The Secret Founders Of +$1,000,000,000 Brands
So here, here's some quotes I'd like to read you. Okay. On blowing $100 million, quote, it happens.
Next quote.
When you talk about blowing $100 million, I know cats that blew double that. That's the second response. It continues. It can happen to anyone, which I gotta say, I don't think it can happen to anyone. Yeah. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. All right, what's up? We got a fun episode here. So we're gonna do, we're gonna play a little game. And the game is that, Sam, I want me and you to go back and forth, kind of like we do when we hang out. If we were just back in the day when we both used to drink it, drink a beer or two, and we would just try to entertain each other, sort of one-up each other with stories. And, um, I'll tell you a story, a business story that I think is pretty juicy. You tell me a business story that you think is pretty juicy. And we're going to see who we're going to, we're going to measure these, uh, you know, to see who can tell the juiciest backstory behind celebrity brands. Now I texted you last night. I go, celebrity brands, but not the celebrity part, the juicy backstory. And that's all we said to each other.
Like, for example, uh, we don't use this one, but what's the, uh, Kylie Cosmetics, uh, Kendall, what's her name?
Kylie Jenner. She has this lipstick company that does hundreds of millions in revenue. She's obviously not the one like running the show. She had to partner with someone, a number 2, a behind the scenes person. We're gonna talk all about behind the scenes people.
Who is that number 2? How did they make this come about? How did they get the celebrity partnership? What made it work versus many others that failed? Who are these sharks that are, that are behind the scenes? Who's the number 2? We're go— I dare say, We're going number 2 today and we're doing it live with all of you. All right. That's how this is going to work.
And we, we, we rank it from raisin to grape with the wine being a 10 out of 10, grape being 9 out of 10. I don't actually know what's the in-between stages of raisin and grape, but it's not really there.
Is it juicy like a prune, like a raisin, like a grape, or is it straight wine? That's how juicy this is. Juicy Juice boxes. That's how, that's how good these can be. All right.
So dude, I have a, I have a low juicy story I wanted to ask you or ask your opinion about before we get into this. Yeah, go for it. This, listen, this weekend I went to Miami for this Hampton thing. We went like lobster diving. It was awesome. I stayed at a very fancy hotel. I'm not going to name the hotel yet because I want to see, I'll wait to the end of the story. I was working out, you know, those cable machines, like it's like a cable machines where you use that rod, like you use the rod to like change the weights at the bottom. And you know how there's like a 2.5 pound weight that's usually at the top that's like adjustable. I, I was fixing the weight. And the machine was broken, apparently. I didn't notice it was broken. And that 2-point, that 2.5-pound weight fell on my finger. I have got— my finger looks like a grape. Can you see that?
Is it all purple? Yeah, I can see.
All right, the question is, is what type of petty court do we go to about this? Is this just like, is this just like a free stay? Like, do I get my money back? Is it like, I want my money back plus like another free stay?
Well, you have to find a way to talk where you're waving that. Like, you got to change your gestures. So like, you got to have like this Obama-style, just gesticular, you know, motions when you're talking, because you need to see the manager. The manager needs to see the finger, and the finger— I mean, you're not, you're not trying to wave it in their face. It's just, you just need to do one of those where you point at it, you're like, what am I, what am I supposed to do about this? I mean, yeah, I need something for this. This is off your property.
Sure did. Look, if I go to a fancy hotel, I expect a fancy gym, right? Not like where the screws come out of the freaking equipment. So my finger looks like a grape right now. It's like, you know, it's one of those injuries that isn't— you don't do anything with a broken finger, right? You do nothing. But goddamn, it hurts.
This is like when Willis Reed limped into Game 7 of the NBA Finals from the tunnel and the crowd goes crazy. They said, no, it's not possible. He couldn't possibly be playing with that injury. That's how people playing this podcast today should feel about your ability to persevere through that injury.
I'm a blogger, bro. I'm a tweeter. I tweet. And also I can't exercise now for a week. And that's how I make a living is with my 7 out of 10 body.
That's how a cat feels when they lose one of their lives.
So anyway, maybe I'll have an update to the story. Maybe I'll get a free stay at a blank hotel name, but we'll see if I can persevere with this, this aching finger, but I think we, I think we could do it. Do you wanna go first?
Do your best. Okay. So there's this woman named Emma Greed. Do you know that name? No. Emma Greed. First of all, destined to be famous with a name like that. Emma Greed.
Greed, like greed, like money greed.
Yeah. But it's G-R-E-E-D-E. Says a little bit like got her own, got her own spin on it. So, um, she is the business shark behind a bunch of the Kardashian brands. So she was a founding partner in Skims, the multi-billion dollar shapewear brand for Kim Kardashian. Her husband is the CEO of that, by the way. So the couple is behind this. The next one is she co-founded Good American, the jeans brand that's massive, that probably does $300 million a year in revenue. So, you know, with Khloe Kardashian. So she, that's how she broke into that.. And then with Kris Jenner, she goes to the mom and she co-founds Safely, a plant-based cleaning product brand with her and Chrissy Teigen. And so this woman, she's so impressive. If you've ever seen her, a lot of people now have seen her because I think she's on Shark Tank this season. So if you like are into that form of like, you know, entertainment, you've seen her. She's so, she's super polished. So she's, She's this woman who's half Black, half white, super good looking, British accent, and an absolute savage in terms of business. This is what I've gathered from watching a bunch of interviews of hers.
By the way, did you see the recent raise for Skims? I think Skims raised $200 million at a $3 billion valuation.
Is that— yeah. And she owns, she owned 8% of that. I don't know after dilution what she owns, but she owned 8% of that. So her stake in Skims alone is basically a multi-hundred million dollar stake. Forget about Good American where she was like, you know, it was her idea. She was the, the kind of the, the CEO. She's the, she's the operator behind that. So here's, you wanna hear her story? It's, yeah, it's pretty good. So she's, she's daughter of a single mom, which is the start of every great entrepreneurial story, by the way. Second thing, she, she basically is like a hustler when she's young. She's got a paper route. She's like working at a deli. She's just working all kinds of like blue collar jobs. And she's like, okay, you know what? I want to make it in fashion. And so she goes to the London College of Fashion and she's 14, 15 years old. She's already like interning at Gucci. She's like hustling her way into like these like low-level internships at fashion brands. And she drops out because she's like, dude, I'm hustling on the weekends and after school, like these fashion shows or in my internship, I'm networking with all these people. I feel like I'm learning way more and building a way more valuable asset, which is my network outside of school than I am inside of school. So she drops out and she starts working for a couple of like, she works for like a runway company and then she starts her own agency. She's like, oh, okay, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna create this agency called ITB. She's 26 years old, I think at the time. And she's like, she'd been hustling in the fashion industry. So now she's got connections. So she's like, hey, let me just be a dot connector. And so she's like, I'm going to connect all these fashion brands want to do collabs with influencers and celebrities, and I'll create an agency that does that for them. So, oh, you know, the way she kind of got her break was Calvin Klein wants to do a campaign for their new launch of whatever the new thing is. She sources 70 different models and influencers for them, signs all the contracts. One of those people is Kendall Jenner. To do that deal, she meets Kris Jenner. And so she becomes somewhat friendly, like they've done a couple of campaigns together. She's booked her out. She has a little bit of respect. So here's what she does then. She's like, okay, this model of connecting, like using kind of celebrity influencers is working for these brands, but they kind of do it in an inauthentic way. It's like only transactions. Like when, when you need the, when you need them to promote X product, they show up and then they disappear. She's like, no, no, no. I think we should have a story and a celebrity at the beginning of these brands. And so she has this idea for Good American, a denim brand that is— I don't know if you're— how familiar you are with it, but it's basically like their thing is it's kind of like all sizes. It's sort of like body positive early on. And she was like, you know, we're gonna have— we're gonna carry like from size 0 to size whatever, like 24 or something like that.
Imagine that pitch to one of the Kardashians. So it works because she's like, I know, but like, look, here's, here's the thing, Khloé.
She's like, why me? Well, Khloé, you might want to sit down for a second.
Yeah.
