0:00
We'll bleep out every mention because this is the zero clout podcast.
Search this video
0:05
Zero clout chasing podcast and we have no clout policy we did not we did not want to do that.
0:11
Wait, but do we have to use his face on a thumbnail?
0:12
No, we're going to blur it out.
0:16
I think we have to put like his face and then Reed's face next to it and blur out Reed's face in the thumbnails like the man behind the scenes or something ridiculous.
0:34
We're we're we got to keep this in though. We're live now.
0:35
I was read I went and listened to a bunch of interviews.
0:39
I did the um I forget the guy's name.
0:41
I like him a lot the financial YouTuber in Vegas um and then I want Grant Stephen.
0:45
Yeah, Grant Stephen and then I watched Samir and Colin and and then a few others that you did including your channel and I was like Sean what if we just don't say the word the whole time because he's great.
0:59
But I know I I I've learned I've learned a bit about it.
1:02
You know, let's just not mention it once.
1:05
it's a bad business decision.
1:05
Not going to get the views, not going to get the clicks, not going to get all that stuff.
1:10
But I don't really care in fact actually it's a great business decision decision to not be uh chasing the algorithm.
1:16
So I say we just talk about whatever was actually whatever's actually interesting.
1:19
I think it might be No bleep.
1:23
So um yeah, I think we might be able to go the whole episode without it. Let's try.
1:29
So it's only up to you guys.
1:30
The Colin the Colin and Samir video is like took off.
1:32
I I think we we had expected it to do well.
1:35
I don't think I expected it to get whatever it's on 4. 7 million views. But yeah. You like who's counting?
1:42
As accurate as of today, but who's counting? Is it accurate?
1:46
Yeah, that's that's pretty much the exact number.
1:51
How do you how do you describe yourself?
1:52
You're the founder of Night Media, but Night Media has a studio division.
1:54
You have Night Capital I believe.
1:57
You have I mean Night Media in itself it's fairly simple.
2:02
It's just like a Endeavor or one of these other agencies, but it's a different genre.
2:05
But how do you how do you kind of like describe what you do?
2:10
Yeah, we've we've started to call ourselves a creator holding company.
2:13
So we at the center of the business we represent talent and that's been consistent since I started the business in 2015.
2:19
But we built out these other verticals now which you mentioned.
2:23
We have a venture studio which has created things like Feastables.
2:25
We have a studio which is like making shows on streaming services.
2:30
We have a venture capital fund which is called Night Ventures. It's a $20 million fund.
2:32
And then we announced Night Capital which is a $100 million growth vehicle.
2:36
Um so for us it's like a platformized creator holding company.
2:41
And yeah, it's I think early on it was much easier to just say I'm a talent manager.
2:45
Now it's it's a little more confusing when I'm like, you know, I can be entrepreneurial. I can be an investor. I'm also talent manager.
2:50
So I kind of playing a lot of different spaces.
2:55
it's great cuz talent manager seems to be a horrible business from what I can tell.
2:59
tell. I I've met a few talent managers and basically you're you're either um talent poor in which case your business sucks or you get talent rich, but then your business is always hanging on a thread of this one whale or two whale
3:13
relationship and even then um the value cap you might create a lot of value, but the value capture is is fairly small um compared to what you're doing now where you got it this investing vehicle and you got it you got all these other components. You said
3:26
You said studio making shows for streaming. What have you guys made?
3:31
Have you guys made anything that's come out?
3:32
We did a lot of stuff early on with YouTube Originals and that was kind of the emphasis of like why we wanted to get into it because Netflix and HBO and and Hulu and all these places starting ask starting to ask us to make shows with them.
3:43
And so you know, Creator Games and some of the other things that we did with YouTube Originals let us into what we're developing now which I don't know if I can technically say anything about what's coming out.
3:54
Um I'll just say there's like there's cameras around constantly as well, but yeah, we we have a a few things like within scripted, one within non-scripted and we're working on a few like different docu documentary type things right now.
4:08
So we'll we'll have like a I think a pretty decent slate by next year.
4:12
We'll see how the the writer's strike and everything plays itself out.
4:17
I think that one's been a little interesting for us to get used to, but yeah, we'll we'll have a bunch of different things like coming out in what is it summer of 2023?
4:23
So sometime in early 2024.
4:25
Is the agency business Sean was he was joking, but he's being serious in that it's a bad business.
4:31
Is that actually a bad business because when I would like I mean I don't I'm totally outside of Hollywood.
4:36
When I see like Ari Emanuel, I'm like it looks like your cat his personal cash flow is pretty decent on the rise versus a lot of like startups, you know, you're you're kind of in poverty until you have a some type of liquid event.
4:48
It seems like you guys have some type of Well, let's let's explain the structure, right?
4:54
So so what what is the what is the structure of a talent talent agency?
4:57
So first you basically you you recruit talent.
5:01
You say okay, you're I'm going to help you with your business side of your operations or get you brand deals or get you things that you that you want.
5:06
Now in the world of YouTube are those exclusive or non-exclusive?
5:10
Like for example for an NBA player their manager their agent is their exclusive representative or they could fire them, but like no you can't have multiple people bringing them deals.
5:19
It all has to go through that person.
5:21
They get a cut of everything.
5:22
So is it usually exclusive or non-exclusive when it comes to YouTube?
5:26
I think it depends on the type of management company.
5:29
We've always kind of sat on the fence of exclusive.
5:30
And I I think the interesting thing about talent management businesses is they're they generate a lot of cash.
5:36
generate a lot of cash. And so most of the the management companies that you look at that have actually started to create things like when you look at just the big let's just look at the big Hollywood agencies like Three Arts Entertainment 360 Brillstein the ones
5:49
that have built some of the and and launched some of the biggest shows like It's Always Sunny in Friends and Seinfeld and some of these things that they have back end on that they will just have back end in perpetuity on which those things are ending. But those
5:59
But those businesses generate a lot of cash.
6:01
I think the thing that they've struggled with is like how do you build something much bigger than just this cash generating management company?
6:08
And so when I started Night the management company was really like the wedge of access into everything else.
6:15
And that and that's really how I looked at it like if you could represent the biggest start with digital creators because me like starting this business by myself outside of the Hollywood system was very hard to say I'm going to go sign an actor actress musician because that is very much dominated by the Hollywood sphere.
6:32
sphere. Um and so I I knew that it would be much easier for me to build a wedge in digital and go represent you know, I started with Dude Perfect in 2013, but go represent digital creators build that wedge and then use that as the access
6:44
point to either continue building a bigger management company in other verticals or to go build you know, something within a venture studio have a venture capital firm like the access the the the management company gives you access to everything else. And that's
6:54
And that's how I saw this in 2015.
6:56
And I think that the managers that realized that and there's some some really like good ones that have realized that Maverick Carter I think realized that pretty early on is like the management business is kind of the means to the end to build Uninterrupted and some of the other things that he's doing with LeBron.
7:11
I think Scooter's probably the best example of like what Ithaca became off the management company.
7:19
And so that that's really how we've thought about it is like you know, management is the core of our business, but it's really the like allows us to to have a wedge that gets us into everything else.
7:30
So that kind of proves the point, right?
7:32
Like if so if a business has to be a means to an end it's probably in itself not the best business to stay at.
7:36
Um you mentioned a couple of those those sound like pretty cool businesses.
7:41
So Maverick Carter is LeBron's long time friend.
7:44
I think high school I think he's is is he one of part of the high school crew for LeBron?
7:50
Or did he come a little later?
7:50
I think one of them came later.
7:51
I I think he was I I don't know the full story.
7:54
I think um Rich Paul was was came came later after high school.
7:59
I think Mav was actually a high school friend and became his manager and they went on to you know, now have a production company and a few other things.
8:05
It seems like one of the few times that would work out well by the way.
8:08
Like your high school buddy like taking the reins.
8:10
So good good good for them.
8:12
And so they have a they have a company that does you know basically production and maybe investing cuz I think they own a bunch of pizza a bunch of like pizza chains and other things like that. So they do investing. They do production.
8:25
You mentioned Scooter Braun and his business.
8:27
And so what what what is his business?
8:29
Is that like that sounds like that might be a fantastic business. What is it?
8:33
Well, it's it started off.
8:35
I mean everyone knows the story probably that he met Justin or or found Justin on YouTube when he was really young reached out.
8:42
You know, the rest is kind of history there, but he he ended up building a music management company that was really like I think that the cash out that business was more touring, right?
8:48
With Ariana Grande Justin Bieber some of the other people.
8:52
And then he sold it to Hive about I want to say a year ago or 18 months ago and they started either buying other management companies.
9:00
They're buying music catalogs.
9:01
They're doing a lot of different things right now.
9:03
Um and he had he he did build quite a few things with some of the talent.
9:07
I know Justin and him built I can't remember what the clothing business is and there are some other like ancillary businesses that came out of Ithaca.
9:13
And they also did a lot of investing a lot of venture investing.
9:16
So he sold it for a billion dollars. Yeah.
9:19
He sold he he sold his media company Ithaca Holdings to to Hive for $1 billion and I think that's because it had those kind of like like you said like royalties on on the on the music itself not just like the touring which might you know, stop tomorrow and who who knows what happens.
9:38
In the YouTube world there's no like royalties structure, correct?
9:40
Like if you're a talent manager for Twitch creators or for YouTubers you get a cut of these brand deals 10 15% whatever it is, but there's no like royalties.
9:52
You have to like build other IP to get the royalties, right?
9:53
Yeah, when there's there's also no back deals, like I said earlier where, you know, Brillstein or some management company in Hollywood maybe helped launch It's Always Sunny and now they have these like residual checks coming in every single month or every single year.
10:08
That also doesn't exist in the digital space.
10:10
And so, we had to figure out like what that packaging business was for us, and we ultimately landed on we think it's business building.
