Sean Mike Kelly: Viral Marketing and the Power of Social Media | E132
50:38 Share

So you made $10 million and you lost $10 million. Yeah, well, I made, but I never realized it. But on paper, I had $10 million and I could have sold it for US dollars and I didn't do it. You got no one to sell. Exactly. My greed kicked in and that's when I took a step back and realized, wow, this is a psychological game. It's a player versus player game.

Welcome to In Search of Excellence, where we meet entrepreneurs, CEOs, entertainers, athletes, motivational speakers, and trailblazers of excellence with incredible stories with all walks of life. My name is Randall Kaplan. I'm a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and the host of In Search of Excellence, which has started to motivate and inspire us to achieve excellence in all areas of our lives.

My guest today is Sean Kelly. Sean is a serial entrepreneur, Web3 advocate, and incredible podcaster with over 11 million followers on Instagram, 1 million followers on YouTube, and 400,000 followers on TikTok.

During his freshman year in college, Sean started a company called Jersey Champs, which sold custom jerseys in partnerships with rappers, athletes, and influencers, and later sold it after dropping out of college. And after that, he started a company that sold $17 million worth of masks and other supplies during the coronavirus pandemic. Sean is the host of the number one marketing podcast, The Digital Social Hour, where he interviews celebrities, entrepreneurs, and industry experts from all walks of life.

Sean, it's a true pleasure. Welcome to my show, In Search of Excellence. So I always start with my family. Your mom was born in China, both your parents from different countries. Your dad was a computer programmer, computer

What were they like and what kind of influence did they have on you growing up? Wow, you did your research, man. No one's ever said that before. Yeah, growing up in a multicultural background was really interesting looking back at it now because I got two really different perspectives. So my mom was an immigrant from China, came here with 20 bucks in her pocket, didn't speak English, scrubbed floors, worked her way up to become a self-made millionaire from a nine to five job.

So I witnessed the work ethic from her. My dad, similar story, immigrant, grew up on a farm working really, really hard, but he was a genius. So his IQ was 150 and he had a lot of like mental problems too. So I grew up around that and that ended up playing a big role on me too. We could dive into that later. Yeah. So how did they go from your mom go from scrubbing floors to becoming a millionaire? That's pretty incredible. Pretty insane. Just hard work, man. That Asian immigrant mentality is hard to beat.

So she did that for a few years and eventually learned English, worked her way into a sales position, and she's still at the same company. Ericsson, a telecommunications company? Yeah, it was Telcordia before it got acquired. And then, so I know she's in sales and marketing there. So did she become a millionaire based on commission revenue or? Both, her base plus commission. So she did that for 25 years. Now she's at Amazon.

And so, and your dad sells books now for on Amazon and eBay. Yep. Watched him do, I think a million dollars in books. And this was when I was a kid. So a million back 15 years ago was a good amount in sales. And is he still doing that right now? Uh, he stopped. It was on the side. Um, he had a main job and he did that on the side for a long time. But I think, uh, these book scanners started coming out.

So it removed his skill level because he could just eye a book and know the value. Right. But you were younger at the time. So were you saying to yourself, Amazon is new and are people selling books? These were not his own books. He was brokering books on Amazon. Brokering books. We would go to dumpsters. We'd go to book sales. He could eye any book and know how much it's worth. It was the craziest skill I've seen. When you're that smart, it's almost like a savant-like skill.

So he's getting discarded books or he's getting them at used bookstores where they're 99 cents and he's basically flipping them on Amazon? Yeah, Amazon and eBay. And I would help him ship them too. Using keywords because how does a guy who has absolutely no experience compete with Amazon, for example, where you can buy used books on Amazon? Yeah, well, I think back then it was easier. You could just list books for the cheapest price and undercut people. But now it's a lot harder. You need volume.

So let's go to seventh grade. You're selling candy. You make $20 a day some days. And tell us what happened and why you got suspended from school. Yeah, it's so pathetic that they make your own students think this way. But I guess the school had vending machines. And I don't know what the kickback is, like where that money goes to exactly, but...

This teacher was just so upset. And she's like this huge lady, probably 250 pounds. I'm walking to my bus stop. In one hand, I have a bag of money. Other hand, the rest of my candy left for the day. And I'm smiling. Like there's a huge smile on my face. 20 bucks as a kid is a lot back then. Huge. Yeah. Because you didn't really have many expenses. So yeah, she said, what is that? I'm like, I just sold candy. She said, come with me right now. It takes me to the principal's office. So I missed the bus going home. My mom had to pick me up.

And they suspended me, man, for selling candy. For how long? I think it was a day or something. But I had to stop selling. So that was the part that sucked.

you snuck out of the house at night to get the candy yeah 10 11 o'clock at night crazy story so i would sneak out at wegmans uh have you heard of wegmans yeah yeah they're big on the east coast and and you said it was two to three miles from your house yeah so i i had to either bike or run and i think they closed at midnight so i would leave at 11 be like the only person in the whole grocery store one day i came home my dad pulled a gun on me because he was on drugs and he thought it was a robber or something

So he's literally pointing a Glock at me from the upstairs. I'm a kid. How old were you at this point? Probably in middle school, probably seventh grade. So 13. So he pulls a gun on me. I'm like begging dad not to shoot. And he still didn't understand the situation because he was so messed up on drugs. So I had to hide in the bathroom that night. There's a bathroom right by the front door.

