The Mysterious Founder Behind $1,000,000,000 Celebrity Brands (#485)

0:00

So, here here's some quotes I'd like to read you, okay?

0:02

On blowing a hundred million dollars, quote, "It happens."

0:09

"When you talk about blowing a hundred million, I know cats that blew double that."

0:13

That's the second response.

0:15

He continues, "It can happen anyone." Which not a thing.

0:21

I don't think it can happen to anyone. All right, what's up?

0:31

We got a fun episode here.

0:33

So, we're going to do we're going to play a little game.

0:36

And the game is that Sam, I want me and you to go back and forth kind of like we do when we hang out if we were just back in the day when we both used to drink and drink a beer or two and we would just try to entertain each other sort of one up each other with stories and um I'll tell you a story a business story that I think is pretty juicy.

0:53

You tell me a business story that you think is pretty juicy and we're going to see who we're going to we're going to measure these on uh you know, to see who can tell the juiciest backstory behind celebrity brands.

1:03

Now, I texted you last night.

1:06

I go, "Celebrity brands but not the celebrity part, the juicy backstory."

1:10

And that's all we said to each other.

1:14

Like for example, uh we don't use this one, but what's the uh Kylie Cosmetics uh Kendall what's her name? Kylie Jenner. Kylie Jenner.

1:22

She has this lipstick company that does hundreds of millions in revenue.

1:26

She's obviously not the one like running the show.

1:28

She had a partner with someone she had a number two, a behind-the-scenes person.

1:32

We're going to talk all about behind-the-scenes people. Who is that number two?

1:35

How did they make this come about?

1:37

How did they get the celebrity partnership?

1:38

What made it work versus many others that failed?

1:40

Um who are these sharks that are that are behind the scenes? Who's the number two?

1:46

We're going I dare say we're going number two today.

1:50

And we're doing it live with all of you, all right?

1:53

That's how this is going to be.

1:54

And and we we will we rank it from raisin to grape with the wine being a 10 out of 10, grape being 9 out of 10.

1:58

I don't actually know what's the in-between stages of raisin and grape, but there's something there.

2:04

like a prune, like a raisin, like a grape, or is it straight wine?

2:07

That's how juicy this is. Juicy juice uh boxes.

2:11

That's how That's how good these can be. All right.

2:13

So, Dude, I have a I have a low juicy story I wanted to ask you or ask your opinion about before we get into this. Yeah, go for it.

2:20

This Listen, this weekend I went to Miami for this Hampton thing.

2:22

We went like lots of diving. It was awesome.

2:24

I was stayed at a very fancy hotel.

2:25

I'm not going to name the hotel yet cuz I want to see I wait wait till the end of the story. I was working out.

2:30

You know those cable machines?

2:32

Like it's like a cable machines where you use that rod like you use the rod to like change the weights at the bottom.

2:37

And you know how there's like a 2.

2:39

5 lb weight that's usually at the top that's like adjustable. Yeah.

2:44

I I was fixing the weight and the machine was broken apparently. I didn't notice it.

2:49

It was broken and that 2. rod that 2.

2:51

5 lb weight fell on my finger.

2:51

I have got my finger looks like a grape. Can you see that? Is it all purple? Yeah, I can see it. All right.

3:00

The question is is what type of petty court do we go to about this?

3:04

Is this just like Is this just like a free stay?

3:05

Like do I get my money back?

3:07

Is it like I want my money back plus like another free stay?

3:11

Well, you you have to find a way to talk where you're waving that.

3:13

Like you got to change your gestures.

3:15

So, like you got to have like this Obama style just justicular, you know, motions when you're talking cuz you need to see the manager that the manager needs to see the finger.

3:25

And the finger I mean, you're not You're not trying to wave it in their face.

3:29

It's just You just need to do one of those where you point at it.

3:31

You're like, What am What am I supposed to do about this? I mean, Yeah.

3:37

I need something for this.

3:40

This is the This is a off your property. Sure did.

3:45

Look, if I go to a fancy hotel, I expect a fancy gym, right?

3:47

Not like where the screws come out of the freaking equipment.

3:51

So, I've my finger looks like a grape right now.

3:53

It's like you know, it's one of those injuries that isn't you don't do anything with a broken finger, right? You do nothing. But god damn it hurts.

4:02

This is like when Willis Reed limped into game seven of the NBA finals from the tunnel and the crowd goes crazy.

4:07

They said, "No, it's not possible.

4:07

He couldn't possibly be playing with that injury."

4:09

That's how people playing this podcast today should feel about your ability to to push you know, persevere through that injury. I'm a blogger, bro. I'm a I'm a tweeter. I tweet.

4:20

And also, I can't exercise now for a week.

4:22

And that's how I make a living is with my seven out of 10 body.

4:27

That's how a cat feels when they lose one of their lives.

4:31

So anyway, maybe I'll have an update to the story.

4:32

Maybe I'll get a free stay to blank hotel name.

4:37

But we'll see if I can persevere with this just aching finger, but I think we I think we could do it. Do you want to go first?

4:43

Okay, so there's this woman named Emma Grede. Do you know that name? No. Emma Grede.

4:48

First of all, destined to be famous with a name like that. Emma Grede.

4:51

Grede like Grede like money Grede.

4:53

Yeah, but it's g r e d e.

4:53

Says a little bit like got her own got her own spin on it.

4:59

So, um she is the business shark behind a bunch of the Kardashian brands.

5:03

So, she was a founding partner in Skims, the multi-billion dollar shapewear brand for Kim Kardashian.

5:10

Her husband is the CEO of that by the way.

5:13

Uh so, the the couple is behind this.

5:17

The next one is um she co-founded Good American, the the jeans brand that's massive.

5:21

Uh probably does 300 million a year in revenue.

5:26

Um so, you know, uh with Khloe Kardashian.

5:28

So, she that's how she broke into that.

5:30

And then with Kris Jenner, she goes to the mom and she co-founds Safely, a uh plant-based cleaning product brand um with her and Chrissy Teigen.

5:39

And so, this woman she's so impressive.

5:42

Um if you've ever seen her A lot of people now have seen her cuz I think she's on Shark Tank this season.

5:48

So, if you like are into that form of like, you know, uh entertainment, you've you've seen her.

5:53

She's so she's super polished.

5:53

So, she's she's this woman who's half black, half white, super good-looking, British accent, and an absolute savage in terms of business.

6:03

This is what I've gathered from watching a bunch of interviews of hers.

6:07

By the way, did you see the recent raise for Skims?

6:08

I think Skims raised $200 million at a $3 billion valuation. Is that Yeah.

6:14

And she owns She owned 8% of that.

6:17

I don't know after dilution what she owns, but she owned 8% of that.

6:19

So, her stake in Skims alone is basically a multi-hundred-million-dollar stake.

6:25

Um forget about Good American, where she was like, you know, it was her idea.

6:27

She was the kind of the the CEO.

6:29

She's the She's the operator behind that.

6:31

So, here's You want to hear her story? It's a It's pretty good.

6:35

So, she's um She's daughter of a single mom, which is the start of every great uh entrepreneurial story, by the way.

6:40

Uh second thing, she She basically is like a hustler when she's young. She's got a paper route.

6:46

She's like working at a deli.

6:48

She's just working all kinds of like blue-collar jobs.

6:49

And she's like, "Okay, you know what?

6:52

I want to make it in fashion."

6:53

And so, she goes to the London College of Fashion.

6:56

And she's 14, 15 years old.

6:58

She's already like interning at Gucci.

7:00

She's like hustling her way into like these like low-level internships at fashion brands.

7:03

And she drops out because she's like, "Dude, I'm hustling on the weekends and after school like these fashion shows or in my internship, I'm networking with all these people.

7:15

I feel like I'm learning way more and building a way more valuable asset, which is my network, outside of school than I am inside of school." So, she drops out.

7:24

And she starts working for a couple of like She works for like a runway company.

7:28

And then she starts her own agency.

7:30

She's like, "Oh, okay, here's what I'm going to do.

7:31

I'm going to create this agency called ITB."

7:32

Uh she's 26 years old, I think, at the time.

7:37

And she's like She'd been hustling in the fashion industry, so now she's got connections.

7:39

So, she's like, "Hey, let me just be a dot connector."

7:41

And so she's like, "I'm going to connect all these fashion brands want to do collabs with influencers and celebrities, and I'll create an agency that does that for them."

7:50

So, you know, the way she kind of got her break was Calvin Klein wants to do a campaign for their new launch of whatever the new thing is.

7:57

She sources 70 different models and influencers for them, signs all the contracts.

8:03

One of those people is Kendall Jenner.

8:04

To do that deal, she meets Kris Jenner.

8:06

And so she becomes somewhat friendly.

8:09

Like they've done a couple of campaigns together. She's booked her out.

8:12

She has a little bit of respect.

8:13

So, here's what she does then.

8:15

She's like, "Okay, this model of connecting like using kind of celebrity influencers is working for these brands, but they kind of do it in a inauthentic way.

8:24

It's like only transactions.

8:24

Like when when you need the when you need them to promote X product, they show up and then they disappear. She's like, "No, no, no.

8:30

I think we should have a story and a celebrity at the beginning of these brands."

8:34

And so she has this idea for Good American, a denim brand that is I I don't know if you're how familiar you are with it, but it's basically like their thing is it's kind of like all sizes.

8:45

It's sort of like body positive early on.

8:47

And she was like, "You know, we're going to have we're going to carry like from size zero to size whatever, like 24 or something like that."

8:55

Imagine that pitch to one of the Kardashians.

8:57

So it worked because she's like I know, but like look, here's here's the thing, Khloé. She's like, "Why me?"

9:04

Well, Khloé, you might want to sit down for a second.

9:12

You have to say one of those things like, "Shit, I'm not racist, but it's like you know, I'm not trying to be offensive, but you're the perfect fit for this brand."

9:20

I don't know which one is Khloé, but they're all like obviously fit and skinny, but I she maybe she's like the She's the one who kind of went up and down in weight.

