Digital Social Hour - Why We Quit Our High-Paying Jobs for THIS Risky Move! I Adam Richman & Joe Silberzweig DSH #473

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

In this episode of the Digital Social Hour, Sean Kelly sits down with the dynamic duo Adam Richman & Joe Silberzweig, founders of Medium Rare, to uncover why they quit their high-paying jobs for THIS risky move! 💼💥 Don't miss out as they reveal the behind-the-scenes secrets of launching massive celebrity-driven events like Shaq's Fun House and Gronk Beach. Packed with valuable insights, this conversation dives deep into their journey from corporate comfort to entrepreneurial success. From working with legends like Shaquille O'Neal and Rob Gronkowski to orchestrating massive festivals, Adam and Joe share their unfiltered experiences, challenges, and triumphs. 🚀 Join the conversation and discover how they leverage mainstream appeal and strategic partnerships to create unforgettable experiences while navigating the high-stakes world of event production. Tune in now and subscribe for more insider secrets! Watch now and get inspired by their bold leap and innovative strategies.🔥 #DigitalSocialHour #SeanKelly #Podcast #ApplePodcasts #Spotify #Entrepreneurship #CelebrityEvents #HighRiskHighReward #ShaqsFunHouse #GronkBeach #EventProduction #EntrepreneurAdvice #LeavingJobForPassion #CareerDecisions #RiskyMove #LifeChangingDecision CHAPTERS: 0:00 - Intro 1:11 - How Medium Rare Started 3:57 - Shaq’s Fun House 5:52 - Rob Gronkowski Appearing at Shaq’s Fun House 7:31 - Medium Rare’s Biggest Event 9:49 - Who Parties Harder: Rob Gronkowski or Travis Kelce 13:16 - Forbes 30 Under 30 Achievement 15:31 - Did You Have a Safety Net When You Left Your Jobs 16:25 - Have You Ever Raised Money 17:41 - Future Goals for Medium Rare 19:34 - How to Get People to Your Events 22:32 - Spending Marketing Dollars Effectively 25:17 - Importance of Data 26:13 - Working with WRLDIE 28:10 - Dave Portnoy's Marketing Genius 29:59 - Challenges of Running a Food Festival 32:21 - Closing Thoughts APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/D2cLkWfJx46pDK1MA BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly 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

By the way, we were hardly legitimate. Adam and I both had full-time jobs at other companies. We had salaries. We had awesome, really great titles. It was like, how do you leave this for all of a sudden you go from a really good paycheck every month to nothing. No guarantee. No guarantee at all. And that, as Joe just pointed out, that Forbes 30 under 30 thing was like, okay, you guys should quit this job.

Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe. It helps a lot with the algorithm. It helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team. Truly means a lot. Thank you guys for supporting. And here's the episode. All right, guys.

Adam Richman, Joe Silbersweg. Tried my best to pronounce that. Founders of Medium Rare. How's it going, guys? Good. Thanks for having us on. We'reman, Joe Silbersweg. Tried my best to pronounce that. Founders of Medium Rare. How's it going, guys? Good. Thanks for having us on. We're excited to be here. Absolutely.

You guys got a busy week, man. We are absolutely drowning. We have four events coming up in 36 hours. We got Jack's Funhouse on Friday night, Gronk Beach on Saturday day, Sports Illustrated, the party a few hours later on Saturday night, and then Guys Flavortown tailgate Sunday day. So we will not be sleeping for the next week, needless to say. That is insane. And we'll get into every event individually, but I want to know how this all even started.

Was it one event at a time, or did this all happen at once? Well, Adam and I actually met right out of college when we started working for SFX Entertainment. So we started producing some pretty big EDM festivals like Electric Zoo, Tomorrowland, Tomorrowworld, and we were, you know, like 21, 22 years old, and I was running marketing and doing a lot of digital, social for Tomorrowworld, and Adam was running operations, and that's kind of how we met,

and we always knew we wanted to start our own thing. So we had some great experience working together, and after I was working at Live Nation, I had a happenstance meeting with Shaq and kind of the rest is history. You can get a little bit more into that in a bit. Nice. Yeah, I think you guys having that corporate background really helped because a lot of people get into events and like, you know, all these music festivals and they just flop, right? Yeah, I think we were really lucky to kind of look at our corporate years as that was our college. We both went to college but didn't really learn anything.

