Latest / Eating While Broke / Eating While Broke: JAMES DUMOULIN - School of Hard Chicks
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of Eating Wild Broke.
- 0:03Speaker 1: I'm your host, Coleen Witt, and today we have very
- 0:06Speaker 1: special guests School of Hard Knocks. James Dumoulin is in
- 0:11Speaker 1: the building. Did I say that right?
- 0:13Speaker 2: That's correct? That works?
- 0:14Speaker 1: I did? Okay, okay. I don't know if you're being
- 0:16Speaker 1: super nice to me or not. So we are all
- 0:19Speaker 1: the way here in Austin, Texas. I literally been like,
- 0:24Speaker 1: do not miss a follow up when it comes to
- 0:27Speaker 1: getting you, and you're very responsive and I'm super thankful.
- 0:30Speaker 1: I watch your show School of Hard Knocks, and I
- 0:34Speaker 1: love that you really make the show about the content.
- 0:38Speaker 1: But then you're always curious about like who's James? You know, well,
- 0:41Speaker 1: at least for me, I'm like, who is he? And
- 0:44Speaker 1: you I felt like when I watch the show, you're
- 0:46Speaker 1: almost so hidden. It's like you have to like really
- 0:50Speaker 1: stalk to find out who you are. So I'm excited
- 0:53Speaker 1: to be able to have you on Eating While Broke.
- 0:55Speaker 1: Before we get into all about James, I would like
- 0:58Speaker 1: to know what you're gonna have me eat today.
- 1:01Speaker 3: Absolutely well, thank you so much for having me on.
- 1:03Speaker 3: I love the concept of your show. I'm a media
- 1:06Speaker 3: the media mogal that's what I like to call it.
- 1:08Speaker 3: But I love interesting concepts, and I thought that this
- 1:10Speaker 3: was a fascinating concept.
- 1:11Speaker 2: For a podcast, so I really liked it.
- 1:13Speaker 3: But we're going to be actually having a twelve count
- 1:16Speaker 3: Chick fil A nugget meal with fries and our sweet teas.
- 1:20Speaker 2: That's a classic.
- 1:20Speaker 3: It's something that I've ever since I was a young kid,
- 1:23Speaker 3: grew up eating, and still to this day sometimes I indulge.
- 1:27Speaker 1: Well, let's go ahead and try. I'm not a huge
- 1:30Speaker 1: Chick fil ayer, even though in LA it's like the
- 1:33Speaker 1: most popping' you know that in in and out. But
- 1:36Speaker 1: I've had this before. My favorite thing at Chick fil
- 1:39Speaker 1: A is the cross fries. But you said fries, and
- 1:42Speaker 1: this is all they gave us. They don't have regular fries.
- 1:44Speaker 2: I thought, they know this is that's what they had.
- 1:46Speaker 2: The waffle fries.
- 1:46Speaker 3: Oh okay, And great job on the sauceage to barbecue
- 1:49Speaker 3: and Chick fil A tho, those are the go to
- 1:50Speaker 3: And I didn't even say that, so.
- 1:52Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, okay, perfect, So take me back. I mean,
- 1:55Speaker 1: we've all had it. Shout out to the listeners. You know,
- 1:57Speaker 1: a good Chick fil A meal the sauce is definitely
- 2:01Speaker 1: the best. Let's go ahead, now, when was the last
- 2:06Speaker 1: time you ate Chick fil A?
- 2:09Speaker 3: I want to say, maybe like a month or so, okay,
- 2:11Speaker 3: a little bit of time.
- 2:12Speaker 1: Okay, Well take me back to the nostalgia of Chick
- 2:17Speaker 1: fil A.
- 2:18Speaker 3: Absolutely so. My first job ever, I actually worked at
- 2:22Speaker 3: Chick fil A. So for like ten months when I
- 2:24Speaker 3: was a sophomore in high school, was making seven twenty
- 2:27Speaker 3: five working at Chick fil A.
- 2:28Speaker 2: Seven Jesus seven twenty five an hours.
- 2:31Speaker 3: Crazy, but you almost kind of have to, in my opinion,
- 2:34Speaker 3: experienced that in any capacity. So maybe it's working in
- 2:39Speaker 3: the food industry, you know, as somebody who's taking orders
- 2:43Speaker 3: and stuff like that, to kind of realize that, hey,
- 2:45Speaker 3: this isn't what I want to be doing forever. And
- 2:46Speaker 3: then my second job was actually construction. So I worked
- 2:49Speaker 3: construction for two years my junior and senior year.
- 2:52Speaker 2: Of high school.
- 2:53Speaker 3: Paid a little bit better, but still was again one
- 2:54Speaker 3: of those things where it's like, hey, this was this
- 2:56Speaker 3: was cool, you know, made a little money doing it,
- 2:59Speaker 3: was smart with it, it saved it, but just wasn't
- 3:02Speaker 3: something that I wanted to be doing forever.
- 3:04Speaker 1: Yeah, I did a fast food shout outs to McDonald's.
- 3:07Speaker 1: But I realized very early on that as crazy as
- 3:11Speaker 1: this may sound, I thought that job was really really hard,
- 3:14Speaker 1: the fast pace of it, the just I honestly said.
- 3:18Speaker 1: I tried fast food and I tried waitressing, and both
- 3:21Speaker 1: were absolutely like colling two jobs that you could never
- 3:25Speaker 1: have for the rest of your life. Braining, it's draining.
- 3:27Speaker 1: You have to be like real positive. What if you're
- 3:29Speaker 1: having a bad day or you know, if I'm anxious,
- 3:33Speaker 1: I can't remember anything. So I learned, you're right, this
- 3:38Speaker 1: is two careers. And I tell my friends all the time, like,
- 3:40Speaker 1: I can't be a waitress and I can't work in
- 3:42Speaker 1: fast food. Absolutely would stuck at it. And I respect
- 3:45Speaker 1: everyone that does those jobs absolutely bit more.
- 3:49Speaker 3: Yeah, and it does hold you some skills as well,
- 3:51Speaker 3: you know, like with Chick fil A, one of the
- 3:53Speaker 3: things that you know how their structure is is they
- 3:55Speaker 3: kind of instilling you to like treat people with kindness
- 3:58Speaker 3: and have that customer service, which you can take with
- 4:00Speaker 3: you in a lot of ways, depending on what type
- 4:02Speaker 3: of business you go into. If you're selling, because there's
- 4:05Speaker 3: a lot of nose, there's a lot of people that
- 4:06Speaker 3: are rude. I've experienced it a ton, especially when we were,
- 4:09Speaker 3: you know, coming up starting our channel, going up to
- 4:11Speaker 3: random people. I was told know in every possible way
- 4:16Speaker 3: that you can kind of hear, but also remembering sometimes
- 4:18Speaker 3: like when you're working that fast food, working at a
- 4:21Speaker 3: place like Chick fil A, you get treated like shit
- 4:22Speaker 3: behind the counter, and you kind of just have to
- 4:24Speaker 3: learn to keep a smile on your face and just
- 4:26Speaker 3: keep going, and you can't let that ruin your day,
- 4:29Speaker 3: you know. I always think about it this way. It's like,
- 4:30Speaker 3: there's twenty four hours in a day. Why let one
- 4:34Speaker 3: second or one minute ruin the entire day. So I
- 4:36Speaker 3: think that's something as well, you know, because anybody that's
- 4:39Speaker 3: worked in that position, I'm sure, like you said, working
- 4:41Speaker 3: you know, fast food in mcdonaldge, you probably have some
- 4:43Speaker 3: people that were super rude, and oftentimes most people just
- 4:46Speaker 3: kind of let that ruin their days, which is very understandable.
- 4:50Speaker 3: But the minute you can kind of realize to kind
- 4:52Speaker 3: of just take it as hey, it is what it is,
- 4:54Speaker 3: on to the next one will be okay, the better
- 4:55Speaker 3: you'll be.
- 4:56Speaker 1: I have to steal that logic because that is impressible.
- 4:59Speaker 1: I never even thought usually even when something bad, so
- 5:03Speaker 1: I have to be like, just this moment, just isolated
- 5:06Speaker 1: right now. I try to imagine how you got the
- 5:11Speaker 1: skill set of walking up to people. I imagine that
- 5:13Speaker 1: you had this sales background, but to hear you were
- 5:16Speaker 1: in McDonald's in construction prior to starting your channel, what
- 5:20Speaker 1: part of those experience led you to seems like as
- 5:25Speaker 1: a fan of your show, it seems like you respect
- 5:29Speaker 1: and love entrepreneurship absolutely.
- 5:32Speaker 3: So what's interesting is that I don't attribute any of
- 5:35Speaker 3: my interpersonal skills of being able to go and talk
- 5:38Speaker 3: to people from working at Chick fil A and working construction.
- 5:41Speaker 3: Obviously it's more of like a trait, like a hard
- 5:43Speaker 3: hands on skill. But I actually like to say this
- 5:46Speaker 3: because from six to ten, I lived in South Korea,
- 5:49Speaker 3: so I lived overseas. My dad he ran the largest
- 5:52Speaker 3: overseas military base in the entire world, so he was
- 5:54Speaker 3: a garrison commander, so I was from a military family.
- 5:57Speaker 3: I lived in three different cities in South Korea, eventually
- 5:59Speaker 3: said back into the DC area before moving to Austin
- 6:02Speaker 3: five years ago. But when I was living in South Korea,
- 6:06Speaker 3: I was watching my dad speak and lead in front
- 6:09Speaker 3: of tens of thousands of troops, people from Korea, even
- 6:13Speaker 3: the American soldiers that were over there, and I was
- 6:15Speaker 3: constantly used to people coming up to him, coming up
- 6:17Speaker 3: to our family, and just learning how to communicate with
- 6:21Speaker 3: people with elders, people who were way older, some of
- 6:23Speaker 3: these people who were, you know, in significant positions of
- 6:25Speaker 3: power in the military and the government over there. So
- 6:28Speaker 3: I had to learn from an early age how to
- 6:30Speaker 3: act professional, how to carry yourself in a confident demeanor,
- 6:34Speaker 3: in the right way when you're meeting these people, with
- 6:35Speaker 3: these heads of states, you know, the top people in
- 6:38Speaker 3: the military. And so I took that with me from
- 6:40Speaker 3: an early age to every aspect of my life to
- 6:44Speaker 3: going into I was in boy Scouts. I became an
- 6:47Speaker 3: Eagle Scout, and all of my you know, Scout masters
- 6:50Speaker 3: were all elder people ex Marines. But again it's you know,
- 6:54Speaker 3: always having those kind of like mentors to kind of
- 6:57Speaker 3: conversate with and be able to guide you. It instilled
- 7:00Speaker 3: I feel like that ability and me to conversate with
- 7:02Speaker 3: people who are older, maybe from a business or financial
- 7:05Speaker 3: standpoint that maybe they're a little bit more like superior,
- 7:07Speaker 3: more experienced, and I think a lot of it I
- 7:09Speaker 3: do attribute to being from overseas or at least living
- 7:13Speaker 3: there for a couple of years, traveling all the time.
- 7:16Speaker 3: You know, we lived in three different cities in South Korea,
- 7:18Speaker 3: but we also went to a ton of countries like China, Cambodia, Australia,
- 7:23Speaker 3: and so I always say to me, there's two things
- 7:25Speaker 3: that will teach you more about yourself than anything else.
- 7:27Speaker 3: It's traveling the world and fighting. Fighting will instill in
- 7:31Speaker 3: you a different level of humility because you know, you
- 7:34Speaker 3: can have no experience or a ton of experience, and
- 7:37Speaker 3: you can still go up against somebody and get your
- 7:38Speaker 3: ass beat, and that will teach you more about yourself
- 7:40Speaker 3: than anything else other than traveling. Because traveling you're experiencing
- 7:43Speaker 3: different cultures, different people, and in my opinion, it allows
- 7:46Speaker 3: you to look at the world from a much more
- 7:48Speaker 3: global lens as opposed to like a very narrow view
- 7:51Speaker 3: on things and not thinking outside of the box. So
- 7:53Speaker 3: I think that between traveling and just being around a
- 7:55Speaker 3: lot of older people taught me more about myself how
- 7:58Speaker 3: to communicate and handle those conversations.
