You can either live somebody else's story or you can write your own story. >> Sometimes you're one tweak away from $200 million, right? >> Yeah. If they don't say that, the app doesn't blow up and the company goes out of business and it shot to number one. It stayed there every single day for 6 months. 25 million people a day were playing it. It's the number one game in 60 countries in the world. >> And what did you end up selling it for? >> $200 million. I mean, I was a high school teacher. It is all of those little things that make a difference, but they all have to come together. >> Okay. Well, why don't you start by just telling us who you are and what you do, Dan? >> My name is Dan Porter. I was on an episode of the career ladder on Tik Tok and I am the CEO and co-founder of Overtime, which is a big sports platform that uh we started in 2016. >> Okay. And what would you say makes you different from your peers, your contemporaries? >> There are a lot of answers to that. I'd say number one, the nature of my career. Like I've I've been a public school teacher. I worked in the music business. I run a gaming company. I'm in sports. I've just done a lot of different things. And so everything that I do is almost like a combination of all those different experiences. It's really not a straight path. It's probably number one. I'd say number two, I'm very relentless and focused and I don't give up. I don't play a lot of games, but I try to only play games that I can win. And I think number three is that you could say that maybe I'm an out of the box or disruptive thinker, and I'm not trying to compliment myself in that, but more just like I don't know the way that I think of things. Maybe I don't understand the way things are supposed to be done. So I come up with my own ideas, but I tend to approach problems probably a different way than other people do. So probably those three things plus occasionally I'm very funny. >> Do you think do you think you approach problems differently because of your breath of expertise? Are they correlated? >> It's a good question. I'd say half of it is that like I just have so many different experiences I draw from and half of it is probably like I'm just really stupid and I don't know the right way to do it so I just come up with my own way to do it. Sometimes like you see people who like play some musical instrument in a really weird way. they play like the guitar with both their hands or something like that and they create entirely new music and maybe they just never learned the other way or that felt natural to them. But I I think in general I don't know if through school and college we do enough collectively to promote kind of creative and different thinking. I think we tend to optimize towards people who think alike. That's why we have tests in school. Tests are like, "Tell me what the right answer is." That's the right answer. Everyone is like, they're like going right towards the tip of a triangle. I love music. I was a musician. I focused on improvisation. I took a lot of creative writing. I think just taking inspiration from writing and music and arts and all the different way that people have thought about, you know, recreating all kinds of music and and even writing and stuff like that is probably part of it. But I don't think we do ourselves any favors as a system in this country and promoting people who are either think creatively or or out of the box. And I think most people in college, I took painting, I took photography, I took poetry, of which I was truly terrible at. And luckily, none of those poems survived. And I took either two or three semesters of creative writing. And I just think learning those things, if I ask kids today, they take computer science and economics, and there's nothing wrong with those. That's what I think. >> Yeah. Well, creativity, it's more important than it's ever been, and it's more rare than it's ever been. >> It's a differentiator. I I I think about like you know when people apply for jobs sometimes you interview for a job you interview people maybe you're interviewing a salesperson and it's like everybody worked at a similar company they all have the same title they've all sold a number of big deals how you going to differentiate like 10 people who come in and have an interview with you or zoom in an interview with and I think there's some element where like a lot of times I'll ask questions when I when I was in the gaming business. When I ran OMG Pop and I used to hire game designers and and builders, software developers, I really used to only ask one question. And the question I asked is like, "What is your favorite game?" You tell me Final Fantasy or whatever. And then I would say, "Why is that a great game?" And people would say it's fun or whatever. And you know, one out of every five people would say something like, "Oh, the way that like this mechanic works." and they describe some intricate part of the game and you just think, "Oh, those people really think deeply about games and game design." And those were the people that I hired. >> Someone that that looks at it differently than everyone else. >> Understand why things are the way they are. >> Yeah. >> And is is a thinker and some of that is creativity and some of that is thinking. But I feel like those people, they can have an impact on you and your company, but you can appeal to them to try to make something bigger and better versus people who do less. So, and I I think that even though some of that is natural, we can all always be better at learning how to do that. >> Yeah. How did you get into the gaming business? I was working for Richard Branson who's a very successful and famous entrepreneur and part of my job was kind of helping him make the Virgin brand relevant to a whole new kind of generation and I just thought let's go to the roots and do music. So we did music festivals and other stuff like that. And I kept reading at that time maybe 20 years ago like the gaming business is bigger than the movie business. It's bigger than the music business. And in fact, funny enough, I have two sons and I took them to an outdoor concert that I put on and they spent the whole time playing the Nintendo DS backstage. And I just kind