The Pomp Podcast - #1167 John Shahidi on Happy Dad, NELK Boys, Full Send, Elon Musk, & SteveWillDoIt

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

John Shahidi is the president of Happy Dad, Shots Podcast Network, & NELK Boys. In this conversation, we talk about the rise of the NELK Boys, how they make money, what the business is behind all the content. This includes the Full Send Podcast, SteveWillDoIt being banned from YouTube, how they interviewed Elon Musk, sales figures & product plan for Happy Dad. Happy Dad is one of the fastest growing seltzers in the world. John is one of the greatest minds when it comes to scaling products when a creator is providing all the distribution.  ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 200,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/

What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. We have no advertisers on this podcast, so it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. John Shahidi is the president of Happy Dad, Nelk Boys, and Shots.

In this conversation, we talk about how the Nelk Boys are taking over the world and how they make money, what the business is behind all that content. This includes the Full Send podcast, Steve Will Do It being banned from YouTube, how they got in touch with Elon Musk, and what exactly are the sales figures and the product plan for Happy Dad, one of the fastest growing seltzers in the world. I really enjoyed this conversation with John, and I hope you guys enjoy it as well. He's one of the greatest minds when it comes to scaling products,

especially when a creator is providing all the distribution. Here is my conversation with John Chahidi. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions. and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy,

but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got John here with me. I thought a great place to start is last time we talked, you were doing nothing with Happy Dad, Nelk, anything. You guys have absolutely exploded onto the scene.

and what I think is interesting is like there's a content story and then there's a business story and everyone is very focused on the content because that's what you can see right yeah uh I care about the business and uh when I see you or any of those guys posting and you're going to like a liquor store and there's literally a line out the door around the block you know there's cops they're making sure that everyone's like staying in line making sure they're getting in people are signing uh all of the alcohol like this is a massive massive movement in a business that guys are building how do you think about day one you walk in you're like all right we have to build a business here like what do you think is the advantage that you have and how do you think

about which products to launch and kind of like what to sequentially do from a business perspective yeah um well i always say this and this is pretty much a no-brainer and you know but but it does come down to the product being great at the end of the day um it's always got always has to start with that and that's the advice i'd have to give anybody it's like no matter how big you are how many followers you have or how many connections you have with whatever retailers or whatever it is if your product's not great like people are going to give every product a chance once if it sucks they won't come back we're going on to two years of happy dad now our rebuys are absolutely insane we haven't launched a new state in six or seven months we're about to launch five new ones

in the next six weeks but we haven't launched any and our sales are still growing in the existing states because they're rebuys and we haven't even revisited those stores yet so it's really the product it has to start 100 with the product um and then yeah then there's a lot of others but why happy dad right like what like why is that the product that you guys like we're gonna hang our hat on this and we think this is the thing that we can build a big business around we want um you know the seltzer business has been growing over the last few years um it's pretty much become a beer replacement uh and happy dad the way was the the branding the marketing or even this type of can that we use was really to target the male audience when it comes to seltzer consumption

almost every single seltzer you see right now comes in a skinny can multiple colors you know just going after you know a different yeah and now you know and our initial because and and it wasn't necessarily we need something for men it was like our audience were men the nelk audience is men 80 plus of the nelk viewer um across all socials are men so we said all right what could we make for our audience that will convert um what's funny is like females love happy dad we could get into why like you know it wasn't our target but you know i think because of the flavoring and the amount of carbonation i could get into that but you know um and maybe even let You know that we're launching Happy Mom, but we'll talk about that because of that.

But yeah, I think really Happy Dad was we want to go after the seltzer market. It's become pretty much a replacement to beer for all different types of reasons, from the taste to the calorie count, carb count. People are a lot more conscious of their health right now. Um, you know, I think a lot of different reasons, post pandemic realizing that maybe the best, um, you know, solution to, you know, some of the, what happened with the pandemic was actually your health versus can't go down that rabbit hole of, uh, you know, but, you know, but, but health at the end of the day, you know, um, health is wealth and, um, and I, you know, and I think we all

want to be healthy now, you know, I think we've learned over the last few years, like got health as well and i think that the big narrative was uh noc had these amazing videos that were going super viral this big audience uh it reminded me a lot of like the barstool audience early on when i was in college and uh in the northeast like you just knew they'd show up for the blackout tour or whatever and like people would show up right and these guys seemed to be able to say hey i'm gonna be somewhere an audience showed up right like they were willing to go do that they also were buying a lot of merch and so usually those two you know data points tell you this is a real audience it's really engaged it really kind of subscribes to the lifestyle and

and the values and all that type of stuff um but they weren't monetizing any of the content as far as i understand right like there weren't a lot of brand deals they uh didn't have any ads from youtube or any of that stuff and it pretty much was just like a merch business attached to content is that like a fair uh way to evaluate what they were doing before you guys really got into a lot of the consumer goods yeah well um merch was a big part of their business because they were demonetized from youtube um during pandemic years during 2020 um they you know they were the ones that weren't refusing to not go out and party still and they were still having gatherings and filming the gatherings and and they were demonetized by youtube uh but no it was a pretty

big organization on the back end you know there's a couple dozen employees so um they had to figure out how to pay bills and merch kind of became the pivot um and focus and um and you know we say to this day is being demonetized by being demonetized by youtube ended up being one of the biggest blessings because you know the merch revenue has been exploded 30 40 x what youtube revenue would ever be um from ads inside and then on top of that brands brands are extremely afraid to work with creators they've always been afraid um you know um just seeing what's happened over the years with different creators which i've never agreed on why everyone was so angry at some of them you know and trying to cancel everybody but the the creators that have been canceled over the years

it's it's frightened um a lot of brands and that's also become a blessing in disguise because like brands have always been afraid of milk and are all types of creators but specifically milk so that's where happy that's come in he's like all right do we go and do a super small deal with anheuser-busch and try to explain ourselves and then be limited on the content be careful the content or do we make our own brand which better decision yeah and now walk me through operation one of the things a lot of folks in the business world a lot of investors are waking up to is these creator-led businesses basically did the business creation in reverse,

right? Usually you build a product, then you go find the customers. Nelk and many others have basically found the customers first, and then they go in there building the product. But building the product for many creators is actually a really, really hard thing to do. They don't have that skill set. They don't have the connections. They don't have the capital. They don't know who, like, am I going to have operate this thing? You obviously have been around for a long time. You've seen a lot of different businesses um and you have not only are you well connected you guys have access to capital like you know i think a lot of folks kind of say like oh john's there like this has got a shot of actually working from an operational standpoint how did you think about

operationalizing it right like just you showing up you're not going to do everything so like you build out a whole team do you go and you just like partner with somebody and it's your brand with their operations like how does that work um you know the one thing i've always been very good at is finding delegating work and finding the best person and being able to hire and fire hire and and find the best person for any specific role so um specifically with happy dad obviously there's so many different sectors of our businesses there's alcohol there's merch there's media with our podcast but but on the alcohol side when the decision was made to make happy dad um there's this family that i know the butao family um long time friends of mine um been in the alcohol

business for many years but decades i mean the the the father keith boot house you know um you know they call him the godfather of the alcohol industry like so went to straight to them and said hey listen um need to make an a plus product you know i've got the platform the milk boys we want to make a seltzer we got the branding we got everything but we need the liquid to be a plus and they're like say no more and immediately started creating the flavorings we did taste tests and you know that's one thing that i've been really great at and then then now that's the that's the beverage that's the like liquid now who gets final say on the taste test it's all of us there's a there's a group like consensus there's a group of about

