The Instagram Growth Strategy You’re Missing | John Cerasani DSH #840

I just said that Trump's not gen pop.

God bless America.

And,

you know, people didn't like that.

A lot of people did like it, but a lot of people didn't.

And I saw my people start unfollowing.

And my page has nothing to do with politics, dude.

And not really anything to do with even social issues.

It's not what the page is about.

I probably get more heat from Trump supporters for not saying more shit.

Yeah.

All right, guys.

How to have him back.

He's blown up since John Sarasani.

Thanks for coming on again, man.

I'm pumped up to be here, brother.

This is great.

Dude, you're about to hit 500K.

You might be past that when this airs.

I mean, you've really grown.

If I'm not past 500,000 on Instagram, by the time this airs, something went drastically wrong because I'm going up between 1,000 to 2,000 a day.

And it's kind of funny because...

I'm actually going up about 2,000 to 3,000 a day, but I lose 500 to 1,000 followers every day.

So I'm always like, are these bots or is it something I posted?

I think it's the combination of the two, bro.

um but it's funny on the Instagram insights man and I don't do like any third-party apps to see like who actually unfollowed I'd I'd spend my whole day just looking at the shit if I did yeah so I'm always like kind of intrigued oh I uh I talked too much about this last week but the thing is man every single day I've grown every single day since I started doing this it's grown maybe a couple hundred and then we're to you know I put a bunch of Vegas content yesterday so one of 4,000 yesterday is it your gambling content that's taken off or is it the ones you where you call out

I think it's a combination of everything brother but i think um the biggest thing is that like it's working exactly how instagram wants it to work all right i'm starting to get like you know those blue check marked actually earned blue check marked celebrity kinds of people are starting to follow now yeah and they're seeing each other follow you know what i mean yeah it makes it easier yeah yeah so like for instance um a guy named uh john chu who is the director of um um crazy rich asians and he's also doing the um the disney render or the cartoon rendition of um of wicked coming out later this year.

And he started following me.

Wow.

And yeah, it's a big fucking deal.

And I'm a big Wicked fan, man.

People don't realize this about me.

I'm very freaking cultured.

I like going to Broadway musicals, actually.

Really?

Wicked's my favorite.

Dude, I would never take you for that type of thing.

Dude, honestly, brother.

When I was 35 years old, I made a decision in life that, all right, because of my background, I don't have like the upbringing or the cultured side of life other people I'm kind of rubbing elbows with have.

So I'm like, I'm going to be of the arts and tried a few things, tried the opera, didn't like it.

I went to a ballet, did not like it at all.

And musicals are a lot of fun, man.

So Hamilton?

Yeah, I don't, I didn't like that.

Didn't like Hamilton?

I didn't like Hamilton only because it's giving me way too much credit, dude.

They try to get a little fucking cute with the actors playing different roles.

Okay.

I'm like, okay, they have an African-American guy playing white, a white guy.

And I know that's like cool, dude.

Like, it makes sense if you understand the history to know who's who.

And, oh, that's really creative.

But for someone like me that doesn't, button you know normally i'm getting confused i'm getting confused about who's who here um actually i saw it i saw it a couple times though and i i didn't like it either time i walked out both times damn yeah okay so you're a harsh critic yeah i just didn't like it i just didn't enjoy it um book of mormon i'm a big fan of okay yeah i like i've seen book of more book of mormon five times damn yeah wicked i've seen a few times and then there's some smaller ones like if you've ever seen like well that's this isn't one of the smaller ones but if you've ever seen jersey boys that's excellent uh million dollar quartet is another one that's a little bit smaller That's excellent.

And then a couple that you wouldn't have heard of.

Are you right in the front row?

Are you backstage kind of guy?

No, I'll tell you what.

I tried to give Hamilton a second chance.

The second time I saw it, it was on actual Broadway.

The first time I saw it, it was the Chicago version.

The second time I saw it was actually on Broadway in New York.

And I screwed up because I brought my kids and we got one of those theater boxes.

All right.

Sweet.

Yeah, but the problem is it's on the side of the stage.

So it's cool that you're looking here, but they're talking out to the audience and you're over here and you kind of miss the production of it.

You think you're getting this cool freaking thing and it's like you miss it.

So maybe I'm too harsh on Hamilton and I screwed myself on that.

But

where were we going with that?

Do you sit in the front row at these or are you more like backstage?

No, I was saying, how do we get on the movie theater in the first place?

What did you ask me?

Didn't you ask me something initially?

Oh, I don't remember.

What was the original conversation about?

Yeah, we got carried away there.

Oh, gambling content.

Oh, gambling content.

Yeah.

I don't think that's what it was.

