My First Million: Billion Dollar Ad Arbitrage: Opportunities Hidden in Plain Sight

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now.

HubSpot just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell.

And they break down why these pitches were winners or losers.

And each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find Another Bite on whatever podcast app you listen

to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

Basically, I think he said they sold like half a million dollars worth of chocolate off

this ad and like within a couple of weeks or something like that.

So it really like jumps.

Are you changing anything you're doing right now because the economy just sucks ass right

now?

No.

What do you mean the economy sucks ass?

You mean the stock market sucks?

The normal people economy, yeah, the economy for muggles.

Well, I don't even think that's that because they're still like the normal people economy

is like restaurants, bars, grocery stores, like taxi drivers, stuff like that.

Then there's the stock market.

So there's like Main Street, there's Wall Street, and then there's like Crypto LSD

Land.

I've spent all my time at Crypto LSD Land, so I don't pay attention to either Main Street

or Wall Street personally.

My three worlds are going through craziness.

Real estate, increase rates, I wonder what's going to happen in the next six, 12 months.

Startups.

So like these startups that you and I all invested in like six months ago, huge valuations.

They had a lot of work to do to live up to it.

And funding is now way harder to get just in like three months, like the macro environment

changes in two months.

And then finally, public equities are just in the shitter.

This sucks, man.

I feel bummed.

Yeah.

The guy, I think we both have the same guy at whatever Morgan Stanley or whatever.

And he'll just text me and be like, hey, tough market bubble.

I'm like, bro, I'm not even looking at this.

Why are you texting me about this?

You know, I appreciate him checking in and making sure that, you know, everything's okay,

but I don't need to be reminded because I'm not, I don't pay attention to that anyways.

I'm too knee deep in my own world.

That sucks.

My trainer has a phrase for this, he calls it Caesar's world.

He's like, we, there's like, you know, you've ever heard that phrase, leave, leave unto

Caesar.

What is Caesar's?

I don't know if you ever heard that, but it's basically like, that's a good one.

There's kind of like the external, it's like the stuff that's a out of our control and

be like, you know, the world can be going crazy.

That doesn't mean I need to go crazy.

Like people are outraged about this.

That doesn't mean I need to be outraged about that.

And so sometimes I'll be telling him something and he's like, Caesar's world, bro.

I have to remember, oh yeah, like I'm putting my attention and energy into something that's

a outside of my control and be like, doesn't really matter.

It doesn't actually affect me.

It doesn't shouldn't be affecting my current mood and I got to remember, you know, how

to keep what's what.

No, I've gotten better, but it still sucks.

I just got done speaking at a conference.

You know who Neil Patel is?

Yeah.

The marketer guy.

Yeah.

He was hosting a conference dude.

I bet you that guy is just wildly wealthy, like cash wealthy and he's been in the game

forever.

Do you know this Naval book?

What's it called?

The Almanac.

Yeah.

So it was, you know, it's on Naval, but it was written by this guy named Eric.

What's his last name?

Jordan.

Yeah.

Dude, I saw him at the conference and he came up to me and he goes, hey man, what's

up?

And I go, oh, hey, Eric, I've read your book.

You're awesome.

He goes, yeah.

Nice to meet you.

You're, you're way smaller than I thought you were going to be in real life.

I was like, I was like, did you just, did you just nag me?

Yeah.

Can I have your number?

Like I was immediately attracted to him.

How do I win your approval?

Yeah.

I need to win your approval dad.

That's my own condition in life right now.

Dude, he just nagged me so hard and he's like six, six.

Did you know that?

Oh, that's why.

Okay.

Gotcha.

He big dogged you.

Yeah.

He big dogged me hard dude.

He nagged me so hard.

I was like, oh, I like that feisty.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's what, that it does happen and when it does, it really rocks you because

you're so, you're probably so used to seeing her in the opposite.

Oh, you're way bigger than I thought.

Oh dude, you're, you're jacked.

You're tall.

You're whatever.

You know, you're amazing.

And for someone to be like, oh, dude, is this mini, are you Samson?

Yeah.

He just snagged me.

He's just so hard.

He got me.

I, dude, I've got a bunch.

I've got one interesting topic today.

What do you got?

Let's start there.

Let's start with my thing.

Yeah.

Start with yours.

So you're a 33, 34 year old guy.

So you probably haven't been to the doctor in like 15 years, but men don't grow the doctors.

My wife's gone and I'm sitting here doing this podcast.

I'm wearing flip flops with one foot has a sock on and underwear that's inside out because

I didn't want to do a laundry.

So like, yeah, I mean, I'm a grown child too, but so listen, have you been to the doctor

like with your wife or kid and notice that there's like these TV screens in there?

I have.

Like in the waiting room, you mean?

In the waiting room, but also like in the doctor's office, like in the actual medical

like in the room.

I see me in the waiting room, but I'm Kaiser and those guys are cheap as hell.

So they don't put them in the actual doctor's office.

Yeah.

Kaiser is Kaiser's is zone network and hospital.

So they, they wouldn't apply to this.

But basically if you go to most like an independent or like a normal non Kaiser doctor, there's

TV screens in the waiting room.

There's TV screens in the hallway and then oftentimes now they've got TV screens in the

doctor's office.

And so have you heard of this company called Outcome Health?

I've heard of this once before, maybe from you know, I think it's actually from our buddy

C. Ava.

And I'm just going to tell you three words I remember, $100 million, basically like

waiting room TVs.

And there's Indian dude who's the founder.

Those are the three things I kind of know about.

Yeah.

Well, you're missing the fourth word, which is fraud.

That's four years ago.

So maybe something has come out since then.

So I'm going to tell you about this business and I actually think that it's kind of like

pretty morally corrupt, but it's interesting nonetheless.

And the business model is actually good and interesting, but the guy who ran this particular

business sucked.

So basically it was called Outcome Health.

It was started by this guy named Rishi and he was out of Chicago and he was like this

wonderkin prodigy, whatever, raised money at a five or $10 billion valuation, promised

that he had or said he had 160 million in revenue.

Turns out that was nonsense.

It wasn't true.

And so he got sued and it didn't turn out well at all.

But listen to what their business was.

It's actually pretty kind of, again, unethical, I think, but fascinating.

So basically, do you watch, do you ever watch like cable TV?

Yeah, of course.

So it's like all Toyota commercials and like pharmaceuticals.

Right.

Back to the earlier point, Dodge Ram.

Yeah.

It's like Dodge Ram and like Cialis.

And that's one of the reasons is like on Google and on Facebook and stuff like that.

You can't really advertise pharmaceuticals or at least the rules are a little bit different.

And so pharmaceutical companies are advertising like crazy on TV, something like 80 or $8

billion last year spent.

It's like the third largest category.

And but they spend like way more.

