Transcript

The Business Strategy That Made Him Millions (Vertical Integration Explained) 🏢 EP150

From The Money Mondays Podcast · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 38 min · 8,254 words · 117 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "The Business Strategy That Made Him Millions (Vertical Integration Explained) 🏢 EP150", an episode of The Money Mondays Podcast published December 15, 2025 (38 min, about 8,254 words). It mentions 32 people, works and ideas, including Simply Vegas, Money Mondays, Money Mondays, John Gaffford, Escaping the Drift.

What this episode is about

The discussion centers on vertical integration in business, particularly in the context of real estate, as explained by John Gaffford, who has built a successful luxury real estate brokerage in Las Vegas. He highlights that vertical integration involves owning various aspects of the real estate transaction process—from mortgage and title to construction—allowing for increased control and profitability, while also enabling charitable contributions.

Key takeaways

  • John Gafford's business strategy: the Tony Soprano Corollary, minus the cement shoes.
  • Vertically integrated business models—just like building Legos, but for profit.
  • Riding shotgun with rock bands can spin into real estate success.
  • Land of luxury homes and unexpected love stories: Vegas, where business and romance roll the dice.
  • Podcasts: the new gym buddy, running just shy of a commute-friendly 40 minutes.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: 47th president of the United States, John Gaffford, Money Mondays, Money Mondays
  2. – 10:00: Simply Vegas, Century 21, Kendra Todd
  3. – 15:00: Escaping the Drift, Escaping the Drift, Kristen Kchner
  4. – 20:00: YouTube University
  5. – 25:00: Leon Washington, Wall Street Trapper
  6. – 30:00: Cole Hatter, Hop on a Cure, John Hopkins, Thrive
  7. – 35:00: John Gaffford, Range Rover, Simply Vegas
  8. – 38:00: Money Mondays, Money Mondays, Escaping the Drift, Escaping the Drift

Notable quotes from "The Business Strategy That Made Him Millions (Vertical Integration Explained) 🏢 EP150"

  • Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays podcast where we cover three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity.
    about Money Mondays · at
  • Two-minute bio. let's see. Fired by the 47th president of the United States on live television. yes, I was a candidate on the apprentice. been in real estate now for about 20 years.
    about 47th president of the United States · at
  • Vegas and then growing to Scottsdale, then growing to Orange County. But when you name your company Simply Vegas, as we did, makes it a little geographically tough to do. So…
    about Simply Vegas · at
  • Didn't have a whole lot going on. I was just kind of semi-retired sitting in Tampa and Kendra Todd that won my season of the apprentice was Hey, why don't you get your real…
    about Kendra Todd · at
  • There's so many companies, Century 21, Remax, all these different brands that are Coldwell Bank or whatever that they could go to. Why do they stay here at Simply Vegas?
    about Century 21 · at
  • What's the title? Escaping the drift.
    about Escaping the Drift · at
  • Room and watch YouTube videos and you can learn everything you need to do from YouTube University. I get that.
    about YouTube University · at
  • And one of the stories that I love is a guy named Leon Washington. I don't know. Do you know Trap?
    about Leon Washington · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • John Gaffford — Person · 3 mentions · first at
    Estate, been all through the grinds of business. And so, I'm very excited to introduce John Gaffford. And if you can give us the quick two-minute bio so we get straight to the money.
  • Carol Burnett — Person · 2 mentions
  • Irwin McManus — Person · 2 mentions
  • Kendra Todd — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Kristen Kchner — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Wrong, right? was just kind of going crazy. And Kristen Kchner, who was one of the contestants on the show with me, she yells, Treading water today, aren't you, Mark? And Mark just shot her look and he's I never tread water. I.
  • Leon Washington — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • Wall Street Trapper — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Wall Street Trapper. You ever met him?
  • Cole Hatter — Person · 1 mention · first at
    More to the point, if the money, it's like Cole Hatter says with Thrive, making money matter, right? And yeah, we all like to get nice stuff and you hit a certain point where it just gets a little hollow. You.
  • John Hopkins — Person · 1 mention · first at
    What we normally do. But unfortunately, a good friend of mine a couple years ago came down with ALS. John Hopkins, who's the bass player in the Zack Brown Band. So now 100% of what we do goes to Hop on a Cure, which is his thing.
  • Gary Breen — Person · 1 mention · first at
    I might bring on Gary Breen to talk about health, and then I bring on John Gaffford talk about real estate, investing, and charity. When there's people in your world, having these open.