- 8:01Speaker 1: So take me back, So your parents are you come
- 8:04Speaker 1: from military background, They're affluent, middle class.
- 8:06Speaker 3: I was one hundred percent. Yeah, definitely middle class. You know,
- 8:10Speaker 3: my dad was military for thirty one years. He gets
- 8:14Speaker 3: out and is kind of just going to work in
- 8:15Speaker 3: DC as like a government contract or sort of thing.
- 8:18Speaker 3: The typical thing that a lot of the military guys
- 8:20Speaker 3: do is they're in the military, they get out and
- 8:22Speaker 3: they do the contracting things. So definitely middle class. However,
- 8:26Speaker 3: you know, my dad was a guy who was very
- 8:27Speaker 3: conservative with his money. He invested, you know, probably ended
- 8:31Speaker 3: up becoming a millionaire by the time he was in.
- 8:33Speaker 2: His like late forties or fifties.
- 8:35Speaker 3: But regardless, did instill a lot of good money habits
- 8:37Speaker 3: within us, meaning he wasn't blowing money, he wasn't spending
- 8:40Speaker 3: money on dumb shit. If anything, he was teaching us
- 8:42Speaker 3: how to invest at an early age because with him,
- 8:44Speaker 3: you know, he didn't start investing until his thirties, whereas
- 8:46Speaker 3: my brother and I, you know, we grew up when
- 8:48Speaker 3: we were.
- 8:48Speaker 2: Working fast food. I was start working in construction.
- 8:51Speaker 3: I was taking a lot of that money and putting
- 8:52Speaker 3: it into the market, started to invest in stocks like
- 8:55Speaker 3: really early on, which you know, again it's everybody, every
- 8:58Speaker 3: millionaire and billionaire will tell you to start early, right
- 9:00Speaker 3: because a lot of them they don't start putting money away,
- 9:03Speaker 3: or they didn't start putting money away until they were
- 9:04Speaker 3: in their like thirties or forties, and so, you know,
- 9:07Speaker 3: starting early is something that's very important as well, that
- 9:09Speaker 3: was instilled in us.
- 9:10Speaker 1: It seems like your father had a lot of transparency
- 9:13Speaker 1: to even bring you to these places where you're meeting
- 9:15Speaker 1: these leaders and watching him interact.
- 9:17Speaker 2: Absolutely.
- 9:18Speaker 1: So, did you guys spend more time with your dad
- 9:20Speaker 1: than your mom.
- 9:21Speaker 3: Or definitely more time with our mom, just because again,
- 9:24Speaker 3: you know, my dad was you know, very busy a
- 9:27Speaker 3: lot of the times he was deployed or he was
- 9:29Speaker 3: constantly going to different military bases, going to meet with
- 9:32Speaker 3: different head stags, different military leaders and stuff like that.
- 9:35Speaker 3: So for that reason, we definitely spend more time with
- 9:37Speaker 3: our mom. But he was still very present, especially you know,
- 9:40Speaker 3: when he was finally done being deployed and came back
- 9:42Speaker 3: we were in the DC area, never missed a baseball game,
- 9:45Speaker 3: was always you know, there for his two sons. So
- 9:48Speaker 3: I was very blessed to have, you know, two great parents,
- 9:52Speaker 3: and they instilled a lot of great life lessons in us.
- 9:54Speaker 3: And it's it's interesting because you know when we first
- 9:56Speaker 3: started doing our channel that we have now, they were
- 10:00Speaker 3: very hesitant at first. They were very like unsure of
- 10:03Speaker 3: the idea because to them it's like it's a foreign concept,
- 10:06Speaker 3: like you can make money just by posting videos, whereas like, now,
- 10:10Speaker 3: you know, they're like our number one supporters. My mom's
- 10:12Speaker 3: always telling me, oh, I want you to interview this person.
- 10:14Speaker 3: I want you to go and love and so yeah,
- 10:16Speaker 3: it's really cool to kind of see is it you
- 10:18Speaker 3: and your brother? It is it's me, my brother. And
- 10:20Speaker 3: then one of our childhood friends from the DC area
- 10:23Speaker 3: actually who was actually we met and we were in
- 10:25Speaker 3: the same boy Scout troupe all became Eagle Scouts a
- 10:28Speaker 3: little bit of a different age gap. So our good
- 10:31Speaker 3: friend Josh, who's our other co founder, he's twenty six
- 10:34Speaker 3: years old. My brother's twenty four, and I'm twenty two.
- 10:37Speaker 3: So twenty two, oh my good, yeah, twenty two.
- 10:40Speaker 1: So usually when I have a younger person on the
- 10:43Speaker 1: show and off camera we were talking about this, I
- 10:45Speaker 1: was like, oh, when we have a younger person, sometimes
- 10:48Speaker 1: I prefer older because I'm like, you know, I want
- 10:51Speaker 1: to know that you guys have hit enough failure to
- 10:54Speaker 1: like really entertain me because I believe failure is at
- 10:57Speaker 1: the end of the day, that's the closest way to
- 10:59Speaker 1: get to success. And sometimes with a younger person, I'm like,
- 11:02Speaker 1: I don't know if they've hit their head enough. But
- 11:04Speaker 1: with you, I was just like, the wealth of knowledge
- 11:07Speaker 1: you have. I'm like, between your traveling, I assume I
- 11:11Speaker 1: have this fantasy of who you are so you can
- 11:13Speaker 1: feel free to pop all the bubbles. I'm like, man,
- 11:15Speaker 1: he must be well read, he must be pounding books
- 11:18Speaker 1: and all day long on top of these interviews. Am
- 11:21Speaker 1: I even closely right?
- 11:22Speaker 3: No, I've maybe read one book in my entire maybe
- 11:25Speaker 3: half a book in my entire life. I'm not a reader.
- 11:27Speaker 3: I mean I get knowledge in a lot of other
- 11:29Speaker 3: ways from these interviews. And maybe that's one thing that
- 11:31Speaker 3: I really do want to work on, is reading a
- 11:33Speaker 3: lot more, because I will say a lot of the
- 11:35Speaker 3: wealth these people, I know they're avid readers, but it's
- 11:38Speaker 3: just not my style of learning. I don't like sitting
- 11:40Speaker 3: still and reading a book. I'd much rather get it
- 11:43Speaker 3: from actually going to seek out other people and have
- 11:46Speaker 3: those conversations. I always like to say that mentorship is
- 11:49Speaker 3: like wisdom without the wounds, and so to.
- 11:51Speaker 2: Me, it's like I have I love that.
- 11:53Speaker 3: It's great, right, And I always say mentorship is literally
- 11:56Speaker 3: the only way to sit, the only shortcut of success,
- 11:58Speaker 3: obviously learning from yourself from your failure. But the way
- 12:01Speaker 3: that you mitigate all that, like I said, is getting
- 12:03Speaker 3: that mentorship is getting around those types of people. But
- 12:06Speaker 3: you know how we say too. You know, I'm also
- 12:08Speaker 3: not a big person of like structure, Like I am
- 12:11Speaker 3: probably one of the worst people I know about keeping
- 12:13Speaker 3: a calendar and.
- 12:14Speaker 2: Sticking to it.
- 12:15Speaker 3: So but everybody has kind of those things that they're
- 12:17Speaker 3: great at and that they're not and I would say
- 12:19Speaker 3: that that's maybe one of my flaws is that. But
- 12:21Speaker 3: now I'm not a big reader. I just like am
- 12:23Speaker 3: obsessed about what we do, which is something that I've
- 12:26Speaker 3: also noticed among you know, and this is a great point,
- 12:29Speaker 3: is that a lot of younger people will ask, like,
- 12:31Speaker 3: how do I figure out what that thing is for me?
- 12:34Speaker 3: And at all points in life, because there's people in
- 12:36Speaker 3: their teams their twenties or thirty forties, fifties that are
- 12:39Speaker 3: still trying to figure it out. And like I was
- 12:41Speaker 3: asked that question the other day, and to me, the
- 12:43Speaker 3: way you kind of come up with that theme where
- 12:45Speaker 3: you know that this is what you need to be
- 12:47Speaker 3: doing is when you just can't stop thinking about it.
- 12:50Speaker 3: Is when you're genuinely obsessed. Like I will be up
- 12:52Speaker 3: at all hours of the day, all hours of the night,
- 12:55Speaker 3: depending on you know, the day, just constantly thinking about,
- 12:58Speaker 3: you know, what can I do? What can I do better?
- 13:00Speaker 3: You know, what can I you know, how do I
- 13:03Speaker 3: get more innovative? We just hit five million followers on
- 13:06Speaker 3: Instagram yesterday, and I'm like, I'm constantly thinking it's like,
- 13:10Speaker 3: you know, how do we get to ten million within
- 13:12Speaker 3: the next you know, year or two? You know, So
- 13:14Speaker 3: I'm always singing about that. But that's again, how I
- 13:17Speaker 3: know that what we're doing is what we should be doing,
- 13:20Speaker 3: because it's just the peer obsession with it.
- 13:22Speaker 1: I love that. Now, take me back. You graduated college
- 13:26Speaker 1: in Texas. When you were doing the fast food, you
- 13:29Speaker 1: were in high school, your parents were definitely taking care
- 13:32Speaker 1: of you, and then you were just taking the money
- 13:34Speaker 1: and investing. At what point does school of hard knocks
- 13:38Speaker 1: start to enter the picture?
- 13:40Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know I was So I'll first say this.
- 13:43Speaker 3: I mentioned that I had those first two jobs, right, Well,
- 13:46Speaker 3: my senior year of high school. Actually this is the
- 13:49Speaker 3: year I was work in construction. It's about December twenty nineteen,
- 13:54Speaker 3: and you know, I start to hear about TikTok. It's
- 13:57Speaker 3: starting to get really popular. And now I think TikTok
- 14:00Speaker 3: had been on the App Store, like it had been
- 14:03Speaker 3: launched maybe late twenty eighteen, early twenty nineteen, but it
- 14:06Speaker 3: really started to hit its stride late twenty nineteen, and
- 14:09Speaker 3: then going into twenty twenty is when it just passed
- 14:12Speaker 3: Google as the number one search engine. And I was
- 14:16Speaker 3: just watching TikTok casually, but I started to notice, like,
- 14:20Speaker 3: there's these kids out there who are my age, who
- 14:23Speaker 3: are younger than me, some older than me, and they're
- 14:27Speaker 3: making ridiculous amounts of money tens and hundreds of thousands
- 14:31Speaker 3: of dollars a month, just making content about stuff that
- 14:35Speaker 3: they were passionate about because they were able to build
- 14:37Speaker 3: an audience and monetize it. And I love the saying
- 14:40Speaker 3: that where attention goes, revenue flows, and to me, I
- 14:44Speaker 3: saw that in late twenty nineteen, and I just decided
- 14:47Speaker 3: to start posting on TikTok. I didn't have any clear
- 14:50Speaker 3: direction of how I wanted to take my brand or anything.
- 14:54Speaker 3: I was just building my personal brand on there, just
- 14:55Speaker 3: a personal TikTok, and I just kept trying different things,
- 14:59Speaker 3: hopping on different trends, and I would go viral, and
- 15:01Speaker 3: before I knew it, within about ten months on that account,
- 15:04Speaker 3: I had eight hundred thousand followers. Wow, So went from
- 15:07Speaker 3: zero to eight hundred thousand followers in about ten months.
- 15:09Speaker 3: So that was from like December twenty nineteen up until
- 15:13Speaker 3: August twenty twenty.
