Julian Dorey Podcast - 😎 #108 - My Experience Inside Dana White's Lair | John Rondi

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

(***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ John Rondi (“Johnny Drinks”) is a YouTube/TikTok Creator and Alcohol Connoisseur. He and his dad (also named John) created the Johnny Drinks YT/TT pages in February 2020 and have millions of Subscribers/Followers today. ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Intro; Content Strategy and the rise of Johnny Drinks 24:35 - MrBeast & The Art of Attention 35:23 - John’s Collaboration With UFC Founder, Dana White, in the midst of the Cain Velasquez drama 1:04:59 - Phone Use, Attention Spans & Decision Fatigue 1:20:26 - Why John nuked his company 1:47:40 - The State of Crypto Bros 2:14:32 - Comment Section Stories 2:37:20 - TikTok China (Douyin) is 2 years ahead of TikTok US ~ YouTube EPISODES & CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “TRENDIFIER”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier   PRIVADO VPN FOR $4.99/Month: https://privadovpn.com/trendifier/#a_aid=Julian Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey ~ Beat provided by: https://freebeats.io Music Produced by White Hot   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He comes in a little bit late and he's hot right now. Like he's very aggressive. Like he just, you can tell something's bothering him, right? And it was during the time where Cain Velasquez was going through his stuff with. Oh shit, that's right. It was that day. Like when he got arrested. He found out that morning and I was like.

What's cooking, everybody? I am joined in the bunker today by my friend, Mr. John Rondy, a.k.a. Johnny Drinks. If you are on YouTube and you are somebody who is very interested in how to make some great alcoholic beverages, you should be following the page that John and his dad have, which is called Johnny Drinks. It has over a million subscribers. They have millions of followers on TikTok, which is where they originally built an audience. And it was great having them back in here because the last time John was here was early on in the podcast. We didn't have a ton of listeners. And so it's nice to see where we stand all this time later. I think it was like 18 months ago or something like that. So there was a lot in this one as the title will tell you yes we talked

about john's weekend with dana white which came at a really interesting time we also talked about the rise of his channel we talked about phone addiction and decision fatigue in society why john nuked his previous company that he built for about four years crypto bros and the state of that whole thing right now the modern warfare of comment sections and China's version of TikTok Duyan. Plenty in this one. Great conversation. Love having my guy come through. If you're on YouTube right now, please make sure you subscribe. If you have not liked the video, please make sure you do that as well. And as always, would love to hear from you guys down in the comment section below. To everyone who is on Apple and Spotify, thank you for checking out the show over there.

Make sure you're following on either one of those platforms if you aren't already. And if you have a second, we'd love to see you guys leave a five-star review on either one of those platforms as well, because that is a huge, huge help. That said, you know what it is. I'm Julian Dory, and this is Trendify. This is one of the great questions in our culture. Where's the news? You're giving opinions and calling them facts you feel me everyone understands this but few seem to do it

if you don't like the status quo start asking questions Johnny Drinks what's cooking brother not much man you're the bartender of the internet. Wow. That's a big label.

For somebody that's never bartended. Well, you kind of seem like, yeah, we were just talking about it right before the camera started. But you've done like 600 or 700 different drinks on camera at this point from start to finish. You know what, man? Our content has evolved into becoming more than just cocktails. But we've probably made like 700 videos, which is crazy, dude. Some long form with like five cocktails in it. So it's a shit ton of drinks.

You never saw this in Wildest Dreams on the first video, right? Dude. Well, I'm trying to think. Like the last time I came on here, we were like pretty fresh. It was like kind of where it was sort of up in the air if it was going to go anywhere. I think you were a year in. You were here early. You were like episode 34. I thought it was sort of up in the air if it was gonna go anywhere um i think you were a year in you were here early you were like episode 30 i thought it was less than a year because i remember we were uh i mean maybe maybe you're right but yeah it the first video it's it's hard when people are asking me like oh how do you go viral like how do you start and it's like for me

i admit like we got super lucky in the beginning because if i didn't have that video pop off we would have never done this. You know what I'm saying? Like, we were never bartenders. We had no clue what TikTok really was. I was always, like, intrigued by the creator space and making a business and a brand out of creating content. But I never really knew what I wanted to do. And so when he started making cocktails and people liked it, I was like, oh, this is it.

This is, like, a shoe-in for us. Didn't your sister, like, tell you on day one or something like oh download this new app i have and then you downloaded it and then shot the video like same day it was like the funniest part bro because i remember the timeline was like february 2020 we were down in miami i was with the sore crew it was like fen you and brylon on them cheers by the way cheers my man welcome back um so i was with and dad had it on his phone because we were at like some table like a bunch of tiktokers were there he was like pointing him out to me he's like dude you should make a tiktok like here's how you edit and so it was teaching me how to edit i come back dude i come back home and my

dad's like doing a little dumb dance and i'm like oh you know let me film him and then he makes the cocktail that night um and it pops off. So yeah, shout out Ant who taught me how to edit. I tell him all the time, like, dude, you're the reason. That's awesome. I love when things are just kind of like born out of opportunity. Just like something crazy. He didn't think anything of it.

But then your dad, obviously, like he knows all this shit. And he was never, you were telling me, he's like, he's never even been a bartender or something. Dude, no. I mean, that's like the reality is like there's a lot of camera work right and my dad is great at what he does and i think as we evolve i realize and appreciate more and more how good he is at what he does right like when we went on live um with like the ufc and like we were both pretty nervous right rightfully so and he did his thing man and he rocked it and for me i was like wow thank god i have this guy with me um but back to like the original statement

yeah we never were bartenders but we learned as we went like okay people want to see what a gimlet is okay what is a gimlet let's go google like you know let's let's check this thing out and i'll tell him i'll feed him the information here's what this is here's what you have to do and sometimes it's like literally on the fly like we have one phone filming one phone on google like here's how you're supposed to make this drink you shake it don't stir it um and sometimes we mess up and that's kind of just the nature of the uh of our i guess um personalities but it is what it is he definitely though like he clearly had a major hobby of it his entire life like he knows his shit so inside and out man even when you see people other guys like you've collabed with talk

about it and then when i talk to people who are like mixologists and stuff they're like oh yeah follow the shit out of that page yeah like he's a god it's so funny bro because like a lot of it is again not taking anything away from a lot of it you just i'm sorry can you just pull this up yeah there you go that's better a lot of it's confidence like he presents himself like he knows what he's talking about some most of the time he does sometimes he doesn't it's kind of like just winging it and people let us know in the comments like hey you did this wrong we don't care sometimes like you know we're not doing anything a disservice we always try our best to make the cocktails as accurate as possible but everybody slips up so it's almost like people are waiting for that one

moment to say gotcha to them but that's that's the whole internet man it is and there's a lot of people who will call out that's also like they won't care even if you have sourced like they'll just be like no that's a lie and they'll just it's just what it's what it is man like you can't you can't let it bother you if if you're putting out good work and also like not for nothing, but if you're also showing up like every day, like you guys are, I mean, maybe not every single day you're posting video, but you guys do like for a week or some shit. Uh, our cadence was four week. And now that I, I've like, I've gone back and forth. What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue, a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door.

A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Because again, we're learning on the fly. And there was a point in time where I was very algorithm heavy. I know you have to post at this time and you can't post this type of content. And you have to... Now I'm under the impression of I understand what good content is. I'm going to put out good content

as consistent as possible. I don't care if this video is going to go viral or maybe just be like an okay video, post it. You know what I'm saying? Because you really never know. I would rather see somebody, and I was talking to my buddy about this,

who's a comedian. Oh, Joey, you had him on. Joey D. Hilarious. The dude is so fucking funny. Dude, he's fucking awesome. I love that guy. He's a special,

like he is one of those dudes, he's just special. He has the impactor. He's going to make gonna make it he is and I told him like straight up look bro if you could make one piece of content a week and it's really really good content versus one piece of content a day that's kind of just okay make maybe lower quality maybe it's just yourself do that one because like the discoverability of seven pieces of content in a week versus one is far greater at the end of the day sometimes it doesn't really matter i mean you watch some of this viral content on tick tock somebody talking to their phone about their story

and they're sitting in their car you know what i'm saying where somebody took a month to think of this idea goes and posts and it flops you know what i'm saying so it depends on the content though too i i want to amend what you said and then tell me if you agree with me you put it like seven days i forget what the exact word was but you were like okay content or whatever the quality has to be there now if you're somebody who is like you know a shock and all content creator like someone who goes out and does quick interviews on the street or somebody who just like says something crazy in the camera like even that kid you ever see the guy who just literally does a video where he goes in new york yeah yeah exactly

yeah okay yeah you can put out a lot of that and it's gonna be the same every time but if you're in like certain spaces where it requires editing and stuff like that there's this fine line between doing too many just to participate and doing enough to make sure you're constantly in front of people if you fall into the cat like my opinion is if you fall into the category of like trying to make everything perfect that you're not putting out enough which a couple times I've accidentally done that when I was on hot streaks and like trying to be too perfect then you're not in front of people that's a problem and it won't it'll always underperform what you want but on the contrary if you put out way too much because

you just want to be out there every time you put something that's like in front of somebody it's more points off where they're more likely to skip it now the algorithm is going to tell them like oh yeah they don't like that video as much anymore 100 and i think the only reason i think it does depend on your niche it depends on where you're at as a creator. If you're a new creator, throw shit at the wall, hope it sticks, like literally do whatever you think is funny or could be your niche down the road. Cause you don't know yet if you've established yourself, like not to say, you know, whatever we have found our groove. I can't now start posting every day or every hour of the day, me sitting here and doing nothing because

that's going to harm me more than it would, you know, do some benefit. Again, it depends on where you're at. I think a lot of people use the excuse. I don't know what to do. I don't have the time, or it takes me a month to think of an idea. If you're at, again, if you've never started, just do something because you never know. Yeah. And it, look, if it's something that provides value, which can literally be like just pure entertainment people with it like they'll get behind it dude I mean 60 seconds out of your day that you don't have to worry about anything else other than that like subtle video I give you a ton of credit and I don't know I've ever told you this before but it is it's something I save in my phone because it was so spot the on when YouTube

shorts was happening early on like it was they weren't really pushing it right so spot the fuck on when youtube shorts was happening early on like it was they weren't really pushing it right so nothing was happening nothing was happening for you either and then i watched you in july last year it's like almost exactly a year ago just suddenly and every like i'm sitting there like it's my subscriber count like this is awesome i'm pressing refresh like every five seconds there's just like 10 000 20 000 like holy shit and so i started making some again in august because i'm like okay like i talked to you i talked to chris i'm like there's a shot like it can work i guess they are starting to push it a little bit and so they sent one of my videos in august and now i'm like okay this would be like

tiktok now they know like i've established i can keep someone on there for 107 average watch time at millions of views and then every video like it would do like 105 watch time send it to 500 people right 600 people that's yeah and i'm sitting there because there was other shit going on i was in such a dump like in beginning of october mid-october or whatever and you sent me a text like i said something about like the total number i remember maybe i'll make up a number i think it was like 250 or something no it was more it was way more and you're like well maybe you gotta make 251 i remember that and i looked at that and i was like looking at the phone and i like looked up and i'm like god damn it I do and then it went but the

the point like that is like more credit to you because I've said that to so many people that have seen our page and I think in the summertime we were like one of the fastest growing accounts because of shorts um and I gave everybody the strategy I was like look if you're a tiktoker and you try to transition it to youtube go and take every one of your videos that have over a threshold. My number was a million views. Take every one of those videos and put them on YouTube every single day. Like don't do not miss a day. I don't care about post time. I don't care about the day. Just go and do it. One of those is going to pop off. And then, like you said, once they start popping off, it's kind of like it's off to the races. And then once you run out of all your million views views then you can sort of titrate it back down to 500k or whatever it may be i said that to so many people

you're one of the only people that listened like everyone's like yeah dude great idea i'm going to start tomorrow they maybe started tomorrow and stopped in a week because they got bored or they didn't see the results um as quick enough so for you to just stay with that is literally just like that's all it takes just go and do it literally just like that's all it takes. Just go and fucking do it. Yeah. And like YouTube, to give it credit, like how they've done it on shorts, it is at a point where like if it's good, they'll take it. Like once you – it took them a little longer with me. Like they didn't do it the first time when they should have.

But like then once they said okay all right yeah boom every video like old videos started doing millions that hadn't done anything yeah so i was like okay and now like i know what i got to do when i post a video i can usually to the first 5 000 views i can see the data and i'm like i know yeah like i know which way this it may take two weeks or it may never happen now because it's not good enough well that's i mean we just talked about it right it's like focus less on the outcome and more on the input you we know subject you know to an extent what really good content is we know when we make it ourselves we know when we see it just make good content and post it don't look at the view count yeah engage with your followers and do all that crazy stuff but don't over obsess with you know like you gave

the example i have 105 watch time why is this video not doing well the stuff. But don't over obsess with, you know, like you gave the example. I have 105% watch time. Why is this video not doing well? The reality is I don't know. And the reality is it's out of your hands. Yep. Give that up to somebody else. But if you over obsess about that, what happens is you get more,

you get less confident, you stop posting as much. And now you try to like transition yourself into a new direction. Like just save all that noise. Like just keep posting and that's going to come back. it did for you too how do you stay with your channel though because obviously for people that have kind of picked up on this at this point because you've explained some of it but you have what like two three million on tiktok now something like

that yeah we have two and a half on tiktok um it's so funny dude because last time i remember we were talking about this and whatever number i said i thought it was a lot and looking back i'm like oh man that's a small account which is it was just terrible but yeah so we have two and a half on tick tock we just hit a million on youtube congratulations thank you thank you um like 130 on instagram again something that i don't focus on it enough i kind of just post and forget it i think i should really put more emphasis on growing an Instagram page, but that's a whole separate conversation. Um, I do Pinterest, which again, if you are, if you're trying to create a business out of whatever brand you have

online, don't sleep on Pinterest and don't sleep on Facebook because those are, they're hidden and often overlooked views that could be worth a lot of money for you and for somebody else. Wait,interest has video yeah dude my really my pit well so my audience is like very manly right on youtube it's like 92 percent pinterest is my final it's it's finally my chance to reach the ladies and so our audience like 50 50 which is crazy on pinterest but that's a lot of girls for us your audience is 92 percent male dude who wants to watch two guys make cocktails other than i feel like a lot of chicks would watch it's definitely guy content but it's also like a lot of

chicks would like that content too i go to the bars man and this is recent like i i get noticed and it's weird how i get noticed because i'm behind the camera most of the time but i guess i have like a less now right well yeah and i'm trying to put myself out there a little bit i go to the bars and i would say out of a hundred people that recognize me 99 are dudes i literally just have my i have my first girl i had my first girl at the bar the other night and she was with her boyfriend she's like oh my god you're that guy i love you like let me get a hug and the boy like we both dapped up it was very wholesome couldn't even be single either oh no of course not even close bro i get to the bars and it's like dudes are all over me and it's so bro, because they're so excited to see me.

And I think the best thing about my dad and I is like what you see on camera is what you get in person. We try to be as personable as we possibly can. I'll never shoo you away if you come say what's up to me. I'm always trying to like buy you a drink or have a conversation. And my dad is better than me. Like he'll come up to you. If he sees somebody looking at him because he knows and it's like a younger guy that's a little bit scared to say something, he'll approach them. I'm like, dad, come on.

Don't ever lose this, dude. That's what I'm saying. This is great. Don't ever lose that. I know. It's a beautiful thing because it's kind of crazy when you're – with the internet and how you make content now. Look what we're doing right here. No one's here.

Right. You know what I mean? You can't see these people. Right. So it's just, all it is, I don't feel anything with it and I have to like remind myself like,

hey, it's not just numbers on a page. Like these are real people. Real humans, bro. Who are like into it. And that's, I think it matters too. Like again,

we found our purpose when we realized that we were filling a void for guys or kids that didn't have fathers in life. Oh, can you talk about that? Actually, this is great. Tell people what you're doing there with your dad as the father figure.

I love this. Definitely. So again, we started our page as cocktail makers that weren't really cocktail makers, whatever. When we started doing the father-son advice, that how do I tie a tie, how do I shine a shoe, what are your best advice tips after college our audience was very receptive number one but were not shy to tell us how special and how important that was to them because they just lost their dad or they never had a dad or their dads and they're afraid because they don't know how to raise their kids like there's so many different

instances that it opened our eyes to the fact like, wow, this is way bigger than creating cocktails online. So we found our purpose. And I think for us, that's what keeps us going is like you just said, these aren't robots commenting this. This is an actual human being that doesn't have a father figure in their life. And it's looking at me and my dad to fill that void like that's crazy that's it gives me chills right now to think about because sometimes i don't sometimes i don't take a step back and i read these comments and i say thanks so much man really appreciate that on to the next one and sometimes i just had this happen on a post where a guy commented he was like

i can't tell you how much this means to me i just lost my dad a year ago you guys bring me back some sort of peace and like dude I never would have thought that starting this TikTok would have that sort of impact on somebody's life but it is and it's it's it's heart it's heartwarming for us but again it keeps us going in a direction that I think is so much bigger than any other cocktail maker in the space. It just gives us the opportunity to do stuff off of the app and establish ourselves as real – and I hate the word – but influencers worldwide. Yeah, look, man. I mean I think that's like a beautiful thing and it doesn't it doesn't surprise me one bit because when you are making that much all the time and putting it out there over time you can't fake that no you know what

i mean like like people you always had this relationship with your dad you guys tight as could be and like he loves this because he's like i i get to do something for fun where my kid does all the work and i get to spend time with my kid like oh my god this is incredible you just tell me what to do on camera great I'll do it you know but that's like the camera turns on and you're just doing what you already do together and like all the little relationship things you guys have and that's why it was so seamless when you made a left turn off the road like hey we're gonna do some of this content too I think that was like last August or something like that and it was like no problem right away i mean they were going viral because people are like oh my god like these guys these guys are dad son goals completely that's it you know what's

funny bro like and i will never take away how great and special our relationship is but when you're painted as a picture of like the perfect is never a place you want to be as anybody or at least portrayed as perfect because nobody's perfect. And now you almost get nervous because you have to live up to that standard. And I think everybody at 26 years old, the dynamic you have with your dad, it could be a 26, it could be at 30, or it could be a little bit younger. It goes through these ebbs and flows, right? There's a point in time. If you have a father figure in your life that he's your idol and you want it to be just like him. And then you go through times where he's like you know what I'm better than him because you're naive and you're young and you're stupid and did you have a long period like that I had a period where

me and my dad are very similar and that's why we butt heads so much because we're both stubborn but to a fault sometimes um but at the end of the day, we always mend it and we always make sure that we do what we have to do. That being said, I was so impressed by him when I was younger, but now that I'm a man and I keep getting fed the information that my dad is such a great guy, it's nerve-wracking because like, oh shit, I got to live up. I have big shoes to fill and I have comments. And I think people comment this just to get at you.