So the doors were locked. Were you upstairs, this kind of thing where you see on TV where you open the window, you hop out the window, or you're just kind of tiptoeing out the front door? I left the front door open. So I walked in. As soon as I walked in, he's there with a gun. It's like midnight pointing at me. There's a bathroom to my left. So I walk in there and hide there for like an hour until he went back to his room and fell asleep. So let's talk about college and the start of your first real company. Talk to us about...

Spending $250 on a design and then spending $1,000 and how you got started in your dorm room and kind of what happened from there. Yeah, so I was broke in college. Even though I grew up in a family like middle class, one thing I love about that is they didn't give me any money or anything. It was normal in high school for their parents to buy the car. I was the only kid that didn't have a car in high school. So shout out to my parents for not doing that. At the time, I hated it.

Believe me, I hated it. But shout out to them for doing that. But yeah, in college, I was broke and drop shipping was hot at the time. And I really took advantage of that wave. And I did pre-orders because I didn't have enough money to order inventory. Right. Tell us, though, first what you were making and why you were making them and where the idea for that came from. Because it's a little different than selling T-shirts, which a lot of people were doing. Yeah. So everyone was doing T-shirts. And I think that market's super saturated for people watching this trying to start T-shirt companies because I still get DM daily about that. Please don't do that.

jerseys on the other hand at the time weren't as saturated so i would go to fraternity parties and tailgates every guy was wearing a jersey so i knew there was a huge market sports is big in america obviously so i did a pre-order for this toronto jersey drake dropped an album at the time the rapper and i had like views and the number six and toronto on the front and that was the first jersey and i think we sold 100 of those

You sold out what you made. You paid $250 for someone to design for you? Yeah, because I didn't know what the going rate was, so I overpaid for sure, but it ended up working out. Yeah, so tell us how you got...

influencers to wear them, which is very, very tough to do. It's so important now to do it, but before social media really exploded, it was still a great way to do it, right? Free advertising of Kim Kardashian, where's your stuff? Good things are going to happen to your brand, right? Kendall Jenner. So how are you doing this? I mean, what was your first rapper? And, you know,

You can't look up their email addresses. So where are you finding these people? Yeah, you can't look up their emails, but you could get their agents. There's a few websites, Booking Agent Info and The Handbook. Those are two that I used to use. But DMs, I feel like worked better. So I would DM 100 people a day on Instagram until I was blocked, basically. And I did that for probably two years straight. So just from sheer volume and I see everything as a numbers game.

And I still have that mentality today. When I was doing the mass, which we'll get into, I was emailing probably hundreds a day as well. And that's how we were able to do good revenue there. Right. So who was the first rapper? And then I want you to tell us about Donald Trump and how he just changed your entire career. Crazy. I still remember that day vividly. It was probably Khaled and then Logic. I don't listen to rap anymore, but at the time those two artists were pretty hot.

And then tell us about Donald Trump and what happened there. Crazy. It wasn't planned. I wish I could say it was some elaborate marketing scheme, but someone bought one of my jerseys and he was front row at his rally, I guess, and had access to Trump and handed it to him. And then we got a whole video of him holding it front and back.

And how did people know it was yours? My logo is on the bottom, right? But it's small. Yeah, it's super small. So what did you do? Take it. It's like on these football replays where you blow it up. I mean, he probably didn't have that blow up mechanism back then. Yeah, I guess people just had to trust it. The video was a little blurry, but surreal moment because my father was a huge fan of him, even though very controversial. But in 2016, he was always talking about him. Yeah, I have a...

Trump story I'm gonna tell you and then I want to go back to the t-shirts. Let's do it. So my best friend's getting married at Mar-a-Lago. This is 2015, 2014. And Mar-a-Lago is a very nice place. Trump owns it. We all know it now, but it was a hedge fund conference. He's in the financial business. So there's all kinds of wealthy people there. And Trump is there. He's the 10th candidate in the race. He's the joke candidate.

just announced never gonna win and he comes down right he's he's schmoozing with people saying hello everyone's getting their photo with him and i said oh let's go take a picture my wife wanted none of it she had met him before new newest sons used to live in new york so uh and she doesn't like taking pictures with uh celebrities or famous people she's never gonna do that got it me

Yeah, sometimes I'll do it. Good branding. Yeah, it was good branding. My son was 10 at the time. So we have a great picture of Donald holding my son Charlie looking directly into the camera. And it's cool. It's my son's screensaver today. And the only post that I made there is one of these men will be president one day. Hashtag 2040. Wow.

Thinking it's going to be my son, not Donald Trump, because 2040, I kind of did the math. Yeah. You know, he'll be kind of in his late 40s now, but it's kind of just amazing how someone can go from dark horse, no candidate, to no chance of winning to what he's done as a president, whether you like him or not. Yep. It's, you know, coming from the rear and winning the race is amazing.

Unheard of, especially for president, because you need a lot of money. Yeah. I mean, he raised a lot of money and he's still raising a lot of money, not spending his own money, but he's... Yeah. He just raised 50 million the other day in Bar Lago. Yeah. One night. Nuts. And he could do that once a week probably. Yeah. Well, we'll see. It's going to be interesting. Yeah. I know people that have paid 100K just to be at a dinner right next to... Like at his table. Yeah. Yeah.

