Shall we?

Yeah.

He still in my heart.

It does, right?

It does.

It makes you feel like it's fond memories.

Still my lonely heart.

First on your show, now on mine.

It's just.

It's.

It's like.

Yes.

It's like kismet.

Lovers meeting in the night.

Oh, yeah, it's kismet.

Your wife's a nurse.

My wife's a nurse.

So welcome to the show.

Well, let me tell you.

Yeah, it's been a long journey.

Well, I've loved watching, literally, frame by frame.

What you've done with this space is just fantastic.

Building of the podcast space took on a life of its own.

I never knew you were that handy.

I never knew you gave a shit that much about podcasting.

I know that you loved it, but not like to the point where you're like, I'm going to build my own.

It's.

It's almost like you watch Righteous Gemstones.

I do.

Surprisingly good show.

Yeah.

Dan McBride is a National treasure.

How old and Goggins national treasure.

How he doesn't get more love.

For the first of all, he moved to North Carolina, so shout out to him for being kind of anti the Hollywood establishment.

But that show is written really well.

Look at you coughing already.

I'm making you nervous.

You want to talk about it?

Maybe.

Yeah, maybe so.

I didn't know that I care about podcasting that much either until.

So What I've told people is that this space came up and I bought it, effectively, sight unseen sight.

And I walked it.

But he thought I was out of my mind.

I mean, it had drop ceilings.

It didn't look anywhere like this.

And I was like, I'm going to turn this into an acoustic space and I'm going to take the show to the next level.

I knew it was a meaningful financial investment.

I did not expect that I would become as OCD as I did about this place.

Oh, you did?

Well, this is like Kelvin's treehouse.

Yeah.

This is your tree house.

Yeah.

You know, this is Chris's treehouse.

And look the acoustics in here.

So Rajill, who's back there with Saeed today, and Saeed's gonna chime in from time to time, so don't be scared.

He scared the shit out of the last guess.

He really?

Yeah, yeah.

We had him on and he didn't realize that said had a microphone.

Thought I was like, Christ, Yeah.

He's like, oh, my God.

I am your conscience.

Yeah.

My.

It freake him out.

But.

So when we built the space and Rigil was was helping.

We.

We built, like, bass traps in this room.

And we, you know, built obviously, the acoustic panels like you saw in the stories.

But we had no.

We're not sound engineers.

We had no idea it was going to sound good or bad.

Wonderful does sound pretty good, right?

It's like that.

Microsoft has that room that's, like, so quiet you could hear, like, your own heartbeat.

And there's.

It's like if you stand it for an hour.

Look at like a million dollars or something like that.

Look it up.

It's.

It's.

It's.

So Ragil and I were here.

Was that Saturday, Sunday?

It was last week.

I don't know what day it was.

We put it.

We're putting up these foam pads.

We turn all the lights off, and we just sat here with the window closed, lights off, and just listen.

And that's the way it felt.

We could.

You could hear like, that throbbing in your ears, and it was, like, eerie.

It's.

I've never known somebody so OCD about, like, glue.

I didn't want you to get high from the glue, man.

It's hilarious, dude.

So when we.

Hilarious, it's just like.

Give it a rest already.

I literally came yesterday to make sure you were gonna get high from the glass.

Oh, my God, please.

You're unfiltered as it is.

I can't have you high and unfiltered.

55 years old.

There's nothing I haven't put in my body.

Except let' I've never done Molly.

Never done heroin.

Beyond that.

Yeah.

Tried all substances and so I'm fine.

I've never tried any of that.

Although I will admit that Molly made me curious.

That sounds like.

That.

I don't know enough about drugs to really tell you, but that sounds like a fun drug.

From what I've been told.

It's wonderful.

You get all touchy feely and you drink a lot of water.

That's all.

Where's the problem with that?

It's also, and I guess, like, sex is supposed to be amazing.

I wouldn't know.

I'm abstinent, but apparently.

Fair enough.

I hear rumors.

Yeah, well, you know, when I have a.

The Pope went to Villanova, so there's hope.

Did he really?

Oh, yeah.

I didn't know Leo Villanova did not.

Know that because I have a friend that went to Villanova, Susan Hyde.

Shout out.

And she went ahead and posted that.

I was stunned they picked an American for that.

I really was.

How about that?

I did not think that was.

I was in my Office.

I was like, a Super Bowl.

Let's go.

Syed's so upset now because I haven't watched sports in forever.

But I was in my office the day the white smoke came up.

The Vatican.

Yeah.

Like, going, oh, my God, who's it going to be?

Who's going to be?

I thought for sure it was going to be the Filipino dude.

And I was going to call my wife, make fun of her.

I had this whole story in my head.

The gringo man.

I did not see that coming.

Go.

Yeah.

And then he came out looking all papal and everything.

When these people like, og.

He's doing, like, OG stuff now.

It's like back to John Paul ii.

Well, before we get too far off on what was sure to be one of many tangents, let's talk a little bit about what you do, because you and I are probably going to dive hard into social media.

Sure.

So let's talk about your podcast.

Let's talk about how you got there.

Let's see.

I have two podcasts.

The main one's Fargo Talks, which is.

The one I was on.

And that was when you were on.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And no, no, thank you.

And here we go.

Jesus Christ.

Self admiration society.

It's something that started originally.

I was a title rep in Las Vegas and wanted to be in front of my clients more and thought, oh, let me start a podcast.

And ended up leaving that job.

They got rid of me, and rightfully so.

Best job I was ever fired from.

And I was like, wait, I like talking to people.

And I'm getting.

Millions of people a month are tuning in and commenting.

And I'm not getting offended when, you know, they're saying very hurtful things about me or about the guest.

I just don't.

I don't give them permission to offend me.

Yeah, why would you?

When I reached that point of clarity.

But some people do.

Yes.

I bring it up on screen.

Son of a.

Look at that.

AI, Jeff.

It's a fantastic picture with one chin.

It's good.

It's the best one chin I've seen in a long time.

I've got more chins in a Chinese phone book now.

But, yeah.

So it just.

It kind of took a life of its own that my kids have always said, dad, you always are chit chatting.

I could be at the supermarket or wherever, out in public.

I'm always talking to people, and I enjoy that.

And everyone has a story to tell.

And so what I've done is really just people now are finding me.

Knock wood.

And are saying, hey, I have a story to tell.

I love to tell it to you.

And hence Fargo talks.

And people come in and we have these wonderful, vulnerable conversations where when you're in the pocket, you don't know.

You're wearing headphones or lights or cameras or a microphone.

And it's like just two guys sitting at the bar having a.

Having an old fashioned and shooting the shit.

You know, we actually used to do that on the show, too, as we would drink during the show, and we found that we had a lot of fun doing it, but the wives didn't like it.

When we got home, we were hammered, but I was.

So when you got into the show, did you think.

You obviously started a podcast.

You didn't think it was gonna take over your life though, right?

No, no.

Yeah.

I was the same way when we started this.

I mean, I was in my garage having a good time, learning something new, learning a skill, thinking I was gonna have fun.

I never in a million years thought that I'd be sitting in a studio with you that I own, doing this for a living.

And same to be like, to fly down here, to come to, you know, to see my friend, to congratulate him on this amazing facility that you've built from scratch.

You're.

You're, you know, like Michael Landon in A Little House in the Prairie.

You're just, you know, entire demographic, listeners.

Who have no idea what the hell you're talking about.

Google it.

Just Google it.

It's fine.

It's fine.

So the part that blows me away about doing this to this day is, first of all, I love the talking to people.

I think it's cool to hear.

But there's also a stigma of talking to people, like everybody you bring in your show.

For some reason, people think that you're endorsing.

Oh, yeah, no, I'm not.

And it's this weird thing like, oh, you're giving this person a spotlight.

But in reality, just because you're giving an opportunity for someone to tell their story doesn't necessarily mean that you're endorsing it either.

I'm just giving them a platform to be heard.

Right.

That's all I'm doing.

And very often I challenge what they're saying.

I tell them that ahead of time.

I have a pre production call with literally every guest, and I tell them, if you're looking to buy or sell or offer some type of product, skill set, whatever, you're not going to do it on my.

My podcast.

It's just not going to happen.

It sucks, right?

It gets kind of icky feeling people do that.

This is not an infomercial.

I've had people on and I've said, let's have a nice conversation.

And then towards the end, let's bring it back to.

I had some folks on that.

They have a nonprofit and one of them happens to be Frank Fertitta the fourth.

His family owns all the station casinos in town.

They own the, you know, mma, UFC stuff.

Frank Fertitta can come on and pitch what he wants to pitch, but it was after 45 minutes of talking about how's the casino business really doing and how come you guys don't charge for parking and everybody on the strip does charge for parking.

And what about your fees?

Yeah.

What are you seeing right now with.

In terms of long term projections with station casinos?

He was very open and honest with what we talked about.

And at the end, tell me about Easy Day foundation, that's helping out veterans to give them, you know, clothes to go on interviews with and helping them out.

It's a natural segue.

Then I'm fine with that.

But if you're just going to come on and talk about, like it said, 80s infomercial, you know, like your Suzanne Somers with the Thigh Master, another great old reference.

Thank you very much.

I still have one of those in the house.

Do you really?

Yeah.

I love that thing.

My love for you just exploded even more.

I've got one of those.

I got one of like the hand grip things.

I've got.

Oh, the Shake Weight.

I've got one of those.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, that's used for other purposes, but fine.

Still a fantastic piece of equipment.

It's in my home garage, but it's.

Just, it's more about.

I tell, I tell my guests, just come on and be you.

Just be you.

And a good podcaster gets somebody vulnerable and comfortable within the first five minutes that you go live.

Yeah, within five minutes you're just talking.

Have you ever had an interview where someone came on and they just couldn't loosen up?

Yeah, in the beginning, when I first started.

When I first started, it was the guest was controlling the conversation more than I was.

Chris.

Right.

And then over time, you just.

You learn.

You learn.

One of the best things I did, and I didn't start until later on, was watching my episodes.

I wouldn't watch myself.

Just have a thing about.

Really.

Yeah, I wouldn't watch myself.

They just a stigma to it or something.

Just.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't like looking at myself on camera, but I would Listen.

I still do.

I listen to every episode.

True story.

Our first interview together, Chris controlled the entire interview and didn't let me get a word in.

Well, that.

That is not true.

That is not.

So let me tell you what happened, okay?

We had.

Who was, who was the guest that you were listening?