It's like, you have big shoes to fill. You'll never be like, you know, you better keep up with your with your dad type of stuff like that and the pressure doesn't get to me and not to say it's frustrating but i want people to know like it's real you know i'm saying like my dad and i have a great relationship it's not always perfect and it's never gonna be perfect and you shouldn't strive right you shouldn't strive for it to be perfect so i have finally come to the realization that my dad is a fantastic person, whether or not he was my dad or not, right? If he was just a human being, I would love to be with that, you know, just hang out with that guy or learn from that guy. But there are things that I have identified that I could do a little bit better. And there are things that he could do a little bit better than I can. And so it's less about a competition and more about an acknowledgement of like, what are my strengths versus what are his strengths yeah man I mean it it comes across sometimes like when you're watching it how similar like all the mannerisms and stuff are which a lot of people have like with their parent especially when they look like them a little bit but it also like adds to it because it's almost like

like when you'll do some of the videos where you stand in for him it's funny or then you like flip back and forth and people are like oh haha I get it and that's why also because you've been doing that a lot like in the last probably since you were on this podcast last that's when you started really coming out from behind the camera and doing a lot on there like now you know people recognize both of you it's not just like at the beginning like it was kind of just your dad for a while because you were behind the camera but now it's like oh the ron d it was kind of just your dad for a while because you were behind the camera. But now it's like, oh, the Rondy boys. Right. You know what I mean?

And that's important because I'm always curious how these different, like especially YouTube channels, which you guys obviously are now as well. It's like you see these vloggers, let's call it what it is, build a relationship like family vloggers and stuff. Which, you know, we've talked about the dark sides of that which you guys don't practice but like you know some at least what they show on camera that you'll see these families like form relationships with the audience and people are living vicariously through them and i've never like it's so fascinating to me because that wasn't a world that i was at all involved in but now like not by choice i follow your dad and you and what you do and i get it like i i see that after a while once you get used to like watching a video like a few videos a week or something like that or like the youtube video you guys put out it's like you're waiting

for the next one it's like a podcast like once you get into a podcast like you want the next one to come out it's just a different like part of the brain it it's funny bro because i've never been like that either i was never a youtube guy like before this stuff and i almost wish i was because i i have to understand the obsession and i finally did because i watched uh my videographer chris was showing me all casey nice stats old videos he's been on this podcast by the way yes because i've been on this podcast number 86 um there you go quick plug because so he showed me he showed me casey's i think like first or one of his biggest videos.

It was Nike's ad. It was like, do more. I forget what it was. Or like, stand out something. He had a tagline. And I watched this video. And I immediately was like, you know what? I get it.

That was so addicting. And I did the exact same thing that a lot of people do. I went from his first video and watched all of them. And I like I don't because in the beginning I was like who the fuck who cares about this guy like he's not special in any way he doesn't do anything that cool why are we all obsessing and then I watched it I was like I get it and so I think that's always the goal as a creator is like become so addicting that you could do literally whatever you want to do and people are still going to watch you. Yeah, and there's a fine line there though too. Like I always use Mr. Beast for the example of exactly what you're bringing up because Mr. Beast is the full package.

He has content that when I tell you I'm the farthest thing from his target market i'm the farthest thing from his target market but i know if i click one of his videos i'm gonna watch the whole thing i might feel bad about it after but i'll be happy i did because he keeps it first of all he's such a likable guy he's nice you guys are very nice and likable on camera that's key it comes across right but then it's also like they find a way to constantly give you a kernel of keeping your attention and not taking for granted the time you are investing, whatever it is. If it's a five-minute, well, 10-minute video, 15-minute video, more likely with him. Whatever time you're spending on that, he values every second of that. And so when I see creators do that, like maybe these early vlog guys who I know a lot less about, I've looked through some of it now it now like just studying like probably not as deeply as you have at all but like that's probably how they built the audience like they constantly if they're posting like some eight minute vlog of like their week

there's just all kinds of like hits coming from all over the place and it just keeps people on their toes where they feel like it took a minute to watch it that's that's one and again i think the the like quick edits is like a big trend now it's like like you said how do i take a 10 minute video make it feel like a minute um that's how you do it right just you keep dropping little nuggets here and there and that's how you learn how to and i'm nowhere near where i want to be as far as like understanding this space but it is a science like how do you keep somebody so addicted to your video that time passes so quickly? And it comes down to like,

there is always an award for watching the full video, right? If it's a food video, the award is seeing the final product. If it's a drink video, it's seeing the final drink. If it's a Mr. Beast video, it's the results of whatever challenge it was gonna be. So they keep, they dangle the carrot in front of your face for so long until finally, and you see it all the time. It's like the, the thumbnail or the clickbaity tagline could be like, we set a million dollars

on fire and it could be a 20 minute video. And in minute 19 is when they finally set the dollars on fire, but they keep you so engaged the entire time that you don't care that it took that long to reach that. And that's like the goal for us is not to be clickbaity and stuff like that. It's just to keep you so entertained that you want to watch the full, whatever it is, eight, 10 minutes of a video. And there's also like a fine line with clickbait and legit bait. I think I've talked with Chris about that a lot.

Like he's the guy who brought that up to me for the first time quick but yeah you can you can practice some of that because it is a world where you do have to get the click unfortunately on youtube which sucks so you have to do some things but i'm always grading everything i do like is what i'm putting in here matching the expectation of what actually occurs right so outside of that you can then do some things where it's like you can get a little bit you can stretch the expectations to keep to anchor people so like i noticed this the other day and i've never noticed this before so this is like a brand new live analysis i haven't done like a deep dive on it but like mr beast posted this video where he has, if you look behind you, I didn't eat food for 30 days.

Okay, it was a 13-minute video. I watched the whole video. What does the top right corner of that thumbnail say? Day 19. You know what day he lost to, spoiler alert, you know what day he stopped like the 30-day challenge? What? 14. so he put day 19 on there because you're watching it and you feel like it's moving faster than it is because when he's on day seven you're like wow

we're already on day seven he's gonna do 19 days and 13 minutes we're only four minutes into the video no he didn't make it 30 days he stopped gordon ramsay cooked him something i'm total spoiler alert but gordon ramsay cooked him something on day 14 and he had to eat. So he ate it. Wait, so his stomach was he didn't eat for 30 days and that's a lie? Well, and now you're getting into something. I hadn't thought of that. He has set that expectation on previous videos that he'll put what the challenge was in the past tense. And he doesn't always make it because there is also

another reward if he doesn't make it so like he didn't make it and they got to shave his head gotcha okay cool so he doesn't have hair now that's actually a really good that's a really good way of putting things because look he's he's the genius right he is the pinnacle of what you want to become as like a vlogger and that is i'll stick that thumbnail in the corner by the way for people yeah um i mean that's what you have to do. Like, to create content that is, like, watchable, it's got to be above and beyond. Like, we did a video where the title was, we tried $30,000 bourbon. And it was a video, it was a picture of my... The thumbnail was awesome.

It was like, one of our best. I remember that video. Right. Yeah. The barrel, in total, would have costed... It would have been about $30,000, right? So, I think the bottles would have come out to, like, $200 a,000, right? So I think the bottles would come out to like 200 bucks a pop, something like that, depending

on the angel share and stuff. So people were not enraged in the comment section, but somebody, there's always going to be people that have something to say. That was the comments. This was not, that's not a $30,000 bourbon. The entire barrel is who you trying to fool. This is clickbait. But at the end of the day, what were

the results is it was one of our best videos right so there is a fine line between literally lying and stretching the truth a little bit just to get people interested in what you're doing now this is a really good conversation i don't think we've ever talked about this in a podcast before but it gives people like listening right now who also like you know they're listening to this because i'm a content creator and they listen to my podcast or watch my podcast like it it takes them inside of like how we have to go about this but like on youtube there are some hardcore rules with what goes and what doesn't even on shorts like i know one thing i love about the shorts is like i know for a fact if i did the job or i didn't yeah for sure if i don't touch a

certain watch time that i have an expectation on based on the time of the video i accept it as i said julian the video wasn't good enough and maybe it wasn't a topic people were interested in enough you know or whatever like i know i did some julian assange videos from andy greenberg's episode a few weeks ago because johnny harris had put out a 30 minute julie nissan's video and johnny harris is like the goat of video editing and with journalism on youtube and so i'm like oh there must be interest in that because it did pretty well but when i talk to people afterwards they're like you know it's such an old story at this point like the videos are solid but doesn't generate a lot of commentary or buzz so i was like okay i'm gonna have to try something

different from that episode But it's like when I saw those watch times coming in and they weren't there I was good with it so now when you look at longer videos though the difference You're talking about here, and I'll put this picture of the thumbnail you had in the corner so that people can see it But the difference is with shorts yes They do put it into feeds and people can click it and I do look at my click-through rates on shorts. And so if they're lower, I question that. But most views are coming through the feed where they don't pick it.

So the title, if it's like related to the first things they see, the title can be better than it actually is without that. You know what I mean? So it's like a weird vibe. When you're doing this, you're competing with so much just to get in the feed like all the little metrics that youtube wants between click through watch time which is hit or miss depending on what time of day you're catching people and if they want to come watch later and they only watch a second that counts against you you know stuff like that that you have to find a

way to compete with all these other assholes out there who actually do clickbait the fuck out of people. Like they don't actually offer it. So it is a fine line. It's very hard. And like, it also comes down, and Mr. B's talks about this a lot,

like comes down to just picking really cool topics to do. Like if I'm a creator and we're in the cocktail niche and I'm going to sit there and my videos are boring, I can't even make a thumbnail or a clickbaity title to get you interested in that. So you got to start doing some cool shit. Like things that you would literally, if you take yourself out of it,

would you watch this for five minutes or 10 minutes? And if you wouldn't, don't blame anybody else other than yourself when your results are shit. You know what I'm saying? That's something I've had to do for myself is like, okay, this video flopped. Well, why did it flop? Would you have watched this? And if my answer is no, why did I even put it out there? You know what I'm saying? So that is more of the, I guess

the challenge right now is less, and we talked about this, less about consistency because we could do that. It's more about making sure we stay as creative as possible and make entertaining videos yeah man 100 and it's like the other thing that you're really good at on the back end that people don't see is like from day one you've been really smart on the business end of things and the making connections end of things and i mean that through like also literally what comes through on camera like collaborations with people in the space developing actual credibility in the space through doing that like who are some of the guys you've had on though we just did one uh nick hamilton actually was that was the uh actor in it which by the way it was the highest grossing scary movie ever wait he was in that

yeah he was the kid like the jerk is this the dude the the australian nick hamilton i think i'm thinking of the wrong one you're thinking of wu-tok bar chemistry yeah yeah yeah yeah so nick is the australian dude um he does cocktail he's he's a mixologist like this dude knows his stuff he has the neatest bar pale guy yeah i am thinking the right guy okay so he has the neatest bar at home that i've ever seen in my life like this thing was insane so we just did uh content with him for father's day because his father's in australia so he made it for tiktok's dad you know all that good stuff um but that's the shit man like we're i'm unfortunately in an area where there's not too many tiktokers like in my space in North Jersey um but we got to make do with what you got so if there's somebody around and they want to

collaborate why not do it because you never know who sees your content that never saw before or because you're with them they finally started to follow you stuff like that but if you're in LA you're in an area where uh people are pretty popping off on any one of these platforms you should collaborate with as many people as possible. Yeah, I feel like Jersey doesn't do the best job on social media with connecting. Maybe I'm just out of the loop on that. But talking with you, there's plenty of people who have sizable followings in this state. I mean, shit, Lance210 is 10 minutes up the road right here.

He's the biggest of them all. But I don't see a ton of that. 210 is 10 minutes up the road right here right he's like the biggest of them all but like you know i i don't see a ton of that like your collabs that you're getting are with people who are in new york or are national international right like you're doing all these things and and by the way how the fuck did you end up in dana white's lair that's a great question so yeah let's go through this whole thing so dana way obviously is founded howlerhead, which is a banana whiskey, which tastes actually banana bourbon tastes really good. They sent us, um, the UFC sent us a bottle a while ago. And I thought they hear about you just like through, I think the, the UFC,

the UFC, the get the kid who runs their account at TikTok is like 21. It's like a small younger kid. Um, he reached out to me. He was like, Hey man, I love your content. We'd love to send you a bottle of Hallerhead. Nothing like no strings attached. There was no like collaboration or campaign structured out, which I normally do. But for me, I was like, I love the UFC. I'm not going to be an asshole and be like, Oh, well I'm going to charge you this much money. Like whatever. So we took a little bit of time and we finally, we did a celebrity liquor review, which is if you want to pull it up, we did it on YouTube. I think it's celebrity liquor view part two um and we had the howl head didn't you do um what's her name kendall jenner before that that was a separate video but yeah we

did do that so we did the video um and i check instagram like a couple days after this one yeah there it is now since you own this am i allowed to put this up and you're not going to copyright tag me um i don't know maybe you're good i think you're okay do you want me to put it on yeah please do all right um so so that's the that's the video right there they saw that and didn't even ask me didn't like tell me they chopped it up and put it on instagram and i was hyped because i was like oh shit like they're using our content they must really like it um and then i was like you know what i'm gonna dm dana and see if he answers and i'm like hey man thanks so much for repurposing our stuff like love you know we'd love to collaborate one day and he likes it and i like geeked out i was like yo no way like look i just like myself

and i think i responded again he didn't follow you right yeah no he he he responded and i don't know if it was him or one of his like guys but he's pretty active so I think it could have been him I then reached out to Hallerhead and was like hey this is who I am this is what I want to do Eric Yee who runs their social reached out like pretty much immediately and was like hey let's try to figure out what we could do hopped on a FaceTime and we're throwing ideas out everywhere like every idea possible we're thinking about it and I said to him because this is what happens I think a lot of times when younger creators or people that are newer in the space they get very excited and when they

have an opportunity they're thinking for the the shooting for the moon and that's a great to do but I always like to say all right what that's great and that should be our goal what's our step one you know I'm saying and I said that to Eric because all right, what that's great. And that should be our goal. What's our step one. You know what I'm saying? And I said that to Eric, because we're thinking of all these crazy ideas being the, the bartenders for UFC. And I said, okay, what can we do first? And he said, well, we have a fight in two weeks. Maybe you guys fly out here and you can make drinks for Dana. I said, that's it. Like, let's, let's focus on that one thing. And so we set that up. Right. And I was like, I was like, you throw that out there for us that's the opportunity and i said what commitment do we have from dana like are we gonna have two minutes with him or do we have a full

time hour to really make him cocktails and he said no like dana you know likes your content he wants to promote howard head so let's go and do it so we ironed everything out they flew us out to vegas for the fight um i forget what two something two six or something it was masvidal versus covington so they flew us out we didn't know what to expect but we did um some promo stuff with cody garbrandt which is a fighter um did like a truth or drink with him so they set up all this dude they set up everything and then the day of because again we didn't know what to expect we get there we're in his personal bar we have four cocktails we have in his office yeah it's fucking insane how big's

his personal bar bro it's i feel like he's got a whole lot it's insane well the bar is like nothing compared to what he actually has so like we make him drinks we made him like three cocktails oh actually no he comes in a little bit late and he's hot right now like he's very aggressive like he just you tell something's bothering him right and it was during the time where cain velasquez was going through his stuff with oh shit that's right it was that day like he when he got arrested he found out that morning and i was like me my dad and he walks into a meeting with you my dad and i look at each other and we're like this we're like let's go home like i literally was like oh my uncle my uncle was there and he looked at us and he's like like literally we all were under the impression of hey let's pack it up it's okay

oh this is the craziest part again can you tell people what happened there just so they know and i don't know all that happened cain velasquez was involved in a murder case something happened with one of his children being like molested i don't want to speak out of line here but something happened with like somebody was harassing one of his children molested them or something like that he went and did something um I think he might have killed so I didn't he didn't kill anyone I'll give the details just because I've looked at this closely because I think about this a lot it's like such a tough situation but Cain Velasquez who's like a he's he's a ufc hall of famer like an all-timer and well-liked guy very very good guy like never been in trouble anything he i guess he has like two or three kids

i think it was his youngest kid his four or five year old was molested over a hundred times at their daycare by i believe it was the son of the people who ran the daycare who was like a 40 year old man and so this is out in california that guy gets arrested on these charges you can imagine kane's a father this is like the worst thing outside of murder that can happen to your kid and so he goes to get he goes to his initial hearing the guy and he gets released yeah so he's he's being picked up in the car and driving away from jail with all these charges hanging over him and came velasquez as a father lost it and he went after them down in an intersection, and went and shot inside the car. And unfortunately, he's not a very good shot.

