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Speaker 2: What's going on? Earnest Welcome the EYL University, the number
Speaker 2: one place for business education. Shoddy tale.
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Speaker 4: Movie club, our book club.
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Speaker 3: everything you need to know as far as the home buying.
Speaker 4: Process is concerned.
Speaker 3: And also what has been added is access to our
Speaker 3: monthly group chat call. So once a month, Me, Troy
Speaker 3: and the whole team is going to let you in
Speaker 3: on our personal plays, our portfolio, what we're doing, and
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Speaker 4: You know it's works.
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Speaker 2: other side.
Speaker 5: My graduates from my school being forced back and drop
Speaker 5: drop mic drop back, drop drop.
Speaker 3: A lot of people come on social media for their
Speaker 3: business and they get like two followers and they're like
Speaker 3: running fifty percent off ads and sales, and it's like
Speaker 3: you don't even have an audience, and it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: the whole point of wearing business, So the whole point
Speaker 3: is to make money. We're never gonna apologize about making money.
Speaker 3: If you are apologetic about making money, this isn't the
Speaker 3: channel for you. But there's ways to go about making money.
Speaker 3: And sometimes like if you promote too much, or you're
Speaker 3: too gimmicky or you it's like you can make money,
Speaker 3: but over the course of time, you're diluting your brand
Speaker 3: because it's not And even if we look at the
Speaker 3: best brands in the world, like Nike, like they have sale,
Speaker 3: but how many times do you actually see Itike commercials
Speaker 3: selling something. It's not really too often. Most Nike commercials
Speaker 3: are like you know Andrea Agacy, that legendary situation on
Speaker 3: Michael Jordan with dunking of basketball, Serena Williams and her daughter,
Speaker 3: like even Colin Kaepernick. It's an ad to build their brand,
Speaker 3: not really selling anything because you're gonna buy it on
Speaker 3: the back end, just by the strength of their brand
Speaker 3: just becoming so dominant that they don't necessarily have to
Speaker 3: beat you in the head with fifty percent off sales.
Speaker 3: You feel compelled to buy it because they've built so
Speaker 3: much brand equity over the years.
Speaker 2: I think what you said is very important, John. I'm
Speaker 2: glad you broke that down with the awareness interesting trust.
Speaker 2: It's like, if you have two followers, we don't even
Speaker 2: have an awareness over you, and you're trying to sell
Speaker 2: something which automatically makes me distrust, right, and so how
Speaker 2: do I go into a relationship with distrust? I don't
Speaker 2: and so now I turn away. So now, even if
Speaker 2: you put valuable content out to the world, you've already
Speaker 2: lost us because you started selling to us. And so
Speaker 2: it's very key to give value, give value, give value.
Speaker 2: People see what's happening, Let them build their trust, let
Speaker 2: them build the awareness of the brand, which will and
Speaker 2: then turn grow the interest in what you're doing, which
Speaker 2: will make it a lot easier when it's time for
Speaker 2: you to say, you know what, All right, I've been
Speaker 2: doing this, I've been doing this. Here's what I also
Speaker 2: have to offer, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: And that's something I'm gonna let you finished, John. But
Speaker 3: somebody said about how but everybody's way is different as
Speaker 3: far as how to build brand. But how we built
Speaker 3: our brand in two minutes is that we just created
Speaker 3: a maximum value as possible. So before we had a podcast,
Speaker 3: we had an Instagram page. Well, even before I had
Speaker 3: my own personal Instagram page. I wasn't selling anything. I
Speaker 3: was just I was just I was just adding value
Speaker 3: people that I would take times write, write captions, write posts,
Speaker 3: make videos. When we started earning a leisure the whole
Speaker 3: we didn't really even know, to be completely honest, we
Speaker 3: didn't know how to monetize a podcast, but we figured
Speaker 3: that once we had enough attention, there would be opportunities
Speaker 3: to monetize. So our goal was just to add as
Speaker 3: much value as possible, and that helped build our brand
Speaker 3: on social media, and then you know, all throughout we
Speaker 3: just had a unique way to relay information with business
Speaker 3: and mix it with pop culture, and that was our
Speaker 3: brand building proposition, was that we're going to educate people
Speaker 3: for free. We're going to give as much value as possible.
Speaker 3: We didn't sell anything, we didn't have merch we didn't
Speaker 3: have a live event, we didn't.
Speaker 4: Have anything nothing.
Speaker 3: So now when we have paid products and we've already
Speaker 3: built brand equity, but it took us twelve thirteen months
Speaker 3: before we even probably even longer than that, like before
Speaker 3: we even sold one thing that made.
Speaker 6: Us in Yeah, and so it reminds me of that
Speaker 6: of that graph, that last graph right, You guys didn't
Speaker 6: start with sales. You could have if you you could
Speaker 6: have tricked a few people into buying a quick E
Speaker 6: course right at the jump without really knowing anything.
Speaker 7: But instead you were that red line. You were you.
Speaker 6: You were building that brand equity by just giving given, given, given, given,
Speaker 6: given given. And as a result, look at the platform
Speaker 6: that you guys grew. And you know, speaking of Nike,
Speaker 6: I caught a glipse. So their brand essence framework and
Speaker 6: their one word was performance. I don't think that you're
Speaker 6: any faster and Nikes than you are in Adidas, but
Speaker 6: they their their core brand was performance.
Speaker 7: And think about how just think about the look of
Speaker 7: their logo.
Speaker 6: The swoosh kind of just makes you feel like performance,
Speaker 6: the flash, you know, and and and it's a really
Speaker 6: a student observation. Rashad that that they don't they don't
Speaker 6: sell I never thought about that. They don't sell ship
Speaker 6: in their commercials.
Speaker 4: No, they don't.
Speaker 7: They don't sell their brands.
Speaker 6: So so for anyone, so if if you have a
Speaker 6: tea company, if you have an e comm company.
Speaker 7: You know, what are ways what's that word gonna be
Speaker 7: for you? A?
Speaker 6: And then B how can you associate your brand with
Speaker 6: that feeling. For example, at Loop, our purpose is to
Speaker 6: move people. We don't care about insurance in the same
Speaker 6: way that Nike only cares about sneakers because it drives performance.
Speaker 6: So we we we stand for movement, right, because insurance
Speaker 6: gets you on the road and then you go and
Speaker 6: you got to do other things that you gotta do.
Speaker 7: So how do how are we gonna build brain around that?
Speaker 6: Well, we're gonna have photography of people on the road,
Speaker 6: all on their hustle, doing their ship and just just
Speaker 6: a little photo, just a little kind of the bottom
Speaker 6: that's as Loop, right. And so for example, those are
Speaker 6: just some of the low hanging fruit ways man that
Speaker 6: we could that we could build brand. You gotta lock
Speaker 6: in on that specific value that you feel you want
Speaker 6: to put brand equity into.
Speaker 3: And I also think that for building a brand, going
Speaker 3: back to our personal experience, you know, we learned a
Speaker 3: lot from raph and we took a lot. We took
Speaker 3: a lot from hip hop artists to help build our brain.
Speaker 3: So you know, being a big Wu Tang fan growing
Speaker 3: up in the late nineties, and you know when you
Speaker 3: saw that w that meant something. You didn't have to
Speaker 3: hear Wu tang to see that, like you know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying, Like when you saw a w you automatically
Speaker 3: associated Wu tang, and then you when you had to
Speaker 3: kill a bee's like they had a mascot if you
Speaker 3: think about it. So it's like even schools. You could
Speaker 3: learn a lot from schools. School is not a problem.
Speaker 3: It's what they're teaching that's the problem. But the infrastructure
Speaker 3: of school is actually pretty brilliant.
Speaker 4: Schools.
Speaker 3: They have clubs inside of schools. They have sports teams
Speaker 3: to keep you engaged. They have times when you check in,
Speaker 3: they have parents, they have lunchtime, they have mascots. Mascots
Speaker 3: is extremely important. So it's like you when you saw
Speaker 3: the kill a bee, that meant something like you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying, but it all equated back to Wu tang.
Speaker 3: But they didn't have to put Wu tang on every
Speaker 3: single thing. So it's like when you see us, our
Speaker 3: mascots are our emojis. That's like a mascot, right, Like
Speaker 3: that's like a team mascot that's branded. We don't have
Speaker 3: to put legion on everything. So now you see eyl
Speaker 3: y L three letters is very nostalgic when you think
Speaker 3: of luxury brands YSL Like you know, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff when you when you think of like three letters,
Speaker 3: like it's real easy to remember, and it's a it's
Speaker 3: an abbreviation. People love abbreviations, even if they hate the
Speaker 3: abbreviation I R S.