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

  • Simply Vegas — Company · 5 mentions · first at
  • Money Mondays — Company · 3 mentions · first at
    Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays podcast where we cover three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity.
  • Remax — Company · 2 mentions
  • Century 21 — Company · 1 mention · first at
  • Thrive — Company · 1 mention · first at
    More to the point, if the money, it's like Cole Hatter says with Thrive, making money matter, right? And yeah, we all like to get nice stuff and you hit a certain point where it just gets a little hollow. You.
  • Zac Brown Band — Company · 1 mention · first at
    A good friend of mine a couple years ago came down with ALS. John Hopkins, who's the bass player in the Zack Brown Band. So now 100% of what we do goes to Hop on a Cure, which is his thing.
  • Hop on a Cure — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Who's the bass player in the Zack Brown Band. So now 100% of what we do goes to Hop on a Cure, which is his thing.
  • Coldwell Banker — Company · 1 mention
  • Hakkasan — Company · 1 mention
  • Kent's Boardroom — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

  • Money Mondays — Product · 3 mentions · first at
  • Escaping the Drift — Product · 2 mentions · first at
    What's the title? Escaping the drift.
  • Range Rover — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Days later, it's just another car in your garage. You're probably sticking to your Tesla or your Range Rover, your daily car. You're not going to drive the Lamborghini that much because it's not comfortable.

Concepts & topics

Sponsors

Full transcript with timestamps

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays podcast where we cover three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. This guest has actually got me to come to his studio. Normally, you know, I do this podcast inside of an RV motor home traveling around the country for the last two and a half years. You guys have helped us support the podcast by sharing commenting liking and subscribing. As you guys know, this podcast will be under 40 minutes for your listening pleasure because the average workout is 45 minutes. The average commute to work is 45 minutes.

So, this episode will be around 35 to 38 minutes. Now, I want to dive right in. We're going to cover these core topics, but this person, this guest, you might see the book, if you're watching this on video, you might see his new book that just came out. It's already topping the charts. He has covered all things real estate, been all through the grinds of business. And so, I'm very excited to introduce John Gaffford. And if you can give us the quick two-minute bio so we get straight to the money.

Two-minute bio. Uh let's see. Fired by the 47th president of the United States on live television. Uh yes, I was I was a candidate on the apprentice. Uh been in real estate now for about 20 years. Built what is the largest luxury real estate brokerage in Vegas. We sell more homes over a million dollars than any other firm. We're a completely vertically integrated firm, which means anything that you touch that happens to do with a real estate transaction, from mortgage, from title to solar to construction to anything, we own a part of. And through that business, we have been able to, like you said, with purpose- driven stuff, help a lot of great charities along the way. Wow, that was fantastic. Okay, you said a couple things there that already stand out. On the make money side, what the heck does vertically integrated mean? Well, vertical integrated means you have two ways you can grow. You can grow wide or

you can grow tall. And for us, wide would have been opening a brokerage in Vegas and then growing to Scottsdale, then growing to Orange County. But when you name your company Simply Vegas, as we did, makes it a little geographically uh tough to do. So, uh so it wouldn't have really worked to do that. But when you go tall, vertically integrated means looking everywhere that your customers are spending money and then figuring out a way to become part of those businesses. The way that we do it is, and I talk about this in the book, uh I call the Tony Soprano Corollary is what I call it. Yeah. Um so here's effectively what we do. If there is a vertical that we want to be a part of, we find who the best people are in that vertical and we say, "Okay, how's your business?" Great. And we start driving all of our customer base to that one soul point.

Wow. And then after about if if it's going well, after about six to eight months, I'll I'll call the person and say, "Hey, how's it going with our business?" "Oh, great." And I'll ask one question. What percentage of our business is your total business?

And they'll say like, "Oh, you guys are probably now 25% of our business." Oh, wow. That's great.

As soon as I can tip that number somewhere between 45 and 50%. Now the conversation changes and it changes to okay cool we've proved the concept I've proved that this will work this is functioning uh it cost me nothing to just to do the startup no marketing dollars anything it's just simply driving uh business in a direction and then at which point we say listen we're going to change our relationship we think we can grow you bigger but we're going to become partners

and so then what we say is we become partners in that business and take that business to to bigger heights from where it is So that going from like literally what we call the customer flow before, during and after. Before is the marketing maybe you have a part of marketing and you'll see to get leads for real estate. Then the during they need to get a notary. They need to get a loan. They need to do paperwork. Maybe they need a lawyer. What are the things that they need in the during? The after is what can we sell them? Do they need gardening? Pool service. There are so many things that happen in the customer flow before, during, and after. As you're going through it and you're deciding who to work with, you've got a lot of options. There's unlimited notaries you could pick to partner with.

There's unlimited mortgage brokers, unlimited banks and refinance and all the things that happen in between. How do you decide the vendors you want to work with?

Yeah, for us, we normally ask our people. We've got 585 agents that work for us and we just kind of put out normally through our network, hey, who knows somebody that's really good at X? And then we kind of get feedback from our people as to who the best person for those things is. And that gives us a really good indicator of the type of job they're going to do going forward. Because one of the things about vertical integration is you can very easily damage your your primary brand by attaching it to people that don't do good work. They don't perform

or or they don't hold the standard that you hold within your main company. And I think the key to that is definitely going to the people that are doing the deals that are in the trenches every day and saying, "Who should we use?" It's been really successful for us.