seven to ten of us and it has to be unanimous um if one person doesn't like it we go back so it's no like not sorry sam we like it you don't or sorry kyle or sorry joe buteau it's everyone has to okay love it um that's why we go back and forth so much if one person says i'm not sure we're going back so and i think that's been part of the happy dad success has been that too um but then you know there's that part there's the liquid then there's then there's a liquid and manufacturing right from cans to breweries um it originally starts with flavoring then breweries cans but then then now it's got to leave the brewery it's got to go to different states every state we have a different distributor so i had to find someone

to help me find the right distributors the right partners a lot a lot of states in alcohol or um have franchise loss meaning once you sign the deal with that distributor you're in with them for life crazy law by the way crazy crazy obviously a free market principle of course of course 100 year old laws you know so so anyway so now we're like all right so if we're in with these guys for life we got to be careful because one is they've got to be great they got to make us a priority uh they can't have a product by a competitor because we'll be bullied you know if they carry like let's just say i don't want to name any competitors but we all know who the competitors are in the can alcohol space uh you know if they say like hey like these happy dad

guys you better shove them out make you know like they're going to listen to the bigger guy of course um but then also you know with distribution you got to also say like all right one day if the you know a strategic partner wants to come into the business do they like that distributor because you're in with them for life so you know there's all those pieces we had to learn as well so i had to bring in someone to help me learn that side of things so i did that that then that happened and And then there's now the retail side. There's, all right, cool. All right, we've got a great product.

It's been shipped out to the distributors. How do I get Kroger's to care? How do I get Publix? How do I get Walmart? How do I get 7-Eleven, Circle K? How do I get them to care? So I was able to go and pretty much help find best people. The point A to Z is so long in alcohol, but that's something I've always been great at.

How much of the talent that you ended up recruiting, were you able to just go to them early on and say, here's our idea here's you know the milk boys here's their audience size like get on board versus you had to kind of get things in motion and get some momentum and then it was easier to convince you know some of these a-plus people to come on i think i've been very lucky and i've said this in a lot is um i've always had this philosophy of um life is long not life is short and i've built some really great relationships in the last 20 something years that i've been in business where where when I make these phone calls, almost everyone kind of knows I'm a man of my word

and they'll give me a chance, whether it's pre-launch, shortly post-launch, whatever it is. You know, I could, with some of my friends, I've been very, very, very lucky with the friends and partners that I have that, you know, I can make calls and everyone's going to give me a chance.

Yeah. Why do you think that is? Is it just that you've been doing it a long time and you've been successful and kind of always done what you said or is it something else? Yeah. Yeah.

I don't, I'm not a bridge burner. Yeah. yeah that's not that's not anything that i do is burn a bridge i know and i'm still i'm old but i'm still still young you know i'm 43 years old i know when i'm 55 years old i'm gonna need to call you for something you know and i know when i'm 55 you're gonna take my call or vice versa you're gonna call me and i'm gonna come through for you you know we're gonna know each other in 12 years you know so so that's why to me i'm also thinking my relationship with you or my relationship with whomever your brother anybody you know we're still pretty young yeah i mean

people have a hard time thinking five or ten years in advance let alone if you're you know in your 20s yeah right some of these guys the boot towels just 40 50 years from now the boot towel family i met in 1999 i met the new boot boot towel family 1999 yeah i was 19 years old at the time maybe 20 um 20 years old i think i was at the time when i met them um i mean i met them so long ago i was actually with them when 9-11 happened we were literally watching tv together like that's how long ago i knew them so for me to 20 years later you call yeah for 20 years later it's like hey listen i know you guys are got all these partners and you guys are doing these tequilas and vodka i think they were part of the tito's team and um i forgot the name of the tequila but a big tequila

um i actually had a business with them we created an alcohol a long time ago and the alcohol failed and you know many know when a when a business fails partners usually hate each other and don't ever want to talk to each other again it's like we still love each other and they still took my call this was 15 years ago we made that tequila that failed 15 years later they're still taking my call so i think that's kind of the lesson for anyone in business is like don't burn a bridge life is long life is not short you know when people say life is short they're just like dude get whatever it takes go burn that bridge screw that person you you you you you i don't i don't agree with that yeah and i think it's kind of proof now it's like you know when kyle or steve or any of my

partners calls like hey can you help get this can you help get this done it's like thinking that you know i'm sure we'll talk about it but i've been like getting elon musk you know on how'd that happen i asked him twice first time he said maybe second time he said sure but that's a 10 year email emailed him at the time and then like they then um then i followed the second time was a text i was like yo you said maybe you know like what like what do you say what do you say in the text Are you hitting Elon with like a you up text or are you just like very specific? Hey, we're going to be in Austin. Here's the date and time.

Can you do it? Um, no, he, he said, if you're in Austin, well, both try to be as specific as possible, but be short as well. I know I only have a few seconds of his time. Um, but when I had text, when I texted him the last time, um, I said, Hey, I think this is a great weekend to do this. At the time, the Twitter deal was kind of pending. I said, I'll stay away from any Twitter talk because there was like this talk of Twitter lawsuit and all this.

Stay away from all Twitter talk. I'll give you final approval on the video. I actually think that this is something that many people who aren't in the content creation business don't really understand. So journalists, there's no final approval, right? They're going to write their story. They're going to do their interview. They're going to kind of produce whatever content they are. And they go out with it.

and they do their best for the most part to try to be accurate and try to get you know all the different perspectives and and kind of um i think most journalists are trying to do the right thing uh but when there is no final approval like it just goes out and a friend of mine recently somebody wrote a big article about him and i texted him and he's like i'm happy with how it turned out right and so it was like kind of like you don't know until it's out and he read it and he liked it now in podcasts and youtube and all this stuff what i've noticed is there are a lot lot of business leaders, a lot of investors, those types of individuals who are gravitating towards podcasts and YouTube style content, because they do get to see it at the end.

And I think that there's a difference between like what some people would refer to as like the gotcha journalism, right? Which is like, hey, I'm trying to get you to say something that's bombastic so then I can twist it or whatever. Versus like, we're going to talk about things today that are like non-controversial, right? And it's like, I want you to be able to feel comfortable to talk right and vice versa when you guys are doing those interviews but how important do you think it is that you say to a guy like elon you get final approval it's very it's very you know it's what's crazy what you're saying is it's very important because we offer it to every single guest and what's crazy is nobody's ever called us said to take this out right because

i think they feel so comfortable that they're just like not on the spot and they're not overthinking what they're saying because they're like okay at the end of the day i'm gonna have final approval yeah there wasn't a single thing elon i didn't he we didn't even talk about after we just went live i think we went live like a two days later like you never said hey i thought you said final approval there was nothing sometimes we'll ask someone at the end like i remember we did david portnoy and i text them i said hey anything that you want to take it out of that he said no um you know sometimes i'll follow up and ask but almost never has anyone ever told us even though we've offered it no one said hey take that one part out or whatever i always say that the people

who ask for a bunch of stuff to be removed we've had i don't know maybe 1200 episodes maybe like five or six people who have been like you know literally one person one time was like here's the time stamps you can take out this to this this whatever it's like those are the episodes where you're like look it's already trending where if you're that worried about it you probably really weren't saying things anyways that were super super interesting and so uh the more successful somebody is the less likely i think they are to okay i can tell you right now there there'll be no no changes required from this episode there'll be none if i said something wrong that's on me that's that's not that's not your team's fault that's that's that's my fault

