1086 Building & Monetizing a Mass Social Media Audience w/Josh Richards

This is episode number 1086 with social media sensation Josh Richards.

Welcome to the School of Greatness.

My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. philosopher Albert Hubbard said the greatest mistake.

You could make in life is to.

Be continually fearing you will make one. And Michelle Obama said the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them. My guest today is Josh Richards with over 30 million followers. Josh is a social media sensation, entrepreneur, musician, writer, actor and podcast host. He is the founder of talent X, the largest Tick Tock management and production company, as well as the co-founder of the energy drink Annie energy. Josh is also an angel investor in dozens of companies and was called a mogul in the making by Newsweek. I'm excited to bring him on as he's one of the younger guests we've had on talking about his rise to success in his teens. And in this episode, we discuss how Josh became one of the top social media influencers today, how you can build Mass audience no matter what industry you're in, how to know when it's time to go all in on that dream, how Josh is able to manage his content and multiple businesses at the same time at such a young age, and how to overcome insecurities and put yourself out there. If you're inspired by this, make sure to share this with someone that you think would be inspired as well. And a quick reminder to click the Subscribe button over on Apple podcast for the School of Greatness, as well as leave us a rating and review and let us know what you enjoyed about this episode the most. Okay, in just a moment, the one.

And only Josh Richards. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got the young icon, Josh Richards in the house. Good to see you, man. Hey, good to see you as well, man. Glad you're here. I've heard about your stuff for a while. I've watched your content.

You're a social media sensation. What do you have, 30 million followers now?

Cross-platforms, probably around 30 million. 30 million. And you've transitioned from being a young teen heartthrob into a entrepreneurial, successful leader now, investing in many different platforms, products, and also working with Triller and a lot of different stuff, right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, of course, I definitely tried to expand the entrepreneurial portfolio. Take that a lot more serious in 2021.

When did you, most teenagers, I didn't know how to make money until I was like 27, right? I didn't make any money. How did you learn the idea of actually making money in entrepreneurship? I think it was when you were 13, but how did that concept actually come to you of like, I want to make money, not just get an allowance from my parents or like do a paper, Route in Canada, but were your parents teaching this stuff? Were you just learning it?

I was always a kid that wanted to, when I bought something, I wanted it to be a bigger item. Like a lot of kids were always like, get the $10 going right to the store, buying a pack of cards, like spending all their money right away, right? If they have leftover, they'll buy gum, they'll buy whatever. Like, I was always a kid that wouldn't spend any money. I was like, I'm putting it in a jar. I want to save up for like a sports ticket event or I want to save up for a PS4 or something, but it was always like, I was trying to make a lot of money for a certain project. And then as that kind of developed, it became more of a passion, I think, of just like making money in general. Then it really became saving up for something. And then my jars, I would have like Buffalo Bills game, save up to go to a Bills game or save up to go to a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey game. And I would just end up never spending the money because I was like, I just want to make more and more and see that jar grow. And eventually, like, that turned into creating like passion, like Hockey was turned into a berserk hockey apparel line where I was putting slogans on shirts and then my lacrosse, like when I was playing lacrosse, I turned that into a company. It was dying mesh and putting in team designs and logos and finding wax formulas so it was waterproof and the pocket wouldn't change its formation.

So I was just always hungry to grind and make some money. Did your parents not want to buy.

You tickets to the games or were they teaching you this or how was that? I think that there was a part of it that was like, They wanted me to learn, like, how to make my own money, to work a little bit. And they were proud of me, too, for always, like, trying to find ways to make money. But at the same time, we weren't a family that was, like, able to just go to games left and right. Or, like, if I was going to a game, my family was like, that's a big deal. We're getting nosebleeds, and it's for my birthday.

Like, that's. That's how it was with my family. Interesting. So what's it been like now since. That was what, when you were 12.

13, you were kind of.

Developing this jar money mentality.

Yeah, yeah.

Now five, six years later, you're, I think on Forbes, a couple years ago, one of the top five biggest earners on TikTok a couple years ago, personalities. What is that like now a few years later, being able to buy whatever you want essentially, go to games, buy clothes, buy cars, how does that feel?

Right, I mean, the craziest thing is I've kind of kept the same mentality. Like I'm still the kid that doesn't buy things. So like, my car, like people will say, I've said this before on podcasts, I don't spend money. and then people will see a picture of my car and it's like a Mercedes, this brand new Mercedes, right? And they're like, well, that's a dumb investment. I didn't pay for my car. Like, my car was gifted to me, right? It's like everything I wear, like everything I have on right now, these shoes I got made by just a shoe account on Instagram. They made them for me for free, right? This hoodie I got for free from a store because I went into the store and they're like, just pick out some things. So my outfits are usually like 20 bucks and it's from my underwear. Like, that's it, right? So I've always kept that mentality, but to know that I'm able to support my family or to be like, my sister will be like, I really want these shoes. We're just randomly texting and I think she's caught on that I start just buying it for them, my brother as well, but they'll be like, oh, this skin in Fortnite, I've really been looking forward to it. And then I'll be like, oh really? And I'll just start buying little things for my family all the time.

So that's been so cool to be able to do that. Cool. When did you learn really about not saving but investing? Because you started to invest in startups, you started to learn more about financial literacy over the last few years as a teen. Not many teens study this. teach us this in school.

No.

So how did you learn? Did you have mentors that were teaching you this about investing and-- yeah, I.

Would say my biggest mentor would have been Michael Gruen. He put me on the path of really using my social media to turn it into business and turn it into the entrepreneurial spirit.

Not just sponsorship deals, brand deals, where it's a good pay, but then you have nothing else.

Right, yeah. And I was always trying to find more creative ways to make money. So I think Michael saw that and saw the drive and the passion that I had and was like, okay, we can create something cool together. So we kind of formed like this business partnership and we do pretty much everything we do together. And I started asking him like, what are ways I can utilize my money? Because at first, what we were doing is instead of doing the traditional brand deal, we were taking equity.

Where you take a fee and then you do a bunch of promotion and.

Then they get all the rest of it. Right, right. So like when, yeah, the original brand deal, right? Every creator does it. It's just paid to post. It's very easy. It's usually one-off deals. It's like 10K for a story. What we were trying to focus on is the equity behind it. So I also talked with Ashton Kutcher, another mentor of mine, and he said, I'd be a billionaire by now if I had taken equity and all my deals over cash. So now when we start doing these brand is we either work in a little half and half part cash, part equity. Or if I really love the company and I'm super passionate about it, I want to do just all equity and I go in and just I'll do the posting for essentially free at the start. But the goal is 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 years down the line. Company goes public either have stock or.

It gets purchased like the company does. What's been the best investment you've made so far, where maybe it hasn't paid off yet, but you can see the potential for it really paying off long term.

I think that Len Table is a huge one.

Len Table?