Are you talking to somebody?

Chano?

Oh, it's Tim Chesano.

You know, you know, see him on Instagram, right?

Tim Chisano.

He was an ad ad agency for a number of years.

I think Atlanta's late 40s about.

He's about my age.

He, he retired now he's a content creator.

He's full time social media.

That's what he does, right.

And he's just the most genuine, heartfelt guy.

And early in his journey when he's coming up, I was like, hey, you want to be on the show?

And Saeed and I were like, you know, super excited to have him on because we thought that this is a guy leaving corporate America who was super relatable.

And there's something about people who were in corporate America who like, break free, which is really appealing to most, like, people out there.

Because I think most people feel trapped in their jobs.

And sometimes just hearing somebody who got out or feels differently is really interesting.

But Tim was a good paradigm because he loved corporate America and he got out, but he still had like fond memories.

So he was like telling people all the good things about leaving and the bad things.

But Saeed, that was his first show of me interviewing somebody.

And we were in my garage.

It was like a thousand degrees.

We were both sweating our asses off, right?

My wife's Tesla's in the back, like turning lights on randomly.

My wife walked by upstairs with the key, like triggering the lights, but said hello on the beginning and said goodbye at the end.

And that was his total contribution.

He was sitting next to me the whole time.

And the worst part is so at that point in time, we weren't actually recording video.

Yes.

Audio.

Oh, no.

But it was over.

But it was over.

Zoom.

And Tim was looking at me the entire time, not speaking to him.

It was, it was literally like he.

So we were on the same.

We had one camera back then too.

We have like, you know, four camera set up now and all that stuff going on.

But then it was one camera on two of us in a garage.

I mean, how sketched out was Tim?

You never spoke to me again, by the way, so good job.

Yeah, never.

But I think anybody when you're first starting out, you don't know what you're doing.

You think you know, but you don't know.

And if you get a strong alpha personality on the other side of the table from you, you're fucked.

Yeah.

Especially one that has, like an agenda when they come on with an agenda.

So they're.

We were talking earlier today when we were at lunch, our.

I guess it was an early dinner, but I had a guy on the show once who came across that way.

He tried to do it in a sincere method, but I could tell he was lying the whole time.

And I spent maybe five minutes going, I'm never airing that episode.

And I never aired it and I never even told him why.

I just didn't air it.

I had a guy come on Vegas, Paul AC and he's a content.

Big content creator in Vegas.

A savant when it comes to gaming and the numbers and quarterly returns and all that.

Very smart guy, very passionate guy.

And I just.

I like him.

But after that episode, I said to my podcast engineer, I need a nap.

I had to physically keep bringing him back because he kept going on tangents.

And that was the first time I had to work a guest to get them to move forward, to stay on task, and to keep them moving forward with the conversation.

Because if not, he was just going to.

Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.

Again, brilliant guy.

But it was like, oh, my God.

And so I've learned now, pre production call.

I learned the person's style from that call.

I see their content ahead of time.

If they're a dominant personality and who they are.

There he is.

His Vegas policy.

Right?

This is Vegas policy.

And again, when it comes to gaming, he's very polarizing.

Um, but one of the smartest guys in the room.

How many followers you got?

Side.

Go to the top.

Let's go to the top.

Scroll up to the top.

This is called social media.

You go to the top to see the followers 486.

But then you can go to social blade.

We can see really what that is.

But for now, it's.

He.

He is somebody that is really good.

People either love him or hate him.

So as a content creator, it's awesome because polarizing.

As long as long as I'm in the ether of the conversation, I'm happy as a content creat.

Good, bad or indifferent.

When there's silence, that's what keeps me up at night.

I get that.

Right.

Yeah.

So from that point forward, I always learn to have conversations ahead of time with.

Unless I know them well, to have conversations with them ahead of time.

I was gonna say because Most of our conversations were sending memes and jokes to each other.

That's it.

That's it.

Which is sophomore bathroom humor from the 90s, which is wonderful.

That's my only kind of humor these days.

That's all it is.

I gotta be honest, when you get to be our age, it's just, you know, you just don't give a anymore.

Just like, look at you.

There's something about being in your 40s, which I'm sure there's gonna.

People like laughing at us.

When you get to a 40s, you get to this point where you're just like, you know what?

I am who I am.

I can't remember who it was.

There's a quote out there that says, like, the forties are when you.

When you start.

When your life really starts, because you stop caring what other people think about you and just start focusing on you.

I really feel like that was kind of what kicked me off on my journey, but I do want to use that as a jumping off point.

So you also recently started the dad podcast.

Did.

And your partner on that show is fantastic.

Brandon is excellent.

Brandon is excellent.

He's.

He's very articulate, he's very well spoken, and he has no problem stating his.

Opinion on Brandon from Vegas.

He's excellent.

And he's been a part.

He's been a content creator for seven years.

I was surprised when you told me he was a real estate agent.

Yeah.

To start with.

Because he.

He's so the opposite of what most realtors are.

Yeah.

That.

It's a lot of realtors.

I don't want to bastardize the entire community, but a lot of realtors have this.

I'm going to project this image of who I am.

And he seems very comfortable in his own skin.

He's the everyman, and he's there.

And he's got some half of a chicken wing sitting in his beard and the camera's way too close to his face.

And he knows it.

He knows all of this.

Suffice it to say, you handle all the technicals at that point.

Oh, God.

Oh, please.

And he's.

But he's just the most lovable man.

Like, I love him.

And we've become such good friends on this journey together.

He approached me six months ago and said, hey, I've been looking to a podcast with somebody.

I would love to do it with you.

I've done a bunch of research.

There's a kabillion podcasts out there for moms, and there's really none for dads.

None to give dads a voice.

I feel like the ones that start off for dads always go like a different route where they're focused on like one hyper localized niche of like, oh, I like X or I like Y.

Like hunters.

Right.

Like finance.

Like our show on some level where some people will just dive super down into a niche and then it gets boring.

Yeah.

It's something that what we tell people is we're giving dads or balls back.

You should probably listen to that show.

I do.

I do listen to the show.

And I do want to congratulate him on his first sponsor.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Which is Wallflower.

Wallflower Dispo.

We can't say.

We can't say dispensary.

I'm learning all this.

All this stuff now.

Like, we can't say something with legal and algorithms and we can't.

You can say dispo or grow house.

Oh, I like grow house.

That sounds classy.

We film commercials there.

We can't film any of the flower cannot be in any of the video at all.

But you can film like the other things.

I'm holding, like one time, like we did, like, here's our top three things to get at Wallflower Dispo.

And number three is Flight bites, which I love.

Flight bites.

Great Gummy shots.

Flight bites.

Yeah.

How many milligrams are in it?

Ten.

Okay.

They're glorious.

And they're glorious.

My wife started giving me edibles.

And I gotta tell you, I'm not a drug person, but, like, I had trouble sleeping.

Everybody listens to the show knows that.

I was like, I don't sleep much.

I think I started with 5 milligram gummies.

Man, I've never slept so well.

Right.

I didn't feel high at all.

I just went to sleep.

It was fantastic.

It's wonderful.

And when they gave it to me and I had to cover up with my hands certain verbiage on the actual bag of gummies because it couldn't be aired.

So, like, you saw Flight Bites by Growers Circle, and I had to say Flight Bites by grower's circle.

Couldn't say just Flight bites.

Right.

Grower circle as well.

Shout out to Grower Circle.

And so but I'm.

If you'll see the commercials, I'm holding it a certain way.

The people that were there were like, no, you have to hold it this way.

This is such a weird thing about society, about how we over stigmatize.

First of all, in this state, it's legal.

So let's Start there.

Right.

But in other states, I understand there's some nuances.

Nevada has some nuances.

But what blows me away is that we're taking something that we know at this particular juncture in time is safer than alcohol, and we're demonizing it because of a legacy ideology.

Like, it's just crazy to me.

Not.

Not addictive.

Not addictive at all.

It's wonderful.

And yet people.

I mean, I'm not.

I'm not saying, hey, everybody should go out and do this.

All I'm saying is, is like, if you look at the.

There's a list that came out not too long ago.

I saw this on social media.

Media.

So it must be true.

Absolutely.

Of, like, the most harmful drugs in the United States, above heroin, far above heroin, is alcohol.

Absolutely.

And you're like, wait a minute.

But this is legal and everybody can buy.

Like, this is crazy.

And it was.

I think they took the, like, all the negative impacts from, like, health and physical, like, impacts, but also the sociological ones, like car accidents and things like that.

And I'm sitting.

That's kind of over reporting some, but under reporting others.

But at the same time, it's like, yeah, when you think about it, most people who have issue.

Oh, here you go.

Site pulling stuff up.

So what do we got here?

The most harmful drugs.

There you go.

Top ten.

Alcohol, Alcohol.

Number one.

Fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, Xanax, Alcohol.

Above all these drugs, Oxy, ketamine.

Yeah.

I mean, it does sound like everything that's going on in Vegas right now at edc.

But you know, who's judging?

Absolutely.

I don't care.

So I also, you.

You, like me, have learned a lot about this industry, far more than I know at this point in time.

And I'm using you as a resource to that effect.

But there are a lot of people in our space who I think are disingenuous.

And I thought it'd be really cool for the listener at least you know, to hear your thoughts are on how to judge real and fake and kind of see through the smokescreen in the space.

Sure.

Oh, where to begin?

There's so much.

So the best way to do it is if you give me the.

You know, think of a name of someone that is a.

Let's say Ryan Pineda.

Okay.

Ryan is.

Ryan is a very polarizing individual.

I've been on a show.

He is the subject right now of a class action lawsuit.

I'm not talking out of church.

It's all there.

Right.

So if Saeed if you could pull up Ryan's Instagram page and we'll look at what he has for his audience and how many followers he has.

And then the second.

We'll do a split screen.

The second tab that will slide over will be Social Blade, which is the end all, be all, and for anybody that is doing so.

All right, 446,000 followers is what he.

That's what he says he has.

That's wonderful.

And then let's go ahead and do Social Blade.

And there it is.

Everybody and anybody who is in, go up on top where the Instagram icon and just type in Ryan Pineda.

All of his socials will come up and just pick the Instagram and they'll.

All come up and just hit enter.

There you go.

Ryan Reynolds is on there.

Go do Ryan Pineda.

All one word, just like it is for his name.

And then P I, N.

And there he is.

And go ahead and click on him.

Yep, right there.

She logged in.