all right uh so you guys do the elon interview what is that like i mean you guys are obviously you're all in there i think that you and kind of your background your relationship you've known them right all this stuff is very different than maybe like kyle or any of the other guys like what are they like before elon comes in the room right what like what is that whole process like well it was um it was i think a little nerve-wracking because it was one it was supposed to be done the day before and there were some kind of like some hiccups and some issues with like different things that it didn't happen so then the next day actually i didn't get a hold of elon till like 3 p.m the next day so um so there were you know we we had flown out um it

was my brother's birthday the day before so we had flown out and you know spent a lot of money last second to fly out and i'm just sitting there i took my wife with me at the time so i'm just like i had like some like emotional support because i was just like i can't let these guys down like the whole team flew to austin because the last message you were asking what the last message with elon was hey i'm down to do it this weekend and um i said we're at where are you going to be and he said florida or texas i was like oh like which one like i don't even know you go to florida i've never heard of elon coming to florida i was like you know coin flip yeah so i was like which one and um i said should we just book our flights to texas and he just wrote back sure i was

like okay so then we just did that um this was on a friday i said hey we'll be there monday and he said okay some things happened monday couldn't happen so then um i said hey let's do tomorrow he said message me in the morning message him in the morning didn't hear back to like 3 p.m and then he just wrote me like see you at 9 p.m tonight so 9 p.m on a tuesday the world's richest man just rolls what was it like in a hotel room we yeah we had got a hotel room like in downtown austin yeah and so he just rolls in and just sits down just records a fucking podcast he's like pulling up i'm like okay it's always so funny to me right because you you always remember like once you're around these folks that like they are humans right they put one pant leg on at a time

like all the all the normal shit they text right pulling up like whatever uh but from afar right like he's dealing with the twitter stuff he's got somebody tracking his like uh private plane he's freaking out about right like launching rockets yeah like all this crazy stuff that you got to deal with when you're the world's richest man and running all these companies and then like you find time to you know yeah go chill in a fucking he's the best man i after that like he and i've always and i was going back to the relationship i met him in 2013 so this is now what we're talking about is august of 2022 so it's like nine years after like nine years of me and him just kind of like just kind of occasionally chat and ran into each other a few different times um mutual friends

birthdays uh actually one time i was at a restaurant he was there we get you know we're ran into each other we're sitting next to each other but uh um you know we just always kind of stayed in touch um but after then like he and i really stayed in touch like you know there's like it's like kind of crazy now it's like i talked to him weekly like really yeah all different types of things usually twitter yeah usually twitter like giving him like product tips uh creators like like i really he really cares about the creator space and um he really wants twitter to be the greatest platform for creators so he'll he'll definitely call me on we'll talk product a little bit um he knows like my background like building the app 10 years ago with shots but um but i think

more is like creators like you know creators of all different worlds not just youtubers and influencers but like athletes and actors and actresses and um and musicians you know stuff like that one of the things i saw that he was talking about i don't know if they're going to implement it or not that i thought was a pretty interesting idea is they're going to put ads potentially in the comments and then the creator who creates the original post right could get a share of uh the actual ads in uh in the comments yeah yeah you know it would be like the equivalent of youtube throwing up ads in the comment section and then you get a share of it and i just thought like okay whether that works or not it's always unclear right you gotta kind of test it and look

at the data and they'll decide whether it's worth uh shipping or not but like man they're thinking differently yeah right like they're willing to test some things that might be taboo right that model works on snapchat does that right now with creators they run ads in between stories on snap and they share that with creators and it's very good money so this uh you know obviously twitter doesn't have stories i do think and i've told elon a few times i do think twitter should bring back stories like you know if you remember that fleets yep um just just like what's like x i mean even the name like what's a flea isn't that when you buy a bunch of cars like you know like what way what you know but but you know just bring back twitter stories and just call it twitter

stories but you know um but yeah i mean now but the way they're doing it because of the comment section which is you know a lot of people read on twitter um versus just viewing um i think you'll get a lot a lot of engaging people yeah and i think you can sell that engagement to advertisers as well i mean putting the view count alone right was a pretty big deal like it definitely i think open people's eyes like hey people may not be engaging but they're here yeah watching yeah i thought that was genius yeah i did too i think i know there was a lot of backlash in the beginning but i thought it was genius i hope that feature is here to stay um i think it's great i actually messaged them that too i said hey i think this is a future that should be here to stay yeah um

who are you guys trying to get on the podcast that you haven't been able to get yet is there like somebody who's like on the full send podcast because we have a few we have the pivot so on full send specifically let's start there because most people would think elon would be like the top of the mountain right but you guys already got him is there anybody else that you guys are like look we've got an elon we've got trump's been on there um you know well he was on the podcast i don't know the video didn't last yeah yeah i think 48 hours or 24 hours um did you know to get taken down no no i don't think it would so that one even after you guys recorded you thought that it was gonna be fine yeah but someone from his team a good buddy of mine who works for him said

hey this is gonna be taken down pretty soon watch and i said why is it because read all the comments they're all positive about him and because it's positive it's gonna go down i was like okay and then and you read i mean even if you read because we we weren't going into that trump i want to answer the question about who because i love that question um but um we weren't going into it as a political yeah you know like we try to stay clear politics as much as possible um a lot of the podcasts i actually help write the questions so like some of the questions were like what songs on your playlist what do you listen to when you're in shower like you know you know even like joking i don't think they ever asked this one but like what do you think about the kim at the time was

relevant kim and connie situation and like you know like just want to show like dudes hanging out that's what that's what we wanted and that's what we got he is what regardless of your politics yeah he is a master manipulator of the media and he has hot takes and he has posted frankly some of the most viral content on the internet in the last decade i mean i still tell people like when he was president one of the most ridiculous but hilarious things that he did was when he was tweeting at kim jong-un and called him little rocket man he's the funniest man and you're just like dude you're the president like please don't start world war iii but also like okay you didn't start world war iii like that shit's pretty funny right and the entertainment factor is like off the

charts and so that's what the debates the debates the debates in 2016 and the ones again in 2020 like and so that's what it felt like just great content it felt like you guys were there hanging out with him and firing questions that he never gets asked right and like i mean i want to almost go as far as to say like it looked like everyone was enjoying it like he was having fun the best time and then the guys were having fun too yeah we had the best time and i'll be you know again I try to steer clear of politics, but I can just say one thing about him. He was so cool to us. He was so kind.

Even when the cameras were off, he was just welcoming and making sure we got everything we needed. And we've ran into him twice since. We ran into him at his golf course in L.A., and then we ran into him at a live golf tournament in New Jersey. Same thing. Every time he's giving us hugs and asking us how we're doing. And he actually I saw him a couple of months after I got married in June and he said, hey, I heard you got married. Congratulations. And he actually sent a letter to like me and Renee and like congratulating us on our wedding. And like, yeah, just like you just like that's why it's hard for me to like just be around any negativity.