Yeah, it's a 401k match up. So that's a huge startup that I'm really invested in. And then as well, I think that there's one for actually, Breaker's a massive one. It connects independent artists to musicians, and it's actually more of an arbitrage play for TikTokers. It allows content creators to have a steady stream of revenue, which is really hard when you're first starting off on TikTok or just social media in general. It's kind of like the rich get richer mentality. It's like the big creators keep getting bigger and bigger. There's like 20 people that are the top. Yeah, exactly. And it's like you get a little new rotation every three years, but it's like it's kind of the same top dogs. So there's been these creators that are making like $1,000 a week or $4,000, $5,000 a month, and they have only 500,000 followers. So they're creating a steady revenue stream off this app by using independent artists music and independent artists paying them.

It's called Breakers?

Breaker, Breaker, Breaker.

Yeah.

So that's a great one. And then Aswell Versus Game is another great company for the influencer. I mean, myself personally, I've done like probably four or five games on the app. And as just a creator, I've made Tens of thousands, if not a hundred thousand dollars, just off using that a couple of times, probably taking an hour of my time. But it's just another great monetization tool for a creator.

Yeah. Wow, man. And what about something like Triller? Did you get equity in that as well?

How does that work? Yeah, so I came in there as a strategy officer. We put in an investment in that as well, like got equity. So go in, and I focus a lot on the monetization side. They were very creator forward thinking company. They were always asking us about how we felt comfortable, It kind of lined up with my journey in, I guess you could say, story. When I first moved to LA, co-founded TalentX Management Company, signed like 110 of the top TikTokers. I wanted to do that because I'd just gone on a tour that summer, made the tour probably a million dollars gross, and I got paid.

Did you do a meet and greet tour?

Like a-- It was a meet and greet tour. Just simply-- that's it. That's it. Did you sign anything? Yeah, signing posters or merch. Like they'd buy merch and then-- Posters and then-- yeah, take photos. But very just meet and greet, almost like a book or podcast tour.

There was no book tour. to sell. Did you sell anything?

We sold merch. It would be like a hoodie with my name, Richards on it or something.

Like very simple back then.

And then... When was this?

A couple years ago. 2019 summer.

So... Did a million dollars in sales from the merch or the tickets or whatever? Yeah, the whole tour.

It was like me and probably five other influencers, six, seven other main influencers.

So would you guys just do like sell out malls or something and just have mad rush of 12 year olds? It was like we would do these small either like bars that had like a little stage, right? Or we would do like Marriotts. We did a lot of those, like so hotels, like the conference rooms and you're selling like a thousand to two thousand tickets and it's usually the big, like our audience then was younger, it was probably like 12 to 16 or 16, like you get like some 18 year olds in there, right? Weird. It's like the weirdos are over 18. Sometimes, sometimes, yeah, sometimes a little strange, but no, we went on that tour and I got paid $750. like cash. Like that was it.

Like, you got paid 750.

Yeah.

Not like 750, 000. 750.

Like, to do the tour.

Yeah. Whole tour.

Why?

We sold tickets. Like, it did amazing. Like, I told you, the tour. It was just the social media space is so Shady at the start. Like, it was the most, like, underprotected industry I've ever seen. No creators were being taken seriously. These, like, fake managers that say they know people, or maybe they were like, A distant relative of someone whatever and they would like use that to try to sign these young kids that don't know anything so like I was 15 Not knowing anything in social media Thought thinking I needed a manager to succeed and gone to a two-year contract that was like I felt like I was stuck in because I didn't know anything in the industry so you did the.

Tour and you actually didn't make any.

Money no money the tour ripped us all off Wow, like completely even the merch sales yeah merch sales everything so.

At the end of the day they sold all the merch they did all the tickets, but they said what all our our expenses were this.

Yeah, they tried to pull the whole like expenses or they tried to pull like, oh, you didn't actually do as many tickets as you think. And then it's like we would sell these tickets called like date night and it was $100 tickets per girl. Had to spend $100 just for this bonus piece, right? Where they would go on this dinner with us and we would just have like an hour dinner eating food at a restaurant, right? And we would be sitting at these tables, one person would have like 30 girls. So that's like right there. All right, three grand right there. Yeah, you're already talking three grand. So it's like if we do eight, 8 to 16 shows and we have that at every, like that alone we already know we're making more, right? So, which is a few shady things. Met Michael Gruen, started Talent X. That was like the whole journey kind of behind that was protecting the creators, so that's why trailer fit so well too.

That's interesting, man.

Yeah.

What do you think, you seem like a very confident guy as a 19 year old. When I was 19, I had a lot of false confidence. I was very talented as an athlete, you know, I was a star there or whatever, It was like, I also didn't believe in myself in other ways. Is there a part of your life where you feel you lack confidence? You've got 30 million plus followers, every woman under 12 wants you, there's a crush on you, you're making money now, you're out in LA, you're doing your thing. Is there a part of your life where you lack confidence?

I would say, I think that there's still a part of, I don't know if it's so much of a lack of confidence or like in the business world, I know that I don't know things, right? Like I know I'm still new to it, so I'm not to come in and act like the guy on an investment meeting or a founder's call that's like raised seven different companies and exited for and like, right, I'm not going to be that guy that the d*ck that like says, I know it all, but I think that's what's actually like a strength is knowing what I don't know. Like coming into the meetings and like knowing I'm also having a learning hat as the same time as like the investor hat. Yeah.

Yeah.

What would you say is your biggest fear right now? as a 19 year old thriving star.

I would say my biggest fear is probably that I don't work hard. Like, I don't succeed. Like, failing would be my biggest fear. If I came out here and did all this, like, if I didn't work hard enough or if I literally just slacked one day and that called, like, that's my biggest fear. Like, I need to succeed.

What does success look like?

To me, success looks like I'm wealthy enough to be able to buy my parents a home, I'm able to support my entire family if I need to, I'm able to live like a life with a wife, my kids, support them, give them what they need, like put them through sports, put them through school. Really, I just want to be comfortable. Like that's the biggest thing. And like, I have aspirations, of course, to be like the richest social media creator ever to do social media, right? Like, I would love to be the first social media billionaire and like, I'm striving to do that. But at the end of the day, like, what I want more than anything is the, the peace knowing I was just a successful entrepreneur. I sold a company. I exited one and then was able to support the people I love.

Yeah.

Why is that desire to be the first social media billionaire? What it, where does that come from?

I just like being the first. I'm competitive. I was an athlete as a kid. Like, I played sports. So it's like getting, breaking records or anything like that. that is like, I need to do it. So, I mean like, I remember like going through just even like my middle school track and field and cross country record book. Like we had like one in the hallway or whatever it was like behind this glass thing and I asked them to take it out so I could see all the records and I went to the track and all I would do is just like time myself, make sure I could be every single record in the middle school for track and field and I was like able to do some, but that's just how my mindset always is. It's like try to be be the best.

What was your best sport or what is your best sport?

I would say my best sport was probably actually cross country. Like running, I was just a really good long distance runner.

So I was your best 5K.

What actually I would do more like, I was doing like 1500 meters.

Okay.