Let's go back to selling t-shirts because I know you tell people today don't do it. Back when I was in college, I went to University of Michigan, greatest school on the planet, and I saw some people selling t-shirts and I didn't have money. So I thought, all right, so, and these were people that I befriended. One of them is Brad Keywell, has become one of my best friends. He was on my show. They started four public companies. Groupon was the fourth. It was the fastest company at the time to a billion dollar valuation. And

uptake his company that he started was the fastest company to a two billion dollar valuation he signed the giving pledge but he got going in college actually he got going when he's six years old selling greeting cards so when you see someone doing something in college I thought well it's an inspiration right if they can make money selling t-shirts so can I so I took $500 of my Burmese for money

And today you can just go online, right? You can buy t-shirts, you can see what kind of cotton they are. You can see photos back then there wasn't any of that. I said, I want to make a University of Michigan inspired t-shirt. And I called and I remember thinking, God, I'm in the yellow pages, right? So you're calling one by one and you're on the phone and I don't know what I'm at. I'm 18 years old and I just want some pizza money. So I get the t-shirts.

I copied and today you can do this, but back then it was loose. So just do it was a slogan. It was huge. They have that trademark font and I made just do a t-shirts for Michigan. And then Michigan was in the final four. So it was road to final four, just do it. It was amazing. Blue is a very good looking shirt.

And I made shirts previous to that, but I sold them in the dorm door to door. Yeah. So I think there's 11 or 12 dorms at Michigan. I went through every single hallway, every single dorm. I got kicked out of almost everyone. I go on the back door and it was a very invaluable. It was a,

Great experience for me because I learned margins were big. I sold the short sleeve for $12, cost me five. Long sleeves were even more killer, $6 cost, sold them for 18. - Wow. - And so, and by the way, these are heavy. So you're lugging around the boxes, right? You got 50 shirts with you. It's not a great thing, but one of the great lessons

of that was the art of cold calling. So let's talk about your cold calling. I know you've done it for your career. How important is cold calling to our success? Oh my gosh. I know you've done more volume than me, but I'm more of a cold email, but cold email, cold call, I'll group them in the same group, changed my life. That's how I did $17 million in PPE sales. I didn't know a single person I sold to.

Right. So we'll get to the PPE in a minute. I want to go back to political issues in high school and really the regulation of that. Yeah. You had a principal remove...

one of your jerseys because it was anti-patriotic or something in a football game. Yeah. How the hell does that happen? What happened and how the hell does that happen? I know. I woke up to that. Pretty crazy. Someone wore the Trump jersey to a football game and the principal kicked him out of the whole game. Isn't that nuts? It's nuts. Just for wearing a Trump jersey. So this kid's in the stands? Yeah, he's in the stands. And the principal comes over, hey, Joe.

come with me, just looking around with everyone there. - Yeah. - Is that what I do? - Crazy. And that just goes to like all the programming schools are doing these days. I mean, they should never have political influence like that. It's crazy to me. - It's crazy. So all businesses struggle before they get going. I've never heard of one by the way that didn't struggle. - Yeah. - So you started the Jersey business. You had a lot of issues. So you got two partners who stole from you. You had jerseys that didn't come.

you had a hundred grand locked in paypal that you couldn't get out yep so and you're young and that's a ton of money for you so how are you dealing with those and then there's something at a festival as well i think you had a hundred shirts come they didn't come you know pissed off so how do you overcome those challenges and you're young so it's not like you have the maturity where you've done this before and

Yeah, at the time, I really hurt because all these numbers are relative. So even though it sounds small back then, it was a lot for me. Like 100K being locked in PayPal was the difference of the business being shut down versus doing a million dollars the next year. So yeah, it was just tough. Luckily, I had a really good support system and I was watching a ton of videos on YouTube and courses and stuff and had some mentors to help me guide through the process. But e-commerce is tough, man. The margins are thin. Payment holds are common.

So it's just something I don't do anymore. But yeah, I sent 100 jerseys to that music festival, never got paid. That sucked. And I just never fronted people again after that. I always got paid first. So you mentioned something that I think is very important to the importance of mentors in our lives. We'll talk about the people that you studied before later in life in your career, but you

What mentors did you have and how important are mentors in our success? Yeah, I had some that I just watched, which I consider a mentor. So back then it was Gary Vee, Tai Lopez, Patrick Bet-David really liked his show back then. And then I have some in-person mentors now that I could just text. I'd say Dan Fleischman is one of them, Matthew Morgan. These are eight, nine figure guys, but they also have a really balanced life, which is important to me these days because I've achieved the money part of what I wanted to do at a very young age. And now it's more about health and lifestyle for me.

Right. So sometimes we're in businesses that kind of peak and then they fall. We'll talk about the mask business in a second. But after the jersey, you pivoted into e-commerce. So what was that like? What motivated that? And then talk about your rise in your arc and then kind of the downside of what happened there. Yeah, I did e-commerce for five years. It was great. Learned a lot. Never made a killing. And I also wasn't fulfilled.

So I was making 50K here the first three years. This was in college and when I dropped out, which was decent, nothing crazy. And then once I got into, I think, crypto from there, that's when I became a millionaire. And then I realized I could use that money to start doing what I actually like, podcasting, mentorship, stuff like that.

And talk to us about the crypto game. I was in the crypto game a little bit. It was kind of crazy. Not kind of crazy. It was fucking crazy. Insane. You had people with no experience running anything. I mean, they...