But also, like, I mean, it's like I'm also not a I'm not a Joe Biden hater either. Like at the end of the day, the man's the president of our country. you know he has serviced the country for a long time um and i think you know um he was elected president and you know his age might be his only one of maybe a major flaw but like that's not his fault like we still voted him in you know so it's like you know you know i think there's a lot of people who wish that they were uh operational at uh at his age yeah right yeah yeah yeah i'm actually sometimes impressed i mean sometimes it's funny right he's on these clips where he's just like reading and it's like completely like you know but it's like you know what can we do with

politics you know i i just laugh there's nothing we can do there's nothing you and i can do to change anything like you know i mean like we can go and vote and our vote counts but that's about all we can do you know like you know so now i'm just gonna sit back and enjoy it i think that's the other thing it's great entertainment everything in everything that is seen through the portal of your phone or your computer has become entertainment and sometimes that's good sometimes that's bad but like i think that gets lost a lot of times because people take so much so seriously but like if there's one thing that we've learned is that if you're entertaining and you can hold people's attention you're charismatic or whatever you win right you win in politics you win in business you

win in all these different facets and i think that is one thing that uh the younger generation has an advantage on it's like they grew up with the phone in their hand yeah right like they understand that in you know it's the life is a movie right and that's how they live their lives yeah yeah you were asking earlier about who on full sent podcast I think one of the things so had Elon have had Trump had Dana White what you know admire Mike Tyson I mean I mean you know Dave Portnoy which which I think is probably one of the most underrated entrepreneurs of our time but um I can't say anything nice about dave because in a recent episode i called him a pioneer of the digital

media age and i'm just waiting for him to find that clip and then go and celebrate so yeah he he's incredible in terms of what he's done i think people don't uh give him the credit he deserves for a 20-year run doing the two right it's not like you just show up on the scene for two years i think he's the um i would put him in top five greatest um entrepreneur in the world of sports you know like when you're making that list of like the greatest entrepreneurs in the world of sports and you take out all the sport owners you know the jerry joneses and al davis and all them take all those guys out um but on sport entrepreneurs like i would put them in top five they've all time of our time of our time yeah yeah i don't know who was doing stuff in the 70s

and 80s but of our time yeah yeah i would say who else is up there reuben reuben 100 reuben um um i mean just those two guys dana white right yeah dana white yeah yeah yeah there's probably like five or six people you could come up with that you're like man they've built what is hundreds of millions or billions of dollars of enterprise value specifically the intersection of media business whatever in sports yeah and they've done it really redefining what sport is or how it's covered or you know whatever yeah and like that is the definition of a pioneer right yeah yeah Yeah. I would say Mark Cuban too. Obviously he owns a Mavs, but outside of Mavericks, he's done quite a bit as well. But yeah, I think those, you know, with guests going back, I want to

try to answer that question again, because I think about all the time, who else and what's the direction of the podcast? I think different creators or celebrities or whatever who actually have products like i also think full send podcast could be a platform for someone who's got their own happy dad or whatever and come and talk about the business with the boys because that's one thing with kyle especially who's the main host of the podcast it's his podcast and um you know he really understands he's very hands-on with the business of happy dad so like let's just say like i was just talking to kevin hart's um partner in the tequila and we were talking about how how to get kevin on and what would they talk about you know kevin doesn't really know the milk boys all

that well and you know so um that would not be a funny episode at all yeah i know i know i can't wait you know there's gonna be some one-liners in that one but um i think um who's taller yeah but no i think um talking about like his tequila you know and like the business the stuff that we opened up this podcast with and talking about is like the business behind you know like his his tequila um i need to try i haven't tried it yet but everyone that's talked about is tequila let's talk about it's a 10 out of 10 product it's because it's on the higher end of the tequila like he's not going after like the lower lower end like it's a higher price point tequila but um but it's like you know we share distributors and our distributors like when i

just randomly i'll ask him like how's kevin hart's tequila like crushing that absolutely crushing it so so is it crushing i know it's not crushing because of kevin hart he's got the right partners now kevin hart's got a crazy platform and like and what he's doing it's helping but it starts with your partners and like he went and he went and found the right partner and this guy james was awesome and then james went and got the right product made you know and then they went and i know they the distributors that they use the same ones we use great a plus and and then now kevin's got this platform and now he's grinding as well and all the time so it's like you know there's so many different parts to building a you know a creator product which what kevin's tequila is

i think like getting guests like that to talk about that like or another one that i think is a very underrated business because he has so much potential i was actually talking to him this morning about is david dobrik and his pizza place you know one might look at it's like wait it's just one location off sunset boulevard yeah that location is less than six months old like wait until you see what he does with this over the next few years the opportunities of growing it into multiple cities maybe franchising it maybe you see the frozen pizzas and costcos you know i mean like like david dobrik has a billion dollar business right and you know in his hands you know yeah um what was fascinating to me is that all of these brands uh are the equivalent of as a kid

when we grew up like cc's pizza nobody knew what the hell cc's was right uh it was just like you went to a place you liked it you kept coming back but now what ends up happening is somebody like david dobrik can open a pizza place and he's done the marketing for years he's already built the fan base he's done all this stuff and it is the like athlete endorsement type model now it's just these people are realizing like own the business right and it then begs the question like the milk boys are they creators or the entrepreneurs right kevin hart is he a movie star is he comedian is he a entrepreneur like i would say entrepreneur i think that they all fall under that entrepreneur that just happened to create you know different than you and i you know i mean like you know we

were businessmen but we also know how to create but in different ways you know we know how to go on podcasts and speak well they know how to create kevin hart knows how to create in front of a live audience telling jokes or no boys know how to create great content that'll go viral on youtube and the internet you know just in different ways but how do you think about how big happy dad is like in terms of are there numbers that you guys have shared publicly in terms of like how big that business actually is it's very big but what's crazy is um you know when i say we're two years old um we right now we're only as of now in march 2023 we're in 16 states only and in those 16 states we have less than 10 penetration we're not in every single store yet in those 16 states

um but when you look at the nielsen charts that's public to anyone who wants to go look or subscribe however way you want to get access to nielsen is um we're moving up on the charts in so many different um parts of america you know we uh you know we're we're top 10 everywhere that we're available but in some regions and some stores we're a top three you know top three alcohol brands top three seltzer seltzer so white claws number one by a landslide truly's number two and three four five have always been kind of a battle between busy but light seltzer um depending on your region there's a lot of local ones like in southern california there's one called ashland um you know there's never been a solid number three and we've in a lot of territories we've

taken that number three and we've kind of locked uh tope chico as it was a big one that's actually was number three in a lot of spots slots um that's owned by coca-cola um but we've in a lot of areas we've locked in that number three so now because like white claws got number one locked for now for now yeah for now yeah but they're also got many years ahead of us i mean white claws i would say like six years old maybe a little bit older um then truly's got number two locked you know but we were we wanted to lock number three and now we're locking number three in a lot of regions so so that's you know that's only in the 16 states uh we're launching five more states we're launching um we're launching canada um canada's a big market for our um our content consumption

and and then also like what we're also now looking at is like uh different audiences at different sectors of consumers uh we know we know if you're 25 to 30 years old you've heard of happy dad you've tried happy dad if it's available in your state uh but now we're looking at a male if you're 25 to 30 year old male uh now we're looking at okay how do we hit the female market how do we hit the latino market how do we hit the black market like how do we hit you know these other markets just take all the demographics whether it's uh race gender sex whatever you can do and just cut through every single one of them yeah how do we keep penetrating all these different so i'll give an example of the female market is uh one is um it's not a day

where a different female's coming up to me he's like well why happy dad why aren't you doing happy mom i've been hearing that for almost two years you know so great idea yeah great idea so we're doing happy mom um and it'll be similar type of product and just different branding same product just different flavor and we said okay so instead of 10 men taste testing the flavors which is what we've been doing the last couple years with our existing flavors let's get 10 females women who work for us women within our world in the industry uh my wife she came in i was gonna say renee one yeah renee's one so pressure yeah 10 of them 10 of all she's i mean they all had to be honest but if anyone's gonna be honest it's gonna be her but the 10 of them came together and they

came up with the flavor together so so you know it's like all right cool so the the brandy's there the flavor is there 10 women love this flavor and we're gonna that's gonna be the first flavor is happy mom so now we're going after the female market and how do you think about the audience being 80 90 male right whatever it is uh being able to crack into that other side of maybe now it's not just the content drives it right like is it now something where happy dad can like be bigger than Nelk? Can it escape, you know, kind of, uh, being, Hey, there's this group on YouTube who has a big audience and like, that's why happy dad is successful. And eventually people just say like, no, happy dad is like a successful seltzer that, uh, survives on its own. Even if

