Michael Capponi

On helping others in a meaningful way

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:13):
People are traveling. That can be very anxiety producing. Have
a plan for your packing. First of all, roll your
items have separate packing bags. They could be zip block bags,
they could be actual packing cubes, but you could do
either by each each outfit goes in one packing cube,
or it could be all T shirts going to packing cube,
all underwear, et cetera. Try to pick a color scheme
when I travel. I'll decide I'm either wearing the browns

(00:35):
or if it's tropical the colors, or if it's skiing
or somewhere like urban like a city like Boston or somebody,
I'll pick black. I'll pick a hardware if you care
about your hardware matching, and wear the heavy things on
the plane with you or in the car with you,
and you're not gonna wear most of it, so cut
it out. You can wear the same shoes multiple times

(00:56):
at different outfits. Pick a color scheme because that means
that you need fewer accessories, bags and staples for that trip.
Just make your life easier today. My guest is Michael Caponi,
the founder and president of Global Empowerment Mission, and he

(01:19):
is a partner in my Be Strong initiative. Michael has
been at the forefront of disaster relief AIDS since the
late nineties, helping people around the world when natural disasters
strike and other issues too. Since being involved with ME,
other things that have been important to us. And this
is a different episode because um my friends at my

(01:39):
Heart suggested that I do something on my philanthropy on
Be Strong. I don't usually sort of promote the things
that I'm doing here. It's just not when I go
on other people's shows, I promote these things. But this
is something that always saves live So, you know, a
little self promotion I guess for Be Strong isn't a
bad idea because it any promotion for Be Strong just

(02:02):
means we're saving more lives, literally helping more people. Um
So today is a different show. It's talking about philanthropy,
which is really related to business. The show talks a
lot about business and how to get things done, and
philanthropy for me has been no different than business except
that goes to the effort. But the reason it's been
no different is that it was really hard to established

(02:26):
credibility in this space. It was really hard to execute.
I had a stop start up pop up where literally
in the very beginning, no one would give me flip
flops after Hurricane Harvey, just flip flaps as me and
people send me things for free all the time we're
used to. I couldn't get flip flops. I couldn't get anything.
I was a nobody, and nobody wants to give money

(02:47):
to a nobody to help people you're not trusted and
trust me, so many trusted charities are such scams and
take so much money for themselves that I got into
this space so I could really cut the bullshit, cut
the rubber chicken dinners, cut the oh come shopping and
buy something to get ten percent going towards a charity.
Like There's just so much scam and so much bullshit,

(03:09):
and I just wanted to get in here and cut
through the bullshit with all the transparency and just executing.
So that's the story about why we're doing a conversation
with Michael, because we work together and BE Strong. Hello, Hi,

(03:29):
how are you okay? So this is Michael Caponi, who
I have worked with on many different missions all over
the world on relief work with BE Strong. Uh So, Michael,
you have an interesting story in my opinion, which is
why I wanted to talk to you today, not about
just all of the work that we've done, because while

(03:50):
that's interesting, it can be a little bit tedious and
boring for people. And sometimes I have to tell you
that people aren't always in the mood to give, and
they have deal fatigue now because of all the crazy
stuff going on in the world. So I think, um,
sort of people getting an understanding of you and the
business of of philanthropy, which is really why I've been

(04:11):
successful at this, because it really is there's a business
aspect to it and execution and being organized, and it
feels like you're starting a new business, just not for profit. So, uh,
tell everyone what your business trajectory has been like. Well,
I met you years ago. I was I went to
some there was a girl whose father was a publisher,

(04:34):
Jerry Powers. I think he was the publisher of Ocean
Drive magazine, And I went with his daughter to like
a fancy party in Miami, like a very jet set,
fast crowd party in Miami at this big house on
the water. I don't remember where it was. You could
tell us, and I think it was your house. And
I remember meeting you and you were super standoffish and

(04:57):
really too cool, like a like a club promoter, and
I think that's what you were, So explain how I
came into that night and who you were then and
when that was. So my father was in the nightclub
business and I ended up in the nightclub business. So
the first part of my career from being a fifteen
year old to basically thirty something, I was at the

(05:19):
helm of nightlife in Miami Beach and opened up, you know,
lots of different nightclubs and learned the art of networking
and connecting the dots, which really was a great lesson
and teaching to what we're doing now with philanthropy, because
it's kind of the same thing. You have to get
a whole bunch of really important people to come to

(05:40):
an event. Now instead of doing that, you're getting a
whole bunch of really important people or regular people to
donate to a cause. So it's the same part form,
it's just flipped. It's true because then you have to
figure out where jen pop is going in the nightclub
is they're important and they're your bread and butter, but
you want people to be spending money buying bottles at

(06:01):
the major tables, and you want to give them uh
extra attention and that's how we do it. Certain people
will donate three planes, and then we want to explain
exactly where those planes are going to go, which is
like saying exactly where your table is going to be
when you're buying a bottle and get you right or
what get you in right away? And you need to
understand what the whole rundown is going to be. And

(06:21):
then people are donating five dollars and we want them
to also feel happy and comfortable. So your dad, what
clubs did your dad own? I didn't even know that. Yeah,
my dad swim the English Channel, he had the World
Records for a while, and he opened up in Belgium,
where I was born, a series of like the original
jet set clubs. So my dad went out with. My

(06:41):
dad's girlfriend was Jane Mansfield. He was best friends with
Sean Connery, you know, virgim Bardo. All these people would
go to these places. Interesting, Okay, so what you were involved?
But you were friends with like major celebrities, right, you
were running in a really fast crowd. You were like,
you knew Madonna and Ingri Saras and all these people
would right. I mean, I think every celebrity on the

(07:02):
planet made it through Miami and it's Heyday, you know,
at some point or another. So they definitely ended up
in our in our spots. So um so, so now
you're running mt nightclubs, you're what's the existence like? What's
your life like? Is it fun? Is it vapid? Is
it superficial? Is it all of that? What's that story like?
I think when you're in it, you're caught up in
it and you're lost in a candy store of pleasure.

