Filming Celsius' Biggest Commercial | Evan Nicolini | The Partners Podcast

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Welcome to the Partners Podcast, where you get exclusive behind the scenes access to entrepreneurs who are relentlessly building real profitable companies. Join us as we ask them the hard questions so you can take away the mindset, strategy and tactics that launch them to success. Welcome to the Partners podcast. I'm joined by my good friend here today, Evan Nicolini. What's up? The man, the myth, the legends. If you guys aren't following him already, check him out on Instagram. He's absolutely crushing it. He does commercials, he runs a software company, and he's working on always cool things. And this guy's a funny guy. You should follow his Instagram. He's a little bit of a troll, but that's what I love. One of my favorite quotes is, life is too short to be taken seriously. And if you like people that like to have fun, this guy is the guy to follow.

Wait, how did we meet again?

Did I DM you or you slid in my DMs, I slid in your DMs, dude. I think I slid in your DMs, that's for sure.

Oh, man. What was even your question?

Introduce yourself. What are you working on?

Well, right now. So we just wrapped up on like a really big project for Celsius, which I showed these guys. It was, you know, two months long. Production, heavy in visual effects, is the craziest commercial Celsius has ever done, let alone, I think it'll rank with some stuff Red Bull Gatorade has probably done. And so we just wrapped up on that. And then right now I've just been working on Custom E Signature, this email software company that I've been building for the last, like, actually like a year. I hate to even say I'm remiss to say that, but really, you know, building out two months? Yeah.

Well, you're up to a lot of badass things, to put it shortly. And that was like a six figure production, right?

Yeah.

And this Custom E Signature company, in two sentences, what's the vision?

The vision, How I explain Custom E Signature is like the Instagram verification badge. Like it really is. Like when you see someone with a verified badge have 10,000 followers, you're just like, oh, this person, it's not an obtainable, easily attainable thing. Right. So there's some credibility to that person. With Custom E Signature, it's like the Instagram verification badge for email, you get this sick animated signature, which you don't see anywhere. Like 99% of the time you get an email from that site. Never seen that. And that person feels the inclination to maybe respond and so it increases your response rate.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

So let's, let's time travel. When did you first identify as an entrepreneur? When did you first get into business? I.

Especially in college. Like you were probably saying, where'd you go to college again?

Illinois.

Illinois.

And you majored in marketing? It?

Yeah. Oh really? I did not know that Internet actually.

Had a triple major. International business marketing and it. And it's all bullshit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

What I've learned in like just a few months working with like entrepreneurs. Yeah, like those skill sets. Yeah, those like actual hands on experience and like failing and learning and trying. Yes, dude, I bullshit in my way into college. I didn't learn anything. I just, I faked it.

Imagine if we had Chad GPT Bro, write me an essay.

Yeah.

10 pages long. Here's the prompt. No, I mean I asked because like. Yeah, I mean I went to school. I was like yourself. I didn't double major, but I was aggressively trying to learn everything. And I learned earlier on from my mentor who was the department head of the CTVA department for cinema and he was the president of paramount television for 20 years. He was definitely my mentor and he definitely taught me like the importance of like find the people that like resemble what you're trying to move towards and do because those people will accelerate your growth faster than learning any hard skill. Granted, like I was telling you, hard skills are important. They open up opportunities if you don't already have some foot in the door. But if I know someone like yourself who's already built, you know, aerial canvas and acre partners and they have tried and truth of like, you know, this is how you scale. This is how you go from 10 employees to 50 employees. This is how you make this much money. It's how you deal this that's way more valuable when you have tried experience than some theory. Theory.

Yeah, from college. Exactly. That's, that's myself. I learned more from pushing around a dim sum car which was my first job working with a old lady saying, are you on a dim sum? Yeah, that I did, you know, my first year of college because it was like real world experience, interacting with people, customers, dealing with like management.

Yeah.

Trying to like, you know, stand up for myself because I was just like, dude, I'm breathing in fumes right now. I don't know if this passes the safety, you know, like marks. And just learning how to like hold my own in society is way more valuable than, you know, trying to plagiarize Essay like with Chat tv.

