[RTB:E45] Coffeezilla - Today's Guest - Internet Detective Exposing Fake Gurus & Internet Scammers 🔎

Hey, you're listening to the Road to a Billion podcast. I'm your host, Stefan Georgi. I'm glad to have you with me here today. The Road to a Billion is a call and radio show style podcast where you can ask myself and my guest questions about copywriting, entrepreneurship, mindset scaling, businesses, relationships, money, and more. The reason for the name the Road to a Billion is twofold. One is because I've hit around a billion dollars in sales by selling my own products and also helping clients to sell theirs. And my goal is to make an impact in the lives of a billion people over the next 10 years. We'll take some people's questions, kind of like if we were taking calls and maybe 30 to 40 minutes from now. And the way that works is for those who are joining on Zoom and the live recording, you'll just put your questions into the Q and A section and we will answer some of them. But before we get to that, we're going to be speaking with my awesome guest who is Coffeezilla. If you don't know about Coffeezilla, he's one of the more controversial figures in the world of Internet marketing. Crypto coaching, gurudoman, things like that. He takes on the role of a detective and whistleblower, making videos that expose fake gurus, scammers, predatory marketers, and more. I personally had my own run in with Coffee last fall and we'll get into that pretty much at the beginning here because I want to accept the context. But ultimately that run in led to me making a bunch of positive changes in my business. Currently, Coffee's YouTube channel has something like 374,000 subscribers. Many of his videos get anywhere from 100,000 to 750,000 views. And we're going to cover a whole bunch of really interesting stuff on today's episode. So Coffee, thanks for joining me.

Hey, thanks so much for having me on. I'm glad to do this.

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I'll set the stage for people. So I want to get to your origin story because I'm curious about how you got to where you are today. But for people who want some background or context, Coffee, you did an interview with Jim Claire about the role of direct response marketing. And I guess this was back in September, October, somewhere in that range of 2020. I replied to somebody forwarded to me and was like, hey, you should see this. And I got kind of defensive about, you know, direct response, felt in some ways like attacked, like, hey, that's my industry. So I started talking about things that I Disagreed with, along with things that I thought you guys were right about that led to coffee making a video about me and covering up some of the claims that I've made as a health copywriter in the past and really just sort of my attitude and. Yeah, I mean, the example you used was like a bullshit Alzheimer's peer type product, which was an informational product I wrote for people in 2013 or 2014, I think it was 13. But either way, my initial response was to get really defensive. So I messaged you on Twitter and was like, hey, let's debate. I'm going to debate. I'm going to stand up for this industry. And, you know, and there's a huge ego component. But then, like, as I thought about it more, I kind of realized that you were. You were right about a bunch of stuff, a bunch of the points you made. Like, I. I had felt like I had, you know, cleaned up my act a significant amount, but I was still playing in the gray area a lot, too. And whether that was as an entrepreneur or in the stuff I was teaching from a copy perspective or really, we can dive deeper in a minute. I want to give you the example, the opportunity to be talking. I want to interview you, but I'll. Um. So it ended up being this actually really positive change where I made real, substantial changes. Um, and I didn't do it. I mean, I did it because I had to look in the mirror. So you made me kind of look in the mirror. So I truly appreciate that. Um, and it took an experience that I guess could have been really, like, jarring and not that it was. It's still jarring when somebody makes a video about you.

Right.

And it gets a lot of views. You're like, you know, there's that feeling of, again, like, I've been attacked or there's a fight or flight thing or whatever. But, I mean, ultimately, I'm glad you made that video. So that's a little context for people. We will talk more, but I guess, first and foremost, man, I'd love to just hear, how did you become Coffeezilla? Like, what, you know, the origin story. Because you play an interesting role and you're challenging people who are in the public and who are making big claims and are doing things, whether that's, you know, me in one case or plenty of other folks. How did that kind of come about?

Sure.

Yeah. So my background is that, first of all, I wish it was like this, like, grand story, which was all meant to be. In the end, I felt like I more stumbled into it than anything. But things from my past definitely informed how I felt about this industry, including my mom getting cancer when I was like 14 or 15 and we could talk about that, but I was in chemical engineering program at Texas A and M and I was sort of like wondering what to do with my life. I decided I would make videos online and I really got, I was just obsessed with telling stories and talking about interesting ideas. There was no component of like exposing or like going after anything or anyone. My thought was I just want to kind of explore stories and really ones that other people aren't talking about. That was a big thing. Sometimes in media the same people cover the same topics over and over again. And so one day I'm just sort of browsing online YouTube and I'm seeing these like 20 year olds next to Lamborghinis, sort of promising to make me rich. And I thought, well, this is weird. And then I get recommended and almost the guy could have been the same 20 year old, just with a slightly different face saying the exact same things, promising to also make me rich. And I said, wow, what a coincidence that there's so many rich 20 year olds out there that are so altruistic that they're willing to make me rich. Like, God, I've been so blessed with these helpers in my life. And then I found like four or five others and I thought, well, this is just, this is like ridiculous. It's absurd. I mean, I sort of know a little bit about the world at this point. I'm like, this cannot be real. And so I start investigating it a bit more and I, and I made an offhand YouTube video. Just like, hey, just kind of being like, what are these guys doing? They just kind of, they're ridiculous. Do they not see how ridiculous their claims are? You're not a millionaire 20 year old and you're sure not a millionaire mentor 20 year old in all likelihood. Okay? And you're not going to make other people millionaires. Just easy note, 1, 2, 3, blueprint. That's not the way the world works. So I put out that video and it got a, like a weird response. Like normally I'll do videos and they'll kind of get the same number of comments. And this, it sort of exploded. It's like I tapped into something and I was like, oh, there might be something here. There's a real wellspring of not only interest and like, hey, you're so right. But then people said, actually that guy, he cost me $5,000 and I never made it. Back. And I said, wait, what? You paid that guy $5,000? And they're like, yeah, I watched this webinar thing. I had no idea even what a webinar was at that time. So I go and I investigate. And just over time, I've sort of fallen down this rabbit hole. And I keep thinking to myself, how in the world is no one else talking about this? I mean, I guess people are talking about it now, but at the time, it felt like nobody was. And it felt like media journalists sort of have missed this explosion of this infospace where, for better or for worse, there's really no regulation or very little regulation as far as what you can say and what standards you're held to. And I started to realize that there's a lot of predatory practices going around where nobody really wants to call it out because it's bad for business. It doesn't really get you anywhere. If you're in the info space to call out other info products, you're sort of seen as negative, right? And I thought to myself, well, somebody should be doing something about this. Somebody's got to call out the bad practices in this industry, if for nothing else, to make room for the info products that are real, right? Like, why would you buy an info product that's promising to teach you how to do computer science or something like that, when there's a product that's promising to make you rich with computer science, when there's a product promising to get you from zero to $100,000 a month in like, six months? So the bigger claims, from where I was sitting, were beating out people who are making more modest and maybe more truthful claims. And so I thought, you know, maybe here's a place where I can do some good and call out bad people, make a little room for better people, and, you know, just generally have a fun time. Because I found the space fascinating. I mean, here are all these people who just. Nobody knows who they are in the mainstream, but they're such gigantic personalities and like, wellsprings of content. Like Dan Loki, you know, telling everyone to call him Sifu and telling them to, like, do his manifestations, meditations. I mean, that's hilarious. It's objectively funny. And I felt like calling it out. It's like, here's a great chance for a great story and to do a little bit of good. So the channel sort of blown up after that. None of that was really planned. And I've sort of become this personality online Coffeezilla. But that's sort of how it all started. Maybe I'll touch on the. My mother's cancer point, though, real quick. Part of my particular disdain, though, for this industry, specifically the health side, was that. And it's sort of why I got so upset with the direct response industry. When I saw this happening, I realized it was a system, was that When I was 15, my mom got thyroid cancer. And she was really into alternative health as long as I can remember. And I remember her telling us at the dinner table one day and seeing her sort of walk through all these different alternative therapies to the point where we were used to the whole house smelling like garlic because some naturopath had told her putting 50 cloves of garlic in a stove pot was going to cure her thyroid cancer and whatever. And I remember the whole house just reeking. And I didn't understand at the time, but these people were making claims that they have no right to be making. And so, thank God, eventually she got a traditional treatment and she got her thyroid removed. She's now on, you know, medication to supplement her endocrine system. But without that, had she been like the millions of people who don't do traditional cancer therapy because they've been told by, you know, direct response people that big pharma is out to get you, and there's this big conspiracy, she could have done much worse. And there's studies to prove that people who do not do conventional cancer therapy have like, two to five times higher mortality than people who do take the therapy. So, you know, things like that in my past have definitely informed how I feel about the ethics of this industry. And, you know, what people are sort of, you might say, are getting away with.

