JAMES DUMOULIN - School of Hard Chicks

From Fast Food to Entrepreneurial Success: James Dumoulin's Journey | Eating While Broke

In this inspiring episode of 'Eating While Broke', host Coline Witt sits down with "James Dumoulin", co-founder of the 'School of Hard Knocks' media channel, to explore his incredible journey from working fast food and construction jobs to becoming a media mogul.

James dives into the importance of mentorship, lessons learned from early financial missteps, and strategies for building a successful brand. He shares his experiences growing up in a military family, living overseas, and how these shaped his professional skills. From starting on TikTok to founding a content agency, James opens up about the challenges, setbacks, and triumphs along the way.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of Eating Wild Broke.
I'm your host, Coleen Witt, and today we have very
special guests School of Hard Knocks. James Dumoulin is in
the building. Did I say that right?

Speaker 2 (00:13):
That's correct? That works?

Speaker 1 (00:14):
I did? Okay, okay. I don't know if you're being
super nice to me or not. So we are all
the way here in Austin, Texas. I literally been like,
do not miss a follow up when it comes to
getting you, and you're very responsive and I'm super thankful.
I watch your show School of Hard Knocks, and I

(00:34):
love that you really make the show about the content.
But then you're always curious about like who's James? You know, well,
at least for me, I'm like, who is he? And
you I felt like when I watch the show, you're
almost so hidden. It's like you have to like really
stalk to find out who you are. So I'm excited
to be able to have you on Eating While Broke.

(00:55):
Before we get into all about James, I would like
to know what you're gonna have me eat today.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Absolutely well, thank you so much for having me on.
I love the concept of your show. I'm a media
the media mogal that's what I like to call it.
But I love interesting concepts, and I thought that this
was a fascinating concept.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
For a podcast, so I really liked it.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
But we're going to be actually having a twelve count
Chick fil A nugget meal with fries and our sweet teas.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
That's a classic.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
It's something that I've ever since I was a young kid,
grew up eating, and still to this day sometimes I indulge.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Well, let's go ahead and try. I'm not a huge
Chick fil ayer, even though in LA it's like the
most popping' you know that in in and out. But
I've had this before. My favorite thing at Chick fil
A is the cross fries. But you said fries, and
this is all they gave us. They don't have regular fries.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
I thought, they know this is that's what they had.
The waffle fries.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Oh okay, And great job on the sauceage to barbecue
and Chick fil A tho, those are the go to
And I didn't even say that, so.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Oh yeah, yeah, okay, perfect, So take me back. I mean,
we've all had it. Shout out to the listeners. You know,
a good Chick fil A meal the sauce is definitely
the best. Let's go ahead, now, when was the last
time you ate Chick fil A?

Speaker 3 (02:09):
I want to say, maybe like a month or so, okay,
a little bit of time.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Okay, Well take me back to the nostalgia of Chick
fil A.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
Absolutely so. My first job ever, I actually worked at
Chick fil A. So for like ten months when I
was a sophomore in high school, was making seven twenty
five working at Chick fil A.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Seven Jesus seven twenty five an hours.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Crazy, but you almost kind of have to, in my opinion,
experienced that in any capacity. So maybe it's working in
the food industry, you know, as somebody who's taking orders
and stuff like that, to kind of realize that, hey,
this isn't what I want to be doing forever. And
then my second job was actually construction. So I worked
construction for two years my junior and senior year.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Of high school.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
Paid a little bit better, but still was again one
of those things where it's like, hey, this was this
was cool, you know, made a little money doing it,
was smart with it, it saved it, but just wasn't
something that I wanted to be doing forever.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yeah, I did a fast food shout outs to McDonald's.
But I realized very early on that as crazy as
this may sound, I thought that job was really really hard,
the fast pace of it, the just I honestly said.
I tried fast food and I tried waitressing, and both
were absolutely like colling two jobs that you could never

(03:25):
have for the rest of your life. Braining, it's draining.
You have to be like real positive. What if you're
having a bad day or you know, if I'm anxious,
I can't remember anything. So I learned, you're right, this
is two careers. And I tell my friends all the time, like,
I can't be a waitress and I can't work in
fast food. Absolutely would stuck at it. And I respect

(03:45):
everyone that does those jobs absolutely bit more.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
Yeah, and it does hold you some skills as well,
you know, like with Chick fil A, one of the
things that you know how their structure is is they
kind of instilling you to like treat people with kindness
and have that customer service, which you can take with
you in a lot of ways, depending on what type
of business you go into. If you're selling, because there's
a lot of nose, there's a lot of people that
are rude. I've experienced it a ton, especially when we were,

(04:09):
you know, coming up starting our channel, going up to
random people. I was told know in every possible way
that you can kind of hear, but also remembering sometimes
like when you're working that fast food, working at a
place like Chick fil A, you get treated like shit
behind the counter, and you kind of just have to
learn to keep a smile on your face and just
keep going, and you can't let that ruin your day,
you know. I always think about it this way. It's like,

(04:30):
there's twenty four hours in a day. Why let one
second or one minute ruin the entire day. So I
think that's something as well, you know, because anybody that's
worked in that position, I'm sure, like you said, working
you know, fast food in mcdonaldge, you probably have some
people that were super rude, and oftentimes most people just
kind of let that ruin their days, which is very understandable.
But the minute you can kind of realize to kind

(04:52):
of just take it as hey, it is what it is,
on to the next one will be okay, the better
you'll be.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
I have to steal that logic because that is impressible.
I never even thought usually even when something bad, so
I have to be like, just this moment, just isolated
right now. I try to imagine how you got the
skill set of walking up to people. I imagine that
you had this sales background, but to hear you were
in McDonald's in construction prior to starting your channel, what

(05:20):
part of those experience led you to seems like as
a fan of your show, it seems like you respect
and love entrepreneurship absolutely.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
So what's interesting is that I don't attribute any of
my interpersonal skills of being able to go and talk
to people from working at Chick fil A and working construction.
Obviously it's more of like a trait, like a hard
hands on skill. But I actually like to say this
because from six to ten, I lived in South Korea,
so I lived overseas. My dad he ran the largest
overseas military base in the entire world, so he was

(05:54):
a garrison commander, so I was from a military family.
I lived in three different cities in South Korea, eventually
said back into the DC area before moving to Austin
five years ago. But when I was living in South Korea,
I was watching my dad speak and lead in front
of tens of thousands of troops, people from Korea, even
the American soldiers that were over there, and I was

(06:15):
constantly used to people coming up to him, coming up
to our family, and just learning how to communicate with
people with elders, people who were way older, some of
these people who were, you know, in significant positions of
power in the military and the government over there. So
I had to learn from an early age how to
act professional, how to carry yourself in a confident demeanor,
in the right way when you're meeting these people, with

(06:35):
these heads of states, you know, the top people in
the military. And so I took that with me from
an early age to every aspect of my life to
going into I was in boy Scouts. I became an
Eagle Scout, and all of my you know, Scout masters
were all elder people ex Marines. But again it's you know,
always having those kind of like mentors to kind of

(06:57):
conversate with and be able to guide you. It instilled
I feel like that ability and me to conversate with
people who are older, maybe from a business or financial
standpoint that maybe they're a little bit more like superior,
more experienced, and I think a lot of it I
do attribute to being from overseas or at least living
there for a couple of years, traveling all the time.
You know, we lived in three different cities in South Korea,