Didn't even work in a coffee shop ever, let alone manage a single dollar, manage a single person who are writing white papers. And white papers, for those people who don't know, is a plan with this cryptocurrency, which is actually worth absolutely nothing when it had a plan that it's going to be used. And we're talking about altcoins. So we're talking about things that are not Bitcoin, primarily not Bitcoin, which people knew. And then they're raising $100 million, $200 million on a deal. You've got all these...

People promoting...

this coin that has ultimately no value and you got to get in to this deal. So talk to us about that and who you knew and how you made money in that space. A lot of it's timing, man. I remember this one kid in my high school, 2015, it might've been 2014. Oh my gosh. So he was mining crypto. Everyone made fun of him. Mining it. Yeah. So tell people what that is. So mining is basically, you use a bunch of fast computers and you mine it and then you collect fees basically. Yeah.

It's hard to explain, but basically... You're creating Bitcoin by plugging in a computer, using power, hopefully that you don't pay for. Electricity. Right. A lot of people were doing it at work, so they didn't have to pay for electricity at their house. So they're creating their own Bitcoin. Yeah. So that's one way of making money. And everyone made fun of him. I mentioned to him a few months ago, he has $10 million. In Bitcoin? Yeah, Bitcoin. Everyone made fun of him in high school. I was the only one who was semi-interested in Bitcoin.

But that's one way of making money. So there's people mining. They buy giant warehouses. Adam Weitzman is one of them. There's guys doing eight, nine figures a year just mining. It's probably the most passive form of income I've ever seen. And then if Bitcoin goes up, it's just like a double win. You know what I mean? Right. So that's one way of making money. The altcoins you mentioned earlier is how I made my money. So I made $10 million at 25 years old. And 80% of people would probably lose that money in their 20s. And it happened to me. And I was like,

Wow, that is crazy because I felt like I was so disciplined and it happened.

you were flipping the altcoins because if you had held the alcohol and most of them are worth zero pennies on the dollar zeros i think 99 i was a speaker on stage at i think was the largest crypto conference in los angeles at the time in 2017 in the wave so there are all these people a couple of people had paid to be on the stage yep right they were promoting their own which again was just ridiculous most people didn't know that they had paid to get on there and i

I was set up there maybe 2000 people there. I said, this thing's going to end badly. Yeah. And 95% of these companies are going to go bankrupt. I think it's 99.9 have gone bankrupt. There's going to be class action lawsuits everywhere. And this is weird, right? I'm in a tie. I've got, you know, my name's up on the board and I was heavily booed. Wow. Look at you now. Heavily booed. I mean, these are young people who had no experience. Everyone is into crypto. It's the fastest way you can make money. Nice.

Not now, but it was back then. Well, even now. I mean, there's still altcoins popping now, but you got to get in and out or you're screwed. So I got caught holding the bag on some stuff and lost $10 million in a few months. So you made $10 million and you lost $10 million. Yeah, well, I made, but I never realized it. But on paper, I had $10 million and I could have sold it for US dollars and I didn't do it. Right. So that's also a lesson that you got to know when to sell. Yeah, exactly. My greed kicked in and that's...

That's when I took a step back and realized, wow, this is a psychological game. It's a player versus player game. So many things about life are about relationships. And for me, my ability to get into some of these crypto deals was because I had the resume to do it and I had relationships. And if I didn't have them, people would find them for me. And people like to say, oh, Randy's got this, he's done this and that. It helps credibility. If I'm in the deal, I'm

And I was not promoting anything, but people would use my name. And so it allowed me to get into a lot of deals. We made money like you, we lost money as well.

timing is everything, right? These coins can go down 80% in a day. And they did. And the interesting thing, by the way, there isn't a single altcoin that has a single effective use in the world today. Not one that I can think of. Yeah. I mean, you can argue Ethereum and Solana, but really what is it if you look at the bigger picture? You're right, for sure. So relationships have been a huge point. It has been a huge, important point.

part of your success. Let's talk about your mother and speaking Mandarin and how you were able to take advantage of relationships

And a very difficult time to get a certain product with supply chain issues. Yeah. So I used to speak it fluently actually, because she, when I was a baby, I was in China for a couple of years, but I forgot it because I just wasn't practicing. But my mother grew up in China, so she had connections and could speak it. So during the pandemic, she had a friend at a big PPE company out there. I think one of the biggest in the world called Cinefarm. And she brokered some deals for me. You were able to get the masks.

Yeah, we were also an authorized, we signed with an authorized 3M distributor. So we were an affiliate for them. Okay. It was important to have credibility to have 3M, which was leading mask maker in the world. Yep. And 95 masks. And there was another mask that was even more

I don't know what the word is, better than that. The medical grade one? Yeah. N95? Yeah. There was KN95, which was the cheap stuff from China. Right. And then N95, which was from 3M. Right. Okay. So you see people needing this. You're reading about it. You can't get masks.

prices of masks have gone up three and four times right price gouging for people and you say hey hey mom can you give me some mass or where'd the idea come from yeah no literally that i would see it in the news these hospitals and governments struggling to get mass i'm like why is that that shouldn't be an issue and uh especially gloves nitro gloves and gowns and stuff so

I just, my biggest skill is connecting people. So I knew I could take advantage of that. But here's the crazy part. On the $17 million, guess how much profit I made? 1.7 million because you had 10% margin. Wow. How do you know that? Because I did my research on you. Oh, wow. But yeah, you would assume it's way higher though, right? Right. If you just see that number. So I learned a lot from doing that, from cold calling and cold emailing. So let's talk about that because we cold call, cold email now in a lot of our businesses. So-

Tell us about the services you use, setting up Google alerts, how important it is to read the news and then react and say, hey, what's going on here? And then walk us through the process. Because as I was reading about what you did, I said, shit, that's the exact same thing that we're doing. Yeah, those Google alerts are fun, man. I do it with podcasting right now too. So tell people what that is for Don't Know. And then what's the value of that in your success? Yes, you could set up Google alerts for search terms. So I think mine were...

mask shortage, gown shortage, just any type of alert where a hospital or something, some company would need PPE. So as soon as an article would pop up, I would know within hours.

