Episode 150: Innovation Breeds Profitability with Vic Belonogoff

All right, Christina and Kels, what is the deal? Are you ready?

Yeah.

So, Kels, I want to know more about your clean diet. You've gone clean, you said. And then you said you've gone clean. I asked you why. You said for environmental responsibility or what was the.

Yeah, the meat industry just uses a ton of resources, just in farming in general. The amount of resources they use and then shipping it different areas and refrigeration and all of that. So. Yeah, and it's for me, I don't need meat. I don't love it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I like it and I. Yeah, I have no qualms against it in terms of taste, but I just don't eat it.

Okay. Yeah, but what about when they come out? They're coming out that 3D printed meat. Have you.

Oh, that sounds awesome.

Chill there, dude. Have you seen, have you read about this? Like they 3D printed a hamburger?

No.

So basically they printed cooked meat and it didn't taste perfect, but it wasn't bad. And they think within a few years they'll be able to make it to the level of quality, taste wise, of any other meat and have all the protein and contents, but they don't have to kill an animal for it. They just 3D print it.

But on what?

Does that sound good to you?

No, please say that one more time because it's plastic. Is that what you said? That was awesome.

I'm thinking three pre printed, like 3D printed. Like my prosthetic type of 3D printer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, there's not. Yeah, not your prosthetic finger. They. They 3D print plastic, but you can 3D print any material. So you can know that they can do what's called bio printing, where they make you like a valve for your heart or something. And now they can 3D print literally a hamburger, which is. It's all the ingredients, if that's the right molecular.

Yeah, but how is it actually, I mean, in terms of chemical composition, how do you reproduce an actual animal?

These hard questions.

I mean, does it sound good to you?

It sounds intriguing. It doesn't sound.

But not tasty.

It doesn't sound even not tasty, but I mean, chemically inducing that. Does that sound good?

I got you. I got you. I don't know, but I think they're taking molecules kind of making the right mix of things.

Yeah.

Just like you can make, you can make water out of quote, unquote, thin air. You take oxygen, you take hydrogen, you stick them together and all of a sudden water Appears.

Have you ever seen those water balls that they make now?

Yes.

How cool are those?

Oh, you're like. Instead of using like a plastic bottle, it's like a. Almost like a gel cap of water, but it's. You can actually consume the cap. So you just bite into it. So there's no way to drink. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

I've not seen that.

Yeah, those are cool.

Water ball.

Yeah.

Where are they available for purchase?

I don't. Are they available for purchase?

I don't know.

Wherever you pick up your 3D printed hamburger. Exactly. That's where you pick them up.

Okay, well, you are listening to the.

Profit first podcast and you're listening to episode 150.

There you go.

We finally made it.

Oh, my God. We're.

I'm thinking about 3D printing our show.

That would be great.

Very logical. That makes sense.

Yeah. Welcome to the profit first podcast. I'm Christina Bulduk, your co host.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit first. You know, you're listening to the profit first podcast. This is a show where we talk about all elements of profitability. We talk to people who successfully grown businesses. Like last week we had Brian Lee. The week before we had.

Bryn.

Bryn Putnam. I was thinking of her last name on our first. Bryn Putnam. Yeah. We talked about these business owners at premises. We've talked about people that struggled and we kind of helped coach them through it and we bring in experts. Well, today's no different.

No different.

And one thing that else isn't different is we have co host this. This Kelsey.

We have Kelsey.

Hey guys.

Welcome to the show.

Kelsey, welcome.

Thank you.

So you know where you can find us?

We like it.

We like it. Find us on Google play, tunein, radio, stitcher, itunes, and of course, profitfirstpodcast.com. mike, tell me what you've been up to.

I did a five burrow bike tour.

Ooh.

So in Bo, in boot, he met in boot, the five burrows of Bouton. I went up main street. I took a right on east street and came back down. All five houses in New York, they have the five boroughs. Queens, Staten Island. Do you know where they are? Do you know where they are?

No.

Yeah. Bronx.

Bronx. Yes.

Was it Queens? Manhattan? Yes, Bronx, Staten Island. And Brooklyn.

Yes. Brooklyn. Beautiful Brooklyn. You go into every borough. You start in Manhattan, you kind of loop around.

Yeah.

Went through the Bronx, Went through all of them. Ended up on Staten island.

That's incredible.

Yeah. 32000 bikers.

Wow.

On mountain bike every Kind of bike.

Was it like a slow pace? Because there's so many people.

Deathly slow. Like. Like, for God's sake. Whenever you got to a hill, and now this is very flat, except when you go on a bridge. So we went across the Verazano Bridge through the climate hill. Oh, my God. There's people that have never exercised in their life, and I don't think their parents exercise, nor their grandparents. It was. They're so unexercised. They would get to these hills and, like, just stop. And there's thousands of them that stop. So then there was this queue of, you know, 30,000 people behind them. Cause they went first, like, they should go last.

Yeah. They didn't get the memo.

I've just been going to a lot of baby showers lately.

That's what got you all jacked up about having a baby?

Yeah. I mean, we're not married yet, and I would really like that to happen first. So we're talking in the next, like, couple years, but we are. It sparked a conversation. You know, he's gonna be 30 in September and I'm gonna be 28 in August. And we' it's like getting to be that time. We want to be young parents, you know?

Yeah.

And, you know, all that fun stuff. It's exciting.

We had someone in our neighborhood have a baby at 42.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's happening more commonly.

