Digital Social Hour - Eddie Maalouf Says No to Almost Everything | Digital Social Hour #122

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

On today's episode of the Digital Social Hour with Eddie Maalouf, we talk about the future of AI, spending tens of millions on paid ads, and the importance of creating content. BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] APPLY TO BE ON THE POD: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH HelloFresh: https://www.hellofresh.com/50dsh AG1: https://www.drinkAG1.com/DSH Hostage Tape: https://hostagetape.com/DSH LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So what about AI? Do you see AI as a fad or it's here to stay? I think AI is the biggest thing we've seen in the last 100 years, probably since the car was made. Wow. Dude, Samsung had the biggest f*** in AI history probably for the next 10 years. Really? What happened? Its engineering team went in and they basically uploaded all the proprietary information of their chips to ChatGPT to ask it how to optimize it and make things better it leaked and now now people would go on there at chat GPT it would spit out

their proprietary chip information away Samsung banned AI use in the entire company like next day Welcome back to the Digital Social Hour. I'm your host, Sean Kelly. I'm here with my co-host, Wayne Lewis. What up? What up? And our guest today, Eddie Malou. What's up, man? How's it going? Good, man. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Absolutely. How are you feeling? I'm feeling awesome, dude. Just got off the plane right ready to dig in from Mexico yeah it came from Mexico and walked in and there's a are sitting on the chair right before we like to mix it up you know we do it over here love that you get the best people from their space which you're one of them and I love you

to explain people watching what you do yeah so long story short I do digital marketing so I got a company with about 120 employees right now and we basically And I'd love you to explain people watching what you do. Yeah, so long story short, I do digital marketing So I got a company with about 120 employees right now And we basically focus on Facebook ads YouTube ads pretty much anything online creating content email marketing Mainly we push like e-commerce revenue on Shopify as well as some pretty big people in like the coaching and info products place right now Nice and how did you get good at marketing to be able to start your own marketing company yeah so originally i wanted to start my own uh fitness supplement company uh i basically want to create a bodybuilding.com in the middle east uh so when i was like 19 20 which is like 10 years ago at this point i basically created a business plan i got really deep into

marketing i figured out facebook ads before like anyone knew how to use them influencer marketing uh and i basically wrote down like a 30, 40 page business plan and took it to supplement companies like really big ones, billion dollar brands, uh, so that they would give me the rights to distribute in the middle East solo. Uh, and I got exclusivity from all of them. And then I basically went to the middle East, started implementing that plan with like influencers, Facebook ads, stuff like that. Uh, long story short, a lot of politics got involved. Uh, and then I started taking the skills to like my family's companies. They had like water parks and things like that. And I like tripled their business in like a year. And I realized

what I could do. And then from there, people basically started talking and started taking on clientele and building a company out of it. Nice. And which platforms are you seeing success with this year? YouTube and Facebook? Yeah, YouTube and Facebook, definitely. We probably spend at this point maybe 10 million a week jesus uh maybe more than that probably probably 10 to 15. what's your roi on that monthly uh depends on every brand a month maybe no no that would be insane no i mean it's probably he said 10 million a week he's spending yeah yeah so yeah so so in a month it's probably like a hundred and yeah 60 million his RI has to be over 100 he's been in 10 million a week yeah so like I'll give you an example like right now we just

ran like a webinar this last week we spent 120k on that we made maybe like 700k so like webinars are still working oh yeah we're doing like 35 million a month and webinars and challenges and things like that. We got a lot your webinar win 100% Yeah, it's anyone done a podcasting webinar yet People do podcasting via cells which are like video sales letters essentially basically what they are is like just a shorter webinar I'm pitching people a lot of people do that. I've tried a few it didn't work out for me. It's kind of niche I guess yeah introverts and don't want to start a pod yeah yeah exactly that's probably part of it so

what about AI do you see AI as a fad or it's here to stay I think AI is the biggest thing we've seen in the last hundred years probably since like since like the car was made Wow yeah that's how far it's I think that's how big AI is because it's self accelerated it learnserated. It learns on its own. I was actually, and here's actually the biggest problem with AI. And I don't think people have realized this yet. But I've noticed that, like, let's take ChatGBD, for example. Let's say I'm in one account and I upload a formula of some sort to ChatGBD.