Step one. Yeah. So set that up, whatever business you're in, set that up for what your service is. Step two. Step two, I use Zoom Info. So that's also similar to Google Alerts, but they set up, I forget what it's called. There's a term on Zoom Info, but it's similar to Google News.

To do what? What was Zoom Info for? They would basically know if companies were in need of a certain product or service and rank it from zero to 100 on the score. So I think it's based off if the company employee emails are searching terms on Google, they track all that. Okay. So they'll know if a company is in need of a product or service and it's really targeted and it gives you their email to contact.

Okay, so emails are in Zoom. We use Lucia, and we've used Rocket Reach, and we've used a whole bunch. And the cost is not a lot. It's $50 to $100 a month. Yeah, same thing. I use Apollo now, Rocket Reach. Yeah, it's all the same. And man, that's how I get a lot of podcasts, too. It's such a big database. You could sell anything on those. Yeah. I mean, we get emails daily. I'm sure you do, too. We get emails for...

Salesforce customers or Salesforce people. And you can actually go and contact these companies and say, I want restaurant email list of people that manage restaurants or own restaurants. You could use it for anything, man. So I host networking events. This is a bit of a tangent, but in a new city every month. And I get 500 people in the room every month with very little ad spend because of Apollo. I just email. Right. Email campaign. Okay. So walk us next. So you've got...

you got the search terms you you found a niche in the market yeah you're reading about it every day we're all reading about it we're seeing it on the news every day shortage shortage shortage you have the connections you're now set up search terms where you're getting identifying potential customers then you have to find out the identity of the people at these companies

So for those people who don't know, who are you targeting as your customer? So not only the company, you're not going to target the CEO of a company. So who are you targeting? And then how do you determine that? For me and for PPE at the time, it was chief procurement officer because they have the final say in purchasing. If I couldn't get them, it'd be someone else in procurement and try to work my way up. And that was basically who I was looking to email or cold call. And it was just a numbers game, man. And just when

When you had the targeted leads, it made the number game a lot better, a lot easier. The close rate was pretty high.

What is the close rate? I mean, the close rate in that business at a specific time was a very unique period of time. The close rate is going to be massively high. Yeah, it's not normal. I mean, it's 90% plus, I would have said. Once they realize that you have 3M masks and they're not counterfeit masks. Well, there was a lot of competition, but on the 3M side, it was definitely high. But for other stuff, gowns and gloves, it was lower, I'd say. One thing I learned at a young age, I was...

unsuccessful lawyer. I wrote 300 letters looking for a job. Everyone said, you're crazy, writing to CEOs of some of these biggest companies. And I got all of these meetings. During that year-long process, what I call a letter-writing campaign, emailed a senior investment banker at Bear Stearns. And just going through the meetings and said, okay, well, I want to meet some more people. Who can you introduce me to? Because it's all about meeting people, shaking their hand, and ask for the order. And

And he said, well, I can't do that. But Bear Stearns has a very successful, well-known media conference in Laguna Beach. And he said, if you want to hunt moose, go where the moose are. It was great advice. So because all the CEOs of the company were there, Michael Eisner, Sumner Redstone, the head of every company.

media company in the world, BMG. And I just went there armed and ready to roll. I mean, I was ready to just fire away. I met so many people, got a ton of meetings. There's some people became my friends. - Nice. - And it was really great. So talk to us, you mentioned conferences.

What's your advice to people who want to get in and meet these people? Should they go to these conferences where there's 500 people? Can they really make a difference? Here's the best hack I've ever seen. I've said it once. You have to host dinners around these events, and it's going to be a hefty bill because you're paying for six to eight people. But the long-term networking value from that dinner is amazing.

So you want to invite the VIP guests or the speakers to the dinner and have that at any conference you go to. If you can't afford that, then offer to be a videographer of one of the speakers. Do it for free and just follow them around all day and meet people. So I'd say if you do one or two or both of those, you'll be in a good position. But how are you going to invite people that you don't know? I mean, here's...

Randy Kaplan. No one knows who he is. You're going around and say, hey, you want to come to a dinner at Carbone? Yeah. And people are going to look at you. I'm not going to that dinner. I mean, I've been invited to dinners before. Yeah. And I don't mean to be snooty about it. But I always want to know who else is there. And by the way, it's rude to ask who else is coming. It's very rude. And there are times where I've been rude and I've done it because I don't want to sit there and say...

fuck, I really don't want to be here. I've got kids and I like being home for dinner every night. And it's one of these things where...