Yeah. Like, you have to say one of those things like, shit, I'm not racist, but it's like, I'm not trying to be offensive, but you're the perfect fit for this brand.
I don't know which one is Khloé, but they're all like obviously fit and skinny. But maybe she's like the—
she's the one who kind of went up and down in weight. She was like, at first she was like the big, the bigger one of the sisters. And she like had these like sisters who were like, you know, size zero. That was insecurity. Then she got super, super skinny, but then she like kind of, you know, naturally people's weight fluctuates.
So imagine that conversations with like Weight Watchers or like one of these brands comes to you, you know what I mean? Or like when I'm honored, you know how Jamie Lee Curtis is the spokesperson for that yogurt company that makes you poop regularly? What's it called?
Yeah, I don't know which one.
It's like a yogurt that like elderly people are supposed to eat, so it makes them go to the bathroom like on a regular basis. Like a mesh, like, look, we're going to call it Oops, I Crapped My Pants. And we, we want you to be the face of it. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's a weird money statement.
Well, what, who cares? I don't care. You know, there's no problem with this. The, uh, so she pitches Kris Jenner. She goes, Kris, I bumped, she bumped into her at Fashion Week. She's like, I got an idea for a brand. And she was expecting like, look, I know you guys get hundreds of offers, but she was like, I've already seen how much of a hustler you are. She's like, I observed the way you operate. Like, I already kind of like, kind of, uh, co-sign this. You should just meet with Khloé directly. See if Khloé likes it. If she likes it, you already has my blessing. So she meets with Khloé. Khloé's in and they basically start this brand. Uh, brand has scaled up now into the hundreds of millions. It's one of the fastest growing denim brands and jeans brands. From there, she then approaches Kim and she's like, Kim, We should do a shapewear brand. And her husband, who's also in the fashion industry, became the kind of the day-to-day person because she was busy with Good American. But they together create SKIMS, which becomes a multibillion-dollar shapewear brand. Then she does this one with her, with the mom as well. And so I just found this fascinating what this family is doing. So they basically have a holdco.
The Gleeve family. What's that? The Gleeve family. The Greed family.
So Jens Greed and Emma Greed. So they basically have a holdco called Popular Ventures or something like Popular Culture or something like that. Like he also did Brady, the clothing brand with Tom Brady. So they're spinning up these fashion and consumer product brands with A+ celebrities and they've built, they're on the Forbes list now. These guys have a, like, you know, $400, $500 million net worth just co-founding these with the Kardashian family and with, you know, Tom Brady and whatnot. So impressive to have pulled that off behind the scenes.
And what's Frame? They have another one called Frame.
Is that a— That's the fashion brand that the husband started. They sell like $300 t-shirts. I don't get it, but like, you know.
Have you seen what they look like? This husband and wife couple? It's hard to like them because they're so good looking. They're like perfect. Yeah. Like they're so good looking. They're both, they both look like influencers.
I was definitely reading it and I was like, yeah, but they probably don't have a good relationship. I was like trying to find some crack. I was like, she might have cholesterol issues. You never know. Nobody's got it all.
Yeah. Yeah. But this guy probably broke both fingers, not even just one. Yeah. They, they're pretty perfect. Like these guys look like influencers themselves.
And so, all right. So where do you put, where do you rank on the juicy scale Emma and Jen's greed from prune to wine?
It's in the middle. So they're incredibly impressive. This is amazing that they do this. It's what's even more amazing is that like, So John Rockefeller had this famous phrase where he would, when he was trying to buy other companies, he was like, look, you should join my oil company. I make so much money. And they're like, no, you can't make more. He goes, look, I know I make money. I make money in ways that you can't even dream about. You have no idea how much money I make. And that's exactly what the Kardashians are like. This Good America, that's just this little thing I've never even heard of that makes hundreds of millions of dollars. That's amazing. But there's no drama here, so I'm gonna put it like right in the middle. A prune. Does a prune have juice in it? I think it does. We're gonna give it a prune.
A prune's the lowest. Prune's the lowest. Raisin is the middle.
I think we're going with, then it's a raisin. This is a raisin. There's, there's no drama here. I, I need some drama, but this is, these guys are amazing. This is, they're a perfect couple.
I understand. I tried to start with like, you know, raised from a single mother cuz that was really the only like story of, of not just badass winning, um, you know, but, uh, the humble origin story.
But I agree with you, there was, uh, like, if you Google her name, there's like a picture of her and Khloé Kardashian posing with, I guess, one of their brands, and they look like models, right? I was like, is this the founder or, or a model? They, they look like models. This reminds me of— I actually didn't do, uh, research on this guy, but it reminds me, he is also in the Kardashian sphere, but have you heard of Brian Lee?
Yeah. So Brian Lee— so do you remember who— it's so weird. Do you remember Robert Shapiro? I don't know if you would remember him.
Lawyer? Who is that?
The lawyer. Okay, the lawyer. So basically, Robert Shapiro was one of the guys— I think he defended O.J. Simpson. That's what he was famous for. Do you remember that?
Their dad, right?
No. So this is where it gets funny. So Robert— so the Kardashian family is famous because one of the Kardashians, I forget the name, the dad who's who's, uh, died. He defended O.J. Simpson along with Robert Shapiro. And Robert Shapiro, you know, he's a lawyer, big shot, probably a smart guy. He ends up partnering with Brian Lee. Brian Lee's this, this, he, this guy did it in 2001. So Brian Lee was only in his, uh, early 20s. He goes, hey, I have this idea for this legal company, but I need a celebrity to be the face of it. So somehow he called, or he actually cold called Robert Shapiro and said, hey, do you want to be a partner on my new legal company? And he's like, yeah, come to my office. Let's talk about it. And he woos him. It works out. Well, that company is now called LegalZoom. And it's a, I don't know if it's quite a billion-dollar company, but it's in that range. It's a really successful company. And so Robert Shapiro and Bryan Lee were like, hey, this worked. Who else do you want to do it with? And Robert Shapiro was like, well, I got these friends, you know, I worked with their dad, the Kardashians. What if we worked with them? And so he does it again and he creates this company called ShoeDazzle, which doesn't end up working out amazingly. And it was actually pretty early. This was in 2009 with Kim Kardashian. He partnered with her and it was like a subscription shoe company. Didn't work out that well. And his third company he did called The Honest Company, which I think they went public. Did they go public?
Yeah, they are public.
And so he partnered with Jessica Alba for that. And he ended up selling like, I think $30 million worth of his shares before it even went public. Now he's doing it again. Where he co-founded another company with Derek Jeter, and it's a digital sports card collecting company. So this guy Brian Lee has been doing the same thing, very similar to the Greed family of like in the Kardashian sphere and just like being the operator. And he's a pretty amazing guy. So Brian Lee's an interesting guy as well.
Dude, we could pull up Honest Company stock, by the way. Hammered. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Got it.
What's it at now? So it debuted in 2021. It was at $20 a share, is currently at $1.40. It is now only worth $130 million market cap.
Is it really? I think they do like $100 million in sales, so it's, I guess it's trading for 1x revenue.
Ouch. It's got a great brand. I wonder who's going to buy that. I think, feel like that's a great target to buy.
Yeah, it's an interesting one. But this guy Brian Lee's been doing this stuff. We'll put him in the same category though. That's only a middle one. When you're with the Kardashians, it's kind of a stacked deck. Yeah, it's a stacked deck.
All right, you do one.
All right, I have one. So this one's kind of popular right now, but there's a really interesting story behind it. So virtual dining company, or is that what it's called? Sorry, Virtual Dining Concepts. So basically, a couple of years ago, MrBeast launched Beast Burger. And the idea that I think they actually— did they tell us in the pod? I think he mentioned this in the pod, right? His manager?
Yeah, I think so.
He was basically like, we had this idea and we went from like idea to executing in like such a short amount of time, which was a huge mistake. I think he said they did it in like 60 days or 90 days, something crazy. But they partnered with this company called Virtual Dining Concepts and they launched this thing. 2 years later now, it's like a shit show. So MrBeast is tweeting, uh, and he's actually deleted a bunch of the tweets, but he's basically said like, this company has ruined my reputation because the burger sucks, the quality control sucks. Now they are both suing. Suing each other. So that alone is a story, but that's not even the interesting part. The interesting part is the guy behind it. So the guy behind it, his name is Robert Earl. So Robert Earl is interesting because in his early 20s, he started a company that was just, it was just a restaurant. I think it was like a medieval restaurant. Have you ever like seen those on, on like movies?
