Trading Secrets - 279. Ross Pomerantz: From pro baseball to Corporate Bro, the BTS of navigating his career identity, making over $100K on LinkedIn, Super Bowl commercial with Matthew McConaughey, and beyond

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

This week, Jason is joined by the hilarious Corporate Bro, Ross Pomerantz!He is someone who has lived in the high pressure, high performance world of corporate fiance and selling at Oracle and actually has the scars and stories to prove it. Ross brings a real unfiltered hilarious perspective in what enterprise sales really looks like behind the scenes. From ambition and burnout to the funny trade-offs nobody talks about unless you’re deep in it, he is covering it all. He is a speaker, investor, entrepreneur, and massive creator. Ross breaks down everything from playing two seasons of Single-A pro baseball to selling luxury apartments in Oakland during Occupy Wall Street, and the identity shift from athlete to enterprise sales at Oracle. He shares what it was like training to cold call, navigating an identity crisis, and clarifying that “Corporate Bro” was always meant to satirize the industry — not glorify it — after getting his start on Vine in 2013. We dive into spending a decade in sales before business school, negotiating lessons, trusting timing, and earning admission to Stanford, along with the fear of fully committing to content creation and how he scripts and produces highly shareable videos with his team. He also talks about appearing in a Super Bowl commercial alongside Matthew McConaughey for Salesforce, leveraging opportunities on LinkedIn, his speaking business, co-hosting a podcast with Corporate Natalie, angel investing, building alongside his wife, and what’s next.Ross reveals all this and so much more in another episode you can’t afford to miss!Host: Jason TartickCo-Host: David ArduinAudio: John GurneyGuest: Corporate Bro Ross PomerantzStay connected with the Trading Secrets Podcast! Instagram: @tradingsecretspodcast Youtube: Trading SecretsFacebook: Join the GroupTrading Secrets Steals & Deals!Momentous:Momentous Fiber+ addresses one of the most overlooked foundations of long-term performance: gut health. Fiber is not just about digestion. It is a key driver of gut health, which directly impacts nutrient absorption, energy stability, recovery, focus, mood, and overall performance. Head to livemomentous.com, and use promo code TRADINGSECRETS for up to 35% off your first order.Warby Parker:Warby Parker gives you quality & better-looking prescription eyewear at a fraction of the going price. For  15% off + Free Shipping when they buy 2 or more pairs of prescription glasses head over to WarbyParker.com/TRADINGSECRETS.Wayfair:Get back into an at-home routine you LOVE and elevate your space with Wayfair. From bedding and mattresses to storage solutions for every room in the house, Wayfair is your one-stop shop. Head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home.Northwest Registered Agent:Northwest Registered Agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. Don’t wait, protect your privacy, build your brand and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes! Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/tradingsecretsfree and start building something amazing!

Next time you fly on business, arrive feeling fresh in Emirates business class. On your flight, you can sink into leather seats that recline flat for a better sleep. You can enjoy delicious regional meals and premium drinks. And there's onboard Wi-Fi if you need to work. Along with Emirates chauffeur-driven airport transfers and entry to the luxurious Emirates Lounge, it's just a better way to do business. Book now on emirates.com. This message is brought to you by the Capital One Venture X card.

Venture X offers the premium benefits you expect, like a $300 annual Capital One travel credit for less than you expect. Elevate your earn with unlimited double miles on every purchase, bringing you one step closer to your next dream destination. Plus, enjoy access to over 1,000 airport lounges worldwide. The Capital One Venture X card. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. Lounge access is subject to change. See Capital One.com for details.

Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets. Today we're joined by the hilarious corporate bro and Ross Pomerates. They're actually two different personalities under one home. We'll talk all about it. Someone who's lived in the high pressure, high performance world of corporate finance and selling at Oracle and actually has the scars and stories to prove it. Ross brings a real, unfiltered, hilarious perspective on what Enterprise says, really looks like behind the scenes.

From ambition and burnout to the funny tradeoffs, nobody talks about unless you're deep in it. He's covering it all. In this episode, we get into the psychology of how sales sucked, turned into a massive empire. He's a speaker, investor, entrepreneur, and massive creator. Ross, let's get into him.

That's good to have you on sharing secrets. I'm honored to be here. Welcome to my city. Let's go. It's good to be in your city. I mean, you are born and raised in Atlanta, right? I moved when I was 13. Okay.

So, you know, I'm still. A little Braves fan. Okay. I was a baseball player. You know, that was my, still play baseball. But, you know, sort of adopted the Warriors when they were terrible and the Niners when they were fine. Like, I just, I was always a baseball guy in Atlanta.

So I've just stayed true to that. And then I guess now I'm a bandwagon fan, so that everyone want to call me. Jealous. You know, as a Bill's guy, I'm jealous of that. Well. You like this story, actually, when the Braves won the World Series is in Houston. And we got tickets through the Braves team somehow. And we were able to sneak into their after party.

Oh. So we were at the after. party with the Braves, with the World Series, party in her ass off. My cousins from Atlanta was like the best. God, that was great. That would be like if the Bill's won Super Rule and I snuck into that. So, anyway, I had to put that out there. Well, well, I'm jealous. Well, that actually connects to where I want to start with you. So you, I read at LinkedIn, you were a pro baseball player in an independent league, right? Not affiliated with minor. Correct. Not affiliated as, you know, the equivalent of single A. Yeah. Okay. Guys who are former Japanese major league guys or guys were in AAA, sort of guys on

the way down and then guys on the way up. Okay. And so we're in dispatch. Home dispatch. You're played that for a year and a half. So two seasons, yeah, two seasons and was like, I guess I could toil around here. But when you're making $1,000 a month for three months, just your playing season, it's not a lot of money to live off of. Damn. That's why there was the whole lawsuit with minor leaguers, not getting paid fair wages. And that's why most minor league guys still were construction or do camps like all summer long. You only get paid in season, unless you're a bonus baby, you know, drafted early rounds.

You get a $7 million signing bonus. You're getting paid next to nothing. That's crazy. How many of those people in single-high will make it to Major League? Maybe a couple. Okay, so it's hard. Yeah, I mean, there's 40 rounds in the Major League draft. It's not like the NBA where all the first round guys end up making the second round guys don't.

I mean, there's a thousand plus guys got to get drafted every year that come in. Yeah. And, you know, when you get drafted in the first round, the Major League draft, you're not necessarily going to be a star. They're kind of like this guy might be good enough to be a contributor at the Major League level. You might not even be like a starter. You might just be a reserved guy. And you still get drafted in the first round. Interesting.

So it's not like the NFL or NBA where if you're a first round guy, they kind of expect you to contribute heavily. Yeah. Interesting. When you were in college, did you actually think, I just said interesting. And I saw that you just did a video making fun of people saying interesting. So yeah, I know you don't give a shit. You're like, I could not. I don't care about that. Next subject, moving on. That's okay. I would say interesting a lot today. No, I'm just playing. When you were in college, did you have the, like, was the pipe dream real about being a major league player? You're like, I'm going to ride this out as long as I can. Oh, in my head, it was real.

You know, I mean, I was, I had my sophomore year was talking to a couple teams. I actually got, like everybody else, got hurt. I was at A, I was a D3 guy, so I was already a long shot. I would have been drafted probably after like the 30th round. Basically, they'll pay for your playing ticket and let you come out and play for a season. If you suck, you're gone. But I ended up tearing my lap, my senior year, and that kind of went out the window, went into selling luxury apartments in Oakland, California during the occupied Wall Street thing,

was training, like a minor league team was coming to the Bay Area. So I was training in the parking garage at night. Oh my God. And just throwing into a net over and over again. I got invited to that spring training and ended up making that team. Interesting. So I kind of had this dream. I was like, I know I've got a little more in the tank.

I definitely punched above my weight class. I mean, I'm 510, 511, left-handed pitcher. I didn't throw that hard. And, you know, probably went about as far as I should have gone. When you were selling luxury apartments, how much can you make in a business like that? Oh, I mean, not much. You're like, you're just a leasing kind of like sales associates. Yeah.

You know, I think I was probably making 85 grand. Okay. You know, it was a brand new building, but people were moving in there. Like, it was not a hard sell. It was like, you know, in 2013, right? So, you know, 13 years ago, comparatively to what you're making $1,000 a month, I mean, like, you're hitting the check. Oh, my God, compared to baseball.

Yeah, well, I didn't know I was going to take such a pay cut to go back down and do that. You're living with, like, home estate families with three, you know, three of your teammates and so forth. But good crash course and sales, which set you up for. for enterprise SaaS sales. Tell me about that transition from playing pro ball to going into Oracle was your first stop, right?

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people, when you're an athlete, your whole life, that's like your identity. And I definitely went through an identity crisis of, you know, people would see my parents. How's your son? The pitcher. How's your son? Is he still playing ball? Like, no.

And you're sitting there like, what the hell am I doing with my life? What am I going to do next? And like many washed up athletes, I ended up in sales. And there were a lot of ex baseball players at Oracle. The truth is, I didn't know I was going into sales. It was called business development. I was like, fuck yeah, let's go develop some businesses. I don't know what that means.

Let's do it. Oracle, oh, the same place the Warriors play. I didn't know what Oracle did. Most people listening don't know what Oracle does. Yeah, it's true. It's basically the piping of all things tech, you know, everything that like supports banks and airlines and stuff you never see. Unimportant, but it's very expensive.

And so I got there day one and just started training to make cold calls. And that's where the sadness began. That's where the pain and suffering, calling people, who don't want to talk to you. You know, that's what you get trained on. We'll get into your current career, but a quick transition to it.

You had mentioned identity crisis. That was then, right? 85,000 and you bring $1,000 bucks to a pro ball player. It doesn't work out. Now you've got to go into sales, cold calling. Yeah.

I want to just transition to where you're at today. In my estimation, you're making millions. Do you still have an identity crisis? No. Not in this space at all. I mean, I have like the, the like, am I Ross,

am I corporate bro? Right. That's kind of where I was going with that. Yeah, I mean, I think there's, you're always trying to think strategically about the business itself. Like for the longest time, I mean, people still call me corp. Most people call me in the streets. They're like, what's up, Corp, how's it going? Like, I love that. But at the same time, there's also the side of Ross who plays corporate bro.