So we were doing, I guess that's not like super long distance. That's more like, but cross country when we're doing like two or three kilometers and everything like that. But I would say what was your 1500? 1500? Do you remember? I might say a number that's gonna just make me sound like an idiot, but I think I was in eighth grade running like a four minute, if I'm not wrong. 420?

420?

That's fast.

Yeah, like fast. Like, I was pretty quick.

That's fast.

I think it was 420, 'cause I remember racing in like third grade, and we weren't even supposed to do cross-country or track. And then they brought me up just with the eighth graders when I was in third grade and I was winning events. Like I won the 800 and came second and 50 or I won the 1500 and came second and 800.

Wow.

Third grade going up against eighth graders type thing. So that was like my mentality but hockey and lacrosse were the sports for sure too.

Did you stop track in high school?

Yeah, because of social media. Really? Yeah.

Did you stop all sports?

Slowly, like track. The thing was is like track was probably like the sport I was just naturally the most skilled at like that in swimming actually, but I just didn't enjoy them. Like I liked the team sports a little bit more. Like so hockey and lacrosse were like the last to go. Like I held on to those sports as long as I could just because like I care so much about them.

So what happened? What was what was the turning point? Social media just was picking up or you were seeing some brand deals come in. You're like, oh, I can make money. I can fill my my jars more.

Yeah, I can go to a lot more Buffalo Bills games. No, it was like, I started to notice how much money I was able to create off of social media and I was making more money than my parents, right? So at this point, I knew that I was either gonna have to go 100% in because I was on an app that was musically at the time wasn't very trending. It was still- so you started musically? Yeah, I started before TikTok. People often think my blow up was like this. But it's that like I put in four years of work in music. Yeah, and then it, well two years of, three years of the work would have been on Musically. TikTok purchased Byte Dance came in and purchased Musically, grinded for another year, and then that summer 2019, that tour is what absolutely just shot me up.

Yeah.

Yep.

That's interesting, man. I'm curious. So what was the moment? Was you like, okay, this is my last game, my last practice, because I just made 10 grand on a post and now I'm gonna go in here?

It was summer. I remember all I was doing this summer was pretty much playing lacrosse and going live every single night. On TikTok. Yeah, so I would go and play lacrosse, right? And then I would come home after my lacrosse games and instantly just go live on TikTok. That's all I was doing. I would do streams from 10 p.m. till 2 a.m. every night.

Shut up.

So I was streaming for four hours straight. What would you do on these? I would just think of different games. Like, I was like, that is how I got made pretty much was by my live stream audience. I built such a engaged audience 'cause they always came on the live. I was like memorizing people's names. I got like that really like personal connection with them. And then that's kind of what gave me the audience to boost up. But that started escalating into like, or I guess that grew into starting making like $400 a night. And then all of a sudden-- From just live. Just live streams alone. And then all of a sudden I had one live stream. I remember I was with my friends and we went live for 30 minutes and I got donated two grand on this live stream. Like one person or all of them?

It was like a few different people.

But there was probably like five big donations, right? Wow. And you were like, I was sitting.

There like, 16 at the time.

At this point, I think I'm like 16. I think I'm like 40. You make two grand in 30 minutes? Yeah, yeah, you're rich. Yeah, exactly. In my head, I'm like, holy sh*t. My friends, I'm with my friends, like we're out of, I'm out of sleepover at their house, my two boys, and they're like, free. They're like, how the f*** is Josh making $2,000 in 30 minutes? So obviously we had to order like 100 wings after that and like muck out. But it was that point started kind of like, I slowly had to stop playing on two different hockey teams. And so then it gets cut down, right? And then instead of playing on the spring lacrosse, summer lacrosse, and indoor lacrosse team, it's like, oh, well now I gotta lose the summer lacrosse and I only can play in the winter. It's like it just like slowly started cutting out like that little by little.

Yeah, that's fascinating, man.

Are you still doing lives every night? I'm doing live still, but not as.

Much as I used to. Like, you're not able to make as.

Much money anymore with that or is it? It's still crazy. Like it's definitely still pretty lucrative. Like I'll go live for 15 minutes and make $1,000. So it's like pretty much the same exact thing. But I feel like I just like to put my time into different content now than live streams. Like if that's doing the podcast now or if I'm creating YouTube videos or.

Any other form of content. so it's 30 million across platforms for the, the over 25 crowd who's listening right now, which I have a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of small business owners who are listening and watch the content here. And their biggest challenge is building audience, building platform. Yeah, something I heard you talk about before on another podcast of yours is about thinking of your followers as friends and not as fans or followers. How does someone who's in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s start thinking of creating content to attract a friend base, a following base, a larger audience when they have something smaller, niche related, and maybe they're not a 19-year-old heartthrob.

Yeah, yeah. No, of course. I think the thing that people miss about niche audiences is that they think, I can never grow to be 20 million followers. And it's like, yeah, you're probably right. going after a niche type audience. But the benefit of that is massive in the fact where you will have such strategic marketing for certain companies that those brands are going to pay you more than they pay me. And I have a larger following than you. So, like, for example, let's say you're, you're a cook or you really love food and you create a tick tock account where you're posting, like, yourself cooking these recipes or what, whatever you, you love. with the food products. Like, if a company like, I don't know, Dijon Mustard Company, like they want to go and get their product out on TikTok, they want to do some marketing, like, what's that mustard come French's or something like that, right?

Yeah.

It's like, why would they come to me and make me do a YouTube promo? And it's like, yeah, I might get four times the views you get possible, but you're gonna be such a more, like such a strategic person to go to if you get 250, 000 people watching your videos that all love to cook and are buying cooking products. And you, so the thing that people miss, I think, is that like you need to have this massive following. But I know people with a million followers that make more money on brand deals than I do on brand deals. Really? Of course.

Like it's that like, no one's specific.

They're like in the beauty space. Exactly. Exactly. Like I'm more broad, right? Like it's like people just kind of put me as an influencer or an.

Entertainer or like a TikTok or like there's no. You're not talking about one subject.

Exactly. You're not talking about sports or food or beauty or fashion. All around and like I'm definitely trying to get more niche and that's the other thing that I've started to focus on like people that have niche audiences Should be happy that they have any shot it's like you can sell way more. Yeah, I'm trying to develop that more I'm trying to move more into the sports world just because like the Barstool podcast like I said like that's my.

Passion growing up with sports like so I just want to keep developing that.

Has Gary gotten you into a card investing? Yep. He's definitely been on me. He wants me to get very involved in like the card world, sports, and so.

Especially the hockey side of things probably. I feel like hockey's not getting as much love as basketball and football and Pokemon right now.

Yeah.

Gretzky card went for like 1.2 million. I know. Crazy.

So you haven't done any content around it yet? No content. I bought a few cards, but I got a Shaq rookie card and a Kevin Durant one, and I believe I'm.