(07:26):
And I didn't like it anymore. And I was always
doing humanitarian work since. Actually it's when we first started.
We were doing drives with the City of Miami Beach
for Kosovo. We did drives for nine eleven Katrina for
the tsunami. But I was always on the other side.

(07:46):
I was always the one just raising the money and
then I was giving it to Red Cross or different organizations.
I was on the executive board of the United Way
for a year, so I learned that side of it.
After the Hate earthquake, I formed our foundation Global empower
a mission. At the time, it was called Haiti Empowerment Mission.

(08:07):
All right, so you are running in a fast crowd
and are you making a lot of money are you partying? Like,
what's what's going on in your personal life? How old
are you when you decided to leave? So I started
nightlife literally when I was in high school. I was
a theater. I was literally passing out flyers for events
on my skateboard down Ocean Drive. How long the history

(08:31):
was by the time I was twenty one years old?
You know, I was literally like at the helm of
throwing all the most important parties in Miami. No college, No,
no college. Okay, so you're at the heyday of twenty one.
When did you retire from nightclub life? Uh? Fully retired
like six years ago. Oh so that's not even that long. Okay.

(08:52):
So wait, so how many years were you doing it?
Twenty seven years or so? Okay, so you were doing
it for twenty seven years. So tell us about the
part of your lifestyle and that sort of life change
you made because you went from that and then into
real estate. Explain the toll that it took on you
personally being in the nightclub space, spiritually, physically, emotionally, financially,

(09:13):
all of that. Explained that part of that. So I
went through by the time I was twenty one, I
was completely lost in excess. I UM, I got addicted
to all different kinds of drugs and I completely crashed
and burned. I um had everything a twenty one year
old could ever want at that time, Abode and Mercedes,
the most beautiful apartment, best friends with you know, all

(09:36):
kinds of celebrities. Everything. At the time I was twenty three,
had gone to about ten different drug rehab centers. I
kept relapsing. I was so addicted, and I ended up,
you know, I was CouchSurfing on friends homes. I got evicted.
I had nowhere to stay anymore, and I literally went

(09:58):
to New York. I spent some time on someone's you know, apartment,
and then I basically ran out of the house. And
when I went into the projects to find some drugs,
I got arrested. And when I came back out, um,
it was the blizzard of and it was right around

(10:20):
Halloween and nine. You can google the temperatures there at
that time, but I believe it was like minus twenty
degrees and there was nowhere, there was no way to
get back to basically society at that time, you know,
And it was today. I look at it as the
most valuable lesson that I've ever gone through, and and
I encourage people have gone through really difficult situations in

(10:43):
life to try to transmute it and find, you know,
the real reasons. I wouldn't trade it for anything in
the world today. If you offered me actually a billion
dollars and said we can erase that, I would say,
no way. That's how like incredibly valuable it was. But
I did honestly spend from the time of Halloween two
New Year's Eve completely homeless in the streets of New

(11:07):
York in a blizzard. You know, I had literally a
garbage bag as a as a raincoat over me. It
was pretty hardcore. And there was subway tokens at the time.
I had to collect literally ten subway tokens just to
trade them for a ten dollar bill and then basically
just to survive. And you're on this treadmill and it

(11:31):
was just this like endless treadmill, and you know, at
the time, you're looking up and you're you're like, you know,
you know, where is God? And why did this happen
to me? You're in in such a negative state that
you you can't see ahead of you. But this was
all I believe part of my destiny in my formation
years for the work that we're actually doing now. I

(11:52):
was lucky. I had, you know, a good family, and
I was flown to Europe. They you know, put me
in the proper treatments. And I at that time or
prior to that, prior to that, and then right after that.
And but why did you go? Why were you homeless?
Because you had shame, You had a family that would
have pulled you out of this. Had you burned every bridge,

(12:13):
Like why what? Yeah, I think you burned every single
bridge at that time, and there's just there's just nowhere
to go. And I ended up in Belgium and from
that day on I never to this day touched the
drug again, a recreational drug ever, not one single time,
and no rehab. You had been to ten rehabs, but

(12:34):
this time you did it just on your own. You
hit rock bottom, went to Belgium, and you didn't go
to meetings. You just not that. I'm not that there's
a reason to not go to meetings. Just your path
wasn't that you didn't go to meetings. Actually, what happened
is when I got clean, I think the universe had
one more big surprise for me. Um Then one day
I fell on a coma and I had a benign

(12:56):
brain tumor. I was in a coma for like thirty
six hours. When I woke up, they basically told me
that I wasn't going to survive, and they told my
father there was no chance I could survive that, you know,
with all the things that are going on with me
and methodone and all this stuff. And my mother came

(13:17):
in and begged them to, you know, at least attempt
to try to save me. I underwent three UH operations
on a meningioma tumor, and the total three operations were
about sixty hours of brain surgery. Imagine after that, I

(13:37):
got meningitis, and that meningitis almost killed me in itself.
I had to stay on i V for like two
months basically, and you have so much antibiotics that it
basically gets rid of like all your white blood cells.
I had a therapist giving me like one pound weights.
I remember, I couldn't even like lift a one pound weight.
That's how like deep in the dark tunnel, you know,

(14:00):
I was. And I made it through, and I understood
for the first time that, you know, there was a
reason why I had actually survived when nobody said, you know, everybody,
every doctor there said I wasn't going to survive. Unfortunately,
through the process, my dad had a stroke and then

(14:20):
he died while I was in the hospital, in the
hospital next door. So that was a very you know,
hard thing on me. And after that, I um got well.
I moved to the Caribbean. I surf for about a year.
I got my strength back, and then I went back
to Miami and then I got back in my life

(14:42):
because that's the trade that I knew best. But I
always knew that I wasn't gonna be in it for
you know, a very long amount of time. So this
time I was back in nightlife in a different Miami.
Miami had really changed in the early nineties. It was
this bohemian, sheet coolest place, and you know, by the
time I got in ninety nine, it was much more commercialized.

