Julian Dorey Podcast - #4 - REAL Always Wins (Authenticity in Culture)

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

SOLO POD - What do LeBron James, Jeff Bezos, Domino’s Pizza, Jon Bellion, Bitcoin, and Elon Musk have in common? If this sounds ridiculous, it’s not. Each of them (and others discussed in this episode) are all examples of stars/brands/ideas who have either completely—or at least in some way—opened up their inner-worlds to build “real” relationships and trust with their followers. ~ YouTube FULL EPISODES: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q  YouTube CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChs-BsSX71a_leuqUk7vtDg  ~ Show Notes: https://www.trendifier.com/podcastnotes  TRENDIFIER Website: https://www.trendifier.com  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

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What is up, everybody? I am sorry to absolutely blast your eardrums to start this. I'm a little bit on fire, though, today, so please excuse me for that. And I hope it just reflects throughout the episode and we have a great time talking about a cool topic. Now, if you are watching this and not listening, you will probably see that it looks a little bit different today. Namely, your boy is standing. I'm not sitting down. I don't know what happened. I had a normal amount of coffee this morning, but had this episode ready to roll, got up here to shoot. I sat down in my regular seat right here, looked into the camera and I couldn't do it. I was just, I felt really cramped in. Now, those of you who know me, as in my friends who watch this podcast, you know that I talk on the phone all the time. And it's like my thing, I guess,

you know, my little old school thing because a lot of us don't do that anymore but when i do you also know that i am never and i mean never ever sitting down on the phone i can't do it i guess it started when i was using a toy phone when i was two years old i would walk around in a circle over and over and over and over again like that and talk on the phone. And it has literally affected me into my adult life because even when I worked in finance and worked in a cubicle, we had a conference room right behind me, very strategically placed, you might say. And this conference room was a window list, eight by 12, small wooden table in the middle type deal. And I shit you not, every time

I would go to get on any kind of phone call, it could be a five minute phone call or a five hour phone call. I would walk into that conference room, shut the door and pace around that table for the entirety of the call it was like my thing i mean that room saw more miles walked in it the most treadmills at a gym see in their lifespan but that's neither here nor there anyway let's actually get in to what we're going to be talking about today. I was looking at some data a few days ago and it was on the total number of daily average viewers for the three main television news networks in the month April of 2020. So this is CNN, Fox, MSNBC. Now, we all know that I thought, yeah, you know what? They'll see a big bump in viewership. I figured this was going to be the month where it happened because I also know that these networks also make themselves available online through the cord-cutting methods as well.

So I'm thinking, all right, their viewership has got to go through the roof. It went up. It did go up, but it didn't go up that much. The total number of daily average viewers combined across all three networks was just over 8 million. Now to put that in context, the biggest podcast in the world, the Joe Rogan Experience, gets around 11 million downloads per episode. That's based on the fact that Joe said – Joe Rogan said back in June 2019 that he gets over 200 million downloads per month and he does about 18 episodes on average per month. So that comes out to around 11 million listeners. It also does not include the fact that he has a vodcast.

He has a video podcast. So he takes his content and he puts it on YouTube as well where it gets millions of views. Now Joe is not a news source. He does not get on there and go, I'm Joe Rogan and today, top of the story, the news of the hour is – there's none of that. There's none of that. He sits down and has a conversation with random motherfuckers, people across the spectrum, all the way from intellectuals to businessmen to mma fighters to naturists you name it he's all over the board if you're interesting he talks with you and their conversations don't cover the news sometimes they cover very random things that

are personal to the guest but throughout them they cover a lot of current events so what's happening is people actually often time oftentimes people rely on even a show like joe rogan's to understand what's going on in the world this is where the attention is now on the surface you say right away well yeah because it's internet culture it's available on people's phones throughout the day it's something they can listen to as well when it's a podcast. So they can just throw in headphones. It's more accessible than TV, yada, yada, yada. All the obvious reasons about why the internet disrupted TV and why we stand where we are.

But the fact of the matter is there's a second angle to this that speaks to something I think a little bigger so when you look at the average age of primetime viewers on each of the three aforementioned tv channels first this is from 2017 so they may be older now but cnn was age 60 as the average age or median age excuse me fox news was 65 and msnbc was 65 it paints MSNBC was 65. It paints the picture of people who grew up with TV and have just stuck with it. And no offense, but these are people who are much closer to being on the way out than on the way in. And demographically speaking, when you look at the younger generations, I'm talking about Gen Z, the millennials, and then even some of Gen X. These are the generations that are, by and large, in the economy and in the world who are driving decisions and consumer decisions. And they're not watching this shit.

We're not watching TV. And it's not just because, like, TV's inconvenient. Like I said, TV's been going online too. All these networks, they have socials. They put out content. They build a lot of their cuts to be able to make one, two, three-minute video content and put it on all platforms and get attention and get likes and retweets and so forth and therefore revenue.

They put it on YouTube. They've been doing this. They got disrupted and they started to join the game. and yet they're still losing ground all the time and no it's not just because people run around saying fake news fake news fake news even on the internet when someone disagrees with the opinion that someone strictly on the internet has they yell fake news Like that's just the way we're polarized now. It's not because of those things. It's because TV is a 1960s medium trying to live in a 21st century world. There are standards to it, quote unquote. I say that very much in air quotes.

There's a production to it. It is behind a corporation that has a point of view and has to make X revenue, oftentimes public corporations. I think all the major networks are owned by public corporations. So they have to respond to investors. There's a boss to the boss to the boss of the boss of the boss. Every show has 50, 60 people that work on it. It's not like this, man.

Now people can put up lights, camera, and say their own action and say what they want, and they don't have to respond to what the corporation says they got to do. I mean, TV still has the FCC on it. Fuck, man. HBO has been around 25 years, which is subscriber tv it doesn't have the fcc controlling it and yet all the regular channels that come with cable are still held in a box and the internet's been around for that entire time too you don't have to watch what the fuck you say on the internet to use that word specifically right there to make the point

you say whatever you want so what does it sound like? It sounds like an actual conversation you're having with your friends. Even among dignified circles, everyone curses, everyone talks in tones that are relatable. They don't get up there and talk like this. That's dying. It's dying. TV still doesn't get this.