of was like, "Wow, gaming is kind of relevant to culture in a way that music probably was in the 80s and 90s. Not that music isn't, but it's gaming is so it's so widely played and it's so pervasive. I don't know 90% of kids play Roblox or anything else like that." I just kept thinking about it. One day this investor said to me, "Oh, I know this guy. He's starting a gaming company. could use some help. So, I met with him and I honestly didn't understand anything that he said to me. I didn't understand his website. It literally made no sense to me whatsoever. And so, I quit my job and took an 80% pay cut and became the CEO of the gaming company. That's a big leap. >> Yeah. >> You just thought you just thought this is a title wave that I want to be riding, so it's worth taking this big pay cut to ride it. >> Yeah. And also I was like there's so much I don't understand about this. Like I want to figure it out. And I'm like I was like this is hard. They they know a lot about something I don't know a lot about. I clearly get where gaming is going. And it was it was before we had digital goods and everything else. But he understood that stuff was going to come from China and from other places in terms of a business model and come here. So I just jumped and took a risk. >> And what happened after that point? How did you get from that point to draw something? >> He was a really cool guy and everybody worked at the company was super cool and lived in New York and Williamsburg and like went to coffee shops and like made like really cool games for people like them. And it was a really multiplayer game site. It was one of the first chances that people could really play online with each other as opposed to by themselves. There was no iPhone or anything else like that. And I said, "Who are the users? Who are the customers?" and they said people like us cuz that's who we make games for. Got deep into Google Analytics and so forth and I realized that the customers were actually almost entirely 14-year-old girls in California. >> They were just assumed. >> Yeah. >> And they were wrong. >> That's who was playing the games for five hours a day. And I was like, well, maybe that's our customer. And then the name of the company was I'm in like with you, which is really funny. And I >> Well, that matches with the 14-year-old girl. I mean, >> well, I realized that when people typed it into Google, they misspelled it and we were losing traffic. >> So, we changed the name. We understood who the audience was, and >> we started to grow >> and we added more and more games and built just kind of like a a gaming site where people came and played with each other. And the guy who started was enormously creative and just a just visually talented. Like everything about the games were really great. I remember once we did a a talk at a conference and he got up and he just said, "My goal is to make a game that's so good that some kid mow lawns to make money to pay for it." >> Real quick, please subscribe to my channel. I know it's kind of lame to ask, but it means a lot. Thanks. >> It was good. And then we were successful with millions of users. Average time on site was four and a half to five hours. And then Farmville came out and Farmville was built on top of Facebook. All of a sudden they had a hundred million users. We had like three million users. All of a sudden we were big and then we were small. And the whole world was playing Farmville and other Facebook games. And the iPhone had just come out. I was like, "Wow, we missed Facebook. We didn't make Angry Birds." You know, sometimes you wonder if it's too late. Mhm. >> Sometimes it is, but sometimes you feel like it's too late, but it's not. >> So, we started to make some iPhone games and then it's like there's a hard part where you don't fail, but you don't succeed. So, you're somewhere in the middle. Like, it's not like you have no users, but it's not like you have a zillion users. It's kind of like >> the messy middle like >> Yeah. You're not uber valley of death >> lift or something like that >> or worse. Yeah. >> Yeah. Long story short, we had a drawing and guessing game that we had tried to make for Facebook and we had made for our site and I decided to try to be the game designer and work with a couple people in the company and we just made it as an iPhone game and we released it and it did okay and then it kind of bombed and then some of our developers were like I think there's a lot of people trying to play it. I think there's a technical problem and they worked all weekend. They fixed it and it shot to number one and it stayed there every single day for six months. 25 million people a day were playing it. It's the number one game in 60 countries in the world. Uh and a quarter of a billion people downloaded it. >> Okay. All right. I want to get to that before we get there. I find it so interesting that you know Facebook releases games and you suddenly feel like a very small company and you are compared to Farmville. It made me think like a lot of times we talk about platform risk like platform risk to watch out for those platforms you know don't want to be relying on one platform but that same platform risk can put like non-platform businesses out of business because that platform is so big and strong and scary right it's the other side of the argument you know I'm trying to reach young people so I built this website and I was like who goes to a website like you think they're going to your website like have you ever seen a young person open a browser on their phone. They don't go to >> only to do homework. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Why didn't draw something for as a Facebook game work, do you think? >> I know exactly why it didn't work. It's kind of not working inspired the thing that made it work. So, basically on Facebook, it's like Pictionary. It's like a drawing guessing game. So, it's open. You go into a lobby and there's three other people there and all of a sudden the word comes up and you draw it and people guess. Well, if you put people in a lobby with three strangers, they're either going to draw anatomical body parts or they're just going to be rude. And what could be really fun was basically kind of toxic most of the time. Not all the time, but most of the time. And so when we made it for the phone, we only let you play your friends because we were like, we can't stop people from drawing funny things or being annoying >> phallic things. >> Yeah. But if you know that they're with their friends, their friends are either going to say, "Knock it off." Or they're going to think it's funny. And so I think what didn't work is kind of like a wide open space worked amazing on a friend basis. >> It's almost like a version of niching down. Like preventing other people from playing it. Kind of like Facebook in the early days, right? Like you have to be a Harvard student. >> It's like you couldn't solve changing people's bad behavior on the internet. So, it wasn't like you could then penalize people and they could report them and everything else like that, but you could solve just not having it open to everyone on the internet. So, it was easier to solve that than it was to solve the former. >> Yeah. And then you you have a built-in virality because you can invite all your friends in your contact list, right? >> Yeah. I remember somebody told me I'm getting invites for draw something on like people that I was on instant messenger with that I haven't even talked to in five years. >> Yeah. What aside from like the built-in virality of it from a base principle perspective, why do you think it resonated so well? >> I think it was really simple. I'm not a game designer, so I made something that was so easy to understand and play. Number one, I think it was very collaborative. It was funny. It was the first thing to use your finger on the phone. It was tactile. It was what the phone was meant to do, not be a joystick replacement. We didn't make it based on winners or losers. It you tried to have a streak with the person that you were playing with that made people feel like they weren't competing with each other, but it just was like a little more social. It It was actually, in a weird way, it was just very >> It was social at a time when most games were not social. >> Yeah. Do you think at the time there was less competition for people's attention on the phone? >> Oh, at that time I would say that maybe seven of the top 10 apps were games. I'd say now zero are. They're mostly either Uber or Instagram or Tik Tok. >> Short form video. >> Yeah, short form videos. So that was a moment probably from 2010 to 2015 when games just dominated the phone. That's what you did. And then I think social media really knocked that out and game discovery was like people would be like what are the new games all the time and there's not a lot of games there's not a lot of mobile games that like since then like people still play they might play that they play Words with Friends or Candy Crush or whatever but in the last 5 years I'm not sure there's been a mobile game that I can think of that's just like taken over and everybody's done it because most of their attention is on social endeavors. >> I'm just continually amazed at how innovative and addicting short form video is. Not just the medium, but the algorithms that drive it and just how accurate it is at showing me what I want to watch. It's it's scary. >> Yeah. I mean, you know, technology is good and it it knows you. I I uploaded 50 essays that I had written into chat GBT and I said, "I want you to reverse engineer my writing style and then I'm going to give you a prompt and I want you to write it like I write it." And I'd say it was like 90% that literally sounded like I wrote it. >> Oh man. In your story, I think you glossed over something quickly and let me make sure I get this right. You you were running the company initially, right? >> Yeah, I was a CEO. You were not a de a developer by any means. >> I'm not a software developer. >> Yeah. And you had this idea and for some reason you said I want to build this one. Is that because you just wanted to learn how to build games or you were so passionate about it like you just wanted to own it? >> In the movie version it's because I'm so passionate. But in reality I just think like we were starting to be like we didn't make Angry Birds and we didn't make Farmville. Like are we effed? Like what's going to happen to us? I was like, "Maybe we're going to fail." Like, if we're going to fail, at least maybe I could try to make a game. >> Yeah. So, it wasn't like, "This is the best idea I've ever had. This is going to save the company. Let me go on the front lines and do it." It's more like >> 90% of the company was working on other games. >> Yeah. So, you're like, "All right, we're kind of in flight mode. We're we're in survival mode right now. I have this idea." And you weren't thinking like, "This is genius. This is for sure going to work. I'm fully confident." But it was kind of like I think there's something to it, but I don't want to distract my team. They're just trying to keep their head above water, so why don't I try to build it? >> I had no idea if it would work. I also just was like, I don't know. I just want to try to make a game. I do overthink some things. In this case, I didn't really overthink that. I just was like, I think I can make something that it it's funny because the company that bought us was called Zingga, and they were the makers of Farmville. Ironically, I went to the offices in San Francisco when we were in the process of contemplating an acquisition and they had all this stuff on the wall and all these game designers were reverse engineering the game and trying to figure it out why was it successful. And I went over and looked and they were like, "Oh, you made the game." And he's like, "I I just have this question for you like why didn't you use XP in the game experience points?" At that moment I thought I forgot I meant to use it >> but it just like totally slipped my mind and how like that it's like >> and they just couldn't believe that that was the case >> and that was the honest answer. So, it's like I don't know. Sometimes things just work themselves out or it's good enough as is. And sometimes you have people who are from outside of an industry who are good at making something. I had I I met up with a friend of mine had been the internet business and then