Speaker 1: What's up, everybody. Welcome to season two of the Big
Speaker 1: Money Energy Podcast on my Heart Radio. We have a huge,
Speaker 1: huge season coming up. Some of my favorite people ever
Speaker 1: for some reason actually agreed to be here and do
Speaker 1: this with me. And our first guest today needs no introduction,
Speaker 1: but obviously I'm going to introduce him to you anyway.
Speaker 1: We talk about a lot of different things, but it's
Speaker 1: Dave Portnoy bar Stool Sports. You all know him, stool
Speaker 1: president day. You might be a stool, might be a
Speaker 1: fan yourself, but his story is so interesting and we
Speaker 1: talk a lot about the building of bar stools, which
Speaker 1: is what I was the most interested in, the building
Speaker 1: of personal wealth, which you didn't do with the money,
Speaker 1: with the money means to you and the freedom that
Speaker 1: then comes with one having influence, to having power, and
Speaker 1: three having the wherewithal to do whatever you want. And
Speaker 1: we talk about how he built the number one digital
Speaker 1: media company in the world by using fans, by using culture,
Speaker 1: and by using opinions, especially those of a guy like
Speaker 1: him personally, because he's the base of Barstool Sports. So
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here. This is the
Speaker 1: premier episode season two. Let's go. Thanks for being here
Speaker 1: man um, so weant to talk to you about the
Speaker 1: most right is is not so much like public persona,
Speaker 1: although that's super interesting, especially in the last eighteen months.
Speaker 1: But it's like the business of Barstool, right and kind
Speaker 1: of the creation of the brand and creation of kind
Speaker 1: of the I guess, like the movement that you started
Speaker 1: and you found it in Boston, did you always know
Speaker 1: that you were going to be an entrepreneur and start
Speaker 1: your own company. Yeah, I always wanted to do that.
Speaker 1: Did I know it would be Barstool or anything that
Speaker 1: looks like it. No, But I knew I was gonna
Speaker 1: do my own thing. Like I had a bunch of
Speaker 1: different ideas before I start Barstool. I thought Barstool would
Speaker 1: be the easiest to do without money, without funding. It
Speaker 1: didn't look anything like this. It was basically a newspaper.
Speaker 1: It started as like an offshore gambling things. But you
Speaker 1: had them around Boston, you correct, Yeah, you still like
Speaker 1: the news racks. You still see them in every city.
Speaker 1: You know, you open it, you take it for newspaper.
Speaker 1: So I like gambling. I basically called I want to
Speaker 1: do something I liked, enjoyed, and called all these offshore
Speaker 1: gambling companies and basically asked them what they would advertise
Speaker 1: in whether it advertised online anywhere. They actually at the
Speaker 1: time want to get off the Internet because, um so,
Speaker 1: this is why around two thousand three, two thousand four,
Speaker 1: if you went on a site gambling site, there's like fireworks, bombs,
Speaker 1: it just looks like you're getting a credit card stolen. Really,
Speaker 1: um so, they want to get off the Internet and
Speaker 1: onto a physical newspaper. So I sold a bunch of
Speaker 1: ads before it launched. Um but it was really four
Speaker 1: page black and white, hardcore like sports fantasy sports gambling.
Speaker 1: That's where it launched from. But it was always a
Speaker 1: business side, Like I had other ideas. This is the
Speaker 1: one I landed on because I thought I could do
Speaker 1: it the easiest. Probably idiotic to like launch that thinking
Speaker 1: that would be the easiest, but for whatever reason, I
Speaker 1: thought it was the most realistic use furniture company. So
Speaker 1: this was again it's kind of like internet one point.
Speaker 1: Oh when I was doing this, but you know how
Speaker 1: like college kids graduate and they just throw their furniture
Speaker 1: on the side of the street. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: what if we just have a huge couple of trucks
Speaker 1: pick it all up for free, warehouse it and then
Speaker 1: sell it online and it's you know, for cheap, but
Speaker 1: we're getting it for free. So that was one of them, um,
Speaker 1: and I actually think there's some companies that do that now.
Speaker 1: And then the other those kind of like with like
Speaker 1: office furniture. Yeah right, so and then the other one.
Speaker 1: So I was like decent at sports, but like not
Speaker 1: D one but like D three good. And the thought
Speaker 1: was to connect And again you gotta remember the time
Speaker 1: it was with the internet to connect coaches like D
Speaker 1: three coaches with like D three athletes. So high school
Speaker 1: kids we're going to college who still want to play sports,
Speaker 1: and most of the schools don't have recruiting budgets and
Speaker 1: things like that, but the coaches still want good players.
Speaker 1: So it was a way to connect those people. It's
Speaker 1: pretty elaborate, Like I spent two grand at the time,
Speaker 1: a ton of money for me, like developing the software.
