Andy Creators Inc: AI in Marketing: Are We Doing It Wrong? | DSH #1504

They didn't know how to make a 30-second, you know, animated commercial that captures your attention.

That's where the fuck we're at right now with AI.

Like, my CMO sent me a fucking chat GPT output like this today.

I was like, Will, are you fucking kidding me?

At least tell it to make this digestible to me.

It's not your original thought anyway.

Like, that's so not pee, but that's where we're at right now.

You know what I mean?

All right, guys.

Got Andy, CEO of Creators Inc.

here today.

Welcome to Vegas, man.

Thank you, brother.

What are you doing in town this week?

The Watch King invited me out to do a convention.

I have another buddy who's in the jewelry business.

What are you doing out there, mainly working on the business?

I started the business in Boston, and actually, Massachusetts jacked their tax rate up from 5% to 9% out of the day.

I didn't know that after your first million dollars in revenue.

So you pay 5% on your first million, then you pay 9% on every subsequent million, which really made no sense because the state over collected taxes.

So when that happened, I said, this might be an opportunity, like a reason to go the fair rush.

That's some liberal ideology right there, right?

Yeah.

It sounds like Carly.

So for those that don't know Creators Inc., it's the largest influencer agency in the world, right?

By gross revenue, yeah.

That's impressive.

And how long did it take to get to that level?

I started about five and a half years ago, right in,

let's call it January of 2020 during the pandemic.

Wow.

It's a pretty fast growth, I feel like.

There's been agencies around for decades.

Yeah, it was really about the boom of OnlyFans.

You know, I'm not going to not gonna beat around the bush.

That's really what the catalyst was.

It's the right time, right place, plus good execution.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I'm a little bit older.

So I started the company when I was 35 or 36 years old.

I'm 41, turning 42 now.

So, you know, a lot of my competitors and other guys in the space are in their early, mid-20s.

And they're still excited about buying their first supercar and all this kind of stuff.

But I had that wave.

And, you know, I was really excited to just build a very stable service business.

And that's what happened.

That's a good point because you already had the experience.

You already built a company that had a billion dollars in revenue prior to this, right?

Yeah, built and failed many times.

So, you know, the experience is a big deal.

Now, someone hears this, like a billion in revenue, they're probably thinking, how did that one fail?

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Was that the phone business?

Yeah.

So I'll back up a little bit.

I grew up in Wayland, Massachusetts, and

my parents were doctors.

I was always kind of alone, like by myself.

You know, I grew up with a nanny, and I'd go out in the woods and keep myself busy.

My sisters were 10 years older than me, so I was kind of an oldie child.

And so I was by myself a lot as a young kid.

And I remember really thinking that I had a lot of self-confidence because I was alone.

I didn't kind of have a picture of the broader world.

And I thought I was going to be a famous athlete or an actor or something.

And then I went to public school.

And public school was rough for me.

Middle school and high school was not an easy town for me.

And I was very small.

I actually wrestled 103 pounds.

But I was scrappy.

I was a good wrestler.

And

but, you know, girls didn't like me.

I didn't get laid until I was 18 years old.

And just high school was a tough time for me.

But I'm in the locker room junior year of high school and a kid comes in.

This is the year 2000.

Right.

So six years before Mark Zuckerberg even exists with Facebook, right?

Like no, like the dream was you go to college, maybe you ride the subway to Wall Street, you make 200 grand a year with your ball sticking to your leg in the summertime.

And like, that's the, that's the dream, right?

So entrepreneurship was not on my calendar, on anybody's kind of radar yet.

And so this kid comes in the locker room and he's all excited.

And he says, I got into Babson College.

It's the number one school for entrepreneurship in the world.

And, you know, Babson College was like around the corner from where I grew up.

So I thought it was a shit school.

I said, well, what's entrepreneurship?

Like a lung disease?

And he goes, no.

He goes.

Arthur Blank, who founded the Home Depot, was fired from his job.

And he went to a coffee shop and wrote the business plan for the company.

And now he's a billionaire.

He owns the Atlanta Falcons.

And I go, that's what I want to do.

I somehow figure out how to get into this school.

And I show up driving a Ford Explorer and Abercrombie and Fitch, thinking that's as bling-bling as the world gets.

And then I see all these Arab kids driving Ferraris.

And I say, what dorm are you in?

They go, Habibi, I live at the Ritz.

And I go, what the fuck?

So, and one of these kids invites me to a nightclub, right?

Freshman year.

So I go out to the nightclub.

I didn't realize he needed money for a cover charge.

I had no money.

So I had to sneak.

Yeah, I had to sneak in so I didn't have to pay $20.

And when I get downstairs, there's a club called ARIA.

I'm watching these kids pop Crystal freshman year of college and they've got black cards.

And it's just this, that wrestler-like competitive rush took over for me.

And

I just started

building and failing businesses after that from that moment on.

That's the one good part about college, I guess, is the networking, right?

Yeah.

The access to other people.

Yeah.

I feel like if you don't take advantage of that when you're in college, it's kind of a waste at this point.

Yeah, absolutely.

So you got inspired by that.

And I guess, did you find your mentor there or what was the next step from there?