- 15:14Speaker 1: And it was it was different types of videotypes of content.
- 15:18Speaker 3: My first ever video that I posted that went viral,
- 15:21Speaker 3: So my first viral video was probably like my tenth
- 15:24Speaker 3: to fifteenth post somewhere around then. But I try to
- 15:27Speaker 3: tell people that it's like, look, most successful creators, I
- 15:30Speaker 3: would argue the majority of them, if you ask them, hey,
- 15:32Speaker 3: how many pieces of content did it take for you
- 15:34Speaker 3: to have one viral video? A lot of them it
- 15:36Speaker 3: wasn't until their fiftieth or one hundredth or three hundredth
- 15:39Speaker 3: video that it takes to go viral. And like most people,
- 15:42Speaker 3: they don't understand that, and therefore they get discouraged because
- 15:45Speaker 3: all you know, my first couple videos didn't go viral
- 15:47Speaker 3: so then they're just done.
- 15:48Speaker 2: They give up.
- 15:49Speaker 3: And it's like I try and remind people that, like, look,
- 15:52Speaker 3: some people, yes, does that you know happen overnight? Sure,
- 15:56Speaker 3: it does a lot of the overnight stuff. Though where's
- 16:00Speaker 3: the longevity most people that go viral overnight? There isn't
- 16:02Speaker 3: any longevity for the most part. Whereas you know, people,
- 16:07Speaker 3: it's a long game media content creation. It is a
- 16:10Speaker 3: long game. And if you want to like actually have
- 16:12Speaker 3: be very successful and you have to be committed to
- 16:15Speaker 3: it for a long time. And so, like I said,
- 16:17Speaker 3: ten to fifteen post was someone that went viral. It
- 16:19Speaker 3: was literally just me making a decision video on going
- 16:22Speaker 3: to the University of Texas. So like I had applied
- 16:24Speaker 3: to like three or four places and I was did
- 16:27Speaker 3: a video like showing all the places I got into
- 16:29Speaker 3: and then deciding to go to UT You got like
- 16:30Speaker 3: eight hundred thousand views. And I realized right then and there,
- 16:33Speaker 3: it's like, okay, I posted that video with I had
- 16:35Speaker 3: like maybe two hundred followers at the time, and I
- 16:39Speaker 3: overnight I got eight hundred thousand views, And I'm like,
- 16:41Speaker 3: wait a minute, So you can literally have like one
- 16:44Speaker 3: hundred followers and you can have hundreds of thousands to
- 16:48Speaker 3: a million people that see a piece of your video.
- 16:51Speaker 3: I'm like, count me in, Like this is crazy. I mean,
- 16:54Speaker 3: obviously this has existed, but I hadn't seen it for myself.
- 16:58Speaker 3: And so, like I said, it did that once and
- 17:00Speaker 3: then was just posting a lot of miscellaneous contents. So
- 17:03Speaker 3: some of it was like me, you know, doing self
- 17:05Speaker 3: improvement advice or making like lists of like my top
- 17:08Speaker 3: favorite movies, my top favorite rappers, like stuff like that.
- 17:11Speaker 3: But it wasn't anything where like I could have built
- 17:14Speaker 3: a brand out of it. So after those ten months,
- 17:17Speaker 3: I hit eight hundred K, but I kind of hit
- 17:18Speaker 3: a wall mentally with it where I was like, I
- 17:21Speaker 3: got to I gotta do something else. This isn't it.
- 17:23Speaker 3: And so I had connected with the child the childhood
- 17:25Speaker 3: friend my brother. We were at like a friend's house.
- 17:28Speaker 3: This is right before I moved out from Virginia the
- 17:30Speaker 3: DC area to Austin, and we kind of just connected
- 17:33Speaker 3: on the fact that hey, we're all from the DC area.
- 17:36Speaker 3: A lot you know a lot of us. If you
- 17:39Speaker 3: know anything about DC, it's a very structured city, very
- 17:43Speaker 3: federal like, we've centered around a lot of federal agencies.
- 17:46Speaker 3: Government jobs, contracting, defense, it's not entrepreneurial, so we kind
- 17:51Speaker 3: of gravitated towards one another. Being that my brother, myself,
- 17:53Speaker 3: and our friend at the time, we were all kind
- 17:56Speaker 3: of doing our own theme, so we just kind of
- 17:58Speaker 3: went back and forth and a year goes by, but
- 18:01Speaker 3: it was ultimately my sophomore year in April twenty twenty
- 18:04Speaker 3: one where the three of us were like, hey, the
- 18:08Speaker 3: creator economy right now is like a five hundred billion
- 18:10Speaker 3: dollar industry, and we all kind of have different skill sets.
- 18:14Speaker 3: My brother was an analytics genius, I knew content. My
- 18:17Speaker 3: other partner had a digital marketing background. We're like, let's
- 18:20Speaker 3: let's let's sort of a media channel together. All of
- 18:22Speaker 3: our skill sets kind of complement one another, and we're like,
- 18:25Speaker 3: let's start a business media channel. So we started the
- 18:28Speaker 3: channel originally and it was just the three of us
- 18:31Speaker 3: that were making the content ourselves about business. We weren't
- 18:33Speaker 3: ablen to doing interviews when we started out the channel,
- 18:36Speaker 3: but we're like, nobody gives a shit about three young
- 18:38Speaker 3: twenty year old kids talking about business content. We're like,
- 18:41Speaker 3: you know, we grew from zero to twenty five k
- 18:43Speaker 3: in like six months, but we're.
- 18:44Speaker 1: Like that's amazing.
- 18:45Speaker 2: Then yeah, it's great.
- 18:47Speaker 3: However, again kind of how I hit that while with
- 18:49Speaker 3: the other one, with this one, I was still like
- 18:51Speaker 3: how do we It was all over the place where
- 18:53Speaker 3: like how can we kind of be different? And even
- 18:56Speaker 3: though you know, street interviews have been around for twenty years,
- 19:00Speaker 3: like every major news site or channel you know has
- 19:05Speaker 3: done street interviews with people, but I'm like, it wasn't
- 19:08Speaker 3: done in a way in which I saw like the opportunity.
- 19:11Speaker 3: So we just started going around cold approaching people, you know,
- 19:15Speaker 3: finding people that have industry experience of twenty thirty forty
- 19:19Speaker 3: years in different businesses from tech to real estate, to
- 19:21Speaker 3: finance to general entrepreneurship, and just tried to get those
- 19:25Speaker 3: insights and be able to package it and pass it
- 19:27Speaker 3: on to the younger generation. So that was you know,
- 19:30Speaker 3: sometime in twenty twenty one, and fast forward to twenty
- 19:33Speaker 3: twenty five, grew it to twelve million followers. We've done
- 19:37Speaker 3: over four billion views in the last you know, four years,
- 19:39Speaker 3: and I've learned a ton about business, you know, content creation, virality, everything.
- 19:46Speaker 3: Now we're definitely some setbacks and adversity on the way
- 19:49Speaker 3: as we were, you know, building, but Ultimately, it's been
- 19:52Speaker 3: an incredible a journeys.
- 19:55Speaker 2: I love failure absolutely well. I'm happy to.
- 19:57Speaker 1: Get you or speed bumps or road bump, so.
- 20:00Speaker 3: You know this, this is one that's been very I
- 20:04Speaker 3: think this story is very helpful for a lot of people.
- 20:06Speaker 3: So one of the best pieces of advice that I've
- 20:09Speaker 3: ever received was from a gentleman in Houston. His name
- 20:12Speaker 3: Steale Woods made like sixteen million dollars in a year,
- 20:16Speaker 3: and you know, the best entrepreneurship advice that he gave
- 20:19Speaker 3: me was stay small enough long enough, and you'll be
- 20:21Speaker 3: big enough soon enough. And I absolutely loved that. All
- 20:26Speaker 3: the wealthiest people will tell you to the best investment
- 20:29Speaker 3: you can make, especially when you're starting to become profitable
- 20:32Speaker 3: and actually make money, is reinvesting and putting it back
- 20:35Speaker 3: into the business. The reason why I bring this up
- 20:39Speaker 3: is because this was very relevant to what happened to us,
- 20:43Speaker 3: and had it not been for that, the three of
- 20:45Speaker 3: us would have been screwed one hundred percent. So we're
- 20:47Speaker 3: about a year into the channel. So my other partner, Josh,
- 20:52Speaker 3: he had dropped out so he had gone full time with.
- 20:54Speaker 2: This channel college. Yea, I love that, so he.
- 20:58Speaker 3: He before we even started. He he dropped out years ago.
- 21:01Speaker 3: Like I said, he's a bit older, so you know,
- 21:04Speaker 3: he dropped out to pursue digital marketing agency years ago,
- 21:06Speaker 3: so he had already dropped out, but he you know,
- 21:10Speaker 3: his digital marketing agency had a partner. They kind of
- 21:12Speaker 3: went through separate ways, and then when he started doing this,
- 21:15Speaker 3: he went full time with the content channel. Like really
- 21:17Speaker 3: before we were ever making money. And as I said,
- 21:20Speaker 3: with like media content creation, it's a long game unless
- 21:23Speaker 3: you want to dilute your brand, Like you're not going
- 21:25Speaker 3: to be making good money off of content for at
- 21:27Speaker 3: least you know, a year or two. But so anyways,
- 21:30Speaker 3: we're like a year, year and a half in by
- 21:32Speaker 3: this point, I'm probably a junior in college. My brother
- 21:36Speaker 3: is now graduated at the time, so he's full time
- 21:41Speaker 3: on the business. My other partner, Josh, is full time.
- 21:42Speaker 3: The three of us are full time, and we're at
- 21:45Speaker 3: a point now where you know, this is what twenty
- 21:48Speaker 3: twenty one, so a lot of people don't know this.
- 21:51Speaker 3: Twenty twenty was the first year that Facebook ever stagnated users,
- 21:55Speaker 3: meaning meaning in the entire twenty plus years that Facebook
- 21:59Speaker 3: has existed, did the only year twenty twenty was the
- 22:03Speaker 3: first year that they stopped growing. And the reason why
- 22:07Speaker 3: they stopped growing is because you've got TikTok, which from
- 22:10Speaker 3: a short video perspective, just started crushing everybody. Instagram had
- 22:14Speaker 3: adapted with the reels, and obviously Instagram at the time
- 22:17Speaker 3: was a little bit more relevant that it was a
- 22:19Speaker 3: new or app.
- 22:19Speaker 2: Facebook was a lot older.
- 22:21Speaker 3: So Facebook sees this and they go, you know what,
- 22:24Speaker 3: we got to start incentivizing people to create content, create
- 22:27Speaker 3: videos on Facebook. So they rolled out this monetization program
- 22:32Speaker 3: on there. It's paying creators a lot of money. And
- 22:35Speaker 3: so we're about a year into the Hard Knocks channel
- 22:39Speaker 3: and we get invited into this program and for a
- 22:41Speaker 3: couple months in the program, we're making twenty five to
- 22:44Speaker 3: thirty five thousand dollars a month. So this is like
- 22:47Speaker 3: a year to year and a half into Hard Knocks. However,
- 22:52Speaker 3: we knew content, but we didn't know the media business.
- 22:57Speaker 3: So for that reason, our entire business model and our
- 22:59Speaker 3: time mid monetization was just relying solely on ad revenue.
- 23:03Speaker 3: We didn't have a content agency at the time. We
- 23:06Speaker 3: have one now. We weren't monetizing in any other ways.
- 23:10Speaker 3: We were approached every once in a while to do
- 23:12Speaker 3: like a brand partnership or create content for a brand.
