My First Million - Billion Dollar Ad Arbitrage: Opportunities Hidden in Plain Sight

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) talk about surprising ad arbitrage opportunities, getting vaccinated against cancellation, new media properties, and more. ----- Links: * Outcome Health (acquired by Patient Point) * Cheddar News * @jonsteinberg * Tabs Chocolate * Tabs Chocolate TikTok ad * @Oliver_b1 * @SteveBartlettSC * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ----- Show Notes: (01:26) - Current state of the economy (06:25) - Outcome Health (12:10) - Cheddar (25:20) - Tabs Chocolate (35:30) - Steve Bartlett ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Basically, I think he said they sold like half a million dollars worth of chocolate off this ad. And like within a couple weeks or something like that. So it really like jumps. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On a road, let's travel, never looking back. Are you changing anything you're doing right now because the economy just sucks ass right now?

No. What do you mean the economy sucks ass? You mean the stock market sucks? The normal people economy. Yeah, the economy for muggles. Well, I don't even think that's that because there's still like the normal people economy is like restaurants, bars, grocery stores, like, you know, taxi drivers, you know, stuff like that. Then there's the stock market. So there's like Main Street, there's Wall Street, and then there's like Crypto LSD land.

I've spent all my time at crypto LSD land. So I don't pay attention to either Main Street or Wall Street person. Well, my three worlds are going through craziness. Real estate, increased rates. I wonder what's going to happen in the next six, 12 months. Startups. So, like, these startups that you and I all invested in like six months ago, huge valuations.

They had a lot of work to do to live up to it. And funding's now way harder to get. Just in, like, three months. Like, the macro environment changes in two months. And then finally, public equities are just in the shitter. This sucks, man. I feel bummed. Yeah, the guy, I think we both have the same guy at, whatever, Morgan Stanley or whatever.

And he'll just text me and be like, hey, tough market. I'm like, bro, I'm not even looking at this. Why are you texting me about this? You know, I appreciate him checking in and making sure that, you know, everything's okay. But I don't need to be reminded because I don't pay attention to that anyways. I'm too knee deep in my own world. That sucks. My trainer has a phrase for this.

He calls it Caesar's world. He's like, we, there's like, you know, you've ever heard that phrase, leave, leave unto Caesar, what is Caesar's? I don't know if you ever heard that, but it's basically like, there's kind of like the external. It's like, the stuff that's a out of our control and be like, you know, the world can be going crazy. That doesn't mean I need to go crazy. Like, people are outraged about this. That doesn't mean I need to be outraged about that. And so sometimes I'll be telling him something and he's like, Caesar's world, bro.

And I have to remember, oh, yeah, like, I'm putting my attention and energy into something. that's A, outside of my control, and B, like, doesn't really matter. It doesn't actually affect me. It shouldn't be affected my current mood. And I got to remember, you know, how to keep what's what. No, I've gotten better, but it still sucks. I just got done speaking at a conference. You know who Neil Patel is?

Yeah, the marketer guy. Yeah, he was hosting a conference. Dude, I bet you that guy is just wildly wealthy, like cash wealthy. And he's been in the game forever. And do you know this Naval book? What's it called? The Almanac. Yeah.

So it was You know, it's on Naval But it was written by this guy named Eric What's his last name? Jorgensen Yeah Dude I saw him at the conference And he came out to him

He goes, hey man, what's up? And I go, oh, hey Eric, I've read your book, you're awesome He goes, yeah, nice to meet you. You're way smaller than I thought you were going to be in real life. I was like, I was like, did you just, did you just neg me?

Can I have your number? Like, I was immediately attracted to him. How do I? your approval. Yeah, I need it when your approval, dad.

That's my own commission in life right now. Dude, he just nagged me so hard. And he's like six,

six. Did you know that? Oh, that's why. Okay, got you. He big dogged you. Yeah,

he big dogged me hard, dude. He nagged me so hard. I was like, oh, I like that.

Feisty. Yeah, that's what, that it does happen. And when it does, it really like rocks you. Because you're so, you're probably so used to see her in the opposite.

Oh, you're way bigger than I thought. Oh, dude, you're jacked. You're tall. You're whatever. You know, you're amazing. And for someone to be like, oh, is this mini, are you Sam's son? Just naked me just so hard. Got me.

Dude, I've got a bunch. I've got one interesting topic today. What do you got? Let's start there. You want to start with my thing? Yeah, start with yours. So you're a 33, 34 year old guy. So you probably haven't been to the doctor in like 15 years.

years, but. Accurate. Yeah. Men don't go to the doctors. My wife's gone and I'm sitting here doing this podcast. I'm wearing flip-flops with one foot has a sock on and underwear that's inside out because I didn't want to do laundry. So like, yeah, I mean, I'm a grown child too.

But, uh, so listen, uh, have you been to the doctor like with your wife or kid and notice that there's like these TV screens in there? I have like in the waiting room, you mean? In the waiting room, but also like in the doctor's. office, like in the actual medical, like in the room. I see him in the waiting room, but I'm Kaiser and those guys are cheap as hell, so they don't put them in the actual doctor's office. Yeah, Kaiser is, Kaiser's its own network in hospital.

So they wouldn't apply to this. But basically, if you go to most, like an independent or like a normal non-Kaiser doctor, there's TV screens in the waiting room, there's TV screens in the hallway, and then oftentimes now they've got TV screens in the doctor's office. And so, have you heard of this company called Outcome Health? I've heard of this once before. Maybe from you, no, I think it's actually from our buddy Siva. And I'm just going to tell you three words I remember.

$100 million, basically waiting room TVs. And there's an Indian dude who's the founder. Those are the three things I kind of know about. Yeah, well, you're missing the fourth word, which is fraud. Oh, okay, gotcha. Just those four years ago. So maybe something has come out since then. So I'm going to tell you about this business.

And I actually think that it's kind of like pretty morally, corrupt, but it's interesting, nonetheless. And the business model is actually good and interesting, but the guy who ran this particular business sucked. So basically, it was called Outcome Health. It was started by this guy named Rishi, and he was out of Chicago and he was like this Wonderkin, prodigy, whatever, raised money at a $5 or $10 billion evaluation, promised that he had, or said he had $160 million in revenue. Turns out that was nonsense. It wasn't true. And so he got sued and it didn't turn out well at all. But listen to what their business was. It's actually pretty, again, unethical, I think, but fascinating. So basically,

Do you watch, do you ever watch like cable TV? Yeah, of course. So it's like all Toyota commercials and like pharmaceuticals. Right. Back to the earlier point, Dodge Ram. Yeah. It's like Dodge Rammed and like Seales. And that's one of the reasons is like on Google and on Facebook and stuff like that.

