Circling Back - Coffee Friday 009: BroBible's Brandon Wenerd

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

What happens when a bunch of old internet heads get together and talk early frat blog publishing days? Well, you're about to find out. We were joined by noted bro and BroBible publisher Brandon Wenerd to talk *that* viral sorority girl story, college rappers like Sammy Adams and Asher Roth, the path of BroBible’s rise, Back-to-Back World War Champions tees, jam bands, shows to catch this summer, BroBible’s move from NYC to LA, early internet days, Eagles NFL Draft, and so so so much more. Enjoy a free two-week trial on Patreon for additional weekly episodes: www.patreon.com/circlingbackpodcast Watch all of our full episodes on our new YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/circlingback  Shop Washed Merch: www.washedmedia.shop  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/circling-back/message Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coffee's for closers only. You think I'm fucking with you? I'm not fucking with you. I'm not fucking with you. Coffee's for closers only. Closers only. Coffee's for closers only. I'm not fucking with you.

I'm not fucking with you. I'm not fucking with you. I'm not fucking with you. I'm not fucking with you. I'm not fucking with you. I'm not fucking with you. I'm not fucking with you. I'm not fucking with you.

I'm not fucking with you. I'm not fucking with you. All right, we're back. Circling Back Podcast coming to you live from austin texas it's coffee friday which means one thing no rundown just vibes my name is will defries to my left david mr bing bong himself rough it's not an official nickname but i'll take it um first time listening to the coffee friday intro uh with headphones on and let me just say banger it's a bop also did not realize that uh our girl unca jams made it in there oh yeah that's that's a nice touch as a as a great man says so anyway thanks for having me dylan shivery ladies and gentlemen

i noticed you got your i'm a tough guy t-shirt on today. Yeah, I boxed. For our guest. That's cool, man. This is my I Need to Do Laundry t-shirt. Okay. Not that there's anything wrong with the shirt. It's just it fits a little tiny. It's a boxing club t-shirt if you can't see it, folks. And I guess we're about to intro.

Dude, Dave, I'm trying to impress Brandon. Have you seen Fight Club, man? If you want these hands, I'll give you these hands. You have the same t-shirt, don't you? I will give you the hands. Don't you own this t-shirt as well? I do, yeah. Come on.

It's a cool shirt. Is this one of those deals where they didn't send me one because they're like, eh, we don't want this guy. Those two guys should probably have boxing shirts, but Will's good. Don't send one to the NARP of the group. Shout out Music City. We have a very special guest today. He's coming to us live from, you're in California right now, right? You're not somewhere else on the road right now?

No, I'm at home. His name's Brandon Wenner. You probably know him from Bro Bible. Brandon, welcome to the program. Gentlemen, thank you so much for having me. This is such an honor to be on with y'all. Honestly, it's been too long this should have happened a while back i think i mean you know what how how long have we all

known each other in the internet world yeah like a decade you've been over a decade long time yeah we we've known about you i mean the the media industry at least like in our little part of the media industry like we all kind of know who each other are you know at grand x we've known about you and and your guys and obviously bro bible since like way way way back you know yeah i mean we we followed like literally every chapter about grand x yeah over the years the the good the bad and the ugly yeah well there's plenty of all of all of that all of the above to to talk about was there ever a rivalry between um because i me viewing it from afar i always thought there was like uh you had the guys who would and they were mainly like midwest or northern like bro guys who would say oh that's bro then you had like then you had the

frat was there the frat in the southeast but then they they converged and created a super genre i think that's fair i i'm curious about like i'm i'm actually really curious about uh what you guys think if there's a rivalry that's i don't think that's a subject that we've ever really no i don't think i don't think there was ever anything i i honestly feel like there was i feel like we might have had some internal rivalries at grand x or at least some chips on our shoulder like where we were like hey like i want to beat these guys but like bro bible i feel like there was always a mutual respect there there there was never some kind of like yeah i don't like these guys we always tried to be sorry go ahead no that that's how i feel that's how we were too like for for years i almost felt like if you guys were doing something it's like hey maybe we should think about doing this like

that's actually like these guys seem to know what they're doing let's let's maybe you know follow their lead a little bit sometimes there were always like certain news stories that would it would come out and that would just fit like our you know our brand and our demo so we would we would cover it like bro bible would cover something we would cover something and then sometimes like barstool sports would cover something they had like 80 writers at the time so they were like always first and then uh yeah there's always kind of like all right who's going to get to it first who's going to do a better job of covering it but we each had our own little unique kind of spin on everything a hundred percent i

think a lot of it was like who was going to uh who was going to have like the audience members send someone send something newsworthy to somewhere like um the the thing i was kind of thinking about a lot was like johnny manziel news where like you know johnny manziel would show up at a bar somewhere and i think like probably all three of those sites would receive the same information from someone that was at that bar um and it was just a matter of like well well, who was going to get to it first to make it like some kind of newsworthy thing, you know? I remember like, it would be like Saturday morning and Johnny Manziel would do something stupid

the night before. And I remember like waking up in a group chat being like, we gotta be first on this. Can someone upload this video to YouTube so we can embed it as well? And it was just like, oh man, like we're trying to be first on Johnny Manziel stuff. When Manziel was at the height of his, you know, fame and he became the starter, he beats Alabama and all that.