10:17
Like we think some of the biggest outcomes for celebrities over the last decade have been through products, right?
10:23
Beats by Dre probably the best example of something.
10:27
I mean, like Vitamin Water was another one where it's like athletes and different people had equity in those businesses.
10:32
So, we think our packaging business is essentially this business building, which we called Night Labs, which a lot of different things have come out of now.
10:39
But, yeah, with the the management company has then allowed us to build these businesses with creators where we take equity, and we think that like that business is much more interesting long-term than just continuing to stack a management business, which some of these companies do very well.
10:55
And, you know, they're 50 million EBITDA businesses a year.
11:00
I think they're now trying to figure out like what what do we either build on top of this big cash-generating business or do we just keep doing it because the partners every single year are making 3, 4, 5 million dollars a year.
11:11
Do you um of of your of this the Night Night Media Night Studios of your wholly owned thing, how many staff do you have at the moment?
11:20
I believe we're just over 60, so 63 full-time within the Night ecosystem right now.
11:26
And and some of the teams are relatively lean.
11:28
I would say our ventures team is is is lean. It's like three people.
11:32
Our studio team is still, and that's like our venture studio is relatively lean with about six.
11:35
And the majority of the company is talent managers and then individual like pod systems where a talent manager will have a junior manager, multiple coordinators, maybe an assistant under that pod.
11:46
And then that pod will represent anywhere between I would say five to seven creators on average.
11:52
And are you managing someone as well as running the 60-person operation?
11:59
I just managed that happened about 2 years 2 to 3 years ago where I was like, this is taking up way too much of my time.
12:06
And also it's like it's also the best use of my time.
12:10
And this was really like when we had started Feastables was an idea.
12:15
We were you had I was you know, pretty helping him produce creator games.
12:19
There's just a lot going on while he was also growing, doing multi-language, all these other things.
12:25
And so, that's when I like fully just like kind of rededicated my time to everything that was going on on his end.
12:31
So, you're able to get, you know, your cut from managing him as well as from owning the 60-person company.
12:35
Um so so in in that regard, it seems like things are pretty good.
12:42
Uh even though you want to go bigger company, so yeah, things I think are always a little hectic.
12:46
And you know, I'm I'm most of my focus right now is on Feastables.
12:50
I think you guys have, you know, I'm sure you've seen the chocolate bars.
12:54
That to us is like and I are probably focusing the majority of our energy on that business right now just because it's growing so quickly.
13:01
And you know, we just launched in the UK.
13:03
We have other global launches that we want to do this year.
13:06
And it's just building into 2024.
13:08
And so, I I knew this would eventually happen where you represent a creator and then the business that you're starting becomes the big opportunity that you really want to chase.
13:18
And we think Feastables is is really turning into that.
13:19
And so, I've directed a lot of my energy toward that business.
13:24
And it's like slowly slowly consuming my life at the moment.
13:26
Before you started Night Media, what what interested you?
13:31
What what were you going to start instead of that?
13:34
Well, I grew up watching Jerry Maguire probably like everyone else.
13:36
And so, I wanted to be a sports agent.
13:37
Like I wanted to represent Rod Tidwell.
13:39
Like I I wanted to be that like bigger than life, you know, agent representing an NFL football player.
13:45
And so, that's I what I wanted to do.
13:47
And I I knew that like cuz I played football in college.
13:50
And freshman year of college, I realized that guys are built different.
13:54
Um I one couldn't run a 4-3.
13:57
I wasn't a 225-lb wide receiver that was 5 or 6'5.
14:00
And so, I knew like playing in the NFL was going to be very very difficult just seeing the the level of high school to Division 1 football that I was at.
14:08
And so, you know, I started seeing that a lot of the players that I was playing with were going to the NFL.
14:14
Some of them were getting drafted.
14:16
Some of them were going to have like NFL careers that lasted 10 years.
14:21
And so, I positioned myself to to be a representative for those players.
14:26
And that's really what I wanted to do.
14:28
And then stumbled upon YouTube in 2013 and kind of just became obsessed with it.
14:32
And in college, I didn't watch YouTube.
14:35
Like I was so focused on football.
14:36
Didn't really watch anything on the internet.
14:38
Um and that changed the trajectory of my whole career.
14:40
I saw this t-shirt on Instagram yesterday.
14:43
It said, "Creatives are the new athletes."
14:47
And somebody was wearing that.
14:47
And uh I thought to myself, that's kind of a lame t-shirt, but I see where they're coming from.
14:52
Uh you know, I I I I get what they're saying.
14:55
You know, the I I don't know if you've seen, Sam, these these deals that creators are from Twitch are signing with Kick. What's What's Kick?
15:03
I've heard you talk about it. What is it?
15:05
It's just a Twitch alternative?
15:08
So, Kick is basically a Twitch alternative.
15:09
But, the the kind of the interesting part is it's started by this gambling company, Stake.
15:15
So, we've talked about Stake before, remember?
15:18
It's this company that just absolutely prints cash.
15:19
And one of the main ways the main way that Stake was growing or one of the best growth mechanisms was they would pay streamers or give streamers money to gamble on Stake live on stream.
15:30
And so, people got to see and Did Did Didn't they give Drake like a jet?
15:34
Yeah, they gave Drake like 20 million dollars and whatever.
15:36
But, the the issue was you couldn't do it in America, right?
15:40
So, a lot of the streamers and and they would have to go to Mexico or Canada.
15:44
And it's still very much like that.
15:46
You can't do it in America.
15:47
Yeah, you got to like get on a boat, go to international waters, and start your stream. Basically, yeah.
15:51
And a lot of the guys were doing this in Mexico.
15:55
And so, now Kick is basically came in.
15:58
They They started Kick as like a distribution like top of funnel on top of this gambling business, which who knows if it's going to be legal in the US in 2 to 3 years.
16:08
They actually have stake.
16:09
us that you can play in America.
16:11
It's just a lot of the games that you have on stake. com are not there.
16:16
But, yeah, a lot of controversy on on this topic because Twitch banned it.
16:19
And that's why Kick started is because Twitch banned all gambling on their website.
16:24
It's like there's these stories sometimes in business where it's like um like I have a buddy who's like this.
16:29
The guys who bought Milk Road, they own one of them started this thing called JM JM Bullion, which is like a gold It's the biggest website for buying and selling gold online.
16:43
And I was like, how'd you do it? What's the origin story?
16:44
He's telling me the origin story.
16:45
And really when he started, he was just trying to be a lead gen for um like somebody else would fulfill the orders.
16:52
He didn't have any gold inventory.
16:53
He wasn't shipping anything.
16:55
He was like, "Dude, I'm an affiliate marketer.
16:56
I just I get the lead from Google.
16:58
Somebody places the order.
17:00
I go tell the the the company who actually does this thing to go sell it to go send it to them."
17:04
And what happened was that they were they were kind of yanking him around, changing the rates.
17:08
And eventually they just cut him off.
17:09
And he's like, "Oh my god, they just killed my business.
17:10
Like they don't want my customers? Like what do I do?"
17:14
He's like, "Well, either I take this zero or I create the whole like distribute I create the whole like supply chain myself.
17:21
I basically go, I get the physical inventory, I get the warehouses, and we start shipping this ourselves."
17:26
So, that's what they did.
17:28
They ended up becoming bigger than the other company.
17:30
And I think they bought them along the way.
17:31
They bought that other company that had rejected them and like went on to become the number one site for this.
17:36
And it's kind of the same um the same thing that you're talking about here with like Kick was using Twitch as like a distribution platform.
17:45
And then when it didn't work, they're like, "All right, we'll have to make our own Twitch."
17:47
Which is kind of like a huge endeavor.
17:49
But, what they're doing is they're giving streamers these contracts that um I kicked the tires on this to figure out if it was real because they gave xQc, who's one of the top uh Twitch streamers, a like a reported 2-year $100 million contract. What?
18:03
So, that means that this guy's making more than LeBron James playing for the Lakers this year.
18:10
Like per year, that that would be the the deal.
18:12
And same thing and and crazier than that is that he doesn't have to he doesn't have to stop streaming on Twitch.
18:19
He can still stream on Twitch, right?
18:20
And so, when you first hear this 100 million dollar deal for some kid in his bedroom playing video games. That sounds insane.
18:26
And then they did that with a bunch of other streamers.
18:28
So, a bunch of other streamers are also making, you know, 10 million, 20 million, 30 million dollars a year to stream on Kick right now.
18:35
And the big question is, will this strategy work?
18:38
You know, will Kick become a thing? Will it just die?
18:40
Will this give Stake a bunch of customers?
18:42
Or is this just money printing? Is the website cuz kick.
18:45
com according to SimilarWeb has like 150 million monthly uniques already.
18:49
Yeah, so this has been going for how long?
18:50
Like 6 to 8 months, maybe?
18:54
Yeah, like within this year basically they've been they've been doing this.
18:57
And so it get that much traffic that fast?
18:58
I mean, that's one of the faster growing websites out there.
19:01
Yeah, so so what happened here was two two Twitch streamers that when they banned gambling couldn't stream on Twitch anymore because their brands were essentially built around Stake, which one was Trainwreckstv, who had a really loyal following on Twitch.
19:14
And then they also then signed Adin second.
19:16
And so, Trainwreckstv and Adin started streaming on Kick, which drove a lot of people over to that website.
19:22
And then the xQc, the like every everyone else that they started signing was just driving more and more traffic.
19:29
And it started to just become a thing of like anti-Twitch, go to Kick.
19:33
They'll also the one thing to point out is ad revenue on Twitch.
19:35
If you were if you were a partner on Twitch, it used to be 70/30.
19:39
They brought it down to 50/50, which sparked outrage on the internet.
19:44
And then Kick came out and said, "We're going to do 90/10 for everyone.
19:47
Doesn't matter if you're a partner or not.