Click the login.

Now I have an account, so you should be able to log in with my username and password.

And again, got you, dog.

Not.

Not picking on Ryan.

But I am picking on Ryan because he is selling a bill of goods to people saying that he is a.

Has this big audience.

But we're going to take a look to see if we really.

If the audience is real or not.

And Social Blade is a.

If anybody is getting into the podcast game.

Rajeel, your wife's following him.

Oh, my, oh, my.

You want to talk about that?

Something maybe off camera.

You want to have a conversation about that?

Ryan's a good enough guy.

You got to stay plugged into everybody, right?

Yeah, that's it.

You got to check it.

This is the problem, though, is, like, I don't necessarily demonizing or picking on him, but he's certainly one of many.

There you go.

Okay, so he has a 0.26 engagement rate.

0.26%.

Wow, that's awful.

That's like.

That's awful.

Go ahead and click on.

Ok, let's just let you guys get all of his cookies.

Bottom right there.

Go ahead.

Yep, get that.

And go ahead and scroll down and we're gonna take a look at how many people are following him or unfollow.

He's getting a bunch of followers here, right?

Bunch of followers here.

Can you go back up to the top?

I think you can do like 180 days out.

So it says last 30 days, go to 180.

If you can do that.

Yeah, you gotta be verified.

But scroll all the way down.

Just scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page here.

There you go.

Yep, keep going down.

All the way down.

So if he's at over 400,000 followers, I'll keep going down.

Last 30 days.

Well, plus 50.

So he's at 50.

So that's all.

That's all paid.

That's paid.

Huh.

Like there's.

That's just not.

That's not possible.

This is a great way to find out if somebody is.

Is, like, cheating or not.

There's people a lot worse than this.

But it looks like what he's been doing is paying for a bunch of followers lately.

You need to get verified, by the way.

You got to do your verification email, and then it'll show you more.

But Social Blade, to me, is the end all.

Be all that you need to look at also.

And we're talking about this before we started with.

I was talking with Saeed about it.

Depending on how many followers you have, if you're 50 to 60,000 or below, 10% of your audience should be watching and consuming your reels.

So if you have a audience of 50,000 people on Instagram, about 5,000 people should be looking at your reels.

Every post.

That's all right.

Yeah.

Right.

Every single post.

So if you go.

Go back to Instagram for a second, please, to.

Back to Ryan's page.

Yep.

And click on reels.

So he's at 440 for that.

He should be having an average of 30 to 40,000 every single one.

So he's got some with 20, some 15.

So.

And these are.

These are actually good.

But also, if you go in, he pays for comments.

So that's what I was gonna say.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Someone like Ryan would know that these ratios need to be at a certain level, so they could pay for views and bots.

Correct?

Yes.

So that's one of the things the algorithm takes into effect now.

So I don't know how many people listening to the show know this, but one of the things that's difficult to do is to get bots to give you specific comments.

So what the algorithm does is it deprioritizes comments that don't have, like, meaningful text or if they have repetitive text, it'll actually hide them.

So look right here.

So he has View hidden comments.

Click on that.

These are all the bots that come through.

And some of the bots.

Fire emojis.

Are bots.

Yeah, fire emojis bots.

So if you scroll back up here, they try to filter through this and go through it, but go all the way to the top.

Keep going.

There you go.

Your scrolling is really weird today.

This one only has 13 comments.

Yeah, but that's strange.

Yeah.

13 comments for and how many views.

Close that and just go back out to the video.

9,000.

Yeah, that's weird.

It's just an overall aggregate.

The numbers don't jive, which is unfortunate.

Because he makes good content.

He does.

It's high quality content.

His page is aesthetically pleasing.

It just seems.

Here's what I would say about him.

When I originally started to follow him and listen to his stuff, I thought there was meaning behind the content and it solely migrated from that into what feels like a constant sales pitch.

And I think a good point here to mention why Jeff is qualified to talk about this.

I know we talked about the podcast earlier, but Jeff also runs a digital advisory firm.

Right.

I don't know that.

We didn't, we didn't speak about.

So you're very qualified to speak on.

This topic a little bit.

Go to Sean Mike Kelly.

Oh my gosh.

So on Instagram, Saeed, please.

While he's doing that, I'll take Sean Michelley.

His as his.

His VA's have reached out to me multiple times trying to get me to pay up to $6,000 to appear on his show.

This is a reoccurring theme I've heard from people around that have appeared on it.

And you and I were talking about it before, but his.

He's got 11 million followers.

Yeah.

So here's Sean Mike Kelly.

11.5 million followers.

Yeah.

Okay, let's go to his reels.

You guys got to get a dial up.

You know, they don't, they don't have, they don't have good Internet here.

So he, he should be having between 500,000 to a million every single time.

Every single time.

All of these.

Click on.

Click on any of these.

On.

On just any of these.

So the backstory here is his.

His account is wildly purchased.

Yeah.

The followers are purchased.

The comments are purchased.

A lot of the engagement was.

Was fake for a long, long period of time.

A lot of.

A lot of these are fake.

Now go to Social Blade and put in Sean Mike Kelly.

So I've done this before too.

This is, this is, this is going to blow your mind.

If anybody ever wanted to see what the worst case scenario of a fake social media account looked like, you can go to this page and look at a Social Blade and see the spikes in his follower count.

It's incredible.

Because you can see exactly what day he purchased millions of followers.

Correct.

And you can just see how it spikes up.

So here, his engagement rate is zero, by the way.

Wow.

Zero engagement rate.

Zero.

How is that even possible?

Look at his gain followers.

Look at how it goes down.

Because those are just bot counts being eliminated.

Correct.

So go ahead and scroll down.

And this is.

So he's lost 97.

Look at.

Look at the red.

Wow.

10,000 followers in a single day.

Yeah.

5,100 followers.

18,000 followers.

12,000 followers in this day.

So these are just bot accounts that.

Scroll all the way down to the bottom.

Yeah.

And you could see he's at.

Go up a little bit more.

Sorry, it's the bottom of that one tab.

Up, up a little bit more, please.

Thank you.

Last 30 days, he's down 96,000 followers daily average.

Sean Mike Kelly.

Sean Mike Kelly is completely full of shit.

Wow.

Completely full of shit.

What he's doing.

And he's getting major guests on.

Because I hate the term fake it till you make it.

I freaking hate that term.

But this is what he's doing.

And again, the thing is, Sean was on my podcast.

I had to take the episode down because Baller Busters.

Oops.

Oh, I broke the podcast.

Breaking new mics.

Look at you.

I don't know where that thing goes.

Take you anywhere.

Where's that go?

Of course it goes right there.

And Baller Busters were like, he pays for reviews.

He pays for.

I'm like, oh, shit.

And they sent me a link of.

They called him out.

I didn't know any of this.

Yeah, he's been on there a couple times.

The worst part, Chris, is the take.

All that aside, the conversation that Sean Kelly and I had, we gave a master class on how to do a podcast.

So grow it.

How to do it.

But I had to take the whole thing down because he pays for his audience.

So let me.

Let me.

Okay, I'm going to play devil's advocate here, Right?

Or in this case, really boring guys advocate.

You can say what you want.

Clearly, his account is fake.

It's purchased.

He doesn't.

There's no reason why that Guy would have 11 million followers.

He's not charismatic.

He's not hyper articulate.

He's kind of vanilla.

He's kind of boring.

Not to say that you and I are the most intriguing people in the world, but I would say from just a contextual perspective, I'd rather have a conversation with you than him any day of the week.

Do so Blade.

Jeff Fargo, by The way to have that queued up, please.

Yeah, we're going to.

We'll bring that and show what real growth looks like.

Go ahead, continue.

But my point being is, okay, yeah, he faked it, but he also has had some very notable guests on his show, so it did work for him.

So on one hand, in today's world, I want to bastardize it, saying, okay, this is cheating.

But on the other hand, I'm like, okay.

But he also got there because of it.

Now, his engagement, because I know this because my account had really terrible engagement because I paid for an agency, they gave me total bot growth.

I spent a lot of money trying to get rid of it, but, oh, wow, look at your engagement rate.

6%, huh?

Isn't that interesting?

Scroll down, please, Saeed.

Oh, now look, I don't have hundreds or thousands, but look, every day, it's in the green.

That's impressive, dude.

That's an annuity.

That's impressive.

That's an annuity right there.

That's why.

And so what?

But see, this is healthy growth, though.

That's healthy.

1297, almost 1300 followers.

That's why.

So you can tell these are clips that have gone viral.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's why now I have Fargo Factor.

Shameless Plug is my digital marketing company that I own.

And I advise people on podcast, direction, growth, the whole thing.

And I say, look me up on Social Blade.

You can see what my main account has done that I'm.

I'm growing.

It's like.

It's like getting an annuity account and you're getting 5 to 7% interest.

It's.

You're not going to, you know, get rich, but compound interest over time.

You keep growing that audience, growing the audience, growing the audience, growing the audience.

And it's solid people.

It's people that want to know more about what you're talking about and who you're talking to.

Yeah, I think that's meaningful, and I think it's real.

So let me ask you the hard question then.

So you look at someone who took an untraditional path, like Sean Michael Kelly or whatever the hell his name is, right?

And for him, I don't think there's ever a world where those numbers that were fake originally can ever convert to real engagement.

So for him, does that mean he's perpetually stuck in a cycle where his metrics will never show real?

Yes.

Wow.

Correct.

And there's only so many people you can interview, like he eventually is going to hit the wall where he's going to burn so much, because I've talked to several people that have gone on his podcast.

Some have paid, some have not.

And they've gone on and there's been hundreds of views or maybe a couple thousand views.

And even then, he could always boost those numbers by paying for them to make.

Exactly.

Right.

Which he did.

Like the stuff we saw.

Pineda.

That's all paid.

That's all paid.

Pineda is very good at paying for the audience.

He's very aware of his optics to make.

To make that paid audience look like it's organic.

I don't understand what he's doing.

What?

He's clearly selling courses.

Right.

And so there's a clip out there that he went to a grant Cardone, I think, a 10x conference in the early days.

And he's kind of a byproduct of that ecosystem.

Whatever.

I'm not judging, but I don't have a clear vision as to what Pineda is selling other than his courses on how to build something.

But there's not, like, a track record there.

At least in the case of Sean Michael Kelly.

I go, okay, he's trying to build a podcast.

Absolutely.

Right.

And if you took out Social Blade, Sean Michelley would be a phenomenal podcast growth consultant for somebody.