Well, I mean, like even when, I mean when I first met you, and I met you at the Aerial Canvas office, you know, there was even things, you know, after we talked that like I took that into my business and it helped me like even just, you know, your advice on just like certain things in business, about communicating in certain styles and budgets and you know, since then I've met some like, you know, very high level incredible people, especially entrepreneurs that are like genuine at heart, you know, like, oh yeah, I run a 50 million dollar business, but you would never know I fuck with those people because like you meet the reverse. And it's like, I don't want to talk someone. I feel like it's just fake.

Yeah.

And you know, I took some things you said and planned my business. I've said some stuff that helped other people and I love that back and forth. That's why you and I know each other. Because whether I shot yet. You shot me a dm. I shot a dm. Whatever is like, I've had instances like that that are so random. Like, wow, I'm so glad I fucking met.

And now we're good buddies. We're trusted advisors. I know we almost worked on a project together in the NFT space. But you know, we all know what happened to that industry.

Yeah, that's not good.

Yeah, for now. Well, I'm sure it'll turn the page one day. So let's talk about your journey. You went from college and then I checked out your resume. You were the CMO of Hyperion. How the fuck did you go from a college graduate to a CMO position? Were you even qualified or did you bullshit your way in?

So that's what's funny, actually, I'm glad you said it. Cause I was not really qualified. But one thing, and you've even said this to me in the people you look to hire, I was just that person. If I don't know how to do it, I will fucking learn how to do it. Because like I always wanted big things like yourself. I wanted to learn a lot in college. I was always like learning like Webflow or After Effects or Cinema 4D. And so, you know, they asked me to do some stuff I didn't know and I learned that shit hella fast. And they didn't know. They didn't know because I learned it so quick that they just did it exactly how they wanted it. But yeah, you know, I got out of college, they were a smaller company, probably like 50 people or so. And my buddy Michael Showed me the car one day on FaceTime and I was like, I thought he was just bullshitting me and he showed me the car. I'm like, that doesn't even. I thought it was CG on FaceTime. And so yeah, he introduced me to CEO and I went in there one day, they checked out some of the work I did in college, which honestly wasn't even like anything crazy compared to now, but they saw value in it. And I look back on them, appreciate that now, gave me a shot and I, yeah, I read their mark, I led their marketing for like two years. And you know, all cross channel, like website, social TV, you know, events. It was cool.

Back to Hyperion. When, when you were the CMO at Hyperion, what was like your biggest challenge? Like, you always figure stuff out. But what, what was the actual.

Like, that's great. Yeah. And honestly, managing people like, you know, it, you know, in college you work on a team project and there would always be someone lagging. And I thought when I get in my career, you know, people are invested in their career and no, it's like a school, college project or people who don't do their job and you know, reprimanding someone in a politeful way, just telling them, hey, your performance is not meeting what we need it to be is not like the easiest thing. And that was tough for me because I'm a very agreeable person. I'm not a disregardable person. So I had to learn the trait of like, you know, you know, everybody can't like you as much as I want that.

But yeah, and then sometimes you gotta carry the team. I remember I turned in a project for my entire group. I did the whole project and they got, they all got a minuses, dude.

But I love, but that type of person goes back to what I was saying about like, no, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'll learn it. Like, you won't even, even if other people aren't doing the job, you're not gonna let that be the detriment of your success. Like, you'll fucking carry the job.

It's a sense of ownership that you, you don't get, you know, from people that I think are unsuccessful. They, they brag about like luck. They brag about like, I had someone who literally like, I'm not gonna call him out by his first name, but he called me late at night, he's like, hey, I love to go to your, your place and get this assignment done. I kind of need your help. And I'm like, yeah, sure, come over. And then five months later, he was bragging to my friend how he stole my, my paper and turned it in and just plagiarized it a little bit. And I'm just like, why would you brag about fucking stealing shit? Like, if I were into someone, I know that would tell me and that if I really wanted to, I could be like, you suck, like, let me get you expelled, you know, or something like that. But it didn't really matter to me because I actually, I also was a cheater in college, so he was cheating for the best cheater. It's like, you know, like I cheated because, you know, there's one thing to like cheat at someone else's expense.

Yeah.

And there's another thing to cheat to gain a competitive advantage. And we've all, we all know the saying great artists steal, right?

Yeah.

