Billion Dollar Ad Arbitrage: Opportunities Hidden in Plain Sight

basically i think he said that these they sold like half a million dollars worth of chocolate off this off this ad and like within a couple weeks or something like that so it really like jumps yeah i feel like got could rude to work i know i could be what i want to put at all in in like a days off on a road less travel never looking back are you are you changing anything you're doing right now because the economy just sucks ass right now no what do you mean the economy sucks you mean the stock market sucks the normal people economy yeah the the economy for mug well i i don't even i don't even think that's that because they're still like the normally the normal people economy is like restaurants bars grocery stores like you know taxi drivers you know stuff like that then there's the stock market so there's like main street there's wall street and then there's like crypto lsd land i spent all my time crypto lsd land so i don't pay attention to either main street or wall street personally well the my three worlds are going through craziness real estate increase rates i wonder what's gonna happen in the next six twelve months startups so like these startups that you and i all invested in like six months ago huge valuations they had a lot of work to do to live up to it yeah and funding we're now way harder to get just in like three months like the macro environment changes in two months and then finally public equities are just in the shit it this sucks man i feel bummed yeah the the guy i think we both have the same guy at whatever morgan stanley or whatever and he he'll just text me and be like hey tough market capable i'm like bro not even looking at this why are you texting me about this you know i appreciate him checking in and making sure that you know everything's okay but i don't need to be reminded because i'm not i'm got i don't pay attention to that anyways i'm i'm too deep in my own world it sucks my my trainer has a phrase this he calls it caesar's world he's like we there's like you know you've ever heard that phrase leave leave unto caesar what is caesar's i don't know if you ever heard that but it's basically that's a good one there's kinda like the external like like the stuff that's a out of our control and b like you know the world can be going crazy that doesn't mean i need to go crazy like people are outraged about this that doesn't mean i need to be outraged about that and so sometimes i'll be telling him something and he's like jesus caesar's world bro and i have to remember oh yeah like i'm putting my attention and energy into something that's a outside of my control and b like doesn't really matter it doesn't act actually affect me it does shouldn't be affected my current mood and i gotta remember you know how to keep what's what no i've gotten better but it still sucks i just got done speaking at a conference you know who neil patel is yeah the marketer guy yeah he was hosting a conference dude i bet you that guy just wildly wealthy like cash wealthy and he's been in the game forever and do you know this naval book what's it called the the alma act yeah so it was you know it's on naval wall but it was written by this guy named eric what's his last name george george george jorge yeah dude i saw him at the conference and he came to me he goes hey man what's up and like oh hey eric i i read your book you're awesome he goes yeah nice to meet you you're you're way smaller than i thought you were gonna be in real life i was like shoot i was like did you just did you just make me could i have your number like i was immediately attracted to him yeah how do i win your approval yeah i did your approval dad it's my own commission in life right now dude he just win your thank me so hard and he's like six six did you know that oh that's why okay gotcha he big dogg you yeah he big dogg me hard dude he naked me so hard i was like oh i like that feisty yeah that's what that does happen and and when it does it really like rocks you because you're so you you're probably so used to see her in the opposite oh you went bigger than i thought oh dude you're yeah you're jacked you're tall or whatever you know you're amazing and for someone to be like oh this minnie are you sam just snake me just so hard got me i dude i've got a bunch i've got one interesting topic today what do you got let's start you wanna start with my thing yeah start to start with yours so you're a thirty three thirty four year old guy so you probably haven't been to the doctor in like fifteen years but accurate yeah yeah mend don't the doctors my wife's gone and i'm sitting here doing this podcast i'm wearing flip flops with one foot has a sock on and onto underwear that's inside up because i didn't wanna do laundry so like yeah i mean i'm a grown grandchild too but so listen have you been to the doctor like with your wife or kid and notice that there's like these tv screens in there i have like in the waiting room you mean in the waiting room but also like in the doctor's office like in the actual medical like in the room like in the waiting room but i'm kaiser and those guys are cheap as health so they don't put them in the their actual doctor's office yeah kaiser would is kaiser is though network in hospital so they they wouldn't apply to this but basically if you go to most like an independent or like a normal non kaiser doctor there's tv screens in the waiting room there's tv screens in the hallway and then oftentimes now they've got tv screens in the doctor's office and so have you heard this company called outcome health i've heard of this once before maybe from you no i it's actually from our buddy and i'm just gonna tell you three words i remember hundred million dollars when basically like waiting room tvs and there's indian duties is the founder those are the three things i kind of know about yeah well you're missing the fourth word which is fraud okay okay gotcha this was four years ago so maybe something has come out since then so i'm gonna tell you about this business and i actually think that it's kind of like pretty morally corrupt but it's interesting nonetheless and the business model actually good and interesting but the guy who ran this particular business sucked so basically it was called outcome health it was started by this guy named rei and he was out of chicago and he's like this wonder kin prodigy whatever raised money at a five or ten billion dollar valuation promised that he had or said he had a hundred sixty million in revenue turns out that was nonsense it wasn't true and so he got sued and it didn't turn out well at all but listen to what their business was it it's actually pretty again unethical i think fascinating so basically do you what do you watch you ever watched like cable tv yeah of course so it's like all po commercials and like pharmaceuticals right back to the earlier point dodge yeah it's like dodge and like cia and and that's one of the reasons is like on google and on facebook and stuff like that you can't really advertise pharmaceuticals or at least the rules are a little bit different and so pharmaceutical companies are advertising like crazy on tv something like eighty or eight billion dollars last year spent it's like the third largest category and but they spend like way more so of the twenty million spent on pharmaceutical ads like fifteen million of that is spent plan billion is spent in the doctor's office and so they do that by like giving them free samples by giving them like those like mugs and pens and yeah just like shit like that just like swag and so this guy came up with this idea where basically he puts a tv in the doctor's office and the tv is like touch screen it's free for the doctor and it does some