Let's say my custom supplement formula. Hey, what can I make this better? Because it's AI, it's actually saving it into its server. And if I go to someone else's account, I can technically prompt that question. And if someone else has uploaded it, it will know the answer and give it back to me. I don't know if you saw Samsung. Have you seen Samsung's situation?

No. Dude, Samsung had the biggest f*** in AI history probably for the next 10 years. Really? What happened? Its engineering team went in and they history probably for the next 10 years really it's engineering team went in and they basically uploaded all the proprietary information of their chips to chat gpt to ask it how to optimize it and make things better and it leaked all their secrets it leaked and now now people would go on there at chat gpt and it would spit out their proprietary chip information samsung

banned ai use in the entire company like next day effectively yeah like imagine coca-cola that doesn't mean that the information is still not in there oh the information's still there it's too late but they're trying to stop it from the future people can literally duplicate what samsung is doing they didn't patent the chip i mean you can't i mean even if you patent it right a company like hawaii or whatever from uh from china is going to go in there and just make their own version of the chip. You know what I mean? They don't care.

You can't patent code or the way it's ability to do stuff. You can patent the chip, but the information in it is, I mean, it's information. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So what jobs do you see AI taking over and just wiping out? All of them. No, I wouldn't say all of them. I'll tell you what jobs are staying.

Like handyman work, construction, things that require physical labor. Yeah, but kids don't want to work no more. Physical labor will be the robot's job. Kids ain't. But how long before we get to robots that are like repairing your house? Let's be honest. Like decades. Decades.

It'll take 20 years, right? But I feel like from a software standpoint, I feel like the humans will be controlling the robots in a sense. But that's just. But like how long before we have a robot no so there's phases right it's like phase one like we have the robots that actually can do the handyman work phase two is like getting humans trust to allow a robot to step into their house to do the work itself you know I think I think we're at least like 25 30 years they don't want to work no more though that's

the problem so that ended but that industry is not gonna go anywhere that's the demands gonna get higher. It's going to get more expensive. I see a lot of, a lot of success in that industry. Even now we're starting marketing agencies and trying to buy like HVAC companies and renovation companies, et cetera. Cause we know we can market them and we know the prices are going to go up because demand is going to get stronger.

Supply is going to go down. Right. Ironically, the first jobs that are taken are creative jobs. I thought that would be like one of the last ones yeah copywriting music dude i mean 10 seconds i can go write a song that's better than bro i listen to the shit drake songs all day those are pretty good fire they're amazing what they're not even dude they hit they they're on the charts bro it's like i'm sorry this is a fire if i was a record label owner i'd be i'd be sweating right now what record labels have to do and this might be a little far-fetched but

it'll it'll make sense i feel like they're gonna have to own the artist's tones and the melodies you're gonna have to own those so now you can push that over so even if artist does die which pretty much a lot of them do they they're still able to make songs. But they have to own the rights to the actual voice of the artist. Wow. 100%. Someone did that. Then that's when you can actually, yeah.

I feel like that's when you can actually stop AI. Because now you actually own the tone of the artist. So the Drake and Weekend big song came out, right? Was it Drake and Weekend? Yeah. They got a lot of them. It popped, right? It went crazy.

And then they're like, they're trying to shut it down. They're trying to stop everything from going. And then another big artist, I forgot who, but I think it was a female artist. She was like, hey, just give me like 10% royalties on this. Elon Musk, baby mom. I don't mean to say it like that. Oh, Grimes? Yeah.

She actually created an app that enables people to actually use her voice and likeness, but she takes a 50, I think she do a 50-50 split. Like that makes sense. That as an artist, that is how you win bro you you just give other people 50% and let them rip the best songs they possibly gain with your voice I feel like artists should do that I think Drake should team up with some of these were AI writers bro do some of the fire did you can get hundreds of millions of views and take a 50% 60% royalty rip on them and do no work whatsoever 80 that's what i'm saying dude just from your

voice yeah that's what i would fire yeah that's what i would do as an artist man 100 it just makes sense right it just you don't have to go after everybody it's like yo y'all put it out long you don't put me out dissing nobody have fun with it and that's it i want 80 you're not going to stop it that's the thing these guys actually think they're going to stop it bro there's there's billions of kids on their computers just sitting here writing songs and drinks and that's the thing these guys actually think they're gonna stop it brothers there's billions of kids on their computers just sitting here writing songs and that's like fire would have been the most viral ads highest ROI ads you've seen and what you think made them so special mmm okay I was just talking about this was someone yesterday so like I'll give you a reference point