(07:18):
but we also went to a ton of countries like China, Cambodia, Australia,
and so I always say to me, there's two things
that will teach you more about yourself than anything else.
It's traveling the world and fighting. Fighting will instill in
you a different level of humility because you know, you
can have no experience or a ton of experience, and
you can still go up against somebody and get your

(07:38):
ass beat, and that will teach you more about yourself
than anything else other than traveling. Because traveling you're experiencing
different cultures, different people, and in my opinion, it allows
you to look at the world from a much more
global lens as opposed to like a very narrow view
on things and not thinking outside of the box. So
I think that between traveling and just being around a
lot of older people taught me more about myself how
to communicate and handle those conversations.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
So take me back, So your parents are you come
from military background, They're affluent, middle class.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
I was one hundred percent. Yeah, definitely middle class. You know,
my dad was military for thirty one years. He gets
out and is kind of just going to work in
DC as like a government contract or sort of thing.
The typical thing that a lot of the military guys
do is they're in the military, they get out and
they do the contracting things. So definitely middle class. However,
you know, my dad was a guy who was very

(08:27):
conservative with his money. He invested, you know, probably ended
up becoming a millionaire by the time he was in.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
His like late forties or fifties.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
But regardless, did instill a lot of good money habits
within us, meaning he wasn't blowing money, he wasn't spending
money on dumb shit. If anything, he was teaching us
how to invest at an early age because with him,
you know, he didn't start investing until his thirties, whereas
my brother and I, you know, we grew up when
we were.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Working fast food. I was start working in construction.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
I was taking a lot of that money and putting
it into the market, started to invest in stocks like
really early on, which you know, again it's everybody, every
millionaire and billionaire will tell you to start early, right
because a lot of them they don't start putting money away,
or they didn't start putting money away until they were
in their like thirties or forties, and so, you know,
starting early is something that's very important as well, that
was instilled in us.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
It seems like your father had a lot of transparency
to even bring you to these places where you're meeting
these leaders and watching him interact.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
So, did you guys spend more time with your dad
than your mom.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
Or definitely more time with our mom, just because again,
you know, my dad was you know, very busy a
lot of the times he was deployed or he was
constantly going to different military bases, going to meet with
different head stags, different military leaders and stuff like that.
So for that reason, we definitely spend more time with
our mom. But he was still very present, especially you know,
when he was finally done being deployed and came back

(09:42):
we were in the DC area, never missed a baseball game,
was always you know, there for his two sons. So
I was very blessed to have, you know, two great parents,
and they instilled a lot of great life lessons in us.
And it's it's interesting because you know when we first
started doing our channel that we have now, they were
very hesitant at first. They were very like unsure of

(10:03):
the idea because to them it's like it's a foreign concept,
like you can make money just by posting videos, whereas like, now,
you know, they're like our number one supporters. My mom's
always telling me, oh, I want you to interview this person.
I want you to go and love and so yeah,
it's really cool to kind of see is it you
and your brother? It is it's me, my brother. And
then one of our childhood friends from the DC area
actually who was actually we met and we were in

(10:25):
the same boy Scout troupe all became Eagle Scouts a
little bit of a different age gap. So our good
friend Josh, who's our other co founder, he's twenty six
years old. My brother's twenty four, and I'm twenty two.
So twenty two, oh my good, yeah, twenty two.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
So usually when I have a younger person on the
show and off camera we were talking about this, I
was like, oh, when we have a younger person, sometimes
I prefer older because I'm like, you know, I want
to know that you guys have hit enough failure to
like really entertain me because I believe failure is at
the end of the day, that's the closest way to
get to success. And sometimes with a younger person, I'm like,

(11:02):
I don't know if they've hit their head enough. But
with you, I was just like, the wealth of knowledge
you have. I'm like, between your traveling, I assume I
have this fantasy of who you are so you can
feel free to pop all the bubbles. I'm like, man,
he must be well read, he must be pounding books
and all day long on top of these interviews. Am
I even closely right?

Speaker 3 (11:22):
No, I've maybe read one book in my entire maybe
half a book in my entire life. I'm not a reader.
I mean I get knowledge in a lot of other
ways from these interviews. And maybe that's one thing that
I really do want to work on, is reading a
lot more, because I will say a lot of the
wealth these people, I know they're avid readers, but it's
just not my style of learning. I don't like sitting
still and reading a book. I'd much rather get it

(11:43):
from actually going to seek out other people and have
those conversations. I always like to say that mentorship is
like wisdom without the wounds, and so to.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
Me, it's like I have I love that.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
It's great, right, And I always say mentorship is literally
the only way to sit, the only shortcut of success,
obviously learning from yourself from your failure. But the way
that you mitigate all that, like I said, is getting
that mentorship is getting around those types of people. But
you know how we say too. You know, I'm also
not a big person of like structure, Like I am
probably one of the worst people I know about keeping

(12:13):
a calendar and.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Sticking to it.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
So but everybody has kind of those things that they're
great at and that they're not and I would say
that that's maybe one of my flaws is that. But
now I'm not a big reader. I just like am
obsessed about what we do, which is something that I've
also noticed among you know, and this is a great point,
is that a lot of younger people will ask, like,
how do I figure out what that thing is for me?
And at all points in life, because there's people in

(12:36):
their teams their twenties or thirty forties, fifties that are
still trying to figure it out. And like I was
asked that question the other day, and to me, the
way you kind of come up with that theme where
you know that this is what you need to be
doing is when you just can't stop thinking about it.
Is when you're genuinely obsessed. Like I will be up
at all hours of the day, all hours of the night,
depending on you know, the day, just constantly thinking about,

(12:58):
you know, what can I do? What can I do better?
You know, what can I you know, how do I
get more innovative? We just hit five million followers on
Instagram yesterday, and I'm like, I'm constantly thinking it's like,
you know, how do we get to ten million within
the next you know, year or two? You know, So
I'm always singing about that. But that's again, how I
know that what we're doing is what we should be doing,

(13:20):
because it's just the peer obsession with it.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
I love that. Now, take me back. You graduated college
in Texas. When you were doing the fast food, you
were in high school, your parents were definitely taking care
of you, and then you were just taking the money
and investing. At what point does school of hard knocks
start to enter the picture?