19:49
We're going to lose an incredible amount of money on the content business and just make sure that stake.
19:55
com remains like the cash cow.
19:57
And so that's like the the big thing that they have against Twitch is like they don't really care if they have a profitable streaming business or not.
20:05
But do they how do they find it how do they finance this entire thing?
20:07
I thought Sean that we had talked about these guys.
20:09
Wasn't wasn't the founder of stake is it like a 28 or back then we I think we're talking about a year ago.
20:14
It was like a 26-year-old guy who bought like a $50 million mansion in Australia.
20:18
Are they is it still like a bunch of young guys doing this without financing?
20:22
I mean not without financing. The financing is stake.
20:25
Stake had a big like 800 it had like an $800 dividend last year or something insane.
20:30
Like that business is just ultra ultra profitable and so their competitive advantage is basically that they they're like Reed said their business model is not ads on kick or subscription cut.
20:42
It's can we funnel these users to come gamble on our in our casino and we have a casino Twitch doesn't have a casino.
20:51
That's the bet that they're making.
20:51
The other thing that I cuz I tweeted this out I was like I said this thing is fishy.
20:56
I said they're paying XQC $100 million for 2 years of non-exclusive streaming. Are they A lying?
21:01
B is this like incentive-based or something like tiered like you know some some like stock deal they're inflating the value of the stock or something like that to make the number sound the headline number sound really big.
21:14
Are they just laundering money? Is that what this is?
21:15
Like what what is going on here?
21:17
And basically it was here's a here's what the the the answer was.
21:22
Basically it's a combination of cash and equity so their equity part might go to zero.
21:26
So that that part of the deal might might go to zero.
21:29
Um or it has incentives where it's like it's based on the number of customers you bring over.
21:34
Um and the second part is that the non-exclusive part is basically so that he can just like funnel traffic from Twitch to Kick.
21:42
So if he just turned off like this is like a big deal like when Microsoft poached Ninja from Twitch he had to stop streaming on Twitch that day and like go stream on this other platform.
21:53
And so most people on Twitch were just like kind of like out of sight out of mind.
21:58
You know some people followed him over there to check it out but like ultimately their habit was still built on Twitch.
22:01
What these guys are doing is different.
22:02
He streams on Twitch and then he says all right I'm going to finish my stream or I'm going to like play the big game over on Kick.
22:09
And then he just like it's like a a call to action.
22:11
He just funnels a bunch of traffic over over and over.
22:14
When I was at Twitch we did the same thing when we were losing foothold in one market in Brazil.
22:19
We acquired this huge YouTube streamer and I was like um and they were and it was an exclusive deal but he started streaming on YouTube while he was streaming on Twitch and I was like and at first people in the company were like yo what the hell man you just spent all this money millions of dollars like signing this streamer and he's still streaming on YouTube over there for free. Like what's the deal?
22:40
And I was like actually wait this is probably excellent because all we have to do is just get him to like block part of the screen or like end his like do a cliffhanger and be like I'm finishing this over at Twitch and he'll just keep bringing traffic over and that's what he did.
22:53
We just basically let him violate his deal cuz we realized actually he was smarter than us.
22:57
That was a better funnel for us than than an exclusive deal would have been. That's insane.
23:01
Reed what these I imagine you've talked to these you know these stake guys well.
23:05
Are is this like a Sam Bankman-Fried type of company where they're or an FTX company where they're just like a bunch of crazy young kids or is this like a dialed-in thing?
23:14
What what are these guys like?
23:14
I don't know them well enough honestly to know if it's like going to become a problem.
23:19
I would say that from my conversations with them they seem like they have this thing under control.
23:24
It's generating a lot of cash.
23:25
FTX thing I company wasn't generating any cash when Bitcoin went down.
23:30
It was like just completely fell apart but I don't mean is it a scam but I mean like young people just being wild you know like imagine a 27-year-old making $800 million dividend just like a a wild child type of setup.
23:45
I haven't seen that from them but it seems like they're a little bit more laid back in Australia don't really communicate with a lot of people.
23:52
So I I haven't seen that behavior.
23:55
Um I mean that could change.
23:55
I'm just I and I know I know way too much about the deal structures and everything else and how this stuff works but I would I'm pretty confident in Kick over at least the next couple of years.
24:07
We'll see where this goes if they continue to want to do that business.
24:10
I I would imagine stake is going to just continue to get so big that maybe Kick eventually becomes a distraction. I don't know.
24:16
Um but I I would say they'll double down on stake.
24:21
us over the next like 18 months as as like states open up and allow them to start doing this. That's insane.
24:25
There was also a secondary business called Rubet as well that was essentially the the stake. com competitor.
24:33
I'm not 100% sure what happened to Rubet but it's still around and so there there is other businesses like stake.
24:39
Stake just completely won because they were able to sign the biggest creators like Train.
24:42
They signed Drake which you guys said.
24:44
It's at the at the moment it's a runaway train.
24:47
They're kind of taking all the market share.
24:50
In one of your other podcasts you'd mentioned how um uh you're like well a lot of creators they think well I have an audience I'm going to launch this product and you're like well that can work for a couple months but if you do a good job this turns into a proper company and the real challenge you're you're saying the real challenge that I'm in is finding amazing executives to actually run the companies and build these into real companies.
25:11
You said for Feastables I think you said you had the president of RXBAR to come and be the CEO for the burger business or the restaurant business you partnered with someone and you also sounds like had a president or CEO of that company.
25:25
What type of deals are you striking with some of these CEOs to make it worth their while to to do this?
25:32
Yeah thankfully a lot of them realize the opportunity when they come into these businesses they know that there's an unfair advantage in go-to-market because the creator has hopefully built this massive platform already that gives them instant distribution and just consumers.
25:45
And so a lot of the people that we interview for CEOs are actually incredibly excited about the opportunity and are willing to leave their big job at PepsiCo or wherever that is.
25:52
And so how the how the deals are really structured is very similar to any other business.
25:58
You have like the a cash basis that you're paying them and then you also negotiate some piece of equity over of like a 4-year vesting schedule.
26:05
And so we we've had a lot of success doing that but for the most part we usually don't have to explain the competitive advantage to the business.
26:14
Like when we start meeting these individuals they already know. They've seen it. They saw it with Prime.
26:19
They're seeing it with Feastables.
26:20
They've seen it with Happy Dad.
26:20
A lot of the individuals that we're interviewing already know and so it makes it a little bit easier for us to get them to leave that specific job but it's it's structured very similar to like what a a CEO would potentially make if they came in and ran a startup.
26:34
And are you funding the company with the bit?
26:36
We fund up to a certain amount.
26:38
What's that amount usually?
26:42
I it honestly depends on the business.
26:42
I would say it falls anywhere between the 250 250 on the low end a million on the high end.
26:48
So Feastables you fund that that that started just a million bucks you think? Yep.
26:52
you think? Yep. The the the the big issue with Feastables was and this is the issue we're now having with some of our consumer products is retailers instead of so if you if you started a chips business or whatever and you didn't have a creator attached to it or
27:07
anyone attached to it that give you gave you an unfair advantage on go-to-market you would go to a retailer and they would say we want to test you in 100 stores or we want to test you in 200 stores and from a cost per perspective to to fund the PO wouldn't be that like it wouldn't put that much strain on the business. The issue that we had with
27:25
The issue that we had with Feastables was Walmart was willing to put us in all 2650 store or 4650 stores right when we launched and so that's becoming the issue with some of these businesses is that how do you fund the PO of 6 7 8 million dollars right out of the gate to meet that retail demand.
27:44
And so that's the one that we've we've had to either raise capital go beg a bank to give us the money as like as a PO as like a PO loan.
27:53
And so that that's kind of the issue that we've run into and even with Feastables like we raised a small amount of capital and it was really just to fund the 4 million chocolate bars that we ended up selling in season one that sold out in I think it was 45 days.
28:06
That was the biggest cash constraint of the business.
28:10
Let's let's talk a little bit about Prime.
28:12
So Prime um seems to be just taking over.
28:18
Um it really really impressive.
28:18
I don't know um how much we've talked about it on here before but can you just explain what's going on with Prime in a way that would for somebody who's kind of out of the loop or maybe you know vaguely heard of it but doesn't really truly appreciate like the the extent it's it's what it's doing? Yeah.
28:37
So if you don't know what Prime is Prime is a hydration drink that was started by Logan Paul who many people are probably familiar with and then KSI who's based out of the UK but I would say the most popular creator to ever come out of that region.
28:49
And so you know they very notably like boxed against each other multiple times.
28:54
They were enemies and the story was them coming together to start this business.
29:00
And the the company that they partnered with actually made an energy drink called Alani Nu that's actually I mean you see it next to Prime.
29:06
I think in every grocery store retail chain I go into.
29:10
It's like Prime sits here Alani Nu sits right next to it.
29:12
And so the founders of Alani Nu basically created this drink that they then called Prime and Logan Paul and KSI came in.
29:18
Really is just the marketing engine.
29:20
They don't do anything operationally for the business.
29:23
They really just market it and it it became like a clout piece to hold a bottle of Prime.
29:28
Like now these 10 12 13-year-old kids have to have it. They have to drink it.
29:34
And we've seen some of the I mean that I saw an article about people saying the FDA needs to go regulate this business because it has too much caffeine in the energy drink.
29:43
And so now now there's just a lot lot stuff going on about the company but it's grown an incredible amount.
29:46
I think I I can't remember what Logan said on one of his podcasts, but I think they did $45 million in revenue in January of this year.
29:54
And that was that was the last thing that I'd seen them say publicly about the business.
30:00
I think he said, if I remember correctly Sean, we talked about it.
30:03
It might have been 6 months ago.
30:04
I think he said like 200 million for the year. Is that right?
