounded as you seem and the skills that you seem to have, we can't do it all. We can't be the best at everything, right? When we think we are in our 20s, some of us longer than we should, but we're dead wrong. The truth of the matter is most of the things I was doing and some of the things I'm doing now, there are a slew of people that can do them better. Yeah. What do you think? I always go to this question with guys.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

13:22

 

 

 

successful guys like you driven it nature nurture. Were you born? You had the variables that probably made you want that because you didn't have it growing up. So I'm sure that's a nature thing, but were you just born to be this guy or did it like develop? No, I would tell you that I am. I was definitely not born. I don't think to be this guy. How could I say that I was right? I went through

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

13:52

 

 

 

one of the most horrific childhoods you could ever imagine. And we can get into that if you want to hear it. It's not a great story, but I've told it before just to add some context. But with this question, it might be important. At a very young age, my innocence, my security, all of the things that make you a stable boy, and as you get older, stable man, were stripped from me. And I had to literally scotch tape that shit together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14:19

 

 

 

And I think I only was able to do it because I was so concerned about my younger sister. Because absent that, I don't know that I could have. And both of my siblings, one went to prison for 10 years. One is still in prison. Product of the same environment. So sometimes there's no explanation other than just who was born first. Maybe, maybe some makeup of my father in me. There, there are a lot of things you never know, but it made me as resilient as hell. It made me the guy that when things are at their worst and everybody is panicking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14:49

 

 

 

I am at my best. I'm at my clearest. And that's because I've been through some shit so that when there's like business stressors, the volume so turned down on it, I'm able to really laser focus and cut through the fog. Yeah. Nah, man, it's hard to say. We all go through things, but a few, but the percentages of people that go through things that we don't have to beleaguer or nail like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

15:18

 

 

 

Not having to go through what you went through to think about others so young versus yourself. Because think about most kids. You think you're so self-centered. Like we all are, and we talked about that a little bit in early adulthood. But normally as a kid, you're only worried about numero uno, right? But having to think and concern yourself and be that concerned with someone else probably instilled something in you that's made you what you are today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

15:44

 

 

 

Yeah, listen, the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life made me the best man I think I ever could have ended up. And it's wild to think about that, right? Talk to me about how do you identify opportunities now? Think our listeners trying to give value to maybe some of the successful people of the world. Like what are, what are things that you look for? What are the triggers now?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

16:12

 

 

 

maybe in either in the past or now for deals or things or what do you keep your eye on?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

16:20

 

 

 

Boy, so the answer I think that would be different on my 20s, 30s, and now 40s. And so for me, I love the analogy. I'm gonna use it as cliche as it is because now you've heard it. If you go and buy a yellow car, well, prior to doing that, you're like, boy, I don't see many yellow cars. You buy yourself a yellow car, all of a sudden you see 35 yellow cars on the way home from the dealership. So I've always been a guy that's looking for the yellow car. And that yellow car for me was opportunity because I had to as a kid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

16:50

 

 

 

And so what's a lethal trait in life in a good way, which I teach my children in a lot of different unique ways is identifying opportunity. There's so much opportunity out there that people literally walk by every day that I think that's the core problem. And by the way, that doesn't matter if you're 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 80. Opportunity is opportunity. And I think the problem is that everybody thinks that opportunity is transactional,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

17:20

 

 

 

I see a way that someone could make money. Can I do it? No, done. Versus speed to opportunity is everything. If you're first to something, you win. Not sometimes, not most of the time, every goddamn time. Because it's more about value, leverage and value. So if you're first to an opportunity, you have the leverage. If you have the leverage, you possess the value. If you have the value, you can either execute on it or you can disperse it. And so can I execute on this opportunity? No?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

17:50

 

 

 

Can I partner with someone? No, okay. Do I know someone that can partner with someone? And so I've always gone to the opportunity, back filled to execution, and then either I can do one of these 14, 12 steps, or I'll find someone that can, or I'll find someone that no one that can, and then I'll arbitrage, or I'll execute, or I'll profit share. And that's how I built the foundation of my wealth. Yeah, I think...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