Nelk never uploaded another video. Hey guys, I hope that you're enjoying this conversation. As you probably realize, we don't run any ads on this show. That's right. All the other podcasts, all the other YouTube shows that you watch, they have advertisers. We don't have any direct relationships with advertisers and we simply create this because we enjoy doing it. Now that we do that though, we have a team. And if you'd like to support us,

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All right, let's get back into this conversation. I think it's become bigger than NELC. And I'll give you a couple of reasons why I know just from experience. This one's a small one, but this one happened. But this happened once with one person, so it can't really tell. But I have another example. Kyle, who's the creator of the NELC Boys, he's the main face of NELC Boys, him and Steve.

But Kyle was on a flight. He's wearing a happy dad hoodie. Guy next to him sitting next to him says, Hey, love your hoodie, man. I love happy dad. I was like, Oh, cool. He's like, Thank you, shit. I'm sitting next to a fan. This is going to be a brutal flight. Yeah. So the guy is just talking about happy dad, this and that.

And at the end of the flight, the guy is just like, Oh, what's your name? He's like, I was like, I'm so-and-so. Kyle's like, Wow, this guy doesn't even know who I am. Like, he had no idea the guy who Kyle was. Wow. He was talking about happy dad and, you know, was talking about why he likes happy dad and this and that. And then I don't know if Kyle Everett revealed who we was.

He was just like, this was crazy. This guy had no idea. So that's one. But this other one is a bigger example. We did a test run at Costco. So Costco, Northern California called us. They said, we want to test Happy Dad. We want to test it in nine locations.

And usually a product, when you want to get into Costco, you'll make a bigger product because Costco always likes the lowest price. so you want you want to give them but they look at per unit price so that's why most people make like larger club packages um for costco so you get maximum dollar but at a cheaper price price visual price point we weren't ready to do that we only have a 12 pack available so we were like all right well you're just gonna have to sell the 12 pack for now we don't it's gonna take us some time to make a 24 or 36 pack i think we've decided to make a 24 now but um so we gave them

12 um the 12 packs they tested nine stores in northern california the product got shipped out earlier than we knew so it was it got it got delivered to the costco stores a whole week before we had this whole marketing plan in place basically and like the marketing plan is like we're going to tell people to go buy it we're going to show up yeah yeah we're going to do all this stuff we'll sell out for sure yeah we got to impress costco we got to show them how fast we move um the product got there a whole week before we didn't know and people are messaging us hey just saw you at costco and i'm like what do you mean like we're not supposed to be there till next week thursday but it was a whole week thursday before calling some of our

partners are like yeah um so by the time we got some answers um it was like now monday by the time we got answers and i'm like well we got to like implement this thing i don't want costco to think a flop right you're sold out all nine costcos so what we we never promote it look at our socials we never promoted available on costco no one posted on social media and one thing like i mentioned a few minutes ago our audience is 25 year olds and up 25 30 year olds in northern california that is not northern california is not a big market for us and 25 year olds aren't really going to costco to shop yep yep so it's not our even audience how much of this is like um uh prime uh i don't know if the numbers leaked or somebody reported them but the prime drink um i think they

did like 250 million dollars last year in uh revenue and uh i've talked to a couple of friends who have kids that are you know kind of like eight to maybe 15 years old and they're like my kid can't find it my kid you know if there's a gas station locally that has it like they all spread the word very quickly and they go and they pick it up and some of them are even reselling it at school for a premium and like all this kind of stuff right like how much of that is baked into what you guys have done with happy dad when i see people you know in a line down the street and it's like look we want to sell out but like there is this scarcity element of it that drives people to go to run over to costco and buy it buy it out because it's not widely available in northern

california for you yeah yeah yeah well we are available in northern california the costco one it was a whole different audience that gave this gave happy dad a try whether it was older guys so so i'd love to talk about prime in a second while you were talking about their numbers but uh but with happy dad so the the the neighborhood i live in is all you're not you're not going to find an adult under under the age of 35 but it's like younger families 35 to 50 year olds live in my neighborhood uh i've made a mandate like every we have three grocery stores in my neighborhood and and we have like five different bars and i've told our team hey listen like everywhere in my city and i live in a smaller city 20 000 people um every location that sells alcohol in my city you gotta

do me a favor and make sure we're stocked up like i gotta see it like i don't want to go to my albersons or my stater brothers or even my selma's pizza the pizza place or board and brew my sandwich place and not see happy dad so they made it they're like all right and literally i said it because me but also like i think this audience is 35 year old to 50 year old men you know what are the they're all dads you know i mean like they see a product called happy dad and i think that's what happened in costco like happy dad that sounds i'm a happy dad you know i'm here i'm here to buy a bunch of tri-tip like i'm you know i'm i'm i'm a happy dad um my wife let me out of the house so i think people were you know the marketing of that is now getting the 35 year old to 50

old men whether they're people living in my neighborhood or going to costco the costco shoppers uh but the products would be great because somebody went back and bought it again you know like somebody went and said hey let me give this a try you know you know bought 12 of them maybe took them out in a day or two and went back that sunday or monday and bought more so so the rebuys are really important going back to what we opened up and talked about was the products got to be great yeah um but yeah so i think that's so the scarcity of it i think maybe helped a little bit in the very beginning but now it's the actual product and hitting different audiences yeah like like we were talking about genders um ethnicities age groups you know like a nilk audience pretty

much caps at like 31 32 years old you know it's like probably the oldest you know um so you know how do i get the 32 to 50 year old to drink you know or 60 year olds yeah and what about prime what do you guys think about that um someone asked me this morning actually do you think those numbers are real i think so like i think you gotta remember one thing prime one thing i do hate is when people compare us to prime which happens sometimes on social media i don't even know why i read social media but on social media like you know oh right prime's doing 250 million like show us your numbers like no ours is not that you know like but we're also in 16 states only and But I do believe that Prime's doing that because not only are they available in all states, but they're also absolutely massive in the U.K.