30:08
Yeah, that's the number that's one number we had heard, but 45 million obviously would put them on a totally different trajectory than that.
30:15
So, yeah, it appears to be just an absolute monster.
30:22
Our software is the worst.
30:22
Have you heard of HubSpot?
30:24
See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous.
30:30
I think I love our new CRM.
30:33
Our software is the best. HubSpot, grow better.
30:37
Who's the Who's Logan Paul's manager? Who's Who's his manager? His name's Jeff.
30:40
I mean, he's he's on the podcast.
30:43
He's been his same manager for a long time.
30:44
Uh Logan talks about him quite a bit.
30:46
And so, if you if you watch some of Logan's older videos, too, he would periodically show up.
30:50
And so, they've been together for a long time.
30:52
And Jeff put together that deal, and it's been incredibly successful.
30:55
We'll see how it ends up. I I don't know.
30:57
I would imagine they're going to want to continue to do this thing for another couple of years and then probably sell it.
31:01
And those guys who created the drink, you said they created Alani Nu, that but that wasn't that big.
31:07
Like it seemed I remember when Prime first came out, I was like, who are these guys?
31:10
And it's I think it's two dudes, right?
31:12
Who are the founders of that? Yeah.
31:16
And though they didn't really have a huge hit before that.
31:18
How did they even secure that deal?
31:21
And why why did they partner with them over like, you know, some more established thing? Do you know? I honestly don't know.
31:29
I've never had that conversation with Jeff of of why did why partner with this company instead of doing it yourself.
31:33
I think I I would imagine what happened was this company presented them with the opportunity, and it was something that really resonated with Logan.
31:41
And then I remember the story of him saying he called KSI and tried on board, which he did.
31:46
And so, it it probably was just right place, right time.
31:49
Logan was ready to lean into something else.
31:51
I mean, Logan's done a lot of different business ventures over the last 5 years.
31:54
I mean, this one obviously is far beyond the most successful.
31:59
But I again, I would imagine right place, right time.
32:03
They liked the product, liked the got along with the individuals who were operating the business.
32:09
And the the partnering with KSI, were they just actually friends the whole time?
32:14
And the whole boxing thing was just, you know, it just a sort of friend-of-me's thing?
32:17
Or like, cuz that's kind of a genius move, right?
32:20
Like you kind of have to give credit to be like, you know, what will make this even bigger?
32:23
Cuz normally, let's say you're one of the biggest YouTubers.
32:27
Those people tend to have like a bit of an ego. I am distribution.
32:28
I don't need anybody else to do this.
32:30
I don't need to split the pie, especially with my enemy.
32:33
So, that's kind of interesting.
32:35
What what's going on there?
32:36
No, totally No, they did not like each other.
32:39
The boxing beef was real.
32:41
They were definitely enemies.
32:41
And from my understanding of the story, and I've only heard Logan's side of this.
32:47
I haven't heard KSI speak about it.
32:49
It took a lot of convincing for Logan to get KSI on board because there was still a lot of animosity between the relationship there.
32:57
I mean, a lot of stuff was said.
32:58
A lot of personal things were said about girlfriends and parents.
33:04
And I mean, it was a very personal beef that went on in this YouTube space for a while.
33:08
And so, I think that's why it was so surprising when those two came together to launch Prime because it was the last two individuals you would ever thought to partner together on a hydration brand.
33:18
He said my Pokémon was a PSA 8. It was It got ugly. Yeah.
33:24
But now it's like for for us, it's it's been helpful because, you know, we they launched in Australia, and it went incredibly well for them.
33:32
They launched in the UK, it went very well.
33:34
And so, Feastables is like, we're probably 6 to 8 months behind because they, you know, had a product and launched a lot sooner than we did.
33:39
But it's it's allowed us to then go into those conversations in Australia, UK, Southeast Asia, where in the the retailers have already had massive success with Prime, where it's a it's a much easier conversation for us to explain to them why they should take Feastables.
33:54
Where I think if we were the first ones coming into the the in the industry like into the Woolies that in Australia, probably a little harder conversation pre-Prime.
34:01
Well, that Prime seems like an amazing category.
34:04
Like that to me, uh the drink, the hydration drink, water basically, like fancy water is a better category than chocolate bars.
34:14
Um how do you think about categories that you're going to go into? Like um Mhm.
34:18
Do you think that's a better category?
34:19
And and also like, how do you choose what category to get to?
34:20
Is you could basically promote anything.
34:23
Dude, when we we we we did the thing with Sean organized this thing, and he brought a bunch of Feastables.
34:27
I ate about eight of those things in one night.
34:31
I was I felt horrible the next day. I I didn't eat dinner.
34:33
I just ate all this chocolate.
34:34
So, it at least for that night, it felt like a good category. Yeah.
34:41
Well, okay, so you I have to back up to just explain how this all started.
34:43
And so, you know, this started with I, you know, in a parking lot kind of brainstorming ideas while he was he was in between him filming this video that never got posted.
34:56
Like most videos that like just got filmed and and never people never saw.
34:59
But anyway, we we came up with this idea where we wanted to launch a snacks company, and we wanted to build this constant idea around launching a snacks company.
35:07
And chocolate bars to us felt like the right category for a couple reasons.
35:12
Like one is it's a massive business.
35:14
Like it's a $26 billion industry.
35:16
It's it's very holiday seasonal dependent, which if you're a parent going into a store for Halloween or for Easter or something like that, and it's like Hershey's is sitting here, and Feastables is sitting here, and you have a 8, 9, 10, 12-year-old son, daughter, like it's a no-brainer.
35:32
Like you're going to buy the Feastables chocolate.
35:34
And so, that that was one reason.
35:36
Another thing is the 50th anniversary of Willy Wonka was in 2021.
35:41
And so, the initial idea was let's put golden tickets in chocolate bars and sell that and give away a chocolate factory, which became just a thing in itself of, you know, buying a warehouse and turning into a chocolate factory. It was no easy feat.
35:55
But that that really kind of sparked the conversation of okay, well, if we're going to build this on this chocolate factory giveaway with a chocolate bar, what are the other categories that we can eventually go into?
36:06
The cookie really came because, you know, had this joke on his channel, and it's been since the beginning is you guys see it in the banner.
36:14
It's like subscribe, and I'll give you a cookie.
36:15
And so, we we wanted to venture into cookies next.
36:17
It's it's not, I would say, as big of a focus for us as chocolate.
36:21
I think we're really trying to build out seasonality in chocolate.
36:24
We're trying to build multi-pack in chocolate.
36:25
I don't think people truly understand how big Hershey's actually is and how dominant they are in the space.
36:32
Like they truly dominate chocolate because they also own Reese's, which is like, if you walk in a chocolate aisle in Walmart, Target, Kroger, wherever, you see a giant wall of orange and a giant wall of brown.
36:45
It's like you very clearly those two businesses or those two brands dominate the chocolate aisle.
36:49
And so, we thought it was a good space for us to go at because it wasn't um it wasn't so oversaturated by 20, 30, 40 different companies.
36:59
It was like we really knew who we were competing against.
37:01
We were like, we're competing against Hershey.
37:03
We need to be more innovative.
37:04
We need to build this gamification layer.
37:06
We need to build a better product that has higher quality ingredients.
37:10
We We just We knew like what the the road map looks like to compete with them.
37:14
It's been a lot harder than we thought.
37:16
Just global chocolate supply chain, I think, was something Jimmy and I knew nothing about.
37:21
Thank God for our team that like understands this that we've been working with.
37:25
But yeah, I think we'll we'll definitely go.
37:28
I don't know if Jimmy said anything to you guys when you were in Greenville, but I mean, there's a road map of products that we're going to do over the next like 2 to 3 years.
37:33
We're trying to figure out like what the rollout strategy is going to be.
37:36
But for 2023 and going to 2024, chocolate is the main priority and getting more space in retail.
37:45
I got to take back what I said.
37:45
I think it's a great category. You convinced me. I was wrong. That was great.
37:51
I actually I think what you guys are doing is really smart there.
37:52
By the way, Hershey's makes like 8 or 9 billion a year in revenue off of their thing.
37:57
And the reason I think it's a great category actually, based on what you said, was the audience fit, but also uh just like how old that competition is.
38:05
And like, you know, you didn't say this, but like, if I'm Mars or I'm Mondelez or I'm Hershey's, um you know, I look at my acquisition targets, my M&A targets, there's not many.
38:16
And I think this is an opportunity where I don't think the business itself is going to generate a ton of profit just because uh physical goods and you know, the the like as you scale up, it's like, you know, it's not the the thickest margins.
38:31
But I do think this is like a business where you're going to look up and sell it for $500 or something like that someday if you wanted to. Yeah, I take that back.
38:38
it's You'd actually be surprised.
38:38
The chocolate actually is a it's a pretty good margin business for us.
38:43
And I mean, Hershey's still, you know, they probably turn off 6 to 800 million dollars in profit every single year and have been doing this for 50 plus years.
38:51
And so, we Yeah, we It's it's it's been challenging for us, but we understand like what the road map is.
38:57
We really think that And we don't know how Hershey is going to compete with us seasonally.
39:06
That's like one thing big for us.
39:06
Like Halloween's going to be big for us this year.
39:09
We're doing a lot of different sweepstakes and promotional things.
39:10
And so, you know, for us, if we can win those months, like October then becomes 100 to 200 million dollars just in a single month.
39:19
And we can put our full force into just October and then into holiday.
39:23
And then you turn it around, and you're like, okay, now like what are we doing for Valentine's Day?
39:26
What are we doing for Easter?
39:27
And so, these are all like the conversations that we've been having over the last year.
39:33
What number would kind of cross the threshold of, all right, we should take this acquisition seriously if one of those guys came to you at the end of the year?
39:41
I don't think he takes a multi-billion dollar acquisition right now.
39:44
I there's just too much upside in the business right now. Just for Feastables.