he was in the fashion business outside of the United States. Then he came back to United States and he's like I said, "Oh, what what are you up to?" He's like, "Let's catch up." He said, "I'm making like a sparkling water like a Soda Stream competitor." I was like, "You worked in internet and fashion. What do you know about sparkling water?" Like, and he goes, "I don't know anything about it, but I'm an entrepreneur. That's what I do. I learn about stuff." >> Yeah. >> Whoa. It's pretty powerful. >> Outsiders are powerful. Like, you could have gotten hung up on adding XP and that could have like held up the whole project and then you move on to something else and maybe it never happens. Or maybe you added >> made it less fun. >> It could have made it less fun. Could have changed the whole dynamic of the game, the whole culture of the game. >> 80-year-olds played my game. It was so simple. >> Yeah. I say this all the time, but people get so hung up on researching and doing market research and talking to people and what features do I add when like the building of the thing is the best research you can do. >> The building is the research, right? I think that everything is like it's like an idea like I'm going to make a brand new toothbrush. I have an idea. But it's just a premise and it's just an excuse to get started. Sometimes your assumptions are wrong or sometimes you discover something else. But you need something to get started. You need an idea and a premise. People like I'm pivoting. I'm like piv pivoting is like, you know, when you start out in the internet business and all of a sudden you're in the underwear business. Like that's a pivot. But like everything else is just you're testing, you're learning, you're getting visibility into what's happening. People are giving you feedback on your idea and telling you what works and doesn't work or you're observing that. And you know, you're building it going forward. And I don't think that's a pivot. I just think you need that first premise and you just need to pay attention. >> Yeah. What what first gave you the idea for Draw Something? What was that moment? It was the third iteration of the game that we had made for ourselves and for Facebook. So, I had thought a lot about about why it didn't work. And then the inspiration really was I went to park with my son and his friend and they were playing catch and I was like, "If you guys can catch the ball back and forth 50 times, I'll buy you an ice cream." And then I was like, "Oh, it's like a streak." And then I was like, "Oh, a streak is a way that two people can play a game and be on the same team and not be competitive." >> And that was like part of the core insight. >> So the like the triggering event for the idea was the feature of the idea and then you built the actual core idea on top of the feature. >> It was fixing something that other people had built and designed but I had thought a lot about and it was that. And then there was one thing that I didn't have anything to do with, but one of the developers, Will Chen, did, which was he figured out how to play back the drawing. So if I drew a picture of a house and I sent it to you to guess, you watched me draw it. It felt live. You could see me erase money versus me just sending you a picture of something. And that aspect of it, which I didn't create at all, it it just made it feel so alive and so different. >> And I think that a great game, a great car, a great product, a great jacket, whatever it is that you experience, like it has to make you has to feel amazing. Like, yeah, >> I own one suit that I've owned for 12 years. Somehow I still fit into it. And when I put it on, I'm like, "This suit makes me feel amazing." >> Yeah. >> I've I look good. I feel like it's a great suit. The cut still works. I have a car with a really nice steering wheel. It makes me feel amazing. And that aspect of the game just made it feel great. >> First question, how successful do you think draw something becomes if you never incorporate that feature of like seeing it drawn live? Do you think that was a core part of it? >> 100%. >> I think it does not become as successful without that. I think all those things, >> streaks, lack of competition, solving the toxic part and that that everything came together to make it work. >> And what did you end up selling it for? >> $200 million. >> All right, I want to pause here just for a second to tell you why I've used Beehive for two years. And I just actually sent my 100th newsletter edition. I love Beehive. And you see, email's different from other platforms because social media platforms own your audience. In fact, YouTube just banned me for a week because they didn't like one of my videos, even though it was perfectly compliant. If Instagram changes their algorithm, your reach tanks. Same with Tik Tok, Facebook, and anything else. You're building on rented land. But with Beehive, I own my list. I own my audience. I'm not at the mercy of some nameless, faceless algorithm. Every time I hit send, they just get my emails. And Beehive makes this simple. growth tools, monetization, and a free website. And I can't get enough of their analytics and the data I get from Beehive. This is data that I can actually use and share with potential sponsors. It's everything you need in one platform. The smartest creators out there are the ones that own their own audience. So go to beehive.com/chris to get 30% off your first 3 months. That's beehiv.com/chris. And start building something you actually own. And I feel like if you don't have all of those ingredients, right, it's not like take away the streaks, we sell it for 160. Take away the live feature, we sell it for 120. It's kind of like if you miss one of those, >> right? It doesn't. >> Yeah. If you take one of them away, it's kind of like uh uh your bacon bread, you take the yeast away. You're like, it'll just be a little smaller because there's only 1% of this is yeast. It's like, no, now you have flatbread and it sucks. You take one of those four key ingredients away, then it's a nothing burger. you never get off the ground, right? >> I agree. >> And the pessimistic way of looking at that is like, well, that's kind of depressing. I have to like put