Speaker 1: Uh so it was called next step scouting. Um, but
Speaker 1: those are the two, those are the three I decided
Speaker 1: between barstool next Step scouting in the furniture company. And
Speaker 1: how many people started with you when you started barstool
Speaker 1: me just me, but then you started to bring in
Speaker 1: some friends. Yeah, not even friends really, Like I talked
Speaker 1: with my friends about starting it, and everyone was gung ho,
Speaker 1: gung ho. But when the rubber met the road, there
Speaker 1: are nowhere to be found, and I was just like funking,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it. Um, So I started it. And
Speaker 1: then we put ads in the original newspapers like we're
Speaker 1: looking for writers, we're looking people to help, and we
Speaker 1: got like an original four people. But I didn't know
Speaker 1: them prior to the newspaper and they never got paid,
Speaker 1: like we weren't making money. They work for free because
Speaker 1: they enjoyed writing. Um, it's bad timing for them because
Speaker 1: we don't want to say floundered, but we didn't have
Speaker 1: money for a long time, so there's nothing around and
Speaker 1: they all at some point got adult lives, Like I moved.
Speaker 1: This is not worth it. And the timing kind of
Speaker 1: like when they stopped as sort of when we started
Speaker 1: our ascent to them being able to maybe to make money.
Speaker 1: We go on the internet at the time too, or
Speaker 1: then you made that switch. No, So it was in
Speaker 1: newspaper for I don't know two thousand four to two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, two eight, and I used to wake up
Speaker 1: and hand the newspaper out like outside subway stations, and
Speaker 1: a guy who took it like routinely was moving from
Speaker 1: Boston to New York and basically he's like, I loved
Speaker 1: the newspaper. If I build you a website, will you
Speaker 1: put it on the web. I was like, yeah, if
Speaker 1: you want to do that for free, knock yourself out,
Speaker 1: and the original ones. I just take the PDF and
Speaker 1: uploaded the guy uh Ian White ended up being like
Speaker 1: the CTO for Business Insider. So I got very lucky,
Speaker 1: Like sharp guy built me a very easy to use,
Speaker 1: rudimentary another guy who worked for free for quite a while.
Speaker 1: If I'm like, hey, can you change this or do that,
Speaker 1: he'd do it just to be nice. But that was
Speaker 1: the birth of the website. Yeah, not playing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean when I started, if you told somebody I had
Speaker 1: a blog, they'd be what is that? It wasn't a
Speaker 1: term yet. When did you first start noticing that you
Speaker 1: had traction? Because you said you weren't making money for
Speaker 1: a little while. And I feel like every business kind
Speaker 1: of has that moment where it's not working yet, you're
Speaker 1: not making money yet, but you know there's like that
Speaker 1: that little bit of traction that like, I'm gonna keep
Speaker 1: doing this and not go do my furniture idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I always thought it was on the ascent. But
Speaker 1: I've heard a lot of people say that in most businesses,
Speaker 1: I know fail. I also don't know if as a
Speaker 1: rational it turned out I was right. But I've only
Speaker 1: done one business and it worked, so, you know, I
Speaker 1: always thought it was kind of going up. UM, and
Speaker 1: I delivered the papers myself. I go around Boston. Every
Speaker 1: time I went in bars every week, it was like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, more and more people will be like hey,
Speaker 1: waiting for it. So it's just I had that gut
Speaker 1: feeling like hey, this is more and more people are
Speaker 1: picking up on it. But it was probably when I
Speaker 1: really was like, oh we got something here. We did
Speaker 1: a music tour in two thousand and and called Stula Palooza. UM.
Speaker 1: We had never been outside of metro Boston, and the
Speaker 1: thought was, let's go see what the world is like
Speaker 1: outside of Boston. So he picks six colleges. You Mass Quinnipiac,
Speaker 1: you are like local schools, UM, and we hired this kid,
Speaker 1: Sam Adams, who actually went on to a pretty decent
Speaker 1: career at the time, nobody knew who he was, and
Speaker 1: it was music based because we wanted to get liquor sponsors,
Speaker 1: and it's like we had to figure out how to
Speaker 1: do that. I remember, We're going to bars. That was
Speaker 1: the plan. I go to little bars, do little events.
Speaker 1: And the Mullin Center is the arena arena you mass
Speaker 1: And I think maybe a day after we put tickets
Speaker 1: on sale for this little bar, the arena called and
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, we're getting all these calls for this
Speaker 1: concert Stulla Palouza, Like what is it? And it's like,
Speaker 1: it's just a little thing. We're doing at like a bar,
Speaker 1: like a hundred people like would you ever try to
Speaker 1: do it at the Mullin Center? And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: we can't afford that. I don't thinking like I don't
Speaker 1: know how many tickets, Like we're just getting a lot
Speaker 1: of people asked me about it, so we think we
Speaker 1: could do. They cut me a pretty good deal um,
Speaker 1: and we sold. It was just the floor, so it
Speaker 1: was three thousand people and sold out like five minutes,
Speaker 1: and and you thought you were gonna yeah, and it
Speaker 1: happened everywhere at all six and we showed up and
Speaker 1: we've been through a lot now, But it was like
Speaker 1: the Beatles were there, like the signs were in every
Speaker 1: dorm had like vehetle of stool, like we get out
Speaker 1: of the bus, people like grab it. It was insane,
Speaker 1: it really was. And that was that was probably the
Speaker 1: moment when I was like, Okay, we have a very big,
Speaker 1: much bigger base than I ever realized at the time.