Yeah. It's even more of a commitment, but.

You have to go through this battery of tests, but they stick things in you and parts you didn't even know you had, like.

Imagery.

What have you been up to, Kel?

I became a godmother last week.

Oh, congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you. One of your sisters or sisters, baby.

Those are good, cuz then you'll see your godchild.

Yeah.

Like, if you're a God child for a friend from high school and then you lose weight, then, like, what do you do?

Yeah.

Well, if you're the godmother, you know.

Well, hopefully nothing. Hopefully you don't need to do anything.

Well, hopefully you don't need to do anything. But I'm saying, like, if you lose. If you lose touch with one of your friends or something, and you're the godparent, it's like, I don't know if I'm still kind of actively involved in this.

A gray area.

Yeah. Congratulations, Grandma.

Yeah, Grandma.

Well, you're a grandparent and your grand. No grandparents. You're a great God. It's really important. Congratulations, Godma.

Thank you.

That's funny, Grandma. Godma.

So we have a shout out today. This goes out to Saphir. She is the. Her business is the holy crepe truck. And she emailed in and she said, I read a lot about entrepreneurship, business, successful people, inspired people. And I was extremely lucky to get to read your book a few months ago. Mike, thank you. It seems so obvious. When I read it, it hit me like a lightning bolt that it was the right way to do things. And the link was. It's the link that was missing between my business and a profitable business.

Oh, Sophia, I love hearing that. And holy crap to you.

Holy crape.

Thanks for coming on show. You talking about show. I did a new thing with American Express, Turning Points. So if you like this podcast, you'll love American Express because we produce that extremely well. The second, first episode, I crack a beer. Second episode, what did I do? What was the fun place? Did you hear it?

Yeah.

Isn't that funny?

Yeah.

So I'm with a candy store owner.

Yeah.

Robin. And she starts. She gives me Pop Rocks. And he goes, and then zotz. You ever have zots?

No.

It's a hard candy, but when you bite into it or just by sucking on it, it'll start letting this acidic kind of foam out in your mouth. It tastes funky. It's wild. And she did that and Pop Rock simultaneously. It was like an explosion. She looked like a vampire. Not vampire, someone. Like a rabid dog. Yeah.

Oh.

So that was pretty crazy. So that's Turning Points you've got to listen to. It's a fun show. I want to thank our corporate partners who make the show a reality. Fundera Fundbox Nextiva Receipt Bank Zero will tell you them at the end. But there's one company I want to talk about now. Net Payroll. They do our payroll for easily a year now.

Oh, yeah.

Far better than any other payroll company I've ever worked with. And I've worked with the big ones. The small ones actually have a story. The guy, my payroll passed away.

Oh.

While he was doing my payroll. And he had a drug. Drug problem. And actually, no, he did. Good guy. And how I found out he passed away is our payroll didn't get done.

Oh.

There was no back. It was just. Yeah. It was horrible.

Oh.

So I don't know. That's a big downer. I wanted to, you know, serve up to that.

Yeah.

But here's what. I don't know how to translate this to. It's a true story. Net Payroll is a large company that they have the depth to serve you, but they have the Personal touch at the perfect size. So we have multiple people we work there with. But the biggest thing that net payroll does that no one else does. The owners give you their personal numbers. If you have a problem, you can reach out to them. So we'll talk more about our corporate partners in a little bit, but just want to give a special shout out to net payroll. Yeah. I was gonna try to bridge it back to other story. Don't do that.

If they die.

If they die.

Yeah.

When we called the police to look in on our account, oh my God. It turned out to be fine.

I know, I know. So I'm so afraid of people dying.

On me that I work with.

I think I almost have a curse. It only happened once, but it was such an impactful thing.

Yeah. No, that is traumatic.

Like, I'm like, where is he? And I got pissed. I'm like, where's. How's my payroll?

Yeah.

And like, oh, he kind of died.

He kind of died.

Yeah. Which I don't think you can kinda.

Yeah.

And from there forward, I'm so sensitive of people dying. So when Deborah didn't respond to a call like a few times, I. And you thought she was dead.

It was also during a snowstorm though too.

Snowstorm, Non responsive. I'm like, she died.

Yeah. And other people were saying the same thing.

A lot of people.

Like, she was like, I can't go back today.

He was like, we're in a snowstorm, of course she's not gonna respond. And we were like, dude, she's the worst.

Yeah, she's like 95 years old or something.

Oh my God. All right, we gotta cut that out.

Yeah, please cut that one out. How old is she?

I think she's like 62. We had to look it up.

She was only a day over 50. I swear I just thought she was 95. I thought she was 90.

Oh, good save. Good swear.

I swear to God.

All right, so I have a shout out real quick to another one of our PFPs. This goes out to Femca. She says that since her profit first graduation in August, which is last August, obviously she landed seven profit first clients and she's coaching. Her coaching is anywhere from six to 12 months and they're paying boatload of money to her and she's very appreciative of it. So congratulations, Femke. That's seven clients in one year for profit first. That's a lot.

Yeah. Way to go, Femke.

So good job, Femke.

Yeah.

Out in the Netherlands. So who do you Think is the second fastest growing media company in the nation right now?

I'm going to guess Render Media.

You nailed it. Our guest, do you. How do you pronounce his name?

My guess is Vic Belinogoff.

