$10K to $100 Million in Product Sales With Michael Gonzalez
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You don't know. Tomorrow's not promised. You know, one of the beauties is like we're gifted this moment, this time frame. So, you know, do it today. You know, what's the worst that can happen? You know, and then at the end of the day, tomorrow the sun will come up again. If you're blessed enough to be alive again, you can try again. Yeah. You know, I failed a lot. I failed a lot before 50. I have, if I told you some of the things I did, you'd be like, holy crap. You know what I mean? And just jump, go for it.

My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. Guys, what's up? Back for another episode of Living the Red Life here with Michael, the TCEO, aka The Goat. Look at those guns. Welcome, buddy. He took 10K.

So 100 mil in product sales. That's why I wanted him here. Plus he's wearing a red shirt just for me. I made sure to have the red shirt on today just for him. Thanks for coming in. Thank you for having me. So a couple of things to go into right away. 100 mil in...

Product sales. Yes, sir. The TCO, what is that? Like the capital T or the tea you drink? The tea you drink. Good. Healthy beverage. Dive in. Tell us the story. How does that happen? I started Fit Tea in 2013. Yeah. I had $10,000 to my name and literally got really, really fortunate. This beautiful thing God gave me, Instagram, landed right in my lap. But honestly, honestly, I was looking to lose weight. I tried a bunch of detox teas. They tasted really bad. Like that market is really generic. Yeah.

And I was really obsessed with Apple at the time, like Steve Jobs and how do you make a premium product? How do you make really high quality product that the consumer is willing to pay a premium for? The average detox tea would go for like four to seven dollars, really inexpensive. And most of the time the ingredients reflect the price. And so I started obsessing with what's called artisan teas.

And like artisan teas smell really great and they're fragrant and they taste almost as if they have sugar, but they don't have sugar. And so I started with a really small batch family company was the only company that was willing to give me a singular box. I only had $10,000 to start. Yep.

And so I called a bunch of places and they were like, oh, well, you know, we need at least a minimum order of 50 grand. I didn't, you know, it was out of the question. But this mom and pop just so happened. It was a blessing in disguise. I didn't realize that they were known for making artisan teas.

And they were really good at it. Like the owner there, his name's Oliver. He was super passionate. And I didn't realize when I pick up the phone, this guy was going to be this ball of energy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, I don't even need a box, you know? And so he was like sending me samples, samples, samples, samples, tried them all. They were amazing. They tasted almost like juice, you know, smelled amazing right when you opened it. So fragrant, so wonderful. And I was like, this is, I know I have something there. Yeah.

and gave me one box. And then my next blessing was the name. FitT was a six-letter domain, even in 2013. Kind of expensive to get a six-letter domain, even random numbers. So it was an auction, just so happened.

And I was like, crap, you know? And I was really like, this is the name. I knew it in my spirit. And I had just left work because I was working a job that I absolutely hated at the time. And I was driving home and I was bidding on my phone for the domain. And it was like $1,000. I'm like, fuck, $2,000, $3,000, fuck, fuck, fuck. You know, like not going to be able to win this auction. And actually the person really outbid me. It went to like $16,000. So I went home. I felt defeated. I was like, damn, I lost this auction. Beautiful. Beautiful.

Just a beautiful damn name. And I was like, where are we going to be? Weight loss, this. And I, you know, I felt so defeated. I went right to bed. The next morning I woke up, the register called me and like, listen, the guy that outbid you is not willing to pay. Huh? Right. And we'll give it to you for regular registration fee. Um,

What's up, yo? A win's a win, man. So I was super, super happy. I remember that day very vividly. Drew the logo by hand, scanned it into... I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know you can just go hire a graphic designer. A very primitive website I created. There was no Shopify at the time. Shopify was in its infancy, but I wasn't aware of it.