Speaker 1: So that was probably the first real eye opening, like
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna have to stop this. When did bar
Speaker 1: still start making money? That tour was the first time
Speaker 1: we made I would say real money, like I I
Speaker 1: paid Sam Adams twenty grands for the six shows, and
Speaker 1: we probably made a couple of hundred grands. Uh, and
Speaker 1: that because he sold way more tickets than in Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then we we moved. We continued with it and
Speaker 1: started doing something called the Blackout Tour. We did a
Speaker 1: couple of different concert things. Actually one was an abject failure.
Speaker 1: We did something called so I saw that I saw
Speaker 1: that first tour. It's like holy cow, Like we did
Speaker 1: three thousand tickets with no talent. Imagine if I bring
Speaker 1: talent in and rent these arenas for Walham, we can
Speaker 1: make a tont Do you remember how much you're charging
Speaker 1: for tickets about fifty bucks. So like we did this,
Speaker 1: uh a concert tour called back to Stool does Mike Posner,
Speaker 1: which was like cooler than me, was big uh wallet
Speaker 1: Mac Miller on it for bucks. Uh. So it was
Speaker 1: like a pretty loaded lineup sold the same exact amount
Speaker 1: of tickets, Like we didn't go up one ticket. It
Speaker 1: was the same, and and we were tied in with
Speaker 1: these like I changed it. I was so confident. I
Speaker 1: rented these huge arenas and I thought we were going
Speaker 1: to business because I owed them so much the ticket sales,
Speaker 1: we we canceled tour and I could basically like loss,
Speaker 1: So we're fine. I could handle that. But what I
Speaker 1: learned from that was people did not care about our talent.
Speaker 1: They were coming for Barstool, they were not coming for
Speaker 1: who we put on it. So we came back with
Speaker 1: a DJ tour called the Blackout Tour UM and that
Speaker 1: was just a DJ I'm still friends with played other
Speaker 1: people's music, and we were charging fifty dollars to come
Speaker 1: to that, and it exploded that that's so crazy. We
Speaker 1: went through a period whereas we do three or four
Speaker 1: shows a night, and I was clearing like net maybe
Speaker 1: like a quarter of a million a night. It was wild,
Speaker 1: like you couldn't get the tickets. It was all just
Speaker 1: in metro Boston. No, We're everywhere throughout the country and
Speaker 1: throughout that entire time you owned bar stool until Yes,
Speaker 1: So twenty fifteen sixteen area a guy Mike Karns, who
Speaker 1: ran Yahoo's sports switched went to churning. Um. And at
Speaker 1: this point we're more successful I think than probably most
Speaker 1: people give us credit for with the merch business and
Speaker 1: sales and like I was making, you know, well into
Speaker 1: seven figures. So I wasn't like, oh, I'm looking for investment.
Speaker 1: I was happy. Um. And you weren't publicizing the success
Speaker 1: at that time or no, right, no, because in a
Speaker 1: weird way, there's always that dynamic of like we's just
Speaker 1: this gritty like blue collar company of band made. I
Speaker 1: was a little bit. I got an int a Tucket
Speaker 1: House that people are very well aware of, and I've
Speaker 1: been honest with like where I'm at in like life
Speaker 1: financially or success wise. When we had nothing, I told you,
Speaker 1: and now we started having it. Um. When you buy
Speaker 1: the Nantucket House, is that their team? Yeah? It was
Speaker 1: pre churning, like that was to be honest, that's my
Speaker 1: favorite place in the world. And if I ever was
Speaker 1: able or fortunate enough to get enough to like buy
Speaker 1: that house, I mean like I made it. So I
Speaker 1: was very happy. Mike Karns reached out to me. That's
Speaker 1: the Churning He worked for Churning UM through a friend
Speaker 1: who actually passed away the old quarterback for the Giants
Speaker 1: in Kentucky, the hefty lefty Jared Lorenzen, who we had
Speaker 1: done some stuff with UM and was friends with. So
Speaker 1: he hit me up. He's like, do you mind if
Speaker 1: I passed uh your name and number along with this
Speaker 1: guy He's he's a friend of a friend of an
Speaker 1: agent or something like yeah. Sure. So he reached out,
Speaker 1: was like, I just want to talk to you, like,
Speaker 1: would you guys ever take investment? Like you know? Maybe
Speaker 1: He's like, well, can I come talk to you? Was
Speaker 1: in San Francisco and he was in Boston the next day,
Speaker 1: So right off the bat, that's like a pretty serious
Speaker 1: sign of somebody's like okay, I'll be there and they're there.