Anyway.

Anyway.

I asked gambling content.

Oh, no, because I was saying John Chu.

John Chu started to follow me.

It was the gambling content, but then when these celebrities start following me, it kind of just like morphs.

They notice that other ones are.

Or just a person off the street starts following you or comes across your page.

And the first thing they do is they look at your mutual tools.

And then they'll see, oh, shit, all these ABC famous people follow him.

And I think that's really helped me out

substantially.

So are you starting to monetize your Instagram?

Brother, it's a challenge for me, dude, because

my original content was always about

leaving corporate America behind, being your own boss, being an entrepreneur.

And that's what the core of my content.

Rise yourself up.

Don't have a ceiling.

Be the best you can be.

And you can analogize leaving my job as a W-2 to be my own boss as that.

All right.

And whatever you do in your life, don't let them define your ceiling.

And in that process, becoming a multi-millionaire happened.

Okay.

So for me to turn around and start monetizing shit becomes a challenge for me

because, you know, why is this guy that's rich and stuff doing stuff for, you know, these shitty little ads?

So I have two pieces of criteria I look at when I do any kind of monetization.

All right.

The first thing is if the brand vibes with the page and is in line with some of the stuff I'm already talking about, sure, I'll do it.

Even if it's on the edge of that, where it might be, eh, okay, but it kind of makes sense.

Let's give it a try.

Yeah.

So, for instance, College Football 25 just came out.

We're in July right now, everybody.

College Football 25 just came out, and a company called me about hosting a tournament where they could gamble on it.

It's $10 entry fee, $1,500 in cash prizes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I don't really talk about gaming my page, but I'm sure a lot of my followers do game.

And this is a tournament where you're gambling against each other.

I'm college for both.

Let's give it a try and see how it goes.

So I did a couple posts about that.

They gave me a little bit of money.

And, you know, it was pretty well received.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

But I'm not getting rich off of it.

The checks that people are offering me are not enough to like sacrifice any of my core shit.

You know what I'm saying?

Like if it was something that had nothing to do with my page,

the check would have to be really substantial.

And it just doesn't happen, I don't think.

And for my

size following, I don't think at least I haven't been offered any that would make it substantial enough.

The other piece of criteria I look at is, could I put something together that's a win-win-win?

All right.

So I win where I get paid.

The brand wins where they're accessing customers that they wouldn't have otherwise.

All right.

But primarily the third win, the win-win-win, is that the consumer, my audience, is getting something that they wouldn't have got otherwise as well.

All right.

So, my biggest one right now is: I made a deal with Virgin Cruise Lines.

They called me up, Virgin Voyages, and they found me because they followed my page and they have a casino on their ship.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

So, we worked out something where it's going to be the John Sarasani 2,000% raised cruise.

And everybody's getting rooms that are below market that they wouldn't have paid, they wouldn't have got that price for.

Damn.

Yeah, you're getting a room with a balcony for less than an interior room.

So, that's like a three-level difference

for all all you cruise people out there.

And yeah, you know, and I'm getting paid for it.

My customer, my, the people coming are going to hang out with me, and they're going to cruise for less money on top of it.

And Virgin Cruises is getting people that wouldn't have been there otherwise.

Nice.

I shouldn't hit you up.

I'm going on Virgin Cruise next week.

Are you really?

And I paid for the balcony room.

There you go.

There you go.

Where's it out of?

Miami.

Yeah, going to Dominican and shit.

Okay.

We're doing.

We're doing Miami to Key West to Bemini Bamas.

Wow.

It's four nights.

That's going to be lit.

Yeah.

You'll be streaming the whole time.

Do you live stream or no?

Yeah, we're working on that, but that's not really

the objective.

The objective is more just kind of like to make it like a networking function and have a little bit of fun.

Got it.

Like to give you a for instance, dude, this cruise, the balcony rooms start at like $18,000, $1,849.

I was selling them early bird pricing for $799.

Damn.

No, that's facts, though, because I paid like 6Gs for four nights.

Exactly.

So $7.99, $7.99 for the whole freaking room, and they could put two people in there.

So now you're under $400 a person?

Are you kidding me?

Yeah, that's a good deal.

And I've been to your networking events.

They're really good.

2,000% raise, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Are you having any coming up?

Well, August 29th, we are going to have our 500,000 follower party, but hopefully

we are at that by the end.

You already planned it?

Pretty much, dude.

Again, something must have went wrong.

Well, I talk about being from Schomburg a lot, bro.

And

we're going to have it in Schomburg.

It's a dinner.

It's going to be, it's a good thing.

I love the manifestation aspect of it.

Exactly, dude.

Exactly.