9:27

She was like at first she was like the big the bigger one of the sisters and she like had these like sisters who were like, you know, size zero. That was insecurity.

9:33

Then she got super super skinny, but then she like kind of, you know, naturally people's weight fluctuates. So.

9:40

Imagine that conversations with like Weight Watchers or like one of these brands comes to you, you know what I mean?

9:45

Or like Yeah, I'm honored to be Jamie Lee Curtis.

9:49

You know how Jamie Lee Curtis is the spokesperson for that yogurt company that makes you poop regularly? Uh what's it called?

9:56

Yeah, I don't know which one.

9:59

It's It's like a a yogurt that like elderly people are supposed to eat, so it makes them go to the bathroom like on a regular basis.

10:05

Like imagine like like we're going to call it Oops, I Crapped My Pants, and we we want you to be the face of it. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

10:15

If the money's green, what who cares? I don't care, you know.

10:19

There's no problem with this.

10:21

The uh So, she pitches Kris Jenner.

10:22

She goes, "Kris, I bumped" She bumped into her at a fashion week.

10:26

She's like, "I got an idea for a brand."

10:27

And she was expecting like, "Look, I know you guys get hundreds of offers, but she was like, I've already seen how much of a hustler you are."

10:33

She was like, "I observed the way you operate.

10:36

Like I already kind of like kind of uh cosigned this.

10:40

You should just meet with Khloé directly. See if Khloé likes it.

10:43

If she likes it, you already has my blessing."

10:46

So, she meets with Khloé.

10:46

Khloé's in, and they basically start this brand.

10:50

Uh brand has scaled up now into the hundreds of millions.

10:52

It's one of the the fastest-growing denim brands and jeans brands.

10:55

From there, she then approaches Kim, and she's like, "Kim, we should do a shapewear brand."

11:00

And her husband, who's also in the fashion industry, became the the kind of the the day-to-day person cuz she was busy with Good American, but they together create Skims, which becomes a multi-billion-dollar shapewear brand.

11:12

Then she does this one with with her uh with with the mom as well.

11:16

And so, I thought I just found this fascinating what this family is doing.

11:19

So, they basically have a hold co. The Gleeb family? The The Gleeb family? The Greed family?

11:24

Oh, so Jens Greed and Emma Greed.

11:26

So, they basically have a hold co called Popular Ventures or something Popular Culture or something like that.

11:30

Like he also did Brady, the clothing brand with Tom Brady.

11:33

So, they're spinning up these fashion and and and consumer product brands with A+ celebrities.

11:42

And they've built They're on the Forbes list now.

11:43

These guys have a like, you know, 450 500 million-dollar net worth just co-founding these with uh with the Kardashian family and with uh you know, Tom Brady and whatnot.

11:52

So impressive to have pulled that off behind the scenes. Uh And what's Frame?

11:58

They have another one called Frame.

11:59

Is that a Is that a different thing?

12:01

that the husband started.

12:03

They sell like $300 t-shirts.

12:03

I I don't I don't get it, but like, you know, Have you seen what they look like, this husband-and-wife couple?

12:07

It's hard to like them because They're so good-looking. They're like perfect. Yeah.

12:13

Like they're so good-looking.

12:13

They're both They both look like influencers.

12:17

reading it and I was like, "Yeah, but they probably don't have a good relationship."

12:20

I was like trying to find some crap.

12:21

I was like, "They might have cholesterol issues. You never know. Nobody's got it all." Yeah.

12:27

Yeah, but this guy probably broke both fingers, not even just one.

12:31

Yeah, they they're pretty perfect.

12:31

Like these guys look like influencers themselves. And so, uh all right.

12:36

So, where do you put Where do you rank on the juicy scale Emma and Jen's greed from prune to wine? Uh it's in the middle.

12:47

So, they're incredibly impressive.

12:49

This is amazing that they do this.

12:52

It's What's even more amazing is that like, so John Rockefeller had this famous uh phrase where he would uh when he was trying to buy other companies, he was like, "Look, you should you should join my oil company. I make so much money."

13:02

And they're like, "No, you can't make more."

13:06

He goes, "Look, I know I make money I make money in ways that you can't even dream about.

13:10

You have no idea how much money I make."

13:11

And that's exactly what the Kardashians are like.

13:13

Like, this Good American that's just this little thing I've never even heard of that makes hundreds of millions of dollars. That's amazing.

13:19

Um but there's no drama here, so I'm going to put it like right in the middle. A prune.

13:23

Does a prune have juice in it? I think it does.

13:25

I'm going to give it a prune. A prune's the lowest. Prune's the lowest.

13:28

Raisin is the middle that I think we're going with. Then it's a raisin. This is a raisin.

13:34

There's There's no drama here.

13:34

I need some drama, but this is These guys are amazing.

13:38

They're a perfect couple. I understand.

13:39

I tried to start with like, you know, raised from a single mother cuz that was really the only like story of of not just badass winning, um, you know, but uh the humble origin story, but I agree with you.

13:50

There was uh Like if you Google her name, there's like a picture of her and Khloe Kardashian posing with I guess one of their brands and they look like models.

14:01

Like I was like, is this the founder or or a model?

14:04

They They look like models.

14:07

This reminds me of I actually didn't do research on this guy, but it reminds me he is also in the Kardashian sphere, but have you heard of Brian Lee? The Honest Company guy?

14:17

Yeah, so Brian Lee So, do you remember who It's so weird.

14:18

Do you remember Robert Shapiro?

14:20

I don't know if you would remember him. Lawyer? Who is that? The lawyer. Okay. The lawyer.

14:26

So, basically Robert Shapiro was one of the guys I think he defended O. J. Simpson.

14:31

That's what he was famous for. Do you remember that? right?

14:35

No, so this is where it gets funny.

14:35

So, Robert So, the Kardashian family is famous because one of the Kardashians, I forget the name, the dad who's who's died, he defended O. J.

14:45

Simpson along with Robert Shapiro.

14:49

And Robert Shapiro, you know, he's a lawyer, big shot, probably smart guy.

14:53

He ends up partnering with Brian Lee.

14:55

Brian Lee's the the This guy did it in 2001, so Brian Lee was only in his early 20s.

14:59

He goes, "Hey, I have this idea for this legal company, but I need a celebrity to be the face of it."

15:05

So, somehow he called or he actually cold called Robert Shapiro and said, "Hey, do you want to be a partner on my new legal company?"

15:13

And he's like, "Yeah, come to my office. Let's talk about it."

15:14

And he woos him, it works out.

15:16

Well, that company is now called LegalZoom.

15:18

And it's a I don't know if it's quite a billion-dollar company, but it's in that range.

15:22

It's a really successful company.

15:23

And so Robert Shapiro and Brian Lee were like, "Hey, this worked.

15:27

Who do you else do you want to do it with?"

15:29

And Robert Shapiro was like, "Well, I got these friends.

15:30

You know, I worked with their dad, the Kardashians.

15:33

What if we worked with them?"

15:35

And so he does it again, and he creates this company called ShoeDazzle, which doesn't end up working out amazingly.

15:39

And it was actually pretty early.

15:41

This was in 2009 with Kim Kardashian. He partnered with her.

15:43

And it was like a subscription shoe company.

15:46

Didn't work out that well.

15:46

And his third company he did called The Honest Company, which I think they went public. Yeah, they are public.

15:54

And so he partnered with Jessica Alba for that.

15:58

And he ended up selling like I think $30 worth of his shares before it even went public.

16:01

Now he's doing it again where he co-founded another company with Derek Jeter, and it's a digital sports card collecting company.

16:07

So this guy Brian Lee has been doing the same thing, very similar to the Greed family of like in the Kardashian sphere and just like being the operator and uh he's a pretty amazing guy.

16:17

So Brian Lee's an interesting guy as well.

16:19

Uh Dude, we can pull up Honest Company's stock, by the way. Hammered.

16:23

Absolute Absolutely got hammered.

16:26

So it was when it debuted in 2021, it was at $20 a share. It's currently at $1. 40.

16:32

It is now only worth $130 million market cap. Is it really?

16:37

I think they do like 100 million in sales.

16:39

So it's I guess it's trading for one times revenue. Ouch.

16:43

It's kind of a great brand.

16:43

I wonder uh who's going to buy that.

16:45

I think I feel like that's a great target to to buy.

16:49

Yeah, it's an interesting one.

16:49

But this guy Brian Lee's been doing this stuff.

16:53

We'll put him in the same category, though.

16:55

That that's only a middle one.

16:56

It When you're with the Kardashians, it's kind of uh stacked deck.

17:00

Yeah, it's a stacked deck. Um You you do one. All right, I have one.

17:03

So this one's kind of uh popular right now, but there's a really interesting story behind it.

17:08

So Virtual Dining Concepts or is that what it's called?

17:11

Sorry, Virtual Virtual Dining Concepts.

17:13

So basically a couple of ago Mr.

17:16

Beast launched Beast Burger.

17:16

And the idea that I think they actually Did they tell us on the pod?

17:21

I think he he mentioned this on the pod, right? His manager. Uh yeah, I think so.

17:25

He was basically like, we had this idea and we went from like idea to executing in like such a short amount of time, which was a huge mistake.

17:30

I think he said it they did it in like 60 days or 90 days, something crazy.

17:33

But they partner with this company called Virtual Dining Concepts and they launch this thing.

17:38

Two years later now, it's like a show. So, Mr.

17:40

Beast is tweeting uh and he's actually deleted a bunch of the tweets, but he's basically said like, this company has ruined my reputation because the burger sucks, the quality control sucks.

17:49

Now, they are both suing each other.

17:53

So, that alone is a story, but that's not even the interesting part.

17:54

The interesting part is the guy behind it.

17:58

So, the guy behind it, his name is Robert Earl.

18:00

So, Robert Earl is interesting because in his early 20s, he started a company that was just It was just a restaurant.

