How To Partner With YouTubers And Make Millions Licensing Their IP

I did— I talk about this the other day, how I went to that, the Blippi show. Did I tell you about this?

No.

All right, so, so do you know who Blippi is? Have you ever heard of Blippi?

I don't know what that is, no.

All right, so like, remember like back there we had Barney or like, you know, uh, like Pee-wee Herman or whatever? He's like— it's like, it's a dude, so he kind of looks like Pee-wee Herman or whatever, but he's more like a Barney or, you know, um, Sesame Street style show. So Basically, there's a guy who went on YouTube, created this brand called Blippi, and he, um, he's entertaining. So he'd be like, oh, and by the way, the funny thing that he does is there's no like set. He just goes into like, um, hey, we're at the aquarium, but they just go in like after 9 PM. It's like closed down. And so it's just, they have it all to themselves. Like, hey, we're here in Las Vegas at this rock climbing studio. And so he just uses that to film his thing, but he gives it a shout out at the beginning of the video. The video gets like 40 million views. So it's like, ah, well, you know, it's it's worth it to let these guys film there. And he just like goes around and he'll basically just play with toys. He'll be like, I'm at an abandoned Chuck E. Cheese, and he'll go play with a bunch of toys. And there's like music and whatever overlaid.

And it's the same guy. I'm looking at him now. It's the same guy every single time.

It is, except for as he blew up and got famous, then they switched him out with just a stunt double for a bit. And so like, that guy's like a substitute teacher sometimes, and then sometimes Flippy comes back, uh, but like The main guy is the main guy and he wears his outfits like this blue outfit with his orange glasses. He like always looks the same. So anyways, my daughter loved Blippi. We used to watch a ton of Blippi and all of a sudden we see this ad that says, um, Blippi, like the live show is coming to Oakland. And so we were like, oh shit. And so instantly my wife buys tickets for, for all of us in the family. We go to this thing last weekend and it's, it's at the same place you did HustleCon. So it's at the Paramount Theater and It is packed. Like, you know, HustleCon was like, you know, sold out-ish. This was like sold out, sold out. Like all the— even the back shitty seat is like sold out and it's full of parents and their kids. And then there's this like this— they basically just created like a little play, like a little mini musical, 1 hour, because kids don't have that long of an attention span. And it's just kind of like music and like, you know, lights and colors. And he's, oh, dinosaurs, oh, rocks.

Oh, how much did it cost?

So every ticket, I want to say, was that venue seats? Maybe like $60 a seat, something like that.

So that venue seats between 2,500 and 3,000, I believe.

Yeah. So I think there was 2,000 there. And I believe the tickets were something like $50, $60, $70, something like that.

So we're in like 120,000.

And he played 4 shows in a row that weekend. And then he went to the next city. So it was like— he had done 8 shows or he was doing something like that. So it was like some crazy like thing where I was like, oh wow, this weekend they made whatever, $800 grand. Um, and yeah, the tickets, tickets basically range from like, you know, $60 to $90. And, um, and the place is lit, by the way. So like, you know, he comes on stage, kids go crazy. He's like, you know, he'd be like, you know, what does the bubble do? And everyone's like, pop. And he's like, when I say pop, can you say pop? And like, so it's like not like a quiet show. Like because kids are loud anyways. So some kids are just not paying attention. Half— like, my daughter during intermission was like, I want to watch Blippi on YouTube. And so we like had to open up YouTube on our phone and give it to her during intermission because she couldn't like go 5 minutes without stimulation. And so— and then they have like the merch and the like the concessions. They have like all that shit, right? So it's like pretty dope actually. And I was like, wow, this is kind of genius. They just took YouTube IP. And this is— this guy who was there was not Blippi. The guy on stage was just some You know, theater kid who like didn't make it, you know? And so he's like, all right, plan B, I'll be, I'll be Blippi. And, um, and so it was like they took the IP, but they made their own show out of it. And so I started looking into this and there's a company that does this called VStar Entertainment.

Awesome.

So VStar, what they do is they go license these kids' brands and then they put on kids' Broadway basically, and they tour around the country.

Awesome.

