#406: Reid Hailey on The Business Behind Memes

Reid Hailey is the Co-Founder and CEO of Doing Things Media, a digital content and entertainment company that owns over 20 brands and shows with a combined following of over 60 million. Some of our brands include ShitheadSteve, NeatDad, AnimalsDoingThings, MiddleClassFancy, DoggosDoingThings, GamersDoingThings, and NoChaser. One of our most popular original shows is All Gas No Brakes, hosted by the now-famous internet celebrity Andrew Callaghan. In this conversation, we discuss memes, shareable content, eCommerce products, building community, the importance of IP, and their new show All Gas No Brakes. ============================== BlockFi provides financial products for crypto investors. Products include high-yield interest accounts, USD loans, and no fee trading. To start earning today visit: http://www.blockfi.com/Pomp ============================== Athletic Brewing is re-imagining beer for the modern adult. We love beer. But we also love being healthy, active and at our best. No matter your motivation, if you want to keep a clear head and drink healthier, we are here for you. Athletic makes non-alcoholic beer that you don't have to compromise to enjoy. The beers are fully flavored, clean ingredient, and a fraction of the calories of full strength beer - they fit in any occasion. Check out www.athleticbrewing.com for more details and free shipping nationwide. ============================== Pomp writes a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast. Simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Reed Haley is the co-founder and CEO of Doing Things Media, a digital content and entertainment company that owns over 20 brands and shows with a combined following of over 60 million. Some of our brands include Shithead Steve, Meat Dad, Animals Doing Things, Middle Class Fancy, Doggos Doing Things, Gamers Doing Things, and No Chaser. One of their most popular original shows is All Gas No Brakes, which is hosted by the now famous internet celebrity Andrew Callahan. In this conversation, we discuss memes, shareable content,

• 0:43Anthony Pompliano?

  e-commerce products, building community, the importance of IP, and their new show, All Gas No Brakes. I really enjoyed this conversation with Reed, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is BlockFi. I'm an investor in the company, I sit on the board, and I am a big, big fan and a happy user. They provide three products today. First, you can take crypto, deposit it, and take out a US dollar loan to get your crypto collateral. Second, you can use their crypto exchange to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. Or third, you can use my favorite product, which is their interest-bearing accounts. You can deposit crypto or a stablecoin and earn up to 8.6% APY in that interest-bearing account. Go check out BlockFi.

• 1:28Anthony Pompliano?

  They've been growing really fast and doing very well. I'm super proud of them, and I think you'll enjoy the product. BlockFi.com/pomp. Again, go visit BlockFi.com/pomp. Next up is Athletic Brewing. Athletic Brewing is all about reimagining beer for the modern adult. They've got great tasting beer that happens to have no alcohol and be a mere fraction of the calories of even the lightest beers. In today's modern, mindful, performance-driven world, there's just no time for hangovers. With Athletic Beer, you can have the full relaxing ritual of drinking a great beer to wind down the day with your dinner or do day drinking, but do it all without derailing the rest of your day or week. So if you're looking for a great beer for Sunday through Thursday nights... Athletics got you covered. Save the Bud Lights for Friday and Saturday night.

• 2:13Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:57Anthony Pompliano?

  for 25% off your first order of the best non-alcoholic beer in the world. My refrigerator's stocked with them, so go do it. Lastly, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 80,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. I break down complex topics into easy to understand language while sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com. All right, let's get into this episode with Reed. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:53Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Reed here. Super excited to talk about memes and making money on the internet. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for having me on.

• 4:04Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. Let's jump right into your background, kind of help everyone understand just who the hell is Reed? What'd you do before, before you got into the media game?

• 4:13Speaker 02

  I did not come to the meme world or the media world. I guess the meme world was like always around, but not really popular with people. And I was still taking classes in college when I got into Instagram, basically, and the meme Illuminati. I started an account called Shithead Steve and started it as a way to like. Troll my friends in the beginning and then it turned into like, oh wait, I'm gaining followers. And then I started reposting stuff. Um, and this is around the time that like, uh, fuck Jerry and Fat Jewish had like a hundred thousand followers. And I just saw them as like, whoa, that's, that's insane. And, uh, and I started making original content.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  That's kind of what locked me in and helped grow the, my business.

• 5:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when you started doing that, uh, I'm assuming you had no, you know, idea you were going to start a media company. You had no idea that you were going to kind of do any of this. It was literally just like screwing around with your friends. But at what point did you end up deciding like, oh, wait a second, like this could be a business and I should actually like go do this rather than just, you know, be the, uh, the person behind shithead Steve on the internet?