18:07

It was I think it was like a medieval restaurant.

18:08

Have you ever like seen those on on like movies?

18:12

No, but every time I go to Vegas, I would stay at What's that castle one called the medieval castle?

18:16

It's like uh that terrible hotel.

18:19

That's where I would stay.

18:21

Well, it He started this thing, I think it was called Beefeater, and it was in England. He's from England.

18:25

And it was called Beefeater, and it was like a medieval-themed restaurant.

18:29

And so, he starts growing that.

18:32

And after a handful of years, like 10 years, he sells it, makes like $60 million, and he's like, "All right, what what what next?"

18:39

And so, his next thing is Planet Hollywood.

18:41

Do you remember Planet Hollywood?

18:44

So, Planet Hollywood was a restaurant concept where it was like, we're going to go big with all the stars.

18:47

So, his big stars were Bruce Willis, um Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and then like Demi Moore, Cindy Crawford.

18:54

He had like all the stars like aligned with this restaurant.

18:58

And he gave them all equity and goes, "You guys are going to be the face.

19:00

We're going to do Planet Hollywood.

19:01

You go to the restaurant and there's going to be like wax figures of all the celebrities, whatever."

19:04

It was a big deal at the time.

19:05

And he expands it and uh eventually goes public, but they expand way too quickly, and they eventually go bankrupt.

19:13

But it's still like it's kind of like a famous failure in that it actually probably could have worked but they expanded too quickly.

19:19

Then he keeps doing this though.

19:19

So he eventually buys uh He's a He's a concept junkie, this guy.

19:25

He's a concept This guy is a concept junkie.

19:27

Do you remember just brainstorming with this guy?

19:28

Like this guy would This guy would would not stop.

19:30

I feel like you I got to be I need to get in a room with Robert Earl and I need to have a brainstorm.

19:37

Well, he's really interesting and so now he's got this thing I think it's called um uh look up uh Earl Enterprises.

19:41

So he's got this thing now where he owns um they own like 30 different restaurants now and they do something like 500 600 million dollars a year in revenue.

19:51

And some of the brands are a chicken restaurant with Guy Fieri.

19:56

He owns a Do you remember uh Do you know uh Balducci like Italian sandwiches and like pasta restaurants? Yeah. Bertucci's.

20:03

It's like better than Applebee's a little bit, you know?

20:07

They're They're like They're like Barely better than Applebee's is the bar we hold and maintain vigorously for all of our customers.

20:13

Yeah, and that's like the thing.

20:13

Like none of them are like crazy fancy, but they're all like, you know, it's like $25 a meal type of thing.

20:18

But he owns a ton of them.

20:22

And so he's in all Not all of them, but many of them have a celebrity behind them.

20:27

And so he gets this idea when ghost kitchens start popping up with Uber and DoorDash starts popping up.

20:31

And so he gets his son to help co-found this new company with him and that's what Virtual Dining is.

20:36

And so he has one with um Barstool where it's like Pardon Pardon my cheesesteak. Pardon my cheesesteak.

20:43

It's a cheesesteak uh business.

20:44

And then he decides to do the same thing but except this time he does it with with Mr. Beast Burger or Mr. um It's called Mr.

20:52

Beast Burger or Beast Burger and it takes off, but then obviously they have the their their issues.

20:57

But he has still done it with a a ton of people.

20:59

So he's done it with Mariah Carey.

21:01

So he has Mariah's cookies.

21:02

He's done it with rapper Tyga, which is crazy to me that Tyga is even relevant.

21:08

But I think by the way Yeah, how does he have that much pull?

21:10

Well, Tyga dated one of the Kardashian girls, so maybe that's how I don't know.

21:14

He could walk into my house right now and I would say, "Hey sir, what's your name?"

21:17

I would not know who Tyga is. Um Yeah, it's weird.

21:21

So he has Tyga Bites, they have Part in My Cheesecake.

21:26

I need to meet somebody who's just eating Tyga Bites.

21:27

Like Who are the Who are the customers Tyga Bites saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

21:33

They are strong and yummy.

21:35

I think I think he's working on Hoobastank Hoagies.

21:38

Uh that's going to be the next one.

21:41

Yeah, I I don't know what the deal is with Tyga.

21:42

But he's done this a whole bunch of times where he has this like pretty massive empire and right now he's being sued and uh he's they said in the comment or they they made a comment and they're like, "Look, like a lot of people are complaining about Beast Burgers, but he goes, "That's just normal.

21:59

Like when you serve all these people uh and he's like, "Look, look at all of our restaurants, people complain. Look, it's normal.

22:06

People complain about all our But But the guy's got like a ton of stuff going on.

22:13

So he owns a casino, he owns uh Aladdin Resort and Casino and on the Las Vegas strip.

22:17

He still owns Planet Hollywood and they're trying to make it uh come back a little bit or he owns a couple of them.

22:22

He owns uh a soccer team, the Everton soccer team. Have you heard of that? Yeah, of course.

22:28

Uh yeah, and him and his wife live in a 25,000 square foot mansion in Florida.

22:30

I mean, the guy's a baller.

22:33

And if you if you Google him, he's like this old looking guy who kind of wears tacky shirts.

22:38

But he looks like a like a blast to hang out with.

22:41

He has a TV show now where he's like it's almost like uh what's that TV show called?

22:44

Like uh Everyone Feeds Phil where it's just like a dorky guy just like talking to restaurant owners and like learning about the local cuisine.

22:50

He's got one of those things.

22:52

So he seems like a That's his show? No, that's not his show.

22:54

It's like it's very it's very similar to that.

22:56

But this guy um Dude, these people who have these like sprawling empires where they're like, "Yeah, I own uh you know, Planet Hollywood, but then I got this uh I have this like, you know, juice brand, and then I have this hotel over here, and then I got like I own the soccer team.

23:15

Um Is that who you want to be?

23:16

I'm curious cuz I think some people really want that.

23:20

I'm not sure that I would want that.

23:21

That seems like just a lot of It seems like a lot Um It seems like a lot.

23:27

Yeah, like is that a goal of yours?

23:28

I definitely respect it from afar, but I don't think I want to be that that guy.

23:33

I think owning a sports team would be cool, but I don't want to own like 500 restaurants.

23:38

So, like he owns I don't know if you've even heard of any of these.

23:41

Asian Street Eats, The Breakfast Club, uh uh Bertucci's, I've heard of that.

23:45

Brio Italian Grill, Bravo Italian Kitchen, Chicken Guy, that's Guy Fieri's, Two J's, Cafe Hollywood.

23:51

Have you heard of any of these? No, not really.

23:55

They're all like restaurants that have like 10 or 20 locations, and like hopefully each location makes like $5 million, and it's like highly profitable.

24:02

Another guy who does this in the same similarish category is uh Tilman Fertitta. Do you know who that is?

24:08

You probably know him cuz he owns uh Houston Rockets, I think.

24:10

So, he I read this interview with him, and he goes, "I think I'm one of the largest companies in America that is fully owned by one person."

24:21

So, he owns 100% of the Fertitta enterprises, and it does something like $4 billion in revenue, $1 million $1 billion in EBITDA.

24:29

He owns like all these kind of He owns some, I guess, nice stuff.

24:33

He owns like some steak houses, maybe like Ruth's Chris, I think he owns.

24:36

But then he owns like Bubba Gump Shrimp and stuff like that.

24:41

Um But some of these restaurant brands, where it's like $30, $50 a meal, apparently they must be really profitable because I've read about a few of these guys, including Robert Earl.

24:51

I've heard about Tilman Fertitta. So, I don't know.

24:54

I guess it works, but it seems like a pain in the ass to deal with all these types of people. Yeah.

24:58

Uh let's move on to the next one.

25:01

Um Let's What's that one?

25:03

Oh, yeah, we got to rank that one on the juicy scale.

25:04

I'm going to give it uh I think that might also be a raisin.

25:10

Um partly out of revenge and partly because uh this guy owns a bunch of like mid-tier things.

25:21

And so I feel like I can't possibly rank him above I I don't want to eat at any of his products. Let's put it that way.

25:29

So, you know, so I do think that.

25:32

But I you know Wait, did did you go to but didn't you go to Chuck E. Cheese's this weekend? I did not. I wish wish I had. I did not.

25:40

I thought you said you were taking your kids there.

25:41

You're thinking of someone else.

25:41

I went putt-putt golf at this dude, it's hilarious.

25:45

These guys opened up a putt They just took a parking lot and then like a husband and wife just sort of out of plywood built a few holes and then they just charge you $10 to walk in that area of the of the parking lot and they'll give you a club. And my kids love it.

25:58

And we go there like you know, like twice a month.

26:00

It's an It's kind of this insane like uh business plan that makes no sense.

26:06

I think that makes tons of sense.

26:08

I mean, there's just no putt like it's putting without the green.

26:10

You're putting on concrete trying to get it in there's no there's not even turf? No turf?

26:16

There's a little bit of turf, but it's like the whole thing is very like the whole thing is like made of concrete.

26:20

So, you know, it's it's not a great not a great look. Yikes.

26:23

All right, what do you got? All right.

26:25

Um I'm going to do one that actually we've we did.

26:27

I was trying to do research for this and the best breakdown of this business was our own podcast like 2 years ago.

26:35

But the fact that I had forgot it means that everybody forgot it.

26:37

I'm going to I'm going to talk about Guthy Ranker.

26:41

So, these These are the geniuses behind a bunch of celebrity things.

26:45

Uh let me pull up my notes here.

26:46

So, um backstory for these guys Including one of my favorite books. Which one? Think and Grow Rich. Uh well, yes, exactly.

26:54

So, okay, so here's the here's the the way that the the business works. So, Guthy-Renker.

27:00

So, um one of the guys, Guthy, last name's Guthy, he's he has a business that's basically audio cassette tape um copies.

27:10

So, you have a you have an audio tape, you want to make 10,000 copies to sell your music or whatever, he makes the 10,000.

