Light that sparkfire nation, JLD here, and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like Marketing Made Simple. Today we'll be breaking down the 12 Laws of the Jungle, how to become a lethal entrepreneur. To drop these value bombs I brought Daniel Cleveland into EO Fire Studios, Daniel, aka the Indiana Jones of Entrepreneurship, is the CEO of Solterra Healing Center, guitars and metal band Savage Existence, an author of 12 Laws of the Jungle, how to become a lethal entrepreneur.
And today, for our nation, we'll talk about these 12 Laws. We'll talk about success as a team and why that's so important as entrepreneurs and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Daniel and our sponsors. The best podcast listening app in the world is here and is called Pudoppolo.
Visit pudoppolo.com, download the app, mention JLD or EO Fire when you sign up for a free account and start listening now. That's P-O-D-O-P-O-O.com. Success Story hosted by Scott D. Clary is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals, success story features, Q&A, keynote presentations, and convos on sales, marketing, and more.
A recent episode on how to protect your business and times of crisis is a must listen. Listen to success story wherever you get your podcasts. Daniel, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up to Fire Nation?
Thank you all for hanging out and thank you to your wonderful host, John McDoumas, for having me on. I look forward to sharing some beautiful thoughts with you guys today. One thing that I would say about becoming successful that some people don't agree with is that it's kind of ugly. In a lot of cases, it's not a straight line and it can get a little bit messy.
Sometimes the perception is that it's this kind of pleasant, happy, sit on the beach and drink your margarita. It's kind of a journey, but it's definitely only that after the grind. Fire Nation, we're going to talk about this topic specifically in the 12 Laws of the Jungle, because we want you to become a lethal entrepreneur. Think lethal.
That's you, Fire Nation. But before we get into all that jazz, COVID-19 threatened to literally obliterate your revenue. How did you survive, Daniel? The company at the time of the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns was fairly nascent.
So about 22 months old at the time. And the first 18 months was a pretty brutal grind, just trying to make payroll every month, trying to get the sales up enough to meet expenses every month, fighting off some typical startup, kind of life or death catastrophes when you're in the red zone there. And I noticed about 18 months into that. Like once we were getting enough volume to keep all of our systems rolling, but I noticed that our cash reserves were low.
I noticed that we were vulnerable to any type of disruptive event. And I also pay attention to really smart entrepreneurs, guys like Patrick Bat David, John Lee Dumas, Brian Rose, et cetera, Grant Cardone. Guys, you talk about the cyclical nature of market crashes and disruptive events and blacks and one events and things. So I was concerned about that and noticed that our cash reserves were not high enough to weather any type of storm.
Even though we were new, I was trying to get it up as quickly as possible. So I pushed real hard internally to get our prices up and to increase our output, to start getting some bigger cash reserves in the bank. And then also luckily I did that and I had that inclination just a few months before. Rent like just overnight, the borders were closed on us and our revenues got completely obliterated by the governments who decided to close the borders.
And after that happened, taking evasive action, I did a few things. I froze refunds, so the cash balances we had on hand, I took the step to freeze refunds, even though that was an unpopular decision, as did many other airlines and tourism businesses that didn't know how long the thing was going to last. I also had to take some steps on the staff side. So we kept everybody on staff but reduced salaries by 25% until we were able to open the doors again, so sustained everybody without losing everybody but in a more sustainable way.
And then in order to get through our major payments, I won a fundraising mission, but instead of going out looking for money in kind of emergency bailout type of way, I built an investment opportunity that would instead take advantage of our downtime so we could accommodate the pent up demand and the sure to be surge in demand after the borders were opened again. So that allowed me that more kind of optimistic message, allowed me to find capital that allowed me to pay off the balloon payment in our mortgage that came due during the pandemic lockdowns, which is several hundred thousand dollars. And in addition to that, we paid very close attention to the metrics in the news and the omens of where the world was going and particularly where Costa Rica was going because that's where business is located. And at one point, we had enough confidence to place a bet on when the borders would reopen.
We changed our policy so that refunds, any deposits were non-refundable and we got a big high profile influencer to do a grand reopening retreat with us which brought in a whole bunch of traffic which was then revenue in the form of non-refundable deposits and that carried us through. And then once the borders opened, we were completely on fire and we've been booked solid ever since. So if you're a nation, you've got to get creative. You've got to be a person who's willing to try different things and keep your nose to the grind so because if you can make it through something like Daniel just described how he made it through, then when you come out the other side, guess what?
A lot of his competition got wiped out or no more. Now he's there. He's still kicking and now he's applying demands. He's there.
He's the option and the competition is a lot less fierce if it's even as crazy as it was before. So think about that. And Daniel, you have 12 laws of the jungle that you included in your book by the exact same name. Share just one of those laws with us now.
Which one jumps out at you? One of my favorites is law one, the jungle doesn't care, which is just about upgrading your mental toughness. But I think the one that's most salient right now, which I think everybody should be concerned about is law 12, prepare for winter because winter is coming. And everywhere you look around us right now, anybody who's paying attention to the economic situation, the increase in global conflicts between countries and between blocks of countries.