- 23:14Speaker 3: But even then it's like, at the time, we had
- 23:16Speaker 3: a couple hundred thousand followers on TikTok and didn't really
- 23:18Speaker 3: have a huge presence on Instagram, so we weren't making
- 23:20Speaker 3: any great money off of brands. And there's three co founders. However,
- 23:24Speaker 3: the ad revenue for those couple months that we were
- 23:26Speaker 3: making twenty five to thirty five thousand off of Facebook,
- 23:29Speaker 3: We're like, man, this is incredible, this is great. And
- 23:33Speaker 3: again one of those reoccurring pieces of advice that we
- 23:37Speaker 3: were receiving was to again put the money back into
- 23:39Speaker 3: the business. Don't be greedy, don't take the money for yourself, right,
- 23:44Speaker 3: which is what we did. So during those months that
- 23:47Speaker 3: we were getting paid like that, we were all paying
- 23:49Speaker 3: ourselves two thousand dollars a month, which is literally just
- 23:53Speaker 3: enough to cover rent and expenses. So we know, none
- 23:56Speaker 3: of us were saving money. We were just taking the
- 23:59Speaker 3: two thousand dollars month out each, you know, for the
- 24:02Speaker 3: three of us, which covered our rent, covered everything else.
- 24:05Speaker 3: Everything else went back into the business. Out of that
- 24:07Speaker 3: twenty five to thirty k well, when you post a
- 24:10Speaker 3: video on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or YouTube. I
- 24:14Speaker 3: tell people this, when you post on their platform, you
- 24:18Speaker 3: no longer own that content. They own that content.
- 24:21Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
- 24:22Speaker 3: Well, they do because at the end of the day, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,
- 24:26Speaker 3: then they can decide whether that piece of content stays up.
- 24:29Speaker 3: They can decide whether they want to pay you offered
- 24:31Speaker 3: or not. That's what I'm more so. Obviously, you as
- 24:32Speaker 3: the creator that posts it, that posts the content, Yes,
- 24:36Speaker 3: do you technically own the content. Sure, But at the
- 24:38Speaker 3: end of the day, when you post on their platform,
- 24:40Speaker 3: who owns the platform?
- 24:41Speaker 2: They do.
- 24:42Speaker 3: So for that reason, we posted a piece of content
- 24:45Speaker 3: on Facebook and it was our own interview, but something
- 24:50Speaker 3: got flagged and we ended up getting demonetized. So we
- 24:53Speaker 3: go from making like twenty five to thirty five thousand
- 24:55Speaker 3: dollars a month to literally like three to four thousand
- 24:59Speaker 3: dollars a month off of just Tiktoka. TikTok was still paying,
- 25:02Speaker 3: but TikTok at the time, you know, you know, paid pennies.
- 25:06Speaker 2: Compared to what they were paying.
- 25:07Speaker 3: So we go from making twenty five to thirty five
- 25:10Speaker 3: thousand dollars a month all the way down to three
- 25:12Speaker 3: to four thousand dollars a month between three people.
- 25:14Speaker 1: Wow.
- 25:15Speaker 3: And it was like that for a couple of months.
- 25:17Speaker 3: And you know, that's kind of when we're starting to
- 25:19Speaker 3: have the conversation like do we disband, Like do we.
- 25:22Speaker 1: Like we were like, yeah, well, well just because it's like.
- 25:26Speaker 3: You know, we weren't we weren't making any money off
- 25:28Speaker 3: of it, and it's like they were full time and
- 25:30Speaker 3: it's like, you know, again making three to four thousand
- 25:32Speaker 3: dollars a month, like, but what kept us afloat again
- 25:36Speaker 3: was those couple of months where we were only paying
- 25:38Speaker 3: us those two thousand dollars. We put a lot of
- 25:40Speaker 3: money back into the business, so we had a decent account.
- 25:43Speaker 3: We're like, hey, we just need to figure this this
- 25:45Speaker 3: thing out and we can you know, we'll be able
- 25:48Speaker 3: to bounce back. And so at that moment we came
- 25:51Speaker 3: to that, we realized that you cannot build a business
- 25:54Speaker 3: off of ad revenue because you don't determine how much
- 25:56Speaker 3: you're paid, you don't determine when you're paid, you don't
- 25:58Speaker 3: determine whether we get paid or not off of that content.
- 26:02Speaker 3: So we're like, we need to get savvy and it
- 26:04Speaker 3: reminds me of Also in twenty twenty three, I had
- 26:06Speaker 3: gone to like my first ever Mastermind with a bunch
- 26:09Speaker 3: of eight figure, seven, eight nine figure internet marketers, and
- 26:12Speaker 3: a gentleman said a statement to me that stuck with me,
- 26:15Speaker 3: you know, to this day, is that great businessmen are
- 26:18Speaker 3: terrible content creators, and great content creators are terrible businessmen.
- 26:22Speaker 3: And it's very true because some of the most successful
- 26:25Speaker 3: business people I know, they're terrible at content. Right, they
- 26:28Speaker 3: know their business, but they don't they don't know content. Yeah, yeah,
- 26:31Speaker 3: And most content creators that I know are broke. Like
- 26:34Speaker 3: most content creators, they don't understand the media business. They
- 26:36Speaker 3: don't know how to monetize it. So then we began
- 26:39Speaker 3: to look at, Okay, there's three of us, what do
- 26:43Speaker 3: we do to be able to kind of get on
- 26:45Speaker 3: the right track and figure this thing out? And it
- 26:48Speaker 3: reminds me of I'll give you one other less said
- 26:50Speaker 3: it than you know, you'll pass it back on to you.
- 26:52Speaker 3: But there was a gentleman out in Scottsdale, Arizona. He
- 26:55Speaker 3: owns like four eight figure businesses, huge real estate guys.
- 26:58Speaker 3: Name's Cody Sperber, And he told me a piece of
- 27:01Speaker 3: advice that you know, I love this piece of advice
- 27:04Speaker 3: is that a savvy entrepreneur he looks at their business
- 27:08Speaker 3: and looks at two things. Number one, all of the
- 27:11Speaker 3: people making money off of their efforts, and number two,
- 27:13Speaker 3: all of the different ways in which they can be
- 27:15Speaker 3: making money. So it's that vertical integration. So the wealthiest,
- 27:18Speaker 3: the most successful people that I know, they look at
- 27:21Speaker 3: their core business and they look at how are my
- 27:25Speaker 3: competitors or how are my customers, like how are people
- 27:27Speaker 3: making money off of me? And I'm going to go
- 27:29Speaker 3: start a business there where I'm going I'm going to
- 27:30Speaker 3: integrate my business there or like okay, us right, our
- 27:35Speaker 3: core business was media was attention. How can we use
- 27:38Speaker 3: our platform to then begin to make money? Which is
- 27:40Speaker 3: exactly what we did. And you know our first thing
- 27:43Speaker 3: we started, Okay, we're interewing wealthy people. We're going viral
- 27:45Speaker 3: with wealthy people. That's start a marketing agency to therefore,
- 27:50Speaker 3: we'll go viral with them and then we'll close them
- 27:52Speaker 3: on doing their content. Let's build their personal brands. And
- 27:55Speaker 3: so we have a content agency where we work with
- 27:57Speaker 3: some of the biggest, most well known entrepreneurs in the space.
- 28:01Speaker 3: And we do their personal brand. So it's like, okay,
- 28:03Speaker 3: there's one business. We're like, Okay, the number one question
- 28:06Speaker 3: that we get asked is how do you connect with
- 28:08Speaker 3: these people? How do we get access to them? So
- 28:11Speaker 3: we started and built one of the biggest online communities
- 28:13Speaker 3: for business owners to get I saw that connect and
- 28:16Speaker 3: be able to you know, learn every week from them.
- 28:19Speaker 3: So it's like, that's that's what it's all about. It's like, Okay,
- 28:22Speaker 3: this is our core business. It's attention, we get eyeballs.
- 28:25Speaker 3: How do we now monetize this? And you know, in
- 28:27Speaker 3: doing that, you know, that's that's what enabled us to
- 28:30Speaker 3: kind of come back from that adversity was having that,
- 28:33Speaker 3: you know, a couple months of operating expenses in the business.
- 28:36Speaker 3: We're like, hey, you know, we can either give this
- 28:39Speaker 3: up or we can keep going. And we did and
- 28:41Speaker 3: it was worth it.
- 28:42Speaker 1: Wow. And then during this little this, I want to say,
- 28:46Speaker 1: how long was your hurdle for that gap?
- 28:48Speaker 2: Six months at least?
- 28:50Speaker 1: Yeah, you guys were almost getting down to the wire.
- 28:52Speaker 2: It was a while.
- 28:53Speaker 3: I mean, I mean yeah, I mean I would say
- 28:55Speaker 3: maybe like three to four months into it, we may
- 28:57Speaker 3: have closed our first client, but we didn't know anything
- 28:59Speaker 3: about about scaling. We didn't we didn't know. I mean again,
- 29:02Speaker 3: we've been learning a lot about business, but we weren't
- 29:05Speaker 3: implementing it. And I always say that information changes situations,
- 29:08Speaker 3: but only through implementation. And so you know, now it's like, okay,
- 29:12Speaker 3: we are genuinely like learning from these people and we're
- 29:15Speaker 3: constantly adapting, like we'll pay to have a phone call
- 29:18Speaker 3: with somebody successful. I mean obviously now our rolodex, our
- 29:21Speaker 3: network is unbelievable, and you know, we do our best
- 29:25Speaker 3: to provide a value to as many people as possible,
- 29:28Speaker 3: and as many of these people that we really really
- 29:31Speaker 3: you know, value and therefore it's like hey, if we
- 29:33Speaker 3: go to ask them a question, or hey, would you
- 29:35Speaker 3: invest in this if you were us or whatever it
- 29:37Speaker 3: may be, it's now like never like a hard ass,
- 29:40Speaker 3: just because we've really done a good job about building
- 29:42Speaker 3: those relationships and stuff like that. But it was it
- 29:44Speaker 3: was a good bit of time, you know. So and
- 29:47Speaker 3: then I would say, we really didn't start making good
- 29:49Speaker 3: money until probably sometime mid to late twenty twenty three,
- 29:54Speaker 3: and then we started to clear six figure months. I
- 29:57Speaker 3: would say probably back like last like June, like last June,
- 30:03Speaker 3: like like last summer was when we started. Ever since
- 30:05Speaker 3: then we've been clearing six figure months and then our
- 30:07Speaker 3: biggest month was this past December where we did over
- 30:10Speaker 3: six hundred thousand and revenue and then half a million of.
- 30:12Speaker 2: That was profit. So geez, the half a million profit
- 30:16Speaker 2: last December.
- 30:18Speaker 1: Now, so you have the school that people can they
- 30:23Speaker 1: pay to subscribe, and how when you were going about
- 30:29Speaker 1: building that school, how did you work out the infrastructure
- 30:35Speaker 1: of how you were going to lay that all out.
- 30:38Speaker 3: This is a great question, and this is where a
- 30:41Speaker 3: lot of people go wrong, is it? And I'll give
- 30:44Speaker 3: you one more little setback.
- 30:46Speaker 1: You can give me as many as you want.
- 30:47Speaker 3: Okay, absolutely well, this is just probably like the worst
- 30:51Speaker 3: one of, if not the worst financial decisions that us
- 30:53Speaker 3: as a company ever made. So one of the biggest
- 30:56Speaker 3: mistakes that content creators make is that they get shiny
- 31:00Speaker 3: object syndrome to where they're like, Okay, you know, I
- 31:05Speaker 3: just went viral, I'm getting followers and all this, and
- 31:07Speaker 3: that I'm going to start a clothing company. I'm going
- 31:09Speaker 3: to start an e commerce store, without even you know,
- 31:14Speaker 3: thinking about the most important thing within the audience, which.
- 31:17Speaker 2: Is why they actually follow you.