27:15

I think it was even called like audio tape duplication enterprise or some like that.

27:19

And uh it's a okay business, but then suddenly he gets a call from a guy By the way, I love names like that.

27:25

We should let's just start bringing that back.

27:27

I'm sick of the like cute that ends in LY, you know, like Tapely.

27:32

Yeah, I mean, I want Hampton. audio Yeah, Hampton.

27:36

Why isn't it trading a bunch of dudes talking about their feelings.

27:40

I tried to make Hampton a little bit like uh Jordan Belfort named his company Stratton Oakmont.

27:45

Jordan Belfort's the uh Wolf of Wall Street guy.

27:48

They're like That's who you want to model your company Well, it was like, "Why did you do that?"

27:52

He's like, "I don't know.

27:52

Like, I just thought of these two words and it sounded like an official thing."

27:55

And I was like, "I kind of like that."

27:57

Uh but I do I I do like like audio tape enterprises. Yeah, exactly.

28:08

Our software is the worst.

28:10

Have you heard of HubSpot?

28:12

See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually works gorgeous.

28:17

I think I love our new CRM.

28:19

Our software is the best. HubSpot. Grow better.

28:24

Okay, so he gets an order.

28:24

He gets an order for 120,000 tapes. He's like, "120,000?

28:27

Oh my god, who who is this?"

28:29

So, he calls up the guy, "Hey, I just want to make sure your order's correct.

28:32

120,000 or did you mean 12,000?"

28:32

He's like, "No, no, 120,000."

28:35

He's like, "I've never heard of you before. Who who what do you do?"

28:37

Turns out the guy is a real estate guy in Arizona, but what he started doing was he was like, "Oh, yeah, I was a real estate guy, but then I realized I could just teach people how to make money in real estate.

28:47

And it's going gangbusters. And he's like, "What?

28:50

How is this guy doing it?"

28:50

He's like, "I I just ran a commercial for 30 minutes about that I could teach people to make money in real estate."

28:56

He's like, "You can't do a 30-minute commercial."

28:58

And he's like, "Yeah, turns out that there was, as you like to say, an inflection.

29:04

And the inflection was that in 1984, the F- the FCC deregulated the ad limit.

29:06

So, they said, you know, before that, there was some rule you could only have like 12 or 16 minutes of ads per hour of TV. They removed the limit.

29:14

And so, now what people could do was they could just go to a channel and be like, "Hey, can I just buy like your 11:00 p. m.

29:19

slot for like five grand?"

29:22

And they're like, "Sure."

29:24

And they would just buy they would just buy the hour of television programming, and they would just run a giant commercial, an infomercial.

29:31

And so, Guthy hears this, and he goes to uh he goes to meet up with his buddy, this guy Rinker.

29:36

And he's like, "Yo, uh Rinker is working at his family's hotel resort at the time."

29:41

And he's like, you know, he's kind of like the pool and tennis guy.

29:44

He's just like sitting around doing nothing.

29:45

And he's like, "This guy ordered 120,000 tapes. This is amazing.

29:50

I think this might be a better business than the tape business.

29:53

Like, you know, then you know, rather than copy the tapes, why don't I copy his business?"

29:57

He's like He's like, "All right, so what do we do?"

29:59

He's like, "This infomercial thing, I think we could do this."

30:01

He's like, "Well, all right."

30:02

So, they go they buy every book they can read on commercials or like but there wasn't really even the word at the time.

30:09

Cuz again, the rule just got changed.

30:10

There wasn't even a category called infomercials at the time.

30:13

They start studying copywriting and direct response marketing.

30:16

And after a few days of just like cramming, Rinker's like, "I think we could do this."

30:20

They're like, "What should we start with?"

30:22

They're like, "Well, we could try the real estate thing.

30:26

But neither of us know anything about real estate, nor do we like have a passion for that.

30:28

Let's at least for this first one let's start with something we both the what's the common ground that we both think is like awesome?

30:34

Like, the the thing we became friends on was this kind of self self-help self-development personal development category.

30:42

So, This is like that sign that Cartman has when he's like coming up with an a startup idea.

30:46

He's like, "Look, step one, we're going to start up.

30:48

Step two, we're going to scale up.

30:50

Step three, we're going to bro down."

30:56

Or like when they're talking about stealing the underwear, they're like, "Steal underwear, then profit."

30:59

They're like, "Well, what What comes between What comes in the middle?" Exactly. And it worked.

31:03

Uh and actually that actually is uh that actually is how most startups work, by the way.

31:08

I I think you know, it seems like you're making fun of them, but honestly that's that's actually more true than the other way.

31:13

So, um so they go they're like, "Okay, we can uh they realize they can buy the rights to the book, Think and Grow Rich, one of their favorite books, uh because it's like it's such an old book that like the like the copyright or whatever had lapsed or some like that.

31:29

They could basically buy the rights to it for $100,000.

31:31

So, they scraped together their savings and they're like, "We're going to buy this."

31:37

And they buy it for 100 grand.

31:37

In the next 3 years, they make $10 million in sales off that.

31:41

So, like really awesome for them, but in the grand scheme of things it turned out to be like kind of like a just a base hit compared to what they then go on to do.

31:49

But what what year did they buy the book? In the '80s?

31:52

Yeah, it was uh like early It was kind of like I think early to mid '80s, something like that.

31:56

Um So, like 300 or 100 grand was like 300 grand.

31:59

So, it's like not a small bet for your first time go at it. thing leads to another.

32:03

In the infomercial that they create, they get Tarkenton, the NFL quarterback.

32:06

They're like, "Oh, let's get Anybody they saw that had mentioned they loved the the book, Think and Grow Rich, they're like, "Hey, come be a part of this infomercial."

32:14

And then if you want The whole infomercial's on YouTube. You can go watch it.

32:17

In fact, I want to do a break down a master class breakdown just on this infomercial, but um you can watch the thing.

32:23

And what they do is they don't tell you about the product at the beginning.

32:26

They're like, you just hear Fran Tarkenton being like, "You know, I always used to feel blah blah blah blah, but now I'm blah blah blah."

32:34

And And somebody else comes in and they're like, you know, "I was struggling, blah blah blah.

32:36

And then now I'm blah and they don't tell you what's the product that gave them that transformation.

32:43

Like, this is the genius of marketing is you you sell this benefit, this transformation.

32:47

You want people banging down your doors saying, "What's the pill?

32:49

What's the product that gives you that?" Right?

32:52

Like, this is the Ozempic thing.

32:52

How the hell you losing all this weight?

32:53

And it's like, "Oh, I take this thing."

32:56

Okay, you know, let me have it.

32:56

Let me have the magic pill.

32:59

And so at the end of the the video they say it's Think and Grow Rich.

33:00

They do $10 million in sales over the 3 years.

33:05

Uh by the way, this video on YouTube has like 900 views.

33:08

Uh like nobody is studying this thing.

33:09

It's crazy to me that a video like this would have so few views.

33:12

Um and they they tell the story around the book that the richest people in the world, you know, Carnegie, the Rothschilds, they wanted this guy to write this.

33:21

And so Carnegie commissions, what's his name?

33:23

Uh Napoleon Hill, to go study the the the four successful people in the world and find out their secret. And he did, right?

33:30

And so that's the that's how they sell this book. Beautiful.

33:33

In the infomercial, This is an awesome infomercial.

33:36

they have one guy come on who's a 24-year-old wunderkind.

33:38

This guy is just getting his He's on the up and up. Tony Robbins comes on.

33:43

A guy named Anthony Robbins comes on and talks about how he how much he loves the book. Unpaid, by the way.

33:48

They're like, "Hey, will you do this?

33:50

I heard you love this book." He's like, "I'll do it."

33:51

Does an unpaid spot and they're so blown away by his charisma on camera that they're like, "We got to be in the Tony Robbins business next."

34:01

So they go to Tony and they're like, "Hey, uh love your book.

34:04

We want to do the same thing we did with Think and Grow Rich but with your book." He's like, "Okay."

34:09

So they're like, "We'll brand it.

34:10

We'll figure out the infomercial, blah blah blah." They do it.

34:13

They create a program in 1988, the year I was born, called Personal Power.

34:17

And it becomes the best-selling self-help program of all time.

34:22

It does $20 million in year one.

34:25

And um you know, this goes on to just How old is I'm I'm looking at this I'm looking at this Tony Rob Tony Robbins has the original infomercial on his YouTube page for the for the personal power. How old is he here?

34:35

He's like 25 years old in that in that. That's crazy, man. He's got a huge jaw.

34:39

Yeah, he uh well he he had a a growth on a pituitary growth problem, which is why he all of his his hands, his teeth, his jaw are all so oversized.

34:46

He's a huge guy if you ever seen him in person.

34:50

I want a pituitary growth problem. He looks great.

34:53

He and he did it I think it I think he like it was causing him like to have secrete like 10 times more HGH than he was supposed to.

34:59

And then they removed it at the right time before he became like an actual like 9-ft over.

35:02

So like, you know, he got the benefits of of that thing.

35:07

It's a amazing amazing story. He looks awesome, man.

35:08

His jawline He looks like the ultimate Chad. He looks awesome.

35:12

He's got like charisma of a nice guy, but like the looks of a Chad.

35:16

That's that's like that's a killer duo.

35:18

You know, I thought that might be your takeaway from all the things I just said.

35:20

So I'm glad you picked up on the important bit.

35:23

So They do um By By 1990, now they're they're 3 years in.

35:28

They're doing 36 million a year.

35:30

They almost go bankrupt because the Gulf War starts in '91 and all television attention goes to that.

35:37

So the infomercial business just sucks and they have to basically fire everybody just to stay alive during that year because they were um infomercials are just not converting.

35:46

The war was was taking everybody's attention.

35:49

So then they go on and they're like, "Okay, here's our here's our model."

35:50

And I've watched There's again this uh the research for this was so fun.

35:54

The There's interviews with this guy uh if you want to Google it, his is uh Vande Vandebunt.