all these ingredients together and I don't know what'll work. And I look at that, it's like, that's freaking amazing. You're a chemist in a lab. You were that easy to make a great product. Everybody would make a great product. But you've got to assemble all those things. It's like you asked me about myself and my career. I assembled all of those different things from my different experiences. I mean, I was a high school teacher. every single thing you put something together. Like great products feel great even around the edges. Like when you buy a shirt or you buy like a really beautiful shirt, you'll notice the stitching on the beautiful shirt and everything else like that. Like it is all of those little things that make a difference, but they all have to come together. I mean, you said too, like your developers are like, "Dan, I think people are trying to play this, but something's broken, right? What if that conversation never happens?" I the the optimistic way that I look at your story is that >> all these little tweaks make such a difference. And sometimes you're one tweak away from $200 million, right? >> One tweak away. >> That the app doesn't blow up and the company goes out of business. I feel like it's never been that critical little tweaks and changes since before the age of the internet. Like if I'm running a Facebook ad campaign with a big budget and I check a box that says optimize for conversions, optimize for add to cart, that could be the difference between me spending $10 to acquire a customer and $100. That could be all the difference. So in this internet connected age, these little tweaks are everything. And so we don't want to overoptimize everything and tweak everything to death, but we want to just keep testing everything, right? >> Yeah. It's kind of like yoga or if you work out, like most of us end up doing it wrong. So you're doing some pose and then the instructor comes over and they say, "Actually, your hips have to be forward." And you're like, "Oh, I was just wasting two weeks think I was stretching when I wasn't really doing anything." >> Yeah. Yeah. So you sell for 200 million. What do you do after that? What's next? So, I work for the company that bought my company for a year because that's how those things go. And then I end up meeting this guy Ari Emanuel who's the founder of Endeavor, William Morris Endeavor, famous talent agent. And long story short, he pitches me and I say no and he keeps pitching me and I end up joining WME as it's called, which is biggest talent agency in the world. is their head of digital and I build the foundation of the modern creator economy by signing building signing 20 agents and 250 YouTubers and you know everything that we think about creators now was doing 2013 to 2016 and a lot of people who I worked with who worked for me and all those are now run digital for companies all over the US. What's an accessible version of that business today? If you were to keep all your skills, you're 20 years old and you want to make money in that way kind of in that industry. How would you go about it? Like I would try to be a creator in a niche that I could own. So either you're broadly popular or there's creators whose specialty is talking about how to be successful on YouTube. There's finance, there's cooking, there's health, there's exercise. I mean, they're all crowded, but there's always room for people who are creative and and a lot of people under the age of 30 rely on other people to help them filter information. So, if I'm walking down the street and I see some restaurant or coffee shop and there's a massive line, pretty much 100% of the time someone's like, "Oh, yeah, that just blew up on TikTok. This one person went there and talked about it and now everyone's gone there." So, I I would think about that. I mean, listen, what do they say? 40% of Gen Z wants to be a YouTuber. So, it's just a different form of being an entrepreneur. >> How do you think AI plays into that with AI generated content? Do you think that makes like unique creators even more valuable because they stand out even more or less valuable? >> I don't have a perfect answer for that because a lot of what we see now is probably only the tip of the sword. I do think that humans are able to make connections about what resonates with people and what's different and what's distinctly human better than AI. But I think AI can accelerate their ability to create it. I I think like I'll teach a book in my class. Let's say I've picked a book. I've assigned it and now we talk about it and whatever. The reality is I could also just go to chat GBT and say hey I just read this book what do you think it's about and does this to ask me some questions I could talk to for two hours and have a really de in-depth conversation about the book but does anyone want to go and just talk to chat GBT to learn books all day or do they want to go to class with a professor and other students and feel different way and read body language and everything else like that so I think there's a role for both >> yeah and as you're reading that book you're thinking oh this character reminds me of my mother or and Chachu Pedi doesn't know that. And your students, they want to know from you without even knowing it. They want to know from you like how that book ties into your life experience, right? And you're able to deliver a unique experience there. Whereas anyone could just regurgitate the Chad GPT summary just like Spark Notes, right? Yeah. It it's I'm going to be more likely to have an opinion which they might agree or disagree. I'm more likely to say, "Hey, in my life when I made this game or I signed this YouTuber, I was reading this book and it made me think about X, Y, and Z." So, I think we are trained to think in this world that B is going to replace A and C is going to replace B. But I think there are ways that it is additive in a lot of different ways. So, I I think that human creativity is still going to be important. I think there's a lot of AI creativity. I mean, sometimes we'll be working on a project at work and we're like, we just don't have a good name for this competition we're doing and sometimes the names that come out through AI are amazing and everyone's