Trading Secrets - 199. Steven Tartick: From growing up with Jason to executive creative director! The BTS of the business behind Broadway, professional magician by 5th grade, and $$$ behind it all!

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

This week, Jason is joined by entrepreneur, producer, executive creative director, former professional magician, board game creator, and co-founder of The Season, a producing and marketing company, his brother Steven Tartick! Jason and Steven dive into growing up in the Tartick household, their differing opinions on team sports, how he got into magic, what career goals he had growing up, going professional as a magician in 5th grade, how his experience was going through school as a gay man, how he got into drama club, and how he ended up working in Broadway. Steven also reveals working at Apple in 2007, what stock mistake he made, the business behind a Broadway show, what recoupment looks like for a Broadway show, what he thinks of celebrities taking on the stage, the critical role that communal entertainment plays in ticket sales, his dream celebrity cast, what he thinks of the influencer space and the world of media & reality TV! Steven reveals all that and so much more in another episode you can’t afford to miss!  Host: Jason Tartick Co-Host: David Arduin Audio: John Gurney Guest: Steven Tartick Stay connected with the Trading Secrets Podcast!  Instagram: @tradingsecretspodcast  Youtube: Trading Secrets Facebook: Join the Group All Access: Free 30-Day Trial  Trading Secrets Steals & Deals! ZBiotics Pre-Alcohol Probiotic: Your first drink of the night for a better tomorrow. Engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, “Pre-Alcohol” is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol which is responsible for rough mornings after drinking. Get 15% off your first order when you go to zbiotics.com/TRADINGSECRETS and use TRADINGSECRETS at checkout.  BetterHelp: If you’re thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It’s entirely online. Designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Rediscover your curiosity, with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com/tradingsecrets today to get 10% off your first month.  Trading Secrets is sponsored by BetterHelp OneSkin: OneSkin is the world's first skin longevity company. OneSkin addresses skin health at the molecular level, targeting the root causes of aging so skin behaves, feels, and appears younger. It’s time to get started with your new face, eye, and body routine at a discounted rate today! Get 15% off with the code TRADINGSECRETS at oneskin.co Bilt Rewards: Bilt is breaking ground as a neighborhood rewards program that hooks you up with points on your rent. Every month, pay your rent and watch the Bilt Points roll in. Your rent game just got a major upgrade! Bilt Points have been consistently ranked the highest value point currency by The Points Guy and Bankrate. Earn points by paying rent right now when you go to joinbilt.com/TRADINGSECRETS.

Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets. I'm your host, Jason Tardick, and welcome to the pre-market trading segment, where I'm going to tell you a little bit about what you can expect from our main guest today and update in the market and something happening in my personal life. Before I go any further, if you are living, listening on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts, please stop right now and just hit the subscribe button. You have no idea how much that helps our show. And if you want to watch the entirety of the show on 4K cameras, just go to my YouTube page, Jason Tartick. You can listen

and watch the entire episode there and make sure to subscribe. Now, today's guest, this is an episode like no other. I'm going to call it Bachelorette Hometowns 2.0. We don't have a big celebrity on actor, athlete, actress, comedian, a reality star or an industry expert. We have my brother on the show, my one and only brother, Stephen Tardick. You will learn in this episode about our childhood, what it was like after college, navigating all the areas. And I mean we go into depths of our financial journey, our career journey, and the deepest of our personal journey. I'll even tell you this. There are things I learned in this conversation with my brother that I had never known before. And then after this, we went and got drinks and we had even a deeper conversation. And so honestly, I'm going to tell you my biggest trading secret from doing this. One, the rest of my life, I will have this podcast recorded and I'll be able to listen to it. And I'm going to do this with my mom, my dad, and my grandmother for sure. Because forever, these conversations can live with us. And I think it's so special.

And I think everyone here, you know, even on your, on your iPhone, you could just pull up the audio recorder and ask some conversations and questions that are meaningful. That's what today's episode is. Now, also one thing you should know is my brother is a big marketing executive, an entrepreneur, an executive producer on a show with Nick Jonas, big in the Broadway space. He has started his own game. You'll hear about that. So, yes, you're also going to get some of the core of trading Cs. secrets where you're going to hear all about these different industries. But this is an episode like no other. And what I really love is if in the feedback on Apple or Spotify, you give us five stars

and you let us know if something like this was impactful, was important and we should do more of it. Because of course, we're going to have the big celebrities on, but we also are thinking about doing more stuff like this. So I'm so excited for you to meet and learn more about my brother, Stephen Tarduk. Now, something happening in the market that I want to talk about. Well, just timing. If you extended your taxes, you should know that your tax deadline is October 15th. A lot of people will extend their taxes, but I want you to know if you did, it's coming around the corner, start preparing now. With taxes, I also want to bring up something that we've talked about in the past, unrealized gains. I've talked about exactly

the definition of an unrealized gain, but we're also seeing unrealized gain, jargon, hit politics. And we don't get into politics here. But what I do talk about is when finance or money meets some of the discussions that are happening. And the biggest misunderstanding with unrealized gains with the conversation that's happening that was proposed by President Joe Biden in his fiscal year 2025 budget and was endorsed by Kamala Harris in August was about having a 25% minimum tax on total income, including so-called unrealized gains or asset growth, this is the part exceeding $100 million. So I don't know if anyone listening to this episode has a net worth or asset growth exceeding $100 million. If you do, congratulations. If you don't, this doesn't impact you.

And one of the big misconceptions with finance and headlines, regardless of what side it's on, is we see these big headlines, but we don't explore them. Unless you have a net worth of over $100 million, you don't have to worry about this. And if you do, congratulations. And also for those that have a net worth over $100 million, they have a wild tax team that's working 24-7 to give them tax advantages in which they'll have the means and resources to deal with this. Now, the other thing that I want people to think about as we go into tax season next year, and of course the extended deadline is that the 400 wealthiest Americans in the United States pay on average around a 23% tax rate. So these are people that are at the highest income earnings but have

unbelievable tax strategies with them to help them pay less in taxes. And so that's why I will always, always endorse working with professionals, irregardless of what your income level is because there could be a tax strategy that could help you. Now, another thing I want to bring up with taxes, and then we'll get into a quick update for my life and into this show, is when you look at federal income tax, right now, the highest federal income tax level based on income is 37%. We see a lot of conversation around taxes, and we see that tax rates fluctuate dramatically. And I was looking up today, and it's pretty crazy when you go back in time a little bit.

If you go back to 1981, if you made more than $215,400, the effective tax rate was 70%, close to double. So this update is a little bit on taxes, something that we're seeing in headlines that I think you should be aware of, the deadline, and most importantly, understand your taxes, organize your information, and work with, professionals that can help you now little update from my personal life i am here in tampa florida had an unbelievable charity gala with cat and her mom on friday it was an honor to be a part of that the non-for-profit is called beat childhood cancer which is a 501c3 it was an unbelievable weekend i wish i was back in buffalo sunday to go to the buffalo bills game but you know what i'm here in tampa so cat and I are going to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers game. And then this week, I will be in Tampa and Nashville. And in this weekend, I have my whole family coming to Nashville to show them the city.

So if you guys like this episode, let me know in the DMs. Let me know in the reviews five stars. Because if so, on Friday, I'm going to put my mom in the hot seat and interview her. But you know what? Enough of me. Enough of my updates in market and taxes. Let's ring in the bell with my brother, a guest like no other. And by the way, I got to tell you this. curious Canadian said to me, he said, listen, my purpose on this show is to explore the curiosities of finance that I don't know in your episodes and ask the questions, but also to add a family and friend element to your show when you have these big celebrities on. He said, you know what, if your brother's on today, you don't need me to step in as a family

or friend because you have family there. So this is going to be an episode with no recap, just my brother. Let's ring in the bell with the one, the only, the smarter, the better looking brother, Stephen Tarter. Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets. Today we are joined by entrepreneur, producer, executive creative director, former professional magician, board game creator and co-founder of the seasons, a Broadway producing and marketing company. And first family member of mine ever to be on a full episode of Trading Secrets by brother, Stephen Michael Tardick. Stephen, thank you so much for joining us today. Jason, my pleasure. What an honor. The honor is truly mine.