Speaker 4: You name it like you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: People, Yeah, use use anything other than the I R S.
Speaker 2: Alphabet.
Speaker 7: Boys, we got an in here. Let's let Annie in out.
Speaker 4: Let's bring up that.
Speaker 3: That's something that that's something to keep in mind as
Speaker 3: well as far as you don't necessarily and even assets
Speaker 3: over aliability, assets over liabilities, that's ours.
Speaker 4: We made that up.
Speaker 3: Anybody that's knocking that off, you should shame yourself. But
Speaker 3: once again, we don't have to put your leisure on everything.
Speaker 3: Because whether you see the mojis, whether you see E
Speaker 3: Y L, whether you see asset overliabilities, it all equates
Speaker 3: back to the mothership.
Speaker 4: That's exactly where I was going.
Speaker 2: And if you look at the most popular thing we
Speaker 2: sell it is assets overliabilities. But it goes back to
Speaker 2: the point of what we're doing. Right, value value in
Speaker 2: your life. Take the things out that don't add value. Right,
Speaker 2: So assets over liabilities. And so when you see that,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter where you see it, most people are
Speaker 2: gonna think us. You don't have to it doesn't have
Speaker 2: to say earn your legion. When they see assets of
Speaker 2: a liability. Even some of those bootleggers out there, they
Speaker 2: automatically think that that must be and shout out to
Speaker 2: our lawyer who's on that uh desists please.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you guys, someone's under your guys skin man, because
Speaker 6: you guys, you.
Speaker 2: Just got to put it out there. We got to
Speaker 2: put it out there.
Speaker 4: You gotta be original.
Speaker 2: It's synonymous with us. And so like again, you don't
Speaker 2: have to see your leisure on the shirt. You see
Speaker 2: assets of liabilities, we're thinking, all right, those people must
Speaker 2: be an earner. I had a friend of mine today
Speaker 2: who was climbing in the uh the Catskill mountains over
Speaker 2: the like over the spring break, and she made it
Speaker 2: to the top and was wearing the assets of a
Speaker 2: liability shirt. You know what happened when she got up there,
Speaker 2: somebody ran up to her and said, oh, you're an
Speaker 2: earner too. Oh talk about freaked her out right because
Speaker 2: she was like, huh, No, I worked with Troy. We
Speaker 2: were tea it's my coworker. She's like, oh, but you're
Speaker 2: not an earnest. She's like, yeah, I'm an earner, but
Speaker 2: like that's my friend, Like I can call him, and
Speaker 2: it was like call him. I'm like no, no, let's
Speaker 2: not do that. But it's anonymous. You can one thing
Speaker 2: leads to the next, and so we don't have to
Speaker 2: put your leads on everything. People know us asset to
Speaker 2: a liabilities. Wait, we got alumni in here.
Speaker 7: We got alumni.
Speaker 2: Yo.
Speaker 7: What's up Annie?
Speaker 2: How you doing?
Speaker 6: Man?
Speaker 2: How you living going?
Speaker 8: Well? Man? I'm excited. Shoddy and Troy, what's up y'all?
Speaker 2: My god, what's going on?
Speaker 9: We taughd y'all were regular human beings and now that
Speaker 9: is you know, range rovers and bus downs.
Speaker 2: I see what it is. It was your fault, partially
Speaker 2: your fault, your.
Speaker 8: Two tone back on your wrist. Congrats.
Speaker 2: You know I did lose it for a minute. We
Speaker 2: did get to watch and we get the car. We
Speaker 2: haven't gotten the driver yet, so we're getting there, getting
Speaker 2: to your level.
Speaker 4: Yo.
Speaker 7: Annie, I'm glad you jumped on.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 6: You were the first person I thought of when when
Speaker 6: when I thought a brand. I think that you've done
Speaker 6: an exceptional job for those For those that don't know,
Speaker 6: Annie Man just total total legend. Been in the game
Speaker 6: a long time, one of the practitioners that I am
Speaker 6: most in the space. A lot of people talking man,
Speaker 6: but but Annie has been doing this shit and doing
Speaker 6: it across industries managing artists. Have wrapped with Khalif at
Speaker 6: some time, is now managing the career of the young
Speaker 6: star on e con. But in addition dabbles in a
Speaker 6: little e commerce. We had launch Equity Apparel together UH
Speaker 6: owner and CEO of co Cutta Chaco dope concept that
Speaker 6: the audience wants to hear more about, but also dabbles
Speaker 6: in real estate. So you're a lot like me in
Speaker 6: the sense that we are multi hyphen it practitioners.
Speaker 7: And the one you know, the one through line that you.
Speaker 6: Have across all your projects is that they all have
Speaker 6: impeccable brand. I mean, we're not big landlords by any stretch,
Speaker 6: but you would think we were because you know the
Speaker 6: way that we brand our ship. And for example, in Philly,
Speaker 6: where I know you have some real estate, you have
Speaker 6: just regular plots of land which anyone would have just
Speaker 6: called a plot of land, but Annie then branded it.
Speaker 2: Then called it.
Speaker 7: You know, Tiger Park created a website.
Speaker 6: Around it, you know, really made an experience, hosted some
Speaker 6: pop up art, you know, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 6: And even with your with your Child concept, which I
Speaker 6: believe is your anchor at the moment, you really lead
Speaker 6: with a super super brand forward approach.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 6: So, welcome to the show. Welcome to the limited series.
Speaker 6: Guest number one, episode number one.
Speaker 7: Thank you, Yes, sir Man.
Speaker 6: Well, I would love to get your take for some
Speaker 6: of the audience on the power of brand and how
Speaker 6: it's been able to effectively elevate.
Speaker 7: And distinguish your concepts from a concept.
Speaker 10: Brand.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I missed the end of it, but I think
Speaker 8: I caught enough to respond.
Speaker 9: I think you know, I look at brand as the
Speaker 9: real only way to get competitive advantage when you're playing
Speaker 9: down a couple of cards, right, people like us first
Speaker 9: generation entrepreneurs, when you're coming up, we just don't have
Speaker 9: access to the same things that a lot of people do,
Speaker 9: and therefore your own ingenuity is your competitive advantage, right.
Speaker 9: And I think brand, you know you touched on it,
Speaker 9: it's when you you got to make a big investment
Speaker 9: in it up front, right, But being tactical and being
Speaker 9: smart about brand upfront allows you to create that moat
Speaker 9: around your business, right, nobody can do it like you
Speaker 9: do it if you do it well. And I really
Speaker 9: learned from you know, hip hop music, and you know
Speaker 9: eyl is kind of spot on with my education in
Speaker 9: terms of like jay z Rockefeller, right that diamond went up,
Speaker 9: you know what time it was, master p no limit,
Speaker 9: you know, make them say oh like it was these
Speaker 9: these references to their brand at all times that created
Speaker 9: that moat around what they did. And to me, I
Speaker 9: looked at it the same way like if I was
Speaker 9: going to you know, build a company or launch something
Speaker 9: from zero when I have a lot of you know,
Speaker 9: much better capitalized players around me, what's my advantage. It's storytelling,
Speaker 9: it's branding, and it's creating that you know that bridge
Speaker 9: and I think you know, I tend to look at
Speaker 9: brand like it gives your company personality and it also
Speaker 9: most importantly allows people to buy in with an emotion.
Speaker 9: And that's the toughest thing. You know, you're talking about
Speaker 9: sales versus brand. When you have a brand that people
Speaker 9: can emotionally relate to, that is the most definitive thing
Speaker 9: about where you know about your company and going forward
Speaker 9: because people can't take that from you. Right, Your sales
Speaker 9: might get cratered because of COVID or you might have
Speaker 9: you know, a supply chain issue, whatever it is. But
Speaker 9: if your brand represents all of your values and has
Speaker 9: that personality, people will always stick by you. And I
Speaker 9: think I'm a very long term player similar to y'all.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 8: And That's how I'll break it down, yo.
Speaker 6: So talk about talk about talk about like your your
Speaker 6: chiy concept. Right, There's a lot of T shops out there,
Speaker 6: but I have never seen any of them with a
Speaker 6: line around two blocks with like straight up, you know,
Speaker 6: all the Indian boys out there lining up, they can't.
Speaker 4: Wait to support.
