Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en tyler perry i don’t know a lot about him but i know that he’s a baller yeah and he’s incredibly talented so what’s cool about tyler perry is like one he’s a billionaire but i mean not a ton of people are billionaires but like he is i think an unexpected billionaire in the sense that some people haven’t even heard his name right and there’s a lot more people who you would think are more well known who at least at first glance have done more things but he’s done a ton of things but just to compare you’re like okay a billion dollars like he works in you know in the uh movie tv slash um play industry so like okay that doesn’t sound so crazy but like taylor swift guess what her net worth was i pulled this earlier this year so it’s probably way higher but maybe what 50. so 365 million leo dicaprio how much do you think his net worth is 100 260 serena williams uh is serena the oldest or the youngest she’s the uh she’s the younger one venus is the oldest 200 yeah so 225. anyway i should share the weight but one of those what are those uh what’s that source i don’t know i mean some some site on google so yeah take it with a grain of salt dude those sites are if you google like i i tested this if you google a couple people’s net worth some of my personal websites come up number one and i just made this up and i’ve seen people cite it well yeah i mean definitely take it with a grain of salt because i’ve definitely googled some of this stuff before and you’ll see someone and one site will be like their net worth is like 50k in another site it’ll be like their net worth is 50 million so it’s it definitely you know can vary but the point is i’ve through the podcast i’ve met one or two like celebrities who if you google they’ll be like yeah they’re worth 10 or 15 and i’ve talked to them they’re like i wish they’re like i got they’re like i make like 100 000 a year yeah okay so tyler perry is like at least i think he was like written about by several different publications i think they verified he’s a billionaire i believe with him with him i believe it because he’s on the forbes list yes exactly so for that for that reason his story is awesome because he basically i mean he didn’t start out with much so he used to when he was younger he used to watch his dad’s subcontract and his dad would make 800 bucks and the person who he’s contracting for with like net 80 000 and he remembers thinking at the time like i always knew there was more power in the man that owned the house rather than the man working on building it so i wanted to be the guy who owned the house so he like very early on understood the principle and the importance of ownership and he had he had a messed up childhood i think he was molested a little bit i think his dad was abusive this guy went through a lot yeah and he was also a high school dropout so when he dropped out of high school he was you know he was doing a bunch of different odd jobs he struggled to pay rent he was a bill collector he sold cars like he did all types of stuff um but eventually he saved up enough which was 12k to rent an atlanta community theater so this was his first bet he basically wrote this play himself it was called i know i’ve been changed and he started running this play and you’re probably thinking like oh okay overnight success no it was really bad at first and he struggled to pay rent and um he actually worked on this play for over a decade he produced the play he sold the tickets he designed the set he sold the snacks so he was like doing the whole thing because no one else would invest in him at the time but over that decade i think the play got better he like reigned in his chops and basically throughout that decade period he sold over 100 million in theater tickets 20 million in merch and 30 million in just the videos of the plays because again he owned the ip so he can actually make money he was just making plays like like interesting plays and which sounds simple but that’s like and it’s hard crazy so he made these wonderful plays and was it like he made a bunch and then they went to different and they like did he like literally tour and just make like 50 grand a night through um like hosting it in atlanta and then nashville and then like chicago or wherever i think that it was just this one play i know i’ve been changed but i do think that they did like several tours and actually one of the one of the different theaters that he eventually ended up at so remember he was just at this like atlanta community theater to start he ended up you know at the acclaimed fox theater so he like moved his way up and i think this one play i know i’ve been changed um kind of helped unlock some things for him so that was his start he started with plays but even then you know that hundred plus million a lot of that was in theater tickets i don’t know how much profit he made from that so the next thing is he basically said okay i want to do that and that was 100 million in over 10 years yes exactly so it’s over like a long period of time that’s amazing and so basically he wanted to create i think a movie next um and he basically wanted to create it’s called like the diary of a mad black woman which is pretty funny and he definitely knows his audience right so he’s definitely like tailored his career towards um you know an audience that he understands really