I wouldn't say I found my mentor, but

I found some really smart kids at Babson who, you know, were like, came from, you know, pretty poor backgrounds, who are there on scholarship, who were like great coders and programmers.

And we built a business together that was one of the first behavioral ad networks, which exploded.

We were the number three.

buyer of banner ads on the internet behind Google and Yahoo.

And we figured out out pretty early on that we could sell mobile offers on the internet because like not everyone had a credit card, but everyone had a cell phone and kids had their parents, you know, would get a parent's cell phone and they could subscribe to stupid things like ringtones, horoscopes, IQ quizzes.

We made a million dollars for our dorm room and thought it was a big deal through a party.

Carriers thought we were pains in the asses.

We were just creating all these customer service chargeback bullshit issues.

And then in 2008, when there was a flash crash, I'm in my mid-20s.

I'm getting these phone calls from the CEO of AT ⁇ T, Verizon, Timo, well, hey, Andrew, how do we do more revenue together?

This is a great stream of income.

They gave us an API into their back end and

do a billion dollars in transactions.

The federal government came along later on after we had sold the company and I was flying around a private jet in my 20s and living downtown in Boston and basically wiped me out.

you know, hit me for $97 million.

Jeez.

Yeah, I went from

being a 103-pound small kid to I bulked up in my 20s.

I, you know, really started going to the gym.

And, you know, that then I hit my growth spreads.

So I'm in my 20s and I've got money.

And that's my new identity.

I'm giving money to restaurateurs and, you know, all these ventures.

And then boom, you know, like I'm on the front page of the newspaper for basically losing all my money and settling with the FTC.

And that kicked off about six years of darkness in my life that, you know, took, took me to

kind of find myself and come back from it.

But while I was kind of in this rock bottom period, period, the Trilight from Therisage is no joke.

Medical grade red and near infrared light with three frequencies per light, deep healing, real results, and totally portable.

It's legit.

Photo biomodulation tech in a flexible on-body panel.

This is the Trilight from Therasage and it's next level red light therapy.

It's got 118 high-powered polychromatic lights, each delivering three healing frequencies, red and near-infrared, from 580 to 980 nanometers.

It's sleek, portable, and honestly, I don't go anywhere without it.

If you had, you know, kind of completely fallen from grace, have you?

I ended up meeting this Harvard neuroscientist.

And this guy kind of saw it.

He actually was my primary care doctor.

And he saw this business background in me.

And he needed someone with a business mind because he was much more of a science mind.

And his vision was to bring the Department of Advanced Research Projects, which is a branch of our military, which literally spends a trillion dollars a year, every year, to make sure that we're the most sophisticated military in the world.

If you go go to DARPA and you say, hey, I've got this bracelet, when a soldier wears it, their brain's going to be 60% more effective in a stressful situation, like in a gunfight.

They'll say,

if they really want what you have, they'll say, how much you want?

You say, $10 billion.

And you like your plan.

And they cut you a check because they print the money and they got the budget for it.

And what really happened was I really bought into this guy's program and he really dialed me in physically, intellectually, emotionally, socially, spiritually, sexually, occupationally.

I've been sober for nine years.

I don't really have any vices.

I'm very very desire-free.

I meditate.

I eat a certain way.

I think a certain way.

I pray.

I guess, you know, I'll kind of dive into that.

I don't know the flow of your show because I think, you know, maybe what's more interesting is the OnlyFans kind of creators inside.

But

my first day after

I decided I was going to work with this guy, he says, Andy, what was your first moment of life?

I'm going to ask you,

what was your first moment of life?

That I remember.

Not that you remember.

What was your first moment of life?

Before that, you were a sperm.

Right.

You were a sperm and you said, Oh my God, this is exciting.

I'm going to be Sean.

I'm going to be Sean.

I'm going to be Sean.

And you look to your left and you look to your right and go, What the hell is that?

And it's 200 million permutations of Sean and Shauna all racing towards the egg.

Right.

And you go, holy shit.

And you put your blinders on and you just start going.

Right.

And you get to the egg wall and you go, Mom, let me in.

Let me in.

I'm going to be Sean.

And here's what happens:

four sperm hit the egg wall.

And the egg profiles the final four and selects the one with the highest survival index.

Wow.

Every single one of us on this earth, the odds of us being born are so great.

Like if we could even think about, like if we could even wrap our head around it, we probably couldn't get out of bed in the morning.

It would cause so much anxiety.

The odds of winning the World Series of Poker, like six years in a row, are greater than, or better than being born.

You know, like our dads didn't jerk off on the floor that day.

They were actually having sex to procreate, part of my French.

And so for the next nine months, you're in the womb, right?

With no distractions.

Amniotic fluid is nice and warm.

Like, you know, when you drink something warm, it soothes your chest.

That feels like being in the womb.

And your eyes develop in your brain and your spine and your fingers and your toes.

And man, look at us.

We came out perfect nine months in a day.

Boom, out the birth canal.

We came and wow, wow, wow.

Mommy and daddy go, oh, it's an EQ.

And, you know,

weighs a made-in-china rattle in your face and you whack it away.

And then they say, what's wrong with you?

And you finally grab it.

