November 20, 2025 - Entrepreneur Prodigy Blake Wynn

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, all right, all right, welcome back to bring
the juice. I we're on away game today. Had a
nice little trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, Blake Winn, Welcome
to the proger Man.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Thank you for having me. Good excuse to get out
to Las Vegas. It's always fun to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
I love a nice morning trip to Vegas. Day trip.
Got a dnsist appointment later today. Be back soon, right,
I feel like I've already feeling like we're going to
be back sooner than I want. And I like that.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
So you've got to come in two weeks for the
Celebrity Poker.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Do you guys have another one coming up?

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Yeah, our championship on the nineteenth. You've got to count.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Okay, what ever put in the calendar right now? You
got so much going on, Blake, And I'm genuinely like,
you know, sometimes you do these pods and as you know,
being a host of multiple events, sometimes you already know
what you want to ask. Other times you're genuinely like
interested and and I listen. I got a range of
people that I've interviewed, a lot of athletes, a lot

(00:49):
of people just in the business of sports obviously, like
for me, I consider poker a sport. It's on ESPN.
I consider that sport all day, and I know we
have a you know, a crossover in certain networks and whatnot.
So I'm excited because I think you got an unanswered
questions people who maybe haven't seen you on a podcast before.
So I appreciate the time. But let's just start from

(01:10):
the beginning, because you're twenty five, right, Yeah, how did
it all start? Like? How did everything begin? Take me?
I think the Sneakers is kind of where like you
would start to paint the picture.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
For me, in a sense, Sneakers was my first thing.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
I mean, you know, I mean I was the kid
at eight or nine years old where I wanted to
do car wash because I wanted to be able to
collect ten dollars from every neighbor kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
I didn't care so much about washing the cars.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
I wanted to try and make a few dollars, and
so I got the other kids in the neighborhood to
wash the cars.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
I'd give them a dollar each.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
So I had five kids washing the cars with ten
bucks they got, they got five, I kept five. And
so I think since I was a little kid, for
whatever reason, I think entrepreneurship was sort of something that
came naturally to me. I was eleven years old when
I went to an outlet mall in Park City, Utah,
where I used to spend my summerscus where my family

(02:03):
would be. And when you're eleven, you go where your
parents goeh, And you know, it was interesting. There's not
much there, really, small town, not a lot of other
young kids there. And so I had a mountain bike
and it's such a safe place that I would feel
free at eleven years old by myself to take the
city bus. City bus was free and the whole thing.
And so I'd wake up in the morning and I'd

(02:24):
ride my bike all over town. And one day I
ride my bike fifteen miles from my house one one direction,
by the way, fifteen miles to the outlet mall that
was the closest outlet mall to my house in Park City.
And I went into the Adida store and when you
walked in, they literally had a folding table with a
tablecloth on top with maybe eight pairs of shoes that

(02:46):
were called the Adidas Jeremy Scott street ball shoe. I've
seen no less than probably five to ten thousand pairs
of shoes in my life in hand that I've owned
and touched and maybe worn or whatever it is. But
it was so just like you got to put a
picture over of it, because I mean, this is this.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Is you know, cheetah hair. I mean, this is like
a shoot.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
It was that era.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
It was every single color. It was boxy, ugly shoe.
But it said suggested retail one hundred and ninety nine
ninety nine today only nineteen ninety.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Nine, just to deal a day.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
For whatever reason, that sort of register clicked in my
head is maybe they're worth more on eBay. I don't
know why that that was something I thought about. I
mean I was familiar with eBay because my dad would
sometimes sell guitars on there or records like so I
had watched eBay be used, and so you're on an
eBay guy, though necessary I'm not at all on eBay guy.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
I've never sold a product in my life.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
But for whatever reason, it was, you know what, It's
one of those things where I just think that I've
been I put it this way. I mean a lot
of times you get asked like, what's your what's your
failure story, what's your comeback story. I I'd be lying
if I tried to like eight one. In a lot
of ways, I feel like I've been really really blessed
for a lot of my life, and for whatever reason,

(04:07):
it's one of those things I think back on this
day and I'm like, why did the idea cross my
head that I could make money on eBay selling an
ugly sneaker at an Adida store? And nonetheless, I had
forty four dollars on me and that was exactly enough
with tax to get two pairs almost so I'd go
home with a couple coins in my pocket and these
two pairs of shoes. I got my bicycle, I get