No, but every time I would go to Vegas, I would stay at, what's that castle one called? The medieval castle. It's like, uh, That terrible hotel. That's where I always stayed.
Well, he started this thing, I think it was called Beefeater, and it was in England. He's from England and it was called Beefeater and it was like a medieval themed restaurant. And so he starts growing that and after a handful of years, like 10 years, he sells it, makes like $60 million and he's like, all right, what, what, what next? And so his next thing is Planet Hollywood. Do you remember Planet Hollywood?
Of course.
So Planet Hollywood was a restaurant concept where it was like, we're going to go big with all the stars. So it was big stars where Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and then like Demi Moore, Cindy Crawford. He had like all the stars like aligned with this restaurant and he gave them all equity and goes, you guys are going to be the face. We're going to do Planet Hollywood. You go to the restaurant and there's going to be like wax figures of all the celebrities, whatever. It was a big deal at the time. And he expands it and eventually goes public, but they expand way too quickly and they eventually go bankrupt. But it's still like, it's kind of like a famous failure in that it actually probably could have worked, but they expanded too quickly. Then he keeps doing this shit though. So he eventually buys, uh, can't stop.
He's a, he's a concept junkie.
This guy, he's a concept. This guy, he's a concept junkie.
So he ends up buying a lot. Did you ever do any brainstorming with this guy? Like this guy would, uh, this guy would, would not stop. I feel like he, I gotta be, I need to get in a room with Robert Earl and I need to have a brainstorm.
Well, he's really interesting. And so now he's got this thing, I think it's called, um, Look up Earl Enterprises. So he's got this thing now where he owns, they own like 30 different restaurants now and it does something like $500, $600 million a year in revenue. And some of the brands are a chicken restaurant with Guy Fieri. He owns, do you remember, you know, Balducci, like Italian sandwiches and like pasta restaurants?
Yeah. Bertucci.
It's like better than Applebee's a little bit, you know, they're like, they're like—
Barely better than Applebee's is the bar we hold and maintain vigorously for all of our Yeah, that's like the thing.
Like none of them are like crazy fancy, but they're all like, you know, it's like $25 a meal type of thing, but he owns a ton of them. And so he's in all, not all of them, but many of them have a celebrity behind them. And so he gets this idea when ghost kitchens start popping up with Uber and DoorDash starts popping up. And so he gets his son to help co-found this new company with him. And that's what virtual dining is. And so he has one with, um, Barstool, where it's like, pardon my cheesesteak, pardon my cheesesteak. It's a cheesesteak business. And then he decides to do the same thing, except this time he does it with MrBeast Burger or Mr., it's called MrBeast Burger or Beast Burger, and it takes off. But then obviously they have their issues, but he has still done it with a ton of people. So he's done it with Mariah Carey. So he has Mariah's Cookies. He's done it with rapper Tyga, which is crazy to me that Tyga is even relevant. But I think, by the way, how does he have that much pull? Well, Tyga dated one of the Kardashian girls, so maybe that's how. I don't know.
You could walk into my house right now and I would say, hey sir, what's your name? I would not know. Yeah, who Tyga is.
Um, yeah, it's weird. So he has Tyga Bites, they have Part of My Cheesecake.
I need to meet somebody who's just eating Tyga Bites. Like, who are the, who are the customers? Yeah. They are strong and united.
I think, I think he's working on Hooba Stank Hoagies. That's going to be the next one. Yeah. I don't know what the deal is with Taiga, but he's done this a whole bunch of times where he has this like pretty massive empire and right now he's being sued and he's— they said in the comment or they made a comment and they're like, look, like a lot of people are complaining about Beast Burgers, but goes, that's just normal. Like when you serve all these people, uh, and he's like, look, look at all of our restaurants. People complain. Look, it's normal. People complain about all our shit. Uh, but, but the guy's got like a ton of stuff going on. So he owns a casino. He owns, uh, Aladdin Resort and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. He still owns Planet Hollywood and they're trying to make it, uh, come back a little bit, or he owns a couple of them. He owns, uh, a soccer team, the Everton soccer team. Have you heard of that?
Yeah, of course.
Yeah. And him and his wife live in a 25,000 square foot mansion in Florida. I mean, the guy's a baller. And if you Google him, he's like this old looking guy who kind of wears tacky shirts, but he looks like a blast to hang out with. He has a TV show now where he's like, it's almost like, what's that TV show called? Like Everyone Feeds Phil, where it's just like a dorky guy just like talking to restaurant owners and like learning about the local cuisine. He's got one of those things.
So he seems like a, That's his show.
That's not his show. It's very similar to that.
But this guy, dude, these people who have these sprawling empires where they're like, yeah, I own Planet Hollywood, but then I got this, I have this Juice brand, and then I have this hotel over here, and then I own the soccer team. Is that who you want to be? I'm curious because I think some people really want that. I'm not sure that I would want that. That seems like just a lot of stuff to manage.
It seems like a lot.
Yeah. Like, is that a goal of yours? I definitely respect it from afar, but I don't think I want to be that, that guy.
I think owning a sports team would be cool, but I don't want to own like 500 restaurants. So like he owns, I don't know if you've even heard of any of these Asian Street Eats, The Breakfast Club, uh, uh, Barducci's. I've heard of that. Brio Italian Grill, Bravo Italian Kitchen, Chicken Guy. That's Guy Fieri's. 2Js, Cafe Hollywood. Have you heard of any of these?
No, not really.
They're all like restaurants that have like 10 or 20 locations and like hopefully each location makes like $5 million and it's like highly profitable. Another guy who does this in the same similar-ish category is, uh, Tilman Fertitta. Do you know who that is? You probably know him because he owns, uh, Houston Rockets, I think. So he— I read this interview with him and he goes, I think I'm one of the largest companies in America that is fully owned by one person. So he owns 100% of the Fertitta Enterprises and it does something like $4 billion in revenue, $1 billion in EBITDA. He owns like all these kind of, he owns some, I guess, nice stuff. He owns like some steakhouses, maybe like Ruth's Chris, I think he owns, but then he owns like Bubba Gump Shrimp and stuff like that. But some of these restaurant brands where it's like, $30, $50 a meal. Apparently they must be really profitable because I've read about a few of these guys, including Robert Earl. I've read about Tillman Fertitta. So I don't know, I guess it works, but it seems like a pain in the ass to deal with all these types of people.
Yeah. Let's move on to the next one.
Let's see. What's that one?
Oh yeah, we gotta rank that one on the juicy scale. I'm gonna give it, I think that might also be a raisin. Partly out of revenge and partly because, uh, this guy owns a bunch of like mid-tier things. And so I feel like I can't possibly rank him above— I, I don't want to eat at any of his products, let's put it that way. So, you know, yeah, I do think that, but I, you know, wait, did you go to—
but didn't you go to Chuck E. Cheese's this weekend?
Did not. I thought you said you were taking your kids there.
You're thinking of someone else. I went putt-putt golf at this— dude, it's hilarious. These guys opened up a— they just took a parking lot and then like a husband and wife just sort of out of plywood built a few holes and they just charge you $10 to walk in that area of the parking lot and they'll give you a club. And my kids love it. And we go there like twice a month. It's kind of this insane, like, business plan. That makes no sense.
I think it makes tons of sense.
I mean, there's just no putt. Like, it's putting without the green. You're putting on concrete trying to get it.
There's, there's no, there's not even turf. No turf.
There's a little bit of turf, but it's like the whole thing is very like, the whole thing's like made of concrete. So, you know, it's not a great, not a great look.
Yikes. All right, what do you got?
All right, um, I'm gonna do one that actually we've, we did. I was trying to do research for this, and the best breakdown of this business was our own podcast like 2 years ago. But the fact that I had forgot it means that everybody forgot it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk about Guthrie Ranker. So these, the legends, these are the geniuses behind a bunch of celebrity things. Uh, let me pull up my notes here. So, um, backstory for these guys, including one of my favorite books, which one?
