My First Million - The Secret Founders Of +$1,000,000,000 Brands

Starting point is 00:00:00 So here's some quotes I'd like to read you. Okay. On blowing $100 million, quote, it happens. Next quote. When you talk about blowing $100 million, I know cats that blew double that. That's the second response. It continues. It can happen to anyone, which I don't say.

Starting point is 00:00:21 I don't think you can happen to anyone. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off on the road All right, what's up? We got a fun episode here. So we're going to play a little game. And the game is that, Sam, I want me and you to go back and forth,

Starting point is 00:00:42 kind of like we do when we hang out if we were just back in the day when we both used to drink a drink a beer or two. And we would just try to entertain each other, sort of one-up each other with stories. And I'll tell you a story, a business story that I think is pretty juicy. You tell me a business story that you think is pretty juicy. and we're going to see who we're going to measure these to see who can tell the juiciest backstory behind celebrity brands.

Starting point is 00:01:06 I texted you last night, I go, celebrity brands, but not the celebrity part, the juicy backstory. And that's all we said to each other. Like, for example, we don't use this one, but what's the Kylie Cosmetics? Kendall, what's her name? Kylie Jenner. Kylie Jenner. She has this lipstick company that does hundreds of millions of millions.

Starting point is 00:01:27 in revenue. She's obviously not the one like running the show. She had a partner with someone, a number two, a behind the scenes person. We're going to talk all about behind the scenes people. Who is that number two? How did they make this come about? How do they get the celebrity partnership? What made it work versus many others that failed? Who are these sharks that are behind the scenes? Who's the number two? I dare say, we're going number two today. And we're doing it live with all of you. All right? That sounds good. And we will we rate it from Razid to grape with the wine being a 10 out of 10, grip being nine out of 10. I don't actually know what's the in between stages of raisin and grape.

Starting point is 00:02:04 Is it juicy like a prune, like a raisin, like a grape, or is it straight wine? That's how juicy this is. Juicy juice boxes. That's how good these can be. All right. Dude, I have a low juicy story. I wanted to ask your opinion about before we get into this. Yeah, go for it.

Starting point is 00:02:21 Listen, this weekend, I went to Miami for this Hampton thing. We went like lobster diving. It was awesome. I stayed at a very fancy hotel. I'm not going to name the hotel yet because I went to the end of the story. I was working out, you know those cable machines? It's like cable machines where used that rod,

Starting point is 00:02:37 like you use the rod to like change the weights at the bottom. And you know how there's like a 2.5 pound weight that's usually at the top that's like adjustable? Yeah. I was fixing the weight and the machine was broken apparently. I didn't notice it. It was broken. And that 2.5 pound weight fell on my finger. I have got my finger looks like a great.

Starting point is 00:02:57 Can you see that? Is it all purple? Yeah, I can see it. All right. The question is, is what type of petticoat do we go to about this? Is this just like, is this just like a free stay? Like, do I get my money back? Is it like I want my money back plus like another free stay?

Starting point is 00:03:12 Well, you have to find a way to talk where you're waving that. Like, you got to change your gestures. So like you got to have like this Obama style just gesticular, you know, motions when you're talking. Because you need to see the manager. The manager needs to see the finger. And the finger, I mean, you're not trying to wave it in their face. It's just, you just need to do one of those where you point at it. You're like, what I'm, what else does do about this?

Starting point is 00:03:37 I mean, I need something for this. This is a off your property. Sure did. Look, if I go to a fancy hotel, I expect a fancy gym. Not like when the screws come out of the freaking equipment. So my finger looks like a grape right now. It's like, you know, it's one of those injuries that isn't, you don't do anything with a broken finger, right? You do nothing.

Starting point is 00:04:01 But God damn, it hurts. This is like when Willis Reed limped into game seven of the NBA finals from the tunnel and the crowd goes crazy. They said, no, it's not possible. He couldn't possibly be playing with that injury. That's how people playing this podcast today should feel about your ability to persevere through that injury. I'm a blogger, bro. I'm a, I'm a tweeter. I tweet.

Starting point is 00:04:21 And also, I can't exercise now for a week. And that's why I make a living is with my seven out of ten body. That's how a cat feels when they lose one of their lives. So anyway, maybe I'll have an update to the story. Maybe I'll get a free stay to blank hotel name. But we'll see if I can persevere with this aching finger. But I think we could do it. Do you want to go first?

Starting point is 00:04:44 Okay. So there's this woman named Emma Greed. Do you know that name? No. Emma Greed. First of all, destined to be famous with the name like that. Emma Greed. Greed, like greed, like money greed.

Starting point is 00:04:54 Yeah, but it's G-R-E-D-E, says a little bit, like got her own, got her own spin on it. So she is the business shark behind a bunch of the Kardashian brands. So she was a founding partner in Skims, the multi-billion dollar shapewear brand for Kim Kardashian. Her husband is the CEO of that, by the way. So the couple is behind this. The next one is she co-founded Good American, the jeans, brand that's massive. That probably does 300 million a year in revenue.

Starting point is 00:05:27 So, you know, with Chloe Kardashian. So that's how she broke into that. And then with Chris Jenner, she goes to the mom and she co-founds safely a plant-based cleaning product brand with her and Chrissy Teigen. And so this woman, she's so impressive. If you've ever seen her, a lot of people now have seen her because I think she's on Shark Tank this season. So if you like are into that form of like, you know, entertainment.

Starting point is 00:05:52 you've seen her. She's so, she's super polished. So she's, she's this woman who's half black, half white, super good looking,

Starting point is 00:06:01 British accent, and an absolute savage in terms of business. This is what I've gathered from watching a bunch of interviews of hers. By the way, did you see the recent raise

Starting point is 00:06:09 for Skims? I think Skims raised $200 million at a $3 billion valuation. Yeah. And she owns, she owned 8% of that. I don't know after dilution

Starting point is 00:06:19 what she owns, but she owned 8% of that. So her stake in Skims alone is basically a multi-hundred million dollar stake. Forget about good American where she was like, you know, it was her idea. She was the, the, kind of the CEO. She's the, she's the operator behind that. So here's, you want to hear her story? It's, uh, it's pretty good. So she's, um, she's daughter of a single mom, which is the start of every great, uh, entrepreneurial story, by the way. Uh, second thing, she, she basically is like a hustler when she's young. She's got a paper route. She's like working

Starting point is 00:06:48 at a deli. She's just working all kinds of like blue collar jobs. And she's like, like, okay, you know what? I want to make it in fashion. And so she goes to the London College of fashion and she's 14, 15 years old. She's already like interning at Gucci. She's like hustling her way into like these like low level internships at fashion brands. And she drops out because she's like, dude, I'm hustling on the weekends and after school like these fashion shows or in my internship. I'm networking with all these people. I feel like I'm learning way more and building a way more valuable asset, which is my network outside of school. I am inside of school.

Starting point is 00:07:23 So she drops out and she starts working for a couple of like, she works for like a runway company. And then she starts her own agency. She's like, oh, okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to create this agency called ITB.

Starting point is 00:07:35 She's 26 years old, I think at the time. Wow. And she's like, she'd been hustling in the fashion industry. So now she's got connections. So she's like, hey,

Starting point is 00:07:41 let me just be a dock connector. And so she's like, I'm going to connect all these fashion brands want to do collabs with influencers and celebrities. And I'll create an agency that does that for them. So, oh, The way she kind of got her break was Calvin Klein wants to do a campaign for their new launch of whatever the new thing is.

Starting point is 00:07:59 She sources 70 different models and influencers for them, signs all the contracts. One of those people is Kendall Jenner. To do that deal, she meets Chris Jenner. And so she becomes somewhat friendly, like they've done a couple of campaigns together. She's booked her out. She has a little bit of respect. So here's what she does then. She's like, okay, this model of connecting, like using kind of celebrity influencers is working for these brands.

Starting point is 00:08:22 but they kind of do it in an authentic way. It's like only transaction. It's like when you need the, when you need them to promote X product, they show up and then they disappear. She's like, no, no, no. I think we should have a story and a celebrity at the beginning of these brands.

Starting point is 00:08:36 And so she has this idea or good American, a denim brand that is, I don't know if you're how familiar you are with it, but it's basically like their thing is it's kind of like all sizes. It's sort of like body positive early on. And she was like, you know, we're going to have,

Starting point is 00:08:51 we're going to carry like from size zero to size whatever like 24. Imagine that pitch to one of the Kardashians. It works because she's like, I know, but like, look, here's the thing, Chloe.