(15:04):
It was very different, and my life wasn't as raw
and it wasn't as interesting. So I was always looking
for other things to do that would be, um, you know,
a better fit. So that's when I started um getting
into philanthropy and use utilizing all my contacts in Miami.
Every time there was a disaster and that's how we

(15:27):
built this up. You know, basically, something would happen, Let's
just say nine eleven would happen. I'd call the mayor
Nisson Kasten at the time, I'd say we should organize
the Miami citywide drive, and then he'd go on TV
and he would say, you know, all the fire stations
are collecting eight and everything, and then we would at
that time as just a private citizen. That's how I

(15:48):
got my feet wet with this uh experience. That's important
because people often reach out to me and say, how
do I happen? So people say I want to send
a bunch of clothes, and then I have to sort
of defeat them by saying, if you just send a
box of random clothes that you know aren't from a
big company in multiple sizes, we would have to sort them,
and then people aren't getting their size and it's demoralizing.

(16:10):
And so things that people traditionally think will help aren't
necessarily sorily helpful, which is why often money is helpful.
But now social media, communicating and connecting and spreading awareness
is a tool, and that's how people have helped a lot.
But Michael's discussing that he was just a civilian who
wanted to help and he had a skill set because

(16:30):
of nightclub promoting, and he ended up building some houses
in real estate development. UM. And I've produced events in
my past, large scale events, and I have run a business,
and often the thing that you do in your normal life,
even getting your kids off to school or getting the
schedule or soccer or whatever it is in your household,
connects the philanthropy. It can help you with philanthropy. So
it seems like an inaccessible world to kind of get

(16:54):
in a meaningful way, but you just have to dip
your foot in. And the first time I tried to help,
nobody want to help me, and nobody would give me anything,
and no one would donate money because I was a
nobody in that space. I was a somebody in entertainment,
but and nobody in that space. So you just kind
of gotta be organized, be transparent, be reliable, delegate, execute

(17:16):
and get on the road and try it. What year
is what you're describing when you got involved, Like dip
your toe in Kosovo was so you know, there's a

(17:38):
good ten year track record before I actually had my
own foundation um of doing it. You know, with others
and and you know, sitting on the board of United Way,
an amazing organization. You know, you're you're looking at UM,
you know, a different type of structure. Right, there's fifty
people on the board. It's slow to make decisions, right.
And then the UH earthquake happened in two thousand ten

(18:02):
in Haiti, and I think that that was the you know,
I always say it was probably my biggest turning point
at the time. I was advised, you know, I was
someone worked in my office. It's incredible. And they happened
to be best friends with UH. This guy Hassan and
his UH mother was like the sister of the president

(18:25):
of Haiti or something. So they wrote us, wrote me
a letter basically asking for help right after the earthquake happened.
And I gave that letter to UH Commissioner Gongora at
the time, and they requested for you know, significant assistant.
So I went and got permission to have the fire

(18:45):
department come with me in Haiti. So this was a
tricky thing because I was kind of a captain of
the mission, but I wasn't a firefighter and I had
never been to Haiti. But we had a lot of
support from the government at the time. They gave us,
you know, a couple of big busses and we had
collected all kinds of supplies in Miami. We were there
right after the earthquake Halpen. We were on the first

(19:07):
teams there and that was the most you know, insane
experience that you could ever imagine. I mean, just to
give you an example, um, when we showed up at
a hospital where basically there was you know, five hundred
people there that were screaming the whole time. Most people

(19:29):
had a rock that had like fallen on their arm
and the arm was like hanging by a thread, and
it had been like four days, and there was like
maggots in there, like blood, and there was no time
for anesthesia to evaluate everything. I think the the team
I brought, I can honestly say, probably amputated more than

(19:50):
like thirty limbs. In front of me. I held ladies
arms while they were like getting cut off. I was
watching I was pregnant. I was watching the average of
Haiti while I think I was six months pregnant. And
I remember George Clooney getting up and saying something And
this is what's scary that back then something like Haiti

(20:10):
the earthquake. It was a very big deal in the
news that would be on for weeks at a time,
and it was one thing that everyone was focusing on.
And I'm going to get into now. We have to
because the just the the way that this whole conversation
is flowing. We're gonna get into how we met. I
know that Michael ended up doing about ninety trips to
Haiti since then. But I remember watching on television kids

(20:33):
onlines from medical care doactly what you're saying, and it
made me feel so helpless, and I wanted to get
involved in helping children and charities because I was in
the liquor business. They didn't think it was a good
idea for me to be in a children's charity because
I'm in the liquor business and those two things don't
don't collide, and they were very careful about where I
spent my time because I wanted my partners to really

(20:53):
get involved. That's how I later ended up getting involved
with Dress for Success, which is a great charity to
to help women um get on their feet and get
jobs and help other people to get jobs. But that Haiti,
where you were, where your where, your tipping point was
that was what the first time I ever thought about philanthropy.
I had never had any money, so watching on the
news about Haiti was the first time I ever thought, Wow,

(21:15):
I want to do something. I want to not just
donate money randomly or percentage of percentages of things that
I sell to go somewhere. I want to do something.
But I didn't know how to enter and what I
bring up that that was the biggest deal in the world.
Then now you'll be dealing with a hurricane at the
same time as a shortage of ppe in the country,