So really, you know, hyperlinked website thing. No CRM, nothing. And then I, you know, got the tea. We packed it by hand, me and my mom. And just in, we lived in a, you know, two bedroom condo. I'm just doing it all by hand with a hand sealer, stickers, you know, built the website and then Instagram. I noticed that they, the people that hit the popular page were there for a certain period of time.

you got to go back to 2013. Sure. A lot less bells and whistles than most people know Instagram now. And I was like, I bet you if I contact everyone that makes the popular page, that an influx of traffic would come to the website. And I was a little bit knowledgeable in traffic because I had did SEO stuff. Yeah, really primitive SEO websites. And so I understood analytics, I understood traffic, but nothing to this extent. So I spent maybe like

I don't know, like $2,000 in tea, overall cost. But the traffic, I put all the money into buying shout outs. And I was like, I'm going to do like a big launch, you know? So me and my mom packed up. We thought it was a lot like,

400 units, like barely anything. And, you know, I bought the traffic. And at the time, I had PayPal notifications on my phone. And, you know, I'm still pretty new to all this. And so the first sale came in, like the ads started going up, and they were like $25. Yeah, I was going to say the shout out. We probably didn't know what they had. And, I mean, the biggest person on Instagram at that time was only like 300,000. Wow. At least small. There wasn't really big whales yet. And a lot of the big whales were page owners. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the pages, yeah.

And so, you know, I paid maybe like, I don't know, $1,600, which I thought it was a lot. But bro, it was just a nuclear. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. It's like almost like it would not stop. It was like, holy crap. And I knew my life changed that moment. Quit my job, went all in, took every dollar. Did you sell out a lot? You had to order more that day? I sold like 100%.

on the first day it was $16,000 in sales and just that little, and we only had like four. - So you got like a hundred X almost. - Yeah, instantly. And I knew everything was gonna change. I knew my life was on a different trajectory and this was gonna be like everything I had to obsess over. But when you do something like that so quickly, you don't have the infrastructure to support at all. - You're down as you go. - You know, customer service, you know, actually,

taken into the post office. So,

simple logic, but if you're on the second floor, you gotta go down the stairs. A lot of sacrifices in the beginning. I tell people all the time, it requires a spirit that's very... Because I would work from the moment I woke up, eyes went down. And wherever I landed, my mom would find me on boxes or on top of... There's photographs of me scooping up tea. So that was kind of the... What was the... That's an awesome story, that growth, right? This whole podcast is...

the red life, right? And living the red life. And to me, you know, that's a play on taking the red pill and building your dream life, right? So a lot of people are trying to quit their job or in that position or grow their business. And it's super awesome probably for them to hear like, it just starts somewhere, right? And it's like a combination of like idea,

trust, risk, a bit of luck along the way, right? We know it's all of those things combined, right? But you made the decision to go through all that and fall asleep every night on the boxes and all that. Yeah, you gotta be. The BS you went through at the same time, I'm sure, all right? So what was the, you know, Instagram and the influencers? Let's talk about that. How did that work? How does it work this day? How can people use it to make money? So back then,

It was just a photo platform. It was really easy to take a photograph and send a caption to somebody and then negotiate a rate. Now, day and age, it's much more competitive too. Back then, there was not so many bells and whistles. There was no live, there was no stories, there was no DMs for crying out loud. It was merely a photograph platform and it had hyperlinks on the profiles. Now, it's much more harder to go, "Okay, hey,

go to the website directly from the graph. You're going to have to build upon multiple iterations with a person and a visual. I'm really big now that brands are less meaningful and persons are more. Totally. And the more you become obsessed with really sharing who you are, like you're doing an amazing job. You have created an identity, a color scheme. Everything that I was very passionate about at 15 is what you're doing. Yeah.