Looking at a Kobe Bryant one and then a LeBron James one right now. Yeah. He got me into it about a year ago. was telling me about it two years ago. And after a year of him telling me about it, you finally got it. I was like, man, this thing went like 20x. I finally jumped in a year ago and I started investing. I wouldn't say pretty heavily, but I spent a good amount investing in it. And it's probably, I don't know, four or five x, at least kind of my whole collection. That's sick. A few cards have really exploded, but it's just fun to be a part of. But I could see you getting into sports more and making that as one part of it.

Yeah, yeah, and it's kind of like a nostalgia thing as well.

I mean, nostalgia for you is like four years ago. Yeah, these guys are like 30 years ago. You're like, for me it's like four years ago I was at the card shop, you know?

True.

That's funny, man. I'm curious about, do you think anyone could build a mass following or if you're focused on a niche, it's gonna be really hard to grow wide. Cause you're already gonna grow wide. Do you think anyone can get a million followers or is it, I think.

That TikTok allows anyone to be able to get a million followers. Or, you know, how social media platforms are moving forward with the short-form content and focusing so much on user-generated content just going viral, right? TikTok's whole four you page, it allows the common person, anyone, to, yeah, I've seen videos of someone in jail go viral on TikTok. It's like, how do they have a phone in their jail cell? they get more likes than me on that video. It's like, what? Anyone can post on TikTok and go viral.

Yeah.

Anybody can build a following. You just gotta find people that go at it to become famous probably aren't gonna succeed. Like, if you're going at TikTok and you want money, like it's, it just doesn't work. Like, you need to have a passion for it or you need to have this general want to create. Because what does happen sometimes is you see these kids that blow up in two weeks, right? And you're like, why can't I be them? Why can't I be them? And they blow off maybe just off looks or whatever, one trendy video, but.

They also fall quicker than anyone.

Like, they become irrelevant quick. It's like that. It's like they fall quicker than they even grew. Like, you see them on your For your page for two, three weeks and you're like, oh, this person's like blowing up right now. And then all of a sudden, three weeks later, you see another video of them. You're like, Wait a sec. I haven't seen a video from this guy in three weeks. Who? I forgot about them. And it's like just like that. So it's like it's a long process. I feel like you really do have to work on it yout need a natural passion for it. You can't just your goal can't just be like I want to make money or I want to be famous. Yeah, you need a little bit more than that.

It's interesting I was listening to Mr. Beast last night on clubhouse actually he was doing a room and he said I just was so excited about the obsession of YouTube. I didn't care about making money. Exactly. I just wanted to make the coolest video possible. Yeah that would be fun for people and just obsessed over the process. And after years, it finally started to work. And now he's able to monetize it, obviously, in a big way, but he was just loved the process. And it sounded like for you going live every night, you just loved going live and like, hey, we're playing games, we're having fun.

Exactly. And like, I was a very analytical guy. My dad's a calculus teacher at a high school, so he actually was the teacher at my high school. But I was always trying to find ways to like growth hack on TikTok. And I was all, like, I had my sister hired on a 15% commission based salary. She was going in and going direct to the consumer. There was like a live leaderboard back on Musically, back when I was doing these four hour live streams. And they actually had a, like, 1 to 250 of the top contributors on the app. So the people that spent the most money, Really? Bought the most gifts and donated the most. Were you on there, I'm assuming, at the top? Well, that's not like who received the most, it's who the fans that actually paid the most, right? So like, who actually went into streams and you spent the most money?

You're on the top.

So what I wanted, I wasn't on the top 'cause I didn't spend money. Like you were spending money?

To find the top 250.

I wanted to find the top 250. Come hey. Exactly. So what I did was I would be live and then for my four hours while I'm live, at the start of my life, I would have my sister and the rest beside me. Exactly. She was logged into my account. She would go through and follow and unfollow all these people in like like 10 of their videos. So then there's 11 notifications from this Josh Richards guy you've never seen before. A lot of these fans that send money, they're not famous. They have like 30, 40 200 followers, right? So they notice when someone follows them. So even if I get 5% of the 250 people every night that come over into my live and they spend money, they were spending the top 250 people, the bottom person is probably spending like 200 bucks a live stream, right?

So-- Crazy.

Exactly. So I'm acquiring these customers with no followers, probably 40,000 to 90,000 followers.

You only had 40,000 yourself.

That's it.

Wow.

And so that's another thing, they felt way more connected to me because I was able to talk and remember names and I followed them so they would join my live and have a red border around their names because TikTok or Musically just let you know who you followed. So I knew who to pay more attention to. So I was always just very strategic behind it but my passion was with the numbers and the growth hacking. So it's like you just need something a little more to get, I think, famous than just, I want to be famous because it looks fun and cool.

What was the most you made in one live?

One time I did a 12 hour livestream day. Probably more, it was probably 16 hours of just livestream straight. And I think that day, this was when I was smaller too. This is when I had maybe 120K followers on the app. And I probably made 12 grand in that day.

12 grand?

Yeah.

And I was 16 at that time.

Crazy.

15, yeah. I was younger. So that was cool. That was awesome. I love doing the leaderboard stuff. Like, so cool, 'cause I was a small creator getting, like, number one likes on the app. It was like, 'cause I would just stream so long. But it was a grind to get.

To where... Sure, but it didn't happen overnight. It was just like showing up every day.

Yeah.

What about the, why did you guys decide to launch an energy drink? What was the reason behind this in a sea of millions of energy drinks?

Yeah.

So, why create it? How did the process work? How many partners do you have?

We ran into this situation where Sway wasn't very brandable, right? Sway is a house, for those who don't know, Sway is a content house.

Where there's what, five or six of you guys there? Yeah, it's like six, seven, eight.

It's weird because people kind of rotate out.

Influencers and you're creating content together, you live there.

Yeah, it's a content house. So it's a house of creators that all live together and their main goal is just create as much content as you can together and boost everyone's platforms. Everyone grows. So within that house, we weren't the most brand safe group. We were a little bit controversial. You were. Yeah, a lot.

R-rated.

Yeah, yeah.

Got it.

So at the beginning, I would say at least. And then what happened is we weren't getting those brand deals. There were other houses getting all the brand money. So we were only making money off our AdSense, our TikTok lives, and our merch. So we were like, how do we create another form of revenue What do we do?

You weren't getting a lot of brand deals.

Exactly. Because you weren't kid friendly. Exactly. So we wanted to own every single thing we touched. Bryce and I, a big part of our content is YouTube. And we would shotgun Red Bulls before, in our videos, just to like establish we were high energy, kind of say like, if you want high energy, like the us, right? And it started this trend on TikTok where people were shotgunning Red Bulls. Terrible trend to start. Like, so bad for your heart, so don't do it. We started this trend. People were tagging us. It was getting millions of views and likes. A bunch of videos were going viral on TikTok about it. So Bryce and I are sitting there giving all this free promotion to Red Bull, right? Just marketing, like they haven't paid us. They just get millions of views from us. We were like, we need our own energy drink. We don't want to sell out and do a brand deal. We want to like own it. Long-term project. So started talking with Michael. We got introduced to Evan Burns who does Long Drink with Miles Teller. He was already obviously experienced in the drink space. So teamed up with him and got Annie in probably it was like a seven month back-end process before we had the drink ready and then did D2C.

