Trading Secrets - 49: The boy to the @girlwithnojob, Ben Soffer. A brilliant entrepreneur explains how to launch a start-up!

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

Check out The Restart Roadmap: Rewire and Reset Your Career now!   In this week’s episode, we explore the fascinating world of meme pages with Ben Soffer, the brain behind the operation of @boywithnojob. What prompted Ben to launch his page? What career path was he planning on pursuing before pivoting to marketing/advertising? What challenges does he face in business with his wife Claudia Oshry (aka “Girl With No Job”)? And most importantly, does he really have no job? Hint: The answers are probably not what you expect! Ben and Jason take a deep dive into brand deals with meme accounts and why rates for TikTok are so vastly different from Instagram. He reveals the optimal time to leave corporate America in pursuit of your side hustle and the benefits/drawbacks of bootstrapping your start-up versus securing external investors. Last but certainly not least, Ben shares his 5-year vision for himself and his ventures in another episode that you cannot afford to miss.   Sponsors: Masterclass.com/secrets for 15% off an annual membership Shopify.com/secrets for a free 14-day trial Wanderingbear.com code SECRETS for 20% off   Host: Jason Tartick Voice of Viewer: David Arduin Executive Producer: Evan Sahr   Produced by Dear Media.

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets. In this week's episode, we're exploring the fascinating world of noon pages with none other than the brain behind the operation of boy with no job. Ben Soffer, despite what his name might suggest, and unlike many other content creators with a substantial following, Ben has always had a job while running the meme account and many more. He started the account during his senior year while going to university, and it has since grown into one of the most popular meme accounts on Instagram, most in 1.6 million followers. His career took him from the world of influencer marketing to entrepreneurship when he launched

his own canned wine company called Spritz Society, which he's actually right here, right now. He's in Sonoma, working that side hustle. But we are so excited to have him here with us to share all the money and the success behind Mean Pages and the business. Ben, thank you so much for coming on, man. We appreciate it.

That was a wonderful introduction. Jason, thank you for having me. It seems like you've done this a couple of times. That was really just, well done. You know what? So there's a little strategy behind it, too. I got to pump your tires a little bit, so you're feeling good coming into the interview,

and then I could hit you with a couple, like, you know, left or right jabs, get some good information out of you. For sure. You liquored me up, put that intro. Goal accomplished. Got you a little spritz. Got you a little spritz there. I love it.

We're going to get into the sprits business and we've got to get started. But before we even start there, I'm going to ask you just a point blank question. Because I want to talk about when you started, boy would not, no job. everything, but you are known as the boy with no job. And the number one question I got when I said, I'm interviewing the boy with no job. Of course, this is my audience to a tee. Well, what does he do? So, Ben, if someone says to you right now, what do you do? What would you respond? I am the founder and

CEO of the fastest growing sparkling can cocktail company in the United States called Sprit Society. Since boy with no job started, I've had a job. It's always been heavily ironic. I've always worked professionally in marketing and advertising, being the client end of influencer marketing. So I was respected because I saw a 360 approach if we were talking contracts or who we should work with or why these metrics look the way that they do. I could speak to it from both ends.

So I've always had a job. It's funny that your audience asks that. The number one thing that my audience asks is, what do you do and it's like can we curse on this podcast? Oh you can curse all day long it's like if you just fucking Google me the first thing that comes up is my LinkedIn where it tells you

exactly what I do. It's not like a there's nothing hidden here with me it's not like I've like hiding the fact that I've had a job for the last 10 years it's just like if you took one minute to Google you would you would know my entire career path

the whole thing. The whole thing and that's the thing about your LinkedIn is you have all the experience, it breaks it down, job by job, all your experience in influencer marketing and social media and that list, that list is endless. One of the things, too, that's frustrating, I think, and that this part, kind of one of the reasons I started this podcast is people just really don't understand, I think, the depth of, one, the amount of work it takes for influencer and content creation and to the money behind it. I remember when I got off the show, I'm starting to do some of these deals. I'm like, my buddies would be like, dude, you look like such an idiot.

is this post? I'm like, all right, I'm not saying this to brag, but how much you think I made out? They'll go, 300 books. And then, like, you tell them, and they're like, blown away by the money behind this entire industry. It's a, it's a wild one, but it's also exciting to be a part of. Yeah, I mean, influencers are human billboards. So as long as you start to understand marketing, it makes perfect sense why rates are where they are. And I like that you mentioned that your friend thought that it should cost 300 bucks. Like, it's, anybody that's in advertising sort of understands the power and just how valid

influencer marketing and celebrity marketing is in the right context. Like, if you try to have it do something that it's not meant to do, like if I'm paying you to promote, I'm looking at a bottle of water and my goal is to have your post sell me out of water, that was like a bad tactic. But if the goal is to make everybody aware that this water exists, So the next time they pop into Costco where it's sold, it's just as effective as a billboard. So it makes a lot of sense.

And do you think, so one of my arguments that too with influencer marketing is I'm like, you think about a billboard, what you just talked about, a billboard, something in print magazine or newspaper, something like that. It's tougher to really understand the demographic and then also analyze ROI. You now owning a business and being in influencer marketing for a while, obviously are paying very close attention to these things. Do you think that right now there is a better outlet to generate direct analytics with ROI and clicks and impressions and everything else that influencer marketing does, then

influencing marketing? Is there a better form of advertising to get a bang for your buck as a company that's advertising? I think that it completely depends on what your goal is. Again, if your goal is awareness, no, I don't think that there is a better bang for your buck, period. You can go on TikTok, find creators with 8 million followers that are severely underpriced. There are people that will take $500 to $1,000 that have a million followers. You book them out for three posts. One of them is going to go viral. It's your cheapest cost for impression

across any other sort of marketing tactic that you'll do. If the goal is anything else, I actually think that influencer marketing is incredibly risky, and it's something that I would not recommend. So I know I already said this, but if the goal is driving sales and you're expecting one influencer's organic posts with no follow-up to drive those sales, you're setting the influencer up for failure and you're setting your budgets up for failure. I completely agree with that. We're kind of going off in a tangent that I didn't necessarily prepare for, but these are always for the fun tangents. So similar to you, I've seen right, both sides of the influencing marketing world from being the client. And I also have 50% ownership

in a talent agency where we rep other clients. And so one of the things that sparked my interest in getting involved from an investment standpoint was I got taken a few times, right? There are some agents out there that took full advantage of me. And as a result of that, I'm like, wait, I could do this differently and we could do it the right way. I just got a deck with all these TikTokers and what their rates are as we're pitching to other agencies and brands.