That's really bad to say right there. But he missed, and I think he shot one guy in the arm. And so he is currently in jail with no bail awaiting this whole thing. Hey, guys, weekly reminder reminder if you're enjoying this episode please be sure to share it with your friends and on social media i appreciate everyone who's been hitting me up in the dms and even on the public comments telling me about how they're sharing it with friends that's everything i could ever ask for so let's keep that rolling you guys are doing amazing thank you you were there the day that this broke and dana was this the day where dana came out and said like

kane did what we all say we would in that situation how about this bro he came out and said it to us before he said that the exact words you just said he said that to us so he walks in he walks in and this is like during like midday so is it it pretty early. And we don't know what's wrong at this point. Oh, you didn't know the story at all. Right, because we're sitting there. We're like preparing for the drinks. He comes in. He's super hot.

Like what's going on? His like manager, Eric, is sort of like talking us through what just happened. He goes on and talks about it. And he said those exact words. Kane went and did what every father would have done. Says they would have done. Right. He did it right yes right and he's hot in the face we're all sitting there like what the do we do now and again when i talked about how my dad truly is special and good at what he does i'll never forget this he he pats dane on the back and goes you know what for 30 minutes let's forget about reality and let's just have a drink

and dana was like all right so wow i'm sitting there like oh my god what the do i do so chris my videographer like all right he's like all right john uh he's like he's like intro the video i'm like oh i was like i'm like uh what's up everybody i'm here with dana white and my dad and we're gonna make i was like oh we're and my dad. And we're going to make, I was like, Oh, we're all happy to be here. We're happy to be here. Like we're having a great time. So we had four cocktails in our Rolodex. We made three and we didn't, again, if you watch the video, you can actually see Dana's tone sort of changed. First, first one, he's like still a little hot. He takes a sip. He likes it. Now he's starting to like get into his groove, one he's like still a little hot he takes a sip he likes it now he's starting to like get into his groove but he's super comfortable we didn't know what his timeline was going to be so

we made three and intended to end there if he had to end my dad's like hey look we have a fourth drink but if you're busy today totally get it it's fight day like literally it was day before fight he goes no let's keep making drinks and at that point i was like oh man we got him so we made a fourth drink um had a great time with him he then again we thought he'd have to like book it out of there we stopped filming he's like do you guys want a tour i'm like fuck yeah we want a tour so he's touring us around his building his office his personal gym when i get into his when we get into his office bro i've never seen anything like this the amount of pictures he has on the wall. Wait, where was the bar? It was in a separate room. Oh, he's got a separate So his office has like the rarest saber-toothed tiger

Skull one of the rarest Samurai swords has a big picture that's worth like millions of dollars The analogy that i always give is like if you were to hand me half a billion dollars that's how dana acted like he was so humble and excited to share what he had and honestly what that did for me was so eye-opening because for a guy that is like a little bit new to having i hate the word fame like whatever you have what you have. You don't know how to handle it with other people because in my, internally,

what I have going on right now is literally everything that I've always wanted. Like I've said this and I've spoke it into existence almost and it is really awesome. And when somebody approached you and says, hey, John, what you're doing is super cool. In the beginning, you're kind of like way too humble. You're like, Oh, you know, it is what it is. Like, let's,

let's move on. Let's talk about something else now because of meeting Dana. I'm like, you know what? It really is like, this is so awesome. Like, isn't this great that I get to do this and people are so receptive because I'm not being an asshole, but I'm not bragging about what I have, but I'm allowing you to share that with me. and then what that allows you to do is when you have a win i'm the first guy to share that with you because i love that so dana with everything that he has was still appreciative enough to want to share that with other people you know what i mean if that makes sense so he wasn't you're saying it's not if i'm understanding you correctly you're saying it it's it wasn't none of it was in a gaudy way or whatever it's just like hey yeah this is some you're saying it it's it wasn't none of it was in a gaudy

way or whatever it's just like hey yeah this is some pretty cool shit you want to check it out he was so understanding that what he had was so cool yeah and such a blessing that it made you feel so great to be it was never like hey check this one out check that one out i'm so much better than anybody no it's just like he knows what he has and he loves it so he must have felt really comfortable though too because like i can't believe your dad did that oh hey let's forget about reality for it that was some wild man some crazy bro so that was uh that was a crazy day he then brought us like we were like first row in the weigh-ins we were like one of the first rows at the actual fight itself it

was it was they treated us like actual celebrities it was insane yeah there was one video that i was crying about i don't know which one it was i should have it pulled up but i don't where you guys were like in the octagon training center you know i'm talking about yeah do you know was that when you were doing like a collaboration with the fighter oh when i rolled around with cloudjet yeah yeah i think so hold on but there was a video where it was you or it was your dad and dana i don't know like what they were even talking about i wasn't even paying attention but it was like they were going back and forth about something in life and then you just look you look in the back of the video and suddenly it's just like you like oh shit the camera uh like like wave and then like leave dude i was it was fucking hysterical

you kind of had to be there to watch it was it on mine i think it was on keep going i thought you put it on johnny drinks yeah that's it you post so much which one go back up one more that's it right yeah yeah yeah this is it this is it i'll stick this in the corner i may have to put it without the volume so people can just see it so this was this was one of the coolest things too where's the where's the shot yeah i think it was i think it was like a motivational one like this it was probably in the actual YouTube. Maybe you posted it. Because these are the cuts, but it's not...

I don't know. Shit, it was so fucking funny though. It was probably on the full YouTube. So that was his personal gym. And he's reading a Bruce Lee quote. There was two moments that really stuck out. That was one of them um because it was just like so it was so genuine like he would he was like this is my favorite quote this quote is what i live by and it was just more or less about like if you're not gonna go

do what you really want to do you might as well be dead like go live a purposeful life and go at least try to do and set your goals super high and and he's a living testament to that you know what i mean that guy's a beast man he's a beast i mean he really you know if you've ever listened to like his story and how he was just like it was a combination of don't take no for an answer and find a better way at all times and he just he saw something that no one else did like the idea of in a society that continues to get more and more focused on like humane and safety as we were moving in that direction he he's like no people are gonna want one thing in the opposite direction and they're gonna buy it and he went there and no one like they're like oh yeah you're gonna do a cage with an octagon octagon people fucking killing each other with every limb. Yeah, people are going to watch that.

And they did, man. I mean, he just, what people see now is the UFC as it is, as it's been now, I'd say, for, it's been big like this for like a decade, probably, like at this kind of size. But, like, they don't think about the 15 years leading up to that to you know the 20 years leading up to that when they were killing people in the and when not a lot of people were watching it wasn't you know they didn't have any deals with ESPN huge huge huge pay-per-views it's not like he was a billionaire all those years he was baby was fucking like making the payments and getting by and

bootstrapping this thing you know he had some good luck along the way too but the guy is he's a machine and that's again what i appreciated because he he is so willing to like adapt because like you just said if he wasn't who he was the ufc would have stayed as this gnarly no rules fight club that nobody really cared about or networks wouldn't be able to pick up right but he is so with the times even him with the size that he has saying let me have somebody like Johnny drinks on to promote my howlerhead bourbon shows how um understanding he really is because there's a lot of people that start their own brands of stuff and Think they're too high and mighty to take anybody else's help with influence Like this dude is way bigger than us as far as like a follower count and no one's count

Yeah, but he's willing to say hey Let me work with these guys because it's gonna create great content great buzz and help my brand grow You know and that's that's humbling. You know what the genius of your Content is though with the drinks you guys have the greatest marketing setup in the history of marketing setups i mean i'm sure someone will come up with something better but like it's up there because you get to do placed advertising on things you like so you are picking out a drink that you want to make and you say to dad all right

well what are you putting in that he says i'm putting brand x and you say all right bet let me hit him up because what are you going to do your content the reason it goes so far is because a lot of people save it because it's it is 60 seconds or less of a free directions step by step with a visual of how to make a drink so people are like oh i want to make that this weekend boom let me save it and what are you doing there you list out all the ingredients including the brand of alcohol that you're using so when people then go to make that drink they're like all right what do i need i'm going to the store oh all right he put tangare in this i'm gonna get tangare and it's it is like you don't have

to say and by the way this video is sponsored by tanga it's it's understood right and they every video i mean you paid a lot of money but i'm sure they still underpay for what they actually get because then if people buy it and they like that drink guess how they're going to make that drink forever moving forward they're going to make it that way absolutely and i think that's one thing like pricing for content is very hard to do. Keep in mind the future value of your brand and that this content lives evergreen. I have people literally now coming to me and saying, oh, I saw the video that you did six months ago. And they thought I posted yesterday.

That's just how the algorithm works sometimes. So when you price yourself out, realize that they're not getting that worth in a week they're getting that worth forever you know so if it's not worth it for them for the first week because they didn't see like that direct roi there's so much more value like when a commercial runs that commercial's done once they stop running it your stuff lives forever so keep that in mind whenever you try to price yourself out um and like you said whatever you're whatever brand is willing to pay on you they're seeing a return on that because they wouldn't keep paying you if they didn't you know what i mean so the value you provide is probably a lot more than what you're charging have you talked with dana since you were there or his team at all yeah so they pumped about the content yeah do they

yeah i mean they were so happy they i mean we were so happy about working with them too their biggest fights are normally at msg in like october november so we already talked about like we want to do something really really big there because we're that's our you know we're 40 minutes away yeah so whether it's like the same situation we create cocktails with dana white but you know we do something at the event like live type of thing there's so many opportunities because i think if we do you did something during the press conference right you may have said that quickly oh yeah so yeah the next day so leading up to the fight the day before they did the weigh-ins and on the weigh-in show it's like michael bisbing uh laura sanko and they do like a bunch of like random stuff

sometimes like games and one of the features this is actually crazy one of the features was having expert bartenders johnny drinks on and that was the point where i looked at my dad and we were both like the fuck are we doing like what are we doing here man like i know real bartenders are like punching the air you know what i'm saying like so that was actually it was a little like discombobulated like they didn't have the ingredients we needed um we weren't sure where we're gonna because it was live like it was okay go you're on so we didn't have a lot of time To prepare and again he might have been nervous. I don't really know he didn't appear nervous at all on camera So he was making it he was making his drinks. He was doing his thing. He was making people laugh

He was the pro at that time It was his show for the five minutes that we were on and that's like man his dudes got it You know what I'm saying, so he made that very easy for me But yeah, they didn't give us too much guidance as far as like what we should and shouldn't do. So it was kind of like all on us. Yeah, you guys had a full, like they really, every single spot

and like you're pumping the howler head, that's what it's called? Howler, yeah. At each end. So like, I mean, you say like, in a way that you're surprised that a guy at his size gets that. Look, man, you don't get to where he is without understanding how things work. And you're surprised that a guy at his size gets that look man you don't get to where he

is without understanding how things work and you're right there are people who lose that once they get there but to me he's always struck me as a dude who is very aware of where pop culture is definitely for all its ups and downs to come with it but he seems to get that and so yeah it doesn't surprise me that he's got a team of people saying hey there's these guys doing this shit and then it's ups and downs to come with it but he seems to get that and so yeah it doesn't surprise me that he's got a team of people saying hey there's these guys doing this shit and then obviously like they saw the same thing we just pointed out you know like this is the most organic way to get the name out there like how did you make this x drink whatever oh i put howlerhead in it along with this stuff howlerhead bet exactly and the benefit of powerhead is it is in a league of

its own there's not too many banana whiskeys or bourbons of powerhead is it is in a league of its own there's not too many banana whiskeys or bourbons out there so is there any good dude it's amazing it's actually yeah if you looked at my review and i'll be i would be real if you looked at the review i want to turn off the cameras for a second you just tell me between you and me it wasn't good it was awesome i'm dead i left the cameras yeah right no dude the first taste if you actually if you see the reaction my dad and i were both like holy shit because at the time we didn't have any ties to them i could have ripped this thing apart which would have been the work if it was real it would have been the worst thing ever but we

tasted like oh my god this thing is that's why they repost that that's why they reposted it that's what you should have done man like you and your dad should have been in on it like yo we're gonna say it sucks like yo this is fucking garbage yeah right no look we're real like i've i've had i've had plenty of stuff like we didn't like it and we're like that's terrible and we've actually had brands i won't say the names this is actually pretty funny one of our reviews we did because we do a lot like seltzer reviews online and drink reviews and we did one for a pretty popular brand um I won't say names oh I saw this one and so he drinks it and he hates it yeah and that brand happened to have been like reaching out to us or reaching out to like an agent that I had and they're like yeah like look

we would have loved to work with them but we can't now because they just told eight million the video did really well I told eight million people they hate us like it would be super unorganic so like look there's a price to be paid but at the end of the day now we are known as being so real and i think that's why brands want to work with us so bad you're honest i tell people all the time like look you're paying for placement with us you're not paying for us to lie so if it's a review and you want our honest feedback we're going to give you that honest feedback i'll always give you the chance to not post it, right? If you don't like our review, I'm not going to post it without your consent. But that's the reality.

It's like if some people don't like this drink, we're going to be honest about it. Some of those younger crowd type drinks, like the different seltzers and things like that, it sounds like the brand is not thinking of it this way. And I kind of get that from a business partnership perspective. but that video doing eight million views where your dad didn't like it as much as people like and respect your dad it might especially on tiktok have the opposite effect that's drys and effect because they're like all right well he's an old dignified guy like i'm just looking to have a good fucking time bro they fucking buy it any publicity is good publicity from that standpoint because

we're not telling you it's gonna kill you you know i'm saying he's just like i don't like the taste of it you're gonna go i would rather if i was a brand and what i always try to do is if we are striking a brand deal i like to reverse engineer everything i want to say if i'm doing an ad for doers if i were doers how would i want my influencer to post? And that's how I do my videos. So not that I would intentionally say doer sucks, don't try it, but I would rather have a video with 10 million views. That's a little bit subjective. Like he might've liked it.

He might've not, it was just okay. Versus a video with a hundred thousand views where I'm like super sponsored and this is an ad and Hey, we love this stuff and you should go buy it. Your, your hit rate is way better with the 8 million. You what i'm saying yeah so yeah that's a wee approach ads it's a weird game when you think about it there's so much psychology to it dude and that you can't get caught up in it you know it's like that's why authenticity and being honest is always the best approach yeah and we and that's our benefit is we can afford to be pretty selective with the brands we we work with nowadays.

We only work with brands we like. I'll never – and I'll be very straight up. Hey, yeah, this is an ad or we're promoting this brand. But we would not promote a brand we don't like. You know what I'm saying? That's key. I mean I think I've always been about that. Like with doing this, I've had at this point plenty of brands reach out usually for deals that aren't that good.

So it makes it easy. But I'm like I would never use that product in my life how could you how could you promote it no like the two that i've been promoting for the longest time are eight sleep and privado vpn i use both really the eighth sleep is fucking incredible if you don't have one you should get one i don't but you know the privado vpn is one click and it's on it's beautiful works at full speed incredible right so if i'm using both and i like them and in this case love them i definitely love the eight sleep the vpn is more of a utility so i don't know if you like love something like that but like now i can't imagine not using it so i guess that's like a really good thing right if that's how it is then i have no problem talking about that because if someone else buys it like i want them to have the same experience i got exactly

right but if i'm hi there i'm ryan reynolds and i have a list of things i like to have on set it's just little things like two freshly cracked eggs scrambled with crispy hash brown sausage crumble and creamy chipotle sauce from tim hortons from my rider to tim's menu try my new scrambled eggs loaded breakfast box just shilling this product x whatever it is it's like i don't know man but if i when i get to a point where i have people coming to me with the offers who have vetted it and explained it and understand things more and actually have the time to look through this and there's a higher volume then i'll be able to say okay that definitely that definitely that, no, that, that, you know what I mean? And now you can actually push them. So I'm looking forward to getting there. And that's the thing too, man, because you got to also realize

like there's an opportunity cost for everything you do, right? So you get paid however many dollars to run an ad, but you go then have people actually go try the product and you lied in that ad and they actually hated, you know, lost lost loyalty from all those people. Was it worth that much money you took? And it almost never is. Let's say a million dollars for an ad, right? Losing your dignity and who you are as an, as a creator is never worth it because you'll never get that back. If you're now the ad slut that all they do is run ads on things they actually don't like, that's your, that's your rep and nobody cares about your content anymore. And you see that happen a lot on Tik TOK because these people are normally a little bit younger and they got hot from no, from, for no reason. You know

what I mean? They kind of just struck gold in one thing and now they have a lot of money coming their way and they don't know what else to do. So now their content suffers because every one of their videos are, are an ad and now they have no chance of getting that back because they lost their their authenticity yeah and that's that's a scary thing like especially with the short form feeds again you don't have to worry about that because it's organic you know like when you and i've talked in the past about and you're always an ideas guy and you're throwing out some stuff i could do it doesn't work because it and like to your credit like you're realizing it when we're spitballing as well because it's just like that

would be so out of the ordinary and so you know like okay now you're just using this feed to monetize me and again you are so at the victim of the algorithm with that stuff and every time you put out something where someone has a negative experience you lose people for a long time absolutely until you hit a bomb again and maybe it'll go in their feed hard to get it back though too hard to get it back you know really hard like i'll notice i'm on tiktok very little these days but when i would be on it more in the past like i would notice there are creators who i would engage with for a while and then i would just engage with them a little less and they disappear it

it literally happened to you once like maybe when you were blowing up on youtube on tiktok i then wasn't seeing your videos your videos had always been first in my friends feed and so what was happening was I would see your videos on YouTube and so then I'd be on TikTok and I'd be more likely to not stay the whole thing so for you I usually try to stay the whole thing but then at that point you know you're like 1.5 million I'm like all right he's doing okay but what then what happened then they stopped showing the videos so I had to retrain that I had to go in and like sit on your page for like 10 minutes and just let each one play and then like two days later it started coming back in it's such an

interesting thing because the two things like i noticed i have anecdotally in the comment section on youtube people like oh it's so weird when i subscribe to you i don't see your content anymore it's almost like youtube like once they got you they don't like that the dangling the carrot is showing them all of my content and then once they got them as in the subscribe they don't feel the need to show that content anymore but it's almost like how do you keep considering or maybe it's like they subscribed now they see way too much my content and instead of watching the full 60 seconds they're only watching 30 so they're almost like shooting themselves in the foot my mom does the same thing my mom has a tiktok and she's like it's so weird you never

come up on my for you page i'm like well number one your for you page is a bunch of dogs and like how-to things but number two like as soon as my video comes out what do you do that you go you like it a thousand times because you think you can like something a thousand times and you share it 500 times and then you stop watching the video so you probably don't watch everything all the way through you don't comment you don't share with other people so like and i also think tiktok isn't dumb they know when something is force-fed into somebody's hands like i do it too i have four accounts on my phone and i try to play the game where i'll swap different accounts and i'll like it and share it from each account but i think it's more device thing than an account thing so they notice and identify and actually call it like a junk view.

