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 [Music] ari emanuel is the guy who runs runs uh wme which is what the show the who’s the show entourage they based the character ari gold off of our emanuel so he’s like this hot shot agent or whatever i’ve heard ari emmanuel in a couple articles they say that’s what he does he’ll call someone every single day until he gets what he wants and i think that’s a i’ve been picking this up as a thing like i’ll give you an example of you you you actually do this when we were like all right we’re going to make like our own podcast studio it’s like yeah cool idea and everybody kind of nods and okay what’s one level better than that somebody’s like oh you know i’ll take charge of it i’ll come up with a plan and then that person usually goes around asking what the budget should be like you know they kind of push the ball forward nudge it forward with their toe and then somebody else is like okay i’m going to get this done and i’m going to get this done in two weeks which seems like aggressive right you go from no studio to a fully functioning podcast studio no i’m like let’s go yeah you were like okay what are you doing right now and i was like i’m on the phone with you and you’re like cool what are you gonna do like right after this you ready to go i’ll kick i’ll pick you up and i was like what uh i guess i could find a babysitter for my child and like i guess i could and so we and then all of a sudden an hour later i’m in the car with you we’re driving to [ ] ikea and you walk in and you’re like hey um ikea guy we need like an awesome studio couch and he’s like okay and you’re like um here’s 500 in cash where do i spend this like to get the couch and they were like what the [ ] is going on it’s a different level of intensity and sure enough by like the next day we had those two red couches that were like you’re like i need a couch you got a vision you’re like i need a couch yeah that’s gonna pop in the thumbnail of a youtube video and so like i want it to look like this and then we had it and you’re like cool you know our accounting person is gonna paint the room today and then like you know this next person’s gonna do this and like all of a sudden like the world just bent to your will and i’ll have another i’ll give you another example me and my buddy suli we invest in this company and i put 50k in he put slowly put like 100k in and so we were like all right great um now a couple months go by and we’re like dude these guys like are they what are they doing and so we like check in with them and like nine months later and we’re like hey what’s the latest and they were kind of like you know doing their thing but they they weren’t they didn’t have like a clear plan and they wanted to raise money so they were like asking us for intros and we were like cool send us your deck and they sent us the deck it sucked and we were like hey guys this deck kind of sucks like i don’t want to make intros like let’s work on your deck and they’re like oh thank you we’d love some help so we get on a call and we get on a call before we get on the call okay that was like they’re like let’s do a call your what times are free for you next week silly goes i’m free in like 45 minutes can you get to can you get to a computer by then and they’re like uh yeah in the 45 minutes between then he sent three emails with like slide one this sucks slide three what is this picture this is stupid side five present it this way slide nine and he just had it but like before the meeting he’d done the meeting then we get into the meeting and he’s like all right guys i sent you guys a bunch of stuff uh like let’s open up powerpoint right now and just fix it and they were fixing it and he’s like okay cool um there’s like these three things that are missing um like all right let’s do a call like in four hours with the deck fixed with those three things that we’re missing and um let’s do this call every morning and every afternoon we’re gonna do two calls a day for the next five days or until this deck is amazing and these guys are just like what and i was also like are they what’s the reason what’s the result of that well they’ve they’ve gone on to raise money though honestly the result of that was i think by day four they were just sort of like i hate you like we disagree or like you know this is just too much for us they kind of like backed off and we’re just like because by the end of that we were like not only does your deck need to change your business strategy needs to change because like the deck can only just tell a great business story but you don’t actually have a great business story so we need to fix that too and like you know and it was like we were are kind of like you know the delivery wasn’t the softest so i don’t think they loved the calls at first it was like wow this is really constructive feedback and by the end i think they were just beating down and like like was dan was dan porter a guy who took it to a level 12. is that what you’re saying that how he pushed so he told me the stories of ari doing it he told me a story of richard branson doing it and then he had stories of him doing it he was like because we were asking about the milk road he reads the milk road every morning and so we were like all right you know what would you do about this and this and this how did you do that early days of his latest project so i should introduce that so he after the wme thing he’s like he started this new company called overtime which i don’t know if you’ve which has like taken over the world but i don’t even entirely know what it is but like their social handles are all over the place they’re huge on social so basically it’s if you’re into bat i started with basketball now they have like football and other things but it started with basketball and basically what they did was they just create like a media company but instead of the way like okay espn is a tv channel and then like bleacher