Environmental issues, political turmoil in the United States and beyond in Europe, social unrest, all these kinds of things. And this is right after the pandemic. So the pandemic was a black swan event. And everyone was expecting that to be the big crash.
But it wasn't really the big crash because it was backstop by money printing. But the big crash is still on the horizon. And if it's not soon, it will be soon. And the fact is, these things are cyclical in nature.
They do come statistically every seven to 10 years. And everyone expected the pandemic to be that one big one. And it was certainly big and was somewhat of a correction. But the way things are looking right now, there's another one imminent here.
So the point being prepare for winter. What power do you best thrive and survive and make capital gains in times like this? You first of all, always have a war chest of cash. So when things, when markets correct and people are trying to sell their assets and everything's on sale because people need money to pay their mortgages or what have you.
That's when you make money when you buy. So war chest of cash, try to pandemic proof your business. And there's a whole kind of list of actions you can take so that you're ready for the winter. And we call this building your winter fortress in the book.
Fire Nation, that war chest of cash is really going to allow you to do some pretty awesome things with everybody else is just scrambling to survive. And then there's a lot of course other things you can do to prepare yourself for. But this is one of those things that's key to keep your finger on the pulse up. And we have a lot of other things that I want to talk about around this topic.
When we get back from thinking our sponsors, are you hiring? What type of role are you hiring for? Maybe you need to hire someone to wear many hats, which can be challenging. Or you might have a simple position to fill, but it's taking forever to find someone who's a great fit for your company.
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With a lovingly crafted suite of tools, you can seamlessly connect your team so everyone has access to the same data and you're able to focus on what really matters. Your customers. Learn how HubSpot can help your business grow better at HubSpot.com. Daniel, we're back and you applied these 12 laws of the jungle when you started your metal band Savage Existence.
Talk to us about that. The 12 laws of the jungle I think are applicable to any type of creative endeavor or business endeavor. Starting a band as I've come to learn is just like starting any other business. For example, the jungle doesn't care.
Anybody who expects that you're going to make this beautiful album and then as soon as it's done, the whole world is going to want to immediately listen to it and start going to your concerts as inverse of price. The music industry is cutthroat, it's ruthless. All these guitar heroes and people who you look up to, well actually when you meet them, they're just competitive and cold individuals who don't really want to see anyone else succeed. They want all the success for themselves.
The music industry is cutthroat and thus the jungle doesn't care. In addition, I found that Law 6, Build Your Masterful Tribe has become extremely important. Of course, you need, if you're going to be in a band of any kind, you need to have very talented musicians. That goes even beyond.
It goes, you have to have a talented manager. You have to have talented social media people. You have to have talented booking agents. You have to have talented road managers.
You have to have talented sound guys. All of this comes together to create this massively effective crew which produces a massively evocative experience on the road for the customers, for the concert goers or the people who listen to the music. Other laws that have come into play, for example, are Law 10. The time to kill is now.
Acting with urgency and acting relentlessly. You have to push ahead sometimes when it would be easier to just wait. It goes on and on. Law 3, Learn to Hunt, Selling, Influencing, Bringing People Into the Fold, Try to Sell People on the Fact that You Have Potential Going Forward, Law 8 Master Your Resources.
I had no clue how much it would actually cost to get a band off the ground. We're going independent. Back in the old days, you would have a music label that would pick up a new band and do all the investments and have this kind of team of people put in place. That's no longer the case.
Now that there's so many ways to get music into the world, the labels don't control access anymore. But the trade-off for that is you have to figure out how to do all that stuff yourself. So it's really exactly the same as the same protocol as setting up any other business. Fire Nation, these are the 12 laws of the jungle.
This is what's going to make you a lethal entrepreneur disregard them at your own risk. These are tried and tested by Daniel. Many of these, not all of these, I've had to apply to my own business, not to mention the 3700 entrepreneurs that I've interviewed over the past 10 years. These are the laws of the jungle.
So welcome to the jungle. And you mentioned this a couple of times already, but I think this is a really important one because it is number one. And this is one that I feel like we can expound upon even a little bit more for Fire Nation to really get the jungle doesn't care. This is law one.
And if you don't get this one right, Fire Nation, you're going to struggle. So what do you really want Fire Nation to understand about this law? I'm sure there are already many seasoned and battle-hearted entrepreneurs in your audience, John. But one thing I discovered doing business, and I'm not like the biggest entrepreneur, but the businesses I built, and by the way, people don't know the businesses I built there, Ayahuasca retreat centers, so basically serving psychedelic plant medicines.
The first one I built was in the middle of the Amazon jungles, like four hours away from the nearest city. So you imagine the kind of complications that comes with that. And now of course we're in Costa Rica on the beach, but doing business in Latin America, highly complex and complicated and bureaucratic, very, very different than doing business in North America or Europe. And then of course working with all the additional risks of serving people, psychedelic medicine that can have major complications from time to time.
I've made up for sheer size with complications that I've had to navigate in this business. And we've really climbed to the top of this industry in this field of work in the book I write about being in the top three, but that's probably being a little bit humble. We're probably top one right now. But to anyways, I think that common misconception is that business is easy and pleasurable, which I said earlier.