You can't really advertise pharmaceuticals or at least the rules are a little bit different. And so pharmaceutical companies are advertising like crazy on TV, something like $8 billion last year spent. It's like the third largest category. And, but they spend like way more. So of the 20 million spent on pharmaceutical ads, like 15 million of that is spent. Billion. Billion is spent in the doctor's office. And so they do that by like giving them free samples by giving them like those like mugs and pens and just like shit like that.

Just like swag. And so this guy came up with this idea where basically he puts a TV in the doctor's office. And the TV is like touchscreen. and it's free for the doctor and it does some things like they could like put like the person's chart on the TV or it's like interactive

and like all right so your foot's broken and if we zoom in here it's this bone but when you're not using it for that reason it's an advertising thing so it like shows ads

and they're not selling the ad to the consumer because the consumer is not the one whose choice it is of what drugs are going to get prescribed it's the doctor and so the pharmaceuticals

go to outcomes health and they say, here's the 50,000 doctors who we're trying to reach, show me which of those you have your TV in their office, and help us reach them. And we'll pay you a lot of money for that. And theoretically, this guy was full of it in like the fourth year business, he was like, yeah, we're making like $160 million in ads and pharmaceutical ads. And now outcome health was eventually acquired by another company. And they're actually doing it legitimately. And they're making over, they're properly making over $100 million. And it's all

from pharmaceutical ads on these freaking screens. What was he lying about? He lied about which doctors he had or he lied about the revenue? Like they just didn't have a hundred six million? So Jay and Jay, Johnson and Johnson, their executives and their ad sales people would go to these doctors

and they're like, wait a minute, this fucking company told us that there's TVs here. I don't see a TV anywhere. And like it happened like dozens of times. They're like, dude, you said that there was TVs and our ad was being seen by this many people. It ain't happening. And so they basically just lied. They just said that their TVs were in all of these rooms. They just thought that no one was going to check. And so their TVs weren't actually there. And so they bill and but they were billing Johnson and Johnson on showing

their Cialis ad or whatever to, you know, but one actually happening. So he lied. But it's pretty crazy. Dude, just put the TV there. Stupid reason to lie. Go go get the TV in the doctor's office. It's not that expensive or hard to do to get a TV in a doctor's office. I just think it's crazy, though, that like this business model is like crazy fascinating, though. It is kind of a good business model. But I think it's the whole pharmaceutical industry advertising is kind of like bullshit. You know what I mean? It's like what someone someone's going to do this for like.

So we saw, we talked to that company that was doing this on top, putting screens on top of Uber, Uber cars. Which I was totally against. Like, I thought that business wasn't going to work. Was I right or wrong? Did it work? I think it looked like we were wrong because they raised a bunch of money. But again, who knows? Maybe there's, maybe it's a, you know, we got a Rishi in Chicago situation again here.

So I don't know. But that company did pretty well. Neither of us invested in it. There's other versions of this. So the question is like, what are these captive audiences where you can go stick, you can go create an ad network, right? So it's like, there's like, physical places. So like, I don't know, high schools, colleges, like, what, can you just go put this in every dorm, like in the country? And they'd be like, hey, you want to reach college kids? There's no more effective place than this. Because like, you know, every three minutes, we give out like a free, you know, code for like a snapple from the vending machine. And then the other, you know, two minutes are, are just straight ads. And so it's like, you know, can you find captive audiences in other ways and create a network of like some highly desired, um,

like person. Like if the the key would be, you know, could you somehow, um, could you somehow do this around like, I don't know, stay at home moms? Probably not because there's like, they're spread out. Like that's the thing with doctor's offices. Like there's, there's a smaller number of them that you need to like get the screens and their high value. There's this company called cheddar. Do you remember cheddar? Cheddar was basically like the hustle if it focused on all the weird shit instead of just like the substance. And then. somehow sold for $200 million.

That's my take on cheddar. So you're forgetting the worst component is that it was entirely built at first on Facebook Live. So right when Facebook came out with Facebook Live, this guy named John Steinberg, who's a nice guy and he's a bulldog. This guy is like Ari Gold.

Like if he sees what he wants it, he's like a missile. He just do do do do. He just captures audit and he just goes straight towards it. So anyway, this guy launches a company called Cheddar and the content was shit. Somehow they got like, they're on the new. The pitch, right?

So here was his pitch in how he raised a bunch of money from investors. He said, very similar to what you said, hey, millennials, Gen Z, these guys are not trying to watch, you know, CNBC or MSNBC or I don't know, I don't know, whatever the finance channel is. I don't even know it. CNBC. The pitch was CNBC only has like 20,000 concurrent viewers at any given point, but it makes like a billion dollars a year. Right. And they're all on Medicare. So it's like, okay.

So how do you get like Gen Z millennial? They're not going to watch that. What are they going to watch? And he's like, social media. Social media, right? And all the VCs have nod their head. He's like, you have a teenager? Do they watch CBC?

Or do they watch social media? And everyone's like, social media. He's like, and guess what? They now have live video. Facebook is live video. Twitter has live video. YouTube has live video. So we're going to create CNBC on social media.

And they basically created a 24-7 like TV show that was. was business news that would just be streaming all day onto Facebook Live, onto Twitter live, onto YouTube Live, onto all these different platforms. And it was John and his co-host. That in itself is amazing. Building 24-7 is crazy. 24-7 is crazy.

So that is amazing that he could even pull it off. But there was one factor that he kind of screwed up on, which is like, no one wanted to watch. No one watched it. Yeah, everyone scrolled right past it. Yeah. No one. So his like, he executed a bad premise, wonder. Yeah, 10 out of 10 hustle, two out of 10 idea because guess what happens on social media?

You don't stop and watch live video for 40 minutes. Like, that's just not what happens on most social media. And so, you know, it just didn't really work. And you're right. 24-7, it was kind of boring because this is just not 24-7 worth of like interestingness when it comes to that stuff. And he raised money, I think he raised 40 million. And somehow a cable company bought it for $200 million.