(21:36):
at the same time as a building collapses, and there
are three hundred people dead. Right now, there's a massive
homeless crisis in the country. But you just sent me
a text that we're still sending aid to Louisiana because
when the headlines fade, we're still finishing missions. So the
headlines fade after the Australia fires, but we've committed to
do relief work, so we're still finishing. So we'll get

(22:00):
into all that sort of but we're going to get
into how I met Michael. I had already done a
relief effort for Hurricane Harvey in Texas. I decided I
wanted to do something. I ended up raising three thousand
dollars in money and in kind, and it was impossible
for me to get this money and to get this

(22:21):
going was impossible. Nobody knew I was. Nobody cared um
and I give Tinsey Mortimer shout out, but she donated
ten thousand dollars at that time to an unproven charity
and that was a big bulk of the beginning of
the money. And it sort of put us on the map.
And me going there and getting all these pictures put
us on the map. And I did that and it
was a one off. It was just something I really

(22:41):
wanted to help. It was this is actually a crisis.
That's how that started. UM. I was watching all these
celebrities linked to big bureaucratic charities that I you know,
people don't know where they're donating, don't know what these
people are doing. I later learned even more from Michael
about the percentage that actually goes. There are a lot
of scam is. There are a lot of legal scams
and a lot of illegal scams. But if you're putting money,

(23:03):
you need to know exactly where it's going. You're donating
money if it's a dollar, if it's a million dollars,
you need to know exactly where it's going. That's been missing.
So now I finished that, and then Hurricane Maria hits
and that's in Puerto Rico, and it's everywhere in the news,
and I have no idea how to insert myself. I
don't know what to do. I'm texting all these celebrities

(23:25):
that I know. Plane, help me get a plane. Nobody's
flying in there. What do we do? The one thing
that was sure is that they needed aid and they
needed planes. Because of the Jones Act, boats couldn't go
into deliver aid, so would normally be a very easy
trip for us. We have a warehouse in Miami, which
Michael will get into. But this was now logistical difference.

(23:46):
Each each disaster has some weird logistical difference that you
would never know. So no two disasters the same. You
don't use the same skill set, and then the next
time you know everything you call back to certain things.
But ppe Ma asks being missing is it was a
new world. Dust from volcanoes erupting was a new world.
Surfside was a new world. People were under a rubble.

(24:09):
So Maria was a new world. Because they had the
Jones actors in place. You couldn't bring boats in. People
need a plane. So now I'm obsessed with finding a plane.
I finally decided, Okay, I'll spend my money. I'm going
to charter a plane and we're gonna fill it with
stuff from Costco. What do we do? How do we
fill this plane? What do we do when we get there?
And one Puerto Rican woman who was very connected, and

(24:29):
that was sort of what I had going. She was
very connected, So we were going to fill this plane.
So I started calling people about filling this plane. And
then Jennifer Bell says, I know a girl who I
already knew what who was it? What was the girl
with the son mixing up her name? A girl named Eve?
And she says, I know a guy who has a
warehouse filled with aid. So now enter Michael and myself

(24:52):
on a group text with this guy Omar, and you
could take it away what happened from your perspective, my perspective,
I'm connected to you. You can help me fill this
plane so I don't have to go to Costco and
fill this order that these children's hospitals had been giving
to me. By Twitter and by text you can help
me and you can help me distribute. So now enter
Michael in my life. Yeah. So at the time, we

(25:14):
we had borrowed a warehouse from Moishi Mana and it
was like a pop up and he just let us
operate out of there. And we were dealing with only
local community collection AID, right, people from Miami were just
dropping off stuff. So we had a whole bunch of supplies,
maybe two million pounds worth of UH supplies. You wanted
UH to fill the plane. So, you know, we agreed,

(25:37):
and I think Violet and Omar and everybody um went
with you. And ironically, UM, you know, I had been
I had seen before, you know, people and Kim Kardashians
and things like that, you know, go to Haiti, and
I didn't think it was going to have any impact.
And I remember in the beginning thinking in my head,

(25:58):
it's funny I could say now, because you've certainly showed
yourself to be the exact opposite of that. But I
was like, oh, housewife wants to go to Puerto Rico.
I was like, you guys, take or I don't need
to go on this trip. It's just gonna be whatever,
you know. But you guys were praying for someone with
a plane. I heard Omar said, you were praying for
someone to come with a plane. Well, even more ironically
in my meditations, you know, it had like kind of

(26:20):
shown me that, you know, something really big was going
to happen and that you know, we were going to
play a significant role in the disaster. And I actually
remember telling my team before I met you. I was like,
it's interesting, the universe is basically telling me that we're
gonna play this major role in this thing. And you know,
there's like barely any funds and you know, and to
operate with. I don't know how we're gonna make a

(26:42):
debt in this. And then all of a sudden, my
phone started getting these Google alerts and I was looking
and it was like Bethany Frankel in Puerto Rico with
Global and our admission, and I kept getting them, and
then um, I noticed our you know, donation link was
starting to like buzz a lot, and there was like

(27:03):
donations coming in. You and I hadn't even really met yet,
and I was very impressed. I was like, wow, this
one really has some you know, amazing impact. So I
picked you up at the airport and then you were
very touched by Puerto Rico and you were like, oh
my god, I need to do more. I need to
do more. What can I do? And you know, and
I remember in the car, we were like, you know,

(27:25):
she get on our advisory board and you could be,
you know, spokesperson at the time, and you know, really
help us. And literally within a week you went and
told your Puerto Rico story on all these talk shows
from l En too. You know, I forgot there was
so many, but every time you did that, you brought
an amazing amount of awareness and the warehouse we would

(27:47):
start getting emails that you know, what you and I
had figured out is that we weren't the only ones
in Miami collecting aid. And that's the whole secret. That
there was people that had fundraisers and drives in South Carolina,
in Texas, in Ohio, all over, and we knew that
there was no way that this groups, these groups were