Like 50 had a set of colors and a set of ways of doing things and they all had to reflect upon that. You're literally doing the same thing. But the beauty is you can talk. Yeah. Right. Yeah. 50 couldn't talk. So I told people all the time, the advantage of building a brand with a person as the face value is much bigger than just saying, okay, buy my product. And what's so funny about that is I learned from like a business guru, like 10 years, 12 years ago, like,

and he was older, you know, like 50, right? But he's like, never build a brand on you because you can never, it's hard to sell, right? And I totally agree, like from a business valuation standpoint, it can bottleneck you, but it's like, and so I kind of went on part of a journey where I was like growing the company, trying not to be the face. And now I've like gone full circle the other way where I'm like the total face, but then I have, I flow it all into a company that can stand by itself. And I think that's like the perfect balance

And it's like, you see that with like the Kardashians and Rihanna and like people that are building these billion dollar brands off the back of their name. It's like, if you can feed, use the personal brand to feed the entity, but still have some segmentation, that's the winning formula, I think. Yes, 100%. Like the Kardashians made a formula. They figured it out, yeah. Like I remember my first post with the Kardashians. How much was that? So I paid Kylie Jenner

I paid her $12,000. That's my first post. Was that, was you like? Yeah, I was like fucking crazy. You're like, oh my God, this is shit. Yeah. It was probably our biggest post at that point. Yeah. And it was like 2014, somewhere around there. How did you feel the minute wiring that money or sending it? It was pretty crazy. I was like, what the hell are we doing? This is nuts. But I was building upon what I was already doing. I knew it was going to be fine, but I didn't realize, holy shit, she was going to make us 700 racks, you know, like from that singular post.

and the amount of traffic we had never seen in any of the bike areas. But it comes with side effects. You get much more eyeballs, you get much more eyeballs from legal and government. So there's different aspects to it. So you have to be prepared for that influx of eyeballs. And you don't think that when you're in mall, like when mall kids say, "I am businesses, trying to buy eyes." See, on sale, like how to push this traffic. I was always watching the traffic meter, you know? I'm not a legal guy.

And my attorney would be like, "What the hell did you do? What did you do now, Michael?" And I'm like, "Oh, you know, we spent $2 million in digital ads on a Tuesday randomly, you know?" And by far, I was probably one of the most aggressive to ever do it. Like, Fashion Nova, me and Rich, I always feel like we're intertwined a little bit. Fashion Nova's like, dominate. Like now, he's the double goat. If I'm the goat, he's the double goat. Because his category is much more.

Bro. You have to guess. Like a million dollars a week, maybe. More. More, yeah. At this point? Yeah. He's super aggressive. I was super aggressive. So, I mean, like, we never got that high. And it would always be, like, really peakful moments, right? So, like, oh, today we're going to do two million. Yep. But then the following week would be, like, a hundred. So, I spend right now about 500K a month on Facebook ads for my own brand.

How, if I spend that half a mil on the IG shoutouts, how do you think it would do? It would do, you would crash it. You think? Even as like selling, because I see that with like Fashion Nova and like these broader products, right? Like weight loss tiers, clothing. But when you're more in this like online money space, marketing space, you think the celeb shoutout route is still a good route?

100%. Yeah, interesting. There's a snowball effect that's intrinsic that you won't realize at first. Yeah, compounds. And six months from now, they'll know you because you did that one thing. Yeah, yeah. And then depending on how creative you decide to make those interactions, right, you can be boring. Oh, you know me. You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing. But if you do what you're doing, it just makes it easy, right? And then people will know you for that.

they know the color red. You don't own red, right? But see how that works? So you're already on a path that's much better than most.

And it won't take long. It won't take long. And it already, like, every time, you know, like, I walk up to Floyd Mayweather and he goes, Rudy Redd. Right. You know, Grant Cardone, the same. Yeah. And it's like, we double down on that and you double down on that side too. Right. That's amazing. And then you add the celebrity, you add the creative, you add the influencer. I was in the case of, I didn't care who promoted the product, right? As long as the product was getting some type of exposure. Sure. And I'm a believer in, like, everything.