Yeah, I think that's probably phenomenal.

I don't think him in front of a camera makes sense.

No, I think him behind a camera instructing somebody probably makes a lot of sense.

I agree.

So why do you think he didn't do it?

I don't know.

I'm not him.

I think it's something that.

Well, again, everyone.

Everyone to some extent, has an ego, and so you kind of want to be on camera.

There's always that thing about, hey, I could be famous.

It's validation and, like, the whole thing.

I'm.

Again, I like Sean.

I know he does not like me.

And I was like, oh, it's gotten back to him that I've called him out several times and.

Which I.

I give two shits.

I really don't care.

Yeah.

Care less.

Yeah, I don't give a shit.

But, um.

But, you know, it's just the.

The analogy I've always used, Chris, is it's a lot like the Tour de France, and I'm in the Peloton.

I've been training my whole life for this.

And we're in the Swiss Alps and.

Or the French Alps, and I'm pedaling and my quads are all fired up, and I'm in the Peloton, and I can make my move.

And here comes fucking Lance Armstrong with his cancerous nuts and he's got juice pee and he's flying up, you know, aside everybody, he's cheating.

And he wins another yellow jersey again because he cheated.

That to me is Sean Mike Kelly.

That to me is Ryan Pineda that they are saying that they are have these amazing podcasts.

They haven't put the work in, in the right way to have organic growth.

So I think it's that simple.

And that the organic growth part I think is important because a lot of people miss this.

A lot of people take.

And I've been criticized for calling people out too, just like you have.

As a matter of fact, both those individuals and others, many of them more like them.

I think the number one criticism people give me is, okay, you're just being a hater, you're being negative.

And I go, no, not necessarily.

They are painting an image of the industry that is inaccurate.

Correct.

And setting an unfair representation of what people like me who start a show, people like Saeed, people like you who work in this space should expect for, quote, visible success.

And then the problem is then brands work with people like that and it makes us look bad because they go, oh, I paid for this podcast.

It had 11 million followers.

I didn't get any growth out of this.

It's.

It's like the real estate agents.

Most of them suck.

I was in real estate.

I was a title rep for 10 years in Vegas.

I could say this, more than 80% are not worth the paper they're printed on.

They're terrible.

But they're out there with a rented Lamborghini in front of a property that they don't even have listed.

But it's optics, right?

And so I am a fervent advocate of if you don't juice, if you don't take, you know, podcast steroids and you put the work in, you invest your money.

You know, we've both, between the, both of us, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Oh, yeah.

Put into this thing.

It is not cheap to get into this game and it takes forever to see your return.

But you know what?

You're working for yourself in this business.

You pick who is going to be.

Across from you, which is empowering, which is very underrated.

Very empowering.

It is, it is so empowering to have a pre production call with someone and at the end go, you know what?

We're not a good fit.

Sorry.

But it's just, and I'm honest with it, I say, I don't see how your message is going to resonate effectively with my demographic, which is men 35 to 44 years old.

It's fair.

It's a fair point.

I mean, that's all I say.

And there.

And it's.

Again, it's the classic.

When you break up with a girl, it's not you, it's me.

And that's what I say to people.

And I've said it a few times, but I'm honest about it.

It's like my.

Tell my kids, I rip the band aid off fast.

Let's just.

Let's get it done.

And I'm not gonna.

I'm not gonna BS you and everyone.

I've.

I've done it a few times with people they've been very nice about.

Like, thank you.

Okay, thanks for not wasting my time, Jeff.

I appreciate it because I want that person to go off and say nice things about me.

It's small world.

And the people that are saying not nice things about me, they're assholes already.

I don't care.

Yeah.

And it's.

It's a weird space too, because the community is so small and everybody knows each other.

And the one thing I'll tell people all the time is, is I've never accepted money to be on the show.

Like, I've never let somebody pay to be on the show at this particular juncture because I've always wanted to stay true to, like, us building it.

But said and I struggle with this too, we've had, I want to call it almost imposter syndrome, where it's weird to have people listen and want to listen.

So we have people who will literally go, oh, my God, like, can you go back two episodes a week?

And I'm like, oh, like, that's really cool that people actually want to hear tell my wife she doesn't want to hear me at all, much less twice a week.

And it's weird to have.

It comes down to a concept that if you're authentic and you are true to who you are, people want to listen.

Even if you think there's been episodes where site and I walked away from feeling like they're the world's worst episode, like, no one's going to like it.

And people like it the most because they got to hear more about our personalities.

But that kind of stuff doesn't come through.

When someone's coming on trying to sell.

Something, it is the worst.

And that's where, again, I'm an optimist.

I'm always a glass half full guy.

So I love it when Somebody comes in and says, well, I'm gonna sell this and do this.

And that's when I.

And I'm open about this.

I use my podcast as a funnel for my marketing company.

Yeah.

And I go, well, honestly, that's not gonna work.

But if you want me to help you generate organic content for you, I can do that with you.

For.

You're gonna pay me a fee?

You're gonna pay my concept, right?

I already, I.

Social Blade is my best proof of concept ever.

6% is actually really impressive.

Thank you.

That's a huge engagement rate.

Yeah, thank you.

I've looked at a lot over the years.

That, that's, that's, that's probably one of the highest I've seen.

That's.

And that's what I show people when they're vetting me to help them, like grow their podcast or produce a new podcast.

Ago.

Well, I'm at a 6% engagement rate, which is off the charts.

I should probably point out to the listener too, that there's something interesting that happens.

A buddy of mine who runs a pretty popular social media agency, he pointed this out a long time ago and it kind of blew me away at first.

But the more I thought about it, it makes sense.

There are people who pay for followers and their accounts are all fake.

Their engagement rate's terrible.

I.

E.

0%.

Right.

Then there are the large accounts.

Things like Los Angeles Lakers, the Kim Kardashians.

They're going to get bots because the people want to have these bot accounts look like they're real people, so they just follow these accounts.

And because some of the agencies do pay for bots and engagement and things like that, just to bump numbers up, just to sharpen them up a little bit.

Because at their level, if the rock is getting more engagement than you are getting more likes or comments, then you're charging less of a fee.

So there's a huge economic boon.

You're talking millions of dollars per post.

He's like, so the truest engagement rates you'll see are those kind of small to like upper level, mid level influencers.

That's where you get the most clear visibility into engagement.

And he's like, that's where the marketing dollars are headed.

And again, I'm not throwing shade.

I'm just pointing out the facts.

And we're picking on Sean Kelly, but we're going to pick on him 11 million followers with.

Was it 0% engagement rate.

That's crazy, right?

And I'm at 36, 35, 36,000 followers with a 6% engagement rate.

Yeah.

Who would you rather put your money behind?

Like, yeah.

You know, who's going to get more views than that?

Right?

Not only more views, more people eliciting a comment or a share or they're archiving whatever's being said in that clip.

That's how.

That's how they feel.

That's.

Or they're sharing it.

The best is when they share it to their stories because then they're sharing your content to their audience.

And this is something that a lot of people, I think, overlook in podcast growth and in social media growth, when somebody shares your story, you need to stop what you're doing and just tell them thanks.

And I'll give you some inside baseball.

I always say, I say thanks to all 90% of them.

I say thanks with a clapping hands emoji, little smiley face.

So I'm not being.

So they don't think it's thanks.

You're being a dick.

No, I'm saying thank you.

I'm going to take time out of my life because you took time out of yours.

And I don't care if you have 120 followers and you live in Des Moines.

God bless Des Moines.

Yeah.

You know, mazel tov.

And so.

But also what I do is if they reply back saying, no problem, love your content.

Keep it going, brother.

Or I love the salute emoji.

I love that one.

Or now black Instagram loves me.

They go, anything for you, King.

I love that.

I'm edified.

And I then go back with if it's.

If It's Fargo Talks one, I type in WT.

YT for YouTube is a shortcut, keystroke thing.

All of a sudden auto populating goes, hey, check out the full episode on my YouTube channel.

And that's a loss leader that I use to get people to subscribe.

I do the same thing for dad Pod.

I do DP and then dad Pod, it shows.

It shows up there and I get subscribers that way.

It's for dad part, right?

DPs for dad pod.

Just be clear, Jim.

I know the gutter.

Yeah, I'm sorry, you just had to clarify.

I thought you guys were talking about.

Dude, perfect.

Oh, there you go.

Thank you.

Dude, perfect.

My next shortcut is going to be airtight or something like that.

It'll be next.

Thank you.

Continue.

So I think the people misunder.

So this is one of the things that I have a conversation with.

I try to.

I'm not as sharp on social media as I should be.

Especially because you And I are in the space, but I find that people look at what we do on these shows like this and they go, okay, they're gonna spend a couple hours talking.

But they don't realize that for every hour or two hours you see us talking, there's a 10 hour window of preparation that goes into the front end and back end between producing the content, you know, sharpening the video, sharpening the audio, and then distributing on your social channels.

Responding to people, preparing show notes, engagements.

And while AI can help, one of the best ways to say thank you is to actually engage with the content.

And so many people are just, look, they're just used to snap death scrolling into the content.

They don't hit like, they don't, they don't throw out a comment or if they do throw out a comment, it's with an emoji.

They don't realize that the, the best way you can support a show like this or like yours is to forward that content to somebody else to share it, to do more than just like it.

Because unfortunately the algorithm is deprioritized.

Things that bots can and do do.

Bots don't forward content to their friends.

If a piece of content speaks to you, whether it's educational or entertaining or a hybrid of both, take the time to share that with your audience.

That is the greatest thing that you can do for the algorithms, but also just for.

It's a great way for me as a content creator to go.

That works.

I know that when I'm in that conversation with that person and that clip got posted, that the stars aligned.

And for me, at my level, anything 100,000 views or up or plays on Instagram and is viral, okay, that's, that's my number.

That's what I'm looking to hit.

Every time I'm posting content on Instagram in a reel, I want it to hit 100,000.

That's the target.

That's the goal.

Yep.

I don't get anywhere near that.

Just full disclosure.

You will, but.

You will, but, but again, also it's, it's scarcity that you know, how many was like 98% of all podcasts just go back to two episodes and that's it.

Yeah.

You know Saeed, when I were told about that show, Saeed pulling up my account.

Oh, look at that one.

He loves to bring this up on TikTok.

He is my most viral reel or short.

He's 1.7 million followers.

So good.

And it sucks because it's my social media, but at the same Time.