Speaker 1: I'd had a lot of other people reach out. Something's
Speaker 1: always off. It's like they want paid to go see
Speaker 1: them or what all right, how serious are you? And
Speaker 1: I wasn't looking for anything because you guys are making money, right,
Speaker 1: I wasn't actively trying. I I never thought we would.
Speaker 1: What was your like gross revenue around that time? It
Speaker 1: was probably like fifteen million, and like we're probably netting
Speaker 1: like four or five off of that something like that
Speaker 1: now because he didn't need the investment. Yeah right, And
Speaker 1: I'm running the business myself. So it's like I was
Speaker 1: happy he comes in. He's basically was very open ended.
Speaker 1: He's like, if we gave you money, what would you
Speaker 1: do with it? Um? And what do you think your
Speaker 1: strengths and weaknesses are? Uh? And I basically said I
Speaker 1: would create what I considered the first reality seven like blog,
Speaker 1: which is get we're all in different cities, do you
Speaker 1: everyone in New York in the one roof? Put the
Speaker 1: cameras on, just go at it? And that was kind
Speaker 1: of the idea basic um. And I'm like, we don't
Speaker 1: do the business side. Now. I think I could. I
Speaker 1: just didn't really have time. It's like, we have the content,
Speaker 1: that's all we did. But we didn't try to say,
Speaker 1: I like to spend money with us, you had to
Speaker 1: like know somebody who knew something to like get in
Speaker 1: my year because we didn't call back like leads. We
Speaker 1: just like whatever, you can do whatever you want. We
Speaker 1: weren't looking to do that. So it's like we're smart though,
Speaker 1: I mean now, but as as they're trying to do
Speaker 1: that to copy what you did, almost right, it's like
Speaker 1: it was hard to do it. Like I remember the
Speaker 1: company that is now DraftKings like he they had to
Speaker 1: call in like a favor basically to get me to
Speaker 1: take their call and spend money with us, Like all right,
Speaker 1: I'll let you do it, but I really don't want to. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: I was doing well and I didn't want advertisers like
Speaker 1: calling me up my ass and like I just didn't
Speaker 1: work because whatever, then don't do it. I don't care
Speaker 1: um so he he. And then the other thing I
Speaker 1: said with Currents is we gotta build out the business side,
Speaker 1: like we don't do anything with that. Our technology sucks.
Speaker 1: I mean, we had such a loyal fan base, like
Speaker 1: if our website broke, we just like you'll be back
Speaker 1: when we check it, um, and they would um. So
Speaker 1: we had no technology, no sales, no nothing, and it's
Speaker 1: like we gotta hire CEO and we gotta just build
Speaker 1: out the business side. And they like that. I think
Speaker 1: they liked that I acknowledged that was an issue. UM.
Speaker 1: And it was pretty quick from there, like a series
Speaker 1: of conversations. Valuation, which they the cleaners on for sure. Uh.
Speaker 1: And what was that first valuation? The first offer was
Speaker 1: seven million and then they valued it at I believe
Speaker 1: like twelve and a half, some of it going to
Speaker 1: the company, some of it going to me, like I
Speaker 1: think five million. That's the first time I had real
Speaker 1: money went to me. Three millions of the business they
Speaker 1: owned fifty of it. I think that was a structure
Speaker 1: of the deal. UM. And you negotiated that by yourself,
Speaker 1: by myself, bringing like your parents or attorneys or UM.
Speaker 1: I told my dad, my dad doesn't know nothing about
Speaker 1: this ship. I mean he's a smart guy, but not
Speaker 1: miss but no, no attorneys, nothing. I mean, we obviously
Speaker 1: had an Interney look at it if it was done, UM,
Speaker 1: and we set up the guidelines where like we want
Speaker 1: to be here at a certain amount of year. This
Speaker 1: that UM. But Karns was right. He was a Barcelol
Speaker 1: fan forever and he knew, which I believed, if we
Speaker 1: had some structure in business we we would put gasoline
Speaker 1: basically on like a fire. And that's kind of exactly
Speaker 1: what happened. Like we got in office in New York,
Speaker 1: we thought would be there five years or there for ten.
Speaker 1: That's um, everything just exploded. So why did you take
Speaker 1: the money? He didn't need it. Why did you take
Speaker 1: the investment? I mean that's you just started this thing.
Speaker 1: It was your baby. You had of it. You could
Speaker 1: do it on your concerts and website and everything forever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I didn't. I believe heavily and our content, our
Speaker 1: fan base, and I also thought a lot of people
Speaker 1: didn't know who we were. So it's like do you
Speaker 1: want to be a big fish in a small pond
Speaker 1: or like you know, go for try to hit a
Speaker 1: home run. Um. I was also at the point when
Speaker 1: Turnon came where it's like, okay, what's my next move?