Think and Grow Rich.
Oh, well, yes, exactly. So, okay, so here's the, here's the, the way that the The business works. So Guthrie Ranker. So, um, one of the guys, Guthrie, his last name's Guthrie. He's, he has a business that's basically audio cassette tape, um, copies. So you have a, you have an audio tape, you want to make 10,000 copies to sell your music or whatever. He makes the 10,000. I think it was even called like Audio Tape Duplication Enterprise or some shit like that. And, uh, it's an okay business, but then suddenly he gets a call from a guy.
By the way, I love names like that, which, let's just start bringing that back. I'm sick of the, like, cute shit that ends in -ly, you know, like Tapely.
Yeah, I mean, I want Hampton Audio.
Yeah, why isn't it just called a bunch of dudes talking about their feelings? I tried to make Hampton a little bit like, uh, Jordan Belfort named his company Stratton Oakmont. Jordan Belfort's the, uh, Wolf of Wall Street guy.
They're like, that's who you want to model your company after?
It was like, why'd you do that? He's like, I don't know. Like, I just thought of these two words and it sounded like an official thing. And I was like, I kind of like that. But I do prefer, I do like, like audio tape enterprises.
Yeah, exactly. So these guys, okay, so he gets an order. He gets an order for 120,000 tapes. He's like, 120,000. Oh my God. Who, who is this? So he calls up the guy. Hey, I just want to make sure your order's correct. 120,000 or what did you mean? 12,000. I said, no, no, $120,000. He said, I've never heard of you before. What do you do? Turns out the guy is a real estate guy in Arizona, but what he started doing was he was like, oh yeah, I was a real estate guy, but then I realized I could just teach people how to make money in real estate and it's going gangbusters. And he's like, what? How is this guy doing it? He's like, ah, I just ran a commercial for 30 minutes about that. I could teach people to make money in real estate. He's like, you can't do a 30-minute commercial. And he is like, yeah, it turns out. But there was, as you like to say, an inflection. And the inflection was that in 1984, the FCC deregulated the ad limits. So they said, you know, before that there was some rule. You could only have like 12 or 16 minutes of ads per hour of TV. They removed the limit. And so now what people could do was they could just go to a channel and be like, hey, can I just buy like your 11 PM slot for like $5,000? And they're like, sure. And they would just buy, they would just buy the hour of television programming and they would just run a giant commercial, an infomercial. And so Guthy hears this and he goes to meet up with his buddy, this guy Ranker, and he's like, yo, Ranker is working at his family's hotel resort at the time and he's like, he's kind of like the pool and tennis guy. He's just like sitting around doing nothing. And he's like, this guy ordered 120,000 tapes. This is amazing. I think this might be a better business than the tape business. Like, rather than copy the tapes, why don't I copy his business. And he's like, he's like, all right, so what do we do? He's like, this infomercial thing, I think we could do this. He's like, well, all right. So they go, they buy every book they can read on commercials or like, but there wasn't really even the word at the time. Cause again, the rule just got changed. There wasn't even a category called infomercials at the time. They start studying copywriting, direct response marketing. And after a few days of just like cramming, Ranker's like, I think we could do this. They're like, what should we start with? They're like, well, We could try the real estate thing, but neither of us know anything about real estate, nor do we like have a passion for that. Let's at least for this first one, start with something we both, the, what's the common ground that we both think is like awesome. Like the thing we became friends on was this kind of self-help, self-development, personal development category.
So this is like that sign that Cartman has when he is like coming up with a startup idea. He's like, look, step one, we're going to start up. Step 2, we're going to scale up. Step 3, we're going to bro down. Or like when they're talking about stealing the underwear, they're like, steal underwear, then profit. They're like, well, what, what comes in the middle?
Exactly. And it worked. Uh, it actually— that actually is, uh, that actually is how most startups work, by the way. I think that's, you know, it seems like you're making fun of them, but honestly, that's, that's actually more true than the other way. So, um, So they go, they're like, okay, we can, they realize they could buy the rights to the book Think and Grow Rich, one of their favorite books because it's like, it's such an old book that like the copyright or whatever had lapsed or some shit like that. They could basically buy the rights to it for $100,000. So they scraped their savings and they're like, we're going to buy this. They buy it for $100,000 and the next 3 years they make $10 million in sales off that. So like, Really awesome for them. But in the grand scheme of things, it turned out to be like kind of like a, just a base hit compared to what they then go on to do.
But what, what year did they buy the book? In the '80s?
Yeah, it was, uh, like early, it was kind of like, I think early to mid-'80s, something like that.
Um, so like 300 or 100 grand was like 300 grand. So it's like not a small bet for your first time going.
But one thing leads to another. In the infomercial that they create, they get Frank Tarkenton, the NFL quarterback. They're like, oh, let's get, Anybody they saw that had mentioned they love the book Think and Grow Rich, they're like, hey, come be a part of this infomercial. And if you want, the whole infomercial's on YouTube. You can go watch it. In fact, I want to do a breakdown, a masterclass breakdown just on this infomercial. But you can watch the thing. And what they do is they don't tell you about the product at the beginning. They're like, you just hear Frank talking and being like, you know, I always used to feel blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but now I'm blah, blah, blah. And then somebody else comes in and they're like, you know, I was struggling, blah, blah, blah. And then now I'm, and they don't tell you what's the product that gave them that transformation. Like this is the genius of marketing is you, you sell this benefit, this transformation. You want people banging down your door saying, what's the pill? What's the product that gives you that? Right? Like this is the Ozempic thing. How the hell are you losing all this weight? And it's like, oh, I take this thing. Okay. Get, you know, let me have it. Let me have the magic pill. And so at the end of the, the video, they say it's thinking grow rich. 10, they do $10 million in sales over the 3 years. By the way, this video on YouTube has like 900 views. Like nobody is studying this thing. It's crazy to me that a video like this would have so few views. And they tell the story around the book that the richest people in the world, Carnegie, the Rothschilds, they wanted this guy to write this. And so Carnegie commissions, what's his name? Napoleon Hill to go study the most successful people in the world and find out their secret. And he did, right? And so that's the, that's how they sell this book. Beautiful.
In the infomercial, this is an awesome infomercial.
They have one guy come on who's a 24-year-old wunderkind. This guy who's just getting up, he's on the up and up. Tony Robbins comes on, a guy named Anthony Robbins comes on and talks about how he, how much he loves the book. Unpaid, by the way. They were like, hey, will you do this? I heard you love this book. He's like, I'll do it. Does an unpaid spot. And they're so blown away by his charisma on camera. That they're like, we gotta be in the Tony Robbins business next. So they go to Tony and they're like, hey, love your book. We want to do the same thing we did with Think and Grow Rich, but with your book. And he's like, okay. So they're like, we'll brand it, we'll figure out the infomercial, blah, blah, blah. They do it. They create a program in 1988, the year I was born, called Personal Power, and it becomes the best-selling self-help program of all time. It does $20 million in year one. And, um, you know, just goes on to just—
how old is— I'm looking at this, I'm looking at this Tony Rob— Tony Robbins has the original infomercial on his YouTube page for the, for his Personal Power. How old is he here?
He's like 25 years old in that.
That's crazy, man. He's got a huge jaw.
Yeah, he, well, he, he had a growth, a pituitary growth problem, which is why all of his, his hands, his teeth, his jaw are also oversized. He's a huge guy if you ever seen him in person.
I want a pituitary growth problem.
He looks great in life. And he did it. I think he, like, it was causing him to have secrete like 10 times more HGH than he was supposed to. And then they removed it at the right time before he became like an actual, like, 9-foot ogre. So, like, you know, he got the benefits of that thing. It's an amazing, amazing sport.
He looks awesome, man. His jawline, he looks like the ultimate Chad. He looks awesome. He's got the charisma of a nice guy, but like the looks of a Chad. That's a killer duo.
