#1139 Tank Sinatra | The World’s Most Famous Meme Lord

Tank Sinatra is one of the best meme makers in the world. In this episode, we discuss Tank's journey to becoming a meme lord, his insane meme output, his views on the internet, why some creators make it and some don't, and Tank explains his new board game "Influencers In The Wild." ======================= The number one name in NFT domains and the world’s most powerful wallet are teaming up to bring something new to the crypto and Web3 world: That’s right, Unstoppable Domains and Blockchain.com partnered to create NFT domain names ending in . Blockchain. It’s the perfect ending to show that you’re a believer in a decentralized future. The Blockchain.com community can get one, for free by signing up for the waitlist here. Free NFT domains provide all the benefits of premium Unstoppable Domains, including fee-free, lifelong ownership. Don’t have a Blockchain.com wallet? No worries, these new domains are available to everyone for as low as $5. Either sign up for a free blockchain.wallet or visit Unstoppabledomains.com to buy your domain today. ================== Valour (formerly DeFi Technologies) represents what’s next in the digital economy -- providing simplified, trusted access to crypto, decentralized finance and Web 3.0 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. Currently listed on U. S. (OTC: DEFTF) and Canadian (NEO:DEFI) exchanges. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit our website at valour.com ======================= With a Messari Pro subscription, you gain access to exclusive industry-leading long-form daily research reports, daily crypto news & insights in your inbox, advanced asset screeners, curated sets of charts and metrics and so much more. Try Messari Pro today! Get up to 25% off their Messari Pro membership by visiting www.messari.io/pro and entering promo code "POMP" at checkout. ======================= This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. The Eight Sleep Pod is a tech layer that fits onto your mattress like a fitted sheet. The Pod dynamically cools and heats each side of the bed, to maintain the optimal sleeping temperature for what your body needs. With the Pod, you can start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. The result: Clinical data shows that Eight Sleep users experience up to 34% more deep sleep. Go to eightsleep.com/pomp for exclusive holiday savings and ring in the most wonderful time of night. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. ======================= LMAX Digital - the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading & custodial services - offers clients a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, together with the deepest pool of crypto liquidity. LMAX Digital is also a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms. LMAX Digital - secure, liquid, trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp ======================= Compass Mining is the world's first online marketplace for bitcoin mining hardware and hosting. Compass was founded with the goal of making it easy for everyone to mine bitcoin. Visit https://compassmining.io/ to start mining bitcoin today! =======================

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

• 0:02Anthony 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. Now let's kick this thing off. Tank Sinatra is one of the best meme makers in the world. He also happens to be the curator and the creator of a number of your favorite accounts from Tank Sinatra, Tank's Good News, Influencers in the Wild, and a brand new board game that is now available in Target. In this conversation, we talked about it all. Tank dropped verbal memes. We talked about your favorite memes. We also talked about his life, how he views the internet, why some people are successful and others, they just continue to kind of wait away, go sideways, and not have any fun on the internet. This was a conversation that I really enjoyed. I

• 0:46Anthony Pompliano?

  learned a ton, and I think you guys will as well. Once you get done listening, don't tell us anything. We don't want to hear your opinion. We don't think it's funny, and Tank is not funny at all. If you are looking for somebody who's funny, don't listen to this podcast. Alright, here's my conversation with Tank Sinatra.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 1:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright guys, bang, bang. I'm very excited to have this conversation. We've talked nothing about business. You've got one of the most popular Instagram pages in the world, and you're just a dude.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  I'm just a dude. Bang, bang.

• 1:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, bang, bang. You're just fucking chilling in life. Alright, how many Instagram pages do you have? And how many TikTok pages do you have?

• 1:46Speaker 02

  I have four Instagram pages. One of them is my personal page, which doesn't really do much. It's Meme Daddy. Then I got Tank Sinatra, Tank's Good News, and Influencers in the Wild, which is the newest one.

• 1:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  And then TikTok, Tank Sinatra. TikTok, Influencers in the Wild, just got banned recently. Who knows, dude? I don't know.

• 2:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Wait, Influencers in the Wild got banned on TikTok?

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a different, it's a different society over there. Younger, more annoyed or offended, and people interpret things worse over there. Instagram's still fun. It's like, hey, we're, you know, we're not...

• 2:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Memes.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're not like out to get anybody. We're just having fun. Look at this person, you know, doing this silly thing in public. TikTok was like...

• 2:30Speaker 02

  The worst thing that happened on TikTok was, or the funniest thing that happened on TikTok was I posted a video of some girl on the beach in a bikini, dancing with a ring light as her tripod. She's on the beach, mind you, with a ring light.

• 2:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that normal?

• 2:43Speaker 02

  No, of course it's, bro, that's, my followers now at this point are so bloodthirsty. If you saw anything out in the wild of somebody shooting content, you'd be like, that's bizarre. Now it's like, if the girl's not twerking on a, you know, a little person's face with fireworks going off, they're like, this is boring, you know?

• 3:05Anthony Pompliano?

  So the ring light on the beach qualified for, for good content?

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Yes, and the girl's in a bikini and she's not a great dancer. It's just like weird, you know? And I wrote, if only there was a natural significant source of light somewhere, right? That was the joke. It's obviously a joke. You're laughing, right? And people were like, oh, she's using it as a tripod, you know, how did you, I'm like, yeah, where would she plug it in, first of all? Second of all, I know. So then this guy made a video making fun of me, saying that, why are we doing this? Everyone looks silly when they, when they're filming content and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, yeah, thanks for explaining the page. That's the whole point of the page. We're just having fun here. And then-

• 3:47Anthony Pompliano?

  He made like a YouTube video over it?

• 3:49Speaker 02

  No, he made a TikTok video which got like a ton of views. And then I, the girl in the video, the girl that was actually dancing commented on that video and it got like, you know, tons of likes. It got fed right to the top. So I, I felt bad, obviously. I don't like, people have asked me to take stuff down maybe three or four times in the two years I've been doing it and I'll take it down every single time. I don't care. I'm not out to embarrass somebody. I'm just like, look at how silly we are as a species. So the girl's content got top rated. I clicked on her. She was like furious. Yes, I can't believe this. They're making fun of me. I feel so ashamed and embarrassed, blah, blah, blah. Go follow my OnlyFans, whatever. Literally.

• 4:25Anthony Pompliano?

  No way.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Kind of, yeah. It was like, I hate this guy. I can't believe he would do this, but also like, check out my page.

• 4:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, like here's my SoundCloud.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Exactly. And I clicked on her TikTok, clicked on the Instagram, which was linked to it. Clicked to write her a message on Instagram. And I saw that she had a message, there was a message already there asking me to tag her in the original Instagram video. So she was like playing both sides.

• 4:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Wait, wait, wait, hold on, time, time, time, time, time.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, whatever you're thinking is what happened.

• 4:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, this is the bullshit on the internet, right? So you posted something on Instagram and TikTok of the, of a woman on the beach with a ring light, dancing. She then on TikTok is yelling and screaming and be like, I'm so outraged, this is bullshit, they're making fun of me, I can't believe these people, they're horrible human beings and like they should go to jail and rot away forever.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  So far, so good.

• 5:06Anthony Pompliano?

  But on Instagram was like, yo, by the way, can you like toss me a tag so I get some followers?

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, and she would have done the same thing on TikTok if, if the video that I posted had gotten bigger than the other video. And it's fine, dude, everyone wants attention, I get it, it's not, you know, this is not like something outlandish that people are trying to get attention on the internet. But if your, if your comment had been on the TikTok video like, oh my God, I know, isn't this so silly, so funny, she probably A would have gotten, I'm the person in the video, isn't this so silly, we're so silly as a species, she probably would have gotten twice the amount of likes and double the amount of followers because nobody wants to follow somebody who's pissed off. Nobody's sympathy follows anybody, your feed is too precious for you to go, I'm gonna throw this person a bone, I'm gonna follow them because they seem upset.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  You're not fun, you're not having any fun, you look like a dick, kind of, you know? You can see people's following stop growing when at a certain point you reach critical mass, let's say, and then out of every, you know, every day that you post, a certain number of people are gonna be pissed off.

• 6:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Not at you, just like in general, you got three million people on a page, 1% is 30,000, so that's a lot of people to be pissed off at you, you think? And you can see people's momentum get slowed down when they start taking it the wrong way, they start getting like, start taking it personally and whatever. So I've always tried to, for the most part, have fun. And if I do clap back at somebody, it's because I think I can say something funnier than what they said and I wanna like roast them a little bit. But I don't even know who that person is, I'm not out to get them either.

• 6:40Anthony Pompliano?

  You've been doing the internet game for like 20 years now, right?

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:43Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, is anything on the internet real? Or is it all just?

• 6:46Speaker 02

  Everything's real.

• 6:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it all real or is none of it real?

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Depends on how you define everything or nothing.

• 6:51Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, well, if I think of the woman who is yelling and screaming on TikTok, but also asking you for a tag on Instagram, like, to me, that's like not real.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  They're probably both real to some extent, because humans are dynamic and there's different parts of their personality. She probably, when the guy framed it in such a way that it was like, this person is being exploited and taken advantage of, yeah, there may have been a part of her that was like, yeah, I do feel exploited and taken advantage of. Whereas on the other hand, before that happened, she was probably just like, hey, I'm in the video, can you tag me? So they're both real, but um, I don't know, people, people are, my whole, so, my whole fascination with the internet started, actually, when I got sober in 2002, MySpace had like just come out. So besides the gym, meetings, uh, burning CDs

• 7:38Speaker 02

  over and over again to try and get the perfect mix of music on a piece of plastic, which I spent so many hours doing.

• 7:47Anthony Pompliano?

  How, what was your labeling technique on the CDs, or were you just like a fuck it?

• 7:50Speaker 02

  I like to be-

• 7:51Anthony Pompliano?

  I'll put in 10 of them until I figure out which one I'm looking for.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  I like to be surprised, yeah. Because it was all pretty much the same music, it was just different orders and whatever.

• 7:58Anthony Pompliano?

  So you're a psychopath?

• 7:59Speaker 02

  I'm a crazy person, yeah.

• 8:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you have the, uh, the binder full of CDs?

• 8:03Speaker 02

  I had like six of them, yeah.

• 8:05Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, did you ever like get in other friends' cars and you're like, we should take your car, you've got the binder? Like, you've got the fucking hot binder?

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm a, yeah, I don't, I don't play that whole, let me get the aux shit. You're not getting, you're, I, I don't, like, you're, if somebody sends me a song, it already loses 80% of its points out of 100. I gotta find it on my own. I think most people are like that. If I find it, it's better than if you send it to me.

• 8:28Anthony Pompliano?

  It's your idea.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 8:30Anthony Pompliano?

  It was your idea, perfect. Uh, all right, so, you're on MySpace. What the hell are you doing on MySpace? And what are you doing, meetings, 20 years ago?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Meetings, sobriety.

• 8:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Like you're going, oh, oh, you're going to like AA meetings?

• 8:42Speaker 02

  I don't, yeah, you know, you're not supposed to say it publicly, but-

• 8:45Anthony Pompliano?

  You're not?

• 8:45Speaker 02

  If I was to-

• 8:47Anthony Pompliano?

  If somebody did go to AA, why can't they talk about it publicly?

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Um, there's a tradition that states that you're not supposed to be a representative of that fellowship at the level of press, radio and film. So like, I'll talk around it as much as I like, like a pro. But for some reason, I'm still, I just don't like saying that. Not because I'm embarrassed or anything like that. Just because, there's two sides to it. One is like, Lindsay Lohan comes out and says, I'm going to AA meetings. The next day, she gets in a car wreck and they find cocaine blown up all over her car. It's like, if someone needs the help and they see that article, they're like, maybe AA doesn't work, but.

• 9:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Did that happen?

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Lindsay Lohan?

• 9:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I met, I met her one time.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Famously was like, I'm going to AA now. That's like a very common thing. People go, I'm going to AA. And it's like, well, you probably should just chill for a little bit, cause you're a maniac and see how, see how it plays out.

• 9:39Anthony Pompliano?

  But she, she hit on me one time.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 9:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, this is a great story.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  You're a good looking guy, so of course you would hit on me.

• 9:44Anthony Pompliano?

  A, a friend of mine got married.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  She was probably hammered, drunk on cocaine.

• 9:48Anthony Pompliano?

  It was at a wedding. And, uh, and she was at the bar and, uh, I was with my now wife, uh, who was like, oh my God, like that's Lindsay Lohan. And I was like, okay.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I think I've seen her in a movie before or something.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, I could tell she like wanted a picture, but like, you know, it's kind of weird. Like you go up to somebody at the wedding. Cause it's not like in a public place where they're like actually a celebrity or whatever. And so I was just like, I'm tired of like, you know, kind of listening to this, whatever. So I just was like, hey, uh, could you do me a favor?

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:14Anthony Pompliano?

  And take a picture with my, uh, at the time girlfriend.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, you know, it'll save me like a lot of time.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Basically. And she was looking at me, she goes, uh, just tell her no, you're cute, you'll be fine. Or something like that. And I was just like, and I turned around and of course, like my girlfriend was standing right there.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Heard it?

• 10:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 10:32Anthony Pompliano?

  And so I was like, uh, two things. One, like damage control.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Thankfully, my wife is a pro and was just like, I don't give a shit. Like, let's leave.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:40Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, I've been like, looked at Lindsay and I was like, oh, she, she's like dumb as before. Like, that was like a pro, I understand the social situation. And like, I'm just gonna like throw a grenade in the room and like,

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Go back to the bar.

• 10:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, I literally was like, that is somebody who has done that like multiple. Times in their life.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  That's a get, that's a professional conversation killer, right there.

• 11:01Anthony Pompliano?

  I was like, man, that was.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  She's done it before.

• 11:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, alright, so.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  But the other thing, so the, on the other side of that, if you're suffering from addiction, alcoholism, whatever, and you need to get help or you're gonna die? And the only thing keeping you from getting help is the fact that Lindsay Lohan went to a meeting once and did cocaine after that? You're probably not ready, anyway.

• 11:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, this dumb question?

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it just for alcohol, or do they also address drugs? If somebody was to go?

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, if, if this fellowship existed, Fight Club, uh, no, it's, it, alcohol is the primary focus, but even in the book, they talk about sedatives and drugs and all that, so like.

• 11:37Anthony Pompliano?

  So like, the whole cocaine thing was kind of violating the, the idea?

• 11:40Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, you can, there's people who, you know, go there for, um, they get hooked on heroin and they just don't like NA, cause NA is a, I don't, again, definitely don't wanna like, bad talk any kind of fellowship, whatever you get, whatever works for you, works. But, um, AA, AA is just more like, professional, like, it's like the granddaddy of all, like, all 12-step fellowships were born out of that.

• 12:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  So if you want the best, purest, rawest cocaine fellowship, that's the one you go to. That was an analogy, obviously.

• 12:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:14Anthony Pompliano?

  So, you're doing this?

• 12:15Speaker 02

  Maybe you can cut that.

• 12:16Anthony Pompliano?

  What are you doing on MySpace?

• 12:18Speaker 02

  Oh, so MySpace, I'm bored, I'm 22 years old.

• 12:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  I'm hanging out, I'm looking up people that I, you know, met in Montauk when I was 12, or whatever.

• 12:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like, uh, you're literally just stalking them on the internet?

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, just finding out who's on this thing, who's here, who can I find, who do I, who that I go to school with, or that I went to school with is on here, looking up people I hadn't seen since high school, which at that point was not that long ago. And I saw this guy from high school who was super, super weird. I don't wanna like, shit talk the guy, but he's weird, never heard him say a word in my entire life, looked weird, acted weird, everything. And he wrote on this girl's wall, "Hey, so-and-so, what's new and exciting, what are you doing this weekend?" And I was like, what the fuck? Like, this guy had never said those words with his mouth, but with his fingers, he's very jovial and outgoing and like, cool. And I was like, that's really interesting that this guy's acting that different on the internet?

• 13:11Speaker 02

  And then from that point forward, I became just fascinated with how people. Act on the internet in both a micro and a macro level like so individuals and groups, the way they act on the internet versus the way they act in real life. Very interesting to me. I made it a point then to not put some kind of persona out there that was not me, that I couldn't hold up. But yeah, just at that point became obsessed with it. MySpace was a big thing for a while, then he sold it for, you know, five hundred million dollars to Rupert Murdoch, who I think sold it for twenty million or something like that. Good for him. And then Facebook became big and then Reddit was the next evolution for me. That's where I started making memes, was on Reddit.

• 13:52Anthony Pompliano?

  When's the first meme?

• 13:53Speaker 02

  That I made?

• 13:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 13:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Like two thousand five?

• 13:57Speaker 02

  No, two thousand eight.

• 13:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Two thousand eight?

• 13:59Speaker 02

  Two thousand eight on a website called quickmeme.com. But you couldn't do anything on Reddit. Like I'd have a meme that hit the front page of Reddit and like I cared. And like, I couldn't tell anybody about it because not, not that I was embarrassed, just like I'd say, hey, I made a meme that hit the front page of Reddit. They're like, okay, what's a meme? What's the front page and what's Reddit? It's like, wasn't even worth discussing with people.