What does that mean to you? Great artists steal? Because I know, you know, like, you take a lot of inspiration from a lot of people.

I mean, yeah, I was going to say that. I mean, yeah, that would roll over into like learning what other people are doing in my industry, typically people who are doing, you know, 5, 10 x what I'm doing and hearing what they're doing and you know, politely taking certain methods they have or reframing that method and they wouldn't be talking to you anyways if they, you're not going to share this information. They didn't expect you to use it.

And sometimes you just ask for it. Like you'll call me and be like, hey, what's up?

Yeah, tell me, what do I do? Yeah.

So you mentioned you had a mentor, you know, earlier in your career.

Yeah.

What about now? Do you have like a coach or mentor you work with? If not, like, how do you, how do you, like, how do you learn and grow?

I did appreciate in college when I had one mentor. Coming from one source, it's very consistent. It created a very succinct identity because it was coming from one person. But nowadays I love talking with yourself and you know, 10, 20 other agency owners. I know people in like software. I'm big into SaaS now because I can even see it reflecting on the way I talk, the things I know about. It's so many, like I don't know anything about freaking finance or real estate. But now I know like a decent amount because I'm just like spreading into different areas. So it's nice to have a good network, not like a mentor, but like a really solid network that you're tight with, like, a mentor.

Yeah, that's pretty awesome. That's. That's definitely how I see it. And actually, I get the same benefits from teaching. Like, the students I work with, I'm actually learning from at the same time. And that's my favorite part about teaching is like, my. I'm always going to be a student, I'm always learning, and I'm always going to aspire to teach. And luckily, I'm in a position where there's agency owners that do trust me, like yourself. I'm glad you called me for advice. I'm like, evan Nicolini calls me for advice. Damn.

Give you that dopamine.

I was like, I'll give it to him for free. He's accomplished. That's like Michael Jordan calling LeBron James. And I'm like, yeah, I can help you out with basketball. Yeah, but that's cool. So what happened after Hyperion? Like, tell me about your journey. Did you quit? Did you get fired? Like, what happened?

Yeah, that's a good question now. So I. After two years, it was a great experience, but I definitely had this. It was a really cool company. I had just a different creative itch to do different industries, different projects. And so after two years, I felt good. I took some of the learnings from that company how to manage people, how not to manage people as well. And I just was like, yo, I'm gonna do my own thing at that point. Geographically, it didn't have to be somewhere specific. So San Diego, I love. I was like, I'll just move to San Diego and figure it out. I started my LLC two years ago with Nickelini Productions. Scaled that, you know, within the first year with a very slow growth. You know, that the next year was like, not. Not even the same. It's like, not even a comparison. And then, then I started Custom E Signature because there was some success, some really big success in that. And so now I'm building that platform with the team out in India. That's freaking awesome. And. And, yeah, just do the same shit every day.

I love it. When it comes to, like, growing your own business. Right. You went from working for a big company that had, like, funds and capital to doing it yourself. What's the first, like, what advice do you have for entrepreneurs that might be switching industries, might be jumping into something new or do something for themselves? What is something that you need to keep in mind? Or, like, what's the best 1, 2, 3 pieces of advice for an entrepreneur in their first year?

Yeah, I mean, you'll learn really Quickly, if you're an entrepreneur or not. I feel like, like I've even had second guessing of myself, like if I'm built as an entrepreneur, because there's times where it's super stressful and I, like low key, might want to give up a little bit or something. And that's the voice in my head, but I keep going.

So perseverance.

Yeah.

You know, being relentless.

Yeah, absolutely.

Relentless is a characteristic. Being relentless is a characteristic every entrepreneur needs to have.

Well, I want to say too, I'm not like that. Like, seriously, I'm super agreeable and I don't necessarily have that relentless mentality. But I will say with the people I've met and the experiences I've had to go through, it's just like growing pains. Like I adopted that and it's changed my entire approach to business.

Yeah, how's that shifted in the last few years? You went from not having that much work to doing six figure productions, landing easily, like projects that are multiple, you know, five figures. How, how has your mindset shifted? Like, what were you like two, three years ago? Who was Evan Nicolini like three years ago? And who is, who are you now?