things like they could like put like like the person's chart on the tv or it's like interactive and like alright so your foot broken and if we zoom in here it's this bone and and but when you're not using it for that reason it's an advertising thing so it like shows ads and they're not selling the ad to the consumer because the consumer is not the one whose choice it is of what drugs you're gonna get prescribed it's the doctor and so the pharmaceuticals go to outcome health and they say here's the fifty thousand doctors who are trying to reach show me which of those you have your tv in in in their office and help us reach them and we'll pay you a lot of money for that right and theoretically this guy was full of it and like the fourth year business he was yeah making like a hundred and sixty million dollars in ads and pharmaceutical ads and now outcome health was eventually acquired by another company and they're actually doing it legit and they're making over they're properly making over a hundred million dollars and it's all from pharmaceutical ads on these freaking streams was he lying about he lied about which doctors was yet or he lied about the revenue like they just didn't have a hundred plan jay and j johnson and johnson they're executives and their their ad salespeople would go to these doctors and they're like wait a minute this fucking company told us that there's tvs here i don't see a tv anywhere and like it happened like dozens of times they're like dude you said that there was tvs and our ad was being seen by this many people it ain't happen and so they basically just lied they just said that their tvs were in all of these rooms they just thought that no one was gonna check and so their tvs weren't actually there and so they bill and but they were billing johnson and johnson on showing their cia ad or whatever it to you know but it one actually happening wow sweet lied but also pretty too crazy put the tv there what the stupid reason to lie yeah go go get the tv at the doctor's office it's not that expensive or hard to do to get a tv in a doctor's office i just think it's crazy though that like this business model is like crazy fascinating though it is kind of a good business out model but i think it's the whole pharmaceutical industry advertising it's kinda like bullshit you know what i mean it's it's like when someone someone's gonna do this for like so we saw we talked to that company that was doing this on top putting you know screens on top of uber uber cars which i i was totally against like i thought that business wasn't gonna work was i right a wrong did it work i think it looked like we were wrong because they raised a bunch of money but i again who knows maybe there's maybe it's a you know we gotta rei in chicago situation again here so i i don't know but but but that company had did pretty well neither of us invested in it there's other versions this so the question is like what are these captive audiences where you can go stick you can go create an ad network right so it's like there's like physical places so like i don't know high schools colleges like what can you just go put this in every dorm like in the country and they'd be like hey you wanna reach college kids there's no more effective place than this because like you know every three minutes we give out like a free you know code for like a snap from the vending machine and then the other you know two minutes are are are just straight ads and so it's like you know can you find captive audiences in other ways and create a network of like some highly desired like person like if the the key would be you know could you somehow could you somehow do this around like i don't know stay at home moms it's probably not because there's like they're spread out like that that's the thing with doctor's office like there's there's there's a smaller number of them that you need to like get the screens high value there's this company called cheddar do you remember cheddar cheddar was basically like the hustle if it focused on all the weird shit instead of just like the substance and then somehow sold for two hundred million dollars that's what that's my take on cheddar so you're you're forgetting the worst component is that it was entirely built at first on facebook live so right when facebook came out with facebook live this guy named john stein who's was a nice guy a he's a bulldog this guy is like ari gold like if he he sees what do he wants and he's like a you just he's like a missile he just good at to do he just captures audiences to do is go straight towards it so anyway this guy launches company called cheddar and the content was shit and somehow they got like on the the the pitch right so here was his pitch and how we raised a bunch of money from investors he said very similar to what you said hey millennials gen z these guys are not trying to watch you know cnbc or msnbc i don't i don't know whatever the finance channels i don't even know it that cnbc the the the pitch was cnbc only has like twenty thousand concurrent viewers viewers at any given point but it makes like a billion dollars a year right and they're all on medicare so it's like okay so how do how do you get like gen z millennials they're not gonna watch that what are they gonna watch and he's like that's social media social media right and all the vcs have nod their head he's like that's do you have a teenager do they watch cbc or do they watch social media and everyone's like social media he's like and guess what they now have live video facebook is live video twitter has live video youtube live video so we're gonna create cnbc on social media and they basically created a twenty four seven like tv tv show that was business news that would just be streaming all day onto facebook live onto twitter live onto like youtube live onto all these different platforms and it was and this covid in itself is amazing building twenty four is crazy first it's crazy so that is amazing that he could even pull it up but there was one factor that he kinda screwed up on which is like no one wanted to one watching it yeah everyone rolled right past it yeah no one and so he's like he he executed a bad premise wonderfully yeah and out of ten hustle two out of ten idea because i guess what happens on social media you don't stop and watch a live video for forty minutes like this is not what happens on most social media and so you know it just didn't really work and you're right twenty four seven it was kinda boring because this is not twenty four seven worth of like interesting miss when it comes to that step and he raised money i think he raised forty million and somehow a cable company bought it for two hundred million dollars and he told me i met with him and he told me one time he was like yeah so i'm gonna start this company and in two years i'm probably gonna sell for two or three hundred million dollars he he just told me and he just called it a shot and he's a bulldog and he nailed it he's an unstoppable force and he pulled it off but now what they do is if you go to a gas station you don't even go to gas stations anymore dude dude i pump my own gas yes i do if you'll see cheddar all on their little screen that's all like and so they're they're like owning like this weird market of people who wanna play like jeopardy while they're pumping their gas like you know it's like snap snap facts while you're while you're like your gas so they they're they've got the gas market well who was it that we didn't we meet somebody i i think i maybe it was just me i met somebody recently who was like yeah you know what a gas station of those screens like i own the ad inventory of like these like in these are three cities like i'm like the kind of main guy so like you know how do you think i should