If you had told me 20 years ago, I would be a guest on your podcast, I would have asked you what a podcast was. All right. But also, you would have been like, how the fuck did that happen? That's probably a thought. That's a journey. All right. Let's actually take that journey all the way back 20 years ago.

Let's go back to childhood. Stephen and Jason, we grew up in Buffalo, New York, started in Tonawanda, we then went to Williamsville school districts, mom and dad still married, still going strong. Tell me about like, when you think about your childhood, like even before high school, what are thoughts that you have for the good or for the bad? Like, what's your overall take? Give someone the take of the Tarduk household from someone other than me. You know, we had a pretty level upbringing, I feel. It was, you know, comfortable.

It's hard to describe. How do you describe our childhood? It's almost nondescript in a way. I feel like we had a very comfortable upbringing. Yeah, I mean, there wasn't, I mean, I think every, every family has their own, like, traumas and tribulations and, like, big moments. And I'm sure we each had of those. but we didn't there was nothing that like monumentally happened at least from my perspective

I was like I can't believe this shit this is unbelievable like I don't know but they're I feel like we had we were we had a fortunate childhood yeah we had I feel like we had a nice nondescriptive is a funny way to do it not like we had nice comfortable upbringing yeah our our parents were generally supportive of our various interests yeah Between the two of us, we covered a lot of ground when it came to interests. Yeah, no major upheaval or disaster trauma to have to ultimately tackle. Yeah. Okay, let me ask you this.

I think I saw a home video when mom and dad brought me home, you were like kind of pissed. Is that true or false? Do you even have recollection of that? Now that I think about it, the ultimate trauma of my child might have been. Needing to share the stage, I mean, I was three. Yeah. So a lot of the stories and memories you have from that time are actually more embedded in your brain

than they are what you actually recall if you think about it. Yeah. But I certainly remember, and I always have been a fairly independent person. Yeah. Somebody who likes my space and my time. Yeah. I do remember and my attention, of course, as a Tartic. Oh, yeah.

And so when you came home, all of the sudden, now someone else had some of the attention. Yeah, yes. That had to be settled. Yeah. That is interesting, though. That's funny. We had our interests growing up literally were A to Z. Like, we had, you know, all the different sports that I was in.

And, like, there wasn't. We didn't have that many interests that overlap. No. I mean, we certainly, I think our existence. Existence, like, overlapped quite a bit. Yeah. So many of my young memories are just being around, like, around each other. But, yeah, I mean, I remember spending so many days and hours at the hockey rink when you would be playing in a tournament. And so my memories of that involved a Game Boy, being into colds because it's always freezing and just drinking that terrible hot cocoa.

that came out she yeah yeah and just being like why you know right grouchy that I wasn't comfortable so did you like like when I you know I played soccer hockey and then dabbled with other sports did what did you at any point did you have interest in playing because you played football for a little but you just didn't you did when you thought sports what did you think is a kid like you always you always hated it I love games yeah so the the part of sports that I'm drawn to yeah the strategy of it okay but the physical uh the physical part of playing games yeah first off i'm an indoor cat yeah you're an outdoor cat true i'm not a big group like a team player yeah it comes to like recreation

i like one-on-one things yeah i like hanging out with people one-on-one more than i like being in a group of 20 people right okay and so sports maybe if i had tried tennis that would it clicked with me but football and soccer i wanted nothing to do with the team i wanted to be inside yeah Yeah. So I remember I was on the football. I played football and dad coached. Yeah. But there was a craft. Do you remember the craft? Oh, yeah, the craft train. Yeah, yeah. So when I went to football practice, I'd be in all my equipment and I'd be grouchy. But I could stop at the craft train and they would make you a lanyard or what we called boondoggles.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Boundogles. Yeah. Braclet. That to me, when I think about football practice, it was like being uncomfortable running around and then making and like wishing that you could have I just wanted to go back to the craft cart now to no one's discredit on those teams but I think of some of the people I do know that might have played on those teams and those certainly aren't people

that every day you would go reach out to and be best friends with today right so let's just let's just leave it at that but amongst like the football team and stuff what was your like did you get along with those guys did you just like why are you into this like what were you thinking at that age it was the thing

that everyone did I mean that Yeah, you're growing up. Yeah. When dad played football in college, so you're like, yeah. Mom love football. Yeah. Dad, you know, our dad's best friend coached the same team. It was a very like community driven thing.

Yeah. You know, I was more interested in like hanging out with grandma and learning how to cross stitch. That was just where I was drawn to. Right. But I didn't have any, I don't recall having any judgment toward it or. Yeah. Yeah, what the hell? I get why people like.

Yeah. sports and that, it just didn't scratch my edge. So other hobbies that did, though, you're a magician, big into games, into movies. What are some other hobbies of yours that you remember as a kid taking over that eventually led to the career you're in today, which we'll talk about? But what were some of those hobbies? Magic was the big one. So there's footage of me at five and six performing magic tricks.

Every kid at some point gets a magic kit. Of course. Okay. I fell in love with that. Yeah. Everything about it. I loved learning the tricks and understanding the mechanics behind it. I also just loved knowing the secrets, considering we're on a podcast called trading.

Trading secrets, yeah. Just, like, kind of understanding how to create, like, how something works that looks impossible. Loved that element. And then finally, so it's like you learn how it works. Then you mechanically execute it, almost the way that, like, Golfers are obsessed with their golf swing. I'm obsessed with my Faro shuffle, like a perfect shuffle of a deck of cards. And then the third piece is the performance part where you're in front of people and you're both entertaining and, like, giving this trick as a gift in a way.

Yeah. I loved all three parts of that. So that became my, like, deep, intense obsession pretty much through high school. Yeah, because I even remember I would go to hockey camp in the summer and you would go to Magic Camp in the summer. So my dream growing up was always to be like, I could be a professional hockey player. What was your dream career-wise when you were a child? What did you want to be? Being a professional magician was always on my map.

The other piece, the other thing that I, the other interest I had at the time was video production. Okay. So there was a local television station, the Lockport Community, LCTV, Lockport Community TV. And I did a summer program with them where you learned. how to film, edit, create voiceovers, host television shows. And I did that for a few years and really fell in love with just media production in general. So those were my two, those were the two things that I was balancing. It was the entertainment side with magic and then the media side with video. Okay. Interesting. When you were performing magic in high school,

talk to me about like how much you were paid. Yeah. So I went professional in fifth grade. Oh yeah. Not a big deal. I did my first paid magic. show. I had business cards printed at Kinko's back when it was called that. And of course, I was obsessed with the design of my business cards. It carries through to this day. My first magic shows, I was getting paid $30. It was for birthday parties, like 12 to 15 kids, and it was a 45-minute show. So in hindsight, like being in fifth grade, I'd make 30 bucks for an hour of work. And granted, I was often driving 45 minutes to the show. We're talking about 2,000, what, one year?

Yeah, 5th grade would have been 95. Yeah, so not a bad day. 5th grader. Super young. And, like, mom would take me back then. Yeah. And she would sit there and watch the show. And I recently found my notebook with all of my set lists.

Yeah. So it would be like, Mikey's eighth birthday. And it would list the 12 tricks I would do. And if you have how much I was paid. And I would keep track of that because I would often get booked for the eighth birthday and the ninth and the 10th. So you had to have multiple sets. So in high school, though, what was the most that you made off magic? I started getting up to like $100 a job when I was in high school.

And I would book three a weekend. So I would do like a birthday party at 11 o'clock on Saturday. I would do a wedding Saturday afternoon. And then I do a bar mitzvah on Sunday. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, I was driving. Once I got my driver's license, it's all over the place.

Just going. Yep, my magic act fit in a tool chest. Oh, yeah, I remember that. Oh, yeah. Like a valourine, a tip-ploth over. Yeah. And so I just load it up and out in the maxima. Out in the max when you went.