And it certainly can get that weight. I'm certainly there right now. I have a very comfortable life, which I enjoy very much. And I'm definitely not overworked and my stress is very low right now because I have built my winter fortress.
I am ready for winter. The company is firing at all cylinders doing very well. And I have a great team who does most of the work, so I don't do really all that much work. But anyways, the journey to get to this place was absolutely brutal.
And I mean, I'm talking like there was one point when I had so much stress. I mean, I was waking up in cold sweats every night having like zombie nightmares. Like just every night I was battling some kind of some kind of horrifying creature of some kind. I, you know, I at one point I had so much stress that I had shingles break out of my face.
Like literally my face started breaking out of these like cold sores because I had so much stress. A couple of examples, you know, and you're trying to keep people in the mix, even though you can't afford to pay them what they should get. You know, sometimes you run out of capital. I've had banks in Costa Rica, like just one example of human business in Latin America is like every single time you send a transfer and they ask you for orginal funds because they're concerned about money laundering.
And you know, it's just such bureaucracy and administration. A couple, I've had two bags shut down my bank accounts well in the middle of like building the facility. You know, just just things like that where you're kind of in a life or death situation and things come up and you just really have to be resourceful and you have to just go to battle. So I just want people to know that before they get into this because it'll bring you to the breaking point, but you can't break like you cannot quit.
You cannot back up. You cannot break. You can't just pull the shoe. If you've taken money, you're taking capital from someone or if you've taken your own capital or if you've had people buy into your vision and give them your word on something and you start something, you can't quit.
You can't back up. You need to have the endurance and the mental toughness and the resilience to get through it and see it through. And so in log one, I encourage people to undergo what I call their rite of passage and I spell that the normal way to spell rite of passage is RITE, but I spell it in the book R-I-G-H-T because I don't think you have the right to even start a business until you complete your rite of passage. And that really is kind of a combination of exercises to learn mental toughness.
So even in terms of just sheer difficulty, in my case, I had many intense ayahuasca ceremonies. I also had a massive accident that put me in the hospital for 40 days, which is kind of just a low point in my life. So I knew it was like to get to the depths of kind of stress and the depths of just sheer mental difficulty. But in addition to that, you want to be able to know that you can handle stress.
So, for example, accountability, stress and the form of accountability, like you have an objective and there's some form of consequence if you don't achieve that objective. So there's various ways to do that, ranging from competitive sports or there's a website where you can place bets on yourself or even just holding yourself accountable by announcing your intentions to the public or to your friends and family, people who will hold you accountable if you don't follow through or people who will make you feel embarrassed or ashamed if you don't follow through. And then there's also like a longer term kind of output threshold that should be proven before you invest yours or anyone else's money in a business. And if you can produce professional level high quality output in the pressure cooker for a sustained amount of time, I think exercises like that are good to really not only prove that you can do it, but prove to yourself that you can do it because you really have to be able to rely on yourself and nobody else because you're alone there.
You're alone in the jungle when you're the fan, you're the one who's sitting in a dark room by yourself as the entrepreneur trying to figure ways out of messes. And Fire Nation, these are just a few of the laws, but I hope you realize that there's us. There's entrepreneurs on fire, there's masterminds, there's mentors, coaches that you can surround yourself with. They're going to help you navigate these 12 laws of the jungle.
And Daniel, bring it home for us brother. You have a book with the same name that we've been talking about all day, the 12 laws of the jungle. Where does Fire Nation go to learn more? Because we can only cover so much in a podcast episode.
And there's of course a whole book on these topics. And then we'll say goodbye. Everything is located on my Instagram page at DanielCKleeland, it's about C-L-E-L-A-N-D, or on my website at DanielKleeland.com. My business will power healing center is at www.sultara.co or on social at Sultara Healing Center.
And Savage Existence, the band is at Savage Existence.com or Savage Existence official on Instagram. Thank you, John. Daniel, thank you and Fire Nation. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
You've been hanging out with DC and JLD today. So keep up that heat. And over to eofire.com type Daniel, D-A-N-I-E-L in the search bar. His shown is page will pop right up with everything that we've talked about today.
Links to everything. Definitely check out the 12 laws of the jungle, how to become a lethal entrepreneur. And Daniel, I want to say thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value of Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.
Fantastic. Thanks again, John. Thank you, Fire Nation. Hey, Fire Nation.
Huge. Thank you to our sponsors and Daniel for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation. You ready to rock your own podcast? Check out our free podcasting course where I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free free podcast course.com free podcast course.com.
I'll catch you there. I'll catch you on the flip side. The best podcast listening app in the world is here and it's called Pudoppolo. Visit pudoppolo.com download the app, mention JLD or eofire when you sign up for a free account and start listening now.
That's P-O-D-O-P-O-L-O.com. Success Story hosted by Scott D. Clary is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Success Story features Q&A, keynote presentations and convos on sales, marketing and more.
The recent episode on how to protect your business in times of crisis is a must listen. Listen to Success Story wherever you get your podcasts.