• 14:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep. And you're just doing this in your free time like it's just fun?

• 14:24Speaker 02

  I just, I've always loved comedy, always loved comedy, ever since I was a little kid.

• 14:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you a comedian?

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Um, I've done stand up.

• 14:31Anthony Pompliano?

  No, no, but like, I feel like on the internet, like the pages are the equivalent of like a digital comedian, right?

• 14:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess. Like there's, there's still, it's two thousand twenty-two, maybe in two thousand forty, this will be a different conversation. But there's still a line drawn between somebody who goes up on stage, sweats it out, grinds it out, is out of their home, which is a big, like, big stumbling block for a lot of people, myself included. And somebody who makes content from the comfort of their home. Because it's not, I've, I did stand up, I've done stand up, I probably have about three years of practice total under my belt. And I just don't love it, but I do want to love it. I want to be good at it. I want to like it because it's still the purest form of comedy to me, but you compare that to having a conversation with someone where you make them spit their drink out?

• 15:22Speaker 02

  What's more pure than that? How is that not as pure as making a group of strangers laugh?

• 15:27Anthony Pompliano?

  So how do you go from Reddit memes to Instagram?

• 15:30Speaker 02

  So it was a big gap in between those. So the Cliff Notes version is in 2003, I had a blog. 2005, I had a blog. 2009, I had a video blog. 2012, I had a website. That website won a Webby Award. And then I was trying to get something going.

• 15:50Anthony Pompliano?

  What were the blogs doing?

• 15:52Speaker 02

  The first blog was

• 15:53Anthony Pompliano?

  This is gonna be fucking great.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  How to masturbate like a pro.

• 16:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Shut up.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  No, I'm kidding.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  I was 22, it's all I knew. No, the first blog was insight is never 2020 because hindsight is always 2020 and I was so fucking profound at that time. Then in 2005, I had a website called Jay-Z for Dummies.

• 16:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Jay-Z for Dummies.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  Jay-Z for Dummies. For Dummies books at that time were like as big as a god for everything. That was like the book version of a, I'm telling people who don't know, obviously you know, the book version of a YouTube tutorial was like ABC for Dummies, whatever it was. You could buy this book and figure it out. So Jay-Z for Dummies was my, I love Jay-Z. Jay-Z is the greatest creative to ever live, in my opinion.

• 16:39Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that that is a very strong argument.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Kanye's mad now, but yeah.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Kanye is also a great creative, but he's obviously been, not even just recently, he's been tarnishing his reputation since 2002 or whatever it was when College Dropout came out and he went on 106 in Park and started yelling at everybody for, because the source didn't give him five mics. It's like, we're not the source, dude. What are you yelling at us for? So he's always been a little bit out there.

• 17:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Dude, the nostalgia of 106 in Park, TRL, like those shows were fucking awesome.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Take His Basement?

• 17:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, they were just, it was amazing time on the intersection of TV and music.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  It was a great time. So then the website was, I'm sorry, the video blog was happiestthenewrich.com, which

• 17:29Speaker 02

  Very, very long story. I was, I entered myself in a contest to win my own show on the Oprah Winfrey Network. It was like this big, own, own show, whatever. And because the, the voting link was so hard to find, I bought happyisthenewrich.com and redirected it to my voting link so I could just send people that link and tell people go to happyisthenewrich.com. And I went to, um, Good Morning America with a big sign that said happyisthenewrich.com, just that's it on the site. Tried to get on TV, just trying to get votes for myself so I could get my own show and, uh,

• 18:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Did it work?

• 18:04Speaker 02

  No, no, no, not even close. And then after that died, I kept the blog going because I liked the sentiment of happyisthenewrich. Because when I was in California, 30 years old, I had, I don't mean like I didn't have a lot of money. I had like literally zero dot zero zero in my bank account because the IRS and idiot waiter, financially irresponsible. And I was like, oh my God, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fucking kill myself. I'm not, I can't take myself out of this hole. There's no way. I'm just not gonna make it.

• 18:32Anthony Pompliano?

  So 30 years old, no money in the bank?

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And but I want to emphasize, not no money, like I had $5 or like I had $700. Like I had zero, literally like I was destitute, full blown. Thankfully, my parents were able to wire me a little money. My friend Jay saved my ass big time. My friend Jay will never, I've tried to pay him back a thousand times. He just,

• 18:54Anthony Pompliano?

  What'd he do?

• 18:55Speaker 02

  He wired me money so I could live twice. Like,

• 19:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Good friend?

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Very good friend.

• 19:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Um, so happyisthenewrich.com, then I had ifoundmoneytoday.com.

• 19:08Anthony Pompliano?

  I found the money?

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Ifoundmoneytoday.com, yeah.

• 19:11Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you think of these fucking names?

• 19:12Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  So ifoundmoneytoday.com was born out of two things. One, there's this story add-on that you can add-on to any story, which I'm sure you've heard this saying before. If your story sucks and you're losing people, you just go, and then I found 20 bucks. And all of a sudden, it's a great story, even if it sucks. That's like, maybe it's a Long Island thing. I don't know. Maybe you've heard of it before.

• 19:33Anthony Pompliano?

  That is a America thing.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  An adage, okay. And then, secondly, I promised my stepdaughter, Leanna, at like, however old she was, five or six years old. I said, if you, whatever it was, clean your room or ABC, I'm gonna give you five bucks. And I forgot about it and she did the thing that I asked her to do and then one day I turned around in the car and I go, "Oh, Leona, you know what? I forgot. I owe you five bucks." She goes, "You're gonna give me five dollars?" And I go, "Yeah." And she's like, "Raaah!" She just blew her top. And I was like, "Holy crap, money's exciting to people." So then one day I was working in the city and I was in Chipotle or Dunkin' Donuts, I don't remember what the first one was, but I was in the bathroom and I was like, "I'm gonna leave five dollars on the sink."

• 20:19Speaker 02

  Just like, to make somebody's day, just to like, let them think the universe hasn't forgotten about them. It's not twenty, they're not gonna feel bad that somebody lost it, it's five dollars. I'm gonna buy your coffee today. And I felt so good after doing that. I did it again, I took a picture of it, bought I Found Money Today dot blogspot dot, or WordPress or whatever, redirected it, made it like a legit looking website. And then I did it every day for, I think, two months and I won a Webby Award, which was, back then, the coolest thing that had happened in my life. That's like the Oscars for the internet, for people who don't know. But then I let it die.

• 20:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And you were just doing five dollars a day, you were leaving it in random places, taking a photo and then posting it?

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Taking a photo, writing who was around at the time, what I thought would happen. It was like, kinda like Where's George dot com, but like, before you see the, before the money goes missing.

• 21:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  So, um...

• 21:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Why'd you stop?

• 21:09Speaker 02

  Ah, I'm a loser.

• 21:11Anthony Pompliano?

  You're a man of money?

• 21:12Speaker 02

  No, I'm just an idiot. I kind of like, hit the, I, I won the Webby and that was like, "Oh, cool. I, I did it. I beat the game." "I'm gonna stop now." And then I stopped for like, a while, doing anything creative, anything that was like, you know, invigorating to me creatively. And then one day, I was fishing around on Reddit. I never left Reddit. Reddit is the greatest website of all time, don't care who, you know.

• 21:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Poetry.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  Don't care who asks or what you're into, and it's not confusing. People say it's confusing, I'm like, "It's not confusing, it's just..."

• 21:44Anthony Pompliano?

  It's the only site where there's conspiracy theories, memes, education, and also like weird communities. Like if you think of-

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Everything.

• 21:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, if you, if you think about all the other platforms, like, they have some of those.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:56Anthony Pompliano?

  But it's the only one that really kinda brings them all together, cause like on Twitter, you can't really like, teach people things, right?

• 22:01Speaker 02

  No.

• 22:01Anthony Pompliano?

  You have memes, you got conspiracy theories, whatever. Like YouTube, there's a lot of teaching, but there's necessarily the memes. There's, you know, video that go viral or whatever.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:09Anthony Pompliano?

  It's different. Reddit's the only place where you can like, really bring those things together.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  It's where people who are serious about something, anything, can find their people. If you're really into remote controls, you go to reddit.com backslash R backslash remote controls and you find your people, you know, I'm, it probably exists.

• 22:28Anthony Pompliano?

  We're gonna look, keep going.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  I was gonna say lighting, cuz lighting's definite. I wanted to go one step weirder, but lighting a hundred percent, there's a Reddit community for it.

• 22:36Anthony Pompliano?

  So there's a radio control and, uh, yeah.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Which is even weirder, what is that?

• 22:40Anthony Pompliano?

  You are right, there is a slash R slash remote control. There's a thousand people in there.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Too many people to be interested in remote controls.

• 22:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, and the content is fucking awesome.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 22:55Anthony Pompliano?

  You know, how you replace certain things, the whole thing.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's wild. Shot in the dark, but it's, there's everything on there. So, I'm posting memes on Reddit, finding memes on Reddit, and I come across the Fat Jewish's Instagram page in 2015. And the most recent post from him, or the second most recent post, was something I just saw on Reddit. So I click, you know, on his profile, see his email address in the, in the bio. I go, I'm gonna email this guy and see if he needs help. For no reason. Cold email, cold thought, it took me like two minutes.

• 23:28Anthony Pompliano?

  How many followers does he have at the time?

• 23:29Speaker 02

  The time he had like seven million or six million.

• 23:31Anthony Pompliano?

  So he's big already.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought I was dead in the water late to the meme game in 2016. So I, I click email, I write in the subject line, cuz he's the fat Jewish, he's got a great name, name is very important. I write, I write Tank Sinatra. That's where it came from.

• 23:48Anthony Pompliano?

  You just randomly thought of it?

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Random, I was like, I'm big, I have blue eyes, I'm from New York, Tank Abbott, Frank Sinatra, let me fucking, we like, marry those things together. I just wanted to get his-

• 23:57Anthony Pompliano?

  What's your Reddit username?

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Ace Trentora.

• 24:07Anthony Pompliano?

  I see a theme.

• 24:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, so you hit, uh, Fat Jewish, what, Josh, right?

• 24:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Uh, you hit Josh with a email that just says Tank Sinatra in the subject?

• 24:19Speaker 02

  In the subject line, yeah.

• 24:20Anthony Pompliano?

  The fuck is he doing opening that email?

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Great name.

• 24:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, alright. What'd you send in the email?

• 24:25Speaker 02

  So you know what a good subject line is key to getting an email opened? I was like, I'm just gonna, he was gonna open this. I don't know what he's gonna do, but he's gonna open it. So I write in the email, hey, I just saw something you posted. I just saw it on Reddit two minutes before you posted. I would like to help you- You know populate your page, I'll send you content. So he writes back immediately and says, yeah, that would be great. I need a ton of help. I got, he had like, you know, a show he was doing, plus size modeling, just a bunch of wild shit that he was into.

• 24:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Remember the billboards?

• 24:54Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:55Anthony Pompliano?

  He was like basically half naked billboards in New York City.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was the face of Seamless.

• 24:59Anthony Pompliano?

  With the thing off the top of his head, his like hair. And I just remember being like, that guy is winning life.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. His hair action, as he, as he called it.

• 25:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  So he writes back immediately. He goes, yeah, I could use the help. I, I'd appreciate it. Really uncommon also to get an email back from somebody with that amount of people emailing them. So I said, all right, great. What do you want me to do? He goes, just, you know, send me some stuff. So I send him like forty memes. In like, you know, eight different emails.

• 25:26Anthony Pompliano?

  So you basically became the fat Jewish's meme dealer?

• 25:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically.

• 25:31Anthony Pompliano?

  All right.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  I gave him a little taste.

• 25:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  And then he got hooked. And then I sent him stuff for probably a year and a half after that. Every single day I opened up an iCloud photo sharing thing with his phone. So I didn't have to send him to him. He didn't have to look at him. He could just go through there. And I was like, um.

• 25:45Anthony Pompliano?

  And how much of your sending him is what's ending up on the page? Like, is it like a hundred percent of the content basically he's posting?

• 25:50Speaker 02

  No, because I'm sending him so much.

• 25:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but then is a hundred percent of what he's posting on the page all coming from you?

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I thought you said the other way. Like, how much is he actually posting? I was sending him too much to ever post, but I wanted to give him a good, a, a variety of what was out there.

• 26:05Anthony Pompliano?

  And how long is it taking you to find forty memes a day?

• 26:08Speaker 02

  No, I sent him forty memes. He goes, you could do this every day. I go, I could do this every hour. Like, I'm a maniac. And that was it.

• 26:16Anthony Pompliano?

  You know, he like went home and was like, dude, some fucking weirdo named Hank Sinatra is sending forty memes a day. And there's literally friends that are like, that's weird.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't tell him where you live.

• 26:26Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So, uh, you're sending these to him. He's posting them and like, you don't have a page yet. You don't have anything?

• 26:32Speaker 02

  I have my page, which was like a bodybuilding idiot selfie mirror, no shirt page.

• 26:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  At this point.

• 26:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you telling him to tag that?

• 26:40Speaker 02

  No, no, I'm not. I said, I don't need anything. Um.

• 26:44Anthony Pompliano?

  He's not paying you the, nothing?

• 26:45Speaker 02

  No. Which is crazy because I still today, to this day, hear people talk about. I interned at Def Jam in two thousand and five when Jay-Z was president. Dream for me. I would have paid to do it. I didn't get paid to do it. I didn't get paid to go there. I had to take a train into the city, go spend a full day there, take the train home, eat, feed myself, the whole nine yards. And I, I, I mean, I know it was a long time ago. But this whole, and I'm not trying to like, listen, if people can get paid for an internship, great. But you gotta be willing to do whatever it takes to get attention from people that you wanna get attention from. I don't mean random attention like, oh, I'm codependent, I need people to pay attention to me. I mean, if you're really into this field.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  If that person asks you to be next to them and work next to them, free, paid, tons of money, no money, the answer is yes. If you can swing it. And I don't want people to think that I came from like some background where I was like, my daddy was funding my life. Like, I told you, I had no money, no money. My dad worked for the railroad. We didn't like, it was just a normal life. Like, we, you know, I had holes in my socks, but I had socks. It was right, it was perfect for what I needed because it was painful enough that I wanted more, but I wasn't, it wasn't so painful that like, my self-esteem was just obliterated and I never thought I deserved success.

• 28:03Anthony Pompliano?

  What'd you do at Def Jam?

• 28:05Speaker 02

  I worked for the assistant to the director of A and R operations for Island and for Def Jam. So I was like, I, I mean, I was, it was a great position to be in because every artist that came through those doors at that time and put out music, I was a part of.

• 28:23Anthony Pompliano?

  What'd you learn?

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Nothing. I learned I don't wanna work in the music business.

• 28:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Actually, pretty important lesson.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I learned that it's not as, it's not glamorous, it's terrible, it's a.

• 28:33Anthony Pompliano?

  But why do you think, like, did you learn anything from the artists as to who ended up becoming successful and who didn't?

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Um, no, because it's becoming successful in music is very much like becoming successful on the internet. If you're willing to throw caution to the wind and just saturate the scene with content, you might make it. If you don't, you definitely won't make it. If you do, you still not might might not make it, but you have zero percent chance of making it if you're not willing to just go above and beyond for people. Like Rihanna was signed at that time. And here's something I learned, which is useless, but people are stars before they're stars.

• 29:13Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you mean?

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Like Rihanna walked out of the Def Jam building. I had no idea who she was, didn't even, upon the replay was not even out yet. And she walked through the lobby, out the doors, and everybody turned and looked at her. And it was like, she was already a star before she was a star. I don't know how else to describe it.

• 29:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it like a self-confidence thing? Is it like a attractiveness thing? Is it like a way that they carry themselves? Like what?

• 29:42Speaker 02

  All of that, all of that. It's just somebody who believes in themselves for no reason, because they know who they are before anybody else knows who they are. So if you know who you are before anybody else knows who you are, you can get other people to like, I heard that, I heard the term gravitas around that time, gravity, like you just, there's something about you that makes people wanna.

• 30:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Just pull people.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Pay attention to you. And whatever you do, whether you play sports, write, uh, make music, write books, speak, make memes, whatever, if you have already decided that people should be into what you're doing, then they might, still might not, you might come off as delusional, like, you know, I don't know if you watched the Kanye West documentary, but.

• 30:20Anthony Pompliano?

  I thought it was fantastic.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  It was awesome, yeah. Watching him go through the offices and put his CD in the, in the player.

• 30:27Anthony Pompliano?

  That was my favorite part.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  And have people not care, but he already knew who he was at that time.

• 30:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  So he didn't care who believed him.

• 30:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  It was like, you're wrong.

• 30:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, just the act of having someone follow you around to do the documentary 25 years ago or whatever, before, he, he literally was just a producer. He wasn't even a musician, right? Like, or like an artist.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And then to have the confidence that one day this is going to be worth.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Having is absolutely insane thought.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:56Anthony Pompliano?

