0:07
We're going to talk about one thing that I think everyone will find interesting.
Search this video
0:11
It's like inside baseball.
0:13
It's like behind the scenes of the pod, what our current numbers are, the revenue we're making from it, and like how we grew it and things like that.
0:21
And also yours as well, because you're earlier in your journey, so that'd be interesting to people.
0:25
We got Jonathan on here, too, who Jonathan's our numbers wiz.
0:29
He knows all about growth and how we grew it.
0:30
I'll do I'll kind of say what the high-level numbers are for My First Million, and you can do the same for your pod.
0:35
So, I just looked in Megaphone, that's the software we use.
0:39
So, this Every number I'm going to say is the trailing 30-day numbers.
0:41
So, trailing 30 days for My First Million, when we say the word downloads, we mean YouTube and also like podcast downloads, which is basically Apple and Spotify, and then a much smaller percentage is like Stitcher and all the other podcast stuff.
0:59
And so, for that, for the podcast downloads, we did 1. Round up 1. 3, so 1.
1:06
255, it looks like, million downloads on like the podcasting platforms.
1:12
Then, our YouTube page right now has 110, or maybe 112,000 subscribers, and in the trailing 30 days, we did 2.
1:20
7 million views, of which a lot are YouTube shorts.
1:26
So, maybe in maybe 1 million to 1.
1:29
5 million is actual episode episode views, which is like any video that's more than like six or eight minutes long, something like that.
1:38
Previously, not this past trailing days, but the one before that, I think we were at 3. 6 million.
1:42
So, we're down a little bit, but cuz we had a few shorts go viral. So, 1. 3 plus 2. 7, that's 4 million.
1:49
So, that's about how many people saw our stuff.
1:52
And then there's like all the social stuff.
1:55
So, my personal socials have been viewed I just looked this up over the trailing 30 days on Tik Tok.
2:01
I think I have two or three million views and then on Instagram I have like another two or three million views.
2:04
So, that's like the total reach right now.
2:06
What are you at for how to take over the world?
2:09
So, right now monthly's are at about 70,000 sorry 80,000 downloads.
2:16
And then my per episodes, you know, stuff that's mature.
2:20
So, like a good example Walt Disney has been out since January so it's been out for a while and that's hovering around that one's got 39.
2:28
Alexander the Great has 43 so around 40,000.
2:31
My biggest episode is now almost it's 54.
2:33
So, like kind of 50,000-ish per episode.
2:40
And my numbers like obviously the totals are way different and weird because my volume is so much lower. Um What's our volume?
2:48
What's My First Million's volume?
2:49
Well, as you mentioned so we're going three times per week.
2:54
Um And then we've got the shorts on YouTube and then we've got the clips on YouTube which drives a lot of volume as you were mentioning.
3:02
Uh My First Million's downloads per episode that's the number that matters most.
3:05
It ranges from like 50,000 to 150,000, right? That's right.
3:12
Depending on if you include YouTube.
3:12
Uh because if you include YouTube we have some that pop.
3:18
Um up to the like half million.
3:21
Um may maybe a little less.
3:24
Um But like the Dharmesh episode did really well.
3:27
The Peter Levels episode did really well and those have hundreds of thousands of views just on YouTube alone. So.
3:33
What are you doing to grow?
3:33
For me the big thing is just fixing my production process which is totally broken for how to take over the world.
3:37
It's it's really just a volume uh game at this point for me.
3:42
Are you making money from it?
3:43
I'm making a little bit of money.
3:45
I'm at least I am making money.
3:48
I used to I was negative for a long time and then I was neutral for a couple months, now I'm positive.
3:52
How much do you charge for an ad?
3:53
About a thousand bucks per per placement.
3:56
So, everyone asks My First Million, I get messages all the time saying, "Hey, can we advertise on the pod?"
4:02
So, My First Million, I said we're going to talk about how much revenue it makes.
4:06
It makes zero revenue because HubSpot, when they So, the way the our process worked with My First Million was The Hustle owned My First Million.