So of the 20 million spent on pharmaceutical ads, like 15 million of that is spent billion

is spent in the doctor's office.

And so they do that by like giving them free samples, by giving them like those like mugs

and pens and just like shit like that, just like swag.

And so this guy came up with this idea where basically he puts a TV in the doctor's office

and the TV is like touchscreen and it's free for the doctor and it does some things like

they could like put like like the person's chart on the TV or it's like interactive and

like, all right, so your foot's broken and if we zoom in here, it's this bone and but

when you're not using it for that reason, it's an advertising thing.

So it like shows ads and they're not selling the ad to the consumer because the consumer

is not the one whose choice it is of what drugs are going to get prescribed.

It's the doctor.

And so the pharmaceuticals go to outcome health and they say, here's the 50,000 doctors who

were trying to reach, show me which of those you have your TV in in their office and help

us reach them and we'll pay you a lot of money for that.

And theoretically, this guy was full of it in like the fourth year of business, he was

like, yeah, we're making like $160 million in ads and pharmaceutical ads.

And now outcome health was eventually acquired by another company and they're actually doing

it legitimately and they're making it over.

They're properly making over $100 million and it's all from pharmaceutical ads on these

freaking screens.

What was he lying about?

He lied about which doctors yet or he lied about the revenue like they just didn't have

$160 million J and J Johnson and Johnson, their executives and their ad sales people

would go to these doctors and they're like, wait a minute, this fucking company told us

that there's TVs here.

I don't see a TV anywhere and like it happened like dozens of times like, dude, you said

that there was TVs and our ad was being seen by this many people.

It ain't happening.

And so they basically just lied.

They just said that their TVs were in all of these rooms.

They just thought that no one was going to check.

And so their TVs weren't actually there.

And so they built and but they were building Johnson and Johnson on showing their Cialis

ad or whatever to, you know, but it wasn't actually happening.

Wow.

So he lied.

But also pretty crazy put the TV there.

What a stupid reason to lie.

Go get the TV at the doctor's office.

It's not that expensive or hard to do to get a TV in a doctor's office.

I just think it's crazy though that like this business model is like crazy fascinating though.

It is kind of a good business model, but I think it's the whole pharmaceutical industry

advertising is kind of like bullshit.

You know what I mean?

It's it's like someone someone's going to do this for like so we saw we talked to that

company that was doing this on top of putting screens on top of Uber Uber cars, which I

I was totally against.

Like I thought that business wasn't going to work.

Was I right or wrong?

Did it work?

I think it looked like we were wrong because they raised a bunch of money.

But again, who knows?

Maybe there's maybe it's a, you know, we got a Rishi Rishi in Chicago situation again

here.

So I don't know.

But that company did pretty well, neither of us invested in it.

There's other versions of this.

So the question is like, what are these captive audiences where you can go stick, you can go

create an ad network, right?

So it's like, there's like physical places.

So like, I don't know, high schools, colleges, like what can you just go put this in every

dorm like in the country and then be like, Hey, you want to reach college kids?

There's no more effective place than this because like, you know, every three minutes

we give out like a free, you know, code for like a Snapple from the vending machine.

And then the other, you know, two minutes are just straight ads.

And so it's like, you know, can you find captive audiences in other ways and create a network

of like some highly desired, like person, like the key would be, you know, could you

somehow, could you somehow do this around like, I don't know, stay at home moms, probably

not because there's like, they're spread out.

Like that's the thing with doctors office is like, there's, there's a smaller number

of them that you need to like get the screens of high value.

There's this company called Cheddar.

Do you remember Cheddar Cheddar was basically like the hustle.

If it focused on all the weird shit, instead of just like the substance and then somehow

sold for $200 million.

That's my take on Cheddar.

So you're, you're forgetting the worst component is that it was entirely built at first on

Facebook live.

So right when Facebook came out with Facebook live, this guy named John Steinberg, who's

a nice guy and he's a, he's a bulldog.

This guy is like Ari Gold.

Like if he sees what he wants and he's like a, he's like a missile, he just, he just captures

on it and he just goes straight towards it.

So anyway, this guy launched this company called Cheddar and the content was shit.

And somehow they got like the pitch, right?

So here was his pitch and how he raised a bunch of money from investors.

He said, very similar to what you said, Hey millennials, Gen Z, these guys are not trying

to watch, you know, CNBC or MSNBC or, I don't know, whatever the finance channel is.

I don't even know it.

That's CNBC.

The pitch was CNBC only has like 20,000 concurrent viewers or viewers at any given point, but

it makes like a billion dollars a year.

Right.

And they're all on Medicare.

Okay, so how do you, how do you get like Gen Z millennials?

They're not going to watch that.

What are they going to watch?

And he's like, social media, social media, right?

And all the VCs have nod their head.

He's like, that's, do you have a teenager?

Do they watch CNBC or do they watch social media and everyone's like, social media.

He's like, and guess what?

They now have live video, Facebook has live video, Twitter has live video, YouTube has

live video.

So we're going to create CNBC on social media.

And they basically created a 24 seven, like TV, TV show that was business news that would

just be streaming all day onto Facebook live, onto Twitter live, onto like YouTube live,

onto all these different platforms.

And it was John and his co-

That in itself is amazing.

Building 24 seven is crazy.

24 seven is crazy.

So that is amazing that he could even pull it off.

But there was one factor that he kind of screwed up on, which is like, no one wanted to watch.

Yeah, everyone just rolled right past it.

Yeah.

No one.

And so he's like, he executed a bad premise wonderfully.

Yeah.

10 out of 10 hustle, two out of 10 idea, because guess what happens on social media?

You don't stop and watch live video for 40 minutes.

Like that's just not what happens on most social media.

And so, you know, it just didn't really work.

And you're right.

24 seven, it was kind of boring because this is not 24 seven worth of like interesting

mess when it comes to that stuff and he raised money.

I think he raised 40 million and somehow a cable company bought it for 200 million dollars.

And he told me I met with him and he told me one time he was like, yeah, so I'm going

to start this company.

And in two years, I'm probably going to sell it for two or three hundred million dollars.

He just told me and he just called this shot and he's a bulldog and he nailed it.

He's an unstoppable force and he pulled it off.

But now what they do is if you go to a gas station, you don't even go to gas stations

anymore.

No, dude, dude.

I guess.

Yes, I do.

If you'll see Cheddar all on their little screen.

That's right.

And so they're like owning like this weird market of people who want to play like Jeopardy

while they're pumping their gas.

Like, you know, it's like Snapple Snapple Facts while you're while you're like your

gas.

So they've got the gas market.

Well, who was it that we didn't we meet somebody?

I mean, it was just me.

I met somebody recently who was like, yeah, you know, the gas station, those screens like

I own the ad inventory of like these like in these three cities, like I'm like the kind

of main guy.

So like, you know, how do you think I should sell these ads?