And they still try to play the game where they do talk like that. And the ones who get the better ratings are the guys who, in some ways, find ways, and the women who, in some ways, find ways to avoid that. It's all about transparency and authenticity. That's everything I just described. People want to know where you stand, and they want you to tell it to them the way you would tell it to your friend. They don't want to feel like the camera turned on and you became a new person. They want to feel like they're sitting there with you, bullshitting around a table, talking about the latest shit happening in society. That's it. It's not more complicated

than that. Now, what I'm not going to do is spend this whole episode saying the words transparency and authenticity over and over again. That's a mouthful. We're not doing that. What I will do is break it down and dumb it down, I should say, into a really third-grader word. And I'm going to call it real. People want real i can show you every piece of data in the book especially across gen z and the millennials to show you that this is their number one priority including from the literal brands that they purchase products from they want that

they want that interaction they want their brands talking with them on social media and not like hey jennifer thanks for coming back today they want what's up jennifer how you feeling girl like that's what they respond to and this this is why the internet content not just in its short form and those reasons and the obvious ones and convenience this is why tv can't keep up with it even as they merge onto that internet platform. It's why it's going away. It's why a lot of other things, traditional sources of trust in society are going away. So we're going to talk about that today. We're going to address all different parts across the cultural spectrum to figure out the best examples of people and organizations who have seized on this trend,

knowingly or unknowingly, and have grown their brands and their recognition and their popularity as a result. That means we're going to go across the media spectrum, the sports spectrum, the business spectrum, the politics spectrum. We'll even touch that. And we'll go across some greater miscellaneous topics within pop culture as well. And then even, by the way, at the end, we'll even run through some scandals and taboos and things within society where being authentic and transparent, being real, behooves individuals to get into good graces and be able to have the harder conversations. So you know the drill

i'm julian dory and this is everyone understands this but few seem to do it if you don't like the status quo start asking questions so right out front there in the intro i use the example of joe rogan as a foil against traditional tv as to what's real and how we get our news how we consume things through guys like him and sources like that that aren't your traditional, we're giving you the news and current event type networks. And I could just build on that example more and use that because it's a great one.

But to start here and discuss realness and media, I want to go a different direction. And I want to talk about Barstool sports and specifically its founder dave portnoy now this company was started in i think 2003 by dave in his parents garage and he started it with the concept of for the common man by the common man and it was supposed to be some sort of light-hearted comedic publication literally in a newspaper at the time talking about sports so he was trying to talk to say your college age through 40 year old male demographic who liked the bullshit about their favorite sports their favorite teams gambling and the like and he built this over time very very slowly and carefully and i'll never

forget in around 2010 or 2011 good friend of mine in high school andrew barksdale shout out andrew he came into school and was telling all of us the next major news publication it's the future it's where we're going to get our content. If you are a male between the ages of 15 and 45, this is where you're going to go. It's called Barstool Sports Boston. Mark it down. He would come in and say that, and at the time, it was literally like only BarstoolSportsBoston.com. Dave was posting some funny articles about usually the latest things happening in New England sports. He was targeting college campuses more than anything, and he was posting funny sexual content like Babe of the Week or Smoke Show of the Week or something where he would go DM girls on college campuses who were hot and say, hey, can I use a hot picture of you and just admire you on our website every Friday? That's what they were doing.

And so the concept of this being a preeminent place to get your current events and news outlets seemed insane and again it was comedy it wasn't your traditional hey let's let's talk about this let's have a deep conversation it was under the guise of oh let's make funny jokes out of this shit so yeah we all laughed off andrew barksdale and figured he's full of shit that'll never happen fast forward a decade later barksdale's looking pretty right looking really right what dave did is he took that platform that he built alone and slowly captured a niche of followers who were entertained by the things he wrote about and then he expanded it across many other categories now you look at traditional media you look at tv

to use our example from out front in tv there's categories like news there's categories like business news sports news usually it was ESPN, culture news, gossip, celebrity gossip, whatever. You went to a specific niche in a specific place to get a specific type of conversation. What the internet did and what Dave seemed to recognize early on and really shift towards as he built an audience is the internet said it's no longer about the actual niche topic. If you want to start gaining an audience under one niche said it's no longer about the actual niche topic. If you want to start gaining an audience under one niche, that's great. You should do that. But as you grow and you are a platform of communication and media online media, so to speak, as you grow, it's no longer

about the categories so much as it's about what has attention and therefore what is going to entertain people to talk about what we all commonly know is going on in the world the country whatever whether it be in sports business news culture etc and dave portnoy built out a cultural publication that covers all these things still from a comedic lens still more geared towards the perspective overall of guys although he does have a fair amount of female listeners and and subscribers or whatever you want to call him at this point still geared towards the things that he built the foundation of the company on but now a place where people legitimately turn for their attention on everything that's going on. And I say all this to set the scene because the way that Dave did this is he was the literal and is the literal

definition of real. Dave Portnoy is called a controversial person by a lot of people. I'm not one of them. I think Dave tells you exactly what he is and who he is and is self-deprecating at himself over things to the point that he owns everything and you can't call him out for it. He tells you who he is on every social platform every day. He both pokes fun at himself and talks himself way up, almost arrogantly, but he does it in a comedic way and then it reflects itself in the content he creates. It reflects itself in the rest of the content that his team at Barstool creates. They are now a network that has podcasts. They have publication all over the place, a publication that covers everything. They have live stream TV shows online, right?

YouTube, YouTube shows, Facebook shows, etc. They have it all. They have people's attention. And it's because he never got away from being that guy. He didn't get too big for his britches. He didn't suddenly become someone new who had to play a role. He was Dave fucking Portnoy, Davey fucking Boston, who just liked to bullshit and give everyone crap about how the Patriots always win.