Like, right? Like radio. It didn't matter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Put you on the moon, I'll put you on the moon. You know what I mean? So that's how I think about brands. And I was super obsessed of like, how do I turn 50, this thing that I created in my mama's house into Coca-Cola? How did I, how would I do that? Right? Coca-Cola has been around for a hundred years. It got a lot of time, but it didn't have an Instagram. Yeah, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like if they had Instagram back in, you

you know, a hundred years ago, they would probably be one of the show. Their biggest brand now, can you imagine they had that amplification? But they did, like, I would even say they figured it out still because, like, I remember, like, there's

old clips and stuff of like them with the military, right? Like during the war, like, you know, your ads with Coca-Cola. So that's probably like, that was with us, you know, like the influences. Where would be the broadcast, right? Media is, you know, media. Newspapers, right? It's the front of a newspaper, right? Right, like. But it's interesting to think about it. Yeah. So when I had 50, I had 10 racks. Like, how am I going to turn into a Coca-Cola? I didn't have any private investors. I was doing this on the whim, you know what I mean? And

you know, as I took capital, I would put it back into the business and revenues would support whatever madness I was coming through. Basically what we do. Yeah. Right. And so I really fuck with what you're doing, right? Like it's the same type of energy vibe. So I just want to see you win. Yeah. Like on another one, like before, obviously we met. Yeah.

But now you got the goat on the side. Press some buttons. So I think one thing with the celebrity stuff, like, because we're obviously, we work with celebs, Floyd and people. People think it's out of reach. Everyone else that I know is like, how the, what are you doing, right? Talk to that. Because, like, I think there's people listening that could do the celeb shout-outs. Jenna's shout-out a book. So for our work week by Tim Ferriss.

this simple chapter in there that he talked about. That book had a big impact on my first book that I read. And like, Tim, like if you're watching this, like you need to come over here, spend some time with my guy because like I was like super influenced by that book. And such, so he had it inside the book. So I was like, I'm just going to contact all the companies that were in the book. And they started, wow, they started contacting me back. It was crazy. Particularly, I got a hold of an agent. His name was Bob.

was Bob and Bob was just a squirrelly older man that just had his foot in some industries, right? But he was a good salesman, right? He would call me and then he got me in a flow too. I loved it. He, because every week, instead of it being like, oh, I'll send you 10K and then he would vanish. He would call me. He was like, I got this guy.

I got this next guy. Oh, I need you to go here. Oh, I got this next guy. And that gave me the gas to keep the money kind of in an era that nobody knew like really sponsorship, right? So we were kind of creating that. He was a bit like the sales, the you on the influx. I got really, again, another blessing that I didn't realize I was going to get this guy that was going to go sell for me. And he was obviously making good money, but that's the whole point. A lot of times young entrepreneurs,

One of my biggest rules is when you give, you get, right? And that comes to money, love, time, energy. And a lot of times entrepreneurs forget that. It's not just, okay, I'm going to pay this guy to go do it. It's that guy's got energy to that. You know what I mean? And obviously he was opening doors for himself to get into different rooms. And then as time went on, we were making so much noise on social that kind of flew to us. It's not like you said, it comes down to the ball. This effect starts to happen and you just, you know, you grab it and...

a lot of times it's picking up the phone too. Like that's the other thing I talk to entrepreneurs is really strange. Thank you. Economy doesn't really flow very well anymore. We look at,

Most e-comm guys look at it as straight numbers. Sure. I'm going to send traffic to a website and you get desensitized that you forget that there's an actual human being trusting you with their money. It's that value exchange that they forget that like, okay, I'm going to say thank you. Yeah. And that goes from marketing to... We call every single customer. I have people down in that office call every single customer. Because if you don't do that, where does the...

the line draw and then and why everyone wants to automate it right it's like order ai and automation and i've learned like i just do the opposite because it's like i get that from like an efficiency standpoint but i have 100 employees which is my i think advantage over every other internet marketer right everyone else they make more money profit than me but they have 20 staff

So I'm like, well, I've got, I can build the team and the company. So I think I can build more connection with the members, more personalization. Cause I have the hands here. I can build more content. So like I'm playing the long game, right? That I'm going to win because eventually I'm going to have 500 employees. Of course. No one else is, right? Maybe Grant, but that's it. But that infrastructure that you're building is, you know, micro and over time, like in a year or two years, 10 years. Yeah.

Like a lot of people, they want the success in a month. Sure. No, like 30 days or less. They don't want to even go the whole endurance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I'm giving you a lot of kudos, man. Like I see what you're doing here. It's amazing. It's really something special. I think with a little bit of tweaks, a little bit of special sauce, magic. Dude. I love it. So I like that. So let's talk about like 100 mil is a lot.