Well, Adam went to U of A, so his education was more in promotion. But no, really having those four or five years of corporate life really taught us how to – I went from doing shows in college that were like $50,000 budgets. Next thing you know, we're running 20, $30 million budgets. You like, you can't teach yourself that, right? There's no book. There's no, nothing you can read on the internet about that and getting that experience firsthand. And it was pretty awesome. Yeah. That taught us everything we know. And here we are now, you know, doing our own thing. Wow. So getting handed a $20 million budget, what do you even do from there?

It was, yeah, it was pretty, pretty nerve wracking and exciting at the same time. And, um, you know, now you have this huge responsibility and look, thankfully it's not your money, right. And you get to learn with someone else's money. I think that that was awesome. Right. Um, and now, now we're risking our own $20 million. Um, but we got to learn the hard way of what works and what doesn't work. And like you said, we saw a lot of things flop and fail. And most festivals actually don't make money. It's actually crazy.

It's a really slim margin, really risky business. And we feel like we've kind of perfected it. We learned what not to do and do the complete opposite now. Right, because you're floating a ton of capital for the talent, right? So you've got to spend $10 million, $20 million on just talent and then hope you make it back. Yeah, you have your talent. You have your venue. You have all – most of our places are complete build-ups, right?

We're going into a parking lot and there's no infrastructure, right? There's no bathrooms. There's no fencing. You have nothing there. No power even. We're building basically a city for a couple of, and it costs millions and millions of dollars. And then you're hoping you're going to sell enough tickets. You're hoping you're selling enough sponsorship.

You're hoping you're selling enough food and beverage just to break even. And it's a really risky business. So what was that first event you guys tried on your own? I think what's interesting about that is Adam and I saw that that system was a bit broken. And we saw tons of festivals putting up $10, $ 20, $30 million to produce and barely making money. And Adam and I were scratching our heads saying, what's wrong with this, right? What these margins are too slim and the risks are too high. Um, so after Shaq came to one of the festivals we were working, you know, formed a unique relationship with him and together with him started Shaq's Funhouse. And that was a new model because we went 50-50 with him and created a joint venture business,

which became Shaq's Funhouse, where he's truly invested in the property. And the whole goal of that event was to bring his DNA to life in a live event setting. And when you think about it, one of the best NBA players of all time shouldn't really have his own music festival. Or Rob Gronkowski or Dave Portnoy, right? These are personalities, iconic personalities that we bring to life. So what we found really quickly is by partnering with these types of icons, it really lowers our risk profile and creates much more favorable margins for our business. So in working with Shaq, all of a sudden, the same people that weren't answering my calls at Live Nation, right, CMOs of Pepsi or Verizon, who I was trying to get to sponsor our music festivals, started calling me back real quick when we said the festival was Shaquille

O'Neal. And with that, the deal size started doubling. And we thought and at that time, we saw that, you know, this model could be really fruitful for us. And after the first Shaq's Funhouse went off, it really showed that there's a lot of potential with this new concept. Nice. So the first event, you guys were profitable from the start? Yeah, we've been really lucky.

We've never taken an L on an event, which for an event producer is kind of unheard of. So we're batting 1,000. I think we're like 30-0 now. We're undefeated. We're liketing 1,000. I think we're like 30-0 now. We're undefeated. We're like Floyd Mayweather. And we're going to hopefully keep that record up this weekend. I think that's why everyone wants to work with you guys. I mean, the biggest talent is approaching you guys, wanting to have events.