And he told me, I met with him. And he told me one time, he was like, yeah, so I'm going to start this company. And in two years, I'm probably going to sell it for two or three hundred million dollars. He just told me. And he just called this shot. And he's a bulldog. And he nailed it. He's an unstoppable force.

And he pulled it off. But now what they do is if you go to a gas station, you don't even go to gas stations anymore. No, dude. I pump my own gas. Yes, I do. If you'll see cheddar all on their little screen. That's right. And so they're like owning like this weird market of people who want to

play like Jeopardy while they're pumping their gas like you know it's like Snapplefax while you're while you're like doing your gas so they they're they've got the gas market well who was it that we didn't we meet somebody I I mean it was just me I met somebody recently who was like yeah you know at a gas station of those screens like I own the ad inventory of like these like in these like three cities uh like I'm like the kind of main guy so like you know how do you think I should sell these ads uh he's like I that's what I own I own this inventory and I was it making money? I'm sure he was doing okay, but he was like, you know, what would you do?

And I was like, I was like, well, the people who want this ad is like the local businesses, right? Because they have like, look. You can actually send them like local foot traffic better than like a Facebook or a Google or these like scaled easy to use ad platforms can. Dude, selling local ads is the worst though. There's like these like San Francisco based. I remember I had a couple San Francisco based Yelp friends. And they were like, they were like like like like like. have you seen that scene in the

Get Rich or Die trying with 50 cent where he's selling drugs and like one guy goes up to one of the drug dealers and tries to buy like some crack but with like quarters and nickels and the drug dealer smacks it out of his hand and 50 goes, hey man, come here, I'll take it. It was like, see how hard I hustled

I was willing to take the change. And like the Yelp is like that version of ad salespeople. Like they would like find like a pie shop and sell $400 ad. You know what I mean? and they're just grinding to get that done. There's just guys in the Yelp sales office.

Dude, I would watch a 24-7 feed of Yelp sales office because those guys are the grimyest, grittiest sales people on earth. They will shake your local pie shop down and be like, hope you don't want this review that I just posted on your page. We'll go fucking write a horrible review on your page and they call you, tell you to go look at it and then sell you a premium plan that will get their ad removed. It's like the craziest thing in the world.

Yeah, dude. And it's a racket. And like, that's what... Put grandma on the phone. Put her on the phone. Grandma, stop making fun. We got a problem on Yale. You got to pay.

They're basically like the mob. Like, do you want protection? And then like, you, they do something bad if they didn't use... From what? From us. Jesus, right. They are like a mob. Totally, totally.

It is crazy. So those local ads suck, man. I've got friends who want to start like local ads or local newsletters. And I'm like, yeah, you're going to get tons of eyeballs. The problem is monetizing that sucks, man. You got to deal with like, you know, like Bob's steaks and chops down the street. And like, he's like, well, I'll give you like 30 pounds of filet mignon. It's just hard.

I cut this great deal for Milk Road. I was like, okay, what's our fill rate? I think our ad fill rate was like 75% or something the last month. And I was like, it was 75%? Yeah, and I was like, Ben, what, I was like, what do we do with this other 25%? And he's like, he's like, dude,

you know, he's like, we actually got hit up by a couple brands that you have said you liked on the podcast. He's like, they were just like, yo, we'll take any ad that you don't have that day, but we'll take it at 40% of the list price. And I'm going to give it to you in store credit. It's like the worst deal. It's like, you know, I'm getting checked down by Yelp here.

But I was also like, I kind of love that product. So, yeah, like, let's do it. And so I have like, you know, like right in front of my front door right now, I have like, like, you know, pallets of fit aid because I just like ran a fit aid ad for them. And it's like, oh, here's, you know, $2,000 of fit aid, you know, in exchange for that ad. Thank you so much. And so I'm like, all right, great. My gym has like, you know, energy drinks for the year.

And it's done. That's actually pretty smart. And it's really smart on their part. It's smart on their part. And Ben was like, yo, tell me like the five or six products. You're like, you love the most. He's like, I'm doing mine too. And like, we'll just, we'll give sweetheart deals to all these companies.

Like, if we actually want their free product, like, if we really want their free product, this is a great way to do it. And he's like, it's a great deal for them too. They just get this like ad hoc remnant inventory. I told you this off air. But when the hustle started in order to get advertisers, did you notice that when you started Milk Road, when you started having ads, you would get more people emailing you asking to advertise. Exactly. Yes. And so I noticed that early on. I was like, if I didn't notice it, I guess.

I was like, if we put ads in there, we're going to get more ads. And so I was like, well, like, what's like the most famous brands of people who don't, who everyone knows of? But hopefully their employees don't read the hustle. And so in the early stages, like, you know, like, it'd be like the hustle brought to you by Ford. And I had never talked to anyone in my life. I just put their logo in there. said I was sponsored by them. And I remember like, hopefully Ford, you guys, I'm sorry, but basically, I still don't listen. Yeah, hopefully. I love Ford.

I had an F-150. I love Ford, but basically, that's illegal. I mean, that's illegal. You can't do that. And I didn't know that it was illegal. I was like, oh, just put like, you know, Microsoft in here, like put Ford, whatever. Who cares? Like, hey, a free ad for them, right?

I'm giving them something. Yeah. And I would put that in there and then immediately, like, there, you know, someone would email me. And then eventually, I noticed that if I put a brand's ad in there, their competitors would call me to advertise. And this one, I won't even, I'm not going to say, but I would put in certain tech brands. I'm like, dude, this particular, this company X has a really big ad budget, but they're not emailing me. Let's go and advertise Y, which is they're a direct competitor and put them in there.

And then immediately after. And then sometimes what I would do is I would only put that particular ad in the email that was going to that company. Because with email newsletters, you can be like, oh, wow, there's eight people that have an at uber.com email. Let's send an email with a message just to them. Here's a Lyft takeover email for them. So I'm like a mini Rishi, a little mini outcome health here.

But yeah. But by the way, that's kind of counterintuitive, like that, oh, if I put ads, that's actually the easiest way to sell more ads. and then being sort of, you know, fake it until you make it. I think that's like the startup way. There is a line. I don't think. I personally don't think you crossed it.

No, I don't think either. With the podcast, by the way, it was the same thing. Somebody was like, you know, it's like, I had this conversation on the way. Somebody was like, oh, dude, love the podcast. And they're like, how much you make it on that? I was like, I'm not really making, you know, much here. You know, I do this for fun. But then it's kind of like ate at me and during my Uber ride to the thing.