All right. We'll talk about everything from that point on. I want us to stick in high school for a second, though. I recently got a face scan done on my skin, and they said I had a little bit too much UV-ray exposure. So if you think that you are out in the sun a little bit too much this summer and you want to hit the undo button on UV induced aging, say hello to One Skin. It's your secret weapon against the summer's toll on your skin. One Skin products are all powered by the revolutionary OS01 peptide, which will totally help with just this. One Skin is the world's first skin longevity company. One Skin addresses skin health at the molecular level, targeting the root causes of aging. So skin behaves, feels, and appears younger. It's time to get started with your new face.

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in high school I was the captains of hockey and soccer team and was like always just like in the athletic group or whatever and I always remember you were the star of the Broadway show or the not the Broadway shows the musicals and you're in the arts and you were I think

vice president of the entire class right you're in student council so even in high school are just the way our entire I guess like personas brands interests were always so divided. But I do remember in high school, and I forget, I was a freshman, you were a senior. Do you remember that basketball tournament that you played in?

Okay, so you play in this, they're playing this basketball tournament, and it's like 3V3 basketball. It's all like the best athletes of each single group, the football guys played together, soccer guys played together. And then you and your buddies from the theater group all played together. I think you wore purple pennies. And basketball was no one's strength forte, but I was, and I remember watching it, like, what was that? What was like, it felt like almost like you're like, we're even though this is another thing, we're going to just be here.

Tell me about like that whole thing. Williamsville East, where we went to school, was a very strange high school to begin with. Why do you say that? on many fronts. I mean, first off, let's talk about the format. That's true. The structure of the school. Our school was an experiment.

So there was an idea in the 60s and 70s that high schools should be less designed like, you know, capital buildings where there are these beautiful, if you look at Williamsville North in our neighborhood, it looks like the capital. Or like Williamsville South, right on Main Street. Beautiful building. Every, you know, the classic.

place and school rooms, everything you would have met. Post-war high school, like long hallways, lockers, rooms. Ours was an experiment. I think it was built in the 60s or 70s, maybe 70s. The idea was, what would it be like if we designed high schools to be more like office spaces? All these students are going to ultimately work in offices. Let's design a floor plan for a school that feels more like cubicles. And so we didn't have walls in our high school.

the hallways were just open-ended. Classrooms were built around the edge of this square building with dividers between them, but there was no wall between the halls and the rooms. There was almost never one classroom in the entire building that had four walls. Yeah. And the way I imagine, like,

because this is hard to conceptualize, you would go to the bathroom. And, like, the person that's in the hallway walking, you would, like, if it's your friend, like, you would just see them go by. Yeah. So it was open clusters of desks that were technically having different classes.

Yes. Strange. It was a strange place. Culturally, very, very strange. Okay, tell me more. It was a very culturally conservative school. Yeah. I would say we lived in upper middle class suburb.

Totally, yeah. You know, not crazy wealthy, though there were like pockets of the doctors and lawyers. Yeah. You had, like, well-off people, but certainly not at the same scale that we see in, you know, Manhattan. Correct. But it was an upper middle class, suburbian neighborhood. The school itself was very conservative. And you were, like, as a kid, like, you remember this as a kid.

Oh, yeah. This is, I don't really remember this. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, I think the, like, the experience I had was a different. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we had, like, we had, like, conservative political speakers talking to our, class. Yeah, we had a woman named Pam Stencil. Oh, yeah. It was a pro-life advocate who did a, she was part of the health program. Sure. And she spoke to us and delivered like a pro-life speech that was supposed to be part of like the sex ed program. Yeah. But the whole message was like,

if you have sex, you may get pregnant and you will probably get an STD. And it was it was very intensely conservative. I don't have any recollection. And of course, like, I was, they wrote a letter to the principal of the school over that. I was a little bit of a rabble rouser. Yeah. Which, in like the nerdiest way possible. Yeah. I was not a troublemaker, but I was vocal. And that was actually, you know, to go back to your, the three-on-three basketball tournament. I, I, the school did not really center arts and entertainment. We did have a nice band program and a theater program and it was fine, but it was very driven by athletics. That tournament happened during the day. There was like a three-on-three basketball tournament. Like a March Madness basketball tournament. And you got to,

if I recall, you were pulled out of class if you signed up, you could play in your match. Okay, that sounds right. And I thought that was ridiculous. And two of my first, friends from the theater club thought, wouldn't it be funny if we, the least athletic people signed up for this? We could, like, get pulled out of a class and play in a basketball match. And none of us knew how to play basketball. But we were, it was self-deprecating in a way. And so we went and bought, you were correct about the jerseys. We bought multi-colored jerseys. All three of us were like the three out gay guys in the school. So we bought these rainbow-colored jerseys, we cut them up and re-sowed them together. So the whole idea was when we did a huddle,

it would make a rainbow. Yeah. And we named our team Phi Alpha Gamma, which if you think about the Greek letters, was a little bit of a play. Yeah. And we just were like, let's just do this. Yeah. And of course, we lost dramatically. Yeah. But we had a blast. And it was just a silly, unsurious thing to do. Yeah. I think at some level, the fact that the school took athletics so seriously

our only response to it was to laugh about it. To be unsirious about it. In a school like that, did you feel God, of course I know I'm like privileged straight white guy living in this school and like not these things don't even

cross my mind, but did you get bullied in the Williams School districts? I never felt bullied I felt bullied more by the administration than I did by other kids. At one point, we wanted to start a gay straight alliance, and that got shut down very quickly. That was the kind of vibe. I felt bullied when they brought in a pro-life lecturer to a public school. I mean, it's one thing if you want to bring Pam St. Joe's to St. Joe's, or it's private and religious, but it was deeply offensive to me.

and so that that was the pressure I felt which really from the administration I thankfully don't remember the principal's name but he was really something I just recalled like feeling antagonized by the leadership of the school okay you said that you guys were all out when did you like come out to friends

I came out senior year of high school so none of your peers in high school knew that you were gay Not until the, like, I mean, well, let's back up. What's funny about Williamsville's, yeah. And also, let's remember, this is 2003, which is very different than, very different. Yeah. Like, it's been a, yeah, it's been a sea change from then to now. I never really had, I was flamboyant in high school.

It was eccentric. I was artsy. I dressed differently than other people. I would always wear loud silk shirts and I was just an eccentric kid. Yeah. But I never felt ostracized by that. I actually felt like I was quirky in a way that people were comfortable with. And I just looked up to, too.

That was kind of the anomaly in school, too. Yeah. I was on student government. I was on student government. I ran every year. I was vice president for three of the four. And that was how I kind of connected. I was inoffensive and, you know, tried to have a warm disposition

and killed people with kindness. Yeah. So I never, yeah, I never really felt bullied or pressured. And I came out, I definitely had a shift in friends. Yeah. Between sophomore year and junior year. I joined the drama club in junior year. Okay.

The first two years I was hanging out with a different group. Yeah. But I shifted. I was like, oh, once I met the drama kids, I was like, oh, these are my people. Yeah. Shifted, became good friends with them. and then I came out, yeah, it's pretty much like at the end of high school, my second semester of my senior year.

And no one in your circle knew before that? Or like, did you have anyone that knew about it? Not really. That's interesting. Yeah, it was, yeah, it was kind of my own. At what age do you think you knew that you're like? Fifth grade. Fifth grade.

Yeah. So from fifth grade to senior year. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, that kind of feels ostracized, though. Yeah. I definitely felt.

I definitely felt like a lot of pressure and built. That was the other thing. At first, I mean, think about this, 1995, I'm 10 years old. Yeah. Which I'm sure if you were to think about like when you had your first crushes. Oh, yeah. It's like when you hit puberty and like, yeah. All of a sudden you're like, oh, wait a second.

Yeah, you're like, wait. Yeah. At that point, I was like, oh, this isn't good. I need to fix this. So that was probably like three or four years. Intrepid thing. Oh, this. No more like, not this.