A lot of sales. There's a lot of sales. A lot of sales, right? So the influencer side is a big part of it, but what else, right? Because there's more that came after that, that you listened. I mean, Fitzy had a lot of different channels. First was me building a small business, really. And I was always really obsessed with margin. Like how do we, even if it's 10 cents, how do we become more efficient?

So for the most part, it's a high margin business because it's just tea. Tea costs maybe 20 cents for a tea bag, for one finished product. With 14 tea bags, it's less than a dollar to make the full product. There's margin, even if you're stupid. So I was stupid in the beginning. I didn't know what I was doing. It's just a cup worth of tea. Here we go, and we're sealing it. And my mom and me high-fiving. But as time went on, you have to become more efficient as skill becomes a problem.

And so we built really efficient teams and machinery. I had like literally one of the biggest team manufacturing facilities right in Orlando, Florida.

that we were doing 80 bags a minute. So, you know, that didn't happen overnight. Just like year one, we were doing everything by hand, you know, cut it, bag it, sell it. Different than the illegal game, we were doing it legal, you know, with a scale and people doing it by hand. And then as time went on, we got our first piece of equipment and that was a clunky monster and it only did 14 bags, but it was like manual and it used compressed air. It was crazy. And it's funny because like me and you, right, we've grown through those phases, right?

But I'm sure just like I do now, obviously you're out of it these days. But at some point when you got to like the end or the top, you look like you just think one day like, I still remember like packing it, right? It's like crazy to look back. I remember hiring on Upwork and Fiverr, my like first two staff in India at $5 an hour, sitting on a bench in Tampa, working by the river, pulling my hair out.

Because I had to explain 20 different times about mobile optimization to this guy that barely understood English. Right? And it's like now we're running million dollar launches and I'm not even involved. Like I just QA it at the end and give the strategy and it goes live. And I'm like, oh, that was good. Well done. Great job, guys. High five, everyone. Yeah. But it's like just crazy. Right? It's crazy. Spark. Yeah. That spark is so special. I tell people all the time, really?

focus on that moment because your time, you know, we're limited time governments, you know, we're not here for very long. I'm very blessed to be here with you today, right? Like this is a moment of our life. And it's the same thing with business. Like I look back in the eight years, I tell people the money, it's, don't get me wrong. It's an amazing thing.

It's a means to the end, right? Like the thing, really, the really greatest gift I ever received was the actual going through 50, right? Nobody can be me, right? Nobody's going, no, I can't be you, right? Like I'm not doing your journey.

So that journey was such an awarding thing that sometimes... The early days are so special too, right? You get to look, you know what I mean? And we get so transfixed on the Capitol that we forget, okay, my mom's right there building. So I spend a lot of time on, oh, I'm doing this thing with my cousin over here. And I'm, you know, I'm packing up bags over here. My best friend's losing his mind because the boxes are not here yet. He wants to get it done because he wants to make sure that I'm okay. And that spark is really hard to replicate too.

Like I get a taste of it from time to time. Yeah. Like here today, I'm getting like, I feel like I almost can taste that even though you're in a different level, don't get me, you're not in the beginning. You're already in the mid to even towards the end. Right. But that spark is super, you know, it's special. You don't really see. And I find like, I'm conscious of that because sometimes you drift out of alignment to it. Right. Like even unintentionally you're growing and stuff's going well, you do a new partnership.

And like I, every three months, I check myself because sometimes I'm like, I'm not enjoying my day to day anymore. I'm on too many calls. There's too many things. Half of this doesn't serve me. And it's only in the last year or two that I've been like strong enough to say no, like

could it, right? Even because it could be a million dollar thing. And it's like very hard to like go, sorry, it's like, yes, I'm probably going to lose five million, but sorry, because it just doesn't allow. Yeah. Like you only can go, you're a human being. So like you can only go so far. Like when I hear about Elon Musk, I'm like, what? He has to be an alien, right? Like there's no, like how, how is that even? Yes. Like I couldn't, I feel like I'm a good entrepreneur and I still feel like I'm still early in my entrepreneur journey.