Belinogov, exactly. Vic Belanogoff. He is the co founder of Render Media. It's the second fastest growing media company Per Inc. Magazine Inc. Ranks the 5 fastest 500 fastest growing companies in the nation every year. They've never sought big round VCs funding which I think is extraordinary. Most of these companies that grow quickly, they have money flowing into them from other people. It's easy to grow. When people give you money it's like oh I want to buy a big house. Oh here's tons of money. Of course you can buy a big house, right? Try to get a big house. When you have no money, you got to bootstrap your way to get there. That's what Render Media did. They have a three strong three pronged approach that's resulted by the way in 70% year, year in, year out growth. It's passive income making money through program programmatic advertising. They have direct advertising and they also have user generated revenue, e commerce and stuff like that. I'm telling you this is the future of media. No longer traditional television. Vic, welcome to our show.

Welcome Vic, thanks for having me. Can I actually just make a quick comment on that previous segment? I am waiting for the invention of the food pill where I actually don't have to go out and ever eat anything and I just take a pill like three times a day.

Oh, talk to us about this.

I think they can Silicon Valley thing too.

Yeah, you sound like so Silicon Valley. So why do you, why do you want the food pill?

Yeah, when people say hey you went to the same restaurant like three days in a row, I'm like yeah, because it doesn't really matter which is really weird. People look at me very strange when I say that. But that's just the way I am. So just a quick comment on that. That's the invention I'm really psyched about.

I don't know. We got to talk about horrible.

Yeah, yeah.

It's either awesome or horrible. Are you like that efficiency driven Vic, that like you just don't want to eat, you just need to for substance?

Yeah, I mean it's not really that efficiency. Like for example, I would love to go to a restaurant if I'm with friends and I'm having like vodka soda. Right. I enjoy drinks and things like that but food is just to Right. Get energy. That's the way I get interesting.

I wish I had that mentality.

Me too. I love to like all the flavors and the different. Oh, I don't know if I could do that.

Vic's already the most fascinating guest we've ever had.

The thing I look forward to most in life. My next meal.

Vic wants to have a nice drink with vodka. I'll take the drink pill. Yeah, like, over. Like, I want to sit down and chew on that hamburger. I love hamburgers.

Or a 3D printer.

But, Vic, like, would you want a booze pill or you want to enjoy that drink?

No, I actually enjoy the flavor of, like, a good vodka soda with a lime. I really enjoy that for a good beer during the day.

Oh, my God. When did you start liking alcohol? Like, when was the turn from, like, as a teenager, something where you have to do it to be cool to, like, oh, my God, I really like my drinks.

So this is going to be a really sad thing. When I was 16, my. My older sister, who's a year and a half older, was way, way cooler than I was. And I used to lecture her and say that alcohol is damaging your brain. In high school, like, that's the kind of guy I was. And then fast forward two years later, I go to college at ucla, and I'm like, I start drinking beer for the first time. I'm like, oh, this actually feels pretty good. It basically all went downhill from there.

And when did you start liking the flavor beyond just the sensation?

I'd say, like, truly, actually. I'd say in my 30s, actually, because that's when I stopped putting, you know, any kind of, like, juices or, like, soda or, like, sodas with my vodka. Just really going straight and simple and really enjoying the taste of vodka. In my 30s, it took a while.

Wow.

I practiced a lot to get there.

All right, so, Vic, tell me, how are you? How is your business different than the traditional media that's out there today?

Yeah, so our main goal here at Render Media is to replace cable TV channels. I think back to 2005, 2006. Newspapers were losing a ton of subscribers. And at that time, you had the emergence of large digital media companies like Huffington Post and buzzfeed. And I see the same thing has been happening over the last few years with cable tv. You know, you see that young people are canceling their subscriptions or they're. They're never even signing up, and they're opting to, you know, subscribe to Hulu, to Netflix, or watch all their favorite Shows on Roku, Apple tv, Amazon and so on. And that's really our goal here. So, you know, example for our Food Channel, instead of people going through and saying, hey, I'm going to watch Cooking Channel or the Food Network, they're going to subscribe to Cooking Panda and watch our content on our website, on social, on Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat, or on our apps, on nonlinear tv, on things like Roku, Amazon, Apple tv. And that's where I think the future is going. You know, cable in the last quarter lost over 700,000 subscribers. That was their biggest loss in their history. So it's going to happen more and more this year. And, you know, our thought process is that as they lose, we gain.

So how do you convince people that may. I know you don't have too many investors because you don't necessarily need the, the funds, but how do you convince someone who maybe could be an investor or something that this is a trend? And let me just set the stage. What I'm hearing is young, the new generation is not going to television in the traditional sense at all. But say I'm, you know, I still live on television, I still have cable TV and so forth, and I'm a prospective investor. How do you tell that story and convince people say, you know what, this, this movement's coming, the shift is coming. You can't see it, but it's coming.

Yeah, I mean, that is the. One of the difficult things is that when a trend or a new kind of disruption is happening, it's very difficult to say, hey, this is where the future is going to be over the next five or ten years. I mean, all you can really do is follow the data. You could follow the loss of subscribers for Comcast, for Xfinity, for Cox, so on and so on. And you could see the increase in users on things like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. But not only that, how many more people now are using Roku or Apple TV or, you know, even all the Amazon prime services on their digital video, you know, model. And so you have to just kind of follow the data and follow the eyeballs. And one thing we use really effectively is that change. You know, I discussed about 1112 years ago when these newspapers started to go down, that all these digital media companies started appear. And don't get me wrong, if you look back at, you know, the newspaper subscription models that, you know, companies like Tribune and Good Network putting out, they thought back in 2004, 2005, that their revenue is going to keep going up and keep Going up. They had no idea this was coming. If you look back at cable three years ago, they had no idea that this was coming as well. Which is, which is another sign why, you know, companies like ours can emerge with very little funding and be disruptors in this kind of industry.

