Speaker 1: People are traveling. That can be very anxiety producing. Have
Speaker 1: a plan for your packing. First of all, roll your
Speaker 1: items have separate packing bags. They could be zip block bags,
Speaker 1: they could be actual packing cubes, but you could do
Speaker 1: either by each each outfit goes in one packing cube,
Speaker 1: or it could be all T shirts going to packing cube,
Speaker 1: all underwear, et cetera. Try to pick a color scheme
Speaker 1: when I travel. I'll decide I'm either wearing the browns
Speaker 1: or if it's tropical the colors, or if it's skiing
Speaker 1: or somewhere like urban like a city like Boston or somebody,
Speaker 1: I'll pick black. I'll pick a hardware if you care
Speaker 1: about your hardware matching, and wear the heavy things on
Speaker 1: the plane with you or in the car with you,
Speaker 1: and you're not gonna wear most of it, so cut
Speaker 1: it out. You can wear the same shoes multiple times
Speaker 1: at different outfits. Pick a color scheme because that means
Speaker 1: that you need fewer accessories, bags and staples for that trip.
Speaker 1: Just make your life easier today. My guest is Michael Caponi,
Speaker 1: the founder and president of Global Empowerment Mission, and he
Speaker 1: is a partner in my Be Strong initiative. Michael has
Speaker 1: been at the forefront of disaster relief AIDS since the
Speaker 1: late nineties, helping people around the world when natural disasters
Speaker 1: strike and other issues too. Since being involved with ME,
Speaker 1: other things that have been important to us. And this
Speaker 1: is a different episode because um my friends at my
Speaker 1: Heart suggested that I do something on my philanthropy on
Speaker 1: Be Strong. I don't usually sort of promote the things
Speaker 1: that I'm doing here. It's just not when I go
Speaker 1: on other people's shows, I promote these things. But this
Speaker 1: is something that always saves live So, you know, a
Speaker 1: little self promotion I guess for Be Strong isn't a
Speaker 1: bad idea because it any promotion for Be Strong just
Speaker 1: means we're saving more lives, literally helping more people. Um
Speaker 1: So today is a different show. It's talking about philanthropy,
Speaker 1: which is really related to business. The show talks a
Speaker 1: lot about business and how to get things done, and
Speaker 1: philanthropy for me has been no different than business except
Speaker 1: that goes to the effort. But the reason it's been
Speaker 1: no different is that it was really hard to established
Speaker 1: credibility in this space. It was really hard to execute.
Speaker 1: I had a stop start up pop up where literally
Speaker 1: in the very beginning, no one would give me flip
Speaker 1: flops after Hurricane Harvey, just flip flaps as me and
Speaker 1: people send me things for free all the time we're
Speaker 1: used to. I couldn't get flip flops. I couldn't get anything.
Speaker 1: I was a nobody, and nobody wants to give money
Speaker 1: to a nobody to help people you're not trusted and
Speaker 1: trust me, so many trusted charities are such scams and
Speaker 1: take so much money for themselves that I got into
Speaker 1: this space so I could really cut the bullshit, cut
Speaker 1: the rubber chicken dinners, cut the oh come shopping and
Speaker 1: buy something to get ten percent going towards a charity.
Speaker 1: Like There's just so much scam and so much bullshit,
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to get in here and cut
Speaker 1: through the bullshit with all the transparency and just executing.
Speaker 1: So that's the story about why we're doing a conversation
Speaker 1: with Michael, because we work together and BE Strong. Hello, Hi,
Speaker 1: how are you okay? So this is Michael Caponi, who
Speaker 1: I have worked with on many different missions all over
Speaker 1: the world on relief work with BE Strong. Uh So, Michael,
Speaker 1: you have an interesting story in my opinion, which is
Speaker 1: why I wanted to talk to you today, not about
Speaker 1: just all of the work that we've done, because while
Speaker 1: that's interesting, it can be a little bit tedious and
Speaker 1: boring for people. And sometimes I have to tell you
Speaker 1: that people aren't always in the mood to give, and
Speaker 1: they have deal fatigue now because of all the crazy
Speaker 1: stuff going on in the world. So I think, um,
Speaker 1: sort of people getting an understanding of you and the
Speaker 1: business of of philanthropy, which is really why I've been
Speaker 1: successful at this, because it really is there's a business
Speaker 1: aspect to it and execution and being organized, and it
Speaker 1: feels like you're starting a new business, just not for profit. So, uh,
Speaker 1: tell everyone what your business trajectory has been like. Well,
Speaker 1: I met you years ago. I was I went to
Speaker 1: some there was a girl whose father was a publisher,
Speaker 1: Jerry Powers. I think he was the publisher of Ocean
Speaker 1: Drive magazine, And I went with his daughter to like
Speaker 1: a fancy party in Miami, like a very jet set,
Speaker 1: fast crowd party in Miami at this big house on
Speaker 1: the water. I don't remember where it was. You could
Speaker 1: tell us, and I think it was your house. And
Speaker 1: I remember meeting you and you were super standoffish and
Speaker 1: really too cool, like a like a club promoter, and
Speaker 1: I think that's what you were, So explain how I
Speaker 1: came into that night and who you were then and
Speaker 1: when that was. So my father was in the nightclub
Speaker 1: business and I ended up in the nightclub business. So
Speaker 1: the first part of my career from being a fifteen
Speaker 1: year old to basically thirty something, I was at the
Speaker 1: helm of nightlife in Miami Beach and opened up, you know,
Speaker 1: lots of different nightclubs and learned the art of networking
Speaker 1: and connecting the dots, which really was a great lesson
Speaker 1: and teaching to what we're doing now with philanthropy, because
Speaker 1: it's kind of the same thing. You have to get
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of really important people to come to
Speaker 1: an event. Now instead of doing that, you're getting a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of really important people or regular people to
Speaker 1: donate to a cause. So it's the same part form,
Speaker 1: it's just flipped. It's true because then you have to
Speaker 1: figure out where jen pop is going in the nightclub
Speaker 1: is they're important and they're your bread and butter, but
Speaker 1: you want people to be spending money buying bottles at
Speaker 1: the major tables, and you want to give them uh
Speaker 1: extra attention and that's how we do it. Certain people
Speaker 1: will donate three planes, and then we want to explain
Speaker 1: exactly where those planes are going to go, which is
Speaker 1: like saying exactly where your table is going to be
Speaker 1: when you're buying a bottle and get you right or
Speaker 1: what get you in right away? And you need to
Speaker 1: understand what the whole rundown is going to be. And
Speaker 1: then people are donating five dollars and we want them
Speaker 1: to also feel happy and comfortable. So your dad, what
Speaker 1: clubs did your dad own? I didn't even know that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my dad swim the English Channel, he had the World
Speaker 1: Records for a while, and he opened up in Belgium,
Speaker 1: where I was born, a series of like the original
Speaker 1: jet set clubs. So my dad went out with. My
Speaker 1: dad's girlfriend was Jane Mansfield. He was best friends with
Speaker 1: Sean Connery, you know, virgim Bardo. All these people would
Speaker 1: go to these places. Interesting, Okay, so what you were involved?
Speaker 1: But you were friends with like major celebrities, right, you
Speaker 1: were running in a really fast crowd. You were like,
Speaker 1: you knew Madonna and Ingri Saras and all these people
Speaker 1: would right. I mean, I think every celebrity on the
Speaker 1: planet made it through Miami and it's Heyday, you know,
Speaker 1: at some point or another. So they definitely ended up
Speaker 1: in our in our spots. So um so, so now
Speaker 1: you're running mt nightclubs, you're what's the existence like? What's
Speaker 1: your life like? Is it fun? Is it vapid? Is
Speaker 1: it superficial? Is it all of that? What's that story like?