(28:08):
going to be able to actually execute that. So we
started reaching out to them and because of the exposure
that was given, they started contacting us too. The next thing,
you know, we inherited like ten million pounds worth of aid,
which is a lot so yeah, So with Michael saying
two things that happened, I went on the first trip
and did distributions and went over the State building and

(28:31):
these guys in khakis were sitting there with coffees and
it was miles literally miles and minutes away from where
people were waiting on their roofs for water. They were
rationing insulin. I mean they were dying because no one
would go there. They had no electricity, no clean water,
no one would go. The President hadn't been there yet
and um and so people would just pull up to

(28:51):
this truck. Didn't matter if they got toilet, paper, diapers,
they didn't care. They were just waiting for hours and
hours and hours for water, for everything. So when I
came back, that was the first of like six trips
that I did. I, as Michael said, I was, I
was from talking about it. Ellen gave three planes, Steve
Harvey gave a plane, Elvis Durant gave a plane. We
ended up doing fifty three planes in and out. Each
mission was tailored differently. And as Michael's explaining, he was

(29:13):
amassing the aid all over the country because we were
using Twitter as a tool. Twitter was where I would
write this stuff, and then children's hospitals would say, hey,
we need at a B C d E and then um.
But but in Ohio a church would say we have
thousands of pounds. Because people around the country were inadvertently
just without a plan. And this is the point about philanthropy,

(29:36):
we have to get into amassing aid. They were doing drives,
taking uh convention centers in high schools and taking an AID.
It's a you can't just take an AID without a
distribution plan. So we were saving them because you can't
take people's donations without a way to distribute it. And
people have gotten into major trouble doing that in the
Australia fires. And you know, philanthropy is a serious business.

(29:57):
You can't just take in a to and not distributed.
So we were helping people saying, well, you gotta get
the aid to us. So around the country Michael was like,
promote this, talk about this, and I was telling it
on Twitter, and then people were calling us from high
schools and convention centers and we would say get it
to get it to the dock in Miami and we'll
move it. What do you have? So I became the

(30:18):
switchboard and Michael became his operations person, and when he
picked me up at the airport, he scared the ship
out of me because he was like, you're gonna be
our our head whatever. I forgot, what the hell you said.
You'll be the head person and you'll be the faith
I'm like, whoa, No, I'm doing one relief work to Pari,
Puerto Rico. Relax, I have a business, I have a daughter, Like,
I'm not your everything. He had me introduced to everybody,

(30:39):
and he wanted me to be the face of this
whole thing. And I was like, take it easy, because
Michael is very pushy in that way, and I'm very
like boundaries, and so I was like, I thought I
was doing one mission. Lo and behold. We've been to Guatemala.
We've been I was in Mexico. We've been to Australia fires.
We've been to California many times, in North Carolina, Louisiana, Haiti,

(31:02):
thirty countries, and and we did the We've done the
largest private relief efforts in the United States history, just
the two of us, literally with a small group of volunteers.
So lean because we don't have that bureaucracy and we're
not spending thousands of dollars wasting it. And Michael gets
so frustrated when he hears people donating their money to

(31:23):
these relief organizations that takes six months to get something done,
and that take for themselves, for their offices and their travel.
I pay for my own travel, I pay for my
own team, I pay for my own everything. So of
be strong donations goes. So we collided and we started
doing crazy stuff like everywhere, and Michael is operations like, um,

(31:46):
he's You've been amazing partner in and we've been through
serious stress. We've been through stress, we've been through corruption,
We've been through some crazy ship. But I'm always the
person who, you know, make sure that I have to
know exactly where the money is going, and I have
to control the message and what we're working on and
like because Michael wants to do everything in every place,

(32:08):
which is great, but I'll be like, no, now it's
time to pull the car out. We have to like
close this up because if we get into deep we
can't get out. So and Michael will be like, well,
we have to finish this up because we still have
to build these schools and we still have to, you know,
help these churches, and so it's a very good marriage
of me controlling Michael, Michael controlling what I'm saying. If
I'm saying something I can't be saying because we're dealing

(32:30):
with a government and we have to be politically correct
and we have to play the game and be diplomatic
with them, because we are sometimes going rogue, meaning we're
not going and attaching ourselves to a government, otherwise we'd
be able to get nothing done. But we also have
to play the game at the government, otherwise they won't
let us fly our planes in or our boats in
or whatever we're doing, or our military in or retire

(32:50):
military in. So it's a it's a it's a serious situation.
I want you to talk a little bit about lack
of transparency in the world of philanthropy, like how people

(33:13):
don't know where they're donating to and how you get
frustrated when you see celebrities posting links and they have
no idea where the money is really going. I'd like
you to talk about that, and I will say that
you are a very uh we both started more naive,
you maybe even more naive than I did. But when
we got started on this level with this public sort
of awareness. I don't think you saw a lot of

(33:35):
the corruption coming, and I was like a step ahead
of you with that, being like, oh no, we've got
to keep our circles so tight because this is where
corruption lies. Because when it's a ship show and it's
a disaster and we're trying to help and everyone's trying
to help, we think everybody else is like us and
wants to help, and that's when the predators come in.
So let's talk about first transparency bureaucracy and how we

(33:58):
work on such a lean JIP based compared to other
people and um, and then talk about the corruption that
we've seen and how people really don't know necessarily where
they're donating, no matter how famous the person is who's
doing it or you know that kind of thing. Yes,
So when we go back to the Haiti story, right

(34:20):
where it all originates from, basically, you know, billions was
was hundreds of billions of dollars were raised for Haiti. UM.
I was on the board of, you know, a giant organization,
and I didn't have my own foundation, and you know,
after a trip two we set up a intents city
and then all the whole time I was like, you know,
the big Organs are going to come in and basically

(34:42):
just fix this and take it over. Will have just
done that, And after about nine ten months in Haiti,
I realized that was never gonna happen and I owned
this problem and the three thousand people I had in
my in tent city, there was nothing I could do
with them. I either just walk away and own that
karma for life or I have to find a plan
for them. And that led me to you know this,

(35:02):
basically you have the problem solved on every single thing,
So you're very correct. Every single disaster is exactly like
a new corporate startup. You have to basically have a
new set of donors, a new master plan, a new
string of governments, new shipping routes right every sometimes as
by plane, by ship, by all different kinds of carriers.