like, that's perfect. And sometimes they suck. But it's just like it's a tool, but I don't think we're all going to just be sitting at home. >> Yeah. Because AI is making amazing YouTube videos and other content. >> But I think it's, >> you know, it's it's going to it's going to work together. >> Tell me about the genesis of Overtime and what Overtime is. >> Overtime is a sports platform, sports brand for next generation of sports fans. I was working in sports at my job at the talent agency and I heard from a lot of sports leagues that young people weren't watching live sports and I'm like they're all watching all the YouTubers that I work with but they're not watching live sports. I wonder if there's an opportunity. So again I just quit my job and I was like let's see if we can start a company to figure out how to get every young person to care about us. Oh by the way we have no highlights, no live rights. We can't cover any pro sports, but still we're going to figure it out. And that's ultimately what we did. So today, every week, a quarter of a billion people watch a video that we make. We have over 110 million followers. We have a basketball league that kicks off on Halloween this Friday, the 31st. We have a football league. We have a girls basketball league. We're in a bunch of different league and event businesses, media businesses, and we've created a really dominant brand and maybe the largest kind of creator in sports. >> Tell me about the crowdsourcing side of that. How do the How does a kid with an iPhone play into your business model? >> Yeah, honestly, it doesn't. I think it's a misconception about our business and I don't know how to get people to stop writing that, but I think the perception was we just used UGC videos, but we didn't. What we did was we built our own camera technology for the iPhone and then we paid people $20 to go to certain games and film stuff that we then published. So it was actually an endto-end network where we had a deployed army of maybe 800 iPhone filmers who used our software, tagged it and did it. But for some reason people thought that that was UGC and that part I'm Look, I'm answering your question and I haven't even published a UGC video like that for nine years. Over time, of these 800 kids, are you able to find ones that are just like spectacular and you're paying them more? Are you giving them more roles? I feel like there's a lot of surface area for finding rock stars. >> Yeah, some of them work for us now, like full-time, and they started when they were 16, just like filming games for us, but over time, we also ended up starting our own leagues, so I didn't need to have 800 people. But there's definitely people work at the company, and that's how we know them. What kind of business ideas or other opportunities has working within Overtime shown you that you're too focused on to chase after? >> I think Tik Tok Shop is super interesting. I think that a lot of products are going to be driven by creators. I think that product categories are going to change over time. I think we're in a like a food product world where functionality is a huge aspect of that. So I think that's pretty big. I think that second colleges which engage nil name image likeness to to play a part in attracting athletes. There's just going to be a lot of change in that space. I mean, you know, Reggie Bush lost his Heisman Trophy and then four or five years ago now people are making millions of dollars in college playing sports. I think it's an incredibly growing and disruptive space. So, those are two that I would think about where I it's not on exactly for the business, but I think there's opportunity there. >> What about the genesis of 67 water? How did that come about and where's it at today? Similarly, I um >> Oh, there it is. >> Uh, you know, we built a water brand off of a meme. I I picked water because it was just easy to make and we didn't have to do testing and tasting and stuff like that. We turned around the whole thing in 8 weeks. We've sold tens of thousands of them. We have 41,000 people on our wait list. We're one of the most followed water brands in the world. But right now we have a couple interns who go to gas stations and bodeas in New York and they just talk to people and they're coming back and they're saying you know what I think we need a flavor and this is why. So like it starts as this kind of instinct. We're sitting in a room and we're like this would be crazy. Let's do it. But now a lot of the decisions are being made because people on the street are spending time with bodega owners and talking to kids in middle school who come in to buy a drink and seeing what they're buying and asking them why. So I wouldn't call it market research, but I'd call it like customer development and a deep understanding there. And that's going to drive the product innovation as it should. >> Yeah. Are you still looking for distributors and you're still trying to scale that? I'm really focused on distributing it in Kentucky where Taylor Kenny, who is the main athlete who started this and started 67 and everything else like that, lives. A because he's from there, and B because I feel like everyone who makes a product tries to launch it in LA, San Francisco, or New York, which is a really hard place to get traction. So, I just somehow feel like maybe Kentucky is the right place to launch it. >> Yeah, it's so funny. Like I I thought that thing was going to die. The 67 was going to die a month ago. Six month five months ago, like a month after it came out. I have four kids between the ages of nine and 15. And so when I when I heard you on MFM like explaining to them what it was and what it meant, I'm like, doesn't everyone know this? Like I hear it 10 times a day. >> It's everywhere. >> Yeah. I mean, you know, I think we always think like culture is at its peak and then it gets to a higher peak and a higher peak. Quick question. What if there were a private community out there of people that were building businesses based on this podcast? Well, I just made it and it's only for business starters and business builders. It's called TK Owners and it's basically like having me and 100 other business geniuses as your business partner. Also, there's