So sometimes when they see too many junk views, they'll like, yeah, they'll, they'll, that'll like screw up the entire thing. So I don't touch it with TikTok. And again,

I care a lot less about TikTok now, but this is my cadence on every platform. I post it. I go away. You have to leave it. What? So right before this podcast, I literally texted, it was a, it was for an energy company called leave it. What? So right before this podcast, I literally texted

it was a it was for an energy company called lost and found. So shout out, shout out lost and found energy. Plug. Yeah, there you go. Great dudes. And they taste really good. Just posted a video. I texted him and said, Hey, I'm gonna be out of pocket for three hours. I'll get to the comments after that. But that's so much better for me. Because if I wasn't doing this right now, I would be on my phone, like refreshing every five minutes and just like, oh, man, how many likes and shares do I have? And it's such an addiction. We just talked about this before. Like there's a lot of pros to what this app has done for me.

But my life is consumed by my phone. And like I notice sometimes I think the biggest problem that I've identified. I love hearing from happy new customers of the 8SleepPod Pro Cover because every single time without fail, they tell me, I don't know how I lived without this before. The 8SleepPod Pro Cover comes in queen or king sizes. It goes right on top of your current mattress and it is wired directly into 8Sleep's proprietary app, which measures your sleep stages throughout the night, every single night, so that you get the best sleep possible it measures all kinds of stuff like your heart rate the number of tosses and turns you have your optimal sleeping temperature which you also have the ability to do some customization with so i like to sleep cooler so i set it to like minus four minus five and then it'll change throughout the night based on how deep i'm sleeping or like what stage i'm at and as i like to tell people you'll sleep six hours and feel like you slept eight.

So if you use that link in my description, along with the code TRENDIFIER at checkout, that's T-R-E-N-D-I-F-I-E-R, you will get $150 off your own Eight Sleep Pod Pro cover today. Very, very important. Use that code TRENDIFIER, T-R-E-N-D-I-F-I-E-R at checkout in order to get that $150 off and start sleeping better today. And at least I'm accepting it is that I find such boredom in like reality.

Sometimes I'll sit in like, I'll sit with like people that I like, like my family or my friends. I'm like, you guys are boring compared to my phone. I'll say, I'm going to go, go to the bathroom for 10 minutes. Cause I have to go check my feed. I got to check how many notifications I have and like that's a shame and doing stuff like this things that force me to get out of my there's no other option I can't go get my phone right now right it's so refreshing

because I'm enjoying this moment so much that I haven't thought about my I haven't thought about checking my phone notifications once I don't even care so I think it's like you got to realize when you're in this space what you're getting yourself into and try to take a step back as much as you possibly can. And like, I think that helps from like a content standpoint too. When you get so sucked into your niche and you think that's all that exists, like the fitness space is what I use an example as, because I know a couple of people that are in it and not that they're toxic, but there's so many people that are so toxic in that space because they're young and they don't realize that like, there's so much more to life than looking good in a picture. Like, great. You've achieved a great

body. That's fantastic. Go live life now. They're also some of the fakest people alive. It's it's a, and it, it really does upset me because it's you feel bad for them that they can't they can't think of anything else other than content creation and the thing thankfully the people that i surround myself with have identified that really well and they don't fall into those same traps but even me dude i get i get the same way you know what i mean listen gavin's a world champion gavin is a different, Gavin isn't a content creator first. He's an athlete first. Yeah. Yeah. So like you're, you're seeing the good, right? But I know exactly who you're talking about. Everyone listening knows too. Like it sticks out like a sore thumb. Those, those dudes that like, and the reality is bro, think about like this. If your reality is mostly social media and all of your pictures are hyper edited and gavin actually does a great

job editing not to say he doesn't look great but he edit he's edited some of my pictures i'm like damn bro i look good but think about like the subconsciousness and the insecurities that you you don't have to walk around life knowing that you do not stand up next to the pictures you took and people every time they see you in person you think in the back of their mind that they're thinking that dude doesn't look the same way he does in pictures. That dude isn't as tall as I thought he was going to be. That dude isn't as jacked. That's the initial thought every time somebody meets you.

That's fucking terrible. It blows my mind that people live in this world, and it's a shame. People care less and less about how it looks two weeks from now versus how it looks right now based on the number of times they get the thumbs up or the heart. That's just what people do. It's so fascinating to me because I don't really get that. I look at some of my early Instagram posts. When I first got myself on Instagram, I had been on Instagram marketing for people for a while. But like, yeah, I kind of like now I look at those posts and I'm like well i guess i played the game like this is what you were supposed to do i'm like

this is dumbest shit ever right because it's like what what some of them are like very legit and like happy moments stuff like that and those ones i appreciate i'm like that's a great post but then other ones it's like what why'd you post that one like well you knew what you were doing when you were doing that and they're not anything special i mean i'm an average show but still like there's a whole thing where it's like well what are people what's going to catch their eye the most when you're doing that in content and i'm talking like video content where you're making things that people have to interact with you know it's a fine line but you can you can think like that a little bit but when people get into like just the

visuals and this also does include in like video content when they're making things look different than they really are yeah it's like well how do you look yourself in the mirror if that's not at all what it is if it's if that's not really you and i think that's the problem is like everybody as a content creator and it's okay everybody puts on a character my dad and i are characters on camera i think the goal is to make sure that your character resembles the real you as much as it's never gonna be the same but make sure they resemble you as much as possible so you could be confident in yourself on camera and in person when somebody meets you like we said before somebody meets you they're getting as close to as possible the person they saw on tick tock or instagram whatever platform yeah i think you

guys are pretty much right there like i don't get i don't get the vibe of much changing because you're also doing it in your environment yeah you're doing it around the house and like it and it's so and it's such a daily routine now which by the way how many times like when you guys film shit do you guys film like four videos on the same day i try because like if when you're when you're in there and you get it as a creator like when you're in the groove you're in the groove and happiness and authenticity comes across in the camera it's very hard to fake that yeah so when i got my dad in a good mood when i'm in a good mood let's bang off four videos why not when we're not in good moods and we have to do a video let's do one because we have to get it done and move on to something else if i know that we

argued and or we're about to argue i'll cut it and i'll be like you know what we made our video today or let's just not film and i've had that happen several times where i where we just were not into it and we were about to make a video we're arguing or something happened he's busy he's a real job and a family he has a lot more stress than i do as like a human so i get that and i see that in his eyes and i'll say you know what let's not create content that's not going to do well let's just end it let's let's live to fight another day type of shit um but again i've done days where we've shot four or five videos in a 30 minute span just because we're rolling um youtube videos we do all in one day so we'll shoot like four

youtube videos in one day um we'll do like two every two weeks so like eight videos a week because i'm just saying last time you were here you wouldn't even need a carb and you guys are fucking drinking every day it's really sad i don't know if you stay in great shape well i don't know man that's the funny part because like the reality is do we have liquor in our diet yeah we obviously we drink we drink and we enjoy drinking do we get that banged up rarely no i mean you may see me pretty banged up on a saturday night in hoboken or that's down the shore that's different nobody's counting that right we're not talking about that right now but like during the week we make a video we may split that drink we may pour that drink down the drain we may make that drink with water you would waste the drink dude but wait how about this my dad my dad hates wasting

the drink he looks and he's like what do we do with it i'm like pour it down the drain bro we have so many bottles he's like to that mongoloid adopted brother of yours exactly yeah that is that is not your father's kid I'm sorry how about that bro he's the one that doesn't drink he eats super clean come on well he's trained he's uh he's in football season right now okay all right that makes sense he's a grinder yeah what what happened there dude I'm obsessed with that. That makes no sense. Give me a couple inches, man. I don't know. I'm going to put a picture in the corner so people can see.

By the way, your sister got married. Congratulations. Thank you, thank you. But at the wedding, I just saw the picture of the family, and I just went like this and chopped it, and you see his entire upper torso and abdomen, and you see nobody else because they're all below there. How funny is that? He's a fucking D1, 6'6", mongoloid know he's a big dude you guys aren't quite six six sorry not yet

no i'm still growing um no but like that that's the funny part is like you gotta live again that's the problem with like some people in the fitness space is like they get so over obsessive that they forget about like real life yeah i live i try to live like a 90 10 rule so like if you see me drinking or eating something pretty shitty that's what you see i eat like a dog every other meal a day like i literally eat the same thing yeah for breakfast lunch second lunch third lunch and dinner like i will eat and my my family will test i will eat literally ground beef and rice and keep it moving because for me it's like I love to enjoy food so you and me got the same diet right I don't need to eat bullshit every time I eat I want to be able to say oh man let's go out for sushi I'm gonna enjoy

this meal and I feel like I'm gonna enjoy it way more than you because my last 10 meals have been beef and rice you know what I'm saying so I keep it simple I keep it moving I go to the gym i like to work out um it's a good way to look at it yeah because like just keep you don't you don't need every meal to be this cuisine that like shocks your world it's fucking food man eat it and move on eating is a utility to me right now yes it is strictly it's it's time i have to waste where i'm not working and it is i want to put shit in my body that's going to keep me alive correct right so i don't i don't enjoy my food it's a process of like chewing it enough to digest it and get the fuck up here and get after it and i think like you know you're farther along than i am and you're at a point of success but like your grind has not slowed down one bit so like you're on all the

time and it's and also you know you take care of yourself like you're on all the time and it's and also you know you take care of yourself like you work out all the time like you're very into maintaining a healthy lifestyle as you pointed out overall so like you probably i'm guessing approach it like the same way like all right i gotta get this done because i gotta get to the next thing we'll worry about like you said having a good meal this weekend somewhere right exactly when i i love food bro i love eating like who doesn't yeah who doesn't like at the same time i'm not a fucking child i don't need a snack i don't need to munch on fucking chips like i think for that like i don't know man get your priorities straight you know what i mean you need that bag of chips right now you're you're probably bored you're you're probably not even hungry you

know what i'm saying so little tips like that help me out and i just keep it very basic i think you've heard people say in the past it's been passed around a bunch as a quote but like it'll be like when you are doing something where you forget to eat and you don't care yeah you probably found your thing or your passion yeah and that was like as i got out of college and was at my job i I started to think about that a lot more. And I started to realize, even though I did still eat exactly like that, like fucking ground turkey and rice, that was my go-to. Because I don't have enough time to cook shit, right? But I would realize that would be more of something I looked forward to or a highlight. And I'd be thinking about it like, ooh, yeah, that lunch is going to be fire today, right? Whereas when I'm doing this, sometimes it'll be like 6 o'clock. I'll it like, Ooh, yeah, I get that. That lunch is going to be fire today. Right. Whereas like when I'm doing this,

sometimes it'll be like six o'clock. I'll be like, Oh fuck. Whoops. Yeah. I gotta go get something. It's actually, it's such a very funny cause I used to be, I used to be hyper obsessive about like the food I ate and what I put in my body and you should be, but you shouldn't, I'm sorry, you should be conscious. You shouldn't be hyper obsessive about anything. I think it's a bad addiction to have. So when I would be like, oh, I have to eat this many meals a day and I can't eat this. And you, you, you demonize these certain things and you really do

not need that in your, like in your stress, um, Rolodex, right. There's, I feel like there's so many things that need to stress you out, like need to stress you out that food should not be one of them, like eat and move on. So like, for me me that is a really good point i used to be conscious about like i'm eating way too much protein now it's like fuck i'm not eating enough and i noticed that like you go to the gym you're not recovering as well and you're not putting up the same weight as you used to because your diet was lacking or your sleep was lacking so for me it's like as long as i get four to five meals in a day and most of them have a lot of protein in it, that's it. It's that simple.

I'll forget the exact number, but I think it was between 30,000 and 50,000. I heard Jesse Itzler talking about this one time, the entrepreneur, where he talked about decision points during a day. And this really affected me when I heard this. He's like every little thing you do is some sort of decision there are things that are subconscious that require the least amount of brain cells to focus on it or realize it's even happening and therefore deduct from the energy you have for the day then there's things that are more conscious so like you know picking up something and lifting it that's more conscious it

affects you more because there's a physical toll to it stuff like that but he's like the average human has between 30 and 50 000 decision points a day and every decision point on stacked on top of each other is like right a brain cell stressor so the more decisions like in content you know those days where you have a hundred things to do and you you don't get it done because you don't you never know where to start right like that happens every day for me it's very stressful because then i'm like wait i can't even i'm trying to decide how to make a decision to decide right exactly and it's so so hard so like when it comes to food literally i want it so simple so I don't have to think about it. I go downstairs.

I get what I have. Exactly. Done, right? Because I want to put whatever that energy is into creating something. Yeah. You know? And it's a lot. Like the respect I have for people who built things over long periods of time that were highly complex,

which anything great, that's usually how it is, whether it's creativity, business, whatever. I mean, it's, I have such respect for that because the, the, the toll you put on your mind to constantly move from A to B to C to D and do it in the simplest possible way so that you can get through as many letters as possible is, I mean, you can't understate that. But yeah, that's what, um, I think Mark Zuckerberg does that he wears the same shirt and same pants every day or like the same color, just cause like, yeah, that's one decision less that he has to make. He keeps it moving. Yeah. I think a bored mind is the worst mind to have. Like that's when you start thinking of

things you should not be thinking of like where, what am I? What should I be doing in life? What's my purpose? And am I worth it? Like keep yourself busy, man. I don't care if you're, and I think I've, I've noticed now and I'm not old, but like at 26, I'm a lot older than I was at 20 to 22. That's an age group where like you're either about to end college or you just ended college you're trying to find yourself you're you're a sponge to information so you take a thousand different opinions on one thing and you don't know what to think and it's frustrating and i remember

feeling like this is like when i was trying to do student united and i was hitting wall after wall it was like tell people what's united was so when i yeah yeah so when i was in college i started and that's funny. I haven't talked about this so long. I started an app called Stu United, which essentially evolved into like an academic marketplace for students to upload their assignments and then barter on what the exchange would be. Legalized cheating. Right. And you could see why that went pretty wrong at the end of it, but that's a whole separate conversation for me before we started to hit the the ground

running and see some traction there was a lot of conversations with myself because the the biggest frustration wasn't that i had too much work to do it was that i had nothing to do i could sit around do nothing all day and nobody would tell me hey you should go and do this you should go and do that because there's no roadmap you know what i'm saying and you're in charge you're in charge like so i would sit there and on my computer i would look and stare my emails and be like what the i can't get this thing moving what the do i need to do you try to think of it's almost like the uh you know the rat on the on the on the wheel like you don't know what you're just running in circles you don't know what to do and that will drive

you literally insane and there are points of times where like, mentally, I was not in a good place at all. It was like very hard time for me because I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know what my worth was. And I finally found something to just keep pushing on. And now every day I wake up, I don't got to think about how happy I am or how appreciative I am. I know it. I give my thanks and I keep it moving because I'm just so excited to keep doing what I do you know what else though you have people in it with you who are in your environment because with united and like you know for people that hadn't heard of that or hadn't heard our last podcast this isn't something you did for five minutes you did this for four years dude i started when i was i won i won rowan's innovation competition or like entrepreneurship

whatever when i was 20 and i didn't stop until i was like 24 yeah yeah so this was a long-term thing you build a user base you had a great concept and like it needed a little more development but you worked on it for a long time this wasn't like some overnight like oh it didn't work out you know whatever but i think that the way that came to an end was actually really really mature because you didn't fight reality and what do i mean by that there are people who could use that as a as a crutch to give up on something when it gets hard and say like well reality is it's probably not going to go versus there are people who then are constantly putting themselves in a place of opportunity

and taking advantage of opportunity where when something ends yes and we could talk about i'd love to get your thoughts on that because we we haven't talked about that at length but like yes it's bittersweet because you were building something for a long time and you've decided like okay I'm gonna I'm gonna mark this a failure because I'm not going to continue it but It's also because you are going into something that you found great success Like you've landed like in your case you would land it on something you're like, holy shit Like we're growing like a weed on multiple platforms we have a nationally known brand at this point we're making a ton of money and it requires

a lot of it requires all my time yeah and so you had to be like well what am i going to prioritize and the fact is this united idea which you know i say legalized cheating but that's literally what it was so it's very very smart like in the internet of things world like you had it and i you know i was a huge fan of that but like you had to sit there and go there's a b and c hurdles i still have to get over to get it there do i want to completely stop what i'm doing now where i know i can build something huge and finance my own opportunities moving forward with anything I want to do. Or do I want to go after the thing that was my baby just because it's that? Just because it's that.