Speaker 1: Like I I can pretty much put this thing on
Speaker 1: autopilot and be happy, but I really believe there was
Speaker 1: a much bigger goal out there. Also, it was a
Speaker 1: cash out moment, not cash out, but it was for
Speaker 1: the guys who worked for me for a long time.
Speaker 1: Like I was doing great, they were doing decent, but
Speaker 1: they weren't like life changing money. They now have life
Speaker 1: changing money. Um, so it was a way for everybody
Speaker 1: to get to the next step, re engender, reinvigorate everybody.
Speaker 1: But it really like I'm in a much different place
Speaker 1: if I I don't, I couldn't have gotten here without investment.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. And they were the right guys,
Speaker 1: like I Bus turned his balls a lot, but um
Speaker 1: they really let us do their thing. And through the
Speaker 1: years there's been a lot of times where probably other
Speaker 1: investors or whatever maybe would have gone cold feet with us,
Speaker 1: and they didn't. They've they've been pretty true to their word.
Speaker 1: Do you think your ability to stick to having an
Speaker 1: opinion no matter what the funk anybody else thinks has
Speaker 1: been one of your secret sauces. Yeah, because people are
Speaker 1: attracted to the authenticity. Yes, that's and that's not like
Speaker 1: a plant. This is me, Like I'm a like cantankerous
Speaker 1: type type guy. That's maybe like a Boston the East
Speaker 1: Coast edge thing. But it's been like nothing has changed
Speaker 1: in that regard from day one. Obviously we're more careful
Speaker 1: not to put like balls on te s and let
Speaker 1: people just you know, have their way on things. We
Speaker 1: know will create controversy because it DAWs ripple. We still
Speaker 1: even though I said we're not dependent on advertisers, you
Speaker 1: just don't want to piss them away for no reason. Um,
Speaker 1: and we know we have a target our back. Like
Speaker 1: I don't know how necessarily that has happened, probably some
Speaker 1: of the decisions I've made. But I am somebody who
Speaker 1: has a target, like for people who probably if they
Speaker 1: sat down and like talk to me, would be like
Speaker 1: he's actually I like him, Like he's not, he's not.
Speaker 1: But you know you read some of the ship out
Speaker 1: there and like I sound like Hitler, Um, like it's crazy. So, uh,
Speaker 1: we gotta be a little more careful. But yeah, overall,
Speaker 1: if I believe in something, I'll stand by it. I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't care. And it's it's worked, it's it's created.
Speaker 1: It strengthens our fan base, uh, motivates them to support us.
Speaker 1: But then it also like the people don't only like you.
Speaker 1: There's nothing they hate more than being told like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't care what you think. It's just like ramps
Speaker 1: them up to completely insane. Yeah right, it's like what
Speaker 1: are we gonna do? How do we get this guy?
Speaker 1: At that time? Then the business was you had the
Speaker 1: the webs right, the website, you're doing the social so
Speaker 1: you're building out all the content, the people, you're doing
Speaker 1: the merch, you're still doing events. Right when did everything
Speaker 1: else start? Like the podcast and the podcast, Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a guy's barstool kind of then just almost kind
Speaker 1: of took over, almost to the point like I almost
Speaker 1: felt let down, you know, in the early two thousands
Speaker 1: by what College Humor could have been. Yeah. Right, And
Speaker 1: you've been very good. I think maybe the nicest thing
Speaker 1: that someone can say about us, and I've said about us,
Speaker 1: So I don't know if it counsel if you said
Speaker 1: about yourself. But we've managed to remain cool and ergy
Speaker 1: for like almost two decades. We were quick to shift.
Speaker 1: We've been on social media, TikTok, you name it, where
Speaker 1: we see something like we gotta be there, um, and
Speaker 1: we span a bunch of different hourors. Hard to do that,
Speaker 1: whether you say college humor, um. There's a lot of examples.
Speaker 1: There's so many companies like the Chive or they don't.
Speaker 1: They may still be around. I don't see, because everybody
Speaker 1: else seems like they have like they have the one
Speaker 1: thing they figured it out and they never pivot and
Speaker 1: they never go anywhere else because they just think it's
Speaker 1: a fat And we touch people in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways that they don't even know we're touching them. It's like,
Speaker 1: I always there's a guy told me a funny story.