Sure. Who's making business decisions. Who's making the, like, the next brand step. Because that's important. I think when your name's corporate bro, especially during a time in tech where bros and, you know, even the world today, Bros are not necessarily seen as a not a positive, you know, concept. I had to differentiate and sort of say, hey, guys, I played this character. I also do these other things because that would prevent me from brand deals.

I'll prevent me for speaking gigs. We can't bring a guy in Corver Bro in here. Because people didn't, if they didn't know who I was, they didn't know that I was satirizing this space, that I was making fun of it. This is the commentary on the space. Yeah. They think, oh, he is that sales douche. I mean, I am that sales douche, but you know what I mean?

Like, to me, to that degree that, you know, I'm embellishing and playing that character. Fair. That makes sense. I think with Oracle, when you look at a career like that, though, it's very safe, right? You can make a ton of money. You know that you can live there the rest of your career. I think in this creator space, which you've done in for 13 plus years, started at Vine, and you talk about that.

But do you, I mean, you've done it for over a decade now, but a lot of creators that come on here, or if we get, like, super hot reality stars, like right off the next show and they're blowing up. Their biggest concern always is longevity. Do you have that concern at all in the space? You know, I, yes and no. I believe I'll evolve to whatever that needs to be. You know, a lot of the content early on for me was I'm that classic like 20s, single tech bro. And then, you know, now I have a kid.

You know, I'm married with a kid. And I was like, well, is this content going to play. But the truth is like, you mentioned I've been doing this since 2013 on Vine. I have a lot of people who have been with me since then. They've grown up. They've gotten married. They've had kids. They've progressed in their careers.

So like, you know, you can always kind of find a corporate spin. At least I've realized, you know, becoming corporate dad. What are all the identity crises that I deal with? going from like closing business to changing diapers. Right? And I think the longevity thing is a fair concern. Because if you would have told me years ago that offices would go away, COVID would happen. All of a sudden,

there's a whole generation, people that don't know what it's like to be in an office. Like, that's insane. Crazy. And so there is an element of that where it's like, well, now I got to work in the work from home content to be relevant to those folks, which,

you know, I did work from home. So luckily I can deal with that. But yeah, I think you always kind of need to plan and think about what could be next. But at the same time, it has to come from a place of truth. And I think that's what I struggled with.

It was like, it got harder to make contact. It was like, I'm not a single bro in the marina, like partying as much anymore. Like, that's not who I am. How do I stay true to myself? Like, that's where the best content comes from. I'm sure you know. It's like, the best stuff comes out of inspiration. Yeah, vulnerability, relatability connection, right?

The authentic piece. It's just like, that shit hits. It makes sense. So I had been going through that identity crisis for a while, actually, that transition of, like, what is the adult version of corporate bro look like? Interesting. All right. We'll come back to corporate bro.

If there's anyone listening right now that's thinking about getting into SaaS or enterprise sales at all. Talk to me about back at Oracle. I mean, you did it for seven years, but with different companies, right? What did it look like as far as compensation day to day at the high end bonuses? Give me like the full breakdown in the industry. Yeah, I mean, I think the unfortunate truth was I kind of missed the true golden age of like tech sales. People wheeling a deal and making millions and millions of dollars. Not to say that there weren't reps making millions of dollars.

They were like in their 60s, though. They had been like, you know, early days of Xerox like printers coming up like all through the evolution of tech and this amazing amount of value that was created. Kind of what I think is happening now with AI and now you're seeing valuations of companies go so crazy. Like there are certain people now that are making that much money. And back then that were too. But I was a 23 year old. I think my base was 60K. And then my OT on target earnings was 60K.

I mean, for those out there, OTE, basically means if you hit your quota, you make an additional X amount. And so it's usually most of the time in tech half, half. So 60 base, 60 more if I hit quota. And I could make more than that if I, you know, did 200%, 110%. There's accelerators and things that allow you to make more money. But you're closing million-dollar deals. Sure.

But your commission is like 0.000 of the deal. And you're like, what the fuck? Yeah. Then there's the subjectivity part of it. Right. At least it was in the banking industry, right? There's like the performance piece of commission. Right.

And then there's another pool that's like, well, it depends how the company does. Right. Based on that, we'll let you know what percentage. Exactly. And then there's other people in the team who are involved. And like, don't get me wrong. There are other people that are helpful. And like with a big million, you know, multi-million dollar deals.

You do need a lot of people have their hands in it. But everybody's getting a little tiny piece. Yeah. So in all those years, what was the highest year you had in enterprise sales? I think the highest was probably like, I mean, it's probably like $2.50. Sure. Yeah. You know?

When you were in it, did you say to yourself like at some point, I will get out of it? Or do you think for the longevity of your career, you thought you're going to be doing that? I think the truth is I started to get kind of bored. I felt like I understood sales. Like a lot of the checkpoints are the same in terms of like how you run a sales call, how you negotiate,

how you like align problems and solutions, right, all that kind of cliche stuff. But there was a part of me that was like, okay, what's next? And I think corporate bro, I was doing this on the side for eight years.

So I think I ended up selling for like, close to 10 years, decided I want to go to business school because I was like, I felt like, because I was the funny guy, the goofy guy, I was a little bit discounted. It's like, oh, he's just like the goofy dummy who's like class clown, right? Not smart. Like, we're not going to like, yeah. And so I kind of had this chip on my shoulder. I was like, well, fuck you guys. I'm going to go figure something else out. I'm kind of done with sales. What's the way you get out for me? It was study and go to business school. And I do think sales is the most important skill there is, like period. It's like what you guys do every day at the agency. It's like,

you know, every little decision, every little thing you want in life, like you can sell your way to it. And it just opens up everything, entrepreneurally speaking. But I was done doing it in tech. Your business identity is everything that shows what your business is about, from what customers to see, to what they don't see, like operating agreements, meeting minutes, and compliance paperwork. Northwest registered agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses nearly for 30 years. They are the largest registered agent in LLC service in the U.S. with over, 1,500 corporate guides, real people who know your local laws and can help you and your business

every step of the way. Northwest is your one-stop business resource. Learn how to build a professional website. What annual filings your business needs to stay in good standing and simple explanations of complicated business law. With Northwest, privacy is automatic. They never will sell your data and all services are handled in-house. Here's what you got to do. Don't wait. Protect your privacy, build your brand, and get your complete business identity literally in just 10 clicks and in 10 minutes. Visit htp, semi-colon, backslash, backslash, www. www. Northwest Registeredagent.com slash trading secrets and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registered Agent.com slash trading secrets free.

We'll get into Stanford as we went for your amazing. Yeah, all right? In a second, we'll do that before we do. I now know that your wife is your manager, so she's doing your selling and negotiating for you, but let's also, thank God. Thank God. We'll talk a little bit about that. It's a wild dynamic. But as far as like sales and negotiating like trading secrets, tips or tricks, people back home that aren't in sales and or they could use any type of insight you could give them, whether it's their negotiating their annual raise or whatever they're doing. What kind of sales and negotiating tactics? Can you provide the listeners? Yeah, I mean, the first thing that I think is important is,

If you're negotiating, it means they're in. Like a lot of people like, oh, teach me how to negotiate. I'm like, you've already kind of closed them. Like, if they're negotiating a price, it means they want what you're selling. Right. I think that's the first part. It's also about figuring out your position of power. Like, where, like, how badly do they need is?

How much have you conveyed that they need this? How much do they understand that they need something? So it's about kind of exacerbating their problem and kind of pulling it to light. Yeah. The problem is people are emotional and they may say, well, I've got a million dollar problem. And you're like, well, it only costs $10,000. Like, oh, that's so expensive. And they're like, you're like, well, you just said it was a million dollar problem.

It's only $10,000. Isn't that like going to save you a lot of money? People don't always work like that. I think don't chase maybes. The worst thing, like, no is, don't hurt you. I think a lot of people think rejection is the pain. No, the pain is chasing something that you think could be, yes, but you just waste all this time getting ghosted.

You know, it's kind of the principle in the relationships, I think. Yeah. Don't just ghost people to tell them no so everyone can move on. Right. It's really easy that way. Also, the reality is, is like, timing is everything. There's a lot of luck in sales. That's true.

Like, the reality is sometimes people are shopping for a solution. You happen to walk through the door that day. And then, you know, there's other times where it's like, yeah, I appreciate it. But the reality is like our contract with this other vendor doesn't end for three years. Those are three good ones. Timing is everything. Don't chase everything. And if they're negotiating, they're already interested.

I think the thing with timing is everything too is you have to, if you're not doing the work, you're not going to get lucky. Right. Like, you has to put yourself in a position to get lucky. and but that takes that takes a lot luck is the residue of design there we go we can they drop them baby drop them all right we get back to negotiating so Stanford NBA you take your G mat right I mean how you're you're just you're working at oracle you're slinging the phones cold calling pro baseball player there you go

Stanford one of the best NBA programs in the world tell me about what you had to do to get in well it was I basically said okay I'm going to put all my post work time into this. And so I got a tutor, you know, and I obviously had to relearn high school math. And even getting in there, we're like, we're going to have you take an extra math class because you, like coming from sales, there's not, there was no other salesperson in my program with me. It was all bankers. It was all. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's no sales guys. Yeah. Which ended up being a huge advantage for me later on, especially for presentations. Yeah. Presidents do the work out to the or any of these, these motherfuckers coming to say like, I want to found a company. Wait, how do I do it?

Yeah. Well, you got to sell something. Oh, how do I run a sales call? Right. Who they call it? It's true. Your boy. Yeah, which is great. The modeling was tough, though.

The modeling, it just buried me. Low pass in accounting, low pass and finance, scraped by an operation. It's like all these things that just, but it gave me enough to be dangerous. Like, I was, I didn't know a balance sheet, literally balanced on each side of the sheet. That's why it's called that. He knew that. Like, yeah, that's where I was coming from. So there was a lot of extra learning that I had to do.

But it was basically, as soon as the workday was done, I go. go hide in a conference room at work, jump on with my tutor. I got my books. And, you know, I think I took, what I take, Jerry? Jerry. I didn't do the GMAC because it was a little bit more math-heavy. Okay. So I took it the max amount of times.

I took it five times. Wow. I was just like, I have to just keep going. The best one I had was like my third one. Yeah. I can't even, I can't remember what my score was. My sister, she's in MBA now and she's trying to figure out what my scores. I was looking him up.

I can't find him anywhere. Yeah. But that's what it was. It was just like, I am so committed to this. And I think I studied for eight months or something. It was like I skipped kind of a year to kind of keep hammering it. Yeah. Did you go full time?