  When you're 20 something years old.

• 30:59Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by Unstoppable Domains. They've partnered with blockchain.com to create NFT domain names ending in .blockchain. It's the perfect ending to show that you're a believer in a decentralized future. The blockchain.com community can join a short waitlist to get one for free at blockchain.com/ waitlist/ blockchaindomain. Free NFT domains provide all the benefits of premium unstoppable domains, including fee-free lifelong ownership. If you don't have a blockchain.com wallet, no worries. There's new free domains available to everyone. Either join the waitlist for a free blockchain.com domain or visit unstoppabledomains.com to buy your domain today, starting as low as $5. UnstoppableDomains.com.

• 31:42Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by Valor, which represents what's next in the digital economy. They provide simplified trusted access in crypto, decentralized finance and Web3 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, all through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. They currently are listed in the US under the DEFTF stock ticker and on the Canadian NEO exchange under DEFI. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit their website at valour.com. That's V A L O U R dot com.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  Well, there's that, there's this like fine line between woo-woo nonsense manifestation, which I, I'm not saying I don't believe in, I just feel like there's a second side to it, and deciding the result before you even take the first step. And if you think you deserve good in life, I'm not saying you'll get it, but when something good presents itself to you, you won't write it off and go, ah, that's, that's a fluke. Or if something bad presents itself to you, you don't go, that's what I deserve, I'm going to take that. If you think you deserve good things in life, you will get them, not because you're special, just because life presents you with, I think, an equal amount of negative opportunities and positive opportunities.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  And whatever you decide you deserve is what you're going to latch on to and focus on and obsess on.

• 33:11Anthony Pompliano?

  One of my biggest things I tell young people is that luck's not real.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And they get all like, what do you mean? I'm a lucky person, I'm not like, whatever. And it's this idea that like probability is a mathematical concept, right? Like you walk out in the street, is the car there, is it not? Like, that's just probability.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:25Anthony Pompliano?

  But luck is, if you and I both get hit by the car, you're like, damn, I was really unlucky. I got hit by a car today.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I may go home and say, hey, I'm really lucky today, I didn't die.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? It's a psychological component to it. And so similar to what you're talking about is like, if you're prepared mentally for certain opportunities, you even view the same exact opportunity differently.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And will take, you'll lean into one and you'll avoid another's just because whatever mental state you're in.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the real sad part is that if you're in that negative mental state and you, so there's a story. I don't know if it's true, they say it's true, but why am I talking like Trump right now? I don't know, I don't know if it's true, they say it's true. I don't know.

• 34:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Hit us with the, uh.

• 34:07Anthony Pompliano?

  By the way, there's a whole new, uh, I don't know if you know the new occupation, uh, New York City. If you obviously go to Trump Tower, there's the frigging guy, he's out there, he's got the mask on and he's doing the impressions.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, hey, say what you want, Trump created at least one job for sure.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure, yeah.

• 34:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, that guy was not here, you know?

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Created an industry, who knows how many people have that job? Yeah.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  So there's a story from this movie called What the Bleak Do We Know? Which is like super duper new age, whatever. But even like, that was the first time I heard them talk about the particle experiment where the particle slid, right? There's another story in that movie where the Native American people are on the shore and they see ripples in the water. Like they're not, they're like, they see something, but they can't figure out what it is.

• 34:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  And then they finally, you know, it's not until the people get off the boats and tell them what they are, that they are able to see them. So if you are so unfamiliar with good things in your life that you literally, it's not that you're not capitalizing, you're not even seeing it, you're not even, it's like in another dimension for you. Then that's when you have to change and say, all right, no, no, no, I like, I'm a human being. I'm not the worst person that's ever lived. I deserve happiness, why, why not? That's my. Answer to why, like, why, why wouldn't you deserve happiness? Like, what makes you so bad and so uniquely horrible that you deserve to be punished here on earth for the rest of your life? And the answer is nothing. So, I, and this is all stuff that I've come from point A to point B on.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  I don't want to make it seem like I was just born with this great attitude, like, my attitude sucked for a long time. And I, I talked to great people who were persistent with me and loving and caring and encouraging. And finally, I was like, alright, yeah. I can actually remember when I was in California, totally broke, stressing out. And this guy Scott, we were in the locker room and he goes, you know, some people are just never gonna have money, man. And I looked at him, I go, yeah, well, that's not gonna be me. And it was the first time I had ever thought that, felt that, known that, whatever. And this guy was tying a shoe and he looked up at me like, holy shit, is that Rihanna? You know?

• 36:20Speaker 02

  No, it was like, I finally was, I finally convinced myself that I deserved all the good things that life has to offer. Why not? I couldn't keep a girlfriend before that, I couldn't get ahead financially, my health was like, not great, my mentality was terrible. And then in that instant, I was like, nah, that's over, that's done. I like, killed a part of myself in that moment.

• 36:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do you think you did it?

• 36:41Speaker 02

  It's too painful to exist otherwise.

• 36:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  If somebody, if you have a tumor in your body, you gotta cut it out, or it's gonna kill you. That was my, that person that I was, was like a spiritual tumor. I couldn't move past, um, couldn't move on in my life until that person was put away.

• 36:59Anthony Pompliano?

  How much of that mindset leads you to send the email to Fat Jewish?

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Or it's just like, nah, I just wanna fuck around on the internet?

• 37:05Speaker 02

  No, it was like, I'm gonna get this guy to pay attention. And if he doesn't, I'm just gonna find somebody else. He happened to be the first person I emailed, the first person I responded, the first person that I, uh, interacted with. But if he didn't respond, I would have reached out to someone else. I was, I was un, um, uh, I, I, I couldn't be stopped at that point. In my life. And he responded, he goes, yeah, please do it. He, I'm a bodybuilding Instagram page at that point. I have some following, but like nothing.

• 37:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Does he know that that's your page?

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I showed him. I said, hey, this is my Instagram page. My Instagram page at that point was still at George Resch, which is like, that would never would have grown. So he just thinks I'm a regular dad dude with meathead from Long Island.

• 37:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  So he likes that.

• 37:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Which is true.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  A hundred percent true. So I think had he known that I was trying to build a meme page at that point, he wouldn't have helped me out, but I wasn't trying to build a meme page at that point. I just wanted to be associated with someone who was doing well or adjacent, successful.

• 38:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Was it like a creative outlet? Like to some degree, like.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:07Anthony Pompliano?

  You wanted to be creative. And so like this gave you a way to kind of like, almost like market test as well. Cause you're like sending the memes. Okay. You post it. You can see which ones are popular, which ones aren't like, you almost like got an apprenticeship to some degree of like learning what works.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  It was, uh, to be honest, now that I'm saying it and the story is coming together, even in my mind, it was like one step closer. Like, so I was the intern for the assistant to the director of A and R operations at Island and Def Jam. Now I'm the direct source of content for this massively successful Instagram page. So even though it wasn't the end game, it was still, it was getting closer to doing it. So I'm sending him stuff, then out of all the stuff that he's posting, I'm like, this is funny. I wanna, I wanna post this. And this is what I always tell people who are starting out. You, you have to be ready for pain. You don't have to, it's not, you don't have to wallow in it, but you know, I did the Ed Mylett show and he was like, tell me what it's like going from zero to three million.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  And I was like, well, I used to think everyone starts from zero. That's not true. Everyone starts from, cause even if you have a hundred and eighty seven followers on your page, that's still a hundred and eighty seven more than you have if you start a new page. And for a normal person, that's a lot of people. So it goes from a hundred and eighty seven down to one seventy two when you post your first meme. So you actually feel like you're moving backwards. Cause people will be like, what are you gonna fuck? Start a meme page now, you're trying to be an influencer, bro, like, it's annoying. So your aunt unfollows you, your friend's wife unfollows you, your cousin unfollows you because they don't wanna be a part of whatever you're trying to do. Which sucks, you know, when you say it out loud, but it just is what it is.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  So I'm posting memes on my page and then, then all of a sudden, I changed my Instagram handle to Tank Sinatra. Then he starts tagging me on Instagram.

• 39:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, he just randomly started doing it.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Like, three months after I started sending him stuff. I guess he was like, this guy's, this guy's helping me out big time. Or throw him a bone. So then I grow to three hundred thousand followers before I even have a chance to realize what's going on. It was just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, growing, growing, growing.

• 40:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, which.

• 40:10Anthony Pompliano?

  And were you posting memes at this time, or you're still like?

• 40:12Speaker 02

  No, I was posting memes.

• 40:13Anthony Pompliano?

  You're, or you're naked when bodybuilding?

• 40:15Speaker 02

  Um, no, I'm posting memes, but at about thirty thousand followers, I said to my wife, I'm like, this page feels like it's not my own anymore. I don't like it. I wanna like, take it back a little bit. So I posted a picture of my face and I go from thirty one thousand, five hundred followers down to like twenty nine thousand. And I was like, oh, man, that hurts.

• 40:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Fuck.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  But fuck them, they're gone, they were gonna leave anyway. At some point, I'm not trying to build like a, a, a fake connection with people. I want people to know there's a real person behind this page. I'm the funny guy. I'm the one who's making these memes. Because at that point, there was not really, there was this guy, Treff Soul Electric, who passed away, who was making his own memes. He was like, really the only person who was consistently making their own memes at that point.

• 40:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Everyone else was just reposting.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, because at that point, at that time, um, it was equivalent to a DJ in a bar playing a song by, you know, Kid Rock. There was nothing wrong with it at all, because nobody was really doing anything with it. Once money got involved, people were like, hey, you know.

• 41:16Anthony Pompliano?

  That's my meme.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  That's my meme. Well, make another meme. I don't know what to tell you, you know? So that's why I think consistency beats everything, always a hundred percent. You cannot outperform consistency.

• 41:29Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I believe that to my core.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:31Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like on the internet, uh, I always tell people when they ask me if they should start a podcast or this or that or whatever, I'm like, don't even start.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, you're gonna quit.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Not if you're not, if you're gonna quit, do not, don't even bother doing it.

• 41:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, you're just wasting your time. Yeah. And instead, if you're gonna actually commit to doing it, like, just pick it, hey, I'm gonna post once a day, I'm gonna post three times a day, I'm gonna post once a week, whatever your fucking thing is, whatever the frequency is, whatever.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Do not stop. We have somebody that we work with and they do a lot of like recording stuff.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:59Anthony Pompliano?

  And we were talking and she asked me, she goes, what advice you got for me? I said, don't stop recording. Like everything else we could figure out, like just don't stop recording.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:08Anthony Pompliano?

  The second you stop recording, it's over.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And it's the same thing here. It's like the consistency.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. You, you get people dependent on your content. They, they did you the, the honor of following your page. They saw something you posted. They said, that's so good. I don't want to miss anything else this person posts. It's a big deal, especially now where there's who knows how many choices of people to follow. So not only am I amazed that people still follow me today, new people that have never heard of me, which I think is fantastic. I love meeting people who have never heard of Thanks Sinatra, Thanks Good News, influencers in the wild. It's like, okay, I'm not done yet. I haven't hit the end and I, and I'm being half facetious. Like I'm not even close to the end.

• 42:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Not even close.

• 42:51Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you go from 30,000 to 300,000? He's just tagging you?

• 42:55Speaker 02

  He's, I'm posting memes. So not only is he tagging me, when they get to the page, they see there's something to follow here.

• 43:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  So that's, that's the other thing. People think if you get tagged on a page, instantaneous followers. There's not, it's not a percentage. People like, it's never a percentage. It's never like, if I can get point oh five percent of people who follow me to buy this thing, I'll be rich. No, nobody's going to buy it. Nobody cares. It doesn't, people, cause each person is an individual. There's no human being in their right mind who's going to see a page that's been tagged, go there, see there's nothing to follow and then follow it. So I gave them something to follow and then he stopped tagging me for, you know, he really stopped posting more than anything. And I was like, I was faced with a decision. I said, all right, that was fun. I can either say, what a ride.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  And go back to selling fence and, you know, even though I hadn't left Sven's, I just mean as like my primary outlet. Or I can keep going and I kept going. And then that's when I really started making all of my own memes. Because I said, if people are gonna, I want them to get something here that they can't find anywhere else.

• 44:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Unique content.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  This meme has never been posted on Reddit, you've never seen it on Twitter, you've never seen it on Facebook. I made it, I posted it, this is fresh baked bread, right out of the oven. You can go get bread somewhere else, for sure, but you can't get this bread, you know? So that's when it really started to grow, and I started to curry favor with uh, other meme pages, uh, celebrities, Instagram, uh, you know, personas or whatever, um, because-

• 44:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Who's the first person that follows you that you're like, holy shit?

• 44:32Speaker 02

  I don't remember who the first one, there was, there used to be a website called Social Rank, where you could put in your Instagram handle and it would like feed you back all the people that follow you ranked in the size of their following. And, I don't remember, because there was so many of them at that point. The coolest one for me, for no reason, no disrespect to anybody, was Jon Favreau. Because even though at the time he had like seventy thousand followers, he had still done swingers and directed Iron Man and, you know, was a killer in Hollywood, and he only followed seventy people, and he still follows me to this day. I don't even think he knows that. But that to me was like, okay, we're past celebrities now, we're past athletes and musicians and Instagram influencers.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  This guy's like, this guy's like the guy behind the guy behind the guy.

• 45:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Who's still the guy in front. You still know who he is, but he's like infiltrated Hollywood in a way that I don't, like, I hadn't seen before. Even people like Martin Scorsese, he's not a movie star. He's a director. Jon Trev- Jon Favreau is everything. And I had just watched Chef, also at that point.

• 45:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Great movie.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  Oh man, what a, I mean, I don't want to say it's underrated, I don't know how it's rated, but it's phenomenal.

• 45:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  As a restaurant person, a person who worked in restaurants, that movie was just like ASMR for food people. The whole thing.

• 45:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, so you're going, you're at three hundred thousand followers, you keep posting.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 45:56Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you get to three million?

• 45:59Speaker 02

  You just don't stop. At that point, I was making and posting-

• 46:05Speaker 02

  Between 10 and 15 memes a day.

• 46:08Anthony Pompliano?

  You were making 10 or 15 memes per day, like original memes.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Psychotic, yeah, just out of my mind.

• 46:14Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you think of the ideas?

• 46:16Speaker 02

  At that point, I was-

• 46:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, you're not a funny person at all. Like, I've had zero fun with you today.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  I know. Wet blanket.

• 46:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  That was almost my Instagram.

• 46:26Anthony Pompliano?

  So how do you think of the ideas?

• 46:27Speaker 02

  So, at that point, I was very much dependent on finding images and seeing something in the image that reminded me of my life that I could then make funny.

• 46:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. So you're trying to make it relatable to the audience.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  You're trying to just extract some kind of emotion from the image. So, I haven't told this story in a long time. When I was five, I was like,

• 46:49Speaker 02

  "Get this guy checked out," you know, like, "Let's figure out what's going on with him."

• 46:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  "Something's wrong." And they gave me an IQ test. I was five or six. I was definitely in this one school, because I switched schools in second grade. They gave me an IQ test, and they tested IQ and then EQ. And the emotional intelligence part, I still remember to this day, dude. It's so strange. The doctor showed me an image of a woman sitting on a sofa, old woman, and an old man standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder. He's like, "What do you see in this picture?" My son is five now. If I showed him that picture, he'd go, "I see grandma and grandpa, and a couch, and a clock." I was like, "It looks like maybe their kid just moved out of the house, and they're sad, and they're trying to deal with it."

• 47:36Speaker 02

  And he was like, "What?"

• 47:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep. Hey, parents, you were right. Psychopath.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  No, it wound up being good. He's like, "This guy's emotional intelligence is unbelievable. It's off the charts." So, that's the only reason I can explain why I was able to, and I'm still able to, look at something and see something that maybe other people don't see. And that's a skill. It's a- What is the, the word that I'm looking for? It's a proclivity, but it's also a skill. So you can have a knack for it, but also work on it. So at that point, I was just looking at images and going, that's what's happening in that image. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, all day, every day. But I had to look at so many images for that to happen.

• 48:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Where, and like, what is the process? You're like finding images and then you're just posting them sometimes? You're like actually putting words on top of them? Like, how did you start to understand what the type of image or the type of meme that would work?

• 48:30Speaker 02

  So actually what happened was I was posting memes that I had found, but then I was writing the caption underneath that you see on Instagram. And I kept seeing people say, look at this caption, it's so funny. And I was like, I gotta, I gotta like get out of my own way. I'm writing captions that people like. The meme is funny, sure, but if the caption's funny too, why don't I just take my caption, put it over that image and then have to write another caption? So I doubled my, you know.

• 48:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Work?

• 48:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. But um, I was encouraged by people's reaction to it. It's no different, and this is like the difference between comedians and, you know, what I do, which is.

• 49:09Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you call what you do? Mememaker?

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Mememaker, I don't know, idiot.