sell these ads he's like i i that's what i own i own this inventory and i wasn't was make money it i i'm sure he was doing okay but he was like you what would you do and i was like i was like well the people who want this ad is like the local businesses right because they have like look you can actually send them like local foot traffic better than like a facebook or a google or these like scaled easy to use ad platform forms count dude selling local ads is the worst though there's like these like san francisco base i remember i had a couple of san francisco based yelp friends and they were like they were like like like have you seen that seen in the get richer die trying with fifty cent where he's selling drugs and like one guy goes up to one of the drug dealers and tries to buy like some crack but with like quarters and nickel and the drug dealers smack it of his hand if fin goes hey man come here i'll take it it it was like see how hard i hustle i was willing to take the change and like the yelp is like that version of ad salespeople people like they would like find like a pie shop itself four hundred dollar ad you know what i mean and they're just grinding to get that done there's this guy's in the yelp sales office dude i would watch a twenty four seven feet of yelp sales office because those guys are the grim g grit sales vlogger yeah will shake your local pie shop down like hope you don't want this review that i just posted on your page we'll go fucking can run it right now a horrible review on your page and then call you tell you to go look at it and then sell you a a premium plan that would get their ad removed it's like the craziest thing in the world yeah dude and it's a racket and and like that's put grandma on the phone put her on the phone grandma topic and pot you got problem on deal you got a ping they're basically like the mob like do you want protection and like you they do something bad if once from us great yeah they are like a mob yeah totally totally it's it is crazy so those local ads suck man i i i've when i've got friends who wanna start like local ads or local newsletters and i'm like yeah you're gonna get tons of eyeballs the problem is monetizing that sucks man you gotta deal with like you know like bob's steaks and chops down the street and like he's like well i'll give you like thirty pounds of filet mignon and chatted like it's as hard i cut this great deal for milk road so i was like okay what's our fill rate i think our ad fill rate was like seventy five percent or something last month i was like it was seventy five percent yeah i was like ben what him was pretty good i was what do this other twenty five percent and he's like he's like dude you know he's like we actually got hit up by a couple brands that you you have said you liked on the podcast he's like they were just like you know we'll take any ad that you don't have that day but we'll take it at forty percent of the list price and i'm gonna give it to you in store credit like the worst deal it's like know i'm getting shit down by yelp here but i was also like i kinda love that product so yeah like let's do it so like i have like you know like right in front of my front door right now i have like like you know palettes of fit aid because just like ran a fit eight ad for them and it's like here's you know two thousand dollars a fit you know in exchange for that ad thank you so much it's all i'm like alright great my gym has like you know energy drinks for the year and that's done that's actually pretty smart and it's really smart on their part it's part of their part and ben was like y tell me like the five five or six products you're like you love the most it's just like i'm doing mine too and like we'll just we'll give sweetheart deals to all these companies like if you if we actually want their free product like if we really want their free product this is a great way to do it it's like it's a great deal for them too they just get this like ad hoc rem inventory i told you this off air but when the hustle started in order to get advertisers did you notice that when you starting milk road when you started having ads you would get more people emailing you asking to advertising exactly yes and so i notice that early on i was like if or i didn't notice it i guess i was like if we put ads and there we're gonna get more ads and so i was like well like what's like the most famous brands of people who don't who who everyone knows of but hopefully their employees don't read the hustle and so in the early stages like you know like it'd be like the hustle brought to you by ford and i had never talked to anyone in my life i just put their logo in there and said i was sponsored by them and i remember like hopefully ford you guys i'm sorry but basically listen yeah hopefully i love ford i had an f one fifty i love ford but basically that's illegal i mean that's illegal you can't do that and i didn't know that it was illegal i was like oh just put like know microsoft in here like put forward whatever he cares like hey a free ad for them right i'm i'm giving them something yeah and i would put that in there and then immediately like they're you know someone would email me and then eventually you i noticed that if i put a brand's ad in there their competitors would call me to advertise right and at this one i won't even i'm not gonna say but i would put in certain tech brands i'm like right dude this particular this company x has a really big ad budget but they're not emailing me let's go and advertise why which is their a direct competitor and put them in there and then immediately after and then sometimes what i would do is i would only put that particular ad in the email that was going to that company because with email newsletters you you'd be like oh wow there's eight people that have an at uber dot com email let's send an email with a message just to them yeah here's a lyft takeover email for them that i'm like i'm a mini r a little a little mini outcome health here but yeah that i that's that's kinda counterintuitive like that oh if i put ads that's actually the easiest way to to sell more ads and then being sort of you know you know fake could tell you make it yeah i think that's like the the startup way there is a line i don't think i personally don't think you crossed it i do i don't think either with the podcast by the way it was the same thing somebody was like you know like i had this conversation on the way somebody was like oh dude i love the podcast and they're were like how much you making on that i was like not really making joe much here you know it's a i do this for fun but then i was kinda like eight at me and during my uber ride to the thing i was like okay i'm gonna get you know i'm gonna get an ad this like the first or second podcast i'm made third podcast i was like i'm gonna get like a sponsor i was like okay do i really wanna go do outreach sponsors in no way sounds like i just in the middle of the podcast after the go i go and by the way today's today's episode is brought to you by no one no one sponsored today's episode and i like made it a joke and i was like but think about it you can have me right here explaining your product i could be like wow it does this and it just and i just like did this like fake ad read like for nothing and i just like whatever i like did that do the next day i got so many like as soon as that episode released we got like our first three sponsors just from that like brought you by nobody ad and i was like oh that was like back for ad sales was you know just because embarrassed myself a little bit on the pod well the and the reason it works and this is something that i had i learned along the way was marketers a good marketer is a shark ad and what they do is they spend most