Got to do the other. And then I would say probably by the time high school, like ninth grade, I was like, okay, this is. Because you date, like, you dated, he dated all the hot girls on our street in middle school. And at that point, it wasn't like I was thinking, oh, I'm gay. I should go, like, I just, I didn't have a label for it. Yeah. It was just like a thing I was feeling.

But I was like, surely that's going to go away for something. You're just like, you know, it's a stage thing. I feel like it's probably a confusing time for straight people, too, even. Like, oh, totally. Working all that stuff. You know what you're doing or how you're doing it. By high school, though, that's when I was like, okay, this is a thing. How am I going to deal with this?

Yeah. Like, now I'm, like, in problem solving mode. Yeah. And I think finding my theater club crew was part of that. So at a sudden, I was like, okay. Yeah, like, these are my... We have a community. We have a people.

Things might be unspoken for now, but this is okay. Interesting. And then you start coming out like one person at a time. Yeah. And then it goes from there. In high school, isn't the personal question, but did you date around, like secretly? With guys? Yeah.

No. Not at all. No. That was really a college thing. Interesting. Yeah. And that's another thing. In high school, you were always, you never got in trouble.

I never had a drink of alcohol until college. I was, I think for a lot of gay guys, my age, this is a pretty common experience. Like, and even into like current days, like, I was basically four years behind from a kind of adult, like a maturity standpoint. Yeah. I was probably in freshman of high school, freshman in college where most people were freshman of high school. Interesting. If you think about it. Do you think because suppressing? Yeah. I think that was part of it. Yeah. It's like that was the moment I was comfortable. I was surrounded by my peers because I chose a very queer-friendly school to go to.

Yeah. So that, I think that like the dating experiences I had, freshman year of college, were probably akin to what people might have had three or four years earlier. Interesting. All right. It's football season. It's fall season. And I have to tell you about this game-changing product

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Let's stay in high school and we're going to college. Favorite memory. when you think about your childhood or your high school like your overall favorite hmm actually it would have been thank you

my my brightest memories of high school were when I performed in the drama club those musicals that was the moment the prince in Cinderella Prince Charming in Cinderella

I was pretty terrible vocal like I was actually good but I had had so much fun doing it and just being on that stage in front of everybody yeah also i only saw my first musical the first musical i ever saw was annie dad took us when i was so young like fourth grade and then the next time i saw a musical was annie and williams lees high school they performed at sophomore year i saw them do the show and i was like i need to be a part of that and i immediately joined the drama club and then I did the next four shows yeah that was the highlight I just loved

like finding that I loved the people the make I loved making a show I loved being in the show I love the buzz before I love the parties after like the theater club experience was just the best and you got to like thank gosh the school system in high schools like did have some form of arts because in buffalo it's limited now you don't there aren't you know it's like you're going to four Broadway shows or Like, you're very limited, so. I'm actually sure, like, I would imagine the experience I had in drama club is similar to what sports teams are like. Yeah, exactly. The locker rooms and the friendship and the camaraderie and you're all working together.

I didn't find that on the football field. I found that on the state. Right, where being in Buffalo and just the availability to it or maybe the groups that were I was surrounded by, we had the absolute luxury and privilege of finding that when you're like five or six or seven, right? Or you just, the biggest hurdle we have to overcome is like, what sports are going to be? Yeah, I don't like baseball. I like this one. And then you find it and then you grow.

So that's the default. Yeah. Like that's it. In Buffalo, the default is try a sport. Yeah. If you only like that one, try another spoon. You know, like there are other places where kids try dance or theater, you know? Sure.

But yeah, I think that was one of the elements of Buffalo that I had to like get over. I like it. Okay. Let's go on to some of the stuff. with your career because I do have some questions about your take on me, but I definitely have to hit Broadway here. So you find your community, you find your group, you find a passion. At this point, are you thinking to yourself, Broadway is in my trajectory? I visited New York for the first time with mom, my junior year of high school. So it was 2001, 2001, 2002. And immediately,

showed up in New York, got off the plane, I was like, this is my place. And mom and I saw a musical, we saw a Rocky Horror Show, closing weekend. And that was the first time I'd been in Broadway theater. First time I'd seen a professional show. I was like, this is it. Whatever this is, I need to do this.

Yeah. I was smart enough to know I wasn't talented on stage. But that's where I started to connect dots. And I loved working at the TV. studio. I loved shooting video. I loved making stuff. I loved creativity. How does that all fit into a job somehow as part of this? The question was, should I design sets or should I make costumes? Like, those aren't my things. That's when I became aware of marketing and advertising. And the idea that all of these shows I loved had amazing posters. And they had logos. And that,

I've always had a soft spot for design. That's when I started to say, who makes that? Where did that come from? And I remember on the IMAX in the computer lab in Williamsville East, starting to like search around to understand like who makes Broadway logos. Interesting. Okay. I came across some article on the internet in 2002 or whatever it was about a guy named

Drew Hodges who founded Spotco. which is one of the Broadway ad agencies. And from that moment, I was like, that's the thing I want to do. Okay. So you pegged it down. The wheels are spinning. You're starting to realize behind your passion, there's many businesses that you can get involved. And before you do that, though, you work at Apple, right?

How long were you at Apple after you graduated? Yeah. So I studied new media at college, which was basically art and design and technology. And then the question was, what do I do with that? I tried to get a bunch of marketing jobs right out of the gate. But it was 2007. It wasn't the greatest time to find work. After applying to literally 50 jobs, I was applying to email coding jobs, just a bunch of junk.

Yeah. A friend was like, have you thought about working at the Apple Store? At the time, it's like retail? Yeah. I'm going to work at, I just got a college degree. Why am I working at retail? Yeah. He said, oh, no, no, no, the Apple store only hires people with college degrees, and it's

harder to get a job at the Apple store than it is to get into Harvard. They like to advertise that because they get so many applications. And at the time, they had a job called Creative. Okay. And the idea was, you buy a new Mac, you want to use it to do creative things, whether it's edit a movie or take photos, anything digital, creative. Like, we're going to teach you how to do that. Okay.

So I was like, that sounds like an interesting job. Sure. Applied, got hired, and loved it. I was there for two years. And all the people I worked with were the smartest, most creative, most driven people I'd ever met. Most of my colleagues, like, went to Yale and Ithaca, Princeton. Like, it was a crazy group of people. Yeah.

And what did you make in a job like that? I think my first salary was 50,000. thousand dollars in 2007 okay they also had amazing benefits okay so you could buy stock at like an employee discount sure again 2007 wow it was like you weren't tax it was pre tax income and they gave you a rate and it was locked in I bought so and it would just come right out of your paycheck yeah and back then I mean I was paying $2,000 a month for rent yeah I had no money yeah So I was racking up credit card debt. Oh, you were.

By my... Did mom and dad know that? Probably not. Yeah, I was just sake. I had $10,000 of credit card debt in 2009 when I left, maybe it's 2008, when I left the Apple, when I left working at Apple. And at the time, I opened up my little portfolio site and saw that I had $11,000 of stocks. Interesting.

Like, through my time there, skimmed off the top. And I was like, I really need to not have credit card debt. Yeah. So I sold in 2008, $11,000 of Apple stock. I paid off my credit card. And I never had credit card debt again. And the last time I went online and looked at how much that was worth. It was something astronomical. It was like hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oh, gosh. Stay tuned to the recap. We will definitely get this calculation. I'm looking very quickly right now, and I'm seeing if you invested a thousand dollars in Apple 39 years ago, you'd have $3.9 million today. So we will talk about what that credit card tossed. $400,000. Okay. Well, lesson learned.