• 49:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Like when you meet somebody at like a bar or something.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Don't even get into it. I can't even tell them. I don't know.

• 49:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 49:17Speaker 02

  No idea, yeah.

• 49:18Anthony Pompliano?

  If you go to a wedding and it's like family or something, they're like, hey, you still making the memes? You fucking weirdo.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  Oh, if they already know what I do, great. But like my friend Adam, who I do the meme daddies podcast with, we talked about this multiple times. It's like someone will say, what do you do for a living? And I'll ask them, do you know what Instagram is? And if they're like, yeah, but I don't have an account. I'm like, I just fuck, I don't even know where to begin with you. Because you're gonna ask me so many annoying questions that I have no patience to answer. So this guy who is such a nice guy dude, I actually apologized to him because I felt bad about how I reacted. I love Larry David because I'm Larry, like, I don't relate to Larry David. I am, like, I'll say the things that like you're not supposed to say. And um, and I'm not as funny as him, but I just relate to him in that sense where like I can't hold my tongue.

• 50:07Speaker 02

  So I'm at um, this, I'm in this guy's garage, smoking cigars. And this guy is like, so what do you, what do you do for work? Cause he worked at the fence company that I used to work at. So I was like, I felt connected to him. He's like, so what do you do? I'm like, you know what Instagram is? He's like, yeah, but I don't really like use it. I'm like, well, I post memes on Instagram that I have thanks good news and influencers in the wild. And people will like call me to or email to, that may have been the problem that I say call. I said, people contact me to advertise their movie, TV show, app, product, service, whatever, on the pages and that's how I make money. And this kid's mind just could not process.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  So like he, like we, like we stopped talking about it and then five minutes later he'd be like, so wait, does like Instagram call you?

• 51:02Speaker 02

  And I was, and I finally said, I'm like, dude, you know what? Like, let's just forget it. I don't wanna, I'm not trying to be a dick, but like, I don't wanna talk to you about this. Let's talk about anything else because it's like me trying to explain to you Aramaic when you don't even speak English, like you're don't, you're never gonna understand it. And I don't have the patience to teach you everything about the internet in this one conversation.

• 51:25Anthony Pompliano?

  So there's a post button.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  He's like, oh, sorry, sorry. I was like, no, it's not like, I'm not mad. It's just like, you're never gonna get it. Not on my watch anyway, I'm not doing the work for you.

• 51:35Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the difference of like older people versus younger people when they find out? Are the younger kids like, oh, I follow the account, like you're hilarious. They recognize you on the street, things like that? Or they're actually not a difference in age?

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Um, there's a wide range of age of people who know who I am. And I'm like forever, forever aware and cognizant and grateful for the fact that I was a drug addict, alcoholic who looked like they were probably not gonna make it past 25. And now people will go, are you Tank from Tank's Good News? Oh, I love that page, man. You're doing great work. Like the fact that I'm associated with humor and positivity, whereas I was not associated with that at all. I was always associated with humor, but I was not a positive person in any sense of the word is. A blessing, gift, whatever you want to call it, that I can't even say I deserve. I feel like, yes, I've done the stuff and whatever, but it's still, that's like probably

• 52:31Speaker 02

  the best part of my life is the fact that I'm associated with positivity in the world. That's unbelievable to me.

• 52:39Anthony Pompliano?

  I have a suggestion for you.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:41Anthony Pompliano?

  So when people ask you what you do, you should just say, I program people's minds.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 52:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? I mean, that's basically what you're doing.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, do you ever think about that? You're responsible for like, the information that is seeping into

• 52:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:56Anthony Pompliano?

  millions of people's minds.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:57Anthony Pompliano?

  You're a powerful fucking person. You're a powerful fucking person.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  Bang, bang.

• 53:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, you ever think, like, does that, like, responsibility ever hit you?

• 53:09Speaker 02

  You know what? So it's, it's very much like if you gain weight over a period of time and you're like, someone sees you and they're like, holy shit, dude. Good? What's happening? Versus looking at yourself in the mirror every day and you've seen each quarter of a pound go on, you never really notice it. Every once in a while, I'm talking very rarely, I'll be hit with the magnitude of what I do versus what it feels like, and that's always great. Like, the, and there's never, it's never panic. It's never like, oh my God, I gotta like, you know, I gotta make this person happy or that person happy. There was a point in time where when celebrities started following me, I was like, I don't even want this person to follow me. I don't want it to affect how I post and decision making and all that, but then I

• 53:52Speaker 02

  realized that they're coming to me and making the decision. I'm not begging anybody to follow me. If you've, and if I post something you don't like, which happens all the time, that is just not my problem. It's not my problem. I don't know what to tell you. You can try and make it my problem and say I shouldn't post it, but you're wrong. You're absolutely, unequivocally wrong. You do not get to tell somebody how to, like, this house that I've built over the past five years, if you came into my house and said you don't like where the couch is, okay, cool, and you tell me I gotta move it or I gotta break a window out of the wall and move it over here, the fuck out of my house, dude.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  I don't want you here. I didn't even know you were here.

• 54:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Till you started complaining.

• 54:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Has the mob come for you at any point? Like, did you ever post anything and they get like real pissed?

• 54:39Speaker 02

  Um, A, I don't think I'm important enough for a mob. Um, B, no. There have been things, listen, there's, there's the mob. And then there's like the ubiquitous mob that is just piranhas, never stop.

• 54:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  Yes, that is, that happens.

• 54:58Anthony Pompliano?

  The unhappy people who are just on the internet.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's never been like a group of people who are like, we gotta get this guy taken off the internet. But every single day I got people who are mad at me. And they're not mad at me, they're just mad in general and I happen to be in their way. It's like we bumped into each other on the street in New York City. But digitally, like I, you have nothing to do with you. I'm not your, I don't, you don't even know who I am. You can't dislike me. You cannot feel the way that you feel about me. Logically, you have something going on in your life. I get it. I feel bad. Hope you figure it out. But again, not my problem.

• 55:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I have followers on Twitter.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Who despise me.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  Hate followers.

• 55:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Despise me.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And I'll see them tweeting stuff and I'm like, I literally don't have it in me to like somebody to that severity or dislike somebody. Even if I spent every single second of every single day of every single fucking year with them.

• 55:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And it's like, by the way, also on the other side, like there's some people who like, like, I'm like, it's weird. Like, you don't have to be so, uh, you know, like attached.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, we're good.

• 56:03Anthony Pompliano?

  But it's the weirdest thing. You're like, man, how did you get such a strong opinion about someone? That you've never talked to, that you've never hung out with, that you, like, you don't know anything other than, I don't know, I fucking tweet a couple of times a day.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, they probably have a strong opinion about something that they think you represent and you're just getting that hate.

• 56:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  It's not you. You gotta, that's the other thing that people, I think, have to realize if you want to make this a profession, you cannot take.

• 56:32Speaker 02

  Anything personally, like Ryan Holiday, love Ryan Holiday. You know, don't take adulation or criticism. Nothing matters. It doesn't, unless you are so dependent on other people's opinion of you, which I get. Sorry about that. This water is very toxic. No kidding. Unless you're so dependent on people's opinion of you that you need it to thrive, which I come from that background where it's like, I need a compliment today or I'm gonna freak out.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  It doesn't matter. It doesn't, it shouldn't affect who you are, how you feel about yourself. If you know you're doing the right thing. If you're not, then that's a totally different story.

• 57:10Anthony Pompliano?

  How big is the business? Well, you got, you got three Instagram pages.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:15Anthony Pompliano?

  How many employees slash people help you? How much money do you make? Like, how do you think about when somebody's like, okay, you, you run a business, you're an entrepreneur, whether it looks like a normal business or not.

• 57:26Speaker 02

  So Instagram like calls you?

• 57:30Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm just, when you were saying that, I was on a call recently. And me and another person, and there's a 25 year old girl.

• 57:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Who's on the, on the call. And so she discovered that through somebody she knew. I had a lot of followers on Twitter. We got YouTube, all that stuff. And she like hits me with the, you know, like, holy shit, I got an idea.

• 57:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:50Anthony Pompliano?

  You should put the content on TikTok.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:53Anthony Pompliano?

  And I was like, that's a great idea.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:55Anthony Pompliano?

  By the way, I don't run the TikTok account. We have somebody here who, who posted, cause I will get addicted to it and I gotta stay the fuck off that thing.

• 58:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:02Anthony Pompliano?

  But we're viral.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Millions of views a week, all this shit and everything. And I felt immense pride telling the 25 year old, like, we're already there.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:11Anthony Pompliano?

  We already got the fucking views. Like, like we're good.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:15Anthony Pompliano?

  But you just repeated it over and over and over again on Instagram. I know you got the TikTok and all that, but like,

• 58:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:20Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you think about the business behind this?

• 58:26Speaker 02

  So it, like you said before, sometimes it's an accidental spark, sometimes it's by design, sometimes it's both.

• 58:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  So this was more of like, I had already had the three blogs, the website, I was not gonna squander this opportunity.

• 58:41Anthony Pompliano?

  You were practicing.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Like in hindsight.

• 58:44Speaker 02

  I was gearing up.

• 58:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, in hindsight, I think a lot about apprenticeship, right? Which is kinda like the stuff with Fat Jewish.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:49Anthony Pompliano?

  But also, uh, practice, even though you probably thought that first blog, like, I'm gonna fucking make it, right? And the second one, I'm gonna make-

• 58:56Speaker 02

  I'm gonna be Seth Godin, instantly.

• 58:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. But like, really what you're doing is you were practicing, and then this is the one that takes off.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I was trying for, for a while, and you gotta, like, so, as far as the Instagram stuff goes, Tank Sinatra, Tank's Good News, Influencers in the Wild, all I did, I met this guy, I don't remember the name of his company, it's a big snowboarding company, it wasn't Burton, but it was like, a big one. And I, I met him, I was working at this restaurant, Nick's, in San Clemente, California, and he was loaded, and he was cool, and we like, hit it off. And I was like, bro, how did you figure out and, like, execute on this idea? He goes, I just saw a hole in the market and I filled it, and sometimes you fill it, and it's a lot, sometimes you fill it and the hole's bigger than you realize. And Tank Sinatra, total accident, total fluke, imposter syndrome, house of cards, whole nine

• 59:47Speaker 02

  yards, but enjoying it, loving it, still, I still loved it. Then I started Tank's Good News, because I, I, I realized, like, everybody realized, it sounds, it sounds cliche now and stupid, but like, enough with the bad news, dude, like, we, we get it. We've, it's been going on forever.

• 1:00:02Anthony Pompliano?

  So, uh, Tank Sinatra's got three million followers, how much is on, uh, Good News?

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  Almost three, 2.9.

• 1:00:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, and then, uh, Influencers in the Wild?

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  Almost five, five million.

• 1:00:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's the biggest one.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, and that's the newest one.

• 1:00:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Jeez. How much also, uh, were those accounts dependent on the earlier accounts? And, and I've talked about this a lot, where like, I was on Twitter first.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Then I did email.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  Uh-huh.

• 1:00:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Then I did the podcast, then I did YouTube. A lot of kids are like, I'm on the internet, I got 17 accounts on all these different platforms they haven't even fucking heard of before, they're like, I gotta be there.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Like dude, none of your accounts look good. None of them are working.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, just focus. It sounds like that's kind of what you do. It's like you focused on one, it grew, then you started a second one, that one grew, and then you launched a third one?

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  So I started Tank's Good News during Hurricane Harvey, like the, maybe like the fourth or fifth day of it, because so many, it was so tragic, obviously what was happening, but there was so much good coming out of it. So.

• 1:00:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And it was just on a whim?

• 1:00:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like, I had posted some, I posted something on Tank Sinatra once where a girl was walked down the aisle by a guy who took her father's heart. Her father was a heart donor, her father passed away. This guy walked her down the aisle. So it's like, oh, okay. Can I get a minute? Don't cry. So I posted that on Tank Sinatra just because I was like, you know what? I don't want to, I can't not post this. It's too good. Yes, it's not funny, obviously, but like, it's fucking good. And it was one of my most popular posts on Tank Sinatra.

• 1:01:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  Tons of likes, tons of engagement, tons of comments, and tons of celebrity engagement on it. You could see at that point which celebrities liked it and which didn't. So I was like, that's interesting, but I didn't think too much of it. And then when Hurricane Harvey started, I took that experience with what I wanted to do and I was, it gave me the courage to just make the page, start the page, post about it from Tank Sinatra, say, hey, I just, I picked out like, whatever it was, 12 or 15 posts so that when you got to the page, there was a full, you know, screen of, of content. And I was like, I started this page, go check it out if, if you, if you want some good news in your life, or if you're tired of, you know, being told what, what went wrong during the day. And that page grew to 100,000 followers in the first week, and I thought that was amazing. And it is amazing.

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  But then influencers in the wild, I posted about from Tank Sinatra, and I posted about Tank's Good News from Tank Sinatra like three or four times over the course of a week. And I was like, wow, this is gonna work. I don't know how or to what extent, but it's gonna work somehow. So that influencers in the wild, I posted about it twice on Tank Sinatra, once, one week and then again, the following week, and that grew to a million in three weeks.

• 1:02:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Jesus.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  And that was like. Imposter Syndrome disappeared. The House of Cards was now like a legitimate structure. And I was like, maybe I do know something about the internet and I should stop being so hard on myself and waiting for this bottom to drop out because I don't think it's gonna drop out. I'm, I was still waiting for Mark Zuckerberg to go, you know what?

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  I've made a mistake. And I'm shutting it all down. Instagram, Facebook, I'm shutting it all down. That's not gonna happen. Like, I saw what happened with Vine. And I, I feel terrible for people whose whole livelihood was made on Vine. Same thing with TikTok. They're constantly talking about banning it, taking it away. How could you put any effort into that platform? Any real effort? Repurposing content is another thing. But if all of your eggs are in that one basket, you better start cracking some eggs and eating because it's gonna be a long winter if that whole thing gets shut down. Instagram, I trust.

• 1:03:37Anthony Pompliano?

  You're bigger on Instagram or TikTok?

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, way bigger, yeah. Not even close.

• 1:03:41Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, uh, employees? Do you have any?

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  No employees, but I have a guy who helps with the video editing. So Jared, um, is phenomenal. He, he, I have a Snapchat tile for influencers in the wild. So he edits the video for that. He also edits the meme daddies podcast. And we just basically look at memes and talk shit and be dads on the podcast. It's really, it's like, it's exactly what it sounds like. That's really easy to explain. Um, but-

• 1:04:09Anthony Pompliano?

  It's easy to explain to people on the internet?

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, true.

• 1:04:12Anthony Pompliano?

  The guy in the garage is like, a podcast?

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  Meme daddies?

• 1:04:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like a fucking radio station?

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  Gay? What are you, you gay stuff? Daddies? Why are you calling it daddies? Yeah, they're not, they're not-

• 1:04:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you know who Danny Boy Hustle Hard is?

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:04:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh.

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  Who was it? Danny Boy Hustle Hard?

• 1:04:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Danny Boy Hustle Hard. I'm about to change your life. So Danny Boy Hustle Hard, uh, he was driving, uh, at the airport. He's like, you know, you fucking walk out of the airport at like LaGuardia or whatever. Uh, I think he was at Newark and, uh, yeah, he got a car or whatever. And, uh, I think he was actually, Daddy, don't, uh, hate me if I get this wrong, but I think he was actually driving the van for a fucking hotel.

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:04:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, you know, the shuttle back and forth, right?

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:54Anthony Pompliano?

  So eventually he meets the people, whatever. Big break comes, uh, he starts getting into like the professional athletes.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, there's a couple of guys who like really like him. And so he, uh, starts renting like an Escalade every day and like going picking guys up. And he's like, got like a little business going. He now has become the guy in the tri-state area for all the professional athletes, musicians, like all these guys, uh, OBJ, Saquon, like the whole thing, right? And so, uh, the only way I know how to describe to him it how, uh, uh, we, um, we, we got to know him. We were going to dinner one night, uh, Saquon's gonna be there, but he's like, yo, let me send, uh, Danny, he'll, he'll pick you up.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, whatever. I get a warning text. I should have known. Uh, one of the guys, uh, text me, he's like, yo, just like, just put your seatbelt on.

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:42Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. We did not stop at a single red light throughout all of Manhattan.

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:05:47Anthony Pompliano?

  He could get you anywhere in the tri-state area in 15 minutes. Uh, it's hard to explain. I have seen this man, traffic doesn't exist in his mind. He will find a way.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:06:00Anthony Pompliano?

  The shoulder.

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 1:06:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Opposite direction, whatever. So the reason why I bring him up is.

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  Opposite direction.

• 1:06:07Anthony Pompliano?

  It's like fucking. It's a two, two lane road. Who cares if one of the lanes is coming this way?

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  They'll get out of the way.

• 1:06:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  That's a New York maniac.

• 1:06:18Anthony Pompliano?

  So you're, you're already kind of like, you, you, this is what I'm talking about, right?

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  I want his number. Yeah.