of their time seeking out under priced new platforms and new places to advertise the way that marketing typically works is you find one thing that works you spend all the money and you crush and destroy it and you strangle it and then you go alright that's exhausted move on next and so you are constantly the middle step then you go tell everybody about how this ad channel is crushing for you you you get well known you sell a course on that meanwhile you've moved on to the next channel that's not saturated and you go do that and then you're silent until that one stops being like fruitful and the same thing you sell the course you talk about it and then you move on again and do the same thing and so whenever you see like a new podcast that you think has potential or you see a newsletter or like tiktok ads we're a good example like it you're they're probably gonna crush once they open it up which they are and that's how marketers work and the smart marketers early on would approach me and they go hey can we just buy it out for the year and at the time i was like yeah definitely i'm poor i need everything and then i realized oh no that's stupid because we're gonna grow a lot and i know what they're doing and they're smart right have you seen did i send you this tiktok ad for tabs chocolate i don't know you've been sending me all these messages i didn't realize it until two nights ago that i even had an inbox on tiktok alright i'm gonna show you what i think is the best ad i've seen in like i mean i don't wanna say my whole life but i can't really think of a better ad so i'm just gonna give this scott mad props about this ad okay this company riverside just raised like forty the we're so right now sean are using this podcast thing called riverside they just raised like forty million dollars so it better work come out go go watch that take tiktok let's watch this take tiktok tell me this is not the best ad you've ever seen i'll i'll out why get it okay good so first explain what it is for somebody who's not watching the youtube channel they're not so there's this attractive nineteen year old right or twenty one year old woman right don't know dude i'm not that precise with it i have a a three like a college age to young adults attractive but not like doesn't next girl tracker shoot it's that girl next door attractive yeah and she says y'all let me let me put you on and this is a special chocolate that will change her love life seriously it shows her under her boyfriend each taking a tab of the chocolate and then it shows her again with her hair having sex hair like it's implying that she just had sex and and then it just says it works at the end of it and okay so this ad has six hundred and fifty thousand likes went viral it got featured advice and a bunch of other places because the brilliance of this so why is this ad brilliance so first the hook the first hook is her she cover she's got her hand covering her face partially which is like with like the kind of like oh my god and then it says y'all but it's real this is a real like this not a real thing this was a this was i think he created this at this wasn't what i mean is it doesn't look like a highly produced thing it literally just looks like a woman holding holding in a selfie yeah yeah she's hold her phone okay this this and then there's a there's like a whatever a viral song right after that and it looks like she's saying oh my god let me tell you something and then this it zooms in on her eyes and she's just like moving her eyes in that way of like that miss like sort of a moon mischievous thing and then the next scene is it shows the packaging but there's also like a little like there's like another thing on the table so you kinda don't it doesn't again it doesn't scream at at you right like it's not like this beautifully like a normal marketer would say we'll get this like you know candle that you have out of here that's kind confusing and she's like no like make it look like a desk and then like put the put the packaging of the product and it says this quote unquote special chocolate will change your love life dot dot dot seriously okay so i'm like intrigued it zooms in on it and then it goes it shows the guy in the girl each breaking off a piece like half and half of this thing so hey that looks kind of fun to do and then it doesn't tell you anything about it except for goes to her with a dish she hair the jb harris they used to say in college if you know what that stands for and then it just says it works with the shocked face and then it's again her looking around like oh my god dude what is okay so i actually don't know what does jb mean i didn't go to like cool just been just been f so so so so so basically you why is this amazing this is amazing because to me the best ads have three components they have the hook which is like just a thing to like draw you in to even get you to pay attention which is in her case the her with a handover face the second thing it has is the promise so it has the the promise that gets to be curious and in this case is this quote unquote special chocolate will change your love life dot dot seriously and then it has the it skips to the end right i have moved straight to the end it has the implication of it working so it doesn't tell you how it works why it works the you know what it does exactly it's just the the end state takes you straight to the happy ending of this is life if you use our product and most people don't like most of people don't know how to do a hook they get usually they get to how to do a promise and then very rarely do people know how to use the implication which is the this is this is if this works here's what happens to your life you kinda just show the ending and people just want to get into that today and so they kinda of put put two and two together about you know how how this might work they wanna click to learn more so that's why to me this is an amazing ad and this is called tab chocolate if you look at the rest of their tiktok they're all doing the same thing it's all like you and your husband when you first get married and it's like them like wanting to have sex and then it's like ten years after marriage and it's like the wife trying to be sexy and the husband ignores her and then they showed now here's you with tab and it shows them wanting to have sex so like an easy thing to advertise for well kinda easy but what's this company about are they killing it yeah so they basically are a b2c company i wanna give the founder a shout out i think his name is oliver i wanna say oliver let me see and what's in this chocolate what what what makes you horny i don't even know see dude i don't know probably nothing it doesn't matter yeah this guy oliver i see this guy oliver on on twitter he's young i think this guy's is like twenty one i think they said they sold half a million know about this then broke out is his first first wood and just decided to create a product phil he's still his first one what like what you're twenty one i mean they work great yeah why why why why do you need to but basically i think he said that he's they sold like half a million dollars worth of chocolate off this off this ad and like within a couple weeks or something like that so it really like jumps jumps is it a boot bootstrap company i mean just tab dot com would cost half a million dollars he has tab dot com right so one of the guys jake his thing says freshman at university of michigan which is just kind of insane and is that true let me find this other guy oliver her there's no way this do you think it's bounded by way so the this guy i wanna send you guys guys twitter which is just hilarious first of all so this guy's handle is oliver oliver underscore b one or something like that or maybe two hundred