36:00

This is the guy who who joined really early.

36:03

He's been the CEO now for like I don't know, 15 years.

36:06

Really want to meet this guy.

36:06

I want to have him on the pod.

36:07

He's There's no interviews with these guys really out there.

36:10

They don't go podcast or anything like that.

36:11

But this guy, Vandebunt, went on um did a talk at some school, I think at USC.

36:19

And they chopped up his his talk into 1-minute clips.

36:21

And I must have binged like 45 1-minute clips last night of this guy. Love this guy.

36:26

He's got such a good attitude and was saying things but he's like He's like, "Look, here's here's our process. Real simple.

36:31

Like uh we find the market need."

36:33

Like, "How do you find it?"

36:35

He's like, "Well, if you see one person with good skin and one person with bad skin, trust me, there's a market need.

36:40

Like, you see some one person with brown teeth and another person with white teeth, that's going to be a big market need and I can just sell it to you by showing before and after.

36:47

So, that's the first thing."

36:49

He's like, "Then, we find the products and we try to license or own them.

36:52

Then, we tie them up to a developer or a celebrity or a story because nobody wants to buy from an ivory tower that says, 'We have the solution.'

37:00

No, they want to buy from a person who says, 'I figured this out.

37:03

I spent my life working on this and I figured this out.'"

37:06

And he's like, "We we marry the market need with the marketing technique."

37:10

And so, the the market first market technique they did was that infomercial technique.

37:13

That drove them for a long time.

37:14

And now, they've shifted to more like internet marketing um since then.

37:20

And like to do the like uh the television just the depths that they went to.

37:23

So, they were so early in this.

37:25

They're shooting these um these things for like, you know, all their brands.

37:28

Like, they created uh Proactiv, the acne brand with Justin Bieber as one of the celebrities and like these doctors as the celebrities.

37:36

Um they created Principal Secret.

37:36

They got this this actress Victoria Principal.

37:41

And um they were like, "Okay, we think this is good, but we don't know exactly how to sell this product."

37:46

So, you know what they did? They put her on QVC.

37:48

They're like, "Let's overpay to be on QVC."

37:52

They're like, "Is it going to break even?" Probably not.

37:54

But, at QVC, if you've ever seen how a QVC thing goes, they you can go backstage cuz during QVC, people are calling in to buy.

38:02

And he's like, "Basically, on a like 10-second interval, you can see what gets people to buy."

38:06

So, they did this almost as a study to test the content.

38:10

So, they have her talking for an hour and they can see what are the things she's saying that's causing the sales board to light up.

38:16

And they had they took a product that really wasn't working.

38:18

They went and reshot the infomercial with that intel of like what what lines and what uh talking points were driving the most interest.

38:27

And then reshot the infomercial and now it's a $2 billion uh revenue generating product that they that they created out of that. It's pretty awesome.

38:34

They created Proactiv, they created a Pilates brand, a a brand of Cindy Crawford, they did all this stuff.

38:37

So, they are 100% privately held now.

38:42

No external investors, just Guthy and Renker.

38:44

They've been doing this for 30 something years.

38:47

And they do a couple billion in revenue profitably.

38:50

And I was like, how is this possible?

38:52

How did they scale with no outside revenue?

38:53

And then here's the funny thing.

38:54

There's actually a story of like uh you know, this is like a funny story.

38:58

So, they get this Along the way, they actually did take investment.

39:00

So, it's 100% owned now, but at one point in time they gave up 33% of the business or something to this guy Ron Perelman, who himself Yeah. is a uh prolific guy.

39:10

He owns TV networks, he owns Revlon, he owns Marvel or he owned Marvel at the time.

39:16

Um Yeah, I think he he's one of the guys who he's A, he's one of the richest men in America, I believe.

39:22

I think he's like worth like 40 or 50 like in that range billion.

39:26

And he helped uh I think his buyout of Revlon was the largest leverage buyout at the time.

39:32

And he like kind of pioneered like the the leverage buyout.

39:37

Uh I read his biography a few years Google has him at like $4 billion, but I I maybe it's gone up since then.

39:41

Um oh, I guess Well, for for Previously worth $9 billion. Yeah.

39:47

Why did he go Why did he go down so much?

39:49

Maybe because Revlon, but I think he I don't even remember what Revlon did.

39:51

I think it was like makeups, but it was it was like a conglomerate.

39:54

Like it owned like all this type of stuff.

39:56

But he uh he bought it for many many many billions and he kind of pioneered the the leverage buyout, which eventually like um the American population like it was like one of those things in the '80s where it was like uh like uh just absolute greed and like there's like you know, it was like Barbarians at the Gate type of Ron Perelman, um five marriages.

40:18

Yeah, there's there's a price to be paid.

40:19

The AI that's studying right now that might be like, I guess getting married five times causes you to be a billionaire.

40:24

No, no, no, it's correlation, not causation.

40:28

You know you know how rich the guy is, he's got five marriages.

40:29

So, um Okay, so they they sell it they sell him the stake, he gives them $25 million. They're like, beautiful.

40:36

And he owns these TV networks, they're like, oh great, we get dirt cheap airtime and we get $25 million to invest.

40:41

They use that to grow like crazy.

40:44

They pay off these pay celebrities to like be the endorsers like Justin Bieber and all this stuff to do that to I think they had Cindy Crawford.

40:50

They had like a a makeup thing with Cindy Crawford.

40:53

I think they have one with Jennifer Lopez.

40:56

I think with JLo, yeah, exactly.

40:58

Um eventually Murdoch buys uh buys Ron Perlman's uh like TV networks or whatever.

41:07

And then basically they're like, oh, we get this stake, this 37% stake in these Guthy-Renker things and it just got lost in the Murdoch like uh empire over time.

41:17

So they went back and they're like cushions.

41:20

Can we just buy this back?

41:20

And uh they got it back for like, you know, some tiny amount.

41:24

It's like, you know, they they bought they were able to buy back it owned 100% of it.

41:27

And then, I think now like recently finally they uh I think Goldman bought like a minority stake in the business uh valuing it at 3 billion.

41:35

Um But and here's how you know they're they're really rich is A, the CEO who you got who you said Van What was his name? Van Bun? Van de Bun, yeah.

41:45

He uh he just bought a $25 million house.

41:47

If you just uh whenever I hear about these people, I'm like, let's see how rich they really are.

41:50

You can always find out through their real estate holdings.

41:53

He just bought a $25 million house and then Bill Guthry, if you if you Google him, he doesn't come up because of this business, he comes up because uh Prince Yeah, he let him live in his house just live in for a bit.

42:05

Yeah, he they lived in his estate.

42:05

It's not a house, it's an estate when they were like, you you homeless for a few minutes.

42:10

They like he they lived in his estate. Yeah.

42:12

So, and then also he owned a home that one of the Jenner uh the Kylie Jenner bought.

42:17

So, it all comes back to the Kardashian.

42:20

Yeah, they're they're everywhere.

42:20

At these guys' peak, they owned 35,000 toll-free numbers.

42:26

Their phone bill was $150 million a year. That's insane.

42:32

He's like, "Yeah, we did that."

42:32

And they're like, "Did you need that?"

42:32

He's like, "Well, we did it for attribution."

42:35

He's like, "We needed to know what converts better."

42:37

The way we did that was every time we would try a new variation of our content, we would give it a new number.

42:43

So, we could just attribute which number is getting the most calls and versus the spend, and that's how we did our performance marketing in the telephone days.

42:50

I thought that was pretty dope.

42:51

I was like But you're also you didn't even mention their most successful product that everyone who's listening who's at least 30 years old will know this product. Proactiv. They did Proactiv. They did?

43:03

They did like three times. Proactiv?

43:05

Yeah, yeah, that's the one they did with Justin Bieber, yeah.

43:07

Well, I think you didn't put enough emphasis. I needed to Pause, bro.

43:11

Yeah, they did Proactiv, which made like a billion plus. I I bought Proactiv.

43:13

I mean, everyone bought Proactiv. Did you use it?

43:17

No, I didn't use it, but uh I watched a bunch of those infomercials.

43:19

They They're They're infomercials are very entertaining.

43:22

Like, you could just watch it as a show.

43:23

Um and actually it was pretty interesting watching listening to their method.

43:27

So, he's like um He's like, you know, uh he's He always says the same thing.

43:32

He goes, "If you just come to me saying X, I can't I can't change the channel fast enough."

43:37

You could just tell that that's like the the guiding principle.

43:39

It's like, "You don't want them to change the channel."

43:43

And it's like, everything trickles down from that one principle.

43:46

So, he's like the slippery slope, baby.

43:47

You got to make them fall down that slippery slope.

43:50

like uh these guys come in and they start pitching me a cybersecurity product, and they've been doing it for like 7 years.

43:55

It's um you know, and highest they ever grossed is a million dollars a year.

44:00

And he's like, "Okay, so what's the product?" He's like, "Cyber safe."

44:03

You know, like uh we help make your your computers Computers are the new thing.

44:08

Um we make your computer safer so you don't get hacked and you don't have a virus on your computer.

44:12

He's like, "Oh man, I'm If I'm watching TV relaxing at night, the last thing I want to do is get stressed about my problem get stressed about a problem I'm not already stressed about."

44:19

Uh which is like, "Oh, now my computer's going to get a virus? I'm going to lose it?"

44:22

No, he's like, "I couldn't change the channel fast enough."

44:24

He's like, "But before they walked out of the meeting," he goes, "Hey, uh I got a question for you.

44:29

You know, we have this thing called need need greed vanity.

44:31

That's what we try to tap into."

44:33

He goes, "Um when you fix the computers to make them safer, does that also have any other benefits?

44:38

Like, does it make it faster?"

44:39

And they're like, "Oh yeah, for sure cuz you know, no viruses you can put it goes faster." He goes, "Mhm.

44:44

All right, come back next week and pitch me the fast thing."