well but when he wanted to create this he basically yeah like no one would take him up on it he’s looking for a distributor um and the only people that will take him up on it and act as his distributor was lionsgate but even then lionsgate was like uh we’re not so sure so basically tyler had to put up half the money he said look like you know what if if this is what it takes like i’ll put up half the money um and how much the nice thing about that i’m not sure how much it was actually but um the great thing about that deal which you’ll see throughout every deal he does so the budget by the way the budget was 5.5 so he put up two point uh two point what’s that three nice so with that deal though he owned and controlled the content so basically every deal he’s done like he’s he’s owning that ip so the lionsgate ceo basically said like before it was released like if this makes 20 million dollars total because yeah like the budget was like five mil he’s like we’ll be really stoked and it did over 20 million in weekend one um and since then has made over 150 million dollars in licensing alone that’s crazy so like first of all like i i understand so he launched the stuff in in the the 90s or not in the plays in the 90s and 2000s and basically like the black population is i don’t know what 12 of america and so you think like so you’re gonna do a thing dedicated to only 12 of one group like there’s no way that can be big and he totally proved it correct because it’s kind of like um in in uh is it ice where’s bjork from iceland so i think iceland and iceland doesn’t have a lot of people um but bjork is incredibly famous and i think the reason is is like iceland had so much pride that a huge chunk of the icelandic population was like oh we love bjork therefore once they start seeing her succeed they get behind her and they go bjork is awesome and that’s almost what happens here a little bit and that’s kind of why sometimes it’s cool to appeal to a smaller but more passionate base than it is to appeal to the larger percentage yeah and by the way iceland has a population of 366 000 people so is it that small very small i remember i had a friend on exchange from iceland and she told me not jokingly they have a dating app that makes sure that you are not related to someone that you are dating because it is such a small population and hey they made and bjork sucks sorry if you’re a bjork fan but objectively she she sucks it is not good music so like it was definitely you know they say it was like it was the product go to the marketing good the icelandic marketing or whatever she’s from it was wonderful because they made her famous that’s so funny um anyway so that was his first foray into movies but then he kept going okay so he’s done play then he’s done a movie and now he wants to do tv okay so he goes and basically he goes and creates ten episodes first himself because again he’s like i can do this like i produce to play for ten years i don’t need like to hire a bunch of people i can do this myself so he creates ten episodes first he sells it to one network called cw and they air it and the ratings are through the roof people absolutely love it and because of that it caught the attention of another network which basically was like hey can we steal this um and they did and they struck a deal for 200 million dollars for him to leave this other network and he would produce 90 more episodes and again he owned the episodes which is kind of crazy he owned the ip of those episodes even after that 200 million deal this deal alone is expected to have made him 138 million dollars so his show his earnings then um you know people still aren’t really paying attention to tyler for some reason um he continues to make remember that lionsgate deal that he did he continues to make movies with them and over time he makes an 11 film franchise that’s done over a billion in sales and netted him specifically him individually over 290 million dollars because again he always owned the copyright and then tyler made one i mean i’m sure he’s made other bets but one really big bet in 2015 which basically this whole time he’s like an atlanta native right and he he kind of saw the potential for the city and so he bought a plot of land worth 30 000 sorry 30 million dollars at the times 330 acres and about double the size of a warner bros warner brothers lot and he turned it into this like production base or where different like uh media companies could go and film shows so since then i think like the walking dead has filmed their black panther um and part of it is he actually like it wasn’t just him betting on his city he saw that in 2008 georgia had changed the tax law so there were certain incentives for production companies so we saw these incentives and he said you know what i think people are different production companies and i bet maybe they they could have created those incentives just for him well i mean this happened so the law happened in 2008. he did this in 2015. so we saw that this was changing and basically in 2007 before that law 67 million was spent in or sorry in georgia and then in 2018 it was 2.9 billion much thanks to tyler and his um investment there but basically because of that then he was also to he’s since signed like 150 million deal with viacom cbs to run another suite of episodes and he’s just like kept going in every juncture he’s made sure to own what