And then he was also like this party guy who would like be seen with like Instagram models and he would just be in Cancun doing whatever or, you know, Cabo. It was an exhausting time in Grand X history because you had to cover every move that he made like we get a text at like 11 o'clock at night hey manziel's doing so and so like oh someone's got to write something about it you know that was a fun yeah 100 i mean i think we all thought we were going to get pulitzers for like our coverage of you know uh what what what what college football players party looked like back in the day. I was trying to reminisce and kind of recall some of the old, really viral news stories from back in the day.

And the one that jumped out at me immediately was the cunt punt situation. I don't remember her name. Rebecca, that's right. And you guys, did you guys hire her at one point? Is that right? We sure did. And it was, she's wonderful. Like, and she worked for us for years.

Her, it was just kind of like one of those things where that went viral. She, we started, we covered it. You guys covered it. started we covered it you guys covered it and then she kept like for some reason she like kept a line of communication open with me um after i think it was because we didn't we didn't like like she there was something she respected about how we covered where we didn't like you know make fun of her or something like that i think we like kind of celebrated it in a lot in a way and uh that kept a lot of communication open and she was like you know a year later graduating uh but i was like

well you're obviously a good writer so you know that's kind of the yeah the day one the day one criteria for the job and uh yeah so we integrated her in and you know she kind of like it was interesting she she she covered a lot of like uh a lot of like you know kind of advice stuff for a while but then spun really really went really hard into like kind of covering news and like college news and whatever and giving her a spin. It was awesome. She's great. Man, I just tried to pull it up, and there's a Cosmo article on it, and the link is a TFM article, but I cannot pull it. It's no longer in existence.

That's a good thing for all of us. No, but it's bad for the SEO if it's a broken link, inbound dog. We've got to fix that. To set the stage here here she wrote an email during her junior year of college get felser on it verbally destroying her sorority chapter uh for being quote fucking boners around fraternities during uh greek week she was henceforth known as the cunt punt queen i don't think we called her that and is now working at bro bible eyes of the time of this uh

this uh cosmo article it was a huge story man i mean it went like crazy viral like anyone who posted about it was getting clicks it was wild it was on like late night shows i think like there were definitely some like late night shows that were referencing it like it was it was big you don't see uh you don't see sorority girls call uh fellow sorority sisters uh fucking boners i like that i do like it maybe they shouldn't have been acting like fucking boners she was ahead of her time yeah i don't know what happened i want her on my team though absolutely i remember being jealous or like i i knew the the guys who had started tfm and i don't think i was working for grand x at the time but when i saw that y'all had hired her i remember

being like oh that should have been them. That should have been my guys. We should have hired her. Yeah. I think because they covered it in a way that it was like you said, like celebrating her, and we were probably just like, who is this crazy chick that's like tearing apart her sorority? And she probably didn't like that as much, to be fair.

Michael Shannon. Yeah, that was it. I mean, i remember that very vividly okay we kind of i kind of know i wasn't with grand x in the early days but i kind of know everything at this point of of what happened in order to make grand x kind of blow up and become this like popular site what was what was really the the starting point of catalyst with bro bible that took you guys from like to being something that was you know something you can do for a living the uh the first thing like back in the day was uh was how we started embracing like all these college rappers that were like um that were

like just kind of like knew it like like the asher ross of the world yeah like that sort of thing sammy adams like sammy adams was a huge one sammy adams in 2009 he released a song where he said like i'm hanging with my bro bible boys yes one of the it's called tab open and uh that was the thing where i think like we were kind of like, oh, this little community that at the time was like a message board, not really focused on our publishing efforts. We're like, oh, this could be a real thing. And people started really recognizing it and everything like that. So we started seeing a lot of direct traffic uh and then we started steering more into like news and kind of the the the writing stuff that you see now

and uh i don't know man it's just like things just started falling in our lap i don't really know how to like i look a lot of it i feel like it's just luck but like growing the audience really fell into just kind of capitalizing on things that came down the line like little bits of gossip about like those those like rappers that weren't like they weren't covered culturally um but that but they were really popular with like college kids also the rise of like the EDM scene back in the day like with like Avicii and all of those kind of

people that seemingly came out of nowhere in like 2010 the way that we kind of just constantly like covered them became a way where we were sort of becoming more of an authority for, um, for like, for the audience as a large. Will you say that though? Like, didn't you write for

us back in the day? Yeah, I did. And early on when I was doing Sunday Scaries, I was sending my stuff out and I was like, man, I want to write. And so, uh, I ended up sending it to a bunch of people and right at the same time, I started, I think I had like a few columns published on BroBible. Right around that time, I got the full-time job offer to come down to Grand X. And it was like, well, okay, I guess my decision has been made for me. But it was like a very quick bang, bang, bang thing. Yeah. Did you even launch the podcast yet whenever you wrote that? No, no. I didn't launch it for a few years after. We didn't have any podcasting going on. So I was really just like, I mean, I was happy if a column of mine got 50 clicks.