So tell me exactly what are you doing? What's the next generation of media that you're doing?

Yeah, the, the, the most interesting thing was for a while we actually thought that TV was going to be dead, right? Everyone's going to be watching on their phone and on their tablet. But there's been a big, you know, resurgence with nonlinear tv. As I mentioned, things like the Roku and the Apple TVs, the Amazons, where people are now watching all their digital content but want that kind of TV experience. And so now as we've kind of really, you know, matured in our business and made more revenue, we can now start to invest a lot more in this premium high quality video content. So in 2017, everything that render media produces for the most part is TV first and then we do cut downs for social media and cut downs for our website. But that's really going to be our goal is to create more and more of these quote unquote like shows and series aimed at tv. But when I talk about this next generation shows, it's really, you know, sometimes it's four minutes long, sometimes it's 10 minutes long. We're not going after the, you know, one hour show or half an hour show. That, that is not the way I think a lot of young people are consuming their, their information. Like I'll give you an example, news. No one out there wants to go and watch a one hour cable show on news. If you are, you know, younger than 55 years old, you just don't have the time. You want to watch your news segment in two to four minute clips, get exactly the news that you wanted and move on to the next clip that gives you the same amount of information on a different topic.

Interesting. So how do you do this profitably? Like I understand the old model run commercials, how do you do, how do you make money doing this?

We have to do it in a very, very systematic and step wise approach. If we came out on day one and said, hey, let's go out and just create this really high quality premium video content with no audience, we would spend a ton of money, probably make a ton of mistakes and we'd be out of business. And so we really started with very cost effective content. On day one, we were just writing Articles for our websites, I mean articles can cost between ten and a hundred dollars each. So you can try a lot of different things, make a lot of mistakes, and it's not expensive. And then we use that method for a couple years to really build up our audience on social and on our websites. And we understood what kind of content they really wanted to consume. And then after that point we graduated onto more short form video, which is now more expensive. You know, three to five hundred dollars per video. You know, you see this a lot on Facebook, on Instagram. And for the last couple years we really started to expand our video offering and you know, really understand what kind of videos our audience wanted to watch. And now we've taken on to the next step so we really understood what kind of content they want on social. And then we use that data to then create really this high quality premium TV style programming. But still short form, 4 to 10 minutes. But now it's even more expensive. It's like 2 to 5,000 per series. And so that's what I would recommend is just look at things in a very cost effective manner and slowly, as you make strides, graduate to that next level. And we did the same thing on the revenue side. You know, programmatic is very cost effective. You need one person who might grab some code from Google or Yahoo or Facebook and put on your website. But then as we gather more revenue, last year we started hiring salespeople. Salespeople are very expensive. You know, there's headcount, there's marketing, there's a whole infrastructure needed to do that. And then as we kind of graduated and added more salespeople, now we're at the point where we're doing user generated revenue, which is even more expensive. We have to do, you know, e commerce infrastructure. We're creating premium paid content which is very expensive. So I think our whole kind of philosophy has been very systematic. Step wise, start, you know, cost effective first and slowly graduate as your company starts to grow. Does that make sense?

Oh, it totally makes sense. I think it's phenomenal. So just reiterating what I heard is you started render media writing articles, literally writing articles to see what people resonated with and then converted that up to the next level, which is short form video and so forth.

That's correct. And the reason that's really important is I go back to the cable model. You know, 10 years ago, whatever Fox put out, people watched because there's not that many cable channels. You know, AMC puts out a show, you watch it. Now fast forward to where we are now. There's 30 million pages on Facebook that create video content. You know, there's millions of Instagram accounts, Snapchat, so on and so on. There's so much competition and users have access to so many different forms of content that if they do not like what you're providing them, you know, Facebook just stop showing to them. They disappear to the next thing really quickly. But we had to understand what they truly love, what they engage with, and then make more of it.

I want to get a sense for your trajectory. How long have you been in business render media?

2011 when we first started.

Okay, wow. So you're six years old. What has been the profit and the revenue trajectory over that time? Can you give us a kind of a year by year layout?

Yeah, I mean, basically 2011, I'd say 2011, 2012, there was actually not that much revenue at all. Right. We're just first kind of starting up and getting going. So we really started to make some strides around 2013. So that's when we made about half a million in revenue, but still very highly unprofitable at that point. And then in 2014, we did about 4 million in revenue. We had a really big jump. And the reason that happened was I remember we had a moment back in 2013 where there was the government shutdown and we have a news channel and we really started to kind of ask our audience, you know, what kind, you know, who do they blame for the shutdown? We said, here are all the facts. And they started debating it with themselves on social media, the left and the right, and our audience overnight we had about 10,000 new fans. And so we really started to see that social media was going to be the, you know, the area moving forward for this kind of content. And so that's when our audience really exploded and we started adding more revenue. So in 2014, you know, we went 4 million. 2015 we actually went up to 7 million. And so last year we did about 9 million. And really this is where we really did a lot of our growth initiatives. And so last year, as I mentioned, we started adding on a sales force, you know, improving the kind of content we wanted, focusing on, started focusing on user generated revenue. And so this year we're going to probably reach over 15 million in revenue. This is our really our big growth year. We're going to be profitable this year as well. Whereas every last year we were probably about break even because we just essentially spent as much as we were bringing in.