That's who he is. And he tells people that. He's honest about it. And when you read some of the things he writes and when you watch some of the content he puts out, it's so in-your-face real that you can't help but smile even when you know he's doing something to draw attention to something that's taboo or something that you shouldn't admire in him. And I say this as somebody who's not a quote-unquote stoolie. In fact, I go months at a time without ever watching anything in Barstool.

I consume a lot online. I'm all over the place. I look at a lot of different shit. I don't have time to look at one place. But I've always admired how Dave has been able to get such a loyal audience by being this guy. I mean, one of his main tics that you should really mention when talking about any of this is he does this thing called emergency press conferences. It's literally him walking in front. Sometimes he'll do it to make fun of the whole situation where people walk into a big announcement, you know, walk in like this and like turn in a suit and like sit at a mic and do it. And most of the time, though, it's him literally turning around his iPhone and talking into it. And it's completely unedited, uncut, him just riffing for one, two four minutes on a topic why ever whatever reason he

need to call a press conference quote-unquote in pure honesty and this could be everything from complaining about his beloved patriots getting fucked over by roger goodell to racial injustice in the world and and arguments that happen around that. He covers everything. And a lot of it's gone viral and has built him a huge following over time of people that aren't even in his Target demo. Because they're like, wow, this guy just puts it out there, man. So I actually don't want to dig into him much more. Because I did a really cool project that turned out great. But I was so interested in how Dave does this on a daily basis and how he builds these people, these followers out to really hang on words he says and trust him.

Even when he straight up tells you like, I don't know much about this thing. You shouldn't listen to what I say. And people kind of trust him on it. I was interested in that so i picked out a month where i just followed his content on twitter for a straight it was 31 days in that month i just tracked every single thing he did and i'm going to do a separate episode going through that so the people can get a glimpse into a normal month it was a random month i picked that had some serious fireworks, as it turned out, going on in the middle of it, where I think the case you're going to see in that future episode is you'll understand exactly what I'm saying. I'm doing a bad job doing it justice, so I'm looking forward to that one where I can really actually dig into it for you but dave portnoy is a preeminent example and he's a guy that even some

people have tried to cancel because he has said some things before that especially if you don't look at it in a comedic light which is usually how he says stuff it can certainly seem like wow you should never say that and people try to come at him but he owns it he doesn't apologize if he apologizes he's like hey different time i said it but yeah like i said it no problem he doesn't apologize. If he apologizes, he's like, hey, different time I said it, but yeah, like I said it. No problem. He doesn't run from it. What you see is what you get. That's Dave Portnoy. Now let's talk about the first real player, full-blown brand in any major American sport to me, full-blown, was Michael Jordan. I mean Michael Jordan became a billionaire not from what he earned playing for the Chicago Bulls and later the Washington Wizards. He became a billionaire for the brand he built through his sneakers and his endorsement deals, especially with Nike, obviously, during and then heavily, obviously, even after his career. He owns a team now.

But Michael Jordan was pre-social media. There was still a barrier to entry, to attention. Now, he had a lot of it. He had cameras on him all the time, but it was NBC and ABC and ESPN and channels who controlled the narrative and controlled when, where, and how, and in what context they were putting a camera on him.

Social media, like everything else, not just sports, it took away that curtain and it allowed the players to create their own stage so when you look at examples of brands today in this country we gravitate right towards basketball because even though football is still i believe statistically the most popular sport in this country it is far more players as in 53 on a roster than say basketball where there's 12 to 14 and it's also a sport where these players wear face masks and and helmets and they're covered you literally can't see right up in front of them in their face on a basketball

court you can see up close and personal exactly what somebody looks like, and these guys have become cultural icons of which Jordan was – there were guys before him. Don't get me wrong, but he was the GOAT. So today when I look at athlete brands as a result of this, I look towards basketball, which is the second most popular sport in this country country and I look no farther than LeBron James LeBron James came into the NBA in 2003 just before social media was really a thing a few years before I'd say probably four or five years before it was legit mainstream but he had a lot of attention the internet was a full-blown thing so that was a new medium where he was getting a lot more attention And obviously his career has been terrific

And it's lasted a very long time He's still going, playing at the top of his game 17 years in Which is unheard of But LeBron, especially over the past decade Has used socials and the internet To take control of his narrative more than Jordan ever could because of the resources that LeBron's era has allowed and some of the things he started as an example he has a player channel called uninterrupted which is literally exactly what it sounds like through Through his network across

the major sports, really around the world, he has athletes come on there and tell their stories, whether that be verbally, in written form, whatever, and give their perspective without the bias of going to media members who have their own motives and want to keep the conversation on whatever they want to keep it on uninterrupted allows the players to come and create their narrative on a platform that then blasts it out with lebron james name to every end of the internet including across all socials and gives these players a platform to build their own brands under the guise of what lebron has given them the ability to do as a name who's recognized by billions around the world literally. When you look at the tagline of Uninterrupted though, it really tells the story.

The very first word is authentic. The others are insightful and entertaining. But authentic is what they lead with because there's nothing more authentic than an athlete coming out and telling you exactly what's on his mind, whatever he was thinking of that day and putting it out as content. It's actually led to more movements too. on a rant at the end of her show talking about how athletes should quote shut up and dribble because lebron and kevin durant had expressed their opinions on politics like i guess we're talking against trump or something like that and laura ingram pro trump didn't like this made that point lebron geniusly turned it right on its head came right back at her and said No I'm going to talk about what I want to talk about And turned the discussion to a brand