Were you writing under your name or it was a Sunday Scaries? Sunday Scaries name. Yeah. I was too afraid to write under my name. But I mean, I had been following BroBible and really TFM for a while before I even started writing. I mean, I wasn't totally relating with the TFM content for obvious reasons, because I'm a GDI. But I did enjoy watching... I did enjoy... It was just hilarious content. Like seeing college kids doing dumb stuff, the one-liners, everything. And then BroBible just kind of hit the same stride with everything. And mean we were listening to all those people you named every single person you just named we were listening to and having fun and so i just wasn't sure like i know the wall was like a huge reason the one

liners from tfm was a huge reason that things started blowing up especially on twitter that was the reason yeah that's how it started and then what and then like reagan bush 84 which some people wear on television these days um on jury duty yeah that's right what about back-to-back world war champs that was the one that what was bigger what was bigger between those two oh okay back to back i was originally high i was hired by grand x in 20 in october of 2011 and they're like all right you're gonna you're gonna run the whole operations for ratty gentlemen well it actually was called frocket tees at the time frat pocket combined two things it was front front pocket oh front pocket okay no dude it was definitely frat pocket everybody

frocket tees and we had a few designs going and i was shipping probably i was doing like 12 orders a day like it was not a big operation and so in my spare time when i wasn't doing that i was writing columns and that's how i got my start like in the content part but we soon switched over to rowdy gentlemen and then we saw the back-to-back world war champs designed floating around somewhere on the internet like we didn't come up with it but we saw it or maybe someone submitted it to us it was like an old like a vintage hat that said it or something with like a big rope on it like that is a killer idea and so we launched this design and we went like I said I was doing 12 orders a day at the time and when that thing picked up steam I was staying up up at the office until like seven eight o'clock just filling orders and we were doing hundreds a day and I couldn't keep up could not keep up and that

that was really what like funded the company and we were able to hire more people and get the content you know the content arm of the company going even more but we finally i was like guys i can't this is not a one-man operation hundreds a day i'd go back in the morning and check the you know the feed and like oh i got i have 500 to do today it's like guys we can't do anymore uh so we outsourced that but that like that got the company funded in order to us you know gave us the the freedom to do a whole lot more on the content side and release more designs it was a wild ride but that was a design that really made grand x take off for sure that that shirt was everywhere i remember like because we were in new

york um and i remember when like when i'd go to like some of like some of the like murray hill bars and everything like that and people would be like wearing that like tag just realizing that like oh man that's like that's like the bro culture, like millennial guy culture, like shirt of the summer. It was everywhere. And when you talk about rivalry, we were definitely, from a business standpoint, jealous.

We were like, damn, hell yeah. Those guys are capitalizing on merch and we don't have merch. That's sick. You should have just stolen the design like Barstool did. They did the exact same thing. There are a number of outlets that sold it. It was like, I remember when I got on, there was like five different, not even five, like 10.

Like so many people were selling it. We're like, well. I remember JJ Watt wore the shirt on Hard Knocks at the time. That's right. It was a really big deal. I do remember that. That's awesome. Yeah. Was that like rookie year, JJ Watt? the shirt on hard knocks at the time. That's right. It was a really big deal. I do remember that. That's awesome. Yeah.

Was that like rookie year? JJ Watt? Had to be year one or two. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it was probably 2012 when it happened. However old he was then. I'm not sure.

Yeah. Wild ride, man. Yeah. I mean, those are like the little cool things where like, I feel like you, you know, for me, like reflecting back on them when you realize like, oh, you're kind of like, you're sort of newness culturally is like really important. And it converges just with like the storm of other things that are happening. Like one of the things that I think I, I, that was super interesting was like back in the day was Evan Spiegel,

the founder of Snapchat. Like he initially like pitched us like Snapchat via like a blind email to bro Bible. And it's like, we just ignored it. We were just like, we were like, Oh, this, this doesn't matter. This sounds weird. Like, you know, um, and then what was the other one too that i thought that i always think is really funny oh uh chet hanks like chet hayes back in the day he like he just like we just like had him come to before he like blew up or you know kind of went on his white boy summer yeah what did the white boy summer thing we were like he was he was just a college rapper at northwestern and he like really wanted to come to our office because like you know at the time um you know like it was the blog era of music and that was how a lot of like new music

was distributed so he wanted to kind of like just like chat us up to basically like distribute his rap. And I don't know. It's just – it's so funny to think of. He's a very kind, nice guy. It was a good hang to be honest. Do you ever have nightmares about the like internet footprint you're leaving behind with like all that you've written in your past dave mentioned like that tfm link being dead which i'm so thankful for that a lot of that stuff you can no longer like it's it's been archived all the time all the time it's such a blessing all the time we've like we've had to you know and and the the reality is that just like the nature of what we were for like basically four or five years.