4:14
So, Sean actually came up with the idea.
4:16
And he goes, "Hey, can I do a I want to create a podcast.
4:21
You guys want to be my publisher?"
4:22
And I said, "Yeah, but we're going to own it."
4:23
And he said, "That's fine."
4:25
Um and so, we did a revenue split.
4:27
I don't remember what we did, but I think we did 50/50.
4:28
So, let's say The Hustle sold uh $10,000 $10,000 worth of ads, The Hustle uh gave him 5,000, and we kept 5,000.
4:38
And then we also paid for it, which I don't know if that's actually a good deal for him or us. I don't know.
4:44
But, when we sold the company, HubSpot bought The Hustle, and they bought the podcast with it.
4:50
And now, HubSpot is the only advertiser on the pod.
4:53
But, we don't make any money from it.
4:55
So, directly, although they can calculate how much money they would make off of it if they had to go and buy those ads elsewhere.
5:03
But, I think So, I went and talked to a friend.
5:06
My friend has a podcast in the health and wellness space.
5:08
And I asked him, "How much revenue do you guys do?"
5:12
And so, they get 7 million downloads a month, and they are currently doing 3 million in ads, 5 million selling like uh programs, like fitness programs, and then like another half a million in like merch and affiliate deals.
5:24
And so, collectively, they're doing around 10 million in revenue with about 65% profit margin. So, it's quite good.
5:31
And so, I think that our pod just off ads would maybe be in the 6 million range.
5:41
So, it would be around $75 to $125 per 1,000 downloads, and that would be separated in like a bunch of different $30 per thousand downloads ads.
5:52
So, we could probably charge 25 to $40 per ad, and then you have like two or three ads in the in each podcast, and that's how you get to like that five or six million range.
6:03
Then, another like three or four million just off some like courses or paid community.
6:07
Yeah, and that's not uh taking into account costs because if we were selling our own ads, we'd probably have to get an ad guy to actually sell it, and he'd take a cut uh and stuff like that.
6:17
Yeah, so What What are costs now for for MFM? Jonathan, do you know?
6:23
For production side, you know, between we got Ben, you know, producer.
6:27
We've got uh Ezra who does the video and audio cutting uh video and audio editing.
6:35
We have the short-form clip folks.
6:35
We have our YouTube producer.
6:40
So, between that whole team, it's like 25k. And then Yes.
6:44
And then if you include you know, other ways to grow the show, whether it's buying ads on other podcasts, other platforms, um it could be anywhere between like 25 k a month to upwards of like 50 to 100. Just depends.
6:58
So, like it our costs right now, not including me and Sean, it's like uh $500,000 a year. Roughly, yeah.
7:08
I mean, and and you can scale that up and down.
7:10
It's just like we're being aggressive with our growth goals, so we're putting a lot of investment into that.
7:15
And our growth is basically you buy ads on other people's podcasts, and that works decent, it seems, but actually hard to track, but that's decent.
7:23
And then the other thing, you tried like buying ads on YouTube channels and things like that, right?
7:26
Do any of them actually work, you think?
7:28
We ran some ads on YouTube, and it definitely drives like a lot of views and some subs, but it's not necessarily sustainable, and you always kind of question the quality of those subs. Um yeah, I don't know.
7:40
We've kind of tested everything, and like the thing that we're most bullish on is obviously the short-form clips.
7:44
It's also not easy to tell how well those are kind of performing in terms of viewers and listeners to like the RSS feed, but um you know, I I just like a long-term play and as you're seeing like your growth on Instagram and Tik Tok is um largely driven by these clips from the show.
8:03
And so it's just like you're not going to maybe that viewer isn't going to convert the first time they see it, the second time they see it, but hopefully by the 50th time they see your face they're like, "Fuck, I just need to check out what he's up to and check out the podcast."
8:16
Ben, are you doing anything to grow?
8:18
No, basically just working on more production. That's basically it.
8:23
But like organic growth has been huge.