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like I started the account thinking it was a business idea. Like my friends thought I was so dumb and so did my parents. They're like, get out of our basement. Um, but, uh, I saw it as like, uh, a way to sell ads in the beginning. Cause I saw, um, I was kind of following Gary Vaynerchuk, just, he was an interesting guy. And, uh, he got me into like the social media thing. Um, and so it was like, it was kind of like a leap of faith with the advertisement stuff. And then I started selling like shirts and I realized that it was more than just advertisements. But that's basically like why I started it.

• 6:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And when you did jump, you know, kind of into, okay, I want to build this business. Did you think early on about protecting the IP, um, and, and kind of really think it is more like a franchise? Or was it literally just get eyeballs onto an account, sell ads and kind of we'll figure it out from there?

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's some other people in the meme space that had a few different pages. Um, after I had been running shit at sea for about a year and I only had one page. And I was like, wait, I could just replicate this. Um, and then that was when it was kind of like, oh, I'm creating all these new brands, like pretty, or like very organically, completely naturally. And I was just like, you know, I made trash game Paul, which is like a weirder version of shit at sea. And there's all these niche, uh, Areas where I could like create an account and then there's like a type of content that I could source or create for that brand. So that we did that with like animals doing things and gamers doing things. And then Derek, my co-founder, he had a video page called Drunk People Doing Things,

• 7:03Speaker 02

  and it was starting to really take off. And a now advisor and partner to the business, Max, one of my good friends, he was like, you need to get into video. And so I partnered up with Derek. I mean, we started like a media conglomerate kind of thing for memes. And originally, I mean, now it's like expanded bigger than memes. You know, we have an original show called All Gas No Breaks, but it all started with memes. And we all, all of our stuff starts on Instagram.

• 7:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so where does the name Shithead Steve come from? Trashcan Paul? Like, these are great names. And I think there's an entire generation of people who are like, yeah, duh, like, that's the kind of follow on the internet. But somebody came up with this. Like, where'd that come from?

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Uh, just like, I was like hungover one day on my friend's couch, and you're coming up with like, stupid names to call each other. And Shithead Steve and Trashcan Paul, I like came up with those randomly. And then I was like, okay, what should the profile picture be? When I was like, wait, I should start an account and call it Shithead Steve. And the username was available, which I thought was crazy. And I just like made it squints from the sandlot, because that was like a movie I loved. And it was just like iconic nostalgic character from our generation. So that's kind of like, it was like a random name, and then also somewhat of a random picture. You know,

• 8:30Speaker 02

  there's like Solo Cup idea. And I was like, I'll just do something iconic, you know, that's like more me. And that was it. And I kind of looked like him, I guess, a little bit. And so

• 8:42Anthony Pompliano?

  I love that. So talk a little bit about you go from creating one meme page to kind of two, three and grow from there. I'm assuming it gets easier because you've got the one account to kind of leverage. But how did you think about really moving the audience you originally built on the Shithead Steve account between all the other accounts to kind of grow them all together?

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, so when I just had shit at Steve and I was like, you know, I had like 20,000 followers. We were all talking with, like, I was talking to Derek. We weren't teamed up yet. And there's all these other memers out there and we started a group chat. And basically I made a spreadsheet of like each account. Each day was a different person's day and we would like all collectively shout out that account. So like, you know, there was female skewed audience pages on there. There's all these different types of pages where there's some audience overlap but not much. And then we just kind of like do a shout rotation and it really blew us up. And then, so we took that same concept

• 9:43Speaker 02

  from, you know, when I just had one account and we were just growing each other for fun, you know, just sharing the love of the audiences liking memes. And so we did that with the different brands that we owned down the road.

• 9:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And it's really interesting to me how the meme culture, just an entire generation gravitated towards it. Like, why is that, right? Like, what is it so special about the memes? Is it that they're shareable, that they're funny? Like, you are an expert in memes, I guess. So just like, why does this work?

• 10:15Speaker 02

  I think it's a mix of like, memes are a form of like just super shareable ideas and it's just like, people can, they really resonate with a lot of people at once and it's like something everyone can kind of like come together on and like, you see the likes going up, you see your friends commenting or, you know, tagging their friends or liking it or whatever. Or your friend shares it in a group chat. It's just like something that, it's either like nostalgic, which makes it shareable, or it's like really hilarious and that makes it shareable or relatable, which is usually funny as well. But I think it's just the easiest and quickest way to share

• 10:58Speaker 02

  funny stuff with a friend. It's like the cartoons that are in the paper, except it's on your phone and you can easily send it. And that goes with more than just memes, you know, it's like. All the TikTok content you see, all the, you know, with our show All Gas No Breaks, it's pretty memified in terms of the editing of the video and like how it's like quick and it caters to the the zero attention span followers like myself included, I have no attention span. So I like stuff that I'm looking at on my phone to be really funny, like quick. So I don't have to keep staring at my phone, I guess.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  I don't know if that answers the question, but that's kind of like how I see them.