So, why Vegas? Why take over this market? Were you born and raised here? Did you migrate here? No, I I you know, man, I I came out here with uh I was on back in my younger days, I used to run around with a bunch of rock and roll bands and I was out on tour with a a 90s band that was doing um a tour out here and met a girl and started flying out here every weekend to see her and uh after maybe five weeks picked up my tent and moved out here.

Yeah, that was just the idea. Luckily, it's worked out. We've been married for almost 20 years and uh yeah, so that's a bet that uh worked out in Vegas here.

I always talk about Vegas and I say it's become a real city, right? The evolution now with the sports teams and their winning with the the amazing stadium. Some of them are some of them are. Let's be clear. Sorry.

Uh I mean obviously on the hockey side, holy smokes, what they're doing is amazing.

But it's the best restaurants in the world, the best chefs literally in the world. 24-hour access to everything. It's easy to get around. There is traffic now. I will say there's traffic but only on the main, you know, arteries, if you will. There's ways to get around, but Vegas is a real city. I lived here 10, 15 years ago. And I still have a 702 number. Like to me, I'm going to end up in Vegas again and living here again. And so when you are taking over a market, how important are relationships, networking? Do you go to networking events as your 585 reps? Like what are they doing to take over this market?

Yeah, I think you have to do something that's just kind of special. And when we when I first got here, I came I was coming out of the tech industry, not the real estate industry. So when I was on the apprentice, um, I was the COO of a tech firm at the time and then we I ended up exiting that and then I kind of didn't have a whole lot going on. I was just kind of semi-retired sitting in Tampa and Kendra Todd that won my season of the apprentice was like, "Hey, why don't you get your real estate license to sell real estate? I mean, it'll be fun." So that's how I got in the business was kind of doing the traveling road show during the boom of 0506. Uh we would go to these markets like San Francisco and go up on stage and and sell, you know, present five different condo conversion projects across the country, you know, all the hot spots for foreclosures later, ironically. And we would sell 200 condos. It was crazy. And

so that's kind of how I got in the business. But but Vegas chose me again, you know, and you talk about how you grow the business. I was coming out of that tech firm industry. So, I had that mindset and I knew how to do things at the time that are so rudimentary now. But I I could make some really cool stuff that nobody had ever seen before. I was like the first guy that I knew that understood how to scrape with spiders like the realtor websites to get all the realtor's email addresses. Like I was one of the first people that knew how to do that stuff. So, we were just kind of came out of the box. When I first moved to Vegas,

I set up shop and I built a real estate team here right out of the box. I never was a solo agent and because I had really flashy marketing. I knew how to do email marketing. I knew how to build flash websites. Uh I hired 27 agents to work for me the first day before I even had a website. I had no lead source. I had no anything. I launched that I launched that recruiting platform out at the time. I was I was an agent at a Remax here in town. I launched that recruiting platform out. We had so many people come in. I hired 27 agents. And then I was like, "Okay, I got to figure this out

for sure." And so with no no systems, no process, no SOP, no anything. Just never running a real estate team, hire 27 people and let's go. That's how I did it.

So going from that to now having to oversee 585 reps, how do you get them to stay when there are so many options? There's so many companies, Century 21, Remax, all these different brands that are Coldwell Bank or whatever that they could go to. Why do they stay here at Simply Vegas?

Well, they stay here because of who works here. And it's not just me. People want to be around winners. They want to be around people that are successful and and we really guard that more than any other company. I think here in Vegas, people know if you're going to come work here, we expect production. This is not a place realtors like to quote unquote hang a license somewhere. And I've often said, you know, if I was your license, I'd hang myself too

because you have to remember the majority of agents don't sell real estate. 50% of them haven't sold a house in 12 months. So for us, we expect success out of our agents. We expect them to sell things. We expect them to be productive. And if you're not, we like we do something here called the purge every six month. I know it sounds terrible. We don't play a horn and kill people or anything, but every six month right. Exactly. Every six months we'll go through and pull everybody that has not done well or has done below our standard.

And then we have a conversation. That conversation goes one of two ways. If it goes, man, I just everything I'm doing, nothing's working. I don't know what the problem is. I'm just really struggling. If that's the conversation, I've got you. Like, I'm all in on that person. I will help you. I will do everything I can to make sure you're successful.

Unfortunately, here in Vegas, what you hear more often than not is, well, I'm not really focused on that right now because I took a job at the pool at at, you know, Hakasan or whatever. They took a job.

N grand a month. Exactly. So, all of a sudden, it's like, okay, cool. Well, I'm going to invite you to not work here anymore.

Because we are the people that work at Simply Vegas aren't interested in selling real estate. This is what we do.

Or they sell real estate. Yeah. We're not interested 584 the 585 like if someone sitting there.