underscores but his name is oliver b there's a slash i sell sex chocolate that's his name on twitter then you know he's got his photo which like here with his bros and yeah he's he's been tweeting out like you know how you know how it's been doing so you know they did seventy three thousand dollars this week he's like i have this army of user generated content creators so like he's like i basically have you know i think he's got like an army of like twenty creators and he'll pay them between five hundred and three thousand dollars and then they make thirty videos they make thirty videos a month or something he's being a little loose with that word army maybe a a gag he's got a gag of got a sup separate separate party yeah he's got like a he's got like a like a full he's got like a a full nhl team it's gonna have to classroom i'll have a good touch football a football game worth of creators that i wanna know about army it would twenty but honestly this guy knows more about marketing than like half of the you know marketing guru that you see on social media just go look at this guys content no they're they're like i think they're bootstrap i don't i don't i don't know i'm kinda baking of half of this i as i'm going along here but i know enough that's this is that's an amazing ad these guys are young these guys understand marketing at a pretty deep level especially on new channels like tiktok and and that they've done you know like a pretty decent amount of sales i was looking at like his like he had said something he was like bragging about his ro ads or something like that and it actually wasn't super that part wasn't super impressive so i i didn't understand why he was bragging about that did you so but this is kind of an interesting topic of like basically thanks to reach like a young audience or you're trying to look cool then you go and you hire like a young cool person and you're like make us look cool which is one of two things might happen one they think that like they're trying to make something that just can't be cool cool and they ended like dude you you it's really hard to make like this particular software thing one who cares if not cool hey fellow yes yeah hey fellow kids that's what it's like and so it's like dude it's just not at that neat or the second thing they do is they end up being just totally douche gucci and like you're they make jokes like elon musk where like make like a four twenty jokes like right funny have you hired any like kids for that reason and what's was the outcome yeah the best example was when we when i hired steve bartlett and he's gone on to do some amazing things we've talked about him before if you don't know he basically ended up creating a marketing like a whatever a marketing company marketing agency that did like over a hundred million dollars in revenue it ended up merging with the company went public he's like a dragon on dragons dan he's got a real popular podcast and bunch of stuff he's like to me he's the young black gary v that's like the best description i can have of him it's it's been you think he's he's totally the real deal yeah he's the real deal he's the real deal in the sense that like you know i don't know in the same way that we were like did gary v is awesome you know does he kinda put on for the camera of course that's the game does you know is va media the pest business i've ever seen no it's not the best but it's a great know it's still a business that works and he's like at scale so you know real deal can meet a bunch of things but i think he's the real deal in all of those terms meaning i've seen his talent firsthand he's really super talented you so i recruited him from the uk he flew over he lived with us and and worked with us in san francisco and then then after that he bit basically went spun out his like marketing agency and like that's how he kind of got his start and and my whole thinking was like this guy gets social this guy gets social media he's a hustle and like if we're gonna build these social apps we need somebody who like a they're they're not like an engineer neck beard like who's like oh yeah people want to share photo galleries because why would i not wanna share a hundred twenty eight photos instead of one it's more it's like no dude people don't wanna share hundred twenty eight they want one disappearing photo actually because i'm trying to stand like you know something you know inappropriate to my friend i don't want this permanent record right so like this there's a big difference of like what how an engineer will build a social product versus how somebody who's you know social we'll build the social product and and so i wanted to have basically like somebody who was young who was a user of every social platform to be like hey dude just shit test some of these ideas and be like is this good or is this not good and then secondly when we have something good be able to like blast it promote it on social in a way that's not like cringe and he did that like and so when we were we were like alright let me give you an example at the time he had this like network of pages he was like look i have all these either own or know the owners of these twitter accounts that have you know together like whatever fifty million followers so when we're ready to launch will post it there and i was like great and so again the engineers were like alright we're ready and so i was you know my brain went to like cool on all these accounts post like hey love this new app it lets you do x y z and i love this new app be it lets you do blank blank and blank and then engineers is like oh and make sure we can track the attribution so we're gonna use this like this url with this ut parameter and they give me this url that's like nine thousand characters long it looks ugly as hell but it's like super track like look at this at the dashboard but we know exactly who clicked in which tweet and all this stuff and then steve was like like alright thanks for the suggestions but not using that link in fact not using any link because nobody's posting a link and nobody posts links on twitter and we're like what like then how will they go download the app he's like they'll go download it if they hear about it a bunch and they feel like they're missing out i was like yeah but that's like more work he's like yeah but again they're gonna feel like they're missing out not that they're being sold to and then he's like and we're also not gonna tweet hey check out the new be app it has these features he's like we're gonna tweet out memes like you know my teacher when she sees me you know like my teacher when she hears about be like for the fiftieth of time today and it's her throat it's a gif of a teacher throwing a phone out this class window and like shattering the window or like you know my feel my m m w my you know my face win or my feeling win i see be trending on twitter you know after ten years and it's like and i was like but that sounds bad for us right they're annoyed at us because he's like yeah get it it's like they're annoyed because they've been hearing about it so much and so somebody who's not hearing about it it's he gonna be like shit i'm out of the loop what is this and don't go to go google and find it and i was like a this this is stupid guess what he we did it his way we launched we hit number one on the app store charts hit i don't know how many down i think we hit two hundred fifty thousand downloads in like the first month or something like that something crazy and yeah it was like insane and we spent zero dollars so it was awesome how did you get the influencers so steve owned a bunch of them so be hiring steve was like me getting to use steve's like assets and then he because he had clout in like the social like meme world of like the people