• 11:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And talk a little bit just about, once you had a couple of accounts, they were growing and they were kind of very meme centric. How did you end up building a whole business behind this, right? Like, what were the steps you actually took to build the media company?

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it started with just like looking at each of the accounts' content and like what common themes are always coming up. That gives you a lot of clues from an e-commerce standpoint, like, okay, you know, Epstein didn't kill himself is trending. So maybe we could make an ugly Christmas sweater and just put that phrase on there and make it look funny or look good, but it's also funny. And so we did that, you know, around Christmas holidays and like, that's really, really the main thing for e-commerce for us is looking at the, the content trends and like the engagement,

• 12:37Speaker 02

  you know, within the first three minutes of posting something, we'll know if it's the new thing. Like if it's the new meme, like we'll know within three minutes. As you know, on Twitter, you know, you'll see your engagement start to spike on, you know, quicker than normal tweets or whatever. I don't know Twitter. We have like zero followers on Twitter, but uh, but Instagram is like, you know, similar, I feel like in the way that you are kind of tracking that. But yeah, that's how we, we realized for e-commerce, that was like an easy way for us to make money there. Advertisements, you know, for each brand has its own perfect brand partner, you know, like middle-class fancy is one of our accounts. Lee, the creator of it, he

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Was talking about crispy boys like five years ago and like created this term and Bud Light wanted to be attached to it. And so that was like a way to take IP that we've created and like marry it with Bud Light and now Bud Light is a crispy boy. And that was part of the campaign we did with them. So yeah, it's kind of like we've, we've been just growing as quickly as possible. And, you know, with in terms of followers and revenue, we're kind of like in the beginning, we were just grabbing cash wherever we could and figuring out what was the most promising thing. And I then advertisements merchandise and, you know, now like subscription

• 14:01Speaker 02

  with Patreon for all gas no breaks. Each brand has its own path to success. So whether it's gamers doing things with Twitch, you know, we have a talent is named Spencer, who's the host of the stream, we're doing tournaments. That's the path to success for gamers and also merch and advertisements. But like all gas no breaks is Patreon. Advertisements soon on the podcast. Merchandise are big for that brand. So merchandise and advertisements are pretty consistent across the board, but there's different ways, you know, for each one to be built out into its own business. Like shithead seed is going to be and already is kind of like the Spencer's of 2020 online,

• 14:46Speaker 02

  you know, gag guess where it's a puzzle that looks like, you know, a field of puppies in a, you know, hanging out and then you open it. It's like a bunch of big dogs taking huge shits in a field. It's like a prank puzzle that we did around coronavirus. So that's just like an example of like a few different brands of ours that like take, take their own lives and like grow in their own ways.

• 15:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk a little bit about all gas no breaks for those that don't know what like, what is that?

• 15:14Speaker 02

  So August No Breaks is a show. We partnered up with Andrew Callaghan, who is the host. And he had a former thing he was doing in New Orleans where he would interview drunk people. And it was like amazing. And a lot of his content was getting shut down because it was so insane. And so he came to us and was like, would love to do a show with you guys. I'm a big fan of the meme pages. And we were like, yeah, this is amazing. Like this, we've been following your content for a while.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  And so we took our audience and basically supercharged the growth to the show. We partnered up, we bought him an RV, we sent him around the country interviewing, you know, tons of different people like flat earthers or, you know, conspiracy theorists, people, Talladega, just like really funny, like iconic American things, but also like underground American subcultures that you've never heard of that are ridiculous or really interesting. And so, yeah, it was just like us helping him out from a creative standpoint and also growing the show and starting the Patreon and the merch business. And I think we're number six on Patreon now on the whole platform.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  So that's really cool. Like in a year, we did that. But that's basically what it is. It's like Andrew's this like, he has this deadpan look on his face and like he just lets people talk into a microphone. And it's hilarious. So definitely check it out.

• 16:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think a lot of people understand advertising. They understand the merchandise business. You mentioned Patreon. Let's start there. What exactly is Patreon and why is that working for you guys? I think you guys have over 16,000 people who have kind of supported you there.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it is exclusive and long form content. The Instagram is short clips, you know, a minute long each basically. That helps promote the YouTube. We also are on YouTube. So basically we take the longest and most raw footage, put it into the longest form we can on Patreon. And, you know, any behind the scenes content will do on Patreon only.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  And then we'll take shorter clips of that, you know, like a 10 minute version of it, or sometimes like seven minutes at the shortest on YouTube. And then we take the really short stuff and put it on like Instagram and Tik Tok. And yeah, that's, that's basically it. We have a Facebook page, but it's mostly Instagram, YouTube and Patreon. And like those three help grow each other.