- 31:19Speaker 3: So what we did probably this may be like a
- 31:24Speaker 3: you know, twenty twenty two, so probably when we started
- 31:27Speaker 3: to make a little bit of money. Actually maybe maybe
- 31:30Speaker 3: this was actually I'm sorry, this was actually probably before
- 31:33Speaker 3: we even got demonetized. So we were again having those
- 31:37Speaker 3: months where we were doing decently off of like just
- 31:39Speaker 3: the ad revenue, probably like a year, year and a
- 31:42Speaker 3: half in, and we're like, you know, what we should do.
- 31:45Speaker 3: We're like, since we're doing you know, these interviews that
- 31:49Speaker 3: are motivational, we're interviewing successful people, we should start we
- 31:52Speaker 3: should start a canvas store, like you know how like
- 31:55Speaker 3: there's like motivational.
- 31:56Speaker 2: Like law art and stuff like that.
- 31:59Speaker 3: We're like, that'd be a great idea, and we're all going, yeah, yeah, yeah,
- 32:02Speaker 3: like let's do it. And we even to the point
- 32:06Speaker 3: where we were serious about it. We started to work
- 32:08Speaker 3: on it, and we even, you know, for three months
- 32:13Speaker 3: hired or invested in invested five thousand dollars a month
- 32:19Speaker 3: in an outsourced CMO. I mean, we had somebody that
- 32:22Speaker 3: we knew who was incredibly talented, like probably one of
- 32:26Speaker 3: the most well respected Internet marketers e commerce entrepreneurs that
- 32:30Speaker 3: I actually know to this day is absolutely crushing it.
- 32:34Speaker 3: We paid them five thousand dollars a month for three
- 32:36Speaker 3: months to come in and help us build it out
- 32:38Speaker 3: and help us market it and sell it. Offer us
- 32:40Speaker 3: to maybe sell five to ten canvases. So we spent
- 32:44Speaker 3: fifteen thousand dollars and literally we lost more when you
- 32:48Speaker 3: talk about paying for the designers, the management, like everything else.
- 32:52Speaker 3: And the reason why is because we never talked to
- 32:55Speaker 3: the customer. We never talked to the audience. We never
- 32:57Speaker 3: figured out is this something that they even want, that
- 32:59Speaker 3: they interested in?
- 33:00Speaker 2: And so.
- 33:03Speaker 3: But like Mark Cuban always says, is that it's like
- 33:05Speaker 3: nobody's going to come save your business. Like a lot
- 33:06Speaker 3: of people have this idea that, oh, you know, I
- 33:10Speaker 3: completely agree with the fact that do you need to
- 33:12Speaker 3: hire like people, bring them on, do partnerships a million percent?
- 33:17Speaker 3: Like my whole thing is is like I'd rather have
- 33:19Speaker 3: a slice of the pie than one hundred percent of
- 33:21Speaker 3: a great Whereas like if people are genuinely talented and they're.
- 33:25Speaker 1: The way you talk is just you got to repeat that.
- 33:28Speaker 2: It's in sound bites, right, No, but the one.
- 33:31Speaker 1: Hundred of piece of a pie.
- 33:34Speaker 2: This is genuinely like beautiful.
- 33:36Speaker 3: One of my favorite and the most important things because
- 33:38Speaker 3: a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs they want to
- 33:40Speaker 3: be the solo preneur and do everything themselves without realizing that, hey,
- 33:45Speaker 3: maybe you know, like I said, perfect example is like
- 33:47Speaker 3: a content creator who's great at content, but they suck
- 33:49Speaker 3: at business. It's like, dude, go find somebody that is
- 33:54Speaker 3: incredible at business. They know how to build this out,
- 33:56Speaker 3: they know how to market it, and you just do
- 33:59Speaker 3: what you do, which is create content. And that's like
- 34:00Speaker 3: my philosophy even with me and my two other co founders,
- 34:04Speaker 3: my brother and my friend, is like, hey, they know
- 34:06Speaker 3: that I'm incredible at creating content. So with their philosophy
- 34:10Speaker 3: with me, it's like, due, go book the flight. You
- 34:12Speaker 3: want to go film there, just go book it. Even
- 34:14Speaker 3: in those even before we were starting to make like
- 34:16Speaker 3: really good money.
- 34:17Speaker 2: They were like, dude, just book the flight. Just book it,
- 34:19Speaker 2: you know, And.
- 34:21Speaker 3: That's like a great way to operate if you're strategic
- 34:24Speaker 3: about it. But yes, it's you know, as an entrepreneur,
- 34:28Speaker 3: I would rather have a slice of a pie than
- 34:30Speaker 3: one hundred percent of a great meaning. It's like if
- 34:32Speaker 3: you partner up with somebody who is extremely good at
- 34:36Speaker 3: an area where you're not and you in your skill
- 34:38Speaker 3: sets can complement one another. You're going to make significantly
- 34:41Speaker 3: more money even though you're giving split of the money,
- 34:45Speaker 3: as opposed to you trying to do everything yourself, because
- 34:47Speaker 3: there's only so much that you can do. There's only
- 34:49Speaker 3: so much you know, area for growing that you can
- 34:52Speaker 3: do if you're trying to do everything yourself. And so, yeah,
- 34:55Speaker 3: I think that that was, you know, incredibly important likes.
- 34:58Speaker 3: What I was saying is like, I'm a huge advocate
- 35:00Speaker 3: of that. But at the same time, it's like, you know,
- 35:04Speaker 3: most people they fail to ask their audiences why people
- 35:08Speaker 3: follow them. And over the last couple of years, as
- 35:12Speaker 3: we were starting to interview more super high network people,
- 35:16Speaker 3: billionaires and stuff like that, people were always asking us
- 35:19Speaker 3: and dming us saying, hey, who is this How can
- 35:22Speaker 3: I get access to them? How you know, could you
- 35:26Speaker 3: send us their contact and all this stuff. So to us,
- 35:30Speaker 3: we're like, Okay, the number one reason why people reach
- 35:32Speaker 3: out to us is literally for the ability to get
- 35:36Speaker 3: in contact with or to figure out how we're meeting
- 35:39Speaker 3: these people. And so we started to realize that, hey,
- 35:42Speaker 3: you know what business we're actually in, Yes, we're in media.
- 35:46Speaker 3: But we're in the bridging business where we're bridging everyday
- 35:49Speaker 3: people consumers of content, and we're bridging them directly to
- 35:55Speaker 3: the you know, some of the most successful people in
- 35:57Speaker 3: the entire world. And for that reason, you know, we're like, okay,
- 36:02Speaker 3: let's it just made sense for us to think about
- 36:06Speaker 3: building a community that connects the everyday people directly to
- 36:10Speaker 3: these people, which is exactly what we did. And obviously
- 36:13Speaker 3: it took you know, six months plus to be able
- 36:16Speaker 3: to build out the infrastructure. You know, there's a lot
- 36:19Speaker 3: of on demand content, master classes, there's weekly calls. But
- 36:22Speaker 3: we also did a lot of you know, polling, like
- 36:25Speaker 3: saying stuff like, hey, if we built an online platform
- 36:27Speaker 3: or community, what would you guys want to see in there?
- 36:30Speaker 3: Or out of these four things, what is the number one,
- 36:33Speaker 3: like most important or like thing that you would want
- 36:35Speaker 3: the most And we did a lot of that for
- 36:37Speaker 3: a couple of months, and I think that's very important
- 36:38Speaker 3: and very underrated that a lot of people mess up
- 36:41Speaker 3: on when they're building their brand, creating content. Starting to
- 36:45Speaker 3: get some traction is like before going all in saying Okay,
- 36:48Speaker 3: I'm going to start a clothing company, what if people
- 36:50Speaker 3: aren't following you for what you're wearing. Like for example,
- 36:53Speaker 3: I would argue, I would say that I probably know
- 36:56Speaker 3: more about content and you know, just virality, the algorith
- 37:00Speaker 3: them as a whole, more than ninety nine point nine
- 37:02Speaker 3: nine nine nine percent of people. However, people don't follow
- 37:05Speaker 3: me because of that. People don't follow our channel to
- 37:07Speaker 3: the School of hard Knocks, because we know how to
- 37:09Speaker 3: go viral.
- 37:10Speaker 2: So like if I.
- 37:10Speaker 3: Wanted to, you know, build and sell, attempt to sell
- 37:14Speaker 3: the viral video blueprint or how to go from zero
- 37:18Speaker 3: to a million followers on social media, it probably wouldn't hit.
- 37:22Speaker 3: I mean, are there some people that maybe would bite
- 37:24Speaker 3: just because of the sheer amount of volume and eyes
- 37:26Speaker 3: that we have. I'm sure right, But is that what
- 37:30Speaker 3: would make the most sense for our existing audience and
- 37:33Speaker 3: our existing type of content and why people are actually
- 37:35Speaker 3: following us. Definitely not so. And a lot of it
- 37:38Speaker 3: is you have to remove your bias out of it.
- 37:41Speaker 3: You have to remove any emotional attachment that you have to, oh,
- 37:44Speaker 3: I'm great at this, I should go sell this. Yeah,
- 37:46Speaker 3: And when it's like no, it's like what if people
- 37:47Speaker 3: actually want, you know, I interviewed a gentleman. He sold
- 37:51Speaker 3: his company to Hilton for two point two billion dollars.
- 37:53Speaker 3: Stephen Klubek, he's actually running for governor of California. And
- 37:57Speaker 3: he said, and he said that it's like, you know,
- 38:00Speaker 3: the most that's what he always preaches, is like talk
- 38:03Speaker 3: to your customer, talk to the you know, he owned
- 38:06Speaker 3: like over four hundred hotels in thirty five countries and
- 38:09Speaker 3: so that was that's his thing. It's like him being
- 38:11Speaker 3: in the hospitality business. He's always talking to people. He
- 38:14Speaker 3: what can we do better? Well, you know, what is
- 38:15Speaker 3: it that we could add to our resort to improve
- 38:18Speaker 3: and stuff like that. And now his big thing is
- 38:19Speaker 3: like with the people of California is it's like you know,
- 38:22Speaker 3: he his he said it this way that made it
- 38:24Speaker 3: really interesting to me, is like that, like the people
- 38:26Speaker 3: of Californias are like customers of California. And so hearing
- 38:29Speaker 3: that perspective, even shifting it to like what we're doing
- 38:32Speaker 3: as a you know, content creator building out this businesses
- 38:36Speaker 3: like we are always constantly trying to talk to different people.
- 38:40Speaker 3: Are you familiar with Steve Madden the Clothes? So, so
- 38:44Speaker 3: I interviewed him and one of the most fascinating things
- 38:47Speaker 3: that I saw him do after we interviewed him, We're
- 38:49Speaker 3: outside of his you know, apartment in New York City
- 38:53Speaker 3: and he's just stopping you know, random random ladies on
- 38:57Speaker 3: the street, asking.
- 38:57Speaker 2: Where'd you get your shoes from?
- 38:59Speaker 3: And he's just talking different people about what do you
- 39:01Speaker 3: like about them and all that. And I'm like, here's
- 39:02Speaker 3: this Guy's a billionaire, his companies two to three billion
- 39:05Speaker 3: dollars a year in sales, and he's just talking to
- 39:08Speaker 3: random people asking them about their shoes and stuff like that.
- 39:11Speaker 3: And I'm like, that's really interesting. So even I learned
- 39:14Speaker 3: a little bit, a little bit from everybody, but that's
- 39:17Speaker 3: something that I've really you know, those couple things have
- 39:20Speaker 3: really made sense to me when it comes to like
- 39:22Speaker 3: the decision for us building out. That's what went into
- 39:26Speaker 3: thinking about launching the community and the infrastructure for that.
- 39:28Speaker 1: Yeah, I get I get nervous anytime, even with eating
- 39:32Speaker 1: while broke. If I'm like all of our revenue is
- 39:35Speaker 1: coming from one area, I like to see split. I'm like,
- 39:38Speaker 1: I don't mind on one part taking up thirty to
- 39:41Speaker 1: forty percent, but anytime it hits over that forty percent
- 39:45Speaker 1: where all of our revenues coming from, I'm like, we
- 39:48Speaker 1: gotta find something else. We have to start really thinking.