going to be exclusive new trends, growth hacks, business ideas, and a database of everything I've ever talked about. You'll find thousands of startup case studies. You'll have weekly ask me anythings with me while I'll answer your questions directly. You can join now at tkowners.com. Link in the show notes. >> Definitely when it's in the Wall Street Journal and on the Today Show, we might be towards the end, but when we started this, we were not there at all. And I also think there's aspects of culture that are exclusionary. If you know, you know. And there are aspects that are inclusionary. And I actually watched this Tik Tok from this mom and she was saying like the thing about 67 is everyone can say it and everyone is in on the joke and there's actually not a lot of things that are really inclusionary like on a broad level where if you're cool or you're not cool if you sit in the front of the class or the back of the class if you're a jock if you're not a jock. Yeah, >> I think that in a way looking back at it there's a deep understanding that there was some power to it that just it was just funny and I I think you know the idea of like monoculture like we're all watching the same thing or everyone's going to see Taylor Swift or whatever those things or the Super Bowl like those things are less and less than I think when we were kids but when they happen I think it's just funny. I mean, if my grandparents were still alive, they would probably think it was funny to say that. I don't know those types of things on a participation basis. Like, people were too obsessed with the fact it doesn't mean anything. Nothing means everything. Everything is lit. A word is just a symbol with an arbitrary meaning attached to it. So, like that's not the point of it. The point of it is it's fun. It's funny. It gives people a way to be included. I wrote this on LinkedIn, but I think forgetting that it it like comes with the hand gesture like I can say what's up, but there's no hand gesture. So, it's sometimes you like watch like a baseball game or football game. People are doing this in the background. You know exactly what they're doing even with the sound off. It just it was >> meme so to speak that just was built for video audio social school camp everything. >> Well, it doesn't hurt that the two numbers are right next to each other. So, we're going to be hearing them together forever, and it's going to be hard to like untrain our brain to not hear it in that tone. How many students have you taught, give or take, roughly? >> Probably 400 to 450. >> When you talk to a student, you're five sentences into the conversation. What's something that you hear or notice that just signals to you, "This kid's got it. He's going to make it. He's going to be okay." >> Interesting. I thought you were going to ask me a different question, which is like what are all the misconceptions about life they have? >> I'd like to hear that, too. But >> it's hard to know that unless you're talking about like a specific assignment or anything else like that. If you look at a class, most people don't ask any questions. Some people ask bad questions and other people ask really, really good questions. And people ask good questions. You get it. They're just people who >> they think differently, >> operate at a different level. Like they're confident about the knowledge. They're engaged. They're not asking you if it's going to be on the test. It's an in-person class, so I'm biased because people with interpersonal charisma. I make I I run out of time every year, but I try to make every student stand up and tell a personal story about something that happened to them in their first year in New York City. And sometimes you just realize like some people are just really gifted and or some people are just really fearless and the rest of them are just like is it going to be on the test or I go to do the grading and I'm thinking like I don't even know who this person is. >> What's a category or an industry that you have no experience in but just kind of you're obsessed over for some reason? Something you find interesting? >> I pay a lot of attention to skin care and beauty. I don't really know anything about it. On the influencer side, it was the first business that influencers were really, really successful in. It feels like cutthroat competition, like this is the brand, now it's not the brand. I really like packaging and like visual communication information. It's fascinating to go into a Sephora and look at all the design stuff. I like functionality and health. So trying to understand what's functional and what's not functional. And then I like the idea of products that make like clothing or makeup or that you know they'll be like skinny leg, wide leg, like it's not trends. It's like what are we all doing together to express who we are or who we aren't and I think those things are super interesting. >> You mentioned early on that you you're very focused. Um like you focus on things. You also have a a a broad array of knowledge. You've been in different industries. How does that balance? What are your thoughts on focus? When is the right time to focus? When is the right time to chase the shiny object? >> I'm very obsessive. So, I have a mesh network in my house and I have like a dlink in the basement with like 18 different Ethernet cords that came in from when I renovated my house and put jacks and everything. And everybody complains, "The internet sucks in our house. it's too slow and this isn't working or whatever. So, I have this week probably spent 12 hours like so deep. I just got one of those tools you stick in the wall and you measure the eight pins and whatever. And my son says to me yesterday, he's 24. He's like, "Why don't you just hire someone like >> like you're spending so much time on like trying to figure out why the why these are like full gigabit and these are not and I was just like I'm not giving up. Like I just will not give up." And then last night he's like, "Wow, the internet my room is really fast. Everywhere else it's slow, but at least in his room is fast now." And I was like, "No, I haven't figured out the other eight rooms in the house." And I know I can always hire someone and then