Speaker 6: Had you had eater dot com over there, you, I mean,
Speaker 6: you guys unlocked ridiculous distribution. You guys have fanatics. You
Speaker 6: guys created like the uh, like what do you guys
Speaker 6: call it? Like that the pour over Challenge? Like you
Speaker 6: guys have done so much shit and it's like a
Speaker 6: two hundred square foot space, but it is like really
Speaker 6: a crazy It's crazy what you've been able to do.
Speaker 2: With that space.
Speaker 6: Man, So talk about like how you approach that and
Speaker 6: what gave you the what's the secret sauce man Like,
Speaker 6: how can someone who has pretty little by term in
Speaker 6: terms of space and in terms of resources be able
Speaker 6: to maximize the.
Speaker 4: Way you have? Right?
Speaker 9: I mean, you know, just for context, we opened six
Speaker 9: months before COVID shut New York City down, and we
Speaker 9: ended up twenty twenty. We ended up in the black
Speaker 9: with both our restaurant and our e commerce operations.
Speaker 8: And I do a lot of that to brand.
Speaker 9: That's why I say it is because you know, I
Speaker 9: mean to answer your question about how we unlocked it,
Speaker 9: I think we approached it as.
Speaker 8: And I talk a lot about this, you know, storytelling.
Speaker 9: What is the story that you're telling as a company, right,
Speaker 9: that becomes part of your brand story, which thereby leads
Speaker 9: to brand equity. Right, And you guys touched on this
Speaker 9: a lot. What's brand that we simply put its credibility?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 9: It is the intangible reputation that you have with your
Speaker 9: customers that nobody could take from you. So when we
Speaker 9: spent about eighteen months before launching the cafe doing pop ups,
Speaker 9: doing events, food festivals, you know, hustling around the city,
Speaker 9: that was to create brand equity, right, because we knew, look,
Speaker 9: whether we had a thousand square foot space or two
Speaker 9: hundred square foot space. They couldn't take that brand equity
Speaker 9: from us. And you know, Johnny, you and I have
Speaker 9: talked about this a lot, is like how do you
Speaker 9: scale the one to one interaction?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 8: That's what we did to build up that brand equity.
Speaker 9: What I mean by that is responding to every DM
Speaker 9: going above and beyond, you know, at events or online
Speaker 9: to give people you know, an extra cup on the
Speaker 9: house or you know, FaceTime with their mom because they
Speaker 9: were excited to walk into a child shop, whatever it was.
Speaker 9: We made ourselves really available to that, built up that
Speaker 9: brand equity, and then monetize that, right. And I think
Speaker 9: that's where a lot of creators struggle with, right. They
Speaker 9: some of these YouTubers have you know, decent brain equity.
Speaker 9: You got a lot of social media personalities with decent
Speaker 9: brand equity. But if you don't have a product to
Speaker 9: sell back to them, you're just popular.
Speaker 8: Right and don't pay the bills.
Speaker 9: As we know, so we you know, we turned our
Speaker 9: brand equity into into that experience, leaned into our community.
Speaker 8: Stepped up for them. Right.
Speaker 9: What I mean by that is we were hosting you know,
Speaker 9: artists meeting greets at the cafe. We were letting, you know,
Speaker 9: people meet with their book club and things like that.
Speaker 9: We were pouring back into the community because that's what
Speaker 9: our brand represented. And now you know, we did you know,
Speaker 9: well into the six figures of e commerce in twenty
Speaker 9: twenty in the middle of the pandemic, which really opened
Speaker 9: up what this business can look like. Right, So now
Speaker 9: we have a true omni channel model with with the retail,
Speaker 9: with e commerce. I'm actually gonna be in Austin in
Speaker 9: a couple of weeks, John, We just locked in with
Speaker 9: neighborhood Goods out there. You know, we're taking it now
Speaker 9: to retail as well. And you know it's that line
Speaker 9: from American Gangster, right, It's it's what is it General Mills?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 9: When when when Frank Lucas is making that that comparison
Speaker 9: Blue Magic, Right, that's that's a they don't need more
Speaker 9: than they know the CEO of General Mills, but they
Speaker 9: know what that stands for and that you know, that's
Speaker 9: that's a hustle's anthem right there. So I think a
Speaker 9: lot of that is is is what I've picked up
Speaker 9: and what I put down.
Speaker 3: Can you talk about like I feel like branding. Storytelling
Speaker 3: is extremely important and the power of creating myths. And
Speaker 3: shout out to my brother Wallow. He had one of
Speaker 3: the most profound things I've ever heard. If anybody does
Speaker 3: know his story, he spent twenty years and jail, he
Speaker 3: came out hit the start. He has one of the
Speaker 3: top podcasts in the world. But long story short, he
Speaker 3: said something else extremely profound to me. He was like,
Speaker 3: you don't you don't have to never beef with the information.
Speaker 3: You don't have to like somebody to learn from them.
Speaker 3: And I say that to say Donald Trump, regardless of
Speaker 3: how you feel about him. It's not a political show.
Speaker 3: But one of the greatest things he's ever did was
Speaker 3: brand himself. And he made things that was normal seem
Speaker 3: out of this world, extraordinary normal in his world. As
Speaker 3: far as a lot of people in Manhattan have buildings,
Speaker 3: that's not really normal what I'm just saying. As far
Speaker 3: as being a millionaire billionaire, and you know a lot
Speaker 3: of people have buildings, and he didn't even own those
Speaker 3: a lot of these buildings, but he made sure he
Speaker 3: put his name on every single building. So now when
Speaker 3: you drive down the West Side Highway and you see
Speaker 3: ten buildings that say Trump on it, whether he owns
Speaker 3: it or not is irrelevant because the story in the
Speaker 3: myth lives much larger than his, you know, royalty fee
Speaker 3: for actually leasing his name out right. So to bring
Speaker 3: it down on a micro level, you know, I talk
Speaker 3: about this a lot, but you know, people see our trucks.
Speaker 3: We have a truck, an eighteen wheeler. We're not the
Speaker 3: only person in the world that has trucks. A lot
Speaker 3: of people have eighteen wheel trucks. But the story in
Speaker 3: the myth was told, and it's going to live way longer,
Speaker 3: and it became a million times bigger than the truck
Speaker 3: because we put our emojis on it. We put eyl
Speaker 3: University on it, we put earn your leege on it.
Speaker 3: We made a complete monstrosity of it. And whatever we
Speaker 3: get from the truck, the value and brand equity and
Speaker 3: the value doing that is going to live way further
Speaker 3: than just traveling goods from Atlanta to Houston.
Speaker 2: And what it also does is it stamps us in
Speaker 2: that world. Right. People watched us have an interview about it,
Speaker 2: they watched us learn about it, and they watched us
Speaker 2: actually execute on the information that we obtained. So now
Speaker 2: it's always it's a funny question. Everybody asks how we're doing,
Speaker 2: how we're doing, and that yo, y'all got a truck?
Speaker 2: The what because nobody had ever seen that done, even though,
Speaker 2: like I mean, we're from New York, so we see
Speaker 2: eighteen years old the time. Never did we ever think
Speaker 2: that that's actually money that's passing us, that's actually a
Speaker 2: business that's passing us. And so now to see us
Speaker 2: do it, being from where we're from, it's like, oh
Speaker 2: my gosh. And you guys are bold enough to get
Speaker 2: a truck, and like John said, you're crazy enough to
Speaker 2: put your face on it.
Speaker 3: Even I want to get on these perspective, but even
Speaker 3: I want to even break it even lower than that
Speaker 3: because some people might you know, a truck is still
Speaker 3: costs a good chunk of change.
Speaker 4: Merch.
Speaker 3: Everybody does merch, A lot of every small business does merch.
Speaker 3: So we're not the first people to have merch assets
Speaker 3: of a liabilities, track suits, things of that nature. But
Speaker 3: we took a lot of l's in our merch journey.
Speaker 3: We're still learning merch and we revamped our merch. We
Speaker 3: founded distributor in Pakistan. It's the whole process. So We
Speaker 3: could have just we could have just put online that
Speaker 3: we're selling merch. But going through that process, we gained information.
Speaker 3: So we filmed the podcast about how to start a
Speaker 3: merch company, and we did every single thing that we
Speaker 3: do from A to Z free. We could have charged
Speaker 3: a lot of money for that. We did that free.
Speaker 3: We put it out and then we said, okay, here's
Speaker 3: the discount to buy the merchan We created a story
Speaker 3: and we added value and then we're going to sell
Speaker 3: the product. And we're not gonna apologize about selling the product,
Speaker 3: but we made a story about it.