Speaker 1: He's like, my girlfriend hates barstool, hates it, like every
Speaker 1: stereotype that people have negatively about it, Like she believes,
Speaker 1: but she loves the pizza reviews. And I don't have
Speaker 1: the heart to tell her it's the same person, Like,
Speaker 1: we gotta do some amount of that. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the podcasting, we had a guy who did it back
Speaker 1: when we're still Milton. I didn't know what it was,
Speaker 1: and I told me it was an idiot. It was like,
Speaker 1: do it if you want to do like your little
Speaker 1: podcast bit, do its. What is that gonna do? Is
Speaker 1: before is being monetized. Um. But what we do is
Speaker 1: we don't tell people what to do. So if we
Speaker 1: hire you, it's because I think you're funny, creative on
Speaker 1: the talent side, and then do whatever you want, like
Speaker 1: just do if it works, great, if it doesn't, great,
Speaker 1: we'll support it and see how kind of the public
Speaker 1: reaction to it is. So when we got the investment,
Speaker 1: we're able to hire people more freely to do all
Speaker 1: this work. Yeah. Yeah. So we have you know, a
Speaker 1: podcast like Part of My Take, which is the number
Speaker 1: one basically sports podcast in the probably world but definitely country.
Speaker 1: Um and were we had a guy, Big Cat who's
Speaker 1: been with us forever. He wants to hire a guy
Speaker 1: Pro Football Comments Air p f T. He wasn't getting
Speaker 1: paid that I think Bleacher Report. We're like, we'll pay you.
Speaker 1: They came in instant magic. Um. You know, the call
Speaker 1: her Daddy is a story a lot of people know
Speaker 1: about where Alex just started this. We just saw like
Speaker 1: the reel of it and it's like, oh, this is weird. Um.
Speaker 1: And we had Alex come in and I asked him, like,
Speaker 1: who who made that sizzle? Really for you? Because it
Speaker 1: was slick. I mean it looked slick, and she's like,
Speaker 1: I did. I taught myself how to do it. And
Speaker 1: once you said that, it's like, all right, we want
Speaker 1: to hire you because clearly you're taking it serious. So,
Speaker 1: you know, we've had a bunch of that haven't worked.
Speaker 1: But we just bring people in and let them do
Speaker 1: whatever they want. Like we have this. We have a
Speaker 1: golf podcast for Play and they run like tournaments throughout
Speaker 1: the country. They sell out very quickly. And you know
Speaker 1: this is a Harvard kid Riggs with weird bad eyes.
Speaker 1: But I remember he's like, my dream is to work
Speaker 1: for you. It's like, all right, whatever, And he came,
Speaker 1: drove to New York, sat down. He's like, I don't
Speaker 1: want anything. He's like, I don't want money. I just
Speaker 1: like enough for me to get by and I'll prove
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. Um and he has and we just
Speaker 1: let people do whatever they want and we have the advantage.
Speaker 1: It's catching up. But I often say we're kind of
Speaker 1: like the first digital media company, and where that's advantage.
Speaker 1: The people who work for us, like are born from
Speaker 1: the Internet, so they they have gotten our attention by
Speaker 1: being funny or more interesting than other people, like the
Speaker 1: beauty Internet. Now, I always help people you don't need us,
Speaker 1: like for like, you can create your resume online, we
Speaker 1: can look at it. You can create your whatever TikTok podcast.
Speaker 1: Whereas a lot of older media people they expect to
Speaker 1: be told what to do, what to say, and they
Speaker 1: don't have that kind of mentality that you need on
Speaker 1: the Internet. So it's just given us an advantage. We
Speaker 1: just move way faster. I think that gap is shrinking now,
Speaker 1: but that was a huge advantage early. What if he
Speaker 1: tried doing that definitely hasn't worked. I don't know, Um,
Speaker 1: I mean we did that music tour that did not work,
Speaker 1: the one that failed. Uh, trying to think, you know,
Speaker 1: we moved so quick out of things. There's definitely podcast
Speaker 1: there's been people that have gone, come or gone, but
Speaker 1: that that the music tours the big one. I don't know.
Speaker 1: We weren't good at early contracts. Like again, we touched
Speaker 1: people so many different ways. But like, have you ever
Speaker 1: heard the name Jenna Marble's so like I hired her,
Speaker 1: like she really yeah, Like she worked in a tanning
Speaker 1: salon in Boston, we and I hired her. She ran
Speaker 1: a female site called Stool a La, so we had
Speaker 1: Barstool Sports Stolo La. She floated all her early videos
Speaker 1: and we didn't know how to monetize it. So it's
Speaker 1: like she got offered to move to l A show
Speaker 1: me the contract, like yeah, go do it, um, and
Speaker 1: then we got kind of a falling out the day
Speaker 1: she not kind of we got a falling out the
Speaker 1: day she left because she basically I thought kind of
Speaker 1: wrote something but long story short, like that situation we
Speaker 1: didn't handle well. But like there's so many you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people point to Pat McAfee, which maybe
Speaker 1: we didn't know how to manage talent totally properly out
Speaker 1: of that. But the web of barstool was thinking like
Speaker 1: as I was walking over, is a lot greater, like
Speaker 1: whether it be Jenna Um. I mean, I think we've
Speaker 1: launched the two biggest female social media stars of the
Speaker 1: last twenty years with Alex and Um Jenna, and yet
Speaker 1: people will be like their sexist, Like the results say
Speaker 1: something like totally different. We have a female CEO and
Speaker 1: those two examples. You know, biz uh Biz was on
Speaker 1: TANTS like hockey launched, they're back on the NHLs, back
Speaker 1: on TNT and like he's saying next to Wayne Gretzky
Speaker 1: on the main booth, like that's spin and Chicklets, like
Speaker 1: our podcast, Um Pink Whitney the Drink. It's just where
Speaker 1: just touched people in a lot of different ways that
Speaker 1: they're not totally aware. Some I'll walk down the street,
Speaker 1: people like that's the pizza man. That's all they know,
Speaker 1: Like we just launched the one Bite frozen pizza and Walmart.