That's a really hard decision. It's so funny, dude, because I realized very early on education technology was not my passion. I fucking hated the sales cycles with schools were a bitch. You never knew when you were talking to the actual decision maker. It would way too long i didn't have any passion for education at all like it was just something i thought of that literally i was very stubborn because in the beginning at 19 years old when i had the idea people would tell me hey it's a great idea and then other people would be like it's not a good idea so i was like you know what i'm gonna show them and every time i heard hey above all it's a great experience that would stab me like i i what do you mean great experience like when

somebody would pretty much tell you hey it's not gonna work out you're gonna fail oh right right but it's hey but at least you get the experience from it like when someone and just a little if you're if you're advising or talking to somebody that's starting something don't say that that's like the worst fucking thing to say to somebody hey, you're gonna fail because 99% of the time you do but you're gonna learn a lot and the reality is I did and like I'm okay with that now going through it. That was a slap in the face So it was that that just kind of like kept me going. It was like fuck you I'm gonna show you that I can and when I started to do it and the traction was there I was more happy that I was just building something and less happy that I was

building something in the space that I was in. Right. So now I'm doing both. I'm building something. I'm happy that I'm building it, but I'm also happy what we're building. Right. Like that's the difference.

And, um, you didn't a question though. Cause like you started the first two, two and a half years. We're all dealing with the schools, which sucked, obviously like no passion for dealing with colleges and administrations.

But then you did move it to where you said, fuck it, we're going to lean into this whole, like, it's basically like legalized cheating rather than, like, trying to work with the schools. So then the sales cycle was different, right? You were dealing with individuals and, like, students. Correct. It was B2C, but it was more, again, that was one thing we'd never nailed.

And I think if I can give any advice to an entrepreneur right now if you're looking to start and i'm talking about like starting something that hasn't been and i think that's a loose term the word entrepreneur because we're not so loose because like are you if you own a pizzeria are you an entrepreneur some people say yes some people say no if you're innovating and you're creating a technology that has not been seen before i think the biggest thing you can do is like identify the problem you're creating a technology that has not been seen before, I think the biggest thing you can do is identify the problem you're solving, go solve the problem, but race to finding revenue. And I'm not talking about making a million dollars in your first year. Just prove that you can do it.

Because even for your own sanity, you need to do that. And I was so against it because I was building a social platform and I wouldn't see revenue until three to five years and i was so ignoring the reality of it like we said this was not making any money and i had a lot of users on it but it wasn't going anywhere because i wasn't hyper focused on that i had all this traction it's like me getting a bunch of views on tick tock and if i'm going to create a business out of it i have to start turning some revenue over and that like was one thing i just ignored so different world different world bro yeah exactly different eyeballs think about your youtube now too yeah like on youtube you make the long form

content you get to go beyond what you do on tick tock and that's ad revenue for sure you know so it's just like creating something great continuing to create something great so like it comes with it like it does for me even, right? So when you're – the context you're bringing up though is brilliant because you're talking about when you're starting something that is an idea of a business, like something that is going to be a product that people hold, touch or feel, whatever it is. Sure. And the focus on just like the utopian world this is going to create is wonderful. But like you do have to demonstrate that it can actually – people will buy this as a service. And like I think – I really believe this and I will believe this for forever. I think if you had not – if Johnny Drinks had not blown up that would have because i think you had moved away

from a lot of the in the education space that you pointed out you didn't like at all and i think if you had been able to stay b2c longer which you didn't because something else you were doing was doing great so this was a fail forward thing let's just call it what it is like this was not like oh i failed this was like i'm gonna. Let's just call it what it is. Like, this was not like, oh, I failed. This was like, I'm going to make a decision. This is better than that. And it was a good decision. I'm saying like, if that if you hadn't had Johnny drinks, I think you would have found a way with that because you did identify a clear problem and something that even though like college students don't have a fuck ton of money, like those little payments of like $10 here $20 there that you get a little rake on as a platform to provide this service and connect people around the whole country together and potentially on international levels like i mean dude it's such a there's there's teachers out there shaking their heads of what what it was but it was about efficiency and there's some teachers that were on our side like some teachers identified like the peer-to-peer assistance was so much better than a student struggling alone and like that's the reality is this like school should be a reflection of real life because you're only there

for four years you gotta live life a lot longer so you gotta learn how to adapt and behave with other human beings and if it's learning from somebody else and understanding how to work in groups like that is as important if not more important than the information you're learning so it's it's crazy man because like i remember vividly seeing my numbers of usage go up gave me so much more satisfaction than seeing my numbers of views go up now and it would be very different right it would be 20 000 users versus a couple million views the couple thousand users going up every day was like i because and honestly i think it was because i struggled so much the reward was so sweet this tiktok stuff like in the beginning it was hot and i'm not saying i don't appreciate it now it's just very different

you know i'm saying like that was life or death almost and i was again there were points where i was like straight up depressed like i was not happy with myself and what I was doing. And so those little things were like, you know what, this is so worth it. And I have to keep going. And again, like the leverage thing too. I was in a position where I was begging people to invest in me. I was begging people to use my app. Now it's the other way around.

And it's a good feeling to be like, I'm'm gonna sit back and let you pitch me why i should use your product or why me and my dad should promote what you got going on and here's my rate like so it's such a i'm sitting in the other chair and i don't take that for granted but it's so refreshing to be able to have that you know you earn that respect yeah through creating things for sure and when you have a platform centralized platform to be able to put it out on where you can win as the little guy and become the not little guy yeah like if you're able to do that like well there you go now you're sitting at the other end of the table and now like you know you make the remark about the experience line i totally understand what

you're saying but also now that we're past that point like fuck yeah being in that world and seeing the bullshit you got to deal with with like venture capital and stuff like that now from your end it's like you know you're a seasoned veteran with that shit and you're gonna you're gonna understand that like as someone who i know is going to be an investor in in startups and things like that like yeah and you already have but I'm saying like in the future like that's going to be a passion of yours there's no doubt about it like you've seen the other person in that seat when it doesn't work and you know what I also have done I've seen what it does when you do and like I I remember vividly bro my first check was 10 grand and it was Doug mirror was one of my best and I guess mentors the

word I was in like an accelerator program and he was the guy running it and off the bat we just resonated he was a wrestler he saw a lot of himself in me and he saw me go through I think the best thing he did for me it was a time where I lacked a lot of, not confidence in myself, but confidence in what I was doing. I had a lot of like imposter syndrome. So he let it be known that John, he has what it takes. And he would hype me up to anybody and everybody that would confront me or him about the idea and myself. So he gave me that confidence to keep moving forward. And it was a lot of time of struggling.

And he's made buko money like just a you know whatever and there was a point in time where i went to his office one day just for like advice like talking shooting the shit and i remember he was like how much you're looking to raise and i said this and he's like uh it's like what's your minimum check size i'm like this and he's like all right i'll write you a check and like it caught me so off guard because people you and you know it too bro a yes is never a yes until the money hits the account you're like wait i'm sorry what i literally i swear to god i was like i was like i was like you just said yes he's like yeah i'll write you a check he's like sure i swear i almost i almost told i almost convinced him not to do it i was like oh like when like what are we what are we doing he's like

he's like you know what he calls his wife in like who worked for him he's like come on i want to take a picture like your first you know first uh check oh my god i was literally like bro i cannot believe this is happening he wrote a check that day like i had money in my bank account two days after that i was riding on such a high and that is a feeling that i will never forget and doug if you're listening and i haven't talked to him in so long, I want you to know how appreciative I was of that moment. And I just want to be able to do that and make other young entrepreneurs feel the same way. Because that's awesome. He literally was like, yeah, 10 grand. Like he was at a point in time where he was making great money. 10 grand really wasn't much to him. But for me, it was everything. It was everything. And it wasn't even the dollar amount. It was just a point in time where he was making great money 10 grand really wasn't much to him but for me it was everything it was everything and it wasn't even the dollar amount it was just

somebody believed in me and what that did was it allowed for more confidence for the next conversation and another guy mike dominic who has been with me since like day one of student united was my next check-in and that was like holy these people are believing in me like they actually invested their money into what I'm doing. And there's so many other people out there that have done that for me. But those are just two examples of guys that I want to be able to provide that feeling to somebody else. Do you get a lot of motivation from the people who didn't do that though too? Motivation is not the right word.

I remember vividly. I won't even say their names cause fuck them. Yeah. People that would strong and they probably know it. Like if they see me now, they probably know how negative they were towards what I was doing. Uh, I remember that pretty well. And I only remember it because it was like, um, I'm stubborn and I do get defensive sometimes.

So like, if you were really at my throat to be like, this isn't going to work and this is why it's not going to work, you should probably give up now. Like, I remember vividly people telling me, Hey, you know, it's at my throat to be like this isn't gonna work and this is why it's not gonna work you should probably give up now like i remember vividly people telling me hey you know it's not too late to get like it's not too late to get a job but it's gonna be too late in a year so you probably should do it now you should probably quit and get a job because when you're 24 and 25 nobody's gonna hire you like give up like they would literally say hey you should probably give up and for me it was like they probably don't remember those conversations but i do you know i'm saying so yeah motivations and probably not the i don't know if that's the right word for it but yeah those those definitely impacted me i i understand what you're saying as far as like you know from my own lens and my own experiences which are

different than yours. But like, yeah, the people that believe in you early on, like you were a guy who's already become an established when you and I met and you and I met when this thing had 30, 40 listeners, something like that. Literally like when you were on here too and you believed in this thing and i choose to focus on that positive of those people who like had legitimacy or were in a position to make a judgment on things or you know understood content and stuff like that who not only believed in it but then backed it up and have continued to be great support systems to me which thank you very much for that because that's you you've been you've been there every step of the way but I also don't think it's a problem to

remember when people miss you know so like my one thing is some of those people that you talk about on your stories they might feel they might be able to argue and I hate this because it's such bullshit but they might be able to argue while i was right i know right tonight it didn't go exactly and that's the one that's the one reason i was like can you just like hold on to it because it can go like someone will fucking run it and it can go because they shouldn't have been right it was a fucking great idea that had established you know you had everything established it was right fucking there it was right there but it's like again like you made the right call it's just like fuck those people if they sit there and they tell themselves that

that's why they're vindicated in what they were doing i was because they missed exactly they can see now they can see what you're doing they missed on the person absolutely and i'm not even talking about like look you got people you got like family right like family's always going to be there's they're saying it for a different reason like my mom has always been like hey there are plenty of times when my mom was like hey you know you know you could always get a job like there's a job they're looking out for you right that's that's different my mom is one of my number one supporters right but there are people that are hating for the sake of hating or because they just want to be right and the thought process that like oh they were right

about student night and it does get me a little bit but it's also like If I wasn't doing what I was doing now, it would hurt a lot more if I quit student I didn't it was like a nine-to-five worker right now Yes, I would be punching the air every day woke up like I cannot believe I gave up I probably wouldn't have given up. I don't know what I would be you know I don't know if I would be able to I wouldn't be able to live with that so You only had to stop because of a time like I remember these conversations. It was a time thing Yeah, it was like well i'm spending all my time on something. We're having massive success with it's made it

It's not like well, we're trying to make it like we made it right and it's it's it's like reflective on like everything you do If you're making content and half your content is one thing and half it's the other and the one half is doing really well Yeah, double down on that shit. Like why are you ever over complicating your your path you know it's a hard thing letting things go it is but like you have to sometimes like it's just it's a part of life and it's down to like friendships and relationships too like when the signs are all saying you gotta move on well it's probably you should probably fucking move on. You got to meet new people. That's the one thing I realized too is like even having conversations like this is so inspiring for myself because it allows me to take a step back.

Like I've never been more inspired to now go and create content because I know how great of an opportunity that I have. And I want to just keep pushing the envelope and i wanted to keep moving forward sometimes you get kind of stale you're like all right another day another video let's keep it pushing but if you don't have these conversations if you don't surround yourself with people that are doing something pretty cool you'll never exceed what you thought you were going to you're going to stay in the same kind of rat race that you've been in because you're with the same friends that you had since high school and it's honestly it's almost um it's not even anybody's fault but when you grow up with somebody and i forget who told me this but like if you're with the person that

you're with at 14 years old and you guys were fucking around drinking and doing whatever it's hard for you now to see them in a new light so when your friends try to become successful it's sometimes and it's a shame but sometimes you try to keep them back for you now to see them in a new light. So when your friends try to become successful, it's sometimes, and it's a shame, but sometimes you try to keep them back because you want to keep them in a place where we're just friends growing up. We're still playing in the park. You got to keep your friends that are true to you

because those are the best friends you're going to have. But you got to take a step back sometimes and go meet new people and surround yourself with people that are better than you. Well, that's key. there's people in this world who want to be surrounded by yes men and there's people who want to be surrounded by people who they think could have yes men if they wanted them do you know you know you you know mitch right of course mitch is like we were business partners you introduced me to mitch yeah so no no that was a coincidence

right because you knew mitch from way back and then someone else introduced us and then i was like wait mitch this is your boy yes exactly bro so mitch is an example of somebody that i always look to when i'm when i'm feeling a little too confident and i want to be humbled i talk to mitch so mitch mitch back in the day it's funny because we both were at the same spot where he was kind of like trying to do his thing with a podcast and i was trying to do my thing with this the student i did by the way this is just for people listening who don't know this is mitch laxamana yeah he's the ceo of metaverse hq he's one of those yeah yeah he's been he's been on this podcast twice 16 and 78 yeah wow you have good memory bro i got that photograph memory

baby you're good for you man so mitch again we first met we were both like faking it till we made it type of thing a lot of years go by he starts doing his own thing i start doing my own thing i see him killing it online in the crypto entity space i reach back out i'm like what are you doing i have to know i don't care I have to know. I don't care about the money he makes. I don't care about what he actually does, how he carries himself and the way he presents himself to other people. I've always emulated. And it's a couple of years older than me. And I don't even think that's the reason why I emulate it. But every time I talk to him, I learned something just by his mannerisms, just by how he speaks to somebody else,

just by how he listens, right? Like I literally will sit down with him and I'm like, you know what? There is, it is obvious why this guy is so successful and why he's able to achieve what he's achieved in life is because he's different. Like he literally taught me because I used to take, I used to be, again, you go through these ebbs and flows and the fame or whatever you want to call it, it kind of smacks you in the face. And it is hard to not get an ego trip. Sometimes I would take every one of my phone calls. I would be a little bit, you know, the fame or whatever you want to call it, it kind of smacks you in the face. And it is hard to not get an ego trip sometimes. I would take every one of my phone calls. I would be a little bit, you know, a couple minutes late. I would answer it in no video.

They'd all be on video because I was too good. I'm like, yeah, this is what I do. These are my rates, and hey, see you later. And until I had to take calls with Mitch, Mitch would be five minutes early. He'd have his camera set up. He'd be dressed super nicely. Always.

Dressed to the nines, baby. That dude's got style. That man's wasted. He's put a lot of money into fashion. That's one thing he spends on. I'm hoping Zara sponsors him one day because he's a Zara fiend. Yeah. But that in itself, I will never forget it.

We had to do a call together for something, for some brand. And he sat there, professional as as hell looked the part made the other people feel special and followed up when he did all the right things and i said to him that day i said you know what i will never take a new phone call not on video if it's supposed to be a video call i am there ready to go i don't care if you have to then turn turn your camera on i will have my camera on because that's how i'm going to present myself from now on so it's good that you recognize that yourself too for me i was like i gotta like who are you bro you know i'm saying like you're too good to put your camera on like come on now you know so i good don't lose that gene man it's a good gene i feel like i i'm always because

i'm appreciative of what i have and look i got i got some swagger to me too and there's some times where i i you know i feel it there's other times where I, I, you know, I feel it. There's other times where I got to be humbled. And it's like, you have to know that, you know, you are not the shit. You're not where you need to be just yet. And that's okay. Because you're going to get there. But the only way you're going to get there is by being humble and weathering the storm type of thing. So a guy like Mitch, I just use him as an example, got to find people that when you tell them something that you're proud of, they humbly like literally 10 X you're proud of, they humbly, like literally 10 X you like,

and I'm on top, like financially, whatever I've told him things. He's like, man, that's awesome. And I'm like, Oh,

what'd you do? And it's like, you know what? I'm nowhere near, you know, near where I need to be. So he, he,

he is one of the examples of just somebody I strive to, you know, emulate. No, man, I'm so fucking proud of mitch he's you know we've been business partners on llc's in the past and the thing about mitch is like he's always been able to be the life of the room in both looks and feel right like he just looks

the part and he's and he's got the vibe right he's one of the only people that can wear sunglasses like inside and you don't question it. If I had my sunglasses on... I question it. I do question it. If I came in here like this, you'd be like, yo, first of all, we're not starting until you take your fucking sunglasses off. But I will talk to Mitch. He'll have his nice shades on. I'm like, you know what, man?