(04:28):
on the city bus, I take it all the way
back to where I'm pretty close to the house. And
then I, because I had two shoe box and my bike,
I like pushed my bike.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
A hold of the shop get back home.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
It was logged in on the computer, so I made
the listing without telling my parents and my mom. The
next morning I put twenty four hour auction. I didn't
really know how it worked, and I started nine nine cents,
which thank god, it didn't sell for nine and nine cents.
But I was just kind of like I didn't really
understand how to.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
Do it well.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
The next morning, one pair sold for one oh eight.
One pair sold for one oh six, So turned forty
dollars into this it's a margin there. But my mom
got the email and she's like, we sold on eBay
and like the listing is probably called like Adidas shoe
size eight.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
Like it probably you know, wasn't.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Total if you're a mom, like this is some spam.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
What the heck happened to my eBay account? Sure enough,
it's like, no, no, you know. She comes to me,
confronts me. Do you know what this is?

Speaker 3 (05:22):
Oh yeah, those are my shoes I bought to sell.
What do you mean? You botch? You blake? You can't
you know you'd be ATVRT even you know, what are
you doing?

Speaker 2 (05:29):
I take two boxes that we had in the garage,
I like, tape them up, get on my bike, bungee
cord them to the handlebars of my bicycle, and ship
them out at the local post office. And now we're here,
sitting in my office in Las Vegas, fourteen or fifteen
years later, and it is just the same forty four

(05:49):
dollars turned over for fourteen years.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
That's led to everything I've got now, I.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
Mean, I love that. And like in my family, they
like I said, I grew up on a farm, still
them on the farm. And we had this tradition in
our family where when you hit fourth grade, you were
given one acre, okay, and that's a pretty good deal,
and you had to grow zucchini squash on that acre.
The reason zucchini is because you harvest it during the summer,

(06:16):
so we would plant it during spring break you'd harvest
it during the summer. Now during that period. The way
zucchini squash work is they regrow every day every other day,
so you've got to be there. And it gets hot
as Fresno area. So we start work at four in
the morning, so I and we live an hour away
from our farm, so I'd get up three in the

(06:37):
morning from ages fourth grade on to this day, like
I'm used to. I'm an early guy. But the principle
of it was to teach you like, Okay, you're going
to plant this, you're going to learn how to water this,
you're going to keep track of all your expenses and whatnot.
And then because we ship onions all over the country,
one of our biggest customers is the San Francisco produce market.

(06:58):
They come every day no matter what. So the deal was,
we drove down to San Francisco and I met the
guy who was their zucchini buyer and basically said, hey,
Mims Frank Delana, I'm in fourth grade. I like the
San Francisco Giants, by the way, because I know all
those guys are season ticket holders over there. And I said,
I'm gonna I'd like to sell you zucchini squash this summer. Okay,

(07:20):
got his phone number every day all summer long, for
like usually seventy days straight. Go to work by yourself
as a fourth grader early before he gets hot.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
And you're what ten probably ten, yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
Ten eleven, fourth grade, whatever that is, and you'd pick it,
you'd pack it into forty pound boxes, you'd label it
based off size. Called the San Francisco protus market. Hey,
I got, you know, twenty five boxes of Jumbo, thirty
boxes a medium. And then he tells you what the
market price is. You try to negotiate a quarter whatever.

(07:52):
Maybe that's the old school Italian farmer in me, but
you learn business absolutely. And by the time I was
in like six with great all the kids, parents in
my class were asking my mom and dad, Hey, can
we send Joey out? Can we send you know, Billy out,
whoever might be, just so they can learn what it's
like to work. Now. I made maybe, you know, I

(08:13):
think my best summer, I made like seven grand, but
learn people cost I bought my I was sixteen. My
first truck I saved up. He said you could buy
your truck in this one day. And it was awesome
because you know, I do think as an athlete through
all this too. I was used to working all day
and then going and playing sports growing up, so it

(08:34):
made sports easy for me. But at the same time,
like all that business and knowledge of understanding, like I
ain't cheap out here, Like there's expenses. This place is
a really cool office. I'm sure you got to pay
rent on it. That's probably not cheap. You know, this
podcast studio is really nice. These you got top of
the end employees, Like it takes money to make money,

(08:55):
and I got to learn that very early. So hearing
your story, like doing my research on you, was like
I could very much relate to that, and I wanted
to go from one acre to two acres, and I
was like, how can we scale this, how can we
get better? And then my family being farmers and owning
a business, like you know, I grew up in an
apartment complex for a period of my life and then
they got to see us develop into buying land and