Starting point is 00:09:05 She's like, why me? Well, Chloe, you might want to sit down for a second. Yeah. Yeah. You have to say one of those things like,

Starting point is 00:09:13 I'm not racist, but it's like, I'm not trying to be offensive, but you're the perfect fit for this brand. I don't know which one is Chloe, but they're all like obviously fit and skinny, but maybe she's like the, she's the one who kind of went up and down and wait.

Starting point is 00:09:28 She was like, at first she was like the big, the bigger one of the sisters and she like had these like sisters who were like, you know, size zero. That was insecurity. And she got super,

Starting point is 00:09:37 super skinny. But then she like kind of, you know, naturally people's weight flexion. Imagine that conversation with like weight watchers or like one of these brands comes to you. You know what I'm honored. You know how Jamie.

Starting point is 00:09:48 You know how. You know, Jamie Lee Curtis is the spokesperson for that yogurt company that makes you poop regularly. What's like? Yeah, I don't know which one. It's like a yogurt that like elderly people are supposed to eat. So it makes them go to the bathroom like on a regular basis. Like a mess shit.

Starting point is 00:10:07 Like we're going to call it oops, I cracked my pants. And we want you to be the face of it. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's a weird conversation. Who cares? I don't care. there's no problem with this.

Starting point is 00:10:23 So she pitches Chris Jenner. She goes, Chris, she bumped her a draft fashion. She's like, I got an idea for a brand. And she was expecting like, look, I know you guys get hundreds of offers, but she's like, I've already seen how much of a hustler you are. She's like, I observed the way you operate. Like I already kind of like kind of co-sign this. You should just meet with Chloe directly.

Starting point is 00:10:43 See if Chloe likes it. If she likes it, you already has my blessing. So she meets with Chloe. Chloe, Chloe's in, and they basically start this brand. Brand has scaled up now into the hundreds of millions. It's one of the fastest growing denim brands and jeans brands. From there, she then approaches Kim, and she's like, Kim, we should do a shapewear brand. And her husband, who's also in the fashion industry, became the kind of the day-to-day person

Starting point is 00:11:06 because she was busy with Good American, but they together create skims, which becomes a multi-billion dollar shapewear brand. Then she does this one with her with the mom as well. And so I just found this fascinating what this family is doing. So they basically have a hold co. The Glead family. What's the Glebe family? The Glebe family.

Starting point is 00:11:25 So Jim's Greed and Emma Greed. So they basically have a hold co called Popular Ventures or something, a popular culture or something like that. Like he also did Brady, the clothing brand with Tom Brady. So they're spitting up these fashion and consumer product brands with A plus celebrities. And they've built, they're on the Forbes list now. These guys have a like, you know, $400, $500 million net worth just co-founding these with the Kardashian family and with, you know, Tom Brady and whatnot. So impressive to have pulled that off behind the scenes.

Starting point is 00:11:58 And what's frame? They have another one called frame. That's the fashion brand that the husband started. They sell like $300 T-shirts. I don't get it. But like, you know. Have you seen what they look like this husband and wife couple? It's hard to like them because they're so good looking.

Starting point is 00:12:11 They're like perfect. Yeah. Like they're so good looking. They both look like influences. I was definitely reading it and I was like, yeah, but they probably don't have a good relationship. I was like trying to find some crack.

Starting point is 00:12:23 I was like, might have cholesterol issues. You never know. Nobody's got it all. Yeah. Yeah, but this guy probably broke both fingers, not even just one. Yeah, they're pretty perfect.

Starting point is 00:12:34 Like these guys look like influencers themselves. And so, all right, so where do you rank on the juicy scale? Emma and Jen's greed from prune to wine. It's in the middle. So they're incredibly impressive.

Starting point is 00:12:51 This is amazing that they do this. What's even more amazing is that, so John Rockefeller had this famous phrase where he would, when he was trying to buy other companies, he was like, look, you should join my oil company. I make so much money. And they're like, no, you can't make more.

Starting point is 00:13:06 He goes, look, I know, I make money, I make money in ways that you can't even dream about. have no idea how much money I make. And that's exactly what the Kardashians are like. This good America, that's just this little thing I don't even heard of that makes hundreds of millions of dollars. That's amazing. But there's no drama here.

Starting point is 00:13:22 So I'm going to put it like right in the middle. A prune. Does a prune have juice in it? I think it does. We're going to give it a prune. A prune's the lowest. Prasin is the middle I think we're going with. Then it's a raisin.

Starting point is 00:13:33 This is a raisin. There's no drama here. I need some drama. But this is, these guys are amazing. They're a perfect couple. I understand. I try to start with. like, you know, raised from a single mother, because that was really the only, like,

Starting point is 00:13:45 story of not just badass winning, you know, but the humble origin story. But I agree with you. There was a, like, if you Google her name, there's like a picture of her and Chloe Kardashian posing with, I guess, one of their brands. And they look like models. Like, I was like, is this the founder or a model? They look like models. This reminds me of, I actually didn't do research on this guy, but it reminds me, he,

Starting point is 00:14:11 is also in the Kardashian sphere, but have you heard of Brian Lee? The Honest Company guy? Yeah, so Brian Lee, so do you remember who, it's so weird, do you remember Robert Shapiro? I don't know if you would remember him.

Starting point is 00:14:23 Lawyer, who is that? The lawyer, the lawyer. So basically Robert Shapiro was one of the guys, I think he defended O.J. Simpson. That's what he was famous for. Do you remember that? That's their dad, right? No, so this is where it gets funny.

Starting point is 00:14:37 So the Kardashian family is famous because one of the Kardashians, I forget the name, the dad who's died, he defended OJ Simpson along with Robert Shapiro. And Robert Shapiro, he's a lawyer, big shot, probably a smart guy. He ends up partnering

Starting point is 00:14:56 with Brian Lee. This guy did it in 2001, so Brian Lee was only in his early 20s. He goes, hey, I have this idea for this legal company, but I need a celebrity to be the face of it. So somehow he actually Cole called Robert Shapiro said, hey, do you want to be a partner on my new legal company? And he's like, yeah, come to my office, let's talk about it. And he wooes them.

Starting point is 00:15:17 It works out. Well, that company is now called Legal Zoom. And it's a, I don't know if it's quite a billion-dollar company, but it's in that range. It's a really successful company. And so Robert Shapiro and Brian Lee were like, hey, this worked. Who do you else do you want to do it with? And Robert Shapiro was like, well, I got these friends. You know, I worked with their dad, the Kardashians.

Starting point is 00:15:35 What if we worked with them? And so he does it again, and he creates this company called shoe dazzle. which doesn't end up working out amazingly. And he was actually pretty early. This was in 2009 with Kim Kardashian. He partnered with her. And it was like a subscription shoe company. Didn't work out that well.

Starting point is 00:15:48 And his third company, he did called The Honest Company, which I think they went public. Do they go public? Yeah, they are public. And so he partnered with Jessica Alba for that. And he ended up selling like, I think, $30 million with his shares

Starting point is 00:16:01 before it even went public. Now he's doing it again, where he co-founded another company with Derek Jeter, and it's a digital sports card collecting companies. So this guy, Brian Lee has been doing the same thing, very similar to the greed family of, like, in the Kardashian sphere and just, like, being the operator. And he's a pretty amazing guy. So Brian Lee's an interesting guy as well. Dude, we could pull up on this company's stock, by the way.

Starting point is 00:16:24 Hammered. Absolutely got hammered. What's at now? When it debuted in 2021, it was at $20 a share, is currently at $1.40. It is now only worth $130 million market cap. Is it really? I think they do like $100 million in sales. So I guess it's straight for one time's revenue.

Starting point is 00:16:43 Ouch. It's kind of great brand. I wonder who's going to buy that. I feel like that's a great target to buy. Yeah, it's an interesting one. But this guy, Brian Lee's been doing this stuff. We'll put him in the same category, though. That's only a middle one.

Starting point is 00:16:57 When you're with the Kardashians, it's kind of a stack deck. Yeah, it's a stack deck. All right. You do one. All right. I have one. So this one's kind of popular right now. but there's a really interesting story behind it.

Starting point is 00:17:09 So virtual dining company, or is that what it's called? Sorry, virtual dining concepts. So basically a couple years ago, Mr. Beasts launched Beesberger. And the idea that I think they actually, do they tell us in the pod? I think he mentioned this in the pod, right? His manager? Yeah, I think so. He was basically like, we had this idea and we went from like idea to executing in

Starting point is 00:17:29 such a short amount of time, which was a huge mistake. I think he said they did it in like 60 days or 90 days, something crazy. But they partnered with this company called Verbalt. virtual dining concepts and they launch this thing. Two years later now, it's like a shit show. So Mr. Beas is tweeting, and he's actually deleted a bunch of the tweets, but he's basically said, like, this company has ruined my reputation because the burger sucks, the quality control sucks.