18:18

 

 

 

I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's like self-limiting, like for people. It's a combination like self-limiting, resourcefulness, grit. There's some combination of those things that go into what you just described. Sometimes there's like these things like, and I'll have this too, and I pray my kids have it, and I want it for everyone, where you just see obvious things. Like when I was in my 20s,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

18:43

 

 

 

and grew a book of business from 3 million to 40 million for someone else in the ad business. It was just walking into the room. I'd be sitting there and something would get said over here. And something would get on a boardroom of 20 people over here and over here. And I would hear, yeah, because we were like an ad agency. And we did, we had this vertical of things that we did. We did a lot of newspaper advertising, TV commercials, that kind of thing. I'd be sitting in the room and.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

19:10

 

 

 

Someone from the sponsorship team would be over there. We really need to think about sports sponsors. And this is Verizon Wireless, by the way. And I'd go, you should hire us to do that. We do that. Do you think we did it? Absolutely, fucking, literally not. It didn't matter. Because I knew I had people that I could call, or I could call my agency owner, who would say, we'll put in a sports sponsorship division tomorrow. But those things are like, and that's just an example for my own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

19:37

 

 

 

But I think those things are all around us sometimes. If we're like listening and just paying attention of connecting dots, right? It's such a, that's such a beautiful example cause I've used something similar to that. Say yes to everything because just because you can't do it doesn't mean you can't find someone that can. Like if someone walks up and says, oh man, my website sucks. I wish I had a new one. I would say, oh, I can do that. This is a kid, I can do that. I didn't even know anything about websites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

20:04

 

 

 

But I went to a website company and I said, hey, what if I bring you leads? Like there's money everywhere. Just say yes. Yeah. Cause they're not explaining it done today. You have people think get anxious because they think they've committed to something like it's there's certain. Yeah. It's like you, if they want their leaves done and you got to go do that right this second and you don't have time. Okay. Fine. But like most things, like we're talking about, you've got some runway to put it together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

20:33

 

 

 

Listen, I have a story I think that demonstrates recognizing opportunity. If you want to hear it. Let's do it. So I was 22 years old. Let me preface it by saying it took me $70. So 68, 69, 70, less than 100. And you know this story? No. And I turned it into 5 million profit in 35 days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

21:03

 

 

 

at 22 just by recognizing opportunities. So here we go. I moved to Florida. First thing I do, I've just moved to Florida. I want to meet everybody that I can possibly meet. So I'm going all the high end bars. I'm going to country clubs. I'm going to events just to shake hands and introduce myself. Listen people. So I made the two top realtors from WCI at the time, largest real estate company in the U S now defunct. Make friends with the husband and wife team.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

21:31

 

 

 

They asked me out to lunch a couple of days later. So in their car on the way to Naples to have lunch, they get a phone call and they ask if, do you mind if we stop somewhere? Sure. So they pull into a 450, 500 unit, low income housing apartments. And so we go in the room, I'm just in the back of the room listening, just like you would be at 22. Is there anything here for me? How can I take everything? And a reed had just bought this from the original owner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

21:59

 

 

 

And they've gathered all the top realtors and said, we're converting these low income units to high end condominiums. We're going to have about 150,000 margin in each. Do you want, how many do you want? So we leave. I say, do you have any interest? They say, we don't give a shit. We sell $10 million homes in Naples. We don't want it. Perfect. Go to lunch, come back. This is 2002. I do literally 10 minutes of research and I find that then 2002 low income tenants, if their unit is going to be converted to a high end condo, first right of refusal. Okay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

22:29

 

 

 

First of all, how many people would have gone this far? Almost none. So here's what I do. I draft letters. I say, dear tenant, great news. You may not know this, but your unit is going to be converted to a high-end condo and you have first right of refusal. If you have the ability, I highly recommend you do it. If you don't and you assign your rights to me, I'll give you $1,000 to relocate. Now I wait. One day goes by, nothing. Demon, I thought that was...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