Speaker 6: But a lot, a lot of the things that you
Speaker 6: guys are saying is illustrated on that last graph. Things
Speaker 6: that build brand. You will take it L four up front,
Speaker 6: the truck is not making you money. If it's making
Speaker 6: you money at all, it might even be costing you money.
Speaker 6: Costs me a lot of fucking money. All of the
Speaker 6: things that I've done that have enriched my brand. Copend Harlem,
Speaker 6: for example, is incubator that first put me on the
Speaker 6: map cost me a ton of cash.
Speaker 7: Anni, you have kicked off a number of projects and
Speaker 7: I know you front.
Speaker 6: Loaded the investment up front, right and we are delusional
Speaker 6: practitioners in that we heavily over index on brand. What's
Speaker 6: that you know, there's probably a balance between going to
Speaker 6: brand heavy, uh, you know.
Speaker 7: And compromising sales.
Speaker 6: But I just I feel like I see you execute
Speaker 6: on your projects, and when I see you storytell to Rashad's.
Speaker 7: Point, I know what it is that you're doing so
Speaker 7: for you, I mean, is the hope that the brand,
Speaker 7: Like are you just going all in and you feel.
Speaker 6: Like you're going to cash in on some big opportunities
Speaker 6: down the stretch, and for you it's just about kind
Speaker 6: of going the distance.
Speaker 7: Or you know, or is it a is it just
Speaker 7: the only way?
Speaker 6: You know? How like helped me make sense of this
Speaker 6: ridiculous thing that is like going all in on brand
Speaker 6: up front.
Speaker 9: That's a really great point and to Rashad's point too,
Speaker 9: And this is I think one of the most tactical
Speaker 9: tips that I want to share with people watching tonight
Speaker 9: is like, you know, Rasha mentioned the word myth right,
Speaker 9: and sometimes when you're starting out early on that story
Speaker 9: that you're telling, you may not entirely be living or
Speaker 9: you know, you're trying to make it look a certain
Speaker 9: type of way, or you know, you don't really know
Speaker 9: if you're gonna make it to the other side of that, Right, Jonathan,
Speaker 9: You and I have been in many scenarios where you know,
Speaker 9: we're in the middle of something, whether it's a residential
Speaker 9: you know, development project or or something crazy.
Speaker 8: And we don't know what the outcome is going to be.
Speaker 9: But that documentation and that's telling and you reflecting on
Speaker 9: your experience throughout that whole process is to me all
Speaker 9: an extension of brand. And I want to mention something
Speaker 9: that happened in my life that changed It didn't change anything,
Speaker 9: actually just validated what I already knew, and that was
Speaker 9: I was in the middle of a couple of my
Speaker 9: first real estate projects, right, And so what I would
Speaker 9: do is I would work, you know, five days a
Speaker 9: week on the agency job, and then every weekend I'd
Speaker 9: work real estate. So I wake up at nine am,
Speaker 9: go to Newark, New Jersey, painting, you know, spackling, doing
Speaker 9: all these small things, trying to get my units turned around.
Speaker 8: And I used to document all of it. It wasn't glamorous.
Speaker 9: It was literally just me eating shit the entire time,
Speaker 9: but talking about what was going on, talking about the
Speaker 9: value the neighborhood, the ARV you know, the construction budgets,
Speaker 9: And in eight months I had raised a quarter million
Speaker 9: dollars just from people on Instagram who I didn't know,
Speaker 9: watching my stories and being like, yo, I trust you,
Speaker 9: I like what you're doing, and I want to get
Speaker 9: into real estate. What's your minimum and me being like,
Speaker 9: it's fifty grand to invest with me on a joint
Speaker 9: venture and walking out of that with two hundred and
Speaker 9: fifty thousand dollars from Instagram stories, just because my brand
Speaker 9: was constantly being extended through you know, stories or through
Speaker 9: my post or whatever storytelling I was in the middle of,
Speaker 9: and that to me was so real because that validated
Speaker 9: this thing that I knew that I think nowadays we
Speaker 9: focus on micro interactions with people that we look up
Speaker 9: to or respect or want to learn from, and those
Speaker 9: micro interactions actually have much bigger impact than we realized.
Speaker 9: Maybe a fifteen second clip, but it sits with people
Speaker 9: if your brand story is whole. And then I took
Speaker 9: that too fifty and I created you know, millions of
Speaker 9: dollars in portfolio value without having to put up my
Speaker 9: own brand. Right, So for anybody that's like wary about
Speaker 9: where they are with brand or if they're like, you know,
Speaker 9: they got two hundred followers, It doesn't matter, right, What
Speaker 9: matters is you telling that story and or that myth.
Speaker 9: At certain times, I'd being consistent with it until the
Speaker 9: right people pick up on it and be like this
Speaker 9: is dope.
Speaker 8: Let me share this.
Speaker 9: And that's how you grow, and that's how you honestly
Speaker 9: remain who you are. Nothing changes about you or your story,
Speaker 9: you just consistently tell it.
Speaker 2: Annie, I got a question in that because it's it's
Speaker 2: like again, it's that hip hop coming into our lives, right,
Speaker 2: Like when Drake said I'm the greatest. I said that
Speaker 2: before I knew I was. It's that same thing. But
Speaker 2: I wonder in this sense, we see people start businesses
Speaker 2: and they try to start brands and then they don't
Speaker 2: even trust themselves become something deviated in the story. So
Speaker 2: for me, I'm thinking about your situation and how covid
Speaker 2: was an alter right you six months after you start
Speaker 2: this business and we actually recorded the podcast, this unimaginable
Speaker 2: event happens in your business, but you still trust the brand.
Speaker 2: So can you talk about that, how you didn't deviate
Speaker 2: from what the story that you created and try to
Speaker 2: create a new one.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's that's a great point. I mean I think
Speaker 9: that first of all, sometimes your brand story might change
Speaker 9: a little bit. And having the flexibility and knowing what
Speaker 9: can change and what can't change, that's like an intuition
Speaker 9: you had to have as you know, a founder, as
Speaker 9: a creator, and you'll build that up over time. Right,
Speaker 9: That's like a muscle that you build over time for
Speaker 9: for us. You know, my my guy right now is
Speaker 9: taking a video of all this that day that the
Speaker 9: cafe shut down. We pulled up with cameras and we
Speaker 9: documented in real time, you know it raining on the
Speaker 9: on the window, me standing outside being like yo, this
Speaker 9: is insane, and in real time sharing how I felt,
Speaker 9: you know, because that was still central to who we
Speaker 9: were as founders in that brand, right. We still believed
Speaker 9: in the business, believed in the community, believed in our product.
Speaker 9: We just got hit with the act of God. Right,
Speaker 9: But that didn't mean that I wasn't allowed to be vulnerable.
Speaker 9: And I think that's the other key here, right. It's
Speaker 9: like people look at you know, even with John now,
Speaker 9: like John's the face of Loop, but John's brand is
Speaker 9: different from the Loop brand, right, and so like there
Speaker 9: may be certain vulnerabilities that he has to share as
Speaker 9: a founder that won't be reflected on the company, but
Speaker 9: you know they'll be reflected in his journey.
Speaker 8: And that's the perspective I took.
Speaker 9: I was like, look, I'm the founder, I'm the owner,
Speaker 9: and I'm taking these l's and I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 9: take them and I'm gonna share them. But the company
Speaker 9: is still going to be all things go, sticking to
Speaker 9: the story, but we're gonna show the reality of it
Speaker 9: in different ways.
Speaker 3: This is I want I want to say something before
Speaker 3: we go on different topics. We interviewed Grant card.
Speaker 7: Dome and he he actually shot our Uncle Gee.
Speaker 4: Episode out now Classics.
Speaker 3: So we were talking him about the trucks and he
Speaker 3: said he said, he was like, you know what you
Speaker 3: you know would be really good marketing.
Speaker 2: I'm like what he was like, Ernest, what's up? You
Speaker 2: ever walk into a small business and everything just works,
Speaker 2: like the checkout is fast, the seats are digital, tipping
Speaker 2: is a breeze, and you're out the door before the
Speaker 2: line even builds. Odds are they're using Square. We love
Speaker 2: supporting businesses that run on Square because it just fit
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Speaker 2: at a pop up market, or even one of our
Speaker 2: merch partners, Square makes it easy for them to take payments,
Speaker 2: manage inventory, and run their business with confidence, all from
Speaker 2: one simple system. If you're a business owner or even
Speaker 2: just thinking about launching something soon, Square is hands down
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Speaker 2: can keep pushing your vision forward. This episode is brought
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Speaker 1: Indeed is all you need burn it.