Wow.

Yeah.

So it's not in stores, it's just online direct to consumer.

Distribution is coming very, very soon.

That's great. How long has it been out now?

It's been out. We released I believe in August.

So like five months, four or five months.

Yeah.

And how's that been working? Are you guys seeing the sales you'd love to see? Is it taking time to ramp up? What's been that process?

So like right when we released it, huge spike obviously because Bryce and I are very good at doing the marketing, social media guys. Like we know how to create viral videos, we know how to make sure that There's millions and millions of views on this site, right? Like Any Energy. And then what we had to learn was how to continuously, naturally implement Any Energy into our videos. So you kind of saw this big spike and then it obviously went down a little bit and then it kind of just had this maintaining upwards graph. So it's been, it's actually been super successful within the last like four months of Bryce and I just grinding on it.

What's the biggest challenge you see a product or a company like that continuing to sustain? You know, and I see stuff like Bang Energy, whatever Red Bull or any brand, it's like they have now thousands of influencers constantly posting them. They've got ad spend. How do you guys compete with stuff like that with all the other energy drink? You know, the Rock's got an energy drink coming out.

It's like, how do you compete and stay competitive? So I think one thing that Bryce and I did that was very strategic is the branding of the drink. It's not branded so much as this hard, cold energy drink that's gonna give you 300 milligrams of caffeine and you're gonna be jittering and shaking out of your chair, right? It's more of a lifestyle drink and that's how it looks like it is a lifestyle drink. When you drink it, you feel like it's only 75 milligrams of caffeine, right? You don't get that insane bang energy boost where you feel like you're about to have a heart attack. So, that's the thing about our drink is the marketing. When you look at the can, it's a little bit more on the feminine side, but Bryce and I, and our videos are very bro-y. And that's because we know we want to sell to both demographics. Our fans are more on the female demographic, so we have the can look a certain way, but at the same time when Bryce and I are doing the marketing, we give it that more bro-y feel. So it can be like the next white claw, but instead of an alcohol, it's in the energy drink space, right? at the start were only accepted by women. Guys made fun of it. Or guys were like, oh, that's a girl's drink, that's a girl. And now every guy at every frat is drinking White Claws at the frat parties. It's just that kind of strategic marketing.

That I think will keep us above. That's cool. How do you stay excited about something like that when you have a million opportunities come your way? Podcasts, projects, YouTube, all these things you're working on. You've got all these ideas, investments, How do you sustain passion and focus for each brand like Annie Energy?

Yeah, of course. I think a big thing is Michael and I actually talk about just what are my passions a lot. We definitely are trying to stay focused on not doing too much because there's just a point where you overstretch, right? You overwork yourself or you're in too many pots at the same time, right? So, it's gotta be something that I care heavily about. Annie Energy, for example, was my first ever, I would say, founding company that--.

It's a product I launched.

Yeah, it was like a product I launched. I took a lot more of initiative in it. With the TalentX side, I was more of a recruiter. I was like a special advisor to someone. So, this co-founding it in doing more, it was just awesome. It was a great feeling. And it's like, I know I'll always be connected to that, but when we do different products, like dog for dog, for example, that's a company with Snoop Dogg where a bag of dog food gets donated to a shelter every time one's purchased, right? And I know I'm gonna be passionate about that because I'm a dog guy. Like my family had one at home. I always have loved dogs. I got one as soon as I came to LA. My house is full of six dogs because everyone decided to get one after me. It was awesome. It was so awesome. awesome.

But.

So there's, like, seven dogs running around my house all the time. That's crazy. But, yeah, I mean, like, that's something that I'm very passionate about. And then continuing that Trend, like, unhide with Ellen. Like, I purchased part of her company, and. And that's a faux fur. So trying to stop the. The shearing of animals. A lot of people think, like, oh, they're just shearing the Sheep. It doesn't kill them. It doesn't hurt them. What they don't know is the amount of infections that could cause by shearing and the deaths, like, they end up dying from the infections, actually, a lot of the times after in the conditions they're kept in while they're doing. It's kind of pretty scary. You don't feel great after watching those like the clothes you have on or the blankets you're buying or the fur you're buying. So yeah, it's definitely like finding those passions and executing on them.

That's cool, man. Michael's been pretty strategic with you, it sounds like. Yeah, for sure. Good guy. Yeah, great guy. I met him many years ago. He's been helpful with a lot of things.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a cool man. I'm curious about the mental health side of social media because I see a lot of young creators who are gain a lot of audience. They get pretty well known and then I see their numbers drop at some point or maybe followers like they start getting, it's not growing as fast the follower count, it's like even dips for a while. I see this a lot or they were getting 20 million views a video, now it's 1 million views where it's still a lot of views and a lot of followers and a lot of attention. But how are you personally managing that as numbers fluctuate and it seems like at certain points it's like this rapid growth and kind of a peak and it's harder to grow. I'm not sure if you've reached that yet, but how are you handling this and also with friends who are in this space? What are you seeing the biggest challenge they're faced with and how do you think you're gonna be able to handle it moving forward?

Yeah, I think that the thing that happens to creators is they start to see a dip in their followers or they start to see it slows down and then they get really scared, right? So they start either trying to do things that are like too crazy or just like are gonna get them in trouble because they're just trying to get views, right? They're trying to maintain their views and like that's not a great way to go or they just give up. They're like, oh, I'm irrelevant now, like I can't do anything. So they get really negative and you'll start to see them post less and you start to see them like think they're too big for or like they'll be like, they'll start using the shadow band excuses. Like, I'm shadow band.

Yeah, yeah.

The algorithm doesn't like me. TikTok doesn't like it. It's like, bro, they don't know who you are. They don't not like you. TikTok isn't blocked. Maybe on occasion there's people like Donald Trump that gets kicked off social media, right? But you, random social media creator, and you just stopped posting so your likes went down, they're not blocking you, right? It's just people get so just, they're not encouraged to keep going. And it makes sense, but you just gotta push through. I mean, look at these big names in social media. Logan Paul and Jake Paul, there's a reason they're still big names in social media because they just never gave up. Like there were so many times when everyone thought they were done or they were irrelevant or they were off like social media, they should have been can't, right? They didn't give up.

They kept reinventing.

Yeah, they just reinvented themselves or they're finding new ways to stay in the press. And like, obviously it's working so like you can maintain relevancy as long as you just don't get scared when you see it drop a little bit. You just can't get afraid of it.

What have you done when you've seen dips or video views?

I mean, I think what I try to do is just continue to give people something to be excited about. I'm always thinking of the next big thing, right? So if that's when we did Sway, it's like, all right, Sway starts and then all of a sudden Bryce and Josh are both starting YouTube, which is like the first TikTok talkers to go to YouTube and then it's now they the first TikTokers to drop a product. It's like, now we're doing any energy, and then it's now we're angel investing in Sway, and now I'm at Barstool, and you know what I mean? It's just big thing, big announcement. So we're always trying to do these crazy partnerships or create these what the f*** moments so that people stay interested.