He's like, I that's what I own.

I own this inventory.

And I was making money.

I'm sure he was doing OK.

But he was like, you know, what would you do?

And I was like, I was like, well, the people who want this ad is like the local businesses,

right?

Because they have like look, you can actually send them like local foot traffic better than

like a Facebook or a Google or these like scaled easy to use ad platforms.

Dude, selling local ads is the worst, though.

There's like these like San Francisco based.

I remember I had a couple of San Francisco based Yelp friends and they were like they

were like, like, like, have you seen that scene in the get rich or die trying with 50 cent

where he's selling drugs and like one guy goes up to one of the drug dealers and tries

to buy like some crack but with like quarters and nickels and the drug dealer smacks it

off his hand and if he goes, hey, man, come here, I'll take it again.

It was like, see how hard I hustle that was willing to take the change.

And like the Yelp is like that version of ad salespeople like they would like find like

a pie shop and sell a four hundred dollar ad.

You know what I mean?

And they're just grinding to get that done.

All right.

A quick message from our sponsor.

You know, I was thinking about the shortest day of the year earlier.

And while we technically have the same amount of time as every other day of the year, the

lack of daylight makes it feel so much shorter, which is exactly the same kind of feeling as

working with disconnected tools.

Our work days, the same length as always.

But before you know it, we spent three hours just fixing something that was supposed to

be automated.

Thankfully, HubSpot's all in one CRM platform can serve as a single source of truth for

managing your customer relationships across marketing, sales, service operations with

multiple hubs and over a thousand integrations and easy to use interface HubSpot lets you

spend less time managing your software and more time connecting with your customers.

Learn how HubSpot can help you grow your business at HubSpot.com.

There's just guys in the Yelp sales office, dude, I would watch a twenty four seven feet

of Yelp sales office because those guys are the grimeist grittiest sales people on earth.

They will shake your local pie shop down and be like, hope you don't want this review

that I just posted on your page.

Go fucking write a horrible review on your page and they call you tell you to go look

at it and then sell you a premium plan that will get that ad removed.

It's like the craziest thing in the world.

Yeah, dude.

It's a racket.

And like that's what.

Put grandma on the phone.

Put her on the phone.

Grandma.

Stop faking pie.

We got a problem on Yelp.

You got to pay.

They're basically like the mob, like do you want protection and they do something bad

if.

From what?

From us.

Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

They are like a mob.

Totally.

Totally.

It is crazy.

Local ads suck, man.

I've got friends who want to start like local ads or local newsletters and I'm like, yeah,

you're going to get tons of eyeballs.

The problem is monetizing that sucks, man.

You got to deal with like, you know, like Bob's steaks and chops down the street and

like, he's like, well, I'll give you like 30 pounds of filet mignon and it's just hard.

I cut this great deal for Milk Road.

So I was like, okay, what's our fill rate?

I think our ad fill rate was like 75% or something last month.

It was 75%.

Yeah.

And I was like, Ben, what?

I was like, what do we do with this other 25% and he's like, he's like, dude, you know,

he's like, we actually got hit up by a couple of brands that you have said you liked on

the podcast.

And he's like, they were just like, yo, we'll take any ad that you don't have that day,

but we'll take it at 40% of the list price.

And I'm going to give it to you in store credit.

It's like the worst deal.

It's like, you know, I'm getting checked down by Yelp here, but I was also like, I kind

of love that product.

So yeah, like let's do it.

And so like, I have like, you know, like right in front of my front door right now, I have

like, like, you know, pallets of fit aid because I just like ran a fit aid ad for them.

And it's like, well, here's, you know, $2,000 of fit aid, you know, in exchange for that

ad.

Thank you so much.

And so I'm like, all right, great.

My gym has like, you know, energy drinks for the year and that's done.

That's actually pretty smart.

And it's really smart on their part.

It's smart on their part.

And Ben was like, yo, tell me like the five or six products you're like, you love the

most.

He's like, I'm doing mine too.

And like, we'll just, we'll give sweetheart deals to all these companies.

Like if we, if we actually want their free product, like we really want their free product,

this is a great way to do it.

And he's like, it's a great deal for them too.

They just get this like ad hoc remnant inventory.

I told you this off air, but when the hustle started in order to get advertisers, did you

notice that when you started Milk Road, when you started having ads, you would get more

people emailing you asking to advertise.

Exactly.

Yes.

And so I noticed that early on, I was like, if I didn't notice it, I guess I was like,

if we put ads in there, we're going to get more ads.

And so I was like, well, like, what's like the most famous brands of people who don't,

who, who everyone knows of, but hopefully their employees don't read the hustle.

And so in the early stages, like, you know, like it'd be like the hustle brought to you

by Ford and I had never talked to anyone in my life.

I just put the logo in there and said I was sponsored by them.

And I remember like, hopefully Ford, you guys, I'm sorry, but basically, I love Ford.

I had an F 150.

I love Ford.

But basically that's all.

That's illegal.

I mean, that's illegal.

You can't do that.

And I didn't know that it was illegal.

I was like, oh, just put like, you know, Microsoft in here, like put Ford, whatever.

Who cares?

Hey, a free ad for them, right?

I'm giving them something.

And I would put that in there and then immediately like there, you know, someone would email

me and then eventually I noticed that if I put a brand's ad in there, their competitors

would call me to advertise.

And this one I won't even, I'm not going to say, but I would put in certain tech brands.

I'm like, dude, this particular, this company X has a really big ad budget, but they're

not emailing me.

Let's go and advertise why, which is they're a direct competitor and put them in there

and then immediately after.

And then sometimes what I would do is I would only put that particular ad in the email that

was going to that company.

Because with email newsletters, it'd be like, oh, wow, there's eight people that have an

at uber.com email.

I send an email with a message just to them, here's a lift takeover email for them.

So I'm like a mini Rishi, a little, a little mini outcome health here, but yeah, that's

that's kind of counterintuitive, like that, oh, if I put ads, that's actually the easiest

way to sell more ads.

And then being sort of, you know, you know, fake it till you make it.

Yeah, I think that's like the startup way.

There is a line.

I personally don't think you crossed it.

I don't think either with the podcast, by the way, it was the same thing.

Somebody was like, you know, it's like I had this conversation on the way somebody was

like, oh, dude, love the podcast and they're like, uh, how much are you making on that?

I was like, uh, not really making, you know, much here.

You know, it's a, I do this for fun, but then it's kind of like eight at me and during my

uber ride to the thing.

And I was like, okay, I'm going to get, uh, you know, I'm going to get an ad.

It was like the first or second podcast, I'm a third podcast.

I was like, I'm going to get like a sponsor.

I was like, okay, do I really want to go do outreach sponsors?

No way.

So I was like, um, I just, in the middle of the podcast episode, I go, I go, and by the

way, today's, today's episode is brought to you by no one, no one's answered today's episode.