You're probably going to hit a million by the the end of the year at the pace you're growing.

Dude, if you would have fucking told me, bro, like I passed 250,000 in January, and then people started saying, watch this start going up exponentially now.

And it's kind of what has to be done.

You got Bob Menry coaching you, too.

Dude, me and Bob started doing shit together a year ago, and I was at about 100,000 followers.

Actually, I was about 50,000 followers.

Bob found me.

We started messing around with each other.

Then I was on Brad Lee's podcast.

And then I was on the TV show Below Deck.

Those three things kind of happened at the same time, and I went pretty quickly from 50,000 to 100,000.

Got it.

You know what I mean?

Below Deck, is that on Netflix?

It's on Bravo.

Bravo.

Yeah.

And that got you a lot of followers.

It's hard to really pinpoint it, dude.

Like, okay, I'm good friends with a guy named Julio White.

He's an actor in Los Angeles.

He played Urkel, iconic character Urkel in Family Matters.

Yeah.

Big time, you know, Hollywood guy.

And he're really good friends from other things.

And he gave me really good advice once.

He goes, dude, it's not going to be one little thing.

Like this interview right now, it's not going to be that.

It's going to be like the little bit, the combination of everything.

Oh, I saw this person there.

Now I saw them there.

Okay, this person's popping up everywhere.

And then it starts to stick.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

And he gave me that advice about a year ago.

And he's absolutely right.

That's exactly how it's happening.

Yeah.

I see you gambling with other creators now, too, right?

Yep.

You're growing their audience, growing yours at the same time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they're actually reaching out to me more so than I'm reaching out to them.

Because I think they, you know, I think they think it's be fun to gamble with me.

But I was on one.

I reached out to one person once.

A guy named Steve Will do it.

Do you know that?

Yeah.

I'll tell you off camera on my relationship.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, he did a podcast over the Super Bowl weekend.

He did a live stream that I was on.

And it was fun.

Yeah, he's got a good following.

Well, and they're hardcore.

They're hardcore.

And I wasn't really prepared for it, to be honest with you.

It was kind of like a curveball, like last-second thing.

And I went on there and we had a blast and it was fine.

But,

you know, his following is a little different than mine.

My following is a lot of like, you know, it's everybody now, but it's usually like

people that, you know, are, you know, trying to be business people of some sort or they're just motivated by different shit.

And his following is not that.

So there's a lot of them are seeing me for the first time.

They don't know anything about me.

So they just think I'm like this fucking drunk guy gambling.

They don't really understand like what's going on.

You know what I mean?

He goes crazy.

I heard in the casinos.

Yeah, he goes nuts.

Yeah.

I've heard some legendary stories.

Have you gambled with Vegas Matt yet?

No, I haven't.

Those guys are not the same as me, dude.

Vegas Matt's fine.

I've seen his stuff because people send it to me all the time.

And it's cool.

He's doing exactly, that's awesome, exactly what he does.

But, dude,

I'm also friends with this guy named Mr.

Hanplay, who's a slot influencer.

Yeah.

These guys aren't even trying to fucking win when they go.

They're going to play content.

They're going to film content and just explain how the games are and whatever, kind of knowing that there's a very good chance they'll lose.

I go to the casinos planning on fucking winning, dude.

I'm like literally going there to win.

I'm not going to film fucking content.

We will film content of me winning, but the priority is to fucking win, bro.

I feel that.

What about Mickey Mace?

He'd be good to win with.

Brother,

yeah, I don't know what that guy's deal is, dude.

That one video went viral recently about him, like fucking, I didn't even know who he was,

about fucking trying to charge casinos $50 million for some baccarat cheating technique or something.

I'm like...

I don't know anything about that.

It sounds like bullshit to me, to be honest with you.

But that's all I really know of him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I know he tried doing poker, lost a ton, and then gave up poker.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Okay.

Do you play poker?

Yes, but I'd rather not, though.

It's fucking.

Your game's blackjack?

Yeah, dude.

Poker's slow, right?

You got to just grind it out, bro.

You got to grind it.

I'll play craps.

I'll play craps and blackjack.

Maybe roulette.

Okay.

If I play roulette, it means something went wrong.

Those double zeros, man.

Now they're adding a triple zero, right?

God damn.

6% edge wasn't enough.

Terrible.

Now it's 9%.

Do you gamble every day?

No, no, no.

Once, probably twice a month.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Based off your content, I thought it was way more than that.

Well, I get a lot of fucking videos.

Exactly.

I mean, dude, I literally posted seven times yesterday, bro.

Holy shit.

Yes.

And I'm like, I don't usually do that.

I usually post like three to four.

I posted seven times because there was something like every hour to talk about.