Yeah, our events, it's so cool. Each event sort of serves as a marketing platform for more talent to come to us. It's really been awesome. We had Travis Kelsey came to Gronk Beach. After that, he was like, I want to do this. marketing platform for more talent to come to us it's it's really been awesome we had travis kelsey came to gronk beach after that he was like i want to do this right that was incredible yeah kelly next thing you know we're doing kelsey jam and travis kelsey because he came to one of our events nice dave portnoy came to sports illustrated last year at super bowl after that he's like i want to work with you guys we started one bite pizza festival of him uh guy fiatty years ago came

to shacks funhouse then we started Guys Played with him on Tailgate. Don't forget the first one. At the first ever Shaq's Funhouse 2018, our first medium rare event, Adam and I barely knew what the hell we were doing in reality. And it was a late night EDM carnival during Ultra. And it went from

2 a.m. to 8 a.m. Damn. We actually had thousands of people waiting outside in the street when we opened the doors. And at about 4 a.m to 8 a.m damn and we actually had thousands of people waiting outside in the street when we opened the doors um and at about 4 a.m rob gronkowski appeared we had no relationship with him he had no clue who we were and he jumped on stage with shack the two of them had a breakdance battle and gronk jumped on his head and shack was carrying him around the festival that moment was on good morning american sports center top 10 the next morning That moment was on Good Morning American SportsCenter Top 10 the next morning, and that was also when our first light bulb went off after the first

event. The media potential and the social potential on these types of events can't even compare to anything else out there. So after that one, Gronk Beach was born. So hopefully after this Super Bowl weekend, we have a few new events to stem out of it. I wouldn't be surprised. I remember

seeing that on the news years ago. That is crazy. That was a big moment. That was when we realized we had something pretty cool. Yeah. What was the biggest event you guys have thrown? Yeah, so big in different ways. Guys, Flavortown Tailgate was our most attended event.

We had about 20,000 people, which was big for a tailgate before Super Bowl. But revenue-wise was last year's Shaq's Funhouse was just an absolute monster. Nice. That is crazy. 20,000 people. Jeez. Could they even fit in the venue? They could fit. This year we're going even bigger.

We got a venue that's like twice the size. Damn. Most Super Bowl events aren't that scale. Most Super Bowl events are really corporate and VIP. It's like 1,500 people, 2,000 people. When we started Guys Flavortown last year, we were like, we're going to do a tailgate for 20,000 people. Everyone was like, you guys are nuts.

That's not what Super Bowl is. That's not going to work. Here we are year two, and revenue-wise, we're double from what we were last year. We had a lot of brands. Pepsi's the presenting partner. Pepsi last year was like, we're not interested. It's year one. Let's see how this. Pepsi's the presenting partner. Pepsi last year was like, we're not interested.

It's year one. Let's see how this goes. Here they are year two and they're like, we want to be the presenting partner. Wow. Which is so cool that year one was like proof of concept

and we showed everyone that this guy's Flavortown tailgate is a great property and it makes sense and it works. And now there was a line of brands waiting to get involved that had no interest at all last year. Yeah, I was on your event websites.

You guys had so many sponsors. It was actually super impressive. Was it tough getting them at first? It's always tough with a new concept or a new festival, right? You are pitching a dream. And year one in the festival model usually loses money or breaks even, and then you start making money in year two or three. We've been really lucky because in partnering with Guy, we're able to sell through different

types of content or experiential deals where, for example, this week we partnered with King's Hawaiian on Guy's Flavortown Tailgate where Guy's cooking up sliders with his recipes and he's having a slider Sunday cook-off with Eli Manning live at the event, which is going to make its way to the main stage, which is a great digital and social moment as well. And those types of partnerships really are very different than a typical music festival. Are you interested in coming on the Digital Social Hour podcast as a guest? Well, click the application link below in the description of this video. We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business

and life. Click the application link below and here's the episode guys. Now having both worked with Kelsey and Gronk, you know, there's a bit of rivalry there. Who do you guys have as the better player? That is a question I cannot answer. Pick it between your children. Yeah, that is a question you cannot answer. They are both the greatest tight ends of all time. And they're both the best for different reasons, right? I think Rob was a more natural tight end and was an incredible blocker and did so much more on the field than just catch. And Travis is a great tight end as well, but he's an amazing receiver.

So it's like pick your poison. If those two were on the field together, you would literally be the greatest football team of all time. Oh, dominate. Yeah, there's always that debate. But, yeah, you guys work with them, so it's not a fair question. That is not a fair question. Yeah, they're different players.

You know, you can't really say. They did have a dance-off at Gronk Beach. It was a tie. Oh, even that was a tie? That was a tie. That was a tie. They both had a dance-off. Rob was, you know, doing some crazy booty dancing.