(09:17):
getting bigger customers and all that. So seeing a business
grow has been huge for me and it's just taught
me to especially, you know, doing things athletically.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
I never thought i'd be able to do.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
You could do anything you put you put your mind to, Like,
the only reason you aren't is because you're bolting yourself
at this point. And don't get me wrong, there's if
you wanted to if you wanted to buy a casino,
you need some capital behind you. If you wanted to
buy one hundred acres, you need some capital behind you.
But there's ways to kind of like get your foot
in the door. And maybe it's working for the right guy,

(09:50):
whatever it might be, but it really starts with, you know,
a vision I feel like, and segueing into my you know,
my kind of next topic is like when I started
to bring the juice, I was done with my athletic career.
I had notepads that I constantly was writing ideas on
I googled how to make money, and the first thing

(10:10):
that came up was write a book. Write a book,
sell a million copies for ten dollars each, make ten
million dollars. Great plan, Right, did you write a book?
I don't have anything ever talk I'm not yet. I
will write a book one day. And I had ideas.
But the second topic, the second bullet point when you
google that was start a podcast. And it showed like
what Joe Rogan's doing. It showed what like some of

(10:32):
those barstool guys are doing, call her Daddy's doing. And
I'm thinking, like, I'm in this era of my life
where I have an identity crisis because I was used
to just playing ball, play ball, play ball. I'm used
to that structure of I need to be at this meeting.
Then I got practiced and I have to do an
ice bath cause I gotta get my body right because
I had a game this weekend. And when that's all
taken away from you and you're not worried about the

(10:54):
punishment that would happen if you didn't do your responsibility,
you could do whatever. And that's why so many fleets
fall off the deep end once they're done playing sports,
or you could take that same structure, apply it and
then go kick ass at something in life. And I
didn't really have a choice. I'm the oldest son. I
had to come back to the farm. But I loved ball.
I mentioned my brothers were still playing ball and seeing

(11:18):
all my friends kind of go off the deep end
and others, I was like, why don't we talk about
And I don't want to be some you know girl
on ESPN who's like being formal, Like, I love what
Pat McAfee's doing changing the game of media on sports. Right,
let's let's let's pour some hennessy, let's get some cocktails going,
let's smoke a cigar and just talk and have a conversation.

(11:39):
But to start bring the juice. It started with a
notebook and a whiteboard and a lot of ripped up pages,
and I didn't have anybody like it was kind of
just deep. Yeah, when we talk about the Celebrity Poker Tour, Okay,
how tell me how that vision kind of started? Was
their whiteboards? Was their notebooks? What was the thing? And

(12:01):
then how did it start getting off the ground.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Well, Celebrity Poker Tour, you know, is owned by my
marketing company. Celebrity Poker Tour didn't exactly start as a
whiteboard idea. Celebrity Poker Tour started by accident. One of
the things that we have done for the last seven
years is we would help professional athletes and celebrities get
endorsement deals, Instagram posts, appearances, longer standing endorsements, right, you

(12:27):
name it. That was something that our business has done
since we founded this company in twenty eighteen. Of my
business partner, Hayes Pollard, who was a linebacker for the
Charters of the time. One of the things we would
do to maintain relationships with the guys is take them golfing.
For the guys who don't know how to golf, what
do they like to do? They like to play cards,
they like to go to the casino, whatever. But I'm
not really someone who's as into that because then you're

(12:50):
not you don't have the time to have the interpersonal
you know, dynamics that come with something like poker. So
I converted bedroom my house to a poker room where
I bought a poker to I put very like New
York pizza restaurant style. I got picture for sign memorabilia,
you know, flush on the entire wall so that there's
stuff to look at when you fold. So it's a

(13:10):
fun little room with a big TV where we put
on the game and I would play fifty fifty cent
poker games with celebrities in my downstairs bedroom in my house.
And we're playing almost two years ago, roughly probably to
the day from where we're filming this, and Austin Eckler's there,
and this is where he's coming off of, you know,

(13:31):
having the season where he led the league in touchdowns.
Joey Hamilton, who had just won a show on ink
on Netflix called inc Masters. Alex both has the chess Champion.
I mean, there's David Tyreeve who made the helmet catch.
I mean, We've got this unbelievable room at my house.
We're playing fifty fifty fifty dollars poker and Austin and

(13:51):
Joey Hamilton get into a hand and they go all
in into each other. And mind you, this is for
forty or fifty dollars, right, this is not a lot
of money, especially when the average networth the table, if
you had the estimate, it is probably it's in excess
of ten million or something like that. I mean, it's
probably some stupid number because everybody's made a big success
for themselves, which is awesome. And they both had flopped

(14:12):
a full house, which is a rare interesting dynamic when
it comes to poker.