I don't know if I should go and then I'm always worried about I mean today I I have a little bit of a name and have some kind of credibility I've thought about doing that but I haven't done it before David Meltzer does it really well have you been any of his no but I want to meet him I know he's in Los Angeles and I definitely want to get him on my show yeah so he does a phenomenally so he'll do it in a new city and then he'll charge people a thousand bucks so he'll make 20 50k every dinner right

And he'll have a big celebrity there. So the 20 people, that's why they're paying to meet and be close with a celebrity like Drew Brees or someone. But yeah, I think for someone like you, it wouldn't work on. But I think they can find six to 10 people at the conference, VIP attendees or people in their industry and just invite those guys start there. You were a natural born entrepreneur, right? A lot of people are not. So you never had a boss.

You never worked for somebody else. A lot of people think they don't want a boss either. So what do you tell on the 18 year old kid or college graduate today? Say, I don't really want a real job. I don't know what I want to do. And I don't want to be a slave and sitting at a desk all day. Should they go out on their gut and go,

Start a new business and can you learn to be an entrepreneur if you don't have the DNA? I would say not at first to the first question I look back at what I sacrificed. I had gray hairs at 21 I had no friends wasn't close to my family

And just sacrificed so much and was making 50K a year those first three years. So I would say to work for someone else at first, if I had to redo it again with the knowledge I have now, would be a safer route. I like what Cody Sanchez kind of teaches people. Which is? Get a job first. She made, I think she saved a million or so working a nine to five and then went out on her own and did her own stuff.

My goal was to make a million dollars before I was 30 years old. I think you made your first million at 24 years old. Yeah, 24, I believe. And I thought, all right, I'm going to start it as a lawyer. I figured, all right, well, I got to go make some money. I got to save money. And then I want to figure my not every year was $40,000 a year. And when I ultimately left, I didn't make a million dollars by the time I was 30, but I had 10 years to bet on myself because I'd saved $400,000. And I think it's really important to

that you have if you have gone to college, you may have some debt, you got to pay off the debt. It's very, very risky to just say, I'm going to go do something. Yep.

Agreed. So does influencer marketing work today? I have a lot of friends who own companies that say, all right, you know, even people that own the company say, you know, it's really bullshit, but people are still paying for it because everyone is doing it. So you have corporate clients and say, well, we got to do it. Someone else is doing it. Our competitors are doing it. Does it work? Not like it used to. Before you could just pay any influencer, have them promote any product, and there might be a good chance you make money. But now it really has to be aligned.

But you do see some campaigns work out. But from an influencer point of view, it actually makes more sense for them to start their own company now because they'll make way more than just getting paid to post a brand. Look at Logan Paul. Look at Mr. Beast. Look at that girl, Emma Chamberlain with the coffee company. There's so many other creators starting their own brands now. So I'd recommend influencers to do that instead of getting paid to post stuff they don't care about.

Is it more effective to have a star power like Ryan Reynolds or someone making, you know, as the face of a brand in the VC business? I always felt like it was very rare to have a celebrity promoter because it's still the VC. It's a very high risk game. But when it hits big, it hits big. Today, what do you think about the use of

having stars to promote your brands, do you need it to be successful? And does it really help? I guess is the real question. I don't think you need it. It might help on the branding. And if you use it for ads in the right way, it might help. But look what Ryan did with his company. I mean, he sold for what? A billion dollars? Yeah. The mobile company. So I can't knock that dude. Yeah. I think he made $300 million on that deal. Crazy. More from that than acting, I bet.

Oh, for sure. Yeah. Not a bad. And it's a long-term capital gain as well. Oh yeah. So only like 15% tax? 20, 20%. Don't know where he lives. Probably lives in Florida or Nevada. Hopefully not Cali. Yeah. Hopefully not Cali. Yeah. We pay a lot of tax. How important is it for people to go and study their mentors to learn when they're not in the classroom?

People don't really do that. You did it. And it was like a class for you. You're taking notes on it like it's a real class in school. What's your advice to people who are just not doing that and who really want to learn from people who they may not be their personal mentors, but they can be your mentors on YouTube because you can learn a shit ton of things from them. It's crazy to me that more people don't do that. You're the most prepared man I've ever seen, by the way. So that's awesome. Thank you. But yeah, that's goals right there, for real. I've never seen a host do that much.

preparation. So I think your show is going to kill it. I appreciate that. Thank you. But for me, I still do it. I watch probably three podcasts a day right now, or I listen to an audio book and I'm probably learning at least three to four hours a day. And back then it was way higher. It was probably eight to 12 hours a day. Just videos, nonstop Ted talk, scary V Patrick, bet David, Tom bill you. And, uh, I attribute so much of my mindset to watching stuff like that. Really want to talk about how has extreme preparation, uh,

Led to your success. Can you talk about some examples about preparation? Getting results that would not have been possible had you not done it. Yeah, I think I'm a bit different with you in that regard I know there's levels Bradley does no prep. I don't know if you knew that. No, I didn't dropping bombs Yeah, so no prep he gets a one-shooter before the episode starts. I

And there's people that can pull that off. I'm somewhere in the middle between you and him. I'll do about an hour, I'd say, per guest. And I'll use AI. So I'm cheating a little bit. But I think it's a tool that everyone should use in the space just to learn faster. So I'll go through. That's why I asked what shows you've been on because I went on them and used AI to summarize them for me. And then I took the most interesting points I found and came up with some questions. Gotcha. So that's my process.

You give a lot of advice on your show. You get a lot of, you had, I don't know, thousands of guests at this point. Yeah. And I always find on my own show, I come in and I come in with preconceived notions of what's worked for me. Then I learn what's worked for people. And that's really the goal of our shows, right? Is to bring people on from all walks of life to motivate people to hear how they became successful. So taking all the data,

in your own success, what do you think are the three most important ingredients of success? - I'd say for me, 'cause it's probably different for everyone, work ethic, mindset, and I'd say probably networking and connections. Those are the three things that propelled me to where I am.