Starting point is 00:17:51 Now, they are both suing each other. So that alone is a story, but that's not even an interesting part. The interesting part is the guy behind it. So the guy behind it, his name is Robert Earl. So Robert Earl is interesting because in his early 20s, he started a company that, It was just a restaurant. I think it was like a medieval restaurant. Have you ever seen those on like movies?

Starting point is 00:18:13 No, but every time I would go to Vegas, I would stay at, was that castle one called the medieval castle? It's like that terrible hotel. That's where I always stayed. Well, he started this thing. I think it was called beef eater. And it was in England. He's from England.

Starting point is 00:18:27 And it was called beef eater. And it was like a medieval themed restaurant. And so he starts growing that. And after a handful of years, like 10 years, he sells it. makes like $60 million. And he's like, all right, what, what next? And so his next thing is Planet Hollywood. Do you remember Planet Hollywood?

Starting point is 00:18:44 Of course. So Planet Hollywood was a restaurant concept where it was like, we're going to go big with all the stars. So it was big stars where Bruce Willis, Sylvester Salone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and then like Demi Moore, Sydney Crawford. He had like all the stars like aligned with this restaurant. And he gave them all equity and goes,

Starting point is 00:19:00 you guys are going to be a face. We're going to do Planet Hollywood. You go to the restaurant and there's going to be like wax figures of all the celebrities, whatever. It was a big deal at the time. And he expands it and eventually goes public. But they expand way too quickly and they eventually go bankrupt. But it's still like, it's kind of like a famous failure in that.

Starting point is 00:19:16 It actually probably could have worked, but they expand it too quickly. Then he keeps doing this shit, though. So he eventually buys. He's a concept junkie. This guy. He's a concept. This guy is a concept junkie. Can you imagine just brainstorming with this guy?

Starting point is 00:19:29 Like this guy would, this guy would not stop. I feel like I got to be, I need to get in a room with Robert. Earl and I need to have a brainstorm. Well, he's really interesting. And so now he's got this thing, I think it's called Look Up Earl Enterprises. So he's got this thing now where he owns, they own like 30 different restaurants now.

Starting point is 00:19:50 And it does something like $500, $600 million a year in revenue. And some of the brands are a chicken restaurant with Guy Fierry. He owns a, do you know, you know, Belduci, like Italian sandwiches and like pasta restaurants? Yeah, Bertucci. it's like better than Applebee's a little bit. You know, they're like... Barely better than Applebee's is the bar we hold and maintain vigorously for all of our guns.

Starting point is 00:20:13 Yeah, that's like the thing. None of them are like crazy, fancy, but they're all like, you know, it's like $25 a meal type of thing. But he owns a ton of them. And so he's in all, not all of them, but many of them have a celebrity behind them. And so he gets this idea when Ghost Kitchen start popping up with Uber and DoorDash starts popping up. And so he gets his son to help. co-found this new company with them. And that's what virtual dining is.

Starting point is 00:20:38 And so he has one with bar stool where it's like part in... Part of my cheese steak. Part of my cheese steak. It's a cheese steak business. And then he decides to do the same thing, except this time he does it with Mr. Beesburger or Mr. It's called Mr. Beasberger. And it takes off.

Starting point is 00:20:55 But then obviously they have their issues. But he has still done it with a ton of people. So he's done it with Mariah Carey. So he has Mariah's cookies. He's done it with rapper Tyga, which is crazy to me that Tyga is even relevant. But I think, by the way, how does he have that much cool? Well, Tyga dated one of the Kardashian girls. So maybe that's how I don't know.

Starting point is 00:21:14 You can walk into my house right now. And I would say, hey, sir, what's your name? I would not know who Tyga is. Yeah, it's weird. So he has Taiga bites. They have part of my cheesecake. I need to meet somebody who's just eating Tiger bites. Like, who are the customer?

Starting point is 00:21:32 Tiga bite thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They are strong in United. I think I think he's working on Huba stank Hogis. That's going to be the next one. Yeah, I don't know what the deal is with Tyga. But he's done this a whole bunch of times where he has this like pretty massive empire. And right now he's being sued.

Starting point is 00:21:51 And he's, they said in the comment or they made a comment and they're like, look, like a lot of people are complaining about Beast burgers. But he goes, that's just normal. Like when you serve all these people. And he's like, look, look at all of our restaurants. People complained. Look, it's normal. People complain about all our shit. But the guy's got like a ton of stuff going on.

Starting point is 00:22:14 So he owns a casino. He owns Aladdin Resort and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. He still owns Planet Hollywood and they're trying to make it come back a little bit. Or he owns a couple of them. He owns a soccer team, the Everton soccer team. Have you heard of that? Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:22:29 And him and his wife live in a 25,000 square foot mansion in Florida. I mean, the guy's a baller. And if you if you Google him, he's like this old looking guy who kind of wears tacky shirts, but he looks like a blast to hang out with. He has a TV show now where he's like, it's almost like what's that TV show called like,

Starting point is 00:22:46 everyone feeds Phil or just like a dorky guy just like talking to restaurant owners and like learning about the local cuisine. He's got one of those things. So he seems like a... That's his show? Then that's not his show. It's like, it's very similar to that. But this guy... Dude, these people who have these like sprawling empires for the

Starting point is 00:23:03 like, yeah, I own, you know, Planet Hollywood, but then I got this, I have this like, you know, juice brand and then I have this hotel over here. And then I got like, I own the soccer team. Is that who you want to be? I'm curious because I think some people really want that. I'm not sure that I would want that. That seems like just a lot of stuff to manage. It seems like a lot. It seems like is that a goal of yours? I definitely respect it from far, but I don't think I want to be that guy. I think owning a sports team would be cool, but I don't want to own like 500 restaurants.

Starting point is 00:23:39 So like he owns, I don't know if you've even heard of any of these. Asian street eats, the breakfast club, Burducci's. I've heard of that. Breyo Italian Grill. Bravo Italian Kitchen. Chicken Guy, that's Guy Fieri's. Two J's, Cafe Hollywood. Have you heard of any of these? No, not really. They're all like restaurants

Starting point is 00:23:57 that have like 10 or 20 locations and like hopefully each location makes like $5 million and it's like highly profitable. Another guy who does this in the same similarish category is Tillman Fertita. Do you know who that is? You probably know him because he owns Houston Rockets, I think. So he, I read this interview with him and he goes, I think I am one of the largest companies in America that is fully owned by one person. So he owns 100% of the Fertita enterprises. And it does something like $4 billion in revenue, $1 billion in EBITA. He owns like,

Starting point is 00:24:32 all these kind of, he owns some, I guess, nice stuff. He owns like some steakhouses. Maybe like Ruth Chris, I think he owns. But then he owns like bubblegump shrimp and stuff like that. But some of these restaurant brands where it's like $30, $50 a meal, apparently they must be really profitable because I've read about a few of these guys, including Robert Earl. I've read about Tillman for Tita.

Starting point is 00:24:54 So I don't know. I guess it works. But it seems like a pain in the ass to deal with all these types of people. Yeah. Let's move on to the next one. What's that one? Oh, yeah, we got to rank that one on the juicy scale. I'm going to give it, I think that might also be a raisin,

Starting point is 00:25:10 partly out of revenge and partly because this guy owns a bunch of, like, mid-tier things. And so I feel like I can't possibly rank him above. I don't want to eat at any of his products. Let's put it that way. So, you know, I do think that. But I, you know. Wait, did you go to, but didn't you go to Chucky Cheeses this weekend? I did not.

Starting point is 00:25:38 Wish I had. Did not. I thought you said you were taking your kids there. You're thinking of someone else. I went puppet golf at this. Dude, it's hilarious. These guys opened up a pub. They just took a parking lot.

Starting point is 00:25:49 And then like a husband and wife just sort of out of plywood, built a few holes. And they just charge you $10 to walk in that area of the parking lot and they'll give you a club. And my kids love it. And we go there like, you know, like, you know, twice a month. It's kind of this insane, like, business plan that makes no sense. I think it makes tons of sense.

Starting point is 00:26:09 I mean, there's just no, like, it's putting without the green. You're putting on concrete trying to get into it. Oh, there's not even turf. No turf? Oh, there's a little bit of turf. But it's like, the whole thing is very like, it all things like made of concrete. So it's not a great, not a great look.

Starting point is 00:26:24 Yikes. All right. What do you got? All right. I'm going to do one that actually we did. I was trying to do research for this and the best breakdown of this business was our own podcast like two years ago.

Starting point is 00:26:36 But the fact that I had forgot it means that everybody forgot it. I'm going to talk about Guthy Ranker. So these are the geniuses behind a bunch of celebrity things. Let me pull up my notes here. So backstory for these guys. Including one of my favorite books.