Less alert. Never ever had credit card dead again. Again. And on one hand, it was a sunk opportunity cuff. The other, it was ultimately the moment I became a bit more of an adult. Okay. I love it. Now we're going to fast forward your career a little bit. So you start working in Broadway marketing. You start working for the big companies. You start working for Spocko. You land the dream that you saw 2002. You now are co-founder of your own Broadway producing and marketing company. And the view viewers of the show have so many questions on just the business of Broadway. So first and foremost, especially being in the producing side of it too, talk to me about just the numbers of Broadway. What is like all the things you got to know. Like what does it cost to build the show? What is it

costs to maintain a show? You know, just how do ticket sales support the revenue? What's the return look like? Give me the business breakdown of a Broadway show. Every Broadway show is capitalized by the lead producers of the project. So if you're a Broadway lead producer, you have an idea for a show or you find a show and you say, I want to bring it to Broadway. You hire a company,

a general management company. They build a budget for you and they say, okay, you want to put, you know, kinky boots, you want to do a revival of kinky boots. The cast is 22 people. You're going to have this many set pieces.

Your orchestra is this large. You need to do an out-of-town trial, blah, blah, blah. This musical, this mid-sized musical, is going to cost $14 million to capitalize. Okay. To build the show, to hire the director, to rent the theater, $14 million. Okay. In addition to that, there's going to be a weekly operating cost. And this is the big difference between a Broadway show and a movie.

Okay. If you produce a movie, you make the movie, the movie's done. Yeah. You produce a Broadway show, you make the show, you still have to pay people every single week. We call that the nut. So every week there is a running cost or a nut that is just like, how much does it cost to keep the lights on? A successful show needs to, on a weekly basis, sell enough tickets to cover the nut and to pay back producers so that ultimately, over enough time, you're profiting.

On, like, typical shows, I know it's hard because you see, like, a set of Moulin Rouge and some of these other shows, they're so extensive. But, like, what would you say the average nut is per week to run a Broadway show if you had to average it all out? Just a guess. Sure. I would say it ranges for a play.

Let's see you have a small play. Yeah. That might cost $300,000 to run a week. Maybe somewhere between $2.40 and 3. Okay. A big musical can cost a million dollars a week to run. Interesting. And then everything in between.

Okay. So probably the most expensive show on Broadway costs one, a little bit more than a million dollars a week to run. Okay. And the cheapest show probably costs $250. So you raise all the capital to build the show. Then let's just say for the sake conversation, it's a million dollars to run the show, pay all your people.

The only way that those investors get that money back, that original, let's call it the 14 million to build the show. The only way they get that back is the excess per week that the show makes in ticket sales above what the operating costs are. That's right. So if you have a show that costs $500,000 a week to run, and you can sell a million dollars worth of tickets, that extra half a million at first goes right back to the investors. Okay. Yep. And that happens until the investors are paid off. So let's take a show like Hamilton, extremely successful. How quickly did those investors get paid back, do you think?

Most shows announce their, it's called a recoupment. When a show recoupes, that means it's in the black and it's printing money. Like a hit show can recoup in a few months, somewhere between three and seven months. Some shows take a year to recoup. Some might take a year and a half or two years. some short plays can recoup in weeks. Okay. There was a hit show last year,

an enemy of the people with Jeremy's, Jeremy Strong from Jeremy, I always get the Jeremy's. I get the Jeremy's book. Jeremy Strong, I think, from Succession. Okay, oh yeah, okay. That show recouped very fast because it was a play.

It didn't have a big, crazy set. It was very intimate. Yeah. Tickets were through the roof. So they recouped in two months maybe, and then the rest of the run, now you're talking profits majority of people that invest into a broadway show do they see a good return typically or do most fail the majority of broadway shows do not fully recoup their investment

okay some shows lose all of it every season there's a few shows they might be 20 million dollar musicals they open no one likes them no one wants to see it they're gone two months later every penny loss. So a high-risk investment. High-risk investment. Other shows, Wicked is a good example. Universal, the film studio, invested like a million bucks in Wicked. I don't know the actual numbers, but they did a fine investment, not like a meaningful investment. That amount that they invested is paying dividends to this day. There are quarterly returns from Universal, overall, the worldwide group where they're like parks were down, our movies flopped, we don't have any good TV shows. Wicked still on Broadway.

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There are a hand, I think there's 13 unions. Okay. That represent Broadway shows. All of those contracts, the minimums for them, are negotiated by the unions. I do not know the exact numbers off the top of my head. Yeah. They tend to be modest if you're thinking about people at the high. height of their careers.

I won't throw out a number, but I want to say it's in the ballpark of $3,000-ish a week plus benefits and such for like a base level. Might be a little bit higher than that. I'm not entirely sure. And for aspiring actors,

actresses, Broadway performers, or parents of those that are listening right now, how challenging is it to make it? It is a hyper-competitive space. Okay. Hyper, hyper, hyper competitive. Okay.

That doesn't mean that it's not worth chasing. And the other thing you often see, I have plenty of friends who are actors who have performed on Broadway and then builds really interesting and exciting careers outside of Broadway shows. So you can teach, you can direct, you can choreograph. There's lots of ways at it, but make no mistake, it is wild. wildly competitive. Okay, wildly competitive. We did see a little curveball recently

where our worlds collided. Reality TV connects to Broadway. We saw Ariana Maddox from Vanderpump Rules as Roxy in Chicago. What's your overall thought of someone like a reality star being on Broadway and just that nature of bringing celebrities to the theater?

Our goal as marketers and producers is to make the show we're working on stand out amongst the other 40 shows on Broadway at any given time. And nobody loves anything more than seeing someone they care about on that stage. Celebrities are now driving Broadway shows. You don't have to look too far to see just the long list of shows that have major stars in them. And it makes perfect sense. We want to see famous people on stage. Yeah, especially live. Yeah. Yeah. Now, for many shows, when we talk about how competitive, is to get on that stage, to sing and dance and act and do it eight times a week requires an

incredible level of talent and training. It's a very high bar. Someone like Ariana who has a background in performance, the reality TV part is great because it brought celebrity with her. She had the hard talent and skills from her life before Vanderpump Rules. She was a trained dancer and had a real stage presence and a show like Chicago, which is what she appeared in, that role of Roxy Hart is a great role for someone to step into and sort of embody it with their own personality. So it's great. It brings people to the theater that wouldn't normally go see a show. And you expect we'll see more of it, just given the trap. Yeah. I mean, we've had, I work on Chicago, full disclosure. We've had Jinks Monsoon on the show who is a drag queen.

from RuPaul's Drag Race. She won that. And she appears, she's had two super successful runs in Chicago. And it's amazing. And now Chicago is really a platform for, you know, an unexpected talent. And with Ariana and then Jinks,

ticket sales did well? Shot up. Shot up. Yeah. Huge impact. Yeah. Broadway shows have to release their sales every week. Yeah.

Part of the agreement that producers have. So you can track how a show is doing. and you see that Jinks Monsoon joins the cast and $300,000 of sales pop up. Instantly. Yeah. Crazy. All right. Marketing effort.

So you've worked in marketing for Broadway. You still do your co-founder of a firm that works for Broadway shows like Chicago. What marketing efforts of all those that you offer, A to Z from billboards on, have you seen have the most success, the most return? The most success is to look at the show itself. and say, how do you change the products? How do you make the products more enticing to people? And casting, star casting is the number one example of that. Nothing sells a show more than the show.

So that's the first beat. But they're paying a shit ton for that. Oh, yeah. Like when our automatic comes, they're throwing out change to get someone like that. Yeah. Which increases the operating costs. So there's a cost for that. You know, I work in reality.

Like, that's actually the base. basis of all marketing campaigns, it's like, what are we actually selling? Who actually wants to see it? And are there enough of those people to hit those numbers we need to? If not, that's when we put on our tap shoes and we say, okay, we need to position this show. We need to tell the world something about this show that is honest and true, but that is really going to fire them up. Yeah. And that's where a lot of my work comes in is about how can we change the message, how we're talking about the show, so it appeals to more people. Okay.