And I was like, okay, I'm going to get, you know, I'm going to get an ad. It was like the first or second podcast. I'm a third podcast. I was like, I'm going to get like a sponsor. I was like, okay, do I really want to go do outreach sponsors? No way. So I was like, I just in the middle of the podcast episode, I go, I go, and by the way, today's episode is brought to you by no one.

No one sponsored today's episode. I like made it a joke. And I was like, but think about it. You could have me right here explaining your product. I could be like, wow, it does this. And it does that. And I just like did this like did this like, did this like fake ad. for nothing. And I just like, whatever, I just like, did that. Dude, the next day I got so many,

like, as soon as that episode released, we got like our first three sponsors just from that, like, brought to you by nobody ad. And so I was like, oh, that was like the hack for ad sales was, you know, just to embarrass myself a little bit on the pod. Well, and the reason it works, and this is something that I learned along the way, was marketers, a good marketer is a shark. And what they do is they spend most of their time seeking out underpriced. new platforms and new places to advertise. The way that marketing typically works is you find one thing that works.

You spend all the money and you crush and destroy it and you strangle it. And then you go, all right, that's exhausted. Move on. Next. And so you are constantly seeking out. The middle step. Then you go tell everybody about how this ad channel is crushing for you.

You get well-known. You sell a course on that. Meanwhile, you've moved on to the next channel that is not saturated and you go do that. And then you're silent until that one stops being like fruitful. Exactly. You sell the course. You talk about it.

And then you move on again. And you do the same thing. And so whenever you see like a new podcast that you think has potential or you see a newsletter or like TikTok ads, or a good example, like they're probably going to crush once they open it up, which they are. And that's how marketers work. And the smart marketers early on would approach me and they go,

hey, can we just buy it out for the year? And at the time, I was like, yeah, definitely, I'm poor. I need everything. And then I realized, oh, no, that's stupid because we're going to grow a lot. And I know what they're doing and they're smart. Right. Have you seen, did I send you this TikTok ad for Tabs Chocolate? I don't know.

You've been sending me all these messages. I didn't realize it until two nights ago that I even had an inbox on TikTok. All right. I'm going to show you what I think is the best ad I've seen in like, I mean, I don't want to say my whole life, but I can't really think of a better ad. So I'm just going to give this guy mad props about this ad. Okay. This company, Riverside, just raised like 40.

So right now, Sean and are using this podcast thing called Riverside. They just raised like $40 million. So it better work. Go watch that TikTok. Let's watch this TikTok. Tell me this is not the best ad you've ever seen. And I'll break down why. Get it.

That's a good ad. So first, explain what it is for somebody who's not watching the YouTube channel. So there's this attractive night. teen year old, right, or 21 year old woman. I don't know, dude. I'm not that precise with it. I don't know. Like a college age to young adult person.

By the way, attractive, but not like, doesn't look like a commercial photo shoot. It's a girl next door attractive. Yeah. And she says, y'all, let me put you on. And this is a special chocolate that will change your love life. Seriously. It shows her and her boyfriend, each taking a tab of the chocolate. And then it shows her again.

with her hair having sex hair. Like it's implying that she just had sex. And then it just says it works at the end of it. And okay, so this ad has 650,000 likes went viral. It got featured in vice and a bunch of other places because the brilliance of this. So why is this ad brilliant? So first the hook. The first hook is her.

She's got her hand covering her face partially, which is like with like the kind of like, oh my God. And then it says, y'all. But it's real. This is a real, like this is like a real thing. This was a, this was,

I think he created this ad. This wasn't like, what I mean is it doesn't look like a highly produced thing. It literally just looks like a woman holding a selfie. Yeah. She's holding her phone. Okay, this,

and then there's like a, there's like a, whatever, a viral song right after that. And it looks like she's saying, oh my God, let me tell you something. And then this,

it zooms in on her eyes and she's just like, moving her eyes in that way of like, that mischievous thing. And then, the next scene is it shows the packaging, but there's also like a little like, there's like another thing on the table. So you kind of don't,

it doesn't, again, it doesn't scream ad at you, right? Like, it's not like this beautifully, like a normal marketer would say, well, get this like, you know, candle that you have out of here.

That's confusing. And she's like, no, like make it look like a desk and then like put the, put the packaging of the product. And it says, this quote unquote, special chocolate will change your love life.

Dot, dot, dot. Seriously. Okay. So now I'm like intrigued. It zooms in. in on it and then it goes shows the guy and the girl each breaking off a piece like half and half of this thing

so hey that looks kind of fun to do and then it doesn't tell you anything about it except for it goes to her with the disheveled hair the JBF hair as they used to say in college if you know what that stands for and then it just says it works with the shocked face and then again her looking around like

oh my God dude what is I actually don't know what does JBF mean I didn't go to like a cool just been just been F So basically you, why is this amazing? This is amazing because to me, the best ads have three components. They have the hook, which is like just a thing to like draw you in to even get you to pay attention, which is in her case, her with a hand over face. The second thing it has is the promise.

So it has the promise that gets me curious. And in this case is this quote unquote special chocolate will change your love life. dot, dot, dot, seriously. And then it has the, it skips to the end, right? I have moved straight to the end. It has the implication of it working. So it doesn't tell you how it works, why it works, you know, what it does exactly. It's just the end state.

It takes you straight to the happy ending of this is life if you use our product. And most people don't, like most people don't know how to do a hook. They get, usually they get how to do a promise. And then very rarely do people know how to use. the implication, which is, this is, if this works, here's what happens to your life. You kind of just show the ending and people just want to get into that end state. And so they kind of put two and two together about, you know, how this might work. And they want to click to learn more.

So that's why to me, this is an amazing end. And this is called tab chocolate. If you look at the rest of their TikToks, they're all doing the same thing. It's all like you and your husband when you first get married and it's like them like wanting to have sex and then it's like 10 years after marriage and it's like the wife trying to sexy and the husband ignores her. And then they show, now here's you with tab. And it shows them wanting to have sex.

So like an easy thing to advertise for. Well, kind of easy. But what's this company about? Are they killing it? Yeah. So they basically are a DTC company. I want to give the founder a shout out. I think his name is Oliver. I want to say Oliver. Let me see. And what's in this chocolate? What makes

you horny? I don't even know. Dude, I don't know. Probably nothing. Doesn't matter. Yeah, this guy Oliver, I see this guy Oliver on on Twitter. He's young. I think this guy's like 21. I think they said they sold half a million dollars. What does he know about this then?