• 1:06:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Anthony Pompliano?

  So. One time I called him. We had like a, a live show where, and I called him. I say, hey, let, let's talk about some fucking economy stuff.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, what's up with inflation? Oh, let me tell you the price of gasoline. And he's going on and on and on, right?

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:38Anthony Pompliano?

  It's the best fucking economic analysis I've ever heard, right? Because it was the actual truth from the ground of no, uh, spin, no massaging of data, like take out all the academic bullshit.

• 1:06:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:50Anthony Pompliano?

  And it was just like, yo, the, the prices are going up and people can't live like this.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And I think of like the guy in the garage. I think of like all these people who you and I probably know. And they tend to usually be like New Yorkers or. Or that type of mentality where it's just like no bullshit. Here's the view of the world and like to some degree what the accounts you have. You're doing it with like from a humorous spin.

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Like you're just a mirror. You're reflecting back to the world. What they already think, what they already feel, what they already do.

• 1:07:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:17Anthony Pompliano?

  And people are like, oh shit, like I like that.

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. If there was no like, um. This is gonna sound insane because it is obviously if there was no society or like collective angst. There, there would be no memes, period. Two things. One Colin Quinn, one of my favorite comedians said, if you want to, he didn't say it to me. He just said it's like in general, making it sound like we had a lunch. He goes, if you want to be funny, don't talk about what you think is funny. Talk about what pisses you off and people will laugh. That's number one. Two, I don't know if you know this, but I did a live stream with Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri on Instagram. You know that or no?

• 1:07:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I did not know that.

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, my life is insane, dude.

• 1:08:00Anthony Pompliano?

  You well, I worked at Facebook and I'm imagining Zuck and you talking and I now need to go watch the recording.

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was awesome. So they, they were, Mosseri and Zuck were doing some kind of live to explain how they're gonna implement new tools for creators to make money, blah, blah, blah. So Zuck DM'd me or Mosseri DM'd me. I don't remember who. No, it must've been Mosseri at that point. He goes, hey, I'm going live with Mark tomorrow. Like check in if you can make it. So I was like, uh, yeah. So as soon as I get in there, I start like making jokes in the chat, right?

• 1:08:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Like not dick jokes, like funny, funny, but PG.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, of course. Just, just typing stuff, whatever I can think of. That's, that's funny.

• 1:08:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  So then I write, um, I said like 20 minutes into it. I'm like, Zuck, you gave us meme gold when you rubbed all that sunblock on your face. Thank you for that from us, the memers. And, and Mosseri saw it and he goes, oh no. He goes, Tank is in here. Did you see that? And Mark goes, yeah, I saw it. And then, uh.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  Or something like that.

• 1:09:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  And then Mark was like, oh, yeah. Here's what happened. He was trying to stay away from. He was trying to shield himself from the paparazzi. So he just covered his face.

• 1:09:11Anthony Pompliano?

  No, he did not.

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:09:12Anthony Pompliano?

  That's really what happened?

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  He was trying to make sure the paparazzi couldn't get a picture of him. Instead, they got one of the best pictures that's ever been taken of anybody.

• 1:09:20Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know if it's better the, uh, the sun lotion on his face.

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Or the fucking, uh, foil.

• 1:09:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, both.

• 1:09:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like, like the combination. Internet Hall of Fame.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  The sunblock, the look of shock on his face that like, oh no, you got me. The foil and his dump truck ass made a perfect picture. So he starts talking about it and then they were like, maybe we should, you know, get, get some of these guys in here to talk about this. So either that, or I was like, I, you know, if you guys want something, if you want it from like, from, to hear from us, I'm ready to go, whatever. I had just finished doing cardio, sweating my balls off, no shirt on. I'm in my kitchen looking at this thing and Adam goes, hey, you know, do you want to get Tank in here and talk to him a little bit? And Mark goes, yeah, sure. So I run downstairs, put a sweatshirt on, go into my office, turn the lights down. So you can't see I'm like profusely sweating.

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  And, um, they start asking me questions about memes. And Mark Zuckerberg goes, Tank, what do we need to do to get the memes, you know, keep, keep coming? And I go, as long as the world keeps turning, the memes will keep churning.

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  And they both laughed and I felt so good that I made them laugh. Cause like, you have to think, if you were a normal person, which I am and you are, and everybody is, but like, we've dealt with some high level people before. You, you, you know, I, I don't know, let's just, you know. We will, we will, we'll do it. So I felt good that I handled that situation with, you know, creativity and all that.

• 1:10:54Anthony Pompliano?

  That is a fucking awesome line.

• 1:10:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I just made it up on the spot. I wasn't like, I hadn't planned to say that. So I don't remember where I was going with that, but um, oh yeah. All we're doing is telling people what's going on in a humorous way like, there's plenty of people who get their, not their news facts from memes, but the breaking part of something from memes. Like you'll make a meme about something and someone will go, did that happen? Yeah, it happened. Sometimes you're too early. Sometimes you're too early on a trend and you make a joke about something that's not going to hit critical mass for three days and it bombs. And then you're like, shit, I missed it. You missed the, you were too early. It's like paddling too early into a wave. You're not going to make it. You're going to get,

• 1:11:37Speaker 02

  you know, crushed or too late. You gotta be like just right on society.

• 1:11:41Anthony Pompliano?

  But I think, uh, I've said this a whole, a bunch of times. The meme is the message now. Like, you know, the whole like a pitch of a thousand words, whatever. And I, I don't know, we can debate like, who's the best meme lord of them all right now, but I would put Elon. He's pretty high up there. I don't think he's making the memes. Right? But like,

• 1:11:57Speaker 02

  He's an idiot.

• 1:11:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Wait, wait. Oh, you think he's an idiot? This episode is brought to you by Messari. Your days of spending hours scouring the internet for quality crypto insights are over. Messari is your one stop shop for all your crypto data and research needs. With Messari Pro, you gain access to exclusive, industry-leading, long-form daily research reports, daily crypto news, advanced asset screeners, and curated sets of charts and protocol metrics. You can try Messari Pro today and listeners of this podcast will get 25% off the Messari Pro membership by visiting www.messari.io/pro and entering promo code POMP. Again, that's messari.io/pro and use promo code POMP. Navigate the market with confidence with Messari Pro.

• 1:12:41Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. The holiday season is here, so give the never-ending gift of deeper sleep. About two years ago, I started to sleep on the Eight Sleep and I sleep on it every single night. It quite literally changed my life. I get deeper and better sleep, but don't just listen to me. Clinical data shows that Eight Sleep users experience up to 34% more deep sleep. It is not a holiday miracle, even though it sounds like one. If better sleep is on your wish list, look no further than the new Pod 3. You can go to eightsleep.com/pomp for exclusive holiday savings and ring in the most wonderful time of the year. Eight Sleep currently ships with the US, Canada, the UK, and select countries in the EU and Australia. Go check them out, eightsleep.com/pomp today.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  I said that on purpose to get you to react.

• 1:13:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, what do you think?

• 1:13:32Speaker 02

  I think Elon Musk has lost eighty to ninety-five percent of his charm over the last twelve months in the world. I think people liked him, A, he's obviously a brilliant genius person, but he's like, so he's also an idiot, though. He's like, you know, if you really dig into who he is, he's done a ton of stuff, but he's also done nothing. Like, the whole PayPal thing, it wasn't like, he didn't really do anything at PayPal, his friend, like, they sold it, whatever, he got rich. Tesla, he like, just kinda Ray crocked it, he kinda like, you know, "I'm gonna take over now and do the Tesla thing." And then made it something it would have never been if they were there because they were too small-minded.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  So he's a big thinker, he's a big actor, a big executor, but I think people loved him, or loved him, because he was making them money for a long time. And now that he's not making them money, it's kinda like, the emperor has no clothes type of situation, like, who is this guy really? Is he really like, as smart as we give him credit for? Is he gonna make Twitter the Alipay-type of all-in-one messaging app that he says? If he does that, I would be very impressed if he's able to take Twitter from a social media platform to an all-encompassing lifestyle brand, which is what I think he wants to do. But I just feel like he's gotta chill out and like, get back to work a little bit.

• 1:14:51Anthony Pompliano?

  So, I agree with, uh, I don't know if it's eighty-five, ninety percent, but like,

• 1:14:56Speaker 02

  That's a made-up number.

• 1:14:56Anthony Pompliano?

  There's people who are, who view him differently, right? Uh, and even people who are positive and now maybe not so much.

• 1:15:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Anthony Pompliano?

  But I think he knows what he's doing. I think that he's intentionally, like, there's a line in the sand and it was like, uh, stay Michael Jordan?

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And like, Republicans and Democrats both buy sneakers, like, "I'm gonna shut the fuck up and like, you know, I got great shoes."

• 1:15:15Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:15:16Anthony Pompliano?

  And he decided to like, step over the line.

• 1:15:19Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:15:19Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think that's why he's been talking about like, uh, you know, civilization depends on what we do, like, all these things that he's saying.

• 1:15:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Forget for a second like why he's doing it.

• 1:15:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:29Anthony Pompliano?

  But I definitely think like he at some point was like, I am going to step over the line. Right. I am now going to enter myself into the culture wars, into the free speech debate, like all these things that like, I think most people are like, I may have opinions like offline.

• 1:15:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:45Anthony Pompliano?

  But if I want to continue to like grow or do things or whatever, like they don't want to talk about it.

• 1:15:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Right. So they're just like, no one needs to hear my opinion. My opinion doesn't matter. Like, you know, let, let the culture war people fight it out.

• 1:15:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:57Anthony Pompliano?

  But because he stepped over the line, now like you're in it, man.

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And you're the richest guy in the world.

• 1:16:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Right. And like the richest guy in the world who also owns Twitter, who also now is in the culture war. We've never seen this before.

• 1:16:09Speaker 02

  No, yeah, it's.

• 1:16:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And so like, I don't know what happens, but like, he's in a new game.

• 1:16:13Speaker 02

  So the reason I, I came out and said, I think he's an idiot is not because I don't think he's a smart person. I think he's buying his own line of shit and he's kind of losing the plot a little bit. He needs, in my opinion, I'm fucking tanks and I'm just telling Elon Musk what to do. Why don't you sit down, buddy?

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  But I've seen it, I've seen it enough times to know that yes, you're absolutely right. It's probably not by accident. He has made a decision. I don't know if that decision is going to pay off for him because he has so many other things attached to it. If it was just Twitter, sure, turn it into a, you know, I don't want to say right wing platform because that's not what it is, but turn it into a platform where people can just say whatever they want. There's no consequences. The market will decide if that's what they want. They'll decide if they want to keep coming to a platform where they get, you know, attacked daily. No matter what your opinion is, because whether you're far right, moderate right, moderate left, centrist. I got yelled at for being a centrist once on the internet. I was like, what, why are you yelling at me? Because I think about it.

• 1:17:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Take a stand, Tank.

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  No. I, I heard somebody say the other day that they were. What did he say? I don't want to mess it up. Fiscally liberal and socially conservative, which is the opposite of what most people say.

• 1:17:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Does that even, I mean, I guess you could be.

• 1:17:35Speaker 02

  It does, yeah.

• 1:17:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, you could do it.

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  Because like, yes, I believe that people, if they get their ass kicked, I think everyone is a socialist until they start making some money and everyone's a capitalist until they need a a hand, whether you're an individual or a corporation. So like, yeah, I don't think that a single mom who's struggling should starve on the street. And I'm fine paying for it. I'm fine paying for roads. I'm fine paying for even administrative people to make the roads happen. Like, I understand that money is an important thing, but I also think that people who demand society change on a dime on their whim are annoying and should shut up. So I'm socially conservative. Like, shut up already. Shut up with your opinion.

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  Your opinion is that. You're making it like it's a necessary change that needs to be made. That's just how you feel, dude. You don't know what feelings are.

• 1:18:29Anthony Pompliano?

  The, the part with Elon specifically, uh, is I actually think he bought Twitter in large part because it was Tesla's marketing department.

• 1:18:42Anthony Pompliano?

  If you think about Tesla, he built the cult of Tesla, right? And, and there's some people who think that that's an amazing thing and like they'll go buy the stock because they're like, oh, the cult of Tesla will carry us to the promised land.

• 1:18:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:53Anthony Pompliano?

  And there's a lot of people who are like, holy shit, the cult will disband at some point and like the emperor has no clothes and like Tesla will fail, whatever. Truth's probably somewhere in between, right? But like, whatever. And if you think about the fact that Tesla doesn't have any marketing budget, they spend no money on marketing. Well, it's like, yeah, because you got the fa- the founder or the CEO, whatever title you want to give him, whatever, a hundred plus million followers on Twitter and he tweets something and it goes mega viral. It's the number one tweet in the world.

• 1:19:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Every single time he tweets.

• 1:19:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:19:21Anthony Pompliano?

  You probably don't need a marketing budget.

• 1:19:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 1:19:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 1:19:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:25Anthony Pompliano?

  And then he says something and then every media out in the world goes and writes articles about it and, and it's like. It's just the marketing department.

• 1:19:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And so now, does that mean it's worth forty four billion dollars? No, right? Does that mean that he doesn't want to do all these other things with it or whatever?

• 1:19:41Speaker 02

  It'd be worth more if that's, if that's really what it is. Cause how much would you spend on marketing for almost, you know, I don't know what the market cap is right now.

• 1:19:48Anthony Pompliano?

  To be the most valuable car company in the world.

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  But it was a trillion dollar company at one point, right?

• 1:19:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Five percent, four percent.

• 1:19:54Speaker 02

  Forty four billion, it's five percent of your marketing. It's a, it's an amazing return. So there's one thing that makes me think this guy is the smartest person that's ever lived. And I don't even know if it's true.

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  There was, he tweeted out on a certain date and a certain time that the stock was splitting. Somebody, have you ever heard this before? Somebody on Reddit took the numbers and did the math. Like, what was it, a four for one split?

• 1:20:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Something like that, yeah.

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  At, at, at whatever number it was. He, like, the time and the date of the tweet was the price. And the stock split was the date that it happened on or something along those lines. Like, he tweeted out on, at this time of this day, that Tesla should be a four. Tesla is too expensive. Tesla stock is too expensive. And the numbers were such that it was exactly the opposite in the number scheme. Does that make sense? So like the time and date with the price and the price was the time of the date. Just flipped. And I was like, that's amazing. Like, he, he told people, essentially telegraphed seven months before it split, that like, it's gonna split.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  We're gonna split it on this day at this split, four for one. So that made me watch him even closer. I watch everything he does. I'm not like immune to his influence.

• 1:21:20Anthony Pompliano?

  I just think the memes, like, he'll post a photo. A meme is a fucking photo.

• 1:21:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:25Anthony Pompliano?

  He'll post it. And there was two recently that I was just like, this guy's playing a game. It's not even chess. It's like a game that other founders, CEOs, all these other guys are like, oh, what do you mean? Why is he doing that? He looks stupid.

• 1:21:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:37Anthony Pompliano?

  One was, uh, it was the grave. You know, the guy who's got like the peace sign or whatever. Uh, and he wrote bots over the tombstone. And he put his face on the dude, you know, down, right? And he's like, you know, dancing on the graves of the bots. And. Stupid, could make it in like two seconds, right? The message that it sent though was like Elon beat the bots.

• 1:21:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Whether it's true or not, right? Like, I don't know, I tweet, there's a lot of fucking bots.

• 1:22:03Anthony Pompliano?

  But like, whether it's true or not, he was like pounding on the narrative, which then reverberates throughout Twitter, the media, they call, and I was like, 4D chess, right?

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Then the other one was, I forget what he wrote on the image, but he had the two bears that are fucking each other in the background. And then he had like a guy with a camera who's like taking a picture in a different direction or whatever. And basically he was like making the point of like, you know, all this other stuff's going on, but like you guys are like focused on the wrong things.

• 1:22:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:31Anthony Pompliano?

  And I was like, this guy, the richest man in the world is literally like, basically dunking on the media, society, like all these different things with a photo.

• 1:22:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:41Anthony Pompliano?

  And he's doing it with such efficacy. Like, I was like, maybe his friends were sending him memes. Maybe. I don't know.

• 1:22:48Speaker 02

  Maybe, or maybe he is, because now that I'm, I'm listening to you talk, um, he's like, maybe I'm jealous a little bit. I swear to God, it did just occur to me right now, like this guy is posting memes. Like the, the thing where I was like, if somebody makes me groan, I'm like, dude, you're, you're over. When he walked in with the sync to Twitter, he's like, let that sink in. That's a bad joke, dude. You should be ashamed of yourself. Why would you do that? You think that's funny?

• 1:23:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, it's funny when it's a nerdy dude who's the richest man in the world thinking he's funny.

• 1:23:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:23:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Like, like we all are, it's like the Zuck photo, right? Like, we're all laughing because we're like, that is so ridiculously bad.

• 1:23:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:29Anthony Pompliano?

  That is his strategy just to say bad jokes. And he's like, these morons think that I'm bad at jokes, but actually they're all laughing.