Starting point is 00:26:52 Which one? They can grow rich. Well, yes, exactly. So, okay, so here's the here's the way that the business works. So Guthy Ranker. So one of the guys, Guthy, the last name's Guthy, he has a business that's basically audio cassette tape copies. So you have an audio tape.

Starting point is 00:27:12 You want to make 10,000 copies to sell your music or whatever. He makes the 10,000. I think it was even called like audio tape duplication enterprise or some shit like that. And it's an okay business, but then suddenly he gets a call from a guy. By the way, I love names like that, which let's just start bringing that back. I'm sick of the like cute shit that ends in L.Y, you know, like tapley. Yeah, I mean, I want Hampton. Audio.

Starting point is 00:27:35 Yeah. Why isn't it just called a bunch of dudes talking about their feelings? I tried to make Hampton a little bit like, uh, Jordan Belfort named his company Stratman Oakmont. Jordan Belford's the, uh, Wall Street guy. They're like, that's who you want to model your company after. He was like, why'd you do that? He's like, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:27:54 Like, I just thought of these two words and it sounded like an official thing. And I was like, I kind of like that. But I do like, I do like audio tape enterprises. Yeah, exactly. So these guys, okay, so he gets an order. He gets an order for 120,000 tapes. He's like, 120,000. Oh, my God.

Starting point is 00:28:14 Who is this? So he calls up the guy, hey, just want to make sure your order's correct. 120,000 or what did you mean 12,000? They say, no, 120,000. He said, I've never heard of you before. What do you do? Turns out the guy is a real estate guy in Arizona. But what he started doing was he was like, oh, yeah, I was a real estate guy.

Starting point is 00:28:31 But then I realized I could just teach people how to make money in real estate. And it's going gangbusters. And he's like, what? How is this guy doing it? He's like, I just ran a commercial for 30 minutes about that I could teach people to make money in real estate. He's like, you can't do a 30 minute commercial. And he's like, yeah, it turns out that there was, as you like to say, an inflection. And the inflection was that in 1984, the FCC deregulated the ad limit.

Starting point is 00:28:55 So they said, you know, before that there was some rule. you can only have like 12 or 16 minutes of ads per hour of TV. They removed the limit. And so now what people could do was they could just go to a channel and be like, hey, can I just buy like your 11 p.m. slot for like five grand. And they're like,

Starting point is 00:29:09 sure. And they would just buy the hour of television programming. And they would just run a giant commercial and infomercial. And so Guthey hears this. And he goes to, he goes to meet up with this buddy, this guy, Ranker.

Starting point is 00:29:23 And he's like, yo, Rinker is working at his family's hotel resort at the time. And he's like, you know, he's kind of like the pool and tennis guy.

Starting point is 00:29:31 He's just like sitting around doing nothing. He's like, this guy ordered 120,000 tapes. This is amazing. I think this might be a better business than the tape business. Like, rather than copy the tapes,

Starting point is 00:29:41 why don't I copy his business? He's like, he's like, all right. So what do we do? He's like, this infomercial thing. I think we could do this.

Starting point is 00:29:48 He's like, well, all right. So they go, they buy every book they can read on commercials or like, but there wasn't really even the word at the time. Because again,

Starting point is 00:29:56 The rule just got changed. It wasn't even a category called infomercials at the time. They start studying copywriting, direct response marketing. And after a few days of just cramming, rankers like, I think we could do this. They're like, what should we start with? They're like, well, we could try the real estate thing. But neither of us know anything about real estate, nor do we like have a passion for that. Let's at least for this first one.

Starting point is 00:30:17 Start with something we both, what's the common ground that we both think is like awesome. Like the thing we became friends on was this kind of self, self help, self development, personal development category. This is like that sign that Cartman has when he's like coming up with a startup idea. He's like, look, step one, we're going to start up, step two, we're going to scale up. Step three, we're going to bro down.

Starting point is 00:30:42 Or like when they're talking about stealing the underwear, they're like, steal underwear, then profit. And they're like, well, what comes in the middle? Exactly. And it worked. That actually is how most startups work, by the way. I think that seems like you're making fun of them, but honestly,

Starting point is 00:30:58 that's actually more true than the other way. So they go, they're like, okay, they realize they can buy the rights to the book, think and grow rich, one of their favorite books, because it's like,

Starting point is 00:31:11 it's such an old book that like the, like the copyright or whatever had laughs or some shit like that. They could basically buy the rights to it for $100,000. So they scrape to your savings and they're like, we're going to buy this. They buy it for $100,000. And the next. three years, they make $10 million in sales off that.

Starting point is 00:31:28 So, like, really awesome for them. But in the grand scene of things, it turned out to be like, kind of like just a base hit compared to what they then go on to do. But what year did they buy the book in the 80s? Yeah, it was like early, it was kind of like, I think early to mid 80s, something like that. So like 300 or 100 grand was like 300 grand. So it's like not a small bet for your first time.

Starting point is 00:31:48 Go at it. One thing leads to another. In the infomercial that they create, they get Frank Tarkinton, the NFL quarterback, They're like, oh, let's get anybody they saw that had mentioned, they love the book, Think and Grow Ritz. They're like, hey, come be a part of this infomercial. And the whole infomercials on YouTube. You can go watch it.

Starting point is 00:32:04 In fact, I want to do a breakthrough, a masterclass breakdown just on this infomercial. But you can watch something. And what they do is they don't tell you about the product at the beginning. They're like, you just hear Frank talking to being like, you know, I always used to feel blah, blah, blah, blah. But now I'm blah, blah, blah. And then somebody else comes in and they're like, you know,

Starting point is 00:32:22 I was struggling, blah, blah, blah. And then now, I always used to feel, blah, And they don't tell you what's the product that gave them that transformation. Like, this is the genius of marketing is you sell this benefit, this transformation. You want people banging down your door saying, what's the pill? What's the product that gives you that? Right. Like this is the OZempic thing.

Starting point is 00:32:39 How the hell are you losing all this weight? And it's like, oh, I take this thing. Okay, you know, let me have it. Let me have the magic pill. And so at the end of the video, they say it's thinking they're rich. They do $10 million in sales over the three years. By the way, this video on YouTube has like 900 views. Like nobody is studying.

Starting point is 00:32:55 this thing. It's crazy to me that a video like this would have so few views. And they tell the story around the book that the richest people in the world, you know, Carnegie, the Ross Childs, they wanted this guy to write this. And so Carnegie commissions, what's his name of Napoleon Hill, to go study the most successful people in the world and find out their secret. And he did, right? And so that's how they sell this book. Beautiful. In the infomercial. This is an awesome infomercial. They have one guy come on who's a 24-year-old wonder kid. This guy is just getting, he's on the up and up. Tony Robbins comes on.

Starting point is 00:33:31 A guy named Anthony Robbins comes on and talks about how much he loves the book. Unpaid, by the way. They were like, hey, will you do this? I heard you love this book. He's like, I'll do it. It does an unpaid spot. And they're so blown away by his charisma on camera that they're like, we got to be in the Tony Robbins business next.

Starting point is 00:33:47 So they go to Tony and they're like, hey, love your book. we want to do the same thing we didn't think we'll grow rich but with your book he's like okay so they're like we'll brand it we'll figure out

Starting point is 00:33:57 the infomercial blah blah blah they do it they create a program in 1988 the year I was born called personal power and it becomes

Starting point is 00:34:05 the best selling self-help program of all time it does $20 million in year one and you know just goes on to just how old is

Starting point is 00:34:13 I'm looking at this I'm looking at this Tony Robbins has the original informational on this YouTube page for the personal power how old is he here

Starting point is 00:34:20 He's like 25 years old of that. That's crazy, man. He's got a huge jaw. Yeah, he had a a growth, a pituitary growth problem, which is why all of his,

Starting point is 00:34:31 his hands, his teeth, his jaw are also oversized. He's a huge guy. If you ever seen him in person, I want a pituitary growth problem. He looks great. And he did it.

Starting point is 00:34:40 I think he, like, it was causing him, like, to have secrete like 10 times more HGH than he was supposed to. And then they removed it at the right time before he became like an actual like nine foot over.

Starting point is 00:34:50 So, like, you know, he got the benefits of that thing. This is amazing. He looks awesome, man. His jawline, he looks like the ultimate Chad. He looks awesome. He's got, like, charisma of a nice guy, but, like, the looks of a Chad. That's, that's like, that's a killer duo. You know, I thought that might be your takeaway from all the things I just said.