Speaker 3: He's like, burn the truck. So he was saying, how
Speaker 3: all home one of his so grand man from birth to.
Speaker 4: His truck burn.
Speaker 3: He had a truck and it burned and they called
Speaker 3: him like, yo, the truck is on fire. And he
Speaker 3: was like, tape it. Let's good content. But so and
Speaker 3: shout out to Matty J. This is this is one
Speaker 3: of the most profound things I've ever heard in life.
Speaker 3: Maddy J on Ashcash's podcast inside the volte Eyo Network
Speaker 3: slipe blok.
Speaker 4: So, Matti J.
Speaker 3: Said he was on Toro. He took a major l
Speaker 3: his cars was getting messed up. He had to go
Speaker 3: to mechanic. He was losing money. While he was losing money,
Speaker 3: while he was making all of these mistakes, he was
Speaker 3: documenting his journey because he said, one day people will
Speaker 3: pay you for your failure. That means is that everything
Speaker 3: that you went through is now going to be a
Speaker 3: learning experience.
Speaker 4: Now you can teach.
Speaker 3: So now you went through a global pandemic and lost
Speaker 3: money and did this and did that. Now you are
Speaker 3: in a unique position as somebody that actually made it
Speaker 3: out of that, as the.
Speaker 4: Voice of authority.
Speaker 3: Now people will pay you for mentorship, for courses, for classes,
Speaker 3: for books, whatever. So it's like, even in the loss,
Speaker 3: there's a blessing because by documenting that and by not
Speaker 3: running from it, by embracing it, it puts you in
Speaker 3: a position as being an authority that people have to
Speaker 3: come to you because the next time there's a global pandemic,
Speaker 3: you've been the only way that they can learn is
Speaker 3: from somebody that's already been through.
Speaker 2: It and that and that's the thing, Like they've watched
Speaker 2: you go through something, right, They've watched you in the mud.
Speaker 2: And it's like I was with him. I remember when
Speaker 2: he was crying. I'm so happy for him. I want
Speaker 2: to I want to support him in any way I can. John,
Speaker 2: I got a question for you. As Annie was talking,
Speaker 2: I was thinking to myself, Right, you have a trusted
Speaker 2: brand as yourself as John Henry. What is that like
Speaker 2: now going to loop or do you feel like you
Speaker 2: have to reinvent yourself and or your audience that was
Speaker 2: with you, that knows you as John Henry? Is are
Speaker 2: you thinking that automatically gonna come with you now the loop?
Speaker 2: And what's that process like? Man, it's a learning experience
Speaker 2: for sure. My brain is gritty as fuck, right like
Speaker 2: like Annie Annie. When he came on, he said, John,
Speaker 2: I see you got the two tone back. I got
Speaker 2: the two tone back. Here's here's the thing, day day,
Speaker 2: here's the thing. This is yet no no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: sirtain just the day just they just.
Speaker 7: I had to pawn this bad boy, this bad boy
Speaker 7: right here.
Speaker 6: I had to pawn it when I was in my
Speaker 6: lowest point of these renovations went south. I'm out of pocket,
Speaker 6: you know, And and I had to come up with
Speaker 6: the mortgage.
Speaker 7: And I was his act. I was tapped and I
Speaker 7: was looking around, like, yo, what what could I just like,
Speaker 7: what could I sell for three g's?
Speaker 2: And you know, and I did one of these.
Speaker 7: I was like, oh fucking you know.
Speaker 4: I knew what I had to do.
Speaker 6: And I pulled up to the Diamond District shout out
Speaker 6: my boy Gabriel and uh and and yeah he gave me.
Speaker 6: He slipped he slipped me three g's for it, and
Speaker 6: I and I bought it back. And then that happened
Speaker 6: one more time before the end of the day. And
Speaker 6: so now it's a badge of honor. But for example,
Speaker 6: that's my brand. I'm just a gritty motherfucker. I don't
Speaker 6: I don't mind it. But the Loop brand is an
Speaker 6: insurance company, it's a financial services entity. And so this
Speaker 6: for me has been an exercise of Phase one is
Speaker 6: me leveraging my personal brand much like so much like
Speaker 6: you do to prop up these new entities. But at
Speaker 6: a certain point you got to step back and let
Speaker 6: this new entity grow because if you lean on your
Speaker 6: own brand too heavily for too long, then you will
Speaker 6: never be able to outgrow the current size of your brand.
Speaker 6: And I know that Loop will be a multi billion
Speaker 6: dollar company. We will take a public and it can
Speaker 6: never get there if it's the JH Show. It has
Speaker 6: to end up being something that's larger than any one person.
Speaker 6: And in order for that to happen, I have to
Speaker 6: take a step back. And so it's still something that
Speaker 6: we're learning and doing. We're proactively thinking through because at
Speaker 6: the same time you want to think about you want
Speaker 6: to use all the.
Speaker 7: Things that you have at your disposal.
Speaker 6: Because if you are Bobby Bernstein and you got a
Speaker 6: rich uncle who put up bread to get your business going,
Speaker 6: and by the way, let's say he's got a portfolio
Speaker 6: of buildings that he can put you on and whatever,
Speaker 6: you're gonna take advantage of it. And so we as
Speaker 6: a culture have very little things that we can that
Speaker 6: we can take advantage of. So the few tools that
Speaker 6: we have we definitely should deploy. That's my take.
Speaker 7: So wo man, Annie, I want to give you the
Speaker 7: last word here. We're coming up.
Speaker 4: Can we just can we can we do like a
Speaker 4: bonus round?
Speaker 7: Let's do a bonus round?
Speaker 3: All right, Well, let'st I just got one more question
Speaker 3: than can we get like two questions from the from the.
Speaker 4: Got questions?
Speaker 3: I just got one question before we go to question
Speaker 3: and answer scarcity. How do you feel about the scarcity
Speaker 3: model as far as branding, Because like Cronuts, that's a
Speaker 3: shop in h in New York that they sell Chronuts,
Speaker 3: which is like a combination of donuts and croissants. They
Speaker 3: only they only open for like an hour day at
Speaker 3: like eight o'clock in the morning. This is before Coviona
Speaker 3: what happened. But you gotta and I actually did this
Speaker 3: before you gotta like wait in line at like six
Speaker 3: o'clock in the morning they open up. But just like
Speaker 3: it's a scarcity model, this is a variety of different
Speaker 3: people that even sneakers Jordan's they release the sneakers, they
Speaker 3: only have a certain amount they could make. Nike can
Speaker 3: make as many sneakers as they want, but they know
Speaker 3: that if they have a limited amount, it drives to demand.
Speaker 3: It's a whole scarcity place. So how do you feel
Speaker 3: about scarcity model in building brand and marketing?
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean so personally. I think that as a
Speaker 9: society or just there's so much going on right now
Speaker 9: that if you can afford to lean on scarcity as
Speaker 9: a as a a point of attraction, use it sparingly.
Speaker 9: But I think that nowadays, like if you're in the
Speaker 9: middle of a goal rush and you're like being romantic
Speaker 9: or being cute about how much you're putting out, I
Speaker 9: think that could actually be a disservice for a lot
Speaker 9: of brands.
Speaker 8: So I'm aware of the power of scarcity.
Speaker 9: You know, we went through it ourselves last you know,
Speaker 9: during COVID, we had a brunch at the restaurant that
Speaker 9: was like only had ten seats a day, and we
Speaker 9: would sell out in like fifteen minutes every day, you know,
Speaker 9: And it was a great way to like build awareness
Speaker 9: around what was happening and keeping us top of mind.
Speaker 9: So it does work one hundred percent. But I think
Speaker 9: what a lot of people do is they lean on
Speaker 9: scarcity when they don't really have something that actually validates
Speaker 9: their brand, if that makes sense, right, And you know,
Speaker 9: if you're starting something new and it's like, oh, only
Speaker 9: fifty payers, like I think scarcity is is a tool
Speaker 9: that you can deploy with with finesse when you're at
Speaker 9: that point, but don't lean on that to start something
Speaker 9: because it's kind of secret.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's other ways to deploy scarcity too though, right,
Speaker 6: it's not just quantity, it's also time sensitivity.
Speaker 7: Right, so you can make it for a limited time.