You know, I thought that might be your takeaway from all the things I just said. So I'm glad you picked up on the important bit. So they do, by 1990, now they're 3 years in, they're doing $36 million a year. They almost go bankrupt because the Gulf War starts in '91 and all television attention goes to that. So the infomercial business just sucks and they have to basically fire everybody just to stay alive during that year because they were, infomercials just not converting. The war was, was taking everybody's attention. So then they go on and they're like, okay, here's our model. And I've watched, there's again, this, the research for this was so fun. There's interviews with this guy. If you want to Google it, his is Van de Bunt. This is the guy who joined really early. He's been the CEO now for like, I don't know, 15 years. Really want to meet this guy. I want to have him on the pod. He's, there's no interviews with these guys really out there. They don't go podcasts or anything like that. But this guy Van de Bunt, went on, did a talk at some school, I think at USC, and they chopped up his talk into 1-minute clips. And I must have binged like 45 1-minute clips last night of this guy. Love this guy. He's got such a good attitude and was saying things, but he's like, he's like, look, here's our process. Real simple. Like we find the market need. Like, how do you find it? He's like, well, if you see 1 person with good skin and 1 person with bad skin, Trust me, there's a market need. Like you see some, one person with brown teeth, another person with white teeth, that's gonna be a big market need and I can just sell it to you by showing before and after. And so that's the first thing. He's like, then we find the products and we try to license or own them. Then we tie them up to a developer or a celebrity or a story because nobody wants to buy from an ivory tower that says we have the solution. No, they wanna buy from a person who says, I figured this out. I spent my life working on this and I figured this out. And he's like, we marry the market need with the marketing technique. And so the first marketing technique they did was that infomercial technique that drove them for a long time. And now they've shifted to more like internet marketing since then. And like to do the television, just the depths that they went to. So they were so early in this. They're shooting these things for all their brands. They created Proactiv, the acne brand with Justin Bieber as one of the celebrities and these doctors as the celebrities. Um, they created Principal Secret. They got this, this actress Victoria Principal, and, um, they were like, okay, we think this is good, but we don't know exactly how to sell this product. So you know what they did? They put her on QVC. They were like, well, let's overpay to be on QVC. They're like, is it gonna break even? Probably not. But at QVC, if you ever seen how a QVC thing goes, they— you can go backstage because during QVC people are calling in to buy. And he's like, basically on a like 10-second interval, you can see what gets people to buy. So they did this almost as a study to test the content. So they have her talking for an hour and they can see what are the things she's saying that's causing the sales board to light up. And they had, they took a product that really wasn't working. They went and reshot the infomercial with that intel of like what, what lines and what talking points were driving the most interest. They reshot the infomercial and now it's a $2 billion revenue generating product that they created out of that. Holy shit. They created Proactiv. They created a Pilates brand, a brand with Cindy Crawford. They did all this stuff. So they are 100% privately held now. No external investors, just Guthrie and Renker. They've been doing this for 30-something years and they do a couple billion in revenue profitably. And I was like, how is this possible? How did they scale with no outside revenue? And then here's the funny thing. There's actually a story of like, You know, this is like a funny story. So they get this along the way. They actually did take investment. So it's 100% owned now, but at one point in time, they gave up 33% of the business or something to this guy, Ron Perlman, who himself is a prolific guy. He owns TV networks. He owns Revlon. He owns Marvel, or he owned Marvel at the time.
Yeah, I think he's one of the guys who, he's, A, he's one of the richest men in America, I believe. I think he's like worth like 40 or 50, like in that range, billion. And he helped, I think his buyout of Revlon was the largest leveraged buyout at the time. And he like kind of pioneered like the leveraged buyout. I read his biography a few years ago.
Google has about like $4 billion, but maybe it's gone up since then. Oh, I guess previously worth $19 billion.
For a while it was huge.
Yeah. Why did it go down so much?
Maybe because Revlon, but I think he, I don't even remember what Revlon did. I think it was like makeup, but it was like a conglomerate. Like it owned like all this type of stuff. But he, uh, he bought it for many, many, many billions and he kind of pioneered the leverage buyout, which eventually like the American population, like it was like one of those things in the '80s where it was like, uh, like, uh, just absolute greed and like, there's like, you know, it was like barbarians at the gate type of shit.
Ron Perlman, um, 5 marriages.
Yeah, there's a price to be paid.
The AI that's studying right now that might be like, I guess getting married 5 times causes you to be a billionaire. No, no, no. It's correlation, not causation. You know how rich a guy is. He's got 5 marriages. So, okay. So they sell him the stake. He gives them $25 million. They're like, beautiful. And he owns these TV networks. They're like, oh, great. We get dirt cheap airtime and we get $25 million to invest. They use that to grow like crazy, pay celebrities to be the endorsers, like Justin Bieber and all this stuff. To do that.
I think they had Sidney Crawford. They had like a makeup thing with Sidney Crawford. I think they have one with Jennifer Lopez.
They had a thing with J.Lo. Yeah, exactly. Eventually Murdoch buys Ron Perlman's, like, TV networks or whatever. And then basically they're like, oh, we get this stake, this 37% stake in these Guthrie Riker things. And it just got lost in the Murdoch, like, Empire over time. They went back, they're like, couch cushion, can we just, can we just buy this back? And they got it back for like, you know, some tiny amount. So I'm like, you know, they, they bought, they were able to buy back and own 100% of it. And then I think now, like recently, finally they, I think Goldman bought like a minority stake in the business valuing it at $3 billion.
But, and here's how you know they're, they're really rich is A, the CEO who you get, who you said Van, what was his name? Van Bunt?
Van de Bunt. Yeah.
He just bought a $25 million house. If you just, whenever I hear about these people, I'm like, let's see how rich they really are. You could always find out through their real estate holdings. He just bought a $25 million house. And then Bill Guthrie, if you Google him, he doesn't come up because of this business. He comes up because Prince Harry, I guess, just live in for a bit. Yeah. They lived in his estate. It's not a house. It's an estate when they were like, you know, homeless for a few minutes. They like, they lived in his estate. So, and then also he owned a home. That one of the gender, uh, the Kylie Jenner bought. So it all comes back to the Kardashians.
Yeah, they're everywhere. At these guys' peak, they owned 35,000 toll-free numbers. Their phone bill was $150 million a year. And he's like, he's like, yeah, we did that. And they're like, did you need that? He's like, well, we did it for attribution. He's like, we needed to know what converts better. The way we did that was every time we would try a new variation, of our content, we would give it a new number so we could just attribute which number is getting the most calls and versus the spend. And that's how we did our performance marketing in the telephone days.
I thought that was pretty dope as like, but you're also, you didn't even mention their most successful product that everyone who's listening, who's at least 30 years old will know this product, which one proactive they did proactive.
I did.
Did you say proactive? Yeah.
That's the one they did with Justin Bieber.
Yeah. Well, I think you didn't put enough emphasis.
I needed a pause, bro.
Yeah, they did Proactiv, which made like a billion plus. I bought Proactiv. I mean, everyone bought Pro— did you use it?
No, I didn't use it, but I watched a bunch of those infomercials. Their infomercials are very entertaining. Like, you could just watch it as a show. And actually, it was pretty interesting watching, listening to their method. So he's like, he's like, you know, he always says the same thing. He goes, If you just come to me saying X, I can't, I can't change this channel fast enough. You can just tell that that's like the, the guiding principle is like, you don't want them to change the channel. And it's like everything trickles down from that one principle.
So he's like, it's called the slippery slope, baby. You got to make them fall down that slippery slope.