What do you think about, there's been a huge change in Broadway, especially pre-COVID, COVID, post-COVID. I think there's probably a big scare for the entire industry during COVID. And even to today, I think there has to be, as you're looking, 5, 10, 15, 20 years, at least a conversation of how are people consuming? Are they still consuming live in theaters? are they willing to pay the price points that are required by Broadway? Your overall take in just the change of the industry

and how you just think about the trajectory of it moving forward. COVID and the impacts of, I mean, you can imagine, working on Broadway when there was no Broadway for 18 months, fucking suck. Oh, my God, I can't even imagine. It was devastating. And our agency, I worked at RPM at the time, we were 60 people before, we were down to 20 during, and we were one of the agencies that kept the most people. It was a skeleton crew across the board. It was miserable. We couldn't make shows. We were all just, like, sitting in our living rooms. And even when the world started to come back and movie theaters open, we were the last thing to come back.

Interesting. We need bodies and seats. We need to be. breathe in the same air for this thing to work. The good news, you look last year, you look at the Taylor Swift tour, you look at the Beyonce tour, there is no shortage of people who are willing to pay anything to get in a room for live entertainment.

That's so true. We want that more now than ever. That's the opportunity. The love, like there is nothing more human than gathering to share in a communal entertainment. experience. So I'm not worried about that part of it. However, it's more expensive. It's just everything costs more. So what that means is that I used to get like I used to come to New York when I was in college in 2004 and I would see three shows in a weekend and I'd pay $25 a ticket.

Right. You can still find cheap tickets, but ultimately a show is only going to recoup its investment. If they can sell those high cost premium tickets, they can sell enough of those to make it work. Yeah, because that's the biggest difference. If you look at a Taylor Swift or Beyonce, their max capacity is filling a stadium of 80,000 people. And they could even find stadiums with more, like college stadiums. Your max capacity in a Broadway show is, what, a couple thousand? Oh, not a couple. The smallest Broadway theater, I think, is 540 seats.

And the largest might be just over 2,000. So the only way- Theaters are so small. And if you live in a city other than New York and you go to see the touring, shows. That theater, those touring houses, are 4,000 seats. They're double the size of a Broadway house, which makes going to a Broadway show so special. You are in a room, a 2,000, 1,000 seat theater with the best performers in the world. I think this is the thing we're not very good at selling ourselves about Broadway. Nothing is like it. Literally, in the entire world,

There's no other place to be in a room with a... Imagine going to a football game with a thousand people watching it. Yeah. The experience is so special, specifically in New York when you see a Broadway show. I wonder if, do you think there's a world? If you take Taylor Swift, who could sell out a stadium,

and we know what the price of her tickets are. Is there a world, if you put her on a Broadway show with only a thousand seats, you could actually get the same revenue per ticket because people would be willing to pay that much because that would have to literally be a hundred grand a ticket. And the conversation that happens a lot in every ad room I'm in is how do we sell the tickets to the people who will pay anything?

How do we sell, how do we get their dollars that they are happy to give us for the best experience? But we don't want Broadway to become this Uber elite thing. It needs to, it is truly, it is an American. in our form. It is critical for the long-term success of it that people are exposed to it. So we put so much effort into figuring out how we can get people in for 30 bucks. And the truth is, if you want to see a Broadway show and you have $35, you can see multiple shows tonight. What's the best way for someone to buy the cheapest ticket, best value?

If you haven't heard of this before, most shows have a rush policy or a lotto. So for Rush, Day of, you can usually go to the theater. And if there are some tickets laying around, if you wait and you're there at the opening of the box office, they'll sell you one for 40 bucks. Okay, who knows where you'll sit. Sure. Again, 1,000 seats. They're all good. Also shows have lotteries where you sign up a day or two before, and they, you know, 100 people might sign up.

And they say, we're going to give out 20 tickets for 25 bucks. Wow. And they do the drawing, and you buy online, and then you have your tickets. Okay. So if you're curious about this, if you search for the show you want to see and, like, search wicked lottery, or Wicked Rush, you'll find sites that have all this info laid up. Okay, that's the play. Trading Secrets is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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and Adrian Warren Starr. This is coming out in spring 2025. You are a producer on this show. How much money do you guys have to raise for a show like this? Yeah, so our musical is a musical with two people. Okay. So the capitalization is not as big. Oh, there's like two, it's just these two? Two person show. It's an intimate show.

And this is one of, when we talk about seeing a star in a small theater, our theater only is 970 seats. We're at one of the smaller theaters. So it's going to be, you know, global superstar Nick Jonas and Tony Award winning, iconic performer Adrian Warren in a small 970 seat house. Interesting. Yeah. Can you share how much you have to raise or can you not care that? Okay. If I wanted to invest in it, what's the minimum amount? Investors can start at $25,000. All right. Yeah. There you go. Credited investors. If anyone is interested, $25,000, reach out to Stephen Tardick. All right, best show that you've ever... That's not a solicitation. That is not a solicitation. Best show that you've ever seen on Broadway. Best show that's currently on Broadway today.

you know always an impossible question i'll say last season on broadway there was a show called merrily we roll along okay which is my favorite musical of all time daniel radcliffe from harry potter starred in it with jonathan grop yeah from hamilton and lindsay mendes who's another broadway just icon that show i saw it four times on broadway it was exceptional and there are rumors floating that people might be be able to see that again in a different form sounds like they recorded it okay that it will appear somewhere else so if if merrily appears i know nothing about this actually i'm just hearing rumors but if merrily appears on some sort of streaming platform everyone has to watch it get on it exceptional okay stream celebrity cast you can pick one or two people they they're going to be in a

broadway show who are you picking oh great question merrill street i was thinking you know she did theater before. He's played Shakespeare in the park. Like, it's time for Merrill would come back to. Okay. Anyone else you could think of? Who else? You know, Oprah. Oprah. Can you imagine Oprah in a Broadway show? Oprah and Merrill Street, that would sell. Let's, yeah, let's make that happens. All right. We're going to wrap with this. We're going to transition from marketing and Broadway to a little bit of me. Social media marketing. It's something you're now touching in your firm. It's something you're working with. You've now seen me do it. A question that came in from a lot of people is, what is your take on my journey from going in the corporate world to now being in this social

media world? Like, what's your, what's your standpoint? What's your take behind the scenes from brother to brother? I mean, it's been hysterical. How so? Sterecical. Like what? I remember when you were getting ready to go, like when you had been approved to, you're selected to go on the show. Yes. But then it was time. I love how, by the way, this is the moment you choose to fill your glass again. You're like, let's top up for this conversation. I remember when you were just getting started and you were like, okay, I need to have a social presence.

And we started to have conversations about that. It's still funny to me that I have the at Tartac candle. Do you know how many DMs I got today? Do you know how many DMs people are like, get that? handle from him from my cold dead hits even our like the domain name tarnet dot com i bought that thankfully they're on a lot of tardics it's been fascinating to see you grow into it i mean now you're the expert and i'm looking to you for advice but i remember in those early days like social media is how i cut my teeth in this industry yeah like i launched some of the early early social pages for

broadway shows it's changed so much so much 10 years since i was doing yeah so now i watch you and I'm like, oh, that's how it's done. Yeah. What do you think about just the whole influencing space? I wonder, I am curious, again, full disclosure. I work on an influencer agency called Relay. I'm really curious. It feels to me like we are at the end of a chapter of influencer marketing,

and I am curious what the next chapter is going to look like. Yeah. I think it came out of such a, like, it feels so authentic. in the space, but it feels less and less authentic over time. And so my big question mark is like, how is this going to change? Because I feel it's getting a little stale at the moment, even though it's so much better than traditional advertising. Totally. Yeah. A change is coming. We'll see what it is. From our management perspective, the only thing we're seeing, though, is deal size increases, campaigns getting smarter, like they're looking for much more organic work, a lot more experiential and a lot more like true advertising. like placement into commercials, but the deals and the sizes and the amounts are all growing.

So we'll see what happens and how it changes. I was in a meeting this morning. Yeah. I pitched an influencer campaign. Yeah. And the producer was like, you want me to pay people to see my show and talk about it? Like, that's so cheesy. He's like, that's so ick.