And that's the first time when you grab that rattle that you are getting attached to something that is limbic in this world, right?

How old are you?

I'm 28.

Okay.

So for the next 28 years, as we go on, it's a world of prey and predator.

We're all trying to predate on each other and sell each other things that are in our own interest because we're trying to get money, but not necessarily good for us.

And you have to figure out and navigate your way through the world.

And what this doctor taught me was that, you know,

we're already already hardwired to win.

It's when you get out into the world, all the predating distracts us.

You didn't need cocaine, Tony Robbins, clout,

forever was,

learned through his method to like stay connected and hardwired to myself and not get turned out by all the shit out here.

And so when I say P-I-E-S-S-S-O, The physical is your diet and exercise.

It's the way you eat.

It's the way you, you know, take care of your body.

The intellectual is the way you learn every day.

Your mind is a muscle.

If you don't work it out, it gets soft.

Old people do crossword puzzles.

E is your emotions, like meditation, people who meditate versus people who don't actually physically have a different anatomy.

Your amygdala shrinks.

That's your emotional battleground.

So your ability to organize data and not like when you're sitting at a traffic light, just like shit on yourself constantly, your inner roommate shuts up

when you meditate.

Also, women, when they menstruate, their amygdala swells.

That's what PMS is.

Socially and sexually, cut out all the negative shit.

It should only be positive energy only.

You know, I'm not on dating websites because I can't, I don't want to be out till four in the morning getting drunk to get laid.

You know, like there's other ways to get what you need.

And socially, like you shouldn't be around people that bring you no purpose.

There's a lot of neuroscience behind the power of spirituality.

So for example, you take a prison population, you give half the Bible, the other half that doesn't have the Bible, and you watch those two crowds, very different results.

Another great example is

scientists who take two glasses, put some rats in them with water.

Rats start treading water.

In about 15 minutes, they give up and they drown.

Okay, they start the experiment over.

Rats start treading water.

At about 14 minutes and 45 seconds, they pluck the rats out.

They dry them off.

They give them something to eat.

and they drop them right back in the water.

Now, these rats just swam till failure.

How long do you think they lasted the next time?

It's got to be less than 14.

250 hours.

Why?

Why?

Because they believed they would be saved.

Think about how much further they could go when they thought something was coming to save them.

Holy crap.

So when they thought nothing was coming to save them, they gave up in 15 minutes.

When they had that hope, it lasted 250 hours.

That's crazy.

Crazy.

And then lastly is your occupational dimension.

So P-I-E-S-S-S-O, the occupational dimension just means like you want to be doing things that bring you more value than things you're like, don't work a job for more money when your food, shelter, and, you know, basic needs are covered if your boss just creates so much negative stress on your life that you're miserable all the time.

And you've got to be cognizant of these things.

And so this guy cleans me all up and I become a very dialed in, calm, sober.

thoughtful version of myself.

And boom, the pandemic happens.

Pentagon shuts down.

There's no more government contracts.

I'm sitting at my parents' home in Cape Town, Massachusetts, you know, kind of squatting there.

They, they, they are living in Florida and we're staying away from each other because everyone's got COVID and the world's scared.

And a female friend of mine who knew me when I was in the, in my 20s, you know, we, we'd met on Bumble or something, calls me up and she says, hey, I need your help.

And I said, what's going on?

And she said, I've got $100 to my name.

I'm some lady's nanny doing her grocery shopping out here in Los Angeles.

I'm scared of getting coronavirus.

So I made an OnlyFans, but I can't figure it out.

So the hell is that?

I logged in and I was like, oh, shit, you're trying to thirst scale.

This platform is pretty robust in the sense that it can facilitate these transactions, but it doesn't do a great job of taking a creator with a blindfold on and saying, do steps one through 10, you're going to make a bag of money.

I helped kind of organize her and took over the marketing to figure out how are we going to maximize the lifetime value of your audience.

She had 50,000 followers on Instagram.

No TikTok, no Twitch, no Twitter.

We made a quarter of a million dollars in month one.

Wow.

She starts to run run around in la and she had been a personal assistant for some big content creators and starts saying hey don't trust your only fans business to nightclub promoters or taiga or you know these little people yeah um there's these guys in boston they don't simp look at my numbers and from there you know we had a client that did 60 million dollars a year holy crap and um

And I kind of figured out,

I had kind of met the higher-ups at OnlyFans.

And so they had kind of divulged to me that I was the biggest guy in the space doing what I was doing.

And they kind of liked the way we did it.

And then I come out to LA one day and, you know, I'm, you know, kind of chest pumped up.

And I try to sign a contract creator and she goes, who the hell are you?

I'm with Unleashed or some shit.

Like, I've never heard of you basically.

And I was like, oh, wow, I need to build brand.

And so what I saw was that, you know, the actors and writers' strike, like nobody's really watching movies much anymore.

So all the traditional Hollywood agencies, which are CAA, Creative Arts Agency, UTA, United Talent Agency, and William Morris, WME, were kind of all going down because the actors and writer strike.

So I created a company called Creators Inc.

so that these large celebrity Hollywood people who are doing these paywall sites would feel like it's something they were familiar with.

And that actually worked out like gangbusters.

Wow.