(35:24):
But there's case law that does help us, meaning it
is totally different. But there's some funk ups that you've
made or some stresses that we've had, so we wouldn't
make that mistake again, you know what I mean? Yeah, Well,
the you know, the biggest thing is that you know
we do not distribute aid unless you know we're doing it.
Ourselves or supervising a partner. Right, So like we just

(35:44):
pulled off right, Now, let's stick with Haiti. Those little
kids that were sleeping in that tent city in two
thousand and ten, we put them through college. Those kids
are in college now, they're wearing these strong shirts. Now,
they're fully educated. They speak English. They're at the poor
in a secret port where we have a four hundred
foot ship come and literally delivered. The last load was

(36:07):
five twenty nine palettes. I mean, think about how big
that is, just for someone to understand that that's twenty
two eighteen wheelers filled with supplies, right that we brought
to Haiti. And we didn't just dump it off there
and hope for the best. We were there for twelve
days at that port. We had sixty seven Haitian trucks

(36:28):
come from different groups and organizations and come pick that
eight up and drive it to like every single part
of the whole South coast and three different zones or
states or departments. That is a lot of managing and orchestration.
At the same time, you have Americans that are kidnapped.
You know, the whole country has no gas, no nothing.

(36:51):
But you know, we figured it out and we you know,
succeeded on this and you know they're big accomplishments. Um
Hurricane Ida. We already sent eight eighteen wheeler trucks with
our partner, you see group, and now we're gonna send
another ten of rebuilding materials. We're gonna have ten trucks
just flywood to rebuild in the Bahamas. We sent twenty

(37:13):
four barges. Imagine an entire barge that's you know, two
d feet long with supplies stacks. So we've grown, you know, incredibly,
and the mission we just didn't Haiti. And there's actually
an article about it right now. If the government would

(37:33):
have done that exact same mission, it would have cost
taxpayers minimum fifty to sixty million dollars. We probably pulled
that off for three grand. That's what I want to convey.
When I came into the warehouse of Michael I, because
I'm very organized, as you all know, I wanted there
to be a system. I wanted there to be boxes,
assembly line and things to be ready. Obviously didn't have
the money yet, but now we had the we had

(37:54):
the we had the awareness, the track record to have
merchandized pet supplies, medicine, he's got plywood in there. You know,
Michael's always connecting the way he used to at nightclubs.
So now we have a warehouse that's fully staged at
all times for anything that could possibly happen, from masks,
stands sanitizer to water to every feminine products, everything kind bars.

(38:18):
Goya has donated Delta blankets. Like we have real uh
connections now. So it's a great feeling once you are credible,
and like you said, they know that they're getting a
better r O I because it's only costing you three
hundred thousand, not millions. I want to just tell a
couple of things I want to say. Number one, the
proof of this fact is that I don't want to
name names, but one of these massive, the biggest org

(38:40):
that you can imagine that is always linked by every
celebrity to donate to. I took two people, two very
famous A list people on missions to Puerto Rico on
planes missions will probably cost thirty to fifty thousand dollars.
Because they went to that organization and said, Hi, we
see what's going on in Puerto Rico. We have money,
we want to donate a plane and fill it. And

(39:00):
they said that's not what we do. So you're talking
about someone at the level of like you know, Demi
Lavado or arian on a grande, calling and saying I
have money, I have fifty dollars I want to play
and fill with aid. And they're going to the biggest
org saying can you help us? And they say, no,
we don't do that. You should call Bethany Frankel. So
these people are calling me, who the hell am I?

(39:20):
What the hell do I know? So I'm taking them
on these aids. One was to go to the elderly.
I think it was the hospitals that had no generators.
Another one was just regular relief, to go through villages
and bring aid to a bunch of different houses. And
that's the point. So you know, just because it has
a name brand, if it's a purse, it doesn't mean
it's better than a bag that's much less expensive. And

(39:41):
just because it is a name brand, if it's a
relief org, you're probably paying for the markup. Just like
in an expensive handbag. You're paying for the packaging, the
real estate, the bureaucracy, the travel, the their literature, all
the bullshit, their website, their social media. You're paying for
all that ship. So we are sort of like, we
don't do Rubbert Chicken dinners, we don't pay for table cloths,

(40:02):
we don't pay for talent. It's the money from you
guys to the people. And I also want to say
you have played such an amazing role in helping us
because you you tell us when the thing happens. We
may not even know off and Michael knows about weather
patterns and disasters, but you let us know this is
a problem. Look what just happened. I found out about

(40:22):
Astro World from my assistant and then looked at social
media and it was everywhere there from you, and then
I reached out to Michael and said, can we help
these families? So because of you, things become important to us.
If so many people say it to us, it becomes
important to us. Because of social media, I've had hospitals
reach out to us and say we need exactly this,
and then we go to the warehouse and deliver it

(40:43):
to them. I send that message to Michael and then
he executes it. If we can help, if he needs volunteers,
he tells me to put it into the to the
to the sphere, and then you guys reach out to him.
I mean, so social media has been literally the reason
that this has been so successful. So I need to say,
you have how much have they homeless crisis? Like because

(41:03):
of the homeless crisis now other people are talking about
their cities. Michael was homeless for a brief period in
his life. So this is something that became important to
us and we get to execute it, um and here
what's important to you? So I just want to say
that you have been amazing in this whole journey for us,
and I want to thank you too, because you know,
we really wouldn't be able to do it without you, Bethany.