Yeah. I get freaked when our number and occasionally it'll peak up to like 600 like hit it'll hit 600 and my partner and I always freak out

because we're like there's just no way we can have 600 of the right people here. There's no way. And when the market's good, it's easy. But like right now it's challenge. The market's been tough. It's been a hard year. And there's a lot of people that jump from one lily pad to the next.

And I always say like personal responsibility anymore, this is a big part of what my book is about. Personal responsibility is in short order. I think in every industry right now. And when you look at people, the last thing they want to do is look in the mirror and say, "I'm part of the problem."

For sure. That's really hard, right? It's hard for people to say, "Maybe it's me. Maybe it's me that screwed this up, right? It's easier to say, "Well, if I just get a different logo on my business card or I go over there and I just I get this or they have this piece of software." Dude, I don't care what software you have. I don't care what your CRM is. I don't care what your website if you don't get up and grind and do the work every day.

Y you just can't be successful in this particular business especially. All right. This book is sitting here right next to me.

Yeah. On the make money side of life, making money from your core business, it takes time to write a book. Even when people have ghost writers and marketing agencies, whatever, there's still a lot of time involved to put out a book. It is a 12 month to 24month process when you're going through

longer. Sure. 36 for mine. There you go. And and you're an efficient person. Imagine people that are not efficient. Yeah.

Right. Why why spend the time to write a book? Why put the information out there?

Well, you know, people ask all the time. I think successful entrepreneurs get asked a lot and I ask it when I'm in that chair and I I get asked it when I'm in this chair which is if you could go back and change anything what would you change and I think most people have this programmed response of saying I wouldn't change anything because all the trials and tribulations and all the mistakes and everything I had got me to where I am today made me the perforged in iron the person I am today and to that I say If I could go back in time and smack my dipstick 27y old self in the face and say, "Dude, wake up. Do this."

How much further along would I be? Sure. So, that's what this is for me. It's a time machine where I can I can't go back and save myself, but I can help as many people that are just drifting on this wave of apathy. You know, so many people, Dan, exist in this universe on the whims and cares of others. What I mean by that is they are not in control of their lives,

right? And they don't realize it until they get fired. They get they get moved across the country in some way. They get broken up with. They get kicked out.

They get stat they get stepped aside. And then all of a sudden it's like, whoa, what I thought I had total control of, I have no control of. So this is about analyzing all the places in your life where you can take control and how to build a plan to to really craft a direction is what I want to do. That's what it is.

What's the title? Escaping the drift. Where did that come from? So again, part of the apprentice uh we were sitting on we were sitting on set of the apprentice one day and Mark Bernett who was amaz I learned more from watching him than from watching Donald Trump uh during that during that time. Uh Bernett was everything was going wrong, right? was just kind of going crazy. And Kristen Kchner, who was one of the contestants on on the show with me, she yells, "Treading water today, aren't you, Mark?" And Mark just shot her look and he's like, "I never tread water. I swim."

And then as he's walking off, he's like, "You drift with the currents." I'm like, "How many people are just drifting along with the currents of life? They wake up every morning, every day's, you know, if if you wake up, every day is groundhog day. If if you're waiting for the right time to do something, but it never seems to be the right time, dude, you're in the drift,

right? You're drifting along. And McManus, who sat in this chair, we were discussing this, said the coolest thing. He goes, "I love the concept of the book." And I even thought of this. This is all Irwin. This isn't me. But Irwin said, "I love the name and I love the concept because the problem with drifting is you're still moving.

So you feel like there's momentum. You feel like there's progress. You feel the inertia of the world moving around you, but you don't realize you're drifting till it's too late and you've hit a rock.

And I thought that I was like, "Yes, that is exactly what I thought when I did this." It's exactly what I thought.

All right, so to the investing part of this podcast, why is real estate still one of the top main things to invest into? It

It's the top thing. I mean, for me, there's nothing in there's nowhere there's nowhere else where you can take somebody with very little education. You can take somebody with not a great college degree and they can become fabulously wealthy and pay little to no taxes by using smart investment strategies in real estate. And now since the information has come out there so prevalently by my good friend Pace Morby who's amazing with sub two and being able to buy properties with not needing your own credit and not being able to take over payments and there's a lot of people through the economy that are going to be in trouble that have great mortgages that aren't going to be able to afford to make make their payments because they're going to get replaced right

by AI or whatever else. So there's massive opportunity for you to do this and not only but to build and grow long-term wealth, but to use the tax code to its full advantage by doing cost segs and and maximum depreciation on things to avoid paying taxes legitimately like not not, you know, weird gray areas. This is straight up black and white tax code that you can use to your advantage in ways that you can't do when you're investing in the stock market. You know, short-term capital gains are going to kill you. You don't have those problems if you do it right with real estate.

There's a lot of options in real estate. Yeah. Storage units, multifamily, commercial, Airbnbs, fix and flip. How can someone a researcher decide what category to focus on in real estate?