Speaker 3 (14:17):
So the whole room is like whoa, whoa, because they
turn over their cards.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
They're all all in, you know, and everybody's reacting and awe,
you know, Austin, so sorry you got beat. And then
the river comes out and it turns Austin's worst full
house into four of a kind. And now you're talking
like a shooting star kind of moment where you're like, wait,
the boys are fired up. That doesn't happen, and the

(14:41):
room is going nuts. I mean, I may as well
have gotten noise complain for the police. I didn't, but
I may as well have from my neighbor. We're going
nuts for ten minutes. And when we all finally calmed down,
Austin sitting to my immediate left, and he puts his
arm on my shoulders. Tell me, you have cameras in
this room that just caught that. I said, no, I don't.
I have security cameras, but not inside the poker room.

(15:03):
Can you imagine how viral that would have been, and
it was like, in one moment, it was no different
than the sneaker thing. Honestly, it's a part of it
where like I'm not like an incredibly religious person, but
I really do feel like there's some sort of higher
power that's always like trying to slam a light bulb
in my head in certain moments, because it was so
clear to me in that moment, I mean CPT.

Speaker 3 (15:24):
There was no whiteboard, no journals or nothing.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
Obviously that came later when it came to the details
of how we wanted to build this thing, but in
terms of the idea, how did CPT come to be
right there in that moment with complete conviction that it
would totally work? And incidentally, a girl that I grew
up with from the time I was eight years old
who actually works here now, she's sitting about twenty feet

(15:46):
from here. Her father owns a company called Poker Go,
which is our production company that produces it. And so
I knew that her family did this, and so I
sent her a text and said, hey, can you set
up a meeting with me and her dad because I
have an idea that I would like tires company for.
Two days later, I was meeting with the company, and
a month and a half later we threw our first event.
I mean it was it was fast. It was like that,
no business plan, no fundraising, it was just go.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
It was just go. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
Because we built it on an existing infrastructure of great relationships,
it was kind of one of those things where I thought, Wow,
talk about you know, this is basically an opportunity for
us as a marketing agency to own our own client, right,
because talk about a business that ought to hire us,
a business that is around gaming, around celebrities, around media,
around social media, live streaming, and then here we are

(16:33):
with this infrastructure of celebrities, talent and brands. It was like, duh,
where has this been for the last six years all
we've been doing everything else?

Speaker 1 (16:42):
No, I mean that's it makes perfect sense. Yeah, it
makes perfect sense. And you are dead on right. Like
I'm just thinking in my head, like my vision for
my Gulf trim to me, it's like I get it,
Like I totally understand it. At the end of the day.
You know, these events as you know too, Like it's
the vibes an, Yeah, it's the vis it's the cocktails flowing,
it's the conversations it's the people meeting people who like

(17:05):
maybe they follow each other on Instagram, but they've never
actually met. It's like a it's a respect follow type thing, like, oh, you're.

Speaker 3 (17:10):
An RB in the league.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
I'm an RB in the league. Like, yeah, we don't
have a relationship, but there's a lot of that one
good night, a lot of poker table. Dude, I've invited
guys to my wedding off good nights at poker tables before.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
For sure.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
And another thing is too is I mean, we really
don't run a poker business. We really are in the
hospitality business, right, you know, we're really in the business
of you come to Las Vegas, you have a good time,
You look good, the lights are good, the cameras are good.
We provide you with content, we provide you with drinks,
we provide you with food, We provide you with all
kinds of free stuff. Right, we make it's that way.
You're not risking. You know, it's not gambling. They don't

(17:44):
buy into the tournament. We just put up anywhere from
as little as fifty to as much as one hundred
thousand or more prize pool. So you come, twenty percent
of them leave with money for a game that never played.
I mean, Josh Norman, who is defensive player of you're
in NFL. You don't see that guy get excpt I
had it too often. The one time everybody can picture
him being excited, it was it was anger excited when

(18:04):
he and O'Dell got in the fistfight on a field.
But like, here's a guy who literally had never played
poker before. His screensaver on his phone the night of
the last event that we had was the what beats
What chart and he won the whole thing. Wow, and
he like was floored. I mean, I've never seen a
guy eared at ear smile fors. I mean afterwards, we
take him to Toka Madera at the Aria, and we
have a nice dinner. We're out till one or two

(18:24):
in the morning. And by the way, he's not a drinker.
I'm not really a drinker. We are literally just hang out.
And the guy could not wipe that smile off his
face if he was paid another seventy five million like
he made in the NFL to do it. I mean,
it was that just like that's what you got for
first place, right, So it's not you're not changing anybody's life,
So what are.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
You gonna do with the money?