You look great. I still bust his balls once in a while, but his fashion is impeccable. He's got brilliant... Sometimes, I've been in his house, I'll just see his his clothes laid out and i just like look at him i'm like wow that's a lot of thought yeah a lot a lot of decision points going into that stuff but he you know he's been successful almost his whole career after like he had one shitty job one year into his career and he took control of the situation said no we're not doing this and he went and got an amazing job was fina so good at it they basically they never invented a position for him but he took on like he's an engineer by trade yeah but i mean he's mitch like he's a sales guy

and a personable guy so like he took on both roles making a ton of money and the thing about him is like mitch is not a guy who is supposed to work for people so like he he was always good at it he got along with everyone very well everyone loved him but like he was always trying to do something else and the years I was with him and around him where I was figuring my own out you know it's like he had to put so much energy into what he did even during the day, even though he had it so like tactical that, you know, when you're trying to build something on the side and then you're also trying to have a life a little bit too. Well, what happened is the burnout would happen every project. Like he'd have things where I'm like, oh, no, this is good. And then it would stop because like couldn't deal with it and so

he got in to the nft stuff early and saw because he was aware of the space and he studied it from the ground from the ground floor shit and like i took a look at what he was doing and i'm like all right let's see if he'll ride this one and so like literally a year ago it's july 4th down the shore in ocean city he and i sat down because he was down i i know him and mike obviously through my cousin adam who has been best friends with mitch's brother mike forever so then we all became good friends but like he was down the shore and we sat down and talked about this and he said listen man like i think i'm gonna go all in on this and you know after explaining the whole thing and i was like mitch i think you should do that and to his credit we're now a year in the the whole crypto market right now is like in the

shitter and mitch is sitting on a beach in croatia handling business calls bro because mitch ain't worried about shit he is murdering it and he's now the head of this whole like that's the biggest trading company out there in the metaverse you know online right with metaverse hq he worked his way from like getting in there towards the ground floor is like a key guy now running the whole fucking thing and it's a beautiful thing to watch because by the way he left his job this is what he does now he left it before he got any of this he left his job last year and was like no you know what i'm putting my money where my mouth is. And I was so fucking happy to see that.

And like there was a fan who commented on a fan. I go back and forth with a bunch of cool guy, but he commented a joke on Mitch's episode. He did with me a few months, like six months ago or whatever, where he's like, oh, the crypto market's crashing. This guy probably has zero dollars now. And I'm like, no, no, he's not missing any meals. You you know what there's a lot of shit people in the crypto space but this guy knows what he's doing and it's it's a beautiful thing to watch man yeah i mean i'm just curious again not even him specifically he'll be fine i'm curious to know how a lot of these kids and i say kids because a lot of them are young are handling such a swing in i guess what they would

consider their wealth you know what i'm saying like their assets a lot of them hold majority of their assets in crypto um because at the time it's like how could you not and i got caught up in it too like there was a point in time where i was like screw investing in the market i'm gonna go dump it into eat because like this is what's hot right now i have the chance to double my money overnight and you ride on this high and you you talk to an older guy once and like they laugh at you because like you're gonna learn from experience what a downfall really feels like learning from experience there it is learn from experience man i hate hearing that bro i hate when i mean my dad knows it too my dad will say to me i can't tell

you how many times he's like you'll learn one day and he like he won't even explain himself he kind of be like when you're he'll say when you're older you'll get it and i cannot stand hearing that but the funniest part is it's so true like every time he says that without explaining himself i look back at myself and i'm like you know what he was right like i learned from experience and so just getting back to like these kids how could you how are you handling this right now so you're not part of me is like part of me is like okay are they still balling like they said they were are they still going out to these fancy restaurants or are they doing it to put up the facade and i'm not i'm not bashing

anybody i'm actually curious are they doing it to put up the facade because they have to they have to weather the storm if that takes emptying their bank account to do it oh you're saying like put up the instagrams or whatever like how because that because that was their image their image was we're young we're millionaires on paper we could do what we want because eth is so great right now or crypto is so great right now that's why you should invest in and that type of lifestyle is so intriguing for other that's why you should invest in and that type of lifestyle is so intriguing for other people that if you just stop like again it's obvious that the value of this stuff has gone down pretty dramatically if they stop doing what they were doing as far as like the extracurriculars nobody's going to believe in this stuff so like i don't know part of me is like

are they doing it just to attract more people or are they doing it because they still can it's always a problem when you have to attract people to do something based on how your lifestyle looks doing it absolutely it's no different watching crypto bros than it is watching lifestyle influencers on instagram in 2016 who really aren't even hot you know they the cameras and cars and yeah you know she's like actually like not that good looking but she's talking about that yeah she's got this beautiful page and then you know she travels to a few places and takes a few pictures with you know her hydro flask and calls it a day right so there's i don't i think it's all the same shit that's a really interesting way of looking at it though like thinking about well are they going to be upholding the lifestyle on socials? Listen, man.

When downward markets happen in anything, it shakes out the cobwebs. It shakes out all the people who are full of shit. And so they can try that if that's a thing. It very well may be. i hadn't thought of that but as long as the market is down it's not going to change the reality of people right now who are looking around like wait a second i thought i was getting rich overnight you know i've always said to people during that bull run and you can run the tape. I had this on record a million times. You know, when the tech bubble crashed in 2000, 2001, Amazon, Apple,

Microsoft, all these companies were in that. They were all affected by it because the broader market is always going to affect you if you're a part of it. But like, they were real. So when Pets.com died, Amazon lived. Because Amazon had a real business.

Their stock went like that for a while, but that's how it works. So we are going to see people come in hardcore mainstream during the pandemic like were you around it in 2017 when it was first coming up crypto yeah no i ignored it i was like i was one of the days like this is fake right so if that time it was 10 of people this time it was 25 of people and i'm making up numbers right there. I was going to say probably more. Yeah. I'm just giving you a small sampling. Those are totally made up numbers just to give an idea. It's a bigger population. Correct. There you go. took me to some meetings in late 2018 in in new york when shit was at the low of the low right

and i was blown away by no one even talked about the market at these meetings these were brilliant builders like the human capital was insane and i remember saying to him on a walk back to his office from one of the meetings i was like you can't bet against a space where things are this shitty right now and every crypto was like a dirty word at against a space where things are this shitty right now. And crypto was like a dirty word at that point. And everyone won't treat it that way. And the dudes you just listened to are some of the smartest people on planet Earth. There's a lot like them who have moved to this space and are building.

And they don't give a fuck about the market because they know what the utility is here. You don't bet against that. And we're going to see if that's the same thing this time. Every bear market shows you who the true people are but the thing about this one is that blowing up during the pandemic it created you know the laws of capitalism came into play and so everyone wanted in the 15 year olds wanted to buy it the 35 year olds wanted to buy it some of the 55 year olds wanted to buy it and so all these platforms started vying for business all these different crypto exchanges so when you're vying for business what do you have to do you have to give access to all the things because someone in your competition pool is going to do it so if you

don't you're yeah now what do we got we and i have to look at this one i've not this just happened like two days ago i have to look at the full explanation but like voyager apparently is filing for bankruptcy no this came out a couple days ago i think it was like two or three days ago whatever it was very recent and my understanding without looking at it based on a couple of things i heard was that it had to do with the fact that they they bought or they had they held a bunch of assets on leverage oh no across all these shitty coins you know why because if they didn't offer trading on those coins someone else was gonna right so for the first time now i'm wondering are there

disinterested parties or interested parties who are disinterested in the rise of crypto who have made sure to maneuver things including creating projects through fronts to get them mainstream during a boom when everyone's home during the pandemic so that when crashes everyone has exposure and they can crush a lot of the space you're a big thinker that's a that's a that's a well thought out plan i don't know or theory i should say it is a theory that's all it is i have no. I have no evidence of that. That's a well thought out theory. Takes a different type of mind to think like that.

Again, you never really know. I think the biggest problem is that a lot of these kids are young and like you said, it's going to weed out the weak. Weak or not, these dudes can't afford to keep doing this sort of stuff. They get very trigger happy and then they get very afraid. They move on to the next fun thing they could do you know what i'm saying

yeah i mean do you believe in it in crypto i mean like as a as a broad question i forget who i was listening to a very like accredited investor and he's like look the reality is us leveraging technology as far as like blockchain and a cryptocurrency is almost inevitable we're going to yes to be able to pick which one today is almost impossible it's like the example you gave in the 2000s and again we weren't around or i was five years old this time yeah i studied it later but we learned from people that have talked about it and what we hear is like like you said use the examples of like apple and amazon that were around at the time there were also thousands of other Companies are around at the time that are no longer around, you know

So picking the Apple right and picking the Apple picking the Amazon today is nearly impossible And I think that's why people like my dad's age and my dad It's himself are very gun shy when it comes to crypto Because they got burnt in the 2000s when they were sold that dream that we're going to be millionaires overnight and then it comes crashing and burning so i talked about that about a lot of time and my dad's in a different spot because he's on the fourth lap you know i'm saying he's 56 years old he's he's made his wealth and he's good he doesn't have to take these risks anymore you call that the fourth lap yeah like you know he's almost done he's great yeah dad you're almost dead

it's funny because now and this is one thing that i've always thought about he was when i say fourth lap i mean like close to retirement you know paying off his mortgage but we're creating a whole new life for him at at 56 years old and i want to be able to show him with him a life that he's never experienced right so like these are all things that are super fun and exciting for us but I digress that's what I think is so scary for the people that have been through it is like they don't want to get burnt again and the odds are they are going to get burnt again it's going to take a very intelligent and knowledgeable investor to pick the one and you may still not even pick the one the best part about getting burnt is that you learn a lesson exactly the worst part about

getting burned is you learn the lesson too hard if you did if you did right exactly and i think about this a lot because there are things you have to learn lessons from but what you don't want to do is then close your mind to things that end up in hindsight looking inevitable because you're so scarred from that past and like i look at those times as to figure out okay what are the patterns that never change what are the human being patterns that never change greed you know pumping and dumping in markets and shit like that like stuff like that yeah that never changes but what makes sense here you know what is what is something that we should be thinking about and then i'll pick up and i get to do this through doing a job like this i'll pick up on little things i'll pick up on having the cia spy in here making a joke that like cryptocurrencies

are dying right now man but out of the same mouth he'll also say i think he said it on here and he said it in other places that blockchain technology is actually the single most important piece or it's one of the single most important pieces of technology that governments are working on and that are important to basically ruling like the future of the world so well which one is it right the difference is like governments and i don't i don't want to put words in his mouth and where he stands exactly he's talking about it from the government lens but like you know governments see what this was so would they have like some of that stake like in that theory that that i laid out like would

there be something for them to say okay we are very worried about a thing like bitcoin like the top of the chain the one that's not controlled by humans you know that i think is more gold than actual dollars right in the in a parallel universe we're very concerned about that because we can't control it or legislate it enough at least so we want to be able to kill the brand of that entire space so that we can then force feed people cbdc's right something like that like this this is stuff we have to think about because guys like your dad who are righteously scarred by shitty situations your dad also has I mean his backgrounds and mortgages and stuff and

he he was one of the guys who had success and survived 08 shout out to him yeah you know as a successful guy through that he's seen murders in front of you man you know he's a successful guy through that, he's seen murders in front of him. I can tell you, man, you know, he's, he's gone through. And again, that's where he's gone through the highs and he's got the lows. Like he's, he's told me there have been points of time where like, he didn't know if he had to quit his job and get a new one. You know what I'm saying?

Like, that's a scary thought, especially when you were used to a life and now you have a family and now you have to try to find something new. Like that's, that's crazy. Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup pick any two breakfast items for four dollars new four-piece french toast sticks bacon or sausage wrap biscuit or english muffin sandwiches small hot coffee and more limited time only at participating wendy's

taxes extra that's a stress that like we as you know later 20s will never even know until we go through it right and with families and everything that's nuts bro it's a bunch that we as later 20s will never even know until we go through it. Right. And with families and everything. That's nuts, bro. It's a bunch of it. And age, everything. So I don't ever want to write that off because there's a lot he said that's correct, by the way.

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You want to be in the middle like everything else where it's like, okay, let's recognize the patterns that are as old as time, tried and true over and over again. There's no such thing as a new normal. Human beings are human beings, and they're flawed. And let's find the things that also point to a better way to do something and figure out how that's going to happen. Maybe we can't time it. Maybe we can't say exactly when or even which one in this kind of case. But we can say that space, that thing, that idea, we want to invest in that because, yeah, it's going to have its downturns. I'm talking about crypto specifically now.

But like there's going to be winners coming out of that right and then the wisdom of like your dad and his generation saying you're not going to be able to pick which one they might be right about that yeah like that's not something to ignore when they say that i mean honestly i think at the end of the day to like because again i don't like talking about things i can't or like i don't have enough knowledge about so crypto for me very high level i was super intrigued by it. I did invest in some ETH and I did get involved with some NFT projects and had a lot of fun with it.

But that was the extent of my knowledge, right? So I don't, I'm not going to come out here and say I'm an expert. And I think that's my point is like, if you have something going on for yourself, that's really good. And for me, it's content creation. It's building a brand online. Don't get so obsessed and have that FOMO that oh shit I should be go do something I shouldn't go I should go do something else because what that'll do is it's

taking away and I noticed this too when I was involved with Mitch and I was doing a lot of like NFT project research and getting involved it was so much fun dude it really was I was sacrificed I'm a big opportunity cost guy, which results in me being a big FOMO guy and that's not good, but whatever. I noticed that I was slacking on my content. And at the end of the day, I'm like, look, this is my business.

This is my life. Stop getting so distracted by what could be and go focus on what is. You know what I'm saying? Like a lot of people do that. A lot of people, whether they're working a nine to five or they started their own brand online, their head is all over the place yes be like a horse man put the fucking blinders on and just go do what you have to do you had the same approach to that that i did

it's kind of funny we've never talked about that but you and i were the same thing because we were we had access to like mitch's little group of like a few people where he's just dead you know he's in there all day how could you not get obsessed with that though right but like you know when i did it was for a week and it was when i had covid and that when i had covid i had a bad in november i couldn't like editing i my eyes couldn't do that with the screen so it was the only time since i started this podcast where I literally couldn't work. I finished my episode, which is very easy for me to edit. I can kind of do it blind.

But I did nothing else. That's interesting. And so I was sitting there, and he had me in the group, and I was paying attention. And I was in on it for a few days. And then the minute I started working again, boop, I put it to the side because I do know this. And this is not about me this is about pretty much anyone who's not literally like elon musk if you're not in something and your heart and soul is not in it and you are not paying attention and treating it like you know a student

of the game you're gonna lose money thousand percent bro like and you don't realize it too you don't realize how important it is just to be in it like just be mentally in whatever you're doing i don't care if you have to like and sometimes i'll do it like i'll put my phone away and i'll put a white i'm a big whiteboard guy and my family makes fun of me because it's like literally like a big whiteboard and it's like little notes like things have to like thing brands have to work with and it's like a list of 15 people like go put your fucking phone but i don't i like to see it very big in front of me if i'm not staring at that i'm not over obsessive about content creation i lose sight and i i i get distracted and like that is the worst thing you can do as a content creator or

when you're trying to build a brand online it's just you get super distracted and like that's what happens with stuff like that is like you get get super obsessive. And I noticed when I wasn't with my dad or I couldn't make, that's, that's one of the demises of like our brand is that we're not together. It's not the same, you know what I'm saying? So when I'm on vacation or he's on vacation, it's hard for us to create content. It's also hard for us to schedule. Cause I don't have to worry about just my schedule. I got to worry about his and I don't do, I don't do a great job with that.

He gets frustrated. So, um, it's's little stuff like that and that was the one time like you said my example was like i wasn't with him and it was a solid week where i was hyper obsessive about these nft projects and i was like dude what are you doing like go back to what you're doing because that's what you're that's double down on what you're doing really well you know everyone's susceptible to shiny ball syndrome it really fucking is there's so much you know you're doing really well you know everyone's susceptible to shiny ball central it really there's so much you know you're watching mitch made all this money because he was working and i finally caught like a glimpse of it and i flipped one for like whatever it was and i was like oh my god i'm gonna be rich overnight from flipping jpegs just like mitch yeah just stick

to what you got it's such a craze i mean i just hope with nfts specifically i hope that all the didn't crush its name right forever tainted because nfts can have such a critical i mean i don't think it will because it is an infrastructure thing they can have such a critical access point to like a healthy digital world which who knows i mean there's a lot of ways that can go bad and be very unhealthy and i hope that doesn't happen but like the applications are there and i i do i do think it'll it'll be all right but you just had so many people come in and it's like all What is it? Like, what is the actual utility of this? And it, you know, that's what happens when anything's a craze.

Like, oh, they build a community, so we're going to build one too. And like, I've seen so many people get caught up in it. And I'm like, you know, I don't, I'm not trying to be a cynic. But like, what are you adding? It's a question most of these projects didn't ask themselves and i'm also like you know i had a front row seat to smiles from day one that's true i had a front row seat to like what it's supposed to look like as far as like launching the project itself right like so happy to see that like waheed is an unbelievable artist who had collaborations

with supreme complex he was doing poosh ice these album covers he's 21 years old he's got the story his his his art is incredible so it's like this was this was a true artist project and they were able to build it because they could integrate that character across all different types of things potentially so like i saw a real utility project and then everything else i'd look at i'm like well whatever they were just they were very real about what they were doing you know what i'm saying like and geo was and you know that he was a beast too like that dude i always give credit to people that grind without an immediate result you know i'm saying like geo from the jump was not seeing a payday

was not seeing any resemblance of success. It just kept fucking going. And then they finally hit and they launched that project and it skyrocketed. And now I haven't caught up with them in a while, but they should still be doing pretty well. But there was a time where they were crushing it. Yeah, look, I mean, they've already done the job at this point. We'll see what they want to do with the company. Shout out Gio, man.