How'd you run last night?

It was good.

I'm up 62 grand.

Holy shit.

You're the only one I know that does this, dude.

For real.

Casinos, I started to back me off a little bit, to be honest with you.

I bet.

You're winning five figures every time you go.

So they don't have a reason to back me off in terms of like, I'm not cheating.

I'm not card counting.

There is no reason to back me off other than I'm winning.

But they're backing me off in like different ways.

They're backing me off where it's like giving me shittier suites than I've gotten in the past.

You know what I mean?

Like the comps are not as like generous as they were.

And then when you call them and ask them why you go, dude, I've been doing the same average bet.

I've been on the same hours of play.

Why did my suite get downgraded?

You know what I mean?

And it's because they look at at it my overall lifetime shit.

I'm up.

Oh, you're up overall?

Yeah.

Wow.

All these casinos.

The whole strip, I'm up.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

The entire strip, every single casino, I'm up lifetime.

Martingale strategy?

No.

That's how you go broke.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

I like Dana's strategy where he'll bet like two hands and dip.

But you're there for hours.

That's why I'm impressed because usually they say the longer you're there, the worse, but you're there for.

Yeah.

So, well,

I'd like not to be.

This strip I haven't been.

I've been doing like 20-minute sessions and I win a little bit and lose.

Dana's strategy works because he's betting like, I think he bets like 50 grand a hand or 30 grand a hand or something.

I don't.

I'm allowed to bet.

My max at MGM is two hands of 25 grand each.

So I could play two 25 grand hands at a time.

I don't usually play that much though.

I usually play a grand or two grand a hand and then go up to like five grand.

Okay.

So I want to stop as soon as I'm up like 50-ish.

I start playing conservatively.

All right.

Now I'm up 50 grand.

I'll have a stop loss.

If I lose 15 of it, then I'll just stop, go home, up 35 grand.

Wow.

All right.

And that's pretty much about it.

So you got to battle to get there.

Now, if I'm down 50 grand starting off, though, it changes.

I'm not even trying to win anymore.

I'm just trying to get back to even.

I feel that.

And degenerates will get that 50 grand back, win, and then lose another 100 grand after it.

I don't do that.

Have you had a bad loss recently?

No.

I've lost only twice in the last three years.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

One of them was for 40 grand and one of them was for 10 grand.

I think I saw the 40 grand one.

That went viral right now.

Dude, I was so fucking mad.

I was so fucking mad.

Well, here's why it went viral because I was fucking hilarious, dude.

I fucking woke up the next morning and I go, it's not going to affect my life.

And I literally like won 90 grand the weekend before.

I win every fucking time.

So I was due to fucking, I was due for a loss.

Thank God it happened at Rivers Casino in Displanes, Illinois, because I only have a $35,000 line of credit there.

And then I had a $5,000 cash.

That's the $40,000.

Everywhere else I have a quarter million dollar lines of credit.

Damn.

Yeah.

So now here's the damn thing though.

If I had a quarter million there, I very well might have won that 40 back.

You know what I mean?

But who knows?

I mean, I've been down 40 at these fucking places.

I come back absolutely time.

You ever feel like they're cheating in some way?

The casinos?

No, bro.

I'm going to tell you what, man.

The Bahamas gave me this advice.

This is back in 2008, bro.

All right.

The cards were so fucking bad.

So fucking bad.

I go up to the pit boss afterward.

It's two in the morning.

We're at the Atlantis.

And I go, hey, just tell the truth, bro.

You guys cheat, don't you?

You stack the deck, right?

And then he goes, buddy,

he puts his uh hand on my shoulder goes buddy we don't need to cheat the game's already set up for the casinos to cheat they already have the edge they don't need to cheat further than that you know they don't i feel it they don't i feel like some of the online ones are sketchy though you know what i mean they don't tell you the odds or anything there's a um

the offshore ones i would not with if there were anybody really to be honest with you um Like Bat MGM and these other online casinos, like Golden Nugget Online Casino.

I do that stuff.

I think they're fine because I think think they have like, there's some software that they all have that's like a third-party

random.

Yeah, I'm talking about the crypto ones.

Yeah.

That are

God knows where, what countries are.

I wouldn't trust them.

Yeah.

I wouldn't trust them.

They probably approach you for deals, right?

Yep.

There's this company called Money Prize that reached out to do live streams with them.

And right now they're only using crypto.

They're trying to get their credit card processing down.

And once they do, I'm going to start doing shit with them.

That's where you make serious money.

That's how Steve made millions.

Yeah.

No, I know.

So that's, I'm hoping we do shit together.

They can't figure out the credit card processing because here's what happens with all these like gambling types of

places.