Speaker 2 (18:42):
He was like, Man, I'm gonna go build more schools
in Africa. I was like, that's great, awesome, dude. Yeah,
it's a lot better than I've seen people put it
all on red five minutes after winning.

Speaker 3 (18:51):
So that's great. But no, he's he's a great guy.
But no.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
I mean that's the kind of that's the kind of
dynamic that that cbt's about.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
So when you pick okay, so like you got one
coming up right now, and you're in figuring out your
invite to you list, how do you go about that?

Speaker 3 (19:09):
You know, it's interesting.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
One of the things that I would like the audience
to feel when they're watching it. Maybe it's a subconscious
thing to them, but we're thinking about it very much.
So my team and I as we're putting this group together,
is I want CP be the only place in the
world you can come to see certain kinds of people
sitting next to one another. We have had a United
States Senator sitting next to an impractical joker, sitting next

(19:31):
to Adrian Peterson, right, you know what I mean, You're
not going to see that anywhere else in the world.
And then, by the way, they're going to not only
be interacting, but they're actually going to be in conflict
because of the nature of the game of poker, right,
And so you talk about reality TV, sport, all those things.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
It creates a nice intersection when you have a diverse group.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
So, you know, perfect example, our tournament coming up in
two weeks, you're going to see Michael Phelps sitting next
to Sketch, who's one of the great streamers of the
last you know, year or two, right, Who's then going
to be sitting next to again one of my favorites,
Joe Gatto from Impractical Jokers, who's then going to be
sitting next to Wyndham Clark, who won the US Open

(20:10):
in twenty Right.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
So you're just gonna have this dynamic.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
That I would just say, right, if where else in
the world could you see these people interact if you're
interested in that kind of thing. And then also what
do those interactions look like? I mean there have been
some interactions that are hysterical. I mean the perfect crossover
is like, if you've ever seen this show called Chrisly
Knows Best, chris Ly Family, you know they were on
TV ten to eleven seasons. Their parents just got pardoned by

(20:36):
the President. Wonderful family, the grandmother. It's our oldest player evers,
I think she's eighty years old. She's the oldest person
who've ever had play in the CPT. She developed a
total relationship that was palpable, that was so entertaining and
so hilarious with Eric Ebron, the NFL tight end, and
the two of them, I mean between every hand are
getting up and they're hugging each other and they're.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
Mom, how you doing? I mean Eric, because Eric.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Is a total character and she is so sweet with
that southern drawl that's almost impossible to understand. Despite our
perfect love mics for the right place, I mean, it's
still hard to understand her where you can see Eric
he Ron and Nanny Fay's hanging out, you know what
I mean. And so that's I think the really cool
thing that we do. And then everybody has a good time. Yeah,
we never I don't know. I mean, maybe some celebrity

(21:22):
will comment that they came and they didn't like it,
but I think everybody's really liked it. And that's why
we have a lot of repeats as well. But even
when we have repeats, we change it up you know,
like Joe Gaddo's played before, but he hasn't played the
last six events, so now he comes back after he
hasn't been there for a year, you know, so we
we change it up, you know what I mean. So
you keep it fresh, but you also build characters up, so.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
You're very strategic about who you invite where you put them.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
Yeah, I love that, And.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
It's all ultimately to creative down down to where every
person is sitting, well not only just table, but then
where they're sitting at the table. Because to your point,
you know, I learned this lesson from Steve, and I've
learned a lot from Steve, so this is one of
a thousand lessons I've learned from him. But you know,
the way he likes to put is he says, do
you think people like to come to the wind because

(22:07):
of the fancy red carpets and the crystal chandeliers, of
the fact that our tables are just a little bit
prettier than maybe the next hotel on the strip, maybe
ten percent ninety percent of the reason people come to
win is because they like the way they are treated.
Because people make people happy above all else. And so
you actually alluded to it perfectly by accident, which is
that I think, to myself, who's Zach Justice going to

(22:30):
enjoy meeting?

Speaker 3 (22:32):
Right?

Speaker 2 (22:32):
He takes a time to fly here from Los Angeles.
Who would he enjoy and who would enjoy meeting him?

Speaker 3 (22:36):
Right? Right?