Shout out Gio. The holders are all happy everyone's made money so like they've done what they got to do and you know we'll see if they go forward as is or if they change something up i don't really know but like they did it right you know what i mean like they're sitting here right now and they got nothing to worry about and their and their community i was just at their event in new york two or three weeks ago whatever it was it was it was amazing it was amazing miles matthews who's on this podcast through it he did a great job as always shout out miles but you know like you saw the whole

community come in and like it's real it's not this it's not just a bunch of people there who were like holders like they're from all over the place all different i saw every background known to man in there and like yeah it was so it was like a refreshing place to be like the it was it was people overused the word community in the space but like it actually felt that way that's awesome that's yeah and and that's partly that's partly due to like who was running the show like i was like geo is that dude um when you meet him in person he's very wholesome he's very welcoming and like that's how you got to be at these events man so again i love i love watching people succeed that kind of deserve it he's definitely one of them i but i do bust his balls for being a very typical southwest jersey

dude like just the way he talks what are you trying to say yeah exactly the way he talks bro and youtube but you a little bit he is like the pinnacle i sent him tiktok so there's one dude that does like the impersonations like saying hoagie like he just he fits i don't have that accent oh geo has it to a t bro and i always bust his balls like yo bro i need a hoagie bro yeah he's a big wah-wah guy yeah yeah i don't know what the deal is with that accent, but there's an interesting one. It's like that Philly, South Jersey fucking vibe. Yeah, you go from Delco across Philly and through to South Jersey, and you get some interesting, you land on some interesting use of vowels. 100%.

You won't find it in other places. But you know what, though? With Gio, people also didn't see the five, six years before that. Really? They didn't see all the building and all the almost, but not that's you know that's a so i met geo we're just gassing people up today yeah i met geo um when i was back in this like full circle when i was pitching steve knighted to rowan i think i was 20 again he was a little bit older than me and he was pitching his idea for um what was the the sports app i forget what it was called

oh man it was a recruiting platform and i remember watching because he went before me and he killed his his pitch and i was like damn that dude he's got it like and i at that was at the time again i struggled a lot with this imposter syndrome like did i really fit this persona that i was trying to portray? And he did. And I was like, damn, if he doesn't get an investment, then nobody will. Cause he, he nailed it. And since that day, I really just like inspired to be like that type of dude on stage and off stage. Um, and then since then, like we just sort of kind of kept casual, like with each other, I knew friends of friends. And again and again like you said watching him grow from that to what he's doing now it's it's amazing to see

and it does take a lot of failure to get to where you are and i know if you're going through it you hate to hear it but it's kind of reality sometimes you got to learn how to fail to adjust their mindset and really learn how to kind of handle adversity a little bit it is true man and even when you're intro project, and something that's going to be successful or it gets successful, like you have, there's plenty of low moments. There's plenty of times where it's like, shit, like, what are we doing here? Like, is this going to end it? I mean, you've heard some of my low moments. You're one of the guys I call once in a while when it's like, fuck. And they don't really, I mean, I haven't

made that call in a long time now. You't now now like and like i had low points in april and may like some a lot of bad shit happened and like it was kind of like been there done that you know i'm gonna get to work i'm gonna do my thing and then put out put out my shit but how important is that to have somebody like you and i yeah to be able, even if it's literally just to complain, like I, I can't even respond because I can't control the algorithm. But the fact that you had me to just bounce that complaint and vent to somebody. So like, if you're doing something, as far as like, again, entrepreneurship, content creation, things are going to get very, very hard. Find somebody to confide in. If it's just a complaint, just to hear them say, I understand. And your complaints are

valid. Keep it moving because you're going to, like you said, now we deal with like things that are a little bit, you know, like I guess adversity, right? We take it on the chin. We keep moving, but in the beginning, it's very hard to deal with so you need that person just to just to talk to having an ear of someone who understands is key for sure even if they even if they don't do the same thing you do exactly i mean if when you don't that that's not the be all end all though too you have to like once i'm off the phone with you like i have to re-understand my reality and whatever because at the end of the day like i'm the one that's gotta dig out it is what it is i can't do yeah i can't dig you out you're not gonna dig me out but like you said you're brought up with a point

it's not necessarily that you're in my niche or in my space it's that you understand a little bit of what i'm talking about right talking to your mom talking to your family they may try to get it they just probably will never right so talking to you when, they may try to get it. They just probably will never. So talking to you, when I say, hey, this is what's bothering me today, you're like, dude, I totally get that. And you don't even have to explain yourself. I just understand that you do. All you have to do is allow me to get back to what I have to do best type of thing. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's like, look, you have to go – if you want respect, like you do have to go take it. And I don't care what you're doing. Like content is one thing. Like, okay. But like if you're building a business, you have to get product into people's hands. You have to go earn the right for people to be like, god damn it. Yeah, that's what I buy because they're great.

Right? That does not happen in a day. It doesn't know it's not like the first time someone uses something unless it's like an iphone or something like that exactly like an established place that that doesn't mean it's going to spread like wildfire right away you have to build over time you have to build your your super buyers your early adopters and then you have to branch that out over and it's it requires hitting people over and over i'm sure you see this by the way like with your content where people will subscribe to your channel and they'll

comment like hey been seeing these shorts or been seeing these tiktoks for a long time first time coming over to watch the full thing this is great happy subscriber yeah right like that's when you know like oh bro people love giving like look sift through the shitty comments because there's plenty of them i get it's 90 i get stood i get so many where it's like the sun we just we're here we're here for the dad and i'm like all right that's fair like i i i don't i take it on the chin honestly my dad i see that a lot less though now well because like look and and my i get angry when somebody like talks about my dad or about my sisters. Yeah. Because that's, you know, that's my family, but whatever. I think now because I'm in such a confident spot, I take it more as feedback.

If you tell me your content sucks because what you just did. Right. Okay. I can learn from that. Maybe I shouldn't do that anymore. Maybe I shouldn't say these things. Because like, look, I know who I am as a person. I don't want you painting this picture of who I am

based on the 30 seconds of content. So if you picture me as this asshole, spoiled, whatever it may be, maybe I should reword what I said, or maybe I shouldn't talk to my dad like that. You know what I'm saying? Or maybe I should tell my dad, hey, don't say this, say that instead.

Like there's things you should pick up on. Absolutely. You know what I'm saying? So I don't think, I like the negative feedback only because it's an opportunity to learn. Um, but some people just can't handle it. And I think, and again, like it's a good feeling for you and I to be in a spot where younger, older, I don't care. People that are just starting out can come to us and confide and be like, Hey,

I'm going through this. Have you been through this? and what can i do to help yeah and like the inner the interpersonal but non-personal stuff in this kind of space like the best examples like comments and stuff people don't handle that well dude now i will say this i live for that go look at every viral video i've ever done the comments are 95 negative and i'll be in there with like hearts or like i love you or like wow you're amazing you create but you create controversial content like that's the difference you're kind of like you're waiting for it i guess but like i will say this for the first time ever like the only times i've ever been aggressive on comments are when people when i see someone there's actually one one that would happen once a month usually where someone would comment on a post and it

would get a little traction where they'd say i hate scripted podcasts and i would come in there i mean you know what we do here i'd come in there hardcore and be like go look at every fucking camera angle you won't find a goddamn script distributed three hours there's fucking 300 hours of content. And I've converted, like, I'm very aggressive. Like, I'll come after your whole family on that one. But that's your personality, bro. You know what I'm saying?

You own that. That's the difference. And that's fine. Because that's, like, one type of comment. And then I've actually converted some people into listeners. Because it's like, oh, shit, I did. I just commented that on the side. But I went and looked.

You're right. And I'm like, okay, well, think about where you're going to comment. But for the first time a few weeks ago when I posted a couple videos that were doing really well I even had it was a Bustamante the CIA spy who laid out a couple different things about like nuclear stuff that is not common knowledge yeah I even had it sourced backed up in the pinned comment and People would comment that this is a lie. Fuck you this piece of shit channel and I would come back read the sources They'd be like fuck you go die And I was I literally like one day I went down to work out and I three hours later

I was like, oh my god I haven't started working out yet because I'm like back at him like this, and I'm like, this is what all these people do. I even had a fan comment on another post like, dude, you're going to go crazy if you're doing this. I'm like, totally, bro. You're right. Now, they kept commenting

it, and the video kept going to 15, 16 million. I'm like, fuck you. I don't care. I have a million and a half likes on this. You can go fuck yourself. That was your standout comment. That was my first moment where I'm like fuck you i don't care like i have a million and a half likes on this you can go fuck yourself so that was like your yeah that was your standout comment that was my first moment where i'm like oh my god this is how creators treat all these comments they ever get i'm like i would have died a year ago if i treated my comments like this bro you got to take it on the challenge and you got to also realize like and what i try to do in the beginning it's very

tough picture the person who's commenting as like just some fucking either low life four-year-old living at home or like or what's also helpful is like some 12-year-old that has no clue what they're even talking about and they're trying to comment on how shitty the video is like like we said like for you it's when somebody comes at your integrity of like this is scripted for me it's when somebody comes at like my family you know what i'm saying so i've never i've never replied to comments and if i do it's like hey man it's like you you should probably stay off of social media today like you're having a bad day like just just relax because that's probably what's like again that's probably what's going on that dude is probably super upset about something that happened and he's very jealous or angry and he had

to get it out so like for for me, you know what? I'll take the higher road. I'll say, have a good day. Just take a nap or something. The one thing that really upset me was there was a post we did for a CBD company. My dad, again, we don't promote anything we don't actually use or condone. My dad does not take CBD. So he didn't want to be the person in the video, taking the CBD. I said,

that's fine. My sister has epilepsy. Avid weed proponent. And that's fine. Yeah, doesn't actually like CBD. But that's like she she'll try once in a while. So she was the one in the video to he like walked in on she walked into him making a drink. She added the CBD in right so it was her drink drink and somebody like commented about like how this is an ad whatever and somebody commented else like She's just acting, you know, she that she doesn't actually use the product. She's full of shit She's a dry like a drama queen spoiled girl whatever like really like went in on her and like for me that

Finally got to my and I and i wrote out this crazy comment and i was like what am i like what am i gonna fight this dude through camera but also i deleted it but then i said you know what no like you gotta be putting your place sometimes and i said victoria has epilepsy she uses it as medicine please think before you speak like that's and i left it at that and i hope that that person read that comment and said you know what i probably should i probably should think before i speak because i realize that people on the other side of this phone are human beings and they have real life problems and they're not just this fig figment of imagination or characters online so like there is no reason to comment

things nasty on people's feeds or posts and you and i wouldn't do it people that are very you know problematic will but they also have to realize you probably shouldn't you know what i'm saying and i don't know you i've never had it happen in person nobody's ever like come up to us and like fuck that dude never yeah never and like you know that could happen eventually but it would be honestly i'd be like you don't want to actually respect that how are you you say fuck you and your dad i'm like i'm like you know what good for you thank you for like i see your face good for you because that's the thing like these people that's why i've never i live for it like i piss these people off so much because i enjoy it like i you will see some posts where every i mean

they're like literally go kill yourself and i'm like i will thank you you know like it's just like and they and they get so like they have to keep replying and like sometimes i'll keep playing along with that and then like they'll be doing it so much i'm like no like they need to have the last word in silence like just let them have it you know what i mean but like you can't you gotta remember like people are wired as human beings we're wired to the negativity because we are we are wired to have to instinctually survive so instinctually surviving doesn't mean the sun came up today everything's beautiful the air smells amazing it's like oh my god there's a bear over there he's gonna fucking maul me to death right that's instinctual survival so like that is beat into us as like the animal that we are

and so when we go to do these things you know how easy it is to go piece of cake right you're a nobody nobody cares you're behind some fucking fake name on some social media platform it's the most unnatural thing ever but like once you know once i had that in my head before i made content, this shit never bothered me. It happened to be like now I know my triggers when I provide sourcing and people still comment calling it a lie. But now you know. Now I know. And I've tested it because now I stopped commenting on those other than like sometimes I would just reply like, please see pinned comment.

Boom. That's it, right? Now I know. I think I stopped when it was at like 6 million views. There's been been another 6 000 comments to say the same thing and i haven't cared once so it's like now now it's like julian remember that's your trigger point so in the future when someone does that if you have the sources right there they can suck your dick and die like that's just what it is right it's what it is right and again you're in a different spot than i am because your content is by nature controversial so yours is ridiculous it is ridiculous but it is what it is. And again, you're in a different spot than I am because your content is by nature controversial.

Which is ridiculous, by the way. It is ridiculous, but it is what it is. People are going to comment your content a little bit more than mine. So you deal with it and you almost, it's okay for you to combat because a conversation is a conversation. You're not being an asshole back. You're having that argument because it's healthy to do. You're taking their opinions and you have your opinions. For us,'re not being an asshole back. You're having that argument because it's healthy to do. You're taking their opinions and you have your opinions.

For us, you're being an asshole. You know what I'm saying? If you're going to talk about how pretentious my dad is because he taps the ring on his glass, like,

why do you care so much to comment on the video? You know what I'm saying? Keep it, if you don't like our content, stop commenting on it. Keep it, keep it moving.

You're harming yourself. But I say it all the time where people are like, I fucking hate this content. Why do I keep seeing keep seeing it i'm like probably because you keep commenting yeah every one of our videos like don't do that and eventually they won't exactly and that's fine because you're not going to get them like some sometimes you convert somebody like that like i said like there's some weird ones but like if they're a hater like let them hate like mitch said it on this podcast in episode 16 he's like

if people are ready to hate it people are ready to love it too and that is how is i think about that so much he was so right about that bro i give the example um two people uh jake paul and andrew tate a while ago and now andrew tate's gone through a lot of shit so i don't you know condone him before but here's the reality i saw 30 seconds of andrew tate talk that first clip gave me such a bad taste in my mouth and i said i hate this dude this dude is pretentious he hates women he thinks he's the you know whatever and then i started really listening to like what he had to say and some of the content is actually like, pretty reasonable, and like, makes a lot of sense. And I knew he's actually doing it to get the clickbaity stuff out there,

right? So he's saying these outrageous things. Like what? He's the big, he talks about how like, it's by nature, men should be dating multiple women, and that women, women shouldn't be single, women should be, you you know cater to the men and that was the first video that i saw was like that that was that clip and i literally i think i commented and again i'm now being the hater i wrote this dude sucks and i wrote and i had comments that were like you just don't understand how the rest of the world works you're an american and i was like that's weird and then i started watching more of his content and a lot of it was like biologically why it made sense that women should be doing one thing and men should be doing another.

And not that I agree or disagree. It was kind of like, okay, he has a valid point to what he's saying. And he's not as big of an asshole as he tried to appear as. He's just being, like we said before, that clickbaity stuff. But because he's so controversial, I don't even want to talk about it because you could like really get you know Because he's done some like fucked up stupid shit Jake Paul's a better example Jake Paul was just that kid that created Unreal viral content since he was 14 years old that dude has been grinding him and his brother been grinding since yes fine days People take away a lot of his credibility and they probably shouldn't I used to hate him he wasn't a boxer didn't know what he was doing he was an asshole kid

now kid can fight he first of all he can fight but he also can create really good content i respect him for both i respect him as a fighter i respect him as a youtuber um i had a chance to meet him one time he was pretty cool so like for me where it was down in miami it was actually after his fight against uh not robinson i forget who it was but he like knocked the dude out and i was like woodley no no it was way before that it was like the one the pre-covid pre-covid oh it was pre-covid yeah not askren not woodley not he didn't have a fight pre pre- COVID. No, he did pre Robinson. He had a fight.

I forget who it was, but then again, he started out fighting like some nobodies. Right. So for me, I was like, all right, but I,

I really warmed up to him because I figured out who he really was. And I think it takes a lot of time to like really understand who these creators are. So you got to give people the benefit of the doubt sometimes. A hundred percent. And like, you can also like not like somebody, but have respect for certain things about what they do. That's exactly how I felt about Andrew Tate.

I was like, I respect what you said. Maybe I don't agree with everything you're saying. Maybe like 90% of what you're saying. But that one clip made a little bit of sense. I definitely pay attention to Jake and what he does because Jake understands, he understands content very well. He understands how to win attention unbelievably well. He's the best. He's got ice in his veins as far as, you know, he is a stoic stoic in a space that doesn't reward that usually.

It's very interesting but like i'm more of an active fan of logan because you know i've seen i think it had to do with like when i really started paying attention to him which was during like his low point with the whole japanese forest thing but like people don't give in my opinion the credit that's deserved on on like him and jake for example and there's other people too but like you know we look at him as oh this 27 year old and 25 year old and whatever they've been grinding since they were 14 bro bro like they were working they were like go back and watch their content how early they were making it the kid up the road i mentioned earlier lance 210 this motherfucker was making content when he was 13 years old 12 years old when did you start doing this i mentioned earlier lance 210 this was making content when he was 13 years old 12

years old when did you start doing this i started i started doing this when i was 26 and you feel like and this is about two years yeah and it feels like your whole life so it feels like forever exactly but like these guys were doing it early they were like we think of them as young but that's just because they started so like they were adults in in the fact of work exactly eight years nine years before you're gonna be in 10 years right right so like i have so much respect for that and i respect people who also constantly find ways to to invent new ways to to be out publicly like who they are and like i mean dude look at logan a lot of people think of him as like a podcaster now right right like that's fucking crazy and he started the podcast after that whole controversy

yeah that's like a way to to be like okay well let's put ourselves out there let's at least have conversations let's show people yeah like i i don't i don't know like people in this world they have such a hater heart for stuff i i just don't – whatever that gene is, I don't have it. If someone is a total dickbag and just not a good person, okay, fine. But like I'm still – I'm not going to go in the comments section on it. Can you imagine wasting your time to be like, I hate this guy? No, I don't think I've ever said one of those. You also get it.