It's actually a win because it's a picture of him.

They think he is me.

It's great because people naturally think that people that look like him have my name, but the beauty in it is I can talk trash.

People think they're looking for his face.

Huh.

Perfect.

But that's like.

It's also like any content creator, you always remember your first piece of content.

A clip.

Short form content that hits a million.

You always remember your first one.

Anecdotally said while you're back there, it's probably worth sharing something with you.

You've gotten 1.7 million views, and unfortunately, the.

The one that's outpaced you has been Kevin Spacey's reel.

Oh.

So just want you to know you're in good company back there.

No Kaiser Sose.

Kaiser.

So say over 4 million.

So it's.

It's something that.

The million mark is a whole nother thing.

And now, like with.

Between.

I'm.

I'm blessed.

Knock wood.

Between dad Pod and Fargo Talks, I one or two a month now, we're hitting over a million.

What's your most popular content?

I mean, you do a variety show on Fargo Talks.

Yeah.

And the dad Pod, you guys kind of brush up against a lot of topics, all within the confines of the relationship.

Being a father.

But what content does it best for you?

Stuff that's either factual.

Like my number one clip is 8.3 million is.

And I teed up Brandon perfectly.

What are the top three strip joints in Las Vegas?

And he just.

The way he's.

His cadence of his voice.

And he said number three is Sapphire, the Walmart of strip clubs.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

You know, if they don't have it, you don't need it.

And, you know, and then he goes.

He goes down the whole line.

And his top one is.

Is Chica's Bonitas, which is extremely controversial because it's a.

It's a Latin.

It's on Instagram.

Oh, you're a YouTube side.

That's right.

What are you doing over there?

What show are you watching?

This is why him and Rajille can't sit next to each other in the production suite.

I only see one of Saitan's at all times.

It's just kind of.

That's what she said.

Yeah.

And so it was just.

It was perfect because he's.

He's so good at social media.

He knew I was teeing him up and he already had the answer in his head.

And he thought about it for a second and then he just.

When he said, I'm like, that's.

I thought maybe 1 or 2 million.

It's over 8 million.

It's 8.3 now.

It's my number one watched piece of content I've ever put out because.

And because it's giving.

It's Vegas.

Everyone knows Vegas strip joints in Vegas.

Everyone knows that it's sensational.

Number one is a Latina strip joint.

What?

So people were blasting him for that.

So it causes Latina strip.

I didn't know that's a thing.

Chicas bonitas.

Top three strip joints.

Oh, okay, there it is.

Can you play that so we can hear it or no?

Yeah, he can.

He's got to turn the mic up on the road.

Yeah, play that one.

That's.

Oh, my one from today's a 22.5.

That's great.

Like, I'm looking at like 86.

7 that I think has a shot of hitting 100 to go viral.

Farah Abraham.

Yeah, she.

She's great.

She actually was much more articulate and intelligent sounding than I thought.

You gotta turn the volume up on the number 4.

It's a USB drive.

USB.

Was dosed and robbed by the dancers.

Hustler Club 01 would not recommend.

Site hasn't figured out the audio yet.

We'll work on that podcast.

Oh, it's all good.

But it was like, so again, to hit something like that and.

Or there's no celebrities involved.

Like, yes, he's got a good following.

I have an okay following.

But for that to be at 8.3 million is bananas.

It kind of is when you think about it.

I mean.

Right.

And so that's like, all.

That's like Haley's comment.

Like, you just don't see that very often.

And so the ones that I have now, I literally could give you an answer to every single one of my pieces of content and that have hit over a million.

Why it's hit over a million.

You could pick any.

Any from YouTube to which I only have a couple on YouTube at over a million, but a lot on.

On Instagram.

I could tell you why.

Like, dad pod stuff.

We're getting real.

We're pushing buttons.

We are doubling down on traditional fatherhood, which is a very polarizing shot.

I can't believe it.

It's a polarizing topic.

Fatherhood, to be honest.

I mean, I do, but I don't.

I think there's some things about being a dad that have been so demonized that it's weird.

Like what?

Like, I don't care about, like, my.

My son Going to school, per se.

I care about my son being happy and following something that he's passionate about.

I agree.

And I think that the traditional route has been like, you know, you got to give your kids the best possible chance to succeed.

And historically, that's been, go get a degree, because worst comes to worse, you can fall back on it.

I don't know if that's sound advice anymore.

That's traditional advice.

I agree.

I.

Look, there was a time in America where you got pensions, right?

There was a time.

And, you know, those are gone, gone.

And, yeah, you get a 401k, but we saw it in the great financial crisis how those can go away.

There's 529 plans.

But I routinely tell people on the show, like, I don't know, that I want my.

My son to have a 529 plan.

I think I'd rather just have him have an investment account that I just give to him when the time is right, and I'll know when that is.

It's not a custodial account.

It's.

It's an account for him that I manage, and it's.

It's something I have in trust for him.

So it's related.

If I pass away, it goes to him.

But that being said, you know, I like to think that you should prepare for the untraditional route, because it seems like the untraditional route is the future I have.

My daughter is 15.

She's about to finish her sophomore year, and she goes to a performing arts high school.

Very cool.

It's awesome.

And she loves it, and she's good, but she knows she's not gonna go to Broadway or anything like that.

And UNLV 15.

She knows that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

How does she know that at 15?

That's what she says.

Okay.

That's what she says.

And so.

And I'm.

And I'm.

The wind could blow differently tomorrow, Chris.

And.

And I'm her biggest fan.

I'm the one that got her into doing stuff.

She was five years old at Hollywood Kids on Eastern Avenue in Henderson, and she started there, and.

And so I cry every time she's in her performance to this day.

I ball every time I get it right.

And so.

But I've told her I've had a long talk with her about this, and I've said, honey, if you want to go to UNLV or UNR are both amazing state schools in Nevada, where we live.

If you want to go there, awesome.

But what do you want to go for?

Like, if you want to be a doctor, a lawyer, a certified financial planner, an accountant, whatever, an engineer, something specific.

You're going to go on for more secondary education further.

But it's not worth it if you don't know what you want to do.

Let's take the money that we're going to use for college.

Let's buy an income property together.

Yeah, let's find income property.

And you're gonna, at the age of 18 or 19, live either upstairs or next door to your tenant.

You're gonna learn basic plumbing, basic electricity, all this, like how you did this, this studio.

I want my daughter to learn all of that.

That's why I did it, is I started buying property on my own.

So my dad growing up, who actually has an office in the hall from where we are, you might actually see him pop in.

So you see like a Danny DeVito looking dude kind of shove you walk in.

That's my dad.

It's very wicked.

He's five.

Five.

But.

But yeah.

So my dad growing up was not handy.

So I started buying investment property and I was like, look, I'm paying these contractors to do things, but I have no idea how much this should cost or how much work this actually is.

So I'll never forget the first time I did it.

A guy was out back sledgehammering concrete and I literally grabbed a sledgehammer and said, I'm going to start doing this.

I wanted to know, first of all, it's a lot more work than you think, but I want every project I did.

It wound up me becoming a general contractor and then me realizing, like, look, like the fear people have of getting started, like anything in life, starting a podcast, starting a new business, getting a new hobby, whatever it might be.

It's the same with a construction project.

That's why you see all these DIYers on social media that are just doing all this work.

They did one, they got some traction, they did another one and they just kept going.

I've told my daughter, I've said, honey, I'm not handy at all, but I will teach myself.

To be handy is my love for you.

And we will do this together if you want.

And you will literally eat rice and beans for 10 years.

But when you hit your 30s and all of a sudden you've got five, six, seven properties that you own debt free and you're leveraging in even more stuff.

I said, by the time you're my age, you have hundreds of properties.

You're done.

Yeah.

And while all of your other friends are who partied all their lives are scraping by and trying to make it to get their pension good or whatever.

You're sitting on millions of dollars of net worth.

Did I ever tell you how I bought my first property?

Your show?

Did we not talk?

Oh, okay.

So I, I couldn't afford property in California, where we're at today.

Right.

Southern California was just expensive.

And I said, okay, well, I have family in Oklahoma.

I can buy out there.

My sister, my mom.

My mom lived outside of Oklahoma City at the time.

I since bought her house in Oklahoma City and they both live next to, like where all my properties are at, which kind of cool.

$204,000 for an 1800 square foot ranch with three bedrooms.

Back then it was 165,100.

I think I paid 165.

145.

My sister could tell you.

She's my real estate agent.

And I put, I put, gosh, I want to say like 5 or something percent down.

It was something very small.

It's awesome.

And I bought a piece of property and it paid me at the time, I want to say it was like 400amonth in free cash flow at the time.

That was fantastic money to me, but it wasn't like life changing.

But that was one property and then I got another property and then every year I'd buy one and then every year I'd buy two.

And up until, frankly probably, I think four, three, four years ago, I decided I'd probably have to go to you on that one.

I was buying two properties a year at least, right.

And I would just buy a property and then the cash flow that I was getting from each one would increase.

And then the ones that I bought originally, I started refinancing when rates went down and that cash flow was, you know, went from 400 to 900.

And now you got meaningful cash flow coming in every single month.

And I think out of all the properties I own, I think I have one that's on interest only.

It's a Bank of America loan, which I really got to think about at some point in time.

And then everything else is amortizing, fully amortizing loan that's paying down.

And as much as I.

So I find myself obsessively, compulsively worrying because I feel like I'm in the prime money making years of my life.

Like I should be making the most money now.

Like, you know, I should be doing that now.

But then I always say to myself, okay, but in reality, I'm in a better position than most because I have this that I did that with.

Yeah.

And to your point, I'll never forget the first property I bought.

I was eating top ramen.

I was living in a place that I couldn't afford to buy blinds for the back space because the sun would wake me every single morning.

I get a sunburn every single morning because it reflect off the water in front of the house.

I just didn't have the money.

And I was worried every single day that one of those properties was gonna.

I was gonna lose it or it's gonna drive me into financial ruin.

And over time, it got better and better.

And the irony is, is I'm an attorney, right?

You know, good for me, I guess.

But that isn't how I made my money.

Most of my net worth came from those properties, investments that I made.

And Hugo, you know, you know, I'm Saeed.

He.

He works with me today.

And he's.

He's one of my closest friends.

He's like a father figure to me.

He's made really good money in banking over the years.

You know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary, and he's got a pretty good reputation in the business.

He's got a pretty significant real estate portfolio.