39:48
Yeah, it's just it's the amount of opportunity for us not not only okay, let's just just I'm just talking domestically.
39:57
So now let's just let's talk about just the world, right?
40:01
Chocolate is is popular like globally and we haven't really talked about this yet, but I know he talked about on your guys podcast is we launched all these multi-language channels.
40:08
There's there's really a method to the madness here is like, you know, we now dub in I think 16 different languages including Japanese and French and Hindi.
40:19
Those are all markets for us that we're pushing into over the next like 12 to 18 months and so the opportunity for us is just way too big to even look at an acquisition at the moment because for us like Asia is is a huge market.
40:31
The Middle East is actually become one of our highest growing markets at the moment which were now figuring out like what are the points of distribution and then we're eventually going to be able to just specifically market to those regions.
40:44
Like we're going to be able to put a video file up and it's going to be the Japanese dub but instead of being like, "Hey, go to your local Walmart and Target."
40:51
It's going to be like our our our dub artist in Japanese which is the voice actor of Naruso saying, "Oh, you can go buy it at your local 7-Eleven or other convenience stores available in Japan."
41:03
And so we're going to make everything very localized and so to us like we're like not having even rounded first base yet what this business opportunity is.
41:12
And so I don't know, we haven't even had like acquisition talk like isn't even a thing we're discussing Well, when we when we all hung out with him he was talking about he was talking to the same thing.
41:21
I don't know if he was saying Feastables, but just like his enterprise, you know, he threw around crazy ideas of like maybe IPO, maybe sell for billions of dollars. I don't know.
41:30
Like but he approached it in a this isn't an insult, but it was very naive.
41:37
Like he sounded like an innocent like, "Oh, I'm just going to do this and then this and then this. That's it.
41:42
Like it's it's going to work."
41:43
And I remember but I but I but I found it to be like believable A, like I believe that he actually could potentially do that which is crazy.
41:51
But B, I felt like his ignorance a little bit about business was actually a massive um tool for him a little bit where where I was like, "Man, that's like you'd be one of the biggest things in the world."
42:01
And in his brain he's like, "Well, yeah.
42:05
What do you what do you expect?"
42:05
And I don't know if that's maybe naive is not the right word, but there was almost an innocence about it that I I really appreciated.
42:13
Do you think you have that same kind of mindset with this or or do are half the things that you guys are working on not just you and him, but your rest of your artists or the rest of your um uh folks on your team, are you like, "I don't know if we can pull this off, but whatever.
42:25
Let's just try and get into it and we'll see what happens."
42:26
Uh I he's probably we're we're a little bit different in that regard.
42:30
I think I'm a little bit more of a realist in terms of, you know, knowing how hard these things are to build, knowing how hard these things are to sell.
42:39
I I said ultimately it's going to be his decision, you know, if he wants to sell this thing or not, but I I think there there is a level of him and I are very naive to to at at least when we entered the chocolate arena, we didn't really have a good understanding of what we needed to create, how we needed
42:56
to compete and I actually think that was an advantage for us because we were just running as fast as possible trying to get product out and we made a lot of critical um I would say decisions that were either big positives or big negatives and we were able to go change the negatives very quickly. I think one
43:13
I think one is I think you said you you didn't even have customer support the day you launched or something like that.
43:19
have customer support in which we then learned in Feastables like, "Okay."
43:23
And in a little different business.
43:24
So we we had a full customer social support team when we launched Feastables thankfully.
43:28
And you you know, you've done a couple of these now and I think I've always been amazed like some creators are much better promoters than others and it's not just like it it matters like in a couple different ways.
43:42
Sometimes if your brand is like I'm super real and authentic, anytime you say anything promotional the audience is like, you know, "Sell out.
43:51
You know, you can't do that."
43:51
And other people whose brand is to be more of a spectacle or more interesting, they can get away with a little more.
43:57
But there's also just the creator's motivation.
43:59
So as brands throw money at creators to, you know, tell people, "Hey, swipe up and do this.
44:06
Hey, swipe up and do this."
44:08
You know, like at some point um I think everybody becomes a little numb to it, the audience and the creator.
44:12
What I've been impressed with is for something like Feastable or I also felt this way with Prime.
44:17
I felt like with Prime Logan Paul is like the CMO and he's like he's looking for every edge he's got.
44:24
It almost you know, like I don't think they own the majority of the company.
44:27
I think they own a small minority in that company, but he almost treats it like a majority owner.
44:33
I remember when he went to like he goes to like you know, the WWE thing or UFC fight.
44:38
He's got his Prime bottle with him and then he'll do something that he knows is going to he'll like embarrass himself so he gets memed like a million times on Instagram, but he's like, "Yeah, I got memed, but I was holding I was holding Prime, wasn't I?"
44:50
And he's like, you know, basically it was all intentional.
44:51
He's like looking for these little edges and that's very different than you know, the old days when you know, an influencer holds up some detox tea and just says, you know, "Hey, try this."
45:01
Um what do you think is the difference in buying in that kind of like that mindset of like, "I'm going to use my engine to promote this like to level 100."
45:09
What have you seen is the difference there and and how does that happen?
45:15
Yeah, I mean there's also just a different level of excitement when you have ownership in the brand versus you don't.
45:21
Whereas like there's a cash exchange for you to promote audible.
45:23
com, you're not going to be as excited.
45:27
You're not going to put as much time creatively into this let's just say ad read that you will if you own the business.
45:31
And so I I actually first saw this with when we did finger on the app.
45:37
I'd seen him do a lot of like we had done a lot of mobile integrations on the channel.
45:41
And then when we did finger on the app, it was our thing. We owned it.
45:45
It was like our competition.
45:49
Explain what it is for somebody who doesn't know.
45:50
Finger on the app was we created this mobile game where a person puts their finger on their cell phone and the last person to take the finger off the phone won 100 grand.
45:57
And there was little bombs that would pop up so you would have to like move your thumb around to just avoid objects that would pop on your phone.
46:04
It ended up lasting 72 hours and then someone won 100k, but uh level of excitement and level of promotion just went to the next level.
46:14
He was, you know, telling people why they should download it and he was, you know, messaging people back on Twitter who was like, "Hey, I just downloaded. I'm ready for the game."
46:21
He was responding and so there's like a a much more there's much more depth to the level of excitement on the creator side and you really see that with Prime and too with Feastables.
46:31
And I you see it with also Happy Dad with Nelk.
46:33
They're going all in on Happy Dad.
46:36
The podcast is essentially built around, you know, Happy Dad is everywhere for each podcast episode.
46:42
And I I do think the future is creators starting businesses.
46:45
The issue is like most of the time it's just going to happen at the top where you know, where we are seeing some interesting businesses for like a mid-tier creator who maybe isn't to the level of Logan Paul or Nelk, but they're, you know, Cars Versus Bids or something like that where it's, you know, the channel maybe has two three million subscribers doing 500k video and they're gaining a lot of traction on that type of business.
47:09
What are some other examples like that?
47:11
Um in in the creator space? In the creator space.
47:13
Cool creator businesses that are not just like, "Well, I'm the most famous guy on Earth so whatever I say works."
47:18
You know, what what are some like we had Doug DeMuro on for Cars and Bids.
47:22
What are some other examples like that?
47:24
Uh there's one called Rare Candy.
47:28
It's with you know, he's a a relatively large Pokémon style creator and he has a marketplace where you can buy Pokémon cards and do Pokémon unboxing.
47:36
So it's it's similar to what not and how it it works, but it's, you know, Leonhart owns a a large piece of that business.
47:42
Um I I mean to go back to the top like Emma Chamberlain Coffee I think is another one that's like very organic to her.
47:49
Talks a lot about coffee.
47:49
And now I'm starting to see a lot of businesses pop up on the smaller end where it's maybe you have a a channel that washes windows, right?
47:58
So it's like a Tik Tok creator who maybe it does ASMR through like washing a house or washing windows and they use it as like this top of funnel in like a city where all these individual houses or all these people are now reaching out to be like, "Oh, this person's in Austin.
48:13
I'll pay them $400 to come pressure wash my house." for pressure washing.
48:18
There's they're all over the place and the grass cutting like lawn mowing.
48:22
Yeah, lawn mowing, vending machines.
48:26
Seeing a lot of like little small niche businesses getting built.
48:28
But I I think these businesses are much bigger than people think they are.
48:33
They're they're gaining like even in the the pressure washing like I'm meeting creators and they're making like 20 30 thousand dollars a month just from pressure washing homes and then all of a sudden, you know, they hire two or three other people because the demand is
48:46
so high for people, you know, booking them out to to clean their home that they start to hire employees and then it becomes a real business that once just started as like one Tik Tok video of them pressure washing pressure washing their own house. Are you from the
48:59
Are you from the Midwest? I am from North Dakota.
49:03
You're the first person on the pod that says says the word wash like I do with an R.
49:08
I I I grew up 40 miles from the Canadian border.
49:11
So I'm probably just as Canadian as American at this point.
49:14
I get made fun of all the time for saying that word that way that I'm embarrassed to even say it, but I just heard you say it.
49:18
Are are there any companies or any creator businesses out there that are shockingly large that many people don't know about?
49:26
Yeah, so one that I was wildly impressed by that was much bigger than I had initially thought was Dhar Mann.
49:31
So it's the largest scripted YouTube channel on the internet.
49:37
And so, it's it's all like it's daily uploading, but it's long-form scripted storytelling.
49:44
And so, I I really didn't understand like how big of an operation that was and how many, you know, people and how many sets and just the sheer volume of content coming out of that business.
49:54
That that was one I was pretty surprised by.
49:57
And if you don't know what it is, I remember when I first saw it, I was like, are people watching this?
49:59
And then I just have been paying attention and slowly growing.
50:03
It's almost like a Hallmark or Lifetime channel, but for like How do you spell it? What is it?