Speaker 3 (13:40):
Yeah, so you know I was So I'll first say this.
I mentioned that I had those first two jobs, right, Well,
my senior year of high school. Actually this is the
year I was work in construction. It's about December twenty nineteen,
and you know, I start to hear about TikTok. It's
starting to get really popular. And now I think TikTok

(14:00):
had been on the App Store, like it had been
launched maybe late twenty eighteen, early twenty nineteen, but it
really started to hit its stride late twenty nineteen, and
then going into twenty twenty is when it just passed
Google as the number one search engine. And I was
just watching TikTok casually, but I started to notice, like,
there's these kids out there who are my age, who

(14:23):
are younger than me, some older than me, and they're
making ridiculous amounts of money tens and hundreds of thousands
of dollars a month, just making content about stuff that
they were passionate about because they were able to build
an audience and monetize it. And I love the saying
that where attention goes, revenue flows, and to me, I

(14:44):
saw that in late twenty nineteen, and I just decided
to start posting on TikTok. I didn't have any clear
direction of how I wanted to take my brand or anything.
I was just building my personal brand on there, just
a personal TikTok, and I just kept trying different things,
hopping on different trends, and I would go viral, and
before I knew it, within about ten months on that account,
I had eight hundred thousand followers. Wow, So went from

(15:07):
zero to eight hundred thousand followers in about ten months.
So that was from like December twenty nineteen up until
August twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (15:14):
And it was it was different types of videotypes of content.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
My first ever video that I posted that went viral,
So my first viral video was probably like my tenth
to fifteenth post somewhere around then. But I try to
tell people that it's like, look, most successful creators, I
would argue the majority of them, if you ask them, hey,
how many pieces of content did it take for you
to have one viral video? A lot of them it
wasn't until their fiftieth or one hundredth or three hundredth

(15:39):
video that it takes to go viral. And like most people,
they don't understand that, and therefore they get discouraged because
all you know, my first couple videos didn't go viral
so then they're just done.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
They give up.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
And it's like I try and remind people that, like, look,
some people, yes, does that you know happen overnight? Sure,
it does a lot of the overnight stuff. Though where's
the longevity most people that go viral overnight? There isn't
any longevity for the most part. Whereas you know, people,
it's a long game media content creation. It is a

(16:10):
long game. And if you want to like actually have
be very successful and you have to be committed to
it for a long time. And so, like I said,
ten to fifteen post was someone that went viral. It
was literally just me making a decision video on going
to the University of Texas. So like I had applied
to like three or four places and I was did
a video like showing all the places I got into
and then deciding to go to UT You got like

(16:30):
eight hundred thousand views. And I realized right then and there,
it's like, okay, I posted that video with I had
like maybe two hundred followers at the time, and I
overnight I got eight hundred thousand views, And I'm like,
wait a minute, So you can literally have like one
hundred followers and you can have hundreds of thousands to
a million people that see a piece of your video.

(16:51):
I'm like, count me in, Like this is crazy. I mean,
obviously this has existed, but I hadn't seen it for myself.
And so, like I said, it did that once and
then was just posting a lot of miscellaneous contents. So
some of it was like me, you know, doing self
improvement advice or making like lists of like my top
favorite movies, my top favorite rappers, like stuff like that.

(17:11):
But it wasn't anything where like I could have built
a brand out of it. So after those ten months,
I hit eight hundred K, but I kind of hit
a wall mentally with it where I was like, I
got to I gotta do something else. This isn't it.
And so I had connected with the child the childhood
friend my brother. We were at like a friend's house.
This is right before I moved out from Virginia the
DC area to Austin, and we kind of just connected

(17:33):
on the fact that hey, we're all from the DC area.
A lot you know a lot of us. If you
know anything about DC, it's a very structured city, very
federal like, we've centered around a lot of federal agencies.
Government jobs, contracting, defense, it's not entrepreneurial, so we kind
of gravitated towards one another. Being that my brother, myself,
and our friend at the time, we were all kind

(17:56):
of doing our own theme, so we just kind of
went back and forth and a year goes by, but
it was ultimately my sophomore year in April twenty twenty
one where the three of us were like, hey, the
creator economy right now is like a five hundred billion
dollar industry, and we all kind of have different skill sets.
My brother was an analytics genius, I knew content. My

(18:17):
other partner had a digital marketing background. We're like, let's
let's let's sort of a media channel together. All of
our skill sets kind of complement one another, and we're like,
let's start a business media channel. So we started the
channel originally and it was just the three of us
that were making the content ourselves about business. We weren't
ablen to doing interviews when we started out the channel,
but we're like, nobody gives a shit about three young

(18:38):
twenty year old kids talking about business content. We're like,
you know, we grew from zero to twenty five k
in like six months, but we're.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
Like that's amazing.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
Then yeah, it's great.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
However, again kind of how I hit that while with
the other one, with this one, I was still like
how do we It was all over the place where
like how can we kind of be different? And even
though you know, street interviews have been around for twenty years,
like every major news site or channel you know has
done street interviews with people, but I'm like, it wasn't

(19:08):
done in a way in which I saw like the opportunity.
So we just started going around cold approaching people, you know,
finding people that have industry experience of twenty thirty forty
years in different businesses from tech to real estate, to
finance to general entrepreneurship, and just tried to get those
insights and be able to package it and pass it
on to the younger generation. So that was you know,

(19:30):
sometime in twenty twenty one, and fast forward to twenty
twenty five, grew it to twelve million followers. We've done
over four billion views in the last you know, four years,
and I've learned a ton about business, you know, content creation, virality, everything.
Now we're definitely some setbacks and adversity on the way
as we were, you know, building, but Ultimately, it's been

(19:52):
an incredible a journeys.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
I love failure absolutely well. I'm happy to.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
Get you or speed bumps or road bump, so.

Speaker 3 (20:00):
You know this, this is one that's been very I
think this story is very helpful for a lot of people.
So one of the best pieces of advice that I've
ever received was from a gentleman in Houston. His name
Steale Woods made like sixteen million dollars in a year,
and you know, the best entrepreneurship advice that he gave
me was stay small enough long enough, and you'll be

(20:21):
big enough soon enough. And I absolutely loved that. All
the wealthiest people will tell you to the best investment
you can make, especially when you're starting to become profitable
and actually make money, is reinvesting and putting it back
into the business. The reason why I bring this up
is because this was very relevant to what happened to us,

(20:43):
and had it not been for that, the three of
us would have been screwed one hundred percent. So we're
about a year into the channel. So my other partner, Josh,
he had dropped out so he had gone full time with.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
This channel college. Yea, I love that, so he.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
He before we even started. He he dropped out years ago.
Like I said, he's a bit older, so you know,
he dropped out to pursue digital marketing agency years ago,
so he had already dropped out, but he you know,
his digital marketing agency had a partner. They kind of
went through separate ways, and then when he started doing this,
he went full time with the content channel. Like really
before we were ever making money. And as I said,

(21:20):
with like media content creation, it's a long game unless
you want to dilute your brand, Like you're not going
to be making good money off of content for at
least you know, a year or two. But so anyways,
we're like a year, year and a half in by
this point, I'm probably a junior in college. My brother
is now graduated at the time, so he's full time

(21:41):
on the business. My other partner, Josh, is full time.
The three of us are full time, and we're at
a point now where you know, this is what twenty
twenty one, so a lot of people don't know this.
Twenty twenty was the first year that Facebook ever stagnated users,
meaning meaning in the entire twenty plus years that Facebook
has existed, did the only year twenty twenty was the

(22:03):
first year that they stopped growing. And the reason why
they stopped growing is because you've got TikTok, which from
a short video perspective, just started crushing everybody. Instagram had
adapted with the reels, and obviously Instagram at the time
was a little bit more relevant that it was a
new or app.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Facebook was a lot older.

Speaker 3 (22:21):
So Facebook sees this and they go, you know what,
we got to start incentivizing people to create content, create
videos on Facebook. So they rolled out this monetization program
on there. It's paying creators a lot of money. And
so we're about a year into the Hard Knocks channel
and we get invited into this program and for a

(22:41):
couple months in the program, we're making twenty five to
thirty five thousand dollars a month. So this is like
a year to year and a half into Hard Knocks. However,
we knew content, but we didn't know the media business.
So for that reason, our entire business model and our
time mid monetization was just relying solely on ad revenue.