on ads like a 1% click-through rate on social media is considered like good really it's like a good baseline it's like if 1% of everyone that sees the ad clicks on it, considered a good ad, right? Yesterday, we were talking about an ad that was 27% click. Like 27 times like the normal baseline. So three out of 10? Yeah. And it was about a baby sleep course, for example,

to teach you like how to put your baby to sleep properly, sleep train them, whatever. And the headline was, I thought my baby died. You know what I mean? Because they were asleep for the first time in a while, whatever, right? So like doing things that are very polarizing and shocking in that headline is definitely like the way to go. But how I view ads, and I think this is why we're successful,

is I try to look at ads like I look at organic social media, right? Same with you guys making the clips for this podcast, right? You want a really polarizing hook. You want something that's interesting enough where first few seconds people are like, oh, what the f**k? There's no way this is what they're talking about. Let me learn more, etc. That's the same approach we take on our ad. So even when we make a good ad, we'll go and we'll rip like 10 different hooks and slap them all on the same exact ad just to see which hook is going to get the highest watch rate. And that's how we're running it. I think too many people play their ads wrong. And too many people think about how can I get people to click? How can I get them off the platform as quickly as possible? When the real

game, if you really think about it, Facebook's trying to monetize, YouTube's trying to monetize, all these guys are trying to monetize, right? The only way they're going to monetize is by getting as much attention and watch time on the platform as possible. So really what you got to do is make the best ads that make people watch all the way through, not just click right away. And then Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, all these platforms will reward you because if your ad gets people watching four or five times longer than another ad, they're going to charge you five times less, 10 times less sometimes just because your ad is keeping people held on the platform longer their attention is there etc that's why I like even back in the day you see used to see

Tai Lopez run like a 50 minute ad and just talk to the camera and people would sit there and watch and he'd do so well because like YouTube's like dude people are watching 40 minutes on average on this video run it you know I mean and that's that's the real formula at the end of the day and then what goes into keeping people engaged that long is do you spend a lot on a video production team or can you do that off an iPhone you can definitely do it off an iPhone for sure you guys know like like interesting content is the first piece of it all it's like being able to consistently get people to like stay engaged with whatever the next

thing is and not just giving all the answers up front is number one I like to always like if I'm running like let's say a 90 second ad, I'll say like, Hey, I'm going to tell you this thing at the end kind of thing. And then it forces them to stick as I'm educating them, as I'm being funny, whatever it is that I'm doing to hold their attention. I give them a secondary incentive. That's like in the back of their head the whole time. Like I want to click off, but like, I want to know that thing that he told me he was going give me at the end of this video right and I see the timer and I know I'm almost there I'm gonna stay on and so that really holds a lot of people especially on YouTube because you can't like sift

through on Facebook you can like sift through an ad right on Instagram you can't so being very particular about those platforms and holding people in like that is super important we do like little effects like pinching in and out all the time I'm sure you guys have seen that like we'll shoot we'll shoot in like 4k so that we can pinch four times yeah and then we'll like pinch in on a word or pinching on a face pinch back out pinch back in pinch back out pinch back in uh because now dude people's people's attention span is so low it's less than seven percent i mean seven seconds now oh oh way less i was sitting on a flight like three to two like hey what that's it i would that's it i wouldn't die i was sitting on a flight like three to two whatever it's about like hey what that's it

i would that's it dude i wouldn't die i was sitting on a flight on the way back there's a 50 year old man sitting next to me makes tens of millions of dollars a year and i'm watching this guy and i'm like he's scrolling through tick tock like a child it's the same thing it scroll oh three four seconds scroll oh three four seconds scroll i'm like dude this is a 50 year old man you have to get your point across now in like three seconds gotta be quick yeah and so you gotta treat ads the same way just like you would organic you're like dude I need I needed to hit big I need people to watch I treat ads the same way I don't make ads to be ads I make them to be the best organic post they can be and

then I put money behind it right so although your business is very cash flow heavy do you reinvest most of it back into the business or do you keep a lot yeah so great question I'd say the first few years I invested pretty much everything back into the business. Um, infrastructure, uh, like you write camera equipment, this shit money, right? They're like all this setup that you guys have here, it costs money. So at first we were doing that, we're building our offices, our infrastructures, et cetera. Um, two things I'd say, like if you're building a business are the most important things to invest your money in uh number one would be your own brain like your own mental ability to understand things like i probably spend five hundred thousand to six hundred thousand dollars a year just going