I mean, I think then it was just kind of like, honestly, for a lot of people in my industry, for like, like video production or commercial space, they just undervalue themselves. It's that, it's that simple. You're a creator. You're a creator at heart. And you know, if you're lucky, you have a business mentality, you have relentlessness built into you and you know, you're good at negotiating, but for me, just underpricing stuff. And when I met people like yourself and other people on my network that were like, yo, whoa, you charge that much, you should be charging 10x that, 20x that. And then I hear other people saying this consistently and I'm like, I just have to do the complete opposite of what I think.

Yeah, I mean, I think you have to challenge your own beliefs because if you don't, you're just stuck. Right. There's no way you can grow if you think you know everything and you don't know what you don't know until someone slaps you with the invoice and says, for sure, I did this and I sold it for this and you did this and you sold it for this. What's wrong with you?

I was gonna say even like advice wise, because I was talking about this on Instagram the other day, like the three biggest things, even when you brought me to like, well, other People I've seen running successful business was like knowing when to scale. Excuse me, because you talked about scale and you said one thing I loved. You were like, well, sometimes scale is not the best thing to do. And that was a great point in time to hear that because I was hearing from everybody, scale, scale, scale. And that means like, bring on a team, take all this overhead, you know, find yourself $60,000 in debt on credit card debt or whatever. That was kind of like. And you told and you put it. Because I wasn't like, you know, a year ago I didn't have like a big team and I wanted to like scale. And I realized like, if I had done what I wanted to, which is like just hiring people, I don't think that would have went well. So like, knowing the right time and place to scale and also delegating has changed my entire life. Like, you know, getting a $50,000 project, let's say, you know, in the past you'd be like, oh, just make 80% margin and do all of it myself. But then I can't work in custom E Signature. I can't focus on my personal life, can't focus on any other projects.

And so fucking opportunity cost it is. Yeah. Like, you think you're making it, but what are you giving up?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get so dialed in the client services, you can't build. It'll. It's like a, it's like a false sense of growth. You know, like, personally, you're growing but the people are around you aren't really growing because you're the one doing all the work and. Yeah, but that's the ones decision. You can stay that way or you can or you can build something. And that's what I want to do. What I learned through you is like I wanted to build something bigger with a bigger team because I started to actually fall in love with like, damn, this person on my team made that much money. That's sick.

Like, you know, you're creating like careers and yeah. You're feeding families and you're building something that is going to stick around.

Yeah.

Even if you might not be there, it's gonna. Building the machine that builds the machine is like one of the coolest concepts I got from Elon is like, it's not just building it, it's building something that can perpetuate.

Yeah.

Evolve and like it's putting things in place where you can see a compound. Like, you know.

Yeah.

It's. You're investing. Right. Correct. The concept of the reason why I never I actually, I love employees because they help me with some, you know, hard, like day to day tasks and not hard but like mundane or repetitive or you know, dealing with customers. I don't mind doing that. But what are you actually building? Right. And the concept of an entrepreneur is you're building something, you're investing your time and energy to create something that can ideally grow with you and with a team and with an industry.

Yeah.

Whereas if you have just a career and you're trading your time for money.

Yeah.

If you don't have any equity, that's where you just cap out.

Yeah. Right. I think a big thing too is like the reason I wanted to become an entrepreneur is, I mean I've learned this now. The real reason is I like long term output, like long term growth. And you know, I worked, you know, I'm 25, so I'm still pretty young. But you know, even when I worked at corporate jobs it just, it definitely taught me like, okay, like my parents, you know, they worked at the same company for 30 years. Right. And that's totally different path. I really, I really want to build something scalable that I can retire when I'm 40 and I'm not going to stop working, I'm going to keep working.

What's retirement look like then? If you're going to keep working, what's retirement look like?

I just want to, I just had small exposure to like what it's like when you make decisions that aren't predicated on money and it's the best decisions you ever make. Like in business, outside of business. Especially for someone like myself. I'm very creative and when I'm not held to a budget or anything financial is when the best shit comes out of me because I'm not held down. Yeah.

So what is it like to.

Be.

Evan Nicolini day to day right now? Like what do you do? Like you mentioned you just finished this six figure production. Yeah. Now you're working on custom E Signature. How do you decide like what to do with your day?