Starting point is 00:35:06 So I'm glad you picked up on the important bit. So they do, by 1990, now they're three years in. They're doing $36 million a year. They almost go bankrupt because the Gulf War starts. to 91 and all television attention goes to that. So the infomercial business just sucks and they have to basically fire everybody just to stay alive during that year because they were infomercials just not converting. The war was was taking everybody's attention.

Starting point is 00:35:35 So then they go on and they're like, okay, here's our model. And I've watched, there's again, the research for this was so fun. There's interviews with this guy. If you want to Google it, is Van de, Van de Bundt. This is the guy who joined really early. He's been the CEO now for like, I don't know, 15 years. Really want to meet this guy. I want to have him on the pod.

Starting point is 00:35:54 There's no interviews with these guys really out there. They don't go podcasts or anything like that. But this guy, Van de Bunt went on, did a talk at some school, I think, at USC. And they chopped up his talk into one-minute clips. And I must have been like 45 one-minute clips last night of this guy. Love this guy. He's got such a good attitude and was saying things. But he's like, he's like, look, here's our process.

Starting point is 00:36:17 Real simple. Like, we find the market need. Like, how do you find it? He's like, well, if you see one person with good skin and one person with bad skin, trust me, there's a market need. Like, you see one person with brown teeth, another person with white teeth, that's going to be a big market need. And I can just sell it to you by showing before and after it.

Starting point is 00:36:34 So that's the first thing is like, then we find the products and we try to license or own them. Then we tie them up to a developer or a celebrity or a story because nobody wants to buy from an ivory tower that says, we have the solution. No, they want to buy from a property. person who says, I figured this out. I spent my life working on this and I figured this out. And he's like, we marry the market need with the marketing technique. And so the first market technique they did was that infomercial technique.

Starting point is 00:37:00 That drove them for a long time. And now they've shifted to more like internet marketing since then. And like to do the like the television, just the depths that they went to. So they were so early in this, they're shooting these, these things for like, you know, all their brands. Like they created proactive, the Acne brand with Justin, Bieber as one of the celebrities and like these doctors as the celebrities. They created principal secret.

Starting point is 00:37:24 They got this actress Victoria principle. And they were like, okay, we think this is good, but we don't know exactly how to sell this product. So you know what they did? They put her on QVC. They're like, well, let's overpay to be on QVC. They're like, is it going to break even? Probably not.

Starting point is 00:37:40 But at QVC, if you ever seen how a QVC thing goes, you can go backstage because during QVC, people are calling in to buy. and he's like basically on a like 10 second interval, you can see what gets people to buy. So they did this almost as a study to test the content. So they have her talking for an hour and they can see what are the things she's saying that's causing the sales board to light up? And they took a product that really wasn't working.

Starting point is 00:38:04 They went and reshot the infomercial with that intel of like what what lines and what talking points were driving the most interest. They reshot the infomercial and now it's a $2 billion revenue generating product. that they created out of that. Holy shit. They created proactive. They created a Pilates brand, a brand of Cindy Crawford,

Starting point is 00:38:24 they did all this stuff. So they are 100% privately held now. No external investors. Just guthing and rancor. They've been doing this for 30-something years. And they do a couple billion in revenue profitably. And I was like, how is it possible?

Starting point is 00:38:38 How did they scale with the outside revenue? And then here's the funny thing. There's actually a story of like, you know, this is like funny story. So they get this along the way, they actually did take investment. So it's 100% own now.

Starting point is 00:38:49 But at one point in time, they gave up 33% of the business or something to this guy, Ron Perlman, who himself is a prolific guy. He owns TV networks. He owns Revlon. He owns Marvel or he owned Marvel at the time. Yeah, I think he's one of the guys who, he's, A, he's one of the richest men in America. I believe. I think he's worth like 40 or 50, like in that range, billion.

Starting point is 00:39:13 And he helped, I think his buyout of Revlon was the, the largest leverage buyout at the time. And he kind of pioneered like the leverage buyout. I read his biography a few years ago. Google hasn't been like $4 billion, but maybe it's gone up since then. Oh, I guess previously worth $19. For a while, it was huge. Why did it go down so much?

Starting point is 00:39:35 Maybe because Revlon, but I think he, I don't even remember what Revlon did. I think it was like makeups, but it was like a conglomerate. Like it owned like all this type of stuff. But he bought it for many, many, many billions. and he kind of pioneered the leverage buyout, which eventually like the American population, like it was like one of those things in the 80s where it was like just absolute greed.

Starting point is 00:39:57 And like there's like, you know, it was like barbarians at the gate type of shit. Ron Perlman, five marriages. Yeah, there's a price to be paid. The AI that's studying right now that might be like,

Starting point is 00:40:07 I guess getting married five times causes you to be a billionaire. No, no, no. It's correlation, not causation. You know how rich a guy is. He's got five marriages. So, okay, so they sell it. They sell them the stake.

Starting point is 00:40:21 He gives them $25 million. They're like, beautiful. And he owns these TV networks. They're like, oh, great, we get dirt cheap airtime and we get $25 million to invest. They use that to grow like crazy, pay off these celebrities to like be the endorsers like Justin Bieber and all the stuff to do that. I think that's Sydney Crawford. They had like a makeup thing with Sydney Crawford.

Starting point is 00:40:39 I think they have one with Jennifer Lopez. They had a thing with J-Lo. Yeah, exactly. Eventually, Murdoch buys. buys Ron Perlman's like TV networks or whatever and then basically they're like oh we get this steak this 37% stake

Starting point is 00:40:57 and these Guthey Riker things and it was just got lost in the Murdoch like Empire they went back lost in the couch cushion can we just buy this back and they got it back for like you know some tiny amount I'm like they were able to buy back and own 100% of it

Starting point is 00:41:14 and then I think now like recently finally I think Goldman bought like a minority stake in the business, valuing it at $3 billion. And here's how you know they're really rich is, A, the CEO who you said Van, what was his name, Van Bunt? Van de Bunt, yeah. He just bought a $25 million house. Whenever I hear about these people, I'm like, let's see how rich they really are. You can always find out through the real estate holdings. So he just bought a $25 million house.

Starting point is 00:41:41 And then Bill Guthrie, if you Google him, he doesn't come up because of this business. he comes up because Prince and Prince Harry just living for a bit of. Yeah, they lived in his estate. It's out of house. It's an estate when they were like, you know, homeless for a few minutes. They lived in his estate.

Starting point is 00:41:59 And then also he owned a home that one of the gender, the Kylie Jenner bought. So it all comes back to the Kardashian. Yeah, they're everywhere. At these guys' peak, they owned 35,000 toll-free numbers. Their phone bill was $150 million a year. And he's like, he's like, yeah, we did that?

Starting point is 00:42:18 He's like, did you need that? He's like, we did it for attribution. He's like, we needed to know what converts better. The way we did that was every time we would try a new variation of our content, we would give it a new number. So we could just attribute which number is getting the most calls versus the spend. And that's how we did our performance marketing in the telephone days. I thought that was pretty dope.

Starting point is 00:42:38 But you're also, you didn't even mention their most successful product that everyone who's listening who's at least 30 years old will know this product. Which one? Proactive. They did proactive. Did you say proactive? Yeah, yeah. That's the one they did with Justin Bieber, yeah.

Starting point is 00:42:52 Well, I think you didn't put enough emphasis. I needed a pause. Yeah, they did proactive, which made like a billion plus. I bought Proactive. I mean, everyone bought ProC did you use it? No, I didn't use it, but I watched a bunch of those infomercials. Their infomercials are very entertaining. You can just watch it as a show.

Starting point is 00:43:10 And actually, it was pretty interesting listening to their method. So he's like, he's like, you know, he always says the same thing. He goes, if you just come to me saying X, I can't, I can't change this channel fast enough. You can just tell that that's like the guiding principle is like, you don't want them to change the channel. And it's like everything trickles down from that one principle. So he's like, it's called the slippery slope, baby. You got to make them fall down that slippery slope. So he's like, these guys come in and they start pitching me a cyber safety product.

Starting point is 00:43:40 And they've been doing it for like seven years. it's, you know, the highest they ever gross is a million dollars a year. He's like, okay, so what's the product? He's like cyber safe. You know, like, we help make your computers. Computers are the new thing. We make your computer safer so you don't get hacked

Starting point is 00:43:55 and you don't have a virus on your computer. He's like, oh man, if I'm watching TV relaxing at night, the last thing I want to do is get stressed about my problem. He's stressed about a problem I'm not already stressed about, which is like, oh, now my computer's going to get a virus. I'm going to lose it. He's like, I couldn't change the channel fast up. He's like, but before they walked out of the meeting,

Starting point is 00:44:12 He goes, hey, I got a question for you. We have this thing called need, need, greed, vanity. That's what we try to tap into. He goes, when you fix the computers to make them safer, does that also have any other benefits? Like, does it make it faster? And they're like, oh, yeah, for sure, because, you know, no viruses. You can go, it goes faster.