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  That's really interesting. I don't know.

• 1:23:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, there's no way, there's no way Elon was like, to somebody on his team, hey, go get a sync. And then was like, this is gonna be hilarious. Like, like actually funny. It has to be, this is gonna be so corny.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:52Anthony Pompliano?

  That it's like 3D chess. And the internet, like, like I'm doing it for the internet. I'm not doing it to like, win a comedy, uh, you know, competition.

• 1:24:01Speaker 02

  He's said, he's doing it to be made fun of.

• 1:24:04Anthony Pompliano?

  To a degree.

• 1:24:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't know. He's, again, we'll see how it plays out. He's obviously got. Something that people like, like, I still like it. Um, I just don't like, I feel like some of the luster has left.

• 1:24:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think that's right. And also, uh, there's, um, when it comes to these individuals, I think there's something about like,

• 1:24:27Speaker 02

  He was Iron Man, now he's Rain Man, is what I'm trying to say.

• 1:24:34Anthony Pompliano?

  No, but there's like, uh, less is more a little bit, I think, with some of these folks. So like, uh, Bezos started tweeting, uh, like more political stuff recently. And I asked a friend, yeah, he was like going after Biden about like inflation stuff and whatever. And not like, uh, he's not shitposting, you know, being super inflammatory, but he was like, basically like, hey, that's not how inflation actually works.

• 1:24:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:54Anthony Pompliano?

  You know, more so than you would expect from people who run these large companies.

• 1:24:57Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:24:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think also just like making it known where they stand. And so I asked a friend of mine, I was like, why are they doing this? Like, why are we seeing this now? Right? And like, why are we seeing it all? I always, I always, whenever I see anything on the internet, like, why now? And why this?

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so with Bezos, I was like, this guy isn't like taking a shit tweeting.

• 1:25:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:19Anthony Pompliano?

  There's someone somewhere who's like,

• 1:25:21Speaker 02

  This is a calculated.

• 1:25:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Thumbs up, like, send the tweet, right? At 11:02 PM, you know, whatever, right? And my friend was just like, no, dude, they feel the pendulum swinging. Like, the pendulum swung like super left, then it goes super right, then it goes super left. And like, just natural, he's been doing this for literally hundreds and hundreds of years of like the political kind of back and forth.

• 1:25:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Which actually kind of makes democracy great, right? Is that like no one party has the dominant perspective.

• 1:25:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:47Anthony Pompliano?

  But they were like, these guys aren't idiots. Like, they understand the pendulum is swinging. And as the pendulum swings, like, they don't ever want to go far right or far left. They basically just want to be a little bit right of center when the pendulum's swinging that way. And they want to be a little bit left of center when the pendulum's, and I was like, man, that's actually like, pretty intelligent way to look at, like, if through that lens, like, okay, yeah, I'll buy, that's why they're tweeting some of this stuff.

• 1:26:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Don't you think it's sad, though, that we're starting to get to know these people on a level that we really shouldn't and? Like.

• 1:26:19Anthony Pompliano?

  You don't think so?

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  It it kind of, I'm sitting here thinking about it. It reminds me of like when I went to Disney World when I was nine and I saw the mechanics inside of Jaw's mouth. And I was like, uh, this sucks. Magic is like dead now. And then the magic dies like Robert, um, Robert Greene, forty eight laws of power. Number four, always say less than necessary. Like you gotta maintain, maybe, maybe we're changing and this is part of like the discomfort of growing pains, but like, I don't want to know that much about these people. I don't want to know like what SZA thinks of Joe Biden's inflation policy. It doesn't matter.

• 1:27:04Speaker 02

  I want like, I don't know, I'm going to say something crazy, but R. Kelly, I still like his music. You're not allowed to like his music.

• 1:27:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:12Speaker 02

  I still listen to Trapped in the Closet three times a year, chapters one through twenty five. I make it a point. It's a rock opera, dude. It's unbelievable. I don't think of what he's done when I'm thinking, when I'm listening to the music. So.

• 1:27:25Anthony Pompliano?

  But but also I think that there is, uh, there's other examples like, I mean, different situation, but like

• 1:27:32Speaker 02

  I'm just thinking, yeah.

• 1:27:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Similar, uh, mechanisms where I guess you can cut it one way where it's like you separate actions someone has done from things they have produced.

• 1:27:42Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:27:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? There's a lot of people who have built companies that we all use on a daily basis that if we like, we're like, the founder is this person and like, here's the worst thing they did. We'd be like, I can't believe you support that company or whatever, right? Uh, one, somebody recently told me is like, everyone was up in arms about, uh, Live Golf and the Saudi and the Saudi stuff. Saudi is like one of the biggest shareholders of Starbucks.

• 1:28:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so like, nobody's out picketing Starbucks being like, you know, Saudi backed Starbucks, like that's not a thing, right? So there's, there's a little, I mean, can you imagine?

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  Let me get a Saudi macchiato.

• 1:28:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, can you imagine that conversation, right? Uh, so, so I think you have that cut, but also there's a cut of like, everyone has their like demons or whatever. And I think in the finance world, uh, Michael Milken is probably the best example. The Milken Institute and the Milken conferences and all like, are on a pedestal. This is like the epitome of financial conferences and he's seen as this great philanthropist and all this shit. Like, the dude broke the law, right? Or at least the courts decided he broke the law. He went to jail, like the, like the whole thing. But I don't think people are showing up there being like, I'm supporting, you know, like this bad person.

• 1:28:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, of course not.

• 1:28:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And so I don't know. It's like, it's like a weird thing because there's also the, the society, what they want you to say. And then there's the like, what actually everyone, you know, does.

• 1:29:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Here's what I hope happens as a result of all of this pain and nonsense and bullshit and all that. I hope that at some point, everyone realizes that nobody's perfect, whether it's a, an individual or an entity, and judgment ceases. That would be the, the best result of this. Because I remember when the Me Too thing happened, everyone was like, oh my God, I can't believe it. Like, why can't you believe it? Do you know people? Do you know any people? Have you ever met a person in your life? Why can't you believe that the Me Too thing happened? Um, so they wash out the Hollywood industry, then they're gonna wash out music, then they're gonna wash out construction, then they're gonna wash out finance, and they're gonna wash out fast food. Like, the end result is going to be

• 1:29:42Speaker 02

  that everybody, at some point or another, has done the worst thing they've ever done. And if you want to hold people to those standards, um, nobody's gonna be left. The world's gonna be completely devoid of people, because everyone has something bad that they've done.

• 1:29:58Anthony Pompliano?

  This episode is brought to you by LMAX Digital, the number one institutional crypto exchange. They offer clients the deepest pool of liquidity, and they have 100% uptime track record through all the volatility spikes. LMAX Group's liquidity relationships and ultra-low latency technology means that LMAX Digital is the market-leading solution for institutions across crypto trading and custodial services. LMAX Digital, secure, liquid, and trusted. Go learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp. Again, that's LMAXdigital.com/pomp. This episode is brought to you by Compass Mining, the world's largest marketplace for mining hardware and hosting. With Compass, everyone can mine Bitcoin. You can do it at home or in one of their 23 hosting facilities around the world. All you need to do to start

• 1:30:43Anthony Pompliano?

  mining your own Bitcoin is go to compassmining.io today. Again, if you want to get into Bitcoin mining, go check out compassmining.io today.

• 1:30:54Anthony Pompliano?

  You want to hear a crazy stat?

• 1:30:56Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:30:56Anthony Pompliano?

  So 2017 is Me Too movement, all that going on?

• 1:31:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:02Anthony Pompliano?

  That's R. Kelly, like, heat really started.

• 1:31:04Speaker 02

  Harvey Weinstein.

• 1:31:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but like, but specifically around R. Kelly, this coming from the guys over at Morning Brew. So that's really when they said that he started having decades of accusations that first got widespread attention during the peak of the Me Too movement in 2017. In response to that, over a number of years, Spotify scrubbed his music from its curated and algorithmically generated playlist, they stopped promoting his work in 2018, YouTube shut down two of his official accounts in 2021, but his songs were still available on YouTube Music, and then some artists voluntarily removed songs that were produced in collaboration with him from their various platforms, etc. But in 2017, he averaged 5.4 million weekly streams, and in 2021, he averaged 6.4. So the streams were still going up.

• 1:31:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Even though he was being removed from places, you know, all this type of stuff. Now, there's the Streisand effect of like, controversy drives the popularity, but also after he was found guilty in September of, I guess, 2021, his audio streams jumped 22% compared to the previous week, which is like pure Streisand effect, probably. And album sales spiked 500%.

• 1:32:13Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:32:15Anthony Pompliano?

  So it's again, like, should they, should they not, like, leave the debate to the side for a second, like, that's hard data on an individual that I don't, I haven't met someone who's like, I think that, you know, what he did was good. Right? I think everyone's like, okay, that is inappropriate, it's, uh, shouldn't be allowed in the society, like, all that kind of stuff. But then when you look at like, the actions of folks.

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:34Anthony Pompliano?

  People were listening, they're buying the albums, they're like, doing all this, it's like, a very weird thing, right?

• 1:32:38Speaker 02

  It's annoying, for sure. I've come to learn that the more adamant somebody is that you must judge this person in this way, the more... The shittier that person is typically. Like, I don't tell anybody how to feel about anything. I don't care. If we feel the same, I feel like um human relationships are built on discovery and uh excitement, meaning like same thing with the song, like I find the song songs better. I don't wanna be set up with a friend, that's weird. Like I met like the guy on the plane I met yesterday who happened to be a friend from a long time ago, like that was really exciting to me. I don't wanna be told how to feel about anything, and I don't wanna tell you how to feel about anything because this is something that I think about pretty much every day now at this point.

• 1:33:24Speaker 02

  I stopped arguing with people about politics on the internet a long time ago. The main reason was that I decided unless you're running for office, I do not give a shit how you feel about this topic. It's irrelevant, it's masturbatory, don't wanna talk about it, definitely don't wanna argue about it. But the main reason is that in order for me to tell somebody that they're wrong about something, like you have to stop listening to R. Kelly. How do you know that R. Kelly isn't the one artist that created the one song that reminds this person of their dead mother, and it's the only way they can connect to them? You just don't know, like I'm not gonna be so arrogant to say that I know better than you how you should have interpreted all of your life experiences and all your memories. I'm, I got it better than you.

• 1:34:09Speaker 02

  And I don't wanna be told that I've interpreted my entire life wrong and all the experiences. I was raised by a father who's a Democrat um and Democrat is a lost word at this point, it doesn't even mean anything, but

• 1:34:23Anthony Pompliano?

  They're all crazy, by the way, like every, just anyone in the political spectrum, I'm just like, okay, everyone's insane.

• 1:34:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, you've, like, there's normal people who identify as left, right, independent, whatever, and then there's people who make it their whole identity. I can't, that's, you're a sports fan to me. I don't want to talk about whether or not the Jets or the Giants are better, or left or right is. You're not contributing anything positive to the conversation or your life. Because so rarely will I hear somebody say something that I haven't heard before. It's like, yeah, I could watch Fox and get this opinion. I don't need to listen to you. We should talk about anything else besides what we're talking about. And then, once you transcend that, then you really get to know people. Instead of getting their opinion on something, tell me a story about what happened, and then I'll, I'll assume your opinion on this topic from that story.

• 1:35:13Anthony Pompliano?

  My favorite thing, I've, through all the Bitcoin stuff, I've met a number of different politicians, right? Yeah. And we're like, what do you think about crypto and all that stuff? And I always ask them, I'm like, hey, what's one thing you agree with the other side on?

• 1:35:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:25Anthony Pompliano?

  And like, you would be shocked. Some of them have great answers. Like, some of them are like, oh, actually, you know, I see I did it with this. I put forward a bipartisan bill, like, and, you know, they're politicians. They're polished and they're good to go.

• 1:35:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Other ones, like, steam's coming out of their ears, literally, and you're just like, whoa. That was just like.

• 1:35:42Speaker 02

  Oh, and then to the other side!

• 1:35:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, literally, you're just like, whoa, okay. Like, there was the, like, you know, button that I pushed, that maybe I shouldn't have pushed, like, whatever. So it's just like a weird, very weird thing. One other thing I want to talk about is, you have, you mentioned no employees.

• 1:35:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:59Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a bunch of businesses that now, I don't know if people are becoming more comfortable talking about it. I don't know if it's just possible because of the internet and technology or whatever, but these, like, one-person businesses are becoming way bigger, way more successful, way more common.

• 1:36:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Why not have employees? Like, do you think there's a rise of this? Like, how do you just think of, like, this idea of, like, one person actually being behind a business? And you got, like, a contractor and stuff like that. But like, how do you think about that trend?

• 1:36:23Speaker 02

  So, I think that, as we were saying before the podcast, like, figure it out. You're in America.

• 1:36:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:33Speaker 02

  You got no excuses, except for where you grew up, what you're limiting, like, I don't, not limiting beliefs, like, some weird business guru, but like, literally, what do you think you're capable of? What do you have access to? Aside from that, whatever arena you're in, play your ass off, and you'll figure it out. So, I have tried to hire people to help me post, to help me curate content for Tanks Good News and all that stuff. And I just, I think there's a little bit of magic that goes into posting. There's, there's discovery, there's inspiration, there's energy, and that's transferred to the audience.

• 1:37:07Speaker 02

  You pass that off to somebody else, unless they're gonna treat it the same way they would treat it as if it was their page, you're not gonna get that. You're not gonna get that excitement and that transference of enthusiasm through the page. And I know that's like, really, um, maybe it sounds like an excuse, maybe it sounds like I don't wanna give up control. I've tried it multiple times. My page just doesn't do as well. Tanks Good News is the only one I've ever tried to outsource. It just doesn't do as well when somebody else is running it. The captions aren't right, the stories they pick aren't right, the timing's not right. And I don't mean timing, like, I believe you post between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, you're good. I don't think that like 12:30 is better than 11:30.

• 1:37:49Speaker 02

  I just mean there's something about finding this content that gets me excited and people tune into that.

• 1:37:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:56Speaker 02

  So, I would love to have somebody who did that, but the other side of that is that if, if they're that good at Instagram, they're gonna start their own page.

• 1:38:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Can you grow a page organically now, you think, without having the other accounts to tag you and stuff?

• 1:38:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, for sure. It, it really depends on what you choose to do. Like, I, I don't, I wouldn't start another meme page for no reason. But Influencers in the Wild pinpointed something that was on the tip of everyone's tongue, but they couldn't collect it together in one neat package. Like, my favorite example is the girls who runs comments by celebs. They saw something happening, Instagram changed the algorithm, all of a sudden, people would click in the comments, they'd see a, a comment from this celebrity, that one, all the way down the line, and everyone was enjoying it and appreciating it. Nobody had said, "This is gonna be an account, I'm gonna make this an account."

• 1:38:50Speaker 02

  That was of the most, one of the most perfect executions of an exploitation of an algorithmic change I've ever seen in my life. They turned it into an Instagram page, a podcast, they're doing great. So, you have to just be really in the world to see either A, what's happening, or B, even more difficult, what's happening next, or B dash one, B point one, what's already happening that people haven't realized is happening that you can kind of capitalize on. That's how you have to do it, I think. Or- Full left field comment. You gotta be someone like Elise Myers on TikTok.

• 1:39:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Who's that?

• 1:39:33Speaker 02

  She's like, I fucking love her so much, dude. Elise Myers, Alexandra Madison and her husband John. These are people who are.

• 1:39:44Speaker 02

  The thought of being someone else probably makes them sick. Elise Myers is just so, you probably have seen her videos before. She is one of the most, if not the most authentic person I've ever seen on the internet. She's just fully 100% being herself. And people are eating it up. They love it. She tells a great story. She does a great job with the editing. Um, she's makes great use of stickers and comical placement and all that stuff of the stickers and the timing and her facial expressions. But more than anything, she's just being herself on the internet. If you can do that, that's scary though.

• 1:40:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:40:23Speaker 02

  That's the problem with being yourself on the internet is that if you get rejected by the internet being yourself, you really feel the rejection. Whereas if you like put on some kind of persona and try and get a try like tension, um, traction that way, at least you can go, ah, that really wasn't, that wasn't really me anyway. That's why I think doing what I do is so uncomfortable because I am being myself on the internet. I am saying things that I think are true and that I want not validation for, but I want my, I want what I'm saying and what I'm doing to find the right person. And when somebody comes along and says like, ah, I don't agree with that. It's like, well, you don't agree with me then. Let's, let's figure this out. But you can't do that with thousands of people a day.

• 1:41:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:05Speaker 02

  So either find a loophole and exploit it or throw caution to the wind and be yourself. That's the only way you can grow.

• 1:41:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Who's the first advertiser you worked with?

• 1:41:15Speaker 02

  First advertiser I worked with?

• 1:41:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, on the tank.

• 1:41:20Speaker 02

  Um, I think it was Dad Brands. Which is a hat company. Which, you know, quickly, the pricing became like, this is not gonna work anymore. But the company that allowed me to leave my job at the fence company was Bumble, which is a dating app. They gave me a year-long contract, X amount of money per month, was more month than I was making at the fence company. It was twelve thousand a month.