That's good, man.

Yeah.

Where do you see yourself by 25?

I think that I'll take a bigger step into, for the entertainment side, I think you'll see a lot more of, I would say like barstool type content or getting more involved in the sports world. Like I just started a radio show with Craig Carton where I'm going on every Friday and we just talk 15-20 minutes about sports, right? And so I think you'll see that on the entertainment side and then then on the business side, definitely stepping more and more into Angel. I love Angel Investing. And then as well, probably being a GP at a fund. And then I would say hopefully either scaling Annie into something huge or have exited because that will be six years down the road. So that would be like seven years of doing Annie. So hopefully, yeah.

That's cool, man. What got you into Barstool and the partnership with Dave and being there?

It was actually-- I didn't know who he was until about a year ago.

Okay. And I've been loving everything about the way he's been.

Yeah.

Well, first off, he's just-- I love the pizza reviews. I'm just like, okay, this is entertaining, but then to see what he's doing with small businesses. I'm just like, dude, mad props to him for stepping up in that way.

And really serving people. Yeah, no, yeah. I was blessed enough to where actually with one of the investments we made, Pair, Pear Pop. They came in with us and helped out the Barstool Fund. We were able to do just off Twitter and Pear Pop. We were able to do $200,000 in 48 hours for the fund at Barstool, which was amazing. But the Dave thing all came from actually drama that happened in social media. It was like the biggest social media TikTok drama that has ever occurred.

Like, what was it?

It was Beef The Hype House and Sway House and essentially my girlfriend and a guy over there.

So, so anyway, who's at Hype House?

Who's there?

Who are the big people at Hype House?

Well, at the time, like Charlie and Dixie were involved with Hype House. They pretty much gave Hype House the name, I would say. And Addison was there for a little bit.

This was a house in LA.

Yeah, yeah. And then there's Yvonne Money, Chase, Thomas, Alex, Warren. There's a bunch of them, but it's same as way.

Like, there's a big group. Sure.

So there was some beef between houses. Yeah, there's some beef going on. And it decided to just break the internet. Like, you couldn't go on TikTok without a video being made about it. Like, we would go live on Instagram, and if any of us involved in the, like, beef went live on Instagram, it would get a hundred thousand viewers on Instagram. Crazy, man. Like, trending on Twitter, number one, for, like, two days. It was everywhere you went like YouTube videos are trending about it. It's just you couldn't stop TMZ It's like Hollywood fix paparazzi everyone so Dave tweets out and is like why the fuck am I seeing wiggle dickers all over my feet? So me and Michael are out of dinner and someone that's at the dinner with us was like yo, Dave just tweeted about you guys and the situation going on And Michael's like, holy fuck, we need to get in contact with Dave. So he starts going through his Rolodex and like, who knows Dave? Who knows Dave? Who knows Dave? And eventually after like 30 minutes we find someone that knows Dave, we get in contact with him and we talk about doing an Instagram live. So me and Dave go live together, I go live and then guest him and we start talking about the beef. And there's like whatever, 50,000 people on the live stream watching. And it's just kind of like us going back and forth, we're like shooting shit, we're roasting people, whatever. It's all in fun and games and then Snapchat hits us up and is like yo, we saw the live stream with Dave and Josh We want to create a show with them would on Snapchat. Yeah, would they be interested? So we get a 30 minute scheduled like time slot with Dave to go and pitch this idea to him We're one minute in we're like they want to do a show with us on Snapchat. What do you think? No, he's like no, I'm not doing anything with Snapchat like one minute into the call we got 29 minutes left and he's already shut down the idea. I don't like it. He's like no, I don't like it. We're not not doing it. And so we're all sitting there on the call with like 29 minutes left trying to figure out what to do. Like what are we gonna say? The rest of the call, like do we keep going? Do we just say like peace, all right? Like so Michael starts like spitballing and then just kind of throws up the idea. He's like, let's do a podcast. Like why don't you and Josh do a podcast? And Dave's like, yeah, I'm not opposed to that. So then we just started talking more and more and like probably was three or four months of negotiations then we got the podcast. and it's been, like, super successful ever since. That's great, man.

How does that partnership work? Do you have equity and bar stools? You just, you guys split things? Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, it's more of a split thing on the actual showcast itself. Yeah.

But it's, and you're promoting on your side. He's promoting on his side, and you.

Guys are doing a split somehow.

Yeah.

And it's, like, great because the demographics, right? For Dave, he's reaching into a whole new demo that he hasn't reached into that younger audience, like, as Barstool fans get older and older. And then for me, it gives me that older audience that I'm looking for and more of the male demographic that I'm lacking on.

So you got 90% 12 year old girls. Yeah, yeah.

No, but the podcast, it's like, I think we have more guys subscribed to the podcast than girls. It's like a 54% guys and then 40 something percent girls. And then like slowly but surely you start to see also like my other socials like go up like my YouTube now I was like, I think, past, like, around 30% male audience. And then it's like, you see my Instagram go up in my TikTok. So, like, that's correct.

Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah, I've been pretty consistent 50/50 male to female audience for a long time. And I think, because I'm interviewing a.

Lot of men and women, and it's.

Just split audiences, I guess. That's wicked, though. Like, when you have that split, it's awesome. Well, my girlfriend's more like 80% of guys that follow her, you know, it's like 13 million guys. Yeah.

Okay. But, yeah.

And she's trying to build a female audience as well. She's building other accounts for just like all female content. Right, okay cool. I think you guys are both doing a smart thing there.

That's cool that you're doing that.

Was that once a week or how does that work? Yeah, the podcast we do once a week. It's called BFF, right? BFFs, yeah. I've seen a couple episodes, it's good, yeah.

Yeah.

You got good clips on there as well. How do you think you're gonna handle emotionally all this success, the money, the opportunities, the fame, the Everyone wanting a piece of you now and in the future. How do you how are you personally dealing with emotional wellness emotional health? Yeah and not allowing it to consume you?

Yeah, I think that I think I was already consumed. I think that like the first six months when we came out to sway was like when I fell into the traps of LA and like the success and the money and everything like like I said I was never like a spender, but I love, like, I love creating moments and memories and, like, being around people and being, like, center of attention or just, like, having a blast all the time. Right. So when we first came to La and there was no covid, right. And it's like, we are these Rising Stars. The party seemed crazy, right? So it's like every single night, like, I was 17 when I first came out here. So for a 17 year old high school kid, they're like, I'm in heaven right now. Like, I get to do whatever I want, party and make money. Like this is sweet. So I did that for like six months and then kind of just like realized after a few big mistakes, like, all right, I'm, I got lightning in the bottle and I'm throwing it away. Like the opportunity I have is way too important to waste. And it's like, I was just like slowly but surely like also kind of justifying decisions I used to never justify.

Really? Like what?