And so, uh, and Blippi's just a guy with a guitar, right?

Or were there more instruments?

No guitar. He just, just him. He just walks out.

So were there any instruments or was it just like a soundtrack?

Just soundtrack and like lights and like, uh, stage props. So like, you know, so he, he almost had like a crew, like, you know, if they came out as sharks, like a bunch of like little backup dancers came out as sharks and then they, whatever, like that's awesome. It's a mini theater show. Right. And so V-Star Entertainment, they do another brand that you've probably heard of, or you may have heard of called Paw Patrol. It's basically another kids cartoon. So guess how much. This is my like kind of triangulation. Guess how much they sold in Paw Patrol tickets last year? Just take a, take a guess.

$20, $20 mil?

$40 million.

$40 million in event tickets?

In event tickets for— and that's just the tickets, not the merch.

That was just last year in '22?

Uh, I don't know, it's like, this is like the just before COVID numbers, so like, I don't know, 2019, 2020, something like that. Wow. So they got bought by Cirque du Soleil. So first, so the backstory is some guy decides, oh, you know what, like He's watching Sesame Street. He's like, Sesame Street should do a live show. And he goes and he basically raises $500 grand from this guy. He mortgages his house, gets an extra $25 grand out of his home equity. So he's got $525,000 and he goes and he gets the license to Sesame Street. And he started with the Sesame Street show and then Muppets and like, you know, he did.

But that must have been years ago.

This was in the like 1980s, something like that.

Yeah.

And then, um, this other guy was doing it. They merged and then that whole thing gets bought by Cirque du Soleil last year. Is it Cirque du Soleil, by the way? Like, Guess how much Cirque du Soleil revenue was? Have you ever been to a Cirque show?

No, I've not. But I do know that the guy who started it is a Canadian guy. He's a billionaire. I read Dan Bilzerian's book and they talk about that guy a lot. I think he's like— I mean, he started a circus, so he's like Liberty or whatever. Yeah, he's really eccentric and wild and everything. So it made him a billionaire. How much revenue does it make?

Ben, have you been to a Cirque du Soleil show? Cirque du Soleil did a billion— does a billion dollars a year in revenue. Which is insane. 10%— 5 or 10% of all Las Vegas tourists go to a Cirque show when they're in town.

Is that what's that at Cirque? Is that the— is that like the name?

Well, they have like 10 shows, right? It'll be like they have O, and then they have Zoomanity, and they have like whatever.

And the Beatles. I— yeah, I know all about it, and I'm, I'm into it. And it's publicly traded, or at least it was before it was acquired by private equity, right?

Private equity owns it now. And, um, and it's a pretty badass business. The idea was do a circus but no animals. So it was like only human performers. And to do that, they did like crazy acrobats and like great costumes.

It's basically its own genre at this point though. Right.

And so he built that thing into a real juggernaut. And so Cirque then bought Blue Man Group and V-Star Entertainment. And so they got Blue Man, which is like an ad— they, what they had said was like, we do $10 million in ticket sales a year for Cirque du Soleil. Blue Man adds another $2 million and then, and then V-Star adds another $2 million, but they're all like different ticket prices, but like they do $14 million in tickets sold per year. And so this, this like live entertainment thing really has caught my attention because I think as the world moves more and more digital, that the, like the demand for like these one-off experiences, like, hey, let's get out of the house and go do something. I think it's just going to keep going up. Music festivals, that's a winner. And then there's like, uh, I think plays and musicals are going to be a winner. I think they're going to be bigger than they were before, even though the world moves digital. And in fact, because the world moves digital, what do you think about all this?

I 100% agree. And so earlier today I sent you a Notion doc of some of my notes on— I'm interested in peer businesses, which is basically like you pay money and you're part of a club and you meet up with them. And I, uh, I can't talk too much about what the names of the companies were, but they were doing like, uh, one of them does $100 million a year in profit and they, it's basically 2 or 3 meetups a year and there's executives paying $50,000 a year to be part of them. And I think actually these are gonna completely boom. I think conferences right now are interesting, but those are really hard. This actually seems way easier to pull off. Um, all types of meetups, Airbnbs. I'm 100% on board that I think that in-person is, is the move.