It was nuts. But it was a tie between Rob and Travis and their dance off of Gronk. What about partying? Who goes harder there? Ooh, that is... Travis is still an active player. Gronk's retired. It kind of depends. When you think of Gronk or Travis, you kind of think of by the year or by the

decade, because who Rob was at 20 isn't who Rob is at 30, but I think Rob in his 20s was a pretty sick guy. I've heard some stuff. And now he's a little bit more into his health and wellness era, and he's looking great and lean. And Travis, he's on another level right now.

I think he definitely really enjoyed Kelsey Jam last year. He was performing live in front of 20,000 people. Performing? Yeah, in KC. He did a quick duet with Machine Gun Kelly. Really? And was rocking the mic yeah they i didn't know what you say yeah he so you know travis every time they win or win a big

game he does he grabs the mic and is like you gotta fight for your right to party and he does that on the mic yeah so machine gun kelly and him chose to sing that together the beastie boy song that is cool epic like travis kelsey literally and machine gun kelly back to back with the band behind them singing Fight Free, Ride the Party. It was epic. That's legendary. Actually, I've seen his brother, the guy in the Eagles. What's his name? Jason Kelsey.

I saw his Christmas special. It was really good. They're both incredible. I was shocked. It's wild. And Jason's a star now, too. Wow. The two of them are like.

Yeah, their pod is killing. Their pod is, I think, the number one or top three sports podcast. Yeah, it's not. It's pretty wild. You guys ever think about having a podcast set up at your events? We should. You should come set one up. I'm down.

Yeah, it would be pretty epic. I'd be fired. Yeah, we need to figure that out, especially maybe at our Barstool Pizza Festival because they have such a big podcast network. But usually we're running around doing a million things at once, and sitting down in the middle of the event sounds a little crazy. I like the idea of a cool studio building and getting a sponsor behind it now we're talking yeah because they got radio row here for the super bowl bunch of podcasts and interviewers yeah i think they have like 200 300 uh outlets set up it's pretty wild it's pretty nuts dude um who you guys got winning the super bowl going with the chiefs i think they have the experience

uh you know they've been in the Super Bowl five years. Been there, done that. I think when you're at this level, that makes such a difference just knowing how to react in a game like this. I think the 49ers are a little new to them. I think Brock Purdy's going to be deer in the headlights

a little scared. Mahomes and Kelsey's Kelsey. That's like betting against Brady and Gronk or Jordan and Pippen. They don't lose. It's going to be a great game, I think. High scoring, hopefully. And you can't bet against Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelsey. Absolutely.

I saw you guys got Forbes 30 under 30. What was that like? That was really cool. That was really like a stamp of approval. That was, I think it was like three years ago now um almost four years and that that that was like a stamp of approval that we kind of needed as a startup um you know when we were really a year year and a half into our business and that really like added legitimacy to everything we're doing right anyone on the outside looking in that was like oh is this a real company?

We obviously had Shaq at the time and we were just really starting with Gronk. And I think people were questioning like if this was a viable business model. And then it's crazy to say, but a little award like that makes such a big difference, right? Everyone's like, oh, Forbes starting under 30. And we started getting – By the way, we were hardly legitimate. Adam and I both had full-time jobs at other companies really and you still got it starting medium rare and started as a side hustle but became our our main focus obviously but i think you know that's you know an interesting kind of tale for for

people as well like we worked around the clock um you know nice weekends on medium rare until it was ready to really hit that launch launching point and as we were doing that you know we signed shack and we start came up with the idea for bronc beach and um you know forbes 30 under 30 actually was one of the key things that gave us that push out the door and gave us kind of the confidence we needed the boost we need to leave our full-time jobs and give medium rare a little bit more we're really comfortable we have sick full-time jobs we're making great you know great salaries we had awesome you know really great titles and the whole thing and it was like how do you leave this for all of a sudden you go from a really good

paycheck every month to nothing right no guarantee no guarantee at all and that as joe just pointed out like that forbes 30 on the 30 thing was like okay you guys should quit this job now do you be an entrepreneur. Be a hustler. That's credibility. Yeah, it was pretty cool. That's on my bug list, man. I got three more years.