50:10
Dhar Mann, D H A R, space M A N N. He has 18. 5 million subscribers.
50:14
It's like um It's There's like a lesson to be learned in like each episode. Is that right, Reed? Yeah.
50:23
He used to do something completely different, right?
50:25
Like Dhar was doing something completely different and then he's he he pivoted into this.
50:31
Yeah, found found his footing in scripted storytelling on YouTube.
50:33
Uh more fast-paced, a little bit more light on the the scripted uh like storytelling aspect cuz it's like more content and volume.
50:42
I'm pretty sure this guy had a giant weed business before this. Um makeup, actually.
50:47
But I I think he also had a weed business.
50:49
His wife is also an influencer.
50:51
I think she has a makeup business.
50:52
I'm pretty sure this guy had a cannabis business.
50:53
I I don't know if I if I got that right, but it's funny. Yeah, WeGrow.
50:57
He started He's He's started WeGrow.
51:00
It sold hydroponics and marketed for growing medical marijuana. That's funny.
51:03
Why Why is this guy impressive to you, Reed?
51:07
What What What's the behind-the-scenes information?
51:09
Just the sheer like the sheer size of the production company.
51:11
You know, people people say it like, oh, you can build, you know, production entities on top of YouTube and creators are hiring employees.
51:18
You know, it's like this is a good example of massive production entity built on YouTube, cash flow positive, making money.
51:25
You know, I think most people thought that, you know, you couldn't do scripted storytelling on YouTube and actually make it a profitable business just because it didn't make sense with how the ad revenue works and how the splits work and he's really figured it out.
51:37
And it's it's hard because you have to upload daily and you have to average two, three, four, five million views per video to start making significant amount of money, but they've really figured it out on a large scale.
51:49
Did they get the revenue up or did they get the expenses down?
51:52
What did they do different than you would have expected?
51:55
Or what did they What What was the trick?
51:56
From what from what I've seen in the scripted space on YouTube and and this is also like in the in like the streaming services, scripted content is very expensive.
52:04
You know, you you have writers on staff.
52:06
Like it's usually long timelines.
52:08
They they figured out how to create content on a scripted basis much quicker and much more cost-efficient where it's like Dhar is doing a lot of the writing.
52:18
Um they have a lot of just like part-time talent that comes in periodically and acts.
52:22
Uh and then they also just like figured out how to do this with their own sets.
52:27
So, they're not renting space.
52:30
Like they actually built their own sets in uh in in LA and they're just just reusing the same sets.
52:38
I mean, if you watch a lot of Dhar Mann videos, you'll see the school, you'll see the the movie theater.
52:40
Uh there's a there's like a gas station.
52:43
There's a lot of like staple sets that just continue to show up and they do a really good job just repurposing those sets. That's amazing.
52:50
I can't believe I remember seeing this guy when he was coming up.
52:52
I never a million years would have bet that this would have been a good one.
52:55
What What are What are some other businesses out there that you've seen that are just shockingly interesting?
52:59
So, this wasn't it it's not a channel that's a business yet, but I I stumbled upon it a couple weeks ago.
53:07
It's called Ryan Hall, y'all.
53:07
And he was a former meteorologist and it's like a channel based on just uh what weather uh is happening across the country, uh different things that you should know about like the hurricane season and how it's going to affect the the like the Southeast.
53:24
And you know, it's I I'd seen channels trying to do this in the past.
53:29
He's the first one that's gaining like tremendous traction and you can see it in the views per video.
53:33
You know, it's like two, three million views per video just on just talking about different weather patterns.
53:38
And this is this is one that could I think become pretty interesting long-term.
53:42
Whether he decides to build something on top of that and I'm I'm guessing it's like a very uh minimal team.
53:49
It's probably him plus an editor.
53:51
What is he doing because uh weather's so local?
53:54
People are like, what do I care about the weather in Toledo, right?
53:57
Unless there's a natural disaster.
53:58
Like, you know, what what do I care?
53:59
So, how is he How is he doing this? This is incredible.
54:03
More of like the talking about just the whole the things that you should know about tornadoes or these are the most dangerous uh weather patterns of the year or of the month.
54:13
So, he talks more holistically about just the entire industry.
54:17
It's not really localized.
54:17
I mean, I'm sure he could start localizing channels, but that becomes a much smaller opportunity.
54:23
You have to You have to make these videos appeal to everyone and he's done a such a good job of that.
54:28
But these type of like little niche channels that start to pull a tremendous amount of views pop up every single month on YouTube.
54:33
I mean, the vending machine one was something that I went down that rabbit hole. And farming.
54:38
I went down the farming rabbit hole as well.
54:41
What's the farming and vending machine ones?
54:42
Yeah, so farming, Cole the Corn Star. I'll hit you with a few.
54:44
So, Millennial Farmer is probably the one that I watch the most and uh I grew up on a farm.
54:51
And so, it wasn't that interesting to me because I had I know all the stuff that he's doing.
54:56
But for a normal person on the coast who has it doesn't know about, you know, cultivating or or anything like that, I think it's it's really interesting to them.
55:04
And so, he's one that's it's more I think appeals more to an older crowd.
55:08
Uh Cole the Corn Star is another one that probably appeals to a little bit younger demographic where it's a little bit more like pranks and things like that on the farm.
55:16
Uh and then Lauren Farms, a female channel also kind of showing like in the in the daily aspect um of just what do you do on a farm?
55:24
And so, there there really is a space for all types of content on the internet now.
55:31
That's why the the argument of the internet is so oversaturated, it's hard to break through as a creator.
55:36
Like I just have never bought that argument because on TikTok and YouTube Shorts, I'm seeing things that continue to break through on a weekly basis and then people are figuring out how to turn it into an actual channel that's profitable.
55:49
And we're seeing it with people like Ryan Hall, y'all, who you know, nobody would have ever thought that a channel about the weather could pull three million views a video, but yet here he is doing it time and time again.
56:02
Well, that kind of makes sense.
56:02
The one of the comments on Ryan Hall uh Ryan Hall's videos that said uh man, the Weather Channel has really lost his way.
56:08
I'm so excited that Ryan is is doing it this way.
56:10
Which is funny that someone like And that was actually the most upvoted comment, which means a lot of people pay attention to the Weather Channel enough so to actually like wonder if it's lost its way or not.
56:19
Uh so, it kind of makes sense where you can just look at like what are like For example, you could be like, well, Court TV.
56:25
Court TV has been around for or C-SPAN.
56:27
Some of these things have been around forever.
56:29
You could go and look at what the revenue is.
56:31
You could see like what's interesting about them, what's not interesting about them. Take a new spin.
56:34
So, Weather Channel's owned by It's that the guy in Hollywood, Byron Allen. I think he was an actor.
56:39
Now he's like one of the richest black men in America. He owns Weather Channel.
56:43
I think they still make like $500 a year in revenue. So, like great business.
56:47
We had um We were friends with this guy named John who who was the president of BuzzFeed and he told me he was like, man, if you look at CNBC, they only have like 50,000 concurrent visitors viewers on their on on the channel, but they make this much in revenue.
57:03
I'm going to create that app but for Facebook Live and he ended up launching Cheddar and sold it for hundreds of millions of dollars.
57:07
And so, like this is like a interesting strategy of just like looking like which channels have lived for 50 years and are doing good, but they're just kind of like been doing the same thing over and over and over again for a while.
57:17
So, it's kind of an actually an interesting strategy. Totally agree.
57:21
Like building a new weather channel I think is incredibly complex and complicated, but he definitely has the type of distribution that could start that business.
57:28
I think then it's just like he would need to find a partner to help him probably execute that.
57:32
But yeah, that's that's I think why I found that the channel so interesting.
57:37
Like I go to the Weather Channel.
57:38
I even have a widget on my iPhone that like pops up from it's like automated from the Weather Channel.
57:42
It gives me the weather every single day.
57:44
I was like, I would much rather download a Ryan Hall, y'all widget that like gave me the weather.
57:50
I'd much rather support that than the Weather Channel.
57:52
And so, yeah, I think there's a much there's a pretty interesting opportunity there for him. You'd made a comment.
57:58
You said something like you would bet that YouTube would be five times more valuable than any other platform combined in terms of value to from a creator's point of view of the type of business you can build on top of it.
58:10
Um You know more than I do, but Sean and I had made this argument like a year and a half or two years ago where we're like, man, Twitter's like happening in the tech field, but there's not really like a a uh what's the Kardashian lady the Jenner the there's not like one of the Jenner persons who have like launched this like Instagram business that became a billion-dollar company off Twitter yet.
58:33
But we think that there's going to be something there.
58:34
And then Sean was like, yeah, there's like the guys on the guy mafia on Twitter.
58:38
There's like the strip mall guy.
58:39
There's like the storage guy.
58:42
And they're actually like raising a significant amount of investor money to create some of these companies.
58:47
Do you Have you been playing around with Twitter and seen uh like some of the micro-influencers and the major difference is instead of like what you do, which is more pop culture, uh this is a little bit more B2B and and much older.
59:00
But have you paid attention to like Twitter and played around with the idea of one of these folks, whether it's like Sweaty Startup, our friend Nick Huber, who's got like a 400,000 following, about them building like pretty big companies on the back of Twitter as opposed to YouTube? Yeah, I've seen it.
59:15
I'm actually not surprised because I've I've been pretty outspoken of social platform, where do you build the most fan loyalty across social?
59:21
And I've seen that Twitter is at the top of the pyramid in terms of fan loyalty.
59:27
Like a a Twitter follower that will comment on your tweets is much more valuable than a casual viewer on TikTok or Instagram because usually like they actually care.
59:38
And so I think people are now starting to figure that out that oh, Twitter's actually incredibly valuable if you can start getting traction and start to get people that that really engage.