Speaker 1: I think when you're in it, you're caught up in
Speaker 1: it and you're lost in a candy store of pleasure.
Speaker 1: And I didn't like it anymore. And I was always
Speaker 1: doing humanitarian work since. Actually it's when we first started.
Speaker 1: We were doing drives with the City of Miami Beach
Speaker 1: for Kosovo. We did drives for nine eleven Katrina for
Speaker 1: the tsunami. But I was always on the other side.
Speaker 1: I was always the one just raising the money and
Speaker 1: then I was giving it to Red Cross or different organizations.
Speaker 1: I was on the executive board of the United Way
Speaker 1: for a year, so I learned that side of it.
Speaker 1: After the Hate earthquake, I formed our foundation Global empower
Speaker 1: a mission. At the time, it was called Haiti Empowerment Mission.
Speaker 1: All right, so you are running in a fast crowd
Speaker 1: and are you making a lot of money are you partying? Like,
Speaker 1: what's what's going on in your personal life? How old
Speaker 1: are you when you decided to leave? So I started
Speaker 1: nightlife literally when I was in high school. I was
Speaker 1: a theater. I was literally passing out flyers for events
Speaker 1: on my skateboard down Ocean Drive. How long the history
Speaker 1: was by the time I was twenty one years old?
Speaker 1: You know, I was literally like at the helm of
Speaker 1: throwing all the most important parties in Miami. No college, No,
Speaker 1: no college. Okay, so you're at the heyday of twenty one.
Speaker 1: When did you retire from nightclub life? Uh? Fully retired
Speaker 1: like six years ago. Oh so that's not even that long. Okay.
Speaker 1: So wait, so how many years were you doing it?
Speaker 1: Twenty seven years or so? Okay, so you were doing
Speaker 1: it for twenty seven years. So tell us about the
Speaker 1: part of your lifestyle and that sort of life change
Speaker 1: you made because you went from that and then into
Speaker 1: real estate. Explain the toll that it took on you
Speaker 1: personally being in the nightclub space, spiritually, physically, emotionally, financially,
Speaker 1: all of that. Explained that part of that. So I
Speaker 1: went through by the time I was twenty one, I
Speaker 1: was completely lost in excess. I UM, I got addicted
Speaker 1: to all different kinds of drugs and I completely crashed
Speaker 1: and burned. I um had everything a twenty one year
Speaker 1: old could ever want at that time, Abode and Mercedes,
Speaker 1: the most beautiful apartment, best friends with you know, all
Speaker 1: kinds of celebrities. Everything. At the time I was twenty three,
Speaker 1: had gone to about ten different drug rehab centers. I
Speaker 1: kept relapsing. I was so addicted, and I ended up,
Speaker 1: you know, I was CouchSurfing on friends homes. I got evicted.
Speaker 1: I had nowhere to stay anymore, and I literally went
Speaker 1: to New York. I spent some time on someone's you know, apartment,
Speaker 1: and then I basically ran out of the house. And
Speaker 1: when I went into the projects to find some drugs,
Speaker 1: I got arrested. And when I came back out, um,
Speaker 1: it was the blizzard of and it was right around
Speaker 1: Halloween and nine. You can google the temperatures there at
Speaker 1: that time, but I believe it was like minus twenty
Speaker 1: degrees and there was nowhere, there was no way to
Speaker 1: get back to basically society at that time, you know,
Speaker 1: And it was today. I look at it as the
Speaker 1: most valuable lesson that I've ever gone through, and and
Speaker 1: I encourage people have gone through really difficult situations in
Speaker 1: life to try to transmute it and find, you know,
Speaker 1: the real reasons. I wouldn't trade it for anything in
Speaker 1: the world today. If you offered me actually a billion
Speaker 1: dollars and said we can erase that, I would say,
Speaker 1: no way. That's how like incredibly valuable it was. But
Speaker 1: I did honestly spend from the time of Halloween two
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve completely homeless in the streets of New
Speaker 1: York in a blizzard. You know, I had literally a
Speaker 1: garbage bag as a as a raincoat over me. It
Speaker 1: was pretty hardcore. And there was subway tokens at the time.
Speaker 1: I had to collect literally ten subway tokens just to
Speaker 1: trade them for a ten dollar bill and then basically
Speaker 1: just to survive. And you're on this treadmill and it
Speaker 1: was just this like endless treadmill, and you know, at
Speaker 1: the time, you're looking up and you're you're like, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, where is God? And why did this happen
Speaker 1: to me? You're in in such a negative state that
Speaker 1: you you can't see ahead of you. But this was
Speaker 1: all I believe part of my destiny in my formation
Speaker 1: years for the work that we're actually doing now. I
Speaker 1: was lucky. I had, you know, a good family, and
Speaker 1: I was flown to Europe. They you know, put me
Speaker 1: in the proper treatments. And I at that time or
Speaker 1: prior to that, prior to that, and then right after that.
Speaker 1: And but why did you go? Why were you homeless?
Speaker 1: Because you had shame, You had a family that would
Speaker 1: have pulled you out of this. Had you burned every bridge,
Speaker 1: Like why what? Yeah, I think you burned every single
Speaker 1: bridge at that time, and there's just there's just nowhere
Speaker 1: to go. And I ended up in Belgium and from
Speaker 1: that day on I never to this day touched the
Speaker 1: drug again, a recreational drug ever, not one single time,
Speaker 1: and no rehab. You had been to ten rehabs, but
Speaker 1: this time you did it just on your own. You
Speaker 1: hit rock bottom, went to Belgium, and you didn't go
Speaker 1: to meetings. You just not that. I'm not that there's
Speaker 1: a reason to not go to meetings. Just your path
Speaker 1: wasn't that you didn't go to meetings. Actually, what happened
Speaker 1: is when I got clean, I think the universe had
Speaker 1: one more big surprise for me. Um Then one day
Speaker 1: I fell on a coma and I had a benign
Speaker 1: brain tumor. I was in a coma for like thirty
Speaker 1: six hours. When I woke up, they basically told me
Speaker 1: that I wasn't going to survive, and they told my
Speaker 1: father there was no chance I could survive that, you know,
Speaker 1: with all the things that are going on with me
Speaker 1: and methodone and all this stuff. And my mother came
Speaker 1: in and begged them to, you know, at least attempt
Speaker 1: to try to save me. I underwent three UH operations
Speaker 1: on a meningioma tumor, and the total three operations were
Speaker 1: about sixty hours of brain surgery. Imagine after that, I
Speaker 1: got meningitis, and that meningitis almost killed me in itself.
Speaker 1: I had to stay on i V for like two
Speaker 1: months basically, and you have so much antibiotics that it
Speaker 1: basically gets rid of like all your white blood cells.
Speaker 1: I had a therapist giving me like one pound weights.
Speaker 1: I remember, I couldn't even like lift a one pound weight.
Speaker 1: That's how like deep in the dark tunnel, you know,
Speaker 1: I was. And I made it through, and I understood
Speaker 1: for the first time that, you know, there was a
Speaker 1: reason why I had actually survived when nobody said, you know, everybody,
Speaker 1: every doctor there said I wasn't going to survive. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: through the process, my dad had a stroke and then
Speaker 1: he died while I was in the hospital, in the
Speaker 1: hospital next door. So that was a very you know,
Speaker 1: hard thing on me. And after that, I um got well.
Speaker 1: I moved to the Caribbean. I surf for about a year.