We got you. We're going to put in a recommendation. It was pretty funny when I was working at Live Nation winning an award for a different company that I wasn't supposed to be working at. Oh, were they pissed? Definitely raised some eyebrows. Yeah, tried to keep it under wraps for a little bit but it all worked out and um yeah gave us a kick in the ass that we needed so did you guys have a safety net when you took this leap because that's a scary time right leaving a high-paying job

yeah we not a safety net per se but we kind of had you know we were like look we have shock and gronk if we can't figure out how to make more money than we're making at our job, then we suck. So that was the safety net really was like, okay, we have two of the biggest and most epic celebrities of all time. And if we can't figure out how to monetize them in the live event space, then we should probably go back to being nine to five employees for the rest of our life. Nice. That was the safety net. And that's what being an entrepreneur is. And I think a lot of people have hesitation about kind of taking that leap. But if you don't give it a swing, then you'll never know.

I think people sometimes get too kind of caught up on planning and timing and all that. But I think our story really shows you got to go for it. And you miss sometimes too, and you swing and miss. And that's part of the journey. Absolutely. Did you guys ever raise money or was this all self-funded? Yeah, so we've completely bootstrapped the business to date. All of our own money.

We've had 20, 30, 50 opportunities to take really good investments. And every time we get close or really think about it we have like the same epiphany we're like why are we doing this we don't need we don't need the money at the moment and we're like why would we do that because we keep on the trajectory we're on uh we think the valuation is gonna hopefully 2x 3x 4x um and why give up a piece right now when we just the money wouldn't really do anything for the company or do anything for Joe and I at the moment. So,

right. Cause you guys are profitable. All 30 events. You don't even need, yeah, we've been profitable. We have, you know,

we're really healthy, great company. We're really cashflow positive. It's a great business. And sure. It'd be great to bring in some investment, maybe take a little money off the table, but obviously have that money there to help grow and,

you know, be the engine. But we're like, our engine is like... And we love being entrepreneurs. We left our corporate jobs. We've been there. We've done that. We hate the corporate life and want to make sure that we can keep building with our vision. And when the time is right, find the right type of strategic partner to help take us

to another level. Nice. So is the goal just to keep having more and more events? That's the goal for sure is the more we can put on the board. You know, we have a lot in development right now and that's really our Joe and I's number one focus, obviously outside of producing the events we already have on the board, but it's really just keep putting more and more on the board. Keep putting, you know, getting more talent, getting more celebrities, getting more brands. And just, we want a calendar. We're like, holy crap, we have 20 events a year.

I think in 2023, we had eight events, and they're all very large scale. And then in 2024, our hope is to have like closer to 12. Nice. Okay. Is the hardest part getting people there, getting attendance? The hardest part actually is selling sponsorships. And that's such a huge part of our model, right? We're really lucky that we feel like our event concepts are awesome.

When you have Shaq and Lil Wayne and Diplo, that should be enough of a draw to get the ticket holders there, to get people there. What's hard and takes a lot of time is selling sponsorship, right? Convincing 10, 15 brands to each write a check for six and in some cases even seven figures. And that takes time and pitching and begging and explaining. And that takes time and that slows down the cycle a little bit. Yeah, when you're working with big companies, it's got to work its way up the ladder, right? So it probably takes months to get a big deal. It does, but it's all relationship-based.

And at Medium Rare, we work with a lot of incredible companies. Some of our biggest partners are Pepsi or Bud Light, for example, where we've proven how successful our model is and how different it is than if they go and just partner with a Lollapalooza or a Coachella because of the digital and the PR value that our events bring to the table. They're really unique and often speak for themselves. But the sales cycle is very long and could take months to get a deal done. So planning ahead is a really important part of our business. This is so interesting to me because growing up, I see these big music festivals. I just think they're printing money like Lollapalooza. I think that's what everyone thinks.

Like Izu, Coachella. That's what everyone thinks. Joe and I were lucky enough to see it on the SFX and Live Nation side, and I saw more festivals that lost seven figures, in some cases eight figures. Damn. Than I can count. It was like one after another. Like, oh, that festival lost two million.