59:46
It's also it's an older demographic where I think the one thing that YouTube is really struggling with right now is, you know, yes, there's people like Ryan Hall and there's people like Millennial Farmer who are appealing to maybe a 20 to 30-year-old, but they're it's much more suited for an 8-year-old to watch content.
1:00:04
Whereas Twitter to me is like I spend most of my time on Twitter.
1:00:08
The people that I meet on Twitter like I would buy products from if they actually promoted something.
1:00:12
And so I just think that Twitter for me has been really interesting from just a fan loyalty perspective.
1:00:19
It's just the depth of the platform.
1:00:21
Whereas Instagram and TikTok to me have been more casual.
1:00:24
I I buy things on Instagram, but it's rare.
1:00:28
And TikTok is like my mind share.
1:00:30
It's like every single second I'm seeing a new video.
1:00:32
I don't even remember the names of the channels that I see on TikTok. They just come and go.
1:00:37
Like I and I when I'm at different events and I see a lot of TikTok creators, I I recognize them because I've seen them on TikTok.
1:00:44
I've no idea what their TikTok channels are, which is bad.
1:00:46
But I will remember like someone's Twitter at that I see and I'll be like, oh my gosh, that's at whatever it is.
1:00:52
I very rarely do I say that about TikTok.
1:00:55
And so I just think that the depth of consumers is just much different on Twitter.
1:01:01
Who would you buy a product from?
1:01:01
Which of the quote Twitter creators would you buy a product from?
1:01:05
Or rather, who are some of your favorite follows?
1:01:09
I mean, I met Blake Robbins, which we you know, did a podcast together. I met him on Twitter. That was how we met.
1:01:13
I thought his tweets were incredibly interesting.
1:01:18
I thought as an investor, he was talking about a lot of things that interest me.
1:01:21
And so if Blake would have sold anything three to four years ago before I knew him, I would have instantly bought it because he had he had built up that you know, loyalty.
1:01:29
I had that loyalty of like I not only agreed with a lot of things he was saying.
1:01:34
I thought it was really interesting to the point where I would take time to comment or like that tweet.
1:01:40
And I I have a lot of those now just that I follow on Twitter.
1:01:41
And then you get to like the of it that are getting hundreds of thousands of likes and I think you know, now then you have the bots and you have a lot of internet trolls and stuff like that.
1:01:51
But where Blake kind of sits is in the 30,000 follower range and a lot of those people care about what he's saying.
1:01:59
And then the word of mouth becomes really interesting where someone says, "Hey, I use an Eight Sleep mattress. It's changed my life."
1:02:07
If someone like Blake or you guys tweet that, I'm going to be like, "What is an Eight Sleep mattress?
1:02:12
I should probably figure out why they like this so much."
1:02:14
But if someone on TikTok is like, "Oh, my Eight Sleep mattress blah blah blah."
1:02:18
I probably just scroll past it and don't even think twice about it.
1:02:21
So that that to me is like something that I've noticed.
1:02:26
I tweeted out that I love Eight Sleep.
1:02:28
Like I I don't have any affiliation with them.
1:02:29
I just had one of their mattresses and I tweeted out how much I loved it.
1:02:32
And then right away their team reached out like, "Hey, can we do an affiliate deal or do you ever want to partner together?" I'm like, "No, man.
1:02:37
I'm just I'm just talking about cool [ __ ] that I like."
1:02:40
And so but they said they they said they they sold a lot of mattresses from that tweet.
1:02:44
Yeah, the people that follow you also can't afford the product.
1:02:48
They, you know, probably have been following you for a long time.
1:02:49
They trust what you say because you guys aren't shilling a ton of stuff constantly.
1:02:54
So when you authentically talk about a product like people pay attention. It's like Tim Ferriss.
1:02:58
Like I I I used to pay a lot of attention to what Tim Ferriss was using and talking about on Twitter.
1:03:05
Are there any other good follows that you that you have that you you could see launching a business and succeeding?
1:03:11
I mean, you guys mentioned some really good ones.
1:03:13
I it's not a platform that I pay a lot of attention to in terms of individuals like that could grow businesses.
1:03:19
I think I'm I'm much more suited for YouTube.
1:03:21
I live in the depths of YouTube every single day.
1:03:23
Twitter for me is like following people I know, you guys, my friends, like other people in the business here. But we'll see.
1:03:30
I I hope they're able to grow businesses on top of it.
1:03:33
I I have a lot of confidence in Twitter just as a platform to grow fan loyalty. What what about Threads?
1:03:39
We didn't ask you about Threads. I don't know.
1:03:43
If you guys look at the Google Trends for Threads, it's not looking good.
1:03:45
I also saw a graph this morning on daily active users for Threads that just like fell off a cliff.
1:03:50
And so It's it's But that's pretty typical, right?
1:03:53
I didn't have a lot of faith in it. But we'll see.
1:03:55
I don't think that I saw a lot of people talking about that and I think their takeaway is like, "Oh, it's not working or it failed."
1:04:01
But like that was always going to happen.
1:04:04
Even whether Threads was going to succeed or not, if they got 100 million people to download the app, any app, look at the Twitter app will do the same.
1:04:12
If you get 100 million people in a day to download the thing, you're going to churn like, you know, 80% of them won't just start using the app regularly, habitually right away.
1:04:20
So so to me, I see that and I'm like, this is completely normal and has like 10 it has no like that was going to happen either way.
1:04:32
There there was no chance that 100 million people are going to download it and 100 million people are going to keep using it next week.
1:04:37
That's no app in the history of mankind ever has worked that way.
1:04:41
And so the question is like, what happens I don't know three months from now once they get their kind of core base of users, does that start growing or not?
1:04:49
And well like there's no way to know until till then. Yeah, totally agree. I I haven't logged on.
1:04:57
I logged on the first day I downloaded it and haven't really been on since.
1:05:00
So I I There's also like you know, your talent to like keep an eye on it or what do you tell your talent?
1:05:08
No, we honestly don't care. It's up to them.
1:05:11
Most of them will download it and will post on it and see if they like it.
1:05:14
I think we're we'll wait like you said, it's going to take months to figure out if this is going to gain traction.
1:05:18
I think most of them are just going to patiently wait.
1:05:20
I don't think any of our talents going to fully lean into Threads.
1:05:23
They're they're better off putting their time into making amazing YouTube videos. We did this video.
1:05:28
Sean and I did this video like two weeks ago or a week ago where we were talking about how we liked that Zuck did this and we were team Zuck.
1:05:34
And Sean, we we officially have a new nickname.
1:05:36
I don't know if you saw this in the comments of YouTube, but we are officially now Zuck's cuck. That's plural. Both of us.
1:05:44
Zuck's [ __ ] They call us Zuck's [ __ ] Uh The t-shirts are getting printed. We should be all right.
1:05:51
I don't know like how we are his cuck.
1:05:53
Does that mean we are having sex with his wife or or is he having sex with our wife?
1:06:00
It's more like the mighty the mighty ducks.
1:06:02
It's like we're the we're the mighty ducks.
1:06:03
We're this this this the small group of people who really believe in this thing that everybody else kind of has written off or hates. Yeah, but we're a cuck.
1:06:11
So I don't know who's who's having sex with whose wife, but something is happening there of which we are involved in.
1:06:18
We are officially Zuck's cucks, which I'm okay with.
1:06:21
I I then yeah, I'm a Zuck cuck for sure.
1:06:25
Yeah, well, it once once they box or fight MMA, like I'll be in Elon's side of the the octagon.
1:06:29
So maybe it will we'll see. you really, bro? so.
1:06:33
I think I think you a largest a large sum of money that if that ever happens that Zuck would crush him.
1:06:38
I yeah, I guess I in terms of who would win, I mean, just looking at the pictures that Mark posted with Israel Adesanya and Volkanovski scares me a little bit if I'm Elon Musk, but I still like I got to support Elon. So win or lose.
1:06:52
Do you um Last couple questions, but what would you sell Night Media for right now? I wouldn't.
1:06:58
I created Night because I really enjoy it.
1:07:03
I mean, what would I do if I sold Night Media? Become an investor?
1:07:06
Like I already get to do that.
1:07:08
So I I like Yeah, but but there's there's always there's got to be a number.
1:07:10
What do you think it's worth?
1:07:14
Um man, I don't know to be honest.
1:07:17
Uh It it all depends on how you value the subsidiary labs businesses.
1:07:20
I mean, I could probably I know what the core management company is worth and what the subsidiary businesses are.
1:07:25
I think it's like where it can flex quite a bit. But I don't know. I enjoy it.
1:07:31
I I think if I if I sold Night, the acquiring business would have to make me the CEO.
1:07:37
Like if we sold it to an agency, like they would they would have to make me the the CEO of that major agency or management company because I actually enjoy doing this.
1:07:48
Like it's not something like I didn't start Night Media to sell Night Media.
1:07:52
I started Night Media because I was like, I really enjoy what I I really want to do this.
1:07:55
I I find fulfillment in it.
1:07:58
I have a venture capital fund. I get to invest.
1:08:00
I get to start businesses.
1:08:00
I get to be entrepreneurial. I get to be a manager.
1:08:03
I get all the perks of being a manager.
1:08:06
I I don't want to do anything else right now.
1:08:08
That might change in a few years.
1:08:10
Who knows like what time will do, but yeah, I don't know. I I wouldn't sell. We've had offers.
1:08:14
Like I just wouldn't sell it.
1:08:16
So What what hundreds of millions of dollars I would assume?
1:08:20
Low low north of hundreds of millions of dollars.
1:08:22
There's no chance in hell. That's that's wild.
1:08:25
That's a good You're in a good position to be in, right?
1:08:28
Yeah, I mean, there's just I feel like we're I said this on Feastables.
1:08:32
I I feel this about the whole company in general is we haven't even got started.