to like events masterminds groups learning like educating myself as much as possible because i know dude like whether the whether crypto goes, whether the Fed raises the rates on real estate, no matter what the f*** happens, the market crashes, it doesn't matter. If I'm growing mentally, I've seen my income quadruple virtually every single year because I've invested so much into my brain. That's number one. And at this point, number two, I invest pretty much any chance I get to find someone extremely talented. Not just like, oh, he's a he's a potential good fit for the company i'm saying like yo i want this kid at all costs to work for me i will spend that money on them and that's where most of our money goes right now last month we

spent maybe almost like 700k in payroll um so like i'm just trying to get the best talent right now because i understand this game and this game is really just a game of getting the most talented people you watch the biggest companies that crumble they rose because they went and recruited the best people from other companies and then the company got to a certain point where those people got bored and then they shifted over and started their own startup or their own AI thing or their own competitor or their own whatever it is and that's when you start seeing those trends where companies start like flatlining a little bit and not growing at the rate that they did.

And, you know, I've been blessed enough to understand that and see that. And we invest heavy amount of money into employees, even when we don't need them. Like if I'm like, dude, this guy's super talented. Yeah. I don't have a spot right now, but I know if like I pay him for 60 days, I'll have a spot for him. Yeah. You know what I mean?

And it'll be worth that. So you hire him with no position. Sometimes if he's like exceptionally talented and I know he has skills that fit in the company listen i don't have an open spot right now but let me hire you you start understanding the business and you can see where you can plug in and that i i know those people will make an roi back but that's crazy that's a crazy model because nobody does that well hire good talent no no nobody hires you without having a position like just to lock you in oh yeah yeah and i'm not saying we do that all the time but if you're a special talent that's still a thing to think about that thought process like he's so special to like no i can't let this dude leave my office 100 i'm gonna hire

you without even having a position exactly i'll make one for you think about that bro that's that's a different way of thinking that's a whole good talent the roi is like insane dude it's hard to come by. And bad talent, the ROI is insanely negative. They come in by the buttload, but again, your ROI is very low. Yeah, and not even that, bro. They affect everyone around them. That's the thing. It's like the

rotten apple in the basket makes all the other apples rotten. 100% in the workspace. Have you ever made a bad hire that just was terrible? Plenty. And here's the thing ever made a bad hire that just was terrible uh plenty of people and here's the thing having a good hire does not correlate like being the smartest person does not equal being a good hire you know and and i've fired people in the past i do this thing so let me put it this way uh i do this like trick i guess in my company with my leaders twice a year.

And I spontaneously ask them to give me the bottom five culture fits in our company. Like people. I'm like, you're not allowed to leave this meeting until you slack me five names of people you feel are the worst fits for the company. So that I can see what you guys think anonymously. I'm not going to tell anyone who voted who. You give me five names and you can leave this room. Otherwise, you're stuck in here all day. And I'll have like my top 10 people in the company and basically give me their five names. And you'll start seeing eight votes out

of 10 for this guy, nine votes out of 10 for this person. And you start understanding, dude, like if my top 10 people in the company are telling me this person is in the bottom five foot of the company, like I as a leader need to take action and i remember firing this person and every single person voted for him all 10 unanimous votes and every single person xm in parentheses said something along the lines of like but he's one of the smartest people i've ever met but he's he's his brain is on another level but but but but he's number one on their list of five every single time and so uh sometimes it's very important to understand like just because someone's super smart or they're bringing you value there's other things that are affecting the culture of the company that are affecting maybe the productivity of other people how people perceive leadership how much respect they have because they see this person not respecting

leadership you got to cut those people dude and that's been one of the hardest lessons honestly growing a company with a bunch of staff i like that exercise because people wouldn't tell you honestly like unless you just ask them that well he's protecting his workforce too right so he's uh getting the bad apples out of there because a lot of things can happen you know a lot of companies get sued because their employees you get asked and stuff like that so when you're having those personal conversations you want your the happier your employees are longer to stay the more efficient they are. So he's providing that happiness. He's giving them the choice to be happy. That's different.