And he once came to me and I asked him point blank, I said, you know, I want to be like you one day.

And he said, well, let me tell you straight up, nothing you do here at your day job is gonna get you that.

And I'm like, well, what do you mean, you make good money?

And he looked at me and he goes, look, I've had a good career, but it was the investments that I made along the way, many of which were happening when I wasn't making as much money, that have led to me having these assets.

Now, I am preaching that to my kids now because I wish my parents did that to me.

I shouldn't have gone to college.

Yeah.

I went to St.

John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

Sounds sexy.

I stayed a fifth year just to drink more.

I said to my mom, I'm like, we're going to have no recession, Mom.

Can we stay an extra year?

She charged it to get frequent flyer miles so she can go gamble the flamingo once a year for free.

True story.

And so I was a double major.

Political science, communications, journalism.

I mean, nowhere.

I mean, you're kind of using the communication journalism now, right?

I am, but it was all my.

My dad was a Jewish life insurance salesman from Queens, New York.

He taught me.

He taught me everything I know.

We're going to, you Know, we're going to gun shows, selling knives and doing.

He would teach me how to dicker with people when I was 10 years old.

Old.

I learned a lot of that from my dad, who ironically insisted that I go to college, too.

My dad.

My dad and I went to law school together.

I don't know if I told you that.

Really?

You ever seen the movie twins?

Arnold Schwarzenegger, DeVito?

That's you too.

That was us too.

My dad, you know, five foot five, small, he tells everybody's five, eight, and it's me.

And we would go into law school together.

My dad was like the perpetual guy, would sit in front of the class, he'd raise his hand, answer questions.

I mean, he's.

Yeah, at the time he was much younger, but.

And you know, I was in my, I think my mid early 20s, and I was the guy in the back of the class, usually not sobering up from the night before or something.

It was very weird.

That's awesome.

And look, as much as I liked it and I think it gives me a lot of it arms me politically if people come at me, and in this space, you know better than most people will come at you, I can defend myself pretty easily.

Sure, I'm appreciative of that.

But in no way, shape or form did it have anything to do with my financial well, being.

College.

If you ask me, college is the biggest grift in America today, hands down.

Hands down.

I mean, we can see it like, look what's going on on campuses that just like the protests.

Again, you could be pro or anti Jewish.

The fact that they're letting such hatred be spewed, extremism is like, what.

What happened at UCLA last year?

Are you freaking kidding me?

Like, again, I'm.

Again, full disclosure, my dad's Jewish, so I'm partial, but I'm also very much like, I'm free speech.

We're in America, I love my country.

But the fact that the colleges were enabling this to happen and not reacting or reacting fast enough is crazy to me.

And like, when we were younger, it's, you go to college, want a good job, you go to college.

Now I'm talking my kids out of college.

Unless, again, with a caveat of there's some specific thing.

Like, my son is 9 and he's in gate, which is gifted and talented.

I was in gate, right?

You look at your future right here, brother.

So he's done then.

Mazel tov.

I love it.

I don't know that it's a good thing.

I love it because like right now, like, well, his last week of school is now, but like, they've done geocaching robotics with like these.

These really cool Legos that they get.

They did 3D printing.

He loves that stuff.

They usually teach him a second language in gate as well.

Spanish, usually.

So that's what he's there.

And he's got two more.

Three more years.

Two more years left at the school he's at.

Then he can go to a science and technology magnet school for like seventh and eighth grade.

And I'm going to talk to his mom about it because those are really.

Cool, by the way.

Right.

I don't know if you've seen them yet.

He would love.

I think I've talked to him about it and he's like, I'm interested bodies where they have an open house.

Next year we'll go check it out.

If he wants to go to school for Engine, he says he wants to be an astronaut.

Okay.

Jack Fargo wants me an astronaut.

And by God, if that's what he wants to do, I will.

I will eat.

I will go back and eat ramen, you know, and whoever I have to do to help give him the education.

Then he can go and be debt free to go ahead and go off and do his thing.

It's such a, like a step up to be debt free.

I mean, I paid.

I think I got out of law school and I think my student loans in total were like 2,500amonth or something.

You know how wild that was for a guy who was just trying to.

I mean, that's my mortgage payment today is 1700amonth.

It's incredible how much I was paying when I got out of school.

Yeah.

Now couple that with what's going on now.

People coming out of college with that college debt, they can't afford a home.

They have to pay rent, and it's crazy.

Where do they go from here?

I was literally talking to our cleaning lady that came over the other day, and she said when me and my husband first came over to the States, we were Both making under $10 an hour and we were able to afford a home.

Yeah.

And so that's the problem though is like, wow.

Yeah.

Going to school used to be a guarantee dignity middle class.

But that guaranteed middle class also had benefits then that we don't have now.

You can afford a home.

You could afford the same car everybody else in your street car could afford, you know, and you didn't have like this other life being flaunted in front of you.

But you got pensions.

20 years at a job, you got a pension.

Typically now you're lucky to get that if you work for the state or the government in some way, shape or form.

And even then those are under threat in some cases.

My.

My mom, who's.

She passed away two years ago and she had a place and.

Thank you.

And it was.

I mean, it was awful.

She was someone that worked hard and we did real estate development.

And so we had a guy came in and bought all of our property in Cannongo Lake.

We had for millions.

And so he paid for it, a lot of it, in cash in CBICO Topsider shoeboxes.

He was an Italian produce vendor.

We claimed everything, but he paid in cash for a lot, like three to $400,000 down payments in boxes of 20s and 50s bundled.

And she lived off that for years.

For years.

I'm sure she did.

That was her thing.

And that was great.

But I remember telling her, I'm like, mom, your generation is kind of the last generation of teachers or people that work for utility their whole lives and get a pension.

Not only that, but now this is.

So I'm obviously a hire in this economy and other economies, and I've been this way for a long time, but I look at resumes.

It used to be that if you had like that long tenure at a company, society was like, oh, my God, Jeff is a loyal employer.

Stability, he's stable.

He's going to stay with us because when the Rothschilds and Vanderbilts, they built this ecosystem that we now call American, you know, corporate America, they wanted the person to raise their hand and want to work their way up the corporate ladder.

Now you're looked at as a liability.

Oh, Jeff can't be that talented because he's with his company.

He's lazy, complacent.

He'd be.

He'd be hopping around, getting more money, you know, job to job, every three to four years if he was talented.

And you're like, how did we go from that extreme to that extreme?

It's, it's.

It's the Adderall society that we live in now.

I blame social media.

Technically, I guess you and I are part of the problem of the ecosystem now.

That people.

God damn it.

And that's it for the higher standard.

Thanks, everybody.

Support our sponsors.

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Thank you so much.

We're Adderall for your life.

But.

But it's weird.

It's.

It's just, it's again, we live in such a transparent culture now.

Everything's on social media every.

Like kids now.

Like back when I, my, my daughter loves for me to tell her stories.

Like back when I was in school, there were not cell phones.

I graduated in 87.

There's no cell phones.

And if you had one, you were a drug dealer.

We would talk about fight.

Fights would happen.

Nowadays, if there's fights, it's on.

It's on X.

You see, because there's a million kids with their phones out.

Yeah.

You know, doing stuff.

And kids are so aware now that like my daughter goes to these birthday parties.

Back when I was a sophomore, junior in high school, there was a keg with a red solo cup.

And you're sitting there and they're playing Skynyrd and you're having a great time.

Now there's no booze, there's no drugs.

There's.

They're, they're karaoke, they're swimming.

Usually someone has a pool.

It's in a nice neighborhood and the parents are there, but you don't meet the parents.

That's embarrassing to your kids.

Like where I was like growing up, my parents would walk me up to the door and you know, Fargo's, Meet the Flanagans.

Fern and Fred Flanagan.

Fern Flanagan.

Thank you.

And so that was.

And when I remember asking my daughter like a year ago, I said, so, honey, I'm going to go in.

No, you're not.

Why not?

No, it's my friend that's going to embarrass me.

Dad.

What?

You're my daughter and I'm giving these people oversight of you for a two hour period and I'm not going to meet them.

And the world is a more corrupt place now than it's ever been before, ever.

Chris.

But I'm like, okay.

And so now I'm the guy that I drive my kid there and I go at the right time and I have her on Find my right where she is at all times.

Yeah, I'm looking to see where she is.

But we are so different now in terms of connectivity now everything is the phone.

Is it, is it Generation Z or why?

What is if you're like 18, if you're like 13 to like in your early 20s, right now there's an infographic that came up.

Hook me up with that one.

What's.

It's.

I think it's like maybe Gen Y or Gen Z have the record now of most.

Most of them are getting fired because there was an infographic that came up about it on somewhere online.

Baby boomers 1946.

96Z.

I think so.

I think it's Z.

I think it's, It's Gen Z.

1995 to 2000.

They're.

They're getting fired the most because of.

Not.

They don't take criticism well.

Not showing up to work on time.

All the things, all the.

And there's a couple of ones too.

There was a lady that got fired for working at Equinox.

You hear about this?

She showed up late 48 times in a 10 month period.

This is on Rogan too.

I think at one point in time she won like $11 million.

Yeah, she would make $11 million in five lifetimes.

No, not at Equinox.

Not an Equinox.

I mean, they take seven.

If you're a trainer there, they take 70% of your income.

You were late 48 times in 10 months.

I.

Don't be wrong.

I'm not.

I'm not.

But she sued for racism and she was an African American woman.

She won.

I mean, I just.

The paradigm has gotten so weird.

But who's the judge?

Like, it's, that's, that's bananas.

And was the judge.

There you go.

Robin Europe, a former Equinox employee won an $11.25 million lawsuit against luxury gym chain claiming she was fired due to race and gender discrimination.

What's that thing above the O?

What's that called?

Do you know what those two dots are?

Oh, I don't know.

I bet before the lawsuit she was just a regular Robin and she changed it to be something fancy when she got that like, I am a Robin.

See?

And you got to like roll your roll the R's.

Robin.

I'm Robin.

I'm Robin.

I'M worth $11 million.

You're Mr.

Omar.

But it's just, it's up is down and down is up.

And that's like getting back to like with dad pod.

We're just talking about, you know, and I'm, I'm an older guy.

My co host is, is, is old at heart.

Don't make yourself old because he's an old soul.

All right, True.

I just say cut me in half and count how old.

How old is he by the way you coast?

He is 37.

Okay.

Yeah.

Wow.

Brandon's like 37.

38.

Like size your age.