1:08:36
It'd be hard for me to to sell this thing with the amount of upside that I see over the next like five years.
1:08:44
I I could see a partnership of some sort.
1:08:47
I don't think I'd just fully sell it and walk away or have like an earn out over multiple years right now. Not yet.
1:08:56
Well, you raised 100 million dollars or you received 100 million dollars from Chernin in a separate fund to buy consumer businesses that you could then kind of like plug in YouTube distribution into something like that. I think that's the idea.
1:09:10
Can you explain the big idea there and what if you've done anything with that yet?
1:09:17
Yeah, so Labs will will start a business zero to one.
1:09:21
Feastables was started ground level, raise capital, hire the CEO.
1:09:23
Night Capital is more fixated on finding a business that's generating cash that maybe is doing 5, 10, 15 million dollars a year and we think we can come in uh probably buy a majority stake in that business, roll some creators or a celebrity onto the cap table and expand what that business is doing or just continue to grow that business.
1:09:46
It's it's very similar to what Shonduras is doing with cars and bids and did with Barstool and Hello Sunshine and all these other businesses.
1:09:53
Yeah, they've done that a ton of times.
1:09:55
Yeah, a massive opportunity for us to do it as well but just because we understand this creator ecosystem and just internet pop culture so much better than anyone else.
1:10:04
And so that ideally is like why why we did Night Capital.
1:10:06
We're not in a hurry to to do a deal.
1:10:08
I think the economy has been something that's scared us a little bit and everyone that did deals in 2022, I think is really regretting a lot of those.
1:10:16
Uh and so we're just patiently waiting for what that thing is going to be.
1:10:19
Well, dude, we appreciate you doing this. You're the man.
1:10:20
Um it's always I I like just hearing like what you're tinkering with.
1:10:24
You have a very uh interesting uh perspective on things. What do you think, Sean? Yeah, this was fun.
1:10:30
Um and I'm glad uh I don't know how well we stuck to our mission but I think we good.
1:10:35
Yeah, it was pretty good.
1:10:35
Uh we'll bleep out every mention um because this is the Zero Clout Podcast.
1:10:43
Zero clout chasing podcast and uh we have a no clout policy and we did not we did not want to do that.
1:10:48
Wait, but do we have to use his face on a thumbnail?
1:10:52
No, we're going to blur it out.
1:10:54
I think we have to put in like his face and then Reed's face next to it and blur out Reed's face and the thumbnail's like the man behind the scenes or something ridiculous.
1:11:02
I'll I'll let you guys figure that one out.
1:11:04
I mean, there's plenty of things that we talked No, you got to figure it out.
1:11:07
We don't know how to do it. We suck at YouTube.
1:11:10
No, I think you guys are killing it.
1:11:10
So No, our YouTube is we have way more downloads on uh on like the actual podcast uh you know uh iTunes and stuff like that. Uh we suck at YouTube.
1:11:18
I mean, I would argue that a listener on iTunes or Spotify is probably way more valuable than a single listener on YouTube in the podcast genre.
1:11:27
So I I think what you guys are doing is incredible uh and I I would continue to focus on listens across other platforms.
1:11:34
I wouldn't like hedge too highly on YouTube at the moment. I agree.
1:11:36
We've we've we like went hard on YouTube for like the last 12 months and now it's like oh man, actually the podcast number that just steadily grows every single week whereas YouTube it's a little it's a little lumpy. Yeah. I'm the opposite. I love YouTube. I think it's great.
1:11:52
I think I just like the comments, I guess.
1:11:53
I love it, too, but I I do think that I I consume your guys's podcast on Spotify.
1:11:58
So Yeah, it's I guess that's what you get used to.
1:12:02
Once wherever you consume it, you're like, "This is a good place for things."
1:12:06
And so yeah, you know, that's where things go.
1:12:08
All right, Reed, thanks for coming on, man.
1:12:09
Where should people follow you or find you?
1:12:11
Uh shout out wherever you want people to go.
1:12:14
we spoke a lot about Twitter, so it's just ReedJD on Twitter.
1:12:15
Um and then I I probably am the most active on Instagram in terms of like answering messages.
1:12:20
So uh same thing, ReedJD on Instagram.
1:12:23
So I appreciate you guys. Thanks for having me on. See you.
1:12:29
It is Producer Ben's last day uh last day producing an episode. This is it.
1:12:34
This is your uh your Michael Jordan shot against the Jazz.
1:12:40
Will there be a Wizards comeback? I don't know.
1:12:41
But but this might be your walk-off.
1:12:51
All right, here's the rules.
1:12:53
You can't say anything about next chapter or adventure.
1:12:54
I don't want to hear that.
1:12:58
And um you can't generically say you learned so much.
1:13:01
If you say you learned so much, you better tell us exactly what you learned.
1:13:05
All right, those are the rules for this speech. Okay, great.
1:13:07
Um so the next the next thing for me is basically focusing on how to take over the world, getting the podcast as as big as possible.
1:13:16
Speaking of things taking over the world with How to Take Over the World.
1:13:19
Speaking of like things I learned when I was here, I think um people talk a lot about focus, right?
1:13:26
And focus is maybe easier when things are not going well because if focus is about saying no, the world is like saying no to you.
1:13:32
But when things start going well, all of a sudden the world is like saying yes to you.
1:13:36
You have all these opportunities, right?
1:13:38
And uh so that was I think one of the things that happened to me early on when I came on My First Million.
1:13:45
All these people were like "Oh, Ben Wilson, the new hot thing. Do you want to try this? You want to do this? What about YouTube?
1:13:49
Are we should make some shorts. You want to do TikTok?"
1:13:52
And I was like, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes."
1:13:54
I want to do like all these things, right?
1:13:55
And so I had all these kind of half-finished projects that ended up not going anywhere because I was maybe a little too dispersed in my attention.
1:14:03
So now it's like, "No, no, no.
1:14:03
Just let's get the podcast to be one of the best podcasts in the world.
1:14:06
That's all I'm focusing on for the next year and then we'll see what happens after that.
1:14:19
There's nothing better quitting your job when you have the twins little alone even one baby.
1:14:31
What kind of what kind of responsible Mormon are you?
1:14:34
I don't know how what kind of decision was this? Reckless at best.
1:14:39
Well, I mean, it's it's not like I'm starting from zero, right?
1:14:40
It's not like I have an idea for a podcast.
1:14:42
Luckily you guys have um put me in a position where the podcast is doing pretty well right now.
1:14:49
So even if I have a bad year and and it doesn't grow that much, I I'll be fine.
1:14:53
And if it goes really well, then things will be great.
1:14:55
So it's a little bit of a risk but not an existential risk.
1:14:59
And do you have I don't know a message to the fans?
1:15:02
What do you How do you want to leave us here?
1:15:04
Where where where do you want to go with this?
1:15:06
So obviously the first message is go follow How to Take Over the World wherever you get your podcast. You'll love it. My man.
1:15:12
I guess um the the most important thing is thank you guys.
1:15:16
My life changed uh a year and a half ago when when you guys brought me on the show and I called it the ride of a lifetime but really like I didn't know if I would be able to make a living as a creator before you guys brought me on here.
1:15:32
Now now I know that I can do that at least in some capacity and so my life is completely changed. So so thank you.
1:15:36
This has been amazing and I've loved doing it and uh to everyone who has like supported me, been such a fan, cheered for me on the podcast, like thank you to you guys, the listeners, as well.
1:15:47
It's meant a ton and I've loved it.
1:15:48
So I guess that's the last thing.
1:15:50
I'm just very very grateful for this opportunity I've had.
1:15:52
The reason I didn't like celebrate you leaving cuz I'm like, you're not really going anywhere. You'll be around.
1:15:57
Uh you're just going to be unemployed for a little while and hopefully uh it works out but I'm sure it will be and I'm happy you kind of came in our lives.
1:16:04
Uh This is it's fun having you around.
1:16:07
I We're hiring for a producer, by the way. of.
1:16:12
We uh we sort of need a producer now. Yeah.
1:16:19
Uh so we're we're using one of uh Sean's Filipino assistants for a little while but I don't know if that's going to work out.
1:16:24
Um but yeah, My mom is trying to download Audacity this morning.
1:16:26
So we'll see what we can do. Yeah.
1:16:31
We So we need a producer but yeah, Ben, uh we love you and thank you for everything you did.
1:16:37
You uh you were mostly decent at a handful of things.
1:16:43
The I was like, "This was the ride of a year and a half. I got to tell you." Oh, yeah.
1:16:50
It was a leisure walk uh but it was fun enough.
1:16:52
Uh no, Ben, you're amazing.
1:16:54
Uh I I I still listen to all the pods.
1:16:57
So that's how I know that it's a good podcast.
1:17:00
you're doing this because we need more episodes.
1:17:01
Uh like if you go I've listened to all the episodes.
1:17:03
I just need more episodes. So this is good.
1:17:04
I'm glad you're doing this.
1:17:08
Um thank you so much for everything that you've done.
1:17:09
You've brought a lot of uh I don't know good support and good energy to to what we do.
1:17:13
You make it very easy for me and Sam because we just get to show up perform and then not think about it after like as soon as we hit done, me and Sam don't really have to think about anything and uh that's because of you and a bunch of other people behind the scenes and so uh thanks for everything you've done, man.
1:17:28
And we will all go in solidarity, the gentleman's agreement today.
1:17:31
You don't subscribe to us.
1:17:33
You go subscribe to How to Take Over the World. Fantastic podcast.
1:17:37
It basically talks about I don't know great conquerors and people who achieved greatness and great things.
1:17:44
Ben goes and reads like 50 books and then just summarizes it into one awesome podcast story, one hour, so you don't have to go read all those books and you get the story from him.
1:17:53
So it's an amazing amazing pod. Go go subscribe. Thanks, Ben. Talk soon.