Yeah. And how much was it? How much was it? I think it's like all in 200. Damn. It's like 100 a year. It ends up being. Did you have to take student loans for that?

No. Well, I come from a very fortunate background. My parents are willing to pay for my education. That's awesome. Did you, what was your parents do professionally? My dad's sports journalist. Oh, wow. My mom just works in financial services.

She just retired. And so I think, like, one of the things that I think is super cool in our family and that I will do for my kids, is they're like, whatever you want, educationally speaking, like, we will pay for it. I love that. Like, you want to chase an extra degree. You want to take a class. You want to, like, go learn something, like, whatever it is. Like, they'll do that for us.

I think my thinking is when, and if I'm lucky enough to have kids, I would have the kids go to school, take out a loan, understand what their loan is, work while they're in school. Yeah. And then assuming they just do all that, like at graduation, give them a check for it all. Right. Like, we have to learn this shit too. No. I think that is my parents paid for my undergrad, Miami A I paid for it.

But that's a great principle by your parents. Like, if we're going to spoil you, the one way we're going to spoil you is education. It's awesome. And I was always like, you know, I mean, that's like cool, cool, but I felt like something cool, cool, like out with a car. You know, that's pretty sick. No, I think it's a great principle. I love the loan thing.

We just don't teach enough finance in the, like, school. We just don't. There's a financial literacy is just terrible. It's terrible. It's a mess. And all the members continue to show it's a mess, right? But it's nuts. All right.

Let's talk a little bit about your content creating career. So you started with Vine. My understanding with Vine is that they went out of business essentially because they weren't paying creators and creators really couldn't monetize through brand deals. When you started, did you have any ability to monetize? Were you none at all? And how were you performing? Like, were you growing?

I mean, you're growing exponentially right now. were you growing at that same rate then? Absolutely not. I mean, look, the reality is Vine was ahead of its time. There was no machine learning algorithm. There was no like suggested sort of like content the way it is now where you see stuff that you're not following. Like it was you had to go tag someone in a comment on a post to get someone to know who

you were. And it was people still reminisce about the days where it's like, you see what you follow. And that's like, wasn't that great. It was chronological and all those things. But they just didn't figure that out. In fact, like you could kind of see the tree. trajectory of Vine dying around 2014, 2015 engagement sort of falling off the table. In fact, my friends were like, dude, like, I'll download Vine just for you, but like,

I don't use Vine. Yeah. And it was when Instagram basically came out with their 15 second videos that the big transition started to happen. I remember they went from 15 to one minute. I remember this because Gromk, oh, I know you've had on this podcast, like, he posted a one minute video and I was like, holy shit. They, one minute, where they Rob talked about for a minute.

I don't even, I don't remember. I mean, probably one thing very silly. Had me him catching a football. Yeah. But I just remember me like, how the hell do you get one minute video? Like, is this a thing? And then they rolled it out to everyone else. So you went from six second jokes to 15 seconds where it's like, okay, I make two jokes.

Now I got a full minute. And I can do a little sketch, a little storyline, a little, a larger piece of content. That's what I think is really interesting, which I want to talk about is kind of like your system, your approach, your writing, your scripting. We'll get into that. When did you start making money on social media? I always pretty much say it took me about seven years, not because I couldn't happen earlier. It was the same thing with baseball where as soon as I was getting paid to throw pitches,

it was a lot less fun. I felt like I was playing for my life every day, which I was. I was just waiting to get cut after a bad start. So I sort of pushed it off because I was like, the money will come. If I can grow this thing, if I can build an engaged audience,

the money will come. I also wasn't putting out a piece of content every day. Like I was still working. I was still doing lots of other things in my life. My goal was to put out one post, week. I would go nights and weekends to an office that I'd access to, bring a couple friends, like buy them coffee, Starbucks, whatever it is. And we would just fuck around. And, you know, if we made six videos, great, we've got six weeks of content. Then I can go write and get inspired

just by your shit that would happen at work. And now it's a lot more operationalized. We're a lot further ahead in the content. I still think we post four, maybe, I probably out average is three or four times a week. Three to four times a week. So 2020, though, is when you started making money. 2020 is when we started making money. It was, you know, little things here and there. It wasn't really until, I would say, B2B started embracing content. Sure. Which is a really interesting niche.

I think I got lucky that I worked in tech. I understood tech and these tech companies didn't understand content. There's a lot of lifestyle influence. Even if it was lacked. I think it took a while. It took a while. Yeah, because obviously like for, you know, unless you write BDC, like your beauty, your skincare, consumer packaged goods, things like that.

that was ripping back in the Kardashian and like 2015-16. Right. We'll give you two bucks a bottle or whatever you sell. Right. People easy to understand, but nobody knows what Salesforce does. Correct. Right. Nobody knows what IBM is doing.

It's like, well, they're computers, right? But oh, what's an AI agent? And there's only a few people kind of in this space that I know of besides myself that are able to talk about it because we lived it. Okay. And again, it's not going to hit for everyone. It's not going to go viral because you're talking about AI agents. But, you know, the value of one person can.

bring to Salesforce is potentially hundreds of thousands to more likely millions of dollars or an IBM agent, tens of millions of dollars. You know, what they're looking for. They know that no one's going to come watch a corporate bro video and be like, boy, I should rip out HubSpot and use Salesforce CRM. Right. But a lot of people just didn't know what CRM was. Stance for.

Yeah, exactly. What's your demo like? What's your audience look like? If you had to, if you had to guess. I always saw so with corporate Natalie, right? She's been on the podcast. She's a friend. we've talked about. You guys have a podcast together. I've always thought with corporate Natalie

it's probably like a 50, 50, 60, 40 split towards women. Then I saw corporate pro. I'm like, oh, this is like the male version of what she's doing. It's going to be like a 70% men, 30% women. That's what I would guess. It's maybe 80, 20. It's 57? 57 male. Wow. Interesting. That's moved. I guarantee in the last two years. It has. Yeah. It was more male dominant, right? Yeah. Yeah. Now your stuff is just so relatable. Oh my God. When you post the one about when you're having a martini and like you got a buzz but then you get fucked like you're actually drunk the amount of times that's happened to me as a banker we have like one or two oh shit it hit okay how it's time to network but for 5743 and and like what is what it's the

like do you know the average working like profession of your audience etc yeah i mean it's overwhelmingly like corporate professionals interesting like you're still but still you could still sell B to C. Are you still doing majority B2B deals? Majority B2B. There's just more money. There's more money there. I don't want a lot of the brand deals. I just I really try to be selective about which ones I work with. You know, obviously I'd love

to like make as much money as possible and that's great. But like for me, I don't love spending the creative energy on brand stuff, especially when the brands are really tough to work with. It becomes tough. You're just like, this put you in a box. Yeah. Or they're like, you need to say this product marketing, like this game changing

tech, you know, agenic software will, you know, increase the ROI. I'm like, no one talks like that. No one fucking talks like that. So why are you making me say it like that? Exactly. So will I do it? Yeah, everyone's got a price, but like I just don't want to do it that often. It makes sense.

You made 250 your highest point enterprise sales. How long did you take you make 250 in content creation? I think it probably took me 10 years, 2021. Okay. So you're getting your MBA. You're not working at this point. And you're making. I wasn't full time yet.

But you're making. making more as a content creator than you were at your highest point in enterprise sales. Yeah. Yeah. That's substantial. Totally. And it was what it's one of those things was like, you know, you, there's a fear to go into content creation and own your own business and do your own thing because the business only goes is you go. If you have a bad day, the business has a bad day. There's nobody else going to pick you up. So it's another deal and the team is going to hit quota because if you're not working, nothing's moving forward. Yeah. Which is terrifying. Terrifying. And I was kind of doing the like 70% in on my real job, 70% in on the, you know, which I know that doesn't have to 100.

but the point being neither was I was going all in on. At what point did you go all in with content? Right after graduation. I graduated in 2020. So it would have been 2020 and 2021, where probably where I matched the SAS. 2020, we re-grew 100, 200% each year. Now we're kind of in like a low mid-seven figure yearly.

It's beautiful. The New Year is here. Get back into an at-home routine you love and elevate your space with Wayfair, from bedding and mattresses to storage solutions for every room in the house. Wayfair is your one-stop shop. Bedding, kids' rooms, home decor, storage for every space, kitchen essentials, work from home, or study setups. Truly, they have it all. Wayfair selection is huge. In my New York City apartment, we were just looking for like the

perfect coffee table, which, as you can imagine, New York City, sizing and decor and style is really hard. But I found the perfect fit for the coffee table at the right. And you know on trading secrets, we're all about the right price from a consumer base, but also the right quality. And that's exactly what we have here with Wayfair. Get organized, refreshed, and get back on track with this new year for way less. Just head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home. So you graduate with that. I just want to know. Mom and dad pay $250,000 for Stanford. You graduate until I'm going to be a full-time content creator.

Yeah, you know, it's funny. It kind of changed when I was walking down the street with them once. And there were some, these group of people came out to me like, oh my God, corporate bro, what's up? And they're like, you know them, right? And I was like, no, I don't know them. They just like the content. They're like, what?

Yeah. People actually, like, know this is like a thing. And I'm like, mom, yes, it's a thing. You know, it's not like, not Brad Pitt, but it's a thing. We're in the tech hub of, you know, the world. Sure. There's going to be some people here who've watched my stuff. They get it. I mean, they get it now. At first, it was like, well, don't ruin your job prospects by saying something offensive.

It's like, Mom, I don't want those job prospects. And I think at Stanford, the thing is, you know, they teach a lot about entrepreneurship and like going out and doing something new. A lot of people come in there and think that's what they're going to do. Then they end up going back to B.BG or like McKinsey and doing what they're doing before. I was like, I don't want to do that. What are those jobs pay? They can pay a lot. I mean, I think they're coming out of school. They're like 300, up to 500 and depends on like what their what their, what projects and stuff. that they're working on. And your peer group at Stanford, right? And your MBA at Stanford, you look at your peer group. You now are making, you know, mid-seven figures in content creating and building like a material empire under it, just not based on content creating, but all these other side businesses. Are you doing the best of all your MBA Stanford grants?

No. We've had a couple of folks who have built and sold tech companies who... But you've got to be up there. I would say, like, on a year-to-year basis, I'm definitely up there. But, I mean, we've got some folks who are just like in the crew. craziest high levels of finance who are like in VC and have hit a couple times that are an aggregate have done a lot more. Okay.