Speaker 1: I got my strength back, and then I went back
Speaker 1: to Miami and then I got back in my life
Speaker 1: because that's the trade that I knew best. But I
Speaker 1: always knew that I wasn't gonna be in it for
Speaker 1: you know, a very long amount of time. So this
Speaker 1: time I was back in nightlife in a different Miami.
Speaker 1: Miami had really changed in the early nineties. It was
Speaker 1: this bohemian, sheet coolest place, and you know, by the
Speaker 1: time I got in ninety nine, it was much more commercialized.
Speaker 1: It was very different, and my life wasn't as raw
Speaker 1: and it wasn't as interesting. So I was always looking
Speaker 1: for other things to do that would be, um, you know,
Speaker 1: a better fit. So that's when I started um getting
Speaker 1: into philanthropy and use utilizing all my contacts in Miami.
Speaker 1: Every time there was a disaster and that's how we
Speaker 1: built this up. You know, basically, something would happen, Let's
Speaker 1: just say nine eleven would happen. I'd call the mayor
Speaker 1: Nisson Kasten at the time, I'd say we should organize
Speaker 1: the Miami citywide drive, and then he'd go on TV
Speaker 1: and he would say, you know, all the fire stations
Speaker 1: are collecting eight and everything, and then we would at
Speaker 1: that time as just a private citizen. That's how I
Speaker 1: got my feet wet with this uh experience. That's important
Speaker 1: because people often reach out to me and say, how
Speaker 1: do I happen? So people say I want to send
Speaker 1: a bunch of clothes, and then I have to sort
Speaker 1: of defeat them by saying, if you just send a
Speaker 1: box of random clothes that you know aren't from a
Speaker 1: big company in multiple sizes, we would have to sort them,
Speaker 1: and then people aren't getting their size and it's demoralizing.
Speaker 1: And so things that people traditionally think will help aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily sorily helpful, which is why often money is helpful.
Speaker 1: But now social media, communicating and connecting and spreading awareness
Speaker 1: is a tool, and that's how people have helped a lot.
Speaker 1: But Michael's discussing that he was just a civilian who
Speaker 1: wanted to help and he had a skill set because
Speaker 1: of nightclub promoting, and he ended up building some houses
Speaker 1: in real estate development. UM. And I've produced events in
Speaker 1: my past, large scale events, and I have run a business,
Speaker 1: and often the thing that you do in your normal life,
Speaker 1: even getting your kids off to school or getting the
Speaker 1: schedule or soccer or whatever it is in your household,
Speaker 1: connects the philanthropy. It can help you with philanthropy. So
Speaker 1: it seems like an inaccessible world to kind of get
Speaker 1: in a meaningful way, but you just have to dip
Speaker 1: your foot in. And the first time I tried to help,
Speaker 1: nobody want to help me, and nobody would give me anything,
Speaker 1: and no one would donate money because I was a
Speaker 1: nobody in that space. I was a somebody in entertainment,
Speaker 1: but and nobody in that space. So you just kind
Speaker 1: of gotta be organized, be transparent, be reliable, delegate, execute
Speaker 1: and get on the road and try it. What year
Speaker 1: is what you're describing when you got involved, Like dip
Speaker 1: your toe in Kosovo was so you know, there's a
Speaker 1: good ten year track record before I actually had my
Speaker 1: own foundation um of doing it. You know, with others
Speaker 1: and and you know, sitting on the board of United Way,
Speaker 1: an amazing organization. You know, you're you're looking at UM,
Speaker 1: you know, a different type of structure. Right, there's fifty
Speaker 1: people on the board. It's slow to make decisions, right.
Speaker 1: And then the UH earthquake happened in two thousand ten
Speaker 1: in Haiti, and I think that that was the you know,
Speaker 1: I always say it was probably my biggest turning point
Speaker 1: at the time. I was advised, you know, I was
Speaker 1: someone worked in my office. It's incredible. And they happened
Speaker 1: to be best friends with UH. This guy Hassan and
Speaker 1: his UH mother was like the sister of the president
Speaker 1: of Haiti or something. So they wrote us, wrote me
Speaker 1: a letter basically asking for help right after the earthquake happened.
Speaker 1: And I gave that letter to UH Commissioner Gongora at
Speaker 1: the time, and they requested for you know, significant assistant.
Speaker 1: So I went and got permission to have the fire
Speaker 1: department come with me in Haiti. So this was a
Speaker 1: tricky thing because I was kind of a captain of
Speaker 1: the mission, but I wasn't a firefighter and I had
Speaker 1: never been to Haiti. But we had a lot of
Speaker 1: support from the government at the time. They gave us,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of big busses and we had
Speaker 1: collected all kinds of supplies in Miami. We were there
Speaker 1: right after the earthquake Halpen. We were on the first
Speaker 1: teams there and that was the most you know, insane
Speaker 1: experience that you could ever imagine. I mean, just to
Speaker 1: give you an example, um, when we showed up at
Speaker 1: a hospital where basically there was you know, five hundred
Speaker 1: people there that were screaming the whole time. Most people
Speaker 1: had a rock that had like fallen on their arm
Speaker 1: and the arm was like hanging by a thread, and
Speaker 1: it had been like four days, and there was like
Speaker 1: maggots in there, like blood, and there was no time
Speaker 1: for anesthesia to evaluate everything. I think the the team
Speaker 1: I brought, I can honestly say, probably amputated more than
Speaker 1: like thirty limbs. In front of me. I held ladies
Speaker 1: arms while they were like getting cut off. I was
Speaker 1: watching I was pregnant. I was watching the average of
Speaker 1: Haiti while I think I was six months pregnant. And
Speaker 1: I remember George Clooney getting up and saying something And
Speaker 1: this is what's scary that back then something like Haiti
Speaker 1: the earthquake. It was a very big deal in the
Speaker 1: news that would be on for weeks at a time,
Speaker 1: and it was one thing that everyone was focusing on.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to get into now. We have to
Speaker 1: because the just the the way that this whole conversation
Speaker 1: is flowing. We're gonna get into how we met. I
Speaker 1: know that Michael ended up doing about ninety trips to
Speaker 1: Haiti since then. But I remember watching on television kids
Speaker 1: onlines from medical care doactly what you're saying, and it
Speaker 1: made me feel so helpless, and I wanted to get
Speaker 1: involved in helping children and charities because I was in
Speaker 1: the liquor business. They didn't think it was a good
Speaker 1: idea for me to be in a children's charity because
Speaker 1: I'm in the liquor business and those two things don't
Speaker 1: don't collide, and they were very careful about where I
Speaker 1: spent my time because I wanted my partners to really
Speaker 1: get involved. That's how I later ended up getting involved
Speaker 1: with Dress for Success, which is a great charity to
Speaker 1: to help women um get on their feet and get
Speaker 1: jobs and help other people to get jobs. But that Haiti,
Speaker 1: where you were, where your where, your tipping point was
Speaker 1: that was what the first time I ever thought about philanthropy.
Speaker 1: I had never had any money, so watching on the
Speaker 1: news about Haiti was the first time I ever thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: I want to do something. I want to not just
Speaker 1: donate money randomly or percentage of percentages of things that
Speaker 1: I sell to go somewhere. I want to do something.
Speaker 1: But I didn't know how to enter and what I
Speaker 1: bring up that that was the biggest deal in the world.