Starting point is 00:44:29 He goes, hmm, all right, come back next week and pitch me the fast thing. They come back, and then they launch this product called Double My Speed. And that business that had never done more than a million dollars in seven years, all of a sudden does $75 million a year at the time he was given this interview, which is a while back for double my speed. He's like, he's like, I just, he goes, there's too many smart people. And they're like, how did you do it? Did you do like internet advertising for this computer product?

Starting point is 00:44:55 He's like, no, we did radio ads. And it was just a radio infomercial. He's like, you know, he's like, there's too many smart people online. He's like, I don't want to compete in a knife fight unless I have a gun. And he's like, so we went to the radio because really no smart people were advertising on the radio and we could just get a bunch of inventory for cheap. and we could just create content that was better than the current stuff on radio.

Starting point is 00:45:16 And I was like, man, this guy's awesome. They were like, how are they doing now with infomercials not being as relevant? So he talked a little bit about it, but I don't know, there's not that much info out there. But he goes,

Starting point is 00:45:27 so they were like, how did you make this a success? You know, they're like, this guy, whatever's name is Vandabund. Vandabund's his last name. And they were like,

Starting point is 00:45:36 you joined at what revenue? He's like, it was $12 million a year. He's like, what is it now? He's like, like $1.7 billion? They're like, oh, amazing. You hear that?

Starting point is 00:45:43 The whole audience is like, wow, that's amazing. And he's like, yeah, when you say it like that, it sounds crazy. He's like, but you don't see that far. He's like, when you're at 12, he's like, what's that phrase? Like, you can't see beyond the wall that's in front of you. He's like, when you're at 12, all you're thinking about is 25. And you just, there's some wall between you and 25. And then you break through that wall and then 25 wants to get to 60.

Starting point is 00:46:07 And like, there's another wall to get to 60. He's like, you just keep doing that. We just did that over and over and over. over again until you figure out like, you know, the right thing. And he's like, and he's like, for six years when we were doing the infomercial thing, we were so early to that channel, we were just the best at that channel. He's like, honestly, we didn't learn that much during that time. He's like, all the learning came in these like, he says this funny joke.

Starting point is 00:46:28 He's like, there was some year where like infomercial started to tank. The internet started getting more popular. He's like, we had 30 million people that were on a reorder program. Meaning he's like, our business model is we get you interested. in a product, you call up our phone, we pick up, and we tell you that that product's going to be great for you, and that we may have some other products that are great for you. And actually, you know what? If you do this right now, we'll keep sending you this product for the rest of your life. He's like, that's like the business model. And he's like, it felt like one day, all 30 million people

Starting point is 00:46:58 on our reorder program called each other and we're like, you know what? Let's cancel this shit. And he's like, he's like, when the world was caving in, he's like, then we had to get smart again and figure out like, oh, we haven't even had to fight to win in so long. Let's, figure, let's be smart and let's figure this out. And, uh, and, you know, I just think these guys that these guys have built an amazing business and nobody really talks about them, at least in our circles. Well, they don't talk about it because a, like, it's not sexy. I mean, the money part is sexy. Because like when I, well, you make this sound so cool. But in reality, this probably looks like workaholics. You remember that TV show workaholics? How they're just sitting around making

Starting point is 00:47:35 phone calls? That's probably what the office looks like. We're just a bunch of like morons like sitting at this shitty cubicle wearing like a badly fitting tie and suit, like just answering these calls. I mean, that's like not that fun to do like on a day-to-day basis, I imagine. It's really fun when it's crushing it, though. They also don't get talked about because they've been around forever. It looks like the company was launched in 88. And before that, they were doing different stuff. So it's been around for 40 years now.

Starting point is 00:48:03 Right. But yeah, I love these guys. I want to know what they're doing with digital. Because I remember like, you remember P90X? Yeah, the Workout program. I love P90A. That's another company. It's called something Beach.

Starting point is 00:48:14 What's it called? Beach Body. So they own, they're just like Guthrie Raker, but they own like P90X style companies. And they owned a bunch of them. And I remember them. Well,

Starting point is 00:48:23 you know what they did. They pivoted. Yeah. Because the internet was like coming around and they're like, we have to keep up. And so now they have like a, it's almost like a Netflix style business. Isn't it?

Starting point is 00:48:32 It's like a subscription. So basically they change the sales model from this direct response infomercial model to MLM. So now they have Beach Body trainers and Beachbody associates that will sell people to join Beachbody, right? So they get people to post on social media that

Starting point is 00:48:49 they've, not only have they gotten in shape, they now work for themselves. They are independent, and they're making more money than they were ever working before. And if you're interested in kind of hearing how you changed your life around, like slide into the DMs, and then they

Starting point is 00:49:05 basically sell you that you too should start selling Beachbody programs to people around you, and you can make a lot of money and be fit. Dude, that's the worst. That totally, like, because I remember when I was in Australia, when I was living there, I didn't have a gym. I did P90X. I did, like, I did it. I thought it was awesome.

Starting point is 00:49:22 But when you go to the MLM route, it makes me hate you. Yeah, what's the name of Tony, Tony Horton? Dude, Tony was ripped. Tony Horton was ripped, man. I love Tony Horton. Side characters, when it was like, you know, whatever. He'd be like, the chef is here, the Russian, blah, blah, blah. Those goes, that's a great program.

Starting point is 00:49:41 I wonder what he looks like now. Is he still jacked? Yeah, he's still jacked. I think he has some, yeah, he looks great. He got some disease and then kind of bounce back or something. Well,

Starting point is 00:49:49 he still looks amazing. If you Google Tony Horton, he's 65 years old now. He looks great. So it worked. But anyway, I'm a big, I like these,

Starting point is 00:49:58 I like studying these companies. I also like studying him because a lot of people in the tech startup world are like, well, this shit doesn't work anymore. And I'm like, wrong. It 100% does.

Starting point is 00:50:08 Maybe it looks a little different. Well, dude, this is whatever. This is whatever, DCC, economy business doing, right? Like, that's what they're, the thing, the first business I featured, which was, uh, you know, the greed family doing this with the Kardashians, creating a shaper brand of the

Starting point is 00:50:22 Kardashians. This is no different. You know, the cosmetics brand with, uh, you know, Kylie Jenner, there's no different what Guthey Ranker's been doing. They just used Instagram instead of an Instagram and Instagram celebrities instead of Hollywood celebrities and TV. It's the same model. Same, same thing.

Starting point is 00:50:37 So this one's a great. You win. This one's definitely the most interesting one. on. It's incredibly fascinating. One thing that I was trying to research that I couldn't find, and I think there's a bunch of people in our world working on this, is everything that we've discussed, it's mostly consumer products. What I'm curious is why this hasn't worked for like a more of a B2B product. So in a weird way, we aren't this. But HubSpot is trying to do it. You're like, bro, you're like a fish being like, what is water? It's like, yeah, we are this for HubSpot.

Starting point is 00:51:08 You know that. Yeah, but we're not, we're not, we're not like, we own, we know, we're the, Kylie Jenner in this case, right? They basically,

Starting point is 00:51:17 yeah, but Kylie Jenner owns 50% of that shit. We, you know, I own, we got to renegotiate, 1%. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:51:25 And so I don't own that much of HubSpot. But, I remember they, what was the company that did this with, what was the rack space? They did it with a guy. What was this? Robert Scoble.

Starting point is 00:51:35 They were early with that, but I don't know if it worked out wonderfully or what happened to that, but there's not, I know there's a few other companies. So there's, um, assembly brands. I worked with this guy Hunter. So we launched this thing called viral cuts where I own part of the company and it's like a agency that clips, uh, podcast clips, but it's going to be small. It's not going to be a multi-billion dollar company like this. I just said this. I wonder why Shepard is a good business. It's like, it's a business that fits our audience, right? Every entrepreneur needs to hire people. If you could hire talented people overseas for 10 times less,

Starting point is 00:52:03 like this is like a no-brainer product. So Shepard was already working. And then they bring me on. and now I own a piece of that company. You are the Sydney Crawford. That's what I've been telling them. And they looked at me a little funny when I said it, but this is what I bet. And, you know, since we joined, first it was Nick Huber was doing it with him.

Starting point is 00:52:23 No, you're more like the Chloe. You're the Chloe, man. You're the Chloe. Oh, that's good. A plus about it. But it's the same thing. Bring on kind of like a influencer to promote a B2B product.