I think just like slacking off, like not doing as much work if it was like deciding to drink and party or do whatever we're doing at these parties instead of like prioritizing the meetings I have the next day, right? It's like it didn't matter what day it was, it could be a Tuesday at like seven and someone would come down and be like, we're drinking, and it would just happen, right? So on that side of things, like I'm very glad we kind of did that at the very beginning and then kind of just got out of our system and moved on.

Yeah.

Because now it's like we're work focused and people in COVID are always like, oh, it sucks so much. Like, we don't get to party. I miss partying. And it's like, yeah, I miss partying a little bit, but I kind of got partied out. So it's like, at least now I've been able to use COVID to just focus on my work and.

Yeah.

And becoming kind of morally back to.

Where I should be.

Like the good Canadian kid. Yeah, that good Canadian kid that I was. was like raised and how I was raised. So, yeah.

Who are three creators that you look up to or you're inspired by?

Like social media creators?

Yeah, maybe they're in your space or maybe they're in marketing or fashion or music or whatever. Maybe they're in a different space, but who are just three creators that you think, man, they're doing a great job. I admire what they're creating. Yeah.

Maybe they got 100 million followers. Maybe they got 100, 000 followers. Right, right, right. But who's doing a good job? I would say Mr.

Beast.

He's one of them. He's absolutely crushing in his whole team. Like, I talk to people on his team. I haven't got to talk to, I'm talking with Jimmy actually soon, I believe, we're scheduling a call, but like the amount of respect I have for them and how hard he works, like I know how hard content is to film and this guy's a machine, like the videos he's doing, his schedule and like how well orchestrated his team is is just phenomenal. So props to him. And then I would say there's like, Definitely a part of me that looks up to Dave. Like, I think that what he's been able to do with Barstool and growing it into a social media conglomerate, like this, this, and like, it's just, it's a machine, right? It can boost anything. It can absolutely push views, sell product. So I really respect where he's on that front.

And then I gotta interview him someday. I think he'd be great on here.

Yeah.

And then another influencer that I would say I have respect for. I would say that Logan and Jay, like the Paul Brothers, like they're definitely like, I always feel like I kind of have to give respect to those guys because they were, they were like pioneers in a sense in this, this industry. And I think that just how they looked at it and, and the things that they Pioneer changed the game. Like they've done so many like bringing the boxing in and it's crazy right? It just they've opened up the music videos everything else the diss track like they've opened doors for other content creators to to make a lot of money and they that would have never thought that way, right?

Like were you watching them when you were 1213 100% really?

Yeah, I was watching Jake a lot when I was younger like probably 14 I was watching him and then Logan like pretty soon after probably like a couple months, but I was always like, I was always just studying. Like, I almost used that studying. Like, it was, I wouldn't just watch the videos to, like, slack off and watch videos. Yeah, yeah. I did that as well, but I was, like, writing notes. I was like, okay, this is what they did. Like, look at their thumbnail. Look at, 'cause I always, like, since.

I was young, just wanted to be an entertainer. Like, I wanted to do social media.

Wow.

Yeah.

Have they inspired you to get into, like, boxing or doing certain things like that? I tried to do a boxing match, like, four months ago, but the kid said no. Oh, really?

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's fine. I'm like, it would have been fun. It would like, it was kind of like, I don't know. I understand why, like, it wasn't done. And I think that, like, fighting's. Fighting's intense. Like, you got to really put a lot of words, man. You can't just, like, say you're a fighter. Like, no, you gotta train for hours. And if you don't and you go in box, you just look, you get embarrassed. like, you look like a fool when you go out there and you can't throw a punch or you start, like, just, like, going left and, like, you can't even, like, control your body movements. So your cardio is, like, Nate Robinson, for example, like, he. He kind of looked like a fool. Like, he went out there against Jake and, like, no disrespect to him on the athlete side, because guys, like, one of the best athletes of all time, probably. But Jake trained and put his absolute, like, full effort into it, and then. and that's why.

You got that result?

Yeah, yeah.

That's crazy, man. What advice would you have for the fans of yours, the followers, the 30 million friends of yours that are going through a lot of insecurities, who are in their teens right now, who are just faced with changing in their body, breakups and relationships, people ghosting them, you know, just all the confusion of social media and real world Dynamics and comparison mode. Like you grew up in this generation more than me. I got into social media when I was 25. I got into it early.

Yeah.

What advice do you have to kids?

Biggest, biggest advice. And it's something like, took me a while to figure out, but definitely learned it in LA. Like keep your circle small. Like find an inner circle that you like. You can be friends with everyone. And I think you should show respect to everyone and be nice to everyone. even if they don't treat you great all the time, but you've got to find your circle and like stick to it. Like in high school, I probably had, for the first like two years, I probably had like two kids that I could have called my best friends. And then the last two years, I gained like another three more. And it was like, so I had like, that was it though, like everyone else I couldn't really trust. Like kids would make fun of me all the time at school, like for the social media things, I got bullied for it, whatever. So it's like, same with when I came out to a lesbian, There were so many kids I trusted, like, and people I called my best friends, and they would go and do these, like, crazy things behind my back or, like, talk absolute.

Yeah.

I mean, Ellie's the worst for that.

Yeah.

So I would say, like, that's the biggest thing, is just, like, keeping, keeping it small.

Keep it small.

Yeah.

There you go. Well, I want to acknowledge you, Josh, for the risk taking you take, because you came from a small town in Canada. You started taking action out there. You moved out here. You made some mistakes. You're still learning and making mistakes, but you're constantly evolving and constantly innovating in your space right now. And I think it's really inspiring to see what you can create as a 16 year old, 19 year old, and where you're going in the future. So I acknowledge you for, for trying to learn and really optimizing these things and taking these risks and investing and learning financial literacy and just expanding your, your Empire. I think it's really cool to see that someone your age can do this. and I know you're going to learn a lot and you're going to fail and you're going to make a lot of success as well, but the fact that you're here now and you're committed to growth, I think is really inspiring to see. So I acknowledge you for all you're doing, man. Thank you. I'm excited for your growth. I want to watch and see what you're up to over the next few years. So if I can help, let me know with anything. For sure. And also, I want to ask you a question I asked everyone at the end called Three Truths. I think you're the second youngest person I've had on here. I think I had Jake on me as well. Maybe it was 18 or 19. So you're the youngest person I've had on or the second youngest. So this is a question that may not resonate with you right now. It's called the Three Truths. And I'd like you to imagine for a moment, it's your last day on earth. And you're as old as you want to be. You're 100, you're 200, whatever. Maybe science allows you to be 200 years old by then, right? But it's the last day. And you've actually accomplished everything. All your dreams, all the businesses, you're the first billionaire social media influencer, whatever you want to do, you've done it all. You've got the family, kids, everything. I know it's a long way way to think.

Yeah.

But just imagine for a second, it's your last day. But for whatever reason, everything you've created, you have to take with you. So no one has access to your content right now, which is YouTube, TikTok, podcast, products, everything has to go with you. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true. from all your experiences in life. And I know you've only got 19 years on this planet right now, but and this is all they would have. They got a piece of paper and a pen. You get to write down your three biggest lessons you've learned as a human being and this is all you could share with the world. What would you say of those three truths for you?