It's cool, but it kind of stirs the pot a little bit. Oh, 100%. But you got to stir the pot, bro. Here's the thing, dude. If you don't stir the pot, like, everyone gets complacent. It's the same thing, like, I'll give you this. We never wrote up anyone, like, physically in our company. We never, like, gave them a piece of paper that was signed like hey you did this bad thing we just be like yo

hey bro like how many we're gonna make this mistake you know what i mean this is like the fifth time come on let's not do this again you know what i mean then sure surely two weeks later dude makes the same mistake again we went to a write-up system where we actually write people up if they do something that's like big enough to be a write-up right bro straight as an arrow every time like fucking it could be the worst person you write them up the next 60 days they're flawless they don't make a single mistake everything's and that's just because you stir the pot you're like you're like listen no one here is invincible you know what i mean here's a piece of paper that you signed that says all the things you did wrong and it carries a different level of weight with people

and i'll tell you it's changed the entire organization of our company. Like you will see people straighten out every single time. Whereas we, we used to just be nice and say like, Hey man, be better next time or don't do that again or whatever. And like, it just carried no weight. And so when,

when people see someone getting chopped off the block because they were a bad example, they start understanding that like no one here is invincible. If this guy who was like in this high position, who's super smart, everyone voted out because of this reason, then I need to step it up and I need to always show up every day, a hundred percent to work.

Otherwise that could be me at the end of the day. Right. A lot of people get complacent. Too many do. A lot of money or decent. What they perceive is a lot of money. So how do you structure the money part? Is there a bonus for like good work? so it depends on the position not every position

has bonuses right i've noticed uh i've served i've surveyed my entire company uh at the time we were maybe like 80 people and i asked would you prefer higher salary uh and no bonus or would you rather have same salary with a bonus and i would tell you maybe 70 80 percent of people voted higher salary no bonus really yep yeah no reason why they do that cuz it's guaranteed but they don't understand that you can peek over that with bonuses yeah I would choose the bonus forces just forces you to work hard plus he'll notice you a lot more if you in your bonuses you probably get promoted likely faster than the person he's just paying higher salary yeah these people get complacent these people drive because they made 50 000 last month now they're

making 100 he's gonna pay attention to them 100 and that what you said is super important you said i would take the bonus yeah and i'll tell you pretty much anyone that runs a company would take the bonus yeah because they understand i'm playing to my ceiling you know what i mean i any job i had before i started running a company was always in sales because I don't want a salary. I don't want to be told that I'm going to make 5K this month. If I'm as good as six other people, I should get paid as six other people. But you know what I mean? And so that's the mentality of a business owner. Most people don't think like that, but I'll tell you every single person I've gotten to quit their company. So I've gotten people who run other marketing agencies, make maybe a million dollars a year, let's say, to come leave their company and come work with me.

All of them are on a high salary plus a very high bonus structure because that's the world that they want to live in. They want to say, dude, I want to play my ceiling. I don't just want to be, I don't want to like leave my company and come work for 150K a year. I want to come and be able to work for 150K. But if I do good, I can make 300k. You know what I mean? And those are the high level talented people. And in the marketing creative world, those are the people that are probably the best fits for like an aggressive growth work environment because they want to push. They always want to push. They want to show up

late. They want to show up on a weekend. They want to do whatever it takes to hit those numbers to hit the bonus. And in most cases, a bonus in my company, it's a profit share base. So like you're running a department, you'll get a profit share of this department if it's a certain amount of profitability. And everyone in that department will also get a bonus based on how profitable we are. So we basically set a baseline. Let's say, you know, this department needs to operate as a 40% margin. As long as you guys are a 40 margin everyone gets 10% split up between all of you guys just like a pool yeah boy pool yeah one of the

things I love that you did was when you first moved into your college dorm room you knocked on every single dorm in that building yeah why did you do that dude I'll tell you so my college I went to University of Georgia for reference it's fucking massive like in the football world, it's like number one, number two, always. My nephew's getting recruited there. Great school, dude. We have like, at the time we had like 50,000 students. And in high school, you know, I was very, I was outgoing and I played soccer and I played

basketball and I did all these things. But I had like an identity, right? It's like you have the same identity from middle school to high school. You kind of like carry it over, whatever it is, right? And my dad was driving me to college and I remember sitting in the car and like coming to the realization like, you know what? As of today, no one knows who the f*** I am. I can be whoever the f*** I want to be. Right, right.

I could show up and, you know, be super cocky. I could show up and, you know, be a jock. I could be super like simpy. I don't know what the f*** it is. From this day on, this is what everyone's going to know me as in this university. Cause this is where I'm going to live. So I was like, you know, I think the best way I want for everyone to identify me is like, everyone knows me. And if I can get everyone to know me, I feel like that's a status that doesn't, doesn't matter good or bad in any way. It's always good. It's like bad publicity is always good publicity kind of thing. It doesn't matter.