Yeah. And what I realized in that moment is there is a right way of doing that and a wrong way. way of doing that. Yeah. And I'm not sure everyone has figured out the right way yet. I'm not sure I figured it. But I'm now seeking out figure. I want to help figure that out for Broadway shows. One of the crazy things is like you think about that as a Broadway show. And we've done deals. And I've been part of deals with some of like the most highly anticipated, highly demanded ticket like at that time in the moment, whether it's a Stanley Cup, it's a Super Bowl. It's a big F1 race. Like you name the thing that people that they're dying to go

and it's at the biggest stage and these brands are paying a shit ton of money for people to go and talk about it even though everyone's already talking about it right so then you just compare it to Broadway producer just being like

I gotta pay someone to come up and show but like the Super Bowl will pay someone to show the Stanley Cup will pay someone to show you know the NBA finals pay up people to show so it's interesting just how it works can I ask you a question yeah as someone who's approach for these deals yeah

do you deal with a situation where someone asks you to see a thing or try a thing or hawk a thing and you're like I don't this isn't my thing I don't like this thing well we I mean you you can you have the ability in the leverage to decline deals based on what your pipeline in supply of deals are and every day I probably turn a deal down oh you do all the time left right and center. Left, right, center. And how do you make that decision? I mean, today there's a deal.

I got an offer. It's three post deal. Three posts, three stories, Hunter Grand. And I was like, I'll only do two, two posts, two stories, hundred grand. I don't know what's going to happen. Might go away. Yep. They haven't even thought about it until we just talked about it.

The reason for that was the brand, the type of the type of requirements for the brand, the alignment. I like it. Do I want to do three of it? No, I'll do two of it. So a lot of negotiation will go into like what your tolerance is for it, what the fee is and what the brand is. How do you know when you're doing the right amount and not too much?

It's, well, first of all, you'll hear it from your followers and two, there's a percentage kind of like, you know, if you look at like a TV show, the percentage of commercials to actual content, you know, you always, always want your advertising to be way below 15% of your overall content. So you can quickly do the math based on the post you've done in the last month or six or two months or 90 days or half a year. And you can look at your percentage of ad to true content. Yep.

So that's a big one. All right. Question for you, you're on the Bachelorette. What was your perspective of hometowns? What's one thing someone might not know about your hometown experience? That it was entirely fabricated. How about? That we filmed in a house that wasn't ours.

That we ate a meal that wasn't cooked. That almost. brought in a girl that did not like me they brought in a fiancee that wasn't the the whole it was it was delightfully artificial in delightfully in in every elements from how we stood up which door we walked out of the producers were so eager to push narratives I will never forget one of the producers coming up and just sitting down before you before becca yeah came in the room yeah they said stephen your brother says he loves this woman and she's dating three other men right now yeah and if that was my brother i would have some tough questions for her

bebecca come on him come on him have a seat and we and we're talking yeah and you know i'm chat. And then the producer would just say, can we just, Stephen, do you remember about? And they just kept trying to push me to. And there was a line. They kept saying, you know, I work in, I work in marketing. I'm working on. Producing. I make direct videos where I need people to hit a talking line. Yeah. What do you do when you want someone to say something? You say it over and over to them. Sure. And that producer who just kept saying, aren't you concerned? Yeah. That should. She's manipulating your brother. Yeah.

Aren't you, remember? Yeah. Did you say it or? I just, it was so inauthentic to me. And I think, like, it's true to our relationship. Yeah. I think we both are willing to give each other advice. Yeah.

Like, if either of us ever saw something in our lives that we thought was askew, we would do something. Yeah. But you and I are not, like, putting on fighting gloves and, like, Like, it was just so inauthentic. Yeah. So you just stood away from it. At one point, I made some comment that was to the effect of, like, I turned, they wanted me

to confront her. Yeah. And I turned it into like a statement of affirmation, which was, you know, I hope, I hope the relationship you have with Jason is sincere. And I hope that you are taking his, his emotions into consideration. And of course, that's not good television, so no one ever saw that. But that was the authentic way for me to get there. Fair answer. Completely fabricated.

All right, what's your take on my journey? You talked about social media, but my journey of going on the Bachelorette to engagement, to failed engagement, to being single, to now with Kat. How do you summarize your take? It has, you have never stopped. Like, the journey, you really shot. out of a canon. Like, you went from having a very private life, having a thousand friends on Instagram, to getting shot out of the canon, which was very exciting. And thankfully, you got a good

edit. And, like, you rode the wave appropriately. And it all kind of worked out in your case, the way it doesn't work out for everyone. And then ever since then, it's been nonstop. And, you know, it's, like, not to delve into your personal life, but it's obviously. Oh, the question was about my personal enough to be excited and enthusiastic again and welcome someone else back into the family like it's thrilling again you know it's just like it's the roller coaster of any family's relationship but actually i would imagine that's not too different from other families sure the um public part of it is uncomfortable and awkward at times but nominally it actually just feels more rooted in like regular family stuff what's the public part that's uncomfortable

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I remember when you were going through your breakup and not only did you have to deal with like the very real emotional part of having like a meaningful relationship end. Yeah. And you were very like emotional about that. On top of that, which is like a traumatic thing for anyone to go through. Sure. You also had to write a statement with the person you were breaking up with to. to post. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that was a weird moment for me because I was both, like, trying to just be like a sympathetic brother, but also be a savvy marketer. And I remember reading the statement, and if you recall, like, I had a lot of notes on the way you wrote your statement. Yeah.

And I was thinking from, like, a press person, a marketing person. Yeah. And ultimately, you posted the statement you posted, which is not the one I would have posted. Yeah. That actually speaks to, like, the authenticity that you wrote something and you put it out there. It was not screened 12 times over.

I would have had a much savvier breakup announcement. But I would have pulled on all the heartstrings. I would have polished it in ways. But it was, like, raw and authentic. But that was a weird for me being, like, watching someone go through something and also thinking about it from, like, a media landscape. Yeah. I couldn't write it. I was like, I can't go there.

They all wrote it. I took a few things out of it. Yeah. A few things I took out were shortly there mentioned after. So whatever was taken out, got out there. But hey, this is always complicated, and it was even more complicated. How complicated when you have to think about other people watching? That answers it. All right, we're getting towards the end here.

A couple things that I want to get into is quickly, how would you describe me in high school? The Money Mafia, the people that listen to the show asked. How would you describe Jason in high school? Nice, nice and aloof. Goofy. Goofy. Goofy. You're high energy.

You're bouncing around. Yeah. You were nice. Yeah. All right. Like a little crazy. Yeah. Would you say, is a kid or in high?

Actually, you never saw me in high school. I was going to, because you were in college. I would say in high school, I wasn't like that. But as a kid, I was like that. Kid, I would go all over the play. All over the door to door. Can Jonathan play? Can Diana play?

Can Christopher play? Where are we going to go? Definitely someone that had a. ADHD that was not treated. So there's that. Someone asked, was Jason a hopeless romantic or a ladies man? I didn't have a lot of visibility into that side. Like, that wasn't part of our relationship.

That's true. I remember you always had been in freshman. Yeah. Well, in freshman year of high school, I was, we didn't say high school. But then after that, you were. I was gone by the time you were, like, really dating. That's fair. And I do always think of you as having, like, you seem to value having a relationship.

You're not like a single person. I always you're always a relationship person yeah that's interesting yeah I actually agree with that I go relationship I've been in like four real like four relationships in my life and if you add up the years of all those it's a lot yeah what's the longest gap you've had as a single person I've had a couple I've had like two three years

yeah I've had and you know I've had that was a beat ago yeah that was a beat ago but I'm like when I'm single I'm single like I you know I'm single I play the rules. So not much wasted time when I'm single when I'm with someone. We're back at it. There it is. All right.