Makes sense. And I think it is still one of those things. As a content creator, like you're always trying to figure out how to scale yourself. I haven't figured out how to scale myself. I still have to go speak. I still have to make videos. It's really hard to scale yourself. And like that's where it's like, let's do a little investment group here.

Let's, I'm working on a CPG company because I don't want to do a tech company. I'm hopefully going to watch that in in July. But like I just, you need to figure out how. to diversify yourself and you know because eventually i love i love this stuff i love doing it but at some point i'm going to not want to do it you'll burn out i'll burn out yeah and i've gone through the waves like everyone else has it's a thing yeah what do you have a team my team is my wife okay and we have one other guy's name's jesse who's just hired him back in august he sort of helps with writing and editing he's very funny like comic wrote for the onion wrote for ebom's world back in the og days of like the

internet we may how'd you find him went through recruiting firm. I put it out. I went through the whole process, interviewed a bunch of people, had hundreds and hundreds of applicants and sort of helped us narrow it down. Can I ask you a question?

When you go to a recruiter and say, I'm looking for a writer who's a comedic writer. Yeah, which like when you think about writing jobs, they're so hard to come by right now. AI and everything like it's just, and then let alone like writing comedy, getting paid to do that unless you're like the daily show or something.

AI cannot comedy. No, 100% it can't. No, it can't. But point being is like those jobs are in L.A. if you were right on shows and that type of stuff. So luckily, he's been performing stand-up multiple nights a week for a long time. He's helped with a lot of other comics write their stuff. He's just like a, he's, what he's done for me is kind of, and we're not Mr. Beast,

but I'm just going to use him as an example, like very scientific about the comedy now. It's like we're looking at the hooks. We're looking at like, what's the value someone gets? It's not like a, bro, it would be so funny if we did this. Like our conversations are more like, well, what if we flip the perspective? and come at it from this angle. And instead of laughing out loud, I was like, oh, that'd be fucking funny.

Oh, that's like a really interesting way to do it. Let's like explore that direction. You mean an example of one. Like, we just did one that was, well, I guess I'll give a more broad example. I'm very dark humor, very like satirical, very much kind of like a jaded, like existing comedy in the negative space of like making fun of things.

He's like, well, what if we change it, like go from a positive space? Like, what if we just have you like dancing out of the room like it's Friday? and like create this vibe of like feeling good. It's fun. It's outrageous because you're dancing in front of all these people in an office or in an airport. Let's just like try it.

You know, million plus likes. Let's take the perspective of not relating because they're upset, but like give them a positive feeling of like why they're happy. So you would typically leave for an example like Monday morning, misery,

Sunday. Yeah, yeah. And he's like, let's lead with Friday. You're out of the party. Yeah, the best time you like. And give everybody like the positive like vibe. And therefore it has more engagement

because people probably attract. I want to feel good connecting to politics. Yeah. They don't want to like a good. with you because they're pissed off too. They want to agree with you because they're happy to. Yeah. I heard you talk at the podcast last March and you were talking a little bit about your system, your structure and like the analytics and that it is kind of science to you, how you put these videos together. Yeah. What is that? I'm shocked. It's only three people that are running your entire

empire, you're your wife and now a writer. Yeah. Between editing, video, everything. Yeah. That's incredible. I love editing. I think editing is just like so. You love editing. I love editing. Comedy. Yeah. Because you kind of have the vision and like timing of it. It's just like so important. You know, if it was like podcast editing, I would outsource that. For my people that are listening right now, do you use a certain app or do you have any tips on editing? I use final cuts. Okay.

And then I will use the Instagram edits app. Oh, well. I used to use Cap Cut. I love it. Keep it simple. Yeah. All right. So talk to me about the process.

Like you walk into a week. Are you analyzing certain videos that perform well? What does that analyzation look like? Yeah. How are you coming up with the next week looks like? The one thing I also, I just on top of that question is I was looking at, at your performance on your videos, it's insane. It's like, how is every single video hitting?

Do you, did you delete performers that, yeah, do you delete videos that don't do well? Like, how is it so, I mean, your engagement's insane. Yeah, we've definitely in the recent months sort of found, there's as an artist. As an artist. Like, but truly, like, there is a piece of you that like wants to do what you want to do. Like, you have to decide who you're doing it for. And I'm sure there's like the algorithm, right? There's what you think other people want.

There's what you think you want and what brands want. And I think we sort of decided. We should, let me step back. We do a Monday morning meeting, all of us, me, Jesse Becca. We look at the previous performance of two weeks. It's kind of two weeks behind. We look back. We've rated them one to five.

We talk about why we think something did well, why it didn't go well. Maybe we missed like maybe our on-screen text didn't quite give the value promise to a viewer of what they were going to see. So they were like kind of confused. We were missing an angle here that left people like ambiguously. Are they laughing at you? Are they laughing with you? Are they feeling it themselves?

Like we miss the marks on some of these things. And then we kind of do a like a pitch. We do a day of pitching each other. Here's just ideas, concepts. Oh, that's a positive one. Let's put that towards the end of the week on a Friday when people want to feel good. Oh, here's like one that's more Monday morning vibes when everybody's mad that we can kind of like hit on this negative side of things.

Here's some evergreen stuff. Here's some things that are popping up, you know, holidays. It's a three-day weekend. Let's make something relevant to a three-day weekend. Oh, it's the beginning of the year. It's recruiting season. It's interview season. It's performance review season.

All those things are more relevant now. Sure. And so we have two shoot days a week. Hopefully, like Monday is kind of a admin, like pitching, planning. Tuesdays are writing Wednesday, Thursday, or often shoot days. Friday's an editing day in sort of our process. And that'll flex depending on things that we've got going on. So for that week, this week,

content will go out in three weeks, two weeks? How far ahead? Yes, I would say it's about three weeks, but we will move, we will shuffle things in and out if we think like, we have a pretty good promometer of what's going to bang and what's going to be like pretty good. How do you know? It's sort of an intuition, I guess, at this point, but some things will be, for instance, I did one earlier this week that was making fun of Mr. Beast, Mark Benioff and. That's McConaughey at the Super Bowl ad. We knew that wouldn't go fire. Like, we knew that had no chance. Why, though?

A, it was a 90-second sketch. B, a lot of people don't know that Salesforce is doing an ad with Mr. B's in the first place. Like, C, a lot of people don't know that, like, Salesforce has done ads with McConnor. Like, these three people will probably be in the same room. There's just, it's just like a very niche sort of thing. If you're in tech, it's like, oh, they're going from Matthew McConaughey to Mr. Beast. What a swing of, like, who's running their social campaigns. And so, you know, every line in there was a joke from McConaughey about, like, if you didn't read his book where he, his book Greenlight, where he talks about how his dad allegedly had a heart attack, well, bang his mom.

I always said, you know, I always said my dad was going to go out making love to my mom. Like, sure you did, dude. But like, that's the first line. He goes, my dad, making love to my mom. Like, if you don't know that, you don't know that. You're not going to check that. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Beningoff talks about how he founded Salesforce while swimming with Doug. dolphins. So I had this whole bit about him talking to this dolphin trainer going, like speaking dolphin. You wouldn't know that, connect that unless you knew. It's like kind of like niche comedy. So then you're doing that with the intent for like your, your strong community. This is going to serve as very tight niche, but they're going to die laugh. Yeah. And you know who's going to think that's funny as executives. Yeah. Who know this work who are at the top. Like that is for a very specific audience of someone saying, oh, that's smart. Because the best performing stuff is, you know, it's my martini. It's a slow zoom with a song,

me making funny facial expressions with text on screen. When you go from networking drug to drunk, drunk, 15 seconds long, it's over, you're out, you got the value, there's something funny about the music and the facial expressions. If you had to depict like that video right there, you knew it was going to pop, it did pop.

What's the reason why? I can think of one reason why, but I'm curious what you're a reason. Well, there's a few pieces. It's relatable is the first one. It's like most people have been there. Yep. The song built,

we went through five or six different songs to figure out which one we found. but like crescendoed at the right. I think we went with a radio head. I think it's exit time. Which also like it is exit time. Like it's time to go, but you might not. Also like the facial timing landing on the hit of the song,

like the crazy kind of psycho William Defoe like. Yeah. Things like hits at the right time. Yeah. And you know someone's going to share that to someone else. And you get the whole thing in 15 seconds. Relatability, share. I mean, obviously you went to detail,

but the two I came up with was relatability, shareability. Yeah. Do you think that's part of the equation to go viral? Yes, 100%. I mean, Mr. Beasts said his most high-performing videos are the ones where he doesn't talk. It's just music. Music creates the feeling you have the screen on-screen text and people see things. Because it goes viral in other nationalities.

I was going to say language doesn't matter. Language doesn't matter. Yeah. You know, but again, you make certain things for certain reasons. Like the Salesforce video took us the most time. It performed the worst by a lot of like last couple weeks. Sure. But I don't regret it.

I'm not taking it down because I want those who know will know. and they'll know extra harm. Sunglasses, contacts, glasses, they've been a part of my life since I was four years old. And that's why Warby Parker is such a great fit for me. Seriously, nothing comes close. When you talk about quality and then price and selection and then factor in the customer service,

there's truly no competitor. And when you think about Warby Parker, they don't just offer incredible prescription glasses, which they're very, very good at. But they have everything you need. for happier eyes. That includes contacts, online eye exams, and sunglasses. It's truly an all-in-one place, which makes everything so much easier, and they also have 300 retail stores across the U.S. I always remember the best part about going in there is the people. They really help you find

what you need, what you want at a price point that makes sense. Warby Parker gives you the quality and better looking prescription eyewear at a fraction of the ongoing price. Our listeners here are going to give 15% off plus free shipping when they buy two or more pairs of prescription glasses at Warby Parker.com slash Trading Secrets. That's 15% off when you buy two pairs of glasses at W-A-R-B-Y Parker.com slash Trading Secrets. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. please support our show and tell them that we send you. How you decide when you're going to take a video down?