Yeah, no, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. And I appreciate you sharing the origin story and with your. With your mom, too. I guess a couple questions that kind of stem from that one would be because one thing that people have brought up to me when talking about your videos is like, the agency component, right? Where it's like we talk about all these millions of people and that they're, like, gonna be victims because they're being tricked into buying stuff. And then something that people will sometimes bring up is, oh, yeah, but like, you know, what about their agency? They, you know, they have a decision like, are we saying that they're not smart enough to make their own choices? I mean, I'm going to venture to answer part of it for you, which is, I think that can be true about some of the cell. You're overweight, you want more energy, your sleep Sucks. Okay, maybe. But like. But something like cancer. Right? It's like there's a desperate component there where you're probably not making a clear decision. So I'm not trying to, like, ask you a question, answer for you, but just. I do think that's part of it with the agency component. But I would be curious, you know, what your thoughts are when people kind of bring that up.

Yeah, I mean, there's sort of. I'll point to an absurd version of this argument, which is that, you know, isn't it okay to lie because people have the freedom to figure out that you're lying? And it's like, well, of course that's not true. Like, we would never say that about. You can't say that something does something that it does not. And then when people call you out on it, you go, well, they had the freedom to figure out that I was lying to them. No one would argue that. Right. So there's definitely an absurd version of this argument where we expect buyers to make informed decisions, but they can't be so informed that they see through pure deception. Right. Like, if it's just outright deception, no one would believe in that. But I think you brought up a really good point, which is the majority of the claims that I go after are things that I view as predatory marketing. And maybe I'll define that because I think predatory marketing means different things to different people. There are certain sectors of business where the choice component isn't so clear and people have to make a desperate choice, which makes the marketing inherently predatory. Because if I hold a gun to your head and say, hey, buy this product, you're not making a good choice. Well, that's sort of equivalent to what a lot of what's going on in the health space, which is, if I have, let's say, some inoperable cancer, and you come to me and you say, I have the solution for your inoperable cancer. It's $1,000. Whether it's $50, $1,000, $5,000, $10,000, I'm going to find relatives who will pay for this thing, no matter how much bullshit you're peddling. And so that's where I see the predatory side of this industry is in segments where the desperation of the audience makes clear thinking and clear choices very difficult, if not impossible. I think it's incumbent on regulators to say, hey, you can't just say anything. And we already see this with medication, for example. There are some rules about that are stricter about medication than you could say about, like, chips or something like that. And I think the same is true to a lesser extent, a slightly lesser extent with money making products where it's like, if I'm working at McDonald's and you come to me and you're saying you're some expert and you're going to make me millions of dollars, you know, it's sort of, I will sort of pay you any price to get me out of my situation. Because I'm sort of thinking to myself, well, it can't get worse than McDonald's for me. And so that's where I also see the side of like, well, people are just, you're just targeting people who are desperate for this like, solution and then you're selling them an easy cure. You're gonna get the sale. It's like almost shooting fish in a barrel. And that's where I just see the really predatory side of this come out. But yeah, to be clear, I'm not upset about every type of marketing, every type of puffery. I think it's specific to areas where there's that desperate component as you rightfully pointed out.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And that's good because it dovetails into kind of a follow up question, which.

Is because even the make money online stuff, right? I think as marketers we'll see people who there always are those outliers or those success stories where it's like, but this person was working McDonald's and they quit and now they're making six figures and like, well, they did it right so other people could do it too. So you know me saying, hey, you know, quit your job, give me money and I'll show you how to make six figures a month type thing. Like I can speak as a, you know, like kind of a guru right in the copy space. Like our mastermind. We don't make promises like, hey, make $100,000 a month or whatever. But we have tons of people who have joined our program and then gone from making 5,000amonth to 20,000amonth or, and granted, we're not marketing to cold traffic. We're not marketing to people who have no idea what like the industry is or copywriting is. Right? It's people who are already writing copy. We're like, we're going to help you to like get jobs and blah, blah, blah. But, but people, that is an argument that gets made, I think in their heads. It's like, well, it did happen a few times. So it's okay for me to say that. But you know, so I guess I'm Curious about your take when people say that. A. And then I do want to get into a broader conversation of, yeah, where do we draw the line between marketing and selling? And then, you know, when you sort of go into that. That dark end, is it just purely a desperation thing or. There are other characteristics. But maybe first we can talk about sort of the. The guru's response of like, well, but I can point to examples of people who have done this thing. What do you kind of say to what? You know, I guess I'm just curious about your reply to that.

Yeah, that's a great point. Well, I. And I think it is a challenging point where it's like, well, you know, I do believe the success stories that happen. You know, I do believe that some people do make great gains, and I don't want to take it away from those programs who have done that. I just think there's a one side of this being shown, which is that all the success stories are shown. You're never seeing the people who are like, yeah, this just didn't work for me. No, it wasn't right. I tried everything and it didn't work. I would liken it to MLM, right, where there are people who make millions in MLM, unfortunately, 99% of people, it shows it over and over again, are not making that, and most of them are losing money. And that's where I see the problem is MLM forever was saying, we are your ticket out. And we're like this easy ticket out. I think the more you make it appear, and you make it appear like it is the norm to be making those incomes, the more it is deceptive and you're lying. The more you explain that, like, some of our students, you know, some of our students have done this, the fairer it is. But my problem is I see things like claims like this. No experience required, no money required, no college degree required, and you're going to make six figures in six months. Like, those are the things where I say, okay, that's just clear. Clearly we should be able to all agree that that's, you know, on the dark side of it. Could there be elements where you have a success story, you feature them? Sure. But I just think you have to be clear and honest with your audience. And I don't even think it's that much of a turnoff when you are honest, by the way, that, hey, this is not common. This is a big success story. This guy tried really hard and he's not typical. I think an audience would be open to that by the way I think they would see it as transparent and frankly more realistic than a lot of what they're seeing right now.

Yeah, I totally agree. It's a good point. I mean, just speaking from experience, going back to my mastermind, it's funny because when we at our events will like, you know, pitch our mastermind, right? The events, you can buy a ticket. And the one In September of 2020, I felt like, I felt like I was like evangelical and it was like, you know, basically like, you know, this is your life raft to get it. You know, I, if I watch it, I don't think I said anything at all to cross any lines. But it was just very like, it was about the upside. I don't think I kind of qualified or I did enough of that and people joined and then we had a pretty say. We had like 80 people join and then about 20ish people ended up dropping out pretty quickly. And we let them drop out with a year commitment. But we weren't like, hey, you have to stay. But we kind of realized, oh, it's because we were, we didn't qualify enough. So then in February, right, It was basically like if you're joining because you're trying to like, you know, make like crazy life changing income, like right away you want a job if you're gonna need to get jobs or make more money and that's the only reason, you know, then they don't join, right? We did a whole lot of like, not bullshit like marketing, but really like here's a bunch of reasons you shouldn't join if like this isn't a right fit for you. And we had maybe 45 people join at that one versus 80. But then pretty much all the people have like stayed because it was like clear, right? People who didn't have business joining. So as a business owner it actually was like better to have fewer people join. But they were like the right people.