I mean, we distributed a lot of like just, hey, this YouTube video is going viral. This thing is like whatever. There really wasn't a whole lot of copy. And now like years later, as we've continued to preserve the business or, you know, honestly, your business isn't one of the best spots we've ever been in. But like, as, as we've, as we've like continued with, you know, evolving as an organization, we've had to like, you know, get rid of a lot of that thin content because it's like SEO best practices, Google doesn't like it. It's like, there's not really any context by just saying that like you know some video went viral and you know it's really popular at a fraternity listserv or something like that um so like the footprint the footprint stuff like that it's definitely like

it's definitely real and we've thought about it we've thought about it a lot especially though because like we've wanted to get we've wanted to get bro bible into like deeper with like seo and stuff like that so a lot of that old stuff we're just kind of like it doesn't really matter anymore you know oh gosh i would love to just be able to nuke a couple pages that are still up right now for myself oh absolutely that's probably nothing like actually bad but I'm like oh man that's just a bad column like I just I just mailed it yeah yeah like that just isn't that this is a terrible representation of myself those days when the site was slow the remotes hadn't submitted anything I'm just gonna write something to put something on the site and like look it's like terrible just a total mail-in dude the the article I wrote about the uh the guy

who wanted to kill himself so he went down to mexico um and while he was down there he does a bunch of cocaine and sleeps with a bunch of prostitutes he's like you know what i want to keep living that like that was the obviously the headlines the story there but i wrote that article and it was one of the worst articles i think i've ever written but the headline has gone viral so many times over and my name like some of the some of the screen captures have roger dorn which i'm thankful for but some of them have dylan chivalry and it's like i don't want i don't want this floating around uh for eternity on the internet i want it to disappear i got bad news it's yeah it's it's it's going around enough at

this point that you're you're fucked i won't get into details but you were almost the reason for a major motion picture with that story i know like no and yeah oh man who was yeah i don't think i don't think we're legally allowed to say who was doing it okay like i actually you've heard of him though oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you've heard of him that's right i forgot that he like bought the story from us. Yeah, yeah. Weird. I mean, it's really funny. Every time I see that screen grab, it's such an old internet time castle, too. Because even just the design and UX of how it was screenshot, it's so funny.

The featured image, I'm like, OK, what can I? We were really scared about copyright infringement back then. So I don't know. I didn't know what picture to use. So I just – I think I got on like MapQuest.com and I just did. I typed in like Austin to Cabo or wherever the story took place, Austin to Cancun or whatever it was. And it was like the worst graphic of all time. It was just like the route to get there on a map.

And that was the image. And the guy wasn't even from Austin. That's where I was. So that's where the origin started. It was really stupid. What was the TSM article that had a really bad featured image where the girl's like on a landline phone, but it's about texting him back or something? It said, why he's not texting you back was the title. Yeah, and the image was just some girl like staring at a rotary phone yeah i don't know why it was such an old school and so what

i won't say the the young lady's name who wrote it but i was like by the way you know this is people are dunking on you all over the internet right what's the reason for the it's an engagement hack dude she was like it's like supposed to be like ironic or something in reality and it's like okay retrospective was kind of genius. I saw it not that long ago. Maybe she's smarter than all of us because it got shared so many different times. She probably is. Yeah, I saw it.

I see it every now and then, like your Mexico thing. So good. I have an idea why he's not texting you back. He's staring at a rotary phone. Brandon, when are Cargo's coming back? Dude, I think they're back, man. are cargoes coming back dude i think they're i think they're back let's go i think they are too why are we why do we not have a like yo that was such a like why do we not have cargo shorts discourse like we used to have like because i

think we shamed everyone out of them like no one wears them like for a decade like people just gave up on they're tired of getting made fun of dave actually famously sky dove in some cargo shorts yeah i made the mistake yesterday i'm a guy dived it probably is i i told y'all when i was 17 i went skydiving in california in cargos and i i felt weird even saying it because like i feel dylan like there's something in dylan that just want to be like, huh. I thought it was weird that you also had Sperry's on too while you did it though. Okay.

Yeah, but were they gold cups? Were they gold cups? I think they were new balances with like the old, the ones with the giant N on them. Like I feel like I had the old. Oh, the 990s? The 990s, yeah. You ever been to a wedding where like a girl shows up in a dress and the dress has pockets in it? And everyone goes wild and she's like, look at my pockets. And everyone's like, oh, those are sick pockets.

I show up to a wedding in cargo shorts and everyone's like, dude, what are you doing? And it's like, why do you have so many pockets on your person? Dave, the 990s remind me of one of my favorite TFMs of all time. And it's like the reflection of a bunch of Ns running across the frat house front lawn when the cops show up or something like that the reflector yeah because it's like a reflective end on the shoe yeah so i remember like we we had this guy um who just kind of like a random internet writer um obviously like we spent so much we spilled so much ink over like the cargo shorts thing we had this we had this guy who was a state trooper in idaho i think who was like i want to

he like reached out to me he's like i love cargo shorts i want to write an in defense of like cargo shorts like will you publish it if i write it and i'm just like i was like i was like yeah you're like a you know you're like a 45 year old like state trooper in idaho like i will a thousand percent like publish that and so he did and it was really it was really great it was super thoughtful he had written a couple other things for us at the time and the amount of like vitriol i got for that like was was absolutely unfathomable but like people also loved it too um i think that was maybe where people were like we're like oh the bro bible guys aren't real bros they're just you know they're they're they're fake bros because they're supportive you lost it oh god they're not real bros my favorite my favorite on when tfm when y'all would post a photo of like it could be

like Leonardo DiCaprio or something in cargo shorts and just him doing something really cool because it's Leo the top comment without a doubt would always be cargos just cargos like just like pointing it out like yep yeah we see him man yeah man not cool you shouldn't have posted this one Yeah, we see him, man. Yeah, man. Not cool. You shouldn't have posted this one. Man, the old days.