• 17:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Everything you guys do is stuff that you own the IP? Or this is stuff where people will come to you, you actually can kind of put, you know, kind of gas on their fire and help somebody else grow.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we created the show. We hired him as the host and he's a partner in the show with two of his best friends. So that's, that's how we did All Gas and that's how we operate for any other shows. We have a few other shows in, in the works and that's going to be the same.

• 18:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And talk a little bit about the importance of intellectual property. So I think a lot of kind of creators, they understand, hey, if I get a big audience, I can sell ads, maybe I can sell some merch, but that's pretty much where it ends, right? That's kind of the monetization strategy. You guys are thinking of this much more almost like Hollywood franchises, right? Where you kind of take that intellectual property and really leverage it for all of these different monetization channels. Where did that come from? And kind of talk through how you guys have done that successfully?

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we, we kind of see ourselves as like a weird version of like Nickelodeon or, or maybe it's like in TV. Like we want to have, we want to create these shows and channels that, you know, each have their own universe, kind of like, I guess, kind of like a Marvel also. You know, there's different characters in the All Gas show and Andrew is one of them. The RV is like a common theme and there's all these like things we can play with and, and build out businesses on their own, you know, like we have, you know, for Shithead Steve, we have a board game that's going to be its own entity, but it's, you know, born on Shithead Steve and we promote it through Shithead Steve.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  And so like some of our accounts are really just marketing vehicles. Some of our accounts are actually their own brands that have their own IP. Like Shithead Steve, you know, has a lot of viral products and stuff like that, but like All Gas No Breaks is creating a lot more IP in its, its own right. But yeah, we just want to get as big as possible and just be an IP factory, kind of like a Disney slash Marvel slash whatever. And just keep, uh, there's, it's just like limitless in terms of how big it can get. Um, now that we're branching outside of just memes. Um, I think having a good understanding of memes and comedy and like internet comedy specifically is just helps

• 20:22Speaker 02

  so much with even like production of, uh, you know, longer form stuff that's not just images. Um, so we want to just keep expanding in that way.

• 20:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and it feels like you guys understand, uh, creating content. You understand internet culture, right? So we talked about the memes, uh, talk about the jorts maybe. I think people find that story hilarious.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, uh, we were just like hanging out in the office back when people had offices like a year ago and, uh, we were like talking about jorts or something, or maybe, uh, cargo shorts, just like really meme-able things. And, uh, we're like, we should make a jorts bathing suit, um, where it looks like jorts and, uh, it's not. And, uh, so literally like a few days later, we had them made and there is like sublimated bathing suit, basically that really looked like jorts. And, uh, a guy that works for us, we were like, hey, you want to go to my pool across the street and take a picture? And we literally just like walked across the street, took a picture with our iPhone.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  That was the shoot, cost us zero dollars. And then, you know, we sold like a ton of those. Um, it's really funny.

• 21:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you guys have a situation like that, right? I think a lot of people are like, oh, I've had this crazy idea, but I don't actually execute. How do you go from, oh, it'd be funny to make a swimsuit that looks like jorts to four or five days later, you actually have the jorts and it's like, let's take the photo and let's launch it. Like, where does that propensity for action come from? And like, what would maybe your advice be to other people who have the ideas, but they get blocked from actually going out and executing it?

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely just take the path of least resistance, especially with new ideas. Like with us, the reason we're valuable is because we have an audience of 60 million followers. We can test products for free, basically. Like, so, and on top of that, we pretty much lined up the different partners that could do the shit that we're not good at. Like, we're a media company, we're good at being funny, making the content around products and stuff. So we outsourced a sublimation partner who could just do it really quick and send us a sample, you know, at no cost to us. And then we basically did a pre-sale. And every time someone bought one, you know, we would just place an order. So we just did it that way.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  It's kind of like an on-demand model, but more of like a pre-sale and fulfill all orders, right, and then cut it off, you know? So that's kind of how we did that. But, uh, but yeah, just like, before that, I made this easy button. That was a Trump button, that was, it's like a wall button is what it was called. It was a meme, uh, where, you know, anything that pissed Trump off, he would just hit the wall button and like all his problems would go away. Because the, you know, build the wall thing was like a meme. And so what I did was I like went on Alibaba and placed an order for like a few thousand of these easy buttons that I turned into the meme and sold out of them. And I mean, it was like such a pain, having to go through that whole process alone,

• 23:30Speaker 02

  when it was just me running shit at Steve. So now that we have partners that can do that stuff, I will absolutely, you know, let them handle it and take a slightly smaller margin. So I guess that is what I would suggest. Like, definitely use all the resources you can, use the internet and Upwork. Like, to build, you can do anything now, wherever you are, as long as you have wifi, pretty much, so.