Speaker 2 (22:37):
Dwight Howard is starting a podcast? Oh right, so well,
now has it? I'm thinking this is I'm telling you
the story from a few months ago, Dwight Howard starting
a podcast. Zach has a phenomenal YouTube podcast that gets
great engagement. Dwight and Zach both live in Los Angeles.
I think to myself, they wouldn't think of it themselves,
but they ought to meet each other. So you sit

(22:58):
him next to each other and you let the dust settle.
The two of them have done so many collaborations together
that when the Sidemen, which is a big creator group
from the United Kingdom, reached out to Zach Justice to
get him to be on their Netflix show, which just
was in the top ten.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
It just came out in the last month or so.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
They said, Zach, do you have anybody else you recommend
Dwight Howard and Dwight and Zach were on the show together. Wow.
And so it's those kinds of things where connections. Yeah, yeah,
but and look, I'm out of it. I have no
rooting interest in it. Besides the fact that and I
don't think that Zach and Dwight would think to maybe
site celebrity. You know, if you ask some point blank
where'd you meet, they they'd say, select a poker tour.

(23:35):
But they wouldn't think that's not a part of their story.
When they go on a podcast and they talk about
their dynamic, they're not going to talk about the Celebrity
Poker Tour. But that's not my My prerogative is that
they will come back to Celebrity Poker Tour looking for
the next Dwhite and looking for the next Zach.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
I have to ask because I'm in the media space,
and like I said, I host a golf tournament where
I get these guys to come. How did you build
I know you had a good network to start with, respectfully,
but how did you build these connections with these guys?
I know it takes time, but it's it's very impressive.

(24:12):
It's very impressive. That's why I ask.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
It's interesting.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
I mean, I think a lot of young people really
have an odd outlook on networking. You know when you
go to when you go to college, they it's basically
this game where they say, cast your netwide, go to mixers,
talk to people, exchange numbers and the whole thing. I've
never really networked like that. I've kind of had a
slightly different philosophy, which is I cast my net a

(24:35):
little more shallow. I don't goes wide with it. But
then I work for the people that I interact with.
Because when you start working for the people that you
interact with, maybe not getting paid to do so or something,
but just you're going to work for them. I'm going
to work trying to introduce Zac to people that I
know he's going to like, right, you know, I'm going
to work for, you know, a football player to get
them a brand deal or whatever it is. When you
start doing that, it all starts coming to you because

(24:56):
they want to provide their friends with value, and if
you're the kind of person that provides them value all
the time, they want to introduce you to people. The
people that I feel like I'm always throwing in group
chats unsolicited, like hey, so and so, you got to
meet so and so.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
It's because I.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
Know that that person I'm introducing them to is going
to be someone who can really help them. Sure, I'm
less interested introducing two people together where one of them
is really looking to benefit from the other. And so
I think that you know, look, we've I'm you know,
ten years in to having this sort of strategy, and

(25:30):
so it just it just it compounds, you know what
I mean. I mean, one foot in front of the
other every day for ten years adds up. And you know,
every business should have sort of a tagline or not
tagline that's forward facing tagline that you and your business
partners and your staff kind of keep top of mind
and say, above all else, this sentence has to be true,

(25:53):
as it's the fundamental principle of the enterprise. And that
sentence for us has always been that we will do
very well andiness if we're if we're no more than
one degree of separation from anybody in the world. That
has been the sentence that I've been hammering into my
business partner's heads since I was seventeen, eighteen years old
when Brack Hazen myself started this thing, and you know,

(26:15):
we got to work for the president last year.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
And so.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
I would say that that statement has become largely true,
and it's why our business has grown the way it
has over the last few years. But I can tell
you for the first four or five years that that
wasn't the case.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Right.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
You were two many degrees away of separation from someone.
We had a business model that kind of predicated on
our network being strong, and until it got strong, the
business didn't get it super strong either.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
Right.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
Like I said, I totally that makes perfect sense to me,
and it's the truth, and it doesn't happen overnight. And
you know, I see a lot of these from my
perspective too. When you're first starting out in your parents'
basement on the pool table, trying to do a podcast,
it's tough because your network is the I had a
good head start from my playing experience, but people are like,

(27:02):
how do you know this guy? How do you know
those guys? Like well, he was my roommate's fall camp
roommate for the Falcons. He just liked the hat that
my buddy had on. So I sent him a hat
with a letter the handwritten that said, hey, you know
love what you're about. If you ever want to come
on the show, would happily fly you out or would
happily connect whatever it might be. And like I said