It was so much fun. So much fun. I'm going to go get some cargo shorts this weekend. Let's just bring them back. Fuck it. I'm fine with it. I'm fine with it. Brandon, can we talk music?

Yeah, let's. Will's on kind of a journey here. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I have questions for you because I'm looking to you as our guiding light here. What's been a really good recent show that you've been to lately? And what's on your summer tour schedule this year? Oh, my gosh. Thank you. I'm so glad that we pivoted to the subject.

So I just wrapped up a three-night run at Hollywood Bowl out here for Fish, a band I've seen over 100 times. Are they your most seen band? Yeah. Yeah. Without a doubt. And like a lot of my like a lot of my I mean, you know, some of my best friends from growing up are like really into Fish. My brother and I, it's like a really special thing for my brother and I to go to the shows. We've been to, you know, uh, so many over the years. And, uh, and actually I met my, I met my partner at a, at a show as well. Um, but, but so like fish is like

a huge, huge thing for me, but, um, three nights at the Hollywood bowl was absolutely incredible. Um, just because it's such a, it's, it was kind of a, I moved to California in 2017 and, uh, it was kind of a bucket list like venue for me to see, uh, to see fish there just because it's outdoors. It's like this old school, you know, Greek amphitheater. Um, the, there's not a bad like sight line in it and you know it's like 65 degrees at night um so it was just a incredible incredible uh experience so three nights in a row there that was really fun this weekend i'm going to the willie nelson uh 90th birthday shindig, which I'm super, super stoked on.

It's got like the lineups crazy. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. It's like Neil Young and like you know, Neil Young and like Billy Strings, like Tyler Childress, all these guys. So that's gonna be real fun.

And then we're gonna see a couple dead company shows here like and since it's their final tour i'm a big john mayer guy i like i like john and what he does and uh i think i'm gonna go to the forum out here and then i'm gonna go to san francisco for some of the final ones at at&t. Other than that, my biggest cool new band that I'm really into is this group called King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, which is an Australian psych rock band.

Dude, Dylan was actually telling me about them this morning. I've been spinning them for a minute. Yeah, you were early on them. Are you talking about the australian rock band formed in 2010 in melbourne victoria exactly good good work dave that's right it's crazy you knew that stew mckenzie you know boys cook craig all of them they uh they they have this like very like 70s psych rock like, you know, sound.

And they like they they they make an absolutely exhaustive amount of of music. Last year, they released like four studio albums. And yeah, they're just incredibly, incredibly creative. And this year, they're playing a lot bigger venues on their on the tour. And on the summer solstice, they're playing a lot bigger venues on their on the tour and uh on the summer solstice they're playing hollywood bowl and it's going to be like a three hour straight through set they're like straight up marketed like that they're like we're going to get on the stage and we're not going to leave it for three hours and we're going to be playing the whole time so they sound like my thing they must go into the heiress tour and saw taylor just

put in absolute work for three hours straight. Yeah, it worked for her. They can do it. The Gizzard Lizard Kings can do it. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. I'm looking at pictures. I'm trying to see Taylor this summer on her. Don't sleep on it. Don't sleep on it.

Will and I both went, and I do not regret it at all. I almost wish I had scored Houston tickets because I would have gone. I would have gone to see again. It was a lot of fun. Damn. Yeah, look at you. I almost wish I had scored Houston tickets because I would have gone. I would have gone to see it again. It was a lot of fun. It's going to happen. I have to manifest it just a little bit more. It'll happen for you. Where are you based? Where do you live, Brandon? I'm in Los Angeles. I'm on the west side

in Culver City. What went into the thought process behind the move to head out there? I'm kind of jealous. I'm not kind of jealous. I'm not kind of jealous. I'm really jealous. Well, so, you know, we started, BroBible started in New York and like I was kind of being involved

on the partnership side. You know, we were really focused on, you know, the trajectory throughout the years. BroBible, like New York was a great place to start the brand because obviously there's, you know, the trajectory throughout the years. BroBubble, like New York was a great place to start the brand. Because obviously there's, you know, the advertising industry is based there, the kind of news like industry, if you will, was there. And that opened a lot of doors for us. So it was a great place to kind of spend my twenties. But but then when we when we we sold bro bible in 2012 to a group called woven digital which repped y'all for tfm on the ad side um and then we were like an oh and oh in that group um we had we were we were a part of it for six years. And then in that, my role kind of changed to more of the business side in regards to working with advertisers a lot.