who own these pages he like pulled a favor it was like y post this on this day and we're gonna get this to trend i need this he was like a twenty one year old trying to prove himself so he's like y i need you to do a favor here put put this thing up here so maybe we paid i a few thousand dollars total but like you know nothing ticket like hundreds of thousands of downloads and number one rank of the overall app store charts and we did that let's see a pain in the ass to employee though no no he wasn't pain the but i'll i'll tell you first why knew we needed to hire steve so when we wanted to we were building this app and we're like alright this social app definitely leans towards a younger audience we're like alright gotta be like into like in touch with you know high schoolers basically so i told jason and tyler i was like guys we need to be like we need to be able to pitch our app to high schoolers and see what they think about it and i was like alright well how the hell are we gonna do that so first they were like coming up with all these schemes and i was like guys like i came visit them like an hour later and i was like alright what's the what's the how many high school you got they're like none we're we're like coming up with a powerpoint deck i'm how we're gonna do this or something like that they're like coming up with a plan and i was like alright like let me put it differently to you guys here's a better question in the next hour how can i show our app to like two high schoolers go let's go make that happen and they're like okay alright then they've they got it they got what was looking for so they first were like alright my nephews on the line so we got the two and i was great how do we get twenty high schoolers now in the next hour and they're like okay there's a bunch high schoolers over here at the mall mirror our office like they went over there with a sign that said you know test our app get a free burrito and they got like immediately like twenty people and they're like okay that was but there was only twenty people there like how are we gonna do this regularly and so we found a high school nearby and so we went over there first they started the same thing they had a sign outside free burrito if your try app and people were signing up like crazy we didn't have burritos by the way i was just like i promise we're like i don't know we'll figure out how to get you a burrito later and and then there so we've got a bunch of people to to like try it out and then a teacher came out and i was like hey guys what's going on here they're were like oh sorry sorry sorry we're not creeps we're just like we're trying to get beta testers for our app do you know what that word means and they were like oh cool you're a startup and they were like come on in and they invited us to come speak they're like hey you know like you could just like take over my class for the day i'll just sit down and place a do and you just teach my kids about startups it sounds like the most naive trusting teacher like to a fault it was it definitely was oh you're you're are you a little kid lover great come on dude and you you must love kids so much you build apps apps for them through your you're a little kid lover it definitely worrisome of like why it was semi but literally that's what would happened so for seven seven hours straight that day like a class would come in fifty kids we would teach them about sars for fifteen minutes and then we'd pitch them our app for fifteen minutes and then we'd be like next and we and we but just by doing that you know to take you know basically thirty kids per class b time seven we're getting two hundred and ten kids a day in the same school to download our apps so that like all their friends were on the app so it's was a great it was like this great way to like take over a high school in a day and see if it goes viral once we get that seed community but in one of them we so with the first day we go and it's me jason i'm like dude it's cool i'm cool i then i was like i start talking i'm i'm like yeah that's tight and then start giggling and i'm like oh shit tight was a cool word when i was in high i was like it's lit it's super lit and they're like you know i was like i was already out it's like not cool by another and so i got like humble big time i'm like realizing and the and by the way if you go talk to kit like high school classic they just don't give us a shit they don't pay attention they'll just be like straight talking to somebody else while you're talking and you can't control them at all it's i was like man this teaching is so hard and then i'm like and so i'm like okay whatever let's skip to the end just skip to the heart where we test our app i you guys wanna see our app and they were like nobody says anything i'm like okay you know the first person who downloads our app like you know you get candy from this bowl and they're were like alright what's up and i was like and i was like they're like what's the name of it so i was like oh it's not in the app store yet on test flight and and i could just feel little cra from my body as i said that i was like what the fuck were are we thinking and then i was like you weren't so just i was like i'm gonna put the link up here on the projector just like type that in and it'll take you to the thing and this kid in the back no joke he goes links are gay dude that was so embarrassed and just i just got wrecked and i started laughing so hard i could've felt laughing and i was like and literally at the office from there on out we're were like hey like hr we're we don't mean this in a bad way but it's the funniest thing that just happened the whole company is in on this joke and so anytime somebody was like send me the link like in slack and somebody else would be like lynx are because it was the most like you thought you got na i got straight bits slapped by this like thirteen year old and it was unbelievable it was unbelievable by the way the other thing every high school kid has just a cracked screen none of them have a phone never like the screen intact they all got cracked screens you you know what you know what wanna i think about everyone's while so do you remember this company called chu yeah so basically they made shorts for they made like short shorts and they were great guys but like their customers and we're just like bros like hard like chad bro chill like the hardest the hardest like bros you could think of and which is like that's fine but i don't wanna be like forty years old and having to like make ads like about summer and spring break like you know i like you know what i mean like i don't don't i i i don't relate to that at all at least i don't if i'm like forty and it's kinda like the bar stool guys it's like men you're losing your hair are you still you wanna be doing like these beer bong like it's and i think about like to build a a social app or even like other products like chu in that space and to be a grown adult doing it it's kind of if that doesn't work it's super embarrassing you're going with some highly intellectual no conclusion here like yeah you basically were like like like yeah you gotta lose it when it's embarrassing man like it's it's it's cool because tiktok worked but imagine a bunch of like like a forty five i think the guy who started tiktok or whatever what's it called bit the owner of tiktok i forget what it's called nam or what this shit byte dance like this like forty three year old chinese guy trying to make products for like but it worked american girls like young fourteen year old american girls it's like yeah it's cool because it worked but man this was like this could gone either way like this could've on either way and and like that's kinda that's kinda scary to me not scary but that's like