(23:03):
We didn't have a content agency at the time. We
have one now. We weren't monetizing in any other ways.
We were approached every once in a while to do
like a brand partnership or create content for a brand.
But even then it's like, at the time, we had
a couple hundred thousand followers on TikTok and didn't really
have a huge presence on Instagram, so we weren't making
any great money off of brands. And there's three co founders. However,

(23:24):
the ad revenue for those couple months that we were
making twenty five to thirty five thousand off of Facebook,
We're like, man, this is incredible, this is great. And
again one of those reoccurring pieces of advice that we
were receiving was to again put the money back into
the business. Don't be greedy, don't take the money for yourself, right,
which is what we did. So during those months that

(23:47):
we were getting paid like that, we were all paying
ourselves two thousand dollars a month, which is literally just
enough to cover rent and expenses. So we know, none
of us were saving money. We were just taking the
two thousand dollars month out each, you know, for the
three of us, which covered our rent, covered everything else.
Everything else went back into the business. Out of that
twenty five to thirty k well, when you post a

(24:10):
video on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or YouTube. I
tell people this, when you post on their platform, you
no longer own that content. They own that content.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
Well, they do because at the end of the day, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,
then they can decide whether that piece of content stays up.
They can decide whether they want to pay you offered
or not. That's what I'm more so. Obviously, you as
the creator that posts it, that posts the content, Yes,
do you technically own the content. Sure, But at the
end of the day, when you post on their platform,
who owns the platform?

Speaker 2 (24:41):
They do.

Speaker 3 (24:42):
So for that reason, we posted a piece of content
on Facebook and it was our own interview, but something
got flagged and we ended up getting demonetized. So we
go from making like twenty five to thirty five thousand
dollars a month to literally like three to four thousand
dollars a month off of just Tiktoka. TikTok was still paying,

(25:02):
but TikTok at the time, you know, you know, paid pennies.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
Compared to what they were paying.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
So we go from making twenty five to thirty five
thousand dollars a month all the way down to three
to four thousand dollars a month between three people.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
And it was like that for a couple of months.
And you know, that's kind of when we're starting to
have the conversation like do we disband, Like do we.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
Like we were like, yeah, well, well just because it's like.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
You know, we weren't we weren't making any money off
of it, and it's like they were full time and
it's like, you know, again making three to four thousand
dollars a month, like, but what kept us afloat again
was those couple of months where we were only paying
us those two thousand dollars. We put a lot of
money back into the business, so we had a decent account.
We're like, hey, we just need to figure this this
thing out and we can you know, we'll be able

(25:48):
to bounce back. And so at that moment we came
to that, we realized that you cannot build a business
off of ad revenue because you don't determine how much
you're paid, you don't determine when you're paid, you don't
determine whether we get paid or not off of that content.
So we're like, we need to get savvy and it
reminds me of Also in twenty twenty three, I had
gone to like my first ever Mastermind with a bunch

(26:09):
of eight figure, seven, eight nine figure internet marketers, and
a gentleman said a statement to me that stuck with me,
you know, to this day, is that great businessmen are
terrible content creators, and great content creators are terrible businessmen.
And it's very true because some of the most successful
business people I know, they're terrible at content. Right, they
know their business, but they don't they don't know content. Yeah, yeah,

(26:31):
And most content creators that I know are broke. Like
most content creators, they don't understand the media business. They
don't know how to monetize it. So then we began
to look at, Okay, there's three of us, what do
we do to be able to kind of get on
the right track and figure this thing out? And it
reminds me of I'll give you one other less said
it than you know, you'll pass it back on to you.

(26:52):
But there was a gentleman out in Scottsdale, Arizona. He
owns like four eight figure businesses, huge real estate guys.
Name's Cody Sperber, And he told me a piece of
advice that you know, I love this piece of advice
is that a savvy entrepreneur he looks at their business
and looks at two things. Number one, all of the
people making money off of their efforts, and number two,

(27:13):
all of the different ways in which they can be
making money. So it's that vertical integration. So the wealthiest,
the most successful people that I know, they look at
their core business and they look at how are my
competitors or how are my customers, like how are people
making money off of me? And I'm going to go
start a business there where I'm going I'm going to
integrate my business there or like okay, us right, our

(27:35):
core business was media was attention. How can we use
our platform to then begin to make money? Which is
exactly what we did. And you know our first thing
we started, Okay, we're interewing wealthy people. We're going viral
with wealthy people. That's start a marketing agency to therefore,
we'll go viral with them and then we'll close them
on doing their content. Let's build their personal brands. And

(27:55):
so we have a content agency where we work with
some of the biggest, most well known entrepreneurs in the space.
And we do their personal brand. So it's like, okay,
there's one business. We're like, Okay, the number one question
that we get asked is how do you connect with
these people? How do we get access to them? So
we started and built one of the biggest online communities
for business owners to get I saw that connect and

(28:16):
be able to you know, learn every week from them.
So it's like, that's that's what it's all about. It's like, Okay,
this is our core business. It's attention, we get eyeballs.
How do we now monetize this? And you know, in
doing that, you know, that's that's what enabled us to
kind of come back from that adversity was having that,
you know, a couple months of operating expenses in the business.

(28:36):
We're like, hey, you know, we can either give this
up or we can keep going. And we did and
it was worth it.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Wow. And then during this little this, I want to say,
how long was your hurdle for that gap?

Speaker 2 (28:48):
Six months at least?

Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah, you guys were almost getting down to the wire.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
It was a while.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
I mean, I mean yeah, I mean I would say
maybe like three to four months into it, we may
have closed our first client, but we didn't know anything
about about scaling. We didn't we didn't know. I mean again,
we've been learning a lot about business, but we weren't
implementing it. And I always say that information changes situations,
but only through implementation. And so you know, now it's like, okay,
we are genuinely like learning from these people and we're

(29:15):
constantly adapting, like we'll pay to have a phone call
with somebody successful. I mean obviously now our rolodex, our
network is unbelievable, and you know, we do our best
to provide a value to as many people as possible,
and as many of these people that we really really
you know, value and therefore it's like hey, if we
go to ask them a question, or hey, would you
invest in this if you were us or whatever it

(29:37):
may be, it's now like never like a hard ass,
just because we've really done a good job about building
those relationships and stuff like that. But it was it
was a good bit of time, you know. So and
then I would say, we really didn't start making good
money until probably sometime mid to late twenty twenty three,
and then we started to clear six figure months. I

(29:57):
would say probably back like last like June, like last June,
like like last summer was when we started. Ever since
then we've been clearing six figure months and then our
biggest month was this past December where we did over
six hundred thousand and revenue and then half a million of.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
That was profit. So geez, the half a million profit
last December.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Now, so you have the school that people can they
pay to subscribe, and how when you were going about
building that school, how did you work out the infrastructure
of how you were going to lay that all out.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
This is a great question, and this is where a
lot of people go wrong, is it? And I'll give
you one more little setback.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
You can give me as many as you want.