8:23
Like honestly, as long as I produce more episodes like it's going to keep growing.
8:28
I've done a little strategic uh like who I choose in order to grow a little bit, like what I cover.
8:37
And I think probably with podcasting that's the biggest driver of growth.
8:41
And you are basically at How many So the way that we found Ben was I was just I was actually taking a flight at like 5:00 a. m.
8:49
and I was like exhausted and I was like, "I need some inspiration."
8:52
And I think I looked up like Napoleon or something like that.
8:56
And I saw your pod and at the time roughly how many downloads did you have at that point?
9:02
Monthly downloads would have been the like hundreds to maybe low four digits.
9:07
I was getting like a couple thousand uh per episode.
9:11
And then we mentioned you on the pod and is that like the thing that was like the big up like we we did this like pretty big thing about you where I was like, "Sean, this is like the greatest intro song and pod I've ever heard of."
9:22
And how much did that boost?
9:25
So I've gone from 2K to like 40K and I would say that it's been like half and half.
9:31
So half of it was like a big upswing.
9:35
Like I immediately went up to like 10 to 20.
9:39
And then since then it's been steady growth from 20 up to 40.
9:44
Dude, that's the thing about pods.
9:46
Everyone talks to me, they're like, I want to I want to do this.
9:47
And I go, just so you know, it's very, very, very hard to grow.
9:51
So, at The Hustle, we had maybe 1. Well, between 1 and 1.
9:55
5 million subscribers when we launched this pod.
9:59
And so Sean was like, "Hey, I want to do this thing."
10:00
We said, "All right, great."
10:01
He goes, "In fact, I already have like a pilot episode." He sent it to me.
10:04
I was like, "Oh, dude, this is like great as is.
10:05
I'll give you 3 weeks or 4 weeks till like get like ahead of the game, and then we'll we'll launch we'll launch one a week."
10:12
And basically, that first week we launched, I think that first episode got 50 or 60,000 downloads.
10:20
The next episode got like 30 or 40.
10:20
And then it just like ticked down until it was like 5 to 15,000 downloads per episode because we blasted it to The Hustle, got traction, and this is how all pods and maybe maybe like all not all but many products work.
10:34
Your launch is like epic, then you go down, and then you just over a period of a couple years work slowly work your way up.
10:41
And then one day, someone didn't appear to one of his to one of his like one of his guests didn't show up.
10:52
And he was like, "Hey, you know how we do that thing?"
10:53
So, me and Sean used to meet like every 2 weeks, and we would just like brainstorm in front of a bunch of people.
10:57
And he'd be like, "You know that thing that we do?
11:01
Can you show up in like an hour and just come do it with me?"
11:02
The person didn't show up. And I was like, I guess.
11:05
And the results were like decent enough that we're like, "All right, I guess we'll just make this the thing, and we'll just keep trying."
11:12
And from there, it slowly went up.
11:12
And when we got acquired, we had acquired in February of like 18 months ago, I think we are doing 600,000 downloads per month.
11:21
And then it like went up from there a lot.
11:26
And I don't actually don't know why it went up.
11:28
I I don't know what happened. That's interesting.
11:32
So, like the idea for what my first money became was basically an accident. Is that right?
11:36
Yeah, so it was like first of all, I didn't want to do a pod forever.
11:40
I thought it was a total waste of time.
11:42
I was like we have to focus and he was like I have this thing and basically Sean at the time was not a content person.
11:49
He is now and he's great, but at the time he was just like my friend who just like was you know, he wasn't on I don't even think he was on Twitter. a startup guy.
11:57
He was more of an operator than a content Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was just he was just my buddy who had a company in the gaming space and obviously he was always charismatic and he was pretty good at storytelling.
12:06
Although I would say that's even improved a significant amount, but he was like I just interviewed my our buddy Sully here.
12:12
Just here's the pilot and I heard it and I was like oh dude, this is this is baller. This is awesome.
12:15
It wasn't actually that different than anything else.