In addition to content and just kind of quarterbacking the way a lot of things work within the confines of that organization that had 20 salespeople and all these other kind of things work within the confines of like that organization that had like 20 salespeople and, uh, you know, all these other kinds of things going on. Um, so they were like, their mothership was out here in Los Angeles and I was working like California hours in New York. And that sort of was driving me nuts that I would, you know, be in the office until like eight or nine o'clock. And, uh, I kind of like was pretty straight up with the, with that, that organization was like, Hey, look, like if I'm going to spend all my days, you know, rather than just blogging or like making content, which is what I love to do, because first and foremost, I consider myself a writer. If I'm going to spend all my days writing copy and making decks and all the kind of backend business stuff for people in California that need to talk through things and everything

like that, you guys should just move me there. So that eventually happened. They they, they moved me from New York to California. I integrated with that organization really for just a couple of months. And then they were like, well, we're selling to to, to another group. And like, we don't, BroBible doesn't want to go along or we don't, the, the buyer doesn't want BroBible to go along with the sale. Um, but you have an opportunity to kind of

take destiny back in your own hands. Um, so we formed like a partnership group to buy BroBible back out of that sale, sale, and then run everything like totally independently. And, uh, I just love California too. Like I had a, it was kind of my vibe and it was like, I thought loss, I think there's, you know, in 2017, there was a lot of really interesting, like stuff happening with like YouTubers and culture and stuff like that in Los Angeles. Um, and i you know it's just kind of was where i wanted to be and i've i've stayed because i like it like so it's kind of a good place to do it this chapter you know how's uh how's j cam what's he up to these days dude he's great man he's our ceo he's no shit bro bro he came down he came down to austin this is probably gosh 2014 15 ish uh for southwest southwest i don't know if you were on that trip or

not but i was there i just did golf with you guys i didn't guys. I didn't play golf with him, but I did meet him at a Riff Raff concert downtown. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. And I was there for like three hours waiting for him to hit the stage, and he was so late that I just went home. I didn't get to see him perform. I'm so happy that you brought this up because I wanted to talk about it, but I was hoping it would come up organically okay um dude that show was sick a bunch of a bunch of grand x people came as i remember like because we wanted to it's austin jerome city we wanted to invite y'all yeah and uh dude riffraff that was it was such a

it was a great party that was marred by the fact that riffraff like just wouldn't hit the stage wouldn't hit this so he did hit the stage with 10 minutes left before we had to close down like and it was like a whole nightmare because um we were going back and forth with like his you know like i think it was like a manager or something like that. And he was like, he was just kind of, he was just being riffraff. Like, and like was refusing to show up and come. And I don't know, there was some kind of issue, but then I think like, but we were sort of like, well, this is a breach and you've already been paid so like you're

gonna have to we're gonna have to do some lawyering if you don't show up yeah like that kind of thing and like you did eventually show up and you know fulfill but i think the room was half oh yeah i mean i i got i i was just too tired i think to stick around but at least i got to hang out with some of you guys. I don't, were you at that concert? I don't remember meeting you there. I was. Okay.

Yeah, I was there. Oh my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was there. I, I, I was, I was, I was running around because that was like a big, like, we had two major advertisers that were like doing things for that one was spike tv uh r.i.p and like they had a they had like a ink masters had this like interactive like tattoo booth like kind of off to the side there where they were like people were getting tatted and then we had jagermeister uh as a as a um

And then we had Jagermeister as a sponsor too. And you guys know from Bar Rescue, Chef Brian Duffy, like that character from that show. I don't know that one. Yeah. He's one of the consultants that Taffer brings in, but he was behind the bar pouring drinks. So I was attending to a lot of like him i didn't get to like socialize that much during during it because

i was i was working while jay got to have a lot of fun i'm glad you brought up spike tv because now i'm just looking at the guy's choice awards from spike tv and uh i'm seeing i'm seeing some of their 2007 categories one of their categories in 2007 was simply hottest jessica and there were two nominees jessica alba and jessica beal oh who you got imagine getting notified like hey dave you're up for the award hottest dave yeah man all my life i've wanted that oh yeah the guy who won the biggest uh won that that year was he he won the guy's guy award and that was adam sandler okay the spike awards were were were iconic back in the

day like a-listers were showing up to those award shows i don't know if i want to go to one of those the most or like i kind of want to go to a comedy central roast at some point. It just feels like it's in the same realm. Okay. 100%. There's like, I don't know. Those look so much fun. Do they even still do those, though? I'm seeing here. I have no idea.

This says the Guy's Choice Awards, formerly known as the Spike Guy's Choice Awards, is an awards show. It says, is an awards show. So I'm going to assume that there might be some other version of it at this point, but it says it ran from 2007 to 2016. We need to bring it back. Let's get that IP if it's not around.

We did, like, we did, we did, we worked really closely with Viacom on a lot of, like, on a lot of those kind of like all around the spike guys, guys choice awards. And we did, we did a photo shoot with, Oh my gosh, I'm going to black. It was Chrissy Teigen and one of the, who was the Alabama quarterbacks? Oh, Catherine Webb. That's it. Alabama quarterbacks. Like wife, I think now wife. Is it AJ McCarron?

AJ McCarron. Yeah. Yeah, it was AJ McCarron. Musburger perved out on her during one of the games. Yeah, Musburger made her famous. Yeah. McCarron got an early shot out last night on the draft. Did he?

Yeah, just for being the number one passer in Alabama history. Oh. Will with the facts. Will loves Bama. Yeah, I'm a big football guy. I know everything about football. Are you really a big Bama fan? No, no.

I just acknowledge that everyone underrates Bama, and they deserve more respect all the time. He's not afraid to say it. Yeah. Bama and their 17 national championships, whatever the hell it is. They're underrated, man. What do you think about that Eagles draft? Dude, I feel great about it.