It comes in, it comes in waves. Like sometimes I'm real. If we have some big clients that we cannot like fuck around with, like I'm in client services, like I am working on the projects, working with directors, working with producers, working with our team. But then also, you know, we'll have like little lapse of time where we don't have as much client projects and that's when my team gets aggressively built into building the business. Looking at like last week I was working with my business partner on Just sales automation platforms because we have custom E Signature, tens of thousands of emails from that business. We want to take all those emails, throw it into the sales automation platform and just cycle everything through that. And we already did a blast of like 5000 emails. And the, it's like crazy, like more work than I could even take on really.

So what, what did you, what was the result of that email blast?

Like regarding the email or like you.

Said, there's more work than you could take on. Is it more work in terms of doing it or the return that you got?

The return was like, yeah, I mean, you know, we have a really big, we have a decent client base and custom E Signature, but also just people who fill out a form or submit their email and don't buy one. You know, reach out to people, hey, we saw you came across a custom E Signature. By the way, we also have this production agency that does some incredible work like Nickelney Productions. Our E Signature is dope, right? So they look at it, it's like the verification badge. Open up our website more times, often than not we'll get a reply like, that's awesome. It's a cool agency. And better times. We go, hey, it's such a coincidence. We're actually looking for a media agency or a marketing agency.

I love that.

And so, yeah, so it's just a lot of companies.

So you're just, you're just turning over the rocks that are literally correct. Like yeah, yeah, there's low hanging fruit. You're just making sure you're turning over those, those rocks, saying, hey, there's a treasure underneath this.

But even like one thing that you kind of like brought to top of mind for me when we first met was like in the creative space, like I'm so dialed in on like web design and visual effects, especially when I was starting out and if I just knew, if I just had someone to say, Evan, just like stop fucking designing stuff. Just sell, just like sell your products. Because like that's the biggest thing that changed for me was I started to do, I started to have a much more positive cash flow and actually built a company when I was just selling shit. Because I just love designing and that's not a way to build a business. You have to like remove that and be a business person.

Absolutely.

And wait, what was it for you though? I mean like when you were building Aerial canvas. Yeah, like what triggered what was like the key moment? You're like, oh, this is going to take us to the next level. Was it like the projects you were doing. Was it the network? Was probably the network. No.

I think there's an intuitive aspect of being an entrepreneur. At least over time you get the experience and you know when to press different buttons and different move different levers in your business. For Aero Canvas, there was different stages. There was a stage where I was learning the industry. Like when I first joined, I was just like, real estate. My dad owns some real estate. I don't really know much about it besides what I've heard on what I've heard on YouTube or TV shows. Right. Buy real estate, Invest in this. So just talking to my customers, talking to agents, understanding what they want, understanding your clients and how you can better serve them, help me build a product. And so obviously I joined Aerial Canvas, I joined my business partner. And I really do believe that as an entrepreneur you don't necessarily have to come up with everything yourself.

Yeah.

You can be extremely successful taking something that's working and just improving upon. Right. You look at all of these companies that make electronics, that make products and services. You don't have to be the best, you just have to be better and want to improve upon what exists.

Yeah.

And whether that's for your own business or something, an idea that you would be passionate about. I think that's step one, understanding your clients, understanding what your product is and understanding where you're looking to improve.

Yeah.

And from there I started building the business and everything compounds. You know, you serve a couple good clients, they refer you clients, they refer you an organization like a brokerage to work with.

Yeah.

And then you continue to evolve that. And that's in everything we did. We try to push excellence in everything we did on the sales front, on the product and service side, on the operational side, on the automation side. And that's where we started coming up with better and better systems and processes and bring on better and better people to help build the organization. And it's not all rainbows and butterflies. We had the worst fucking month last month because real estate's in the shitter and no one wants to buy sale. Interest rates are sky high. And that's when you, you get a. You get the other taste of entrepreneurship.

Yeah.

The trough of sorrow and losing money. Like, you know, Tesla and I love talking about Elon and Tesla because it's just such a magnificent journey.

Yeah.

He didn't found Tesla. He joined Tesla because he believed in it. He bought into it. You know, I think 20, like, you know, what is it? I think $100 million is what he put in.

But everybody thinks he found it.