- 39:51Speaker 1: But it seems like you guys started to do that
- 39:54Speaker 1: once to monotize. Once the life supply kind of came out,
- 39:57Speaker 1: you guys were like, oh, snap, was there another painful
- 40:00Speaker 1: lesson in the business where it was just like with that,
- 40:02Speaker 1: you literally kept you guys, started to argue, maybe kept
- 40:06Speaker 1: up at night, started reaching out to your parents like
- 40:08Speaker 1: I don't.
- 40:08Speaker 3: Know, you know, I don't know. I know that one
- 40:12Speaker 3: thing I'll say about the partnership that I have with
- 40:15Speaker 3: my brother and a good friend. And I think this
- 40:18Speaker 3: is also very important because a lot of people will
- 40:20Speaker 3: argue against going into business with friends and family, but
- 40:24Speaker 3: I don't see it that way. I think there's one
- 40:27Speaker 3: thing that you guys do have to have in order
- 40:30Speaker 3: for you to partner up, because I think the beautiful
- 40:33Speaker 3: thing about going into business with family or childhood friends
- 40:37Speaker 3: where you know the kind of people that you are
- 40:40Speaker 3: and what I mean kind of people, not what you're
- 40:41Speaker 3: good at and what you're bad at, but genuinely like
- 40:44Speaker 3: when I see and I hear from a lot of
- 40:46Speaker 3: entrepreneurs about why their business failed or why big companies failed,
- 40:51Speaker 3: a lot of it had to do with a bad
- 40:53Speaker 3: disagreement or dishonesty between the partners or the founders or
- 40:59Speaker 3: whatever it may be. And that's the one thing is
- 41:01Speaker 3: that I can say confidently that you know, between myself,
- 41:05Speaker 3: my brother, my other partner, I know them morally. I
- 41:09Speaker 3: know that our values are all aligned, that we're all
- 41:11Speaker 3: on sync, and that I wouldn't ever have to worry
- 41:14Speaker 3: about somebody taking a dollar behind somebody's back out of
- 41:16Speaker 3: the business or doing something dishonest. I know that for
- 41:19Speaker 3: a fact. I know for a fact that I wouldn't
- 41:20Speaker 3: do that to them, obviously because I love them, but obviously,
- 41:24Speaker 3: like I just was raised in a way that like, hey,
- 41:25Speaker 3: that's not that's not the right thing to do, no
- 41:27Speaker 3: matter what point you get to. And it's it's really
- 41:30Speaker 3: cool to be able to know that and know that, hey,
- 41:32Speaker 3: if we're in this shit together, like even you know,
- 41:35Speaker 3: during what we call like the trench days, where we
- 41:37Speaker 3: were just making two thousand dollars got demonetized down to
- 41:40Speaker 3: the point where we're making we're making like four k
- 41:41Speaker 3: a month collectively for a couple of months. Even during
- 41:44Speaker 3: those days, we were still just very very you know,
- 41:48Speaker 3: close with one another, and we're really in it together.
- 41:50Speaker 3: But the problem with that is going into business with
- 41:54Speaker 3: people that you know and that you love, is that
- 41:57Speaker 3: it does create a sense of comp fortibility for a
- 42:01Speaker 3: lot of people, to where when you're you know, constantly around.
- 42:05Speaker 2: People that you grew up with or that you live with, you.
- 42:08Speaker 3: Can become very comfortable because it's what you're used to,
- 42:10Speaker 3: whereas it's like okay. That's why people always say it's
- 42:12Speaker 3: like get out of your hometown, go do something uncomfortable.
- 42:15Speaker 3: I think that's some of the best advice that you
- 42:16Speaker 3: can ever give somebody is to like literally like leave hometown,
- 42:19Speaker 3: go get uncomfortable. It's gonna you know. To me, low
- 42:22Speaker 3: pressure means low performance. So even causing you to have
- 42:25Speaker 3: a little bit of like pressure where you have to
- 42:28Speaker 3: make you have to meet people, you got to make connections,
- 42:30Speaker 3: you got to build without knowing people. I think that's
- 42:32Speaker 3: a great thing. But I don't think we ever experienced
- 42:37Speaker 3: that comfortability because we were never afraid to put one
- 42:41Speaker 3: another in check. And most importantly, like I said that
- 42:44Speaker 3: one thing that you have to have is that you
- 42:46Speaker 3: cannot be or you cannot be surrounded by a yes man,
- 42:49Speaker 3: and none of us were yes man, meaning if somebody
- 42:53Speaker 3: felt a certain way about something but the other person
- 42:56Speaker 3: completely disagreed. We were not afraid to just butt heads
- 43:00Speaker 3: to the point where it's like it could go on
- 43:02Speaker 3: for a while, just like arguing, like, you know, pretty harshly,
- 43:07Speaker 3: you know, genuinely. Yeah, I would say like yep, not
- 43:09Speaker 3: in not in a nice way sometimes. And that's a
- 43:12Speaker 3: great thing about having that third partners that they were
- 43:14Speaker 3: able to you know, when you have two people or
- 43:17Speaker 3: that third partner's able to kind of go in there
- 43:19Speaker 3: and reason with one of them or go agree with
- 43:21Speaker 3: one of the two, it's you're able to kind of
- 43:24Speaker 3: come to a decision in a better way because that
- 43:26Speaker 3: person who's disagreeing with the other two is like, Okay,
- 43:29Speaker 3: if you two are saying this, then I don't really
- 43:31Speaker 3: don't have a choice because it's like, look, we're there's
- 43:33Speaker 3: three of us here. Maybe I need to see it
- 43:34Speaker 3: from your lens a little bit more. However, it takes
- 43:37Speaker 3: those two to go at it and not be like,
- 43:39Speaker 3: you know, just this person's you know, feeling this way
- 43:42Speaker 3: about it. Oh he's from that way, then then you
- 43:43Speaker 3: know he's absolutely right. We were never like that, and
- 43:46Speaker 3: that was extremely important. So I think that, like you
- 43:49Speaker 3: just whether it's you, you the people that you decide
- 43:53Speaker 3: to partner with, you just cannot be a yes man
- 43:56Speaker 3: or a yes woman towards each other because like again,
- 44:01Speaker 3: it's you got to have those own uncomfortable conversations sometimes
- 44:05Speaker 3: to ultimately make the decision that's going to move the needle,
- 44:08Speaker 3: the furthest for your business or whatever endeavor that you're doing.
- 44:11Speaker 3: So I don't know if there was like a specific
- 44:14Speaker 3: thing in which I mean, I'm sure that there were
- 44:16Speaker 3: a lot of different things here and there on the
- 44:18Speaker 3: way that were but like to me, like those were
- 44:21Speaker 3: the when I think of like setbacks that we had,
- 44:23Speaker 3: it was definitely the one where we completely got demonetized
- 44:27Speaker 3: for months or like a year and a half in
- 44:29Speaker 3: making a couple thousand dollars, you know, or to that point,
- 44:32Speaker 3: we weren't even really paying ourselves. We're just like living
- 44:35Speaker 3: off of our bank accounts in Austin, which is a
- 44:37Speaker 3: more expensive city than most places, not la expensive, but
- 44:40Speaker 3: it's still it is.
- 44:42Speaker 1: But it's definitely more affordable for sure. And you guys
- 44:45Speaker 1: were doing a lot of this too. It seems like
- 44:47Speaker 1: during the pandemic. Can we talk about that, like the
- 44:50Speaker 1: hurdles you faced doing that.
- 44:53Speaker 3: So during the pandemic is when I actually sorted on
- 44:56Speaker 3: my personal account. So that was from you know, December
- 44:59Speaker 3: twenty nine team to like August twenty twenty was like
- 45:02Speaker 3: peak pandemic was when we really was when I started
- 45:05Speaker 3: to grind on TikTok. And so a lot of my
- 45:09Speaker 3: you know, close friends, relatives, people I went to school with,
- 45:14Speaker 3: a lot of them were looking at the pandemic, not
- 45:16Speaker 3: everybody as maybe like a vacation or like time off.
- 45:20Speaker 2: And don't get me wrong.
- 45:21Speaker 3: Like I feel horrible for people that like they were
- 45:25Speaker 3: lined up to go to the school or they were
- 45:26Speaker 3: lined up to do something really great. I mean I
- 45:29Speaker 3: know a ton of people, you know, I think about
- 45:31Speaker 3: all the younger kids, like the athletes, didn't get that
- 45:33Speaker 3: showcasing to different schools or you know whatever it may be,
- 45:37Speaker 3: getting in front of the right people. But I genuinely
- 45:40Speaker 3: took it as such an opportunity. And I think that's
- 45:43Speaker 3: also another important thing as well, is that like when
- 45:45Speaker 3: everybody's kind of you know, chilling out. And obviously there
- 45:49Speaker 3: was a lot of reason why people they had no choice,
- 45:51Speaker 3: because people were getting paid off from companies and in
- 45:54Speaker 3: order for them to go find work, like people weren't
- 45:55Speaker 3: really hiring, Like a lot of businesses were losing tons
- 45:58Speaker 3: of money, especially like if you were some.
- 46:00Speaker 1: And it was like full on shutting down.
- 46:01Speaker 2: Yeah, full on.
- 46:02Speaker 3: Shutting down, right, which was crazy. But I, to me,
- 46:06Speaker 3: looked at COVID as an opportunity to get ahead on honestly,
- 46:09Speaker 3: and that's why, Like I when I was doing my
- 46:13Speaker 3: personal account and I went from zero to eight hundred
- 46:15Speaker 3: K in the ten months, every single day during COVID,
- 46:18Speaker 3: I was posting two to three times a day, every
- 46:20Speaker 3: single day. It didn't matter where I was, whether I
- 46:23Speaker 3: was on a train, flying somewhere, going to visit family,
- 46:27Speaker 3: going to visit relatives. I was just posting NonStop, relentlessly.
- 46:31Speaker 3: So I looked at that as an opportunity to where. Okay, obviously,
- 46:37Speaker 3: you know, I was a senior in high school. Our
- 46:40Speaker 3: semester just ended in like March, which was crazy, and
- 46:43Speaker 3: as opposed to waiting months before moving out to Texas
- 46:46Speaker 3: to go to school in August, I was like, okay,
- 46:48Speaker 3: what could I be doing now?
- 46:49Speaker 2: Until then?
- 46:49Speaker 3: I still worked construction that summer actually, but I was
- 46:52Speaker 3: still doing that, and then I was also I was
- 46:54Speaker 3: as I was doing the construction, but then I was
- 46:57Speaker 3: just blowing up on the social media side of things.
- 47:00Speaker 3: I just looked at this as an opportunity to, you know, hey,
- 47:04Speaker 3: why not run with this just kind of see where
- 47:05Speaker 3: it goes.
- 47:06Speaker 1: Yeah. I love mentorship. I love my mentors I seek
- 47:11Speaker 1: out I try to tell because I mentor a lot
- 47:13Speaker 1: of younger people and I always tell them I like
- 47:15Speaker 1: to seek mentors that aren't in the same line industry,
- 47:19Speaker 1: remotely different industry, completely different, you know, stratosphere Almost For me,
- 47:25Speaker 1: it's like I gain more knowledge you with everyone you interview.
- 47:30Speaker 1: Do you have a particular like handful of mentors that
- 47:34Speaker 1: are like in your or in your roller decks or
- 47:39Speaker 1: do you just everyone that you interviewed that kind of
- 47:42Speaker 1: supports like do you just say, hey, do you want
- 47:44Speaker 1: to be my mentor just trying to figure out.