Speaker 1: It's like, I think we sold two thousand of them
Speaker 1: in like a week. It's like the number one frozen things.
Speaker 1: So we just we have a ravenous audience and it's
Speaker 1: all real and offense and the pizza reviews that you've
Speaker 1: always done. Do you remember when you did the first one? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a debate Dan Big Cat and I got in,
Speaker 1: which is, if you could eat one food the rest
Speaker 1: of your life, what would it be? I said pizza?
Speaker 1: He said burritos. He was going with, like you can
Speaker 1: do like breakfast burrito basically. UM. And we did it
Speaker 1: for a month straight. So that's all I ate. That's
Speaker 1: all he ate. And I was just doing. People be like,
Speaker 1: well is it any good? I like, I'll give you
Speaker 1: one bite. Here's a review, like quick. And that's how
Speaker 1: it started, the same thing. It's like people are inch
Speaker 1: like something happened with it. We're just a little spark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like why do people care so much about this? Um?
Speaker 1: And then when we moved to New York, I was
Speaker 1: just like, I'll try them all now would I definitely
Speaker 1: if it wasn't working, But I could tell you just
Speaker 1: tell when things are going it's like, okay, this pizzas resonating.
Speaker 1: It also is weirdly like a window into I think
Speaker 1: New York life, like because I would walk out and
Speaker 1: do it and all these weirdos would just jump into
Speaker 1: the review. Um and that kind of just took on
Speaker 1: a life of its own. But a lot of people
Speaker 1: now the pizza, like I said, they have no idea
Speaker 1: necessarily about barstool, like none. They'll just be like, that's
Speaker 1: the guy who eats pizza. Yeah. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's insulting or compliment people just pizza, man, though, Like
Speaker 1: just well it at me as I'm walking by. So
Speaker 1: it's particulous. What's the best advice that you give out? Now?
Speaker 1: When people ask you, I just always say, like, don't
Speaker 1: talk about it, just do it. Like there's so many
Speaker 1: people just talk ideas and do And even in my
Speaker 1: own kid, it's like, hey, we want to do this,
Speaker 1: that's all right, do it, like you don't need me
Speaker 1: to do it. So I always tell people at it's
Speaker 1: like it's very easy to talk about something, Um, it's
Speaker 1: a lot harder. Just do it. But that's that's what
Speaker 1: I generally tell people, and I mean, I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: I always say we were in I think a lot
Speaker 1: of companies are probably this way. We're the right time,
Speaker 1: right place, and the right people like you kind of
Speaker 1: need all those things probably together, you know. And it's
Speaker 1: the one business that you've ever started. It's grown into
Speaker 1: hundreds of other businesses. So what's next now? Right? You
Speaker 1: said you're super rich, you got all these houses everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not that young. Um, gambling is a huge focus
Speaker 1: and I've never really been in something like this where it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's like a gut or war. Like I've never had
Speaker 1: as direct like peer to peer competition as we do now.
Speaker 1: Like it's very all I can name them. It's like,
Speaker 1: all right, we're competing versus DraftKings, Vanduel Caesar's MGM, big
Speaker 1: boys spending literally like billions of dollars on marketing. We
Speaker 1: don't spend any We just go with the like it's
Speaker 1: barstool versus them. Like you won't see our ads in
Speaker 1: the NFL. You won't see any of that. So it's
Speaker 1: scrappy underdog. But it's different, and that is like the
Speaker 1: focus for the next you know, least kind of three years.
Speaker 1: Your story is super inspiring and it's very very cool
Speaker 1: because you've built something that never existed before. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you've invented something with your eyeballs and then you just
Speaker 1: created it and just kept writing it, which I you know,
Speaker 1: I think obviously everyone in this room, everyone in this company,
Speaker 1: everyone out on the street, is now very very clearly
Speaker 1: aware of But it's just been super awesome to watch,
Speaker 1: and I just want to say congrats. I appreciate the Forbes.
Speaker 1: I saw they had a line they called me and
Speaker 1: I forget it was one of the dawns of digital media.
Speaker 1: I was gonna print it out and just wear it.