Like, KSI. Is he a sleeper? Oh, massive. Like, in terms of for Americans. Like, he's that guy in the U.K. I don't think people know how big KSI is in the U.K. Like, he's, I mean, he's like borderline royalty out there. like they love ksi out out in the uk so so you got that strategic partner in europe then you have

logan here and then like logan's genius marketing right it's like there's not a place where he's not holding up the bottle and making sure it's the bottle's getting as many impressions but also like you know i've got a lot of all my friends you know i was telling you before we even got started like all my boys back home like my best friends are we have there's a group of 10 of us from high school 27 years later we're all still best friends most of them have kids whenever they're coming they're coming over the at a super bowl party all the kids uncle john do you have prime you know dads are drinking happy dad but uncle john do you have prime and they logan always sends me cases to my house so i'm always like giving the kids prime and now they want to come

back we want to go to uncle john's house he has prime these are kids between 8 8 and 13 years old yeah and is it like just basically replacing gatorade for them i think so like like you know you and i probably grew up and it was like the michael jordan commercials and gatorade i remember when powerade came you kind of like i think it's it's it's it's what you just said i think it's gatorade combined with michael jordan because michael jordan it was cool to wear michael jordan because of michael jordan because michael jordan was so cool to kids back then i think that's what logan is logan is really cool to kids these days so he really appeals to the 8 to 13 to you know teens you know teens of all ages you know people they love logan obviously

a lot of people hate logan and jake you know but but but you know but also during the world of combat sports there's you're supposed to have people hate you that's that's why people are buying these pay-per-views and they're making gazillions of dollars with the pay-per-views so but kids love logan paul kids love jake paul i know because i see it myself with all my friends kids so that's why i think those numbers are real and i think man i think like i think this is like maybe their second full year too like i think they're about as old as i remember i think we're around the same age just happy that maybe started a little bit later but they're murdering it uh i want to talk about a couple other things but um on the like i'll call it the milk business you

also have as you mentioned other podcasts you guys have other products i know that you guys have talked about uh doing some sort of jerky product you guys are obviously still doing merch i've heard numbers that are like mid-eight figures on the merch in a year like this is like a big big business what is the structure of this is this like a bunch of different businesses and each one has kind of different partners and equity splits or whatever is there like a it all rolls up and there's kind of like a holding company and people would think of it almost like a conglomerate like when you put on like the business hat how do you think about the way you all have built this and some of it may be intentional and some of it you know sometimes you're just moving so fast that

like oh my god dude it's a complete mess we got to fix it right but like is it comparable to the conglomerates of like yesteryear that people would be familiar with in like public companies or uh or even private conglomerates or does it look different from that well um i think it's it's so i'll break down the entire structure um there's there's three companies um there's happy dad lc the beverage consumer goods food product i'm gonna get to that and the kind of the real vision behind the direction where happy dad's going there's full send which is milk full send uh content house but also uh merch um those uh eight figures that you've heard has been underneath the full sand milk umbrella and then there's shots podcast network which is my shot

formerly known as shot studios became a podcast network during covid you know when we had to pretty much shut down the studios and couldn't really have production we pivoted the whole business into podcasting um and those three pretty much ran by me my brother sam and kyle so kyle's now a partner in shots as well and um and steve will do it and um so let's go go backwards so shots is just the network shots is got the relationships with all the platforms shots is um pretty much 14 years of me doing youtube um so there's shots then there's full send which which is really the merch teams from full send golf full send fitness um all the different collabs full send does and then even powering happy dad merch but then there's happy dad the way we see

happy dad is um you know it's not the same as like like we don't see ourselves as like the next budweiser um definitely not the next truly a white claw uh i think it's much bigger than that i see it as the next pepsi co is what i say like i when i want to model the happy dad company i think of the pepsi co model pepsi owns pepsi and all the different pepsi products mountain dew different variations of pepsi pepsi also owns frito-lay uh pepsi also owns gatorade pepsi owns a bunch of different water companies including aquafina so they're into beverage and then in the you know consumer goods product um world up until recently pepsi owned taco bell pizza hud kfc long john silvers um and that's kind of the model with happy dad is you know we have happy dad happy

dad's the number one priority when it comes to consumer goods but what more can happy dad do we have these teams that are walking through these stores they're merchandising they're building these displays they're developing relationships store owners store managers buyers everybody you know so while we're doing that and we have our own staff that's internal so we didn't subcontract that we don't use a third-party distributor for this we use third-party distributors to distribute the alcohol but not to go actually build the relationships we own those relationships they're happy dad employees they have happydad.com emails so while we're doing that what more can we do um that's where the idea of beef jerky came in uh it was presented to me about a year ago

um just somebody just cold emailed me and just said hey like i've got a beef jerky company would like would love to see if there's something we can do together i'm i live in orange county we're in orange county and i said hey stop by the office let me give it a try bring some samples try it out i was like wow this is really good um you know shout out to this guy but um ahmad but um the branding wasn't there though i was like listen like i don't think anyone's gonna buy that but but you've done the most hardest part you've made a great product let me help you with the branding let me i'll come up with something and let me help you with the distribution and um and that's what we did we rebranded it uh during the time we had bought a bunch of board

apes so we said all right so we have four apes why don't we do each one of the apes will be a different flavor call the beef jerky board jerky and um and use our guys who are going into the 7-elevens kroger's independent stores wherever and say hey while we have happy that we actually have this other product as well it's doing this what you know doing really great on socials we're we're doing this sales wise we're doing this whatever you know um there's spiel is and um and getting that into stores and that's kind of like going back to the pepsi model is all right pepsi has pepsi and probably pepsi is the number one driver of revenue for the company is the pepsi product but pepsi also has frito-lay what's our frito-lay beef jerky maybe down the road there

will be other products maybe we do get into non-alcohol or other alcohol you know we're getting to these liquor stores maybe there's a spirit maybe you know more but right now Now, Happy Dad has a lot of work to do. And then there's, you know, our first food product that we'll be distributing. And as you do this, how much of it will be you guys ideating the actual products versus like somebody brings to you and you're like, hey, you already, you know, you nailed the product, but we can help with the branding and distribution. And more so, there's probably a lot of people who are listening who may have products. Is this something you guys are actively seeking and saying, hey, look, if you got them, come show them to us? Yeah, we're always, you know, you know, it's crazy.

and and i know my emails are going to blow up before i say this but i read every single email that's sent to me yeah every single email i'll read it um so there's other guys you know they pitched us on atm machines you know and doing atm machines and my first thing to think was that's not food what's that have to do with us but now it's like wait a minute same we're in a lot of bars you know like we could what if what if we made happy day what if you skinned it as a happy Dad ATM machine, and now it's another point of sale item inside that bar, right? Because maybe someone didn't know Happy Dad's available there and they went to order Jack and Coke, but they need to go get cash from the ATM machine.

They see Happy Dad logo there. They come back. Hey, you guys have Happy Dad here? Oh, yeah, we do. You know, like, you know, they're just not, you know, because people are we're less than two years old. They're not programmed to go to the bar and think to order Happy Dad yet. So how do we program point of sale items? well point of sale we've got coasters that we make available to all the different bars and

other on-premise locations we have neon signs available upon request we have napkins we give the staff all the different merch but like maybe the atm machine is like that's a pretty big piece of real estate inside that of that location so so you know i'm always looking at different things people send um we will we'll uh we'll come up with ideas ourselves um you know many of the like the flavor idea of happy mom or it's another one that we're coming out with early april with a very big partner um it's gonna be a big surprise but a big partner first week of april and then um you know so those are all like the flavors and the ideas of the partnerships were all stuff that came in internally but then people pitch so i would say it's like 50 50 it's whatever

i mean whatever makes sense we're not going to just do anything um you know we do get pitched a lot of dumb stuff as well you know but you know but but if it makes sense and it's something that we could be helpful and doesn't distract us from what we're currently doing we'll do it i want to talk about steve um i don't really i'm not as familiar with all of the controversy but it sounds like from a couple of videos i've seen recently he's not allowed in the youtube videos yeah it's or uh they get they'll get taken down like well i guess kind of what's happened there and especially for our audience who uh they're not going to be up on the latest you know kind of details of milk and the content like how would you describe steve as part of the group and then it almost seems like