Oh, that festival lost five million. You're like, how does this make any sense? And to the naked eye, you're like, whoa, there's 50,000 people there. They should be printing money. And it is a tough business being the normal concert festival promoter. It is tough. Yeah, because there's so many talent. You guys keep it smart, like maybe one to three talent per festival.

Yeah, we found this really boutique size, right? Like I think the three-day mega festival, 50,000 people a day, that model is what we saw is like really hard and very difficult and risky our models like these more boutique events uh you know this weekend shacks funhouse is 5 000 people and rock beach is 5 000 people si is 5 000 people and guys 20 000 but those are a lot more manageable right like 5 000 people on super bowl weekends a lot more manageable than trying to do 150 000 people on a random weekend at this park in uh chicago i've been to lala blues i was sick we really work to put our events at the intersection of sports entertainment surrounding these big weekends

where there's an influx of fans and patrons like super bowl but also where brands want to be right and where corporate sponsors park their dollars so So that's been really successful for us, dominating Super Bowl weekend, NFL draft, and other key cultural weekends like that. So, you know, like Adam said, this boutique strategy is very different than what's out there because people think they need to scale to achieve that profitability. Well, when you have more attendees, all of a sudden you need to hire more staff. You need more Browns. You need more artists. And we've seen that that model hasn't always worked so well. But what makes our model so unique is the digital and social, like I've been saying, where at Shaq's Funhouse, across his social platform, getting hundreds of millions of engagements and views on his platform surrounding the event. But also from a media standpoint, we have CNN and Fox News reporting live from Shaq's Funhouse, interviewing Shaq, going around to our sponsor

activations, interviewing Lil Wayne and Diplo, and that's what sets us apart. So our little event for 5,000 people has a similar media reach to some of the biggest festivals in America. That's smart because you don't really see festivals doing that, having live media there. And now there's this huge wave of live streaming. So there's guys like Aiden Ross. I don't know if you heard of these guys, but like I Show Speed, XQC, they're getting insane views.

And they actually help the UFC a lot. Yeah, it's wild. I think the UFC has actually done a great job tapping into that whole world. That next generation. Yeah, they don't even get credit for it, but like they've done an incredible job with, you know, the Nelk Boys and following, you know, sort of a lot of their friends and family around them.

And it's been incredible to see they're like really tapping in the next generation. So this being a marketing podcast, what's your guys' takes on like spending marketing dollars? I know UFC, I believe they don't spend anything on marketing and same with Elon Musk with Tesla. But how do you guys feel about it? We wish we were that lucky that we'd have to spend my marketing dollars. Um, you know, if you take an average event,

we'll spend this weekend about $250,000 per event on marketing. Damn. Um, like Facebook ads and stuff. Yeah. Ads are a big part of that. Content's a huge part of it. Um,

right. We're making a ton of content to one, promote the event, but two coming out of the event to write, keep the hype and sell it to partners. And, um, but two, coming out of the event to keep the hype and sell it to partners. And we spend, of that 250, I'd say almost 50 grand of its content, just making incredible videos, photos, reels, GIFs, whatever to promote the event on a year round basis. That's a big expense. We probably spend about a hundred on digital ads. That's

everything from Facebook ads to retargeting to Google ads and so on and have a really robust strategy there. And then we're lucky. Sometimes we go on sale of an event and sell so fast that it's like, oh, you had 250 in the budget. Now it's only 50 because you sold out in nine minutes, right? You don't have a campaign. That's happened before? That's happened before? That's happened before. And you're like, obviously, one, you're thrilled because you just sold out quickly.

But then you're even more excited because you're like, holy crap, we just saved 200 grand on the marketing budget. So that's always lucky. And you've got to know how to adapt it based on how the event's performing. And sometimes you've got to add more fuel to the engine. You're like, this event is not doing well. So you're like,

we've got to spend more on ads, right? We've got to get people here. We've got to add more fuel to the engine. You're like, this event is not doing well. So you're like, we've got to spend more on ads, right? We've got to get people here. We've got to sell tickets. Spend more, spend more, spend more. And it does. You see what's working, what's not working. In some events, you're like, it's going great. Spend less, spend less.