Well, I think it depends on how much capital you have and how much time and how how active you want to be in the process. For me, you know, there's different levels to the game, right? And so I'll tell you like what I'm doing right now that I love is I buy notes.

I I'm the bank. That that's that's where I am. So I have a good friend of mine um owns a very large fix and flip lender based in Dallas and they are always needing to recapitalize because they're just having hockey stick growth.

And for those you don't know what I'm talking about, it means like if you're a flipper, you need to borrow some money shortterm to finance both the purchase of the house but also the renovations. That's called a fix and flip loan. So these loans are very short term on his term sheets. They're normally between six and nine months. So what I'm doing is though is I'm sweeping in on the back end and I'm buying them when he needs to recapitalize on like 60-day coupon.

So I'm lending the money at 60 days in first position on a 70% LTV property hoping that they and no offense I mean I don't ever want anybody to foreclose. If they foreclose it's a it's a massive win for me because I get the property. I'm in first position, 60 days out, 12% interest with a 1% discount.

12% interest paid for the 60 days. 12% interest for the 60 days plus 1% plus 1% discount.

So, because I'm helping them No, I'm sorry. The 12%'s annualized, but the 1% discount when you look at the compressed time frame, the acceleration of money is great.

It's it's wonderful. We're crushing on that. And it keeps me pretty much liquid. because my money's never out for longer than 60 days at a time,

right? And I'm not doing it like where I'm doing the big blanket investment of like here's a million dollar. I'm buying individual notes.

So this might be $125,000 loan, $140,000 loan, $160,000. I'm allowed to say no to stuff if I think it's too risky, but I know that these guys have already underwritten these loans and it makes sense,

right? So process you're coming in, right? So So for me, I have this hands-off approach, super hands-off that I'm making money now. I don't get any tax advantage from that.

Sure. Right. I'm I'm getting like that is acrewing massive tax liability by investing that way. But we also have a 37story high-rise in Nashville that we built 5 years ago.

That that K1 that comes in is my favorite piece of mail that I open every single year from the depreciation on that building. That's an $80 million project and I love opening up that envelope because that depreciation is that that K1 is marvelous. So, it just depends on what you want to do. But if I'm if I'm living somewhere and I'm like, "How what do I want? How do I want to buy stuff?" Here's the number one piece of advice I can do. Just go on to Facebook and search for this phrase. Real estate meetup

and just go. I love it. Just go. Because being around people that are doing what you're doing or doing what you want to do is the fastest way to get there. You can sit in your room and watch YouTube videos and you can learn everything you need to do from YouTube University. I get that. But there's nothing more motivating going around other people that are actually doing what you want to do. Because hopefully everybody has this little toxic trait. This is my biggest toxic trait, right? And hopefully everybody has a little bit of this in them, which is when you hear somebody that is making money that's doing something, you think to yourself, I could do that.

Of course, I could totally do that. Like, yeah, I'm smart in this guy. I could to I could kill this. I could crush this. Right. And but you don't get that feeling unless you're actually around other humans that are doing this.

So that's how you decide what you want to do. You don't know until you get around it. And but here's the thing, like the only reason I had the opportunity, like I just talked about, I didn't Google opportunity to buy notes. I'm in a very high level mastermind group with real estate investors. I met that guy at that mastermind.

Right? There's a reason that I I have that I make I I have that return, that opportunity because of that relationship. So I know how big you are with networking. It all comes down to that.

Led my next question about investing into yourself. So Oh yeah. Why is it important to invest to go to real estate masterminds if they're in the real estate category? Why invest in real estate masterminds, real estate coaches, watching free things on content, investing the time, not necessarily money, the time to watch the things on YouTube, etc. Why is it so important to learn and network from investing into yourself? Because most people sell themselves short. I think going back to the book, right? Most people tell themselves a story about who they should be, the economic ceiling that sits above them, what's possible, what's capable, what you can do. And until you the fastest way to change your situation is change the people that you're around. M you know when I talk about the apprentice and that experience being on reality television the biggest thing for me to take away wasn't yeah being on

television and having 8 million people watch every week was great and the exposure we got from that was I can't even you know

quantify quantify what that value was but the real value to me was that was the first time I'd been around 18 people in a in a confined space like that that were getting it

for sure I mean that were just really really getting it. You know, when I went on that show, cuz I did I hustled my way on it. I was probably, you know, I I figured out pretty quick, and this is going about changing your room and investing in yourself and understanding what's possible. When I got on that show, I hustled my way on. And pretty quick when you walk into a room, you can surmise it, right? You can look around and say, "hm, where do I rank on the smart category in here?" Like, where do I where am I stacking up here pretty quick? And I can I can surmise pretty fast where I am. And on that show, I would say I was probably in the smart category in the top five of the 18 people there. But financially at the time I was probably bottom two or three.