Speaker 1: It's like a T shirt. I really like that. That
Speaker 1: was that's ever been said about one the dawns of
Speaker 1: digital media. Maybe what's been one of the coolest moments
Speaker 1: You've had? Two craft going the box. Because I'm a
Speaker 1: dire Patriot and uh, like I'm a Jimmy Buffett guy,
Speaker 1: Like I'm talking high school. Put the shark fin on
Speaker 1: the super go to the Tweeter Center, watch it, and
Speaker 1: he invite me over his house for lunch. So that
Speaker 1: was pretty surreal. Um, it takes a lot and actually
Speaker 1: I don't know why, but I like I always I
Speaker 1: always watched the Real estate shows. What's the other guy, Frederick?
Speaker 1: I saw him walking. I saw him walking. This is
Speaker 1: just funny. It's not one of the surreal but I
Speaker 1: saw him walking, and I don't want you not tell me.
Speaker 1: This is one of the greatest moments. It was one
Speaker 1: of the most surreal, though. I'm like, hey, can I
Speaker 1: get a picture because I watched the show. He's the
Speaker 1: only man. He won't stop. He's like, yeah, but you
Speaker 1: gonna keep walking. He definitely had no idea who I was.
Speaker 1: When was this is probably like a year and a half,
Speaker 1: two years ago. It's the old office, and he like
Speaker 1: made me go back take it. I told everybody's like,
Speaker 1: I just saw this guy Frederick. He big time the
Speaker 1: funk on. It's like walking. But yeah, no, it's it's
Speaker 1: the it's just jiggered that it was. Um it's it's
Speaker 1: the Jimmy Buffett or the Craft. I mean, there's always
Speaker 1: those surreal moments that have happened, but weirdly like we
Speaker 1: I went to um uh Kenny Chesney concert serious one
Speaker 1: the other day, and who is I'm sure you know
Speaker 1: the name? Oh I got confused, but they they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: Randy Garber wants to come up and say hello to
Speaker 1: like I didn't named in Jugara, So I was like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: sure whatever brought up in Cindy Crawford was with them
Speaker 1: almost faithed, like just that's like an I because so
Speaker 1: weird moments like that where it's like what happened to
Speaker 1: my life? Where like they're coming up to say hello
Speaker 1: to me? Uh, I still appreciate that those are pretty
Speaker 1: pretty surreal. Yea nuts. Do you think you'll ever turn
Speaker 1: what you're doing now maybe into you know, into your
Speaker 1: own venture, like investing in other companies, other digital media companies,
Speaker 1: other entrepreneurs, because you seem like I have a really
Speaker 1: really great knack for talent and now that bar stools
Speaker 1: with pen and I like when I look at you,
Speaker 1: I also see somebody that like what I just said,
Speaker 1: like you you know what's gonna work, and you just
Speaker 1: have that intuition and ways that other people don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this is something that a lot of people have
Speaker 1: said I'm full of ship on, but I have said
Speaker 1: once I'm done, which I think will be at the
Speaker 1: end of this pen deal, like I'll make sure like
Speaker 1: I still don't leave Penheim and dry and I'll be
Speaker 1: connected with it. But I could just pooh vanish and
Speaker 1: not work like everyone's like, no, you have that. No
Speaker 1: I think I could, So I don't have. I've made
Speaker 1: more than I ever dreamed. I I started Barcetool not
Speaker 1: to be wealthy, to do something I enjoyed doing. If
Speaker 1: that meant sixties seventy grand a year working for myself happy,
Speaker 1: I honestly would have been happy. Um so I could
Speaker 1: sit on a couch, watch horse racing, bet on sports,
Speaker 1: golf a little bit and be very very happy. So
Speaker 1: that's what I say. Now Everyone's like, no chance, like
Speaker 1: you'll see, like you'll get the bug, But I honestly
Speaker 1: don't think I would. So I just want to kind
Speaker 1: of be done and go enjoy life. Yeah yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I haven't travel. I haven't done. It's like I've
Speaker 1: been busy almost NonStop since I started it. Have you
Speaker 1: traveled the world a lot? Like if Canada is like
Speaker 1: exotic for me? I haven't. I haven't traveled much. Pizza
Speaker 1: and like wants. I went to Italy once, yeah, for
Speaker 1: but the way I did it was not relaxing. It
Speaker 1: was like, uh, you know, pack your bags landing a
Speaker 1: place sleep that night, drive two more out. It was
Speaker 1: like packing much of it. Yeah, so it wasn't relaxing
Speaker 1: at all. Um, but no, I really haven't traveled, got it?
Speaker 1: So you could do that. Yeah, there's a lot I
Speaker 1: could do. There's a lot I could do. Again, people
Speaker 1: say it's Bullshit's like you won't be able to do it.
Speaker 1: I think I will be able to do it. I've
Speaker 1: always said I was just a cloud of smoke and
Speaker 1: see that. Big Money Energy is hosted by me Ryan Sirhant.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Mike Coscarelli and Joe Loreesca, an executive
Speaker 1: produced by Lindsay Hawkman. Find more podcasts like Big Money
Speaker 1: Energy on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.