12:19
It was called my first million cuz he was going to talk about how people got the first million users or revenue or profit, whatever.
12:23
And he was all about the early days, but which frankly isn't that unique, but he was pretty good at it and then like 6 months in or 3 months in someone didn't show up and he was like hey, come do this and me and Sean loved this podcast called the Fighter and the Kid and it was Brian Callen and Brendan Schaub, two guys sitting on chairs just like goofing around and we're like oh that I think we could do that and so we just kept doing it.
12:48
That's interesting to me because a little bit when I started my podcast it was the same thing of just that it was kind of an accident. I was sitting there.
12:57
I had been reading this Napoleon biography and I thought I want to remember this.
13:01
Like I want to retain more of this information.
13:02
I I should create something.
13:03
I should make like a blog post or tweetstorm or something and then I had all this audio equipment lying around and I thought oh I'll just do a podcast about it.
13:18
And I bet people would like to hear what I learned from reading this biography of Napoleon.
13:21
And I think a lot of really good podcasts start that way.
13:24
Of it's not someone sitting down and like gaming the system of like, all right, where's a niche that I I want to make a podcast, where's a niche?
13:31
But people who are just kind of doing stuff and uh and then it turns into a podcast and becomes successful.
13:37
Do you think that's right? Maybe.
13:37
I think you could like I think there are worlds like iHeartMedia does this nicely.
13:42
I think Parcast, which is a podcasting company, does this nicely.
13:46
Gimlet Media does this nicely. Who else does this?
13:48
Um there's a Wondery does a decent job.
13:53
Some are still better than others, but basically where they come up with ideas and then they launch them almost like a movie where it's like planned and hopefully successful.
13:59
And then other times it's organic.
14:01
I think the the problem with podcasts there there's a bunch of upside.
14:06
I'll talk about the upside in a second. But here's the problem.
14:08
The problem with podcasts is the same problem that I have with copywriting and hiring writers, which is everyone can talk and everyone a lot of people like talking with their friends.
14:18
Therefore, the noise to signal ratio of people who want to do it versus who are good at doing it is like really, really hard to determine who's like great.
14:26
And so you have a ton of people launching podcasts that are A, they're not committed to like the long-term like they're not committed to making this and being treating it like a job where you you know, me and Sean, we were we record every single Monday and Wednesday unless of an emergency.
14:41
Um so they're not committed to that.
14:43
B, they're not actually good at they don't actually have the skill or the talent.
14:47
And they think they do because they talk with their friends a lot.
14:51
And so there's like a lot of crap out there.
14:52
And C, it's not really like well thought out where it's like you know, Sean and I joke where like you need some attributes, man.
14:59
Like you either have to have this like crazy like interesting niche or and I would say this is definitely in Sean's case, slightly in my case, you just have to be really charismatic and good at storytelling.
15:09
Or you have to have like some crazy experience.
15:12
So like you're just an expert in X, Y, and Z or like, you know, you're in the NBA for 20 years so you can talk about like what it was like being in the NBA.
15:19
Like you have to have something that's intriguing and a weird angle, or you have to be super talented, like a Malcolm Gladwell or something like that. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
15:27
So, what you've touched on something that there's this guy, Eric Newsom, whose his background is in public radio, and then he was kind of one of the OGs of podcasting.
15:35
And he's got this framework that I love for creating a hit podcast.
15:39
So, he calls it a diamond, but there's really four attributes on which you can be unique, and you need to be unique on at least, well, really two of them in order to be a successful hit podcast.
15:52
So, the four ways you can be unique are what the podcast is about, who hosts it, who it's for, or the way you tell the story. Okay?
16:02
So, it's who So, it's how it's told, what it's about, who it's for, or who it's by.
16:06
So, basically, like, the concept or the person. Exactly.
16:09
And most people only do one, and that's where they fail.
16:14
They're like, "Oh, I'm going to make a podcast about gorillas, cuz there are no podcasts about gorillas."
16:18
And it's like, "Well, are you Jane Goodall?