So yeah, you qualified your prospect. I mean like I would say that's huge too, is that most people, they think that when they don't qualify prospects, they're only eliminating from their pool. But you also have to imagine that your qualified prospect isn't going to fall for some like, like really wild sales pitch. And so I think that when people do a wild sales pitch, you might get more sales, but you're for sure going to get more chargebacks. You're for sure going to get more dissatisfied customers and customers who are willing to complain and say you didn't hold up your side of the bargain, but you Also could be turning away the right fit for your business. The right fit for, you know, who your program's really made for, which might be, you know, a business owner in a certain phase of their business where they're looking to make, like, the next jump. And you've done exactly that. And you're like, look, I can help you get from point F to point G, Right. Or point point H. Instead of telling them, I'm going to take you all the way from point A to Z. No problem. Anyone join? I think you'll get a lot of people at A. But then they're just really not right for you.

Right. No, I totally agree. I think, yeah. Can actually it makes your business better. And I feel like in general, yeah.

There'S a craving too, for people in the role of direct response and other industries too, that they do want more authenticity and they want this stuff.

Right.

I mean, there's a reason that what you've been doing has struck a chord with so many people. So I'm curious. Let me ask that question and then we'll move to the ethical conversation. I mean, why do you think it is that, you know, your videos and your content, even putting out has, you know, struck such a chord with folks? Because it really has. You have a lot of very, you know, loyal followers and for, you know, there's lots of people in different industries who hate you, but there's a lot of people who love you. Right. Why do you think that is?

I think you said it best. I mean, it struck a chord with other people. It was not my. I don't see it as like, oh, I'm just such a charismatic guy or like, I really, I really figured this. No, no, no, not that at all. Because like I said, I'd been making videos for a long time before that. I have another channel with like 380,000 subscribers where I never did anything with this. So this wasn't my first run in with YouTube, but this was the first thing where I got this much of a response from other people in terms of residents. I mean, it's like the emails came flooding in and I think it's because of what this industry's sort of been, for better or worse, allowed to do for the past, I don't know, 10 years or so, and people know about it. It's not like I'm the first to raise this as a problem, but I think the problem hadn't been taken too seriously or there was nobody sort of like holding that many people's feet to the fire. I Guess, for lack of a better word, like, you'd see your offhand, you know, FTC investigation, but that was mostly like whack a mole once, you know, once every two years. So this, I think this was like, people would actually get what they were doing, would get sort of shown in a broader market, whereas normally, you know, direct response. Nobody's gonna see what you're doing. Like, only your market's gonna see what you're selling. So, yeah, I think that's why it struck a chord. People just thought like, yes, I've been sort of waiting for someone to talk about it. And I was just one of the people who started talking about it. I guess Mike Winnett's another, Spencer Cornelio is another. But I think people were just kind of hungry for somebody to say, like, yeah, this isn't right, that people are doing this.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I think once you started doing it, yeah, it resonated. And my feeling is that. And I've told this to you, like, kind of privately talked to. I do. I actually think the industry is getting better overall. I think there's outliers who are making, you know, just as crazy claims as ever. And like, you can think of some of the health stuff out there that's like. And then like one thing like blows up and then a bunch of people emulate it. And. And to be transparent, I mean, I wrote something to.

I don't know if I want to name it. I don't know, whatever. Research, right? Like, so research. Pretty, like, over the top crazy. I had gotten hired and I wrote like a research, like, killer type thing. And this was like, right. I don't know, a month or two before you made your video about me. And. And at the time, I'm like, it was. I was totally doing it from an ego perspective of like, oh, that's number one. I want to, like, I want to beat it. Because then, like, I'm. That makes me a good copywriter.

I'm, you know, great.

I can beat it. And I did. And then it went like, the guys only launched it like a month or so ago. And, you know, it makes me super uncomfortable kind of. But I don't know what to do about it exactly. But I realized, like, oh, fuck. Right? Like, I. So then when you made the video, and I'm like, I'm sitting here saying, I'm not doing this kind of shit anymore. But then I just totally fell for it because the ego play of wanting to beat this other offer out there. So I think there's offers like that and then people trying to come in and like really, it makes it look bad. But I think I also see so many people who are not going crazy with their claims now or they're trying to do more E Comm oriented stuff and less like of the crazy long form or they're trying to build brands. There's a conversation happening at least. And I'm just. My view is that overall, at least in the health space, maybe in the make money space, I don't know, that one's a little more sketchy and I'm less tuned in there. Um, but I think things are actually moving in a positive direction. But I'm curious on your take if you agree with that or do you think it's about the same or worse than it's ever been? I'd love to hear what you think.

I. I hope it's getting better. Um, I sort of don't have. In some ways I feel like I'm. I haven't. I've always had an outsider's perspective because I'm not, you know, a. I'm not running like a marketing agency. I'm not, you know, sort of playing plugged into click funnels in the same way that other people are. I hope it's getting better. I do see that a lot of people, like just the audience has less of an appetite for the get rich quick stuff than they used to. They have less of an appetite. Well, maybe not. I don't know as much on the health side. I know on the get rich side, it's just working less. And I think people are trying to figure out, okay, well, what does work? What can I say? And I hope that's a function of what I said earlier, which is that if the bad stuff gets called out and people start losing an appetite in it, it sort of makes room for people to do legitimate offers and do more legitimate stuff and it works out for them. I also think there is a shift also going on within copywriting. I've gotten written a lot from copywriters who have changed up their business and are switching up things. They just are making the shift themselves. It's not even the market. They're making the ship. I think that's awesome. I think it's also a way to build reputation rather than just like you're just going from offer to offer. I think there is ways to build reputation. I'm excited that people are trying to do that. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of the same garbage going out, but I guess I See it getting less traction than it used to, which sort of excites me. And yeah, it makes me wonder, am I going to do this forever? I don't know. It's like sometimes I look at the scam landscape and I'm like, I'll never run out of content. And then sometimes I'm like, maybe I'll get bored of this. Maybe people will figure this out and I can just move on to something else. I'm totally open to that being a possibility. I'd be happy if that was true.

Yeah. That is one of the questions I have for you is sort of like five years from now, I mean, do you think you're still creating content and doing what you're doing here?

For sure, I'm creating content. Am I creating content about ClickBank? I hope not. I mean, maybe. I don't know if it's that bad. If it's bad enough to where I feel like I'm making new points. I have gotten the feeling sometimes, just only recently where I was like, have I made my point? Have I sort of like. Because there's only so many times you can talk about one scam where you're like, you're making the same point over again. And I think there are so many scams out there. I mean, I don't want to, like, I benefited from college, for example, but I do see college debt as like a huge problem. And there are other, like, sort of journalistic areas you can go to where. Which are kind of exciting and they're also need to be talked about. My thing is like, I'm in love with the untold story. So once this story, I feel like it's been told and everyone's sort of aware of it. I think I'll get bored with it and I'll be like, you know, what's next? What can I, you know, what's not being told somewhere else and I can go share it.

Yeah, that makes sense. Have you ever thought about writing like a book? Because I've thought about even when I was in the first, really discovering this whole world of direct response and my mind was like, blown. And I was like, man, someone could do like a. Like a book. Or I even thought about like, you know, like, I'm like, how is kind of your point? Like, how is mainstream media? How is there not like an article and like Forbes or Fortune or. But. But even like a book about this world I think could be interesting. Have you thought about doing that?

100%. I would love to. I sort of like, don't have time. But a book about Agora I would.

Love.

That is like. Okay, I'm just gonna tell you this. This is a exclusive for you. Agora is my white whale. If I'm, if I'm Captain Ahab, Agora is definitely my white whale. It's like as far as. I just haven't had time to do it justice, but. Oh my gosh, that. The level of history, the level of. I don't know, it's what they've done sort of like in terms of building a business and also like the crazy offers they've tried to like give to people I would love. I think that's not been told. There's so much. Yeah, there's so much rich history and direct response that like, it would make a great investigative book, but someone's just got to kind of sit down and do it.