Speaker 3 (30:47):
Okay, absolutely well, this is just probably like the worst
one of, if not the worst financial decisions that us
as a company ever made. So one of the biggest
mistakes that content creators make is that they get shiny
object syndrome to where they're like, Okay, you know, I
just went viral, I'm getting followers and all this, and
that I'm going to start a clothing company. I'm going

(31:09):
to start an e commerce store, without even you know,
thinking about the most important thing within the audience, which.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Is why they actually follow you.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
So what we did probably this may be like a
you know, twenty twenty two, so probably when we started
to make a little bit of money. Actually maybe maybe
this was actually I'm sorry, this was actually probably before
we even got demonetized. So we were again having those
months where we were doing decently off of like just

(31:39):
the ad revenue, probably like a year, year and a
half in, and we're like, you know, what we should do.
We're like, since we're doing you know, these interviews that
are motivational, we're interviewing successful people, we should start we
should start a canvas store, like you know how like
there's like motivational.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Like law art and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (31:59):
We're like, that'd be a great idea, and we're all going, yeah, yeah, yeah,
like let's do it. And we even to the point
where we were serious about it. We started to work
on it, and we even, you know, for three months
hired or invested in invested five thousand dollars a month
in an outsourced CMO. I mean, we had somebody that

(32:22):
we knew who was incredibly talented, like probably one of
the most well respected Internet marketers e commerce entrepreneurs that
I actually know to this day is absolutely crushing it.
We paid them five thousand dollars a month for three
months to come in and help us build it out
and help us market it and sell it. Offer us
to maybe sell five to ten canvases. So we spent

(32:44):
fifteen thousand dollars and literally we lost more when you
talk about paying for the designers, the management, like everything else.
And the reason why is because we never talked to
the customer. We never talked to the audience. We never
figured out is this something that they even want, that
they interested in?

Speaker 2 (33:00):
And so.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
But like Mark Cuban always says, is that it's like
nobody's going to come save your business. Like a lot
of people have this idea that, oh, you know, I
completely agree with the fact that do you need to
hire like people, bring them on, do partnerships a million percent?
Like my whole thing is is like I'd rather have
a slice of the pie than one hundred percent of
a great Whereas like if people are genuinely talented and they're.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
The way you talk is just you got to repeat that.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
It's in sound bites, right, No, but the one.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
Hundred of piece of a pie.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
This is genuinely like beautiful.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
One of my favorite and the most important things because
a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs they want to
be the solo preneur and do everything themselves without realizing that, hey,
maybe you know, like I said, perfect example is like
a content creator who's great at content, but they suck
at business. It's like, dude, go find somebody that is
incredible at business. They know how to build this out,

(33:56):
they know how to market it, and you just do
what you do, which is create content. And that's like
my philosophy even with me and my two other co founders,
my brother and my friend, is like, hey, they know
that I'm incredible at creating content. So with their philosophy
with me, it's like, due, go book the flight. You
want to go film there, just go book it. Even
in those even before we were starting to make like
really good money.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
They were like, dude, just book the flight. Just book it,
you know, And.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
That's like a great way to operate if you're strategic
about it. But yes, it's you know, as an entrepreneur,
I would rather have a slice of a pie than
one hundred percent of a great meaning. It's like if
you partner up with somebody who is extremely good at
an area where you're not and you in your skill
sets can complement one another. You're going to make significantly

(34:41):
more money even though you're giving split of the money,
as opposed to you trying to do everything yourself, because
there's only so much that you can do. There's only
so much you know, area for growing that you can
do if you're trying to do everything yourself. And so, yeah,
I think that that was, you know, incredibly important likes.
What I was saying is like, I'm a huge advocate
of that. But at the same time, it's like, you know,

(35:04):
most people they fail to ask their audiences why people
follow them. And over the last couple of years, as
we were starting to interview more super high network people,
billionaires and stuff like that, people were always asking us
and dming us saying, hey, who is this How can
I get access to them? How you know, could you

(35:26):
send us their contact and all this stuff. So to us,
we're like, Okay, the number one reason why people reach
out to us is literally for the ability to get
in contact with or to figure out how we're meeting
these people. And so we started to realize that, hey,
you know what business we're actually in, Yes, we're in media.
But we're in the bridging business where we're bridging everyday

(35:49):
people consumers of content, and we're bridging them directly to
the you know, some of the most successful people in
the entire world. And for that reason, you know, we're like, okay,
let's it just made sense for us to think about
building a community that connects the everyday people directly to

(36:10):
these people, which is exactly what we did. And obviously
it took you know, six months plus to be able
to build out the infrastructure. You know, there's a lot
of on demand content, master classes, there's weekly calls. But
we also did a lot of you know, polling, like
saying stuff like, hey, if we built an online platform
or community, what would you guys want to see in there?

(36:30):
Or out of these four things, what is the number one,
like most important or like thing that you would want
the most And we did a lot of that for
a couple of months, and I think that's very important
and very underrated that a lot of people mess up
on when they're building their brand, creating content. Starting to
get some traction is like before going all in saying Okay,
I'm going to start a clothing company, what if people
aren't following you for what you're wearing. Like for example,

(36:53):
I would argue, I would say that I probably know
more about content and you know, just virality, the algorith
them as a whole, more than ninety nine point nine
nine nine nine percent of people. However, people don't follow
me because of that. People don't follow our channel to
the School of hard Knocks, because we know how to
go viral.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
So like if I.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
Wanted to, you know, build and sell, attempt to sell
the viral video blueprint or how to go from zero
to a million followers on social media, it probably wouldn't hit.
I mean, are there some people that maybe would bite
just because of the sheer amount of volume and eyes
that we have. I'm sure right, But is that what
would make the most sense for our existing audience and

(37:33):
our existing type of content and why people are actually
following us. Definitely not so. And a lot of it
is you have to remove your bias out of it.
You have to remove any emotional attachment that you have to, oh,
I'm great at this, I should go sell this. Yeah,
And when it's like no, it's like what if people
actually want, you know, I interviewed a gentleman. He sold
his company to Hilton for two point two billion dollars.
Stephen Klubek, he's actually running for governor of California. And

(37:57):
he said, and he said that it's like, you know,
the most that's what he always preaches, is like talk
to your customer, talk to the you know, he owned
like over four hundred hotels in thirty five countries and
so that was that's his thing. It's like him being
in the hospitality business. He's always talking to people. He
what can we do better? Well, you know, what is
it that we could add to our resort to improve

(38:18):
and stuff like that. And now his big thing is
like with the people of California is it's like you know,
he his he said it this way that made it
really interesting to me, is like that, like the people
of Californias are like customers of California. And so hearing
that perspective, even shifting it to like what we're doing
as a you know, content creator building out this businesses
like we are always constantly trying to talk to different people.

(38:40):
Are you familiar with Steve Madden the Clothes? So, so
I interviewed him and one of the most fascinating things
that I saw him do after we interviewed him, We're
outside of his you know, apartment in New York City
and he's just stopping you know, random random ladies on
the street, asking.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
Where'd you get your shoes from?

Speaker 3 (38:59):
And he's just talking different people about what do you
like about them and all that. And I'm like, here's
this Guy's a billionaire, his companies two to three billion
dollars a year in sales, and he's just talking to
random people asking them about their shoes and stuff like that.
And I'm like, that's really interesting. So even I learned
a little bit, a little bit from everybody, but that's
something that I've really you know, those couple things have

(39:20):
really made sense to me when it comes to like
the decision for us building out. That's what went into
thinking about launching the community and the infrastructure for that.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
Yeah, I get I get nervous anytime, even with eating
while broke. If I'm like all of our revenue is
coming from one area, I like to see split. I'm like,
I don't mind on one part taking up thirty to
forty percent, but anytime it hits over that forty percent
where all of our revenues coming from, I'm like, we
gotta find something else. We have to start really thinking.