And to what you just said, I could not believe the rates they were charging, it was pennies on the dollar to what some influencers in the Instagram space are charging. And I was very, very perplexed by that. Before I get to some of the stuff I wanted to initially talk to you on this, what is your take with all your experience of why the TikTok rates for some of these influencers is substantially less than Instagram? They'll always be lower. And that's why you'll see people like, we'll take, we'll take like the upper echelon of TikTok. TikTok. The Addison rated Charlie Demilios, the Dixie Demilios, their main goal right now is pushing as many people as humanly possible over to Instagram. Because Instagram's where they're going to make all the money. TikTok as a platform has presented itself as a company that doesn't know how to accurately report on analytics. So big companies, like your procter and gambles, aren't going to spend millions of dollars on TikTok because they don't trust the ads platform. They don't trust that an impression is an impression because, I mean, we can debate it all day long.

You go into some of these posts and they have so many views that you just can't really wrap your head around how that's possible. You pop into the app and it's sound on. So if when it's sound on and you shut off the sound, was that an impression, even though you didn't see it and you found it annoying, like TikTok really hides that and we don't really know what a view means versus Instagram is owned by Facebook. It's been around forever. We know that it's a three second or same thing with YouTube. It's like we understand what constitutes a view, what constitutes a click. It's very, very standard by the book advertising. And TikTok is

sort of this free for all. So people are okay to put it in their test budgets, but they're not okay to pay full freight because we don't understand really what it does. And what it means, and the second piece, I think, is that liquor is probably the biggest alcohol, I mean, the biggest advertiser period, and you can't legally advertise liquor and spirits on TikTok because the audience is too young. So I think that once the audience starts to age up and you completely remove the narrative that we're advertising to kids, then I think TikTok will be something that advertisers take a little bit more seriously.

Yeah, fascinating perspectives, both I couldn't agree more with the other interesting component there is the amount of time that we already just addressed this that people are spending and creating this content is significant material, especially on TikTok, the editing and the cuts and everything else that's done to really drive good content. You wonder if they have enough time, if there is enough runway or this potentially could be another vine where your content creators are putting so much out there and getting so little in return that it eventually dies off. Do you think there's any possibility of that? I think there's always a possibility. I think that only platform that seems to be standing the test of time is Instagram. And that's because

celebrities value it, the industry values it, Fortune 50 companies value it. I think that, I don't know. It's a very interesting question. It's sort of the same way that like a JP Morgan will invest in crypto just in case it pops, right? It's like you're not dumping all their money into crypto because they don't know, but they don't want to miss it. And I think it's sort of the same thing. It's like, all right, we'll play with TikTok. We see that kids are enjoying it, that seems to be getting a lot of views, that we can prime Gen Z for when they exit and move into, or they don't exit Gen Z, but as they get older. And I think that we'll see. I don't know.

I don't know. Yeah. One of the interesting things is about TikTok that I think about is you have so, you know, you need a stage and you need an audience, right? And I think one of the issues with TikTok is there's so little audience and there's so many people on stage now. So there's so many people that have these like massive, massive followings. And the interesting thing is when you see someone with the following, you're looking with like eight different, you know, looks. Like who are they? Do I know them? Is there anything recognizable or did it just become famous overnight?

The one thing that's interesting about Instagram is if someone has a following on Instagram, you can almost 100% Google their name and you'll instantly understand where credibility comes from. So two different worlds operating at two different speeds. A cool conversation didn't expect to jump into, but I'm glad we did. Now I want to jump back into the start of your boy with no job. So the meme account that you started. I think it's brilliant. It's hilarious. The stuff you have is just incredible. Tell me, because I saw that you started when you were studying, tell me what prompted you to start it. And when you really caught your stride, what it took to really catch your stride with the account? So my wife and I met about 10 years ago.

Neither of us were on Instagram. She had a blog called Girl with a Job. And I think she's been on the podcast. So she's told this story, sorry, it's redundant. But she got fired from that job for accuracy purposes, changed her name to Girl with No Job. And all of a sudden means are starting to pop up. And it seemed like this was a really great way for her to drive traffic

from Instagram to her blog. So she hopped on Instagram, started posting, honestly the same stuff that she was posting on her Tumblr, but then started making memes. And this was a whole new world to me that I didn't understand. I couldn't understand why she was on her phone so much. We had just started dating. And it was like, like, I want to talk to you. And you're just like permanently on your phone sitting next to me.

And she's like, you'd find it fun. Like you help me. Like, why don't you just start your own account? like you'll be the boy to my girl. And so I can take no credit for it. She 100% pushed me towards doing it. It was not an original idea by me. It's 100% mine and grown from zero to millions. But the idea itself actually came from the lack of time that I was spending with my now wife and wanting to find commonality. And our commonality was memes. We always just love making memes. And, found them funny and had shared passions over them. And the goal was honestly to segment the market, have a boy meme account and a girl meme account. But that didn't happen.

I have a majority of female audience. It's less than hers. I'm at like 60, 40. She's at like 90, 10. And we forge our own paths. But that is the true origin story. That it was a happy accident. And it's interesting not to pivot too much.

But when people ask and people ask all the time, how do you grow an audience? The truth is you can't try to grow an audience. If your main goal is coming on Instagram and having millions of followers, you're going to fail. It's like the main, main thing. Like, you have to be authentic. You have to have a niche. It can't just be, I want to make money and grow. So you'll find that most of these creators, a lot of them are happy accidents.

They enjoy dancing, so they danced. And then all of a sudden they blew up. But, yeah, this was this was a. absolutely a happy accident that really changed my entire career path. I was pre-dental in college. Really? I have a chemistry minor and my senior year when I started this or end of junior year into senior year, I was like, wow, I love this. I love advertising. I've always wanted to be in advertising. It did an entire digital marketing major my senior year. And I went to work at Young and Rubicam and just made ads. So it completely

changed my entire life. So at what point, so you're pre-dental, right? And at what point are you, was it your senior year at college that you started this account? End of junior year. And so where I'm going with this is by usually junior, sophomore year, you'd probably start looking at dental schools and stuff. Did you even look at dental schools or did this growth of this account and the excitement you're putting towards it just kind of completely scrapped the idea of going to graduate school to pursue dentistry? It completely scrapped it. Wow. My first three years were all science classes literally bashing my head against the wall. And I came to this realization that I loved dentistry because my good friend's father is like a mega dentist and like

as three bentley's. And I think that I just enjoyed the fact that it was something very lucrative. And then when I started to think about it, it's like it's not actually very lucrative for most. It's very lucrative for the, for him because he's not a dentist. he's a businessman. When you own 50 practices, you're no longer a dentist. You employ dentists and you don't have to be a dentist to employ dentists. So it was sort of a combination of the realization of why I was doing it and what I was enjoying doing in Boy with No Job, that I felt that I could sort of pave a career in advertising and creating. That is amazing. The one thing, on chapter two of my book, I talk about break the blueprint because I say that our system kind of

based on where we're born and what we see and with the views we see of success. puts us down this lane of how we define success. That's a perfect example of how you saw the success within a dentist. You said you got to be a dentist. The amount of people, though, that don't have the coming to before they go take out another $500,000 of debt and they're already a dentist and they're miserable is so significant. The fact that you did it is really fascinating. When you're creating these memes, though, because I mean, every day, I'm sure people that are listening to this, they get sent to a meme and they start laughing. I know one of the big things is like And talk to me a little bit about this.