• 1:41:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Twelve thousand a month, per year, uh, uh, through a year?

• 1:41:46Speaker 02

  Yep, one hundred and forty-four thousand dollars.

• 1:41:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And how much did you have to post? One a week or something?

• 1:41:50Speaker 02

  I think it was one a week, but it was, could either be on, uh, I don't remember if I had started Tanks Good News at that time. I think it was one meme a week, which at that point, I was like, this is fantastic. But then, because I wasn't doing fence anymore. All of my, like, people don't give enough credit for how important mental energy is and how much time you spend thinking about, oh, I gotta go to work tomorrow, I gotta talk to this person, that person. Imagine if not thinking about that at all, you thought about what you really wanted to do, you would take off in two seconds. So, once the, having to think about fence was gone, then I was, that's where Tanks Good News was born from.

• 1:42:30Speaker 02

  Then I didn't make a hundred and forty-four thousand dollars that year, I made five hundred and fifty thousand, or whatever it was.

• 1:42:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And you were just selling like, one-off advertisers, or you were getting them on like, a monthly?

• 1:42:40Speaker 02

  No, Bumble was monthly, and then, like, uh, Vader Media hit me with one that like, changed my life. Because, up till that point, I was, I was charging like, five, ten thousand dollars a post. Maybe five was even like, the max at that point, I'm trying to think. And they paid me thirty thousand for two posts. And I was like, usually when people buy more than one, you give them a break. This was like, times two, times three, I was like, holy shit, what is, where is all this money coming from? People don't even, how do people have this much money to spend? But that's why Dad Brands, unfortunately, I stopped working with, because they're just like, a normal couple, bunch of guys selling merch on the internet, they're not Viacom, or Comedy Central, or CW, or,

• 1:43:21Speaker 02

  you know, Hinge, or these companies that have almost unlimited budget to just say, like, I'll, I don't normally talk about what I get paid exactly, because A, I don't wanna make anybody feel bad, but B, um, I, I don't wanna like, out the, uh, the company. But one I'll always feel comfortable talking about is, um, hemorrhoids. Preparation H asked me to do a meme.

• 1:43:48Speaker 02

  I got the email and I was like, nah, no way.

• 1:43:53Anthony Pompliano?

  No?

• 1:43:53Speaker 02

  Not doing it. No way. I'm not posting about itchy assholes on the internet. I don't know if they want me to do a video like, hey, my butthole itches so bad. I love Preparation H. Go buy it. Or like, if I can make fun of it. So a- after I gave them the number, I said, 100,000 is what I want for this post.

• 1:44:11Anthony Pompliano?

  100,000 for one post?

• 1:44:12Speaker 02

  For one post, yeah.

• 1:44:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk about itchy assholes.

• 1:44:14Speaker 02

  Talk about itchy buttholes, yeah. So they wound up, i- it was negotiated down to 80. But for one post that I posted on Valentine's Day where I got to make fun of their product, I can't work with the brand now unless they're gonna let me make fun of them. I- i- it doesn't work otherwise. We can't say, hey, Cottonelle's great toilet paper. It doesn't clog up your toilets. You should buy it. It's gotta be a joke about the fact that you guys ran out of toilet paper during the pandemic. Cottonelle was a- a brand that I did a campaign with right as soon as the pandemic hit. Maybe like three months after. And I was like, if I can't talk about the fact that you guys left everyone with no toilet paper, we can't do it because it's not worth it to me on the back end

• 1:44:58Speaker 02

  that people are gonna be annoying about. I have to face the problem head on. Like, there was, I did a campaign with Bloomberg when he was running for president.

• 1:45:05Anthony Pompliano?

  I was gonna ask you, do you, you secure the bag from, uh, from the billionaire?

• 1:45:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, um, I don't, I don't support him. I don't endorse him. If anything, like Adam.

• 1:45:19Speaker 02

  Cut. Um, Adam goes, Adam Padilla, the guy, podcast, whatever, and I created the board game with him. He goes, if anything, he endorsed us. This presidential campaign asked meme accounts to post about him running for president. That's a win for us. I don't care who it is. I don't care what politician it is. That validated the, the form.

• 1:45:39Anthony Pompliano?

  A billionaire. Not, not just like Joe Blow crazy person down the streets. Like, I could be president one day. Like, literally a guy who, whatever your politics are, like, he at least had a shot.

• 1:45:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? He's gonna spend a, what, $2 billion, whatever, to try?

• 1:45:51Speaker 02

  He had a shot. I, I feel like, um, this is what happened. So we all posted memes that were DMs from him asking us to make him look cool, basically. Which is like, okay, we're essentially making fun of him. That's fine with me.

• 1:46:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:05Speaker 02

  It, I mean, that campaign got so much press, it was astronomical. Astronomical, but it wasn't great press. And I don't believe all, all press is good press. I think sometimes if you're trying to do something, the press is not great. So, we were supposed to do another round of, of memes for him. And I said, if I can't do, if I can't address what's happening, it was to try and get people to tune in for the debate. And it was just gonna be another round of the same shit. I was like, he's gotta ask us to post another meme in the DM. This is all fabricated, by the way, he's not DMing us. But it's gotta be, hey, Tank, great job on that meme, I wanted to do another one. And then I'd have to say, yeah, I don't know, dude, people are saying you're trying to buy the election.

• 1:46:47Speaker 02

  And then his response would be, that's unfortunate to hear, tune into the debate tomorrow night at 8pm. Or, hey, we wanna do another meme, can't do it, got too much heat. People, you know, the stop and frisk, people were pissed off about it. Totally understandable, I'm gonna talk about that during the debate tomorrow. And like I said, if I can't do that, I, I don't wanna do the campaign, cuz it wasn't worth it to me, to people. People are sometimes still mad about the fact that I did a post for Bloomberg three years ago. It's like, dude, get over it, you're sad. But it was a very interesting campaign because it mixed a legitimate, um, advertising vehicle. Or, i- i- it won't, it, it mixed a legitimate advertising opportunity with a underground advertising vehicle.

• 1:47:31Speaker 02

  People still don't realize how powerful memes are for getting the message out. And how the response can be so much more than you could ever imagine, just off of the one post. Let's forget about the earned media that, that campaign got. That was in the, who knows, tens of millions of dollars worth.

• 1:47:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:47:48Speaker 02

  Everybody was talking about it.

• 1:47:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Robert Greene wrote a book with 50 Cent.

• 1:47:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, 50th Power, 50th Law.

• 1:47:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and, and he talks about the mixtape strategy.

• 1:47:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:47:55Anthony Pompliano?

  And, and a lot of what goes on on the internet now, and I think like the memes and stuff, is very similar.

• 1:48:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:01Anthony Pompliano?

  So, for those that don't know, uh, a lot of like, specifically in New York City, but, uh, I think a lot of rappers back in like the early 2000s or so, uh, they were like, well, how do I get people to learn about my music? And so they would press the CDs, and they'd go out and they'd just give them, give them away, basically, and just like, If you got hot in the streets.

• 1:48:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Then you had a shot to actually build a business and do all this. It's kind of same thing.

• 1:48:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Like Bloomberg was kind of, that, that was the mixtape strategy for a presidential campaign was to basically like go to the memes. Now it costs a lot of money.

• 1:48:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? But they were able to.

• 1:48:29Speaker 02

  Didn't cost him near. So it's a, that's a great analogy because to do a mixtape or to make an album, you have to pay a producer to make the music for you. All 50 Cent did was take beats that already existed, that were already proven to be hot on the streets or in the charts or whatever, and rap over them. So he, Bloomberg saw that he's like, he didn't have to pay for a commercial to be produced. It was just like, everything was already there. It was all in one neat package for him. It's very interesting. 50 Cent was, nobody was hotter than him in the streets. I mean.

• 1:49:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Have you seen the clip? Uh, I forget who it is, uh, but somebody, maybe they were at Def Jam. I can't remember. Uh, but it recently went viral where, uh, he's like Jay-Z came in one day and he goes.

• 1:49:13Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:49:14Anthony Pompliano?

  All of you on the microphones and now.

• 1:49:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:17Anthony Pompliano?

  This dude 50 is coming.

• 1:49:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:18Anthony Pompliano?

  And if you don't get in front of it, like it's over.

• 1:49:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:20Anthony Pompliano?

  And they said 50 dropped the album and it was like, everyone shut up. Don't drop anything for four months.

• 1:49:25Speaker 02

  Which is insane to think about because he, like, I remember there was, there's a song called Back Down. On his first album that was used as the intro outro kind of background music for a small DVD that was given out with another purchase before his album came out.

• 1:49:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 1:49:44Speaker 02

  So it was like 50 Cent in his neighborhood, talking to people, have you heard of this guy, blah, blah, blah. And it was like, doon, doon, doon, doon. It was a creepy but hard beat. And I remember I was in the mall and I heard the music coming from like 200 feet away and I went like that. And this guy who was at a kiosk playing the music looked at me like this. And he was like.

• 1:50:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Dude, I remember going and buying music. And like, I don't know, when like, I think Lil Wayne, Lil Wayne Carter 2.

• 1:50:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:25Anthony Pompliano?

  First time I skipped school.

• 1:50:27Speaker 02

  To get an album?

• 1:50:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, yeah, album dropped, like, we gotta go fuck in, let's go. I'm a little bit younger than you, and so I was, I think I was a sophomore, freshman or sophomore in high school. And we like, went, skipped school, got the album. And I'll never forget, like, guess what we did once we had the album? We drove back to the parking lot and sat in the parking lot like idiots.

• 1:50:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And like, word spreads real quick, like, yo, they got the album, they're out in the parking lot, like, whatever, right? And kids are like, coming out there, and eventually the school's like, what the fuck are you two doing, sitting, you know?

• 1:50:55Speaker 02

  Idiots, yeah.

• 1:50:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Why not go down the street? I don't know, right? But you'd go to the store and you would try to like, trick your parents into buying the advisory, with the advisory label.

• 1:51:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Because they literally would have like, a censored version and a not censored version.

• 1:51:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:13Anthony Pompliano?

  And like, today, that sounds so ridiculous.

• 1:51:16Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:51:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? But like, that was, there was debates nationally, like, should we allow these people to sell music with curse words in them?

• 1:51:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:25Anthony Pompliano?

  And now, if you turn on like, the radio, I got a daughter now.

• 1:51:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:29Anthony Pompliano?

  I turned on the radio the other day, Megan Thee Stallion was, I was like, whoa, I never listened to the words of this before.

• 1:51:35Speaker 02

  Listening now.

• 1:51:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's go to the Christmas music, right? But like, you just like, for some reason, I don't know, society change or whatever, but like, the things that used to be kinda edgy, like,

• 1:51:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Aren't, and I think 50 Cent even, like, there was shit that he was saying, you know, when he first came out.

• 1:51:53Speaker 02

  Shot nine times, that's why he got famous.

• 1:51:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, Columbia Records dropped him.

• 1:51:57Speaker 02

  Whole thing. He had an album out before that, that I love, that did nothing for him. It wasn't until he got shot and survived, and people were like, there's this other guy, Casanova, who's a rapper, and he's like, he's literally just famous because he helped other rappers that were in prison while he was in prison. That's it, that's his whole thing. There's a certain amount of, still in that industry, certain amount of just mystique that goes sometimes even further than what you're saying. Like, still to this day, Jay-Z still also has that mystique, and people will say-

• 1:52:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do you think he has it?

• 1:52:35Speaker 02

  Because he's a real one, like he didn't, he doesn't, he's not fucking around. When I interned at Def Jam, you hear stories of like him stabbing Lance Rivera over leaking a bootleg or, you know, lost ninety-two bricks.

• 1:52:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Rewind that again, because I don't think people actually know this story. You said he stabbed him.

• 1:52:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, in a club, at the Kit Kat Club. He stabbed Lance on Rivera because he leaked one of his albums. I believe it was volume three.

• 1:53:08Speaker 02

  But it was, so to put that in perspective, volume one was already out, obviously. I'm sorry, Reasonable Doubt was already out. Volume one was already out, volume two was already out. This Jay-Z guy was not like a nobody. He was a massive star. This is after Big Pimpin'. Trying to figure out the timeline exactly. I don't want to misspeak. But anyway, he stabbed Lance Rivera over leaking a version of his album, so the bootleggers got it.

• 1:53:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Normal thing to do.

• 1:53:35Speaker 02

  Totally normal thing to do. But Jay-Z is like really, he's really like that, you know what I mean? He, I was at the inter, at the Def Jam Christmas party and something was going on. Jay-Z's friend Tata was there. And some guy was like kind of being annoying to Tata, but like not annoying like, hey, man, I want to talk to you. He was like being a dick to him.

• 1:53:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Like talking shit, yeah.

• 1:53:57Speaker 02

  And Jay-Z just got up and stared the guy down and told him to get the fuck out of the party. Jay-Z, who was the president of Def Jam at that time, can still turn that part on of himself. So the point is that you can't do that if that's not really who you are. Jay-Z has a line on the Black Album where I'm on the spot, so I might not be able to think of it. Oh, yeah, no matter where you go, you are what you are, player. Like that song saved me from a relapse when I went on vacation in two thousand and three or whatever it was. But he like, he knows a tiger can't change its stripes. And I think people sense that. Like I said, Rihanna, she was just a star, dude. She was just, Brad Pitt, I've heard the same thing. I've never seen Brad Pitt in real life. From what I hear.

• 1:54:42Speaker 02

  Brad Pitt walks into a room and it's not just because he's Brad Pitt because believe it or not, not everyone knows who Brad Pitt is still at this point. He's just like, he's just got that, you should know who I am kinda vibe to him.

• 1:54:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Jay-Z's got, uh, probably, I think a lot of people, uh, they have the nostalgia for some of his early work, but also now I think there's a whole other group of people who are like discovering him and all this, younger kids, uh, but he's got a whole verse on, uh, God Did with, uh, DJ Khaled.

• 1:55:11Speaker 02

  And get me started, pump.

• 1:55:13Anthony Pompliano?

  And he, and he just kills it, right? And there's a couple of things he says in there, which I think alludes to this, like the, there's one line where he's like, uh, we're just corner boys, the corner office.

• 1:55:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:55:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And, and he's basically like explaining like, you guys don't understand, you know, kinda where I've come from. But then he also talks about, you know, the fact that he's like, uh, he says something to the effect of like, we're taking our weed public now, or like, we're selling the weed in stores. Like, like who would have ever thought, right?

• 1:55:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:55:38Anthony Pompliano?

  That we would have literally gone from them trying to catch us on the streets and put us in jail for selling drugs.

• 1:55:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:55:42Anthony Pompliano?

  So now some of those drugs are legal and like celebrated. We can take a company public doing it.

• 1:55:46Speaker 02

  And making us rich. Not drug dealer rich. Like, like he's.

• 1:55:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Like rich, rich.

• 1:55:51Speaker 02

  Like Forbes list rich.

• 1:55:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Have you seen, uh, Can't Stop, Won't Stop, the, uh, Diddy documentary?

• 1:55:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:55:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, you gotta.

• 1:55:58Speaker 02

  I'll check it out.

• 1:55:59Anthony Pompliano?

  So there's two parts to it that, uh, that just resonated with me. The first is, uh, he gets a, uh, I'll call it an internship or like, you know, he's kinda early in his career. And, uh, I forget the name of the music label he's at, but, uh, the owner is basically, hey, you're gonna.

• 1:56:14Speaker 02

  Oh, Arista.

• 1:56:15Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I think so. So he's like, you're gonna work with me. And he says he knew that, uh, Diddy was different because he's like, uh, all right, man, there's this package. Take it to this address and come back when you're done. And I'll tell you what to do next. And he says he, uh, hands him the package. Diddy walks out the door. He gets on the phone and before he gets off the phone, it's like a 20 minute call.

• 1:56:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Diddy comes running back in the office, sweating his ass off.

• 1:56:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:35Anthony Pompliano?

  And he's in the suit, tie, the whole thing. And he's like, bro, what the fuck happened? He's like, I ran there. I gave it to him. I ran back. What's next?

• 1:56:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:41Anthony Pompliano?

  And he's like, holy shit. He's like, bro, I thought you were gonna go get lunch. Like, you know, like whatever. He's just like, the dude was just on, right?

• 1:56:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:50Anthony Pompliano?

  And then the second thing is, uh, the way that he, uh, got asked to leave is cause some guy in the office was talking shit to him and he took his shirt off and he punched him in the fucking face in the office.

• 1:56:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 1:57:00Speaker 02

  It is from Harlem, dude.

• 1:57:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, it, it's just, again, not condoning it, not saying that, uh, today that's what would happen in an office environment or whatever.

• 1:57:09Speaker 02

  It would make waves, it would make noise for sure, just the same way it did back then.

• 1:57:12Anthony Pompliano?