Speaker 6: And for example, when I'm out there raising money, one
Speaker 6: thing I realize is if you don't give them a
Speaker 6: re like if you don't, if there's no time that
Speaker 6: the round is going to end, people will kick the
Speaker 6: tires forever until there's an action forcing event. So I
Speaker 6: would agree with with you, Annie, But also some of
Speaker 6: these classic retailers, you know, ironically I have gone out
Speaker 6: of business. They've done they do things really well, certain
Speaker 6: things really well, and that was the offers, right, So
Speaker 6: like it ended up, it can be something that cheapens
Speaker 6: your brand. But these man, these these cats are good
Speaker 6: at straight off like J C. Pennies with the ill offers. Now,
Speaker 6: not every brand is going to be a coupon brand. However,
Speaker 6: I pay attention to, you know, offers that.
Speaker 7: Drive a lot of value.
Speaker 6: And you're in the e comm business and ey l
Speaker 6: you know you guys run these flash sales too. So
Speaker 6: I think scarcity I agree with you. I like your
Speaker 6: take that scarcity is a tool and you should learn
Speaker 6: to use it. And I think that scarcity in the
Speaker 6: fashion business specifically works very differently probably than any other
Speaker 6: industry from what I've seen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's get get one. Let's get one question from
Speaker 4: the see, we gotta handles it. If they actually did,
Speaker 4: just what's going on on?
Speaker 2: Mute yourself, you've been unmuted. What's going on?
Speaker 4: They had they hand up the whole time?
Speaker 2: Good morning, Uh, good brothers.
Speaker 11: You just answered my question.
Speaker 4: Annie did.
Speaker 11: Because I have a couple of real estate properties and
Speaker 11: it was hard for me to find.
Speaker 8: People to do good work.
Speaker 11: They was always like, in my opinion, half ass you
Speaker 11: or they told me they knew how to do something,
Speaker 11: and after the job was done, it was you know,
Speaker 11: it was wat. So I ended up having to get
Speaker 11: the knowledge myself to do the job on my own.
Speaker 11: So he answered it for me. That's why I have
Speaker 11: my hand and I appreciate you calling on me and brothers.
Speaker 2: Have a nice step.
Speaker 6: Also, also to the folks watching right now, because I'm
Speaker 6: seeing some questions around that that pdf. So if you
Speaker 6: go to loop insure dot co slash e y l
Speaker 6: Loop Insure dot co slash e y l, that pdf
Speaker 6: is now available, so you could just click on it
Speaker 6: and you type in your email and then you'll get
Speaker 6: a PDF sent to your inbox, so you can get
Speaker 6: all of that, all of that brand is his framework
Speaker 6: and all that other jazz sent.
Speaker 7: Sent to you and just using your hustle man and
Speaker 7: let me know, let me know what you think of it.
Speaker 2: YO.
Speaker 7: While we get another audience question, can we just do
Speaker 7: a quick lightning round hip hop? We all referred to it,
Speaker 7: we all pulled from it.
Speaker 6: Let's go through and name who we think has been
Speaker 6: the most effective brander in all of hip hop and
Speaker 6: some key lessons that we've taken away personally.
Speaker 7: Who wants to start?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's been so many great brands, from
Speaker 3: death row records to no limit records to cash money
Speaker 3: records to But I think the greatest brander has to
Speaker 3: be jacause, you know, he's his brand has survived three
Speaker 3: decades and that's extremely impressive. And the biggest takeaway that
Speaker 3: I get from Jay is that he always reinvents himself
Speaker 3: and he always Drake does this well too. He always
Speaker 3: surrounds himself with the newest people. He has no problem
Speaker 3: severing ties, whether that's a good thing or not. Jay always,
Speaker 3: you know, he's always in the mix with something that's
Speaker 3: new and progressive. He's not afraid to change with the times.
Speaker 3: And he's built his brand off of a mistique. It's
Speaker 3: a nostalgia. You never see him. He's not on Instagram,
Speaker 3: he's never on Twitter, he's not on TikTok, and that's
Speaker 3: the way that you know, that's that's risky because it's
Speaker 3: like you know, and that's extremely extremely risky and extremely
Speaker 3: extremely rare. But he's built such a nostalgic brand that
Speaker 3: at any given moment, when you see him, it's like
Speaker 3: seeing a ghost, like you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: If it wasn't for these pictures, they wouldn't see me
Speaker 7: at all.
Speaker 3: So I think he got that intentionally and that has
Speaker 3: helped him remain relevant for thirty years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, obviously Jay is our guy. Jay is
Speaker 2: our favorite guy. We're gonna keep saying Jay's name. And
Speaker 2: I know, John, you're sharing this until we sit next
Speaker 2: to him. But I'll say easy, easy, I think. I
Speaker 2: think what Yay's done is incredible, right like the Yeasy
Speaker 2: name that the brand itself speaks for itself. It's transcended music,
Speaker 2: it's trans it's transcended fashion. It is the symbol of
Speaker 2: new and cutting edge. And he's done that over time,
Speaker 2: and he said he was going to do it right
Speaker 2: like he lives that line too. I'm the grades with
Speaker 2: I said that before I knew I was. He's been
Speaker 2: saying it since O three. He would say it to
Speaker 2: anybody that would listen, so to watch it come to fruition,
Speaker 2: and even like with the Forbes thing, I know, John,
Speaker 2: you have some things to say, and I was right
Speaker 2: on with you as far as the Forbes thing. It
Speaker 2: doesn't matter if he's worth six billion or two billion.
Speaker 2: He's a billionaire and he said he would be and
Speaker 2: he's here doing it now. So his branding is amazing
Speaker 2: with everything he does, and everybody might agree with the
Speaker 2: way he goes about it, but you can't deny if
Speaker 2: he steps into a room or if he puts his
Speaker 2: name on a product, it's out of here. Right. People
Speaker 2: are wondering, Hey, look at Gap Wow. Why is gap
Speaker 2: stock rising? Well, yeah, this guy said he's doing a
Speaker 2: brand partnership with him, and they know when he puts
Speaker 2: stuff in the stores, it's leaving the stores. I've been
Speaker 2: If anyone has been to a Kanye concert, I've been
Speaker 2: to a bunch of them. There are people who literally
Speaker 2: don't come to see the music. They will stand in
Speaker 2: line for the merch for the entire show. Wow, for
Speaker 2: the entire show, no joke. I went to the Saint
Speaker 2: Pablo to him, it was one who was like floating
Speaker 2: over the whole crowd, and I tried to buy his
Speaker 2: shirt and I couldn't get I was like, I'm miss
Speaker 2: the show if I wait in this line, and people
Speaker 2: will wait in line. My wife was like, oh go,
Speaker 2: I'll miss a song or two. Him like, Noah, it's fine.
Speaker 2: At the end of the show, I have to wait
Speaker 2: an hour to get a T shirt. I'm like, these
Speaker 2: people have not left everything. He puts on a lot
Speaker 2: of concert cells out.
Speaker 3: But also before you go John. He's also like Jay
Speaker 3: in a sense where you don't see him. He's also
Speaker 3: built a nostalgia. He pops up. He's more active than
Speaker 3: Jay on Twitter, but he pops up for Twitter rants
Speaker 3: every now and then, and then he's like the groundhog.
Speaker 4: Then he goes under. He'll be on Instagram then delete
Speaker 4: all his Instagram that.
Speaker 2: He's driving in water.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's that.
Speaker 4: It's that that crazy, you.
Speaker 3: Know what I'm saying, Like he's he's another one where
Speaker 3: he's not really accessible like that.
Speaker 2: I think that's something we said, like one of the
Speaker 2: best attributes is that you can't access access mysterious Manchronica.
Speaker 3: Said, familiarity doesn't breathe. Just content like just content like
Speaker 3: meaning like sometimes you oversaturate yourself. It doesn't even breathe.
Speaker 3: People get they start to hate you just because they
Speaker 3: see you so much. It's like like being with a
Speaker 3: you know, what's a spouse or somebody.
Speaker 2: Said what he said one day, they want to knight
Speaker 2: you the next good night you.
Speaker 7: Yeahnny. What you think, man, Who's who's the best brand
Speaker 7: in the hip hop game?
Speaker 8: I mean I think, yeah, I think the answer is Jay.