(41:23):
And and I mean there's no chance. I mean we
have I think we've distributed a hundred thirty million dollars
worth of supplies since you and I've met, um substantial,
you know. And I want to make a point, right,
So you have the Amazon fires, and every single celebrity

(41:44):
and guru and spiritual person is you know, tweeting and
posting about you know, stop the ams on fires. Right.
But action speaks louder than words, right, So what are
you doing about it? Right? So what did we do?
We flew there immediately, right and we went where the
fires were actually happening, and we spoke with all the

(42:04):
mayors on the ground with literally showing us with binoculars
explaining to us how it could be stopped. They said,
we have farmers everywhere and basically we can turn them
overnight into firefighters if only we had firefighter equipment for them.
The mayor's told me this literally on Tuesday, just to

(42:25):
show the donors how quickly we operate, and said, we
need right now equipment to make three farmers firefighters to
put out these fires right here. I flew back to
the capital of Bolivia, found a company that sells fire equipment,
purchased it on this plot, and sent a couple of
truckloads to the region. By Thursday, forty eight hours later,

(42:47):
we were outfitting the farmers and they were going out
there and they put out the fires. Yeah, and that's
the thing about the transparency. What happens is we assess
what's needed. Then I talked to Michael, we have a goal.
Then I tell you what the goal is. I don't
say a hundred percent can get this done. I say
what the goal is, and then I come back to
you and then to say what we've executed. That's why

(43:07):
it's always a mission update and some you know, I
try to do that not too much because I don't
want to badge your people with information or asking for money.
It's becomes the boy required wolf. I asked when we
really need to ask And just so you know, of
the money or probably now uh goes a d percent
to the cash cards, to the people. All the aid
in the warehouses donated, So we're not going and buying

(43:31):
rice with the money you're you're sending. It's it's all
in the warehouse. With the exception of if let's say
that Michael and I, let's say he finds fire equipment,
then he has to say to me, can I have
permission to spend a hundred thousand dollars or fifty thousand
dollars or fifteen thousand dollars to to to transport the
equipment or whatever it is. But this is like literally
my accounts are involved. I'm involved. Michael asks me if

(43:54):
it's okay, do I approve it. There's a whole process
is if we have this corporate infrastructure. Um, so there's
a whole thing that goes on behind the scenes, and
did you discuss have been amazing and so the transparency
has been hugely important, and yes, you're right, people post
what's important to them because they see a picture of
a koala bear and then they give a link. And

(44:14):
it always is annoying to us because celebrities then drive
all this money or they themselves donate money, and Michael's
hitting his head going, oh they're fucking giving to that,
and because what really goes like we get frustrated, we're
passionate about it. So, uh, we've done amazing things. Uh,
the Ppe thing almost killed us. I mean that was

(44:35):
insane and it was stressful and it was brutal, and
there was corruption and there was stealing and it was
bad and it kills me. And everybody around me has
to sort of intervene because this is your job, that's
not my only job, and everybody sort of feels like
they have to pull me out because I can't get
myself out. So I have to control myself and I
have to control myself for my health and decide when
to extricate and when we have to close things up

(44:56):
and not do everything. So that's been a big and
not go to everything of thing. It's like an event
I maybe I made, say I tried to fly to
New Orleans. Remember all the flights got canceled, and we
will raise more money if I am physically there. And
we Have've been to the Bahamas many times, in Puerto
Rico and everywhere. But I can't go to everything. So
I've had to control myself in this process, otherwise I'd

(45:19):
be killing myself. I used to go to Guatemala and
Mexico and everywhere, so I can can't go every single
place I go. I choose my spots. You're usually there
all the time, and you've done amazing things, and we've
been an amazing team, really like with business, sticking to
the boundaries and sticking to the roles and sticking to
what we both are good and sticking to our skill sets.

(45:52):
How do you support yourself being a philanthropist? How do
you support yourself financially? So from the Global Empowerment Mission side,
not the not the be strong side. I have a
BORD approved salary and that's how I run the foundation
now and I've forfeited, you know, all my other things
because this requires basically I work honestly, eighteen hours a day,

(46:17):
seven days a week. This is from seven am to midnight.
There's no time for anything. You know, you have to
track these things. You have to. If I I used
to surf and I still do, And when I saw
a big swell coming and you know, going to Barbados,
I would fly to Barbados, you know, because I knew
that swell I was gonna hit. That's how we operate

(46:37):
today with hurricanes. I mean, the donors should know. When
Hurricane Ida was still off shore, we were voting our
a team wheel or trucks with DUC groups. Same with Bahamas,
we were flying when the thing was still happened. The
thing was with Bahamas, the storm still happening. When I
was flying that we were doing recon you know, um
while the thing was still still twirling. So the name

(46:58):
of the game today is like I said, it's like
you you were always usually the first or second people
on the ground. Um. You know, world kitchens incredible, they're
always there, you know early also and you know you
get there and you assess. They have to assess, you
know what they do and we do a different role,
right and we have to assess that immediately. So you

(47:18):
fly into Abaco and you get a quick read. Okay,
there's three hundred homes that are destroyed how many are
we gonna be able to realistically repair Let's take half.
But you got to assess the situation and then literally
within twenty four hours, you got to come up with
a game plan. Right, So it's effectively shark tank. You
come up with your business plan and you then have
to present it because you're trying to get people to donate,

(47:40):
you're trying you're you're distributing aid while trying to update
your website. You're dealing with celebrities and they want a
deck and you're like, I don't have a deck on
what's going on, par Rico, because we're creating the deck
as it's happening. So that's been great about me being
a person who's got credibility and business just being able
to say I don't know, you want to help, or
you don't want to help, like you gotta get us
some money, and they just do that because now people