Let's go to the last thing, relationships, you. I want to ask you about this. So you're married in 2015. It was almost 10 years ago, June 26, 2015. U.S. Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage. They legalize it in all 50 states. Fast forward to 2024. what are some hurdles that you still think about as a gay man living in 2024 with all the moving

components in today's world versus back then right you got married what two three months after yeah we picked our wedding date when we would have had a state marriage certificate but if we had been married and then went to texas it would not have been recognized right right So if I was at that time when, did mom and dad live in Texas then? Yeah. Yeah. If we were visiting in Texas and I was hurt and had to go to the hospital, they could have denied Billy from like seeing me in the hospital.

That's fucking nuts. Yeah, because he was, who was he, you know? Crazy. You know, it, obviously things are miles better than they were 20 years ago and even 10 years ago. Obviously right now it's a scary political situation. Like we're in a scary political client. There are a lot of people actively working to roll those policies back. And, you know, obviously there are a lot of hot-button issues in the LGBT community,

largely surrounding transgender rights and transgender issues. That's kind of the frontier at this moment. And there's just a lot of people who are investing a lot of negative energy in looking at this very, very small group of people. Yeah. It's like, the conversation around transgender rights is very large. Yeah. But we're actually talking about a small number of people.

Yeah. We're just trying to, like, live their life in a way. Yeah. They can, like, get through a day and feel good about who they are and how they represent themselves and how the world sees them. Yeah. And it is so deeply linked to the gay rights movement. Interesting.

And people try to pull those two things apart. Yeah. Because now we generally accept one of those things. And now everything that trans people are going through that gay people went through 10, 15, 20 years ago, the same arguments are being thrown at them. And there is an important bond between LGBT issues for any reason. Interesting to see like that it's not even a dotted line. It feels like a very direct line. It's a direct blinking line.

Yeah. Direct blinking line. That's perfectly said. Yeah. I just think people should just like let folks. live their lives and just kind of try to get out of the way as much as it as you can yeah like everyone chooses to live their lives however they choose to live it yeah and there are just other bigger things for us to be yeah yeah especially when like the main goal is

just like peace and acceptance right we're not we're not talking about like some crazy yeah and yeah and yeah i could do a full hour on that but yeah Generally speaking, let folks live their lives. Okay, I like that. Let them find their joy and you find your... You find your joy. We're not going to ban them for, you know, this, that, and the other. Exactly.

All right. Last question I got for you then. As far as you, Billy, possibly kids, yeah, your name. I don't think so. No? Not for me. How come? I don't...

Yeah, I love my life. Okay. Raising kids seems like a huge... a huge shift in the life that I live and just not of interest to me. Yeah. Okay. There's the answer. The last thing I'll probably end with, of course, we talk business, money, career, and

life on this podcast, but I just think our relationship with money is so different, too. Like, I just remember, and then we'll go into your trading secret at this, but I just remember, like, even in high school, you like to buy a lot of things, you bought you, the next game system comes out, you're the first one that bought it. And I was always a big saver. And I always say to you, like, don't you want to save your money? This is when we were kids, and I'd want to go, like, start this business, start more money. And you were just like, I remember you saying once to me, nothing, and I mean nothing,

excites me if I look into a bank account and see that there's money there or what the number is. It means nothing to me. But when I buy that gaming system, I get a lot of excitement. It is so fascinating that we grew up in the same household with, you know, a lot of the same lessons. And our relationship with money is night and day. That is true. I wish my relationship with money was closer to yours. One of the things I've realized as I get older is that buying things and what makes me happy is experiencing things. It's easy to buy a book. It's harder to read the book, right? Like one thing takes me 30 seconds and I get this little dopamine kick and then I get the thing and that's all. I love stuff. I love objects. Reading books is going to take me 12 hours. But I've realized is right now, if I never bought another book in my life, I could only read books I own today, and I still wouldn't finish them before I died.

And the same is true with video games. If I never bought another video game again, I could not finish all the video games I currently own from now until eternity. And I'm using that as a method of buying less because I should only buy things when I'm ready to use them, because it's the using that I enjoy. Yes. But it is true. I obviously everyone's relationship to money is so personal and it's driven by certain things. I wish I was more fiscally astute.

I've definitely arrived at a place where I live within my means. But yeah, I wish I gamified saving in a way that really like press my buttons. And still to this day, it's kind of the same mentality. Obviously, you've just explained how it changed a little bit. I'm no longer like irresponsible with money, but I do love, I like, I love the act of collecting. I think that's the thing that kind of broke me a little bit. I love, you know, I collect all sorts of ephemera and things.

I like collections, though I'm real, yes, as I get older, I'm getting better with that. There we go. All right. Different, different strategies, different thoughts with mind, different relationships with money, probably from day one to today. Doesn't mean one's right or one's wrong. They're just different, right? All right, we got to wrap with a trading secret. So it's something you can only learn from Stephen Tarduk's experience, life, financial, professional, any direction.

You can't get it from a TikTok tutorial or a professor only through your textbook of life. What trading secret can you leave us with? What trading secret? I'll give you two trading secrets. I like it. The first, as a magician, I have really grown attuned to spotting. scams and spotting moments when people are purporting to do something or offer something that they are not purporting to do or offer.

And I will say generally speaking, if anybody is claiming to do something supernatural or paranormal or psychic or clairvoyance, someone's claiming they speak with the dead and they are making a single dollar off of it, be heavily skeptical. Okay. Heavily, heavily skeptical. Yeah. I mean, it's someone that performed for entertainment and made a couple bucks in that growing up. That's a world that obviously you probably saw a little behind the curtain. So that's a really interesting take.

I'm deeply, deeply sensitive about people who specifically claim that they can speak and commune with the dead. Yeah. They are all using magic tricks. They are all manipulating other people. And many of them are getting very rich. off of those magic tricks. Consider one of like the great evils of modern day society.

So real quick, I want to follow up on that. You're seeing, I'm just going to say a psychic. Psychics that say they could speak to the dead on TV, social media, or just at the corner. And you're watching tactics that you learned as a magician to manipulate the audience, verbatim being used. Yep. It's called cold reading and hot reading.

And if you Google cold reading medium, you will see, all sorts of ways that these celebrity psychics and mediums are manipulating, grieving people to pluck and extract information out of them, give it back to them to make it feel like they're communing with somebody who's passed away. And, you know, I know that this gives a lot of people comfort. Yeah. And if it does, that's, I'm happy that people are feeling better about things. But as soon as money is transacted, you ultimately have what I consider to be. a quite evil fraud. Wow. Okay.

On a lighter note. Yes. That's a great one. One we've never had in 200 plus episodes. Skeptical. On a lighter notes, I have something called Tardix Law, which is, this is truly... Never heard this. Tardix Law.

This is something I believe emphatically true with zero room for anything else. Okay. Tardix Law is if you have to use the bathroom. and there is a bathroom nearby. Yes. Always use that bathroom. Okay. Never wait for the next bathroom.

Okay. Critical life rule. Did something happen? You never want to wait for the next bathroom. Okay. Always use the bathroom that presents itself. Just think about all those times. You're like, yes, there's a bathroom here, but I'm just going 20 minutes.

And then you get tied up. And then all of a sudden, you really... Tardix Law always use the bathroom in front of you. Two of the most creative trading secrets we've ever had on the show from one of the most creative guests we've had on the show. Unbelievable. All right, Stephen, I know you have so many other things we didn't get to when you have your show that is coming up. You have demoniac, your card game and board game that you created yourself. Where can everyone find each of those things? Yep. So you can find me on Instagram at Tartik, T-A-R-T-I-C. How much for that? We'll talk offline.

From there in my handle, you can find links to the board game I designed, the show I'm producing, and to my... Okay, we are going to give one of the board games away. All you got to do is give us five stars on Apple. Put your email address and then let us know your biggest takeaway from this episode. We're going to buy one and give it to one of you that give a review on this episode. Steven Tardick, I don't know, after this one, I might have to have mom and dad back. Thank you for being on sharing secrets. It was my treat.

Talk soon. Making that money, money, playing on me. Bringing that money, money, living that dream. Making that money, money, money, pay on me. Making that money, living that dream.