Speaker 9: Because of the ecosystem of product and brands and businesses
Speaker 9: that he's created, right, I mean what he did with
Speaker 9: title Champagne Rockaware. You know, Jay's pedigree and his track
Speaker 9: record are insane. I'm gonna throw in a dark horse
Speaker 9: just to acknowledge what what Nipsey did while he was here,
Speaker 9: you know, and peace. But I think Nick was instrumental
Speaker 9: in branding a consciousness in a way of thought that
Speaker 9: we hadn't really seen in a long time.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 9: He he made people believe in ownership and and and
Speaker 9: got people interested in real estate, and you know, was
Speaker 9: doing a bunch of technology smartphone ars, you know, nf
Speaker 9: T related things way before you know, any of these
Speaker 9: things were in mainstream consciousness. And I think that you know,
Speaker 9: nips all money in, no money out. You know that
Speaker 9: there was a lot. There was a lot there. You know,
Speaker 9: fuck the middleman, like there was a lot there.
Speaker 7: He was more marathon.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, thank you minded me right like that.
Speaker 9: It didn't it wasn't mainstream, so less people will acknowledge it.
Speaker 9: But for for people like us who were grinding during
Speaker 9: the time that Knit was grinding, it was like, you know,
Speaker 9: he had a different effect on consciousness. And I think
Speaker 9: that's been you know, obviously it's big for me. People
Speaker 9: know how I feel about Nip, But ye I gotta
Speaker 9: acknowledge that because I think that he was one of
Speaker 9: the new school players, you know that that was really
Speaker 9: about to run it up after that first crop of
Speaker 9: Jya fifty Snoop Dre, you know, like that that graduating
Speaker 9: class had already moved on.
Speaker 8: I think Nip was the revolutionary in that sense, yo.
Speaker 6: Can I also just say that what what jay Z
Speaker 6: did with titles should be fucking illegal, like that's my
Speaker 6: man's and he made his bag, but like had did
Speaker 6: no one.
Speaker 7: Like guys, remember when we came out with Title.
Speaker 6: He made his fucking entire catalog exclusive to title, brought
Speaker 6: a bunch of artists, got him exclusive to Title, inflated
Speaker 6: the value, sold the third of it to Sprint, cashed
Speaker 6: in I think it was two hundred mil, right, and
Speaker 6: then once that shit was flopping, Uh, he pretty much
Speaker 6: brought his cadillag, brought his catalog right back on Spotify.
Speaker 6: And so because he was vulnerable during that time that
Speaker 6: he was only on Title. Uh, and then he made
Speaker 6: himself accessible again and sold that bitch and he sold
Speaker 6: it to Jack Dorsey.
Speaker 7: And then finished cashing out on it.
Speaker 2: That is ridiculous.
Speaker 6: That's that's like market manipulation, except for it's his own
Speaker 6: personal catalog and IP.
Speaker 9: You know, so he could do it, but he took
Speaker 9: the risk, right, I mean with him, and you know
Speaker 9: Beyonce did with having their music exclusive on a platform
Speaker 9: that wasn't available to everybody, that when they knew they
Speaker 9: were losing millions of dollars on them that you know,
Speaker 9: it was it was a risky movement that paid off
Speaker 9: for him.
Speaker 6: So bought it for fifty, sold a third for two hundred,
Speaker 6: finished selling Man's Crazy. I think, you know, I think
Speaker 6: the best brainder in the in the game is Puff.
Speaker 6: I just I think that bro I seen recently the
Speaker 6: Ready to Die documentary. I mean, the guy has an
Speaker 6: eye for talent and when he backed Big, you know,
Speaker 6: he put this whole like like movement and brain around
Speaker 6: And for as long as I can remember, Puff has
Speaker 6: been that flashy type and he took that whole persona.
Speaker 6: Going back to that, you know, to the earliest part
Speaker 6: of this episode. His word really like is just lifestyle
Speaker 6: in a way that Hove is not. Hope is mysterious.
Speaker 6: Hope is kind of crusty. Actually, Puff, you just you
Speaker 6: won't find you know, with the exception of when when
Speaker 6: his when his girl passed away, and of course he
Speaker 6: was in that in that dark period of just mourning.
Speaker 6: That was the only glimpse of time really that I
Speaker 6: could think of that Puff wasn't smiling, laughing, and he
Speaker 6: was able to productize that entire just persona. He's got
Speaker 6: the Spirits brand and I had the chance to kick
Speaker 6: it with his CFO, and his CFO told, Yeah, projects
Speaker 6: that we invest in don't net a whole lot. The
Speaker 6: projects that we build from scratch and vertically integrate and
Speaker 6: that we own the i r R the internal rate
Speaker 6: of return, the profit is through the roof.
Speaker 7: Because Puff is not really that that speaks to his superpower.
Speaker 7: He's not one to invest in another vehicle and then
Speaker 7: let it do his thing.
Speaker 2: He's one to just live it.
Speaker 7: He lives his products, man, and and for that, I
Speaker 7: think Puff is the best brander in the game.
Speaker 2: That's a good point, John, because when you were talking
Speaker 2: about brand, I was thinking about some rock. It's more
Speaker 2: than a drink, it's a lifestyle. But this guy had
Speaker 2: like every commercial was a James Bond movie. Right then,
Speaker 2: it became The Ocean's Eleven's movie and it was like this,
Speaker 2: I have to taste this. This is the only thing
Speaker 2: I can drink. I need to feel like that. I
Speaker 2: want to look like that. I need to have that lifestyle.
Speaker 2: Does this drink? Bring it? And now you got Klid
Speaker 2: and he's on a jet ski and every time I
Speaker 2: look at his glass and I'm like that, son's that
Speaker 2: new uh summer breeze is like that new drink looks incredible.
Speaker 2: I have to try it. It's like it becomes a
Speaker 2: part of your lifestyle. It's great market.
Speaker 3: I just want to say one more thing before we can,
Speaker 3: maybe just get the one more question before we wrap,
Speaker 3: but bringing it back, like X said, get well soon,
Speaker 3: let's bring it back to the streets. And I want
Speaker 3: to always make this as relatable for people as possible.
Speaker 3: Another Eyo alumni that we had Nacho Banger. He's a
Speaker 3: he's a young man out of Baltimore, crazy story, grew
Speaker 3: up in the streets, literally eats Baltimore and uh, you know,
Speaker 3: became six figure entrepreneur off of nachos.
Speaker 4: So yeah, he does.
Speaker 3: He's not shows where he puts like you know, so
Speaker 3: a long story show so this is the most practical
Speaker 3: thing in the world, right, Like anybody can make nachos
Speaker 3: with shrimp, and he was making it in his microwave
Speaker 3: at first, before he learned how to cook. So this
Speaker 3: is like because people be like, you know, this is
Speaker 3: a high level this is the most practical thing in
Speaker 3: the world brand right, he built He told the story
Speaker 3: through a bunch of other stuff. So he created a
Speaker 3: dance called the Nacho Benga Dance, and he won't viral
Speaker 3: in Baltimore and colleges like Morgan State and you know,
Speaker 3: Talents and and all of these schools and all the
Speaker 3: high schools and in the neighborhood. So now he's going
Speaker 3: this is before TikTok. He's going viral for his dance.
Speaker 3: He made a dance attached to the food. So it's
Speaker 3: one thing to make the nachos, but now he's branding.
Speaker 4: It with the dance.
Speaker 3: And you know he's doing like going to parties and
Speaker 3: hosting clubs and all of that. So it's so many
Speaker 3: different stories that come to mind as far as branding
Speaker 3: is concerned, but that's one of my favorite because there's
Speaker 3: nothing more practical than that. Like he literally started from
Speaker 3: the bottom legit making nachos out the bando. Literally, you
Speaker 3: had to watch that episode. It's very inspirational. I'm going
Speaker 3: to finish, and he without even knowing what he was doing.
Speaker 3: He's branding himself by creating a story and making himself
Speaker 3: a legend and a myth. But it comes down to nachos.
Speaker 3: That's the most practical thing in the world. Like, he's
Speaker 3: not selling anything that's out of this world. He's literally
Speaker 3: selling nachos that you get from nachos, like the bag,
Speaker 3: the nacho.
Speaker 2: Bag, jeez, and anything you want. This is the craziest
Speaker 2: part about that story. Right, So he's getting booked to
Speaker 2: come to clubs and be the host, right, he's getting
Speaker 2: paid that because this song is crazy. The dance is
Speaker 2: even crazy. You got the club doing it. You know
Speaker 2: what he's doing when people are leaving the club selling
Speaker 2: the nacho. He's got his food truck outside selling you
Speaker 2: the food. Because the first thing you got to do
Speaker 2: is eat. When you come out of a party, you've
Speaker 2: been sweating, you've been drinking, you're hungry. He goes to nachos,
Speaker 2: five dollars, get your sauce. Wow, incredible, that's fine.