report and others were websites and then there were some newsletters and these guys were like no we’re just gonna be like an instagram account and we’re just gonna become the biggest instagram account for basketball culture and uh what does that mean it’s like crazy dunks like high school prospects that’s really where they like found their foothold was they were like okay forget the nba like like hoops culture they’re really interested like who are the next who’s the next lebron and it turns out there was this kid zion williamson who was this like tank looking guy in south carolina that people had heard of he’s got a cool name called zion the guys built like a [ ] you know crunch bar right and then he can fly like he’s like you know he’s like a flying bus and so a crunch yeah like a double crunch i would have thought like thicker than a snicker but all right we’re gonna go i’m not perfect okay um so he so they started so they were like okay they put up a video of this guy and it was like it immediately went viral he’s like okay cool people want to know about zion espn they’re not sending a reporter down to like greenville south carolina to like cover this guy’s high school game against west bishop baptist like it’s like but we can do that and so he he basically and he said this thing when he when i was talking to him he was a very calm guy but he had that that level 12 intensity i could tell because he goes he goes i decided i was going to do this and then i just applied my will against it and i was like only somebody who is like knows they’re a force of nature would even say something like that he wasn’t pitching me he wasn’t selling me he was just i was trying to figure out how the [ ] did you build this into like a household name in such a short period of time and i’ve seen so many people how do they and how do they make money do you know uh they have a couple different ways so i think they have like you know probably like sponsors or whatever but they now have their own basketball league so he’s like he basically created his own version of like a like a instead of the ncaas it’s like you can come play in the overtime league so right now he’s like living in atlanta where they’re doing the season and like and i told him i was like dude you look like a high school science teacher well yeah so if you if you guys look up dan porter when i hung out with him he was like dressed cool and he looked like the cool guy but he looked more he’s more similar to malcolm gladwell that he was a basketball fan yeah yeah yeah yeah he’s more of a gladwell than an x that’s for sure like you would never think this is the guy that’s like steering you know street culture and hoops culture at the grassroots level but he is he really is like maybe he would have launched a poetry league over a basketball league and i asked him i was like no actually i love football and i was like what and he’s like yeah you know like and so he told me about the approach that he took of like he’s like i was at wme and um he’s like you know i i we heard these stats which was basically like the foot the nfl was really worried because they’re like kids choose their favorite team and league at like um age 10 or 12. um and then that’s like who they’re a fan of for life it’s like that’s my team i think that’s my player and then like they’re fan of them for like decades and he’s like then we’ve asked like how do you decide is it because of the city you’re from or whatever and they’re like no madden like whoever’s the most fun to play in madden or like whoever’s colors i like and he’s like oh [ ] and the nfl was also like oh [ ] and the local sports owners were like oh [ ] because if if every kid in philadelphia isn’t growing up an eagles fan if they just like michael vick cause he’s fast in the game of bad and then like that’s a fan we just didn’t get they’re not gonna buy tickets jerseys they’re not gonna like come to the games like this is not gonna work the model will break at that point and then also tv networks were like yeah kids aren’t watching tv so um like we gotta figure something else out what are they doing they’re playing video games they’re on social media they’re on instagram they’re on tick-tock and so his theory was like oh okay so we need to build the sports media brand on those networks and then we just have to find the thing that clicked and what clicked for them was these like young up and coming basketball players um and then he like came up with the craziest like they would basically he’s like all right we need um the clips like we need those clips faster than anybody else and so they came up with crazy ideas like crazy ideas which was like they would find they would in their social media they would be like hey who lives in like south carolina we need a photographer so like the number one zion clip submitter to them these clips that got millions and millions of views basically built their brand which is like a multi-hundred million dollar brand now was done by a guy who was like i think like a plumber on like weekdays and he would go to the games and like the number two clip submitter was a student at zion school who had broke his leg and because he was in a wheelchair they put him like courtside every game like instead of going up in the bleachers so he had like the best spot and so that guy was submitting like these amazing clips on his iphone and like that’s what was going viral right away and then he’s like espn or whatever would hit us up and they’d be like hey um like can we license your videos we’ll pay you for this license like it’ll be like getty images and he was like [ ] me dude i don’t want to build getty and he’s like how about this hpn you can have it for free you just have to tag us and put our watermark on it and they’re like idiot done and so then they ended up promoting the [ __ ] out of overtime like overtime was everywhere because of that it was like seen as incredible because it was on espn all the time you