There's a big discussion about like plagiarizing. There's like this unwritten code of rules that amongst memes, memes you better not steal someone else's content. And if you do, you better source it. So tell me a little bit about those unwritten rules. And for your memes, are they all self-created? Or do you also share memes that you find? Definitely share memes that I find.

Create as many as I can. Credit it as much as humanly possible. The unwritten rule is if you've found it, and you can find credit, do a minute of research and find credit. The biggest problem, which makes it really difficult, is that there are upper echel on meme accounts, and for every verified personality-driven meme account, there are nine million middle-tier meme accounts that rip memes, post them without credit, and credit is gone. The only leader really find a memes owner is if a meme's owner is if a meme.

meme was made on Twitter. If a meme was made on Twitter and when viral, you'll be able to search the substance of if it's a tweet and find the original tweet. But the truth is, it's unbelievably difficult. And the goal of a creator is to, one, try to make as many as they can themselves, but two, if they find it funny, reposting it and doing their best to find the original creator of the meme. The last and most important piece is the internet is, the internet is, the internet is, the internet because we share content all the time just like this, it becomes really hairy and downright dishonest. And I think a huge problem when somebody profits off of that meme. So I would never, ever post a meme as an ad that I didn't make. Like, that's the number one. And that's

where people start to get in trouble, right? It's like they rip a meme. They think it's funny. It's a meme about Amazon. They pitch it to Amazon. All of a sudden, Amazon paid them 30 grand for a meme when the original creator got nothing. So there's a difference between when you are monetizing your account and when you're not monetizing your account, like people share, celebrity share memes uncredited all day long. Snoop Dog is probably the biggest share of memes. He's bigger than any meme account. And he just rips and shares memes. But again, it's not really a problem because Snoop Dogg didn't profit off of that meme. Do you know what I'm saying? I completely understand. And there is, and I'm glad you kind of broke that unwritten

code of rules because I know it gets deep and I've heard meme creators talk about it. And that makes a lot of sense. There's one thing you talked about there, though, that's maybe new news to myself or even to listeners is that we see ads on Instagram all the time. And it's pretty easy to identify what an ad is. Even if it's organic, okay, got it. They're selling me something. thing. One thing I never thought about is taking an existing meme that accounts and then pitching it to a company and using that is advertising. So tell me how meme accounts actually work brand deals and how they're connecting with brands to be selling and how that's different from like myself going to sell, you know, your can cocktail, for example. It's a good question.

So in terms of how meme creators get deals, the bigger ones are wrapped, have agents at WME, CIA, the same deal. The smaller ones maybe work with a network of creators. If you're asking how a creator would inbound pitch themselves to a brand, that I don't fully know like it depends on the person. Am I understanding your question correctly? No, I think like so my question is if you're doing a deal with it, so where I'm, if you, there's a meme out there, right? And you're stealing that to use for a brand deal. Give me an example of what a meme would look like that's an advertising Got it, got it. I understand. If you Google right now, I'm doing it. Amazon meme, I promise you you'll find something. I don't know anybody directly

that's done this, but I'm sure I'm doing it at the same time as you. I'm sure that there are memes about Amazon. Gotcha. So there will be like an Amazon meme, like chirping, making a funny joke around Prime. I see a Prime box. And that will actually be an ad that the meme accounts getting paid for. Could be. Absolutely could be. Everything that we're looking at could have been an app. Fascinating. And when was the first time? Because I do find that a meme ad is a lot different than probably like your normal influence or selling something. So it's harder to like even spot. When was the first time and how many followers did you have before you got your first brand deal on Boy with No Job? First brand deal was Captain Morgan. We worked with them for a really

long time. I think the first time I ever made money, I think I made like 500 bucks. And I think I had a couple hundred thousand dollars. Gotcha. And does that rate increase substantially based on how many followers you have, would you say? Or would you say total engagement over a longer period of time? The first thing is it increases when you're educated on market value. The second thing is it increases when you're repped. Often people say, why get an agent? They take 10%. It's because the agent gives you a level of credibility

that other memeers don't have. And it's even breaking the stigma of being a memeer. There's a stigma around memes that there isn't sort of a face behind the account. There isn't more to it. It's just sort of what we're seeing when we Google Amazon meme. And that is the job of the PR team and the job of the creator. the job of an agent, but I'd say that the number one step is understanding your market and making sure that the rest of the industry doesn't know that you're cheap.

Like, there are plenty of accounts that are just flagged as I know that I can work with X for a tenth of the price because they're happy churning out an ad a day. Like, that's their business. Like, their business is volume. The other side of the business is being more selective with your ads and making sure the command market rate. But in terms of pricing, I usually say a million followers, it's $10,000. It's sort of a good equation for the majority of meme accounts. And it depends on cloud, but understood. All aligns makes perfect sense. I love that we are 25 minutes into this,

and I haven't even got to question number two on my sheet. This is a fascinating part of podcast in our discussion. You never know which direction they're going to go. But while I am on to, and I'm looking at it, it does correlate to this discussion. You start to monetize your social media a little bit. You don't go the dental route. You end up working for an ad agency. It's the question I feel like most content creators face today, at what point do you leave your full-time gig to pursue your side hustle indefinitely in full-time? And for you, what helped you make that decision and when did you do it? I say to everybody, you'll know when it's time. It's not time when it's not even time when you're making, in my opinion, again, everybody has a different

opinion. But as we spoke about this before, you don't know what Instagram is going to do. You don't know what TikTok's going to do as a platform. You don't know when it could fall off a cliff. So it changes if you're a really strong personality. Like I'd say, if you're Googled, if you feel that your face means something offline, sure, you can go and quit and you can pursue that full-time. But from the lens of being specifically in memes, I didn't leave my, I didn't leave corporate America until my business was funded and built. I funded and I, like, I raised money and built it while having a full-time job. I just did the full-time job at 90% instead of 100 and I worked 20 hours a day. But to me, it's not worth the risk of quitting and

pursuing because I have an idea a minute. And what if I picked the idea that was a shitty one? Like entrepreneurs, I would say that most feel this way for every hundred ideas you have that you really think are legitimate businesses. Like you've convinced yourself in your head, this is the one. It's not. And so you really need to build it. And then when you step back and you're like, oh shit, like this is a, this is real. That to me is, is the only time that you should really be jumping. It shouldn't even be revenue-based. Like, I really think it's all about the infrastructure.