Everybody wants to do their deposits with their credit cards.

Right.

All right.

So all these people turn around and say, oh, no, I didn't gamble or whatever.

And they ask for your money back.

Yeah.

So.

High risk.

Very high risk.

Yeah, that's why they do crypto.

You can't get that shit back ever.

Yeah.

Once you send it, you're fucked.

Exactly.

But there's that, I know Steve and a couple other people got in that dilemma where they promoted casinos and then they were getting a percent of the losses or whatever.

Or were they?

There was that that moral dilemma?

Yeah.

Does that fix on you?

I would never do that

because I'm actually trying to teach people how to gamble properly and win on my thing.

So that would kind of be counterintuitive if I did it that way.

Yeah.

But I'll say this:

there's another way to get paid with all these.

There's something called theoretical losses.

All right.

So there's actual losses and theoretical losses.

Theoretical losses is a term that the casinos use.

It's called theos.

Based on how long this person played for, based on how good of a player he is, and what his average bet was for that time period theoretically he should have lost x now he could have actually still won but theoretically he would have lost x and the way to actually win is to manage your money properly so you could have the best of both worlds got it all right so i want you guys to all actually win quit while you're ahead even if you come play and you quit while you're ahead you're up five grand but it took you three hours of playing 300 a hand to get up that five grand theoretically they're going to have you probably at a three or four grand loss.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So if they're going to pay an influencer based on theoretical losses, I would do that.

That makes more sense to me.

Yeah, I wouldn't get paid on actual losses.

Or

I don't know what deals are out there.

I don't know how they work, but if somebody wanted to pay me on actual losses only,

I probably wouldn't do that.

I've seen some as high as 50% of actual losses.

Of actual losses.

Yeah, I probably wouldn't do it if that was the deal.

If it was like a combination of like, hey,

10% of actual losses or 20% of theoretical losses, maybe I would do something like that.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Because then you could still have the ability to cheer for your followers.

I want to be able to sleep at night, man.

Followers going broke.

Exactly, dude.

Yeah, you got to make money ethically.

A couple funny videos I saw you post.

So you made a video about Trump, I guess, and you lost a lot of followers.

Dude, I don't know if it was a coincidence or what, but I didn't even say shit, bro.

All I said was that Trump is in gen pop.

I use this term called gen pop, right?

I'm referring to general population of the casino, okay?

So there's the high limit area, and there's where everyone else plays, okay?

The high limit area is where the action's at, where the rules are better, the odds are better, everything's fucking better, especially when you're playing blackjack, okay?

So I call everybody gen pop.

If you're not in high limit, you're gen pop, but I'll talk about it in like other contexts, and my followers think it's funny.

Most of them do.

Well, I'm in fucking Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut.

We had a a big outing there, and there's like 15 or like 16 of us at this point.

And we're sitting there at the happy hour in the high limit room.

And we see Trump get freaking shot live on TV, dude.

Where they did the breaking news, and we saw it live.

And anyway, I'm like, how am I not going to make a reel about this the next day, like addressing that, how we were in the casino and everything else?

And it wasn't even supporting his politics or anything, man.

So

I just said that Trump's not gen pop.

God bless America.

And,

you know, people didn't like that.

A lot of people did like it, but a lot of people didn't.

And I saw people start unfollowing.

And it kind of just sucks, dude, because my page has nothing to do with politics, dude.

And not really anything to do with even social issues.

It's not what the page is about.

I probably get more heat from Trump supporters for not.

saying more shit.

Like people just, people just assume, speak up.

They all just assume I'm a Trump supporter.

They have no way of knowing.

I don't talk about it.

So I made another reel a couple days later addressing this unfollows.

And

I just made it fucking clear, dude.

If Biden got fucking shot, if Obama got shot at even, you know, I would have made a similar post.

I mean, dude, you can't have people trying to kill a president.

I mean, it's fucked up.

Yeah, that's serious.

I can't believe you lost for that, man.

Yeah.

I've lost some guests because my pinned photo is me and Trump Jr.

And I've lost a ton of guys.

Yeah.

Yeah, man.

I got to tell you, man, another reason I kind of stay away from it, Sean, is I don't like feel as strongly about it as other people do, quite frankly.

There's other

parts of my message that are a lot bigger than that, that I'm just have more conviction about.

And it's not that I disagree or agree with any particular candidate.

It's just that

the president of the United States, like only so much could be changed.

based on who the wins the president.

You know what I mean?