That became more than an athlete I am more than an athlete And he built that within Uninterrupted He built it in with some of his other businesses Which includes a media company And he took even more control Of athletes getting a platform To go completely without a barrier to the public to tell

their side of things whatever that might be i mean you could argue that all this started with actually one of the worst media decisions of all time which was in 2010 when lebron had the decision air on tv now for those of you who don't know the the decision was, as I said, in 2010, LeBron James was 25 years old. And for the first time in his career, he was a free agent. He was the reigning MVP. He was viewed as the best player in the game, somebody who was following the ghost of Jordan. And he had been drafted by borderline his hometown team. He was from Akron, Ohio, but he was drafted by the Cleveland Cavaliers. And the idea of leaving the Cavaliers, who he had turned into a contender, seemed like Judas betraying Jesus. And LeBron ended up leaving them for the Miami Heat to team up with his buddies, fellow superstars, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh,

where they would go on to win a couple titles over the next four years. He ended up leaving Cleveland for Miami. And the way he did it was with a live on ESPN one hour special where he sat down with Jim Gray, longtime basketball reporter, and discussed where he was going, announcing he was going to Miami and why he chose to do it. And it was righteously so railed as one of the most egregious displays of disloyalty, yada, yada, yada, and all this stuff towards a city that he was an adopted son to go on national TV and break up with them in front of everyone. And all that was probably fair it was not his best decision but to his credit one of the things he recognized from that was that the attention you can get by creating the platform yourself is incredible and that's

what led to all these things i just talked about that's what led to uninterrupted that's what led to him giving athletes a voice and doing it under the guise of his brand and then to take things full circle we saw no better example of how much people want to see behind the curtains and see what people really think than what michael jordan who i mentioned at the beginning of this topic, did this very year. And that was for Michael Jordan's final season in Chicago in 1998, which was over two decades ago. He did something unheard of at the time. He and the Bulls, the most legendary team maybe of all time in the NBA,

allowed a camera crew full, unfettered access to their locker room for the entire season, because it was kind of an open secret that it was going to be their last season together, as in Michael Jordan, Phil Jackson, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, and the main part of the crew. And then for 22 years, they sat on this footage. And finally finally they built a 10-part documentary interviewing everyone who was involved including michael obviously he was the producer of it all the great players all the guys they went up against all the people who were in the media at the time you name it they interviewed them they interviewed clinton and obama they interviewed everyone and this 10-part documentary called the last dance that came out during the coronavirus pandemic took all the scenes from that season and built it in context of his career.

And for, in a lot of ways, the first time showed people the opinion, perspective, and decisions and mindsets that the greatest player of all time in a lot of people's opinion, Michael Jordan, had in his career. And these are all the things that we couldn't really see from him at the time because he wasn't controlling what he said in public. He didn't have the platforms to go out and do it himself. So it really brings it full circle, and we've lebron who has those platforms use it people see him they they they see him talk about topics that are passionate to him that are off the basketball court have nothing to do with it social issues they feel like they know him that's that's an authenticity and lebron's another guy i want to touch on in a future episode because there's some

things about him that you could say are't quite authentic, aren't real. But I have to give him a ton of credit for building platforms that not only allow him to speak directly with the public and with people and bring them into his life and into his home, but creating a platform where fellow athletes can do it too. And now we've seen even across things like podcasts, players literally do podcasts and sit down and bullshit with their fellow peers. You see retired guys like Steven Jackson and Matt Barnes doing the All the Smoke podcast, which is wildly entertaining. In fact, they did one of Kobe the court, off the court, etc. social media and the power of the internet to share but yeah a guy like lebron leading the way as a major brand himself and telling people this is something we should do has obviously had a tremendous tremendous effect now next we have to explore the key players who drive the economy talking about businesses

and the people who run them. The first guy to talk about is always a great example, and that's Elon Musk. Elon Musk understands pop culture unbelievably well and does not get enough credit for it. This is a guy who holds court on Twitter. And by the way, the things he tweets, especially for Tesla, which is a public company he gets sued by shareholders all the fucking time and he continues to do it because over time he understands

that just speaking real with people and saying whatever the fuck's on your mind despite the fact that maybe you're not supposed to say this stuff resonates it builds your personal brand it builds people's trust in you he's saying the things that other people if they were in your position would want to say as well and they love that like he went on the joe rogan podcast he smoked a blunt or was that a blunt i can't remember a joint or a blunt i think it was a joint either way he smoked weed on joe rogan's podcast i'm not condoning like him going on and being crazy but you know a lot of people smoke weed it's legal in california he went on and did it his stock went down 12 the next day it went right back up after that because he didn't run from it said yeah whatever

guy's a pop culture genius I got the picture of that on my damn computer and I think on here as well I mean it's hilarious he he went on there when Tesla stock which has run like crazy throughout I mean since it started but especially throughout 2019 and 2020 he went on and and mentioned you know I think the price of my stock is too much which he got sued for in Delaware court by shareholders who were upset. But who says that? Who says that? All these businessmen. I don't know if you've ever been on a public company earnings call, but let me tell you how they go. It's literally still a conference call. We're not even doing video yet for most of these companies or all of them. All the ones I've been on are conference calls. And what you hear is some dude who's just a PR man saying, and now I'm going to turn over the phone to CEO Joe Blow. And Joe Blow gets on the phone and takes out a script.

It's like – I mean you can hear the crinkle of the paper and he'll be like good afternoon ladies and gentlemen we are thrilled with our results from quarter two this quarter our revenues against an expected that's what it's like now what part about that doesn't even seem slightly guarded none of it in their defense money's a funny game stocks are funky how people trade them they got to be careful about everything they say they're worried about getting sued unlike elon apparently but over time it gets old people like to see that you're willing to say what they're thinking or what you're really thinking that they know you're thinking. Elon does that. I think he literally said on a call for Tesla's earnings in April or May, he was like, California sucks. I'm going to move states. They're locking everything down. He might have said, don't quote me on this, but he might have said, like, this is bullshit.

Like, they're violating our freedoms. Of course, the stock sold off for a minute, but then it went right back. He probably got sued for that, too. But that's what people were thinking. They're like, this is madness. Every single thing is shut down. People can't work. And how long are they going to do this?

It's been a month and a half. Yes, coronavirus is terrible. We've got to be careful with stuff. But isn't there a more responsible way to do it? And instead of getting on there saying, well, John, we will defer to the government on this one and we trust our elected. No, no, he didn't do that. He said, actually, Gavin, governor, he's a friend but this is bullshit people love that another guy i have to mention in the context of businessmen is gary v now gary v is a lot for some people to handle he posts content all the time he's he's very very very vivacious and and and loud and and certainly you know where he stands on stuff. But Gary Vee was the guy who built his media empire at this point by saying, hey, we're going to roll a camera and I'm just going to talk into it and see what happens. And he started documenting years ago everything he does and putting it out there.