Yeah, totally. I agree. And I get, you know, the time aspect is challenging and that's perfect. Cause it does go. Another question I had, which is as a content creator, it's funny, somebody in the Facebook Live was like asking if he creates anything or. And you know, there's sometimes people, and I like the person who asked that, so they watch it. They're a good person. They're, they're. I think they're, they're really trying to do stuff the right way. But there's a feeling of like, oh, you're just making videos, right? Complaining about stuff like, But I mean to me a. Like those, your videos are super entertaining. So I think you are a creator, right? That means, I don't know how you would argue you're not a creator. And then. But my question is, I mean, do you get burned out on that? Like, I mean, you make a lot of videos, you put out a lot of content and you do create a lot. Is that something where you ever feel like, are there weeks where you're like, man, I don't want to make any videos. I want to just go chill. Like, you know, do you ever get burned out?

Oh yeah, man. Oh yeah. Like that's. Yeah, it's less like. It's sort of like sometimes like my creativity just feels tapped and I'm just like, oh man, how can I make another video? This year was a big year for. This is just separate from. I see myself as a content creator first and then like very secondarily like in this anti scam space, like of guru busting or whatever. I think that's just something I've fallen into for a time. But as far as a Content creator. I fell in love with something Malcolm Gladwell said on a Tim Ferriss podcast where he essentially said he got over his writer's block by just learning to have deadlines and just, like, operate on a deadline like a newspaper would. And I had really struggled with writer's block earlier on in my career. And so I said, I'm just, for a time, going to try to work like a newspaper, not because for any other reason than I want to basically beat my writer's block and. And get out of this whole, like, these artistic sort of pretensions and really get good at crafting a story. And part of getting good is, like, taking a bunch of swings. So not everything I do is going to knock it out of the park, but I'm happy knowing that the more I get on camera and tell stories, the better I get at it and the more I can do future stories justice. So that's why I have been, like, kind of on this insane grind recently, is I've been. I've really subscribed to that philosophy.

Yeah, that's cool. I love that.

Yeah, that's an awesome way to approach it, I'm sure.

By the way, copywriting is the same. Like, you just kind of have to get in the swing of, like, you just have to write a lot. A lot, a lot. And you can't be too much of a perfectionist. You kind of have to just get in the rhythm of, like, okay, you got to get good at this thing. And part of it's just hours in.

Yeah, totally. And part of it, too, is that generally what you end up creating ends up being a lot better than you think it's gonna be.

Right.

Sometimes when you. When it's a fight creatively, where you are, like, not. You know, you're not feeling motivated or you feel stuck, but you just power through it. And then, like, my wife. My wife is also a copywriter. And, well, not actively, but that's how she got her start and how I discovered copywriting. And, yeah, she said it to me really early on. She's like, one of the best tips was like, don't stop and reread stuff and edit. She was like, just keep writing. Basically finish your draft, and then you can always go back and do it. But. But you'll find that your first draft is usually a lot better than you thought it was. And I think also the psychological component of, now that you've finished it, it's a lot easier to go and improve it. So that's kind of part of the copy Process, for sure. So, yeah, let's dive into. Well, actually, one more question about. Because people bring up the. I mean, I want to get to the ethical part, and we will, but going back to the YouTube and the content it fits in here, which is having ads on for your channel. Right. Because people will bring that up as a. As a criticism and say, like, ask him why he's got, you know, why is he monetizing his channel? Or why does he have ads? So, you know, I have my own thoughts, but I'd rather than answer for you. I'd love to hear your answer to that.

Yeah, totally. Okay, so first of all, I don't want to give anyone the impression that I'm anti marketing or anti advertising. I'm actually very pro advertising and pro marketing. I think when marketing is done right, you're connecting a person with a product they didn't know about, a product they didn't exist, and providing a solution they didn't know existed. I think that's a beautiful thing. I think that's a high calling that you could live up to. So first and foremost, I think marketing's good. And then secondarily as a content creator, and it's like most content you see online today wouldn't exist without. Or couldn't exist, you would say, without ads. Really. Oh, sorry, did we lose Stefan real quick? We might have lost.

I'm here. No, I'm sorry. My dog was like one brain.

Oh, no worries.

No, no, no. Sorry about that. Sorry about that. Yeah, most content is, like, able to exist because of ads. Because we live in this, like, free model where, you know, everything's free, but then it's paid for by ads. Right. So I have no problem with ads. I think probably the specific thing that that person's getting at is the get rich quick ads, which sometimes appear on my videos, maybe. Is that what they're saying?

Yeah, that does happen. Yeah, because it'll be funny. Because it'll be like an anti guru thing.

And then at first I saw that and I thought it was funny. I was like, how funny is it that I'm trying to bust these people? And then YouTube automatically picks your ads. They just throw this on here. I still think it's a little funny. Recently though, I was like, oh, man. I don't think it's a conflict of interest, but I could see how other people do. So I found out there's ways to turn that off in YouTube ads. And so I did turn it off. And I was like, there's a selector. I found out in AdSense where you can just turn off get Rich quick schemes ads like, you just say, I don't want this on my channel. So I turned that off like a few months ago and I don't know what happened. It's. It's still, I still seem to get them. I mean, I, it's. I. But explicitly, I don't want. I'd way rather have like a Robin Hood ad on my channel than like, you know, London Real. I still think it's funny, but it's like at this point there's nothing I can do. I've flagged it with Google engineers. I've said, hey, do you. Are you guys aware that like, get rich quick ads are playing even though I've turned off get rich quick ads? And they say like sort of. Oh, it's a classification problem. And so, yeah, I mean, in some senses I think it's kind of like, it's like a point of like, people just have to have ads to make content. I mean, content wouldn't exist without the advertising model, otherwise everything would be paid. But then also, like, I've personally taken steps to try to eliminate that, like, that specific side of it from it because I don't even want the appearance of like, hey, you know, my channel is like, I'm just doing this because I'm getting get rich quick ads. That's so ridiculous. Um, but yeah, I've taken specific steps. Sorry, you still get them. You can just click skip ad. You can use an ad blocker. I really don't care. I mean, it's, it's fine. Makes no difference to me.

Yeah, that's cool. That makes sense. And that is actually another good segue because one thing I mentioned to you and you know, I talked about Jim Claire for like two hours, just a private conversation a few weeks back. And then. And you know, Jim Claire talked about. He's like, he's like, people feel like I hate marketing, but he's like, he's like, I love Mark. I'm like, I'm in love with marketing. He's like, I study it. Like, I love it. Like, you know, and you know, you also, I think you'll love or at least deeply enjoy marketing too. And which is because the only place.