Bro got his first, first wood and just decided to create a product. He's still his first one. Well, you're 21. I mean, things work great. Yeah. Why? Why do you need this? But basically,

I think he said they sold like half a million dollars worth of chocolate off this ad. And like within a couple weeks or something like that. So it really like jumps, jumps up. Is it a bootstrap company? I mean, just tab.com would cost half a million dollars. He has tab.com, right?

So one of the guys, Jake, his thing says, freshman at University of Michigan, which is just kind of insane. Is that true? Let me find this other guy, Oliver. There's no way. Do you think it's founded by it? So this guy, I'm going to study this guy's Twitter, which is just hilarious, first of all.

So this guy's handle is Oliver, Oliver underscore B1 or something like that. that, maybe two underscores. But his name is Oliver B. That's his slash, I sell sex chocolate. That's his name on Twitter. Then, you know, he's got his photo, which is like him with his bros. And yeah, he's, he's been tweeting out, like, you know, how, you know, how it's been doing. So, you know, they did $73,000 this week. He's like, I have this army of user-generated content creators. So like he's like I basically have um you know I think he's got like an army of like 20 creators and he'll pay them between 500 and $3,000 and then they make 30 videos um they make 30 videos a month or something he's being a little uh loose with that word army maybe a a a gaggle he's got a

supper supper party yeah he's got like a he's got like a like a full he's got like a full NHL team He's got half the classroom. I'll have a good touch football game worth of creators. That one knows about Army. It would 20. But honestly, this guy knows more about marketing than like half of the

marketing gurus that you see on social media. Just go look at this guy's content. No, they're like, I think they're bootstrapped. I don't know. I don't know much about them. I'm kind of making up half of this stuff

as I'm going along here. But I know enough. that's, that's an amazing ad. These guys are young. These guys understand marketing at a pretty deep level, especially on new channels like TikTok, and that they've done, you know, like a pretty decent amount of sales.

But I was looking at like his, like, he had said something. He was like bragging about his Roaz or something like that. And it actually wasn't super, that part wasn't super impressive. So I didn't understand why he was bragging about that. Do you, so this is kind of an interesting topic of like, basically,

reach like a young audience or you're trying to look cool, then you go and you hire like a young, cool person and you're like, make us look cool, which is one of two things might happen. One, they think that like, they're trying to make something that just can't be cool, cool. And they ended, like, dude, it's really hard to make like this particular software thing.

Who cares if you're not cool? Hey, fellow kids. Yeah, hey, fellow kids. That's what it's like. And so it's like, dude, it's just not that neat. Or the second thing they do is they end up being just totally dushy. It's like you're,

they make jokes like Elon Musk where like makes like a 420 jokes like funny. Like, right. Funny. Um, have you hired any like kids for that reason? And what was the outcome? Yeah.

The best example was when we, when I hired Steve Bartlett and, uh, he's gone on to do some amazing things. We've talked about him before. Uh, if you don't know, he basically ended up creating a marketing, uh,

like, uh, whatever, a marketing company, marketing agency that did like over $100 million in revenue. It ended up merging with the company. Went public. He's like a dragon on dragons den. He's got a real popular podcast and a bunch of stuff.

He's like, to me, he's the young black Gary Vee. That's like the best description I can have of him. And you think he's totally the real deal? Yeah, he's the real deal. He's the real deal in the sense that like, you know, I don't know in the same way that we were like, dude, Gary Vee's awesome. you know, does he kind of put on for the camera? Of course, that's the game.

Does, you know, is VaynerMedia the best business I've ever seen? No, it's not the best, but it's a great, you know, it's still a business that works and it's like at scale. So, you know, real deal can meet a bunch of things, but I think Steve's the real deal in all of those terms, meaning I've seen his talent firsthand. He's really super talented. So I recruited him from the UK. He flew over. He lived with us and worked with us in San Francisco. And then after that, he basically went and.

spun out his like marketing agency and like that's how he kind of got his start and uh and my whole thinking was like this guy gets social this guy gets social media he's a hustler and like if we're going to build these social apps we need somebody who like a they're they're not like an engineer neck beard like who's like oh yeah people want to share photo galleries because why would I not want to share 128 photos instead of one it's more and it's like no dude people don't want to share 128. They want one disappearing photo actually because I'm trying to send like, you know, something, you know, inappropriate to my friend. I don't want this permanent record. Right. So like, there's a big difference of like what, how an engineer will build a social

product versus how somebody who's, you know, social will build the social product. And, and so I wanted to have basically like somebody who was young who was a user of every social platform to be like, hey, dude, just shit test some of these ideas and be like, is this good or is this not good? And then secondly, when we have something good, be able to like blast it, promote it on social in a way that's not like cringe. And he did that. Like, and so when we were, we were like, all right, let me give you an example. At the time he had this like network of pages. He was like, look, I have all these, I either own or know the owners of these Twitter accounts that have, you know, together like whatever, 50 million followers. So when we're ready to launch,

we'll post it there. And I was like, great. And so again, the engineers are like, like, all right, we're ready. And so I was, you know, my brain went to like, cool, on all these accounts post like, hey, love this new app. It lets you do X, Y, Z. You know, I love this new app, Bebo. It lets you do blank, link and blank. And then engineers like, oh, and make sure we can track the attribution.

So we're going to use this like this URL with this UTM parameter. And they give me this URL that's like 9,000 characters long. It looks ugly as hell. But it's like super trackable. They're like, look at this at the dashboard. We know exactly who clicked and which tweet and all this stuff. And then Steve was like, like, all right,

thanks for the suggestions, but not using that link. In fact, not using any link because nobody's posting a link and nobody posts links on Twitter. And we're like, what? Then how will they go download the app?

He's like, they'll go download it if they hear about it a bunch and they feel like they're missing out. And I was like, yeah, but that's like more work. He's like, yeah,

but again, they're going to feel like they're missing out, not that they're being sold to. And then he's like, and we're also not going to tweet, hey, check out the new Bebo app. It has these features. He's like, we're going to tweet out memes like, you know, my teacher when she sees me,

you know, like my teacher when she hears about Bebo for the 50th time today, and it's her throw, it's a gift of a teacher throwing a phone out this class window and like shattering the window or like, you know, my feel, MFW, my, you know, my face winner, my feeling when I see Bebo trending on Twitter. you know, after 10 years. And it's like, and I was like, but that sounds bad for us, right?