So much so that he even puts out content that'll contradict old content which some people could pick them apart for and then other people who understand it are like well yeah i end up contradicting myself too they see themselves in that and he took this concept of nothing is private people want to know who you are what you're about and what you do be unfair not to mention him because frankly that is how he built everything he has and it's a perfect example of what being real means what's important to remember though is that it's more than just businessmen and the people who run these companies who are riding this wave and and getting

on the whole let's be transparent and honest with everyone about stuff and let's be ourselves it's the literal brand entities themselves as well as far back as i think 2009 or 2010 great example domino's pizza which now is everyone's on college campuses late night drunk food domino's Pizza, which now is everyone's on college campuses, late night drunk food. Domino's Pizza was reviled by customers. Their reviews were horrible. Horrible. I don't think I even had Domino's back then. That was before I was in college, so I don't really know, but it must have fucking sucked. sucked and instead of running from this or saying like oh we're working on it or whatever they created a mini documentary with their ceo their people who run their marketing actual marketing groups talking about their pizza and how bad it was and shitting on it and they made this mini doc coming clean and saying yeah you know what our pizza sucks owning it owning it and saying all right we're working to improve it pizza sucks. Owning it. Owning it. And saying, all right, we're working to improve it. We're showing you how we're doing this too. Like we're not hiding behind this. It sucks. It's rubber. We hate reading this. Let's fix it. Long story short,

since that documentary, I saw a stat the other day from last year. So I don't know if this is still true, but at least for the next decade, their stock actually outperformed Google on a percentage basis. Domino's completely turned it around because they owned who they were. They didn't hide behind PR statements. They said, you know what? Fuck it. We're going to videotape all of our disastrous marketing meetings where customers tell us how bad we are, and we're going to show people the process to fix it. We're serious about this. And then you look at longtime brands, as in longtime brands that have always had the whole concept of just being completely honest with their customers and telling people exactly what they think. And I think of Patagonia.

Patagonia was founded by accident by Yvon Chouinard he was not planning on founding a company he just happened to put on a rugby shirt while he was climbing in the UK and then his he came back home and his friends wanted the same shirt and so then he said okay well I guess I'll sell some to fellow climbers and naturists and that's how the company went and throughout the entirety of its of its history Patagonia has been all about the environment and being a sustainable company long before this was common practice and focusing on recycling what they use and creating long-lasting products to do the leave the smallest damage or footprint on the world that they could i explained that wrong they were trying to leave

the smallest footprint of waste on the world that's the way to say it so now you will to this day see ads where they post that there was one they had a a jacket that they made a few years ago and they ran full-blown beautiful advertisements with it and wrote do not buy this jacket because they had determined as a company that there was i forget what it was but something about the jacket left was below their standards on the environmental effect and what it leaves when people get rid of it or done with it or it's lost its utility. And they didn't want to stand behind that. So they said, please don't buy this. And I think they don't quote me on this, but I think they even had a drive to like exchange it or donate it for a better cause or something like that, where it wouldn't be wasted

into the environment. Like that, that's who they've always been. That's who this company is. And that's why they have such a loyal following. There's no question about it. Patagonia, like you know some people, I'm sure, who wear it. I don't wear it myself, but the people who do, they don't have one shirt, they have 15. There's something to be said for that. Now in addition to customers, brands have also had to keep it very real for their employees as well. When I worked in finance, one of my clients was a guy who had helped build one of the departments of a company called Glassdoor, which many of you probably know. That's exactly what it sounds like. Glassdoor was a place to join and anonymously post information about salaries, benefits, culture, and overall opinions of companies, big and small.

So as a job seeker, and you could find jobs there too and job listings, as a job seeker, you go there and you figure out, all right, what does this place look like before I go and look at potentially working there? And as someone who works at a company, you can kind of figure out what people are saying about you who work for you without them having fear of the most obvious downstream inventions the internet could have had. Bullshit, water cooler talk. I say bullshit, but you know what I mean. Like actual water cooler talk about what goes on behind closed doors at companies. So instead of just worrying about what our customers think of us, brands very much in order to attract talent have to worry about what their own employees think of them at all times.

It keeps everyone accountable so the brands that are having conversations with their with their employees truly asking for feedback and enacting change making people feel valued at their place of work not shutting down new ideas, encouraging innovation. These types of brands, I say brands, but companies, businesses, whatever, they're the ones who get the good grades online. They're the ones who then attract that talent. They're the ones who people say, I want to work there. So the realness has kept businesses honest. Now, you know we couldn't have this conversation

without also talking about politics. Politics is a major part of culture. If you're like me at this point, you're pretty disillusioned with what we're seeing. I don't really find a team that I can get behind. I think we are beyond polarized. I think that the decorum of our politics is so far beyond the pale of what's acceptable that it just it's an eye roll for me.

That said, it is a part of all kinds of conversations. Every day, we know it. People like to say, oh, we'll stay away from politics. That almost not possible like in some way or format it works into the conversation so it's relevant it is relevant and the president we currently have in office donald trump is without a doubt i think the most controversial president this country's ever had especially by where we are as a world and and how much attention we have on news and and content and information basically at an all-time high he's controversial anyway you stack it up that said one thing that none of us can deny about his ability to become president in the first place and his journey to win the office was done in the most outside the box way in the history of united states politics this guy was a reality tv star

who said whatever the fuck was on his mind and not only said it but throughout the day every day used a major social platform the main one obviously being twitter to project these thoughts regardless of what they were or how stupid they sounded and so a lot of people especially those who hate the guy they can't even fathom the fact that people would buy half the shit or even any of the shit he says they can't fathom the fact that people could ever like this dude i mean he's been a public figure for a long time we know a lot of the negativity around him they bottom line is they couldn't fathom the fact that anyone could ever get behind him for anything, let alone the office of the presidency of the United States. What those people ignore is that the literal idea of Trump just saying, fuck it, no PR, no person to come out to speak for me, no prepared statements, less teleprompters all this stuff i'm just going to say what i think that brand led a lot of people

in this country who were already very disillusioned with politics to say fuck yeah i could get behind that you know what this fucking guy this guy he says what's on his mind i respect that and you could sit there and say well did you hear what he just said? That was completely wrong. And they'd go, no, but you know what? He says what he thinks. I'm with it. That's what he did. If he had a thought, he tweeted it out. He would do multiple tweets sometimes because 140 or I think it was 140 at the time.