I do get, I get sad. Some people, I think will watch content from Jim or from you or whoever, and then they start to feel like any selling is bad and unethical. Right? And it's like, that's. I don't think that's true at all. I don't think you think that's true. I, like. I think, you know, selling has been going on since, like, the beginning of time and, like, so. But clearly there is types of selling and marketing that's, like, super problematic. Like, we've been talking about predatory stuff, things like, of that nature. And so I guess, like, one thing you and I talked about a bit privately, but I don't know if we ever came to a perfect conclusion on is, like, I mean, how do we, like, draw the line? Right? Is it as simple as, like, the newspaper test type thing? Is it, you know, do you have any ideas? I mean, how do we guide people? Because people. People. There's people there who want to do right, I think, but they don't know what that looks like. And they're torn, they're conflicted. I mean, I'm curious what your thoughts are on how do we sort of, you know, how do we market from an ethical perspective? Is it really easy? And I'm making it sound more complicated. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Yeah, that's super. There's a lot there. So first, let me totally agree with you. Yeah, I'm like, I'm not against marketing. I'm very. I think, like, marketing, sales, advertising is this, like, beautiful world of psychology and persuasion. And like, Jim, I'm like. I'm also fascinated by it just purely from it's. It's interesting that from that perspective alone, I do. Yeah, like you said, there are areas where it can get a little bad. I do think a lot of people want to do right. And I would just say, like, the first thing is that you have to realize that what is legal and what is right are not the same thing. And I think that's really clear. I think you can get by legal with a really scummy claim. And I think when you realize that, you have to say, okay, there has to be an internal check here for what is like, so to speak, crossing the line for me. And that's going to slightly differ per the individual. But I think what's very clear is it has to be some. Like, it has to be two things. Number one, you have to think, am I qualifying my prospect at all? Is there any kind of qualification? And then two, if I'm stretching these claims, how much am I stretching them? Am I kind of, you know, just like, doing a little bit of a pool? Or is this thing been disfigured beyond repair? In engineering, they call it, like an inelastic. Like, what do they call it? An inelastic stretch. Where Basically, the thing is deformed at that point. And so if you say, you know, there are some studies on PubMed that suggest such and such, that's fine. If you say science shows that this thing cures cancer, this thing cures this, that's a problem. That's not the same thing. So, yeah, I think there has to be some level of. I don't know, maybe there's not a clear line, but I do think there are some easy guardrails as far as, you know, like, what do people. What would my mom think of this if she saw it? You know, if my offer targeted her? Because a lot of copywriters, their demographic, especially in health, is sort of their parents. Like, it's like sort of like old, older people with illnesses, right?

Yeah, absolutely. No, yeah, I think that's a great one. And I mean, I can stuff that I've written where then I'm excited to show it to my mom and. Because I'm like, hey, mom, like, check it out. Like, I love the way I wrote this copy. I think the product's great, right? And there's stuff I've learned that I was like, I don't want to show this to my mom because. And you know, again, not recently because of my ethical come to Jesus, thanks to you. But I think, you know, right? So I think the mom test is good. The newspaper test, I think is same idea, right? If it was on the front page of your newspaper in your town or city or hell, make it like a global newspaper, right? Would you be excited about that? Or would you be, like, really embarrassed and feel like you were trying to hide from the road? And then I think one thing you and I talked about is like, yeah, the claims. I mean, what you just said. But. But like, I think anytime you start saying that, hey, like, this is going to work for, like, you know, the vast majority of the people, the vast majority of the time, and you don't have, like, very, very concrete proof to back that up, right? Like, random example, Tide magic pen, right? Remove stains. I don't know if you've ever used one of those before. They're great. If Tide wants to go, hey, this removes, like, you know, 99% of stains. Hand sanitizer kills 99% of germs. And you've got laptops. No one's like, f you, right? Like, that's like, all right, that seems like a pretty reasonable claim. But you're like, hey, every person, no matter what age, anything else is going to, like, make money, like, a ton of Money or it's going to drop £20 in the next 30 days or I mean, it's such a big difference, right? And so I think part of it is as soon as you start making it like that, you know, everybody or the vast majority of people who do, who buy this product are then going to get a solution that's going to give them this result, like pretty much guaranteed to give them this result. That's when you run into problems. Unless, again, you have miracle products that really can do it, right? In which case good for you and go become a billionaire.

I think you just did such a great point, which is that what I've noticed is that where it all goes wrong is when people try. Nobody minds when people turn make a great product, look like a great product. People care. When people make a mediocre product, they advertise it like a great product and it doesn't do what they said it would do. So, I mean, I think that's so huge. How many times have we heard that this weight supplement doesn't actually do what, you know, the weight supplement purports to do? It's like if you have that weight supplement, nobody would mind if you that it actually did it. Nobody would care if you actually advertise it like it actually does it. But too often we see people, you know, kind of, kind of, they skip it. They say, hey, I can write a compelling story, therefore I'll write it about any product. I can write a great. Like, I can make a product look that's mediocre, look great, therefore I will. I think that's where you just have to, you know, gut check yourself and just say, like, maybe I should find a better product. Maybe I should skip this one. Maybe this product isn't worth selling. Or maybe I can turn, tone down the claims and give it to the people who still would be happy with that mediocre product because it happens to solve the perfect problem that they're in.

Yeah, absolutely. No, I think that's an excellent point. So for those who are watching with us live, we will take some questions in just a couple minutes. I have a few more questions for you.

Let's do it. Stephan. I'm loving this, man. Give it to me. Come on.

Awesome, man. Yeah, I'm having a blast. Thank you for being on here. This is really a lot. One question that is almost part of his curiosity for me, but, I mean, what's one of the weirdest responses that you've gone from somebody after you've made, like, a video about them? Because I know you've had stuff, like people tried to come after you. I imagine you've had all kinds of weird stuff happen. So as much as you're comfortable sharing, I'd be really curious to hear, like, kind of maybe a story about one of the weirdest responses.

Maybe I won't name this person. People probably figure it out, but I won't name them. Just I don't want to cause any more drama. But I've noticed there's this weird phenomenon that I've noticed where for some reason, call it dumb luck, I sort of get an inverse response to how hard the video is. Like, it seems like all the times where I've gotten the most flack has been on my softest videos. And I don't know why. Like, I made, like, a very middling dogecoin video, and the video got my channel banned. Like, it was just, like. It's like, it wasn't even controversial. It's like this totally, you know, middle of the road, you know, be careful kind of thing. It got my channel bad. And I have these other, like, videos where I would say is much more like kind of me going hard on something. Nothing happens. So in this specific case, I had made a video about this person's marketing where I called their marketing. Like, it was actually. I said, it's a bit cringy, but actually, this guy's putting a lot of effort in. I kind of love the theatrical ness of this. I basically complimented this person's marketing, and it turned into this, like, a whole beef. And like, it was all, you know, it turned in this massive thing of him, you know, calling me out on social media. We had this giant, explosive, explosive debate or whatever. And then I just felt like the whole thing was like, wait, what did I do? I don't know. So it's this. It's my weird luck. And I've just decided I can't go too soft because otherwise something bad will happen. It's just something that I've realized.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. It's funny. Somebody put. But they only put the panelists. But I put a guest that I think I'm guessing was accurate, but for those who didn't see it, no problem. I. That's interesting. I think I do know who that was, but obviously we'll keep it.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just weird, right? Like, why I thought people would get madder about this. Like, the stuff that I said that was, you know, if they felt was unfair or whatever. Yeah, it's weird.

Yeah, it is. It's interesting. And again, I think a lot of it does come back to ego because I think, you know, when somebody has a video made about them at all, there's this immediate sort of instinctive, I'm being attacked. I need to defend myself. I need to, like, you know, I think that part of it that plays a part and some people maybe respond. But again, the best thing you can do is take a deep breath or, you know, one thing I did, I'll share with people when you made the video about me, too. And I reached out to, like, a couple people and mentors and friends and stuff. And I'm just saying publicly, I think it's fine. I mentioned to you before this call, too. So one person was Frank Kern because somebody brought up, oh, Frank Kern used to have this issue of this guy, Salty Droid. And, like, the guy would give him a hard time and blah, blah, blah. So I messaged Frank Curran because he bought my course and was on my email list. And I was like, hey, you know, I'm curious what you think about this, blah, blah. And basically he gave me a really nice, like, an email with some ideas. And then we had gotten a call. But one of the things, the first things he said was, you know, make sure that whatever they're saying isn't, like, true or accurate. And if it is, like, fix that immediately. And I was like, oh, shit, that's a really, like, you know, and at first, because, like, well, of course it's not. And I'm like, well, and there's that. That research killer I wrote.

And.

And then as soon as that, I have to give Frank credit because it really suddenly I wasn't fully in, like, kind of combat mode. Right. It was like, actually thought introspectively. And that was one of the reasons, I mean, that I kind of was able to come back to Earth. So I have to give Frank credit. It seems like such obvious advice, but I thought it was so wise of him to say that. Where it wasn't like, just like, hey, man, here's how you deal with this, right? Here's how you fight back. It was like, well, they're accurate. Then you need to stop doing whatever they said. Oh, shit, Frank, that's really good advice.