Okay, but you also were able to facilitate this Growth, I understand. Without raising at least big time venture capital money.

Yeah, that is true. When I look at our competitors in our space, you know, guys like Vox Media, Buzzfeed, Mashable, Tastemade, Refinery29, you know, these guys aren't just raising $10 million. I mean, they're raising 100 million, 200 million, $500 million. Like these are just astronomical amounts that they're investing into growth. And so overall, you know, we've only raised about, excuse me, about $3 million plus 1 million in debt, so 4 million in our entire history since 2011.

Right. Okay, so in six years you raised 4 million. And so are you profitable now? Like, is 2017 or 2016 profitable?

So 2016 was about break even. 2017 is going to be profitable, but our goal still is not to be a hugely profitable company. We think we can take that money and invest it back into our company and grow even faster. But at the same time, the profitability is still a very important metric. I would have to say that probably no one in our space, all the companies I just mentioned to you are anywhere close to being profitable. They are growing, I think for the sake of growing, because they have different external pressures. They have VCs, they have other strategic partnerships that want them to keep growing every year for the sake of growing. And I think in the end they hope they ipo, they hope they sell before they run out of money. And I think that's a very dangerous way to approach a business.

I totally agree. I mean, they're racing down the Runway without wings, which means they're going to crash at a certain point. That's an analogy. Okay, but your, your approach is different. You're. I understand you raised 4 million is still substantial, but it's over time, you're turning profitable this year. What is the key to making it profitable when a business hasn't been profitable up to this point?

Yeah, and I think the key is what we mentioned, right? Taking kind of a stepwise, systematic approach to growing your company. Because that helps you keep cost down while you make mistakes. You're going to make mistakes. Anyone who tells you that you're not going to make mistakes is crazy. But I think at the same time is being able to innovate, be dynamic. Especially in an industry like ours that changes so rapidly. You have to be thinking of different ways to grow your audience, generate interesting content and different ways to make revenue. That's the key. You have to be willing to take risks. And last year, as we mentioned, we went from zero salespeople a year ago to now, we have 10. And so those were areas we said, hey, now's the time to build up. And so I think that the diversifying, as I mentioned, revenue and your audience and your distribution is very important.

You know, one thing when you and I were talking offline, Vic, I thought was remarkable is that a huge portion, like, I think it was like 20 or maybe even 30% of your staff, full time staff, were started off as interns for your company. And that seems like a very profitable and a unique approach. Can you tell me about that?

Yeah, you know, I think one of the things that a lot of people always ask me is, you know, how are you guys giving back to the local community? You know, I think there's, excuse me, you know, different ways to give back. I think the most important thing that we've ever instituted at our company is our internship program. So we go to all the major universities, ucla, USC and so on, and recruit students to come in and work at our company. But I think the big difference is we actually pay our interns. You know, college is expensive. And so I think it gives them a sense of like, not only are they getting experienced, but actually getting paid as well. So that's really important. And then we allow them to, you know, come in, you know, try one area. If they don't, you know, they can always shadow other people in the company. And for us, it's very important to bring in people who are, you know, young, smart, excited. They don't need, they don't need to have the experience for that job. But yeah, over time we've, we've actually hired over 30% of these interns. I'll give you an example. Our VP of Business Development was an intern. And so, you know, one thing that's really important to me is that a lot of people feel like they need to leave their company to move up in their career.

Right.

At Rental Media, we're the exact opposite. We want to proactively promote people from within. Instead of being reactive, a lot of people go out and say, oh, we'll give you a promotion because they threatened to leave. You know, our COO was a project manager. Our VP of content was a writer. He was a writer on Opposing Views our, our news channel when we first started. And so that's really important. And that's why people have stuck with us. They're passionate and they're excited.

Yeah, you deserve to. Hallelujah. So it sounds like you're growing your people.

That's exactly, that's exactly it. Because I Think that one thing you hear a lot, we're in la, but you know, you hear about startups like, oh, they get free lunches and they get like a massage. Listen, in the end of the day, yes, that's great. But you know, one thing that people care about is their own personal, I think, career. Are they happy? Are they making enough money to not just survive but enjoy their life and move up in their career? So all the other stuff for me is just listen, we do offer that, right, but it's just fluff. The number one thing people should be offering is a good career path, an exciting career path and enough salary where people are not just surviving but enjoying their lives when they're not at work.

Now, I want to know about the cost structure for a company like yours. If you're bringing people who are interns, you're paying them, I assume you're not paying them huge salaries. You're paying fair salaries. As they enter a role like VP of Business Development, does that also mean that your costs for your business are lower because they have to gain that experience still? Or are they dictating the salary of a experienced, experienced, high profile VP of Business Development?

Yeah, I mean, we will, you know, as we, as we promote someone, right. Their salary could go up 30 or 40%. Right. As we promote them to the next level, we don't just believe like, hey, every year here's your, you know, 10% raise or things like that. We really give in when they give that big promotion. But yes, you know, we are not, we're not a company that's gone out and try to recruit these, you know, experienced execs from NBC or from buzzfeed. That just hasn't been our style. And I think that that's worked out for us. So, yes, maybe our cost structure is a little bit lower, but I think you end up with someone who's a lot more passionate, who's excited because they started off as maybe an intern and now they're a VP and they're gonna stay around for years. So to me, that's more important.