I'd focus on those. And it's been an interesting journey because we had the trauma growing up. So I was not talkative at all. Neither was I. The fact that I'm a podcaster is mind-blowing. I was a huge introvert, super shy, didn't want to talk to anyone. So I think being able to adapt, if I had a fourth one to add, that's been major too. Yeah. Yeah.

My best friend who knew me for a long time said, it's really amazing what you've done, Randy, because you started, you couldn't get like you couldn't go into a restaurant. Here you are, you got your own show. You're about to go out and do some paid corporate public speaking on the topic of extreme preparation in front of thousands of people. But you've come a long way. I've come a long way. And it's been great. One of the most important things I think that people overlook is the difference between positivity and negativity, right?

And you were an incredibly negative, pessimistic person growing up. Your girlfriend told you that. So explain why and then explain kind of the lightning bolt that hit you and how you changed and how the changes affected your life. Yeah, so bad, man. And you get normalized to it, right? So both my parents, and I hate to put blame on people, but this is kind of just what happened. So I would come home. I'd be one of the best athletes in school. So I could run a mile in four minutes 40.

That's amazing. Yeah, I could have probably went D1 and pursued that. But I would come home from a track meet, tell my mom I won this race, got 440. She wouldn't give a shit. She would just say like, oh, good job. Not even that. So just any type of news to her was a negative reaction. And I think she got that from her parents or something. I don't know. And same with my dad. I could tell him anything and just so pessimistic. And he left on really bad terms with his parents. So he brought that up every day.

And his dad beat him every day. His dad beat him every day. And he just had so much trauma that he never dealt with. So you just always bring it up instead of addressing it and just rubs off on me. So once I got out of that environment and that's kind of mean to say because my parents, but once I was on my own and with my girlfriend, anything she would tell me negative response.

isn't that crazy it'd be the best news and you didn't know it at the time either i didn't know don't recognize it's different subconscious it was so built into my subconscious and she could be like i aced this test uh my mom's doing well just anything and it'd be crazy man so i had to rewire my brain but it's hard to do so i i think that's very important because a lot of people are very negative yeah very negative but you can't just

if you've been that way your whole life. So did you go to therapy to do this? Were you reading books on this? Were you meditating on this? Because it's hard to do. I mean, that's part of your DNA. It is super hard. I tried all of that. Therapy didn't really work on me. Books, I mean, they're good to know, but applying it is a whole different story.

Just reps, just straight reps, just talking to thousands of people at conferences. And now I can see subconscious cues and like body language reactions. So when I'm telling someone good news or bad news and I can just see their reaction and know if they support me or not. I've trained myself to do that.

I think attitude is almost everything, right? When you walk into work every day, if you're grumpy or have a negative reaction, have a frown on your face, it's contagious. And if you're a leader, people are following your mood, right? So as part of my coaching, I tell people, hey, you shouldn't give a shit if you just had a fight with your wife, your kids, or you just blew a deal or something. You gotta walk in with an attitude of,

regardless, a great attitude, regardless of what's going on in your life. And, you know, one of the most, the most common asked question in the world is attitude. How are you? Oh, how are you? Right. The most commonly asked question in the world. And how many people get that wrong? So many people just say good, right? Right. Good as a B. 3.0. You want to be a 3.0? It's the easiest thing someone can do walking into a room. How are you?

I'm getting by. I've had better days. You know, doing all right. I can't wait until I get off. Yeah.

It should be, I'm doing phenomenal. I'm great. I'm outstanding. I'm having an amazing day. Even if you're not, no one gives a shit. Yeah, no one cares. No one cares. That took me a while to realize. They really don't. Yeah. And it's the easiest thing to start off a meeting or anything or a greeting and it takes no work. And most people will get it wrong. Absolutely. So I do a ton of coaching on that. That was the biggest mindset shift for me, by the way, when I realized no one cares.

Because they really don't. Yeah. And it sucks to say, like, it sounds kind of negative, but it was, I just used to be scared of being judged a lot. So when I had that shift, it was major. By the way, I'm not saying fake it to make it. I'm saying if you have close friends who you trust, girlfriend, wife, family, parents, people who really care of you, I think it's important for you to tell them I'm not doing well right now. Yeah. Because mental health is so important. Absolutely. And I think people who care, but just to...

or people you meet on the street. I just don't think, I just have a different mentality in terms of how you should go about that. Before we finish today, I want to ask some more open-ended questions. I call this part of my podcast, Fill in the Blank to Excellence. Are you ready to play? Let's do it. The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is,

Wow. That's deep. Biggest lesson I've learned in my life. I'd say to cherish life because I mentioned earlier, I've had three near death experiences and each one of those, if I died at that moment, I wouldn't have been fulfilled with my life. My number one personal goal is? Have kids. My biggest regret is? Not being closer with my father. My biggest fear is? Letting my fiance down.

The craziest thing that ever happened to me in my life is... Craziest? I would say Trump showing one of my jerseys at his rally. One of the things that we didn't talk about is how much revenue that actually generated from you. So why don't you tell everybody? Yeah, it was six figures overnight, which at the time I was 22 years old. So that was a lot of revenue for me. The one thing I've dreamed about doing for a long time but haven't is... Go to space.