Brilliant, dude.

That is so cool.

Now a billion dollars this year in revenue projected.

Top Top line.

Our creators collectively will do over a billion dollars top line.

But people are saying OnlyFans is dead.

How so?

And it's not as popular, but you're proving them wrong with the billion in top line this year.

Well, I mean, there's.

Well, there's a lot of haters, so.

Yeah, no, it's definitely not dead.

There's just a lot of guys on the bottom.

Mainly the Red Bull.

I'm a very fear-based person.

When I started the business, I was like, this ain't going to last six months.

This girl takes her top off and our fans see it.

Like, what's left?

And it

that same client has grown and grown and grown and grown and grown like 20 straight quarters.

Wow.

And what I've discovered is that it's not about what you look like.

The reason why my company is called Creators Inc., it's because we are looking to work with good content creators.

If you make good content, somebody will discover you on their FYP or, you know, the Explore page.

They'll watch 10 of your videos and start to feel like they know you.

And

the only fans, the only people who would give a shit would be the people we went to high school with who would be like, what the fuck is he doing?

Right.

Like

showing his balls, you know, like,

but it's the C word context, right?

Like, I had some of the most attractive looking people coming to us, couldn't make two pennies.

You've got Trisha Paytas sitting in her car eating Korean food all day, like making a million dollars a month because she's connecting with the people.

They start to feel like they know them.

That's far.

That's where engagement comes from.

That's so facts because I feel like the modern day

from when we were growing up of course and seeing these movie a-list celebrities i feel like they would get less engagement on only fans than like a trisha patis or tanamongo yeah it's 100 true yeah because those guys are you think it's relatability that they provide their fans their audience um yeah i mean

dominant behind the screen that needed a production company or a studio that's a different registration path than OnlyFans Lincoln Bio.

You know what I mean?

So it's definitely like you have to have the knowledge to do it.

I can't really, but I do have some older, you know, celebrities in their 40s and 50s who are doing six figures a month that were like big time like movie stars and actresses who are just like that they don't make revenue anywhere else anymore.

And this, this platform has really saved their life.

Well, there'll always be that MILF category, I think.

There's, there's always a crowd of guys that want to see what their childhood crush looks like now, right?

Sure.

Yeah, I think that's an audience for sure.

Do you have any male creators or is it mainly female?

15% of our clientele are male.

Interesting.

Jack Joe Herdy is a client, right?

Jack Doherty, yeah.

Shout out to him.

He's probably one of the most misunderstood people on the internet.

He is.

He is.

And you know what?

Jack is a really, really good kid.

I would like to say I'm a mentor for Jack, but I'm not sure Jack uses mentors.

Like

he does consult me a lot when he needs to bring me in to kind of mediate and moderate things.

Jack is one of the smart, like, you know, I wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was 18 years old.

I mean, that kid at 20, 21, like, and I've known him even since he was 18.

I mean, like his understanding of real estate and rates and how to leverage debt, like this kid is a, this kid is a super prodigy.

I just hope he like kind of stays out of trouble.

And like, you know.

you know, you see him crash his car and then, you know, crash a dirt bike the next day.

I want to see him learn from those lessons.

But I think what people get wrong about Jack Doherty is that Jack Doherty's online persona and real name is Jack Doherty.

They're two different people.

And he's actually a very, very, very good kid.

When Jack Doherty calls me and asks me for something,

he always ends the phone call with, thank you so much, Andy.

I really appreciate you.

Wow.

Not a lot of people do that.

Like he's, he's a good kid.

And I, and I'm going to tell you what's going to happen with him.

Logan Paul was canceled.

He took pictures next to, you know, suicide people in Japan and like he was fucked.

Now he's like the biggest star in the world.

His company just outsold Gatorade four to one in Walmart last year with Prime.

The thing didn't exist five years ago.

He's a WWE champion superstar.

His podcast is amazing.

I mean, and he was fucked, right?

Like Jack will cognizantly make a pivot to being a good guy versus a heel pretty soon here.

I could see.

Because he's smart enough, he's thoughtful enough, and

he's got a good hand on his shoulder jay stall did that there's also another kid neon who i'm sure you've seen he's in the middle of that transformation right now is he i think it's possible you just gotta first get the audience and some people hate on that right that he's rage baiting they call it but he's playing chess you got to give it to him neon cost me about two and a half million dollars two decembers ago how so uh his manager asked if he could come stream my art basil party i had a boogie with the hoodie rich the kid enale choppa i had paid for for this whole thing at the SLS.

I let Neon in.

As soon as the camera goes up, his community swatted the hotel.

No way.

Like Robo was like, oh, there's bombs by the pool.

Don't the fucking idiot operator like freaks out, calls, you know, Miami PD or whatever it is, and they literally shut down the whole entire hotel.

Holy crap.

Just like a lunch.

Yes.

Canceled the whole party.

Like they evacuated the whole hotel.

That's a thousand-dollar night hotel.

That's crazy.

Insane.

I just had an event there for F1 the other day.

Yeah.

Damn, that's nuts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But, but Neon's a good kid too.

And I, you know, I, I don't want to say I worry because I think all those kids are on their journey.

They're going to figure it out, but they've, they, they garner so much attention.

