Billy of the Week: Tyler Perry

tyler perry i don't know a lot of bottom but i know that he's a baller yeah and clearly talented so what's cool about tyler perry is like one he's a billionaire but i mean not a ton of people are billionaires but like he is i think an unexpected billionaire in the sense that some people haven't even heard his name right and there's a lot more people who you would think are more well known who at least at first glance have done more things but he's done a ton of things but just to compare you're like okay a billion dollars like he works in you know in the movie slash tv slash play industry so like okay that doesn't sound so crazy but like taylor swift guess what her net worth was i pulled this earlier this year it's probably way higher but maybe what fifty so three sixty five million oh my leo d cap how much do you think his net worth is a hundred two sixty serena williams a serena the oldest or the youngest she's the she's the younger one venus is the two hundred yeah so two twenty five anyway i shared the of those what of those what's that source i don't know i mean some some site on google so yeah take it with a great salt dude those sites are bullshit i if you google like i i tested this if you google a couple people's net worth some of my personal websites come up number one and i just made this shit up and i've seen people cite it well yeah i mean definitely take it with grain because i've definitely googled some of this stuff before and you'll see someone and one site will be like their not worth is like fifty k in another site it'll be like their net worth is fifty million so it's it definitely you know can vary bad point is i've do the podcast i've met one or two like celebrities who if you google it'll they'll be like yeah worth ten or fifteen and i've talked them they're like i wish they're like i they're like i make like a hundred thousand dollars a year yeah okay so tyler perry is like at least i think he was like written about by several different publications i think they verified he's a billionaire i believe with him with him i believe it because he's on the forbes list yes exactly so forbes reasonable for that for that reason his story is awesome because he basically i mean he didn't start out with much so he used to when he was younger he used to watch his dad's sub contract and his dad would make eight hundred bucks and the person who he's contracting for with like net eighty thousand and he remembers thinking at the time like i always knew there was more power in the man that owned the house rather than the man working on building it so i wanted to be the guy who owned the house so he like very early on understood the principal and the importance of ownership and he had a he had a messed up child that i think he was molested a little bit i think his dad was abusive guy went through a lot yeah and i he was also a high school dropout so when he dropped out of high school he was you know he was doing a bunch of different odd jobs he struggled to pay rent he was a bill collector he sold cars like he did all types of stuff but eventually he saved up enough which was twelve k to rent an atlanta community theater so this was his first bet he basically wrote this play himself was called i know been changed and he started running this play and you're probably thinking like oh okay overnight success no it was really bad at first and he struggled to pay rent and he actually worked on this play for over a decade he produced the play he sold the tickets he designed the set he sold the snacks so he was like doing the whole thing because no one else would invest in him at the time but over that decade i think the play got better he like reigned in his chops and basically throughout that decade period he sold over a hundred million in theater tickets twenty million in merch and thirty million in just the videos of the plays because again he owned the ip so he can make make money he was just making plays like yes like interesting plays and which sounds simple but that's like in its crazy so he made these wonderful plays and was it like he made a bunch and then they went to different and they like did he like literally tour and just make like fifty grand a night through like hosting it in atlanta and then nashville and then like chicago or whatever i think that it was just this one play i know been changed but i do think they they did like several tours and it actually one of the one of the different theaters that he eventually ended up at so remember he was just at this like atlanta community theater to start he ended up you know at the acclaimed fox theater so he like moved his way up and i think this one play i know i've been changed kind of helped unlock some things for him so that was his start he started with place but even then you know that hundred plus million a lot of that was in theater tickets i don't know how much profit he made from that so the next thing is he basically said okay i wanna and that was a hundred million in over ten years yes exactly it was over like a long period of time that's a amazing and so basically he wanted to create i think a movie next and it he basically wanted to create was called like the diary of a mad black woman which is pretty funny and he definitely knows his audience right so he he's definitely like tailored his career towards you know an audience that he understands really well but when he wanted to create this he basically yeah like no one would take him up on