They're annoyed at us. He's like, yeah, get it? It's like they're annoyed because they've been hearing about it so much. And so somebody who's not hearing about it is going to be like, oh shit,

I'm out of the loop. What is this? And they're going to go Google it and find it. And I was like, nah, this is stupid. Guess what? We did it his way. We launched.

We hit number one on the app store charts. Hit, I don't know how many down. I think we hit 250,000 downloads in like the first month or something like that. something crazy. And yeah, it was like insane. And we spent zero dollars. So it was awesome. How did you get the influencers? So Steve owned a bunch of them. So me hiring Steve was like me getting to use Steve's like assets. And then he because he had clout in like the social like meme world of like the people who own these pages, he like pulled a favor. It was like, you know, post this on this day. We're going to get this to trend. I need this. He was like a 21 year

trying to prove himself. So he's like, yo, I need you to do me a favor here. Put this thing up here. So maybe we paid like, I don't know, a few thousand dollars total,

but like, you know, nothing to get like hundreds of thousands of downloads and number one rank in the overall app store charts. And we did that. Was he a pain in the ass to employ though? No,

no, he wasn't a pain in the ass. But I'll tell you first, why I knew we needed to hire Steve. So when we wanted to, we were building this app and we were like, all right,

this social app definitely leans towards his younger audience. We're like, all right, we got to be like, in touch with, you know, high schoolers, basically. So I told Jason and Tyler, I was like, guys, we need to be like, we need to be able to pitch

our app to high schoolers and see what they think about it. And I was like, all right, well, how the hell are we going to do that? So first they were like coming up with all these schemes. And I was like, guys, like, I came visit them like an hour later. And I was like, right, what's the plan? How many high schoolers you got? They're like, none. We're like coming up with a PowerPoint deck on like how we're going to do this or something

like that. They're like coming up with a plan. And I was like, all right, like, let me put it differently to you guys. Here's a better question. In the next hour, how can I show our. app to like two high schoolers. Go let's go make that happen. And they're like, okay, all right.

And they got it. They got what I was looking for. So they first were like, all right, my nephew's on the line. So we got the two. And I was like, great. How do we get 20 high schoolers now at the next hour? And they're like, okay, there's a bunch of high schoolers over here at the mall near our office.

Like they went over there with a sign that said, you know, test our app, get a free burrito. And they got like immediately like 20 people. And they're like, okay, that was cool, but there was only 20 people there. It's like, how are we going to do this regularly? And so we found a high school nearby. And so we went over there. First, they started the same thing.

They had a sign outside, free burrito if you try our app, and people were signing up like crazy. We didn't have burritos, by the way. It was just like, I promise. We're like, I don't know. We'll figure out how to get you a burrito later. And then there, so we got a bunch of people to like try it out. And then a teacher came out and was like, hey, guys, what's going on here? They were like, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.

We're not creeps. We're just like, we're trying to get beta testers for our app. Do you know what that word means? And they were like, oh, cool. You're a startup? And they were like, come on in. And they invited us to come speak. They're like, hey, you know, like, you can just like take over my class for the day.

I'll just sit down and play Sudoku and you just teach my kids about startups. It sounds like the most naive trusting teacher, like to a fault. It was. It definitely was. Oh, you're, are you a little kid lover? Great. Come on in. You must love kids so much.

You build apps for them. So you're a little kid lover. It's definitely worrisome, like why it was so easy. But literally that's what happened. So for seven, seven hours straight that day, like a class would come in, 50 kids, we would teach them about startups for 15 minutes and then we would pitch them our app for 15 minutes and then we'd be like next and we but just by doing that you know to take you know basically 30 kids per class time seven we're getting 210 kids a day in the same school to download our app so like all

their friends were on the app so it was a great it was like this great way to like take over a high school in a day and see if it goes viral once we get that seed community but in one of them we so with the first day we go and it's me and jason I'm like dude it's cool I'm cool I'm cool I and I was like, I start talking. I'm like, yeah, that's tight. And they start giggling. And I'm like, oh, shit, tight was a cool word. But I was in high school.

I was like, it's lit. It's super lit. And they're like, I was like, I was already outed. It's like not cool by saying tight. And so I got like humbled big time. I'm like realizing. And by the way, if you go talk to kid like high school class, like, they just don't give a shit.

They don't pay attention. They'll just be like straight talking to somebody else while you're talking. And you can't control them at all. And so I was like, oh, man, this teaching is so. hard. And then I'm like, and so I'm like, okay, whatever, let's skip to the end. I'll skip to the part where we test our app. So I was like, all right, you guys want to see our app? And they were like, nobody says anything.

I'm like, okay, um, you know, the first person who downloads our app, like, you know, you get candy from this bowl. And they're like, all right, what's app. And I was like, and I was like, what's the name of it? I was like, oh, it's not in the app store yet. It's on test flight. And I, and I can just feel the blood raining from my body. As I said

that, I was like, what the fuck were we thinking? And then I was like, I was like, I'm going to put the link up here. on the projector, just like type that in and it'll take you to the thing. And this kid in the back, no joke, he goes, links are gay. I was so embarrassed. And I just got wrecked and I started laughing so hard.

I could have stopped laughing. And I was like, and literally at the office from there on out, we were like, hey, HR, we don't mean this in a bad way, but it's the funniest thing that just happened. The whole company is in on this joke. and so anytime somebody was like, yo, send me that link in Slack and somebody else would be like links are gay

because it was the most like you thought you got nagged I got straight bit slapped by this like 13 year old and it was unbelievable it was unbelievable by the way the other thing every high school kid has just a cracked screen

none of them have a phone that's like the screen intact they all got cracked screens you know what I think about everyone once in a So do you remember this company called Chubbies? Yeah. So basically they made shorts for, they made like short shorts. And they were great guys.

But like their customers and we're just like bros, like hard. Like Chad Bro Chill like the hardest, the hardest like bros you can think of. And which is like that's fine. But I don't want to be like 40 years old and having to like make ads like about summer and spring break. Like, you know, like. you know what I mean? I don't relate to that at all. At least I don't if I'm like 40.