And like, I hope they get a chance to kind of figure out life in their own ways and, and do the right things by the time they get to my age.

Um, you know, because like the journey is crazy, right?

Like when I, when I first made money my first time around, I had to do all the ego dumb shit.

Like I, like, it was a crutch.

You know, I had to make people, I had to, I had to make everybody know I was important.

Right.

Now I just like, I don't give a fuck.

Yeah.

And that provides a lot of freedom.

Well, a lot of the most financially successful people I know are like that because of childhood trauma.

They're trying to prove everyone wrong and they got a lot of demons they're battling.

So they overwork.

They become workaholics.

Yeah, you don't have to meet me.

You don't want to peak in high school.

No, you definitely don't want to peek in high school.

But no, you're right to be worried.

Man, this guy, Vitali, have you been giving up with that story?

I'll tell you something crazy three days before Vitali was arrested he FaceTimed me I hadn't heard from him in a year like since he like blew back up with the predator shit I let him come to one of my Coachella events and like we had some fun we filmed the skit um and uh you know I think he also is genuinely a good guy who uh is really passionate about content and virality and you know again If you don't know him, you probably have, you know, prejudice opinions.

Three days before he gets arrested, he calls me up.

He goes, I need a huge favor.

You still own this domain, like the tally, the goat.

I need it back.

I was like, okay, no problem.

But like when you get back from wherever the fuck you are, he was in the Philippines.

I was like, you got to come over.

You got to, you know, make some story posts

and say, like, Creator Sync is great.

Like, they hooked me up with Mike's domain, whatever.

But he's like, yeah, okay, okay, okay.

I promise.

And then, of course, he gets arrested.

The live streaming stuff is

you're constantly chasing crazy.

Anyway, what's going on with him?

He's just in jail in the Philippines.

He's about to face charges.

Yeah, it's not looking good, dude.

It's not looking good.

But the point is, these live streamers, they just keep having to do crazy and crazier things, and it ends up like that.

I can't believe they're as ballsy as they are.

Like, I just, I mean, I fear incarceration.

Like, I don't want to be locked up.

Not that it's actually like the reality of it's so bad because it's not.

But,

you know, just not being able to pursue your goals or relationships or be that because you're like sitting in a federal camp sucks.

So I'm just surprised, like, you know, when law enforcement gets involved, you know, when I forget, like these kids are so young.

A lot of my clients, like,

here's something interesting, right?

When I first started, I tried to be like super agent.

I was like, you need to be filing your taxes.

Here's your CPA.

We have your tax return filed.

You need to write a check.

Some of my clients would be like, nah.

And I realized that a lot of my clients like probably have issues with their parents.

And I was becoming a parental figure.

Right.

And so if I would help them too much, they would leave, they would fire me.

Um, and then I had to like kind of figure out that balance and realize, like, you kind of got to let them touch the stove and get burnt, and then, like, be there to coach them more passively.

It is a tricky role you're in, because there is a negative stigma with OF managers, right?

They're greedy and they're taking advantage of their clients.

I've seen that online.

Yeah.

But you got to just provide good value, right?

Yeah.

I mean, there's definitely some shit bums in the space.

A lot of suitcase pimps and,

you know, people who are just doing it for, you know, monetary reasons.

I am actively looking, like the reason why I create, I actually have a huge community of creators who don't do OnlyFans.

But what I don't have yet, which I'm still trying to develop and, you know, hopefully Hashem will bless us with the answer soon is.

You know, I was in my house the other day and there was four huge Mexican-American influencers.

Like I was adding up the total Instagram followers.

Yeah, like 200 million.

And I was like, if I had a spicy Cheeto knockoff or a gusher thing or, you know,

so I actually went out and ran into David Dobrik at this snack and sweet convention.

And I was like, so I'm looking for products to monetize our network that doesn't do OF as well because I have so many great friends who are young, big content creators that look up to me for investment advice.

And I actually have close relationships with them, but we don't monetize anything together.

So

yeah, the CPG space seems like the next phase of influencer product, right?

Yeah, man.

Like, you know who Brent Rivera is?

Heard of him.

He's a big influencer.

He's got his own chip.

It's like a 3D Dorito.

And like, he's just got such a good audience.

He's got such a big audience.

And he's so good at creating content that like, you know, I think, I think it's an easy strategy.

You promote the hell out of your product for like a year, then maybe you get into some, you know, brick and mortar stores.

People know what it is.

The purchase orders start to come because they're selling it.

Then you get better placement and caps and then and then you get bought out.

But the CPG space is really, really tricky.

So like beverage and snacks and all that shit, you make no money when you're in stores because the distributor gets all that margin.

You only make big money when Coke or Pepsi or Nestle buys you and they immediately get like they can pay a billion dollars for, you know, Olipop or Poppy or whatever it is because they immediately get 40% of.

that business back because they are the distributor.

You understand?

Yeah, they got like a little monopoly going on, right?

Big time.

Yeah.

Liquid Death was another one that sold it.

Yeah.

That was a big one.

So that's like, that's the tough part about that business.

Like you don't really make money until the day you actually.

You got to survive for years, have patience, maybe even lose money.