So he's like, uh, these guys come in and they start pitching me a cyber safety product and they've been doing it for like 7 years. It's, um, you know, the highest they ever gross is $1 million a year. And he's like, okay, so what's the product? He's like, CyberSafe. You know, like, uh, we help make your, your computers, computers are the new thing. Um, we make your computer safer so you don't get hacked and you don't have a virus on your computer. And he's like, oh man, I'm, if I'm watching TV relaxing at night, the last thing I wanna do is get stressed about my pro— uh, get stressed about a problem I'm not already stressed about. Uh, which is like, oh, now my computer's gonna get a virus. I'm gonna lose it. He's like, I couldn't change the channel fast enough. He's like, but before they walked outta the meeting, he goes, Hey, I got a question for you. We have this thing called need, greed, vanity. That's what we try to tap into. He goes, when you fix the computers to make them safer, does that also have any other benefits? Like, does it make it faster? And they're like, oh yeah, for sure. 'Cause no viruses, your computer goes faster. He goes, hmm. All right, come back next week and pitch me the fast thing. They come back and then they launch this product called Double My Speed. And that business that had never done more than $1 million in 7 years, all of a sudden does $75 million a year at the time he was giving interview, which is a while back, for Double My Speed. And he's like, you know, I just, he's like, I just, he goes, there's too many smart people. And they're like, how did you do it? Did you do like internet advertising for this computer product? He's like, no, we did radio ads. And it was just a radio infomercial. He's like, you know, I, he's like, there's too many smart people online. He's like, I don't want to compete in a knife fight unless I have a gun. And he's like, so we went to the radio because really no smart people were advertising on the radio and we could just get a bunch of inventory for cheap. And we could just create content that was better than the current stuff on radio. And I was like, man, this guy's awesome.
They were like, how are they doing now with infomercials not being as relevant?
So he talked a little bit about it, but I don't know, there's not that much info out there. But he goes, he, so he's, they were like, how'd you, how'd you make this a success? You know, you, you, they're like, this guy, whatever his name is, Van de Bundt, Van de Bundt's his last name. And they were like, you joined at what revenue? He's like, it was $12 million a year. He's like, what is it now? He's like, like 1.7 billion. They're like, oh, amazing. You hear that? The whole audience is like, wow, that's amazing. And he's like, yeah, when you say it like that, it sounds crazy. He's like, but you don't see that far. He's like, when you're at 12, you could, he's like, what's that phrase? Like you can't see beyond the wall that's in front of you. He's like, when you're at 12, all you're thinking about is 25 and you just, there's some wall between you and 25 and then you break through that wall and then 25 wants to get to 60. And like, there's another wall to get to 60. He's like, you just keep doing that. We just did that over and over and over again until you figure out like, you know, the right thing. And he's like, for 6 years when we were doing the infomercial thing, we were so early to that channel. We were just the best at that channel. He's like, honestly, we didn't learn that much during that time. He's like, all the learning came in these, like, he says this funny joke. He's like, there was some year where like infomercial started to tank. The internet started getting more popular. He's like, we had 30 million people that were on a reorder program, meaning he's like, our business model is we get you interested in a product, you call up our phone, we pick up and we tell you that that product's going to be great for you and that we may have some other products that are great for you. And actually, you know what, if you do this right now, we'll keep sending you this product for the rest of your life. And he's like, that's like the business model. And he's like, uh, he's like, it felt like one day all 30 million people on our reorder program called each other and were like, you know what? Let's cancel this shit. And he's like, he's like, when the world was caving in, he's like, then we had to get smart again and figure out like, oh, we haven't even had to fight to win in so long. Let's figure, let's be smart and let's figure this out. And, and he, you know, I just think these guys, these guys have built an amazing business and nobody really talks about them, at least in our circles.
Well, they don't talk about it because A, like it's not sexy. I mean, the money part is sexy because like when I, Well, you make this sound so cool, but in reality, this probably looks like Workaholics. You remember that TV show Workaholics? They're just sitting around making phone calls. That's probably what the office looks like. We're just a bunch of like morons, like sitting in this shitty cubicle wearing like a badly fitting tie and suit, like just answering these calls. I mean, that's like not that fun to do like on a day-to-day basis, I imagine. It's really fun when it's crushing it though. They also don't get talked about because they've been around forever. It looks like the company was launched in '88 and before that they were doing different stuff. So it's been around for 40 years now. But yeah, I love these guys. I want to know what they're doing with digital because I remember like, remember P90X?
That's another company. It's called something Beach. Which one? Beachbody. So they own, they're just like Guthrie Baker, but they own like P90X style companies and they owned a bunch of them.
And I remember them, well, you know what they did? They pivoted.
Yeah. They, because the internet was like coming around and they're like, we have to keep up. And so now they have like a, it's almost like a Netflix style business, isn't it? It's an MLM.
So basically they changed the sales model from this direct response infomercial model to MLM. So now they have Beachbody trainers and Beachbody associates that will sell people to join Beachbody, right? So they get people to post on social media. That they've not only have they gotten in shape, they now work for themselves. They are independent and they're making more money than they were ever making before. And if you're interested in kind of hearing how you changed, how you turned your life around, like, slide into the DMs. And then they basically sell you that, like, you too should start selling Beachbody programs to people around you and you can make a lot of money and be fit.
Dude, that's the worst. That totally, like, because I remember when I was in Australia, when I was living there, I didn't have a gym. I did P90X. I did like, I did it. I thought it was awesome. But when you go the MLM route, it makes me hate you.
Yeah.
What's his name?
Tony Horton.
Tony was ripped. Tony Horton was ripped.
I even like the side characters when it was like, you know, whatever. He'd be like, the chef is here. The Russian blah, blah, blah. That was a great program.
I wonder what he looks like now. Is he still jazz? Yeah, he is. Yeah, he's still jazz.
I think he has some—
yeah, he looks great.
He has some disease. He got some disease and then kind of bounced back or something.
Well, he still looks amazing. If you Google Tony Horton, he's 65 years old now. He looks great. So it worked. But anyway, I'm a big— I like these. I like studying these companies. I also like studying them because a lot of people in the tech startup world are like, well, this shit doesn't work anymore. And I'm like, wrong. It 100% does. Maybe it looks a little different.
Well, dude, this is what every DTC e-com business is doing, right? Like, that's what they're— the thing, the first business I featured, which was, uh, you know, the, the Greed family doing this with the Kardashians, creating a shaper brand of the Kardashians. This is no different. You know, the cosmetics brand with Ken, with, uh, you know, Kylie Jenner. There's no different than what Guthrie Renker's been doing. They just used Instagram instead of an Instagram and Instagram celebrities. Instead of Hollywood celebrities and TV. It's the same model, same, same thing.
So this one's a great— you win. This one's definitely the most interesting one. Um, it's incredibly fascinating. One thing that I was trying to research that I couldn't find, and I think there's a bunch of people in our world working on this, is everything that we've discussed, it's mostly consumer products. What I'm curious is why this hasn't worked for like a more of a B2B product. So in a weird way, we aren't this, but HubSpot is trying to do it.
I was about to say, bro, you're like a fish being like, what is water? It's like, yeah, we are this for HubSpot. You know that?
Yeah, but we're not the founders of the company. You know, we're not like, you know, we own, we maybe have—
We're the Kylie Jenner in this case, right? They basically—
Yeah, but Kylie Jenner owns 50% of that shit. We, you know, I own—
That's why we got to renegotiate, baby.
1%. Yeah. And so I don't own that much of HubSpot, but I remember they, what was the company that did this with the, what was the Rackspace? They did it with a guy. What was this? Robert Scoble. They were early with that, but I don't know if it worked out wonderfully or what happened to that, but there's not, I know there's a few other companies. So there's Assembly Brands. I worked with this guy Hunter. So we launched this thing called Viral Cuts where I own part of the company and it's like an agency that clips podcast clips, but it's going to be small. It's not going to be a multi-billion dollar company like this.
I just did this. I wonder why. Shepard is a good business. It's like, it's a business that fits our audience, right? Every entrepreneur needs to hire people. If you can hire talented people overseas for 10 times less, like, this is like a no-brainer product. So Shepard was already working and then they bring me on and now I own a piece of that company. Enough of us—
you are the Sidney Crawford. I am the Sidney Crawford.
That's what I've been telling them. And I was, they looked at me a little funny when I said it, but I, you know, this is what I bet. And, uh, you know, since we joined, uh, you know, first it was Nick Huber was doing it with them.
You're, no, you're more like the Chloe. You're the, you're the Chloe. You're the Chloe, man. You're the Khloé.
Oh, that was good. A+, uh, on that one. Um, but it's the same thing. Bring on kind of like an influencer to promote a B2B product and revenue, all-time high last month, all-time high this month, right? Like it just keeps happening now every single month, uh, by doing that. And so it's a, I think it is happening more in the B2B space and that's why it's happening more, but it's not nearly as common.