140 characters wasn't enough. When he wanted to get thoughts out there yes he used the traditional news sources on tv because he's a long time tv guy and tv fan he used those to get on because he was wildly entertaining and they would always have him on for the ratings but he would put out videos of himself talking he ran around the country and campaigned left and right for a year and a half and spoke to everyone and then shared content of him doing it. He controlled the narrative. The guy said pussy at a campaign rally ahead of New Hampshire. And won. Now, I'm not saying he should have done that.

I don't think the president should be around saying the word pussy. I don't think the president should be around saying the word pussy i don't but i'm saying that there's a lot of people in there who were like man fucking guy it's like we're sitting at the table talking and that's how they made their decision and then what exacerbated it is you had the ultimate establishment candidate in 2016 on the other side hillary clinton who came up and said we're gonna do x y and z because we won't stand for any of it we will i mean that's literally how she talked we will believe like and people just looked at it and said it's like R2-D2 talking. It's not real. Like I'm not having a conversation with her. That's where the brand went, and then yes, there were all kinds of things around it. You had the whole Trump, Brandon Hurt, Crooked Hillary. You had the Access Hollywood tape. You had a ton of bullshit but make no mistake about it trump got himself into that position and then you know was able to end up winning the office even if it was a race to the

bottom but just being the regular fucking dude at the table saying you know what i think not even citing evidence on stuff but just giving an opinion that a few people could go fuck yeah that sounds about right to me. That he drove people right into his arms. It's what he did. He was, I said out front, Dave Portnoy had the line, by the common man, for the common man. That's really what Trump was. He managed to convince a swath of people across this country living even paycheck to paycheck that he was a blue-collar billionaire and that's that's another important point by the way he's the first guy in

that stratosphere like the billionaire stratosphere to get people to love him for it in a world where there's more and more of an income and wealth divide where there's more anger from the lower side to the higher side he is the first guy to get people to love him for it by coming out and flaunting it he stood up at the first press conference he was like i'm really rich i i mean look at my balance sheet. $4.5 billion. I got six golf courses in Scotland. Oh, no, that was in California. Like, he was doing that, and he got a laugh. And that's the other end of it.

That's another thing right there that people have to understand. And Russell Brand actually has some great content online breaking this down, the comedian and actor Russell Brand. I would highly encourage you to go find it but he and it's not just him other people talk about it as well he's wildly entertaining i mean wildly entertaining now there are some people in my life who hate this man with a burning passion most of them will never say anything that could even be construed as not negative i would say about him but i have had even a few of them quietly with me say you know

this fucking guy i think he's a racist i think he's out of his mind i think it's the worst thing we ever did putting him in office But he is so fucking funny. I have to watch it. I mean, I'm laughing at him, but I mean, he is hysterical. And it's true. He's funny. Now, some people may say when he says things that are highly offensive to them, especially based on whatever your identity may be, that can't be funny. I totally get that.

But like what I mean is this is the kind of guy if he were reading the phone book i'm fucking tuning in and watching i mean he is just hysterical and so that entertainment value in a field that rewarded this and talking like this and telepromptering like this and saying we want freedom jobs and liberty in a field that did nothing but that he came in and said yo fuck it i just had a reality tv show i'm really rich let's run a country bro like that's what he did it's the definition of real i'm not saying you have to endorse it as like oh that was really cool but he did win the office and he won the office by being that guy. Finally though, let's talk about entertainment, our escapism and what trends support this concept of realness or

reality based on what we consume and what we're drawn towards. So one thing right off the bat, look at the growth in documentaries and documentary content over even just like the last five years, let alone the last decade. I mean, when you look at trending topics on Netflix any day, you see titles like Explained, America's Book of Secrets, Down to Earth, the Zac Efron story, Look Mom, I Can Fly, Travis Scott behind the scenes, the business of drugs. You see constant behind the scenes looks and like, hey, this is how this thing really is. Or hey, let's explain this thing. And hey, it's not actors. It's not a script. It's like, this is what it is. People are interested in that. People are into vlogs on YouTube. They're into seeing what a day in life is like. They love Instagram stories from their favorite influencers and celebrities and you name it. They love seeing behind the

scenes. They love the drama. Documentary content in whatever form it is involves drama and it involves relatability to show people that, you know, there's things in my life that may relate to that person, whether it be someone famous or someone in their own network, a not famous person. Podcasts. Podcasts are another one. I mean we talked about Joe Rogan out front, the authentic, non-big media-driven types. and podcasting started with a dude just throwing a mic on or maybe even recording into i don't think iphones weren't around when podcasts started but either way a dude recording into a mic and and then putting it out there on the internet like radio but on the internet college kids in their basement that was what this was at the beginning of it that's what

podcasts were built on because it's on demand. You listen to it whenever you want. You can say whatever you want. There's no corporate control over it. And now obviously you have podcast networks coming in and getting in on it. That's what always happens. But it's still – anyone can post a podcast. I'm posting this right now. No one told me to do it or not like i i can post it podcasts are a big representation of people just looking for people who are like them who talk about things they're interested in and then the topics be it like conversations around the news which we already touched on i won't touch on again or like investigation or true con true crime podcasts which are huge peeling behind the scenes of stuff learning the deeper information that That's what people look for. You see the theme? They're trying to peer behind the curtain on everything. Again, I'm bringing this up because it's one of the ultimate representations of what it means to be real.