  But like you, you, you hear these stories and you're just like, again, how does somebody go from, uh, I'm not successful, I, I don't have notoriety, you know, in music, all stuff.

• 1:57:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:23Anthony Pompliano?

  To having it like, there's an overlap between like the guy who's wanting to take his shirt off and literally punch the coworker in the face.

• 1:57:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:30Anthony Pompliano?

  To like the guy who's selling out arenas.

• 1:57:33Speaker 02

  Well, there's also an overlap, the Venn diagram is a complete circle of people who would take their shirt off and punch a coworker and people who will run to deliver a package in the summer in a suit.

• 1:57:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely.

• 1:57:45Speaker 02

  You gotta be a little bit off. Basically, life presents you with pain and it's whatever you do with it that determines who you are. And I think when you grow up in that kind of environment, like Tata famously said in a documentary, like, Jay-Z, let me back up, Jay-Z said, "I'll never enjoy my success, but my family will." He said that a long time ago on, um, a song that was not on an album, I forget the name of it, maybe like Shooting Star or something. But I always thought, man, that's so sad that like, because of the way he grew up, he'll never fully enjoy his success. But because of the way his kids grew up, they may never fully enjoy it either because they're growing up in the lap of luxury. They don't know what it is to struggle. But when you come from that kind of environment, Jay-Z from RC Projects, uh, Diddy from Harlem,

• 1:58:30Speaker 02

  there's like, you don't really forget what it's like to feel like that. And you never want to feel like that ever again. So whether you have 10 million albums sold, 20 million, 500,000, 20,000, it's all, everything over zero is a win. It's just to what degree, to what extent.

• 1:58:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk to me about the board game. Cause I think what's interesting about what you guys are doing now is you've got the, uh, you got the accounts, you're all advertising revenue, but now once you start to break out, it's like you're actually able to take this like relationship you have with the audience and the feeling that you give them and all the stuff, and actually build products? Like, how does this happen?

• 1:59:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, so. Influencers in the Wild, the game was my attempt to give people fun, a fun experience that doesn't, it doesn't, let me start over. Influencers in the Wild, the game was my attempt to give people a fun experience that doesn't mean they're looking at their phone, isolating themselves from family members. But you still get all the fun, I guess, the hit of adrenaline or humor when something funny happens on the internet. So I was on the phone with Adam, Adam the Creator, one day and we were like, how do we branch off of Instagram? Like, what can we do that we can own and make our own and try and blow it up? And he's, he's like, I don't know, maybe a game of some sort? And I was like, no dude, a game is stupid.

• 1:59:51Speaker 02

  It's not, you know, what are we gonna do? What do you meme or Cards Against Humanity? Like, I don't, I don't feel like putting that much effort into something that I'm not really into. So, so then he's like, yeah, I don't know. And then, then, bro, I mean, lightning strike. I was sitting on my couch in my house, looking out the window, and I'll, I'll never forget, I was like, oh my god, dude. He's like, what? I didn't even want to tell him because I wanted to like, keep that excitement for like, an extra three seconds. I was like, bro, what if we made a game where instead of like, you know, uh, life events happening, like the game of life, influencers quote unquote, travel around the globe on a board and rack up followers instead of money? And he's like, oh my god, dude.

• 2:00:36Speaker 02

  It was the most exciting conversation I've ever had in my life, but then we got to work. Then it was like, well, what do, how do we indicate that it's an influencer? Well, alright, we're gonna 3D print, we're gonna 3D render and get printed these influencer playing pieces. One of the girls is in a yoga pose, another guy is lifting weights, he's a fitness, fitness influencer. You have the dog with sunglasses, who probably makes more, more money than you and I both combined.

• 2:00:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 2:00:58Speaker 02

  Like, all these influencer, um,

• 2:01:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Stereotypes.

• 2:01:01Speaker 02

  Stereotypes are the playing pieces. The board is, you know, you go to Bali, you go to Tulum, you go to Coachella, you go to the, you know, the,

• 2:01:11Anthony Pompliano?

  I could've guessed them.

• 2:01:11Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:01:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Because you know.

• 2:01:13Speaker 02

  Um, Griffith Park and then you end up at the pink wall. That's the goal, to get to the pink wall first, because you get a reward if you get there first. Then we were like, alright, how do we make that fun? Cause that's not enough. It's not enough to just do that. So we were like, alright, let's, Adam, design this board that is M.C. Escher level fascinating. Like, you just keep looking at it, and looking at it, and looking at it. And every time you look, there's another layer of joke to it. He's unbelievable. He helped me write the cards, too. So I wrote the cards. Let's say, I wrote the cards, he designed the board. But I helped design the board, and he helped write the cards. Like, we couldn't have done it without each other. So, you roll the die, you go around the board, you land on no Wi-Fi, lose a turn.

• 2:01:58Speaker 02

  Land on low battery, you lose a turn. You land on Bali, gain a hundred thousand followers. You land on Fire Festival, you lose a hundred thousand. You go back to the middle of the board. Then there's the blue spots, and that's where all of the fun is. That's where the whole game resides, is in these blue spots. So, if you land on a blue spot, you pick a random playing card, and it's a reward, challenge, penalty, or question. The rewards are like, your song goes viral on TikTok and boosts your streams, gain fifty thousand followers. Or, The Rock reposts your meme, which happened in my life. Like, some of the stuff happened, some of it didn't. So those are good. The challenges are, you'll like this one. Give me your best hustle and grind speech for thirty seconds, and post it with the hashtag influencer game. So we're gonna try and create some Gary Vaynerchuk's out of it.

• 2:02:43Speaker 02

  Do your best Kylie Jenner impression, fish face, duck lip, whatever. But the promotion is built into the game that way, cause they have to post it with the hashtag influencer game, to get the followers. Because we know people are somewhat uncomfortable doing that, there's no penalty if you don't do it, you just don't get the reward. The questions are, has the person to your right ever had oat milk? Who is willing to go into debt at the table to go to Coachella? Like, funny stuff like that. And then the penalties are, unfortunately, you lose followers, but it's the best part. There's penalties like, your dad finds your OnlyFans, lose fifty thousand followers. Or, your pyrotechnic gender reveal causes massive California wildfires, lose a hundred thousand followers.

• 2:03:22Anthony Pompliano?

  It happens, probably.

• 2:03:23Speaker 02

  It happened.

• 2:03:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:24Speaker 02

  That's exactly what happened.

• 2:03:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Literally not surprised.

• 2:03:27Speaker 02

  So that's it. It's all like, internet humor, joke. Like, if you have a love-hate relationship with influencer culture, and the internet in general, you're gonna love the game. I can't imagine people not liking the game. I did see one review from a person who was like, This game was too simple. There was no strategy of, I was like, what did you expect?

• 2:03:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Risk?

• 2:03:47Speaker 02

  Dungeons and Dragons, dude? Like, what did you think you were getting into? It's called Influencers in the Wild, the game. No talent required. Is, you know what I mean? What do you think this is gonna be? It's gonna be a fun time.

• 2:03:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And where do you sell them now?

• 2:04:01Speaker 02

  So they're in Target. They're on target.com. And then they're on influencersinthewildgame.com.

• 2:04:08Anthony Pompliano?

  All right.

• 2:04:08Speaker 02

  And we have an exclusive with Target that ends December 31st. So we'll be everywhere after that.

• 2:04:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And do you think that from a business perspective, you'll like continue to create more games? And like go more into physical products? Like what's the?

• 2:04:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, obviously this game has to be a huge success first, but then from there, I think there's a market for making a New York centric version of the board. There's a market for making an LA centric version of the board, a European version of the board. And then expansion packs based on stuff that happens every year. That's new, interesting, fun, exciting. Some of the references are old, but we knew that going in, like, you know, the girl who went viral, like, you know, you go viral on the Dr. Phil show for saying, "Catch me outside, gain 50,000 followers." That's an old reference.

• 2:04:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 2:04:52Speaker 02

  But it's timeless. So we tried to like really pick the ones that, yes, they're dated, but like you know exactly who we're talking about. So as time goes on, we can make it refreshed and, you know, make it more timely.

• 2:05:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. When you think of the game, is it for like families to play?

• 2:05:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's.

• 2:05:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Like almost like a drinking game to some degree, or you could play with your family as well?

• 2:05:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, um, we, we put 17 plus on it because one of the challenges is take a, you know, a funny twerking video and post it to social media with hashtag influencer game. So we didn't want like an eight year old kid to do that, obviously, or a 12 year old or whatever. So because of that, the 17 plus is on there, but like, point, 1.5% of the cards are like even gray area questionable.

• 2:05:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 2:05:45Speaker 02

  I just didn't want to open us up to that. And I don't really think it's, like, we played it with my son, the, like a prototype version of it. And he goes, I pull the card, he pulls the card and goes, "You lost 50,000 followers because your dad found your OnlyFans? What's an OnlyFans?" And I was like, "Give me that card. I'm gonna put that away." We don't need to explain this to this young man, what this is.

• 2:06:12Speaker 02

  But I think there's a

• 2:06:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Check your credit card, uh, you know, next week, right?

• 2:06:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. But I think there's a version of it, a version of that game being played that's funny when the age goes in the opposite direction and you have to explain to your aunt who's 72, what an OnlyFans is. Like, I think that's funny. I might be wrong. Explaining it to a kid is not funny. So it's families-ish, but like, at your own discretion. PG 13 at least, for sure.

• 2:06:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. All right. Uh, I have two questions and then I'll let you get out of here. What's the best meme in history?

• 2:06:46Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 2:06:48Anthony Pompliano?

  You're, you're in the Hall of Fame of memes as a maker. What is the number one best meme in history?

• 2:06:54Speaker 02

  My personal favorite or all things considered?

• 2:06:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Both.

• 2:07:02Speaker 02

  I mean, the best meme person in history is Hyde the Pain Harold. Do you know who that is?

• 2:07:09Anthony Pompliano?

  No.

• 2:07:11Speaker 02

  Ah, this poor guy. He's a Norwe- yeah, Google him.

• 2:07:16Anthony Pompliano?

  What is it?

• 2:07:16Speaker 02

  You'll definitely know who he is when you see it. Hyde the Pain Harold is his name.

• 2:07:21Speaker 02

  He is a stock photo model that just people saw-

• 2:07:26Anthony Pompliano?

  I didn't know that he was a stock photo model.

• 2:07:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. He's a stock photo model. He's not a meme guy. He's not a normal person. Like, he's-

• 2:07:34Anthony Pompliano?

  For those that are, uh, watching, he's the guy who holds the, uh, coffee cup.

• 2:07:39Speaker 02

  Well, there's that and then there's like 15, there's videos, pictures of him exercising. He's a, he's a prolific, uh, stock photo model. But he also, at first, hated the fact that he was a meme. He was embarrassed. It infuriated him. Why are these people making fun of me? And then he got in on the joke. So for all those reasons, because of his recognizability and his, um, you know, the amount of content that he's in and his personal story with memes, that would be number one.

• 2:08:10Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. What's your favorite?

• 2:08:14Speaker 02

  My personal favorite is a meme that, when you explain memes, they're not funny, but I have to explain it because it's, you know, otherwise you won't know what it is. There's a wrestler, Sheamus. You know who that is?

• 2:08:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:08:26Speaker 02

  In WWE. Red hair, super pale.

• 2:08:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Great description.

• 2:08:33Speaker 02

  So, relevant description. So, there's a, an image of him with his hands up in the ring. And on the top, it says, "They said I wouldn't make it. They said I didn't have the look," right? And then, there's another paragraph that is typed over his pale body, but it's white letter, so you can't see it. And it's like him ranting about how he was never gonna be told no, whatever. But you can't read it, cuz he's so pale. And like, that is...

• 2:09:00Anthony Pompliano?

  So, he crea- he created it?

• 2:09:02Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no. It's just like, "They said I'd never make it. They said I didn't have the look." "Well, here's how much I don't have the look. You can't even read the words on my pale ass body."

• 2:09:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Incredible.

• 2:09:13Speaker 02

  I've seen that. I mean, I laugh every time I think of that. It's just so stupid, though.

• 2:09:20Speaker 02

  So, I couldn't put that in a Hall of Fame, cuz people, fifty, the other reason I like it is because fifty percent of people go, "I can't read it." And the other fifty percent go, "Oh, that's the funny part. Like, you can't read it."

• 2:09:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I do think, uh, the meme, like, the beauty of the meme is in the eye of the beholder.

• 2:09:35Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah. It's humor.

• 2:09:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah. And, uh, when you have to describe it, they explain it to people.

• 2:09:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:09:42Anthony Pompliano?

  It, uh, it ends up being pretty good. My favorite videos right now, uh, I don't know why I just saw this. Have you seen the Grinch, uh, videos on Instagram?

• 2:09:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:09:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I saw one last night. The Grinch shows up to the, uh, family's house.

• 2:09:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:09:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, at first, there's like two kids, probably like six, seven years old, like, "Oh shit!" You know, they jump up on the couch.

• 2:10:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:10:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And then the Grinch starts going near the gifts, and they jump off the couch and start punching them.

• 2:10:05Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:10:06Anthony Pompliano?

  And they're like, you know, and they're like little six-year-olds, and the Grinch is like, probably like a neighbor, you know, whatever.

• 2:10:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:10:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And he like literally like kinda pushes one away, like, he's like, "I didn't sign to get beat up by, you know, these six-year-olds."

• 2:10:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:10:17Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, and they're screaming at him, and he gets like one of the gifts, puts them in his little bag, and he's like gonna leave. And they're like following him, and they're trying to punch him and everything. And I sent it to a friend, and I was just like, "I hope my kids grow to be little savages like this."

• 2:10:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:10:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 2:10:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:10:30Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, like, there, there ends up being these trends, because I'd seen one, and I saw another, or whatever. And like, now you realize, like, okay, like, people are gonna do this.

• 2:10:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:10:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, to me, that's the magic of the internet. It's like, you couldn't script, the kids are gonna actually get mad, and like, attack the Grinch. And like, it's like chaos in the video, right, the whole thing. And, uh, I, I tell friends all the time, like, "I just love the internet." The internet is

• 2:10:51Speaker 02

  Unbelievable.

• 2:10:52Anthony Pompliano?

  The single greatest place in, in all of existence.

• 2:10:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:10:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Because of, uh... The ability to entertain. It's not even just laugh. It's just like just to entertain you. And there's downsides to it, but like, I just love the internet.

• 2:11:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's downsides to everything. There's downsides to restaurants. And mechanics and movies and everything like this. This expectation that the internet and social media especially has to be perfect or not hurt anybody's feelings or never piss you off. I, I feel like it's almost done. I feel like people are getting to that point where they're like, all right, I guess as long as I'm dealing with people, I might, there's a potential for being annoyed. You make peace with that, then you can have fun.

• 2:11:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:33Speaker 02

  But don't expect people to do what you want them to do, or feel how you want them to feel, or say what you want them to say. Just live your life and gravitate towards people who you like and steer clear of people you don't like. It's just like fucking life. It's not that hard.

• 2:11:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Shocking concept.

• 2:11:50Speaker 02

  I know. It's not that difficult.

• 2:11:53Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Where can we sell people to find the game?

• 2:11:55Speaker 02

  Target. Go to Target, Target stores, um, target.com, influencers in the wild, game.com.

• 2:12:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Influencers in the wild game.com.

• 2:12:03Speaker 02

  Influencers in the wild game.com. If you type in influencers in the wild, it'll pop up on Google. But, uh, yeah, thanks Sinatra. Thanks. Good news. Influencers in the wild, meme daddy's podcast. If you like memes and you like dads and don't, if you're a fan of this podcast, just reset your expectations.

• 2:12:24Anthony Pompliano?

  How, on a scale of one to really dumb?

• 2:12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:27Anthony Pompliano?

  And on a scale of one to really funny, where are you guys? Like really dumb and really funny?

• 2:12:31Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Adam is, Adam sets me up for, and I set him up like unintentionally. He's just one of the funniest, smartest, um, my favorite people in the world. He's just fucking a genius. And when you talk to people like that, it, they make you, you know, step your game up and become funnier and smarter and try and outdo each other. But he's, he's made me, uh, we've both made each other like laugh hard multiple times every podcast episode.

• 2:13:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Meme daddy.

• 2:13:01Speaker 02

  That's all I care about. Meme daddies.

• 2:13:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Daddies.

• 2:13:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:13:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Not, not one.

• 2:13:05Speaker 02

  No, cause it's two of us.

• 2:13:07Anthony Pompliano?

  You're good at math.

• 2:13:10Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. We'll definitely do it again in the future. I appreciate it.

• 2:13:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Thank you.

• 2:13:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to transition into a brand new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to thecryptoacademy.io. My team and I have been working with the top HR teams in the industry to develop an intensive three-week training program with over 50 live events. We teach you exactly what you need to know to break into the industry, including live interview prep and resume review. Our students have been hired at over 75 of the world's best Bitcoin and crypto companies. Go to thecryptoacademy.io to learn more. Again, that's thecryptoacademy.io. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with your friends, and I'll see you all for the next episode.