It's all about your roadmap. Like, is this a legitimate business? Or is this a money grab? Like, a merch business isn't a legitimate business. Right. A merch business doesn't have a team or a plan or really anything beyond drops. Like, so hopefully that answers the question. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the driving factors there, too, is like,

can you exit this business and exit it at a, a life-changing amount. Emerged business, it's very unlikely that'll happen. Being in the canned wine business, that very much can happen, especially given the multiples that those companies are exiting at. Given your point, though, about building infrastructure, because this is one thing that a lot of people face is when to leave their full-time job. For you, realistically, was there a dollar amount that your company could have offered you

to get you to stay at that point? no because i'm making less money on salary now than i have in the last eight years i'm the one of the lowest paid people at the company because of my equity and that's intentional it's not a money thing it's passion opportunity exit value building a brand building a family business that again there's nothing better than promoting your own products like it's it's so much better than promoting somebody else's because I can speak with integrity to say that spruits society sparkling cocktails are made with all natural ingredients because I sourced them they're made with all natural like there's there's no bad

dyes like it's made in a factory where people are treated right like there is this level of sort of cover your eyes and promote something without really knowing what it is so having integrity is worth far more to me And, of course, the potential is so much bigger than in any full-time job. So no, there was no dollar amount that corporate America could have given me that would have had me stay. I love that. And I want to get into Sprit Society and how you got started, funded, and where you guys are today.

My last question on the boy with no job account is from a cash flow perspective, if someone were to say like in the range of what someone can make, if you have a meme account of, let's say, two, three million followers. Can you make $500,000? Can you make in seven figures? It's strictly off just doing ads, not selling your own products. So I would say that, and I mentioned this before, it depends on the type of meme account. I think that if you are a meme account that has personality, that has stories, that has this cult following where it's not just about memes, you can make significant money. I think that if you're, in the

two million. I'll break it down on two million. If you're, if you have two million followers, you're really cult following people know your face, you're pretty damn popular, you're wrapped, you could make three, probably like $300,000 a year. It's like a good

number. And if you have two million followers and you're just a mean page, recycling memes and posting for every Adam and Eve ad about vibrators that get sent into your DMs, you're going to make, I don't know, you can probably make a hundred grand. Okay.

All right. Again, it's still great. Like, as a side hustle, power to you. But it's just a difference. Like, that account is like, we spoke about engagement for six seconds like that. It's just like this. Yeah. Like just, you're going to plateau and fall off.

There's no one. You're going to go to fall off. You can't run ads that frequently without starting to, I don't know if the word shadow band is even right. I don't even know if it's real. Yeah, the big shadow man, everyone talks about. It could just be that everyone's just slinging too much shit and people are like, I'm done with you.

But then we say it's shadow band. Totally. It could not be the platform. It could be the people. Totally. All right. Now, I want to get into, I love the Spritz Society and what you did with it. And I saw in an interview that you had said that many businesses fail

because entrepreneurs just aren't all in. And you touched a little bit on fundraising a little bit. We had a couple entrepreneurs come on. We had Mark Lorry come on who owns a Minnesota Timberwolves, former CEO of Walmart, and he talked about his all-in. His all-in was literally, it's wild. Every dollar he had to his name, he invested in the company. And that's how he was able to get so many investors.

So for you, what does All-In mean? And how were you able to attract investors? Or did you bootstrap this? What does All-N mean? This is 24-7 in the best way. I am working in the business, on the business, overseeing the business. I am leveraging my life's work in Boy With No Job to the business. So I'll say that it's very similar to what you just said about, Mark.

Every future dollar to my name currently sits in this account. Like, Boy with No Job is a big revenue stream, the same way that I'm sure your socials are big revenue streams. and I've committed my entire account to it. I promote it every day authentically, but sprits and boy with no job are completely synonymous forever. So if it were to fail, God forbid, it's very difficult to recover from. So that is sort of my all in, all chips on the table. And I'm trying to think of what interview you were talking about where I mentioned

that sometimes influencers and celebrities aren't all in, but I often talk about there's a huge difference between founding a company. and being brought in to be the face of a company, the amount of influencers and celebrities that are offered 15, 20 percent to be the face of a company, they're being offered that by five different companies. They collect them, and it's sort of like, it's like venture, right? Like, venture is going to invest in 100 companies

and hope that two unicorns come up. They don't give a shit about the other 98, right? And it's the exact same thing with influencers for brands. So I always caution it's be very, very careful the celebrities and influencers that you use to promote to be the face of your brand because sometimes you have a Ryan Reynolds, most of the times you don't. Most of the times you don't is right. So founding it and living it and breathing it and being our sort of life's work to this point. It's just a culmination of everything I've learned and applying it to something new is sort of

my definition of all in. That's fantastic. And the one thing is interestingly enough is I think people look at celebrity type liquors or wines right now and automatically think success and it's actually the polar opposite. And when you're dealing with some of the distribution companies and brands, the selling you have to do behind a celebrity backed wine or liquor is so significant because so many have failed and so many to this conversation have been misbranded. You've had people that don't even drink wine, that don't even enjoy wine, now putting their face on a wine label people, people are like, wait, even though it is one of the biggest celebrities that I do recognize their name in every household, it's still not clicking to me because wine and them don't

pair, and that makes a big impact on it. For this company, I don't know if this is something you can share or not, but do you have outside investors or did you invest in yourself? And it's something we have to pass on. We could go to the next question. No, without sharing figures, I can tell you that we had a sizable seed round of funding on a sizable valuation through strictly strategic investors. The intrigue and what we were doing was through the roof. We're actually about to re-raise a bridge round and are targeting a series A next summer. But things are going well, very, very well, thank God. Yeah, this is definitely not bootstrapped financially. And I think that it's great to bootstrap financially if you know the business inside

and out. I don't come from a beverage alcohol background. I'm learning it on the fly. And having those strategics both invest and be able to be advisors and sort of help open doors is absolutely crucial. So without a strategic cap table, it's very hard to enter a space that you haven't been in yet. I'm going to play the voice of the viewer right here. If there's a viewer that's a little confused on when you say strategic partner and you refer strategic, can you just explain what that is in layman's terms? Yeah. So there's two types of investors. There's passive investors. I can even break it down more than that. It's money that is in it to watch it grow, but doesn't necessarily know the space and can't add value. And then there's the type of investor that can make the

introduction of a lifetime, like maybe they serve on the board of Whole Foods, and all of a sudden you're in Whole Foods. Or maybe the investor is close to the key distributor, and they can make that introduction. They are filled with warm introductions to the right folks. That's a strategic you can master. There you go. There is the professor Ben Soft for going at it. That is a great explanation. I love it. One thing I got to ask you about this business is that one thing I've seen in it, especially from Caitlin's wine, is that shipping becomes like a big part of the function if you're going business directly to consumer. Are most of spirit societies and mostly sold through retailers or is it sold direct to consumer? And if so, how has shipping impact?

the business? Yeah, so we launched the business with the plans of being direct to consumer for at least a year. Due to how we sold out of our first purchase order in like three weeks, due to the inbound demand press, we were very, very lucky or fortunate to get really, really serious inbound from retailers without having a traditional distributor. So we're currently in 215 total ones in Bevmo's across Florida and California. Wow. Again, like just us. Like we are basically self-distributing the product in retail.