When you roll the cameras and just fucking record yourself making a sandwich during the day, like that's who you are, what you're talking about with your friends, what's going on, that's who you are. And don't get me wrong, there's edited aspects to all this stuff, especially with people who are influencers and things like that, but there's still a big level of honesty to it. When you're doing it every day, the truth comes out. So I look at, I travis scott's documentary which

is tremendous that's another one i'll talk about in a future episode it was just awesome awesome awesome behind the scenes to see what that guy's all about but i i've seen some musicians record how they make their music and to me i don't know why every musician doesn't do that there's one guy though who stands out above the rest as just incredible content. And that's John Bellion. John Bellion, when he was making his first album in i forget what it was called but it was a terrific album and he documented himself creating from soup to nuts i don't know like six or seven of the songs and there's one documentary in particularly about the song guillotine that of all of them is like it's 20 minutes long it's one of the best things you'll ever watch and it shows this dude sitting at the table and starting like Oh, I like that

Okay Let's work with that all the way to this ending with this song that has another vocalist on it 12 different Instruments a bunch of different synths two different level beats to it I mean, it's it's incredible and so fans see that and they're like, oh my god This guy's creativity is next level they feel like they know him by the way it's no coincidence that helped him really blow up right after that and made that album big all right so we've covered examples from media sports politics, and kind of the behind the scenes of entertainment culture itself. But what about leveraging authenticity and transparency? What about leveraging that realness

within the context of scandals and taboos? A concept that I want to really highlight when I bring this up is called radical honesty. And I've already touched on it throughout this. I mean Dave Portnoy was a good example. I think LeBron's platforms with the athletes are phenomenal examples. Obviously Trump's an example, and he hurts himself doing it sometimes, but I mean he tells you what he is but radical honesty is a way to cut away the bullshit and tell people exactly how you feel regardless of the shock value of how you feel and that's that's the power of it radical honesty is about letting people know exactly who you are and what you're about and not hiding or running from it at all staring them in the eyes and saying this is what it is man what do you think and i look at a great example where someone played this

to their advantage big time in what happened to jeff bezos last year jeff bezos the ceo of amazon was about to divorce his wife which was already a big media story i think that was already out at the time and he had been separated from her for a while and so he had had other women as well which i mean it's his business man who the fuck knows what goes on i i've never cared about that shit but people do and it sells so there was a scandal where jeff like a lot of us you know took some rather interesting pictures of himself and you know little jeff bezos and texted it around now why a technology titan and the richest guy in the world would ever risk sending pictures via text of things that he probably doesn't want people to see

that's another topic and i'm sure jeff doesn't do that anymore so to speak however i think it was the national inquirer got a hold of these pictures and was going to run a story about him which you know it's a total hippie they're going to run jeff bezos holding his cock and doing all kinds of shit. He's just talking with a woman on text. Instead of running from it though, Jeff Bezos did the total opposite. He went on to Medium.com, which is a platform where authors can create written content on whatever they want and put it out to the public to – it's basically like a blog platform. Huge. Great platform.

Check it out but he went on to medium.com and he wrote an article and i forget the exact title but it might as well have been national inquirer is about to run a bunch of pictures of me holding my dick they are from me and the real story is about what are they trying to do here and he spent the first i don't know 10 paragraphs posting screenshots of the emails with national inquirer which describe in depth exactly what's in the pictures which is basically like the picture itself almost clear-cut black blackmail and says yes in the article yes all pictures exist. They do have the real thing. So they'll probably release them now. But let's talk about them. Because you know what? We all do it. But they're just, they're trying to blackmail me into something else here. And I think it's bullshit. What is their motive in this? Why are they coming at me? This is a bigger problem than Jeff Bezos. And he completely changed the context of the scandal in doing so. That was pure form awesome fucking ticity, man.

Doesn't get any better than that. And it was never, I mean, now it's like a joke. Like, yo, Jeff fucks, man. Like, people are like, yeah, I fuck with that. Okay, cool. Yeah, we're all normal. That's what we do. We all send sex out.

Cool. When you look at taboos though beyond just scandals like that, what about the concept of like discussing money? I already touched on that with Trump. But like Mark Cuban, Mark Cuban is a guy who reminds people he's a billionaire. He's on Shark Tank. He sells based on it. He sells being the shark billionaire, the pure businessman, the guy who, hey, I'm a real dude and I made it myself. And I got this rich because I fucking worked for it and I got out in front of trends like this, this, and that and was able to make a lot of fucking money.

And I want other people to be able to do that. But frankly, I know very few people actually see it through and can actually get to where i got like he owns that as like the fuck it man i'm hitting you with reality but let's see what you got and hosts is one of the hosts on a show doing that to go back to dave portnoy actually dave portnoy constantly comedically reminds people he's worth over $100 million. He started a publication called By the Common Man, For the Common Man and has literally become someone who's not a common man and blast that out. And by owning it and getting in front of it and like poking fun at himself for it, he gets people to be like, yo, fucking Dave's just like me, man. The guy will sit in a private jet and be like,

hey, what's up? It's Dave Portnoy. You know, here in my private jet, which I bought, because I'm worth over $100 million. And you can't, like, he's owning it. You can't come at him for it. You can't punch from below him. So when you discuss money and you use radical honesty, even comedically is a great way to do it, or like Mark Cuban does it and just kind of be like, yeah, bitch, I fucking earned it. Yeah, that's what I am. Come at me. Longtime college basketball coach Rick Barnes,

I think this was last year, he coached Texas for a lot of years where he coached Kevin Durant, among others. He's been the head coach of Tennessee now for a few years, which is a really good job in the SEC. And he almost left Tennessee for UCLA last year. UCLA was offering a big contract for him, but he had a big buyout at Tennessee that would have to be paid, and UCLA wasn't going to pay the whole thing. So it didn't make enough sense monetarily quite for him to make the jump instead of running from it like every other guy does especially in sports when they're like man i just care about the fans i care about the organization they say all this stuff that's not really true it comes down to like most of the time who gives me the best offer that's best for me and my family which usually revolves around money rick barnes didn't say that rick barnes was asked point blank like rick what why did you decide to stay? How serious were you about potentially leaving? And he dead ass said, like, straight up, I mean, to be honest like, nah, like if they had given a little more money, I'd have left. The money didn't quite make sense. So here I am. And then it was a non-story. So people were like, all right, yeah,

Rick's honest. So they can't ever hold him to that. They can't ever then say in the future, like, oh, Rick, you got to stay out of loyalty. And if you leave, like, that's fucked, man. You're already rich. You're just going after the money. They can't do that to him he's already outed himself and said like yeah man like if there's more dough on the table fuck it put it in my bank account now some people may say like oh that's he should have a more personal feeling especially coaching you know technically young adults like almost youth in college not youth but you know what i. Like people who aren't even out working yet. He's like their mentor. He should care more.