22:57

 

 

 

Like I thought I was brilliant. I thought I was like Einstein discovered equals MC squared.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

23:03

 

 

 

Couple days go by, phone starts ringing. Fast forward two weeks, I have 252 assignments to me. So now the REIT is going batshit bananas. We're gonna sue you, you're doing, nothing was illegal. And so the more they pushed, the more I pushed the other way and I said, listen, I'm ready to close. Send me the wire instruction, I'm gonna close it off. Now, all they had to do was call my bluff. I couldn't buy 250 units. If they had said buy it, I was done. So.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

23:32

 

 

 

Week goes by and they go, listen, what do you want here? And I said, I'm guessing you have about 150,000 per unit. They didn't know I was in the room. And I said, I'll tell you what, you give me 20,000 per unit, it's yours. They agreed, brought me a check for $5 million. Holy shit. The arbitrage of all time is awesome. Listen, opportunity is everywhere. Yes, it is. And you did, you worked hard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

24:00

 

 

 

But you really just weren't smart. Come on. I drafted one letter, hit print, paid $70 for a courier to knock on people's doors. And then I bullshitted and played poker for two weeks. And at worst they call you on it and you go, oh, I don't have it. And you putt. You putt. Well, lesson learned. But man, that taught me a really valuable lesson. I knew I had skills. I knew that there really weren't any rules in business. And then I did this and I said, aha.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

24:29

 

 

 

Everything I suspected was right. It doesn't matter how small you are, how big they are. If you make your moves and your timing is right, you can outdo and beat anybody. Yeah. It changed my life forever. It also, one thing I heard, and some people talk about this. I don't know if it's talked about enough, but you put yourself in the environment in the room with some movers and shakers and you didn't know you might

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

24:56

 

 

 

outfoxed them at some point. That probably wasn't necessarily an intent, but you just knew that you surround yourself with people that are a higher level than you. And that's right. And lo and behold, you're now at a higher level than them. I call that opportunity adjacent. I try to always put myself into that situation. And listen, you can look at that and call it luck, but nothing about it was luck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

25:24

 

 

 

It wasn't luck that I, first thing I did when I got to Florida was I sought out connections. It wasn't luck that I went to lunch, all of these types of things. So anyway, you get the drill, but for listeners, it's super important. And really, I'm even ashamed to say this word platform now that I'm a social media guy, but my whole platform is really, if I can do this, if I can be here today on your podcast at the Aspire stage last week, there's not a script that Hollywood could have written. It puts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

25:53

 

 

 

a young Derek from where I started to hear. In fact, if they made that movie, which Netflix is, you'd watch it and go, that's unbelievable. Like they've gone too far. Yeah, it's just opportunity. And here we are taking advantage of it, talking with Derek Fay, founder and CEO of 3F Management. I know we've danced around it, we've talked about it, but what is 3F Management? What does 3F Management do?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

26:21

 

 

 

So it starts, I say we're a startup. What we do today is we invest, partner, JV, with mostly established companies. But if there's a special startup company, we'll do that too. And in a word, we help them scale and exit at far greater than they would. I would say one of my specialties is selling companies for more than they are worth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

26:46

 

 

 

And that's not magical. It's not because I'm smarter than most. In fact, I'm really the smartest guy in the room, but I know how to, I know how to position and again, we get back to the dealer situation, it's about timing. People buy the sizzle, not the steak. There are people that have really great companies. I sit down with them, reorganize their financials in a way better suited to sell. And they get two times more than they would have. And so we're a full service. We'll provide management services.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

27:14

 

 

 

We'll take equity in the company. We'll consult. We'll do all of those types of things. And that's 3F management. And then independently myself, I do things, I call them shadow CEO services. So I'll go into fortune 500 companies or publicly traded companies and either consult or step in as an interim CEO, help with board deadlocks or take an advisory board position. And again, let's not miss the fact that I dropped out of college in 60 days. Don't have a degree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

27:42

 

 

 