44:46

They come back and then they launch this product called double my speed.

44:49

And and that business that had never done more than a million dollars in 7 years, all of a sudden does 75 million dollars a year at the time he was giving this interview, which was a while back, um for double my speed.

45:00

And he's like, "You know, I just He's like, I just He goes, "There's too many smart people and they're all They're like, 'How did you do it?

45:06

Did you do like internet advertising for this computer product?'"

45:09

He's like, "No, we did radio ads."

45:09

And it was just a radio infomercial.

45:12

He's like, "You know, I He's like, there's too many smart people online.

45:14

He's like, I don't want to compete in a knife fight unless I have a gun."

45:18

And he's like, "So, we went to the radio because really no smart people were advertising on the radio and we could just get a bunch of inventory for cheap and we could just create content that was better than the the current stuff on radio."

45:28

And I was like, "Man, this guy's awesome."

45:30

Um they were like, "How are they doing now with uh infomercials not being as relevant?"

45:36

So, he talked a little bit about it, but I don't know, there's not that much info out there.

45:39

Um but he goes he So, he's They were like, "How did you How did you make this a success?

45:43

You know, you you They're like, 'Vent This guy Whatever his name is Vandebutt.'"

45:47

Vandebutt's his last name.

45:47

And they were like, "Uh you joined at what revenue?"

45:51

He's like, "It was 12 million a year."

45:52

He's like, "What is it now?" He's like, "Uh like 1. 7 billion."

45:54

They're like, "Oh, amazing. You hear that?"

45:56

He scared The whole audience is like, "Wow, you know, that is amazing."

46:00

And he's like, He's like, "Yeah, when you say it like that, it sounds crazy."

46:03

He's like, "But, uh you don't see that far."

46:05

He's like, "When you're at 12, you can He's like, "What's that phrase?

46:08

Like, you can you can't see beyond the wall that's in front of you."

46:11

He's like, "When you're at 12, all you're thinking about is 25.

46:15

And you just There's some wall between you and 25.

46:17

And then you break through that wall, then 25 wants to get to 60.

46:21

And like, there's another wall to get to 60.

46:23

He's like, "You just keep doing that.

46:24

We just did that over and over and over again until you until you figure out like, you know, the the right thing."

46:29

He's like He's like "For 6 years, when we were doing the infomercial thing, we were so early to that channel.

46:33

We were just the best at that channel."

46:34

He's like, "Honestly, we didn't learn that much during that time."

46:38

He's like, "All the learning came in these like" He He says He says this funny joke.

46:41

He's like, um He's like, "There was some year where like, infomercials started to tank.

46:45

The internet started getting more popular."

46:48

He's like, "We had 30 million people that were on a reorder program."

46:52

Meaning, he's like, "Our business model is we get you interested in a product, you call up our phone, we pick up, and we tell you that that product's going to be great for you, and that we may have some other products that are great for you.

47:02

And actually, you know what?

47:02

If you do this right now, we'll keep sending you this product for the rest of your life."

47:06

He's like, "That's like the business model."

47:08

And he's like, uh He's like, "It felt like one day, all 30 million people on our reorder program called each other and were like, 'You know what?

47:14

Let's cancel this shit.'"

47:16

He's like He's like, "The when the world was caving in" He's like, "Then we had to get smart again and figure out like, oh, we haven't even had to fight to win in so long.

47:24

Let's figure Let's be smart. Let's figure this out."

47:26

And uh and he you know, I just think these guys have These guys have built an amazing business, and nobody really talks about them at least in our circles.

47:35

Well, they don't talk about it because A, like, it's not sexy.

47:37

I mean, the money part is sexy because like, when I Yeah, you make this sound so cool.

47:42

But, in reality, this probably looks like Workaholics.

47:46

Do you remember that TV show Workaholics?

47:47

Uh they're just sitting around making phone calls.

47:50

That's probably what the office looks like.

47:51

We're just a bunch of like morons like sitting in this shitty cubicle wearing like a badly fitting tie and suit like just answering these calls.

48:00

I mean that's like not that fun to do like on a day-to-day basis I imagine.

48:05

It's really fun when it's crushing it though.

48:08

Um They also don't get talked about because they're they've been around forever.

48:11

It's I looks like the company was launched in '88 and before that they were doing different stuff.

48:14

So they it's been around for 40 years now. Right.

48:17

Um but yeah, I love these guys.

48:17

I want to know what they're doing with digital cuz I remember like remember P90X?

48:24

Yeah, the workout program. I love P90X. That's another company.

48:26

It's called something Beach. What's it called? Uh Beachbody.

48:29

It's so they own they're just like Guthrie Rucker but they own like P90X style companies and they owned a bunch of them.

48:36

And I remember them Well, you know what they did? They they they pivoted.

48:39

Yeah, they to cuz the internet was like coming around and they're like we have to keep up.

48:42

And so now they have like a it's almost like a Netflix style business, isn't it? It's a subscription.

48:48

they changed the sales model from this direct response infomercial model to MLM.

48:53

So now they have Beachbody trainers and Beachbody associates that will sell people to join Beachbody, right?

48:58

So they get peop- people to post on social media that they've uh not only have they gotten in shape, they now work for themselves, they are independent uh and they're making more money than they were ever making before, and if you're interested in kind of hearing how you change the how you turn your life around like slide into the DMs.

49:18

And then they basically sell you that like you too should start selling Beachbody programs to people around you and you can make a lot of money and be fit.

49:25

Um and Dude, that's the worst.

49:26

That that totally like cuz I remember when I was in Australia uh when I was living there I didn't have a gym. We I did P90X. I did like I I did it.

49:36

I thought it was awesome.

49:36

But when you go the MLM route, it makes me hate you. Yeah, what's his name? Tony Tony Horton?

49:41

Uh Tony dude, Tony was ripped.

49:41

Tony Horton was ripped, man.

49:43

I I even even like his side characters when it was like, you know, whatever.

49:47

He'd be like the the chef the chef is here.

49:49

The the Russian blah blah blah.

49:53

Those are That's a great program.

49:55

I wonder what he looks like now. Is he still jacked?

49:57

Yeah, yeah, he's still jacked.

49:58

he has some Yeah, he looks great. disease.

50:00

He got some disease and then he kind of bounced back or something.

50:03

Well, he still looks amazing.

50:03

If you Google Tony Horton, he's 65 years old now. He looks great. Uh so, it worked.

50:10

Um but anyway, I'm a big I like these I like studying these companies.

50:12

I also like studying them because a lot of people in the tech startup world are like, "Well, this doesn't work anymore." And I'm like, "Wrong. It 100% does.

50:21

Maybe it looks a little different."

50:24

is what every D2C company is doing, right?

50:26

Like that's what they're The thing The first business I featured, which was uh you know, the the Greed family doing this with the Kardashian creating a shapewear brand with the Kardashians. This is no different.

50:36

You know, the cosmetics brand with Ken with uh you know, Kylie Jenner, there's no different.

50:41

What Guthy-Renker's been doing, they just used Instagram instead of an Instagram and Instagram celebrities instead of Hollywood celebrities and TV. It's the same model. Same same thing. So, this one's a great. You win.

50:52

This one's definitely the most interesting one.

50:55

Um it's incredibly fascinating.

50:55

One thing that I was trying to research that I couldn't find, and I think there's a a bunch of people in our world working on this, is everything that we've discussed, it's mostly consumer products.

51:08

What I'm curious is why this hasn't worked for a like a more of a B2B product.

51:13

So, in a weird way, we are this, but HubSpot is trying to do you're like a fish being like, "What is water?"

51:20

It's like, "Yeah, we are this for HubSpot." You know that.

51:23

Yeah, but we're not we're we're not the founders of the company, you know, we're not we're not like you know, we own we own maybe half Jenner in this case, right?

51:29

They basically Yeah, but Kylie Jenner owns 50% of that We you know, I I own 0. 1%.

51:39

And so, I don't own that much of HubSpot, but uh I remember they What What was the company that did this with the What was the Rackspace?

51:45

They did it with a guy what was his Robert Scoble.

51:47

They were early with that but I don't know if it worked out wonderfully or what happened to that.

51:52

But there's not I know there's a few other companies so there's Assembly Brands.

51:56

I work with this guy Hunter.

51:57

So we launched this thing called Viral Cuts where I own part of the company and it's like a agency that clips uh uh podcast clips but it's going to be small.

52:06

It's not going to be a multi-billion dollar company like this.

52:08

just did this with Shepherd is a good business.

52:10

It's like it's a business that fits our audience, right?

52:13

Every entrepreneur needs to hire people.

52:14

If you can hire talented people overseas for 10 times less, like this is like a no-brainer product.

52:18

So Shepherd was already working.

52:21

And then they bring me on and now I own a piece of that company.

52:24

Enough of a stake You are the Sydney Crawford.

52:27

I am the That's what I've been telling them.

52:29

And I was they looked at me a little funny when I said it but I you know, this is what I'm about.

52:32

And you know, since we joined you know, first it was Nick Huber was doing it with him.

52:38

You're No, you're more like the Khloe.

52:39

You're the you're the you're the Khloe. You're the Khloe, man. You're the Khloe. Oh, that was good. A+ uh about that one.

52:48

Um but it's the same thing.

52:48

Bring on kind of like a influencer to promote a B2B product and revenue all-time high last month.

52:54

All-time high this month, right?

52:56

Like it just keeps happening now every single month by doing that.

52:59

And so it's a I think it is happening more in the B2B space and that's why It's happening more but it's not nearly as common and I think it will be or should be.

53:08

big opportunity for sure.

53:10

Um the thing that the thing that's interesting so Austin Reef tweeted this out over the weekend.

53:13

I don't know if you saw him say this.

53:15

He said uh D2 I think he said D2C though.

53:18

I think he said every like e-commerce company is going to have a content creator that's high more highly paid than many the executives.

53:25

So he says over the next 5 years every D2C business will have full-time content creators on staff.