• 23:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. How did you go about finding employees and kind of building out the team, right? There's so many people who think they're funny on the internet, but they're not. There's so many people who are creating content that sucks. Like, how do you actually find the right people who can either run an account, can kind of help with the e-commerce products? And it's not just you, you know, kind of micromanaging, but actually finding people who can kind of make your life easier, but still be effective and grow the business?

• 24:19Speaker 02

  For sure. So creatively, those people already were like, pretty much our good friends on the internet. After years of growing in the meme space, we looked at who was growing, you know, just as fast or faster or whatever. And we liked their content. We were just like, hey, do you want to come work with us? And, you know, we acquired middle-class fancy doggos doing things, a few others, and brought the creators on full-time to help us build this. You know, they have a piece of doing things. And, you know, it was a cool and smart, like, really glad we did this because they, they just get it, you know, they already, they don't need any training or anything. They're just doing what they're already good at. And we

• 25:00Speaker 02

  just help amplify their brands. And then, uh, what was the other question? I'm blanking.

• 25:09Anthony Pompliano?

  In terms of, uh, like, the non-content employees, how do you kind of find the right people there?

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. So Max, advisor and partner to the business, he's helped out early on, helping put the pieces together for, you know, like, our, basically like our financial arm. We have like a company that is a small partner of the business also that does all of our finances, like anything at the company. And they're awesome. They manage a lot of like, really, like Hollywood Illuminati people's money. And they're like, really helpful. In terms of like, sales, I brought on Todd Anderman from Group9. He's been amazing. I just hit him up on LinkedIn. Like, I saw that he worked at another media company called Group9. And I was like, I looked into it. He seemed awesome. And we ended up just, you know, hiring him

• 26:00Speaker 02

  as a president a year ago. So I used a lot of like, social media, LinkedIn, and networking.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Uh, for sure. And Todd's been really helpful finding more people for the sales team and, and stuff like that. And also just across the board, helping us out with hiring. Um, you know, some project managers came from other companies that I worked, I worked directly with them when I was like running Shithead Steve. There's a company called Herb, which is like a weed themed page on Facebook that like I would share their content and get paid for it. Basically, and, and my, and the point person there, we, we brought her on, uh, and she's been awesome. Uh, her name's Amanda, but, uh, yeah, it's a lot of networking, online searches, LinkedIn and social media, I guess.

• 26:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you guys have aspirations to get outside of just e-commerce from like a selling things to people, right? So you talked about you get the advertising, e-commerce makes sense. You've got Patreon. Will you eventually get into whether it's building hardware products or building, uh, software products? Actually try to kind of get into, you know, the higher margin, more scalable type things that seem to be attractive to some creators?

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're thinking about doing a, uh, we're thinking about creating a technology. That's kind of like taking everything we know and our brain meme brains and like the internet trends, uh, side of things. And turning it into a, a data type, uh, oriented technology, um, that brands can use. And, uh, you know, basically just help, uh, companies or brands or whoever understand what's, you know, what is trending or, or like,

• 27:43Speaker 02

  you know, we do a lot of advertising campaigns with memes and integrating and like organically rather than like paying, paying a platform. Um, so that's definitely one thing we're thinking of. In terms of, uh, hardware, I can't really think of anything there. Um, we're definitely wanting to do like live events and, and we're just trying to build businesses off the platform overall. Like, and we see commerce as part of that, like building brands, whether it's a beverage or a, uh, card game. We want to build things that like would outlive the platforms and grow on their own.

• 28:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. In terms of kind of scaling this out, it feels like you guys have done a really good job using that initial traction with Shithead Steve on Instagram, but on other Instagram accounts and then kind of build the business from there. If you did not have any of this, right? Like there was no accounts and you were starting today, what platform would you look at and why that platform?

• 28:44Speaker 02

  I think Instagram is still great. It depends on what you're making. Like if you're creating video content and it's, you know, you can do a 10 minute episode, I would say YouTube. But I think Instagram is a great place to get discovered with reels, there's IGTV and there's, you know, the, the regular post in the feed. But yeah, I don't know, it depends on what you're doing. Like you're an influencer, it might be something like reels and TikTok at the same time. Instagram is still great though. I think probably Instagram.

• 29:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk to me about monetization in terms of how do you guys think about selling the advertising? Is it per CPM? Is it per post? Is it maybe monthly? Like, like, how do you think about that? And for those people who aspire to be creators, whether it's under their own name or under kind of these, these account brands, how should they think about early days monetization versus late stage monetization once they're big?

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, it's kind of a tough question. Can you repeat the last part?

• 29:57Anthony Pompliano?

  So, uh, talk just about how you guys monetize it. Do you charge by CPNs or some other model? And then in terms of did that change over time, right? When you were starting out, did you guys monetize, you know, one way and then over time it kind of evolved something else?