it he's looking for a distributor and the only people that will take him up on it and act as his distributor was lions but even then lions was like we're not so sure so basically tyler had to put up half the money he said look like you know it if if if this is what it takes like i'll put up half the money and how much was nice thing about that i'm not sure how much it was actually but the great thing about that deal which you'll see throughout every deal he does so the budget by the way the budget was five point five so he put up two point two two point what's that three nice so with that deal though he owned and controlled the content so basically every deal he's done like he's he's owning that ip so the lions ceo basically said like before it was released like if this makes twenty million dollars total because yeah like the budget was like five million he's like we'll be really stoked and it did over twenty million in weekend one and since then is made over a hundred and fifty million dollars in licensing alone that's crazy so like first of all like i i understand so he launched this stuff in in the the nineties or not the plays in the nineties and two thousands and basically like do the black population is i don't know what twelve percent of america and so you think like so you're gonna do a thing dedicated to only twelve percent of one group like there's no way that can be big and he totally proved it correct because i've a it's kind of like in in is it ice where's b york from iceland so i think iceland and iceland doesn't have a lot of people but bj is incredibly famous and i think the reason is is like iceland had so much pride that a huge chunk of the icelandic population was like oh we love bj york therefore once they start seeing her succeed they get behind her and they go bj york is awesome and that's almost what happens here a little bit and that's i know why sometimes it's cool to appeal to a smaller but more passionate base than it is to appeal to the larger percentage yeah and by the way iceland has a population of three hundred and sixty six thousand people so is it that small very small i remember i had a friend on exchange from iceland and she told me not joking they have a dating app that make sure that you were not related to someone that you were dating because it is such a small population and hey they made in bj sucks sorry if you're a bj fan objectively she she sucks it is not good music so like it was definitely you know they say is like it was the product code of the marketing good the icelandic marketing or whatever she's from it was wonderful because they made her famous that's so funny anyway so that was his first foray into movies but then he kept going k so he's done play then he's done a movie and now he wants to do tv k so he goes and basically he goes and creates ten episodes first himself because again he's like i can do this like i produced a play for ten years i don't need like to hire a bunch of people i can do this myself he creates ten up episodes it's first he sells it to one network called c and they air it and the ratings are through the roof people absolutely love it and because of that it caught the attention of another network which basically was like hey can we steal this and they did and they struck a deal for two hundred million dollars for him to leave this other network and he would produce ninety more episodes and again he owned the episodes which is kinda crazy he owned the ip of those episodes even after that two hundred million dollar deal this deal alone is expected to have made him hundred and thirty eight million dollars so his show his earnings then you know people still aren't really paying attention to tyler for some reason he continues to make remember that lions gate deal that he did he continues to make movies with them and over time he makes an eleven film franchise that's done over a billion in sales and netted him specifically him individually over two ninety million dollars because again he always owned the copyright and then tyler made one i mean i'm sure he's made other bets but one really big bet in twenty fifteen which basically this whole time he's like an atlanta native right and he he kind of saw the potential for the city and so we bought a plot of land worth thirty thousand sorry thirty million dollars at the times three hundred and thirty acres and about double the size of a warner bros warner brothers lot and he turned it into this like production base or were different like media companies could go and film show so since then i think like the walking dead has filmed their black panther and part of it is he actually like it wasn't just him betting on his city he saw that in two thousand eight georgia had changed the tax law so there were certain incentives for production companies so we saw these incentives and he said you know what i think people are different production companies i bet maybe they they they could've have it created those incentives just for him well i mean this happened so the law happened in two thousand eight he did this in two thousand fifteen so we saw that this was changing and basically in two thousand seven before that law sixty seven million was spent in at or sorry in georgia and then in twenty eighteen it was two point nine billion much thanks to tyler and his investment there but basically because of that then he was also to he's since signed like a hundred and fifty million dollar deal deal with via cbs to run another suites of episodes