And the DTC sales that were really exciting quickly became far less exciting the second you enter wholesale and see that the opportunity to scale in wholesale is unlike anything you can do DTC because the velocity, the doors, people are so much. more interested in alcohol is so of the moment. Like, you want to drink, go get a drink, go to a bar. It's very hard to plan when you're going to want to drink. Some people do it. Most can't. And something that people don't often realize, and you clearly do because Caitlin's in the business. But people think that shipping online makes it cheaper, right? Like, you don't have to, it's not marked up by a distributor who's then marked up by a retailer,

who's then sold to the customer, you just go one to one, but the reality is shipping is incredibly prohibitive. It's unbelievably expensive as an alcohol. You need to get adult signature. The term is pick and pack, people in the facilities who are doing this for you, unless you're vertically integrated, meaning own your entire supply chain, you're going to work with these co-packing partners that help you. And that entire process is unbelievably expensive. So it really takes the vast majority of the margin that you'd save shipping direct and makes them, the margins are very similar from direct versus wholesale. Right.

And the beverage industry to everything that Ben is talking about is there's just so many moving parts. And just when you go wholesale, even the distribution channels becomes such a headache in the different states and the different compliances. And there's certain states that you get into and you can break into some that you can't. So to do, like, it's just so much behind the scenes, behind the curtains that people don't see behind the beverage industry. That's critical. One thing I'll tell you guys is that the, so what I can talk about is this packaging and this website for Sprits is sick. We have the grapefruit. We have the blood orange. We have the pineapple and lemon here. In the recap, so we recap every episode and I bring out one of my buddies and we break down the episode. David and I are going to do a taste test of all of them, let you know what our favorite one is. But if people want to know more, about Sprits Society and everything you got going on with it, Ben. Where can they find more information? So you can go to Sprit Society.com. That's where you could buy direct. We ship to 46 of 50 states. If you go on Instagram, the handles just Sprits, SPR-I-T-Z. And then if you live in Florida or California, it is available on GoPuff, on Drisley, in Total Wines, and Bevmo's.

Massachusetts will be excited soon if you live in Massachusetts as well as Texas and Chicago. But for now, the easiest place to get it would be spurts society.com. Shipping is quick, but yeah, that is the best to get it right now. Amazing. Well, we appreciate that. One thing I'd be interested in is getting your trading secrets. We'll get your trading secret before we wrap up. I just have a couple more questions.

The one last question I have about your career track is when you said you're all in, when you look at like five, ten years from now, I mean, what do you think the career path or vision looks like for you, Ben? What do you want out of this in five to ten years? Either this business is humming and we're building Coca-Cola or I've sold this business and I'm on to the next business. But the goal here is I can't possibly explain how much I'm learning on a daily basis and how different I am just in the last, the process over the last two years. And I think that these skills are incredibly applicable to starting any business, whether it's the trust in myself that I could fundraise, the trust in myself that I can run a business, the understanding of, to your point, how fucking hard it is, right? Like, that's the first thing.

It's like we just see, I'm currently sitting in a hotel room in Sonoma, we just see everything that's here, the water that's here, the coffee maker, the tear, the foam that's here. everything was made by someone somewhere in a range to be here. And when you compartmentalize that, it's absurd. And like the fact that we can just walk into a grocery store and have anything of our heart's desires is people don't realize until they're in the business of physically making something and moving it, how much went into that. Like forget the packaging, forget anything. It's just physical product creation and distribution alone.

It's fascinating. And so what I've been able to learn here, I think, is applicable to really any business. I think I picked the hardest one to start. Alcohol has by far the toughest regulations. You can't just open up a store and start selling. Your number one hurdle is legal bills and supply chain investment. But hopefully it's either this business continue to hum or it's a new business that I find inspiration from this one. Unbelievable. I love it. And yeah, the backend distribution, the backend logistics, all the way to the packaging and how you can actually sell to the consumer while they are walking down that aisle with 18,000 options. All the things that go into that are just absolutely maddening and wild. Also intriguing. You can do a whole podcast on that. I got to wrap with this, though, because I do think while from a professional standpoint, there's the personal life and you have personal life and professional life. And I don't think they should be treated as silos. They do bleed into one another. And the cool thing is, is we've had.

Claudia on as well. And so she actually mentioned to us, she's talked about the fact that one of the things she's working on is spending less time on her phone because it's such a distraction to like everything in her life. And I think I put her on the spot. I'm like, all, I need to see your screen time right now. And she showed it. And it was, I couldn't believe the hours that she logged into that. It was nuts. So I got to ask you, being in a partnering business like you guys are and sharing a lot of the same world while still like doing different things as you guys move in different directions. What are some of like the biggest challenges that you have to like overcome being in like a business partnership with your significant other?

The first thing is understanding that this particular moment in time and the amount of energy needed to get something off the ground is not forever. It's understanding that you got to sort of run through mud to land on grass. Like, just, just like respect each other's grines. And the good news is that, like, my wife is currently on a sold-out national comedy tour where she is absolutely crushing it. And it's nice that we can have mutual respect where it's like, all right, we're working our fucking asses off.

And we understand it. Like, when there's time to breathe and relax, we'll take it. But for now, it's trying to preserve a really bright future where we can spend less time grinding and more time enjoying each other. But I think that it's that mutual respect and understanding that in order to get to the place that you need to be, you have to work really hard to get there. And I sympathize with that a little bit with Caitlin being on tour for two months and move my direction. She's back next week. So you put the time in now and enjoy the fruits of your labor. And I loved, loved your line of crawling through mud to land on grass.

That's one I won't forget. You think we'll ever get a, I know we got morning toast from Claudia. You think we'll get a show or a podcast from you, Ben? I love it. I love going on the toast. I tried. I once launched, it was called the Schwitz. It's funny.

I must just like these terms schvitz and sprits. I started like a sports podcast that was going well. You just have to put in so much time and energy to grow these things. People don't realize that, like, this is not an overnight thing. I'm sure you've been at Trading Secrets for a long time. And the amount of time, energy, and effort that goes into a single episode, like, we'll record. You then have post-production. You then have proper promotion.