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, in the beginning, I was literally like, what's your budget? And they'd say, you know, like 10 grand or like, okay, well, we need, you know, 20 grand or whatever. Like it was super scrappy in the beginning. It was just like us hustling ads. Like we're, we used to do ads for just like the most hilarious, you've never heard of them, like drop shipping companies and stuff in the very beginning. But now, and you know, in the past, the past three years, it's been CPM based. So it's, it's.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  It's understood by agencies and brands like across the board because it's kind of how they operate anyways. So impressions, you know, with a CPM.

• 30:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And in terms of building out these kind of IP or brand type accounts, do you guys kind of have triggers in your mind? So hey, when we get started, we know we're going to have zero followers. We can get to 50,000 followers with a couple of mentions on our other accounts. That's when we'll start doing ads. Then once we get to 100 or 250,000, then that's when we'll go ahead and do e-commerce. Like, is there some kind of framework you use? Or is it literally case by case each time?

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's case by case. And it's very like, we'll see what happens, you know, like, we want to put stuff out and see if it gets traction. We're not going to try to force a brand that no one cares about. Like, we'll start it, we'll run it for a few months, and then if it just doesn't pick up steam, and people aren't converting, then it's like, whatever, on to the next. So, and we also don't, like, we have a lot of accounts that are like, you know, a few hundred thousand followers, and we just want to keep growing them to the million follower mark or more before we start doing ads. Definitely case by case, though, like All Gas No Brakes is different. We only want to put ads in there that are really, you know, across the board is like

• 31:55Speaker 02

  this, but for All Gas, it's a little harder to integrate ads in the right way. So we're thinking podcasts and also just sponsoring a whole series of episodes by a really funny brand, whether it's like Monster Energy, or for a Florida Man episode, or whatever it is.

• 32:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And then talk to me about your day to day, kind of what you focus on, right? Are you still creative and posting on Shithead Steve and a bunch of accounts and, and kind of, you know, deep in the meme culture? Or are you doing other things to kind of build the business on a day to day basis?

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we're all wearing like a million hats. I still will occasionally like, find something or like, think of something and make a meme and just post it because I'm logged into like my, my accounts that I would post to. But yeah, so I'm the CEO. I'm doing a lot of stuff on the commerce side. That's what I'm focusing on. But I'm also like, helping out on ad stuff when I can. And across the board, like, I'm not doing everything anymore, which is great, but I'm still like, doing a lot of stuff. And it's mainly e-commerce, creative, a lot of stuff on All Gas No Brakes, just like with, you know,

• 33:08Speaker 02

  Picking different events, podcast guests, we're actually launching something really big. I can't talk about that. Working on that. And yeah, so a lot of stuff.

• 33:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. What's the one thing you wish that you knew when you got started?

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Um.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  I wish, well, part of me wishes that I didn't go so wide with so many accounts.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  Uh, just honestly, because it's like, okay, now like they're all amazing accounts. So it's not a bad problem. It's like, we just have to hire the correct people for each one to build it out into its path to success or whatever. Um, but I wish I would have doubled down on the ones that were working more so than I did, but I, I mean, I did. So it's not really a regret. Um, I wish.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  I wish I had, I wish I hired Todd earlier. I mean, I guess that's it because I had to do a lot of sales stuff for a while and it was just like, really tough, you know, doing that plus e-commerce, plus actually running the pages. Um, I guess I, I wish I hired faster. I wish I knew that I could hire faster without worrying about it. Cause it was so new to me. I was like, I, I wanted to be very careful about how I grew and we still are, but it was like, how aggressive should I get, I guess?

• 34:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I feel like that's a fairly common thing for people, right? Is like, um, cause if you mess it up, you'd be seeing the exact opposite thing, right? Which is like, I wish I'd hired slower.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And I also didn't know the meme space was like as big as, like, I didn't think it would get as big as it is, but now I'm realizing, I had this realization a while ago. It's like memes are just a different form of content and a lot of stuff's memified. That's not just a picture with text over it. So it's really just the future of entertainment on social media.

• 35:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. How should companies think about using memes and gifs and kind of all of these like new multimedia type communication for their everyday kind of marketing, right? So it's one thing if you're posting on Shithead Steve to use memes and things like that, but there's plenty of people out there who say, hey, I run Burger King social media, or you know, I run whatever company's social media. Should I be using memes? Or should I just kind of keep it cool and you know, corporate and just stick to that?