And get lucky because like if Coke buys Red Bull and Pepsi Vibes Monster and like you're the third guy, like it's going to fuck.

Retail scare.

It scares me because of the margins too, like you said.

Like you're investing so much time for the possibility of a sale.

Yeah.

Whereas this, you know, I just need views, revenue's going up, profits going up.

I'm about to start a network actually.

And that's how you sell in the podcast space.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

So I'm pumped about that.

I love it.

You watch Succession?

No, I've heard about, though.

Oh, you got to watch it.

It's a good show.

It's basically about like loosely like Rupert Murdoch, who created Fox News.

Okay.

But just like really understand, like if you, you know, you want to start a network, the power of media succession.

Fox has done a great job at getting personalities.

Yeah.

Like Tucker came off Fox.

There's a bunch of big guys that came from Fox, right?

Sean Hannity.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, good luck to you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I've studied Barstool Sports Model.

So Dave Portnoy is a Boston guy.

I've known him for fucking 20 years.

Nice.

There was an influencer named Jen Selter who was.

I know her.

Yeah, one of the original fitness influencers.

So, you know, I had her at my apartment in Boston like 20 years ago.

Wait, what fucking year was that?

Damn.

How old was she back then?

She still looks good at her age.

No, not 20 years ago.

I'm sorry.

What year is this?

Maybe 2012?

So I was about 13 years ago?

And Portnoy came over and filmed a video with her, which is still their biggest YouTube video ever.

And Barstall sports an interesting story.

Like they just started as like a newsletter.

Like they would make, you know, like funny, degenerate betting newsletters and put them at the bars in Boston.

You would like, you know, they had the smoke show of the day on the cover.

And to watch him, what he's done and who he's become is great.

It's really impressive.

I'm proud of that.

Yeah.

Shout out to Dave.

They've had four shows branch off of Barstow that are nine-figure empires now.

Name them.

Call her daddy.

Call her daddy.

Damn.

BFFs?

No, not BFFs.

I'm blanking out right now.

But I just looked it up the other day.

Conversation?

Caleb just left.

Yeah.

I don't know if that's a nine-figure one.

That was eight figures.

There was two guys.

One has a mustache.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

KFC?

No, not KFC.

Whatever.

Either way.

Barstool is, they've set the tone in the podcast space.

And Rogan, obviously, of course.

I mean, people are like, the world moves so fast.

Like, people forget Dave Porter Porter and I sold this company for hundreds of millions of dollars and bought it back for a dollar.

No one's ever done that.

How crazy.

It's legendary.

Yeah, I mean, it's also luck.

You know, Penn got in this position where like ESP and Disney said to them, hey, we're going to work with you on the sports betting stuff, but like you cannot be associated with Barstool.

They was like, the fuck does that mean?

And like somehow got to buy his company back for a fucking dollar.

Crazy.

It's incredible.

Shout out to Dave, one of the goats.

You want to sell this thing one day, I'd imagine.

Listen, actually, I've never woken up and even thought of that possibility.

Wow.

Really?

I swear.

Like, I think companies probably only get bought when, like, you don't need to be bought because like, you've got such a good thing.

Somebody like wants it or it's, it's some vertical.

Um, you know, sure, that would be cool, I guess.

Uh, but

I started this thing from zero.

Like, I'm so far beyond where I ever thought it would be in five and a half years.

Remember, I thought it was going to last six months.

Yeah.

Remember the first time a client paid me 14 grand, I was fucking like, holy sh, you know, and like here we are.

So,

um,

OnlyFans is having a tough time selling their business.

Oh, they're trying to sell right now, yeah, there's rumors,

but they make so much money.

Even if somebody stroked a $5 billion check, which would which would be a really low multiple, you know, what are the odds in the next five years that AI or regulators don't fuck up their business?

It's not zero.

So, that's so risky, right?

So,

you know, I don't,

for how strong my company is financially, the size of a check somebody would have to write me to make me say, okay, this makes sense.

Here are the keys.

I don't have enough to really give them back where I think that would ever even make sense.

What do I have?

Just like a bunch of relationships and contracts with content creators.

You know, it's, um,

so, but, you know, maybe I start a CPG product and that has like really strong, you know, annual revenues and that's a little bit more tangible for someone to buy.

Oh, makes sense.

Again, like

I'm, I'm so content and grateful and

humble to wake up every day and be free, not paralyzed, and not have cancer.

Like,

I'm not going to worry about food or anything over my head.

This might sound corny.

That's where my brain's out.

I really enjoy what I do.

I don't have a shit about somebody buying me or not.

Like, I'm just like, that's not my house.

That's a good spot to be in.

So, no worries, no fears for you right now.

Do you fear AI interrupting the business?

I don't fear anything.

Like, the weird thing is, if it, if it, I fear cancer and taxes and the feds.

Good fears to hunt.

Yeah, but,

you know, if my whole industry blew up tomorrow, like, again, like, I would appreciate that it happened.

Like,

if it weren't for COVID-19, if it weren't for the fucking Wuhan flu, I wouldn't have a business.

I wouldn't be here.

Right.

That whole thing happened for me, not to me.

But

my scary thing about AI

is that

I think it's a really important time to make money because I think there's a good chance the world's going to be haves and have-nots, right?