And so I'm like wait a second what what why is there the dis disparity? And the answer was was was within me. So investing in yourself

to learn new skills is great but I think it's more important to understand what's possible.

When you go to a mastermind event what are you hoping to happen? Are you there to learn? There to network? All of the above? Like what do you want to happen going through a three-day mastermind weekend for example? What? Well, okay. So, I think there's different kinds of masterminds and there's some that are really heavily built on networking and shaking hands and then there's some that are like one of the reasons I love Kent's board Kent uh his uh mastermind group boardroom is because you present your business and they pull it apart

for sure. Like they beat you up. I mean, I I used to say that was the it was the only eight days a year where I didn't feel sexy because nobody told me how great I was for those eight days. They pull it apart and tell how dumb you are. So, I was always looking there. But for the most part, for me, it's all about creating relationships. And the way that you create great relationships is by creating value for people. So, I'm always looking to how can I help as many people here as I can. And I think if you walk into that room with how can I genuinely help as many people as you can, you'll be really surprised at what comes back to you. But I also think you've got to it's a fine line, dude, because you want to help people, right?

But you've also got to maintain this humility. Sure. And and one of the stories that I love is is a guy named Leon Washington. I don't know. Do you know you know Trap? Wall Street Trapper. You ever met him?

Oh, yes. All right. Trap. So Trap came and nobody knew who Trap was. And I s first day I'm sitting next to him. were talking and we're just talking and he was just so gracious and he he he carried himself through so much grace through that room and as we walked around that as as we talked he was like as more I talked to him he's like man I paid $6 million in taxes last year or some crazy number and I was like or two million whatever it was I was like what what are you like what are you talking about and then we started talking about his business and I was like like hol like here's this guy

that's sitting in this room so grateful to everybody that's pouring into him and financially he probably could have turned out the lights of half the people in that room

right this guy is balling at a level that they are just not there and then he's being like thank you so much for helping me

it was it was a great lesson like as much as you want to be the man sometimes and we all get a little competitive and that ego kicks in to sometimes walking with grace you learn a lot more Sure. So in the investing side, there's the stock market, cash flowing businesses, cryptocurrency, and obviously real estate, and so many other things. When with having all these different options, how can someone decide, I'm going to dive into real estate. I want to gamble and go, you know, invest into cryptocurrency. I want to just buy Tesla, Amazon, Google, Netflix stocks.

Like, there's so many options. How do people decide when there's so many things that are going on in their minds? Well, I think real estate investing for me, you're you're already doing it, especially if you're young, right? Buy a house, get three roommate. If you have if you buy a house and get three roommates, guess what? You're a real estate investor.

That's fun. Because those three those three roommates are paying your bills, right?

They're covering the whole thing and then you can go buy another one. So, you can start that way. I mean, I know everybody likes to talk that, you know, buy a duplex and live in one and then rent the other one out.

Yeah. If you live in Vegas, there are no good. Like don't even call me about a forplex in Vegas. There are no nice forplexes in Vegas. They do not exist.

But six figures to remodel. It's the it's the place it's the place you start. And I and I I the one problem I have with so many of the so many of the big influencers talking about real estate even if you like look at Grant, right? Who says like owning a house is the dumbest thing you can do. And and I have a my dad used to say don't ever buy a protest sign from the guy that tells you about the cause. That's what he used to say. And I love that statement because the same guy that's telling you, "Don't go out invest in single family homes or buy a home, but send me all your money so I can put it in my fund to buy multif family."

Like, okay, is that necessarily congruent? Congruent, right? Is that true? Because to me, it's a bigger risk to send your money off to somebody to invest in a multif family deal. Right now, a lot of those syndicated multif family deals are getting murdered because they were all based on all of their performance. All of the financials on those multif family syndication deals were all based on the fact that rates were going to come down. And they haven't. And there's a bunch of them that are in deep, deep trouble right now. And you're going to see probably a lot of those deals fall apart and go to foreclosure. You're going to see that soon if rates don't change. But you can go out and invest in real estate by yourself with no money down by doing sub two and structuring deals creatively to put to do that and you have control of the situation. And the one thing about you, like you said, crypto and

stocks and all those things, dirt is never going to go to zero. There will never be a time on planet Earth when somebody says, "How much is that lot?" and they say, "It's zero."

Sure. It's never going to happen. Now, could a company go to zero? Absolutely. Can crypto go to zero tomorrow, right? Coins go to zero all the every day. I think the problem with it is when you talk about crypto especially and yes, crypto should be part of your portfolio. I think it's it's an aggressive growth strategy. That's fine, but crypto to me in a lot of ca the ways that people use it, especially with like the meme coins and all that stuff, that's gambling.

Literally gambling. That's not investing. So when you're thinking about, oh, should I invest in crypto or should I invest in real estate? That's not even the same sport. That's completely different. That's one is going to the casino and one is going to the bank,

right? So go to the bank first. Yes. Play at the casino, keep your money at the bank.