You know, because you look at like top CEOs, they're... Yeah, they're twice our age. For sure. So, you know, I feel like I'm still early in the game, yet I've done a lot of really amazing things.

But you only can do so much before you start to burn. Like for me, around 2016, I started getting anxiety. I didn't realize I had this underlying, but I kept pushing forward. And then eventually I got a full-on disorder. I was a full-on GAD and I was out the game for like a year. It took me to recover. And I always tell people my secret to recovery because of what happened to me.

I didn't know it was going to happen. And I feel like it's not discussed in the entrepreneurial world at all. We wear these, if you want to brag, yeah, yeah, yeah, these ego...

And it can go from one entrepreneur to the next entrepreneur to the next, and they don't show kinks in their armor. And I like to share that all the time with people because it was a tough moment in my life. So Dr. Clara Weeks, super simple book, Hope and Help for Your Nerves. She was a research scientist. She realized that her patients, she was a regular practitioner doctor. She wasn't a psychologist, that they were experiencing symptoms that she couldn't diagnose.

She couldn't understand why they were having panic attacks, why they were nervous, why their hands were shaking, why they felt nervous all day long. Like me. I had a panic attack driving home. I was working on so much crap. I was doing manufacturing. I had Walmart calling me on the phone. I had, you know, a million dollars here, $500,000 going that way. Parnassians, yes. Oh, I need to be on a plane to LA. Okay. Try to lose weight because you're in a phrase to the 50. Okay. All right. So I was doing all these crazy things.

And then I had one pain attack, but I was like, I'm going to go rest and go home. The next day I woke up, I was still shaking. I was like, wait, what? Why am I shaky? And no doctor could give me the right answer. It's crazy.

And so six months of that. And what happens is with a disorder, it's typically like a bad habit. You start to obsess. Instead of obsessing over the business, I was obsessing over my symptoms. You go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And so I recommend that book all the time to entrepreneurs because it's like undoing the habit. It's undoing. And it's such a simple, it's called The Acceptant Method. I don't want to like go too deep in it. I always like to touch on it because it was really important. It

it sparked into Happy Tea. I don't know if you know. Yeah. I recover from a disorder and I decide, you know what? I'm going to go public in the Canadian markets and we're going to raise a bunch of money. That's what we do as entrepreneurs, right? We're our biggest enemies. I always say like on that, I mean, it's important. I always tell myself internally that

I can do anything I just can't do everything and I always tell myself that sometimes when I want to make the hard decisions on what do I keep and not keep and if I'm doing too much I just remind myself of that so just to finish up I would love to like what is some of the craziest stories of going to 100 million product sales like this because there's we've talked to you know people don't where do we see it we're like running big companies 100 staff like

There's a lot of BS. What are some of the crazy, so good, bad, what are some of the... I've only told this story probably like two, so you're getting some exclusives. Okay. So I got a call in the middle of the night. It was a bunch of numbers on my phone. So I'm like, there was a very big prank culture in my office. Like your car would disappear and it'd be, you'd go look it up and it'd be like 30 minutes away. You know, like my best friend would be like,

Have a good time. Or the office will be filled with bricks. Walk in and there'll be literally 100 bricks. They must have took three hours to do this. It was a very prank culture. So I got a call and it was this guy. He's like, I have your container. And it was very sinister. And I thought I was getting pranked. I'm like, fuck off, yo. Jamel could play with me. I got your container. I want $100,000. And I'm like, are we going to burn the whole thing? But I legitimately had a container coming from overseas. Yeah.

And it was not like $5. It was literally a whole thing for the whole GNC stores, all of them. So, I mean, I don't know. Fuck off. Yeah, yeah. And the next day I get a call and it's the FBI. And I'm like, holy shit. They were like, we intercepted pirates. I was like, I was talking to motherfucking pirates. Yeah.