other one we built so after that app so we go through that process but i get humiliated i'm like oh my god i go back to the i'm like we are so far disconnected from like our customer like we thought we could go in there teach them about startups as if they give a shit and then tell them to download our test flight app from a link i'm like you know we all heard how that went down okay so so so you know i got basically like i was a character in south park that day so i i got owned and i was alright well and looks so we pivot and we tried this other app that was like the idea was like end being what house party he was so us a house party at the same time it was like you at apple it's like i wanna call somebody but like i'm you know like i'm down to hang out if somebody else happen to be like free at the same time and so it was this app or you could just kinda say like you know if you could just say if you're available and if other people are you can just get into kind of a more a spontaneous conversation versus the phone call where it's like dude what do you need from me but i was like well so they made the app they made the prototype real quick engineers are great again and then the front screen they're like hey we need some text for this like because right now it just as like you know push to begin i like you know but you know like initiate and i was like oh no that's like we we don't wanna write like initiate that's not gonna work again teenagers they don't like links what are likes do netflix and chill and so i was like oh just make it like a swipe like tinder i was like so so we just said swipe to chill and like literally like the first version said swipe to chill and the the we had one guy johnny dallas working for us and he was a teenager so he was like a sixteen year old programmer and he saw swiped chill and you could just see him being like do i have to share this with my friends like and you guys with other people before i to my friends because it says swipe to chill on the front and like that's not a thing people say or do and so it was all bad dude that sucks okay so then let me tell you steve bartlett story alright so so i'm like we need we need some young blood in this in this office steve bartlett cold emails me a great cold email i'm like this guy's awesome fly him and his buddy out and we're like you guys work for us now you're are kind of like our youth department and how did they stay in america there was no like visa now there it just not a tourist thing they came they could say for three months at a time and then they would go back and they would come again and did they live at the office they would live they got we got them a hotel but it was like they're staying for a while so we were like alright just stay at the office because there's an apartment built in and like you know just i don't know make it work dude but but did you ever think like what did steve tell his parents like can you imagine twenty year old or nineteen year old you like explaining what's gonna happen yeah i would have been like this is awesome and i knew steve was wired like that so he was also like this awesome he didn't he didn't bother tell his parents he was like living his life so he he thought this is great so steve's there and our if you remember our office stands was kind of a baller pad so steve basically went from like living at like a dump that like get a tiny you know like he a college dropout in the uk making no money to he comes to the us and now he's living in this like baller pad that has like a bar built into it a private chef all these like perks it just looks like it's designed like i straight out of a some like british magazine and and steve would take advantage of that so he was living there and so he would like you know people would leave the office six seven pm and then what he would do is he would like go and know he didn't invite friends over he was on tinder tinder was active and so we would come into the office in the morning and like i remember one day i came bed and like sub girl was like leaving doing the walk of shame holding her heels in her hand like walking out and like you know we we had women working in the office who were like who's this girl like what and why is she like hungover over leaving the like the bedroom in the office like what's going on here that steve would come down he'd be like he was like you know proud of himself and away dude i'm winning at life and so so that was a little bit of a problem and then i remember lived like what what did do you say to him like hey you you know you you can't even this yes you are living here but you can't live here yeah i think i told him once but i remember just like even in the conversation i was like man he feels like he's in the principal office and i feel like the principal and like i could tell this is lame because he wasn't doing anything out of any malice right like it would just be like they would just he you know they'd be hanging out drinking you know at the bar we have in our office but they were kinda like leave the bars kinda sticky and with beers ever they didn't know to like you know just like some professionalism stuff like that's a tuesday night i should just like let me just at least make this look like we weren't here drinking and hanging out all night and playing the music and the neighbors get a noise complain stuff like stuff like that right nothing nothing harmful nothing like bad just like slightly annoying to people who felt like they were parenting them in the morning when they came in and and like i remember one time the funniest one and the one where i was like oh this is just now working out dude they have like order they like or i was talking to our office manager and i was like promised i talked to steve they're they're not gonna like play the music too loud and like don't clean up the beers or whatever and like that happened one day and then the next day nobody beers no loud music it was all good and then she opened up like the supply closet to like get like some new pencils and like sticky notes for the meeting we had like the board meeting we had and like just a giant pizza box to why would you put a pizza in this closet like just throw the pizza in the trash and she was like these kids like i i can't do this shot i can't do this at i did you fire him no no i didn't fire him but i was like i kind of knew in my head i was like you know what birds got fly i was like these guys they're talented they need to do their own thing the them conforming into like our office like set up and like it's just not like a fit you know like the they don't need to run these meetings like these daily stand up meetings with the engineers it's like not their skill set that's not what they need to do like they're good at like taking something that's dope and making it like pop in the market like and they just need to do that and then basically that's what their marketing needs did they would just find cool brands to work with and they would figure out how to tell that story and make it big and trend in social media and it turns out they were great at that and they made made like you know hundreds of millions of dollars doing that and so that was like a successful outcome but i i kinda knew in my head i was like alright there's these advantages when you bring in these sort of like these non domesticated cats and they're gonna like they're gonna be real with you about what about the market they're gonna like have fresh ideas they're gonna be good at like playing the social media game but like you know they're not gonna be the best at like you know running this like you know agile software like you know meeting and this is just not what you know they don't need to be product managers they need to be like out out out about