he's kind of been banished off of youtube yeah well as far as part of the group it's very simple steve is a partner in everything we do um steve is a very close friend i would even say to me a a brother um and um you know i mean he's part of our group and pretty much will be part of our group for the rest of our lives so so he's he's part of us um and that'll you know with or without whatever platform that that's never going to change but um you know it's very unclear so when i was going back and we're talking about the elon thing that monday when we met when we were supposed to get with elon when we landed we were told that steve channel was permanently banned and it just kind of so sucked the soul out of all of us um when that happened

and um do you like tell elon like yo steve will do his channel got banned and then he's like steve will do what yeah well no no because at that same time elon had also said um that um i guess someone had steve loves elon to this day if you go down his twitter he's retweeting every single thing elon says okay and there was one time he made just this joke video when bitcoin had crashed and you know it came out that like elon sold all his bitcoin and bitcoin crashed and steve like lost a lot of money so he made an anti-elon video once that's a joke you know the problem with the biggest problem steve will do it has and i think this is what's led to steve's termination of his youtube is um people can't tell that he's joking like they can't tell

his jokes you know what i mean like i don't know if this is the best analogy but i use this analogy once it's like it's like it's like it's like a woman like like if you see a like a teacher like out there she's dressing not like a teacher but like maybe like you know she looks like she's like an exotic dancer and you're like dude why is she dressed like that she's a teacher she's not supposed to dress like that but then like if you see a girl that you know she's you know she works at tootsies and she's dressed the same way that teacher was she's like no that's fine she's a stripper you know like and i think that's the same thing with steve is like people don't know that he's a comedian so when he says things people are just like hit so off guard it's like

why do you say that it's like he's a comedian steve is a funny funny guy so if you're not watching all this content you don't get it so if you're just watching a clip you're gonna be offended because he will say some stuff but it'd be offensive if it's just some random person on street but if you know a comedian said it then maybe it'd be fine but if theo von says it or if tim dylan says it or dave chappelle says it or you know you know any any stand-up comedian says it it's like oh no no he's a stand-up comedian he says that kind of shit ah okay okay damn that guy's fucking and dark you know but no one really knows steve is that it's like who is he it's like oh he's some kid from florida that blew up on the internet yeah oh and he said what you know and i

that's what's led to people say it was because of gambling maybe that's the reason that was used to um terminate it um but i don't think that's why i think it's because people who are taking some of the things that he said was offensive because they don't know that he's actually joking because if if a if a person who has a netflix special stand-up comedian would say the same thing steve said people would be laughing about it and sharing it so i think that's kind of what happened with steve but it's a blessing in disguise because after that he did a deal with rumble and he's got a you know i know it's very early with rumble but you know he's like a priority to the ceo chris he's like always taking care of steve they've become good friends um you know rumble's

numbers have been through the roof ever since then steve also launched a audio only podcast as well with the video on rumble something very unique and it's like helped his number now helped and develop a new audience on on spotify that's like you know that's now introduced steve will do it world now it does hurt not being allowed on youtube uh he's launching a snapchat show you know um obviously with twitter he's he's good you know so yeah um so he can't even be in the videos for like the full send podcast that's crazy yeah if he's did you guys like have him his voice like just put them off to the corner and not put them on video it's just yeah we've thought about it we thought about putting them you know maybe make putting on a mask you know yeah put them in a

costume you know we've thought of all all that i can only imagine what you guys have thought of yeah yeah we've thought of it all maybe he's uh you know maybe he's a dj competitor to marshmallow you know it's like just becomes the official dj of nilk but no one knows who it is um we've thought of at all um and we might do that so hopefully no from youtube's made it this far into this episode but um no the the truth is that's all joking aside is the truth is i think life goes on and i think it's time for him to focus on other things people love steve when he's still his channel was terminated in august so it's been what six seven months and um when he shows up for meetups same same amount of crowd you know um you know nothing's really changed other than not

having youtube but like you know with happy dad he's just as important as a partner to us um you know it's tough for me to say i don't agree that he can't be in videos you know so it's just tough for me to like kind of go down that rabbit hole so i just kind of stay mute because um the people i've talked to at youtube about it um i don't want to say who or what what department or anything but they've all like pretty much like said the same thing to me it's like we don't agree either like like it's it's like a deeper group within there and it seems weird like i understand taking down the channel right like again i don't agree with it based on what i understand you're saying or whatever but like okay uh but to then say like you basically ban the person from youtube where

like they can't even appear on anyone else's yeah channel i don't know i think i feel like that's being bullied because if they said you know and i think they're just bullying creators when they're saying that because andrew tate was banned from youtube as well right but he's on pierce morgan's channel on peers so peers is okay because it's peers morgan he's part of a massive network but we're just some small creators we don't you know like you need that massive network because they probably spent x amount of dollars with this other department so you can't piss them off by deleting peers morgan's you know channel or or video but you don't really need anything from us you know so different we're threatened you know i mean but but you know if like let's just say

back to andrew tate it was probably you know what the most hated person on the internet maybe the most banned person on the internet um but if andrew tate went on good morning america that'd be okay for them to air it on their channel you're going good morning america 10 times i'm gonna give abc a hard time you know um but steve will do it comes on the full send podcast hey you're going to be terminated sounds like steve will do it should go on good morning america very true right yeah we got to see actually he was joking about that he was like maybe um he's like you know what's funny is uh he's like maybe i should go on a mr beast video he's like you think you can make that happen and let's see if like they take down mr beast oh that's actually

a genius idea like let's see i doubt they would take down mr beast i don't think that they would do that he said that he said that a few weeks ago we were in arizona he's like we're talking about that right maybe we should put you on a mr beast video yeah but but yeah it's sad it's sad because um listen i would be the first to admit if we did something wrong and and and nelk has done the world of nelk all all everyone has done some dumb things here and there but does it nothing has nothing that's led to the consequence of being permanently banned on the biggest social network in the world the second biggest website in the world without any type of warning there was no warning no nothing so that one like that's why it just kind of sucks it's like

this steve has done listen steve has done a lot of dumb things a lot of them publicly some behind the scenes a lot and anytime i've called him i said steve i wouldn't do that or i would he stops you know i mean like he stops he's he's moving a million miles an hour anytime i've called him he's 24 you know anytime i've called him or his mom's called him or sam or kyle anyone's and say hey steve and explain logically not steve stop hey steve don't do this because this this this and that ah fuck i didn't think of it like that john you're so right you know or his mom or kyle's being a 24 year old kid and everything you do basically is on the internet i can't i can't i can't imagine i can't i wasn't yeah there was no i don't even

know come on i mean was youtube even a thing when i was 24 i don't know um but um but yeah so that's why to me it was like steve is a very logical smart guy he's not dumb at all he's moving a million miles an hour but if someone slows him down and explains things to him he stops i know i know this i talked to his mom and i are very close and we talk five six days a week you know and where everyone's always in the you know we got this pretty much this board of directors around steve to always protect them but he listens he's not he's not unmanageable or anything like that and that's the one thing he never got from youtube was a phone call hey we don't like this you know could you please not do this that never happened just was hey permanently banned

no appeal no nothing sorry do you think it changes uh with uh susan leaving a ceo and uh this guy neil coming in or do you think that it's kind of below ceo level i don't think it i don't think it's a youtube level i think it was a google level i don't think it was a youtube because everyone that i've talked to at youtube it's like dude we love this we don't agree with this everyone i've talked to at youtube i've never talked to susan about it but everyone else i've talked to from you know high up down yeah you know like david i don't know i don't know might not even be a youtube thing might it might even be a third party contractor that they you know contracted policies out to you know everyone does that twitter i know that i know damn well twitter