Yeah.

If you ask anybody on the street.

He made it something because he made it something and from there he improved upon it. But like, even after putting all that love and energy, even though he had his first success, the roadster, you know, car of the year, the Model S, when he was trying to scale the Model 3, he was facing bankruptcy for months on end and hitting all these walls with production that people don't know about. They think like, just because you crushed it. Yeah, a lot of people think you continue to crush it. And it's, it's about the Infinite game. You're always facing that battle as an entrepreneur on like, how do I do more? Like when, when things are going well, you want to gas on, when things aren't doing well, you want to continue to, you continue to persevere and be relentless. And I think that's what's made me successful because I'm no longer attached to Aerial Canvas. I had my success with Aerial Canvas, but I want to continue pushing in everything that I do. But with Aerial Canvas, I learned so much. I learned how to create a product and service based client services type business and scale that, automate that, replicate it in both people, systems and processes. And once I was able to do that, I could take that skill set and I could bring it to other business, other journey, like other other paths, other journeys.

I wanted to talk about failure. Yeah, because no, I think, I think a lot of people appreciate hearing like podcasts from, from business owners and entrepreneurs who talk about like Gary Vee, for example. You know, he kind of makes you feel like everything's gonna be okay. You know, he's not my go to guy for, for advice on entrepreneurship, but there is some reality to like, like you said, like we had, you guys had a horrible month. We have horrible months. You know, custom E Signature. We're about to launch this platform. You know, I think it's gonna hit big, but there's gonna be months where I'm like, holy shit, this is not good. And like, I think an acceptance of like, just knowing that like things are not always gonna be good and like, if you work at a company, you're going to experience the same thing. And honestly, as an, like, I would rather take the hardships of an entrepreneur than working at a company and in a feeling like, oh, my boss is like causing all these anxiety because this, this and this, you know, I'd rather take the pressure of like, my business isn't doing well because that shit's on me.

Yeah. And I mean, even if you had a boss. It's just mindset, right? Yeah. You feel like having, like, you always have. You always are going to have a boss, whether it's your spouse.

Yeah.

It's your. It's your clients. Yeah. It's yourself. Right. You always have someone you need to be accountable to. And usually at the end of the day, it's yourself, but that's where that's like the best boss. Being accountable to yourself. Yeah. And I think that's what you decided on is I don't want to be accountable to anyone else but myself. No. Yeah.

Really quickly. Who. So for this podcast, like, who can we pick A few topics I think would be like, like, really good gold. Like, but like, who is this for? Entrepreneurs?

Well, who's gonna, I think, set it.

For real estate somewhat?

Well, our main, main audience is real estate marketing agency owners and real estate agents and companies. Okay. But I think so General business advice. General. General business advice would be great. Most of our audience would be entrepreneurs or business owners. That's outside of the real estate realm. But, you know, I think we have, like, maybe. How much time do we have? 10 minutes.

I just want to hit like a couple.

Yeah.

Quick, super succinct, like, let's go back and forth.

Yeah. Very tight segments there was. Yeah, I know. Because both you and I have.

I just want to give you some, like.

Yeah.

I want to put you into saying like 10 words and it's like that one.

Yeah, exactly.

We have that.

Yeah. We're definitely short form content. Do you believe in it? Yeah.

Well, you don't.

Hell, no.

Really?

That's why we're doing this podcast right now. And I wanted it to be extra long. Super long. So I can take this super long piece of content and I can chop it up into 50 fucking little pieces. Right. And you know, it's. It's better. Like, there's two. There's two ways you can create short form content. One is more organic, which is what we're doing, and the other one is more scripted and structured. I believe in both because I think there's something that you can't replicate in a script that you can in a conversation like this.

Yeah. I mean, so.

Fuck, yeah, I believe in short forms.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I know what you mean. I mean, I've been pressured into just. Just like, okay, things are shorter now. You know, commercials aren't, you know, two minutes. You know, shows aren't as long as they were. Like, everything is getting cut down for a good reason. You know, there's so Many things out there. Wait, I want to talk about, like, like, what are, like, in terms of, like, general advice? Like, the top, like, I don't know, five to 10 things. Because, like, I've been harping on, like, for general business advice for anybody, like, especially if they're in marketing, the biggest thing is, like, selling, like, they're not selling them.