Like, I have a friend of mine that lives in Scotland, and he made a comment to me this is back when trump uh

and um hillary were running against each other and he's like dude at the end of the fucking day like what's really going to change for you guys who the president is you know what i mean like in some of these other countries there's a huge changes if their leader changes you know your your day-to-day life will change you know um i will say that you know now with biden falling out and and um being out of it completely i i mean you know we don't have a crystal ball the next few weeks look like, but

if Trump's going to run away with it now, you know, one of the things I'm not looking forward to, Sean, is the next four years being so freaking divisive, dude.

You know what I mean?

Just like just a fucking shit show of it's like a perfect storm, man.

It's a perfect storm, dude.

You know, um,

I, there's some things,

you know what I mean, like during COVID and like the whole Antifa BLM stuff happening,

where I was like, thank fucking God Trump's still not the president right now.

You know what I mean?

Because he would have been blamed for everything.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Or like

Britney Gaynor when she was in.

Oh, the Russia, right?

Yeah, was it like Russia?

Grinder?

Yeah, it was Russia.

Yeah, yeah.

Reiner, yeah.

Is it Griner?

Britney, the W NBA player.

That was a sad state of affairs, dude.

I'm Kloster Fulbright.

I felt bad for that girl, dude.

I'm not kidding you.

I felt bad for her, dude.

And

could you imagine if that would have happened and Trump was still the fucking president?

Yeah, it would have been black.

Mike, seriously.

He gets blamed for that.

He would have got blamed for all that.

Yeah.

Just for weed.

Crazy.

Yeah.

I saw a video a month ago on your Instagram.

You recently lost a friendship over someone running up your hotel bill.

Yeah, it's right here in Vegas.

Did you solve that?

No, they're out.

There's two people.

They're out, dude.

Damn.

Try to be too nice to people sometimes and they take advantage.

They're a little misinformed.

I think they thought.

I let people stay in an extra room that I had.

I was already checked into the room that we weren't going to use it.

They were sleeping on the floor of someone else's room, fucking some gen pop shit.

And I'm like, dude, you guys could just stay in this other room.

I'm not using it anyway.

Didn't think to say, don't charge a bunch of shit to the room.

Figure that was just kind of assumed.

I got that fucking bill, $3,881.

Holy crap.

Brother.

And it was at the MGM Grand.

And some of the charges, this is where I really got pissed.

So the charges included like clothing.

They went clothes shopping at like the gift shop.

It's impossible to spend that much money there, by the way.

They went to prime

in the Bellagio.

A little five-star steakhouse.

Yeah, a little five-star steakhouse, but we weren't staying at the Bellagio, Sean.

We were staying at the MGM.

Now, these two particular fucking people aren't seasoned gamblers, dude.

How would they fucking know that Bellagio is owned by MGM?

How would they know that they could go there and charge things to the room back over at MGM?

They did some fucking research to figure this out, dude.

Okay.

They went and asked somebody, and there was a $900 charge there, and there's only two of them.

So I'm like, let me get a copy of this, Mother Fing Bill.

And it was hilarious, dude.

Hilarious.

I'm talking caviar,

seafood towers.

Oh, they tipped very well with my money as well.

It's awesome.

And then they were like sampling soups.

There were like eight different soups that they had.

What the fuck are they doing?

Wagoo Ribeye, you know, Kim Crawford, like all these different fucking wines.

And it was pure insanity.

$900, dude.

So they're out.

They're out.

They're the little swindlers.

They had a chance to pay me back.

And

they thought it was,

their thing was that they thought it was going to get comped and it didn't matter.

And I go, are you guys mental?

Like, that's not how it works, dude.

That's not how it fucking works.

Lost friendship with you over 3K.

Yeah.

That is crazy to me.

Exactly.

It was stupid.

And they could have resolved it, too.

They could have resolved it after I called him out on it.

They decided not to.

And you were friends with that guy for years, right?

Yeah.

I was friends with the guy, and it was people he brought to one of my events that he should have been responsible for.

And he,

I don't know, you know, I blocked them.

I didn't really give them a chance to explain further.

They said that they thought it would be comped.

And I sent them my Venmo, and I never heard from them.

I blocked them.

So

maybe they tried to call me.

I don't know.

They don't have a chance to.

They have my Venmo.

If they pay me the money back on my Venmo, then I'll take their call.

You're watching this.

Pay up.

Yeah.

You probably get a lot of people trying in your ear now now that you're blown up, right?

That's mostly good stuff, man.

But I got to tell you, when I blast the haters on my stories and stuff, people don't like that dude.

Or people like it, but people don't want to be featured on it, bro.

I think you do it in a funny way where it's not like too bad.

Brother, I'm walking through the Aria Casino yesterday.

This guy, I literally just had a story post about him six days earlier making fun of him.