(39:51):
But it seems like you guys started to do that
once to monotize. Once the life supply kind of came out,
you guys were like, oh, snap, was there another painful
lesson in the business where it was just like with that,
you literally kept you guys, started to argue, maybe kept
up at night, started reaching out to your parents like
I don't.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
Know, you know, I don't know. I know that one
thing I'll say about the partnership that I have with
my brother and a good friend. And I think this
is also very important because a lot of people will
argue against going into business with friends and family, but
I don't see it that way. I think there's one
thing that you guys do have to have in order

(40:30):
for you to partner up, because I think the beautiful
thing about going into business with family or childhood friends
where you know the kind of people that you are
and what I mean kind of people, not what you're
good at and what you're bad at, but genuinely like
when I see and I hear from a lot of
entrepreneurs about why their business failed or why big companies failed,

(40:51):
a lot of it had to do with a bad
disagreement or dishonesty between the partners or the founders or
whatever it may be. And that's the one thing is
that I can say confidently that you know, between myself,
my brother, my other partner, I know them morally. I
know that our values are all aligned, that we're all

(41:11):
on sync, and that I wouldn't ever have to worry
about somebody taking a dollar behind somebody's back out of
the business or doing something dishonest. I know that for
a fact. I know for a fact that I wouldn't
do that to them, obviously because I love them, but obviously,
like I just was raised in a way that like, hey,
that's not that's not the right thing to do, no
matter what point you get to. And it's it's really
cool to be able to know that and know that, hey,

(41:32):
if we're in this shit together, like even you know,
during what we call like the trench days, where we
were just making two thousand dollars got demonetized down to
the point where we're making we're making like four k
a month collectively for a couple of months. Even during
those days, we were still just very very you know,
close with one another, and we're really in it together.
But the problem with that is going into business with

(41:54):
people that you know and that you love, is that
it does create a sense of comp fortibility for a
lot of people, to where when you're you know, constantly around.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
People that you grew up with or that you live with, you.

Speaker 3 (42:08):
Can become very comfortable because it's what you're used to,
whereas it's like okay. That's why people always say it's
like get out of your hometown, go do something uncomfortable.
I think that's some of the best advice that you
can ever give somebody is to like literally like leave hometown,
go get uncomfortable. It's gonna you know. To me, low
pressure means low performance. So even causing you to have
a little bit of like pressure where you have to

(42:28):
make you have to meet people, you got to make connections,
you got to build without knowing people. I think that's
a great thing. But I don't think we ever experienced
that comfortability because we were never afraid to put one
another in check. And most importantly, like I said that
one thing that you have to have is that you
cannot be or you cannot be surrounded by a yes man,

(42:49):
and none of us were yes man, meaning if somebody
felt a certain way about something but the other person
completely disagreed. We were not afraid to just butt heads
to the point where it's like it could go on
for a while, just like arguing, like, you know, pretty harshly,
you know, genuinely. Yeah, I would say like yep, not
in not in a nice way sometimes. And that's a

(43:12):
great thing about having that third partners that they were
able to you know, when you have two people or
that third partner's able to kind of go in there
and reason with one of them or go agree with
one of the two, it's you're able to kind of
come to a decision in a better way because that
person who's disagreeing with the other two is like, Okay,
if you two are saying this, then I don't really
don't have a choice because it's like, look, we're there's

(43:33):
three of us here. Maybe I need to see it
from your lens a little bit more. However, it takes
those two to go at it and not be like,
you know, just this person's you know, feeling this way
about it. Oh he's from that way, then then you
know he's absolutely right. We were never like that, and
that was extremely important. So I think that, like you
just whether it's you, you the people that you decide

(43:53):
to partner with, you just cannot be a yes man
or a yes woman towards each other because like again,
it's you got to have those own uncomfortable conversations sometimes
to ultimately make the decision that's going to move the needle,
the furthest for your business or whatever endeavor that you're doing.
So I don't know if there was like a specific

(44:14):
thing in which I mean, I'm sure that there were
a lot of different things here and there on the
way that were but like to me, like those were
the when I think of like setbacks that we had,
it was definitely the one where we completely got demonetized
for months or like a year and a half in
making a couple thousand dollars, you know, or to that point,
we weren't even really paying ourselves. We're just like living

(44:35):
off of our bank accounts in Austin, which is a
more expensive city than most places, not la expensive, but
it's still it is.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
But it's definitely more affordable for sure. And you guys
were doing a lot of this too. It seems like
during the pandemic. Can we talk about that, like the
hurdles you faced doing that.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
So during the pandemic is when I actually sorted on
my personal account. So that was from you know, December
twenty nine team to like August twenty twenty was like
peak pandemic was when we really was when I started
to grind on TikTok. And so a lot of my
you know, close friends, relatives, people I went to school with,

(45:14):
a lot of them were looking at the pandemic, not
everybody as maybe like a vacation or like time off.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
And don't get me wrong.

Speaker 3 (45:21):
Like I feel horrible for people that like they were
lined up to go to the school or they were
lined up to do something really great. I mean I
know a ton of people, you know, I think about
all the younger kids, like the athletes, didn't get that
showcasing to different schools or you know whatever it may be,
getting in front of the right people. But I genuinely
took it as such an opportunity. And I think that's

(45:43):
also another important thing as well, is that like when
everybody's kind of you know, chilling out. And obviously there
was a lot of reason why people they had no choice,
because people were getting paid off from companies and in
order for them to go find work, like people weren't
really hiring, Like a lot of businesses were losing tons
of money, especially like if you were some.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
And it was like full on shutting down.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
Yeah, full on.

Speaker 3 (46:02):
Shutting down, right, which was crazy. But I, to me,
looked at COVID as an opportunity to get ahead on honestly,
and that's why, Like I when I was doing my
personal account and I went from zero to eight hundred
K in the ten months, every single day during COVID,
I was posting two to three times a day, every
single day. It didn't matter where I was, whether I

(46:23):
was on a train, flying somewhere, going to visit family,
going to visit relatives. I was just posting NonStop, relentlessly.
So I looked at that as an opportunity to where. Okay, obviously,
you know, I was a senior in high school. Our
semester just ended in like March, which was crazy, and

(46:43):
as opposed to waiting months before moving out to Texas
to go to school in August, I was like, okay,
what could I be doing now?

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Until then?

Speaker 3 (46:49):
I still worked construction that summer actually, but I was
still doing that, and then I was also I was
as I was doing the construction, but then I was
just blowing up on the social media side of things.
I just looked at this as an opportunity to, you know, hey,
why not run with this just kind of see where
it goes.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
Yeah. I love mentorship. I love my mentors I seek
out I try to tell because I mentor a lot
of younger people and I always tell them I like
to seek mentors that aren't in the same line industry,
remotely different industry, completely different, you know, stratosphere Almost For me,
it's like I gain more knowledge you with everyone you interview.