I would have just gone in all staff and then just said, at channel, who was that good one? Right, yeah. Yeah, 100% thought it was a prank. And no, it was legitly. And so did they recover the... We covered it. They're like, it's safe. It's on the way, Mr. Gonzalez. Everything's fine. And so we get it. We're laughing, you know. We're opening up and fucking things. So you're like, my taxes went to use. Use, yes. They really, they protected my shit. And I get it. And it was all misspelled.

There was a misspelling during menu. I was like, fuck, why didn't the pirates...

I was calling the number, you know? So there was that one. That's a good one. Another one, I got invited to Puff Daddy's 50th birthday. A good friend of mine is really close with Puff, and I got this super special thing. Yeah, yeah. And I had dressed to impress, and every celebrity in the world was there. And I didn't realize how heavy. I'm talking Kobe Bryant, the Kardashians.

you know every mofo was there i was drinking shots with post malone and

And at some point in the night, I was like going through a crowd. It's so, you know, it's a puff party. Super crowded. Yeah. And kind of got wedged between a group of people. And, you know, I'm looking this way. I look this way. And it's Beyonce. And so, you know, at that point, I'm really sober. It's early in the evening. I'm like, Beyonce, you look beautiful. You know, I hope you have a really wonderful evening. She's like, thank you. And she's like, I'm like, you want to dance for a second? Because we're wet. You know, literally like stuck.

She's like, "Ah!" She just laughs, you know. I'm like, "Have a great evening." Of course, fast forward the clocks four hours later at a Puff Kennedy party, I go up, you know, you think you've created a connection with Beyoncé. So I like walk up there like, "Yay!" And nonce behold me, like Hov is right behind me. And he like gives me a small shove. He didn't like push me, but in my mind it was like, "Wraaah!" You know? I turn around, "Who the hell put..." He's a really big man.

And he was super cool. It was not like he was trying, he was literally trying to get me out the way because he was going in that. I don't think he, in my mind, he pushed me because we were dancing, we were trying to dance with Beyonce into my drunken state. But it was, it was just that he was trying to get out of the, like me out of the way in his direction.

And of course a lot of people there were like in their faces with phones and stuff. So I wasn't doing that. I was legitimately just trying to have a really fun night. - The I-4 you were gonna lead with that you asked to, you tried to negotiate a shout out. - No, are you crazy? False party? - Nah, the closest business stuff I did there was just like trying to be cool. - It's the craziest shout out that ever happened. The Kardashian. - Yeah, definitely Kim. - Yeah. - It took a lot longer to get, so like from Kylie,

Probably 2015. Oh, wow. So this is stuff in 20... No, it's much earlier than that. 2014, I got Kylie. But it took four or five years later to get Kim. So, you know, $700-something thousand for Kim. That's really awesome. Was it what?

ROI. Oh yeah. Totally worth it. They're an amazing family. They go above and beyond. People don't realize they're just people too. Of course, yeah. And they really tried. They ended up giving me stuff into the TV show and our products showcased and it was just really... And they're really cool too and

But super great for the brand. They opened doors that we probably never, like Walmart's deal was probably a precedent towards the working with them. Obviously we did a lot of marketing, but the snowball effect happened. Yeah, I love that. That's important. People always look at like, especially as marketers, Grant Cardone, I talk a lot with him about this and he's like a big advocate.

ROI like as marketers we can sometimes fall in the trap of like okay I spent 100k did I make 100 right back but like and I'm a big like I invest money and stuff and people my even my staff are like what are you doing it's like what you're the ROI guy why are you doing this and I'm like you're not getting the like let me explain like how this is gonna work and then

They say, "Okay, I get it." I don't know if they really do. But some of the time they're like, "Okay, you're crazy, but okay, we're going to listen." A lot of times the Bugazi effect happens. You don't quite have the, you can't just say one-to-one.