It's a lot. So I think that I would need to be at a place where it was a Spritz-focused podcast, and it was something that sort of aided the current business that I'm doing. because I don't have time for something that doesn't aid this current business. But Grey Goose did a show that I always think about with Jamie Fox a couple years ago where he would just sip Grey Goose and he'd bring on friends and they'd talk about whatever they wanted. So maybe something like that where it's more Sprit Society is the sponsor of a podcast,

but it's not about Sprit Society. It can be about something else. But I love, I mean, I've really enjoyed talking with you. I love doing podcasts, so could definitely do it as long as time permitted it. That's awesome. Ben, so many takeaways from the start of your meme account to leaving corporate America to funding your own business. And I mean, just the aspirations you have and the success you guys have had.

It's so cool to hear the story. And also to get to talk to this is the first time ever we have had both powerhouse entrepreneurs from a power couple on the podcast on different episodes. So, Ben, before we wrap, we've got to get a trading secret, something you can't see in a textbook, learn in a classroom as it relates to financial management or career management from all your experiences and for what's to come. What trading secret can you leave our viewers with? Oh, that is a really, really great question. I would say that, and I can only speak from the entrepreneurship lens, you're going to have a great idea. You have to be really careful to not step on a mind that's a bad idea and invest in something and hold on to it when it really is a bad idea. Don't listen too much to what friends and family have to say because often they will discourage you from sort of taking that leap and achieving your dreams.

So be both self-aware. it's very hard and I know this is a convoluted answer but be both self-aware enough to be able to acknowledge when something is a bad idea it's a perfect balance between listening to the people in your corner but not listening to them too much so that they discourage you yeah I could not I put a bow on that because it was a very convoluted answer but I think the bow is people are there they're going to support you they're going to respect you but everybody is scared of change and the idea of taking a leap out of a nine to five is going to scare everybody from your wife to your mother to your friends. And if you're not in the exact right circle of other

entrepreneurs, they're not going to understand it, but also don't invest too much time in a bad idea. It's a bad idea. Just kick it to the curb and find a better idea. It's really a delicate dance between the two. I agree with it, especially because I think like your standard deviation of family members, what they want to see is security. They want to sleep at night knowing that there's the secure option. And unfortunately, to your point, some of the biggest wins come from the biggest risks, but also calculated and knowing when to adjust. So super well said, Ben, thank you so much for your time. We zig did zag through this podcast. We covered some stuff in the beginning. I didn't think we could, but I have enjoyed the conversation

and the depth of it. Thank you for being here. If people want more, Ben, where can they find more Ben? And where can, I mean, you already told us where to find the good old drinks. So we're going to cover that in the recap. But where can they find more of you, Ben? Boy with no job on Instagram. That is where you can find me. Boy with no job in Sprits. Those are my two out. That's where you'll find me. All in Boy with No Job and Sprit Society. Can't wait to crack open a couple cans here for the recap. And Ben, thank you so much for your time. Thanks, Jason. Appreciate it. closing bell with the one and only the curious Canadian. I'm not the girl with no job, but the boy with no job. The one and only, the husband to Claudia. It was a great episode. A lot of

takeaways. Clearly, extremely intelligent, intelligent man. I want to just put out there, if you guys haven't given us five stars, please do that now. Any recommendations we're listening to? Just saw some really good ones about maybe adding a second pod, keeping it very financially focused to what's happening on that week. That's something we're highly considering. So put five stars. rating. Also, if you haven't grabbed a copy of the restart roadmap, please do that. And five stars on Amazon allows us to grow. But that being said, we got the one, the only, the curious Canadian here with us. David, what did you think? Boy with no job. We've had girl with no job. What's your takeaway? Well, it's always intimidating when you have someone on that you follow

their content and they're extremely hilarious. And then they come out of the gates on the podcast with a couple zingers. And then they just settle into this like, I'm actually really, really smart too. And I'm going to prove that. And it's always intimidating when someone can come across and just, like, be so elated, both like the sense of humor, the comedy side, and then having the sense of being really realistic and his approach for a side hustle and now obviously a thriving business. So he did not disappoint, and I thought it was really, you know, educational, some good takeaways, but always intimidating when you get those five tool athletes on the pod.

That is an actual power combo when you have the wit of like being a comedian and like the book smarts because it's a combo that rarely meet one another. I almost wish we could like hyper blend our skills sometimes into like reactionary width that I have and then just like get down to like in the books that you have, it would be just, it would be deadly. It would be boy with no job. Exactly. It'd be great. And I just think like overall when, you know, we've brought a lot of people on, you know, influencer types, reality TV types, all different industries. But running a meme account, like that's got to be the dream now like no face behind it like that's if you're

good at it that's got to kind of be the dream in a way if you're good at it and you enjoy it that's it right because you probably don't have to deal with the trolls at the level you do you're still getting paid the way you'd want to get paid and from what I've seen growing meme accounts is like very like if you're good and you build momentum

it's easy to do so I think he's they're doing it right well let me ask you this like you talk a lot about going back to your corporate job after being on the show, but that your value of coming off the show has all to do with your face and your personal brand. Do you think you could have had a meme account job at the same time as the corporate job? That you probably, yeah, because I think if people didn't know your face with it,

you'd be good to go. I think one of the issues becomes engagement levels. Like you talked about his rates, those rates are lower because people aren't as engaged with your stuff because it's just a meme. It's not a story, right? Yeah, pretty fascinating. One thing that he did say, he used the water branding as an example with like influencer marketing and just, you know, he's clearly a believer and well educated in it. But he said, if you're trying to get sales, then influencer marketing is actually very risky. If it's brand awareness, it's good. If it's sales, influencer marketing is very risky.

I just kind of wanted your take on that and then maybe go into some details on this. I think one of the big takeaways here is that if you're trying to get people to click and buy and you think that the rate you'll have to pay these days is going to equal the conversion of how many gross sales you'll get, it's extremely challenging. There's only really one way to do it is to work with influencers who have no idea what their rate should be, quite frankly, which is something that you don't want to do that a ton of companies try and do. But I think one of the biggest takeaways for me, guys, if you're listening out there, and I can validate this because I do own, I have 50% ownership in a talent agency, is that conversion and rates on

TikTok are so, so materially less than on Instagram. And so what he talked about there with the TikTok and the analytics versus Facebook is a very true thing. It'll be interesting to see what happens. But if you're out there and you're listening to this, you're like, make this relatable to me. If you are trying to grow your brand, your personal brand or small business brand on social media, the best place is to do it. To get new organic reach will be TikTok, LinkedIn, or Twitter. Instagram and Facebook, you're going to make more money, but you will not get the growth that you will get on those other three platforms. So when it does come to driving sales, okay, it's 2022. We've had a bunch of different

traditional advertising and marketing platforms in the 35 years that we've been alive, you're a small business owner or a big business owner right now. And you do want to use advertising and marketing to drive sales, okay? Not brand awareness. You want to drive sales. In your opinion, not to put you on the spot, but what do you think is the best platform or avenue to do that if you're not necessarily worried about brand awareness, which influence marketing clearly is king. I don't think that's even debatable anymore. But if you're trying to drive sales. What are you doing as a business owner? So one of the tough things about this question is it's very, very specific to what you're selling. Is it B2B? Is it B2C? Do you know what that means or no?