I like made it a joke and I was like, but think about it, you could have me right here

explaining your product.

I could be like, wow, it does this and it doesn't, and I just like did this like fake

ad read like for nothing.

And I just like, whatever.

I just like did that.

Dude, the next day I got so many, like as soon as that episode released, we got like our

first three sponsors just from that, like brought to you by nobody ad.

And so I was like, oh, that was like the hack for ad sales was, uh, you know, just to embarrass

myself a little bit on the pod.

Well, the reason it works, and this is something that I learned along the way was marketers,

a good marketer is a shark.

And what they do is they spend most of their time seeking out underpriced new platforms

and new places to advertise.

The way that marketing typically works is you find one thing that works.

You spend all the money and you crush and destroy it and you strangle it.

And then you go, all right, that's exhausted.

Move on next.

And so you are constantly seeking out the middle step.

Then you go tell everybody about how this ad channel is crushing for you.

You, uh, you get well known.

You sell a course on that.

Meanwhile, you've moved on to the next channel that is not saturated.

And then you go do that and then you're silent until that one stops being like fruitful.

Exactly.

You sell the course, you talk about it and then you move on again.

And you do the same thing.

And so whenever you see like a new podcast that you think has potential or you see a

newsletter or like, um, uh, well, TikTok ads, we're a good example.

Like, they're probably going to crush once they open it up, um, which they are.

And that's how marketers work.

And the smart marketers early on would approach me and they go, Hey, can we just buy it out

for the year?

And at the time I was like, yeah, definitely I'm poor.

I need everything.

And then I realized, oh no, that's stupid because we're going to grow a lot and I know

what they're doing and they're smart.

Right.

Have you seen, um, did I send you this TikTok ad for a tabs chocolate?

I don't know.

You've been sending me all these messages.

I didn't realize it until two nights ago that I even had an inbox on TikTok.

All right.

I'm going to show you what I think is the best ad, um, I've seen in like, I mean, I don't

want to say my whole life, but I can't really think of a better ad.

So I'm just going to give this guy mad props about this ad.

Okay.

This company Riverside just raised to like 40.

So right now Sean and are using this podcast thing called Riverside.

They just raised like $40 million.

So it better work.

Go, go watch that.

Let's watch this.

Tell me this is not the best ad you've ever seen and I'll, I'll break down why.

Get it.

Okay.

So first explain what it is for somebody who's not watching the YouTube channel.

They're not.

So there's this attractive 19 year old, right?

Or 21 year old woman.

Right.

So dude, I'm not that precise with it.

Like a college age to young adults, uh, attractive, but not like, uh, doesn't

like girl attractive.

It's neck girl next door attractive.

Yeah.

And she says, y'all, let me, let me put you on and, uh, this is a special chocolate

that will change your love life seriously.

It shows her and her boyfriend each taking a tab of the chocolate and then it shows

her again, uh, with her hair having sex hair.

Like it's implying that she just had sex and, uh, and then it just says it works at

the end of it.

And, uh, okay.

So this ad has 650,000 likes went viral.

Um, it got featured in vice and a bunch of other places because the brilliance of this.

So why is this ad brilliant?

So first the hook, the first hook is her, she's covered, she's got her hand covering

her face partially, which is like with like the kind of like, oh my God.

And then it says y'all, but it's real.

This is a real, like this is like a real thing.

This was a, this was, I think he created this ad.

This wasn't like, what I mean is it doesn't look like a highly produced thing.

It literally just looks like a woman holding a selfie.

Yeah.

She's holding a phone.

Okay.

This, this, and then there's a good, there's like a whatever a viral song right after that.

And it looks like she's saying, oh my God, let me tell you something.

And then the set, it zooms in on her eyes and she's just like moving her eyes in that

way of like that mis, like sort of a mischievous thing.

And then the next scene is, it shows the packaging, but there's also like a little like, there's

like another thing on the table.

So you kind of don't, it doesn't, again, it doesn't scream ad at you, right?

Like it's not like this beautifully, like a normal marketer would say, well, get this

like, you know, candle that you have out of here.

That's confusing.

And she's like, no, like make it look like a desk and then like put the, put the packaging

of the product.

And it says this quote unquote special chocolate will change your love life dot, dot, dot seriously.

Okay.

So it's like intrigued, it zooms in on it.

And then it goes, it shows the guy and the girl each breaking off a piece, like half

and half of this thing.

So, hey, that looks kind of fun to do.

And then it doesn't tell you anything about it except for it goes to her with the disheveled

hair, the Jbf hair, as they used to say in college, if you know what that stands for.

And then it just says it works with the shocked face.

And then it's again, her looking around like, oh my God, dude, what is, okay, so I actually

don't know.

What does Jbf mean?

Cool, just been, just been after, um, so, so, so, so basically you, why is this amazing?

This is amazing because to me, the best ads have three components.

They have the hook, which is like just a thing to like draw you in to even get you to pay

attention, which is in her case, the her with the handover face.

The second thing it has is the promise.

So it has the promise that gets me curious.

And in this case is this quote unquote special chocolate will change your love life dot dot

dot seriously.

And then it has the, it skips to the end, right?

I've moved straight to the end.

It has the implication of it working.

So it doesn't tell you how it works, why it works, you know, what it does exactly.

It's just the end state takes you straight to the happy ending of this is life.

If you use our product and, um, most people don't like most people don't know how to do

a hook.

They get, usually they get how to do a promise and then very rarely do people know how to

use the implication, which is this is, this is, if this works, here's what happens to

your life.

You kind of just show the ending and people just want to get into that and so they kind

of put, put two and two together about, you know, how, how this might work.

And they want to click to learn more.

So that's why to me, this is an amazing ad.

And this is called tab chocolate.

If you look at the rest of their tiktoks, they're all doing the same thing.

It's all like, um, you and your husband, when you first get married and it's like them like

wanting to have sex and then it's like 10 years after marriage and it's like the wife

trying to be sexy and the husband ignores her.

And then they show now here's you with tab and it shows them wanting to have sex.

So like an easy thing to advertise for, well, kind of easy, but, uh, what's this company

about?

Are they killing it?

Yeah.

So they basically are a D to C company.

I want to give the founder a shout out.

I think his name is Oliver.

I want to say Oliver.

Let me see.

And what's in this chocolate, what, what, what makes you horny?

I don't even know.

Dude, I don't know.

Probably nothing.

It doesn't matter.

Uh, yeah.

This guy, Oliver, uh, I see this guy, Oliver on, uh, on Twitter.

He's young.

I think this guy's like 21.

I think they said they sold half a million dollars.

What did he know about this then?

Bro got his first, first wood and just decided to create a product.

Still, he still has his first one.

Like, well, you're 21.

I mean, we're great.

Yeah.

Why, why, why do you need this?