16:21
Like, are you an expert?"
16:22
You need that second thing um to make it successful.
16:26
And you maybe you don't have to be the expert, but if you're not the expert, then it's like uh then you have to differentiate in terms of how you tell the story.
16:32
You have to give it really high production value, or uh you know, you need to like have gorillas on the podcast or something like that.
16:38
Like, you But most people are just think of one new idea and stop there.
16:43
Whereas, I think My First Million is successful because A, uh what it's about is unique in that it's kind of an entrepreneurship podcast that covers everything from like little side hustles all the way to like big, you know, tech ideas that could be, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars.
16:58
So, it's unique on what it's about. It covers everything.
17:00
And then the the who, you and Sean have the experience and are really funny and super engaging.
17:07
It's like it's like the All-In pod.
17:09
Like, people talk about that, and I'm like, you know, I think that they're like pretty okay hosts themselves.
17:13
I think Jason's pretty great, but like you're going to listen to anything that they say because they are so successful.
17:21
Their world view is so much grander than mine and you know, they're hanging out with like ex-presidents, CEOs of, you know, Fortune 500 companies.
17:28
Like they've built billion-dollar companies.
17:32
Like they have access to things that I don't.
17:33
Therefore, they don't even need to be and I'm not saying they're not charismatic, but I'm saying they don't even need to be that charismatic in order for it to be awesome. Right, exactly.
17:40
They have that second angle.
17:42
The second angle doesn't have to be that you're a great entertainer.
17:43
Like you got to have very unique insights like those guys do.
17:46
But you got to have something for that second angle.
17:50
This data is wrong every freaking time.
17:53
Have you heard of HubSpot?
17:55
HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.
17:57
Woah, I can see the client's whole history, call support tickets, emails, and here's a task from 3 days ago I totally missed. HubSpot, grow better.
18:10
But let's talk about the upside.
18:10
So, the the upside is to a pod is I have never expe- I don't I'm not popular.
18:15
I mean, I'm somewhat popular on social media, but I'm not like that popular on the video or picture-based social medias.
18:23
And so, I've not experienced what it's like to have fandom there.
18:24
But for our pod, the benefits of having a podcast and I noticed this in myself while listening to other people is I truly become like fans of these people cuz I get to know them so well.
18:35
And that is like a huge benefit.
18:37
And so, like I'll mention like Sometimes people will come up to me and they'll say like, "Yeah, like I'm I eat this food because you talked about it or I read this book."
18:45
And I'm like, "I don't even remember mentioning that."
18:46
Like I just said I talked so much that like I don't even remember all of it.
18:49
But people like listen so much that they get to know you and it's like creates true fandom.
18:52
I think you probably could get that at other uh platforms, but I think it's more so this because if they're 30 to 60 minutes long, they really get to know you.
19:01
And also, the the hard part though is you know the best way to circumvent someone's [ __ ] detector is just not bullshitting.
19:10
And that's the hard part about That's the hard part about about podcasting is when you talk for 45 minutes or an hour and a half five or three days a week or whatever it is, you you have you have you can't lie a lot.
19:23
You can't lie at all cuz it's going to catch catch up to you.
19:25
You have to be authentic.
19:27
You have to Or if you're going to play a character, you got to play that all the time.
19:30
I mean, like you really have to be authentic.
19:34
The the greatest thing and the worst thing about podcasting is such an intimate medium.
19:37
Like you're in someone's ears, they're doing when they're doing the dishes, when they're commuting.
19:42
Um they feel like they're friends with you.
19:43
I think more so than YouTube, Instagram, like any other media format, TV, whatever.
19:48
People really feel like they have this relationship with you, which is a little weird.
19:52
And like uh as you alluded to, I think the most difficult thing about podcasting is that it's really difficult.
20:01
It's like hand-to-hand combat to build a big audience.
20:03
But the best thing about it the best thing about podcasting is that you can build a a really valuable following with very few followers.
20:13
If you have 35,000 followers on YouTube, you just can't do much of like you're nothing.