And I think it will be or should be.
It's a big opportunity for sure. The thing that, the thing that's interesting, so Austin Reef tweeted this out over the weekend. I don't know if you saw him say this.
He said every, I think he said D2C though. I think he said every like e-commerce company is going to have a content creator that's high, more highly paid than many of the executives.
So he says over the next 5 years, every D2C business will have full-time content creators on staff. The best will be comped more than the execs and drive more value than anyone else in as a business. The math is gonna make sense to hire, build, and invest in creators who could become a part of your company narrative versus spinning off one-off influencer campaigns. The key difference between being, between a creator and a social media manager, a social media manager just creates and posts content. A creator is the content. And of course, the best companies will be founded by creators like Happy Dad, Feastables, Prime, et cetera. When people hear creator, they think of MrBeast and Logan Paul. I'm not referring to famous creators, just people who create content. Full-time. And, um, this is something that we're seeing with our, uh, D2C business. But in general, I think this is, I think you just need to take out the word D2C, right? Dharmesh had the same insight. He goes, every software company is gonna have its own media company. Why? Because creating your own media is gonna bring inbound, is gonna bring inbound leads. Um, and it's gonna be more, a more efficient channel than doing outbound paid ads, or it's gonna be, and Dharmesh is sort of like that with HubSpot.
I mean, like, uh, people, like actually our most popular episodes are Dharmesh. Uh, so he's like pretty much doing that for his own company.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, okay. You want to do, you have more or you want me to do one?
You want to do one more or let's do Scott Storch. Yeah. Okay. I wasn't sure if that was in the same category, but I want to talk about him.
So here's another version of the guy behind the scenes, the engine that makes the thing work. We did it with business, with D2C products. Well, how about music? So this guy's going viral recently for a bunch of TikToks because he's got an amazing story. This guy, Scott Storch, he is a producer.
I think he's sober now and he's like, he's like out of the, he's like left the cave.
He's a producer. He's a songwriter and he's famous for a couple of things. He produced some of the biggest hits, like, you know, Still Dre, you know, the little piano keys at the beginning of Still Dre. That's Scott Storch was sitting on a piano, did it. And Dr. Dre was in a kitchen. Eating a sandwich, poked his head in, he goes, that's it. That's how Still Dre, the track happened.
I love those stories. I love those stories.
He did Candy Shop. He did Naughty Girl. He did a bunch of songs with everybody you can imagine. Beyoncé, Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Justin Timberlake, Chris Brown, all of them. He's amassed a fortune of about $100 million doing this as a producer behind the scenes that you didn't know about that was just killing it. And he's also famous for blowing all $100 million because he got addicted to two things, spending and cocaine. And he was basically just partying too much, blowing through all his money, and now he reset. So he went to rehab, got clean, declared bankruptcy basically, and came back and now is trying to rebuild again. And so this guy's story I thought was pretty crazy. What do you know about this guy?
Yeah. So we did a bunch of interviews lately where he was like, I was spending $2, $3, $4, $5 million a month. He was like, I had houses that I forgot about. He said we had this one house and he goes, I had $5,000 worth of like glass figurines that I had a party.
They were like, so you were collecting like cars or shoes? He goes, I collected everything that could be collected. He goes, stuff I didn't even care about. And he's like, I had a million dollars of crystal figurines.
He's like, they, I had a party and they fell over. We just like sweeped him up in the dust.
Yeah, he goes, I had a $500,000, uh, $500,000 crystal bottle of perfume. And they go— the guy was like, do you even wear it? He goes, nah, some drunk girl at a party knocked it over and broke it. And he's like, he had a $4 million pinky ring. If you think you're balling and you don't have a $4 million yellow diamond pinky ring. Like, you need to step down because Scott Storch has, has it done. He is a character in Grand Theft Auto because he's so prolific as a guy in Miami who's like, you know, in, in the scene.
There's this one story from 2013 where he says he spent something like $100 million. One, one says $30 million, one says $100 million in 6 months. He's like cocaine, houses, and cars.
Yeah.
And he just went hard. Yeah. So like, I love stories like this, by the way. I like it because hopefully this will have a happy ending, but I just love people that fly close to the sun, man.
He's also a genius because he dropped out of 9th grade. You know that? So he dropped out of 9th grade and you know how he made his original, like how he broke onto the scene? No. He was the keyboard guy for The Roots. So he's in 9th grade, he drops out, teaches himself how to play the piano. And he's like, yeah, they're like, you didn't take any courses? He's like, no, I mean, I couldn't afford a class. He's like, I actually enrolled in one class, but I couldn't afford to get to it. So I was like, ah, I guess I'm just not gonna like, you know, just, I'll just try to sit here. He's like, I would, I would have a tape player and I would put it on the piano and I would hear it. He's like, then with one finger, I'd be like trying to recreate what I just heard. He's like, and I just did that until I could learn how to play the keyboard to like by ear. He's like, so then he, discovers the Roots before they were big. He joins them and he's the only, he's the white boy in the Roots and they're just going and playing literally on corners and he's like playing in the corner. They'd go down to New York and they would play for a day and they'd come back to Philly and he would just do that all the time. The Roots start getting popular, they get signed, but then he leaves the Roots and they're like, why do you want to leave the Roots? He's like, man, I heard that's that white boy from the Roots. One too many times. And I, he is like, they don't even know my name. He's like, I'm going to go create my own music. So he's like, I'm going to create my own music. Through the Roots, he had met Dr. Dre. So he goes and hangs out with Dr. Dre and Dre's like, yo, this guy's got talent. And so he makes some songs with Dr. Dre. And Dr. Dre at this time is the biggest producer in the world. He's the most high in demand guy. So Scott Storch makes his $100 million fortune, as he says, off the eating crumbs at the end of the table. So basically Dray would get a project and he's like really picky. He's like, I'm not going to do just anything. He's like, so he would just take all of Dr. Dre's reject projects and do them himself and made $100 million doing that.
Dude, how good is Dr. Dre, by the way? The fact that when Eminem came around, he raps about it. He's like, you walked in with a yellow jumpsuit and you're a white guy. And everyone's like, dude, you can't play with this guy. What do you get? White rappers. That's ridiculous. If you Google Scott Storch, my wife's from Long Island, so I've gotten to know a bunch of Long Island people. This guy looks like there's the Long Island medium and then there's Scott Storch in terms of like, and like the way that they look in terms of stereotypes. He looks like the most Long Island guy ever wearing like Ed Hardy t-shirts and True Religion jeans. And Dr. Dre like sees past that and like sees talent. That's pretty amazing.
Exactly. And he even says that he's like Dre's number one skill. He's like, he's very technically talented, but his skill is, he can hear 10 things and he'll tell you which one is hot. And he's like, we'll play the same thing 5 different times. And he's like, number 4 is the one that sounds the best. And he's like, Dre just has that ear for what's good and what's hot, what's next and what's different, what's unique, what's singular, what's going to stand out. He's like, I never had that to that extent. He's like, but you know, I was good. I was able to get good enough where I could still make, you know, hundreds of hits. He would get paid $100 grand to do a single track and he would do 10 a week. And when, and you know, in his prime, that's what he was doing. That's how he was making his money. So he is like, dude, I'm just rolling in money here. And then he stopped working. He's like, I'm just gonna party now. He is like, the problem was like, I was spending, like I was still making money, but I had stopped working 3 years ago and I was just spending money like crazy. And yeah, this guy's, so here, here's some quotes I'd like to read you. Okay. On blowing $100 million, quote, "It happens." Next quote, "When you talk about blowing $100 million, I know cats that blew double that." That's the second response. It continues, "It can happen to anyone," which I gotta say, I don't think it can happen to anyone. And then he says, uh, he says, you know, "I grew up a poor kid and then all of a sudden I have infinite money. I have no, I've," infinite options and I just didn't know how to say no. So then he, they were asking about like, you know, how do you make a hit song? And he just goes like, you know, in the real estate game, it's location, location, location. And the music game, it's melody, melody, melody. He goes, it's melody, melody, melody. If you can make a memorable melody, that's what it takes to make a hit song. And that's what I focused on being able to do. So yeah, this guy Scott Storch is a prolific character.