(47:30):
Do you have a particular like handful of mentors that
are like in your or in your roller decks or
do you just everyone that you interviewed that kind of
supports like do you just say, hey, do you want
to be my mentor just trying to figure out.

Speaker 3 (47:47):
You know that's that's a really good one. There are
definitely like a handful of people that I would say
that I have in my rollerdecks that I know that
I could text them any time a day or call
them anytime of the day, and that if I needed
something that like they would be there for me. But
I look at it is that in your life you
should have mentors for just about every aspect of your life,

(48:12):
you know, whether it be spiritual mentors. Definitely a Christian,
so I know that there's five to ten people that
I know that know more about the Bible than anybody
else to where if I have a question about this
or you know, spirituality, my faith or whatever, I can
always call on one of them and they'll be able
to give me insights or guidance if I'm struggling with something.

(48:32):
And then also when it comes to the business side
of things, it's like just because we're constantly meeting these people,
we're nurturing, we're building these relationships. You know, a lot
of them maybe I meet once or twice, but I
try and stay in touch with them. I try and
check in on them. Now some of them, you know,
maybe it is literally just for you know, you do
an interview and anything comes up, maybe to do another

(48:53):
one or another opportunity at some point like that, then
we'll make it happen. But I would say I definitely,
and especially when we started our content agency where we
started to work with a lot of super successful entrepreneurs
closely to build their personal brands to strategize and everything
that got us to know them a lot more and

(49:13):
become a lot closer with some of these people. And
so I've got a couple you know that I'll just
kind of like shout out. There's a gentleman. His name's
any Atonukue. He's from Dallas. He owns one of the
largest Sunspa tanning franchises in the entire world. And you know,
he taught he taught us how to delegate. He taught
us how to you know, you know, stop working in

(49:34):
the business and start working on the business, like remove ourselves,
stop being employee entrepreneurs. He's also extremely successful.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
In real estate.

Speaker 3 (49:41):
Him and another one of my clients. His name is
Todd Napola. He owns hundreds of millions of dollars worth
of real estate out in South Florida. So, you know,
in January this past year, we made our biggest investment ever,
me and my two co founders into a huge real
estate project out in Texas. And the beautiful thing about
having the network that we have and the rowdecks that

(50:02):
we have is that, you know, we're able to send
the deal that we invested in to five ten different
people that are that own tens and hundreds of millions
of dollars worth of real estate where they've invested in
great deals and some not so great deals. And again,
the mentorship thing is like, it's genuinely wisdom without the wounds,
because we're able to ask these people and be able

(50:23):
to get that kind of unanimous decision from them on
whether or not this is a good idea or not
without having that, and we're just going in blind to
a deal or making a decision. The deal could blow
up in our faces or it could ultimately be a bad,
you know, decision. And then and even within that, you're
still going to learn a lot from it to be like, Okay, hey,

(50:43):
if this isn't it, if this isn't you know, then
we probably shouldn't invest here or whatever. But being able
to rely on and have so many great people that
we can reach out to and ask questions about, that's
like a beautiful thing to be able to have, and
we've definitely taken advantage of that. But also it's like,
I look at it that not only do we ask
these people for help, I'm always looking at ways to

(51:06):
be able to add value to people. And I think
that there's a lot a lot of power in that
and what a lot of younger people and people from
all across the board, what they struggle with is that
when they're trying to connect with people who are you know,
higher net worth or you know, money's not everything, but
like just in a capacity, when somebody's trying to connect
with somebody that seems like maybe like out of reach
or that it's like a long shot. A big problem

(51:28):
is because they make it all about them, yeah, when
in reality, it's like how do you make it about
this person every single time? It's like you should always
be looking at how I can deliver value to this
person off the bat, and not for them to come
try and come up with ways of how you can
like be intentional about what you can do for that person,
how you can help them out, how you can add

(51:48):
value to their business or whatever that they're doing on
a regular basis and not saying hey, I'd love to
come work for you for free and come add value
for you. It's like okay, but then now that person
has to think about what you can actually do for them.
It's like they probably don't even they probably don't even
need you. Whereas it's like, okay, you have you have
a skill set here, this person's clearly lacking that. Boom,
go and tell them exactly what you what and how

(52:08):
you're going to do it for them, and it gives
them much more of a reason and incentive to connect
with you.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
So I think that, you.

Speaker 3 (52:15):
Know, there's there's a lot to be said about that though,
as well as in trying to like connect with and
network with the right people, A lot of it just
comes down to straight up just adding value to those
people and those relationships to make them lasting and to
make them worth it for the person who's taken the
time to connect with you, because a lot of you know, mentorship,
if it's not organic, it's literally going to be like paid.

(52:37):
You know, some of these people it's crazy, which is
is almost all the time worth it is long as
long as it's with the right person. But you know,
to me, I mean, we built our network organically without
spending a dollar on I mean, we've gone to masterminds
and events and we've paid for people's time before for sure,
which I think is necessary in a lot of different capacities.
But just from building what we built, you know, we've

(52:59):
got and hundreds of people in front of you know,
multi multime millions of people. So giving them that attention,
that exposure a lot of the times makes the people
that we interview feel like, hey, anything you guys need
you let me course so, which which is a really
nice thing to have and be able to do, because
now it's like, hey, a lot of these people, you know,
we have them kind of in our back pocket that like, hey,

(53:21):
if you know, we know that we have a question
about this or want to get their perspective on this,
where as you know, kind of guide us in this way. Hey,
this person's the best in the world at this, let's
go figure out, you know what we should do.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Yeah, and I know I haven't let you eat not
one bite. We're gonna I'm gonna let you eat this
cold Chick fil a right after this last question, And
my question is what's a day in the life of James?
Just really am trying to get to know you, So
I just want to know wake up today. Obviously there
was a text for me in there, but what's the

(53:52):
day in the life of you? On average?

Speaker 3 (53:54):
Yeah, Well that's what's really interesting. Like I said, I'm
not the best person at keeping the schedule there's times
we're like all set up three calls for twelve o'clock
and I'll just I'll move all of them back like
twenty minutes. And so that's again something that I'm not
great at and obviously like depending on you know, the
opportunity and how pressing something is, it's like, okay, I

(54:15):
will one hundred percent make this priority, like will not
mess this up or whatever, But you know I would.
I would say typical day in the life. I'll give
you kind of like two different ones. One if I'm
home base here in Austin versus like if I'm traveling,
because that is when it kind of gets completely different
because when I'm here in Austin, I do have much
better structures. Like I woke up this morning, I ran

(54:36):
two miles. We're getting a lot more into running. I've
always been like into like lifting, but I'm like, hey,
I'm just for heart and health purposes. Have been wanting
to run a lot more and get a little bit
more that like higher intensity cardio and exercise. And so
I would say, wake up. I like to get the
work out out of the way early. If I have
a couple of calls, depending you know, we've been doing
a lot of stuff out in Dubai and in the

(54:56):
Middle East recently out there, so yeah, we do. There's
a lot of cool st uff going on. But we
did a really cool partnership with the Dubai government and
so that was a big reason why we were out
there or have been out there, and we'll continue to
go out there. I mean, that's probably I've been in
twenty countries. I think Dubaia is my favorite city i've
been to.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
I've never been, but I see everyone going there, I'm like, well.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
Yeah, I mean obviously I will. I'll say, for us,
do we have a slightly biased perspective, probably just because
you know, we went out there for some specific reasons
and got to do really some incredible things. But even
if you're just going out there to visit, I mean,
it's it's beautiful, it's clean, it's safe, there's a lot
to do, the different ecosystems. You've got the beach, you've