he’s producing and so now he like has listen to this he’s basically amassed 22 films dozens of plays and 1200 tv episodes that’s what like his like life work so far plus this like production base and he owns much of his work even the latest 150 million dollar deal i think he sold it for five years but after those five years the rights returned to him i love tyler perry is there a tyler perry biography out there i would read that in a heartbeat yeah i think there’s a few go to google tyler perry house he’s got a this huge spread in outside of atlanta with a private jet run a runway no one has that uh that is baller so i was doing this podcast earlier today with rob walling and i was talking about how at hustle con because i’ve met all these like successful people and these billionaires and stuff like that that i uh i’m like i was like often i’ll meet someone like for example uh like the founders of casper or something like that and i’ll say to myself you know you’re like maybe fi you’re financially more successful than i am maybe um and like your company’s definitely bigger than my company but i don’t think that you’re necessarily like if i i don’t think you’re necessarily 20 times or 50 times more smart or smarter than i am or however much bigger i was like you know like we’re in the same ballpark you might be a little bit or maybe even i might be a little bit smarter or even hard-working or something like that the difference is is that maybe you just kept at it or there’s probably some luck involved or you um you kind of like landed on the right idea like you’re not like significantly better than me and therefore that’s why i believe that most people can accomplish something interesting of course like it definitely takes luck and like all this crazy other stuff to become a billionaire but like we can all become uh pretty successful if we just kind of stick with it because the intelligence isn’t that big of a factor in order to achieve some success however i see guys like tyler perry and i see the work that they like their output and their genius and i think well we’re just not the same you’re just better than me like you are so good at what you do like i went and just i saw hamilton the other day and i was researching lin manuel um and i was like oh you’re just a freak like you like like i was watching it and i was like i don’t even like musicals but the fact that someone was so brilliant that they came up with us and put this together that like i understand you should be a billionaire like you should have it all you should or like when i read harry potter i’m like how on earth does one person invent this in their brain you you’re better than me you and i we are not the same you are just a different human being and you’re more of an alien than you are a human being and that’s how i feel about tyler perry that’s how i feel about like lin emanuel or what’s the name lin manuel and that’s how i feel about like a jk rowling type so kudos to tyler perry he deserves it yeah i mean it’s crazy he’s done like over 1200 tv episodes like you have to be just like so good at what you do to be able to do that for like i think his first play came out in 1992 so he’s been creating for 30 years straight and it’s like some people are one hit wonders like this guy is not a one-hit wonder he like knows what he’s doing he’s like honed in his craft and so yeah it’s like super cool i remember i got a lot of flack for this but i like once tweeted something about like jeff bezos i think he had like resigned and i was like this guy’s been working on this company for 27 years like how rare is it that someone works on anything for even like five years straight and these guys like tyler perry as well like he’s just like worked on his craft for decades like that’s insane yeah it’s pretty cool i think that um like we were talking about on this podcast i was like you know i think i could become a billionaire if i wanted to i just you have to be willing to dedicate like 30 years to it like i’m definitely smart enough and i and i work pretty hard um i just don’t know if i’m like if i like want to spend the time doing it and and and and i think a lot of people who achieve greatness they’re not much different except there are people i was like elon musk and jeff bezos i was like you just have more horsepower than i do like you’re just different and i’m gonna put tyler perry in that category you just you just we’re just we’re not the same you know what i mean yeah i know it’s just like it’s like a race car versus like you know not a race car like there’s just no amount of modifications can i make my car as fast as that yeah you have to like have so much horsepower to want to do this for so long which is why you’re you ask me all the time you’re like you want to be a billionaire and like every time you ask me i’m like less sure of the fact that i want to do it because i’m like yeah everyone wants to be a billionaire everyone wants to like amass well maybe not everyone but a lot of people are like yeah i’d love to live like a great life but a lot of people don’t want to put in that effort and now i’m questioning like i think i’ll actually be pretty happy with less than a billion yes uh i think you’ll be i you do you definitely don’t need that to be happy that’s for sure about to see my first a million got to the safe and it’s filling up got to the bank it’s not big enough