Just flies. Yeah, I never take it down. I just hide it off the main page. Yeah. You know, if people want to scroll and they see that it's got, you know, a tenth of the views to another,

and they're probably infer that it's not as good. There's times when it's just like, this one was for me. I think it's fucking funny. Yeah. If you're not a weirder like me, it's not going to be funny to you either. One thing is like last March when you did that podcast,

I'm sure if I asked you that same question, what makes it pop? You probably would say the same thing, relatability and shareability, but something's changed since then, right? I think you said you had 700,000 followers then, now I have over a million, so something's changed. So what do you think has changed? If you look in the mirror, you look at your career, you look at the content, like something else's had to change other than saying relatability and shareability, what is it? Yeah, it's a good question. I really think it's just like studying the human, like, it's looking at it in a more scientific

way. It is just simply looking at like, what is the, what am I promising, what are they getting, what does it make them feel? Like being able to answer more questions, rather just be like, oh, I think, like, early on in comedy, like, you start, you think things are funny and you're not sure why. You can't, like, explain it.

Yeah. But it is, it's relatable. But, like, why is that relatable? Like, what we just talked about. It's like all those elements have to work in conjunction. I would have said, oh, it's just funny because, like, it's related. Like, relatable is a very broad stroke.

But why is it relatable? Interesting. Yeah, the promising to getting the feeling on the why. I think it's like a good equation right there that summarizes. is pretty right and I think that's what we miss a lot of times like our on-screen text might just send people down the wrong rabbit hole and then they're not given the payoff that they're looking for interesting and the payoff is a mismatch and therefore like oh this isn't what I thought and then it becomes one of those negative social videos that where it feels like you're draining yourself

like why we hate doom scrolling if you're not getting the hitting the jackpot if you're not paying off not laughing showing your wife showing your friend yeah then you just wasted time and you're like why am I scrolling just go looking for the feeling that you didn't just get When you guys do your two-week review, when you look at where you missed and where you excelled, where often is the number one miss? Hmm, where is our number one miss? I think it's, it's, this is so broad and lame, but like execution. Like we have the right human insight. We just didn't deliver it the right way.

Like that video you mentioned earlier about be interesting. We followed another concept that we did earlier where it was like, if small talk was honest. like how you doing today? Like fucking terrible. Right? Like it's just a bunch of quick hitters like that. This was the same thing. But it didn't quite,

it didn't quite fulfill like deliver on like the sarcasm wasn't quite there. Like there was some. We haven't totally figured it out. But it was like that structure had worked for a different video. It was probably the wrong structure to apply to like an interesting like that's so interesting video. Like now I'm kind of coming off as just like a dick. And you can't totally tell like if you're supposed to relate. or you're supposed to know that person.

Like if it's supposed to be you or if it's supposed to be them. And so it just like didn't do well. Yeah. But, but I know there's like a lot of us sit out there and say, oh, that's crazy. Oh,

like there's someone's rambling on. Oh, crazy. I think that's crazy. It's probably the most overused word right now. That's crazy. Right. We just like hit the insight the right way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we know it's there. It's just like the execution of it. You should do a video on the different tones of that great. Because I feel like, oh, that's crazy. Yeah, that's crazy. No, there is. There's your insight.

It's like, how do we execute that? Do we need to show someone else saying something for you to respond to it? Yeah. Like, are they saying something worthy of you being that person or not? Like, these are all the questions that we're saying they're asking ourselves. And we don't know the right answer necessarily. But one of the things we talked about earlier, even before I started recording, was a relationship with corporate Natalie and how you guys started helping one another.

TikTok wasn't your thing. It was her thing. One of your things was scripting and writing. I think majority of people that listen to this, if they're doing content, they're definitely not scripting, majority, not all. And I could say for a majority of even creating. I represent, they're not scripting. They have an idea of what they're going to do and then they just do it and let it rip. Yeah. But you write out every single video you do, right? Most of them. And what does that writing process look like? And for someone at home is trying to make, let's say, they're trying to script something for their business or for their new page. Like, where do you tell them to start with that process of scripting? I mean, it's just kind of a brain dump. And then it's like molding clay, right? And just hacking things away. I think on social media, you do need to front load the value or create the hook, right? Like, it's just in comedy for us, it's like, let's put the funniest lines of the front.

If they get to the end, like, we've already given them enough value that, like, it may not end exactly as well as it started, but you've gotten them through it because the amount of times people just scroll past you is, I mean, it's most of the time. Most of the time. Right. Especially these days attention spans, like nothing. It's nothing. And so it's, can a video be multiple videos? Like, I think, again, I would love to make longer form stuff and write movies and so forth, put the attention span and most people are on their phones now in movies. I think it was, I think it was Matt Damon.

It was Matt Damon. Yeah. The movie was ripped. You got to restate those. It's like the five times. Yeah. Otherwise because people are leaving their phone. Their phone.

Exactly. And so, but it's the same thing. But like writing for us is you're going to waste a lot of time being like, wait, what am I going to do? At least you have a plan. Like a lot of our stuff is improv.

Let's try it this way. Let's do something else. Just say shit. Mm-hmm. But at least we know we're going to get what the baseline was. And then it always like improves off of that. I think that's sort of just like having a plan anything you do is good. Yeah.

Improv is obviously great, and we do a lot of that. But if it was just improv, we would miss the mark a lot because we still want to think about what are these lines delivering on. Why are they funny? Gotcha. You know, why do they matter? They do matter because you only get so many seconds of someone's attention. Yeah. Interesting.

I like it. When you're talking about, let's go back to the sales days, right? It was a dream to be like sales guy of the year to get the Tots. Top Gun Award. To get the president's club or whatever. If you look at your content creator profession, what is your top gun award? what's your what's your president's club like in a deal you did tell me about the deal maybe if you can yeah what you had to deliver maybe the amount if you can whatever just give me like your top gun award for a deal

i would say our well for for me now the top gun award was doing the ad with matthew mccaneh for sales force that played during the Olympics and yeah i got like a one second cameo in the ad fine but you got it but i got it and i also did a lot of content for them on the side like the social side of the same campaign. So I was kind of like the outlaw bad guy AI. I represented kind of like what's wrong with AI. And McCona is the hero. And so in the ad, he kind of walks through a saloon, looks at all of us. He's kind of talking about how there's a lot of bad actors now in AI. And he throws one of a throws us out of the saloon. So I got to have a stun double get launched out of a saloon door. That's cool. Check that off the resume. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, I got to be on set with Matthew

McConaughey. I got to be on TV during the Olympics. And then I got to make content on the side that's supported. And we won, I don't know, we won a bunch of a war, Salesforce. We. Salesforce won a bunch of awards for the campaign. And so that was, you know, that was, that whole thing was about all is equaled one year of SaaS sales. To it for the cat. Yeah. Got it's awesome. Congrats.

Now that you're at it, you obviously never studied acting, but you do acting. You have a short film. And then you see a guy like Matthew McConaughey. One question I've always had about acting is, I hate to say it. How talented do you have to be to be? an average actor. Like, you're seeing some of the best actors. You've been around actors.

You've done short films. Obviously, we know there are that Timothy Chalameh is the best of the like, the Leonardo of Cathayos, the can't Denzel Washington. But like an average to above average actor, you have no training. You do it pretty fucking good.

Like, what's your take on that? With acting, there's just such a surplus of talent and not enough acting jobs. Which would support my... Yes, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like, there's a lot of people that are like very solid actors.

and now in Hollywood unless you're you know, the top of the top like you're doing other shit like you're not living off of acting and also with Hollywood they're casting such specific people that there's going to be someone out there that looks

sounds is exactly like what they're looking for and it'll be like their only acting job they were get you know rather than like a shallame who can play a bunch of different character DiCaprio who can just like morph into these people that that is just like so elite and they can flip it so quickly McConaughey, like, maybe a hot take.

Like, McConaughey kind of plays McConaughey and everything ever did. I think Boniority are the best actors are the same way. Like, Jennifer Aniston. Jennifer Anderson plays Jennifer Aniston. Right. Like Adam Sandler.

Right. Adam Sandler's the man. But Adam Sandler plays Adam Sandler. Right. I think that's a lot of... Yeah, but then you've got like Daniel Day Lewis who can just like morph into like... That's true.

Anything and you're like, holy shit. That is not the same. That's not the same. But, I mean, it works. McConaughey's got, you know, he's one of the most legendary actors of all time, but I think at the end of the day, watching him on set,

it was like, I don't feel like you're acting right now, bro. Like, did he nail every take? Did he have every take, like, with slight variations and not misaligned? Yeah, he did. Yeah. Granted, it was 15 second, you know, Salesforce ad, but like... I mean, like, Joe Pesci. Joe Pesci is Joe Pesci. Right. Right. Right. There's a lot of folks that's like, they are...

They're just characters. Yeah, they're entertaining. So they're entertaining. They just play their characterature. They've got charisma. They got the RIS, if you will. And so I think some people just kind of have it. And they get identified and they get built up. And, you know, there's a piece of the industry that, like, props these folks up and gives them kind of the visibility and credibility. Makes sense. And there's a lot of people that could usually do that too. Okay. Just don't get it. Good answer. I thought, I thought we would agree on that. I want to transition

to LinkedIn. Majority of people that listen here, do not look at LinkedIn. Everyone's pressing that 15 seconds skip thing right now. I was just like, yeah, they're like, not about talking about LinkedIn. The place where everyone just announces their next promotion. No, but you've nailed LinkedIn from a business perspective and you're monetizing up. And how, how are you monetizing off LinkedIn, what recommendations would give people? I mean, the first recommendation is get on LinkedIn. Like, I know, LinkedIn's cringy, LinkedIn's all

these things. Everyone's, every artist, every rapper, every, like, content creator is cringy until it starts working. Yeah. Right? It's like you're always an imposter. I don't know. Like, go listen to I mean, Eminem is one of the greatest, but like his early stuff is like cringy

as shit. But then he's starting to get good. And I think that's the first thing. So LinkedIn is just a very like it's like YouTube in 2010. Like the opportunity is there. There's nobody else is there. No one's there. Like it's just an opportunity and they're trying to move towards that classic or new age social media style of scroll and algorithmic interest based algorithms.

And I'm just saying like it is a great spot to get like brands are there. You're not user 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You're Ross Pomerant's Oracle, Glass Door. Like the users are real. Yeah. You know what I mean? And you can't really hide because. it's your whole profile.

It's your whole profile. It's your network. So the individual value of a single person seeing your stuff on LinkedIn is so much higher than user 91012 on TikTok who's worthless. How do you make money on LinkedIn? Post it.

I mean, the same thing as on any of the other ones. You pay for posts. Paper posts. How do they analyze your rate? Is it like a CPM? Or like what type of analytics? No, I mean, like, you know, there's no science to it at this point.