(55:38):
got the desert, you know, the city life, so it's
really neat. I'd highly recommend going out there, and there's
a lot of hitters that are out there as well,
so definitely recommend checking it out. But yeah, I would say,
I mean, I'm a I'm a wake up, workout kind
of guy. Probably eat the first meal around like twelve.
We'll maybe have calls before and after lunch. You know,

(55:59):
maybe I'm wor conon videos, you know, the one task
that I have not been able to give up yet.
And a lot of people like they don't believe this
or understand this. I still edit every single one of
our videos. You edit, I edit every video. If you
look at my last probably five hundred to thousand videos
that we've posted on that channel, the School of Hard Knocks,

(56:19):
I've edited every single one, and each video takes a
minimum of an hour to edit. Like, for example, before
before I came here, I put a video up today
at twelve.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
I edited from like ten to twelve today, And I.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
Was assuming that you use schedulers.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
No, so I mean, so I have a content agency,
and I have we probably have five to ten editors
that work for us. I still edit every one of
our Hard Knocks videos.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
That is crazy.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
It's crazy because you know I've mentioned I have a client.
His name's Annie, and he's again in Dallas, very successful
entrepreneur out there, and his like I said, a lot
of you hear a lot of you know, successful entrepreneurs
talk about delicating buying back your time right, and that's
his whole thing. It's like, get somebody to do the

(57:07):
job seventy percent as good as you can and then
move on, like you need to stop doing those you know,
they call them the MWA activities, the minimum wage activities.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
Editing is definitely one.

Speaker 3 (57:17):
Of those activities. However, it's one that I just have
refused to give up.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
Why is that, you think?

Speaker 3 (57:23):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Is it because you don't trust anyone else, particularly with
the brand.

Speaker 3 (57:27):
Because I think the number one thing that we are
my partner's not. But I would say that I'm the
absolute best at is taking a twenty minute, twenty minutes
worth of content. Because I would say our interviews, even
the ones on the street are anywhere on average from
ten to twenty to even thirty minutes. I would say

(57:49):
I'm probably the best in the world, or one of
the best in the world at taking twenty to thirty
minutes worth of content and putting it down to one
to one and a half minutes. So the way that
I edit is very interesting, being that I will take,
you know, different parts from three different answers and combine

(58:10):
it into one to make it the most engaging and
entertaining as well as just the overall pacing the flow.
I mean, there's a lot that goes into virality and
like short form content. So I would say that that's
why is that to me? In order if I were
to explain it to somebody, Hey, I want this piece
here and this part there, and let's put these two
answers together and take out this and that. And if

(58:33):
I were to do that and then also do revisions
on top of that, it would take the same amount
of time for me to get one video back as
opposed to me just you know, doing it myself. And
at some point, I'm sure, like I'm gonna have no
decision but to like literally just you know, kind of
give the ropes off to somebody else. And I'm sure
too that I will you know at some point also

(58:54):
just train somebody who's really talented at what they do
from like an editing standpoint and just let them do it. Yeah,
that's that's I mean. So I mean we post I
would say now like every other day or once every
you know, two or three days, So I'm still editing
all the videos which are pretty pretty time consuming.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
I'm not gonna lie. I love. I love to know
that about you though.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
I would have never thought never not even thanks for sharing.

Speaker 3 (59:17):
Yeah yeah. Well when I bring that up to people,
they're like, you edit, I was like, I do edit. Yeah,
I trust me. I have a I'm a premiere pro wizard,
you know, absolutely, I don't.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
Edit anything really. Yeah, but I mean our channel isn't
the greatest online.

Speaker 3 (59:33):
Yeah, I mean everybody everybody, Yeah, everybody, everybody you know
starts somewhere, you know. But I mean so yeah, I
would say again, editing, workout calls, stuff like that is.
But like a typical day will look like when I'm
like here at home base, and then when I'm traveling,
I mean it's go, go, go, go go. So I
mean it's like, hey, you know, first I was just

(59:55):
in New York City. We did the interview with We
did two really cool people back to back, Barbara Work
you know Barber.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
From Sharp Shed your interview I saw.

Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
Yeah, she was yeah, she was great. And then right
before her, like thirty minutes before her, we did the
one of the owners of Equinox.

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
Do you know Equinox?

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
So yeah, Harvey Spovac. It was another great interview. I
haven't posted it yet, but I did them back to back,
and even before those two interviews, like I was out
on Wall Street for like two hours just filming organic
content like any people going in and out of the
Stock Exchange. Then did those two interviews, then after them,
went back to Wall Street from for a couple more
hours before it got dark, then had the community call,
and then probably went to go eat some food out

(01:00:32):
in New York City. So, you know, the days, especially
because when we're traveling to places, you know we'll be
there for maybe two to four days. We try and
you know, film as much, take advantage of as much
of the opportunities are the people that we can connect
with or collaborate with while we're out there. So I think, yeah,
it's maybe like a typical day in the life, like
here versus on the road. So but no, I was like,

(01:00:54):
I say, no day is ever really the same, especially
when we're traveling doing content, because when we're always doing
some some interesting things and connecting with some really cool people,
so it's always a good time.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
Wow, Well, thank you so much for your time. I
would like to if you can share some of the
things that we can look forward to as a school
of hard knocked fans, anything we can look forward.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
To, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
Yeah, I mean just I would definitely say get a
part of the community if you're not already, because I mean,
every you know week, we're hosting some crazy great live
calls with hyper successful people.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
This month, we've got three calls. Next week, we got
a call with one hundred million dollar venture capital entrepreneur.
The week after that and Ma Loom she sold you
Solid Corps for a couple hundred million dollars. End of
the month we got another good one. So I would
say definitely get a part of that. As far as interviews,
my thing about this and it's you know, I'll tell

(01:01:49):
you off air. We do have some really cool interviews
lined up, but I don't like to say them like publicly,
just because I don't know, I feel like a lot
of people they celebrate too early, or they you know,
they say things before they actually happen, and especially in
this world and in this business, these can fall through
like that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
So even though I'm very optimistic and happy and looking
forward to some of the different collapse and stuff like
that that we have lined up. I don't like to
address it too much publicly just because you never know.
I mean, I've came super close to getting like some
of the biggest people in the world, and just one
little thing can cause it to fall through. So for
that reason, I mean, I'll tell my partners and that's it.

(01:02:30):
I't even tell my family sometimes and get something cool
coming up. It's like when it happens, it happens, and
people will just see it. But now, I mean, that's it. Yeah,
just you know, like I said, the community's growing. It's
doing really nicely. Got about three thirty five hundred or
four thousand members right now, so just trying to keep
growing that. And then just like I said, I'm always
focused on growth. We got twelve million followers. Now I'm

(01:02:52):
just thinking about, okay, how do we get to fifteen
twenty million collective followers in the next year or two,
you know, So that's what I'm thinking about.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
All right, Well, thank you so much for your time.
I super value and appreciate it. I will never forget this.

Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
Thanks happy to be here, this great podcast, great questions,
good food, and thank you for having me on.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
It means a lot, really, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
Guys for tuning in peace Out