- 47:47Speaker 3: You know that's that's a really good one. There are
- 47:50Speaker 3: definitely like a handful of people that I would say
- 47:54Speaker 3: that I have in my rollerdecks that I know that
- 47:57Speaker 3: I could text them any time a day or call
- 47:59Speaker 3: them anytime of the day, and that if I needed
- 48:01Speaker 3: something that like they would be there for me. But
- 48:03Speaker 3: I look at it is that in your life you
- 48:07Speaker 3: should have mentors for just about every aspect of your life,
- 48:12Speaker 3: you know, whether it be spiritual mentors. Definitely a Christian,
- 48:16Speaker 3: so I know that there's five to ten people that
- 48:19Speaker 3: I know that know more about the Bible than anybody
- 48:22Speaker 3: else to where if I have a question about this
- 48:24Speaker 3: or you know, spirituality, my faith or whatever, I can
- 48:28Speaker 3: always call on one of them and they'll be able
- 48:29Speaker 3: to give me insights or guidance if I'm struggling with something.
- 48:32Speaker 3: And then also when it comes to the business side
- 48:34Speaker 3: of things, it's like just because we're constantly meeting these people,
- 48:37Speaker 3: we're nurturing, we're building these relationships. You know, a lot
- 48:40Speaker 3: of them maybe I meet once or twice, but I
- 48:43Speaker 3: try and stay in touch with them. I try and
- 48:45Speaker 3: check in on them. Now some of them, you know,
- 48:47Speaker 3: maybe it is literally just for you know, you do
- 48:49Speaker 3: an interview and anything comes up, maybe to do another
- 48:53Speaker 3: one or another opportunity at some point like that, then
- 48:56Speaker 3: we'll make it happen. But I would say I definitely,
- 49:01Speaker 3: and especially when we started our content agency where we
- 49:04Speaker 3: started to work with a lot of super successful entrepreneurs
- 49:08Speaker 3: closely to build their personal brands to strategize and everything
- 49:11Speaker 3: that got us to know them a lot more and
- 49:13Speaker 3: become a lot closer with some of these people. And
- 49:16Speaker 3: so I've got a couple you know that I'll just
- 49:19Speaker 3: kind of like shout out. There's a gentleman. His name's
- 49:21Speaker 3: any Atonukue. He's from Dallas. He owns one of the
- 49:24Speaker 3: largest Sunspa tanning franchises in the entire world. And you know,
- 49:29Speaker 3: he taught he taught us how to delegate. He taught
- 49:31Speaker 3: us how to you know, you know, stop working in
- 49:34Speaker 3: the business and start working on the business, like remove ourselves,
- 49:37Speaker 3: stop being employee entrepreneurs. He's also extremely successful.
- 49:40Speaker 2: In real estate.
- 49:41Speaker 3: Him and another one of my clients. His name is
- 49:43Speaker 3: Todd Napola. He owns hundreds of millions of dollars worth
- 49:46Speaker 3: of real estate out in South Florida. So, you know,
- 49:49Speaker 3: in January this past year, we made our biggest investment ever,
- 49:53Speaker 3: me and my two co founders into a huge real
- 49:56Speaker 3: estate project out in Texas. And the beautiful thing about
- 50:00Speaker 3: having the network that we have and the rowdecks that
- 50:02Speaker 3: we have is that, you know, we're able to send
- 50:04Speaker 3: the deal that we invested in to five ten different
- 50:08Speaker 3: people that are that own tens and hundreds of millions
- 50:10Speaker 3: of dollars worth of real estate where they've invested in
- 50:13Speaker 3: great deals and some not so great deals. And again,
- 50:16Speaker 3: the mentorship thing is like, it's genuinely wisdom without the wounds,
- 50:20Speaker 3: because we're able to ask these people and be able
- 50:23Speaker 3: to get that kind of unanimous decision from them on
- 50:26Speaker 3: whether or not this is a good idea or not
- 50:29Speaker 3: without having that, and we're just going in blind to
- 50:32Speaker 3: a deal or making a decision. The deal could blow
- 50:34Speaker 3: up in our faces or it could ultimately be a bad,
- 50:38Speaker 3: you know, decision. And then and even within that, you're
- 50:41Speaker 3: still going to learn a lot from it to be like, Okay, hey,
- 50:43Speaker 3: if this isn't it, if this isn't you know, then
- 50:45Speaker 3: we probably shouldn't invest here or whatever. But being able
- 50:48Speaker 3: to rely on and have so many great people that
- 50:52Speaker 3: we can reach out to and ask questions about, that's
- 50:55Speaker 3: like a beautiful thing to be able to have, and
- 50:57Speaker 3: we've definitely taken advantage of that. But also it's like,
- 51:00Speaker 3: I look at it that not only do we ask
- 51:03Speaker 3: these people for help, I'm always looking at ways to
- 51:06Speaker 3: be able to add value to people. And I think
- 51:08Speaker 3: that there's a lot a lot of power in that
- 51:09Speaker 3: and what a lot of younger people and people from
- 51:12Speaker 3: all across the board, what they struggle with is that
- 51:14Speaker 3: when they're trying to connect with people who are you know,
- 51:17Speaker 3: higher net worth or you know, money's not everything, but
- 51:20Speaker 3: like just in a capacity, when somebody's trying to connect
- 51:23Speaker 3: with somebody that seems like maybe like out of reach
- 51:25Speaker 3: or that it's like a long shot. A big problem
- 51:28Speaker 3: is because they make it all about them, yeah, when
- 51:30Speaker 3: in reality, it's like how do you make it about
- 51:33Speaker 3: this person every single time? It's like you should always
- 51:36Speaker 3: be looking at how I can deliver value to this
- 51:38Speaker 3: person off the bat, and not for them to come
- 51:42Speaker 3: try and come up with ways of how you can
- 51:43Speaker 3: like be intentional about what you can do for that person,
- 51:46Speaker 3: how you can help them out, how you can add
- 51:48Speaker 3: value to their business or whatever that they're doing on
- 51:51Speaker 3: a regular basis and not saying hey, I'd love to
- 51:53Speaker 3: come work for you for free and come add value
- 51:55Speaker 3: for you. It's like okay, but then now that person
- 51:57Speaker 3: has to think about what you can actually do for them.
- 51:59Speaker 3: It's like they probably don't even they probably don't even
- 52:01Speaker 3: need you. Whereas it's like, okay, you have you have
- 52:03Speaker 3: a skill set here, this person's clearly lacking that. Boom,
- 52:06Speaker 3: go and tell them exactly what you what and how
- 52:08Speaker 3: you're going to do it for them, and it gives
- 52:10Speaker 3: them much more of a reason and incentive to connect
- 52:12Speaker 3: with you.
- 52:13Speaker 2: So I think that, you.
- 52:15Speaker 3: Know, there's there's a lot to be said about that though,
- 52:18Speaker 3: as well as in trying to like connect with and
- 52:20Speaker 3: network with the right people, A lot of it just
- 52:22Speaker 3: comes down to straight up just adding value to those
- 52:25Speaker 3: people and those relationships to make them lasting and to
- 52:28Speaker 3: make them worth it for the person who's taken the
- 52:30Speaker 3: time to connect with you, because a lot of you know, mentorship,
- 52:34Speaker 3: if it's not organic, it's literally going to be like paid.
- 52:37Speaker 3: You know, some of these people it's crazy, which is
- 52:39Speaker 3: is almost all the time worth it is long as
- 52:42Speaker 3: long as it's with the right person. But you know,
- 52:44Speaker 3: to me, I mean, we built our network organically without
- 52:48Speaker 3: spending a dollar on I mean, we've gone to masterminds
- 52:50Speaker 3: and events and we've paid for people's time before for sure,
- 52:53Speaker 3: which I think is necessary in a lot of different capacities.
- 52:56Speaker 3: But just from building what we built, you know, we've
- 52:59Speaker 3: got and hundreds of people in front of you know,
- 53:03Speaker 3: multi multime millions of people. So giving them that attention,
- 53:07Speaker 3: that exposure a lot of the times makes the people
- 53:09Speaker 3: that we interview feel like, hey, anything you guys need
- 53:11Speaker 3: you let me course so, which which is a really
- 53:14Speaker 3: nice thing to have and be able to do, because
- 53:16Speaker 3: now it's like, hey, a lot of these people, you know,
- 53:18Speaker 3: we have them kind of in our back pocket that like, hey,
- 53:21Speaker 3: if you know, we know that we have a question
- 53:23Speaker 3: about this or want to get their perspective on this,
- 53:25Speaker 3: where as you know, kind of guide us in this way. Hey,
- 53:28Speaker 3: this person's the best in the world at this, let's
- 53:30Speaker 3: go figure out, you know what we should do.
- 53:31Speaker 1: Yeah, and I know I haven't let you eat not
- 53:34Speaker 1: one bite. We're gonna I'm gonna let you eat this
- 53:37Speaker 1: cold Chick fil a right after this last question, And
- 53:41Speaker 1: my question is what's a day in the life of James?
- 53:46Speaker 1: Just really am trying to get to know you, So
- 53:48Speaker 1: I just want to know wake up today. Obviously there
- 53:50Speaker 1: was a text for me in there, but what's the
- 53:52Speaker 1: day in the life of you? On average?
- 53:54Speaker 3: Yeah, Well that's what's really interesting. Like I said, I'm
- 53:57Speaker 3: not the best person at keeping the schedule there's times
- 54:00Speaker 3: we're like all set up three calls for twelve o'clock
- 54:03Speaker 3: and I'll just I'll move all of them back like
- 54:05Speaker 3: twenty minutes. And so that's again something that I'm not
- 54:08Speaker 3: great at and obviously like depending on you know, the
- 54:12Speaker 3: opportunity and how pressing something is, it's like, okay, I
- 54:15Speaker 3: will one hundred percent make this priority, like will not
- 54:18Speaker 3: mess this up or whatever, But you know I would.
- 54:21Speaker 3: I would say typical day in the life. I'll give
- 54:23Speaker 3: you kind of like two different ones. One if I'm
- 54:26Speaker 3: home base here in Austin versus like if I'm traveling,
- 54:29Speaker 3: because that is when it kind of gets completely different
- 54:31Speaker 3: because when I'm here in Austin, I do have much
- 54:33Speaker 3: better structures. Like I woke up this morning, I ran
- 54:36Speaker 3: two miles. We're getting a lot more into running. I've
- 54:38Speaker 3: always been like into like lifting, but I'm like, hey,
- 54:40Speaker 3: I'm just for heart and health purposes. Have been wanting
- 54:43Speaker 3: to run a lot more and get a little bit
- 54:45Speaker 3: more that like higher intensity cardio and exercise. And so
- 54:49Speaker 3: I would say, wake up. I like to get the
- 54:51Speaker 3: work out out of the way early. If I have
- 54:53Speaker 3: a couple of calls, depending you know, we've been doing
- 54:55Speaker 3: a lot of stuff out in Dubai and in the
- 54:56Speaker 3: Middle East recently out there, so yeah, we do. There's
- 54:59Speaker 3: a lot of cool st uff going on. But we
- 55:02Speaker 3: did a really cool partnership with the Dubai government and
- 55:05Speaker 3: so that was a big reason why we were out
- 55:07Speaker 3: there or have been out there, and we'll continue to
- 55:09Speaker 3: go out there. I mean, that's probably I've been in
- 55:11Speaker 3: twenty countries. I think Dubaia is my favorite city i've
- 55:13Speaker 3: been to.
- 55:13Speaker 1: I've never been, but I see everyone going there, I'm like, well.