It's a little – look, I feel great about it. It's a little weird. I don't know, you know – I mean, I don't know how – we'll see what – I don't know. We'll see what happens. I like – I think it's – our defense is going to be sick. We need it. I think our defense is going to be sick.

We need it. But at the same point in time, I think I'm allowed to be a little cautious here too. I get it. Yeah. I don't like it from a Cowboys perspective, but I'd be very happy if I were you. Yeah. I mean, well, I hate getting too excited about draft picks because I feel like so many of them, it just doesn't work out. Yeah, you can't put too much stock into it.

You ever been to the draft? Did you ever? No, I really want to go, though. Have you guys been? No, and that's funny you say that because my wife, I looked at her last night and I was like, why would I ever want to go to this? I think I was more, I would have been more likely to go when it was indoors than outdoors for some reason. I don't really know why, but the outdoor thing

seems more wild to me. Whereas like, I want to be able to sit down and like tune out for a little bit while drinking some beers. Agree. And I would also need the cowboys to have like a top 10 pick so i can celebrate and get out of there as opposed to a late round pick uh which you know you're just watching them kill time to they're rolling the jonas brothers out for some reason i'm like okay i'm watching last night that was painful alissa was like my wife's like is that the jonas brothers i'm like yeah and she's just like, why? I don't know. It's never good when the NFL is rolling out people to like kick off the NFL draft.

And like Sally comes over to me and she's like, why is the girl from SNL and the guy from Modern Family? Why are they the ones doing it? And I'm like, yeah, you know what? That's a good question. It's like that's the best Kansas City people we have right now. question it's like that's that that's the best kansas city people we have right now it was like really awkward where like i mean when the you know the jones brothers started talking about being penn state football fans which my ears kind of perked up when that was happening because i went to penn state but also like because uh they've they have some kind of connection to

state college like i think with like some bar owners or something like that um so they do like show up at a lot of games but then they started talking about like saquad barkley and just like not really current to the draft right now just not topical at all not topical oh man that was fun. That was a fun one. Okay. Yeah, I figured maybe somewhere along the line that Bro Bible did some kind of event there. No, I mean, I just kind of want to go just to experience it for some time. But no, we haven't done a ton of events in this kind of current chapter like that's you know we've some small

things around los angeles but like um we've really we've really kind of dialed that business back like but man i love i love going to stuff like that though do you have any that's why it's kind of a bucket list yeah i get it do you have any austin trips planned this year, I want to. I really, I want to come for the race, man. I mean, like, is race weekend fun? It is. It is. It's kind of a weird time, though, because, I mean, so much of the actual race happens outside of, like, Austin. It all happens out at the track.

And so all those people are there. It does create a very busy scene in Austin. It does create a pretty funny scene in Austin. It does create a pretty funny scene in Austin. There's a dynamic within the city that you just don't see very often. There's so many international people in. There's a buzz. Like there's so many like, like weird dudes with models walking around that you're like, what's going on?

Oh, it's F1 weekend. Oh, that guy has a lot of money. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. He took a chopper to this restaurant or something. I haven't actually been to the, to a race yet though.

The last race that I went to, I didn't go to the last one, but I went to the one the year before, and I think I went to one other one. But it's like the most, it's very well done. Everyone's there to see the race. It is such a positive event. No one's like falling over hammered. Like it's all like a very like positive, excited, pumped up atmosphere. It's a good time.

I hope that they don't lose it like there's some uh theories out there it's in october usually is that right late fall yeah i don't know if it's october november yeah um it's right around ac i'm worried vegas is going to take away from it though yeah i mean because no offense to austin but like vegas is a pretty good draw for an f1 race if you're just a casual fan compared to austin where you have to like go out i feel like i feel like also the way that they're you know building that track out of vegas too where you're able to like just have a vantage point from you know the strip like it's gonna be that's gonna be cool i got sucked into like a 30 minute uh video of you two touring the new sphere in las vegas last night the new uh music music venue have you

guys seen this no it's just a giant sphere i can't wait to go it looks insane i know in the beginning of the video i was like making fun of it in my head and then by the end of it i was like man i can't wait to go to this sphere it does look pretty yeah it looks like a snow globe like it's like a giant snow globe that holds like i think like 20 000 people or something like that yeah and it's but it's like a it's like a stage it's not like an arena and like everything's going to be like all the the outside of it's going to be like super hd screens and like the ins i mean the inside of it's going to be like a giant essentially you know what's it called like the the movie thing will what uh what artist is going to be like a giant essentially you know what's it called like the the movie thing will

what uh what artist is going to pull you pull you to vegas to uh to to see something i don't know i'm worried that it's just i'm worried it's going to be a u2 set for like the first like year that it's open and i don't know if u2 is going to move the needle for me unless i get some free tickets i i think that's a i think that's like one of the one of the like ongoing one of the struggles about that place is that it's so state-of-the-art and this multi-billion-dollar facility that they don't really know who they're going to fill it with. I feel like you would need a huge budget in order to create the assets that need to be on the screen behind you to make it worth it for the people that are going to that show a hundred percent and that's the thing like a lot of you know even like really really big acts they just don't have like they're not the budget carved out in production to be able to like actually do that yeah yeah maybe if goose decides to do only bob seger covers i'll go and i'll go and watch that and

it'll just be it'll just be lake michigan in the background and i'll be happy are uh are you guys familiar with uh rough are you guys familiar with with the goose has goose bubbled up on this podcast yet no but i got a feeling it's about to you you uh you've heard goose you just haven't realized that you've heard Goose at this point. Is there something Dylan and I would be into? I am unfamiliar. Probably as a surprise to nobody. You're just familiar with the way that your high school friends do it.