Speaker 1: Then now you'll be dealing with a hurricane at the
Speaker 1: same time as a shortage of ppe in the country,
Speaker 1: at the same time as a building collapses, and there
Speaker 1: are three hundred people dead. Right now, there's a massive
Speaker 1: homeless crisis in the country. But you just sent me
Speaker 1: a text that we're still sending aid to Louisiana because
Speaker 1: when the headlines fade, we're still finishing missions. So the
Speaker 1: headlines fade after the Australia fires, but we've committed to
Speaker 1: do relief work, so we're still finishing. So we'll get
Speaker 1: into all that sort of but we're going to get
Speaker 1: into how I met Michael. I had already done a
Speaker 1: relief effort for Hurricane Harvey in Texas. I decided I
Speaker 1: wanted to do something. I ended up raising three thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in money and in kind, and it was impossible
Speaker 1: for me to get this money and to get this
Speaker 1: going was impossible. Nobody knew I was. Nobody cared um
Speaker 1: and I give Tinsey Mortimer shout out, but she donated
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars at that time to an unproven charity
Speaker 1: and that was a big bulk of the beginning of
Speaker 1: the money. And it sort of put us on the map.
Speaker 1: And me going there and getting all these pictures put
Speaker 1: us on the map. And I did that and it
Speaker 1: was a one off. It was just something I really
Speaker 1: wanted to help. It was this is actually a crisis.
Speaker 1: That's how that started. UM. I was watching all these
Speaker 1: celebrities linked to big bureaucratic charities that I you know,
Speaker 1: people don't know where they're donating, don't know what these
Speaker 1: people are doing. I later learned even more from Michael
Speaker 1: about the percentage that actually goes. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of scam is. There are a lot of legal scams
Speaker 1: and a lot of illegal scams. But if you're putting money,
Speaker 1: you need to know exactly where it's going. You're donating
Speaker 1: money if it's a dollar, if it's a million dollars,
Speaker 1: you need to know exactly where it's going. That's been missing.
Speaker 1: So now I finished that, and then Hurricane Maria hits
Speaker 1: and that's in Puerto Rico, and it's everywhere in the news,
Speaker 1: and I have no idea how to insert myself. I
Speaker 1: don't know what to do. I'm texting all these celebrities
Speaker 1: that I know. Plane, help me get a plane. Nobody's
Speaker 1: flying in there. What do we do? The one thing
Speaker 1: that was sure is that they needed aid and they
Speaker 1: needed planes. Because of the Jones Act, boats couldn't go
Speaker 1: into deliver aid, so would normally be a very easy
Speaker 1: trip for us. We have a warehouse in Miami, which
Speaker 1: Michael will get into. But this was now logistical difference.
Speaker 1: Each each disaster has some weird logistical difference that you
Speaker 1: would never know. So no two disasters the same. You
Speaker 1: don't use the same skill set, and then the next
Speaker 1: time you know everything you call back to certain things.
Speaker 1: But ppe Ma asks being missing is it was a
Speaker 1: new world. Dust from volcanoes erupting was a new world.
Speaker 1: Surfside was a new world. People were under a rubble.
Speaker 1: So Maria was a new world. Because they had the
Speaker 1: Jones actors in place. You couldn't bring boats in. People
Speaker 1: need a plane. So now I'm obsessed with finding a plane.
Speaker 1: I finally decided, Okay, I'll spend my money. I'm going
Speaker 1: to charter a plane and we're gonna fill it with
Speaker 1: stuff from Costco. What do we do? How do we
Speaker 1: fill this plane? What do we do when we get there?
Speaker 1: And one Puerto Rican woman who was very connected, and
Speaker 1: that was sort of what I had going. She was
Speaker 1: very connected, So we were going to fill this plane.
Speaker 1: So I started calling people about filling this plane. And
Speaker 1: then Jennifer Bell says, I know a girl who I
Speaker 1: already knew what who was it? What was the girl
Speaker 1: with the son mixing up her name? A girl named Eve?
Speaker 1: And she says, I know a guy who has a
Speaker 1: warehouse filled with aid. So now enter Michael and myself
Speaker 1: on a group text with this guy Omar, and you
Speaker 1: could take it away what happened from your perspective, my perspective,
Speaker 1: I'm connected to you. You can help me fill this
Speaker 1: plane so I don't have to go to Costco and
Speaker 1: fill this order that these children's hospitals had been giving
Speaker 1: to me. By Twitter and by text you can help
Speaker 1: me and you can help me distribute. So now enter
Speaker 1: Michael in my life. Yeah. So at the time, we
Speaker 1: we had borrowed a warehouse from Moishi Mana and it
Speaker 1: was like a pop up and he just let us
Speaker 1: operate out of there. And we were dealing with only
Speaker 1: local community collection AID, right, people from Miami were just
Speaker 1: dropping off stuff. So we had a whole bunch of supplies,
Speaker 1: maybe two million pounds worth of UH supplies. You wanted
Speaker 1: UH to fill the plane. So, you know, we agreed,
Speaker 1: and I think Violet and Omar and everybody um went
Speaker 1: with you. And ironically, UM, you know, I had been
Speaker 1: I had seen before, you know, people and Kim Kardashians
Speaker 1: and things like that, you know, go to Haiti, and
Speaker 1: I didn't think it was going to have any impact.
Speaker 1: And I remember in the beginning thinking in my head,
Speaker 1: it's funny I could say now, because you've certainly showed
Speaker 1: yourself to be the exact opposite of that. But I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, housewife wants to go to Puerto Rico.
Speaker 1: I was like, you guys, take or I don't need
Speaker 1: to go on this trip. It's just gonna be whatever,
Speaker 1: you know. But you guys were praying for someone with
Speaker 1: a plane. I heard Omar said, you were praying for
Speaker 1: someone to come with a plane. Well, even more ironically
Speaker 1: in my meditations, you know, it had like kind of
Speaker 1: shown me that, you know, something really big was going
Speaker 1: to happen and that you know, we were going to
Speaker 1: play a significant role in the disaster. And I actually
Speaker 1: remember telling my team before I met you. I was like,
Speaker 1: it's interesting, the universe is basically telling me that we're
Speaker 1: gonna play this major role in this thing. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's like barely any funds and you know, and to
Speaker 1: operate with. I don't know how we're gonna make a
Speaker 1: debt in this. And then all of a sudden, my
Speaker 1: phone started getting these Google alerts and I was looking
Speaker 1: and it was like Bethany Frankel in Puerto Rico with
Speaker 1: Global and our admission, and I kept getting them, and
Speaker 1: then um, I noticed our you know, donation link was
Speaker 1: starting to like buzz a lot, and there was like
Speaker 1: donations coming in. You and I hadn't even really met yet,
Speaker 1: and I was very impressed. I was like, wow, this
Speaker 1: one really has some you know, amazing impact. So I
Speaker 1: picked you up at the airport and then you were
Speaker 1: very touched by Puerto Rico and you were like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I need to do more. I need to
Speaker 1: do more. What can I do? And you know, and
Speaker 1: I remember in the car, we were like, you know,
Speaker 1: she get on our advisory board and you could be,
Speaker 1: you know, spokesperson at the time, and you know, really
Speaker 1: help us. And literally within a week you went and
Speaker 1: told your Puerto Rico story on all these talk shows
Speaker 1: from l En too. You know, I forgot there was
Speaker 1: so many, but every time you did that, you brought
Speaker 1: an amazing amount of awareness and the warehouse we would
Speaker 1: start getting emails that you know, what you and I
Speaker 1: had figured out is that we weren't the only ones
Speaker 1: in Miami collecting aid. And that's the whole secret. That
Speaker 1: there was people that had fundraisers and drives in South Carolina,
Speaker 1: in Texas, in Ohio, all over, and we knew that
Speaker 1: there was no way that this groups, these groups were
Speaker 1: going to be able to actually execute that. So we
Speaker 1: started reaching out to them and because of the exposure
Speaker 1: that was given, they started contacting us too. The next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, we inherited like ten million pounds worth of aid,
Speaker 1: which is a lot so yeah, So with Michael saying
Speaker 1: two things that happened, I went on the first trip
Speaker 1: and did distributions and went over the State building and
Speaker 1: these guys in khakis were sitting there with coffees and
Speaker 1: it was miles literally miles and minutes away from where
Speaker 1: people were waiting on their roofs for water. They were
Speaker 1: rationing insulin. I mean they were dying because no one
Speaker 1: would go there. They had no electricity, no clean water,
Speaker 1: no one would go. The President hadn't been there yet
Speaker 1: and um and so people would just pull up to
Speaker 1: this truck. Didn't matter if they got toilet, paper, diapers,
Speaker 1: they didn't care. They were just waiting for hours and
Speaker 1: hours and hours for water, for everything. So when I
Speaker 1: came back, that was the first of like six trips
Speaker 1: that I did. I, as Michael said, I was, I
Speaker 1: was from talking about it. Ellen gave three planes, Steve
Speaker 1: Harvey gave a plane, Elvis Durant gave a plane. We
Speaker 1: ended up doing fifty three planes in and out. Each
Speaker 1: mission was tailored differently. And as Michael's explaining, he was
Speaker 1: amassing the aid all over the country because we were
Speaker 1: using Twitter as a tool. Twitter was where I would
Speaker 1: write this stuff, and then children's hospitals would say, hey,
Speaker 1: we need at a B C d E and then um.