Um, but basically, I think he said they, they sold like half a million dollars worth

of chocolate off this, off this ad, um, and like within a couple of weeks or something

like that.

So it really like jumps.

Jump.

Is it a bootstrap company?

I mean, just tab.com would cost half a million dollars.

He has tab.com.

Right.

So one of the guys, Jake, his thing says freshman at University of Michigan, which is just kind

of insane.

Is that true?

So, uh, let me find this other guy, Oliver.

There's no way.

Do you think it's founded by it?

So this guy, I'm going to study this guy's, uh, Twitter, which is just hilarious first

of all.

So this guy's handle is Oliver, Oliver underscore B one or something like that, maybe two underscores.

But his name is Oliver B. This is a slash.

I sell sex chocolate.

That's his name on Twitter.

You know, he's got his photo, which is like here with his bros, um, and yeah, he's, he's

been tweeting out like, you know, how, um, you know, how it's been doing.

So, you know, they did $73,000 this week.

Um, he's like, I have this army of user generated content creators.

So like, he's like, I basically have, um, you know, uh, I think he's got like an army

of like 20 creators and he'll pay them between $500 and $3,000.

And then they make 30 videos, um, they make 30 videos a month or something.

He's being a little, uh, loose with that word army.

Yeah.

A gaggle.

He's got a gaggle of kind of supper supper supper party.

Yeah.

He's got like a, he's got like, uh, like a full, he's got like, uh, a full NHL team.

Um, he's got half the classroom, I have a good touch football, uh, game worth of, uh,

creators that would know about army 20, uh, but honestly, this guy knows more about marketing

than like half of the, uh, you know, marketing gurus that you see on social media.

Just go look at this guy's content.

No, they're, they're like, um, I think they're bootstrapped.

I don't know.

I don't know much about them.

I'm kind of making up half of the stuff as I'm going to longer, but I know enough that

it's, this is, that's an amazing ad.

These guys are young.

These guys understand marketing at a pretty deep level, especially on new channels like

tiktok and, um, and that they've done, you know, like a pretty decent amount of sales.

Yeah, I was looking at like his like, uh, he had said something he was like bragging

about his row as or something like that.

And, uh, it actually wasn't super, that part wasn't super impressive.

So I, I didn't understand why he was bragging about that.

Do you, so this is kind of an interesting topic of like basically trying to reach like

a young audience or you're trying to look cool, then you go and you hire like a young

cool person and you're like, make us look cool, which is one of two things might happen.

And they think that like, uh, they're trying to make something that just can't be cool,

cool.

And they ended like, dude, it's really hard to make like this particular software thing

who cares if you're not cool.

Hey, fellow kids.

Yeah.

Hey, fellow kids.

That's what it's like.

Um, and so it's like, dude, it's just not that neat.

Or the second thing they do is they end up being just totally douchey and it's like you're,

they make jokes like Elon Musk, where you like make like a four 20 jokes like, um, have

you hired any like kids for that reason?

And what was the outcome?

Yeah.

The best example was when we, when I hired Steve Bartlett and he's gone on to do some

amazing things.

We've talked about him before.

Uh, if you don't know, he basically ended up creating a marketing, uh, like a whatever

a marketing company, marketing agency that, um, did like over a hundred million dollars

in revenue.

It ended up merging with the company, went public.

He's like a dragon on dragons day and he's got a real popular podcast and bunch of stuff.

He's like, to me, he's the young black Gary Vee.

That's like the best description I can have of him.

It's, it's, and you think he's, uh, he's totally the real deal.

Yeah.

He's the real deal.

Um, he's the real deal in the sense that like, uh, you know, I don't know in the same

way that we were like, dude, Gary Vee is awesome.

Um, you know, does he kind of put on for the camera?

Of course that's the game does, you know, is VaynerMedia the pest business I've ever

seen?

No, it's not the best, but it's a great, you know, it's still a business that works.

And it's like at scale, um, so, uh, you know, real deal can mean a bunch of things, but

I think Steve's the real deal in all of those terms, meaning I've seen his talent firsthand.

He's really super talented.

Uh, so I recruited him from the UK.

He flew over.

He lived with us and, and worked with us in San Francisco.

And then he, then after that, he basically went and spun out his like marketing agency

and like, that's how he kind of got his start.

And, uh, and my whole thinking was like, this guy gets social, this guy gets social media.

He's a hustler and like, if we're going to build these social apps, we need somebody who

like a they're, they're not like an engineer, neck beard, like who's like, Oh yeah, people

want to share photo galleries because why would I not want to share 128 photos instead

of one?

That's more.

And it's like, no dude, people don't want to share 128.

They want one disappearing photo actually, because I'm trying to send like, you know,

something inappropriate to my friend.

I don't want this permanent record.

Right.

There's a big difference of like what, how an engineer will build a social product versus

how somebody who's, you know, social will build the social product.

And, and so I wanted to have basically like somebody who was young, who was a user of

every social platform to be like, Hey dude, just shit test some of these ideas and be

like, is this good or is this not good?

And then secondly, uh, when we have something good, be able to like blast it, promote it

on social in a way that's not like a cringe.

And he did that.

So when we were, we were like, all right, let me give you an example.

At the time he had this like network of pages, he was like, look, I have all these, uh, I

either own or know the owners of these Twitter accounts that, uh, have, you know, together

like whatever 50 million followers.

So when we're ready to launch, we'll post it there.

And I was like, great.

And so again, the engineers were like, all right, we're ready.

And so I was, you know, my brain went to like, cool, on all these accounts post like, Hey,

love this new app.

It lets you do XYZ.

And I love this new app.

Bebo.

It lets you do blank, blank and blank and then engineers like, Oh, and make sure we can track

the attribution.

So we're going to use this like this URL with this UTM parameter.

And they give me this URL that's like 9,000 characters long.

It looks ugly as hell, but it's like super trackable.

They're like, look at this at the dashboard.

We know exactly who clicked and which tweet and all this stuff.

And then Steve was like, um, like, all right, thanks for the suggestions, but, um, not using

that link, in fact, not using any link because, uh, nobody's posting a link and nobody posts

links on Twitter.

And we're like, what?

Like, then how will they go download the app?

He's like, they'll go download it if they hear about it a bunch and they feel like they're

missing out.

And I was like, yeah, but that's like more work.

He's like, yeah, but again, they're going to feel like they're missing out, not that

they're being sold to.

And then he's like, and we're also not going to tweet, Hey, check out the new Bebo app.

It has these features.

He's like, we're going to tweet out memes, like, um, you know, uh, my teacher, when she

sees me, you know, like my teacher, when she hears about Bebo, like for the 50th time today,

and it's her throne, it's a gift of a teacher throwing a phone out this class window and

like shattering the window or like, you know, um, my feel MFW, my, you know, my face winner,

my feeling when, um, I see Bebo trending on Twitter, you know, after 10 years.