Well, it is still a business. He's got a market. He's trying to make money. He's got a window to earn, and he's using it. So I appreciated the honesty. I think it's a good example. And actually, speaking of money, important point, major taboo here.

We would literally be remiss if we didn't discuss the concept of actual money 2008, and this will definitely be a separate episode down the line. This is a subject I'm passionate about. But when the whole world melted in 2008, what people forget is that a white – the world melted technically started melting big time in september 2008 and on october 1st 2008 a white paper published by a fake name under the name satoshi nakamoto came out and introduced the concept of bitcoin which was the first cryptocurrency built on the blockchain that started trading then on january 3rd 2009 a few months later i know what you're saying you're rolling your eyes like oh here here we fucking go talking about cryptocurrency and whatever because everyone knows what happened in 2018 that's a different conversation for a different day i want to talk about why that started very quickly here and the whole concept is bitcoin was created out of the ashes of a fire that burned down everyone the global financial crisis touched everyone,

and it touched some people and ruined their lives. It was the worst thing to happen in this country since the Great Depression and was damn near it. Not quite there, but not too far off. It took a lot to get out of it. And so the trust in the financial system that had let people down was at an all-time low. And what does the financial system do?

What do the banks do inherently? What's their number one thing they have? They hold our money. Unless we're a drug dealer or something, we don't have money sitting in our fucking walls. It's a number on a screen now, on a computer that a bank has as like a ledger. And by the way, like if you, let's say you have a million dollars and your bank account says a million dollars, you don't have a million dollars cash sitting in a vault somewhere.

It's just a million dollars on a page. And so people even got scared about that. And they got scared about government intervention with their money when the governments, and they had to do it. I don't blame the government at all they had to do it but the optics were bad when the governments had to come in and bail out the banks who caused the whole thing so trust all-time low cryptocurrency which inherently takes the power of money out of the banks and institutions out of their ledger systems, out of even the governments, and says it's online, immutable, on blockchain, which is a loaded word. We'll talk about it some other time, but it's there for the public to see, and you have it. You have a record of it. No one can touch it. concept was born out of the institutions that had once been trusted breaking all of that trust

and now having consumers coming out to innovate ways to get around them so that they never had to rely on them again inherently bitcoin the idea not bitcoin itself the idea of bitcoin the idea of cryptocurrency is based on what's real and not what then people viewed as fake bullshit numbers on a page that banks sell to them and say, we got your back, man. Because apparently, and this even extends to the mortgage lenders and stuff like that in 2008, apparently they didn't. Now the very last thing, separate topic, that I want to go through is this idea of fake transparency. And I'm talking about PR culture. You know what this is. We live in a cover-your-ass litigious world. This could be its own episode. But there is nothing worse than seeing in today's environment, like let's say a celebrity who's on social media every day, talking in a certain lingo to his camera or her camera every day, posting content, commenting on content every day, videos out the ass online.

People know what they're like and what they talk like. There's nothing worse than seeing these bullshit statements posted 12 hours after a celebrity does something really fucking stupid. And the next thing you see, you don't hear it. You see it. It's like an iPhone note, I would like to profusely apologize for my transgressions encountered or enacted earlier today, of which I did not mean to cause harm or trauma or stress upon my friends, my family, my fans, my dog, my cousin, my fucking horse. You get the point. That's not how they really talk. People know that's not how they talk. And these same people who trade on constantly being like, yo, I'm just showing you who I am. I'm just like you,

whatever. And sharing their content and getting people to follow them, whether they be actual online influencers or actors or actresses, whatever they are, someone in society who has attention, all the things they do to get attention, they throw it all out and become something else behind a statement that a fucking lawyer put together. And we see it in our businesses too. I mean, I got so sick of all the PR comments from companies about the George Floyd stuff. And don't get me wrong. I was perfectly fine. And also very supportive. And actually refreshed.

That companies weren't ignoring an issue for once. And were being like people. So let me give them a little bit of points here. Because companies came out. And they took a stand on something. That was pretty clear. Everyone watched that video. We've seen far too many iPhone videos. Where the same shit happens.

And shit needed to change. And so businesses came out. and at least recognized it. But their CEOs very often didn't do it. There were no videos. There were very few actual opinions elicited. Instead, there were these iPhone notes. Or usually they put it out on actual actual like Times New Roman 12 Microsoft Office or Microsoft Word statements that said, we at Company X are terribly saddened by the racial

injustice that we've witnessed at the hands of the senseless murder of George Floyd. Dude, we know. We all saw the video. We know what happened. Tell us how you really feel about it. If you want to comment on it, don't just think you're going to put out a PR statement and get credit for it. That's what I hate. People in our generation, we hate that. We want to hear what they have to say.

We don't want to hear Disney's comments. We want to hear Bob fucking Iger come out and make a comment. Why are we hiding? That's PR culture. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. I guess the moral of the story is the internet always wins.

Truth is going to be found out one way or another. We have the ability to fact check or whatever you want to call it. Check anything at any time on anyone pretty much. Privacy is going away. And so authenticity reigns through. Transparency reigns through. And when it's not there, you will get caught for it. You will get called out for it.

And sometimes, depending on how you handle it, you won't come back from it. So I've talked enough today. I love this topic as you can tell there's more things i want to talk about around that whole concept of realness we'll do some more content around the study air quotes that i did on dave portnoy's twitter from one of the months here that was very interesting there's another topic i'm thinking about that maybe I'll put out there as well that I just thought was really compelling. But for now, I think there's nothing better to close on than say it's 2020, people.

Be real and be relevant. That's it. I'm Julian Dorey, and this is Trendify.