This is street smarts versus book smarts. And it's important for people to hear, and I'm not knocking a college degree. Maybe I would have done 10 times better if I'd had it. Maybe not. MIT grads work for me. And we're going back to, it's just a matter of perseverance. What makes you happy? Other than my daughters? Yeah. Well, that's actually a really great question. And I didn't have the answer to that until.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

28:12

 

 

 

after COVID. COVID saved my life. Up until COVID, we talked about a little bit, I just pursued money for more. I just wanted more. I thought it was going to make me, that I was going to fill the hole that my childhood made in me. I put my head down, put it away, didn't look at it. In 2019, I sold another really large company that I'd built, getting a divorce, in my massive home, garage filled with cars. This doesn't feel bad for the rich guy, but just some context. And I'm alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

28:41

 

 

 

I've got nothing. I realize that everything I felt more empty at 39, 40 with everything I thought I always wanted than I did as a little kid. And so that's why I say COVID saved my life. I had a year of reflection and really looking at what I thought would make me happy. And then that's when I transitioned to partnering with people, helping young entrepreneurs, not completely selfless. I make money when I help young entrepreneurs. It's still about making money, but it's about making money for a different reason.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

29:11

 

 

 

And today, outside of my children, what makes me the happiest, and I've just stumbled into it, is now speaking on stages is really, I'm a visual thinker. So I like to say, before I started speaking on stages, I was filling that hole in me with a spoon. And now that I'm speaking on stages, it's a goddamn backhoe. And so speaking to these people about where I came from, how I've gotten here, stepping off stage and having three hours in a line of people just asking me questions, that's really feeding my soul.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

29:41

 

 

 

That's great, man. I love it. Yeah. And I respect the hell out of you didn't even like pause your daughters. Like you'd be surprised. I've talked to a lot of people, asked some people that question. I know they have kids. They think a lot harder than you did longer than you did about family. I respect you for that. That's a miss. My daughters are my life. They've they grew up in boardrooms with me. I was the dad that, you know, two, three years old with a pad and a crayon. They don't know what the hell they're writing and they're acting, but it was getting in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

30:11

 

 

 

And I was the founder and CEO and I've had instances where someone said, no, I don't think it's appropriate that you've got your children in this boardroom. And I said, great news. You no longer have to be here. Really easy solution. Get the fuck out. And so they've tasted entrepreneurship their whole life and they have become just a, such a better glowing, shining example of myself and probably everything I could have been. But.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

30:40

 

 

 

absent the stuff from my childhood. So it's so great to watch. And this is a father. Oh, I don't understand parents that compete with their children. All I've ever wanted was my children to not be as good as me, but to be so much better than me. That's a success as a father, I think. And so they're both, they both have their independent passions. They both own their own company. They're both entrepreneurs, not because I pushed it, because that's what they want. And so we've got a great relationship. I bring them all my deals. We talk about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

31:08

 

 

 

So it was an easy answer. Ha ha. I love it, man. What's the economy headed? I imagine, I don't know, that's maybe not your specialty, but I'm sure with your financial position and what you do, you have at least your, I don't know, future vision cap. What do you think next year's looking like? I'm gonna answer that in a way, and this isn't to avoid it, because I can give you a technical answer, but before I do that, I like to give answers that I think are helpful to people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

31:35

 

 

 

Yeah. And there may be some nine figure people listening and we can talk about the best possible allocation, blah, blah, blah, who gives a shit, right? Those are rich people problems. But I want to look at it more like when I, in 2008, when I didn't have a fraction of what I had, how did I push through that? And I think the problem is that we all pay far too much attention to all the noise and all the things that are going on because good, bad inflation, high inflation, low gas prices up, gas prices down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

32:03

 

 

 

You still need to put your head down and get shit done. And if you do that and only focus on your life and what you're doing, you'll be amazed how little all that stuff actually matters. Dude, yeah. You're playing off the playbook, brother. Like I'm just saying, I asked that because I got a business and marketing show and you're a smart guy. And maybe there's some nugget that is worth it, but there's no more important nugget than that. Like it's so true. Like it...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