So it's really just continuing to tinker with it. Even this week, the events are all doing really well. But we sat with our marketing team for like two hours yesterday brainstorming what else can we do this week, you know, the events are all doing really well. But we sat with our marketing team for like two hours yesterday brainstorming what else can we do this week to push these events over the edge. And we added like five new things that we never had in our budget or never had in our thought process. But being here in Vegas and being like, we should do that. We should do that. Let's add this. Let's add that.

And made those changes this week to push the events over the edge. Nice. Yeah, I think you guys are like really adaptable, and that's a huge part of success, right? Being able to adapt on the fly. Some people are kind of old school and stuck in their ways, and that's why they fail sometimes. I think too, again, with our model, take Kelsey Jam, which is coming up next for us. We're going to launch that with a national press conference with Travis. He'll do eight different outlets back to back and then have a big launch on social. And it just is a great kind of launch pad for our marketing rollout and strategy. And then like Adam was saying, we kind of go on sale and then from there readjust what

our marketing campaign needs to do to be successful. Always look at it from a pretty kind of holistic standpoint across all social, digital, local marketing is really important, making sure that we tap into that local community. And data is really important to us. Most of our events we do pretty big pre-sale registration campaigns, trying to capture as much data as possible so we can remarket to them throughout the campaign. And also offer all sorts of different incentives to that list that we're building. So at Super Bowl, right, we have the four festivals.

Well, if you're attending Shaq's Funhouse, you're certainly a prime target to attend Gronk Beach the next day, given you're already in the market. So how can we communicate with that fan and incentivize them to attend maybe two of our festivals or three of our festivals across Super Bowl weekend? So definitely put a lot of time and thought into that across targeting that consumer on social, through text message, on email, and just game planning how we can take advantage of that data. Love that. When you're looking at potential partners to have events with, what do you guys have criteria there? Because there's probably gonna be people watching this

wanting to work with you guys. Yeah, you know, we've turned down so much talent that's reached out. And it's always flattering. It's always really cool when someone reaches out and is like, I want to work with you. It's, you know, every time it's awesome and humbling. But our events are so mainstream. That's really the key word is you have to be so mainstream and so known by such a mass audience, right? When you think about who we're working with now, Shaquille O'Neal, one of the most famous NBA players of all time. The guy is on TV more times than you can count. He's one of the most likable and beloved people of all time.

Really fortunate. Rob Gronkowski, I think, saw a statistic. He's the fourth most known NFL player, current or retired. He's just so recognizable. Everyone knows Rob Gronkowski, grunt. Travis Kelsey, may have not known him, but then he started dating taylor uh became the biggest star in the world and you know dave portnoy media superstar starter barstool

millions and millions of instagram followers devout following if dave portnoy told people come meet me at this address right now there'd be like 20 000 people waiting to meet dave portnoy yeah um so it's it's hard to like just call it one factor, but there's sort of this it factor of you're known by everyone or, you know, there's just something that makes you so special. And look, Damon John's one of our partners. You know, Damon's incredible, right? He's on Shark Tank, started FUBU. He isn't known like Shaq, right?

He can't, you know, from a celebrity standpoint, but we were able to get creative with Damon and came up with an event for him, Black Entrepreneurs Day, that made a lot of sense for him and his market. And that was unique. And he had this it factor with the black business community, right? That was able to be crafted to him. And he's not as mainstream as other guys. So it's hard to nail down one trade or one specific thing, but it's really that it factor in whatever you do. Yeah, I love that.

Did you guys do a pizza review with Portnoy? We did not get to do a pizza review. We did get to eat a lot of pizza with him. It was pretty epic. And, yeah, that guy is awesome. We love Dave. You got to even cook Lucali. Yeah, I got to cook Lucali.

It's one of the most famous places in New York, and we got to cook some Lucali together. But Dave's awesome. We love Dave. At the festival, we went around and tried about over 25 different pizzerias with him. I think we weren't doing live reviews because it was Dave's festival. We were bringing together the community of the best pizzerias

all across America. We had Lucali, John's of Bleeker, Patsy's, Sally's, DeFara. And that was an awesome event. And kind of unlike our others, really had, you know, an amazing community and small business focus as well. You know, bringing together these mom and pop pizzerias and everyone kind of, you know, bonded over their love of pizza there. So that event actually, you know, sold out over 5,000 tickets in a few minutes.