All right. Let's talk about the charity side about giving money away. Why do you think that businesses or business executives should have a charity component for their customers, clients, vendors, employees, etc. to see them doing something to do with philanthropy? Well, I think it there was not that I think there's there was a study that came out that I think Harvard did a study. I don't remember how long ago it was saying that they did a they was a study or they did a survey, but it was something like eight out of 10 consumers said they would want to do business with a company that has a charitable component. So, if no other reason, I think that's a good reason to do it. But more to the point, if the money, you know, it's like Cole Cole Hatter says with with with Thrive, making money matter, right? And yeah, we all like to get nice stuff and you hit a certain point where it just gets a

little hollow. You become numb to it. Yeah. You get a little numb and then you have something happen that that really affects you. Like for years, we've always had this thing where like the the for sale signs for my personal real estate team, you know, like some a lot of them say like have writers on the bottom say like pull honey, stop the car, whatever that nonsense is that realtors hang on the bottom of signs. Our signs say a portion of the commission from the sale of a house will go to and then the writers are actual char the actual charities and we normally do four and let the seller pick which charity they want to they want to have hanging in front of their house is what we normally do. But unfortunately, a good friend of mine a couple years ago uh came down with ALS. Uh John Hopkins, who's the bass player in the Zack Brown Band. So now 100% of what we do goes to Hop on a Cure, which is his thing.

Because I think when you get really personally affected by that, by something that's tragic, I think it changes your view on charitable forgiveness.

And you put more energy into it. A little more energy into it. Yeah. We got an event tonight with him actually, which is great. Oh, really?

Yeah. So, I'm going to break down. You guys have heard me say this probably once every six months. You will become numb to your second and third watch. You will become numb to your second and third car. You will never visit your fourth bedroom at your house. If there's just you and your kid or you and one, you know, person, you're never going to go to the fourth bedroom. It's not going to happen. And everyone wants this big patio. You don't go on your patio that much. You go in your backyard, but you don't go on the patio on the second floor that much. Looks cool, but you don't really go on your balcony that much. I say that because too many times we've watched people raise their overhead and we watch someone go from making eight grand a month to 10, 10 grand to 13, 13 grand to 25, start crushing it and they have the exact same amount in their bank account and a little more debt actually because went

from a two-bedroom apartment to fourbedroom. They got a second and third car. They got a second and third watch. You will become numb to it. Now, I am not saying to not have a goal of your first watch, your first car, the thing that you want, upgrading your car one day, but I can pinky swear from the bottom of my heart. John's got hundreds of friends and clients over the years that'll tell you the same thing. You will not care about that third car ever. Once that new car smell goes away six days later, it's just another car in your garage. You're probably sticking to your Tesla or your Range Rover, your daily car. You're not going to drive the Lamborghini that much because it's not comfortable.

Yeah, you're not going to drive it. And so I just say this because we are trying to be flashy for people on social media that don't actually care about you. I care about the people that are going to be at my funeral. There's only going to be 100 people at my funeral, if that. And so because of that, the other million people that see it, I don't actually care what they think. That's why I'm not wearing a watch right now. That's why I don't show fly cars. I don't have a flashy car. I don't own one because I don't care about building that perception. And I've watched so many of our friends, peers, people we look up to and billionaires and zillionaires that are numb to the second, third, and fourth thing. And so I implore you, go have the goal of that one watch or that one car, that one thing that you want, but please don't waste your money buying the other 40 grand thing and 200 grand thing. Try to impress other people.

John, on the charity side, what about in your household? Why is it important for a household, you know, you have kids or wife, husband, etc. Why should they see some type of philanthropy part or take part in it, not necessarily the money part?

Well, two reasons. Number one, one of the goals I think when you raise kids is you want them to be the best humans they can be. You want them to be grow to be kids that set goals that are kind, that have feelings and empathy for others. And I found when you raise children with wealth and around money, it becomes harder for them to do that. And so exposing them to acts of kindness, acts of charity is a does two things for me. Number one is it's going to build that empathy muscle within them. It's going to build that the world is a bigger place than my 7,700 foot house. The the world is bigger than than first class. But what it also does, it allows them to see, hey, the coin can be flipped pretty quick right?

Like your mom, you know, my my my wife grew up on the verge of abject poverty. And

you know, it's not that far away. You guys are not like six generations Rockefeller deep away from

Yeah. from from being here. Like this isn't that this isn't that far away. So, you want them to kind of see a little bit of how the other side the other side lives. I love when we travel, we don't just necessarily go to all the tourist place. We try to to go to where the locals are. We try to go to places where they can see how the world is. And you know, one of my favorite sayings is that's ever been said in this room is, you know, I've never seen a welltraveled racist.

But I've also seen I've never seen anybody that's seen abject poverty in third world countries that doesn't really appreciate daily what they have.