Speaker 1: But but in Ohio a church would say we have
Speaker 1: thousands of pounds. Because people around the country were inadvertently
Speaker 1: just without a plan. And this is the point about philanthropy,
Speaker 1: we have to get into amassing aid. They were doing drives,
Speaker 1: taking uh convention centers in high schools and taking an AID.
Speaker 1: It's a you can't just take an AID without a
Speaker 1: distribution plan. So we were saving them because you can't
Speaker 1: take people's donations without a way to distribute it. And
Speaker 1: people have gotten into major trouble doing that in the
Speaker 1: Australia fires. And you know, philanthropy is a serious business.
Speaker 1: You can't just take in a to and not distributed.
Speaker 1: So we were helping people saying, well, you gotta get
Speaker 1: the aid to us. So around the country Michael was like,
Speaker 1: promote this, talk about this, and I was telling it
Speaker 1: on Twitter, and then people were calling us from high
Speaker 1: schools and convention centers and we would say get it
Speaker 1: to get it to the dock in Miami and we'll
Speaker 1: move it. What do you have? So I became the
Speaker 1: switchboard and Michael became his operations person, and when he
Speaker 1: picked me up at the airport, he scared the ship
Speaker 1: out of me because he was like, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: our our head whatever. I forgot, what the hell you said.
Speaker 1: You'll be the head person and you'll be the faith
Speaker 1: I'm like, whoa, No, I'm doing one relief work to Pari,
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico. Relax, I have a business, I have a daughter, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm not your everything. He had me introduced to everybody,
Speaker 1: and he wanted me to be the face of this
Speaker 1: whole thing. And I was like, take it easy, because
Speaker 1: Michael is very pushy in that way, and I'm very
Speaker 1: like boundaries, and so I was like, I thought I
Speaker 1: was doing one mission. Lo and behold. We've been to Guatemala.
Speaker 1: We've been I was in Mexico. We've been to Australia fires.
Speaker 1: We've been to California many times, in North Carolina, Louisiana, Haiti,
Speaker 1: thirty countries, and and we did the We've done the
Speaker 1: largest private relief efforts in the United States history, just
Speaker 1: the two of us, literally with a small group of volunteers.
Speaker 1: So lean because we don't have that bureaucracy and we're
Speaker 1: not spending thousands of dollars wasting it. And Michael gets
Speaker 1: so frustrated when he hears people donating their money to
Speaker 1: these relief organizations that takes six months to get something done,
Speaker 1: and that take for themselves, for their offices and their travel.
Speaker 1: I pay for my own travel, I pay for my
Speaker 1: own team, I pay for my own everything. So of
Speaker 1: be strong donations goes. So we collided and we started
Speaker 1: doing crazy stuff like everywhere, and Michael is operations like, um,
Speaker 1: he's You've been amazing partner in and we've been through
Speaker 1: serious stress. We've been through stress, we've been through corruption,
Speaker 1: We've been through some crazy ship. But I'm always the
Speaker 1: person who, you know, make sure that I have to
Speaker 1: know exactly where the money is going, and I have
Speaker 1: to control the message and what we're working on and
Speaker 1: like because Michael wants to do everything in every place,
Speaker 1: which is great, but I'll be like, no, now it's
Speaker 1: time to pull the car out. We have to like
Speaker 1: close this up because if we get into deep we
Speaker 1: can't get out. So and Michael will be like, well,
Speaker 1: we have to finish this up because we still have
Speaker 1: to build these schools and we still have to, you know,
Speaker 1: help these churches, and so it's a very good marriage
Speaker 1: of me controlling Michael, Michael controlling what I'm saying. If
Speaker 1: I'm saying something I can't be saying because we're dealing
Speaker 1: with a government and we have to be politically correct
Speaker 1: and we have to play the game and be diplomatic
Speaker 1: with them, because we are sometimes going rogue, meaning we're
Speaker 1: not going and attaching ourselves to a government, otherwise we'd
Speaker 1: be able to get nothing done. But we also have
Speaker 1: to play the game at the government, otherwise they won't
Speaker 1: let us fly our planes in or our boats in
Speaker 1: or whatever we're doing, or our military in or retire
Speaker 1: military in. So it's a it's a it's a serious situation.
Speaker 1: I want you to talk a little bit about lack
Speaker 1: of transparency in the world of philanthropy, like how people
Speaker 1: don't know where they're donating to and how you get
Speaker 1: frustrated when you see celebrities posting links and they have
Speaker 1: no idea where the money is really going. I'd like
Speaker 1: you to talk about that, and I will say that
Speaker 1: you are a very uh we both started more naive,
Speaker 1: you maybe even more naive than I did. But when
Speaker 1: we got started on this level with this public sort
Speaker 1: of awareness. I don't think you saw a lot of
Speaker 1: the corruption coming, and I was like a step ahead
Speaker 1: of you with that, being like, oh no, we've got
Speaker 1: to keep our circles so tight because this is where
Speaker 1: corruption lies. Because when it's a ship show and it's
Speaker 1: a disaster and we're trying to help and everyone's trying
Speaker 1: to help, we think everybody else is like us and
Speaker 1: wants to help, and that's when the predators come in.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about first transparency bureaucracy and how we
Speaker 1: work on such a lean JIP based compared to other
Speaker 1: people and um, and then talk about the corruption that
Speaker 1: we've seen and how people really don't know necessarily where
Speaker 1: they're donating, no matter how famous the person is who's
Speaker 1: doing it or you know that kind of thing. Yes,
Speaker 1: So when we go back to the Haiti story, right
Speaker 1: where it all originates from, basically, you know, billions was
Speaker 1: was hundreds of billions of dollars were raised for Haiti. UM.