Business, business, consumers? No, not a big deal. Just make it sure. Geneseo business degree coming in clutch. Pay it off. Just want to make sure. Right. So like things. It's like the four piece of marketing, B2BBC. So like for example, like his seltzer, like I could speak to Caitlin's wine. When you have liquor and you have salsa like that and things like that, it's of course huge to have organic sales via e-commerce. But the only way you're going to move mass volume is if you get into retail brick and mortar. Now, but for most businesses, like if you're selling B to C, it is so imperative that you've mastered the e-commerce space. You've mastered the space of how to understand search-arch engine optimization, AI, how to get people generating traffic to your site, how to keep

them engaged on your site. E-commerce is obviously where you need to be and where you're going to start your business in this day and age. One of the challenges is shipping. Shipping costs have gotten absolutely out of control. So it's so hard to compete with an Amazon where you're swip and it's there tomorrow because Amazon forever is running on a loss. He did mention, he said it, I think in quotes, he's like, it's absolutely absurd how much goes into physical production creation or physical product creation and distribution. Just like basically, I make a product. Now I have to get it on the grocery shelves. And when you get on the grocery shelves, you just absolutely take it for granted that just appears there. But like the legs that it takes to get there is just insane. But even to get it there,

the ability to then move, I talk a little bit about this in the book, but the ability to move that product versus 10 others that are not, and hundreds of others that are on the shelf is so hard. And you're paying, when you go to, guys, think about when you go to a grocery store, depending on what rack you're on, you're paying more for that positioning. You're paying for the tag labels that are associated with that you're so it's more expense and more work to try and get that consumer just walking down the aisle to impulsively grab or try it for the first time it's wild it's almost like you know talk about grocery store and all the options like mean pages like how we talked how there's just so many mean pages but like the elite of the elite ones are are because they are so well what are

the tough things too too david is if you think about like his industry this the spritz industry it's like how do you sell like if you're one of the first players to the market you're going to crush it. And if you can build the brand early, but to mirror something without much of differentiation, which it sounds like he's differentiated significantly, is very tough. Like, White Claw has taken over the entire planet in the Seltzer world. And Seltzer sales are increasing at a ridiculous, ridiculous rate. It looks like the whole industry is growing 23% from 2022 to 2030. On an annual basis, they are expecting, 23% of growth for 2020 to 2030. And, And White Claw has taken it by storm.

The interesting thing about White Claw is they are valued at such a high dollar amount like he talked about that they actually cannot exit because no one will actually pay what they're worth, all because they hit the market at the right time with a good product. Yeah, the Seltzer game has changed everything. And now when you go into like when I go to Wagmans now and go into like the liquor liquor area with there's just a million different brands. and then there's each brand has 10 different varieties too. So staying up in that game and differentiating like, you know,

the alcohol sales is just, it's just a crazy industry. Crazy. It's absolutely crazy. What else you got? One nugget that you touched on that, you know, I don't know how much you want to go into this too much, but you just mentioned in the episode,

you just mentioned in the recap, you won't 50% of a talent agency. I don't think a lot of your friends in the circles that we run even know that about. you, that you have one. And I don't know if you've ever mentioned it actually on the podcast before. What can you tell our listeners about this tiny little talent agency that you just happen to run in your back pocket in your office there? Because I think I know about it and I think it's pretty cool, pretty interesting. Yeah, I think one of the big takeaways is I learned a lot

about what this industry is and where the money can be made and then thought about how I could help others. And so many people would come off the show asking me like about the business end of things. And so I talk a little bit about this in the book, too, took a friend who's killer at business development. Evan Sarr taught him the industry. He then learned it on his own. We started together and I invested to own 50% of the agency that he runs the day-to-day operations and I run a lot of the strategy. But yeah, we've placed hundreds and hundreds of deals with influencers of all different levels in the business community and the athletic community in the music community, like almost all spaces. We don't operate on any form of exclusivity. So it gives us the opportunity

to really work with anybody and everybody. And our goal is to go get deals and find homes for them where it belongs with different influencers. And the company has grown significantly from hundreds of sales, hundreds of thousands of dollars of sales to now in the seven figures with gross annual revenue basis, so it's been going really well. Are your clients exclusive to you guys, or can your people that you work with get deals from everywhere? Does your wife tell you need to listen better? No, she doesn't, but maybe I need to. I heard you say exclusivity, but I didn't know if that was like your clients or the brands that you were. Nope, that's the client. So the clients could work with literally anyone they want. There's no exclusivity whatsoever. So the beauty

of that is they don't have to feel like they're tied to us. So we don't have to do all this work to be like, you can only work with us. Be like, go work wherever you want. Our job is to get you deals. And if it's a deal, it makes sense. We'll bring it to you and we'll close it. And we'll work with you on it. Make sure you're getting some of the best rates out there. So, yeah, I dropped the ball there. I love it. Tough break. One thing that I do want to ask you about because I thought this was really cool was just the creation of Boywood No Job. Yeah. And just how it came to fruition. He said that it came from the need for commonality in his relationship. And it's so funny because he was saying how they were hanging out and they were in the living room together

and she was just on her phone all the time, but crushing it. So he's trying to be supportive, but also wants to hang out with her and kind of want to get on like the same level as her. And so she encourages him to start this own passion project and he does it. And all of a sudden, like they're so connected, even though they're, you know, FaceTime or amount of words said in person is going down, but they're thriving together and clearly has brought them to this, you know, extreme power couple heights. I'm just curious, have you made any changes out of the need for commonality in your relationship with KB, either like professionally or personally? I think personally, yeah, because we don't really, we don't, it's, we actually are just so different of humans. It's crazy how

different we are. Our interests are different. The types of movies or shows we'd want to watch is different. The things we do like in our space and our backgrounds, right? If you look at like the education professional and like her route and like what like we just operate in different worlds, I think the one common denominator between us, which has been helpful, is we're both extremely competitive, right? So the one thing is we can do fun competitive things together, whether it's literally playing like blackjack one-on-one or playing any form of game or golf or anything that we could both compete monopoly deal, anything like that. Yesterday, we fired up Mario Kart. So I think anything that's competitive, that's a game is like where we really