And if you're willing to go over that jump and know that the chess move five moves ahead is much better than the... But you've got to be the strategist to do that. You've got to think ahead. And you've got to take risks. In this life, nothing is rewarded unless you take some type of... And I feel that's what Elon does with Twitter. He's just playing a bigger chess game than we can fathom most of us. But most people won't get him. Like, no.

the dudes shooting fucking rocket ships and electric cars. It's like, who the fuck would be to talk about that guy? You know, like most people, understand the stockholders, right? Sure. But a lot of times, stockholders are just a skin, one to one. They look him really short too. And maybe he's fucking wrong. Who knows? I see, right? I see, right. But he seems to have pulled some shit so far. People ask me, I did an interview on him on like recovering that and I'm like,

i think the guy he's just at a different level and he's got a plan figured out and we'll see it right at the end of the day but i think he i mean he knows what he's doing like i feel like the reason why twitter has a lot of relevance is because like oh it says him yeah i've been a big twitter user for a long period of time like probably since really early on like almost from launch and um i

i feel like it's much better than it's ever been yeah right like uh i almost feel like it's a platform to put money into again that's the innovation side that i think is why i believe in elon and like you're a great example of like you you innovated in your own way the whole instagram shout out thing you were one of the first and it scaled you to where you scaled and you had to figure that out as you go right and it's like

Success in life rewards those people, the risk takers, like you said, the innovators. So yeah, I mean, for everyone listening to understand the influence impact, the compounding ROI, the use of celebrities and that more is possible if they think it's possible. But I also feel the inspiration, you were packing boxes with your mom. If you have the heart and you have to put it into the universe, there was a long period of time

Like I was working a job I didn't like, right? And this is as personable as I can get, right? There was like a six month window where it was just manifestation, if you want to call it prayer, if you want to call it whatever it is of I'm going to build something and I'm going to put it into the universe. It was also me putting it on paper, saying it, and then telling people I'm going to do this thing. And then also the study. People don't realize education and really putting that time to really learn a craft

requires time into studying, you know? But then it's like, how do you take that study of knowledge and put it into practicality? Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. So, you know, it was SEO. I'm going to learn how to do, you know, analytics. But that had an effect understanding and having a logic of, okay, the social media thing has come. I think it could be a traffic source, right? That's how I looked at it. I didn't think of it like, oh, I'm going to become famous, right? I looked at it as like, oh, just as simple as like, I can get clicks on a link. So simple, you know? Yeah.

And so like that belief system of first, you know, number one, I believed I could do it. I had saved my own money of work that was really hard for two years and not a lot of money either. Yeah. And risked it, you know, put it on black and said, okay, we're going to do this thing. Yeah. Everyone thought I was dumb. You didn't buy the Rolex, you put it on you. The first major purchase, I tell people I bought a Tesla cash. Yeah. A Model S. My mom basically had to put a gun to my head because she was like, do I need this? Do I really need this? Do I really need to buy this? It was a lot of that, you know. Yeah.

I don't really spend. I tell people all the time,

For me, at least, wealth was more about like, I can do whatever I want. Freedom, yeah. Whatever I can do. Tomorrow, if I want to sleep in, I'm going to sleep in. Where some people, it's the trinkets and the things. Yeah, yeah. Which is great too. Everyone's wealth is different. But building a legacy within a brand is the most, you can't take that away. Everyone knows me as the 50 guy. Wherever I go, if they know about it. And I'm not even really well-renowned, but the brand, if I show them a picture, they're like, aw.

like, oh, seeing it on Instagram. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's the ticker. You can't ever take that away. It's a really cool thing. So just to finish, I always ask this question towards the end. The whole show and the theme of my brand is taking the red pill, building your dream life, living in Wonderland. What would you say to someone that's on the edge deciding between the blue and red pill? Just jump, man. Life's so short. You don't know. Tomorrow's not promised. One of the

beauties is like we're gifted this moment this time frame so you know do it today you know what's the worst that can happen you know and the end of the day tomorrow the sun will come up again if you're blessed enough to be alive again you can try again yeah you know i failed a lot i failed a lot before 50 i have if i told you some of the things i did you'd be like holy crap you know what i mean and um just jump go for it good i love it well let's wrap up there you heard it here jump for us

Figure it out, make the decision, commit, go all in. That's what we always say. That's how you can live the red life. Dude, I appreciate you coming on. Thanks. Until next time, guys, keep living the red life.