- 55:16Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean obviously I will. I'll say, for us,
- 55:19Speaker 3: do we have a slightly biased perspective, probably just because
- 55:23Speaker 3: you know, we went out there for some specific reasons
- 55:27Speaker 3: and got to do really some incredible things. But even
- 55:29Speaker 3: if you're just going out there to visit, I mean,
- 55:32Speaker 3: it's it's beautiful, it's clean, it's safe, there's a lot
- 55:35Speaker 3: to do, the different ecosystems. You've got the beach, you've
- 55:38Speaker 3: got the desert, you know, the city life, so it's
- 55:41Speaker 3: really neat. I'd highly recommend going out there, and there's
- 55:44Speaker 3: a lot of hitters that are out there as well,
- 55:47Speaker 3: so definitely recommend checking it out. But yeah, I would say,
- 55:51Speaker 3: I mean, I'm a I'm a wake up, workout kind
- 55:54Speaker 3: of guy. Probably eat the first meal around like twelve.
- 55:56Speaker 3: We'll maybe have calls before and after lunch. You know,
- 55:59Speaker 3: maybe I'm wor conon videos, you know, the one task
- 56:02Speaker 3: that I have not been able to give up yet.
- 56:04Speaker 3: And a lot of people like they don't believe this
- 56:07Speaker 3: or understand this. I still edit every single one of
- 56:10Speaker 3: our videos. You edit, I edit every video. If you
- 56:12Speaker 3: look at my last probably five hundred to thousand videos
- 56:16Speaker 3: that we've posted on that channel, the School of Hard Knocks,
- 56:19Speaker 3: I've edited every single one, and each video takes a
- 56:22Speaker 3: minimum of an hour to edit. Like, for example, before
- 56:25Speaker 3: before I came here, I put a video up today
- 56:27Speaker 3: at twelve.
- 56:28Speaker 2: I edited from like ten to twelve today, And I.
- 56:31Speaker 1: Was assuming that you use schedulers.
- 56:35Speaker 3: No, so I mean, so I have a content agency,
- 56:38Speaker 3: and I have we probably have five to ten editors
- 56:42Speaker 3: that work for us. I still edit every one of
- 56:44Speaker 3: our Hard Knocks videos.
- 56:46Speaker 1: That is crazy.
- 56:47Speaker 3: It's crazy because you know I've mentioned I have a client.
- 56:50Speaker 3: His name's Annie, and he's again in Dallas, very successful
- 56:54Speaker 3: entrepreneur out there, and his like I said, a lot
- 56:58Speaker 3: of you hear a lot of you know, successful entrepreneurs
- 57:01Speaker 3: talk about delicating buying back your time right, and that's
- 57:05Speaker 3: his whole thing. It's like, get somebody to do the
- 57:07Speaker 3: job seventy percent as good as you can and then
- 57:10Speaker 3: move on, like you need to stop doing those you know,
- 57:12Speaker 3: they call them the MWA activities, the minimum wage activities.
- 57:16Speaker 2: Editing is definitely one.
- 57:17Speaker 3: Of those activities. However, it's one that I just have
- 57:20Speaker 3: refused to give up.
- 57:22Speaker 1: Why is that, you think?
- 57:23Speaker 3: Is it?
- 57:24Speaker 1: Is it because you don't trust anyone else, particularly with
- 57:27Speaker 1: the brand.
- 57:27Speaker 3: Because I think the number one thing that we are
- 57:32Speaker 3: my partner's not. But I would say that I'm the
- 57:34Speaker 3: absolute best at is taking a twenty minute, twenty minutes
- 57:40Speaker 3: worth of content. Because I would say our interviews, even
- 57:43Speaker 3: the ones on the street are anywhere on average from
- 57:46Speaker 3: ten to twenty to even thirty minutes. I would say
- 57:49Speaker 3: I'm probably the best in the world, or one of
- 57:51Speaker 3: the best in the world at taking twenty to thirty
- 57:54Speaker 3: minutes worth of content and putting it down to one
- 57:59Speaker 3: to one and a half minutes. So the way that
- 58:02Speaker 3: I edit is very interesting, being that I will take,
- 58:06Speaker 3: you know, different parts from three different answers and combine
- 58:10Speaker 3: it into one to make it the most engaging and
- 58:13Speaker 3: entertaining as well as just the overall pacing the flow.
- 58:16Speaker 3: I mean, there's a lot that goes into virality and
- 58:18Speaker 3: like short form content. So I would say that that's
- 58:21Speaker 3: why is that to me? In order if I were
- 58:24Speaker 3: to explain it to somebody, Hey, I want this piece
- 58:28Speaker 3: here and this part there, and let's put these two
- 58:30Speaker 3: answers together and take out this and that. And if
- 58:33Speaker 3: I were to do that and then also do revisions
- 58:35Speaker 3: on top of that, it would take the same amount
- 58:37Speaker 3: of time for me to get one video back as
- 58:39Speaker 3: opposed to me just you know, doing it myself. And
- 58:43Speaker 3: at some point, I'm sure, like I'm gonna have no
- 58:46Speaker 3: decision but to like literally just you know, kind of
- 58:49Speaker 3: give the ropes off to somebody else. And I'm sure
- 58:52Speaker 3: too that I will you know at some point also
- 58:54Speaker 3: just train somebody who's really talented at what they do
- 58:57Speaker 3: from like an editing standpoint and just let them do it. Yeah,
- 59:00Speaker 3: that's that's I mean. So I mean we post I
- 59:02Speaker 3: would say now like every other day or once every
- 59:06Speaker 3: you know, two or three days, So I'm still editing
- 59:08Speaker 3: all the videos which are pretty pretty time consuming.
- 59:10Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie. I love. I love to know
- 59:12Speaker 1: that about you though.
- 59:13Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting.
- 59:14Speaker 1: I would have never thought never not even thanks for sharing.
- 59:17Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. Well when I bring that up to people,
- 59:19Speaker 3: they're like, you edit, I was like, I do edit. Yeah,
- 59:21Speaker 3: I trust me. I have a I'm a premiere pro wizard,
- 59:24Speaker 3: you know, absolutely, I don't.
- 59:25Speaker 1: Edit anything really. Yeah, but I mean our channel isn't
- 59:32Speaker 1: the greatest online.
- 59:33Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean everybody everybody, Yeah, everybody, everybody you know
- 59:38Speaker 3: starts somewhere, you know. But I mean so yeah, I
- 59:41Speaker 3: would say again, editing, workout calls, stuff like that is.
- 59:45Speaker 3: But like a typical day will look like when I'm
- 59:46Speaker 3: like here at home base, and then when I'm traveling,
- 59:50Speaker 3: I mean it's go, go, go, go go. So I
- 59:53Speaker 3: mean it's like, hey, you know, first I was just
- 59:55Speaker 3: in New York City. We did the interview with We
- 59:57Speaker 3: did two really cool people back to back, Barbara Work
- 1:00:00Speaker 3: you know Barber.
- 1:00:00Speaker 1: From Sharp Shed your interview I saw.
- 1:00:03Speaker 3: Yeah, she was yeah, she was great. And then right
- 1:00:05Speaker 3: before her, like thirty minutes before her, we did the
- 1:00:08Speaker 3: one of the owners of Equinox.
- 1:00:09Speaker 1: Do you know Equinox?
- 1:00:11Speaker 3: So yeah, Harvey Spovac. It was another great interview. I
- 1:00:13Speaker 3: haven't posted it yet, but I did them back to back,
- 1:00:16Speaker 3: and even before those two interviews, like I was out
- 1:00:18Speaker 3: on Wall Street for like two hours just filming organic
- 1:00:21Speaker 3: content like any people going in and out of the
- 1:00:23Speaker 3: Stock Exchange. Then did those two interviews, then after them,
- 1:00:26Speaker 3: went back to Wall Street from for a couple more
- 1:00:28Speaker 3: hours before it got dark, then had the community call,
- 1:00:30Speaker 3: and then probably went to go eat some food out
- 1:00:32Speaker 3: in New York City. So, you know, the days, especially
- 1:00:35Speaker 3: because when we're traveling to places, you know we'll be
- 1:00:38Speaker 3: there for maybe two to four days. We try and
- 1:00:40Speaker 3: you know, film as much, take advantage of as much
- 1:00:43Speaker 3: of the opportunities are the people that we can connect
- 1:00:45Speaker 3: with or collaborate with while we're out there. So I think, yeah,
- 1:00:49Speaker 3: it's maybe like a typical day in the life, like
- 1:00:51Speaker 3: here versus on the road. So but no, I was like,
- 1:00:54Speaker 3: I say, no day is ever really the same, especially
- 1:00:57Speaker 3: when we're traveling doing content, because when we're always doing
- 1:00:59Speaker 3: some some interesting things and connecting with some really cool people,
- 1:01:02Speaker 3: so it's always a good time.
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: Wow, Well, thank you so much for your time. I
- 1:01:06Speaker 1: would like to if you can share some of the
- 1:01:09Speaker 1: things that we can look forward to as a school
- 1:01:13Speaker 1: of hard knocked fans, anything we can look forward.
- 1:01:16Speaker 2: To, you know.
- 1:01:17Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean just I would definitely say get a
- 1:01:20Speaker 3: part of the community if you're not already, because I mean,
- 1:01:22Speaker 3: every you know week, we're hosting some crazy great live
- 1:01:26Speaker 3: calls with hyper successful people.
- 1:01:29Speaker 2: You know.
- 1:01:29Speaker 3: This month, we've got three calls. Next week, we got
- 1:01:32Speaker 3: a call with one hundred million dollar venture capital entrepreneur.
- 1:01:35Speaker 3: The week after that and Ma Loom she sold you
- 1:01:38Speaker 3: Solid Corps for a couple hundred million dollars. End of
- 1:01:41Speaker 3: the month we got another good one. So I would
- 1:01:43Speaker 3: say definitely get a part of that. As far as interviews,
- 1:01:46Speaker 3: my thing about this and it's you know, I'll tell
- 1:01:49Speaker 3: you off air. We do have some really cool interviews
- 1:01:53Speaker 3: lined up, but I don't like to say them like publicly,
- 1:01:57Speaker 3: just because I don't know, I feel like a lot
- 1:02:00Speaker 3: of people they celebrate too early, or they you know,
- 1:02:03Speaker 3: they say things before they actually happen, and especially in
- 1:02:06Speaker 3: this world and in this business, these can fall through
- 1:02:09Speaker 3: like that.
- 1:02:09Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:02:09Speaker 3: So even though I'm very optimistic and happy and looking
- 1:02:12Speaker 3: forward to some of the different collapse and stuff like
- 1:02:14Speaker 3: that that we have lined up. I don't like to
- 1:02:16Speaker 3: address it too much publicly just because you never know.
- 1:02:19Speaker 3: I mean, I've came super close to getting like some
- 1:02:22Speaker 3: of the biggest people in the world, and just one
- 1:02:24Speaker 3: little thing can cause it to fall through. So for
- 1:02:27Speaker 3: that reason, I mean, I'll tell my partners and that's it.
- 1:02:30Speaker 3: I't even tell my family sometimes and get something cool
- 1:02:33Speaker 3: coming up. It's like when it happens, it happens, and
- 1:02:35Speaker 3: people will just see it. But now, I mean, that's it. Yeah,
- 1:02:38Speaker 3: just you know, like I said, the community's growing. It's
- 1:02:40Speaker 3: doing really nicely. Got about three thirty five hundred or
- 1:02:43Speaker 3: four thousand members right now, so just trying to keep
- 1:02:46Speaker 3: growing that. And then just like I said, I'm always
- 1:02:49Speaker 3: focused on growth. We got twelve million followers. Now I'm
- 1:02:52Speaker 3: just thinking about, okay, how do we get to fifteen
- 1:02:53Speaker 3: twenty million collective followers in the next year or two,
- 1:02:56Speaker 3: you know, So that's what I'm thinking about.
- 1:02:57Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank you so much for your time.
- 1:03:01Speaker 1: I super value and appreciate it. I will never forget this.
- 1:03:04Speaker 3: Thanks happy to be here, this great podcast, great questions,
- 1:03:08Speaker 3: good food, and thank you for having me on.
- 1:03:10Speaker 2: It means a lot, really, thank you.
- 1:03:12Speaker 1: Guys for tuning in peace Out