Right. When I went to India, it literally changed my whole soul. Yeah. Cairo was that was Cairo for me.

It was like wow. Like this was that was a like you know you go to parts of Dominican Republic whatever when you're on vacation you're like oh this is not good but man I I haven't been to India but I'll tell you Cairo was something else.

Yeah. In Cairo and in India they're literally on the sides of the street on the freeway living on the side of the freeway.

Yeah. Just like hundreds of thousands of people. Not a couple hundred hundreds of thousands of people. And then you have to step over them to go into Nou.

It's a weirdly weird dynamic in some of these countries of like extreme wealth and extreme poverty. And it's stuck in my soul. Stuck in my mind. So, there's only one question I ask the same on every single episode, and I've never gotten the same answer before. 50 years, 100 years from now, unfortunately, John Gaffford finally passes away. What percentage of that net worth after you built Simply Vegas from 585 reps to 5,000 reps, built this humongous company, what percentage of that net worth you leave to your children?

I want my children I I've the answer I've always given to this. I want my children to have enough money that they can do anything that they want, but not so much that they can do nothing.

I love that. That's it. I want them to have every opportunity that all of the things that we've done, the hard work that we put forth can offer them, but they're not going to be able to sit around and do nothing.

All right, tell people about the book more in depth. I want to hear more about it. So yeah, again, the book is my users manual to my 27-year-old dipstick self, but it's one of those things where when you look at what's happening in the country right now, I think you've got this whole generation of young men that are drifting along. Y,

you've got a massive problem there and then you combine that with AI coming down the pipe. There is a there's a tsunami coming and nobody is coming to save you,

right? You've got to be willing to save yourself. And I think when I wrote this book, I didn't want it to just be hyperbole. I didn't want it to just be stories. I want it to be real stories from my life of things, problems, and things that I had, but also lessons and actual planning that you can do. Like, okay, do A through Z and then you'll get this. Like, this is the actual playbook for what you need to do to get yourself out from being at the at the mercy of somebody else and taking control of your life. Because I promise you, if you do not take control of what of the direction of your life, somebody else is going to do it for you and you're not going to like where you wind up.

Where can people follow you, check out the book, etc. You can find me uh any all my handles are at the JohnGaffford, Instagram, all those places. Um podcast, escaping the drift as well. Uh and everywhere books are sold, man. It's out there and you know, check it out.

The podcast is called Escaping the Drift. Podcast is also called Escaping the Drift.

That's great. I'm staying on brand. All right, guys. cuz I'm about to write a Money Monday's book now cuz I'm inspired by John.

All right, as you guys know, these episodes are not just for you. Your friends, family, and followers from your past, present, and future might want to be listening to this episode. Not all these episodes are going to be for you. I might bring on Gary Breen to talk about health, and then I bring on John Gaffford talk about real estate, investing, and charity. When there's people in your world, having these open lines of communication to talk about money, talk about business, investing, taxes, things that we're talking about on these episodes is super, super important. So we can change the narrative that it's rude to talk about money. It is not rude. It's ridiculous to not talk about it because part of our daily lives. You making money, you spending money on your family, your parents, health care, insurance, bills, electricity. There's all these things are part of your normal life. We have to

have the discussions. So I appreciate you guys sharing the money Mondays with your friends, family, and followers. When you see these podcasts, make sure you're liking, comment, subscribing. It helps us keep this ad free. I did take a sponsorship deal, as you guys heard, with GoHigh Level because I actually use it for years. You've seen me use Go High Level and I talk about it with passion, but I'm not offering you discount codes or coupon codes. Just go research Gohigh Level. It's very useful people that have courses, businesses, and online sales.

And I've done an ad for you this whole time because I want you guys to have this in intense time to really listen to everything that we're talking about because these guests care. You can see that John cares. He's built up a great business here. So, check them out. Obviously, if you're in the Vegas area or you know someone in the Vegas area and they need real estate, obviously they are all encompassing here at Simply Vegas. I appreciate you guys listening to Money Mondays. We will see you guys next Monday here on moneymunddays.com.

Questions about this episode

What is "The Business Strategy That Made Him Millions (Vertical Integration Explained) 🏢 EP150" about?

The discussion centers on vertical integration in business, particularly in the context of real estate, as explained by John Gaffford, who has built a successful luxury real estate brokerage in Las Vegas. He highlights that vertical integration involves owning various aspects of the real estate transaction process—from mortgage and title to construction—allowing for increased control and…

What is mentioned in this The Money Mondays Podcast episode?

32 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Simply Vegas, Money Mondays, Money Mondays, John Gaffford, Escaping the Drift, Escaping the Drift. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "The Business Strategy That Made Him Millions (Vertical Integration Explained) 🏢 EP150"?

The episode runs 38 min; the transcript is about 8,254 words in 117 timestamped sections.

More from The Money Mondays Podcast

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated December 18, 2025.