Jesus.

Yeah, but.

And he's, he's so good and insightful on stuff.

I would not have guessed he was.

That young and, and knows he's an old soul.

Yeah, yeah.

And so there we will talk.

We have a little show prep and we have like a Google Doc that goes back and forth with some stuff.

And then we've got our laptops open when we're talking.

But then when we start hitting stuff, we just go, yeah, yeah, why don't we go?

And we just riff?

And he's good because he's such a massive audience.

Sometimes he'll live stream, which is also a great thing to do for your.

To get your numbers up.

So people be asking questions.

Well, 40 or 50 people on.

And they're asking questions or validating what we're saying and so we're recognizing them.

That also, that helps a lot.

There's a dad.

There's dad pod.

And if you look, hit reels, notice we have 4400 followers.

And then look at our traction for our reels.

So that means we should have.

Those are fantastic.

We should have 400.

And instead because of.

He has good numbers and I have good numbers in terms of our audience.

Keep scrolling down, please.

There's one at 500,000.

10,000 on everything.

Keep going.

300,000.

Keep going.

There's another 500,000 and 150.

That's going to hit a million.

Keep going down.

My dad's must be the asshole in the house also.

Very true.

And then we've got one at.

We've got one over a million, too.

It's on there somewhere, huh?

1.2 million.

So why dads must enjoy suffering.

Yeah, true.

So when you look at us and you go, well, wait a minute.

How again, this.

Is this inside baseball for people?

Yeah, we only have 4,400 or, you know, over 4,000 people.

Those are fantastic numbers.

It's because of.

I have a decent audience and Brandon has a massive audience.

But even with his say, if he has 400,000 followers, that means between hybrid, for us, anything 50 to 70,000 is performing well.

If it's at 100,000 or more, it's outperforming.

If it's 500 to a million, it's viral.

Given given an aggregate of both of our audiences, it's interesting to see that.

You quantify because everybody talks about going viral all the time and it's so, like amorphous and ambiguous.

Fluid.

Yeah, very fluid.

Nobody really has a handle on what.

It depends on your organic audience.

Yeah.

Like I could do.

The organic audience is often hidden from a lot of these accounts.

I could do a collab with Kim Kardashian.

And that means.

Well, then every single reel should be 3 to 5 million views minimum.

Yeah, you know, this is her engagement.

Rate and that's her engagement rate, you know, and so for, for me, it looks good.

I mean, I'm at a 6% engagement rate.

That's pretty good.

You know, it's other people, though, with, you know, 11 million, 10 million followers with 0% engagement rate.

That to me is still.

Honestly, this is going to sound like I'm hating on the guy and I'm going back to it, but you would have to really work to have that low of an engagement.

I mean, that is statistically so improbable, given the amount of people that he's had on his show, that that is hard to do.

I mean, you have to have an immensely fake following.

It is a finite focus and drive and desire to mediocrity.

That's what it is.

Or the short path to success.

The short path to success.

And again, the thing is, take all that out.

He's a brilliant podcaster.

Like this.

I don't not believe it.

I mean, I get it.

The stuff he knows about podcasting is mental level stuff.

The conversation we had was so good that no one's ever going to see.

Chris, but he's also hyper young and he wanted it fast and he didn't want to take his time.

Plus, I'm guessing.

So he rents out a studio space and this is probably worthwhile to talk about in a lot of.

Oh, Kim Kardashian, she has an engagement rate of 0.28%, which I would say is probably a more common engagement rate.

Well, because in 356 million, that's pretty accurate.

Yeah, I would think that that's a pretty accurate number for her.

If you scroll down and she's lost 300,000.

Look at all these.

She's lost.

There's.

I would be hard pressed to think that she paid for her audience.

No, but what happens.

What happens is.

And so I've had people in the space that have made this clear is they.

She will get lots of fake accounts because other people are working with her, trying to pump up her accounts, number one, because they want to see their product successful or they're just trying to keep up.

Her PR company's just trying to ramp it up and keep it going and keep it going from a.

From a numbers perspective.

But if you think about her, it was great, like kind of corollary.

She's not the one doing that.

There's somebody else driving it.

She doesn't do anything.

She's got assistance for the assistance.

Right.

You need to get your.

I think it's after you get your email verified, then it gives you 180 day look.

Okay.

Which is really cool.

You can pay more and get the 365.

I'll get that eventually.

Vegas Starfish Jenny, who's a.

She's a million followers organic on.

On Instagram.

She's a massive audience across.

She's a 4 million probably total sweet woman.

People hate her.

They love her.

Her and Vegas Paulie C.

Go at it like Catfields and McCoy.

She is a Vegas lifestyle and entertainment content creator.

So she'll do restaurants, hotels, she'll.

But she gets a bad rap sometimes from people like, oh, she's gone in and doesn't tip and gets a free meal.

I've talked to her.

She's been on my podcast three times.

I've had her on.

I've told.

We talked off camera.

I'm like, you really stiff people.

It's like, no, actually tip like 3 to $400 when you know the bill was comped.

I over tip.

That's just people spew hatred about her and.

But she's somebody like if you, if you pulled up Vegas Starfish, I think is what she is on Instagram and she's the one that told me about years ago, she told me about Social Blade.

She was like, you need to go on Social Blade to look up anybody you want to talk to.

Yep, that's her biggest starfish.

This is her full time gig as.

Soon as the Drew Barrymore show probably.

Okay.

So that's probably where a lot of her following came from.

You get national coverage like that.

She's gone viral several times and she puts out just solid.

Followed by Jeff Fargo and Joe Rogan.

Hello.

Those are two podcasts right now.

There you go.

And she's someone that she is nice to a fault.

She's a super sweet lady and if.

You look at how simple her thumbnails are, they're very consistent.

She's the one that taught me see how you see the different like night of fun under 100.

I now started doing that a few months ago because of her.

Well, these also work both on TikTok and on Instagram pretty well.

It's very.

And that's something that we'll talk about that once I started doing this, I saw my numbers starting to go up because now that becomes a look in.

If someone's scrolling.

They now have like, oh, it's like the beginning of a chapter.

I know what, I know what that reel is about.

Saeed and I used to do that too.

And then we Just didn't see the conversion numbers.

And then we switched over and we've tried to play with some numbers.

What's interesting, say pull up Chris Williamson's account.

I like his not saying this is a strategy for someone like you or I.

Fine.

I think that.

So if you look at Chris Williams account, he lets the cinematography and the beauty of the shots really sell it.

But he also has these big ass guests on.

He's great.

I love him.

When he was on Rogan, he's so good.

So good, so good.

He gets a lot of hate for somebody who I think doesn't deserve it.

But he.

So if you look at his shots, they're almost always cinematic and beautiful unless he's doing something remote.

Yeah.

This one's one of my favorite ones.

This podcast in particular.

Was he the one he said on Rogan that he said that people are fatter than pigs in the United States now.

Like, I think that was him.

Like, like, like US obesity is, is exceeded a pig.

So his shot's really interesting.

And he does something that I don't think most people catch.

And you have to catch.

You can see it with Naval's here.

So first of all, the cinematography is always beautiful.

The quality kind of goes up and down with some of his shots when they post on social media.

But the actual show itself looks like a movie.

But he uses very small overlays in text which draw you in enough if you're listening to it on mute so you can understand what's being said.

But there's nothing fancy here.

There's no pop up images.

There's nothing here.

The cinematography speaks for it and the shots speak for it.

And he has no problem putting text over the face.

Interesting.

But watch the camera.

He has it moving slightly with the eyes.

So when the guest looks a certain way the camera will pivot left or right or up or down.

The camera follows it just a tiny bit.

Very interesting.

And what that does is that draws your human subconscious, draws you into it without you knowing because you're following the camera moving with the eyes.

That's great.

It's such a psychological like weaponization.

Yeah.

And closes real quick.

But he.

Wow.

So there's little like nuances like that that I've been trying to catch.

Catch.

Because So I went down this path a long time ago about how the, the guys who created the infinite scroll, their sole purpose in creating the infinite scroll was to keep you engaged in the apps.

Yeah.

So when they went to.

I think it was Facebook back in the day.

And now instagram they said, okay, if you make them click to go see next or have a button that they push to see more content, they will drop off, gone.

That's all the human mind needs to stop.

And the infinite scroll, where you scroll and just more keeps coming up, keeps you engaged.

You never have to think about stopping, so you just never stop.

It's little nuances like that that play on the psychology of humans that I think are the difference between, like, some of these bigger creators.

Granted, he has a platform.

It's going to.

His number is going to be big no matter what.

You know, he's been on Rogue.

He's been on all those shows, but it's little things like that, like the following, the eyes and the cinematography that I think there's.

I think that's what the new level of content is going to be for guys like us.

I think it's also.

It's always be testing.

Yeah, Always be testing.

We do testing.

Your thumbnails, your camera angles, audio quality, everything is.

You're always testing.

You're never complacent with.

Oh, well, this was good because it went viral.

And let's just stick with this.

No, no, no, no.

You ever weary?

I don't know.

I see a lot of creators now.

Who's that wilderness guy?

There's a guy who.

I watch his videos all the time.

I see them on, like, YouTube.

It comes up.

He's like a wilderness content creator.

God, I can't remember his name.

He just announced that at the end of the year.

No, no, it's a different guy.

Oh, YouTube guy.

I saw that.

Yeah.

He just announced that he's gonna retire.

He's done.

And people were like, what are you talking about?

You got millions of followers.

He's like, I'm gonna be a consultant.

He just thought, like, spend time with his family.

Yeah.

Because he didn't.

He liked the stigma his family was getting up and.

Yeah.

And I totally respect where he's coming from.

Why?

It sounds like something that I would say.

Do you ever worry that the constant need to be watching and create and grow can go from, like, mental engagement to exhaustion?

Yeah.

It's scary, right?

Oh, yeah.

That's what.

For me, the balance is consulting.

Oh, I see that.

Okay, I gets it.

I can unplug but still feed that part of me that loves that growth, the content growth part.

I do it now vicariously through my clients.

I love that.

I.

That's.

I love to see my clients.

Outdoor boys.

That's it.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Yeah, I know.

Fine.

I love to See my clients go viral on stuff or to see something pop more than my own content pop, because I love it for them.

And I had a little spot, that little piece I played in that.

I don't care about that, though.

At my age, my ego's.

I'm done.

I'm done.

But I want to see them succeed.

I want to see them get in front of an audience.