Like it's sort of, we charge, let's, my 170,000 followers on So a fifth of what I have on Instagram, and I think I would say we charge probably like 10% more than what we would on Instagram because of the value of a follower. And like, again, at B2B, again, lucky even the B2B space. But like that's where professionals are. If you're trying to sell a professional software or a tool, like people are on that. When people talk about energy, recovery, and performance, they usually jump straight to training, protein or supplements.

But one of the most overlooked pieces is gut health. If your gut is not dialed, everything else struggles to work the way it should. And that is where Momentous Fiber Plus comes in. Momentous Fiber Plus addresses one of the most overlooked foundations of long-term performance, which is gut health. Fibre is not just about digestion. It's a key driver of gut health, which directly impacts nutrient absorption, energy stability, recovery, focus, mood, and overall performance.

And like everything, Momentus makes Fiber Plus, it's all built on science-first formulation, clean and minimal ingredients and no artificial additives or artificial flavors. Right now, Momentus is offering our listeners up to 35% off your first order with promo code trading secrets. Head to livemometus.com and use promo code trading secrets for up to 35% off your first order. That's livemometis.com promo code trading secrets. Obviously, we've talked about mid-seven figure business on your social, but like in LinkedIn. Are you making over a hundred grand? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Interesting. Yeah. I just haven't seen any deal flow on LinkedIn. So that's a... Well, so it's like, it's so early right now is the truth. And I think it's like, yes, you probably do need some business lean. Sure. Towards it. Like, I mean, I'm sure you're putting these podcasts like clips out there. I mean, they're starting...

It's like, don't even put it on LinkedIn. I have it, obviously, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, but like... Yeah, I mean, well... This will be the first step. Yeah, I mean, you gotta put the... You gotta put it out there. And I think that's like the thing, though, is like Mark Cuban's posting on there. And Kevin, like the Shark Tank folks are on there. Like, you're starting to see people just even talk about their creative.

The businesses they're running. The business behind the business. Yeah. And like, people are interested in that stuff. How often you post on LinkedIn? I mean, I post. So I have two accounts. I have my Ross account.

I have a corporate bro account. That's a longer story mostly that I got kicked off on LinkedIn back in the day for which my videos. I wasn't a real person. That's why. I was posting as corporate bro. Yeah. I had all these. Anyway, now they're cool with it.

Now they're like, hey, you want any part of our creator program, be corporate bro? And I'm like, how dare you? Fuck, you fired me in 2019.

I didn't make two separate profiles. But I think it's just one of those things where it's so early, nobody's quite figured it out. It's a huge opportunity just to put content on there. And it's becoming interest-based. So, like, there's no real risk. It gets pushed out to certain people if they like it,

great, if not. There's just such little risk there. Yeah. Right. Why not? Just make stuff for LinkedIn. Yeah. Just put what you're,

I'm making it. That's what you're already doing. Yeah. All right. Another question we talked about negotiating. I saw on Gotham artists. This is public information out there, by the way. Your speaking fee is 20 to 30,000.

Is that accurate? Is it less? Is it more? It's not accurate. It's more. Gotham, step it up. Yeah, I can't. I don't think I worked with Gotham.

I don't know how they know that. But I mean, the truth is I do like your profiles. Yeah, I guess so. Let's just say it's higher than that. But it's a range of things I do. I will do keynotes. I will do MC in events. It's the classic.

it depends. Like how many days do you want me there I've done. I do like game shows. Now I like host kind of corporate game shows. Get people involved like roast. I do roasts and toasts and like. Will you do stand-up? I don't call it stand-up because that's too much pressure, but yeah, it's all comedy. I'll do like unhinged keynotes

about why sales is the best and why marketers don't do shit. It's like, first of all, I love that. I feel like stand-up comedians are just like that's the launch pad. Like a right, right, finikilaseer. It just seems like it's the launch bat. Yeah. Well, it's for like next level. I'm saying. Yeah. Well, yes and no, but like you make so much more doing a corporate event than you

ever will go in at, you know, the comedy club, comedy store, right? Those things. Like, sure, if you want to be quote unquote mainstream and go on like the tours and do that thing, but it's like I could probably do five or six corporate events in a year and do like what someone had to do for three months in a tour. Makes sense. All right. But also there's the business side of you, right? Like it looks like you're an advisor to a bunch of companies. Audio LinkedIn saw that. You have a small investment group. Like these other areas are you sell merch. You sell it. We got mugs out there. Yeah, we don't got mugs.

But on like the advisor front and then the small investment group, talk to me about that. What's it like? It's just a syndicate, angel syndicate. Okay, off angel lists called Corp Capital. And our joke is that our little like logo is the poop emoji, but color with a horn on it and like color of unicorn, because we just do unicorn shit.

Yeah. So you can tell how serious it is. It is too. I mean, it's small. Like we're doing, you know, there's 500 or so people LPs in our little group. I would say we've done 12 or 13 deals. average deal size 100K. So we're just like tacking on.

Like it's just an opportunity. I get a lot of deal access. I get to do a lot of angel investment on my own. And it was kind of like, oh, maybe I can, you know, A, get a little bit of carry here. It's none of it's ever going to be meaningful, really. But like, bring the audience in,

connect sort of the sales folks and the Stanford experience. Because sales folks, like, in tech, it's like you got a four year investing period. You got a one year cliff. People don't realize that you can get equity in other companies without working there. Like, and sales folks, like they spend money on stupid shit. Like, so why not put it this stupid shit with me?

Angel investing. And so it's all tech stuff, but it was sort of a way to bridge that gap. And, you know, so I think our total deployed is like $1.5 million, you know, over like a year. Of course, we started in like 20, 22, like the worst possible vintage for tech. Like, like worst case scenario. Like literally worst case scenario. And it's moving. It's moving.

Yeah. It's not nothing. All right. When you have a massive exit, you're going to come back on. Yeah. Last topic, I think we got to cover is this topic of love and money. Your wife is your manager. Yeah. What are some of the challenges in working together?

It's going to make this sound worse than it is, but like we run a lot of our relationship like it's business. Like we do our quarterly check-ins. We have our personal goals. We have our professional goals. We go through those. Like stuff with our, stuff with our kiddo. I mean, she's just very operational. Very operational. Like dates, scheduling, negotiate, like tracking all these things. And I'm just like, I put one thing on the calendar. That, A, that's a miracle. But then B, I put it for the wrong year. So, like, it's just like it doesn't work. I just suck at that stuff. Your weaknesses are strikes.

Yes. And I think I had an assistant at one point. And it just took me as long to tell her what I needed, then just do it. But now it's like, we go to the gym together. We go on coffee walks together. We can discuss these things kind of in the fabric of our life as it is. You know, there are times where she will come in and I'm, you know, sitting cross-legged, playing video games with my boys.

And she's like, hey, what do you want to do this? I'm like, now? Now? baby got me killed like you know so we have moments where it's like let's just not deal with this now but at the end of the day

we work seven days a week but we can also go on like a golf date on a Tuesday if we want to hell yeah so I think it's just it's understanding that both of us are we have the same goal just to be like a badass power couple

like be as successful as we can and yeah there's times where it's like let's celebrate some wins let's go out to dinner let's like give me baby boy the grandma and grandpa okay next time we're into a full lap So of this, Becca, you're going to be on the ones and twos with us.

We're going to get the real answer. Yeah, you can't. Yeah. No, we're going to get the biggest problem. Biggest issue is. I think the hardest thing is turning it off. Turning it off. For sure.

Yeah. Turn it off. She says turn it off. She says turn it off. Turn it off. Turn it off. Get on it. All right.

Last thing before I get your trading secret. What's next? Like, what's the dream career-wise? Three, five years from what was it look like? I think the next piece for me is like, I want to get back to building. Like, I do a lot of the startup stuff. but I'm so over tech right now, just generally speaking. It's like, look, I get it.

It's doing a lot of cool things. I'm not a builder of tech. Like, I can't do it myself. I can build brands. And so I'm moving into the CPG space. I want to be in every single corporate space. Yeah, yeah. It's going to be a beverage.

Okay. Alcoholic? Non-alcoholic. It's going to be a functional can, functional beverage, something that hopefully people will drink, instead of an energy drink or coffee or both. It'll be in that space. I'm still sort of like,

working on the formula of what that will be, but I want to be in every corporate fridge in America. I want to be in everybody's fridge in when they need something to get to do what they need to do in their life to do it better. That's where I'm trying to, I'm trying to play in there. All right, when you're ready to promote. Caffinated, it will be capped.

Let's just say, let's just say that. A little pick me up. A little corporate bro pick me up. Yeah, that's the hope. All right, well, more to come on that. We have a lot of following up to do because you got a lot of dreams and aspirations. I got a lot of dreams. From the days of playing pro ball to where you're now slinging in millions. All right. Give us a trading secret.

You got to wrap us with one trading secret. I feel like you've given us a lot today, but you can't learn it in a textbook or from a professor or on a TikTok tutorial only from you. What can you give us? Oh, man. Well, here's one thing that I will say. I do a lot of career panels.

I get a lot of, like, kids ask, you know, saying like, hey, when I grow up, like, I want to be an influencer or like, I want to be a YouTuber. It's crazy, by the way. It's crazy. And then my follow-up as them is like, for what? And they're like, they don't know. They just want to be rich and famous.

And I basically say, you need to figure out what do you love so much you can't stop talking about and that even like in the darkest days you can sit there, rationalize yourself and you're like, it's hard today,

but like I still fucking love it at the end of the day. And for me, it was making people laugh and talk about the pain of my job because I was living it every single day. And I spoke that truth, that was my truth, and it turned into a business.

I wish I could tell people was like, oh yeah, I'm going to build this content business. It's going to be like a B-to-B thing because that's like worth so much money. But it wasn't that. It's just me living my life and talking about my life because I could talk infinitely about my life because that's the shit I was dealing with.

And so I think it's finding that perspective and just going hard at that. Like if you like Dungeons and Dragons, which I do and it's on my mind all the time, go all in on Dungeons and Dragons. If you want to talk about like your work stuff, you want to talk about your health stuff, everyone's like, oh, it's so saturated. It's not saturated. If like you're speaking your truth, it will just be better. So it's authentic.