i remember i read a profile about him when he was still pretty young and it was working and it was like buzzfeed or something i think was buzzfeed and he must have been only twenty three or twenty four and there were like basically the office has like a slide in there and like it was like everything a all pit like a mcdonald's play pen it's like face and he was like they've got like forty employees here and i asked him how much each person is getting paid and it was like twenty five thousand dollars a year it was like nothing and but they like love it because it's the first time a twenty one year old is able to like be the head of hr and like just figure out stuff as she went and other like i i don't know about those numbers but i do remember at one point it was like they had twenty three employees and i think twenty two of them were under the age of twenty two like it was like all twenty one year olds and they were like and that was the the vice article or the whatever v article or whatever it was it's just like meet the twenty one year olds who are running the internet right now and it was true like they were really they owned all of the popular instagram and twitter accounts in in europe and so they just had like crazy ability to influence the market and they had the right people to do it right like that's who knew how to build was the business the business was brands would pay to advertise on those twitter and instagram handles initially that's how we used it but the and that was a part of it we were like we created this like idea like this this thunder which was like getting all those pages on the same day to be talking about your brain came up with that i remember saying it i but i think other people will use that term so i don't think that's a my head i invented it but i'm sure i learned it i heard it somewhere i'm sure but the thing what they were doing was then they were they would just like a brand would be like hey how do we what's our social strategy so then it they quickly got away from just like hey pay to post on our pages because that's kind of like transactional to to like hey netflix do you wanna know how to do your social like why don't we just be your agency of record for social media for your social media marketing and like that became with a fat retainer and like ongoing campaigns and then like and then they would like do like proper videos and like kind of viral videos stunt things like that whole strategies for these brands so that's what it became and then they launched their own brands too we've been getting the past few episodes we've been getting more into just try to just tell them the funny stories i'm very eager to see if this is the route that we should go it's way more fun that's for sure yeah it's fun but after every episode i have to like do like a cancellation check and be like was i sexist racist homophobic you know is there anything that i said that could've have been cons hateful in any anyway to any group of people that is going to be like offensive like i tweeted out this thing the other today that's like and by the way they're never hateful they're always like a compliment but like i tweeted at this thing which was like you know my investment criteria you know big market good traction founder is mormon russian jewish or whatever i like said up something but it was like positive it was like because i think those founders like on balance are awesome like i've had was a joke and it was a joke right and people were like what does race have anything to do with who you'll fund this is what's wrong with and i was like well first of all it's to joe to be clear like did and did you think this was serious and secondly like it wasn't a joke saying i don't fund these if fun you know these random niche minority groups it's like no i think mormons are awesome at sales and like you know just as a as a general like positive prejudice you know i'm am i'm inclined to believe that these people are really smart or really talented really gritty or really whatever and you know but of course like there's no winning right like the audience that like gets that and thinks it's awesome is like so small compared to the like the other audience that's like i will make it my life's mission to like get you canceled out for for this for this this joke you said the the ne boys which is like those youtube guys now they got this they've got a new podcast it's only good because there's they're not like good asking questions but they're good because they're so famous that they get like the best guess so the ne boys had donald trump on know like the of the most famous people in the world they had you know all types of like they had h bond they had dana white on they have like all these like hugely famous people and when they were talking to day port and they were like yeah like we're on cancel because like everyone's expectations of us are so low right and like we're just degenerate so like they don't everyone's like yeah of course they did that thing like there's no surprise there these guys are idiots and i'm not sure for there yet i don't know for maybe we can be but it's like you know for example you wanna be yeah do you wanna be right like i call it the cancellation vaccinations like do you wanna be vaccinated to against cancellation here's what it entails you need to consistently be provocative never apologized like catered to your base and ignore the rest and like that's the that's the cancellation of vaccinations that's what joe does what donald trump does it's what the note boys do it's what any group of people dave chappell it's any group of people who like they're like look i'm gonna say what's on my mind there's gonna be some people who are offended by this that's not my audience there's you know some people who understand the point of view where i'm coming from they're gonna understand what's joke they're gonna understand when i'm saying something positive about somebody that doesn't mean it's negative about somebody else and they're just like and they're like i'm consistent i'm willing to do this i'm willing to take heat i'm not gonna apologize etcetera etcetera and and so you know i i that's like the the cancel now i think you do that i think you also need to be financially independent or directly fan supported and like you know for example this is a hubspot podcast network podcast you work at hubspot i don't think they're gonna love some of the jokes that you tell like even if that person individually thinks it's funny they'd rather us just take no risk right why like the for them the risk reward you know calculator is like oh just take no risks and it's fine just like do your other stuff step in sprint whereas for us it's like you know like i'm here to have a conversation with sam i want this to be like a conversation we would actually have i think that's how you get super fans because they feel like you're being authentic you're not you're not like separating the real you from like this like pub public podcast version of you and i know my intentions are pure i know i'm not actually a bad guy i'm not texas racist or homophobic or any of those things and if i say that i think mormons are awesome founders i think that that is should be a i think that should be a totally fine thing to say right you know i don't think that's a controversial thing in my books and so i'm like you know i'm part of the common sense party and i want other people who you know like can you use their common sense are not like easily offended around me but that's a that's a risky path to take that's a good speech i'm bore good very good speech alright i guess that's the episode yeah i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to put my all in it like a day's off on a goal travel have a look back have