And it's kind of like the barstool guys. It's like, man, you're losing your hair. You still want to be doing like these beer bongs? And I think about like to build a social app or even like other products like Chubbies in that space. And to be a grown adult doing it, it's kind of, if that doesn't work, it's super embarrassing. I thought you were going with some highly intellectual conclusion here. You basically were like, you know, like, yeah, you're kind of a loser. It's just embarrassing, man.

Like, it's like, it's cool because TikTok worked. But imagine a bunch of like a 45, I think the guy who started TikTok or whatever, what's it called bit, the owner of TikTok. I forget what it's called Bitnami or what's this shit. bite dance. Like this like 43 year old Chinese guy trying to make products for like. But it worked, dude. American girls like young 14 year old American girls.

It's like yeah, it's cool because it worked. But man, this was like this could have gone either way. Like this could have gone either way. And and like that's kind of, that's kind of scary to me. Not scary, but that's like another one. We built. So after that app. So we go through that process that I get humiliated.

I'm like, oh my God. I go back to the team. I'm like, we are so far disconnected from like our customer. Like we thought we could go in there, teach them about startups as if they give a shit, and then tell them to download our test flight app from a link. And like, you know, we all heard how that went down. Okay. So, so, you know, I got basically like, I was like a character in South Park that day.

So I got honed. And then I was like, well, let's, so we pivot and we try this other app that was like, the idea was like, it ended up being what house party was. So us and house party at the same time. It was like an app where it's like, I don't want to call somebody, but like, I'm down to hang out if somebody else happened to be like free at the same time.

And so it was this app where you could just kind of say like, you know, you could just say if you're available. And if other people are too, you can just get into kind of a more of spontaneous conversation versus the phone call where it's like, dude, what do you need for me?

But I was like, well, so they made the app. They made the prototype real quick. Engineers are great again. And then the front screen, they're like, hey, we need some texts for this. Like,

because right now it just says like, you know, push to begin. like, you know, like initiate. And I was like, oh, no, that's like, we don't want to write like initiate. That's not going to work. Again, teenagers, they don't like links. What are they like to do? Netflix and chill.

And so I was like, oh, just make it like a swipe like Tinder. I was like, so we just said swipe to chill. And like literally like the first version said swipe to chill. And the we had one guy Johnny Dow was working for us. And he was a teenager. So he was like a 16 year old programmer. And he saw Swipe to Chill. And you could just see him being like, do I have to share this?

with my friends. Like, could you guys with other people before I said this to my friends? Because it says swipe to chill on the front. And like, that's not a thing people say or do. So it was all bad, dude. That sucks. Okay. So then let me tell you Steve Bartlett's story. All right. So I'm like, we need, we need some young blood in this office. Steve Bartlett cold emails me. A great cold email. I'm like, this guy's awesome. Fly him and his buddy out. And we're like, you guys work for us now. You're our kind of like our youth department. How did they stay in America? There was no like visa.

Now they were just not a tourist thing that came. They could stay for three months out of time and then they would go back and they would come again. And did they live at the office? They would live. We got them a hotel, but it was like they're staying for a while. So we were like, all right, just stay at the office because there's an apartment built in. And like, you know, just I don't know, make it work. Dude.

Did you ever think like what did Steve tell his parents? Like, can you imagine 20 year old or 19 year old view? explaining what's going to happen. Yeah, I would have been like, this is awesome. And I knew Steve was wired like that. So he was also like, this is awesome. He didn't bother tell his parents. He was like living his life.

So he thought this is great. So Steve's there. And if you remember, our office is kind of a baller pad. So Steve basically went from like living in like a dump and like a tiny, you know, like he was a college dropout in the UK and making no money to

he comes to the US. And now he's living in this like baller pad that has like a bar built into it, a private chef. all these perks. It just looks like it's designed like straight out of some like British magazine. And Steve would take advantage of that.

So he was living there. And so he would like, you know, people would leave the office 6, 7 p.m. And then what he would do is he would like go and he didn't invite friends over. He was on Tinder. Tinder was active. And so we would come into the office in the morning.

And like I remember one day I came in and like some girl was like leaving, doing the walk of shame, holding her heels in her hand. of like walking out and like, you know, we had women working in the office who were like, who is this girl? Like,

what? And why is she like hung over leaving the, like the bedroom in the office? Like, what's going on here? And then Steve would come down and he'd be like, and he was like, you know,

proud of himself and away. Dude, I'm winning at life. And so, so that was a little bit of a problem. And then I remember they would like, what did you say to him like, hey,

you know, you can't even, yes, you are living here, but you can't live. here. Yeah, I think I told him once, but I remember just like, even in the conversation, it was like, oh, man, he feels like he's in the principal's office and I feel like the principal. And like, I can tell this is lame because he wasn't doing anything out of any malice, right?

Like, it would just be like they would just, you know, they'd be hanging out drinking, you know, at the bar we have in our office. But they would kind of like leave the bar is kind of sticky and with beers ever. They didn't know to like, you know, just like some professionalism stuff. Like, it's a Tuesday night. I should just like, let me just at least make this look like we weren't here drinking and hanging out all night and playing the music. and the neighbors get a noise complaint, stuff like, stuff like that, right?

Nothing, nothing harmful, nothing like bad, just like slightly annoying to people who felt like they were parenting them in the morning when they came in. And like, I remember one time the funniest one and the one where I was like, oh, this is just not working out. They had like, or I was talking to our office manager and I was like, I promised, I talked to Steve. They're not going to like play the music too loud. And like, they'll clean up the beers or whatever.

And like that happened one day And then the next day No beers No loud music It was all good And then she opened up like The supply closet To like get like some new pencils

And like sticky notes for the meeting we had Like the board meeting we had And like just a giant pizza box Fell out Why would you put a pizza in this closet Like just throw the pizza in the trash And she was like These kids like I can't do this shot

I can't do this And I was like Did you fire him? No no no I didn't fire him But I was like I kind of knew in my head I was like you know what birds got to fly i was like these guys they're talented they need to do their own thing

them conforming into like our office like set up and like it's just not like a fit you know like they don't need to run these meetings like these daily stand-up meetings with the engineers it's like that's not their skill set that's not what they need to do like they're good at like taking something that's dope and making it like pop in the market like and they just need to do that and then basically that's what their market agents did they would just find cool brands to work with and they would figure out how to tell that story and make it big and trend in social media. And it turns out they were great at that.