I want to see them.

We post a piece of content for them that we're like, oh, this is not going to go anywhere.

Next thing you know, viral, gone.

I love that.

So, you know, I just maybe.

Obvious answer, but do you.

Do you regret staying in the title business as long as you did?

No, no, no.

Everything happens for a reason, because you're.

Very clearly passionate about this.

And I get it.

I am, too.

I.

I did not think when I started podcasting that I would.

Somebody else told me I should do it.

Oh, you got a good voice.

I was like, all right, I'll give it a.

Give it a run.

I didn't think that I would love it as much as I do.

Yeah, it's the best.

I regret waiting so long to start.

I needed a time to incubate.

I mean, I started.

I've been on social media since AOL back in the early 90s.

Okay.

Like, I was getting back when.

I mean, I.

I thought I was having cyber sex with a leggy blonde that played volleyball for ucla.

Meanwhile, it was a morbidly beast obese man with skin tags from Spanish Harlem.

Good for you.

But no, didn't care.

That's.

That's my experimental phase.

We talk about probably with my kids down the road.

And so.

And so somewhere out there is a.

Record of those chats.

Now it's.

It's gone to where I was.

I taught spin classes back in the 2014, 2015.

Really?

A friend of mine came into one of my classes, Krista Whitley.

She came in and she goes, hey, I want to do a thing called a live stream on this platform called Periscope.

And I was like, what is that?

And this is back when, like, I was Facebook.

I was on Instagram before Zuck bought it.

I've been in big social media.

She goes, yeah, I'll probably have three or four hundred people be watching your spin class while you're.

You know, while you're.

You're teaching.

Lo and behold, three or four hundred people did.

I would have never guessed that about you.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, I was Vegas spin guy.

Stop it.

Google it.

Does that slot there.

Does it exist?

Oh, yeah.

There's.

There's gonna be some YouTube videos.

You were Vegas Spin Guy.

I had a disco ball in my spin room at the Henderson Multi Generational Center.

I would have never.

Oh, my God.

Thank you.

Actual 23 photos.

There's a Yelper.

Hold on.

Is that you?

Yeah.

I love a class as Vegas Spin Guy.

Go.

Go to YouTube.

Vegas spin guy.

And how long did you do this for?

2, 3 years.

I lost £70.

I started the back of the class.

Okay.

Worked all the way up front, got my certification, took over the entire thing.

Okay.

Some of you were super proud.

That's what I do.

Yeah, no, I get it.

That's what I do.

So if you go to.

It's got to still be live.

If you do.

That's not me.

Vegas Bend guy is now, apparently, slot machines.

Vegas Matt's big.

That's hilarious.

They came up.

If you do.

No, no, it's fine.

We don't see it.

So.

So I just want to see you in a peloton outfit.

Oh, you.

It's there.

The whole kit.

I had a First American title kit.

Did you really?

Oh, God, yes.

Because my boss was an iron man.

He did, like, 10 iron men.

So a bunch of us that either did spin or were cyclists, we'd buy kits that said First American title.

And you guys, you went in and you rocked it while you were there.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Oh, yeah.

But we have playlists and did the whole thing, man.

Loved it.

And so I started doing that, and I started going around as a title rep, going to open houses and walking and going, hey, I know you already use Chicago title.

I'm Jeff Fargo with Fatco.

I could probably get about 500 to 1,000 people to see your open house right now.

What do you mean?

I'm like, hold on a second.

Let me get my phone.

All right.

Better yet, give me your phone.

And we're going to go ahead.

I'm going to set you up with Facebook Live, because when it first came out, I was one of the first ones to get it, and people didn't.

Understand it when it came out, I.

Had no idea what it was.

I set them up right there at the open house.

And I go, all right, take your one sheet with all your info about the house.

Walk me through.

Like, I'm an interested buyer right now, and people are going to come on and ask questions, and I'm going to ask the questions on behalf of them.

And I did that.

And I was.

By my third year at Fatco, I was in the top 1% in the nation and won their DPK award.

Went to Key Biscayne, Florida with my wife at the time for five days.

Wow.

Yeah.

And so that's how I.

So I was the.

The digital social media title rep in Vegas for years.

I was it.

There was other people tried, then they just not at my level because I had more reps than them and.

But then I was screaming in an echo chamber because it was.

I said, working for a title company is like working for the Mormon church.

You're working for a bunch of old, out of touch white men that just have no clue with reality and so.

Many industries like that.

And so I was constantly screaming in an echo chamber because of compliance or you have to get this approved before you can do anything.

And I was like, I'm done here.

From a media marketing perspective.

Yeah.

And I'm done.

And so I need to go through all of that.

And I mean, fidelity title help pay for my podcast.

The first 20 or 30 episodes of Fargo Talks is me talking to realtors.

Boring as shit.

But I got more experience and I got to be a better podcaster.

Kris.

Every time I got to sit across from somebody, I got my reps in.

That's how Satan and I started.

We just, you know, started talking to each other in the garage.

Yeah.

And we were very close and very sweaty, might I add.

But, you know, you get the reps in and after a while you can get over that almost imposter.

Like, because at the beginning, you don't know if anyone listen to you.

You don't know.

And so it's just kind of morphed into now it's a variety podcast and got a second one, about to start a third one.

And I love just helping people now all over the country, I'm talking to people to say, well, you want to do podcast growth?

Okay.

The first thing I would say to them is 0 to 10, how committed are you to this?

This, if anything, below an 8, I'm not your guy, so don't spend your money with me.

What I told myself, and Saeed knows this because we did it together, was the first six months we recorded this show.

I didn't put anything out.

I just recorded.

I had.

I had one mic, I had my garage, and it was me talking to myself effectively for six months.

And then I interviewed people and I had literally six months of content ready to go on day one.

Did I love all of it?

No.

Did I use all of it?

Except for a couple episodes here and there.

I thought the people I was interviewing were disingenuous.

But I knew when I went out that I had six months, and I knew I'd already beaten the curve of podcasters that came out before I even started to announce.

Announcing the show.

And then it's leveled up into this, into this and this.

And frankly, that's how you and I became close, is because the podcasting space brought us together.

It's a really cool thing to be able to talk to people.

I love it.

You know.

If I was to win the Powerball and have a hundred million dollars in the bank, I'd still be doing this.

Yeah, I think I would, too.

I wouldn't change.

I'd still be doing this.

It's just.

I'd be flying you to the Seychelles.

I'd be coming with you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we could wear whatever you want.

Well, that's you, me, and Saeed in our loinclaws, just, you know, sitting there with a three mic, you know, podcast.

We could do that.

Just riffing from a.

And we would also.

We'd get one of those, like, huts that you turn the light on and there's the glass, the convex glass, and all the fish are there underneath, swimming.

And there's us just hanging out, drinking our little, like, Mai Tai's or rum runners.

I could be bought.

Yep.

I could be bought.

Yeah.

Slides in.

Listen, baby, I'd love to stay at home with you, but this is work.

We got to go for work.

But it's.

It's.

To me, this isn't a job.

It's fun.

You know, when my.

I watch my friend who I admire and respect put blood, sweat, and tears into this room.

Oh, his place.

And.

And, you know, and.

And I'm flattered to be one of your first guests on, you know, on higher standard 2.0.

You know, man, I love this.

Bringing you in here was.

This is going to sound cliche and I really, sincerely mean this, so don't let it sound like.

Like I'm being sarcastic.

I'm not bringing you in and getting you here and getting the studio ready for you to arrive was a huge milestone moment for me.

It really was.

Not just because of your subject matter expertise and because we're friends is because I wanted.

When you.

And this is terrible because the guest we had on before was a great guest.

No respect to him, but I wanted the lighting to be perfect for you.

I wanted the environment to be perfect for you.

And there's still some things that, you know, we didn't quite get done, but it meant a lot to me to present to you what we could be, because you know the space and you know what, you know what it could be and you know the show.

So it's wonderful.

Thank you for being here.

Oh, it's my pleasure to hop on a plane and come do this and see my friend and spend time and, you know, this is great.

I would do this anytime.

It's fun.

Well, Jeff, good, because I'm going to have you come back at some point in time.

We're going to figure out some more, some more things to talk about.

But we got a flight to get you to, and it's a getting to the top of the hour.

We do.

I'm a very busy man.

You are very busy.

Very.

I have a lot going on.

My mom would always say that Jeffrey got a lot going on.

Mom, what are you doing?

You've got, you've got Jeopardy.

And then you got Wheel of Fortune.

Mom at night.

That's all you've got going on.

My mom is the opposite.

Oh, you can call her no matter what time of day.

She's got nothing going on.

It's my sister who's like, oh, my God, I'm so busy.

I'm so busy.

And you're just like, you're like, you're not busy.

You're at the gym.

I can hear the plates smashing.

I have access to your Google calendar.

You have dick.

You have nothing going on right now.

How dare you.

Well, before you go, is there anything you want to plug specifically?

Obviously, this will all be in the show notes anyway.

Oh, I'm good.

Thank you.

You know, you know why I, I, I used to do that at the end of my podcast.

Just food for thought.

If people have lasted this long, they're going to see, like, tagged, like, I'm going to be tagged in stuff I'm going to be at as a collaborator or a tag and all the clips and all that.

And so that's how you can get a hold of me is just do that.

It's Jeff Fargo on Instagram.

Hop on if you want to, but most people aren't going to see this part of the, of the show.

No offense, but they're not going to see it.

What are you talking about?

We've got at least 2% of our audience.

That's like three people that are going to check this out.

Your wife, my wife, Saeed's wife, Saeed's.

Wife, and Rajeel, your wife's wife.

So we got four, actually.

My wife doesn't listen to the show.

We got three of us.

Three.

All right.

Net three.

Gross.

Four.

Net three.

But I just.

Yeah, you know what?

I do this more for having a good conversation with my friend.

If other people want to seek me out and see what I'm doing, great, let them do that.

But this isn't.

To me.

To me, it's disingenuous for me to say, oh, hey, follow me on this platform.

No, I'm more.

I'm here.

I'm here more for you and, you know, and.

And for.

For.

For everyone here.

All the work you've put into this brand and how you've grown to this.

I'm just happy to be here, man.

There's no need to plug anything.

Me, too, man.

I'm happy to be here just as much as you are, frankly.

I'm happy to be here and not be covered in drywall.

I love it.

Yeah, I love it.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Have a good night, everybody.

Saeed, take them out.

Good night, everybody.