And it's like, um, and I was like, but that sounds bad for us, right?

They're annoyed at us.

He's like, yeah, get it.

It's like they're annoyed because they've been hearing about it so much.

And so somebody who's not hearing about it is going to be like, oh, shit, I'm out of

the loop.

What is this?

And they're going to go Google it and find it.

And I was like, nah, this, this is stupid.

Guess what?

He, we did it his way.

We launched, we hit number one on the app store charts, hit, uh, I don't know how many

downloads.

I think we hit 250,000 downloads in like the first month or something like that.

Something crazy.

And, um, yeah, it was like insane.

And we spent $0.

So it was awesome.

How did you get those influencers?

So Steve owned a bunch of them.

So me hiring Steve was like me getting to use Steve's like assets.

And then he, because he had clout in like the social like meme world of like the people

who own these pages, uh, he like pulled a favor and was like, yo, post this on this

day.

We're going to get this to trend.

I need this.

He was like a 21 year old trying to prove himself.

So he's like, yo, I need you to do me a favor here.

Put this thing up here.

So maybe we paid like out of a few thousand dollars total, but like, you know, nothing

to get like hundreds of thousands of downloads and number one rank at the overall app store

charts.

Um, and we did that.

Let's see a pain in the ass to employee though.

No, no, he wasn't a pain in the ass, but I'll tell you first why I knew we needed to hire

Steve.

So when we wanted to, we were building this app and we were like, all right, this social

app definitely leans towards his younger audience.

We're like, all right, we got to be like into like in touch with, you know, high schoolers

basically.

So I told Jason and Tyler, I was like, guys, we need to be like, we need to be able to

pitch our app to high schoolers and see what they think about it.

And it's like, all right, well, how the hell are we going to do that?

So first they were like coming up with all these schemes.

And I was like, guys, like, um, I came visit him like an hour later and I was like, all

right, what's the, what's the plan?

How many high schoolers you got?

They're like, none.

We're, we're like coming up with a PowerPoint deck on like, how are we going to do this

or something like that?

They're like coming up with a plan.

And I was like, all right, like, let me put it differently to you guys.

Here's a better question.

In the next hour, how can I show our app to like two high schoolers, go, let's go make

that happen.

And they're like, okay, all right.

And then they got it.

They got what I was looking for.

So they first were like, all right, my nephew's on the line.

So we got the two.

And I was like, great, how do we get 20 high schoolers now in the next hour?

And they're like, uh, okay, there's a bunch of high schoolers over here at the mall near

our office.

Like, so they went over there with a sign that said, you know, uh, test our app, get

a free burrito.

And they got like immediately like 20 people and they're like, okay, that was cool, but

there was only 20 people there.

It's like, how are we going to do this regularly?

And so we found a high school nearby.

And so we went over there.

At first they started the same thing.

They had to sign outside, free burrito if you try our app and people were signing up

like crazy.

We didn't have burritos, by the way.

It was just like, I promise we're like, I don't know, we'll figure out how to get you

a burrito later.

And, um, and then there, so we got a bunch of people just to like try it out.

And then, uh, a teacher came out and was like, Hey guys, what's going on here?

They're like, Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, we're not creeps.

We're just like, we're trying to get beta testers for our app.

Do you know what that word means?

And they were like, Oh, cool, you're a startup and they're like, come on in and they invited

us to come speak.

They're like, Hey, you know, like, you can just like take over my class for the day.

I'll just sit down and play Sudoku and you just teach my kids about startups.

It sounds like the most naive, trusting teacher, like to a fault.

It was, it definitely was.

Oh, you're, you're, are you a little kid lover?

Great.

Come on in.

And you must love kids so much, you build apps, apps for them, so you're a little kid

lover.

You definitely worry some like why it was so easy, but literally that's what happened.

So for seven, seven hours straight that day, like a class would come in, 50 kids, we would

teach them about startups for 15 minutes and then we'd pitch them our app for 15 minutes

and then we'd be like, next, and we, but just by doing that, you know, to take, you know,

basically 30 kids per class times seven, we're getting 210 kids a day in the same school

to download our apps.

So like all their friends were on the app.

So it was a great, it was like this great way to like take over a high school in a day

and see if it goes viral once we get that seed community.

But in one of them, so the first day we go and it's me and Jason, I'm like, dude, it's

cool.

I'm cool.

I, and I was like, I start talking, I'm, I'm like, yeah, that's tight.

And they start giggling.

And I'm like, oh, shit, tight was a cool word when I was in high school, that's, I was like,

it's lit.

It's super lit.

And they're like, you know, I was like, I was already outed as like not cool, but I

was like, and so I got like humbled big time.

I'm like realizing, and by the way, if you go talk to kid, like high school classic,

they just don't give a shit.

They don't pay attention.

They'll just be like straight talking to somebody else while you're talking and you can't control

them at all.

And so I was like, oh man, this teaching is so hard.

And then I'm like, and so I'm like, okay, whatever, let's skip to the end, let's skip

to the part where we test our app.

So I was like, all right, you guys want to see our app?

And they were like, nobody says anything.

I'm like, okay.

Um, you know, the first person who downloads our app, like, you know, you get candy from

this bowl.

And they're like, all right, what's that?

And I was like, and I was like, they're like, what's the name of it?

I was like, oh, it's not in the app store yet.

It's on test flight.

And I could just feel the blood draining from my body as I said that I was like, what the

fuck were we thinking?

And then I was like, you weren't just, I was like, I'm going to put the link up here on

the projector and just like, type that in and it'll take you to the thing.

And this kid in the back, no joke.

He goes, links are gay, dude, I was so embarrassed and just I just got wrecked and I started

laughing so hard, I couldn't stop laughing and I was literally at the office from there

on out.

We were like, hey, HR, we don't mean this in a bad way, but it's the funniest thing that

just happened.

The whole company is in on this joke.

And so anytime somebody was like, yo, send me the link, like in Slack and somebody else

would be like, links are gay because it was the most like you thought you got an egg.

And I got straight bit slapped by this like 13 year old and it was unbelievable.

It was unbelievable.

By the way, the other thing, every high school kid has just a cracked screen.

None of them have a phone that is like the screen intact.

They all got cracked screens.

You know what, you know what I think about everyone's wrong.

So remember this company called the Chubbys?

Yeah.

So basically they made shorts for, they made like short shorts and they were great guys,

but like their customers and we're just like bros, like hard to like Chad bro chill, like

the hardest, the hardest like bros you can think of.

And which is like, that's fine, but I don't want to be like 40 years old and having to

like make ads like about summer and spring break.

Like, you know, I don't relate to that at all.

At least I don't if I'm like 40.

And it's kind of like the barstool guys.

It's like, man, you're losing your hair.