Are they just like lessons or things.

I've done that I leave behind? Lessons you would leave behind. Lessons. The three things you know to be.

True that you would want to share to the world.

All right, number one.

Lessons to the world.

Yeah.

With power comes responsibility. I got a tattoo on my arm for a reason. Quote my dad always said to me, Also watch Spider-Man obviously. But it's just, I've realized so many times where I've had such an influence or such a power and utilized it maybe in the wrong way or just made mistakes where it's been utilized wrong. So just when you have that power and it can be as small as like power over one friend or like a sibling, right? Like make sure you realize the responsibilities that come with that. The next truth, I think that kind of going back a little bit to what I said with the tight circle thing actually, but I think that that me personally, there's just been so many times in my life where I've been backstabbed or I've been like, I've put my heart out and trusted someone multiple times or like they've even done things or shown me where I should have cut the ties off or been like, all right, we can't work in business anymore, whatever. There's been so many times where situations like that have happened and I just try to make it work. I'm always like, oh no, I'll give you another chance, another chance. like, the circle that is small, like, in that you can trust, like, is so important because when everything's crumbling, like, you need to be able to go to someone and just, like, tell them, like, look, I I only can go to you with this. Like, this is. You're all I got here. So I think that's super important.

And then what would that lesson be? Like, keep a good.

Keep a tight circle.

Yeah.

And then the. The last one is. I'm trying to think the best way to say this, but I think that there's a false notion where people say like save your money. I think the biggest lesson is spend your money, but spend it wisely. And that's like utilizing your, your invest. Like there's so many times where you could put like $10 away into an account that's giving you like 6% back, right? or whatever it is, acorns, et cetera. You just don't go buy the Starbucks coffee, instead you go somewhere else where the coffee is gonna be $1, right? And then every day you're saving $3 and putting it in little things like that. Learn to spend your money, but spend it wisely. Those would be my three lessons.

That's good stuff, man. I've got one final question for you. Before I ask it, what is a question you wish more people would ask you?

What is a question I wish more people would ask? I think actually what we got to, something we got to talk about today, which I usually don't, is the analytical or I guess like how focused I am on the numbers of things. Like when I talked about my story of like growth hacking my social media, I think a lot of people think I just came out of social media like this. And like I've been on interviews or podcasts where they're like, Josh, so you blew up overnight. Like how does that feel? and I'm like, well, you obviously didn't even do research on me. Like, you don't know my story, then, like, that's not even what happened, right? So, like, people almost, like, I put words in my mouth before. They think that, like, I just blew off. Blew up off, like, a pretty face. And I mean, like, sure, probably didn't help that, like, whatever. Like, girls think I'm cute, but it's like there. There was three and a half, four years of me, like, doing tedious work, like, following and unfollowing accounts and commenting on videos. And like, I was so strategic about my blow up and studying the For your page, knowing what worked, like trying out different video styles. Like, it was it was a grind for me. It wasn't this easy. I got views for being good looking.

Yeah, you studied. You worked hard.

Yeah, I also was like a weird looking kid. I like puberty helped me out. I was a weird looking guy.

14 was weird.

Oh my God. It's like I had an awkward face from, I think, like 14 until three months ago. Like, I just a little bit got out of it. Yeah, until now. Yeah, so.

You're still the weird face.

Yeah, still Loki in. Yeah.

And what's the thing you're most proud of that maybe people don't see or they don't know about? It's something smaller maybe, or maybe not as well known about your bio and about your content.

I think that one thing I'm really proud of is probably. I would say. I would say, like, this. I think people don't realize the work that the boys, but also, like, myself put behind sway. Like, I think people think sway was more of this, like, management came in and picked us all out. But the actual work, like, all the boys put in and the. In the Brotherhood that was made, like, I just. people to, I think people don't realize like how true that was. People think like, it's like a boy band, right? People think, oh, we went out and we selected like five, six random people. Like, we were best friends going into that. And it's like that accomplishment of all of us truly just caring about each other and then being able to create an entire like movement with Sway and be able to change kind of even how like people view social media creators because before you couldn't do the things we did as a social media creator, you got canceled for it. Like, there were stigmas for TikTokkers. They were right, like we broke those. So I think like that's one thing that I'm just so proud of because I was able to do with my friends, and that was always a dream of mine is being successful with people I care about.

That's cool, man. Yeah. Good stuff. Well, we can follow you. Where's the main place you're posting content now? Where should we support?

Where should we follow? I would say my Instagram or YouTube. They're both just Josh Richards. It's like my name. Are you not on TikTok as much anymore? I definitely am, but I think that just like, I'm trying to expand my portfolio and content. Trying to push them to other platforms. I think everyone knows about my, like, people know I do TikTok. I want them to know I do YouTube. And I want them to know, right? And the content I tend to post on my Instagram, I'm able to be more sports involved. I'm able to be more Like there's trends on TikTok. There's audio, so I'll try to put my spin on it or whatever, but it's like you're a little bit restricted on TikTok unless you want to spend a ton of time on it. And it's like, I want to use that time for YouTube and TikTok.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah, it's good, man. Yeah.

Okay, well, final question for you. What's your definition of greatness?

Definition of greatness? I would say someone that's putting in 110%, like it, I would call myself the greatest or I've achieved greatness if I know I've left everything out on that field. And like, I always go back to kind of like that sports analogy thing, but it was just like, that's how I was training. My dad was my coach my whole life, right? Like, or at least a majority of it. And like, the other coaches I had, it was always the same thing. We were always getting run, like, back and forth, back and forth. Like, my team's always huge on that. And it's just like, you are leaving everything you got out on this field. Like, my dad would be mad at me if I could go and walk to the car without kind of, like, struggling after a game. Like, he was like, why do you have to drag you off? Yeah. Yeah. Like, right. Like, I should have to drag you off the ice after every hockey game because you should be giving 110. Like, you should be leaving it all out there. Right. So that's what I define as greatness.

Is leaving everything you have on the field. My man, Josh.

Thanks for being here, man.

Thank you for having me, man.

Thank you. Thank you. Good times. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and if you did, make sure to share it with a friend, text a few friends, post it on social media, copy and paste the link wherever you're listening to this or just use the link lewishouse.com/1086 and share it out online. If you enjoyed it, make sure to click the Subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts right now as as leave us a rating and review, as that really helps us spread the message of greatness to more people in that ecosystem. So if you enjoyed this and you got value, then make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share this with a friend. And if you want inspirational messages sent to your phone every single week from me, then text the word podcast right now to 614-350-3960 to get on my secret texting list.

And I want to leave you with.

A quote from the Rock who said, success isn't always about greatness. It's about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come. I hope you enjoyed this. And if no one's told you lately, you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. I'm so grateful for you. And you know what time it is? It's time to go out there and do something great.

[No.

2] Thank you.