20:19
And I talked with someone the other day who has 35,000 downloads per episode on his podcast and is making a half a million dollars a year from it.
20:28
What uh genre or category? Productivity. Yeah. All right.
20:31
So, 35,000 downloads an episode and he's doing half a million in ad revenue? Yeah.
20:36
And then he could be doing way more off like courses or whatever else he wants to sell.
20:39
He could be doing three or four times as much as that.
20:41
Yeah, and he's talking about doing that stuff. He's not doing it yet.
20:43
So, like I don't even feel like that's the limit of what you could do with that many followers.
20:50
So, um I do think that's the beauty of podcasting is if you can like grind it out to get a decent following of a few tens of thousands, you can make like real money in podcasting.
21:00
Yeah, and the best way I think you do it is if you already have a business.
21:04
So, for example, I didn't know this, but you know that guy Patrick David Betts? I think his name is.
21:11
He's got that YouTube channel called Valuetainment.
21:12
So, I just thought that he was like a personality.
21:17
And he recently had a life insurance, I think it is, company that he sold for like $300 million.
21:22
And I didn't even know about that.
21:25
And that's way more valuable than I mean, his YouTube channel is very valuable, but not two or $300 million valuable. Same with Dave Ramsey.
21:33
Dave Ramsey I was researching him.
21:34
His company's worth something like seven or $800 million bucks and it's a collection of real estate and selling like personal finance stuff.
21:42
And the radio show is definitely awesome, but it's not it it it alone ain't worth that.
21:46
It's not the monetization engine.
21:47
And so, if you already have that monetization engine and you build a podcast, I think it's lights out, man.
21:52
I think you can crush it.
21:54
I And what's interesting is our pod's not even big.
21:56
So, let's just say we're between 1 and 3 million downloads depending on accommodation of YouTube or not YouTube.
22:02
I And it's it's not YouTube first.
22:05
So, like we we our faces aren't out there.
22:08
If I'm walking around a top 10 city, so like a New York down to like a Denver, I will get recognized maybe once a day.
22:17
And that is a very small audience.
22:17
That is not If there's 350 million people in America and we only reach 1 or 3 million of them a month and I get recognized probably five times a week.
22:27
Um or like yesterday, I went to Lululemon and I had to give her my email and my email was is my name and I told her my name and she looked up and she goes, "Wait, for My First Million?
22:39
Are you Sam for My I was like, yeah, what's going on?"
22:41
She goes, "I thought I recognized your voice."
22:42
And like that happens all the time and that's one of my biggest surprises is that we get recognized on such a small audience.
22:52
And the people are like pumped.
22:54
They're excited, which I would be, too, if I if I you know, like Brendan Schaub is someone I really admire and you have have no idea who that is.
23:00
And he's not like famous, A-list famous.
23:03
If I saw him, I'd be like, "Dude, can I get a picture?" You know what I mean?
23:06
And it's so it's That's the interesting thing about podcasts.
23:08
Do you get like Instagram models that slide into your DMs? So, that's funny.
23:12
Uh I surveyed my Twitter audience and I said, "What gender are you?" And it was 93% dudes.
23:19
And if you go to our meetups, we had a meetup in New York.
23:23
Um we had a 1,500 people RSVP.
23:26
I don't know how many people actually showed up.
23:28
Let's just say 800 or 500 people showed up.
23:30
I'm pretty sure it was 90% men as well.
23:32
So, my stuff is mostly all men and also on all of my social media profiles, there's a picture of me and my wife is as either the main picture or the cover picture.
23:46
So, most everyone and I always talk about her.
23:47
So, most everyone knows that I'm married.
23:48
Um so, do I get like women DMing me in the in the sexual sense?
23:51
No, but that's not really.
23:54
Like it's happened like maybe at most once a month.
23:58
But like you have to remember that A, this is like a tech and business podcast and B, I'm like a Midwestern seven.
24:03
So, like you know, I'm a I'm a Missouri seven and like a New York six.