32:32

 

 

 

Look, inflation matters and it has impact, but you can't control it. And there's so many opportunities and things that you can control if you really want to stick your nose in it. You just have to do it though. And you may have picked up, I'm a bit of a smart ass, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but somebody the other day or other week, whatever, was going on and on about the Fed and the decisions he's going to make. And I do the same thing when people get really juiced up about sports. I'm like,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

33:02

 

 

 

What position do you play? Oh, I'm sorry. Are you the one making the decision on inflation? Because if you are, then let's continue this conversation. Otherwise, why don't we talk about something we can control? People get just swallowed up by it. Yeah, exactly. But is there anything that you're actually watching or worried about next year? Listen, I'm not a guy that worries for all the reasons that we just said. Yes. Comma. I do have a lot of money in the market. It's funny. I.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

33:31

 

 

 

didn't invest a dollar into the market until three months before COVID. I told everybody that ever met me, it's the casino of the world, don't do it. And then of course, sold a bunch of companies and did the opposite of what got me there because that's what we all do because we're stupid as many times. And promptly lost 40%. So there you go. We've rallied. I look in a sentence, I suspect something like the roaring 20s is going to happen. I don't think it's next year. I think 2025.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

34:01

 

 

 

I think next year, depending on what the Fed does, people think he's going to drop the rates Q1. I don't think that. I think he's going to hold as long as he can, maybe mid-year, end of year. And if that's the way it plays out, and he's dropping rates, the Fed's dropping rates through the end of next year into 2025, I think we're going to see a massive surge in the markets. I think we're going to see spending in unprecedented ways. And I compare it to the 1920s, where we're coming out of the Great Depression, not that we're in a Great Depression.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

34:30

 

 

 

But there are a lot of similarities. And I think if you're heavy in the market, just like you should always do, regardless of anything, if you hold on, I think 2025 could be a very exciting year. Outside of being in the market, I stand by my advice. Just do what you're doing. Double down on your successes and keep your head down. Bingo. I love it, brother. Where can everybody keep up with everything that Derek Faye is doing and call you if they need a good speaker?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

35:00

 

 

 

Yeah, I'm on all platforms. Very simple. Just my name at Derek Fay, D-E-R-I-K-F-A-Y. I do my very best to keep up with all the DMs and requests. Because as we mentioned, I think before we went on, I don't have anything to sell. I am looking for deal flow. I am looking for good partners. I'm never going to sell you a goddamn course. In fact, if you go on my pages about once a week, I give away for free things that I've done very simply put how you can do this and make real money.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

35:30

 

 

 

And why not? Like other people's success doesn't affect me. It makes me feel good. So hop on there, take my ideas. I like to say that if you think they're bullshit and they could never be done, they weren't for you anyway. So just promptly ignore them. It's the people that wanna try it that will see that it works. Yeah. The wise Chinese proverb. The person saying it can't get done better get the fuck out of the way of the person doing it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

35:57

 

 

 

That's right. He's not going to do it. I added some conjecture to the Chinese proverb. I'm not sure the F bomb was in there, but you know, Hey brother, I've really enjoyed this. I'd like to pick your brain sometime on, on some deals. Anytime, bro. Appreciate it. Hey guys, find us the radcast.com search for Derek Fay. You'll find the highlight clips, the links and how to get in touch with Derek on social media. I'm at Ryan Alford on all the social media platforms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

36:27

 

 

 

And hey, get on my newsletter, man. It's free, it's daily, it's million dollar advice. RyanAlford.com backslash newsletter. We'll see you next time on the Radcast. To listen or watch full episodes, visit us on the web at theradcast.com or follow us on social media at our Instagram account, the.rad.cast or at RyanAlford. Stay radical.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

xt time on the Radcast. To listen or watch full episodes, visit us on the web at theradcast.com or follow us on social media at our Instagram account, the.rad.cast or at RyanAlford. Stay radical.