Like the tractor didn't put everybody out of business, right?

The world grew from the invention of the tractor.

So all the jobs that will get wiped out from AI, right?

Like I don't use lawyers anymore.

I use ChatGPT.

Yes.

So

the world will evolve.

And I think it's really important time to make money.

So you're like not a have-not, you know, if,

but with that being said, here's something interesting to think about.

The very first television commercials, if you go back and research this, look, look this up.

The very first television commercials were radio spots.

Why?

Because the radio was the technology.

Everybody knew how to advertise on the radio.

You read the fucking commercial.

The very first television commercials was a guy sitting there reading a radio spot.

They didn't know how to make a 30-second, you know, animated commercial that captures your attention.

Yet, that's where the fuck we're at right now with AI.

Like my CMO sent me a fucking chat GPT output like this today.

I was like, Will, are you fucking kidding me?

At least tell it to make this digestible to me.

It's not your original thought anyway.

Like that's so not peeve, but that's where we're at right now.

You know what I mean?

So people who are really sitting down thinking, like, how am I going to position myself in this?

Like, this this is the time right now.

This is the time you can, you know, set yourself up.

I love that.

I mean, like you said, if it blows up tomorrow, you still have the skills and the experience to do this in another industry.

You've already done it before.

Yeah.

And I've got bullets in the chamber.

I got lucky that I got to monetize the last five and a half years.

Right.

Like any, anyone's goal who's just like focused on making money should be make enough money so that what I make on interest from my money out yields any efforts I can have in entrepreneurship.

Then you can do whatever the fuck you want.

That's FU money right there.

Yeah.

That's my goal.

I'm almost there.

But yeah, because if you can make 7% off your, your money.

How are you going to make 7%?

S p or it?

Great.

I love the answer.

Why?

Is that a good answer?

I think so.

Yeah.

Look, what I have a lot of young people coming to me who have made money on OnlyFans and brand deals and things like that.

And it's just sitting in the bank.

And I explain to them, I go, Your money sitting in your bank account is losing you money because there's something called inflation.

That bag of chips is going to cost more next year than it does this year.

So they say, what are my choices?

I go, you've got two pretty simple choices.

Put it in something called fixed income, a high yield savings account.

You can take it from your bank account and put it in the money market.

You get 4.5% a year.

So you get 45 grand on every million dollars or 4,500 on every 100 grand a year, risk-free.

Or you will make twice to three times that in the SP 500.

But in the long run, any

six month year window, it's not guaranteed to be a straight lineup, but in the long run, it will outperform money markets.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think.

And then you can become a really sophisticated investor.

But I mean, for the sake of this conversation, you really can't outperform the S ⁇ P in the long run, especially when you factor in like paying taxes properly.

It's very hard.

People that claim that they can do that for everyone, that's a red flag to me.

Yeah.

You know, if they could do hedge fund managers.

Yeah.

Well, even financial advisors.

There's a lot of those.

A lot of young guys claiming that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A lot of crypto experts too.

Yeah.

I'm sure you've seen that yeah i forget what buffet's 90 10 rule is but it's basically like 90 of your assets should be in like the spy and then like 10 fixed income or something and his whole thesis behind it when he lays it out over like the long term when you factor in taxes is like it's just undefeated yeah that that's the go right there he just pulled out of everything though did you see that i mean he's also in his mid 90s and uh You know, it's, it's a little interesting, right?

Like, I never got into crypto.

I never got into Bitcoin mainly because like Warren Buffett was my idol.

And he was like,

I wouldn't buy all the Bitcoin in the world for 25 cents because I don't know what it is.

I'd rather farm land that I know yields something.

Old school.

He might not have been right about that.

I don't think he was.

He's 110,000 mouth.

So you wanted to buy it back in the day?

Oh, yeah, man.

I'll tell you a crazy story.

When I lost all my money, I had a guy sleeping on my couch who had just been divorced named Harry Ya.

And I was investing in Harry's like fantasy football thing.

Harry's now a billionaire.

Damn.

And when I lost all my my money, he's saying to me, Wait, what year is this?

December 2013.

Andrew, don't worry about it.

We're going to make it all back in cryptocurrency.

And I've got to do a crypto fund.

I said, Harry, say cryptocurrency again.

I'm going to throw you off the fucking balcony.

Like he started a crypto fund and now he flies his private jet between Vancouver and Abu Dhabi.

And lies everyone he's on to every Monday because he's fucking bored.

And

you still talk to him?

Oh, yeah.

What a friend right there.

Yeah.

So he got in Bitcoin when it was like a dollar for a hat.

It was just like, you know, like, you ever seen them, ever heard of the movie Dumb Money?

No, it's the story of the GameStop stock.

Okay.

Have you ever heard about this?

No, I know about the stock.

It's on Netflix.

It's a fucking great movie.

There's this guy in Brockton, Massachusetts.

He calls himself Roaring Kitty.

I know what I mean.

He basically discovers that GameStop's like not such a piece of shit.

And he starts to like, he's an analyst and he looks at it and he's like, there's 150% of this company short.

And then GameStock becomes this

basically symbol of like the people versus Wall Street.