did that elon got rid of them all all of them but twitter was doing that it wasn't twitter we had our youtube channel deleted one time uh we were on a live stream and we got done and it was deleted and thank god i had twitter because i went on twitter and i was you know having a field day what the hell just happened um and it took a while but i had numerous youtube employees dm me and be like hey send me the information and i'll you know try to navigate internally um and it turns out that uh the official communication was like uh there was a mistake made channels reinstated you're fine um but the unofficial stuff was like one person hit the delete button right and like i think to me it was like i don't know who the person was i didn't want to know

right it's just like look just we got the channel back move on whatever um i was like man one one employee can do that yeah right that's what i mean and like when you get to that level that's what happened to steve you know and don't know who don't know is a contractor out you know they contracted a firm out of you know in the middle of nowhere i don't know i don't know i don't know we'll never know but what i tell steve is maybe things change maybe there could be reinstatement but in the meantime build this relationship with you have with rumble you know i know it's not you too but they take care of you and they're they're growing as well but then also you've got everything else you know you have so much more and when we walk the streets of steve just as many people

going losing their minds when they see steve in the streets today as they were a year ago so nothing's really changed as far as his relevancy goes when you think of full send milk kind of the whole thing today right those three companies etc how big can this get like is this a thing where the aspiration is we want to build a billion dollar business we want to build a 10 billion 100 billion is it like we think we can build this and you know some large corporation will come in and buy us out like what kind of when you guys sit around in private you think about like imagine if how big are the dreams or aspirations um you know one thing i've never ever done is build anything in hopes of selling so i've always wanted every business including

shots over shots 14 years old now happy dad's about two years old full send nelk i only joined about almost three years ago now uh but it was you know it's about 10 years old seven years old without me um my first focus is make it a successful profitable business treat this like we're never selling and we're just going to be a profitable business we're growing we're innovating you know um we're monetizing you know monetization you know monetization leads to being able to innovate and we could create you know that happy dad was self-funded in the very beginning to this day we haven't really brought on any large investors and so you know we make all decisions you know happy mom I don't have to go

get so-and-so's approval we decided my brother and I decided ran it by Steve and Kyle they loved it that's it that's happening you know and that's always been the philosophy now how big it could become you know because we do have shareholders so i sometimes have to answer that question is i think in each one of each one of those business itself is a several hundred million if not billion dollar company um and then happy dad the different businesses within happy dad i think i think happy dad's a multi-billion dollar company i think happy dad's i think you're not thinking big enough was that yeah i think no i think happy dad could easily be 10 plus billion 10 plus billion i think happy dad's gonna have

number of billion dollar companies within it right i think board jerky itself is a billion dollar company i think someone will just call them i saw the rock um with terramana tequila i'm gonna mess up the numbers but casamigos uh i think when they sold somebody said they were doing like 180 000 cases or that they had done 180 000 at this for a billion and the rock has now sold a million cases oh right so again maybe the numbers are you know not exactly the same from a multiple basis uh price points can be different profitability can be different the economic environment's different like there's a whole bunch of uh kind of asterisks alongside that but like terramon is probably a multi-billion dollar uh business yeah right for that audience

uh size and engagement i feel like not only do you guys have a very large audience a very engaged audience but you also have a really long runway right like everyone loves the rock he's one of the most recognizable people in the world he's older yeah yeah right and so if you think over the next you know 10 15 years all those 21 to 28 29 year olds they're eventually going to become 30 and 40 year olds yeah we you know you know and happy that we also have partners outside now so drewski became a partner recently sugar sean o'malley became a partner recently um there's a partner that's coming out april 1st i can't say who but i'm gonna i'm gonna show you and i i just want you to see your reaction all right and then we'll all right i can't say you can't

say i'm just gonna show you oh no he actually came out with the flavor idea himself too not yet yeah that's a grand slam he came out with the flavor and the packaging of course of course yeah like that's a grand slam yeah so that's so he's become a partner in the company and um and we're launching a our first uh well i don't i don't want to say our first um our first collab our first collab was actually in my opinion this our board a banana flavor um that was our first collab but this will be our second collab i guess you would say um but yeah that's coming out so so that's you know so when now when i'm thinking happy dad i'm like all right

i got we've got these other partners and by the way he hits a different market like he's that and that was his approach to us he came up and said hey what are you doing within the black community it's like i'm trying to figure it out he's like let me run that for you let me let me handle that part for you you know i was like pretty good person to do it yeah so i was like love to have you you know mr mrs you know i'm not gonna i guess i've said him so yeah we know it's a mister but um but yeah yeah let's let's do it so this was about maybe a year ago this time it's been a year partnership in the works and we're launching it april 1st so um but yeah so going back to it is like so shots in my opinion several hundred million dollars i mean it's right

it's currently actually the biggest podcast network on youtube shots shots podcast network is um full send is and can be the next barstool sports in my opinion um you know uh it's gonna be a lot of work don't ever take away anything from portnoy 20 plus years of grinding so it's not like an overnight thing but in the long run it could be its own network for sports content male and female focused content both um you know um comedy what time and then and then there's happy dad which happy that the beverage itself to me is billion dollar plus coming but then happy dad's gonna have these other brands within it that'll also you know board jerky in my opinion could be a billion dollar plus company itself so so that's why it's like multiple multiple ones but

all three are very different too yeah but they all complement each other you know the full send brand and everything full scent brings to the table helps happy dad yeah shots podcast network helps bring on podcasts and you have like the pivot podcast where every episode they're drinking happy dad and we're partners with them now and you know other partner other podcasts that we're going to bring underneath the partnership that we're going to be drinking happy dad in every single episode or some of the collabs that we're going to do we're going to do a pivot podcast happy dad collab you know um so you know so they all they all they all all these companies talk they all they all talk yeah it's very smart yeah where can we send people to find you if they want

to just kind of pay attention as you guys continue or if they want to reach out um don't give your email yeah they they find my email my email's too easy i gotta make it more complicated um no i mean my socials you know i'm just at john everywhere twitter instagram snapchat i have at john um i don't use tick tock much but every time well every so often i'm on at john there i'm at john on youtube so just john everywhere but uh that's my personal but i think if you really want to follow and see everything just follow our brands follow happy dad on his on socials board jerky uh shots milk boys you know those are i think more entertaining my personal ones i'm so i'm so focused on helping other people with their social strategies i forget about myself so

i don't really know what i'm doing i just throw up random stuff on my socials yeah i think you're doing just fine yeah awesome thank you so much for doing this i always enjoy talking and uh i don't think people quite understand just the uh the size of what you guys have built and how fast some of this stuff's growing so it's cool to talk to you and uh hopefully it'll inspire a lot of other people too that's that's why i do these podcasts man i want i want every once in a while whenever i do these someone messages me that they were inspired or they're doing this or that i really you know i don't like doing a lot of these but i do them because i just know that there's people out there who just want to get up and get off their ass and do it whether launch your own

podcast start your own company design your own merch whatever it is you know like just do it because that's that's been the secret to us is like you know when we want to do something we do it and um we don't like i've said before and i'm going to stay forever we don't burn bridges um we're always thinking long term and um and you know and um and we have fun you know we do everything we do everything that we do it's just fun so that's what i'm hoping that anyone who's listening to this we'll just get up and just do it i love it all right thank you so much thanks