(27:22):
when I was kind of texting you, like I only
do my interviews in person. Like I could just say,
I don't know how long we've been rolling now, but
like if we did this over zoom, our connection would
not be a tenth of what it is in person.
That's just the way I operate in business. I like
to shake someone's hand, looked them in the eyes firmly.
That's how I was kind of taught and raised and
you know, and it's twenty twenty five. As men, there's

(27:45):
not enough of that anymore. So I value that. But
it is the truth. We say, chopwood carry water on
all the time. Like something good happens, good, chopwood carry water,
something bad happens, all right, chopwood carry water. Sometimes you
just got to just keep going in its constant repetition.
But with your you know, your your tactic and your

(28:07):
theory of how to attack it with these network. This
is your network being grown over the course of years.
It's it is a chopwood carry water method. It's not
like you know, if you're if Tom Brady started a
podcast right now, it's gonna be pretty popular. It's Tom
Brady anybody who watches football or is a Tom Brady fan,

(28:27):
they're probably gonna tune in. So for me to get
fifty thousand people or one hundred thousand people to listen
to my show, it's gonna take years and reps and
you know, good equipment and good guests and good conversations
and people you know, saying they still kind of like
me a little bit enough to keep tuning in versus
Tom Brady. First episode, he's gonna get one hundred thousand

(28:48):
even if he's not even talking.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
So, like I said, I'd sit my hat heavily to
you because I know it's not easy to create this
celebrity poker event that you do constant and get those
people to come, and it's hard to It's also it's
just hard to get people to come someplace right, scheduling conflicts.
Most of the people you're dealing with, they're busy guys.
They're busy guys. So I, like I said, I tim

(29:12):
my hat on that. Do you have a you know, goal, like, Okay,
right now we're getting X amount of views, we want
to get to this many views or is it more
of like, hey, we want to host one of these
at a different location, or we want to like, do
you have a dream table that you want to line up?

Speaker 3 (29:28):
I mean I could.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
I could probably just name nine celebrities that I'm a
particular fan of that if we were able to get
them all at CPT would be cool.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
And I will say every.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
Now and again there are people that we invite a CPT,
not that they don't deserve to be there on their own,
they're absolutely celebrities, but that we invite because I've got
a personal particular attack. You know, like when I was
a kid out a Clinton Portis fat head on my wall,
I thought Clinton Portis was awesome, and so we had
Clinton Portis come play. You know, who's been retired for
a while, but he was a great running back for
the then Redskins and Broncos, and you know, so I

(29:58):
brought my jersey that I still have when I was
a kid, rebox jersey had them like sign and stuff.
So every now and again, you know, we have players
like that. But no, I think, Look, I think at
the end of the day, like I said, it's hard
to answer that question because it would require me having
goals relating to poker, right, and I don't I have

(30:19):
goals relating to the media elements of it, and those
goals are not like I want to get this many views.
I want to be exclusively distributed on Netflix or some
streaming platform or something like that. I think all those
things are natural progressions for the business, and I think
we're putting ourselves in that position. But no, I mean, look,
the broader business is we are. We are still a
marketing agency. We just happen to own the Celebrity Poker

(30:40):
Tour and so to me, one of the goals I have,
if you will, is to just continue growing Celebrity Poker
Tour from the perspective that you know, we do a
lot of work in politics. We do, you know, a
lot of work in a B to B business to
business capacity with brands where you know, it's fun and
it's enjoyable. The political work a lot of times it's like,

(31:02):
I mean, politics is like you wake up and you fight,
you know, in one way or another. You're fighting, and
it's not like I'm literally like yelling at someone, but
you're just you're just you're in deep thought, You're playing chess,
and you know half the country is going to love
what you do. Half the country is going to hate
what you do, and that's just what it is. But
at somebody poke to where one hundred percent of people

(31:23):
love we do it. It's honestly for me, on a
personal level, it's a nice just break and enjoyable time
to see people smiling and just enjoying. And the other
thing that I would say is every goal I've ever had,
I feel like I've either achieved or realized.

Speaker 3 (31:43):
And this is actually the more true part of this.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
Realize that it really wasn't worth having, and as things metabolize,
those goals just change. I mean, let me, I'll tell
you a story that'll make sort of our networking and
our approach makes sense. And why I have a tough
time with this question. Most entrepreneurs say this is what
I want to do, and it makes me sound unfocused
to say that I that I don't.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
Have exact I would be the same way right now, but.