We all want to be rich and famous, but it's like for what? Find the passion. The passion is the money. passion leads the money. I love that. So that's that idea of being authentic. But to get there, like, look in the mirror, see what the hell you like? Like, what do you naturally? When you have free time, what are you naturally gravitating yourself? What are you consuming? What are you eating? What are you reading? What are you watching? Behind that, there could be many billion dollar businesses. It's like what I would think about, like, all the stuff like, did you know you want to do this growing up? And I'm like, I didn't. But if I look back,

whenever my cousins came to town, I was taking the camcorder out and shooting like home videos. No one ever said go to film school. When I was on plane flights, I would like write the short stories that were in comedy. They tried to make my brother, sister, family laugh. I would, like, you know, write it by hand. And then I read it at the end and, you know, hopefully they would laugh at.

Like, the signs were there that I like doing creative stuff. But in my mind, I was like, oh, if I'm not a baseball player, I'm going to be successful in business, whatever. Sure. But, like, it turned out content. Like, that was the passion. It did lead to the business. It did lead to the success.

But it was like, I like creating. I love it. It's a hell of a trading secret. And there's many more in this episode. Make sure to give us five stars. Let us know what. you guys thought and your biggest trading secret, but you got to tell us where can people find you. Definitely on LinkedIn. Where else can they find? Rale name on LinkedIn or corporate bro on LinkedIn.

Corporate bro everywhere else. Okay. Corporate dot bro. Good stuff. The important dot. But yeah, I love it. Well, when you go A-List actor, when you sell the CPG company, you and Becca are coming back on. She's got a lot to say. So I'm sure that would be a wonderful episode. It would be. I'm looking forward to that. We're running it back. Port-Pro, Bro. Ross. Thank you so much for and training secrets. Of course. Thanks for having me. Ding, ding, ding! We are closing the bell to, wow, corporate bro episode. But David, before we even get to corporate pro, we got Jason Tardick, born and raised, Buffalo, New York, the American, David Ardoin, born and raised, all Canada. How are you feeling after that game today, huh? Oh, man.

We got a, by the way, by the way, we have a lot of Canadian listeners. Yeah. So, to our Canadian listeners, love you guys. So I'll say this. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, Do I have permission to kind of just go for a little bit here? I'm not going to make it too long. I'll give you a stop clock of, we'll call it two minutes, just because, you know, Gurney's got to edit this, and who knows what Gurney was doing this weekend. You know, he might be celebrating.

He might be celebrating the gold medal a little too hard. So he might be celebrating. Might be on dates. We'll have to ask him. We'll have to bring him on the podcast. All right. So two minute drill here. Tons of mixed emotions.

I am a Canadian born and bred. came to the United States for hockey in 2008. I've been pretty much in both countries for half my life. I will always cheer for Team Canada hockey until I either get my U.S. citizenship or I have a player that I've coached play on a different country team. That's kind of how I'm going at it now. Watching the game was number one, first and foremost,

I do believe the best hockey game I've ever watched in my life. It is hockey in its highest, most purest form and just it was breathtaking. It was absolutely breathtaking. And when you're 39 years old and you can still feel those feelings watching something that you care so deeply about was amazing.

Hockey-wise, I am, I can't believe that Canada didn't win. They had so many chances. Shocked. And they had so many, and the US came out firing and the one-ninth thing left out of the first period, they had so many chances.

When Taze misses the open, open net when McKinnon, one of the greatest goal scores in the world, misses an open net, when Hellebuck is literally standing on his head like it couldn't believe in. The game was going back and forth. Both teams had chances. You had hits. You had five on three penalty kills. You had

the penalty kill, the four-minute penalty at the end, and then they take a high sticking and we get the power play, and it ends at the end of the day, Jason. At the end of the day, when U.S. is celebrating and they bring the Johnny Godreau or Jersey on the ice

and they bring his kids on to celebrate and you're a Canadian hockey fan but you're a human being I had tears streaming down my face and I in my hockey network I have a lot of people that are really close with the Goodro family and with Johnny and Matthew Goddrow a lot of them

I'm so glad that the Americans won because I know I know the USA Hockey Brotherhood is so close. I know they've been through a lot, and I know how much this means to them. And at the end of the day, it just adds to the rivalry. It's good for the sport.

It's good for my business in USA hockey and in what I do. But man, what a roller coaster emotions. I had a headache after. I was sweating. I was out of breath. I was drinking at 8 in the morning. It was insane. What a hockey game.

I mean, I really can't add much to that. That was beautifully said. I too was like, like Catherine looked back at me and she was just like, oh my God, because when the, when they got the kids to come out, I started crying too. It's just like hit me. And I don't, dude, if you like the odds of the US winning that game had to be so low so many times. I remember in the third period, there's a moment. I was like, let's not embarrass ourselves. Like let's let's lose like, your second period. I'm like, let's lose two to one, three to one. And to see the result of that, a lot of grit, a lot of, a lot of hard.

a lot of dedication. And, you know, one thing I can't stand about it, I just got to say, hey, I hate the, like, the Canadian U.S. hockey rivalry goes so deep and so far, but is also so connected because these guys are playing with each other all the day. Like, so they hate each other, but they fucking love each other. And it's like, and you know this better than me. But even like, you know, I remember growing up in Buffalo, Canada across the board. We'd go against Burlington.

We'd go against where Paul Bissinette played. Fuck, I'm blinking on the name of it. It'll come to me. Welland. We used to go up to Ottawa. Oh, my God. Welland. Holy shit.

That was it. Welland. Those guys hit so fucking hard. They're the first people that, like, taught us how to get hit. In Ottawa, Toronto, we do it all. And it, like, we hated each other, but we fucking loved each other. And, like, so that's what I think sometimes with these people that don't know anything about hockey or missing.

they're just seeing like two countries and like it's no it's not like it's so much greater than that i'll kick it to you you can speak to this well it is and i just hockey is the greatest game on the planet because when you win or you lose you shake the hands of your opponent first and foremost you celebrate with your team and then you give respect to your opponent it's like a playoffs it's the best tradition when you win the trophy your captain goes over and he lifts the trophy it's not all like the NFL, it's not like college football, it's not the NBA where these fucking owners get up in front of all the players who do all the work and take

all the credit and the coaches are next and this and that. I love Kirk Signetti. I love Nick Saban. I love all that. The players have such respect for each other. The coaches have respect for the players who do all the work. The owners stay out of the fucking way. They stay out of the spotlight. It is such a

gentle, menly game. It is such a game of life lessons and class. And, you know, the culture of hockey, yeah, there's some things that have some toxicity to it, but overall, high level, like you said, yeah, it's USA Canada. There's a lot of political things going over. That spills into any

sport, but that's why sport is beautiful because it's competition at the end of the day. You get a winner, you get a loser and you win with class and you lose with class. And it was just an amazing hockey game. Like I said, it builds the quote-unquote rivalry and it's great for the sport. So what a way to cap off the Olympics. Shout out

Olympics. I will miss you. It was just amazing to have on the TV and to watch and to watch all these people who are so elite at what they do, but, you know, this is a business podcast and it's probably they have to work two jobs just so they could do their Olympic

sport because some of them just don't pay in the realm that they should and these obscure events that we're watching and man, it was great. Shout out the Olympics, shout out Team USA, shout out Team Canada, shout out hockey, shout out everything. Shout out everything. I can't even imagining the endorsements at Jack Hughes doorstep, four teeth

knocked out, pushing through, blood coming out of his mouth, slam, in the boards after he scores the game. One and go, wow, we can go on, have a whole podcast about this. But again, we got to, we got to get to corporate bro. So my man, David Arden, Curious Canadian, transitioning from Olympics corporate bro. Wow. What an absolute beauty, huh?

Listen, he was funny. You could just tell with how witty he was, how quick his reactions were. I admire guys. Like, I love guys like that. I want to be, it challenges me to try and wittier and on my toes. but he was super smart too, like super engaging, gave great insights into kind of where he's been,

how he's gotten to where he is. But I will be honest with this, Jason, in all of my years, my way too many hours spent on TikTok, my stupid screen time on these apps, my algorithm has never ever brought me to corporate bro. I had never seen one single video of his

until I listened to this podcast and went and watched it on. of his content. Wow. I am I am part of me surprised by that. Another part of me is like, you know, David Artoin, the hockey guy, the pop culture guy, probably, you know, his audience, a lot of like corporate bros. Like the things, like the things that he does connects with me so deeply from my banking days. I don't know if you saw that video that I talked about, but the one where it's like, you finally hit that, like that buzz where you're like buzz and then you're like fucked up at the, at the, at the happy hour at work, you're like,

oh shit, I got to get out of here. I've never related more to something when I was back in my banking days because you're so miserable going, but you're just like, all right, let's go. Let's socialize. Then you have a couple drinks. You're like, wait, this is fun because I just had too many drinks. It connects with the people that are in that corporate. Well, I also have in my notes, there has to be some level of connection between you and him because how he needed to separate his personal brand Ross from corporate bro for business purposes to get brand deals, to be able to have speaking events. Like, and for you, you must have trading secrets for that whole mission of like, hey, at some point, I got to have my thing. I can't just be Jason from the Bachelor. And Jason for the Bachelor only gets you so far.

And now you're Jason, the businessman, the rewired, trading secrets, you're talking about these things. So I saw a real genuine connectivity between you two and a real respect between you two. And a lot of, you guys are both really detailed. Like, nothing is happening by happenstance by surprise. Like, you guys both put a lot of thought into your. craft and that that really shined through through your guys's chemistry in this episode as well. I put a lot of thought my craft, but the thing is, is that like I'm not as diligent as him and I'm a little spread too thin. Like what they like to me, I've, you know, listen, I've,

we've managed, you know, 100 plus creators on our agency and we broker a lot of deals through others. I don't think I've ever, I have, but it's very rare you come across people like him where he's that detailed, he's that scripted. Like, dude, they have writing days. They have analyzation days. They manage the hook, the tone of the music, the way the music hits. Like, then they have, there's not, think about this. There's not one video he does where they haven't written out of script.

That's unbelievable. That's a, that's a fucking media company. That's a production company. He's not, he's not getting on recaps with this boy and just like, like, did you listen? Yeah, listen. Let's listen. Let's just ban.

Let's just talk about it. it. But, you know, that's, that's us and I love us. And we don't want to change that. But I do have in my notes like... But he's like traditional. Like, he's like, it's like act. It's almost like it's like filming, like videography. Like we're unscripted. We're just, you're being you. I'm being me. We're talking.