You still, you want to be doing like these beer bongs, like it's, and I think about like

to build a social app or even like other products like Chubbys in that space and to be a grown

adult doing it, it's kind of a, if that doesn't work, it's super embarrassing.

I thought you were going with some highly intellectual conclusion here and you basically

were like, like, yeah, you kind of lose it when it's embarrassing, man.

Like it's like, it's cool because Tik Tok worked, but imagine a bunch of like a 45,

I think the guy who started Tik Tok or whatever, what's it called bit, the owner of Tik Tok,

I forget what it's called, bitnami or what's the shit by dance.

Like this like 43 year old Chinese guy trying to make products for like, but it worked,

dude.

American American girls like young 14 year old American girls.

It's like, yeah, it's cool because it worked.

But man, this was like, this could go either way.

Like this could go either way.

And like that's kind of that's kind of scary to me.

Not scary, but that's like another one we built.

So after that app, so we go through that process that I get humiliated.

And I'm like, oh my God, I go back to the team.

I'm like, we are so far disconnected from like our customer.

Like we thought we could go in there, teach them about startups as if they give a shit

and then tell them to download our test flight app from a link.

And like, you know, we all heard how that went down.

Okay.

So, so, so, you know, I got basically like, I was like a character in South Park that

day.

So I got honed and I was like, all right, well, let's, so we pivot and we try this other

app that was like, the idea was like, it ended up being what house party was.

So us and house party at the same time, it was like an app where it's like, I don't want

to call somebody, but like, you know, like, I'm down to hang out if somebody else happened

to be like free at the same time.

And so it was this app where you could just kind of say like, you know, you could just

say if you're available.

And if other people are too, you can just get into kind of a more spontaneous conversation

versus the phone call where it's like, dude, what do you need from me?

But I was like, well, so they made the app, they made the prototype real quick, engineers

are great again.

And then the front screen, they're like, Hey, we need some text for this.

Like right now it just says like, you know, push to begin or like, you know, like initiate

and I was like, Oh no, that's like, we don't want to write like initiate.

That's not going to work again.

Teenagers.

They don't like links.

What do they like to do?

Chill.

And so I was like, Oh, just make it like a swipe, like Tinder.

I was like, so it just said swipe to chill.

And like literally like the first version said swipe to chill and the, the, we had one guy

at Johnny Dow's working for us and he was a teenager, so he was like a 16 year old programmer

and he saw a swipe to chill and you could just see him being like, do I have to share this

with my friends?

Like, with other people before I send this to my friends because it says swipe to chill

on the front and like, that's not a thing people say or do.

So it was all bad, dude.

Okay.

So then let me tell you Steve Bartlett's story.

All right.

So, so I'm like, we need, we need some young blood in this, in this office.

Steve Bartlett cold emails me, a great cold email.

I'm like, this guy's awesome.

Fly him and his buddy out.

And we're like, you guys work for us now.

You're our kind of like our youth department and how did they stay in America?

Oh, there was no like visa now there's just not a tourist thing that came, they could

stay for three months at a time and then they would go back and they would come again.

And did they live at the office?

They would live, they got, we got them a hotel, but it was like, they're staying for a while.

So we were like, all right, just stay at the office because there's an apartment built

in and like, you know, just, I don't know, make it work.

Dude, did you ever think like, what did Steve tell his parents?

Like can you imagine 20 year old or 19 year old you like, uh, explaining what's going

to happen?

Yeah, I would have been like, this is awesome.

And I knew Steve was wired like that.

So he was also like, this is awesome.

He didn't, he didn't bother to tell his parents.

He was like living his life.

So he thought this is great.

So Steve's there and our, if you remember our office is kind of a baller pad.

So Steve basically went from like living in like a dump and like a tiny, you know, like

he was a college dropout in the UK and making no money too.

He comes to the US and now he's living in this like baller pad that has like a bar built

into it, a private chef, all these like perks.

It just looks like it's designed like straight out of some like British magazine and, um,

and Steve would take advantage of that.

So he was living there and, um, so he would like, you know, people would leave the office

six, seven PM and then what he would do is he would like go and, um, you know, he didn't

invite friends over.

He was on Tinder.

Tinder was active.

And so we would come into the office in the morning and like, I remember one day I came

in and like some girl was like leaving, doing the walk of shame, holding her heels in her

hand of like walking out and like, you know, we had women working in the office who were

like, who is this girl?

Like, why?

And why is she like hung over leaving the, like the bedroom in the office?

Like what's going on here?

And then Steve would come down and he'd be like, and he was like, you know, proud of

himself in a way.

Dude, I'm winning at life and so, so that was a little bit of a problem.

And then I remember they would like, what did you say to him like, Hey, you know, you

can't even, yes, you are living here, but you can't live here.

Yeah.

I think I told him once, but I remember just like, even in the conversation, it was like,

oh man, he feels like he's in the principal's office and I feel like the principal and like,

I could tell this is lame because he wasn't doing anything out of any malice, right?

Like it would just be like, they would just, you know, they'd be hanging out drinking,

you know, at the bar we have in our office, but they would kind of like leave the bars

kind of sticky and with beers ever.

They didn't know to like, you know, just like some professionalism stuff, like, ah, it's

a Tuesday night.

I should just like, let me just at least make this look like we weren't here drinking and

hanging out all night and playing the music and the neighbors get a noise complaint, stuff

like stuff like that, right?

Nothing, nothing harmful, nothing like bad, just like slightly annoying to people who

felt like they were parenting them in the morning when they came in.

And like, I remember one time, the funniest one and the one where I was like, ah, this

is just not working out, they had like, or they like, or I was talking to our office

manager and I was like, I promised, I talked to Steve, they're not going to like play the

music too loud and like, they'll clean up the beers or whatever.

And like that happened one day and then the next day, no beers, no loud music, it was

all good.

And then she opened up like the supply closet to like get like some new pencils and like

sticky notes for the meeting we had, like the board meeting we had.

And like just a giant pizza box fell out and she was like, why would you put a pizza in

this closet?

Like just throw the pizza in the trash and she was like, these kids, like I can't do

this shot, I can't do this.

Did you fire him?

No, no, no, I didn't fire him, but I was like, I kind of knew in my head, I was like, you

know what, birds got to fly.

I was like, these guys, they're talented, they need to do their own thing, them conforming

into like our office, like set up and like, it's just not like a fit, you know, like they

don't need to run these meetings, like these daily stand-up meetings with the engineers.

I was like, that's not their skill set, that's not what they need to do.

Like they're good at like taking something that's dope and making it like pop in the

market.

Like, and they just need to do that.

And then basically that's what their marketing agency did, they would just find cool brands

to work with and they would figure out how to tell that story and make it big and trend

in social media.

And it turns out they were great at that and they made like, you know, hundreds of millions

of dollars doing that.