Yeah. And to your credit, I mean, when you came back to me, I realized, oh, this guy's not. I don't know. It's sometimes easy. Like I said, I am an outsider. So I'll just confess that sometimes it's easy to, I don't know, put people in bad Faith. And I try not to, but there's a problem when you see too many offers, you sort of do pattern recognition. You go like, oh, this is the same as this. And this is the same, same as this. So sometimes I do, I'll admit it, like, I can get in the trap of taking people in bad faith. And so when you reached out to me and you were very self aware, very kind of self conscious, very, you know, honest, then we ended up having this super productive dialogue where I was able to see like, okay, there are definitely people in direct response who are aware of the problem. They kind of want to know how they can do better. They want to know how they can do the right thing and also do it in a way that sustains their business and they can build a future business on that they're proud of. And so that was something really cool that because of your kind of self reflection there, I was also able to have a moment of self reflection, see you sort of as a full human being. And then we were able to have a really productive discussion that led to this.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I appreciate that about you because again, so people who may wonder, who are watching this interview, whether maybe they watch the recording and wonder if you're, if it's like all an act or, you know, because people like have accused you of that too, right? That you're this sort of inauthentic, like a grifter.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm just, I'm just doing it for the money.

Yeah, yeah.

And you know, the fact that when you responded, it wasn't like, oh, well, if you don't want to debate publicly, then we're not going to get like a bunch of eyeballs and like, I don't even want to talk to you. You were like, wow, what a thoughtful respons.

Like, thanks.

Here's a bunch of, you know, here's some of my thoughts on it. And then to your point, yeah, we had this really great dialogue and conversation and I was able to see right away that you were authentic and that you really care about the stuff that you're talking about. Right. I mean, you're doing it like, yes, it's fascinating and there's like a hole in the market and that nobody's talking about it, which is crazy.

Right.

But it's clear you're also doing it because you want to help make the world a better place. And so I saw that really quickly with you and I got, you know, for what that's worth, I just had immense respect for you. As soon as that happened.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And same to you too. I kind of realized that what you were about as well.

Yeah.

So, I mean, Jake was like, I.

Hit me with the hard question. Steph, this is just getting into a backpacking competition here.

Let's.

Yeah, yeah, let's get. Let's get the. The questions here. Go.

Okay.

I'm curious if we got any. Any good ones in the chat here. I mean, like. I mean, Jake asked about your end game, but again, I think Gears is. We kind of covered that. Jake, I'm not sure if you're on for that or not, but we sort of did cover it, I guess. Let's go to BitCloud, because I do want to talk about that. And then we'll go to answering questions from our audience. Because I like BitCloud, right. I have been on the platform. I'm kind of like, not that in love with Facebook for a variety of reasons, just like, their algorithm and a ton of different stuff.

Nobody's that in love with Facebook.

Let's be real.

I hope not.

There's always that one person who's like a super fan that, you know, but, you know, I'm like, so. So the way I'll lay out the reasons I like it, and then I want you to obviously share what you got, because I know you don't. And, well, you see problems with it. So I like it because I'm like, I actually think the platform functionally is pretty good. There are interesting people on there, like some of the creators. There's, you know, like, everything from investors to artists to everyday people, but I think there's interesting people. I see good content on there. I like the kind of financial incentive component of it. I think that's kind of neat, right? That if you put out good content and people want to invest in you, they can, right? And as a creator, then that incentivizes you to want to create more good content. Most people I see using it aren't using it as, like a get rich thing. There are definitely some people where they're sort of constantly like, hey, everyone buy my coin. Right? Because if my coin goes up, I'll make money. But that's not. I would not characterize it that way at all. And I think, you know, because I know some of the points are like, how many. There's sort of a big amount of the bitcoin that's sort of unspoken for. And there's sort of like, some of, like, the bitcoin is kind of locked up and maybe the price is propped up a little bit. But my feeling is like, that is true, but maybe it will end up not mattering because the platform is actually a good platform and enough people are going to come that even though there's like some weird kind of shady stuff with the origins of it, that it may. That may not be enough to make it not end up becoming, like a pretty legit platform, like the Dogecoin of the world.

Right.

Dogecoin is a joke coin now it's like, is it kind of like, I don't own whole Dogecoin, I'm not on Team Doge. But like, you're like, fuck, I don't know, like, right, Like, Elon Musk was the same.

Yeah. They can get too big for it to matter that they have these problems.

Yeah, exactly. And so that's kind of. I feel like with BitCloud, I mean, it's totally speculative. Right. But I know, again, I know you made two videos on it. And of course, every time I bring up BitCloud, people are like, stefan, have you seen this? And I'm like, yes, I've seen it. I emailed my list, I've linked to it. Like, I totally get copies of Perspective. But yeah. So what is it with BitCloud that you kind of. Why do you feel the way you feel about BitCloud?

Yeah. So to be clear, BitCloud's like a decentralized social platform where you can invest in creators using these things called BitCloud, which are tokens. Tokens you buy for bitcoin. So when I first saw this come out, it went to like a billion dollar valuation in, I think, a month. And this is part of a larger problem, which is these valuations of these crypto companies, which is just crazy. But I was more concerned with their start and how they got started, who their owner is, who their. Who they're created by, who they're like, who's in charge of this project? And I saw me calling it as a scam was like, don't put your money in this. There are huge red flags associated with it that have not been answered. So I think there's maybe a distinction between the users which you're talking about, which you're like, there's great users. And I like that, like the mechanism of this thing. And we can separate that out from the creator of the project and sort of the genesis of the project itself. So just to refresh people on what my concerns about the BitCloud project were was there are these, number one, you can put Bitcoin into BitCloud and there's no return market. Like there was no secondary market for it. You couldn't get your money out of it. This was at first. Now I don't know if they have a secondary market for it. There was also a problem. Of all the bitcoin that you're paying for BitCloud, it goes to this unknown address that no one knows who controls it. And so out of nowhere, somebody sort of made $250 million off the backs of what is essentially just like a slightly worse version of Twitter with one extra functionality where you could pay for BitCloud and invest in these creators. And then there's a bunch of shady stuff with its genesis block where nobody was interested in it, but there was like a 40% pre mine. And I don't know if you're familiar with crypto projects, but when somebody owns a vast majority of the coins and you don't know where it is, it's an existential threat to that project. And so before you send people to go like, hey, go invest in me or go put your money in this, they should all be aware that there are these threats that could make this into what is called a rug pool, where it's just like out of nowhere, somebody just dumps a bunch of coins on people and the liquidity vanishes and you're just left with a coin that's essentially worthless. Right? The floor just bottoms out on it. So that was sort of my problems with BitCloud. There are also some threats to it that are built into the structure where everything has to be paid for. Like transactions have to be like, if you reclout something, I think you pay a small amount of bitcloud. If you update your profile, you pay a small amount of bitcloud. You know, this is sort of a problem for your everyday user. It's great for an influencer who's getting invested in. But let's say I'm like an everyday user, right? And I just want to use Twitter, like Twitter, a decentralized Twitter. Why would I pay for Twitter when I can go to regular Twitter? So my thought is just like, I don't see this getting widespread adoption now. Could I be wrong? Could there be enough people interested in this to become useful? Maybe. But when I look at the creators, what they've done, I'm a little skeptical there was of it. Whether it's a project for the long term or whether it's a project that was meant as sort of a genius cash grab from a marketing perspective. Because another Thing they did that people aren't aware, some people might not be aware of is they posted people's accounts for them and allowed people to invest in these accounts that were not owned by the person that they said owned it. So like if Elon Musk, they put up an account for Elon Musk, they copied his Twitter profile, they use his likeness and then people spent millions of dollars on this Elon Musk account. Where does that money go if Elon Musk never joins the platform? Have they just used his, his likeness for millions of dollars? I mean, Jimmy Donaldson, same thing. Mr. Beast, he's this, it looks like he's endorsing the platform because his profile's on there and it's investable. Right. He hasn't endorsed it. So I just felt like from a marketing perspective that was shady. The pre mine, it's shady. Pose an existential threat. The structure of the whole thing of like can this get widespread adoption even because of the problem of most people aren't going to have a coin that's valuable. Most people are simply going to be sort of paying to tweet. And then at the end of the day, what do you get? Sort of just like this speculative market where a very few people sort of benefit, I guess. Is that worth this whole. All these risks? I don't, personally, I don't think so. Yeah, no point.