And like all these like layman people, like nurses and plumbers and electricians are like buying and holding GameStop and they're short squeezing all these hedge funders.

And they like, they took out like multiple hedge funders, like billions of dollars.

And this like, I don't know if GameStop is actually a piece of shit company or not.

I haven't studied its financials, but crazy story.

But literally, this guy sold like a bunch of shit.

Like his life savings was like 50 grand.

He put it all into GameStop at like three bucks.

He made, you know, upwards of $100 million.

Legend.

That to me showed the power of social media when that was going on.

Yeah.

Because that was all social media.

Yeah.

That's what like got everyday investors to invest.

Yeah.

And that actually movie, it's called Dumb Money.

It's on Netflix.

It tells some great stories.

Like, like.

Robin Hood actually tried to pull some fuck shit off.

I remember that.

Yeah, like the big hedge funders that were getting getting squeezed and losing billions did some corrupt shit where they like convinced the Robinhood owners to like halt, disable the ability to buy the stock.

And then they that then they paid to get Wall Street bets, which was a Reddit sub thread where they, where all these guys were communicating and watching this guy roaring Kitty, they shut it down.

So all of a sudden, all these people who are holding the stock are like, fuck, did Kitty sell?

Is he going to sell?

Is he going to dump?

Da-da-da.

And then there was a big congressional hearing.

And so you've got all these hedge funders who are like speaking, like, no, we didn't tell Robin Hood that they were lying.

And then this fucking guy from Brockton, Massachusetts, Roaring Kitty, who's like, he's like our little analyst at Mass Mutual, who'll be investing 50,000 of his life savings.

He goes on to a congressional hearing and goes, I like this stock and I'm buying.

And like his whole community is like, fuck yeah.

I think that's where like hold the line came from.

And like the stock surges again and literally literally puts this hedge fund called like Melvin Capital out of business.

This guy had to borrow like $6 billion because he's like, no, no, we're like, like all these fuckers are going to give up and like the stock's a piece of shit.

It's going to short.

And the guy literally had to shutter his door.

Jeez.

Yeah.

That was a multi-billionaire Nate.

And the people wiped him out.

That was a legendary story.

Showed me the power of alternative media, which is now.

how we make a living.

Watch that movie.

I will.

Dumb money.

Still on nothing.

I'm a big movie guy, man.

Learn a lot from some good movies.

Yeah, I like that one.

Yeah.

You got one creator I did want to ask you about who I think is the next big star, Camilla.

How did you find her and how did you start working with her?

So Camilla was,

she blew up from a Mr.

Beast video

and she lived in North Carolina and she somehow got into a Mr.

Beast video of this squid games thing.

And I think she got into OnlyFans and was monetizing it very, very small scale.

And then reached out to Jack Doherty and signed with Jack to help promote her and blow her up.

And then she's just, she's, she's got a very, very,

she's very bright.

She's very intense.

She's very alpha, you know, like, and what really launched her was like, you know, she kind of cloud hooked Sophie Rain into this fake beef.

And then she kind of took over as the new Sophie Rain.

And

she has like a little bit more polished aspirations.

Like she wants the, you know, she's a beautiful kid.

And, you know, she does, you know, she wants to do like Met Gal and, you know, she's a name now.

So, you know, it happens quick.

Like six months ago, she did not have the social footprint.

See, she came out of nowhere.

I think she's next, though.

She's got something special about her.

I'll tell you in December, she was making half a million dollars a month.

Just like, you know, her traffic was getting that crazy.

She pulls the Sophie Rain thing.

I think she's, she's probably around $3 million a month.

Holy shit.

That's insane.

Yeah.

And by the way, when we started with her, she was under $10,000 a month.

Oh my gosh.

So So you guys just have a machine.

Like you just, it's like a plug and play system.

Like you find the right creator and you got the marketing behind it.

It's not even just the marketing.

It's actually data.

It's actually saying, how do I maximize the lifetime value of someone's audience?

Right.

And there's a methodology to doing that.

That's cool, man.

Yeah.

It's cool to see you give smaller guys an option because some agencies won't work with you unless you're hitting certain revenue per month.

Yeah, no, for me, it's all about potential.

It's not about your,

it's not about your current numbers.

It's definitely not about following Followers are irrelevant these days.

Yeah, because it's not so much social media anymore.

It's more interest media, right?

Like somebody who makes a really relevant, shareable, likable piece of content with no followers can go to 100 million on that video tomorrow, right?

Yep.

And so that's what I look for, people who really understand how to make good content.

Yeah, Ashton Hall.

My biggest pet peeve is when a brand approaches me and they're like, oh, if we convert 0.5% of your followers to buy this, you know, you'll give 40% of this.

Oh, on a CPA deal?

Yeah.

Yeah, fuck that.

And then, meanwhile, in the back end, they're scrubbing the shit out of it.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

But that's cool, man.

Well, for people watching this that want to work with you and learn more about Creators Inc., where can they find you guys?

Accreators Inc.

on Instagram.

And

there's your Zinc button.

Awesome, man.

Thanks for coming on.

Yeah, man.

Thanks for having me.

Yep.

Check them out, guys.

I'll see you next time.