53:30

The best will be comped more than the execs and drive more value than anyone else in the business.

53:35

The math is going to make sense to hire, build, and invest in creators who could become a part of your company narrative versus spinning off one-off influencer campaigns.

53:42

The key difference between be between a creator and a social media manager.

53:46

A social media manager just creates post content.

53:50

A creator is the content.

53:50

And of course, the best companies will be founded by creators like Happy Dad, Feastables, Prime, etc.

53:57

When people hear creator, they think of Mr. Beast or Logan Paul.

53:58

I'm not referring to famous creators, just people who create content full-time.

54:03

And um this is something that we're seeing with our uh D2C business, but in general, I think this is I think you just need to take out the word D2C. Right?

54:11

Dharmesh had the same insight.

54:11

He goes, "Every software company is going to have its own media company." Why?

54:16

Because creating your own media is going to bring inbound is going to bring inbound leads um and it's going to be more a more efficient channel than doing outbound paid ads.

54:23

Or it's going to be And Dharmesh is sort of like that with HubSpot.

54:27

I mean, like people like it actually our most popular episodes are Dharmesh.

54:30

Uh so, he's like pretty much doing that for his own company. Yeah, exactly exactly.

54:36

Um okay, you want to do you have more or you want me to do one?

54:40

You want to do one more or Let's do Scott Storch. Yeah, okay.

54:43

I wasn't sure if that was in the same category, but I want to talk about him.

54:46

So, here's another version of the guy behind the scenes.

54:48

The the engine that makes the thing work.

54:52

We did it with business, with D2C products. Well, how about music?

54:56

So, uh this guy's going viral recently uh for a bunch of TikToks because he's got an amazing story.

55:02

This guy Scott Storch, he is a producer now and he's like he's like out of the keys like left the cave.

55:08

He's a producer, he's a songwriter and he's famous for a couple of things.

55:12

He produced some of the biggest hits like, you know, Still D. R. E.

55:13

You know the little piano keys at the beginning of Still D. R. E.?

55:18

That's Scott Storch was sitting on a piano, did it, and Dr.

55:20

Dre was in a kitchen eating a sandwich, poked his head in and he goes, "That's it."

55:26

Um and that's how Still D. R. E. uh the track happened. I love those stories. I love those stories. He did Candy Shop. He did Naughty Girl.

55:33

He did a bunch songs with everybody you can imagine. Beyoncé, Dr.

55:35

Dre, 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Justin Timberlake, Chris Brown, all of them.

55:38

Um he has amassed a fortune of about a hundred million dollars doing this as a producer behind the scenes that you didn't know about that was just killing it.

55:49

And he's also famous for blowing all hundred million because he got he got addicted to two things, spending and cocaine.

55:55

And um and he was basically he just partying too much, blowing through all his money. And now he reset.

56:00

So he he you know, he went to rehab, got clean, declared bankruptcy basically, and came back.

56:06

Um you know, and now is is is trying to rebuild again.

56:09

And so this guy's story I thought was pretty crazy.

56:13

What do you know about this guy?

56:15

Yeah, so he did a bunch of interviews lately where he was like, "I was spending two, three, four, five million dollars a month."

56:21

He was like, "I had houses that I forgot about."

56:22

He said, "We had this one house."

56:24

And he goes, "I had a five thousand dollars worth of like glass figurines that I had a party "So you were collecting like cars or shoes?"

56:32

He goes, "I collected everything that could be collected."

56:34

He goes, "Stuff I didn't even care about."

56:36

I was like, "I had a million dollars of crystal figurines."

56:40

He's like, "They I had a party and they fell over and we just like sweeped them up in the dustpan."

56:44

He goes, "I had a five hundred thousand uh I had a five hundred thousand dollar crystal bottle of perfume."

56:48

And the guy the guy was like, "Do you even wear it?"

56:52

He goes, "Nah, some drunk girl at a party knocked it over and broke it."

56:58

And he's like, he had a four million dollar pinky ring.

57:06

If you think you're balling and you don't have a four million dollar yellow diamond pinky ring, uh like you need to step down because Scott Storch has has it on.

57:14

He is a character in Grand Theft Auto because he's so prolific as a guy in Miami who's like, you know, in in the scene.

57:21

There's this one uh story uh from 2013 where he says he spent something like a hundred million dollars.

57:26

One one says thirty million dollars, one says a hundred million dollars in six months.

57:31

Uh he's like, "Cocaine, houses, and cars." Yeah.

57:35

Uh, and he just went hard.

57:35

Uh, so like, I love stories like this, by the way.

57:38

I like it because it hopefully this will have a happy ending.

57:42

But I just love people that fly close to the sun, man. I just love it.

57:46

cuz he dropped out of ninth grade. You know that?

57:48

So, he dropped out of ninth grade, and you know how he made his original like how he broke onto the scene? No.

57:55

He was the keyboard guy for the Roots.

57:58

So, he's in ninth grade, he drops out, teaches himself how to play the piano, um, and he's like, "Yeah, he's they're like, you didn't take any courses?"

58:05

He's like, "No, I couldn't afford a class."

58:07

He's like, "I actually enrolled in one class, but I couldn't afford to get to it.

58:10

So, I was like, "Ah, I guess I'm just not going to like, you know, I just I'll just try to sit here."

58:14

He's like, "I would I'd have a a a tape player, and I'd put it on the piano, and I would hear it."

58:19

He's like, "Then with one finger, I'd be like trying to recreate what I just heard."

58:23

He's like, "And I just did that until I could learn how to play the keyboard like by ear."

58:27

He's like, "So, then he discovers the Roots before they were big.

58:31

He joins them, and he's the only he's you know, he's the white boy in the Roots.

58:33

And they're just going and playing like literally on like corners.

58:38

And like he's like playing on the corner, he'd go you you know, they'd go down to New York, and they would play for a day, and then come back to Philly.

58:44

And he would just do that all the time.

58:45

The Roots start getting popular, they get signed.

58:48

But then he leaves the Roots, and they're like, "Why do you want to leave the Roots?"

58:50

He's like, "Man, I heard that's that white boy from the Roots one too many times, and I he's like, "They don't even know my name."

58:55

He's like, "I'm going to go create my own music."

58:58

So, he he's like, "I'm going to create my own music."

59:01

Through the Roots, he had met Dr. Dre.

59:02

So, he goes and he hangs out with Dr. Dre.

59:05

And Dre's like, "Yeah, this guy's got talent."

59:06

And so, he he makes some songs with Dr. Dre. And Dr.

59:08

Dre at this time is the biggest producer in the world.

59:13

He's the most high-in-demand guy.

59:13

So, Scott Storch makes his hundred million-dollar fortune, as he says, off the eating crumbs at the end of the table.

59:21

So, basically, Dre would get a project, and he's like really picky.

59:24

He's like, "I'm I'm just going to I'm not going to do just anything."

59:27

He's like, so he would just take all of Dr.

59:28

Dre's reject projects and do them himself and made a hundred million dollars doing that.

59:35

Dude, how how good is Dr. Dre by the way?

59:37

The fact that like when when Eminem came around, you know, he wraps about it.

59:41

He's like, you walked in with a yellow jumpsuit and you're a white guy and everyone was like, dude, you can't you can't play with this guy.

59:45

What do you What do you can't white rappers? That's ridiculous.

59:47

If you Google Scott Storch, my wife's from Long Island, so I've got to know a bunch of Long Island people.

59:52

This guy looks like there's the Long Island medium and then there's Scott Storch in terms of like in like the way that they look in terms of stereotypes.

59:59

He looks like the most Long Island guy ever wearing like Ed Hardy t-shirts and True Religion jeans. Yeah. And Dr.

1:00:05

Dre like sees past that and like sees talent. That's pretty amazing. Exactly.

1:00:08

And then he even says that.

1:00:10

He's like, Dre's number one skill he's like, he's very technically talented, but his skill is he can hear 10 things and he'll tell you which one is hot.

1:00:19

He's like, we'll play the same thing five different times and he's like, number four is the one that sounds the best.

1:00:23

And he's like, Dre just has that ear for what's good.

1:00:26

And what's hot, what's next, and what's different, what's unique, what's singular, what's going to stand out.

1:00:31

He's like, I never had that to that extent.

1:00:33

He's like, but you know, I was good I I was able to get good enough where I could still make, you know, hundreds of hits.

1:00:38

He would get paid a hundred grand to do a single track and he would do 10 a week.

1:00:43

And and when and you know, in his prime.

1:00:46

That's what he was doing.

1:00:47

That's how he was making his money.

1:00:48

So he's like, dude, I'm just rolling in money here and then he stopped working.

1:00:51

He's like, I'm just going to party now.

1:00:53

He's like, the problem was like, I was spending like I was still making money, but I had stopped working three years ago and I was just spending money like crazy and um yeah, this guy's So here here's some quotes I'd like to read you, okay?

1:01:07

On blowing a hundred million dollars, quote, it happens.

1:01:13

When you talk about blowing a hundred million, I know cats that blew double that.

1:01:17

That's the second response.

1:01:19

He continues, it can happen to anyone. Which is not fair.

1:01:25

I don't think it can happen to anyone.

1:01:27

And then he says, and then he says, you know, I grew up a poor kid and then all of a sudden I have infinite money, I have no I have infinite options, and I just didn't know how to say no.

1:01:33

Um So then he uh they were asking about like, you know, how do you make a hit song?

1:01:39

And he just goes, like, you know, in the in the real estate game it's location, location, location.

1:01:43

In the music game it's melody, melody, melody.

1:01:46

He goes, it's melody, melody, melody.

1:01:48

If you can make a memorable melody, that's that's what it it takes to make a hit song.

1:01:51

And that's what I focused on being able to do.

1:01:56

Um so yeah, this guy Scott Storch is a prolific character.

1:01:59

Well, he he he'll be back.

1:01:59

I mean, I feel like if you have that skill, you can make it work uh for you can make it work for a while, right?