Well, he'll be back. I mean, I feel like if you have that skill, you can make it work for a while, right? I mean, it's very similar to marketing. It's like if you understand what motivates people and gets them to act, whether it's dancing or buying something, you'll come back. Have you ever met these guys? Like, there'll be guys like, oh man, I just got ahold of all these old rookie cards for this baseball player who's about to die. We should like go and buy all of them for $50 grand and like hold onto them for 3 weeks and then resell them. I just got this old, like, you know, supply of like DVD players. It's only 50 grand. Like, they're always into schemes. Like, I always meet these guys who like love these schemes. Every once in a while it works out. And this is like a guy, Scott Stewart, who's like, you'll meet this guy and you're like, dude, you're an idiot. No way that's going to work. Like, quit trying to scam me. This is one of those guys who's made it work. You know, another guy who did it that way was the Dollar Shave Club guy. You know, it actually, Dollar Shave Club came to be a thing because he like saw a discount on like a container of like cheap razors and he's like, let's just buy these. Yeah. He's like, let's just get this cheap razors and just figure out how to sell them. I don't know how we're going to do it. I think his father-in-law like had a deal on like 50,000 razors and he's like, screw it. Let's just do it. I've met a bunch of these people like this. For some reason, it's always a Long Island thing, by the way. And, uh, and Scott Storch is a, is a, for everyone out there who's just scheming on these types of like weird, weird things. This is your hero. You know what I'm talking about? You ever meet these guys and they always have some weird hustle going down?
I was one of those guys counting cards. I'm trying to win the Monopoly game at McDonald's. You know, we are entering contests. We realize that most people don't enter contests if there's any work. So like, my buddy Dan was amazing at this. I actually wrote him off and then later learned this guy's a genius. He freshman year, This guy lives 3 doors down from me and we're like, yo, we're going to go get food. And then we're like, who are we waiting for? Where's Dan? And we go into his room and we're like, Dan, let's go, man. We're hungry. He's like, oh, hold on. The deadline for this contest is in 30 minutes. I'm out. And I'm like, what contest? Why are you entering a contest? And Duke is full of kids who play by the book and Dan never really played by the book. He was like, he had his own little book that he was playing in. And so, you know, he, he's like, oh, this is Stride Gum. He's like, Stride Gum will give you free gum for life if you can make a commercial for like a 20-second commercial that's like cool for Stride Gum. So he took a little like flip cam, like it wasn't even smartphones back then. He took one of those flip cams and he basically like filmed this commercial of himself in his dorm room being like, whatever, Stride Gum, the best goddamn gum in the world, right? He's like doing this commercial, he submits it. He's probably one of 3 people that actually like read the fine print, submitted a, did the work to submit a commercial with that, that filled in all the things. And guess what? Stride gum for everybody for the rest of college, right? We had free Stride gum forever.
Really?
He won? He did another one. He's like, um, wait, what type of package did the gum come in?
What's gum forever?
Like they just order infinite amount basically. Um, like you could just keep ordering by some, some limits. Um, then he did another one for this sandwich shop called Spicy Pickle. They're like, hey, we're renaming our mascot. And of course Dan's over there trying to rename the mascot. I'm like, Dan, do you even like this restaurant? He's like, nah, but I want to win. And I'm like, you know, he's like the definition of like play stupid games, win stupid prizes. But he has so much goddamn fun doing it that you're like, ah, I kind of wish I was doing this like Dan. And so he renamed, so the mascot currently for Spicy Pickle is a pickle who's a spy called Spy the letter C Pickle, and he's got a business card and he's a spy that'll help you out. And that's Dan. Dan created that character. And then we go to the ceremony at a Spicy Pickle headquarters and they're like 20 people in a circle cheering, clapping for him, and they hand him a big check that says like free sandwiches and he wins. And so he just kept doing these things. And Dan's from Jersey and I feel like he just always had this thing, which was like, I'm going to win. I'm going to play these I'm going to find these random edges and I'm going to win. Like, I'm going to just find these little arbitrages and I'm going to constantly exploit them.
Dude, we should do an episode on this because have you read about the guy who did it with Snack Pack? Like pudding cups? No. Like, you remember, you know, like pudding. Okay. So they ran this contest that says like, I forget exactly how the contest worked, but you could like, if you pulled off the tops of the pudding and like lick it, it like said like you won this much in free airline miles. And there was like some contests around it, but this guy did the math where I'm just, I just had to Google it now to remember exactly, but he only had to buy, I think, $3,500 worth of pudding, which is like a significant amount in terms of like how much space it would take up in your room. And he like had all this pudding and he peeled all the packs and he was able to redeem it for 1.2 million miles, airline miles. And he like gamed the contest. Contests. And there's, I like, we at The Hustle, we used to do this of people like gaming these contests. There's like a bunch of people, there's this community of people who go and find these contests and they're like, all right, where did they make the mistake where if you follow this exactly, you could actually like milk it hardcore to the extreme. And there was a guy who did this with pudding. So he basically, it was, it was basically you get 1,000 miles for every 10 labels. And the, because the whole thing was like, for some reason this pudding is supposed to be healthy. And so they said, if you eat a lot of it, it's good for you. And we're gonna reward you by giving you 1,000 miles for every 10 labels. And so the, there was $2 a piece. He figured out that he could buy 'em in bulk and he is like, here's this arbitrage where it's profitable. And he did that where he got 1.2 million miles for $3,100.
Wow. There's a Netflix show about this, about a different version of this. There's some guy trying to do this with a, I think he had to buy cans of Pepsi or something like that, or Coke or something. To do airline. There's some show I haven't, I haven't watched it yet, but I saw it, uh, show up on, on, uh, on Netflix.
Yeah. Then there's the McDonald's one.
There's a McDonald's one too, where they, where they like, but that was just a scam.
They just, they scammed it. Uh, yes. Yeah. But it is fascinating. I, I do like reading about those. They're always fun stories. We should, one of these days we'll do an episode of all these people who have just gamed the system. We used to do that at The Hustle all the time where we would give, I forget what it was. It was like one email subscriber to us was worth $10. And if you referred like 10 people, we would send you a t-shirt, which was a profitable thing for us. And if you Google the Hustle affiliate contest, all of these moms have, there's mostly like a stay-at-home mom website and it's called like CouponDash or like some of the, well, all these websites where it's just people who enter contests and they're like, hey, look, here's another one. You can win a free pair of socks if you refer 50 people. And it was like referral, like rings. And we would get all of these people doing this and we'd, and we would catch this and we're like, Why is like this, like a 38-year-old woman named Cindy winning all of our prizes? We've never heard of her. She's won all this stuff. What's going on? And you like can figure out that they list your contest on these websites and they game it like crazy. It's a pretty wild thing. So we had to create like a double opt-in system because they just figured out, they're like, you see them talking about like, look, you don't even need to opt in your email. So you can just write like SeanPlusOne@aol.com, SeanPlusTwo@aol.com, and you just win. And so that's when we had to change it. But like, I, that's how I learned a little bit about this underground world of like sweepstakes, they call it, I think. Yeah. Yeah.
Sweepstakes hackers. Amazing. All right. Should we wrap it there or do you want to do any more of these?
We'll wrap it there. So I think the order of greatness, the least interesting one, I think it was either mine or the hot couple, the second.
The Perfect Couple. We gotta put The Perfect Couple down there because they've been winning at everything their whole life.
Yeah, it'll go Perfect Couple and then Robert. Yeah, The Perfect Couple is the worst. Finally, they have something bad on their resume.
It actually does feature sort of like ugly winners. Yeah, like the sort of like more ugly and like, you know, slightly shady you are, the higher you seem to rank on My First Million. I don't know if that's intentional or unintentional, but it definitely happens.
Yeah. So the hot people, they're your last, and then we'll go Robert Earl, and then the one above that is, ooh, Scott Storch is going to go number 2. Guthrie Ranker, number 1, the juiciest. But Scott Storch is interesting too. But Guthrie Ranker, I think there's more to learn. All right. So that's it. That's the pod.
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.