Well, I think it's different for everyone. I think for you it's exciting and it's adventurous because you kind of hit a plateau. Yeah, you hit a plateau with your technical, like, trading your time for money type and you're like, what's the next level? And for an entrepreneur, that's exciting. Whereas for someone working a career, it's not exciting to. To not know if this giant venture where you're putting your life savings and all your energy this year is gonna work out or not.

Yeah.

When you have a family to feed. So to answer your question, there's no, like, advice. The only advice you should take is advice that applies to you. Right. If you're an entrepreneur in this industry, you should take probably advice from other successful entrepreneurs in this industry. If you're, if you're a doctor, you should probably take advice from not just the best doctor, but maybe the happiest doctor.

Yeah.

Right. And so it like to, to answer your question, what is the best piece of advice that we can give entrepreneurs? It's not about the best piece of advice you can give. It's about the best questions you can ask as an entrepreneur. Hey, who out there is an entrepreneur I want to learn from? Yeah. Who is someone I aspire to be like.

Yeah.

Though asking those questions will help you find the right mentors that might be able to give you the right pieces of advice and understanding where you want to be. Because oftentimes I talk to entrepreneurs and they're like, I'm trying to double my business. I'm trying to double my business this year. And I've done that. So I can give them advice on that. But I'm at a different place in life where I've doubled, I've tripled, I've 10x my business. What I want is, I want peace of mind, tranquility. I want to be able to put someone in place so I can work on other things. And so that's my current journey. And when someone went, when you're done 10xing what I'm currently customizing 100x. Yeah, you're going to come to me and Brennan, you're going to be like, hey, Brennan, remember that Podcast we did, where you're like. When I was just like, dude, I'm trying to. My business, I'm trying to gas on. I'm looking to chill now.

Yeah.

I went to Bali, but I wasn't chilling. How do I chill like you? Or how do I. How do I travel and adventure like you? And that's something I can speak upon then. Yeah, you've seen me do it for sure. And then you'll ask me for that advice then. So it's. It's not about what piece of advice we can give our audience. It's about the mindset we can help our audience adopt. And that mindset is who are you asking for help from? Are you ask. Are you asking yourself for help? And what do you actually want? It's all like, I'm a big believer in intention. Right. What is your intention? Because a lot of people don't message me. They're like, hey, Brandon, I see what you're up to. I love to learn from you. And. And I'm just like, what the fuck do you actually want? Are you trying to be an entrepreneur? Are you trying to learn how to, you know, vacation better?

Yeah.

Like, I have so many things I can teach you.

Yeah.

And what's in it for me?

Yeah.

And I asked that selfishly because that's what everyone needs to understand. When you ask, when you seek help, what are you giving in return? Are you appreciative? Are you finding someone that. Who. Who will mentor you for free? Because they get more out of it, you know, than they give you? Because they're like, I'm helping Evan. That's why I give you free help, right?

No, for sure.

Because I'm like, I'm helping Evan. It's a back and forth. Another entrepreneur that I can learn from.

Yeah.

And it has to be a win win. So, you know, there's principles in life. To answer your question, there's frameworks and principles. And if you follow Elon, he believes in, like, first principles.

Yeah.

This is the probably the most best. This is the best piece of advice. And it's a framework.

Yeah.

If you want to know the outcome, look at the incentives. I've had agency owners that I coach, and they're like, dude, I have this shit employee and he sucks. Like, I'm thinking about firing him. I don't know why I'm still keeping him on. And I asked them like, well, what do you want from this guy? Yeah, what are you giving this guy? And I was like, does this guy have an incentive to work Hard. Does he have a punishment or, like, something that you're taking away if he doesn't perform? And he's like, I don't have any of that. And once he implemented incentives and punishment, he was able to turn this C player into an A player.

Yeah.

And that's like, that's my piece of advice. Whether you're doing it for someone else.

Yeah.

Or you're doing it for yourself.

Yeah.

You have to understand what is the incentive? What is the intention.

Yeah.

What are the questions? What the fuck do you want out of this? Because if you don't know what you want and you don't know what intention you have behind your actions and don't know the outcome you're looking for, you're gonna be flopping around like magic for sure. You never become Gyarados.