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you're, you're going to see more and more corporate, like, like big companies like Burger King, and I think they are, we're actually potentially doing something with them down the road. But like Burger King, McDonald's, all these like QSR companies are starting to adopt meme stuff. And you know, Wendy's on Twitter, I'm sure you've seen is like completely a meme. I don't think you have to go that hard. You know, it's up to whoever is running the brand, like if they think it should go full meme, like Slim Jim or Wendy's. We're running an account called Fruit Bowls right now for Dole, and it's hilarious. It's, it's like a Slim Jim,

• 36:20Speaker 02

  but for fruit bowls. I think there's ways to not necessarily post a lot of memes or any memes on your company's account on Instagram or whatever, but you can work with people like us to integrate your messaging or whatever it is that you want to get out there in a organic and natural way. So it shows up in people's feeds and they're not pissed off. It's like, oh, that's actually a funny piece of content. And then that, you know, oh, by the way, it's an ad. It's not in your face like when an ad hits that's paid and you're like, or it's like on TV, you just immediately whip out your phone. So it's a way to get in front of, you

• 37:01Speaker 02

  know, millennials without pissing them off. And they're just like, they're not thinking you're cheesy necessarily. They think you're funny or whatever they're getting across is getting across.

• 37:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  It's working with people like us, not necessarily having to post that on their own page.

• 37:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Any words of advice for the people who are running accounts right now, who are kind of more creators, but aspire to be in the position you are, that have kind of a full-fledged business around this?

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Any advice to them?

• 37:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, if you're running like a meme account, just be creative and original. That's what's going to stand out these days for sure. If you're creating, you know, anything like if it's a something like interviews, just keep in mind that people have very short attention spans. So if you have some long intro, people don't care about intros. Like I, I've always hated intros. I think, you know, for like certain YouTube channels and stuff, it makes sense. But I think you should just get straight to the point because people don't have a lot of time or, you know, they don't want to stare at their phone for too long. So just keep that in mind whenever you're making content.

• 38:21Speaker 02

  You want to get the, the thing started as soon as people see it.

• 38:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's a great piece of advice. I asked the same two questions to everybody and then you'll get to ask me one to wrap it up. The first is, what is the most important book that you've ever read?

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Zero to One by Peter Thiel.

• 38:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Why that one?

• 38:42Speaker 02

  It's just such a straight shooting book. It's like, he's done it and this is how you do it. And it's like, it's really, really informative and super smart. Like that guy's genius.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  I'd ask the same question to you.

• 38:59Anthony Pompliano?

  I cheated because I already know, know this question and I answered with the same three books, which is kind of breaking the rules as well. But I would say Rich Dad, Poor Dad, The Richest Man in Babylon and Thinking Grow Rich. And I'd be, when, when did you read Zero to One? Like, how old were you?

• 39:17Speaker 02

  A year ago.

• 39:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so I read those three books when I was like 20, 21 years old, which like, from a finance standpoint, like that's a good time to read and kind of build habits and change the way you think about money, et cetera. When you're building a business, right? It's probably a good book to read is Zero to One. And so I think a lot about like the book itself. Sure, it's high quality for most suggestions, but it's also like, when did the person read it? Because the timing is super important for what that impact was on them, right?

• 39:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. Another question, how did you, um, so you said you got started on Twitter. What was the, the tweet or the thing that made it pop? Was there any like one time where you're like, that's it? Or maybe a tweet?

• 40:03Anthony Pompliano?

  I had already worked, I used to run the growth team for Facebook pages. And so I like knew how the algorithms worked. I'd helped a bunch of people, probably a lot of, you know, we probably have a ton of mutual friends in terms of these meme accounts or brand accounts. And everyone had started on either Instagram or maybe there was a couple of people on Twitter. They're trying to figure out Facebook, right? They were trying to figure out like these other platforms where they hadn't started. And so naturally I would just get introduced to them. And like the conversations would be hilarious. Or like the fuck Jerry, you guys were, were a great example. They're like, so like, we have all these memes and like, it's working on Instagram. Like, how do we like make Facebook work? And here it is like, okay, like, you know, you guys should be teaching us things, right? You use the platform better than pretty much anyone. And so I had seen it over and over and over again, just like what worked, what didn't work.

• 40:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And in 2017, I just realized like, I'd never done it for myself. And I was like, what, you know, what the hell am I doing? And at the time, it was very clear that Twitter was a much better place to do this type of stuff. Like if you're going to go for business and finance and that it's harder, you know, to kind of do it. Yeah. And it's also harder to like, do it under your own name when it's on an Instagram or whatever. So I think that a lot of it came down to like, okay, I don't know exactly why this is going to be valuable, but I do know having an audience will be valuable in the future. So like, let's get started. And then, you know, you kind of tweet, tweet, tweet, and you just quickly like start to like, let the audience say like, hey, that we want more of this and less of like that other stuff.

• 41:29Anthony Pompliano?

  And there was a time in 2017, like Q4, I can literally just tweet the word Bitcoin and the shit would just go, you know, viral.