enjoy spending time together, if that makes sense. How about you? Does she, does she own you in anything? Like, is there a game that she just like, she just has your number? Completely dusted her in Mario Kart yesterday. What system you played on? We played Nintendo Switch. I got it for her for Christmas last year. It was first time we ever fired it up, dude. First time. I got it for Christmas. So I'm thinking where does she really, do you know where she gets me? It's like, I'll be, got her in Blackjack, got her in Deal. I think Deal were pretty 50-50, but where she gets me is the chirps, right? So even if I'm smoking her, like, she'll be totally out-churping me the whole time. I love it. How about you? How about you? Do you guys

anything like that? Yeah, I mean, we were pretty competitive too, but I think, too, like, commonality for us is like just finding those ways when okay if i'm noticing that she's in like relax mode i need to be in a relaxed mode too um if i feel that it's time like you know that we've been in relaxed mode too much and we need to have a date night like making times that you know even though our industry she works from home i'm on the road all the time with hockey but when we're together it's like i think for me it's like the need of commonality is like identifying okay what mood is she in i need to no matter what my priorities are right now i need to get a on that mood. So we're a little more connected and taking advantage of this time that we're

together. I think one of the really big takeaways there, too, not only for relationships, but in like business settings too, right? So this is definitely a parallel is whether it's a business setting or its relationship. I think one of the big things, even when you're going to negotiate with your boss or talk to someone about something that's serious that might have like a discomfort zone, it is so important that when you enter that conversation, guards are down and they're prepared for it. And I think so many people try to back people into corner. or especially a relationship. Like, we need to talk about it now.

Da-da-da-da. I think the issue with that, though, not understanding the energy or space is that instantly your guard is up and therefore the productivity within that conversation is going to instantly be decreased. Where, to your point, David,

and this goes for business settings too, but if like you want to have a serious conversation or you want to do something that was a little bit more real, but your partner wasn't there, if you guys aren't both an agreement on that space at a time where it's okay to,

to have those conversations, it could lead to, like, complete distress and in the business thing could lead to complete catastrophic negotiation attempt. I just love, I think that that was probably my, all my favorite takeaway, the whole podcast was just like, hey, where'd this come from? He's like, well, I wanted to spend more time with my wife. And she was going to be doing this and crushing this. And like you mentioned, we had her on the podcast and her screen time was like to wait like 16 hours or something. So that's how they did it. And anyone that thinks out there, if you think that your work life doesn't impact your personal life, friends or family, you're fucking out of your mind. Like, it does. And this is another example.

A hundred percent it does. You know, a weird breakdown is like, how many hours of sleep are you supposed to get a night? Eight hours. How many hours are you supposed to do a work day? Eight hours. So that leaves eight hours left of like all this other stuff, family, relationship, chores, bills, social, sports, getting healthy. It's obviously all going to blend together. So speaking of blending together. We had boy with no job. We had girl with no job on earlier. You had girl with no job. Claudia, I was one of your guests on the book tour. The book tour is done. We were going to do a full recap up episode. We're too busy. We didn't get to it. So I got a couple questions, quick hitters about the book tour, about the book in general, if you don't mind me

ending the recap with a recap. So I love that. I want to give people the opportunity. If you're still with us here, go give us five stars. If you want a recap of the book tour, like the ins and out, the money behind it, the success rates. Put in the comments in the rating, book tour, yes or no. Thumbs up, thumbs down. We will watch that based on that response. We will do a recap or not because my perspective was it's too late. People don't really care. But if there's interest, we'll do it. But we got, let's say, like, two, three minutes. What do you want to know, Dave? I just got one question. I'm edge of my seat, edge of my seat type stuff for finding out if you're on New York Times bestseller list.

When do I find out? How do we find out? Do you get an email? Is it a text? Is it a phone call? Is it like, how do you find out? Yes. So today we're recording this guys a week early because I'm going to Tulum this weekend. We could do a whole podcast on vacations and how to book and plan those for the right dollar amounts. But as of today, tonight I'll be sharing that we hit the Wall Street Journal's best selling business list, which is a lot. That's amazing.

We hit... Wall Street Journal. Is that good? Wall Street Journal. Ever heard of it? Good for a business one. We hit Amazon bestseller list. We hit Audible bestseller list.

We then hit Publishers Weekly bestseller list. What's cool about Wall Street Journal is there some big, big books in here. If you haven't read, grab a copy, but make sure you got the restart roadmap first. Atomic Habits, Strength Finder 2.0, CEO excellence, extreme ownership, how U.S. Navy SEALs, lead and win. Those are monsters, and we were ranked right under those. The other thing we got is the next big idea clubs. So the next big idea club is a big, big award that we were nominated for in Book Club.

It's extremely prestigious. Now, they only two people win, but we are a finalist nominee. It's based on, like, the big idea. It's run by Malcolm Gladwell. So that's what we got so far. We won't know about New York Times because New York Times business is done monthly. So it will be for the full month. of April. We won't know until like mid-May. One of the issues is we thought it was like to make

all those lists the first week is really important. But the problem is this counts for the whole month and we don't have this spot taking vacation next week. So we kind of took off. So I don't know if we're going to have enough power to make that New York Times business one. But if you haven't heard guys and you haven't got the book, please grab it. That will help. Well, you also had the stress of only having that Saturday deadline in that first week to keep the books shelf. Yep. And you passed that test.

So that must have been a little, a little stressful, but you crushed it. That was stressful. We'll know indefinitely that they will be on the shelf's Barnes and Nobles and the alike. And yeah, you can get this book anywhere.

Probably the easiest place to get is Barnes and Nobles online or Amazon. But, and also the Audible book is one that I actually did myself, so my voice. So check it out. But we've gotten really, really good feedback. If you guys want a full detour,

whoa, what the fuck was that? That was the wrong word. A full, like, deep dive. Full detour. I've been talking about this book too much in life detours. Yeah.

You're an idiot. If you want a... You need to detour to Tulum, I need to detour to Tulum and never talk about the restart roadmap again. But I said the word book more times in this month than I had my entire life. But if you guys do want a whole, like, detailed deep dive into the tour, let us know we'll do a full recap episode.

Anything else, David? No, I'm good. You got to go to Tulum. I've got to go to Florida. I'm leaving in, like, three hours so. Vacation for that. boys, maybe we'll wrap up on some tips and tricks while traveling. That being said, David, it was a pleasure having you on tour. You crushed it. This was a fun recap. We'll talk more.

Trading Secrets also just renewed our annual contract. We'll talk more about that. Give you the numbers and deets. Remember to give us five stars and go to Amazon, give it the three star roadmap five stars. And if you haven't grabbed a copy, trust me when I tell you, grab a copy for yourself or for a friend or family member, the feedback has been amazing. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Trading Secrets, what you can't afford to miss. Thank you. Thank you.