I guess super fair. Every single point there is super fair. Trying to think of. I mean I, Yeah, it's funny, I mean like the, the like taking people like Elon Musk, giving them a profile.

Yeah.

I mean if you go to their site and stuff, they do make it pretty clear. Like, like so we've taken the top 15,000 users from Twitter. We put them on. If they come on and claim their coin, great. So one hand of me is that's a really smart kind of potential way to drive adoption. Right. Because when people do come on, maybe that incentivizes the problem. Elon Musk, for example, is going to be worth like a billion dollars. And he wouldn't necessarily be that incentivized to come on because it's Elon Musk and he's got. His net worth is. But so part of me sees that as a smart growth hacking component.

But think about the value chain real quick. Okay, so look at this. So the value chain is who's winning from this? Now they would say, well, we don't actually take the money from like Elon Musk's BitCloud, therefore we're not benefiting. That's what I've seen, but they do because, okay, so imagine this. So you've got Elon Musk has never given his consent for this, but an Elon Musk fan might see that, okay, I want to invest in this creator coin, whatever. What do they have to do to get bitcloud? They have to pay Bitcoin. Who benefits from that chain in the value chain, right? Not Elon Musk. Elon Musk never sees that Bitcoin, it is given to the founder, to this anonymous address that we don't know who owns it, who does what with it, and that address is not going to pay you. You cannot exchange BitCloud with that address for the same Bitcoin you got in. So if you say, oh, Elon Musk's not coming on here, I want to sell my coins, I want to sell my bitcoin, I want to get out of this, that address will not give you Bitcoin in exchange for that. And so to me, you've sort of like inserted yourself in this value chain using other people's identities, purely profited off of it and said, like, oh, no, well, if they don't join, it's Elon Musk's token, et cetera. No, actually, Elon Musk is not the one really benefiting from it. It's the guy who owns the origin address. You're right, it's a genius marketing move. But I would again argue just what is a smart marketing move, Even, like, even technically legal, which I don't think it is, it doesn't make it right. And I don't think this one's defensible, in my opinion.

Sure.

Well, no, I think that's a really good point. I don't know. Yeah, I guess. I mean, for me, I still, I go back to the user experience because if we separate the two things, right. I'm enjoying the user experience. It was kind of cool. Like, I did a, like an econ course and I basically started soft launched it to my list because I kept not finishing it, and I was like, let me do it a different way. So I'm like, hey, you either need to buy $10 of my creator coin to get the course and send me a screenshot that you did, or you can send me $10 of Bitcoin. Or at least, at least. And soft to my list. I had about 200 people who did it, which was another, like, I don't know, 150 people say, this is fucking stupid. Just make a funnel and charge me US Dollars. I want this course so bad. Or I'm in Nigeria and I can't do Bitcoin or whatever it is. But to me, that was cool because it was a way of, yes, people are buying my coin, but I'm not saying invest in me because we're going to go to the moon. It's like, you're going to give me the money anyway for the course. So I'm like, buy my coin because I want to see if my coin value goes up. And I'm experimenting with the platform. I thought that was neat. So I guess the marketer in me really likes the possibilities there. And again, I like the content there. But I would not deny at any level everything you just said. There's definitely issues with who controls a lot of these coins, and I wish that they could go public and they could probably dispel some of it if they were like, hey, here's exactly what's going on. Right. I kind of wish they would answer some of those big questions and objections, and hopefully they will. And the optimist in me hopes that they'll come out and be like, oh, no, it all goes here and we're going to charity or whatever, but I'll be fair that I'm not. Don't see that necessarily happening.

Yeah, I don't either. But I would say the steel man of your argument is that the best argument for BitCloud is the other platforms. Right? It's like sort of like, oh, these other social platforms, nobody is that in love with any of them. Everyone does. Or I think a lot of people see the value in a decentralized platform where nobody could, like, let's say, kick you off. They just don't like your opinion. So they just say, hey, we're not going to have you. So that's the one distinction. And I would say the one luxury that my platform doesn't allow is, like, I talk less about the positive side just because I think other people cover it. But I do think there's a positive side to crypto and to even, like, a decentralized social platform where it's like, I'm not just against social networks and crypto social networks. I think there's a possibility. I think it's cool. I just thought that this one has so many problems that I'm just thinking, can we do better than this? Maybe not. So we'll see. Cool.

Makes sense. Awesome. Let's. Let's turn to the audience and take some questions. So the way I usually do this is I will kind of set up the question. I'LL bring them on so they can talk kind of like a radio show. They'll be like, hey, you know, thanks. And then they'll.

The last question, guys, let's go. Give me some questions.

And I usually do by people kind of upvoting. So Sean Mabry has the first one. So, Sean, I'm going to bring you on. Give me a second to find you. We have a good amount of people.

Get ready, Sean, get your question ready. I've done these zooms before. Sometimes people aren't ready to go.

Yeah, my answer is pretty good. I see Sean already unmuted. Sean, you there?

What's up, guys? Can you hear me? Yeah, Sean, awesome. So, yeah, to expand on what I put in the chat, my question is how can people ethically get started as marketers? One of the things that made me thought of this was Stephane's email earlier where he mentioned after the conversation with coffee how he pulled out of a doctor company that was doing the kind of hardcore gray or black hat stuff. But I think we can all admit that that's easier for someone in Stephane's position to do, whereas if it's someone's very first position in marketing or they're just trying to break into the industry, like in my experience, and I think I'm actually kind of one of the exceptions to this because I've been lucky to work with some really good companies. But by and large, a lot of people I talk to, they get started in more kind of gray or even black hat zones because it's easier to get started there. And a lot of times those can even kind of be the best training grounds because they'll just kind of give you the no fluff version, like, hey, here's what works, here's how the whole game operates. And then later on, people learn how to be ethical. But I worry that if we're going to apply the same standard of ethics that Stephane is operating at right now, do we then end up unintentionally shutting out people that actually could have been good, responsible marketers over time, but.

The.

Industry is just not set up yet to have those smooth inroads. What do you guys think about that?

I think that's a great question. I think there's. I think Sol Alinsky said that morality is sort of a luxury of people with resources, like the ability to kind of make these weighty moral choices is sort of a luxury. And I think that's what you're pointing out. I think it's a good point. Although part of me thinks, like There has to be a limit here, right, where you don't say, like, oh, yeah, deal drugs until you're ready to break into E commerce. You know what I mean? That's sort of an absurd version of the argument. So there has to be, like, lines we draw here where we say, like, you should have. You should be moral. As. As soon as you feel compelled to be moral, you should try to be moral and you should try to work for the job that you're trying to get. Like, working, you know, sleazy. Direct response does not necessarily make you best equipped to do, you know, ethical, direct response. I get, I get your point, but part of me feels like I don't want to give that, you know, excuse to people where they go like, oh, yeah, I'm just gonna. I'll be ethical later. Like, how common is that? Like, I'll. I'll do the right thing when I'm good and ready. So I see your point. I think it's a good one. But I don't know, maybe Stefan has a better, better answer here.