Speaker 1: I was on the board of, you know, a giant organization,
Speaker 1: and I didn't have my own foundation, and you know,
Speaker 1: after a trip two we set up a intents city
Speaker 1: and then all the whole time I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: the big Organs are going to come in and basically
Speaker 1: just fix this and take it over. Will have just
Speaker 1: done that, And after about nine ten months in Haiti,
Speaker 1: I realized that was never gonna happen and I owned
Speaker 1: this problem and the three thousand people I had in
Speaker 1: my in tent city, there was nothing I could do
Speaker 1: with them. I either just walk away and own that
Speaker 1: karma for life or I have to find a plan
Speaker 1: for them. And that led me to you know this,
Speaker 1: basically you have the problem solved on every single thing,
Speaker 1: So you're very correct. Every single disaster is exactly like
Speaker 1: a new corporate startup. You have to basically have a
Speaker 1: new set of donors, a new master plan, a new
Speaker 1: string of governments, new shipping routes right every sometimes as
Speaker 1: by plane, by ship, by all different kinds of carriers.
Speaker 1: But there's case law that does help us, meaning it
Speaker 1: is totally different. But there's some funk ups that you've
Speaker 1: made or some stresses that we've had, so we wouldn't
Speaker 1: make that mistake again, you know what I mean? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: the you know, the biggest thing is that you know
Speaker 1: we do not distribute aid unless you know we're doing it.
Speaker 1: Ourselves or supervising a partner. Right, So like we just
Speaker 1: pulled off right, Now, let's stick with Haiti. Those little
Speaker 1: kids that were sleeping in that tent city in two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten, we put them through college. Those kids
Speaker 1: are in college now, they're wearing these strong shirts. Now,
Speaker 1: they're fully educated. They speak English. They're at the poor
Speaker 1: in a secret port where we have a four hundred
Speaker 1: foot ship come and literally delivered. The last load was
Speaker 1: five twenty nine palettes. I mean, think about how big
Speaker 1: that is, just for someone to understand that that's twenty
Speaker 1: two eighteen wheelers filled with supplies, right that we brought
Speaker 1: to Haiti. And we didn't just dump it off there
Speaker 1: and hope for the best. We were there for twelve
Speaker 1: days at that port. We had sixty seven Haitian trucks
Speaker 1: come from different groups and organizations and come pick that
Speaker 1: eight up and drive it to like every single part
Speaker 1: of the whole South coast and three different zones or
Speaker 1: states or departments. That is a lot of managing and orchestration.
Speaker 1: At the same time, you have Americans that are kidnapped.
Speaker 1: You know, the whole country has no gas, no nothing.
Speaker 1: But you know, we figured it out and we you know,
Speaker 1: succeeded on this and you know they're big accomplishments. Um
Speaker 1: Hurricane Ida. We already sent eight eighteen wheeler trucks with
Speaker 1: our partner, you see group, and now we're gonna send
Speaker 1: another ten of rebuilding materials. We're gonna have ten trucks
Speaker 1: just flywood to rebuild in the Bahamas. We sent twenty
Speaker 1: four barges. Imagine an entire barge that's you know, two
Speaker 1: d feet long with supplies stacks. So we've grown, you know, incredibly,
Speaker 1: and the mission we just didn't Haiti. And there's actually
Speaker 1: an article about it right now. If the government would
Speaker 1: have done that exact same mission, it would have cost
Speaker 1: taxpayers minimum fifty to sixty million dollars. We probably pulled
Speaker 1: that off for three grand. That's what I want to convey.
Speaker 1: When I came into the warehouse of Michael I, because
Speaker 1: I'm very organized, as you all know, I wanted there
Speaker 1: to be a system. I wanted there to be boxes,
Speaker 1: assembly line and things to be ready. Obviously didn't have
Speaker 1: the money yet, but now we had the we had
Speaker 1: the we had the awareness, the track record to have
Speaker 1: merchandized pet supplies, medicine, he's got plywood in there. You know,
Speaker 1: Michael's always connecting the way he used to at nightclubs.
Speaker 1: So now we have a warehouse that's fully staged at
Speaker 1: all times for anything that could possibly happen, from masks,
Speaker 1: stands sanitizer to water to every feminine products, everything kind bars.
Speaker 1: Goya has donated Delta blankets. Like we have real uh
Speaker 1: connections now. So it's a great feeling once you are credible,
Speaker 1: and like you said, they know that they're getting a
Speaker 1: better r O I because it's only costing you three
Speaker 1: hundred thousand, not millions. I want to just tell a
Speaker 1: couple of things I want to say. Number one, the
Speaker 1: proof of this fact is that I don't want to
Speaker 1: name names, but one of these massive, the biggest org
Speaker 1: that you can imagine that is always linked by every
Speaker 1: celebrity to donate to. I took two people, two very
Speaker 1: famous A list people on missions to Puerto Rico on
Speaker 1: planes missions will probably cost thirty to fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Because they went to that organization and said, Hi, we
Speaker 1: see what's going on in Puerto Rico. We have money,
Speaker 1: we want to donate a plane and fill it. And
Speaker 1: they said that's not what we do. So you're talking
Speaker 1: about someone at the level of like you know, Demi
Speaker 1: Lavado or arian on a grande, calling and saying I
Speaker 1: have money, I have fifty dollars I want to play
Speaker 1: and fill with aid. And they're going to the biggest
Speaker 1: org saying can you help us? And they say, no,
Speaker 1: we don't do that. You should call Bethany Frankel. So
Speaker 1: these people are calling me, who the hell am I?
Speaker 1: What the hell do I know? So I'm taking them
Speaker 1: on these aids. One was to go to the elderly.
Speaker 1: I think it was the hospitals that had no generators.
Speaker 1: Another one was just regular relief, to go through villages
Speaker 1: and bring aid to a bunch of different houses. And
Speaker 1: that's the point. So you know, just because it has
Speaker 1: a name brand, if it's a purse, it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it's better than a bag that's much less expensive. And
Speaker 1: just because it is a name brand, if it's a
Speaker 1: relief org, you're probably paying for the markup. Just like
Speaker 1: in an expensive handbag. You're paying for the packaging, the
Speaker 1: real estate, the bureaucracy, the travel, the their literature, all
Speaker 1: the bullshit, their website, their social media. You're paying for
Speaker 1: all that ship. So we are sort of like, we
Speaker 1: don't do Rubbert Chicken dinners, we don't pay for table cloths,
Speaker 1: we don't pay for talent. It's the money from you
Speaker 1: guys to the people. And I also want to say
Speaker 1: you have played such an amazing role in helping us
Speaker 1: because you you tell us when the thing happens. We
Speaker 1: may not even know off and Michael knows about weather
Speaker 1: patterns and disasters, but you let us know this is
Speaker 1: a problem. Look what just happened. I found out about
Speaker 1: Astro World from my assistant and then looked at social
Speaker 1: media and it was everywhere there from you, and then
Speaker 1: I reached out to Michael and said, can we help
Speaker 1: these families? So because of you, things become important to us.
Speaker 1: If so many people say it to us, it becomes
Speaker 1: important to us. Because of social media, I've had hospitals
Speaker 1: reach out to us and say we need exactly this,
Speaker 1: and then we go to the warehouse and deliver it
Speaker 1: to them. I send that message to Michael and then
Speaker 1: he executes it. If we can help, if he needs volunteers,
Speaker 1: he tells me to put it into the to the
Speaker 1: to the sphere, and then you guys reach out to him.
Speaker 1: I mean, so social media has been literally the reason
Speaker 1: that this has been so successful. So I need to say,
Speaker 1: you have how much have they homeless crisis? Like because
Speaker 1: of the homeless crisis now other people are talking about
Speaker 1: their cities. Michael was homeless for a brief period in
Speaker 1: his life. So this is something that became important to
Speaker 1: us and we get to execute it, um and here
Speaker 1: what's important to you? So I just want to say
Speaker 1: that you have been amazing in this whole journey for us,
Speaker 1: and I want to thank you too, because you know,
Speaker 1: we really wouldn't be able to do it without you, Bethany.