Starting point is 00:52:38 And revenue, all time high last month, all time high this month, right? Like, it just keeps happening now every single month by doing that. And so it's a, I think it is happening more in the B2B space. And that's why it's happening more, but it's not nearly as common. And I think it will be or should be. It's a big opportunity for sure. The thing that, the thing is interesting. So Austin Reef tweeted this out over the weekend.

Starting point is 00:53:00 I don't know if you saw him say this. He said every, I think he said D to C though. I think he said every like e-commerce company is going to have a content creator that's more highly paid than many of the executives. So he says, over the next five years, every DDC business will have full-time content creators on staff. The best will be comped more than the execs and drive more value than anyone else in the business.

Starting point is 00:53:22 The math is going to make sense to hire, build, and invest in creators who can become a part of your company narrative versus spinning off one-off influencer campaigns. The key difference between a creator and a social media manager, a social media manager just creates a post-content. A creator is the content. And of course, the best companies will be founded by creators, like Happy Dad, Feastable, Primes, Prime, etc. When people here creator, they think of Mr. Beast or Logan Paul.

Starting point is 00:53:45 I'm not referring to famous creators, just people who create content full time. And this is something that we're seeing with our D2C business. But in general, I think this is, I think you just need to take out the word D2C, right? Darmesh had the same insight. He goes, every software company is going to have its own media company. Why? Because creating your own media is going to bring inbound leads. and it's going to be a more efficient channel than doing outbound paid ads or it's going to be

Starting point is 00:54:10 And Darmesh is sort of like that with HubSpot. I mean, like people like actually our most popular episodes are Darmash. So he's like pretty much doing that for his own company. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Okay, you want to do you have more or do you want me to do one? You want to do one more or? Let's do Scott Storch. Yeah, okay.

Starting point is 00:54:30 I wasn't sure if that was in the same category, but I want to talk about that. So here's another version of the guy behind the same. scenes, the engine that makes the thing work. We did it with business, with D to C products. Well, how about music? So, this guy's going viral recently for a bunch of TikToks because he's got an amazing story. This guy, Scott Storch.

Starting point is 00:54:50 He is a producer. He's sober now and he's like out of the keys, like left the cave. He's a producer. He's a songwriter and he's famous for a couple of things. He produced some of the biggest hits. Like, you know, Stil Dre, you know, the little piano keys at the beginning of Still Dre. that Scott Storch was sitting on a piano did it

Starting point is 00:55:07 and Dr. Dre was in a kitchen eating a sandwich poked his head and he goes, that's it. That's how Still Dre the track happens. I love those stories. I love those stories. He did Candy Shop. He did naughty girl. He did a bunch of songs with everybody you can imagine.

Starting point is 00:55:21 Beyonce, Dr. Dre, 50 cents, Snoop Dog, Buster Rhymes, Justin Terbilate, Chris Brown, all of them. He amassed a fortune of about $100 million doing this as a producer behind the scenes that you didn't know about. that was just killing it. And he's also famous for blowing all 100 million because he got addicted to two things, spending and cocaine.

Starting point is 00:55:43 And he was basically just partying too much, blowing through all his money. And now he reset. So he went to rehab, got clean, declared bankruptcy basically, and came back. And now is trying to rebuild again.

Starting point is 00:55:57 And so this guy's story, I thought, was pretty crazy. What do you know about this? Yeah. So we did a bunch of interviews lately. where he was like, I was spending two, three, four, five million dollars a month.

Starting point is 00:56:07 He was like, I had houses that I forgot about. He said, we had this one house and he goes, I had a $5,000 worth of like glass figurines that I had a party. So you were collecting like cars or shoes? He goes, I collected everything that could be collected. He goes, stuff I didn't even care about. He's like, I had a million dollars of crystal figurines. He was like, I had a party and they fell over.

Starting point is 00:56:28 We just like sweeped him up in the dustpick. Yeah, he goes, I had a 500,000. And he was a $500,000 crystal bottle of perfume. And the guy was like, do you even wear it? He goes, no, some drunk girl at a party knocked it over and broke it. And he's like, he had a $4 million pinky ring. If you think you're bowling and you don't have a $4 million yellow diamond pinky ring, you need to step down because Scott Storch has it done.

Starting point is 00:57:00 He is a character in Grand Theft Auto because he's so prolific as a guy in Miami who's like, you know, in the scene. There's this one story from 2013 where he says he spent something like $100 million. One says $30 million. One says $100 million in six months. He's like cocaine, houses and cars. Yeah. And he just went hard. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:57:23 So like I love stories like this, by the way. I like it because hopefully this will have a happy ending. But I just love people that fly. close to the sun, man. He's also a genius because he dropped out of ninth grade. You know that? So he dropped out of ninth grade and you know how he made his original like how he broke on to the scene? No. He was the keyboard guy for the roots. So he's in ninth grade. He drops out, teaches himself how to play the piano. And he's like, yeah, they're like, you didn't take any courses. He's like, no, I mean, he could afford a class. He's like, I actually enrolled in one class, but I couldn't afford to get to it. So I was like, ah, I guess I'm just not going to like, you know, I just,

Starting point is 00:58:00 I'll just try to sit here. He's like, I would, I would have a tape player, and I would put it on the piano, and I would hear it. He's like, then with one finger, I'd be like trying to recreate what I just heard. He's like,

Starting point is 00:58:09 and I just did that until I could learn how to play the keyboard, like, by ear. He's like, so then he discovers the roots before they were big. He joins them, and he's the only, you know, he's the white boy in the roots.

Starting point is 00:58:20 And they are just going and playing like literally on like corners. And like, he's like playing on the corner. You know, they'd go down to New York and they would play for a day and they'd come back to Philly. and he would just do that all the time. The roots start getting popular.

Starting point is 00:58:32 They get signed, but then he leaves the roots. And they're like, why do you want to leave the roots? He's like, man, I heard that's that white boy from the roots one too many times. And he's like, they don't even know my name. He's like, I'm going to go create my own music. So he's like, I'm going to create my own music. Through the roots, he had met Dr. Dre. So he goes and hangs out Dr. Dre.

Starting point is 00:58:51 And Dre is like, yeah, this guy's got talent. And so he makes some songs with Dr. Dre. And Dr. Dre at this time is the biggest producer in the wall. he's the most high-end demand guy. So Scott Storch makes his $100 million fortune, as he says, off the eating crumbs at the end of the table. So basically, Dre would get a project, and he's like really picky. He's like, I'm not going to do just anything.

Starting point is 00:59:13 He's like, so he would just take all of Dr. Dre's reject projects and do them himself and made $100 million doing that. Dude, how good is Dr. Dre, by the way, the fact that like when Eminem came around, you know, he raps about it. He's like, you walked in with a yellow jumpsuit. and you're a white guy. And everyone's like, dude, you can't play with this guy. What do you?

Starting point is 00:59:32 White rappers, that's ridiculous. If you Google Scott Storch, my wife's from Long Island, so I've got a bunch of Long Island people, this guy looks like there's the Long Island medium, and then there's Scott Storch in terms of like, the way that they look in terms of stereotypes. He looks like the most Long Island guy ever wearing like Ed Hardy T-shirts and true religion jeans.

Starting point is 00:59:50 And Dr. Dre like sees past that and like sees talent. That's pretty amazing. Exactly. And he even says that. He's like, Dre's number one skill. he's like, he's very technically talented, but his skill is he can hear 10 things and he'll tell you which one

Starting point is 01:00:04 is hot. And he's like, we'll play the same thing five different time, and he's like, number four is the one that sounds the best. And he's like, Dre just has that ear for what's good. And what's hot, what's next, and what's different, what's unique, what's singular, what's going to stand out? He's like, I never had that to that extent. He's like, but, you know, I was good.

Starting point is 01:00:22 I was able to get good enough where I could still make, you know, hundreds of hits. He would get paid 100 grand, to do a single track and he would do 10 a week and when you know in his prime that's what he was doing that's how he was making his money so he's like dude

Starting point is 01:00:35 I'm just rolling in money here and then he stopped working he's like I'm just gonna party now he's like the problem was like I was spending like I was still making money but I didn't stop working three years ago and I was just spending money like crazy and yeah this guy's

Starting point is 01:00:49 so here's some quotes I'd like to read you okay on blowing a hundred million dollars quote it happens when you talk about blowing 100 million I know cats that blew double that that's the second response continues it can happen to anyone I don't think you can happen to anyone

Starting point is 01:01:12 and then he says I grew up a poor kid and then all of a sudden I have infinite money I have infinite options and I just didn't know how to say no so then he they were asking about like you know how do you make a hit song he just goes, you know, in the real estate game,

Starting point is 01:01:29 it's location, location, location. And the music game, it's melody, melody, melody. He goes, it's melody, melody, melody. If you can make a memorable melody, that's what it takes to make a hit song. And that's what I focused on being able to do. So yeah, this guy, Scott Storch is a prolific character. Well, he'll be back.