Damn. Dave's following was the most devout following of anyone we work with, right? Like Dave is – he isn't Shaq. He isn't Gronk. He doesn't have that same name recognition or celebrity status, but his fans are the most hardcore that we saw. When Dave announced it, it was like absolutely trending there's haters our web traffic yeah our web yeah it was wild yeah almost it almost crashed it was wild we've never seen web traffic like that we've never seen pre-sale signups like that just the amount of interest because dave's fans are just so hardcore for anything he does that doesn't shock me because

didn't he raise like tens of millions for small businesses during the pandemic? Yeah, I think he raised almost $100 million with the Barstool Fund, which is awesome. He was just giving that money out to small businesses. That was incredible. His pizza reviews are, you know, everyone's at least seen a few of them. And then obviously everyone knows him from

Barstool. Yeah. So you guys will have to 5X that event this year. That's the plan. It's tough on food festivals. So now we produce two of America's biggest food festivals with Flavortown Tailgate coming up on Sunday and One Bite Pizza Festival. But the operations and logistics needed for these large-scale food festivals

are very different than music festivals. These pizza places can only make so much pizza, right? So you can't have 50,000 people there waiting to try Lucali or something because they'll never be able to keep up and the line's going to be right actually why a lot of food festivals have failed um when we started pizza fest people are like you guys are nuts no one's ever done a pizza fest successfully which is sounds crazy what do you mean no one's ever pizza yeah and then you realize that all

these pizza places have a special oven that's what makes pizza special right like these old school places that have been in Connecticut for 100 years, they're like, our pizza's only good because we used this oven for the last 100 years. And now we have to figure out how to get that oven in a venue. Literally, we did it at a

baseball stadium this year. We're like, I think we rented about 94 ovens. Damn. Which was crazy. Hundreds of thousands of dollars on wood burning, gas, coal. We had every type of oven. Yeah. The stuff we had to do with FDNY because they're like, you're going to have 94 ovens in one location. Oh, fire hazard.

Yeah. It was like crazy. And that's why pizza festivals haven't figured it out because they couldn't figure out how to do the ovens. Wow. I didn't even think about that. Yeah. It was crazy. And everyone's like told us we were nuts and somehow we figured it out.

Pretty awesome. But food festivals are hard. Pizza tasted just as good as the shop. I think that was what the goal was. And that's what Dave kept chirping and harping on us. Like it needs to be as good. And that was the pleasant surprise as we went around and tasted 20 different pizzas with him. It was – I felt like I was at DiFara.

I felt like I was at John's Oblique. And that's what made it really special. What's the best pizza in Vegas? Dude, there's not many, to be honest. Pizza Rock's okay, I guess. There's one in Durango that's decent. Yeah, that's from New York. Yeah, they just opened here.

They were at the festival. How is Durango? I liked it. The owner came on. Damn, I forgot his name. But yeah, it was cool. Yeah, I want to check it out. It was awesome.

Durango's dope. That's where Power Slop is Friday. Oh, at Durango? Yeah, you guys are so busy probably will uh yeah there's no way everyone it's awesome we get so many cool invites this week and people want to hang out and invite us to dinner or lunch this event that event and we're like we're here for business we're like we wish but like we're we're building four festivals i wish we could hang out yeah i love that well i hope you guys have a great week man anything you guys want to close off with or promote? No, appreciate you having us on.

We're excited with the four events coming up, and it's going to be an incredible week. And I think Vegas Super Bowl is going to blow everyone away. This is the best city for a Super Bowl, hands down. Let's go. It's going to be awesome. Love it. We love doing business here. We were here for NFL Draft with Gronk.

We did Gronk Beach. We now have four festivals. Super Bowl Las Vegas is really incredible. If it was up to Adam and I, we'd have Super Bowl in Vegas every single year. Love it. Love it, guys. I'm going to lose a lot of money on the project. You'll make it back.

We'll make it back. We'll make it back. All right, guys. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for watching as always, guys. See you tomorrow. Thanks, brother.

Bye-bye.