(48:01):
know that we're going to be first and furious and
we have a warehouse and that's the beauty of what
we've done. So but we have to be very careful
at all times because and ship can go sideways. Anytime.
We experienced treacherous conditions in Ppe, I remember you said, Bethany,
you got to fucking lay off at the pressure because
I'm going to jump off a building. Because that one situation,

(48:21):
which was touch and go, it ended up being written
about in the New York Times, the PPE fraud and corruption. Remember,
we didn't know what was going on until we were
in the middle of it, meaning I started to stay
to Michael, something's fucked up with these people. And we
were in the middle of something where people were trying
to scam us using literally state governments. People were being

(48:43):
investigated everywhere, and we were like right in the middle
of it because everyone knew that we were working on
us and we were getting into warehouses and getting aid
that no governments were getting. So we were a target
and we had to identify that really quickly. And it
was scary because we had we had come it too,
getting PPE to hospitals and to uh states and people

(49:05):
were trying to scam us at the same time. You remember,
like how bad that wasn't You're freaking out? It's crazy
And we realized that we realize now that like we
have to know that people are coming to scam during
times of disaster. As soon as the pandemic happened. You know,
you've got a hundred or so groups that basically hijacked
all the existing ppe and just sat on in different

(49:27):
warehouses and and marked it up, and then the hospitals
couldn't get to it. So we were forced to negotiate
with some of them and and and buy through them.
And some were legit and some were illegitimate, but we
didn't know that immediately. We didn't know what the deal
was worldwide with masks, we didn't know what the deal was.
You're learning, you're flying a plane while you're building it,
so you've got to be sort of watching for everything

(49:48):
that could happen. Because while it's happening, you can't wait.
You can't like vet something, you can't do a research
project on something. That's what disaster relief is. That's why
it's scary, because the people people are dying. People were dying,
Doctors are dying, So you had to sort of be
figuring out the equation and the enigma and where the

(50:09):
scams are while doing it. Time isn't on your side.
That's the one thing. It's different than a business because
you might you can't create a business plan when people
are dying. I mean we did. You know, we did
incredible things that we sent PPE to seven hundred and
fifty different institutions including you know, maybe five hundred hospitals,
two hundred nursery homes, and had ten ten eighteen wheelers

(50:33):
of just asthmat suits to New York City alone. And
you know, we we had a purchase at the time
Ppe because there was nowhere to get it. But ironically,
in uh the end of two thousand twenty and especially
two thousand twenty one, now these same people that were
trying to sell it to us, they got stuck with

(50:54):
it and now they wanted to give it back and
donate and we probably received this you're alone, about thirty
five million dollars worth of donated pepe. Can you imagine? No,
it's crazy. It was a stock. It was a stock surge,
and it was the stock was up through the roof,
and we were trying to buy that stock when it
was at the peak. So we were trying to figure out,

(51:16):
how what's more important money than our time? And governments
decided and we decided that money was less important than time.
We were set mask up to seven dollars and fifty
cents in certain crazy states when they should be fifty
nine cents, and we were trying to deal with that
and then try to also get masks wants to stop crash,
and then everybody was trying to deplete. It was a
crazy scam situation. Same thing with the has met suits. Anyway,

(51:39):
we're inside baseball. Um, you have been amazing and done
amazing things, and you've dedicated your whole life to helping people,
and um, how many years ago do we mean? Six now? Almost?
It's been extraordinary. It's been extraordinary. It's been really extraordinary.
Nobody else is like you, nobody. You can get things

(52:00):
done that nobody else can do. It's it makes sense
that used to do real estate development, it makes sense
used to do nightclubs. You really can figure out crazy stuff,
dealing with corruption, with crime, with hijackers, with different You're
very good dealing with different You know, you've had we've
had the police, Republicans, Democrats, the Christians, the Jews. Like

(52:22):
riding the line, knowing the political landscape, what to say,
what not to say, it's been excellent. It's been a great,
great ride, not without bumps, but no businesses and it's
been amazing And I'm really grateful for it. I'm really
we're really grateful for you. I really think that you
have you know you we have made it. You know,

(52:43):
you really have. Um. Every single time I go to
a place, it's problem solving, and that's the mind has
to understand how the problem solve. You have to go there. Okay,
what's the situation, what's the need? And then aren't the
obvious to come back? And how can we get this
need to this place for the least amount of money
in the quickest amount in the shortest amount of time.

(53:06):
That's that's business. So that's why. Yeah, and that's why
every time there's a California fire, a truck is there
two weeks later, Ida, we had trucks forty eight hours later,
you know, St. Vincent, we were the first ones there. Um,
all right, Michael, it's been amazing. I'm so grateful and
I'm glad that. That's why in the beginning I wanted
to people to hear your story because it's connected to

(53:28):
what we're talking about. You know, people need to want
to hear like a person story because you might be
just like them. So if you want to donate Bethany
b E. T H E. N and y dot com
slash be strong, and we are transparent in what we're
working on, what we have worked on, and where the
money goes. And Michael is integral in that process. So

(53:48):
I wanted to talk about giving back and sort of
our process much like a small business in how we
get these things done. So thank you so much for
being here with us. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed
that conversation because I like to bring everything back to business,
which philanthropy, if done properly, is very much like a

(54:09):
small business because you have to be lean and watch
costs and execute in an organized, transparent manner. Michael's had
an interesting story. I thought it was important to give
you the whole story, his trajectory from where it started
to where it is now, because that is instrumental in
all the work to we've done. So you might be

(54:29):
a philanthropist and not even know it. If you have
these skill sets, you know if you have this these attributes,
And I just want to thank you all so much
for helping, because you've helped immeasurably with our relief missions.
Even if you've donated, you've helped, if you've connected, if
you've communicated, if you've spread the word, if you've let
me know where something is happening, if you've given me information,

(54:51):
you have helped so Thank you so much,