Yeah, so Render Media is, quote unquote, one of the little guys who's actually beating up the big juggernaut. Buzzfeed will say, I mean, here you got the number two fastest growing media company by Inc. I mean, that's no easy feat by any stretch of the imagination. How does the small guy take on these big established. They have all the money backing them guys.

You know, it's, I'm not gonna lie to you, it's Been very, very difficult because, you know, when a company like BuzzFeed raises $500 million, they invest a lot in things like PR and marketing. So everyone in the world knows BuzzFeed. For us, you know, we've just started to promote ourselves last year because we wanted to wait until we had a sound financial kind of business model and we made some strides to start promoting ourselves. So I think the way you do it is you have to be incredibly creative on how you grow your business and you have to be smart. I think everything that I just explained to you about the systematic approach, on how we started with writing articles first and we kind of graduated to premium content, starting with low cost revenue like programmatic and graduating to direct sales and user generated revenue. And then on the employee side, starting with, you know, interns and people have come out in entry level positions and promoting them to things like C level, you know, positions or VPs. I think all that has been part of, you know, part of our success drivers. But it's easier said than done. You know, we've been very fortunate that the people who work at our company are incredibly talented people. And so that's. Yeah, I wish there was a simple formula, but it's, it's a very complex thing. But at the same time, you know, all these guys we're going against, they have the backing of, you know, massive companies and massive amounts of money and we truly are the, you know, the David versus the Goliaths out there.

Yeah, well, we're rooting for David. What about the tipping point? Meaning you, you started targeting industry because you saw a tipping point. And I mean, the data is proving it out. There's no question about, I think my own children, none of them watch tv. It's all on demand. Right. If someone listening to show Vic, how do you, how do you look for the tipping point in an industry you're serving? How do you know that things are going to be, you know, changes afoot?

Yeah, I think you have to have a sense of, I think just internally you have to have a sense of curiosity. You know, my, you know, probably one of my big problems in the past.

Is the vodka you were drinking. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Yeah. Oh, yes, that, that too, yes. But, you know, I will be up late at night and I'm like, oh, I wonder what this data point looks like from, you know, from three years ago. And I'll kind of look it up to see what happened. But at the same time my mind's even crazier because I'LL just ask myself, I wonder who the king of England was.

Yeah, yeah.

So my, my brain is just wrong in all sorts of ways. And I think I, as a child, I hit my head three times. So something got knocked out of whack. Right? So I don't recommend that at all to anyone to go out and do that. But I think you have to have a sense of curiosity and really want to read about what's going on. You have to have a passion for the industry that you're in and to follow trends and, you know, read all the different trades that talk about what's going on. And you have to almost anticipate. And sometimes those, you know, those anticipations are wrong. I mean, if you think about this industry in general, you know, at one point in, MySpace was the behemoth, right? When Facebook came along, everyone said, MySpace is gigantic. You are not going to compete. And now MySpace is gone. And so if you think about it, you know, who knows what's going to happen? You know, maybe Buzzfeed keeps growing in the IPO next year. Maybe they run out of money. Right. It's tough to say, but I think that sense of curiosity is what you need to really move yourself forward.

You know, just talking about MySpace and Kelsey's page that you really. That's an amazing page. Kelsey went all in on it and she. But one day MySpace has disappeared. If you own MySpace, Vic, are there indicators that things are changing not to your advantage, but to your disadvantage?

Yeah, I think we live in an engagement world. If you think about, you know, every single app that I use these days, whether, if I'm on Netflix, Netflix will show me more shows because I've watched a certain type of show right on Facebook. If I, you know, like a certain friend that I'm following, I see more posts from that friend. It's nothing like we've ever seen before. You know, on cable, if I stop watching espn, it's not like ESPN channel just disappears. It's always there for me to watch. But that's not like any other platform that we're viewing these days. And so I think if someone on MySpace, they probably should have seen that overall engagement was down. People were probably commenting less, they were probably interacting less or things like that. And so we focus on engagement in everything that we do. Our people, not only are they viewing our content, but they also interacting with it as well, which is really important.

Let's look five years out. What's Render Media doing within five years? What's your vision?

You know, I think the vision is right now we have three, quote, unquote digital channels that compete with cable, where we have news, food. We just launched beauty and style. So when I look out five years, I imagine us having, you know, 10 plus of these channels. You know, there could be home and garden. There could be sports, There could be travel, There could be parenting. Do it yourself. And so we have a roadmap of verticals that we kind of are targeting, but at the same time, we're rolling these out in a very systematic approach. Right. If we just rolled out 10 right now, it'd be very expensive. We'd probably do them all in a very, very substandard job on all of them. And so we'll roll out, like, one to maybe two per year. But that's what I see us in five years is truly having a good, good ten plus channel approach for our users.

I love it. If I can make one suggestion and you prioritize that parenting channel, because Christina's got the baby on the mind. So, Vic, thank you. Where can our listeners find out more about render media and all the great channels you have?

Yeah, I mean, so you can go to. Our main website is rndr.com so it's like render without the vowels. Or you can go to opposing views on social or on the web. Cooking Panda is our food channel, and our beauty one is launching this month on our main corporate website, rndr.com, render without the ease.