Like you know what I'm saying? You get that there's another human – I don't care. Logan Paul has – Joe Rogan has read his comments. They know what people are saying. You're not talking to a robot. You're talking to a human being. So, like, why do you feel the need to try to ruin somebody's day? Because you get it, too.

It could ruin, it could fuck up your whole day. One bad comment will literally, maybe not for us because we've been through it, but there are people, don't mean to be like sexist but like women especially yeah we'll take one comment and we'll up their entire day you may not make content that night because you're thinking about what somebody else said why are you doing that to somebody have you ever read through like female comment sections dude i i know i know a fitness influencer in the in the in the women's space and she's like tell me like Oh my god, people are so mean and I didn't believe it until I read the comments I'm like why are grown men Commenting on a picture of a girl who's actively first of all looks great in pictures that she's not doing something

Right or she's photoshopped or she's not all that. Like what do you what are you trying to do are you trying to like flirt with them in a weird way like i don't i just don't understand their thought process behind that i also that's one i really don't get like the last person i'm gonna comment on is is a female's post like the and i already won't comment on a male's post but like holy man a girl think like this bro we're men the gym is a very male dominated space it's been it's been dominated by men for years less now but yes but that but that's my point for a girl to be able to have the confidence to get into the gym just to get in there takes so much now you're gonna now now you're gonna go and and bash her for trying to do something that is already hard from the jump like you're an asshole i read through

some of the megastars comments it's terrible bro dude like i'm talking the mega mega stars right and i'm like they know this is in there if they want to go looking for it and it's not two comments it's thousands yeah and i'm just like because it has to do with like and i'm sorry it just is what it is but like guys we can roll out of bed and look like an and we're not gonna get in trouble for it right like women that like they gotta put in a ton effort like i i respect that so much because i'm like holy like that's like two hours out of your day that's nuts like that is a lot of like the presentation like just as a biological fact when you're on social these days it's so shallow that like that's

a part of it and so when you have everyone attacking every little thing about that i mean maybe the girls who are who are married and whatever have more security because they're like fuck yeah i don't know they're still bothered by it i'm sure but like when i look at some of these who are mega stars who are gorgeous by the way like not a flaw on them you know and i'm like well these comments all exist like there's no way they haven't had points where they don't question that because i never dealt with that i mean i'm a dude so i guess i'm lucky but like fuck we are we're lucky in the spot in the sense of like we've never had people attack our looks or like our like i've never had somebody like this dude's ugly and like that wouldn't even affect me because i'm not trying to

look good not that i want to look bad but that's not our objective to be hot attractive that's what i'm saying i might be like it's true you look like shit that day. All right. I didn't do my hair. Yeah, you're right. But when a girl goes out, takes hours out of her day to film and create content. And now you're going to go out and be like, you look like shit. Your nose is fucked. Like, what are you doing, man? And again, that does create so much insecurity and like questioning, who am I really? Like, do I really look that good the reality is those girls look better than most people and way better than girls that you could ever get as the

guy in the comment section because any guy that would actually be on that level would never comment something like that no you know what i'm saying no they don't like that's the thing like if these dudes had to show like their girlfriend or lack thereof exactly Exactly, bro. The game changes. It's just like, I don't know what it is about us, but people just take out their own problems in the most insane of ways. But again, that's the thing. I would even say this without the benefit,

without the, I guess, psychological damage of having to go through it myself, but I would say it to any of those even like megastar females like listen you're great you know what i mean like don't worry like who cares you could whoever you wanted to believe me like even the ones who aren't that good looking i'm like trust me you're not gonna have a problem you're gonna get any sugar you could be the sugar mama to anyone you want you know like you trust me, you're not going to have a problem. You're going to get any fucking sugar. You can be the sugar mama to anyone you want.

You know, like I wish you could just tell them that, but like at the same time, you're not them. Well, you just said it, bro. Like the negative comments outweigh the positive comments by a thousand. Right. You got a thousand positive comments, but one negative. What sticks in our mind is that one negative. And it's such a shame because like you said,

you're on defense mode to that one negative comment you're in fight-or-flight now and I have to do it now you have to like attack or defend yourself to whatever that threat really was in reality it's no threat at all and I think that's what women have to women I say women but men deal with it too anybody on social that creates content has to realize that that is zero threat to your life it is just hearsay it's people try to knock you let it pass yeah and and the the one good thing that can come out of it though is like constructive criticism yes the problem is now though the comment volume is so high that people will nitpick any little thing they want on their own it could be totally

wrong and so now i i'll get comments right next to him next to each other to say the opposite thing yeah bro so like i can't even unfortunately i have to look at i look at it but like i don't engage with a lot of it publicly because like i know which ones actually have a point and then which ones are like well no that's literal horse shit right but it unfortunately like as you get bigger that's I think that's a benefit you lose because I'm constantly looking at that like well what can we be doing better if I mean if you're not asking that like get the fuck out right it like what you're doing well you can probably keep doing well what are the things that need to be better what

things do you have to personally improve it you know audience can be a great way to help that but not when it's at high volume because it's impossible. Yeah, I think also like you take the Steve Jobs and like with the Apple stuff, right? Like the user feedback thing, I think, is sort of a facade businesses put up to just make you feel like you're being listened to. At the end of the day, your content and my content, who knows how to make it better is us. I know exactly what needs to happen for my content, who knows how to make it better is us. I know exactly what needs to happen for my content to be better. I don't need to hear you say it, right?

I need sometimes conviction to tell myself that I'm right, but I know. You know what I'm saying? I know where we lack. I know where we thrive. So like listening to comments is like, yeah, sure, it's beneficial. But at the end of the day, you're the voice of reason. And if you're not,

that's the reason why you're so special. That's the reason why people listen to you. Because you are so innovative. You are so different. You're not... If you relied on feedback from other people, then you're just like everybody else. Yeah. Yeah, look, I think it's...

I think there's some sort of happy medium that can be found with it. But again, when it gets too out of control, it turns into white noise. Exactly. It turns into white noise. But what do you think is next? I love talking with you about the status of content and where things are. Because first of all, you're talking.

You make a point of talking with a lot of people who are making moves in different spaces. But we obviously saw tiktok upend everything and i don't know why that wasn't obvious i knew it the first time i used that app and i'm not a genius but you know the whole world has recognized the attention span and therefore curated feed issue that they need to solve for people so you know i've looked at like how tiktok's innovating and i don't see a ton of it which in some ways i think is good because they're not killing the product but in other ways i'm like well what's gonna what's like the new thing that's gonna upend stuff so i guess two things for that number one tiktok in china right now is actually like two years ahead of us right so they have functionality yeah so my buddy uh malik is

chinese he's from china he's on tiktok he has a third malik his name is malik maybe his american name i don't know what his chinese name is okay he's big on the youtube version in china i forget what that's called um do you do so he he's the kid is a you know you talk to him it's the same thing like talking to mitch or he's just got it you know what i mean how do you know him dude i met him from united way back when at like ruckers and dude it's funny as shit because and i don't mean to get too long-winded we're sitting here that's why you're here bro that's why i'm here long wind away exactly so we're we're sitting outside having a conversation and I'm again,

they're receptive because at this point I had nothing. I just united. The leverage was all in somebody else's court. I'm taking notes as we're sitting here. He has kids, Chinese kids walking by double looking and saying, Oh my God, you're so-and-so.

Can I take a picture? And at the time I was so blown away by that, but he has learned, like we said about Logan and Lance, he's been at this for so long. So what he's doing with TikTok and other platforms in China is they are making so much money because the brands and the companies in China have identified that's where their marketing spend

should be going. Wait, how's that different from what you're doing though maybe i missed something you because you said they're two years ahead but the money's pouring in to the creators on doing i guess because the advertisers realize the buyers are there but how's that different from you because the same thing is happening to you um i don't mean to say this is like an arrogant way i'm an anomaly in the sense of like not an anomaly i go and get it you know what i'm saying like i treat this like a business a lot of people don't the money that we make would not have been it would not be made by everybody the only reason i do is because i approach this a little bit differently than other

people um but what i'm saying is like you go after it i go after and and i treat these campaigns as like business transactions right so very much so the features and functionalities of tick tock china are actually way more primed to make a lot of money for the brands they do for example like live sessions you can click to buy right from the live session if i'm promoting doers on my live click to buy the doers so like imagine how much money a company would be willing to pay for that right stupid why do we not have this here it's so when i've talked to malik and again this is just what i got from him he literally said to me weather the storm just keep making content tiktok is going to make these updates for American TikTok soon. It's only a matter of time. The only thing, the other thing that I want to mention is like, I think because the way the

economy is sort of turning over right now, the inevitability of like a recession or whatever, maybe I don't know enough about to talk about it, but it's kind of heading in that direction. Companies will not have the money to spend on typical marketing, right? Ads on Google or commercials. So with a limited budget, they are going to go for the best bang for your buck. Where's the best bang for your buck? Is it one commercial or 10 influencers? Because that's probably the same ratio, right? If you're spending a hundred grand here or 10 grand spurs out, that's where we we come in i think it's going to get worse for because people are going to be stricter for like their commercial ads

from like a marketing budget it's going to go down to people like us because it's going to be a smaller budget but from an adsense standpoint that smaller budget is going to increase for the creators i think the creator bubble or space as far as dollars is going to increase overall it's going to decrease the one thing i'm i'm paying attention to though outside the product is the growing sentiment in i've heard for a long time that tiktok's data allowances that are that users grant them when when they use the app is insane yeah and we know that like trump was toying with banning him for a while and then obviously like he deprioritized that and everything but now there's a lot of bipartisan stuff which is hard to find these days coming out of dc because china does have access to the u.s user data yeah apparently and so this goes to things that are in photo feeds through clipboard messages and stuff like that

people can check it out online to see the whole thing but are is there any talk like in some of the spaces you're in about people looking at alternate universes here which was a talk once back when trump was thinking about banning it because there's a worry that like tiktok could be banned like that's a real threat like a different platform yeah i i think every influencer or creator should always be focused and have the assumption that one of these social platforms is going to die tomorrow and even if it doesn't happen you should be creating a community that is bigger than tick tock if tech talk were to die tomorrow you're good- You're good now. It would suck, but I would be good.

I wouldn't be as good as I should be, but that should be your thought because you should be creating brands that go beyond this fake world of TikTok. And I use the example, I was in Nashville a couple months ago and I was on Broadway, fantastic time. And I went to Luke Bryan's bar.

I'm not a country guy fan. I'm not a country fan. I don't like country music. Luke Bryan was now in my head for the entire weekend because I went to his bar the entire time. I then started to listen to Luke Bryan the week after that. So my point is start doing things off of the app that solidifies your brand in people's minds forever right luke bryan buying that bar is a great financial investment because it has expanded his reach so much greater than

just his music because he's tapping into a whole new market it's his destination place too exactly so like for us i want to start doing stuff like creating a liquor, which is in the works, creating a cocktail kit, which is in the works. You have a bourbon, right? But like we partnered with a brand to make a selective bourbon. We want to make an actual brand. We want to have a Terra Mana or a proper 12 to the Johnny Drinks, right? I want to have a bar or restaurant, like something that is tangible that will stand and potentially be bigger than our tick tock platform you know I'm saying that I think that should be the goal for every creator yeah and the other thing is with content you have the business hat on so that's gonna serve you well because you both reinvest in making better content

but also you are looking at quote-unquote diversifying the portfolio for sure you know like that's something i want to get to because like i haven't really had i don't have the juice you do right i'm not there yet but like i know that once i start branching this and now i have people working here like i have a produce that's really the first thing I'm going to need here. Once I get that and this starts to scale, I want to look at – like even if I don't know what projects we're going to do that are based out of this podcast, I want to be able to say, okay, for every X dollar or $1, we're going to set aside X percent as a future in escrow, call it reinvestment in the business. And I think a focus, whatever that is, should be on something where you can draw attention to the quote unquote brand that's outside of just someone's feed. Yep. Totally. And that's, again, you look like, I guess your example as a podcaster,

and I'm going gonna make an assumption your goal should be becoming the next joe rogan right i would assume every podcaster is like i want to have not not that you're like him i want to have the status of a joe rogan and what joe rogan can now do is because of his presence he could stamp his name on what is on alpha brain or that stuff yeah and now promote it on his podcast and double down on his investment right so for you because you're so diverse you could start to become that guy where as long as you find something you actually like using like we said about like sleep aid and stuff like that you're gonna be fine a sleep i'm sorry yes get

it right john my apologies um that you'll be fine You know I'm saying it's just a matter of time and you're in your you're proving that you know I'm saying like think about where we were a year from a year ago How different you are now and think about where you're gonna be in a year from now, you know So it's just like and it's and it's parabolic, you know, and you know that and again I give you kudos dude because you've been grinding at this stuff Didn't see results instantly just stuck true to your vision and knew that you had it in you in yourself and like that's all that really matters and now you have the now it's easier because you've done it

right you've achieved a level of status that you're off to the races now yeah i i appreciate that man and you know i just treat it like it's on zero every day i have to i wake up and i say you have zero listeners no one gives a fuck if you're alive or dead and go earn some people today right and i never that's one thing i never want to lose is there's no way you can like if you're at the status of a top 10 podcaster like there's no way you can fully keep that it's psychologically not possible but that mentality of like we gotta figure out how to eat you know you have that and like you've had a lot of success and like you still have that and maintaining that i i mean i don't mean to cut you up like you just said it was actually pretty resonating like that really stood out to me it's

like earn your followers right like earn your keep earn your viewers because every day somebody that has never seen you before is going to see you so don't let your content slack don't let your content appear that you've done a thousand times approach every single day as if this is your first day of content creation and i think you will be in a way better spot because now you're creating content to impress everybody. You know what I mean? Like sometimes I'll get lost and I'll be like, you know what? They know who we are. I don't have to explain anything. I can create subpar content and people are going to like it. And to an extent that's true. Like I have like a baseline, like a ground that I will always achieve a level of this many views. And that's like dangerous. You know what I'm saying? Like you get that sort of leeway

but that's a really good mindset to have and i have to again that's a takeaway that i'm going to have every time i create content yeah there's a quote i think it was haggler said it the fighter his herns are haggler but he was like it's really hard to wake up at 4 a.m in silk pajamas and train it's very very hard bro did it It's like Conor McGregor, bro. Conor McGregor did it. People that say, oh, he should fight again. Why? Why would he ever fight again? He has two belts. He has made a million, whatever.

He'll do it because he's going to make a hundred million dollars. He has made millions and millions of dollars. He has his celebrity status. He looks great. He's not fucked up in the head yet.

How would you keep, you've done it. You've achieved what every fighter has wanted to yet. How would you keep? You've done it. You've achieved what every fighter has wanted to achieve. Why would you ever go back in a ring? I think he's, I don't know if you did this intentionally, but he's actually a really good example in this space of how hard it is as a human being to maintain that. Because, well, first of all, in fighting, like you take a toll every time. So as you go along along like if you don't quit like you're not going to be what you once were so that's part of it but also

he achieved the pinnacle in 2017 with he had already won multiple belts and multiple weight classes in the ufc he's one of the greatest of all time self-made the whole background the whole country of ireland behind him like all shit, right? And then he goes and fights the best maybe pound-for-pound fighter ever in his own sport and goes last eight rounds with him. He won like two of the rounds. Eight rounds. Eight or nine, whatever it was. Like you're never going to beat that.

So it's no coincidence that since then he's like one in three and it hasn't been the same and what because it's like how can you get up for it you can't bro you got dudes that are literally fighting for their life compared to you yeah you know he's riding on lamborghini yachts like he's chilling he's the most i think he's the most last year he made the most money of any athlete in the world like he's done it bro i and that's what i'm saying like i don't know how he feels about that because his mentality the things that got him to that pinnacle are incredible like how he i mean i really vibe with that a lot and it's like well is he just hanging on too long i don't know but like i will always look up to the way that he got there exactly for sure yeah not yeah exactly because

you look at plenty of fighters that are as talented if not more talented and are not where he is because they didn't they didn't have the mentality that he did yeah to treat this like a anything else treat this like a business and there are plenty of creators that are like us that don't treat this like a business and will never achieve what they want to achieve because they're not approaching it the right way Yeah, and there's a point where you have to cross over and prioritize that you really do bro And it's it's the reality you figure that out quick man. Listen. I'm really like I love talking about this stuff It's good to have it good to have an episode with a buddy to where we're going back and forth on and catching up on Like the shit you've been doing well, but yeah man listen you were here as we said like 18 months ago whatever it was and you know it was already doing great and to see it since then it's

really amazing so keep doing what you're doing and you know i love your whole team obviously with you and your dad as the partners jessapini in there as well like just great people and and i hope everyone goes and checks out your page by the way way. Tell them where they can find it. It's pretty much at John Rondi at everything. So my dad and I share the name, John Rondi. R-O-N-D-I. R-O-N-D-I. TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram. We're pretty much on every platform.

And if you type in Johnny Drinks, Johnny with a Y, it'll come up everywhere too. You'll also find out, yeah. But, yeah, man. Next time you're in here, I feel like it'll be at 10 million hopefully next time i'm in here we have a liquor i guess future plans liquor launched cocktail smoker launched i want to open my dad is so against it but i want to open a bar or a lounge um tough business it's that's exactly what he said exactly what i know i want to be able to stamp our name on something i don't want to be the manager i'm not gonna be the guy running around

because then again opportunity cost i want people to make content right i want to be able to stamp our name on something. I don't want to be the manager. I'm not going to be the guy running around because then again, opportunity cost. I want people to make content. I want to be able to stamp my name on something tangible like that. I got a few guys you could talk to. We'll speak after this podcast. Yeah, 100%. Johnny Tranks, thanks for coming down here, bro.

Thanks for having me, bro. Appreciate it. Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Cheers. Peace.