Speaker 1: And and I mean there's no chance. I mean we
Speaker 1: have I think we've distributed a hundred thirty million dollars
Speaker 1: worth of supplies since you and I've met, um substantial,
Speaker 1: you know. And I want to make a point, right,
Speaker 1: So you have the Amazon fires, and every single celebrity
Speaker 1: and guru and spiritual person is you know, tweeting and
Speaker 1: posting about you know, stop the ams on fires. Right.
Speaker 1: But action speaks louder than words, right, So what are
Speaker 1: you doing about it? Right? So what did we do?
Speaker 1: We flew there immediately, right and we went where the
Speaker 1: fires were actually happening, and we spoke with all the
Speaker 1: mayors on the ground with literally showing us with binoculars
Speaker 1: explaining to us how it could be stopped. They said,
Speaker 1: we have farmers everywhere and basically we can turn them
Speaker 1: overnight into firefighters if only we had firefighter equipment for them.
Speaker 1: The mayor's told me this literally on Tuesday, just to
Speaker 1: show the donors how quickly we operate, and said, we
Speaker 1: need right now equipment to make three farmers firefighters to
Speaker 1: put out these fires right here. I flew back to
Speaker 1: the capital of Bolivia, found a company that sells fire equipment,
Speaker 1: purchased it on this plot, and sent a couple of
Speaker 1: truckloads to the region. By Thursday, forty eight hours later,
Speaker 1: we were outfitting the farmers and they were going out
Speaker 1: there and they put out the fires. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: the thing about the transparency. What happens is we assess
Speaker 1: what's needed. Then I talked to Michael, we have a goal.
Speaker 1: Then I tell you what the goal is. I don't
Speaker 1: say a hundred percent can get this done. I say
Speaker 1: what the goal is, and then I come back to
Speaker 1: you and then to say what we've executed. That's why
Speaker 1: it's always a mission update and some you know, I
Speaker 1: try to do that not too much because I don't
Speaker 1: want to badge your people with information or asking for money.
Speaker 1: It's becomes the boy required wolf. I asked when we
Speaker 1: really need to ask And just so you know, of
Speaker 1: the money or probably now uh goes a d percent
Speaker 1: to the cash cards, to the people. All the aid
Speaker 1: in the warehouses donated, So we're not going and buying
Speaker 1: rice with the money you're you're sending. It's it's all
Speaker 1: in the warehouse. With the exception of if let's say
Speaker 1: that Michael and I, let's say he finds fire equipment,
Speaker 1: then he has to say to me, can I have
Speaker 1: permission to spend a hundred thousand dollars or fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars or fifteen thousand dollars to to to transport the
Speaker 1: equipment or whatever it is. But this is like literally
Speaker 1: my accounts are involved. I'm involved. Michael asks me if
Speaker 1: it's okay, do I approve it. There's a whole process
Speaker 1: is if we have this corporate infrastructure. Um, so there's
Speaker 1: a whole thing that goes on behind the scenes, and
Speaker 1: did you discuss have been amazing and so the transparency
Speaker 1: has been hugely important, and yes, you're right, people post
Speaker 1: what's important to them because they see a picture of
Speaker 1: a koala bear and then they give a link. And
Speaker 1: it always is annoying to us because celebrities then drive
Speaker 1: all this money or they themselves donate money, and Michael's
Speaker 1: hitting his head going, oh they're fucking giving to that,
Speaker 1: and because what really goes like we get frustrated, we're
Speaker 1: passionate about it. So, uh, we've done amazing things. Uh,
Speaker 1: the Ppe thing almost killed us. I mean that was
Speaker 1: insane and it was stressful and it was brutal, and
Speaker 1: there was corruption and there was stealing and it was
Speaker 1: bad and it kills me. And everybody around me has
Speaker 1: to sort of intervene because this is your job, that's
Speaker 1: not my only job, and everybody sort of feels like
Speaker 1: they have to pull me out because I can't get
Speaker 1: myself out. So I have to control myself and I
Speaker 1: have to control myself for my health and decide when
Speaker 1: to extricate and when we have to close things up
Speaker 1: and not do everything. So that's been a big and
Speaker 1: not go to everything of thing. It's like an event
Speaker 1: I maybe I made, say I tried to fly to
Speaker 1: New Orleans. Remember all the flights got canceled, and we
Speaker 1: will raise more money if I am physically there. And
Speaker 1: we Have've been to the Bahamas many times, in Puerto
Speaker 1: Rico and everywhere. But I can't go to everything. So
Speaker 1: I've had to control myself in this process, otherwise I'd
Speaker 1: be killing myself. I used to go to Guatemala and
Speaker 1: Mexico and everywhere, so I can can't go every single
Speaker 1: place I go. I choose my spots. You're usually there
Speaker 1: all the time, and you've done amazing things, and we've
Speaker 1: been an amazing team, really like with business, sticking to
Speaker 1: the boundaries and sticking to the roles and sticking to
Speaker 1: what we both are good and sticking to our skill sets.
Speaker 1: How do you support yourself being a philanthropist? How do
Speaker 1: you support yourself financially? So from the Global Empowerment Mission side,
Speaker 1: not the not the be strong side. I have a
Speaker 1: BORD approved salary and that's how I run the foundation
Speaker 1: now and I've forfeited, you know, all my other things
Speaker 1: because this requires basically I work honestly, eighteen hours a day,
Speaker 1: seven days a week. This is from seven am to midnight.
Speaker 1: There's no time for anything. You know, you have to
Speaker 1: track these things. You have to. If I I used
Speaker 1: to surf and I still do, And when I saw
Speaker 1: a big swell coming and you know, going to Barbados,
Speaker 1: I would fly to Barbados, you know, because I knew
Speaker 1: that swell I was gonna hit. That's how we operate
Speaker 1: today with hurricanes. I mean, the donors should know. When
Speaker 1: Hurricane Ida was still off shore, we were voting our
Speaker 1: a team wheel or trucks with DUC groups. Same with Bahamas,
Speaker 1: we were flying when the thing was still happened. The
Speaker 1: thing was with Bahamas, the storm still happening. When I
Speaker 1: was flying that we were doing recon you know, um
Speaker 1: while the thing was still still twirling. So the name
Speaker 1: of the game today is like I said, it's like
Speaker 1: you you were always usually the first or second people
Speaker 1: on the ground. Um. You know, world kitchens incredible, they're
Speaker 1: always there, you know early also and you know you
Speaker 1: get there and you assess. They have to assess, you
Speaker 1: know what they do and we do a different role,
Speaker 1: right and we have to assess that immediately. So you
Speaker 1: fly into Abaco and you get a quick read. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's three hundred homes that are destroyed how many are
Speaker 1: we gonna be able to realistically repair Let's take half.
Speaker 1: But you got to assess the situation and then literally
Speaker 1: within twenty four hours, you got to come up with
Speaker 1: a game plan. Right, So it's effectively shark tank. You
Speaker 1: come up with your business plan and you then have
Speaker 1: to present it because you're trying to get people to donate,
Speaker 1: you're trying you're you're distributing aid while trying to update
Speaker 1: your website. You're dealing with celebrities and they want a
Speaker 1: deck and you're like, I don't have a deck on
Speaker 1: what's going on, par Rico, because we're creating the deck
Speaker 1: as it's happening. So that's been great about me being
Speaker 1: a person who's got credibility and business just being able
Speaker 1: to say I don't know, you want to help, or
Speaker 1: you don't want to help, like you gotta get us
Speaker 1: some money, and they just do that because now people
Speaker 1: know that we're going to be first and furious and
Speaker 1: we have a warehouse and that's the beauty of what
Speaker 1: we've done. So but we have to be very careful
Speaker 1: at all times because and ship can go sideways. Anytime.