As long as everyone knows Eddie Maloof, right i'm okay i'll be able to get into every party i'll be able to get into every situation and it worked because i ended up being friends with all the athletes all the basketball players all the football players were my boys i go all their parties i throw all the parties um but yeah i knocked first day of school bro i showed up before school even started it was like the the Sunday before first day of class. Nine floors, probably 40 rooms, a hallway, 50 hallway. Dude, and I knocked on every door. But guess what, bro? By the first week, everyone over the house.

Wow. Everyone. Because, dude, how many people are in this building? And then they go and make. That's 400 doors. That's what I'm saying, bro. They go and make 200. They make 20, 30 friends each.

I know the whole campus now. That's it. You know what I mean? Like, just like that, I have 20,000 people that I know indirectly. So you just knock and introduce yourself now that's it you know what i mean like just like that i have 20 000 people that i know indirectly so you just knocked and introduced yourself that's it hey i'm eddie i live on the fourth floor i'm in room whatever 427 whatever the was you know nice to meet you hey let's exchange socials boom boom so that's it how did that make your college experience easier as far as your network and grow and growth aspect dude i got whatever i wanted to

call it no really that that was it because i knew everyone you know what i got whatever i wanted to call it no really that that was it because i knew everyone you know what i mean like i wanted to get into a party i got in if i wanted to get into a football game i couldn't get in i knew someone who was on the team get me in you know what i mean if i wanted to get into a bar and i didn't have a fake for whatever reason i knew the guy who worked the door like like nothing mattered you know what i mean and in college it's like virtually like no rules you know what i mean that's so smart i wish i did like knocked on your first day right first day bro and and and even to get to get crazier first semester i never sat next to the same person at any meal or any class so i was like

it's fucking all dude it was awkward sometimes because like you could have breakfast at like 7 a.m right no one in the whole cafeteria i'm talking 400 empty tables one dude sitting on a table by himself you go sit next i'd be like hey bro can i sit here and he'd like look around he'd be like what the this guy doing and i'm like uh sure and then i'll sit down and make a friend you know what i mean so same with classes like the auditorium classes like 400 people i just sit somewhere new every time like hey i'm eddie wow and then you know by the end of the first semester i knew literally like everyone on the entire campus that's insane yeah did you graduate i did graduate oh nice yeah i'm surprised

i'm gonna be like no i only i so i'm middle eastern right i'm lebanese and um my parents like how i look at it as like they went through so much they pushed me through the entire school system i'm just gonna finish for them but before I even graduated I was already running a company okay I was doing that supplement business yeah and I remember um going to fly to Vegas to have those meetings um with those with the guys who own the brand some of these guys are billionaires dude and um I remember like telling my teacher hey listen I gotta go I gotta do this I'm not gonna be here for this exam and he's like cool I'm just gonna fail. I'm not going to be here for this exam. And he's like, cool. I'm just going to fail you. I'm like, all right. Imagine we're in a business class right now, sir. And you're teaching me business and I'm going to do it. I have a company and I'm going

to have meetings with billionaires and you're going to fail me in your business class because I'm doing the thing that you're trying to teach us to do. I'm like, bro, let's be reasonable. Anyways, long story short, he ended up giving me like a flush 80 or a flush 90 for it because he understood the situation but i was like bro what the f*** are you gonna fail me for you're trying to teach me this i'm doing it i always thought business and marketing professors were kind of ironic because they never don't have experience yeah they only have textbook experience none there was one teacher i had who had experience and he's the only guy i ever listened to yeah every other class i kind of chill whatever like I do my thing honestly I was blessed where I was like very intelligent yeah and like for example like economics I would skip

every class and the class would just tell me when the exams were yeah and I would tutor the whole class I tutor like 20 30 people not going to class the day before the exam and that's how I studied I would like explain all the I go to class and do and I'd be out of the class in like five six minutes I was I was really blessed but this guy I remember was uh like my statistics teacher or something he starts the class with I'm like whatever this guy's lame he looks like a bum he starts the first class with an intro he sold a company for like 30 million dollars he did this he did I'm like bro this is a guy listen to that class I never opened a laptop never pulled my phone out I was like I would ask him like real life questions.