And they made like hundreds of millions of dollars doing that. And so that was like a successful outcome. But I kind of knew in my head, I was like, all right, there's these advantages when you bring in these sort of like, these non-domesticated cats. And they're going to like, they're going to be real with you about the market.

They're going to like have fresh ideas. They're going to be good at like playing the social media game. But like, you know, they're not going to be the best at like, you know, running this like, you know, agile software, like, you know, uh, meeting. This is not what they, you know, they don't need to be product managers. They need to be like out in the out about. I remember I read a profile about him when he was still pretty young and it was working.

And it was like BuzzFeed or something. I think it was BuzzFeed. And he must have been only 23 or 24. And they were like, basically the office has like a slide in there. And like it was like everything young like a McDonald's play pan. And he was like, They've got like 40 employees here. And I asked them how much each person is getting paid.

And it was like $25,000 a year. It was like nothing. And but they like love it because it's the first time a 21 year old is able to like be the head of HR and like just figure out stuff as she went. And I was like, I don't know about those numbers. But I do remember at one point it was like they had 23 employees and I think 22 of them were under the age of 22. Like it was like all 21 year olds. And they were like and that was the the vice article or the whatever. box article or whatever it was. It's just like, meet the 21-year-olds who are running the internet

right now. And it was true. Like, they were really, they owned all of the popular Instagram and Twitter accounts in Europe. And so they just had like crazy ability to influence the market. And they had the right people to do it, right? Like, that's who knew how to build those pages. And that was the business. The business was brands would pay to advertise on those Twitter and Instagram handles. Initially, that's how we used it. But the, and that was a part of it. We were like, we created this idea of like this thunder clap, which was like getting all those pages on the same day to be talking about your brand.

You came up at that name? I remember saying it, but I think other people use that term. So I don't think in my head, I invented it, but I'm sure I learned it. I heard it somewhere, I'm sure.

But the thing what they were doing was then they were, they would just like, a brand would be like, hey, how do we, what's our social strategy? So then it, they quickly got away from just like, hey, pay to post on our pages,

because that's kind of like transactional to like, hey, Netflix, do you want to know how to do your social? Why don't we just be your agency of record for social media, for your social media marketing? And like, that became with a fat retainer and like ongoing campaigns. And then like, and then they would like do like proper videos and like kind of viral video stunts, things like that, whole strategies for these brands.

So that's what it became. And then they launched their own brands too. We've been getting the past few episodes. We've been getting more into just try to just tell them the funny stories. eager to see if this is the route that we should go. It's way more fun, that's for sure. Yeah, it's fun. But after every episode, I have to do like a cancellation check-in and be like,

was I sexist, racist, racist, homophobic? Is there anything that I said that could have been construed as hateful in any way to any group of people that is going to be, like, offensive? Like, I tweeted out this thing the other day that's like, by the way, they're never hateful. They're always like a compliment. But I tweeted out this thing, which was like, you know, my. investment criteria, you know, big market, good traction. Founder is Mormon, Russian, Jewish, or whatever. I like said something, but it was like positive. It was like, because I think those founders like on balance are awesome. Like I've had. And it was a joke. And it was a joke, right? And people were

like, what does race have anything to do with who you'll fund? This is what's wrong with? And I was like, well, first of all, it's a joke to be clear. Like did, did you think this was serious? And secondly, like, it wasn't a joke saying, I don't fund these, you know, these random niche minority groups. It's like, no, I think Mormons are awesome at sales. And like, you know, just as a as a general, like, positive prejudice, you know, I am, I'm inclined to believe that these people are really smart or really talented, really gritty or really whatever. And, you know, but of course, like, there's no winning, right? Like, the audience that like gets that and thinks it's awesome is like so small compared to like the other audience that's like, I will make it my life's mission to like get

you canceled that for this for this uh this joke you said the um the nelk boys which is like those youtube guys now they got this they've got a new podcast it's only good because it there's they're not like good at asking questions but they're good because they're so famous that they get like the best guess so the knelk boys had Donald trump on you know like one of the most famous people in the world they had um you know all types of like they had uh habib on they had dana white on they have like all these like hugely famous people and they were talking to day port And they were like, yeah, like, we're uncanceable because like everyone's expectations of us are so low. Right.

And like, we're just degenerate. So like, everyone's like, yeah, of course they did that thing. Like there's no surprise there. These guys are idiots. And I'm not sure if we're there yet. I don't know if we may be. I think we can be. But it's like, you know, for example.

Do you want to be? Yeah, do you want to be, right? Like, I call it the cancellation vaccination. It's like, do you want to be vaccinated against cancellation? Here's what it entails. You need to consistently be provided. provocative. Never apologize. Like, cater to your base and ignore the rest.

And like, that's the cancellation vaccination. That's what Joe Rogan does. What Donald Trump does. It's what the milk boys do. It's what any group of people, Dave Chappelle, it's any group of people who like, they're like, look, I'm going to say what's on my mind. There's going to be some people who are offended by this. That's not my audience.

Some people who understand the point of view where I'm coming from. They're going to understand what's a joke. They're going to understand when I'm saying something positive about somebody. That doesn't mean it's negative about somebody else. And they're just like, and they're like, I'm willing to do this. I'm willing to take heat. I'm not going to apologize, et cetera, et cetera. And so, you know, that's like the cancelation.

Now, I think you do that. I think you also need to be financially independent or directly fan supported. And like, for example, this is a HubSpot podcast network podcast. You work at HubSpot. I don't think they're going to love some of the jokes that you tell. Like, even if that person individually thinks it's funny, they'd rather us just take no risk, right? why. For them, the risk reward calculator is like, oh, just take no risks and it's fine.

Just like, do your other stuff. It's great. Whereas for us, it's like, dude, no, like I'm here to have a conversation with Sam. I want this to be like a conversation we would actually have. I think that's how you get super fans because they feel like you're being authentic. You're not, you're not like separating the real you from like this like public podcast version of you. And I know my intentions are pure.

I know I'm not actually a bad guy. I am not sexist, racist, or homophobic, or any of those things. And if I say that I think Mormons are awesome founders, I think that that should be a, I think that should be a totally fine thing to say, right? I don't think that's a controversial thing in my books. And so I'm like, you know, I'm part of the common sense party and I want other people who are, you know, like, can use their common sense or are not like easily offended around me. But that's a, that's a risky path to take.

That's a good speech. I'm on board. Good, very good speech. All right. I guess that's the episode. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off.

On the road, let's travel, never looking back.