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