And I had like a poll for everyone to vote if he's like a W-tour, a gen pop employee, you know, if he's a virgin, things like that, because he was a smart ass in one of my comments.

This guy comes up to me in real life.

That's shocking, actually.

Brother, he thought it was fucking hilarious.

He goes, dude, you put me on your story.

It was so funny.

Everybody was messaging me.

Why are you fucking with John?

I'm like, dude, I was just kidding around.

I didn't know he'd get mad.

So that's how you have a sense of humor, though, bro.

That's how you like, you know what I mean?

That's what social media should be about, dude.

You know, and when I see it, Sean, when I see it going the other way, I usually take the post down almost immediately.

Okay.

So like I had one the other day.

This one girl was like, I don't even use this term, but she's like a total fucking Karen dude, all over this fucking comments, you know, well, you should date women, not girls.

Like, you know, who is this woman?

And I look at her.

She's not even following me.

So she just came across this reel.

And

whatever.

I put her on my story.

And,

you know, she DMs me like not to threaten her or something like that.

And I'm like, okay, you know what?

I'm taking, I'm taking it down.

And, you know, I ruined her day.

You know what I mean?

And I'm not trying to ruin people's days.

You know what I mean?

But it's just funny how some people could dish dish it out and not take it.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, you don't want that defamation lawsuit, man.

No.

Well, I mean, me, me screenshotting a comment that they wrote and then making a bubble of it coming out of their mouth.

I mean, it's not defamation.

They're the one who typed it.

I had once, though, a guy claimed to me, dude, it was so funny.

Somebody wrote, he was so fucking funny.

He was a consultant at Accenture.

Okay.

And it said it right on his Instagram profile.

Okay.

And his comment

on one of my, I posted about a year ago before I hit a huge following.

And

he wrote die with exclamation points.

And I put it on my fucking story and I tag him.

The guy starts messaging me claiming he was hacked and didn't write the word die.

What?

And it was such a funny reel, dude, because like

I didn't, I didn't even just put it on my story.

I made a whole reel about it.

It was because I like.

tied into like him working in corporate America and you hate your job so fucking much that when you see somebody doing something that you wish you could be doing on Instagram, you literally want him to die.

Right.

Like this person said.

And then I put it up on the screen.

It was pretty freaking funny, dude.

But this guy had such conviction that he didn't do it.

And I go, buddy, no one's believing you.

He goes, please.

I go, dude, people think it's funny.

Don't worry about it.

He goes, dude, I don't want people to think I'm saying that to you.

Like, it's not just that you have me blasted.

I don't want people to think that would come out of my mouth.

So I took it down.

That's the only time I've ever taken it down where I'm like, all right, I'm not sure if I should have or not because it's a pretty fucking asshole thing to write.

Die.

Is that like your biggest haters, the W-2 guys?

Yeah.

And at this point, though, Sean, it was before it was different, right?

It was before it was different because people didn't know

what to think of me.

Okay.

So it doesn't really happen as much anymore because people stumble across my page and then you could do two seconds of research and see I got like legit people following me.

It's a real page.

You know what I mean?

Whereas before, maybe it wasn't so clear and they just think i'm some like you know some guy selling a course or something like that you know what i mean so those people would they'd be more vocal and come at me um and it was usually w tours yeah will you ever launch a course

dude i think um i think those days are behind us man i think god bless people that were able to make money if they were actually providing value the last few years um

I think

I'm the wrong person to ask.

I'm sure there's still a market for it, but not with what I'm doing.

Yeah.

I'm the same way.

I think it's past.

Yeah.

I think the heyday was like five years ago, three to five years ago.

I think so, too.

And I think it got played out really fast.

And I think there's certain people that won't even be a fucking pimple on a horse's ass in a couple of years that are, that are kind of popular right now that are just not going to be because there's not

substance to their message, dude.

Yeah, they're saying the same shit over and over again.

I know who you're talking, who you're talking about.

Yeah.

It's like, dude, what the fuck are you talking about, bro?

Like, it's like, hello.

Like, and for me, bro, like, I would have been too.

Even though I was in a selling cars, my shit would have been done if I didn't start expanding another shit.

That's true.

You know what I mean?

Like, this gambling stuff is giving me rejuvenation.

I have a lot of shit I could talk about now.

Talk about my kids sometimes.

Well, if I fucking post with my kids, fucking do better than anything else when I do that.

Really?

Yeah, dude.

Wow.

Dude, my fucking daughter now got like fucking, she had like 7,000 followers.

Now she has like 14,000 from me.

Like, mentioning dude, I'm going to promote her.

She's like mentioned in a story or something.

You didn't even tag her?

No, I'll tag her.