Okay, everyone go there. We'll have it in the show notes, too. Vic, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for having me. And let's keep hoping for that food pill.

I love it. I love it. All right, here's what we're gonna do in a second.

Yeah.

We're gonna invent the food pill. That's what we're gonna do in a second. Oh. What we're gonna do is we're gonna have a recap of what we learned from Vic. We're gonna share some more juicy details. But first, I want to thank. Ooh, that was a good punch. But first. Oh, I love it. I wonder. Oh, this reminds me. Can I tell you a quick prank I played on my mom?

Of course.

Okay, I'll tell you where. Oh, my mom. It's the best prank ever. Actually, I want to do it after our corporate partners. Or maybe I'll embed it in between so people don't skip the corporate partners. Oh, cute. Okay, so who are corporate partners?

Zero.

That's okay. I love the hand signals. We lost someone she did the old hand pitch. I know. You meant we lost someone. No, we're good. Zero accounting software. It's built from the cloud up. It's amazing.

Amazing.

It's highly flexible. It's constantly updated. It's very affordable. Links in with tons of external programs too.

Receipt Bank.

All right, I'm not gonna tell my mom's story yet. Maybe I will. No, let's talk about receipt. Receipt bank is a efficiency tool. It allows you to scan in your receipts and all these different things. Syncs right up to Xero and other accounting platforms we use in house.

Fundera.

Fundera. Fundera. Who says someone talks like that? Fundera. Fundera is a one stop shop for loans. So Vic's company could have used them. Our Pod, Pod Fly, our podcast producer. They have used them.

Yes.

And if you need a loan for your business, I don't care if it's 5,000 bucks or 5 million bucks, but maybe they don't do 5 million. 5,000 bucks. We'll say to 500,000. I know they do that. They will shop the loan for you and they'll come back with the best option next Diva voiceover IP phone system. The best in the world. We use them. You know they're coming out with a CRM.

Yeah.

Cool.

Yeah, like they're teasing us. So. In such bad ways. Like you won't believe what it does. And they give me like one of the features. I'm like, are you kidding? Basically, this thing reads your mind. Like instead of you typing in notes, it'll just go suck the stuff out of your mind and stick it in.

I need it probing from your ear. Yeah.

Always horrible thoughts. Creepy. I don't know why I meat. I know. Like, it's like all your. Your notes will just be all about like, meat consumption. It's horrible for our plan, but I do love the taste.

Maybe I should probably be all about food.

Maybe I should do 3D printed meat eating. Okay.

Fund Box.

Fund Box, that's a cash flow accelerator. You know, use invoices that you're having trouble collecting. They release the funds to you even if it's not trouble collecting. Maybe your clients just take. You take two or three months to pay you. Now you get the funds up immediately. Just go to fundbox.com they release the funds to you. And I don't want to forget Net payroll.

Yeah.

Net payroll is a company we use. You can go to netpayroll.net net Mike, emphasize that. Yes. Netpayroll.net Go there. That's our payroll Company. We love them. So here's the deal with my mom.

Yeah.

So we bought. My wife and I bought a minivan. Not recently. This is years ago. A Sienna. You ever see the title Sienna? Okay. And they had. At the time, they were the first one of the first companies to do it. With the remote key fob, you could double click on the trunk, and the trunk would open.

Yeah.

You could do Push another button, the engine would start, and another one.

Unlock the door.

Unlock the door. Yeah. Which was pretty innovative. Like, 10 years ago. Yeah.

Yeah.

I have the key fob. My hand like, mom, we bought a new car. She go, what'd you get, Mike? This is Sienna. Come see. And she's like, oh, it's so great. I'm like, you wouldn't believe the technology. Now, Again, this is 10 years ago. You wouldn't believe the technology. Nowadays, I say, it's all voice command. So I feel. I say, if you say something, and I whisper in ear, like, open trunk. It'll open the trunk. I'm like, I can't say it loudly because they'll do it. My mom's like, what? Are you serious? I swear to God. I'm like, just try it. So my mother goes, open trunk. I push the button, right? And it goes, beep, beep. It starts opening. She goes, oh, my God. She goes, what else can I do? What else can I do? Like, why should I. Starting the engine. Start engine. She's like, this is. This is incredible. I'm like, try closed trunk. She goes, close trunk. Closed, Right? And then I start pushing random buttons when she says things. She goes, what else does it do? And I go, it unlocks it. She goes, what happened? I didn't say, undo it. I'm like, ma, don't say anything else. She goes, I didn't say anything. I opened the trunk again. I cut the engine on off, and the car starts, like, flapping. She starts getting so scared. She's like, I'm ruining your car, Michael. Was that the best prank ever?

Oh, my goodness.

Probably not the best.

No.

It was good, though.

Top 50 is right. As right as we would say. Top 50. Top 50. Yeah. That hurt me emotionally.

Yeah.

I thought he's gonna say we're his number one favorite podcast of all time. He's a top 50, and it kind of cut.

He can't give that to you.

He's a cutter.

Oh, no, he really is.

He's a cutter. No, he does.

That's the thing you don't want to associate with.

We're Dave and Busters. And he started cutting himself.

Stop it.

Yeah, with. He was. It was weird. He was taking like toothpicks. And it wasn't like deep cuts. It wasn't like a razor blade, just a little pin prick. I was like, dude, you're a cutter. That qualifies.

Mike, what did you learn from Vic.