1:02:06

I mean, it's just it's very similar to marketing.

1:02:07

If it's it's like if you understand what what motivates people and gets them to get gets them to act, whether it's dancing or buying something, you'll you'll come back.

1:02:13

Have you ever met these guys like like they'll be guys like, "Oh man, I just uh I got a hold of all these old rookie cards for this baseball player who's about to die.

1:02:24

We should like go and buy all of them for 50 grand and like hold on to them for 3 weeks and then resell them."

1:02:28

Or "I just got this old like, you know, supply of like DVD players. It's only 50 grand."

1:02:32

Like they're always into schemes.

1:02:34

Like you I always meet these guys who like love these schemes.

1:02:38

Every once in a while it works out.

1:02:38

And this is like a guy Scott Storch who's like you'll you'll meet this guy and you're like, "Dude, you're an idiot.

1:02:45

No way that's going to work.

1:02:46

Like quit trying to scam me."

1:02:47

This is one of those guys who's made it work.

1:02:50

You know another guy who did it that way was the Dollar Shave Club guy.

1:02:53

You know, it actually Dollar Shave Club came to be a thing because he like saw a discount on like a container of like cheap razors.

1:03:00

And he's like, "Fuck it, let's just buy these."

1:03:02

Yeah, he's like, "Let's just get these cheap razors and just figure out how to sell them."

1:03:05

I don't know how we're going to do it.

1:03:06

I think his father-in-law like had a deal on like 50,000 razors and he's like, "Uh screw it, let's just do it."

1:03:13

I've met a bunch of these people like this for some reason it's always a Long Island thing, by the way.

1:03:17

And uh And Scott Storch is a is a uh for everyone out there who's just scheming on these types of like weird weird things, this is your hero.

1:03:29

Um you know what I'm talking about?

1:03:29

You ever meet these guys?

1:03:30

And they always have some weird hustle going down in there.

1:03:33

Yeah, I was one of those guys.

1:03:33

Counting cars, I'm trying to win the Monopoly game at McDonald's.

1:03:36

Uh you know, we uh we're entering contests.

1:03:39

We realized that most people don't enter contests if there's any work.

1:03:42

So like um my buddy Dan was amazing at this.

1:03:45

I actually wrote him off and then later learned this guy's a genius.

1:03:50

He freshman year, this guy lives three doors down from me.

1:03:55

And um we're like, "Yo, we're going to we're going to go get food."

1:03:57

And then like we're like, "Who are we waiting for? Where Where's Dan?"

1:03:59

And we like go to his door we're going to his room.

1:04:01

We're like, "Dan, let's go, man.

1:04:03

We're supposed to we're we're hungry." He's like, "Oh, hold on.

1:04:05

Um the deadline for this contest is in like 30 minutes. I got to I I'm out."

1:04:09

And I'm like, "What contest?

1:04:12

Why are you entering a contest?"

1:04:13

And um like Duke is full of like kids who play by the book.

1:04:15

And Dan never really played by the book.

1:04:18

He was like he had his own little book that he was playing in.

1:04:21

And so, you know, he he's like, "Oh, this is Stride gum?"

1:04:27

He's like, "Stride gum will give you free gum for life if you can make a commercial for like a 20-second commercial that's like cool for Stride gum."

1:04:33

So he took a little like flip cam.

1:04:35

Like it wasn't even smartphones back then.

1:04:36

He took one of those flip cams and he basically like filmed this commercial of himself in his dorm room being like, "Whatever. Stride gum.

1:04:42

The best goddamn gum in the world."

1:04:45

And he's like doing this commercial. He submits it.

1:04:46

He's probably one of three people that actually like read the fine print, submitted a did the work to submit a commercial with that that filled in all the things. And guess what?

1:04:56

Stride gum for everybody for the rest of college, right?

1:04:58

We had free Stride gum forever. Really? He won? another one.

1:05:00

He's like um Wait, what type of package did the gum come in? What's gum forever?

1:05:03

Like they literally just send you a box infinite amount basically.

1:05:07

Um like he could just keep ordering but some some limits.

1:05:10

Um they needed another one for this sandwich shop called Spicy Pickle.

1:05:15

They're like, "Hey, we're renaming our mascot."

1:05:16

And of course, Dan's all over there trying to rename the mascot.

1:05:19

I'm like, "Dan, you do you even like this restaurant?"

1:05:22

He's like, "No, but you I want to win."

1:05:23

And I'm like, you know, he's like the definition of like play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

1:05:28

But he has so much goddamn fun doing it that you're like, "Ah, I kind of wish I was doing this like Dan."

1:05:33

And so, he renamed So, the mascot currently for Spicy Pickle is a pickle who's a spy called Spy, the letter C, Pickle.

1:05:43

And he's got a business card and he's a spy that will help you out. And that's Dan.

1:05:46

Dan created that character.

1:05:48

And then we go we go to like the ceremony at a Spicy Pickle headquarters.

1:05:54

Uh, and there are like 20 people in a circle cheering, clapping for him, and they hand him a big check that says like free sandwiches. And he wins.

1:05:59

And so, he just kept doing these things. And Dan's from Jersey.

1:06:04

And um, and I feel like he just always had this thing which was like, "I'm going to win like I'm going to play these like I'm going to find these random edges and I'm going to win.

1:06:14

Like I'm going to just find these little arbitrages and I'm going to just constantly exploit them."

1:06:18

Dude, we should do an episode on this because have you read about the guy who did it with Snack Pack like put pudding cups?

1:06:24

Like you remember you know like pudding like hey, so they they ran this contest that says like I forget exactly how the contest worked, but you could like if you pulled off the tops of the pudding and like lick it, it like said like you won this much in free airline miles.

1:06:40

And there was like some contest around it.

1:06:42

But this guy did the math where I'm just I just had to Google it now to remember exactly, but he only had to buy I think $3,500 worth of pudding, which is like a significant amount in terms of like how much space it would take up in your room.

1:06:54

And he like had all this pudding and he peeled all the packs and he was able to redeem it for 1.

1:06:57

2 million miles airline miles.

1:07:00

And he like gamed the contest.

1:07:03

And there's I like at the Hustle we used to do this of people like gaming these contests.

1:07:07

There there's like a bunch of people there's this community of people who go and find these contests and they're like all right, where did they make the mistake where if you follow this exactly you could actually like milk it hardcore to the extreme and there was a guy who did this with pudding.

1:07:22

pudding. So he basically it was it was basically you get a thousand miles for every 10 labels and the because the whole thing was like for some reason this pudding is supposed to be healthy and so they said that if you eat a lot

1:07:35

of it it's good for you and we're going to reward you by giving you a thousand miles for every 10 labels and so the there was $2 a piece he figured out that he could buy them in bulk and he's like here's this arbitrage where it's profitable and he did that where he got 1.2 million miles for $3100.

1:07:47

2 million miles for $3100. Wow.

1:07:49

There's a Netflix show about this about about a different version of this the some guy trying to do this with a I think he had to buy cans of Pepsi or something like that or Coke or something to do airline.

1:07:57

There's some show I haven't I haven't watched it yet but I saw it show up on on on Netflix.

1:08:05

Yeah, then there's the McDonald's one.

1:08:06

There's a a McDonald's one too where they where they like was just a scam.

1:08:09

They just They scammed it.

1:08:10

Yes, but it is fascinating.

1:08:12

I I do like reading about those.

1:08:14

They're always fun stories.

1:08:14

We should one of these days we'll do an episode of all these people who have just gamed the system.

1:08:18

We used to do that at the Hustle all the time where we would give I forget what it was.

1:08:21

would give I forget what it was. It was like one email subscriber to us was worth $10 and if you referred like 10 people we would send you a t-shirt which was a profitable thing for us and if you Google the Hustle Affiliate Contest all of these moms have there was mostly like a stay at home mom website and it's called like coupon dash or like some of the well all these websites where it's

1:08:42

just people who enter contests and they're like hey look here's another one you can win a free pair of socks if you if you refer 50 people and it was like referral like rings and we would get all of these people doing this and we'd and we would catch this and we're like why is like this like 38 year old woman named Cindy winning all of our prizes we've never heard of her she's won all this stuff. What's going on? And you like can figure What's going on?

1:09:03

And you like can figure out that they list your contest on these websites and they game it like crazy.

1:09:09

It's it's a pretty wild thing.

1:09:09

So, we had to create like a double opt-in system because they just figured out they're like You see them talking about like, "Look, you don't even need to opt-in your email.

1:09:15

So, you can just write You'd be like, "Sean plus one at aol.

1:09:19

com, Sean plus two at aol. com." And you just win.

1:09:23

And so, that's when we had to change it.

1:09:25

But, like I That's how I learned a little bit about this underground world of like sweepstakes, they call it, I think. Yeah.

1:09:29

Yeah, sweepstake hackers. Uh amazing.

1:09:31

All right, should we wrap it there or do you want to do any more of these? We'll wrap it there.

1:09:35

So, I think the order of greatness the least interesting one, I think it was either mine or the hot couple.

1:09:47

The second The perfect couple.

1:09:49

We got to put the perfect couple down there cuz they've been winning at everything their whole life.

1:09:53

Yeah, it'll go perfect couple and then Robert. Yeah.

1:09:56

The perfect couple is the worst.

1:09:59

Cuz actually this dude really does feature sort of like ugly winners.

1:10:07

Like the sort of like more ugly and like, you know, slightly shady you are, the higher you seem to rank on My First Million.

1:10:16

I don't know if that's intentional or unintentional, but it it definitely definitely happens.

1:10:20

Yeah, so the hot people, they're you're last.

1:10:23

Uh And then we'll go Robert Earl and then the one above that is uh Ooh, Scott Storch is going to go number two.

1:10:31

Gutter Raker, number one. The juiciest.

1:10:34

But, Scott Storch is interesting, too.

1:10:36

But, Gutter Raker, I think there's more to learn. All right. So, that's it. That's the pod. Mhm.