24:11
You guys know like 99% of our audience, if they had Instagram models sliding into their DMs once a month, would not be like, "It's not that much."
24:17
They'd be like, "I got Instagram models sliding into my DMs once a month, baby. I'm rich. I'm famous."
24:22
Well, I get and I get I Now, how many fake hi uh profiles do I get sliding into my DMs?
24:29
Once or five times a day. So, that happens a lot.
24:33
So, I don't know how many of these women are actually real, but I would say maybe one time a month there's someone who Like I'll even I'll be sitting next to Sarah, my wife, and I'll be like, "Hey, this is crazy. Check this out."
24:43
And like we'll laugh about it.
24:43
Uh and I'm like, you know, I ain't touching that.
24:47
But just so you know, like this exists.
24:48
I was talking to someone who is more conventionally famous than either one of us.
24:54
And uh And they were talking about how they get like real like verified models sliding into their DMs all the time.
25:05
This person has a girlfriend and and is in a long-distance relationship. It's very hard for them.
25:09
They're just like all the time these people are sliding That's crazy.
25:13
No, I I get like a I get like the hand models.
25:15
I don't get the face models or the body models.
25:17
No, I I don't exactly get that.
25:19
But what what happens a lot is if when it's warm outside, I always work out outside and I'm always shirtless.
25:27
Uh there seems to be a like just an unlucky pattern of I get recognized shirtless a fair bit and I always put my shirt on right when I because like me and Sarah have been on walks where I've been shirtless and like a guy will come up with like with his like 4-year-old daughter and say like what's up and I'm like, "Oh dude, I'm totally making this little girl uncomfortable being the shirtless dude right here."
25:44
So like that's our joke is like I try if I'm ever going to be shirtless, I'll wear like glasses or something cuz I don't want to be like that one time that I see someone that is like uncomfortable for them.
25:54
Uh But that happens all the time. It happened yesterday.
25:56
Uh you're so you're saying your body's more famous than your face is.
26:01
No, I'm saying it's coincidence that I usually when I'm outside during the day, I'm shirtless and again, my I'm saying maybe it's not a coincidence.
26:08
Maybe they're just looking and maybe they don't recognize your face, but they're like, "That Those are Sam Par's pecs.
26:12
I can tell that those are Sam Par's abs."
26:14
I would and and like I have got like uh I've got like a New York 7. 5 bod.
26:20
So like it's not always embarrassing, but uh The other so the other day we released an episode that was uh about like fitness and so we had loved it. People loved it. Yeah, people loved it. It's a great episode.
26:31
But Sam DMed me and was like, "Hey, can we change my after pic?
26:36
I don't think I look ripped enough."
26:37
and started sending me like five to 10 shirtless pics.
26:39
It was like, "Dude, if I'm going to be shirtless, where does my body look best?"
26:43
If I'm going to be shirtless on the internet, like I I would prefer like the best.
26:47
Paint me in the best light.
26:47
So like that's But so anyway, that's the update on the pod.
26:52
Do we want to talk anymore about that?
26:53
Just like one other thing.
26:55
I just like a couple frameworks I think are interesting.
26:59
So I've been thinking this for a little bit. It's interesting.
27:03
We do interviews and it's always surprising which episodes actually pop off.
27:07
Like we'll get someone really really famous and their episode will do okay.
27:12
And then we'll get Peter Levels or we'll get Dharmesh and the episode will go crazy. We'll do super well.
27:16
Dude, because we need more unique weird people.
27:20
Sometimes we're clout chasers. You need unique people.
27:22
And it's like when you get unique people that have a super engaged audience that want to hear from them but don't get to hear from them often then it totally blows up.
27:29
So I've been thinking about that recently um with my pod in terms of what I do.
27:35
So I could go the route of like uh doing more episodes like Julius Caesar.
27:41
Like I could do uh a Charlemagne or Winston Churchill or Muhammad Ali. Yeah.