I'll give up, but I'm I'm like crimping and cutting the ends off and things and whatever. And I'll probably never use I'm just like I will figure this out. >> Yeah. Well, and you're going to appreciate the internet even more when it's your internet, right? >> That part, too. I just don't I don't want to lose like >> Yeah. >> I have like hundreds of chats with chat GPT where I take pictures of the back of the thing and I'm like, "Oh, yeah. What's wrong with this wiring? Is it this end or that end or the other thing? I walk around with my laptop. So, it's like it's like starting a company or something like that, you just get so obsessed that you have to figure it out and make it work. And that's what it requires. When people are like, "Oh, I own four businesses." is I'm like, well, you own them maybe, but like I don't know how they can be great because like for me, I I just got to be obsessed and all in and thinking about it non-stop to make it great. >> Yeah. Regardless of the industry, you don't care. >> Regardless, I mean, I I care like there there's a limit. I I'm not going to do anything in in like >> chemistry, for example, like I will never understand it. And there are things that I tap out on, but other things especially things that are consumer oriented or culture or like I always say like I learn so much like a lot of what I learn about business I learned from culture like I was a big watch of the wire and breaking bad and it's not like oh I learned tactics about how to start my own lab or how to sell drugs and projects but I'm like what is compelling about these stories and why do they resonate with people and what do they have in common and even if you look at now Like K-pop Demon Hunters and Stranger Things are actually the same story. They both have an underworld. They both have kids who alert adults to what's going on in the world. They have all of these things that are very similar, >> even if they didn't watch each other's shows. So, it says to me like, oh, we live in this time of anxiety where young people don't trust that grown-ups are going to be able to figure that out. And when was that true? Also in the early 80s, like War Games with Matthew Brderick. Like those themes don't always exist, but they come and go at times when young people are like, I don't really feel that. And I tie that to like my overall thinking about like why are a lot of young people really into wired headphones right now versus AirPods? Like I love AirPods. Well, I think to some extent they're just like, how long am I going to trust that technology is better for me? Like what if I just have a bunch of headphones I don't need to charge and one doesn't fall out when I'm riding my bike and like I'm good. And so those to me are cultural indicators that I pay a lot of attention to and I try to feed back into what I'm creating or working on. >> Yeah. Was there something that I should have asked you that I didn't? Anything you want to get out there to the world or anything interesting? >> What are the things that your students ask you that are misconceptions or whatever? >> I'd be curious to hear that as well. >> Whatever you major in does not matter. Your grades do not matter. And whatever your parents tell you, you should probably not listen to them because it's your life. And I also say that saying that most people's parents still have probably had one or two jobs their whole life and most young people are going to have 10 jobs given everything else. >> Like when you're 21 or 22 or you're graduating, like you can either live somebody else's story or you can write your own story. And it's way scarier to write your own story. And it's way easier to do what everyone else is doing because the rules are really explicit and you know exactly how to do that. And it's way more risky to try to write your own story. But if you're connected enough to the world, it can be also way more rewarding. And I think like the beginning part of our conversation, school and education and a lot of, you know, functional things that we experience growing up, they tend to go like this. We tend to like like 5-year-olds are crazy creative and into dinosaurs and trains and I don't know what your kids were into, but like it's all that stuff. And it's just kind of all goes like this. We beat it out. >> We're all in this little realm where we want to do this and we want to do that. And I'm just like, if you can break out of that, there's so much crazy potential in the world. >> Yeah, beautifully said. That inspires me to get my kids to do more weird things, honestly. >> Yeah, 100%. Or just I mean, you you probably do it, but it's like we all do as parents. You indulge them. I mean, I used to know the name of every Thomas the Tank Engine train and whatever else, and I I could barely remember them, but like the passion of like a 5-year-old who's so emphatic over something, it's so like it's incredible. >> Yeah. So, with that in mind, my final qu question, passion or profit? Follow your passion, follow the profit. >> There's two aspects of passion. One aspect is like I'm into poetry, I'm into music, I like sports. I don't think you have to follow your passion for that. that that your passion may not correlate with a high likelihood of gainful employment. You might love poetry, but there's no job. You might love books, but you're not gonna be a writer, and that that industry is small. But I think you can have passion for things that you do, accounting, marketing, talking to people, sales, live events. Like, as you get out in the world, you're just like, and you know what drives that passion? A lot of times you're good at it. Like I know people who have changed careers and they're emergency room doctors and they're just, you know, they're so good at it that that's what that's what the passion is. And I just think separating that idea that the passion has to be your interest versus the thing that you might actually be really good at because we're all really good at something and it's just a process of unpacking that. >> Dan, thank you. That was amazing. Where can people find you if they want to reach out or sell some water? TFADP on Twitter and on pretty much every social platform. >> All right, what' you think?