and he's just like kept going at an every juncture he's made sure to own what he's producing and so now he like has listen to this he's basically amassed twenty two films dozens of place and twelve hundred tv episodes that's what like his like life work so far plus this like production base and he owns much of his work even the the latest hundred and fifty million dollar deal i think he sold it for five years but after those five years the rights return to him i love tyler perry is there a tyler perry biography out there i would read that in a heartbeat pete he i think there's a few go to google tyler perry house he's got a this huge spread in outside of atlanta with a private jet run run a runway no one has that that is baller so i was doing this podcast earlier today with rob wall and i was talking about hut at hustle khan because i've met all these like successful people in these billionaires and stuff like that that i i'm like i was like often i'll meet someone like for example like the founders of casper or something like that and i'll say to myself you know you're like maybe you're financially more successful than i am maybe and like your company is definitely bigger than my company but i don't think that you're necessarily like if i i don't think you're necessarily twenty times or fifty times more smart or smarter than i am or however much bigger i was like you know like we're in the same ballpark you might be a little bit or maybe even i might be a little bit smarter or even hardworking or something like that the difference is is that maybe you just kept at it or there's probably some luck involved or you you kinda like landed it on the right idea like you're not like significantly better than me and therefore that's why i believe that most people can accomplish something interesting of course like it definitely takes luck and like all this crazy other stuff to become a billionaire but like we can all become pretty successful if we just kinda stick with it because the intelligence isn't that big of a factor in order to achieve some success however i see guys like tyler perry and i see the work that they like their output and they're genius and i think well we're just not the same you're just better than me like you are so good at what you do like i went and just i i saw hamilton the other day and i was researching lin manuel and i was like oh you're just a freak like you like like i was watching it and i was like i even like musicals but the fact that someone was so brilliant that they came up with us and put this together that like i understand you should be billionaire there like you should have it all you should or like when i read harry potter i'm like how on earth does one person invent this in their brain you you're better than me you and i we are not the same you are just a different human being and you're more of an alien than you are a a human being and that's how i feel about tyler perry that's how i feel about like lin manuel or what what the name lin manuel and that's how i feel about like a jk k rowling type so kudos to tyler perry he deserves it yeah i mean it's crazy he's done like over twelve hundred tv episodes like you have to be just like so good at what you do to be able to do that for like i think his first play came out in nineteen ninety two so he's been creating for thirty years straight and it's like some people are one hit wonders like this guy is not a one hit wonder he like no who what he's doing he's like honed in his craft and so yeah it's like super cool i remember i got a lot of flack for this but i like once tweeted something about like jeff bezos i think he had like resigned and i was like this guy's been working on this company for twenty seven years like how rare is it that someone works on anything for even like five years straight and these guys like tyler perry as well like he's just like worked on his craft for decades like that's insane yeah it it's pretty cool i think that i'm like we were talking about on this podcast i was like you know i think i could become a billionaire if i wanted to i just you have to be willing to dedicate like thirty years to it like i'm definitely smart enough and i and i worked pretty hard i just don't know if i'm like if i like wanna spend the time doing it and and and and i think a lot of people who achieve greatness they're not much different except there are people i was like elon musk and jeff bezos i was like they you just have more horsepower than i do like you're just different and i'm gonna put tyler perry in that category you just you just we're just one we're not the same you know what yeah i know it's just like it's like a race car versus like you know not a race car like there's just no amount of modifications can i make my car as fast as that yeah you have to like have so much horsepower i wanna do this for so long which is why you're you ask me all the time you're like you wanna be a billionaire and like every time you ask me i'm like less sure of the fact that i wanna do it because i'm like yeah i everyone wants to be a billionaire everyone wants to like a mask well maybe not everyone but a lot of people are like yeah i'd love to live like a great life but a lot of people don't wanna put in that effort and now i'm questioning like i think i'll actually be pretty happy with less than a billion yes i think you'll be i you do you definitely don't need that to be happy that's for sure about to see my first mill got to the safe and got to the bank is not big