Speaker 8: I think that's a valuable lesson too on brand.
Speaker 9: Right, there's a lot of times like he doesn't the
Speaker 9: way that your product gets popping on the way you
Speaker 9: get popping isn't necessarily your core competency.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 9: The dance might be bigger and getting more impressions than
Speaker 9: a picture of the nachos. But that's what good thinkers
Speaker 9: and founders do is they find ways to create, you know,
Speaker 9: parallel ideas and concepts that lift up their entire brand.
Speaker 4: Let's take one question before we wrap.
Speaker 2: I hope I did not to apply by saying, my delly,
Speaker 2: we're coming to you. Mute yourself. You've been unmuted? What's
Speaker 2: going on? Oh wait wait, oh yeah, I'm here, bro,
Speaker 2: I'm here, bro.
Speaker 4: Come on.
Speaker 10: That was less bless How your fellows doing. That's great, man,
Speaker 10: Glad glad to hear that. Listen, It's funny. You guys
Speaker 10: have touched on a couple of things that I realized
Speaker 10: marketing wise, that I never noticed before, even for example,
Speaker 10: me signing up with E Y L the day that
Speaker 10: I was just listening to one of your market mondays,
Speaker 10: and you guys created that urgency with the sale is
Speaker 10: about to run out. Next thing I know, Bam, I
Speaker 10: throw my card on the thing. Next thing, I know,
Speaker 10: I'm blessed to be to become earner. So I'm saying,
Speaker 10: but you guys drove it into me by creating that
Speaker 10: urgency just crazy, which is absolutely crazy marketing? How that works?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 8: Quick?
Speaker 10: Thing I wanted to touch on is, uh, when you're
Speaker 10: going back to what you were mentioning as far as
Speaker 10: creating a brand.
Speaker 4: So I'm doing the Amazon.
Speaker 10: The Amazon thing, trying to you know, create my brand,
Speaker 10: and that's so.
Speaker 4: Hard to get Amazon exactly.
Speaker 10: It's so hard to do right now because you have
Speaker 10: so much competition and you have to get a bunch
Speaker 10: of people, you have to get up front, you have
Speaker 10: to get uh rated, you have to get a ranked
Speaker 10: and all that.
Speaker 4: It's so hard.
Speaker 10: What can you Is there anything that you might think
Speaker 10: that I could be able to use to help my
Speaker 10: help me, you know, get better with my business.
Speaker 6: Wow, that's a great question for Annie, but it's also
Speaker 6: a brilliant question in general. How do you brand yourself
Speaker 6: when what you're selling is commoditized and also it i e.
Speaker 6: Widely available and also you're on the platform that is commoditized.
Speaker 7: Man, Annie, what's your take on that?
Speaker 6: That's a powerful question actually because a lot of people
Speaker 6: could probably relate to that.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, you know the idea of when you
Speaker 9: engage with Amazon, you have to know that you are
Speaker 9: engaging on somebody else's platform and somebody else's brand equity
Speaker 9: rights making it easy for you to sell and easy
Speaker 9: for other people to transact, and so you're going to
Speaker 9: lose a little bit of competitive advantage there.
Speaker 8: My recommendation will.
Speaker 9: Be create content in your own world and still direct
Speaker 9: people to Amazon, but that brand equity and the things
Speaker 9: that you're doing on social editorial, you know, livestream, all
Speaker 9: those things can still be as fruitful as you need
Speaker 9: them to be. So just because the transaction is happening
Speaker 9: on Amazon, it doesn't mean that the entire narrative or
Speaker 9: the story band is happening on Amazon.
Speaker 3: You know, another thing, another thing, This is my take
Speaker 3: on this is what I would do. So the good
Speaker 3: thing with Amazon is private label. So like lint rollers
Speaker 3: shout out to Josh Chris lint rollers or toenail.
Speaker 4: Clippers, a lot of these things.
Speaker 3: This is what a lot of people sell on Amazon,
Speaker 3: because nobody ever asked where's a lint roller coming from?
Speaker 3: So like they sell lint rollers in a factory in China.
Speaker 3: You get it and you can put your label on it.
Speaker 3: So it could be like eyol lint rollers.
Speaker 4: Right. What I would do is whatever product is selling.
Speaker 3: Let's say we're selling lint rollers, right, I would Now
Speaker 3: I would go to every social media blog whatever. Now
Speaker 3: going back to creating a story. Black owned lint rolling company,
Speaker 3: the first ever black owned lint rolling company out of Philadelphia, whatever,
Speaker 3: I would create a story about it and make the
Speaker 3: myth and make the story way bigger than would it. Actually,
Speaker 3: you're not lying. You're a black on lint rolling company.
Speaker 3: But now that sounds way better than me just putting
Speaker 3: the lint roll on Amazon. No, I gonna make a
Speaker 3: whole movie out of there. I'm making a whole motion
Speaker 3: picture out of it. Black own lint rolling company. I
Speaker 3: started from the bottom. Da da dada da had to
Speaker 3: get distribution from China. It's all about how you say things.
Speaker 10: It's damn, it's crazy. That's crazy. It seems to me
Speaker 10: like I'm gonna have to cut your checks.
Speaker 4: Million dollar for a game. You know we're talking about that.
Speaker 4: Shout out to the earnest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so separately, Yes, gentlemen, this, this, This was fun.
Speaker 4: This was fun. Guys, John, I'll let you I'll let
Speaker 4: you put this, wrap this up.
Speaker 6: Episode one Man in the Books. Thank you guys for
Speaker 6: rocking and rolling with us. Man Annie, always a pleasure
Speaker 6: to have you on you guys. Got to check out
Speaker 6: Annie Man. He's at at Annie Hustles, on Instagram, on
Speaker 6: every other platform. Just one of the realist practitioners in
Speaker 6: the game. You get a lot of knowledges following all
Speaker 6: of his content, So talk about storytelling, talk about brand
Speaker 6: I take notes from him. I personally reach out to
Speaker 6: him with questions that I have around how to crack
Speaker 6: the code, marketing on brands, and things of that nature.
Speaker 6: So definitely tapping with Annie Man. That's the dude, support
Speaker 6: his his child concept. You won't be disappointed. It's a
Speaker 6: lot more than Chi So locking with Annie. But yet
Speaker 6: to all the folks listening, Man, thank you guys. This
Speaker 6: has been a limited this episode one of a limited series.
Speaker 6: We're just getting going. We're just testing out and experimenting
Speaker 6: with the show format. I know that some of you guys,
Speaker 6: I can already see hundreds and hundreds literally of down
Speaker 6: loads of the framework, So I hope that you guys
Speaker 6: take value from it. I think in future episodes we
Speaker 6: will keep the presentations to a minimum and just keep
Speaker 6: it more rooted in conversation, experimentation, and you know, examples
Speaker 6: from pop culture and different moments of that nature. Next
Speaker 6: up on episode two, we're gonna be diving into content strategy,
Speaker 6: which everyone here on this particular pod could literally do
Speaker 6: a master session on. And our special guest for that
Speaker 6: episode is going to be none other than the team
Speaker 6: captain for gary V. So this is Andy Kranak, who
Speaker 6: had he runs gary V's entire thirty five person content
Speaker 6: team and just crushes their content strategy. So we're gonna
Speaker 6: get into the three h's of content hub, hero hygiene,
Speaker 6: how you can mm hm, how much is your cause,
Speaker 6: how you should structure your whole ship.
Speaker 7: It's gonna be a banger.
Speaker 6: So thank you guys, ey L appreciate you all as
Speaker 6: as always, And for those of you guys listen, remember
Speaker 6: Loopingshure dot Co.
Speaker 7: The link is linked up there.
Speaker 6: Tapping and join the wait list slash, make sure you
Speaker 6: download the framework. Talk about scarcity.
Speaker 7: It's going away at the end of the day, so
Speaker 7: you gotta go and have that ship today and then
Speaker 7: we'll take it from there fellas. Thank you guys so much.
Speaker 7: Appreciate y'all.
Speaker 8: Y'all the link.
Speaker 3: The link is also in the description of this video
Speaker 3: and it's pinned here. So yeah, thank you guys.
Speaker 4: This was fun. See you next week later. Peace.
Speaker 5: Peace, my graduates from my school being forced back and drop.
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