Yeah. And I think that— so then I started thinking like, what are the other opportunities? And so I think, A, you could just like go compete with these guys on like either the same brands or other brands. So like what they did was the V-Star guy took TV IP, turned it into a live show. The Blippi guy is doing is taking YouTube IP and turning it into a live show. And I think you could just even do this for more. So like, I think you could even do like— we've talked about religion, which is the greatest free IP in the world. So I think if somebody could do this for religion, which would make it extremely kid-friendly, in fact kid-focused, like Christianity show basically. I think you could do this for dinosaurs or science as a generic genre because like if kids love trucks and dinosaurs or whatever, and you could just basically create the like the, the show, you know, Day with Dinosaurs or something like that. And once you get like, if you have a certain level of quality, moms will spread this and they will talk about it and they will like in their mommy groups, they will help you sell these tickets. And, um, and I just feel like there's a— like, it's not that hard. Like, you build one show and then you sell that one show 1,000 times, right? Like, the show goes on tour. Mamma Mia has made, like, I don't know, some stupid amount of money just being the same show on tour with replacing the, the low-cost actors over time.

I'm trying— while we're talking, I'm trying to find the numbers. So we used to— so we did events, but we would do like these, these this thing called HustleCon, which was like the— our big one where like thousands of people would come. But then we'd do this thing called 2X, and 2X was basically from like 7 PM to like 10 PM. And it was basically, we got 15 or 10 women, all who were in tech and business. Not that many of them were like well-known, but they would have 10 minutes to like tell a story, and we would charge like $25. But then we would get tens of thousands of dollars in sponsors. But we got to the point where we could pull this off like kind kind of like almost weekly in other cities. And when we started doing this, The Hustle wasn't that popular, but we were making like, I think like $30 grand a night when we were doing it. And we had one employee running it, right? And she would use a team of contractors and then we wouldn't supply anything. Like, I think we had free wine, but I don't know. I don't even think it was free. I like, we wouldn't supply anything, but then when we have corporate sponsors and we crushed it. And in my head I'm like, I can always fall back on this to make a living because it was so much easier than people thought.

Right. Yeah. Wow. That's pretty good for a tech bro. Um, a tech bro business. Like all of a sudden you, you, you were running one of the best like women's entrepreneurship events in the country. You got labeled wrong, dude.

I did. Yeah. There, I'm like an onion, man. There's layers. So, but basically like we used to do this thing called Pizza in Forties, where we would do a meetup and, uh, I would interview someone and they would drink a 40-ounce. And when the 40-ounce beer was done, the talk was done. But then like women were like, this is like, there's all dudes here. And so we created like a, like a wine version and that had like way better. It was like called like Cheese and Wine. I don't even remember, but that had way better engagement. And so we're like, oh, like let's pursue this vein. Like this, there's clearly an opportunity here. And so we created 2X, which, uh, comes, it's, it's like 2X chromosomes, which I thought was clever. I stole it from Reddit. But anyway, we would do— I think we did 10 or 12 in one year, and every single time it was like $20,000 and $30,000.

And the cost—

the cost was nothing. The cost was renting the venue, which cost like $3,000, and we would make like $20,000.

And you also— you had readers in every city, right? So that's how you sold the tickets.

Yeah. Yeah. But we weren't— basically the speakers sold the tickets. The reason why we had 15 speakers was, was I was like, I bet each 15 will get 25 people to come. Plus our, like, little bit of our engine. Like, this is easy.

And you weren't making the money off the tickets, you're making it off the sponsors really anyway.

The tickets pay— the, the business model was the tickets paid for the event, and then the conference was all— or the sponsors were all the profit. But when it's— there's two things going on. One, like, women. So whenever you have, like, an underserved community, like, sponsors definitely are willing to pay more. And two, it was, like, a B2B component. So it wasn't kids component, which I think would alter the economics. But my point of it is that I think that this— it was far easier than people thought, and it was way more rudimentary and raw than people thought, and it worked. We just used SplashThat. I think if you Google like 2x The Hustle, you'll like see like the SplashThat is basically Eventbrite. It was nothing special and it freaking worked.