And so that was like a successful outcome.

But I kind of knew in my head, I was like, all right, there's these advantages when you

bring in these sort of like, these non-domesticated cats and they're going to like, they're going

to be real with you about the market, they're going to like have fresh ideas, they're going

to be good at like playing the social media game.

But like, you know, they're not going to be the best at like, you know, running this

like, you know, agile software, like, you know, meeting, this is not what they, you

know, they don't need to be product managers, they need to be like, out and about.

I remember I read a profile about him when he was still pretty young and it was working

and it was like BuzzFeed or something.

I think it was BuzzFeed and he must have been only 23 or 24.

And they were like, basically the office has like a slide in there and like, it was like

everything young like a McDonald's playpen and he was like, they've got like 40 employees

here and I asked him how much each person is getting paid and it was like $25,000 a year.

It was like nothing and, but they like love it because it's the first time a 21 year old

is able to like be the head of HR and like just figure out stuff as she went and I was

like, oh my God.

I don't know about those numbers, but I do remember at one point it was like, they had

23 employees and I think 22 of them were under the age of 22, like it was like all 21 year

olds and they were like, and that was the device article or the whatever Vox article

or whatever it was.

It's just like, meet the 21 year olds who are running the internet right now.

And it was true, like they were really, they owned all of the popular Instagram and Twitter

accounts in Europe.

And so they just had like crazy ability to influence the market and they had the right

people to do it.

Right?

Like that's who knew how to build those pages.

And that was the business.

The business was brands would pay to advertise on those Twitter and Instagram handles.

Initially, that's how we used it, but the, and that was a part of it.

We were like, we created this like idea of like this, this thunderclap, which was like

getting all those pages on the same day to be talking about your brand.

You came up with that name.

I remember saying it, but I think other people use that term.

So I don't think in my head, I invented it, but I'm sure I learned it.

I heard it somewhere.

I'm sure.

But the thing what they were doing was then they were, they were just like, a brand would

be like, Hey, how do we, what's our social strategy?

So then it, they quickly got away from just like, Hey, pay to post on our pages because

that's kind of like transactional to like, Hey, Netflix, do you want to know how to

do your social?

Do you want to know?

We just be your agency of record for social media, for your social media marketing.

And like that became with a fat retainer and like ongoing campaigns.

And then like, and then they would like do like proper videos and like kind of viral

video stunts, things like that, whole strategies for these brands.

So that's what it became.

And then they launched their own brands too.

We've been getting the past few episodes, we've been getting more into just trying to

just tell them funny stories.

I'm very eager to see if this is the route that we should go.

It's way more fun.

That's for sure.

Yeah, it's fun.

But after every episode, I have to like do like a cancellation check in and be like,

was I sexist, racist, homophobic?

Is there anything that I said that could have been construed as hateful in any way to any

group of people that is going to be like offensive?

Like I tweeted out this thing the other day that's like, by the way, they're never hateful.

They're always like a compliment, but I tweeted out this thing, which was like, you know,

my investment criteria, you know, big market, good traction, founder is Mormon Russian Jewish

or whatever.

I like said something, but it was like positive.

It was like, because I think those founders like on balance are awesome.

Like I've had it was a joke and it was a joke, right?

And people were like, what does race have anything to do with who you'll find?

This is what's wrong with.

And I was like, well, first of all, it's a joke to be clear.

Like did you think this was serious?

And secondly, like it wasn't a joke saying, I don't fund these fund, you know, these random

niche minority groups.

It's like, no, I think Mormons are awesome at sales and like, you know, just as a, as

a general, like positive prejudice, you know, I'm, I'm inclined to believe that these people

are really smart or really talented or really gritty or really whatever.

And you know, but of course, like there's no winning, right?

Like the audience that like gets that and thinks it's awesome is like so small compared

to like the other audience that's like, I will make it my life's mission to like get

you canceled for, for this, for this, uh, this joke you said, the, um, the milk boys,

which is like those YouTube guys now they got this, they've got a new podcast.

It's only good because they're, they're not like good at asking questions, but they're

good because they're so famous that they get like the best guests.

So the milk boys had Donald Trump on, you know, like the one of the most famous people

in the world.

Um, you know, all types of like, they had Habib on, they had Dana White on, they have

like all these like hugely famous people.

And when they were talking to Dave Portnoy and they were like, uh, yeah, like we're uncancelable

because like everyone's expectations of us are so low and like we're just degenerate.

So like they don't, everyone's like, yeah, of course they did that thing.

Like there's no surprise there.

These guys are idiots.

And uh, I'm not sure for there yet.

I don't know.

I think we can be, but it's like, you know, for example, you want to be, yeah, do you

want to be right?

Like I call it the cancellation vaccinations, like, do you want to be vaccinated against

cancellation?

Here's what it entails.

You need to consistently be provocative, never apologize, like cater to your base and ignore

the rest.

And like that's the, that's the cancellation vaccinated vaccinations, what Joe Rogan does,

what Donald Trump does.

It's what the milk boys do.

It's what any group of people, Dave Chappelle, it's any group of people who like, they're

like, look, I'm going to say what's on my mind.

There's going to be some people who are offended by this.

That's not my audience.

Some people will understand the point of view where I'm coming from.

They're going to understand what's a joke.

They're going to understand when I'm saying something positive about somebody that doesn't

mean it's negative about somebody else.

And they're just like, and they're like, I'm consistent.

I'm willing to do this.

I'm willing to take heat.

I'm not going to apologize, et cetera, et cetera.

And um, and so, you know, that's like the cancellation vaccination.

Now I think you do that.

I think you also need to be financially independent or directly fan supported.

And like, you know, for example, this is a HubSpot podcast, network podcast.

You work at HubSpot.

I don't think they're going to love some of the jokes that you tell, like, even if that

person individually thinks it's funny, they'd rather us just take no risk.

Right?

Why?

Like for them, the risk reward, you know, calculator is like, oh, just take no risks

and it's fine.

Just like, do your other stuff.

It's great.

Whereas for us, it's like, dude, no, like I'm here to have a conversation with Sam.

I want this to be like a conversation we would actually have.

I think that's how you get super fans because they feel like you're being authentic.

You're not, you're not like separating the real you from like this, like record public

podcast version of you.

And I know my intentions are pure.

I know I'm not actually a bad guy.

I'm not sexist, racist or homophobic or any of those things.

And if I say that I think Mormons are awesome founders, I think that that is should be a,

I think that should be a totally fine thing to say, right?

I don't think that's a controversial thing in my books.

And so I'm like, you know, I'm part of the common sense party and I want other people

who are, you know, like can use their common sense or not like easily offended around me.

But that's a, that's a risky path to take.

That's a good speech.

I'm on board.

Good, very good speech.

All right.

I guess that's the episode.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like the days off on a road less travel

never looking back.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.