It's possible now. It is. You're going to do it? We'll see. I got some flat earthers on the show saying there's no space. There's no space? So where do they think all these SpaceX rockets are going? I don't know. 10 years from now, I want to be doing... Podcasting. If you could go back in time and give your 14-year-old self one piece of advice, what would it be? Oh, 14. So that's high school. Don't go to college.

What's the best advice you can give to 50-year-old parents today? Maintain your relationship with your kids. I think when they go off to college and they go out in the real world, a lot of parents are disconnected. The best advice for a recent 21-year-old college graduate is? Internship.

I'm going to ask you a couple questions about internship now, just because we're on that topic. Because we have one more question to go after this. Internships are very competitive. This year for our program of 36 kids, we have 4,000 applications. Dang. It's become a thing. Wow. It's hard to get a job. And it's a 12-week formal program. I spend 60 to 90 minutes a day with the interns.

speakers come in each week if you want to be a speaker we'd love to have you yeah and i have a bunch of friends who will do this just because we're friends yeah i'd love to support thank you and uh that'll be really dope so i i appreciate that and i think internships are so important they're so competitive to get so how does someone citadel for example ken griffin's firm got 29 000

applicants for summer jobs last year. Holy crap. I mean, you can Google this. When I heard it was hard, hopefully Ken will come on my show. I met him, asked him, really hope he does it. So Ken, we're going to send you this

this clip, but I really want you to do my show. Please do my show. I think a lot of creativity will go into it. What's the best piece of advice you have for someone looking at Citadel, working at Jump this summer, how to stand out among the crowd? Yeah, I didn't know the numbers were like that. When I said internship, I mainly meant just working under someone, being mentored by someone, maybe for free. When I was just starting out, I emailed Gary Vee and said, I'd work for you for free. So I was willing to do that. Did he respond? He didn't.

He didn't respond. I should find the email. Hopefully I didn't delete it. But yeah, for those companies, it'd be tough. I heard a lot of connections are involved at that level. Is that true? A lot of what? Like if you have personal connections with people at the company. At these companies, you know, I think it varies. I think at our company, just because I know a lot of

and a lot of parents have kids looking for summer internships. We hire lead interns from the previous summer to run the program. They do all the sifting, interviewing, hiring. I want to empower them. Lead interns go on to do whatever they want to do. It's the only job that 19-year-olds can't have the green light to hire someone and manage your peers. So we've got kids working at Goldman Sachs and investment banking, which you probably know is

Incredibly hard job to get. Matt Hickerson is here as my right-hand person. He's sitting right there while I was an intern. Came dressed his first day in a suit and tie. Did a test run from 90 minutes away to find out how he got to work. Wow. Stayed late till 11 o'clock at night when it's his unpaid internship. You have to get credit for the internship, school credit. Yeah.

proactively send stuff. So I think you gotta do stuff like that, stand out among the crowd.

to be the best. 100%. I have personal assistants I'm interviewing after episodes today and I didn't even look at their resumes because I just would rather see what they're willing to do in person. Right. Feel out their energy. Right. We look at the resumes if there's a period out of place, if there's a comma where there shouldn't be, if the formatting's wrong, we don't even look. And what's crazy is, yeah, I mean, if they don't have that level of detail, these are easy things to fix. Yeah. So would they be

be making careless errors at our company. I can't have them missing

a period, a letter they're sending out to a client, it's a reflection on me. It just looks terrible. Over a period, that's insane. Over a period. Wow. Right? And it's a resume. They're looking for a job. This is a job that's going to put food on the table, pay the rent, pay their bills. They're going to be spending more time at work than anywhere else. And if they can't see that a period's missing in their resume, something's fucking wrong. I do not want them working at our company. They're not going to work at the company. Yeah. And there are sources online, Grammarly,

which if you don't have Grammarly on your computer, you're not working at our company either. I have that. It's good. There's no reason to have a spelling mistake and there's no reason not to have a missed period. Yeah, it makes you sound really intelligent. It's just, you know, there's no need for it. These are...

low hanging fruit mistakes that nobody should make that could not only kill your chance for a job, but could kill your career. Just imagine you're working at Goldman Sachs. You got a major presentation. You go in there, you're meeting with David Solomon, the CEO takes you five years to get there. You go in with your PowerPoint presentation. There's a misspelled word. You're done. Yeah. Done. Done. Absolutely. What's the one question you wish I'd asked you, but didn't, uh,

- Huh, one question. Oh, I guess, what guest do you want to get on your podcast? - Besides me, what guest do you want to get on your podcast? - Yeah, of course, right? It's gotta be Rogan, man. I grew up watching him with my dad. We watched every single episode growing up for five years straight. So he's the goat to me. - You have the ability now, you have the clout, I'm sure, to get to him. So what's the plan there?

Yeah. So just my plan with these big guests is to get people around them first, establish credibility, have those people have great experiences on the show. And then eventually I'll go for the ask. I'd say within three years we'll be on. Yeah.

I'm also guessing Joe's going to be on my show within three years. I'm going to have Tony Robbins, Elon Musk. You already had Dana, so you're right there. Yeah, Dana was great. Yeah, super pumped. So appreciate you being on my show. I'm a huge fan, Sean, and I think this is great. We learned a ton about you, and I think people are really going to love it. Yeah, it was cool to get that side out of me. Good job, man. Yeah, appreciate you. Thanks for being here. Yep.