What would you do in this in business? Oh, I did this, this, this, this, this. That was awesome. And I was like, dude, I wish every teacher, like they just pulled in people to teach like one class and they would just be sick at business. Dude, they can afford it with the tuition they charge. That's what I'm saying, bro. Hundreds of thousands of dollars over the semester.

Instead of teachers being more having a business acumen which I feel like they should hire entrepreneurs yeah they want you to have a degree in all that but it's like dude I just turned away someone who went to Harvard undergrad went to Harvard masters I just turned away someone from Harvard for a $48,000 job whoa because they were under qualified and I felt so bad that instead of just like denying them over an email,

I had my team get on a call because I was like, dude, how distraught must this person be applying to a $48,000 project manager job and they have an undergrad in Harvard,

a master's at Harvard, probably spent half a million dollars minimum. No experience. And they couldn't get a $48,000 job. I was like, you need to get on a call with this person and deny them and explain to them how they can become qualified to to reapply for this job in a month because i can't imagine your whole life you're like i'm going to harvard yeah like you work your ass off for that and then

you can't even get a 50k job i need to be honest i mean just experience nowadays is like YouTube University is like the main university. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Even just courses online, bro. You could buy a thousand dollar course right now. Like, obviously, there's a bunch that are just a waste. But like, you could buy a thousand dollar course and make millions of dollars from the shit that you learn.

I used to watch a course a day, bro. That actually looks better on the resume. I went hard. So, you watched a course a day? Yes. Holy fuck. So, when I dropped out of Rutgers, I watched a course a day yes holy so when i dropped out of ruckers i watched a course a day for probably six months straight wow beneficial though yeah yeah

you probably learned so much the most learning you've ever done your whole life i used because i said this on the last podcast i used to think i hated learning from school right but as soon as i started watching courses on and i didn't grow i was addicted you know same here and and also too uh the fact that a person made a million dollars or sold a company for a million dollars looks way better on a resume versus you know just a degree you would more so look at them dude i don't even look at the degree like we didn't even realize she went to harvard we like denied her and i was like oh you don't care about the college bro i don't even i don't even care about the college anymore dude on i i like like what experiences you going to college tell me you can play beer pong i mean like sure

there's a level to like uh organization and like understanding i mean some people say you can start and complete a task but it's like but can you i don't know i don't know what your actual college was like you know i mean i don't know like if you depend on other people and group projects or like i'm not gonna go calling your actual college was like. You know what I mean? I don't know if you depended on other people and group projects. I'm not going to go calling your teachers and asking about you. You know what I mean? I want to know, like, what have you done? Oh, I led a senior management distribution team on Amazon in a warehouse for a year and we did this.

That's cool. That's experience. I got a marketing degree. I know you're underqualified. There's no way you're working in my company. 100%. Yeah, they didn't learn anything about social media marketing. Marketing doesn't require a degree. Definitely not. My degree was the biggest waste. Man, what's next for you, Eddie?

I am building this company into hopefully a company that we sell for like $150, $200 million. That's the goal. Nice. We're looking at like a four or five-year potential exit. Nice. But it doesn't mean I'm out of the game right it's uh it's just getting rolled up by someone bigger and then probably playing out like a public uh public company level uh and just being a part of that bigger company and trying to play bigger

dude at the end of the day here's my thing like once and i'm sure you can relate to this dude once you make like you know multiple six figures a year like you understand like okay i can always make money like it's super easy to make money you know once once you get past a certain point you're like whatever i can make money i just want to play bigger you know what i mean i know right now if like if you took all my money if you took my entire company i'd still make seven figures in the next year like if you took everything you just left me with like a laptop and a phone i'm gonna make millions of dollars in the next 12 months yeah it's guaranteed right so once i realize that i'm like dude i just want to shoot as big as I can go just to like tack on life achievements, not even money, just like sold the company a hundred million dollars. Check. That was really cool. Never expected I could do that. You know what I mean? And things like that. So immediately that's the next step. But for now, working with some of the biggest brands in the world, some of these guys are top 10 Shopify stores in the world. Some of these, I mean, dude, we have some accounts that do hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

And being able to manage that so much experience, dude, so valuable to life and so much experience and being able to take that away and like whatever the future is, you know, I'm ready for it. That's awesome, man. Wayne, dreams become nightmares when you don't chase them. Mmm. Bars. Thanks for tuning in guys. Digital Soul Schlauer. See you next time. Peace.