• 41:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's like, you know, right now you can literally just tweet, what's it, Portnoy, right? Like Dave keeps just tweeting like stocks only go up and just explodes. And so it's like, you know, I, I think your point about like, you'll know what content works and what doesn't work by based on the audience reaction. Like that's true on every platform, right? It's not just an Instagram thing. It's kind of anywhere.

• 41:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure.

• 41:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Second question is a more fun aliens believer or non believer?

• 42:02Speaker 02

  It's a hundred percent real.

• 42:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do you think that? I agree, but why do you think that?

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Because they just have to exist. I've watched way too many Joe Rogan podcasts to not believe in them, so.

• 42:16Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm there with you. Bob Lazar, I'm assuming you saw that one?

• 42:20Speaker 02

  That's the one that was really like, well, okay, they are real. And then there was also the government thing. The governments, like when coronavirus is the worst or some crazy shit was happening this year. It's like all blur at this point, but like they said, yeah, aliens are real, pretty much. Like there's an alien aircraft in the world and it's definitely from aliens is pretty much what they said. And everyone's like, yeah, but coronavirus, like no one cares. So I was the one guy who's like, they're real.

• 42:52Anthony Pompliano?

  I still am shocked. Like I get the fact that like the videos had already leaked on Reddit and stuff, right? I get the fact that like they're UFOs, they're not aliens, like all of it. I'm with you though. I'm like, wait, timeout. You're telling me that the US government is publicly releasing videos being like, we don't know what the hell this is flying around. And you and I can look with our bare eyes and see something that we don't understand, explain, never seen before. Like, you know, maybe it's something weird, but I'm with you in that should have been a bigger deal than it probably people made it to be.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. Big believer. Watch. There's a, an Augas episode about aliens, alien con. It's pretty good.

• 43:30Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. I'm gonna have to go look that one up for sure. You could ask me one question to finish up. What do you got for me?

• 43:40Speaker 02

  I guess you're, you're probably comfortable sharing. I was just wondering like, what's your, what's the biggest part of your business? And if you don't want to answer, it's all good. You can talk about something else.

• 43:48Anthony Pompliano?

  No, podcasts by far. In terms of, I've tested a lot of stuff, like sounds very similar. And I didn't really take the business seriously. Like actually it sounds very similar to your story. Of like, at first it was kind of like, okay, like I'm doing this thing and like, oh wait, the audience is like pretty big. And it's like, oh wait, the audience is like really big now. And then it was like, maybe I should like try another platform. And I should like try another platform. And like you realize like, oh, the audience will like move with me and okay, like maybe there's something here. And I've just been shocked in terms of podcast monetization. Some of it's just, you know, it's finance. So there's a lot of disposable. Income, kind of the perfect demographic. All these fintech companies have gotten just absolutely overwhelmed with like venture funding.

• 44:32Anthony Pompliano?

  And frankly, I think some of them like, don't know what to do with it all. So it's kind of, you got like all these things that that work in favor there. But also I've been pretty shocked, like I've got, I don't know if you know what a Substack is. It's like a paid newsletter type thing. And so basically every morning I wake up, I write a email and it's just like my analysis on whatever I think is interesting in business, finance, Bitcoin, whatever. But I send it five days a week. If you are on the free email list, you get it once a week. If you paid 10 bucks a month or 50 bucks a year, you get it all five days a week. And you know, these guys were like, hey, you should try this. And I was like, who the hell is going to pay? Right. And next thing you know, I've got, I think it's like the number 10 or 11 largest one on their site. And you start to realize it's like very similar, like the Patreon stuff, right?

• 45:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Like people, if it's good content, I think that they are willing to support the people who create it. And so it's like, pretty interesting when you start to unpack. You know, you can create content, you can do ad supported, you could do kind of, you know, audience supported. You could do e-commerce, like there's so many monetization channels. But for me, it all comes back to the one area that I think you guys have done a great job where other people haven't is just the intellectual property. Right. I'm shocked at how many people haven't, they have large audiences, but they don't, just don't use it.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was gonna say like another thing early on that we had to do was build like a video submission portal to play defense, basically, and also be able to license out videos. But people submit a ton of videos to us and we had to get buttoned up pretty hard on the meme pages and the video pages. So I feel you.

• 46:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Where, where can people find you on the internet? Read or find more about doing things media?

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Go to, my Instagram is read doing things, but I just post shit about my dog or like surfing or something.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  I'm on LinkedIn, Reed Haley, R E I D H A I L E Y. I guess that's probably the best place for this, LinkedIn.

• 46:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome, man. Well, listen, thank you so much for doing this. You guys have built a very interesting and awesome company, so we'll have to do this again in the future.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks.