Why We Quit Our High-Paying Jobs for THIS Risky Move! I Adam Richman & Joe Silberzweig DSH #473

By the way, we were hardly legitimate.

Kenneth and I both had full-time jobs at other companies.

We had salaries, we had awesome,

really great titles and everything.

And it was like, how do you leave this for all of a sudden you go from a really good paycheck every month to nothing?

No guarantee.

No guarantee at all.

And that, as Joe just pointed out, like that Forbes 30 on the 30 thing was like, okay, you guys should quit this job.

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And here's the episode.

All right, guys.

Adam Richmond, Joe Silbersweg.

Tried my best to pronounce that.

Founders of Medium Rare.

How's it going, guys?

Good.

Thanks for having us on.

We're excited to be here.

Absolutely.

You guys got a busy week, man.

We are absolutely drowning.

We have four events coming up in 36 hours.

We got Jack's Funhouse on Friday night, Gronk Beach on Saturday day, Sports Illustrated the party a few hours later on Saturday night, and then Guy's Flavor Town Tailgate Sunday day.

So we will not be sleeping for the next week, needless to say.

That is insane.

And we'll get into all the every event individually, but I want to know how this all even started.

Was it one event at a time or did this all happen at once?

Well, Adam and I actually met right out of college when we started working for SFX Entertainment.

So we started producing some pretty big EDM festivals like Electric Zoo, Tomorrowland, Tomorrow World.

And we were, you know, like 21, 21, 22 years old.

And I was running marketing and doing a lot of digital, social

for Tomorrow World, and Adam was running operations.

And that's kind of how we met.

And we always knew we wanted to start our own thing.

So we had some great experience working together.

And

after I was working at Live Nation,

had a happenstance meeting with Shaq, and kind of the rest is history.

You can get a little bit more into that in a bit.

Nice.

Yeah, I think you guys having that corporate background really helps because a lot of people get into events and like, you know, all these music festivals and they just flop, right?

Yeah, I think we were really lucky to kind of look at our corporate years as that was our college.

Like we both went to college, but didn't really learn anything.

Well, Adam went to the U of A, so his education was more in promotion.

But no, you know, really having those four, four or five years of corporate life really taught us.

How to I went from doing shows in college that were like $50,000 budgets.

Next thing you know, we're running $20,000, $30 million budgets.

Damn.

You like, you can't teach yourself that, right?

There's no book.

There's no, nothing you can read on the internet about that.

And getting that experience firsthand and it was pretty awesome.

And yeah, that taught us everything we know.

And here we are now, you know, doing our own thing.

Wow.

So getting handed a $20 million budget, what do you even do from there?

It was, yeah, it was pretty nerve-wracking and exciting at the same time.

And,

you know, now you have this huge responsibility.

And look, thankfully, it's not your money, right?

And you get to learn with someone else's money.

I think that was awesome.

Right.

And now we're risking our own $20 million,

but we got to learn the hard way of what works and what doesn't work.

And like you said, we saw a lot of things flop and fail.

And most festivals actually don't make money.

It's actually crazy.

It's a really slim margin,

really risky business.

And we feel like we've kind of perfected it.

We learned what not to do and do the complete opposite now.

Right, because you're floating a ton of capital for the talent, right?

So you got to spend 10, 20 million on just talent and then hope you make it back.

Yeah, you have your talent.

You have your venue.

You have all, you know, most of our places are complete build outs, right?

We're going into a parking lot and there's no infrastructure, right?

There's no bathrooms.

There's no fencing.

You have nothing there.

You're no power even.

And we're building basically a city for a couple of days and it costs millions and millions of dollars.

Wow.

And then you're hoping you're going to sell enough tickets.

You're hoping you're selling enough sponsorship.

You're hoping you're selling enough food and beverage just to break even.

And it's a really risky business.

Yeah.

So what was that first event you guys tried on your own?

Well, I think what's interesting about that is Adam and I saw that that system was a bit broken.

And we saw tons of festivals putting up $10, $20, $30 million to produce and barely making money.

And Adam and I were scratching our heads saying, what's wrong with this?

Right.

These margins are too slim and the risks are too high.

So after Shaq came to one of the festivals we were working, you know, formed a unique relationship with him and together with him, started Shaq's Funhouse.

And that was a new model because we went 50-50 with him and created a joint venture business, which became Shaq's funhouse, where he's truly invested in the property.

And the whole goal of that event was to bring his DNA to life in a live event setting.

And when you think about it, you know, one of the best NBA players of all time shouldn't really have his own music festival or Rob Bronkowski or Dave Portenoy, right?

These are personalities, iconic personality, iconic personalities that we bring to life.

So what we found really quickly is by partnering with these types of icons, it really lowers our risk profile and creates much more favorable margins for our business.

So in working with Shaq, all of a sudden, the same people that weren't answering my calls at Live Nation, right?

CMOs of Pepsi or Verizon, who I was trying to get to sponsor our music festivals, started calling me back real quick when we said the music festival was Shaquille O'Neal.

And with that, the deal size started doubling.

And we thought, and at that time, we saw that, you know, this model could be really fruitful for us.

And after the first Shaq's funhouse went off, it really showed that, you know, there's a lot of potential with this new concept.

Nice.

So the first event, you guys were profitable from the start?

Yeah, we've been really lucky.

We've never taken an L on an event, which for an event producer is kind of unheard of.

So we're batting 1,000.

I think we're like 30-0 now.

We're undefeated.

We're like Floyd Mayweather.

And we're going to hopefully keep that record up this weekend.

I think that's why everyone wants to work with you guys.

I mean, the biggest talent is approaching you guys wanting to have events.

Yeah, our events, you know, it's so cool.

Each event sort of serves as like a marketing platform for more talent to come to us.

It's really been awesome.

We had Travis Kelsey came to Gronk Beach.

After that, he was like, I want to do this.

Right.

That was a good thing.

That was born.

Yeah, next thing you know, we're doing Kelsey Jam with Travis Kelsey because he came to one of our events.

Dave Pornoy came to Sports Illustrated last year at Super Bowl.

After that, he was like, I want to work with you guys.

We started One Bite Pizza Festival with him.

Guy Fiati years ago came to Shaq's Funhouse.

And then we started Guy's Flavor Down Tillgate.

So each event.

Don't forget the first one.

Yeah.

We had the first ever Shaq's Funhouse 2018, our first Medium Rare event, Adam and I barely knew what the hell we were doing in reality.

And it was a late-night EDM carnival during Ultra.

And it went from 2 a.m.

to 8 a.m.

Damn.

And

it was nuts.

We actually had thousands of people waiting outside in the street when we opened the doors.

And at about 4 a.m., Rob Gronkowski appeared.

We had no relationship with him.

He had no clue who we were.

And he jumped on stage with Shaq.

The two of them had a breakdance battle, and Gronk jumped on his head.

And Shaq was carrying him around the festival.

That moment was on Good Morning American Sports Center top 10 the next morning, and that was also when our first light bulb went off after the first event.

Like,

the media potential and the social potential in these types of events can't even compare to anything else out there.

So, after that one, Gronk Beach was born.

So, hopefully, after this Super Bowl weekend, we have a few new events to stem out of it.

I wouldn't be surprised.

I remember seeing that on the news years ago.

That is crazy.

That was a big moment.

That was when we realized we had something pretty cool.

Yeah.

What was the biggest event you guys have thrown?

Yeah, so

big in different ways.

Guys, Flavor Town Tailgate was our most attended event.

We had about 20,000 people, which was big for a tailgate before Super Bowl, but

revenue-wise was last year's Shaq's Funhouse was just an absolute monster.

Nice.

That is crazy.

20,000 people.

Geez, could they even fit in the venue?

They could fit.

This year we're going even bigger.

We got a venue that's like twice the size.

And

most Super Bowl events aren't that scale.

Like most Super Bowl events are like really corporate and VIP and it's like 1,500 people, 2,000 people.

And when we started Guy's Flavor Town last year and we're like, we're going to do a tailgate for 20,000 people, everyone was like, you guys are nuts.

Like that's not what Super Bowl is.

You guys are, that's not going to work.

And here we are year two.

And,

you know, revenue-wise, we're double from what we were last year.

We had a lot of brands.

Pepsi's the presenting partner.

Pepsi last year was like, we're not interested.

It's year one.

Let's see how this goes.

Here they are year two and they're like, we want to be the presenting partner, partner,

which is so cool that year one was like proof of concept and we showed everyone that this guy's flavor town hillgate is a great property and it makes sense and it works.

And now there is a line of brands waiting to get involved that had no interest at all last year.

Yeah, I was on your event websites.

You guys had so many sponsors.

It was actually super impressive.

Was it tough getting them at first?

It's always tough with a new concept or a new festival, right?

You are pitching a dream

and year one in the festival model usually loses money money or breaks even, and then you start making money in year two or three.

You know, we've been really lucky because in partnering with Guy, we're able to sell through different types of content or experiential deals where, for example, with

this week we partnered with Kings Hawaiian on Guy's Flavor Town Tailgate, where Guy's cooking up sliders with his recipes and he's having a slider Sunday cook-off with Eli Manning live at the event, which is going to make its way to the main stage, which is a great digital and social moment as well.

And those types of partnerships really are very different than a typical you know music festival are you interested in coming on the digital social hour podcast as a guest well click the application link below in the description of this video we are always looking for cool stories cool entrepreneurs to talk to about business and life click the application link below and here's the episode guys now having both worked with kelsey and gronk you know there's a bit of rivalry there who do you guys have as the better player Oof, that is a question I cannot answer.

You can pick it between your children.

Yeah, that is a question you cannot answer.

They are both the greatest tight ends of all time,

and they're both the best for different reasons, right?

I think Rob was a more natural tight end and was an incredible blocker and did so much more on the field than just catch.

And Travis is a great tight end as well, but he's an amazing receiver.

So it's like pick your poison.

If those two were on the field together, you would literally be the greatest football team of all time.

Oh, dominate.

Yeah.

There's always that debate, but yeah, you guys work with them, so it's not a fair question.

That is not a fair question.

They're different players.

You can't really.

They did have a dance-off at Gronk Beach.

It was a tie.

Oh, yeah,

that was a tie.

That was a tie.

That was a tie.

They both had a dance-off.

Rob was, you know, doing some crazy booty dancing, and it was nuts, but it was a tie between Rob and Travis and their dance-off at Gronk Beach.

Okay.

What about partying?

Who goes harder there?

Ooh, that is.

Well, Travis is still an active player.

Gronk's retired.

I think.

You know, it kind of depends.

And I think when you think of Gronk or Travis, you kind of think of by the era or by the decade, because who Rob was at 20 isn't who Rob is at 30.

But I think Rob in his 20s was a

pretty sick guy.

I've heard some stuff.

And now he's a little bit more into his health and wellness era, and he's looking great and lean.

And Travis,

he's on another level right now.

I think

he definitely really enjoyed Kelsey Jam last year.

He was performing live in front of 20,000 people.

Performing.

Yeah, in KC.

He did a quick duet with Machine Gun Kelly.

Really?

And was rocking the mic.

Yeah, they

didn't know what you said.

So, you know, Travis, every time they win or win a big game, he does, he grabs the mic and is like, you got to fight for your right to party.

And he does that on the mic.

Yeah.

So Machine Gun Kelly and him chose to sing that together, the Beastie Boy song.

That is cool.

Epic.

Like Travis Kelsey literally and Machine Gun Kelly back to back with the band behind them singing fight for your right to party.

It was epic.

That's legendary.

Actually, I've seen his brother, the guy in the Eagles.

What's his name?

Jason Kelsey.

I saw his Christmas special.

It was really good.

They're both incredible.

I was shocked.

It's wild.

And Jason's a star now, too.

Like the two of them are like.

Yeah, their pod is.

Their pod is, I think, the number one or top three sports podcast.

It's pretty wild.

You guys ever think about having like a podcast set up at your events?

We should.

You should come set one up.

I'm down.

Yeah, it would be pretty evident.

It'd be fire.

Yeah, we need to figure that out, especially maybe at our barstool pizza festival because they have such a big podcast network.

But usually we're running around doing a million things at once.

sitting down in the middle of the event sounds a little crazy.

I like the idea of a cool studio build and getting a sponsor behind it.

Now we're talking.

Yeah, because they got Radio Row here for the Super Bowl.

Bunch of podcasts and interviewers.

Yeah, I think they have like 200, 300 outlets set up.

It's pretty wild.

It's pretty nuts, dude.

Who you guys got winning the Super Bowl?

Going with the Chiefs.

I think they have the experience.

You know, they've been in the Super Bowl five years,

been there, done that.

I think when you're at this level,

that makes such a difference, just knowing how to react in a game like this.

And I think the 49ers are, you know, it's a little new to them.

I think Brock Purdy is going to be dear in the headlights, a little scared.

And Mahomes is Mahomes and Kelsey's Kelsey.

That's like betting against Brady and Gronk or Jordan and Pippin.

They don't lose.

Yeah.

It's going to be a great game, I think.

High scoring, hopefully.

And you can't bet against Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelsey.

Absolutely.

I saw you guys got Forbes 30 under 30.

What was that like?

That was really cool.

That was really like a stamp of approval.

You know, that was, I think it was like three years ago now,

almost four years.

And

that was like a stamp of approval that we kind of needed as a startup.

You know, when we were really a year, year and a half into our business, and that really like added legitimacy to everything we were doing, right?

Anyone on the outside looking in that was like, oh, is this a real company?

Or are these, you know, we obviously had Shaq at the time.

We were just really starting with Gronk.

And I think people were questioning like if this was a viable business model.

And then it's crazy to say, but a little award like that makes such a big difference, right?

Everyone's like, oh, Forbes starting under 30.

And we started started getting.

By the way, we were hardly legitimate.

Adam and I both had full-time jobs at other companies.

Really?

And you started.

So we were starting Medium Rare and started as a side hustle, but became our main focus, obviously.

But I think, you know, that's an interesting kind of tale for people as well.

Like we worked round the clock, you know, nice weekends on Medium Rare until it was ready to

hit that launching point.

And as we were doing that, you know, we signed Shack and we came up with the idea for Bronck Beach.

And, you know, Forbes 30 under 30 actually was one of the key things that gave us that push out the door and gave us kind of the confidence we need and the boost we need to leave our full-time jobs and give Medium Rare a little bit more.

We were really comfortable.

We had sick full-time jobs.

We were making great, you know, great salaries.

We had awesome, you know, really great titles and the whole thing.

And it was like, how do you leave this?

All of a sudden you go from a really good paycheck every month to nothing.

No guarantee.

No guarantee at all.

And that, as Joe just pointed out, like that Forbes 30 under 30 thing was like, okay, you guys should quit this job.

Be an entrepreneur, be a hustler.

And like, that's the ability.

It was pretty cool.

That's on my bug list, man.

I got three more years.

We got you.

We're going to put in a recommendation.

Oh, that was pretty funny when we were at, when I was working at Live Nation winning an award for a different company that I was supposed to be working at.

Oh, were they pissed?

Definitely raised some eyebrows.

Yeah, tried to keep it under wraps for a little bit, but it all worked out.

And

yeah, it gave us a kick in the ass that we needed.

So did you guys have a safety net when you took this leap because that's a scary time right leaving a high-paying job yeah we not a safety net per se but we kind of had you know we were like look we have shock and gronk if we can't figure out how to make more money than we're making at our job then we suck um so that was the that was the safety net really was like okay we have two of the biggest and most epic celebrities of all time and if we can't figure out how to monetize them in the live event space then we should probably go back to being nine to five employees for the rest of our life life.

Nice.

That was the safety net.

And that's what being an entrepreneur is.

And I think a lot of people have hesitation about kind of taking that leap.

But if you don't give it a swing, then you'll never know.

I think people sometimes get too kind of caught up on planning and timing and all that.

But I think our story

really shows you got to go for it.

And

you miss some times too, and you swing and miss.

And that's part of the journey.

Absolutely.

Did you guys ever raise money or was this all self-funded?

Yeah, so we've completely bootstrapped the business to date.

We

all of our own money.

We've had

20, 30, 50 opportunities to take really good investments.

And every time we get close or really think about it, we have like the same epiphany.

We're like, why are we doing this?

We don't need the money at the moment.

And we're like, why would we do that?

Because if we keep on the trajectory we're on,

we think the valuation is going to hopefully 2x, 3x, 4x.

And why why give up a piece right now when we just, the money wouldn't really do anything for the company or do anything for Joe and I at the moment.

Right.

Because you guys are profitable at all 30 events.

You don't even need.

Yeah, we've been profitable.

We've, you know,

we're a really healthy, great company.

We're really cash flow positive.

It's a great business.

And sure, it'd be great to bring in some investment, maybe take a little money off the table, but obviously have that money there to help grow and, you know, be the engine.

But we're like, our engine's like.

And we love being entrepreneurs.

We left our corporate jobs.

We've been there.

We've done that.

We hate the corporate life and want to make sure that we can keep building with our vision.

And when the time is right, find the right type of strategic partner to help take us to another level.

Nice.

So is the goal just to keep having more and more events?

That's the goal for sure is the more we can put on the board.

You know, we have a lot in development right now.

And that's really...

our Joe and I's number one focus, obviously, outside of producing the events we already have on the board.

But it's really just keep putting more and more on the board.

Keep putting, you know, getting more talent, getting more celebrities, getting more brands.

And just we want a calendar.

We're like, holy crap, we have 20 events a year.

I think in 2023, we had eight events

and they're all

very large scale.

And then in 24, our hope is to have like closer to 12.

Nice.

Okay.

Is the hardest part getting people there, getting attendance?

The hardest part actually is selling sponsorships.

I mean, that's such a huge part of our model, right?

We're really lucky that we feel like our event concepts are awesome.

Like when you have Shaq and Lil Wayne and Diplo, that should be enough of a draw to get the ticket holders there and get people there.

What's hard and takes a lot of time is selling sponsorship, right?

Convincing 10, 15 brands to each write a check for six and in some cases, even seven figures.

And

that takes time and pitching and begging and explaining and that that takes time and that

slows down the cycle a little bit.

Yeah, when you're working with big companies, it's got to work its way up the ladder, right?

So it probably takes months to get a big deal.

It does, but it's all relationship-based.

And, you know, at MediumRare, we work with a lot of incredible companies.

Some of our biggest partners are Pepsi or Bud Light, for example, where we've proven how successful our model is and how different it is than if they go and just partner with

a Lollapalooza or Coachella because of the digital and the PR value that our events bring to the table.

They're really unique and often speak for themselves.

But the sales cycle is very long and could take months to get a deal done.

But so, you know, planning ahead is a really important part of our business.

This is so interesting to me because growing up, I see these big music festivals.

I just think they're printing money, like Lollapalooza.

I think that's what everyone thinks.

Like Ezu, Coachella.

That's what everyone thinks.

Joe and I were lucky enough to see it on the SFX and Live Nation side.

And I saw more festivals.

that lost seven figures, in some cases, eight figures than I can count.

It was like one after another, like, oh, that festival lost $2 million up.

That festival lost $1 million.

You're like, how does this make any sense?

And to the naked eye, you're like, whoa, there's 50,000 people there.

They should be printing money.

And it is a tough business being the normal concert festival promoter.

It is tough.

Yeah, because there's so many talent.

You guys keep it smart, like maybe one to three talent per festival.

Yeah, we found this really boutique size, right?

Like I think the three-day mega festival, 50,000 people a day.

That model is what we saw as like really hard and very difficult and risky.

Our model is like these more boutique events.

events, you know, this weekend, Shaq's funhouse is 5,000 people, and Gronk Beach is 5,000 people, SI is 5,000 people, and then Guy's 20,000.

But those are a lot more manageable, right?

Like 5,000 people on Super Bowl weekend is a lot more manageable than trying to do 150,000 people on a random weekend at this park in Chicago.

I've been to Lalabooza.

We really work to put our events at the intersection of sports and entertainment, surrounding these big weekends where there's an influx of fans and patrons like Super Bowl, but also where brands want to be, right?

And where corporate sponsors park their dollars.

So that's been really successful for us dominating Super Bowl weekend, NFL draft, and other key cultural weekends like that.

So it's, yeah, like Adam said, this boutique strategy is very different than what's out there because people think they need to scale to achieve that profitability.

Well, when you have more attendees, all of a sudden you need to hire more staff, you need more Browns, you need more artists.

And we've seen that that model hasn't always worked so well.

But what makes our model so unique is the digital and social, like I've been saying, where at Shaq's Funhouse, across his social platform, getting hundreds of millions of

engagements and views on his platform surrounding the event.

But also from a media standpoint, we have CNN and Fox News reporting live from Shaq's Funhouse, interviewing Shaq, going around to our sponsor activations, interviewing Lil Wayne and Diplo.

And that's what sets us apart.

So our little event for 5,000 people has a similar media reach to some of the biggest festivals in America.

That's smart because you don't really see festivals doing that, having live media there.

And now there's this huge wave of live streaming.

So there's guys like Aiden Ross.

I don't know if you heard of these guys, but like iShow Speed, XQC.

They're getting insane views.

And they actually helped the UFC a lot.

Yeah, it's wild.

I think the UFC has actually done a great job tapping into that whole world.

The next generation.

Yeah, they don't even get credit for it, but like they've done an incredible job with

the Nelk Boys and following

a lot of their friends and family around them.

And it's been incredible to see they're like really tapping in for the next generation.

So this being a marketing podcast, what's your guys' takes on like spending marketing dollars?

I know UFC, I believe they don't spend anything on marketing.

And same with Elon Musk with Tesla.

But how do you guys feel about it?

We wish we were that lucky that we didn't have to spend marketing dollars.

You know, if you take an average event, we'll spend this weekend about $250,000 per event on marketing.

Damn.

Like Facebook ads and stuff?

Yeah, ads are a big part of that.

Content's a huge part of it.

Right.

We're making a ton of content to one promote the event but two coming out of the event to right keep the hype and sell it to partners and um we spend you know of that 250 i'd say almost 50 grand of its content just making you know incredible videos photos um you know reels gifts whatever to promote the event on a year-round basis that's a big expense uh we probably spend about a hundred on digital ads um that's everything from facebook ads to retargeting to google ads and so on um and have a really robust strategy there.

And then we're lucky sometimes we go on sale of an event and it sells so fast that it's like, oh, you had 250 in the budget.

Now it's only 50 because you sold out in

nine minutes, right?

You don't have a campaign.

That's happened before.

That's happened before.

And you're like, obviously, one, you're thrilled because you just sold out so quickly, but then you're even more excited because you're like, holy crap, we just saved 200 grand on the marketing budget.

That's always lucky.

And you got to know how to adapt it based on

how the event's performing.

And sometimes you got to add more fuel to the engine.

You're like, this event is not doing well.

So you're like, we got to spend more on ads, right?

We got to get people here.

We got to sell tickets, put more, spend more, spend more, spend more.

And it does, you know, you see what's working, what's not working.

In some events, you're like, it's going great.

Spend less, spend less.

So it's really just continuing to, you know, tinker with it.

And even this week, you know, the events are all doing really well.

But we sat with our marketing team for like two hours yesterday, brainstorming, what else can we do this week to push these events over over the edge.

And we added like five new things that we never had in our in our budget or never had in our thought process.

But being here in Vegas and being like, we should do that, we should do that, let's add this, let's add that, and made those changes this week to push the events over the edge.

Nice.

Yeah, I think you guys are like really adaptable and that's a huge part of success, right?

Being able to adapt on the fly.

Some people are kind of old school and stuck in their ways and that's why they fail sometimes.

I think too, you know, again, with our model, Take Kelsey Jam, which is coming up next for us, we're going to launch that with a national press conference with Travis.

Well, he'll do, you know, eight different outlets back to back and then have a big launch on social.

And it just is a great kind of launch pad for our marketing rollout and strategy.

And then, like Adam was saying, we kind of go on sale and then from there readjust what our marketing campaign needs to do to be successful.

Always look at it from a pretty kind of holistic standpoint across

all social, digital, local marketing is really important, making sure that we tap into that local community

and data is really important to us most of our events we do pretty big pre-sale registration campaigns trying to capture as much data as possible so we can remarket to them throughout the campaign and also offer all sorts of different incentives to that list that we're building so at super bowl right we have the four festivals well if you're attending shaq's funhouse you're certainly a prime target to attend groc beach the next day given you're ready in the market so how can we communicate with that fan and incentivize them to attend maybe two of our festivals or three of our festivals across Super Bowl weekends.

So, definitely put a lot of time and thought into that across targeting that consumer on social through text message, on email, and just game planning how we can take advantage of that data.

Love that.

When you're looking at potential partners to have events with, what do you guys have criteria there?

Because there's probably going to be people watching this wanting to work with you guys.

Yeah, you know, we've turned down so much talent that's reached out, and it's always flattering.

It's always really cool when someone reaches out and is like, I want to work with you.

It's, you know, every time it's awesome and humbling.

But our events are so mainstream.

That's really the key word is you have to be so mainstream and so known by such a mass audience, right?

When you think about who we're working with now, Shaquille and Ial, one of the most famous NBA players of all time.

The guy is on TV more times than you can count.

It's, you know, he's one of the most likable and beloved people of all time.

Really fortunate.

Rob Minkowski, I think, saw a statistic.

He's the fourth most known NFL player, current or retired.

Wow.

He's just so recognizable.

Everyone knows Rob Minkowski, grunk.

Travis Kelsey, may have not known him, but then he started dating Taylor Swift,

became the biggest star in the world.

And, you know, Dave Portnoy, media superstar, starter barstool, millions and millions of Instagram followers, devout following.

If Dave Portnoy told people, come meet me at this address right now, there'd be like 20,000 people waiting to meet Dave Portnoy.

So

it's hard to like

call it one factor, but there's sort of this it factor of you're known by everyone or you know there's just something that makes you so special and look damon john's one of our partners uh you know damon's incredible right he's on shark tank started foo boo he isn't a he isn't known like shaq right you can't you know from a celebrity standpoint but we were able to get creative with damon and came up with an event for him black entrepreneurs day yeah that made a lot of sense for him and his market And that was unique.

And he had this it factor with the black business community.

That was able to be crafted to him.

And he's not as mainstream as other guys.

So

it's hard to nail down one trait or one specific thing, but it's really that it factor in whatever you do.

Yeah, I love that.

Did you guys do a pizza review with Borneo?

We did not get to do a pizza review.

We did get to eat a lot of pizza with him for the epic.

Yeah, that guy is awesome.

We love him.

You got to even cook Lucali.

Yeah, I got to cook Lucali.

That's one of the most famous places in New York.

And we got to cook some Lucali together.

Damn.

But Dave's awesome.

We love Dave.

At the festival, we went around around and tried about over 25 different pizzerias with him.

I think we weren't doing live reviews because it was Dave's festival.

We were bringing together the community of the best pizzerias all across America.

You know, we had Lucali, John Zebliker,

Patsy's, Sally's, DeFara.

And that was an awesome event.

And kind of unlike our others, really had

an amazing community and small business focus as well, bringing together these mom-and-pop pizzerias.

And everyone kind of bonded over their love of pizza there.

So that event actually you know sold out um over 5 000 tickets in a few minutes and damn dave's dave's following was the big most devout following of anyone we work with right like dave is he isn't shaq he isn't grunk he doesn't right he doesn't have that same name recognition or

celebrity status but his fans are the most hardcore that we saw yeah when dave announced it it was like

absolutely trending there's haters there web traffic could be yeah our web yeah it was crashed It was wild.

It was wild.

We've never seen web traffic like that.

We've never seen pre-sale signups like that.

Just the amount of interest because Dave's fans are just so hardcore for anything he does.

That doesn't shock me because didn't he raise like tens of millions for small businesses during the pandemic?

Yeah, I think he raised almost $100 million with the Barstool Fund, which is awesome.

He was just giving that money out during

to small businesses.

That was incredible.

His pizza reviews are, you know, everyone's at least seen a few of them.

And then obviously everyone knows him from, you know, know, from Barstool.

Yeah.

So you guys will have to 5X out event this year.

That's the plan.

It's tough on food festivals.

So now we produce two of America's biggest food festivals with Flavor Town Tailgate coming up on Sunday and One Bite Pizza Festival.

But the operations and logistics needed for these large-scale food festivals are very different than the music festivals.

These pizza places can only make so much pizza, right?

So you can't have 50,000 people there waiting to try Lucali or something because they'll never be able to keep up and the line's going to be a s ⁇ .

And actually, why a lot of food festivals have failed.

when we started pizza fest people are like you guys are nuts no one's ever done a pizza fest successfully which is sounds crazy what do you mean no one's ever done pizza

yeah and then you realize that all these pizza places have a special oven that's what makes pizza special right like these old school places that have been in connecticut for a hundred years they're like that's our same oven that they use they're like our pizza is only good because we used this oven for the last hundred years and now we have to figure out how to get that oven in a venue in the middle.

Literally, we did it at a baseball stadium this year.

We're like,

I think we rented about 94 ovens, damn, which was crazy.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars on woodburning, gas, coal.

We had every type of oven.

Yeah, pizzeria is amazing.

The stuff we had to do with FDNY because they're like, you're going to have 94 ovens in one location.

Firehousers.

Yeah.

It was like crazy.

And that's why pizza festivals haven't figured out because they couldn't figure out how to do the ovens.

Wow.

I didn't even think about that.

Yeah, it was crazy.

And everyone's like, told us we were nuts, and somehow we figured it out.

Pretty awesome.

But

food festivals are hard.

Pizza tasted just as good as the shop.

I think that was what the goal was, and that's what Dave kept, you know, chirping and harping on us.

Like, it needs to be as good.

And that was the pleasant surprise as we went around and tasted 20 different pizzas with him.

It was, I felt like I was at DeFara.

I felt like I was at John Zubliko, and that's what made it really special.

What's the best pizza in Vegas?

Dude, there's not many, to be honest.

Pizza Rock's okay, I guess.

There's one in Durango that's decent.

That street?

Yeah, that's from New York.

Yeah, yeah.

They just opened here.

Yeah.

They were at the festival.

Yeah, how is Durango?

It's cool.

I liked it.

The owner came on.

Damn, I forgot his name, but yeah, it was cool.

Yeah, I want to check it out.

Yeah, awesome.

Durango's dope.

That's where PowerSlop is Friday.

Oh, that's Durango?

Yeah, you guys are so busy.

We will,

yeah, there's no way.

Everyone, it's awesome.

We get so many cool invites this week, and people want to hang out or invite us to dinner or lunch, this event, that event, and we're like...

We're here for business.

We're like, we wish, but like, we're...

We're building four festivals.

I wish we could hang out.

Yeah, I love that.

Well, I hope you guys have a great week, man.

Anything you guys want to close off with or promote?

No, appreciate you having us on.

We're excited

with the four events coming up.

And it's going to be an incredible week.

And I think Vegas Super Bowl is going to blow everyone away.

It's going to be, this is the best city for a Super Bowl, hands down.

Let's go.

It's going to be, it's going to be awesome.

Yeah.

Love it.

We love doing business here.

We were here for NFL Draft with Gronk when we hit Gronk Beach.

Now to have four festivals in Super Bowl Las Vegas is really incredible.

And if it was up to Adam and I, we'd have Super Bowl in Vegas every single year.

So we're comfortable.

Love it.

Love it, guys.

A lot of money in the project.

You'll make it back.

We'll make it back.

We're going to make it back to the best.

Exactly.

All right, guys.

Thanks for for coming on.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, thanks for watching.

As always, guys, see you tomorrow.

Thanks, bro.