Starting point is 01:01:47 I mean, I feel like if you have that skill, you can make it work for a while, right? I mean, it's just, it's very similar to marketing. It's like if you understand what motivates people and gets them to act, whether it's dancing or buying something, you'll come back. Have you ever met these guys like, there'll be guys like, oh, man, I just, I got a hold of all these old rookie cards for this baseball player who's about to die. We should like go and buy all of them for 50 grand and like hold on to them for three weeks and then resell them where I just got this old like, you know, supply of like DVD players. It's only 50 grand. Like they're always into schemes.

Starting point is 01:02:20 I always meet these guys. He like love these schemes. Every once in a while, it works out. And this is like a guy, Scott Stewart, who's like, you'll meet this guy. You're like, dude, you're an idiot. No way that's going to work. Like, quit trying to scam me. This is one of those guys who's made it work.

Starting point is 01:02:36 You know another guy who did it that way was the Dollar Shave Club guy. You know, it actually, Dollar Shave Club came to be a thing because he like saw a discount on like a container of like cheap razors. And he's like, that's right? Let's just buy these. Oh, wow. Yeah, he's like, let's just get those cheap razors. Is it just figure out how to sell them?

Starting point is 01:02:51 I don't know how we're going to do it. I think his father-in-law had a deal on like 50,000 razors. And he's like, oh, screw it. Let's just do it. I've met a bunch of these people like this. For some reason, it's always a Long Island thing, by the way. And Scott Storch is a, for everyone out there who's just scheming on these types of like weird things, this is your hero. You know what I'm talking about you ever meet these guys?

Starting point is 01:03:16 They always have some weird hustle going down. I was one of those guys. I'm counting cars. I'm trying to win the monopoly game at McDonald's. We're entering contests. We realize that most people don't enter contests if there's any work. So my buddy Dan was amazing at this. I actually wrote him off and then later learned this guy's a genius.

Starting point is 01:03:36 He freshman year, this guy lives three doors down for me. And we're like, yo, we're going to go get food. And then like, we're like, who are you waiting for? Where's Dan? And we're like, go to his don't. We're going into his room. We're like, Dan, let's go, man. we're supposed to we're hungry he's like oh hold on um the deadline for this contest is in like 30

Starting point is 01:03:55 minutes i got to i'm out and i'm like what contest why are you going to take a contest and uh like duke is full of like kids who play by the book and dan never really played by the book he was like he had his own little book that he was playing in and so you know he he's like oh this is stride gum is like stride gum will give you free gum for life if you can make a commercial for like a 22nd commercial that's like cool for stride gum so he took a little like flip cam like he wasn't even smartphones back then he took one of those flip cams and he basically like filmed this commercial of himself in his dorm room being like whatever stride gum the best goddamn gum in the world right he's like doing this commercial he submits it he's probably one of three people that

Starting point is 01:04:35 actually like read the fine print submitted a did the work to submit a commercial with that that filled in all the things and guess what stride gum for everybody for the rest of college right we had free stride gum forever really he won did another one he's like wait, what type of package did the gum come in? What's gum forever? You could just order infinite amount, basically. Like, you could just keep ordering by some limits.

Starting point is 01:04:57 They needed another one for this sandwich shop called Spicy Pickle. They're like, hey, we're renaming our mascot. And of course, Dan's all over there trying to rename the mascot. I'm like, Dan, do you even like this restaurant? He's like, no, but I want to win. And I'm like, you know, he's like the definition of like, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. But he has so much goddamn fun doing it.

Starting point is 01:05:17 that you're like, I kind of wish I was doing this like Dan. And so he renamed, so the mascot currently for Spicy Pickle is a pickle who's a spy, called Spy, the letter C, pickle. And he's got a business card and he's a spy that will help you out.

Starting point is 01:05:33 And that's Dan. Dan created that character. And then we go to like the ceremony at a spicy pickle headquarters. And they're like 20 people in a circle cheering, clapping for him and they hand him a big check that says like three sandwiches. and he wins. And so he just kept doing these things, a dance from Jersey.

Starting point is 01:05:51 And I feel like he just always had this thing, which was like, I'm going to play these, like, I'm going to find these random edges and I'm going to win. Like, I'm going to just find these little arbitrages and I'm going to constantly exploit them.

Starting point is 01:06:04 Dude, we should do an episode on this because have you read about the guy who did it with snack pack, like pudding cups? Like, you remember, you know, like pudding.

Starting point is 01:06:13 Okay, so they ran this contest that says like, I forget exactly how the contest worked, but you could like, if you pulled off the tops of the pudding and like lick it, it like said like you won this much in free airline miles. And there was like some contests around it. But this guy did the math where I'm just,

Starting point is 01:06:30 I just had to Google it now to remember exactly. But he only had to buy, I think $3,500 with a pudding, which is like a significant amount in terms of like how much space it would take up in your room. And he like had all this pudding and he peeled all the packs. And he was able to redeem it for one point. 2 million miles, airline miles. And he like gameed the contest.

Starting point is 01:06:50 And there's, like, we, at the hustle, we used to do this. So people like gaming these contests, there's like a bunch of people. There's this community of people who go and find these contests. And they're like, all right, where did they make the mistake? Where if you follow this exactly, you could actually like milk it hardcore to the extreme. And there was a guy who did this with pudding. So it was basically, it was basically you get a thousand miles for every 10 labels. and the because the whole thing was like for some reason

Starting point is 01:07:17 this pudding is supposed to be healthy and so they said if you eat a lot of it it's good for you and we're going to reward you by giving you a thousand miles for every 10 labels and so there was $2 a piece he figured out that he could buy them in bulk and he's like here's this arbitrage where it's profitable and he did that where he got 1.2 million miles for $3,100.

Starting point is 01:07:35 There's a Netflix show about this about a different version of this some guy trying to do this with a I think he had to buy cans of Pepsi or something like that or Coke or something. something to do airline. There's some show. I haven't watched it yet, but I saw it show up on on a Netflix. Yeah, then there's the McDonald's one. There's a McDonald's one too where they were they like they just a scam. They just they scammed it. Yes, but it is fascinating. I do like reading about those. They're always fun stories. We should one of these days walk through an episode of all these people

Starting point is 01:08:04 who have just game the system. We used to do that the hustle all the time where we would give. I forget what it was. It was like one email subscriber to us was worth $10. And if you referred like 10 people, we would send you a t-shirt, which was a profitable thing for us. And if you Google the Hustle affiliate contest, all of these moms have, there was mostly like a stay-at-home mom website, and it's called like coupon dash or like all these websites where it's just people who enter contests. And they're like, hey, look, here's another one. You can win a free pair of socks.

Starting point is 01:08:33 If you refer 50 people. And it was like referral like rings. And we would get all of these people doing this. And we would catch this. And we're like, why is like this like 30. year old woman named Cindy winning all of our prizes. We've never heard of her. She's won all this stuff. What's going on? And you can figure out that they list your contest on these websites and they game it like crazy. It's a pretty wild thing. So we had to create like a double opt-in system because

Starting point is 01:08:58 they just figured out they're like, you see them talking about like, look, you don't even need to opt-in your email. So you can just write like Sean plus one at AOL.com. Sean plus two at AOL.com. And you just win. And so that's when we had to change it. But like that's how I learned a little bit about this underground world of like sweepstakes, they call it. Yeah, sweepstake hackers. Amazing.

Starting point is 01:09:18 All right. Should we wrap it there or do we want to do any more of these? We'll wrap it there. So I think the order of greatness, the least interesting one, I think it was either mine or the hot couple. The second. The perfect couple.

Starting point is 01:09:36 We have to put the perfect couple down there because they've been winning at everything their whole life. Yeah, it'll go perfect couple. And then Robert. Yeah, the perfect couple is the worst. Finally, they have something bad on the resume. The podcast really does feature sort of like ugly winners. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:09:53 It's sort of like more ugly and like, you know, slightly shady you are. The higher you seem to rank on my first million. I don't know if that's intentional or unintentional, but it definitely happens. Yeah, so the hot people, they're your last. And then we'll go Robert Earl And then the one above that is Ooh Scott Storch is going to go number two Guthrie Ranker number one

Starting point is 01:10:18 The Juiciest But Scott Storch is interesting too But Guthrie Raker I think there's more to learn All right So that's it That's the pod I feel like I can rule the world I know I could be what I want to

Starting point is 01:10:35 I put my all in it like no days off On the road let's travel Never looking back Bye

My First Million - The Secret Founders Of +$1,000,000,000 Brands

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