Yeah.

or she'll comment and i'll pin her comment or something and then she gets the fucking shitload here's this trick by the way if you're not an influencer but you're fucking friends with an influencer a family member of an influencer and you want to get follows make your page private when they tag you they tag you then they'll go look at your page okay i looked at the page and then they leave they don't press the follow button make it private wait a couple days accept the follow Then they'll fucking forget that they'll forget that they did it.

Are you going to branch off to YouTube and other platforms?

I'm doing more on YouTube now.

YouTube's been tough, man.

It's tough just, actually, I shouldn't say that.

It's not tough.

It's just like

different.

It's like these podcasts, you know, like even these podcasts.

It's like you look at your views you could get on social media with Instagram or TikTok, and then you do a podcast and post it on YouTube, and it does okay, but it's a fraction of the audience.

You're going to get 100th of views.

Yeah, like

compared to Instagram and TikTok, it's not even close.

Exactly.

YouTube's tough, dude.

Yeah, it's competitive, I think.

Yeah.

I haven't really tried to crack the algorithm there.

I've run ads there a couple of times that have been helpful.

And when I've run ads, it's really been more primarily because I've had other people featured that I want to just get eyes out of for them to see.

I've run ads too, but no one comments.

Really?

Yeah.

I noticed.

It's just views.

Yeah.

I just had one with

I've interviewed Jim McMahon from the Chicago Bears, 1985 Bears, who ran ads just in Chicago because I knew that they would give a shit.

And it was a pretty good episode.

And I think we ended up with 80,000 views, but like literally 11 comments and like 300 like likes.

That's what happens to me.

Who knows if those views are even fucking real?

They're gonna be charging us.

Yeah, if that's if that's the fucking case, I'll be pissed though, dude.

I wouldn't be surprised.

I mean, with that little engagement, it's hard to tell if they're real.

That's true.

That's true, dude.

What's next?

I mean, got the cruise, anything else?

Not much, man.

Not much.

I did this TV show called The Partner earlier this year.

That was a lot of fun where I interviewed different entrepreneurs, decided people I'm going to be going to business with.

Probably going to do a season two of that at some point.

I got a lot of shit going on right now, though.

So we shall see on when I do that, but we will do it.

It's just a matter of when.

That was a ton of fun.

So it was like Shark Tank for you guys.

Yeah, Shark Tank, but I kind of screwed up a little bit.

We did

eight episodes.

And it was cool.

People were fucking engaged.

And the episodes got better and better as we went.

But it takes up a lot of real estate on your social media when you promote something for eight weeks.

You know what I mean?

So again, it becomes, okay, we're getting 70 or 80,000 views on YouTube, which is good.

I mean, for what I was trying to do, that's good for that kind of show, I think.

And,

you know.

You're getting that a video on Instagram.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And,

you know, it was one of the things I did learn on it, though.

I don't know if you've done this.

Have you ever done YouTube Premieres?

No.

Do you know how it works?

I know the Nelk Boys do it.

It's cool.

It's cool, bro.

But you're really putting yourself out there because it's like Instagram Live.

You see how many people are actually fucking watching your shit and everyone can see it.

So I started promoting

in uh youtube premiere again a lot of people don't even know what the fuck it is we're premiering at 7 p.m episode one of the partner tune in then well people what do you mean tune into youtube or people think are you talking about youtube tv what do you talk no actual youtube go to my channel and at 7 p.m it's going to come out And then we're going to have a live chat with me in it with all of us going back and forth, commenting during the day.

Oh, wow.

That's actually cool.

It's very cool.

So what would be cool about it is like then in the chat, I'll tell people, hey, do me a favor, go comment about this person that's on there right now in the actual comments.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So and this is funny with YouTube, by the way, I don't know exactly how it works, but there's a lag with when their views show because I would have a lot, a good number, not a lot, but it'd probably anywhere from, I think, low-end 200, high-end, 500 people

on these freaking,

maybe a little bit less than that, but on these, on these YouTube premieres.

And there'd be a ton of comments.

And there'd be a ton of fucking likes.

Okay.

But then if you looked at my YouTube thing afterward, it's still up there, right?

Yeah.

It'll show like 119 views, but it'll have like 300 likes and like 60 comments.

Oh.

Because they'll be coming from the freaking premiere.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

So anyone that's like looks at it during that snapshot of time is going to be like, all right, he fucking bought his views or comments.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And that's just not the case.

So I learned that.

That was kind of fucking funny.

So we'll link this up below, man.

Anything else you want to close off with?

No, man.

Thanks a lot, brother.

Keep doing what you're doing, man.

Yeah, thanks for coming on.

Thanks for watching, guys, as always.

See you tomorrow.

All right, brother.