Last thing is, like, because you were talking about, like, DMing people on Instagram. The people I've met in the last three months have changed my entire life just off Instagram. DMs people DMing me or people who I've DMed. Like, I went out to Tampa, Florida to film a commercial out there for that same disaster relief company. And there's one of the biggest production companies in the U.S. diamond View Studios. I knew a couple people over there that I just connected with over Instagram. And I've talked with the CEO over the phone every once in a while. Super cool guy. And Ben Myers, who works there as well in their virtual set. Like, you know, I hopped over their production one day. They were. They played my Tactical Fleet commercial up there. Super dope guys, you know, that age. I don't know how much money they do. Millions. Millions and millions and millions in rev a year. And like off of a dm, those people and their advice, like, changed everything I do in business.

That's awesome.

So people should DM, like someone like. Like 10 people a day. That's what I do. I literally start my day every day with 10 DMS and then I continue my day and I typically source from TikTok because. Yeah, it's just that.

But what's the intention? Right. What do you want? Like, I think no intention. I think I asked you, though, like, I mean, you don't have to have an intention off the bat, but what is like your overarching, like, life course or business journey that you're going down?

Yeah.

Because if you don't have intention, you said send out 10 DMs. I could send out 10 DMs to. Yeah, you know, 10 hood rats. What's the Intention. Right. Am I trying to get business from them? I'm not trying to learn from them.

I think it's just real. Recognize is real. Like, when I'm not, you know, I'm messaging people who are doing, you know, 5, 10x what I'm doing, and it's just like, there's no attention, just acknowledgment. Like, this person is crushing it. And I definitely know that I know things they don't know because they're maybe in a different space or a different. Different. Same industry, different market. And I know, like, yourself, like, our relationship, like, you know things I don't know. I'm your guy. Like, if you need to build a web app or if you need to know about video production, the pricing of it, the logistics, operations, I like, I will give it. You don't have to Google it. You have to use chat. Gdp. Fuck that thing.

I'm messaging Evan. Nigele. Yeah, dude, I'm trying to build this app. It's called custom Y Signature. Yeah. Why am I doing this?

Blocked.

All right.

Do you want to sign off or, like, what is.

Yeah. So if you're interested, like, this is what we want to do with all of our episodes. We come here, we set intention at the end. Obviously you have business goals, and there's people that are watching that might align with your business goals. Yeah, some people that might be interested in a custom E Signature. So what's your intention? Give us an offer and give us, like, who should reach out to you. First off, if someone wants custom E Signature, can you make our audience an offer today, please?

Yeah, I actually will.

Yeah.

If you guys want a custom E Signature, we'll show up. You. 50% off. Yeah, I can send you a.

Only if you reference this podcast.

If you reference this podcast. 50% off. These things are $330 for 10 signatures. No one is doing this. Literally. I'm serious. No one is doing an animated signature. Cause they haven't figured out the secret sauce behind it. So 50% off. We'll do what? Acre. 10 Acre. 50.

Okay. Coupon code. Acre.

Custom you Signature. Calm.

Yeah. And then what about people that are watching this episode that want to meet you or you or work with you? Who are you looking for to be in your life?

When I reached out to people when I was in call, I don't want to make it a long thing. I was just gonna say, like, when I was. When I was in college, I wasn't really good at, like, I had new video. But, like, compared to now, it's like, I look at that. Like, obviously, like, that was horrible. But, like, I appreciate the people who are way above me, like Devin Supertramp. Do you know who that is? Yeah, Devin Graham. Like, Devin Graham gave me a chance. I edited some stuff with him. We've talked over the phone. I'm like, Dude, I was no. 1 in college. This guy gave me a chance. So those people who are, like, don't really. They're, like, super driven. Like, they want to learn. Those people, even where they're at isn't, like, anything crazy. And then also people who are in the same industry, same space, and if you're doing 20 times more than I am. Yeah, I want to meet you, too.

Yeah.

I'm down to meet anybody who is super freaking driven.

Yeah.

And wants to build stuff authentically. I will do a 10, 30 minute Zoom call.

I'm glad I slid in your DMs, brother. This was fun. We'll do it again. All right.

Acre 50, Sam.