That Ryan Lee's a cutter? What I learned from Vic, first of all, Vic is funny and awesome. I love when people like him are successful.

Yeah.

I love when good people win.

Yeah.

And I love the Dave and Goliath story.

Yeah.

I learned the internship. Love growing interns. We kind of do that here too. You came in Kelsey's entry job and then your job has grown to much more significant stuff.

Yeah.

It's the best way to find people. So that was extraordinary. I love that. Tell me this is ingenious. Start off by writing articles. Here's a company that intends to take on TV. And they start off by writing $10 blogs.

Yeah.

Or ten to a hundred dollar blogs. To find out what people responded to. Then creates videos around it. Then from the videos, full, full feature videos, and now content. I don't even know. That means content based video production where he's kind of responding to the users. Now they engaged interactive content. I mean, how smart is that?

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

That's very popular, Shay. Like a lot of those people, like Philip DeFranco, Nicole Arbor, like all those people post like five minute videos on like current issues. No matter what they are, they're huge. They go so viral. Listen. Smart.

So smart. No, no, I mean, that was a comment. Shut up. That was a shut up.

Like, that's amazing.

Like, get out of town.

Get out of town.

He's so angry.

No, he's not. Shut up. Yeah, it does sound that way. That's amazing.

It is amazing.

What'd you learn, Kelsey?

I think in general, it seems like he responds to feedback. So every aspect has been a reflection of feedback that he's asked for, which I think is huge and could really help us, you know?

What do you mean? Like, we're having problems?

No, no, no. I just feel like it's a really effective way to learn how to grow your company.

Yeah. Highly responsive.

Yeah.

Yeah, I like that.

And same. Even the way he treats his employees, it's. It's, you know, you're in this job, but how can we use your skills most effectively? So now you're a VP of content, you know?

Yeah, we're not doing enough of that. That's what you're implying? Well, I think we do.

I think we absolutely do that.

We do.

And I think it's effective.

Yeah.

It's nice to hear that. It's effective for him, too.

Yeah. And because he could look at his company. He's. He's, you know, I don't know, 15. I run the math real quick, but a lot bigger than us. I mean, he's a lot bigger than us. And to continue to do that. It doesn't sound like that corporate mentality's taken over, but he's the one guy. He had a break even. Break even. Now they're going to be profitable. The one company in this industry. Everyone else is not profitable. Yeah, those. I think those companies inevitably are the ones that make it because they figure out now the other ones just keep.

On hoping, breaking the cycle. It's all about taking risks. Like you said, after you take that systematic step approach so that it helps keep your costs down while you make your mistakes. As you said, taking the big risk of once you finally get to where you want to be and you see the beginning, then hiring salespeople or taking that extra step to actually explore other outlets, I think is. Is a big deal for that company, too.

Totally. I'm totally with you.

Totally floors yours.

Yeah. As you. Where can people listen to us?

Oh, they can listen to us on itunes, stitcher, Google play, tunein radio, and of course, profit first podcast dot com. Come and visit us. Leave me comments. Leave. Kelsey, comments. We want to talk to you.

Yeah.

All about the engagement.

Yeah, leave comments. We'd like to get an honest rating from you. And you know what? One thing I didn't give it a full shout out for was Peter McCarroll. Because Peter McCarroll is ours. He's our first professional. He's in New Zealand, which is the birth.

He's actually in Canada now, but he's found.

For God's sake. For God, am I the most pathetic human ever?

He was say take it back.

I take it back. I take it back. I just. He was in New Zealand, the birthplace of zero. Where his. His birthplace. A lot of amazing things come out there, including Peter mcarol.

Yeah.

He's now in Canada. Thank you. But he supports zero everywhere.

Everywhere throughout the globe.

He's our zero guy. One of many first professionals who specialize in zero. But Peter McCarrol is the one who caught me in a lie.

Not in a lie.

Well, in a mistruth, which is also a lie. All right, here's the deal, my friends.

Yeah.

You got one more thing to do. It's go To Profit first professionals dot com. Right. I mean, how hard is that?

It's easy.

You can just type in private first and Google push enter is going to come up there. You don't even have to type in the full sentence. Or you can go to private first professionals.com push enter. This amazing page will come up, which I think Ron's making some improvements. The page.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Then there's two big buttons on there. One says become a profit first professional. If you're an account or bookkeeper or a coach, we want to hear from you because we want to investigate and see if it's a match. We need more prop first professionals. Demand is outstripping supply right now. But we got. I'll tell you, we got 100. We got four or five new members join this past week. So hundred plus 100 a lot.

Yeah.

Of people who are certified, been trained by us, work with us. We have a meetup where they're coming here in person to train with us. Next week, next week, 101 to master profit first. They will coach you your business to the highest degrees of Profitability using Profit First. So you as an entrepreneur, go to Profit First Professionals.com. step one. Step two. Someone talks like that. So go to ProffersProfessionals.com. step one. Step two is click on the find button. Step three, you feel about the forum, I mean, how easy is that? It's like three or four great questions so we can match you up. The proffessional. Step four, we hook you up. Yeah, there's the bridge. That's okay. I like the bridge. Step four, we hook you up with a profit first professional. Step five, Profit, profit, profit takes you one action. That's all you gotta do. Do it right now. And then you're, you know. Yeah. All right.

Okay.

I'm good. Anything else we gotta talk about?

I don't think so.

No. All right, guys. All right, we'll see you guys later.

Bye.

Bye.