Speaker 1: We experienced treacherous conditions in Ppe, I remember you said, Bethany,
Speaker 1: you got to fucking lay off at the pressure because
Speaker 1: I'm going to jump off a building. Because that one situation,
Speaker 1: which was touch and go, it ended up being written
Speaker 1: about in the New York Times, the PPE fraud and corruption. Remember,
Speaker 1: we didn't know what was going on until we were
Speaker 1: in the middle of it, meaning I started to stay
Speaker 1: to Michael, something's fucked up with these people. And we
Speaker 1: were in the middle of something where people were trying
Speaker 1: to scam us using literally state governments. People were being
Speaker 1: investigated everywhere, and we were like right in the middle
Speaker 1: of it because everyone knew that we were working on
Speaker 1: us and we were getting into warehouses and getting aid
Speaker 1: that no governments were getting. So we were a target
Speaker 1: and we had to identify that really quickly. And it
Speaker 1: was scary because we had we had come it too,
Speaker 1: getting PPE to hospitals and to uh states and people
Speaker 1: were trying to scam us at the same time. You remember,
Speaker 1: like how bad that wasn't You're freaking out? It's crazy
Speaker 1: And we realized that we realize now that like we
Speaker 1: have to know that people are coming to scam during
Speaker 1: times of disaster. As soon as the pandemic happened. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got a hundred or so groups that basically hijacked
Speaker 1: all the existing ppe and just sat on in different
Speaker 1: warehouses and and marked it up, and then the hospitals
Speaker 1: couldn't get to it. So we were forced to negotiate
Speaker 1: with some of them and and and buy through them.
Speaker 1: And some were legit and some were illegitimate, but we
Speaker 1: didn't know that immediately. We didn't know what the deal
Speaker 1: was worldwide with masks, we didn't know what the deal was.
Speaker 1: You're learning, you're flying a plane while you're building it,
Speaker 1: so you've got to be sort of watching for everything
Speaker 1: that could happen. Because while it's happening, you can't wait.
Speaker 1: You can't like vet something, you can't do a research
Speaker 1: project on something. That's what disaster relief is. That's why
Speaker 1: it's scary, because the people people are dying. People were dying,
Speaker 1: Doctors are dying, So you had to sort of be
Speaker 1: figuring out the equation and the enigma and where the
Speaker 1: scams are while doing it. Time isn't on your side.
Speaker 1: That's the one thing. It's different than a business because
Speaker 1: you might you can't create a business plan when people
Speaker 1: are dying. I mean we did. You know, we did
Speaker 1: incredible things that we sent PPE to seven hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty different institutions including you know, maybe five hundred hospitals,
Speaker 1: two hundred nursery homes, and had ten ten eighteen wheelers
Speaker 1: of just asthmat suits to New York City alone. And
Speaker 1: you know, we we had a purchase at the time
Speaker 1: Ppe because there was nowhere to get it. But ironically,
Speaker 1: in uh the end of two thousand twenty and especially
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty one, now these same people that were
Speaker 1: trying to sell it to us, they got stuck with
Speaker 1: it and now they wanted to give it back and
Speaker 1: donate and we probably received this you're alone, about thirty
Speaker 1: five million dollars worth of donated pepe. Can you imagine? No,
Speaker 1: it's crazy. It was a stock. It was a stock surge,
Speaker 1: and it was the stock was up through the roof,
Speaker 1: and we were trying to buy that stock when it
Speaker 1: was at the peak. So we were trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: how what's more important money than our time? And governments
Speaker 1: decided and we decided that money was less important than time.
Speaker 1: We were set mask up to seven dollars and fifty
Speaker 1: cents in certain crazy states when they should be fifty
Speaker 1: nine cents, and we were trying to deal with that
Speaker 1: and then try to also get masks wants to stop crash,
Speaker 1: and then everybody was trying to deplete. It was a
Speaker 1: crazy scam situation. Same thing with the has met suits. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we're inside baseball. Um, you have been amazing and done
Speaker 1: amazing things, and you've dedicated your whole life to helping people,
Speaker 1: and um, how many years ago do we mean? Six now? Almost?
Speaker 1: It's been extraordinary. It's been extraordinary. It's been really extraordinary.
Speaker 1: Nobody else is like you, nobody. You can get things
Speaker 1: done that nobody else can do. It's it makes sense
Speaker 1: that used to do real estate development, it makes sense
Speaker 1: used to do nightclubs. You really can figure out crazy stuff,
Speaker 1: dealing with corruption, with crime, with hijackers, with different You're
Speaker 1: very good dealing with different You know, you've had we've
Speaker 1: had the police, Republicans, Democrats, the Christians, the Jews. Like
Speaker 1: riding the line, knowing the political landscape, what to say,
Speaker 1: what not to say, it's been excellent. It's been a great,
Speaker 1: great ride, not without bumps, but no businesses and it's
Speaker 1: been amazing And I'm really grateful for it. I'm really
Speaker 1: we're really grateful for you. I really think that you
Speaker 1: have you know you we have made it. You know,
Speaker 1: you really have. Um. Every single time I go to
Speaker 1: a place, it's problem solving, and that's the mind has
Speaker 1: to understand how the problem solve. You have to go there. Okay,
Speaker 1: what's the situation, what's the need? And then aren't the
Speaker 1: obvious to come back? And how can we get this
Speaker 1: need to this place for the least amount of money
Speaker 1: in the quickest amount in the shortest amount of time.
Speaker 1: That's that's business. So that's why. Yeah, and that's why
Speaker 1: every time there's a California fire, a truck is there
Speaker 1: two weeks later, Ida, we had trucks forty eight hours later,
Speaker 1: you know, St. Vincent, we were the first ones there. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, Michael, it's been amazing. I'm so grateful and
Speaker 1: I'm glad that. That's why in the beginning I wanted
Speaker 1: to people to hear your story because it's connected to
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. You know, people need to want
Speaker 1: to hear like a person story because you might be
Speaker 1: just like them. So if you want to donate Bethany
Speaker 1: b E. T H E. N and y dot com
Speaker 1: slash be strong, and we are transparent in what we're
Speaker 1: working on, what we have worked on, and where the
Speaker 1: money goes. And Michael is integral in that process. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about giving back and sort of
Speaker 1: our process much like a small business in how we
Speaker 1: get these things done. So thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being here with us. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: that conversation because I like to bring everything back to business,
Speaker 1: which philanthropy, if done properly, is very much like a
Speaker 1: small business because you have to be lean and watch
Speaker 1: costs and execute in an organized, transparent manner. Michael's had
Speaker 1: an interesting story. I thought it was important to give
Speaker 1: you the whole story, his trajectory from where it started
Speaker 1: to where it is now, because that is instrumental in
Speaker 1: all the work to we've done. So you might be
Speaker 1: a philanthropist and not even know it. If you have
Speaker 1: these skill sets, you know if you have this these attributes,
Speaker 1: And I just want to thank you all so much
Speaker 1: for helping, because you've helped immeasurably with our relief missions.
Speaker 1: Even if you've donated, you've helped, if you've connected, if
Speaker 1: you've communicated, if you've spread the word, if you've let
Speaker 1: me know where something is happening, if you've given me information,
Speaker 1: you have helped so Thank you so much,