27:45
Bottom line is there's actually a lot of Muhammad Ali content out there uh and you could probably find stuff that's as good as my podcast or nearly as good as my podcast out there.
27:57
Um And so I've pivoted to doing stuff that's a little more niche.
27:59
And so I just did an episode on Brigham Young who most people don't care about but some people care about very very passionately.
28:08
And so it's actually on track to be my most downloaded episode.
28:12
And so I'm trying to like adopt that Peter Levels Peter Levels Dharmesh like unique episode uh kind of framework of now I'm starting to think like okay, Brigham Young huge in the Mormon community.
28:24
Like people want to hear about that.
28:25
That's going to down that's going to drive downloads and then those people are into my audience. Who else can I do?
28:30
Like who is the greatest emperor of of Cambodia, you know?
28:35
Like Cambodians probably don't get a lot of podcasts made about their heroes, right? So like can I do that?
28:42
Can I drive something for that audience?
28:43
And then those people become super like good listeners of the world.
28:48
Have you ever watched a Bruno Mars YouTube videos? No, they good? No, so that's my point.
28:53
So, a lot like Bruno Mars is one of those guys who like everyone knows about, but not that many people seek him out, even though he's pretty amazing.
28:59
And I love his music videos, and I was watching some of them, and they have like one, two, three, even four, I believe, billion views.
29:06
Bruno Mars has 4 billion views.
29:08
And you And I was wondering why.
29:10
And I looked it up on Wikipedia, and then I looked it up on the YouTube comments to see if it was like if it if I felt like it aligned.
29:17
But basically, Bruno Mars uh his mother is Filipino. So, he's part Filipino.
29:19
And the Phil- Philippine I mean, how many people live in the Philippines?
29:24
Like, you know, a ton, I think, like hundreds of millions.
29:27
So, it's not exactly It's not exactly like a small little country, but in terms of the amount of people who exist in that country compared to their cultural relevance on a global scale, uh you know, they're not they're not exactly represented a ton.
29:39
And so, when this American Filipino guy, it's kind of like Jeremy Lin in the NBA.
29:43
You know, there there's a lot of Chinese, but there weren't a lot of Chinese basketball players.
29:47
And so, when Bruno Mars like got famous, like the Filipinos were like, "Yes, one of us. They're killing it."
29:53
And so, they just like get behind that person.
29:54
Same with Björk from Iceland.
29:56
Iceland like not exactly incredibly relevant on you know, they don't exactly invent a lot of things, including entertainment that like it's recognized on a grand scale.
30:03
And when Björk like gets a little bit of uh love from America or Europe, they all pounce on that [ __ ] and they go, "Hell yeah, it's one of us."
30:12
It's like It's like Nelly in St. Louis. In St.
30:14
Louis, where I'm from, like, you know, my 65-year-old white dad is like, "Nelly's the man." He like Sir Nelly.
30:21
Like, people everyone in St.
30:23
Louis is like, "Nelly's just our god. He's our mayor.
30:25
We we'll do anything for Nelly because he represented us, and we didn't have a lot of representation, St. Louisans."
30:30
So, anyway, I think it's the same way with different topics, where if you find that one or two things that it's okay if it's not that many people, but they're like passionate about it, and they can rally behind it, and they're like finally something for us.
30:43
That just makes it so much so much easier to get popular.
30:45
It's a little bit of the Amazon strategy, right?
30:49
Like so Amazon is the store for everything online, right?
30:51
But it start out that way.
30:53
It was a bookstore and then it was a DVD store and then it was a dog toy store and it's like actually just a collection of niches that all got bundled and that I think that works for content as well.
31:03
You can just go out and collect niches and then it becomes like a big broad audience even though you don't start that way.
31:10
Yeah, and so right at this point we're a little bit more broad.
31:13
We're still not that broad but we're more broad and like we make dumber jokes and we talk about Kim Kardashian every once in a while now and but before it was just like this dude's making five grand a month on the internet.
31:24
You know what I'm saying? Um All right. Is that the pod? That's the pod.