Oh, yeah. If you want to get Goosed, then I got some people. You got a guy. You got a Goose guy. You got a Goose guy. Uh-huh. They show up in the bumper music on Fox Sports NFL games every now and then. Do they really?

Because I know they have the guy that runs it. The guy who does it is – he's actually become a friend of mine out here in Los Angeles. His name is Jake Jolly. He's like the music guy. That's why you hear like fish and like, you know, Grateful Dead and a bunch of like, you know, uh, kind of left of center music in Fox sports productions these days. Jake, Jake Jolly, he's a great guy. A lot of fun. Yeah. It is always interesting to hear that. It's like, what, what, what just happened? Like, how did that take us into commercial break? i'm not mistaken goose has been regularly compared to jam bands such as fish and unfreeze mcgee both of which

the band's members count as influences is that correct wow dave that's amazing i don't know all this stuff it's just like i forgot it at first and then you said goose and you said goose you put emphasis on it now i remember it now you get it now you get it yeah dude shout out to uh trevor and peter and the boys good band good band i was listening to one of your shows one time and i was laughing at every time you say good band yeah day's probably your favorite he's everybody's favorite yeah that's dave that's dave not a not a big deal we've accepted it it's fine yeah this is what they do they marginalize me like this oh come on man my favorite too by the way thank you what the fuck oh sorry i was just kidding man that's cool

it's cool what's next for brandon in 2023 oh let's see here i mean uh we're really we're really like stay the course with the pro bible business right now. We got like some cool new distribution stuff going on with like MSN and where we, we added some, some new writers last year that that have been pretty, pretty fun to have in the mix, especially on the sports front. We get to sports coverage pretty quickly these days, which

is, which is awesome. We've kind of optimized the business like that. You know, just trying to do like cooler, different stuff, to be honest. I think sometimes people are like, you guys, I'm sure you guys kind of feel this way about like, know with everything that you guys have built um you know a lot of it like people will be like oh what's like what's next what's like how are you gonna like you know 4x 3x whatever um but like we're a we're a 15 person like company these days um and like we're pretty content with just running like maintaining you know what i mean and like capitalizing on opportunities when you can't hear in there i'm kind of talking in esoteric business speak i'm so sorry go off how do you scale your business like no like i mean i think people don't think they're

they're they're like how do you you know how do you become this big, massive thing? And like, for, I think for a lot of us, we're kind of more just like, Hey, we've done this for, you know, like, like 13 years now, like, it's not really about like getting massive and culturally huge or anything like that like it's more about like just continuing to maintain and you know be proud of what we what we're putting out does that make sense yeah of course it does absolutely that's a great perspective well thanks for joining us today man i like to think of these like content things as like family restaurants you know like not necessarily like mcdonald's like it's like everybody has that great iconic like family restaurant that everybody knows in a city or neighborhood and uh and like that's like that's a like

my perspective is i'd rather bro bible be that than i would you know be mcdonald's i like that i'm gonna i'm gonna use that in a meeting like yes three months from now and you guys are gonna be like oh shit you guys took that from brandon that was deep we're like dylan and i are texting totally stole this from brandon uh well we got a link we got to uh next time we're on the west coast or next time you're in austin we got we got a link and got to uh next time we're on the west coast or next time you're in austin we got we got a link and do this in person you might you might see me in july in san francisco if you're there dude that would be that would be awesome i'd love to and uh you know i was i was hoping i was like uh david you like invited me to come on man i was like damn i should go to

austin for this but because i got the willie thing tomorrow i like i get it i just completely understand you just got to come here for a willie show sometime he does enough he does enough here that's a fair fair how you working the folks follow you on uh twitter instagram whatever you want to plug yeah uh twitter twitter's kind of my go-to a little bit. It's, it's kind of weird these days, but like, you know it's just my name, Brandon Wennerd. And also I'm trying to build up my Instagram. Like, so I should plug my Instagram. It's just a Brandon dot Wennerd on Instagram. I would be super appreciative if people follow me there. I want to like share cool shit.

Follow Brandon, everybody. Say no more. Go hit that follow button. All right, Brandon. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm sure we'll hear from you again in the near future. Absolutely, guys. Thank you so much for having me on, man.

It means the world to connect and you know i have so much respect for for what you guys do and what you guys have built um into all your various endeavors and you know nothing but nothing but love and support from over here well back at you man we appreciate that a lot thank you so much all right brandon we'll see you ma'am yeah man see y'all see y'all thank you coffee's for closers only you think i'm fucking with you i'm not fucking i'm i'm i'm not fucking with you coffee's for closers only coffee's for closers only I'm Katja and I'm Michelle be fine