Speaker 3 (32:06):
Here's why it's a different answer.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
When I was eighteen, one of my best friends I
graduated high school with. We decide to go on a
graduation trip and we go. I've never told a story
this would be fun. We go on a graduation trip
to Atlantis. We stay at the Atlantis Resort in Nassau,
and I love the resort because you only have to
be eighteen to gamble to drink.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
I'm eighteen years old. I just graduated high school.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
This was a cool first experience of being an adult,
first time, you know, really like truly just vacationing by myself.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
I'd traveled by myself, but not vacation.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
And I invited a Bears safety at the time, who's
who was and still is a good friend, Major Wright,
who's a safety for the Bears, long retired now this
is seven or eight years ago, and Major is a
good friend of pac Man Jones, and so pac Man
Jones comes to Atlantis as well, who I had never
met before, and we spend ten days there and we

(32:58):
are having the best time. And we're going to the
night club on the property, and we're gambling, and we're
hanging out the beach and we're throwing a football on
a beach. And I'm eighteen years old and these are
like guys that I've always looked up to because I
love football, and we're having the best time. And three
months later, I start this marketing company with Hayes where

(33:18):
we get endorsement deals for athletes. So I reach out
to Major and I reach out to pac Man. Well,
Major actually was like, I don't really want to do
the marketing thing. Pac Man was like, man, you can
make me some money. I'm in right. Pac Man was
the second or third guy we signed three or four
days after I started this business. He signed me when
I was eighteen years old to get him his endorsement deals,
and he was on the Broncos at the time, like

(33:39):
he was still playing. About a year later, that's his
last season. So he retires, and we've at this point
made him a ton of money off the field in
relation to our business and in relation to what he
was previously making off the field to his overall networth.
Probably not crazy, right, I Mean, the guy made a
lot of money playing football. But at any rate, it

(34:00):
gets to a point where, about a year and a
half in, we've done so well for him that when
he gets inbound emails, he forwards them to me to
respond to and we get to take that business for him.
He gets an email from a startup sportsbook app called
Fliff out of Philadelphia that says we want to have
him do a campaign around their Super Bowl markets or
March maddness. I forget exactly what it was, right, get

(34:23):
on a call with them, hit it off with the
guy that owns a company. I said, tell you what,
We're at the point now where I can at least
afford a flight on the business. I'm like, I'm going
to fly to Philly, come meet you. Let's spend some time.
We'll get the pac Man deal done, but I'll come
spend some time with you. We get a nice deal
done for pac Man and the whole thing. But the
company and the guy, Matt and I get along really well. Now,

(34:46):
to shorten the story a little bit, if you fast
forward five years, and we would do deals with them
all the time, with athletes and celebrities and what have you.
Fast forward five years. I'm sitting in my room and
I come up with the CPT idea. The second the
second that we book our first event, I think to myself,
you know what has never been done in poker that
I think would make this way easier to watch and

(35:06):
way more interesting. Imagine if you could bet on the
outcome of the result of these celebrity players. And so
I called Matt and I said, what would Fliff think
about offering betting markets on this long story short. They
were our first sponsor and are still our sponsor. It's
the only time you've been able to bet on poker
in the history of the United States legally, and you

(35:27):
can bet only on the Celebrity Poker Tour. And tens
of thousands, probably by this point one hundred thousand or
more people have made a bet using Fliff on this.
They've gotten lots of users from it. It's been an amazing,
amazing partnership for the two of us. And to put
a bow on that story, that friend that I went
to Atlantis with is now one of the leaders here
in the company and works here. So you think about

(35:50):
something that's so meaningless seven years ago. It's a trip
with your high school buddy and you get to meet
pac Man Jones. I mean, huge business you've done with Fliff.
Pac Man of this day is still a friend. He's
come and play in the Celebrity Poker Tour. I see
him all the time, and I could name a million
other people I've met through him, including Funny enough, we
had dinner I remember about five years ago, and he

(36:11):
was like, he's really close to the Sanders family, and
he was like, I want you to meet this kid.
He's in high school right now, but he's going to
be the next big thing. And he introduced me to
Shador for the first time like this actually probably like
seven years ago. Wow, long time ago, but at any rate,
it's those kinds of dynamics where if I'm supposed to
sit here and project exactly where we're going to be
seven years from now, I couldn't have projected celebrity poker
tour the night before we came up with the idea.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
Oh it wasn't in my head.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
I couldn't have projected I would have sold sneakers the
night before I went to that Adidas outlet.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
And so I'm just I'm aware of the fact that
we're a company that's designed to seize opportunity very well,
and so I'm not too concerned with trying to blueprint
exactly what that opportunity looks like, because again, if nobody's
more than a grief separation away, as soon as you
see an opportunity, you know who to call to get
it done.