They're doing a bit. They're doing an act. They're writing it out. It's like film production. It's unbelievable. Well, it's talent. It's hard work. And I did love, I love the behind the scenes of the insights into how he plans. You know, that they do the two week review. They go back two weeks and they kind of look at

trends and all those things and they have their Monday meetings every Monday about you know all those little you know micro details that go into a successful video and the calendar of what's relevant in terms of you know hiring season and intern season and all these different elements of like what's relevant in in terms of like reviews and in negotiation tactics and I just thought like that behind the scenes to like what you were saying like this is this guy's funny and there's a lot of funny guys that probably watch content creators and like, I could do that. I'm funny. This guy's funny. But to really see, like,

this guy's a business. Like you said, this guy's a pro. He's a pro. And you want to see guys like that get rewarded. And I just loved his transparency with numbers. I loved how we talked about how long it took him to get paid. I locked how, you know, how he realized this was his thing. Like, I just really, there was a lot of really passionate takeaways,

I guess, and I have a lot of respect for this guy. And I like this part of the dark humor. We're going to talk about dark humor versus like the positive humor and adjusting it. I will tell you of all the people I've met in this space and it's like content game or whatever, that he reminds me so much of John. You know, John, yeah, you know, John. He reminds me so like they both have dark humor.

And so after this, we had the Super Bowl house in, because we filmed this in San Francisco, Super Bowl house, had him come over. He came over, hung with everyone. Greatest guy, like really, really, just an awesome, awesome dude. Met one of his buddies. him and John have very, very similar styles. Just an impressive guy. I mean, just, I mean, just the guy of like it.

You talk, David, a lot of the times, you and I, I just cut, wait, I might have just come up with this. Okay. Hang on. You and I talk a lot about after the recap, like, by yourself. Like, am I investing in this person or am I not? Like, if I, I'm investing it all in him. Like, he's, this guy is like, he's just, it doesn't matter how he's going to win

or what he's going to win, he's going to win. Like, he's just going to win. Well, I had a. massive takeaway from him business-wise that he said when you were like well people listening in here if you can give him a sales tactic the negotiation tactic like you know what do you got for them and he was like this hit home for me too is in the simplest realm and I didn't even realize it because he's right if you're he said if you're negotiating price then they already want in like you've already kind of won and I was like fuck me I'm in contract season right now

for my hockey academy for like people renewing and wanting to come back and in and like it's just so funny you get so fearful of people like you know maybe like thinking of a player or family leaving and they want to they want to talk and negotiate it's like oh or like a recruit like same thing it's like a recruit comes in and like they want to negotiate the price just they want in and i just love that and figure out the position of power how badly do they need this how much have you conveyed that they need miss how much do they understand they need this and then i loved don't chase maybes like no's are okay yeses are great but like stop wasting your time with Mabies. I just loved those.

And it was like, man, he talked about going to Stanford Business School. He talked about how he was the only sales guy with like a bunch of bankers and a bunch of like, you know, finance guys and like how you could tell his separator skills are so elite. And that's what makes him who he is. Don't chase Mabies.

Unbelievable trading secret. Yeah. I mean, it's it is no wonder why he is where he is. He's crushing. He's killing it. I felt, I don't know David, if you felt like this, but I felt like I was asking him a lot of questions for the best perspective of the listener who's trying to make this happen, but also for me. Like, I learned so much from him.

Like, I was just taking notes and taking notes and taking notes. I don't know if you felt. I felt it. I felt it because I know when you're not in that mode and your effectiveness as an interviewer is night and day. Like, let's call a spade of spade. Can we do that? Like you and Hillary, and you're just trying to move.

the conversation along and get to the next topic and stop the story and like get through the interview compared to like Jason who's like the note taker and Jason who's like like curious questions. Like you bring a little curiosity from the curious Canadian into your brain with the person that you're there. It's infectious. It's energetic. And I felt that. I felt that in the YouTube segment for sure.

And you're like, God damn, this guy's making six figs on YouTube and I haven't even put trading secret clips on there. Like what am I doing? Like it's a business podcast. I got to get on it. Oh, like LinkedIn. Oh, sorry. Sorry, LinkedIn, idiot, duh.

LinkedIn. This guy's a LinkedIn, I mean, he's a master of all. LinkedIn of all. I mean, it's just, yeah, it was great. Exactly. You nailed it. There are episodes like Hillary

where I'm just like, I'm playing like referee. Like we got to push this thing along. And then there's episodes like this. I will say this, David. There's a lot where you have delayed the JTA like no other. And I got a lot of people pissed off about it.

But you know what also? A lot of hype about it. David last week wasn't feeling good. It's okay. You know, but we're going to battle back in somehow, some way this week, David. We got to record. I'll be in New York City Saturday. What are we going to do?

We got to record. Yeah, we got to record. And you want me to fly up to Rochester early before I go in New York? Like, what do we got to do? I would love that. Listen, at the end, at the end of the end of the end of the day, I need it. If we recorded JT last week, you might as well have just like, I don't even know. You might as well just had me record with duct tape over my mouth.

I would have been useless. Absolutely. There's way too much hype for me. Yeah, and we got a new lighting set up. We got a new camera for me coming in for JTA in case we can't get together. And then also for 30 minute Thursdays, which we'll talk more about in JTA and our big plans for that. So sometimes good things come to those who wait. And we will make sure that JTA is the juiciest and the most, I don't want to say intense,

because I don't think intense is the word. I think we're both at a place in our life where we just want to talk and we want to get deep and we want to stop sugar-coding things and really just talk about things. Just talk about it. The other thing, too, for those who are listening

that, JTA, when you start late, we also get more information. So if we start filming this next week, we also have two months of information into this year. So we could do a little bit of like, what's going on this year? How's it looking?

Things like, what are you projecting? So, you know, a lot of action. A lot of excitement. What else, David? What else is going on in your life? Everything good? We're getting there. We're getting there.

Hockey. I don't know, man. I might need a segment where it's like, give me, like, you know what I loved about this episode? Corporate Bro, where he's like, yeah, like, do you ever worry if you're going to, like, run out of time in the content creator space? Like, no, because my audience, like, grows with me. And, like, as they grow with me, I become a corporate dad.

Like, I talk about, like, going from corporate dad, like, changing diapers. Like, there has to be a segment. I think for us where it's just like maybe it's we give an example and you talk about it as like someone who's like someone who's like absolutely in the trenches, the war trenches with like two kids that we like talk about like, hey Jay talk about like what going to dinner is like on a Friday night and I'll talk to what it's like for me, the before, the during, and the after. Like just little things like that. So I'm just, oh, that's why we're getting the mic. That's where we're getting the lighting. That's why I mean, I was at dinner tonight. I went over to Sean Johnson, Andrew Reeves house.

They had a few families over and I all had kids. Catherine and I were there. The only ones without kids. Kids are just running everywhere. It's like the best thing. I was like, this is hopefully our future. And you're just like, wow. This is like, holy.

It's a different. It's like, why? You know, this kid stubs his toe over here. And then this kid's over here. And then dad's got to go wipe the butt. And then like, you know, we're in the middle of conversation. And the princess comes out. And I'm like, oh, my God.

This is like, this is the best thing ever. I'm laughing because you're like, this is the best. thing ever because you have no kids. I was at a first birthday party today. Not the best thing ever when you have kids. It's just not the best thing ever because you have kids there and they're ripping around and you're the one having a wipe your butt and then you're trying to feed them and they're not feeding because they want to run around and the only thing they eat is cake. And so when you get home, it's the only thing they've had is cake. So then you want to wind them down and you want to put them to bed time, but then they don't want to go to eggs or sugared up. And then they're they have a

temper tantam because they're playing with people. They don't want to come home with mom and dad because mom and dad are boring. They want to stay with their friends at the party. So it's great for the kids. They'll get me wrong. But it's just like simple as that. It's like, you know, now you come home. I see you sipping on a little Nicola Bultra. Like life is good. You're spinning in it. Yeah, you're spinning in the chair. And I'm like, okay, I just hope that my kid doesn't revert back to four hours of sleep like you did last night and puke in his bassinet again. So meanwhile, my biggest concern is that John Gurney's had a long weekend going on dates. And this recap's 19 minutes. I told him V 10. He probably wants to go to bed right now. He's probably

up to four in the morning last night. At least John Gurney will listen. to this recap and he'll get a few chuckles in and Johnny let us know how we did I'll sore we're gonna have to have Johnny come in live edit this so that he could just like enjoy it yeah that would be good any single gals out there go give John Gurney a foul he is in the game yes ready to go ready to play uh corporate bro thank you for coming on trading secrets he's asked a lot corporate Natalie's coming up soon manda butula coming up soon katherine hurley coming up soon. Jesse Solomon coming up soon. Andrew Spencer coming up soon. And David, I'm thinking, you know, we do talk in the recaps about buy yourself. Hmm. Maybe we do, like I'm trying to think,

how do we, it's the Bachelorette's going to be on, right? There's so much hype buying this season. I don't want to just be a redneck recap podcast. Not who we are or what we do. We're business. We should like talk about based on what you know about my career of doing this shit. And like, I know about the content creation game and everyone's any of there for the right reasons. We should do like reels every single time after an episode who we're buying who we're selling and why from that episode. It's a great idea

and 30 minute Thursdays we're going to do a really authentic uncut recaps not even of the show. We're going to do a recap of everything surrounding the show. The noise around it, the business around it, the decisions around it, the choices around it, the impacts around it, the direction around

it. We're going to do that. It's going to be electric. I'm looking forward to Five stars. Thank you for tuning into another episode of Traying Secrets. One, hopefully you couldn't afford to miss. Next time you fly on business, arrive feeling fresh in Emirates business class. On your flight, you can sink into leather seats that recline flat for a better sleep. You can enjoy delicious regional meals and premium drinks. And there's onboard Wi-Fi if you need to work. Along with Emirates' chauffeur-driven airport transfers and entry to the luxurious Emirates, Lounge, it's just a better way to do business.

Book now on emirates.com. This message is brought to you by the Capital One VentureX card. Venture X offers the premium benefits you expect, like a $300 annual Capital One travel credit for less than you expect. Elevate your earn with unlimited double miles on every purchase, bringing you one step closer to your next dream destination. Plus, enjoy access to over 1,000 airport lounges worldwide. The Capital One Venture X card.

What's in your wallet? Terms apply. Lounge access is subject to change. See Capital One.com for details.