No, well, yeah, I agree. It's a good point. I get. I go back and forth because, I mean, that can be my part of my rationalization for the, you know, the more kind of aggressive black hat stuff I wrote in, like, 2013, 2014, was like, look, I was trying to pay my bills and have food and like, make a better life for myself and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And there's some validity to that for sure. But what I think I. What I realize now is, is like, again, you can actually write, you know, great copy for great products without having to feel shitty. Like, I just did one for, like, a dog. It's a supplement, but it's like an awesome dog supplement. Every single ingredient has, like, clinical studies on, like, dogs. Like, they're all patented, trademarked ingredients. They have a vet who's a reality TV star for, like, as a vet, it's like a bunch of great user generated content. Like, we're not making crazy claims of, hey, your dog's gonna live forever, or, like, cure your dog's cancer. It's just like your dog, you know, like, like after six weeks or two months, or your dog's probably gonna have more energy and might have better fur. And like, you know, I love it and it's doing great. It's like, it's. The metrics are amazing on it and I have an NDA because I can't go too deep into it, but as soon as I can, I'm going To like teach off that. So part of what I'm trying to do now is if I as I do take on projects is, you know, think about how can I then share with people who are earlier on. Because, yeah, I don't know. I mean, but I do think there are more opportunities than we think. There's plenty of opportunities on the black hat side, but. And there's a lot of company, you know, I don't know. There's a lot of companies that are also trying to hire people who can do it the right way. So I don't think, you know, it is easier for me to say it being in a place of financial comfort. I think that there's also, I do think there's a hard part of that which is like, oh, I know this magical way that I can just print money, but I'm like, I'm going to stop doing it and stop printing money. And that is actually hard to do kind of right. Even though it's a different problem versus like I'm trying to like eat and put a roof over my head. But it's not, it's so hard to just to do, I mean, walk away from, oh yeah, you have to go from 5 to 20 million and you're like, all right, fuck it, just have it back. No, I wasn't a buyout, didn't get paid, wasn't like I get future. It was literally just like have it back. And the person's my friend. And it wasn't, it was a borderline company, but it just wasn't to where I just couldn't feel good about it. And like if I'm saying my changes, I can't, I can't say that and be authentic and not also, you know, like be doing this. Like it just doesn't, it's not congruent. So that's a lot of long way of saying that. I think it's a valid question, but I do think there's a lot of opportunities out there for to get started without having to kind of bend your morals or ethics a lot.

Awesome. Yeah, thanks guys.

Cool.

Good question, Sean.

Yeah, thanks for asking, Sean. Perfect. All right, next we're going to go to Xavier, who has a question. Xavier coming on now. You're on live with Stefan. Coffee Zone.

Hey, coffee. Hey, Stefan, what's up? Everything's good. Okay, I got a question. It's a little bit like more philosophical. So knowing most people in society have a low self esteem, it's like you need to motivate them to take action and believe in themselves. How do you balance hyping up your marketing so that people will take action versus being too vanilla and then missing out on people that could have benefited from what you have to offer? And I've thought about this and I think like, the amount of hype you have on the front end should be balanced with extra support on the back end. Because with your marketing, you're hyping them up to take the action. But I wouldn't want them to be stuck in their pre hyped state when they get your offer and then they're.

Stuck on their own.

So I'm curious to hear your thoughts about it.

Yeah, that's an interesting point. I think one thing I would say here is that I've heard this before. It's just like you have to kind of get people to take action. Maybe even sort of like, even if they wouldn't have normally you hype it up so much, they take action, their life's better for it anyways. I think to some extent that's a justification to sort of do a little bit of a bait and switch where you're like, I'm hyping you up and up the product isn't that great, but you're better off anyways. So what I would say is that, you know, a lot of those customers, the type you're describing, first of all, I don't think that fits all of humanity. But I think the type of customer you're talking about may be not a good fit for your product. Like if they sort of have to be like overly hyped into it. I don't know what kind of hyped claims you're talking about. Like if you have to sort of promise them the moon and know you're going to deliver them like, you know, a little piece of cardboard at the end, I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think they're going to be satisfied. So I don't know, maybe, maybe describe to me a little more of what you mean by like hyped up. What do you mean by those claims? Like, what do you mean by that?

It's more like, it's like, you know, you have a good offer, but maybe it's hard for people to see it working until they actually get their hands on it. And that's why I'm saying don't just have an offer where you just hand it off and they go use it and it may or may not work, but actually have a support team to go with it. So that if they run into troubles, you can help them out.

Yeah, I would just say I think there are great case studies out there in marketing of people finding creative ways to do this with persuasion and not necessarily with like, exaggerated claims. So for example, I think Febreze, when they designed it, they said, oh, here's this cool product that kills odors. And they thought it was going to be a huge hit and they released it to the market and people weren't buying it. And so they had to find a way to break into the behavioral psychology of these, like these, at the time, traditionally women who were in the house and they were like, how do you break into that habit of cleaning? And so what they ended up realizing is that people don't. They weren't buying it because of the getting rid of the smells it was, they were buying. They ended up finding a way that they advertised the good smell afterwards and it was like a reward. And so they ended up kind of queuing into that habit formation in the customer and they used that as like a clever way to, you know, enhance their marketing. And they sold a bunch of units and now the product is everywhere forever. But I think that's a great example of using persuasion intelligently and knowing human psychology where you can break into markets and get people a good product without having to sort of lean into super heavy claims. They didn't change the claims they were making, but that's like a really cool case study of how they successfully pivoted a failure of marketing into like a huge product success story. And that is a great product.

You know, to, to your point.

Does that make sense to you, Xavier, or.

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting.

Cool. Interesting is good. You've been, you've been interesting.

Coffee?

Cool, man.

Thanks, Xavier.

Thanks for like, I love marketing. I love this stuff, man. It's like, it's fascinating. And I think the ways people creatively solve problems, it's like, that's the cool, that's the cool element of this field. And that's why I love, like, when people, you know, go out and try new things. It's one of the sad things to me about the formulaic copywriting that I sometimes see where they're just obsessed with cranking out a formula. And I'm like, man, there's so many opportunities here to try new things.

I don't know. Yeah, no, I completely agree. Next up, we have Chad Bauman. He says, I don't have a question, but I want to share my perspective as a high ticket, closer graduate who saw the good and the bad. Well, I'm sure who doesn't want to talk about Dan Lock a little bit? So hop on, Chad.

I want to talk about Danlock. First of all, I don't have beef with you, but I have beef with Stefan. For those who don't know, I posted my 16 week weight loss transformation and the first thing this guy says is, you lost your tan, so you look tasty. As to be fair, for the record, Stefan, let the record hold. I'm going to Florida. I'm gonna get my tan back. It's. Look, you got to take care of one thing before the other, right?

Fair enough. Fair enough.

Awesome.

The second thing I want to say is, coffee, kudos to you. It's easy to lean into the scandal and I think a lesser man would have done so for the clicks. You didn't. You came to the table, you said, how can we better ourselves? How can we better this industry? How can we better the people that are in. In the industry? And just from listening to your content, you've turned me on to some people who I value their perspective. I've changed up some of the ways I've done things in my work. So well done.

Huge compliment.

Thank you.

Yeah, yeah. So let no one say there's no space for you, because there is. And the third thing I want to say is I am a high ticket, closer graduate. I was pretty involved in the brand. I can't. You know, he's litigious. So I don't want to say too much, but I will say there are good components. A lot of the content in my experience was good. I still use it to this day. I enjoyed it. I made good friends. The downside was that a lot of those good friends, they got shafted. And again, I can't go into the details. I ultimately sided with them. To me, their family. Despite everything that happened, none of us, not a single one of us regret going through that program. And I've thought about why that is. And my belief is that if you're an A player, it doesn't matter if the course is shit. And I'm not justifying if a course is shit, if content is shit. But if you're an A player, you're going to find a way to win. And so, no, we're not making our millions just quite yet, but every single one of us is. Is better off today. And I believe that's partially because of our network and partially because of that program. So that's just something that I wanted to share as somebody who has seen both the good and the bad. I think perhaps Dan had good intentions and he just got away from him. But I did like the content. A lot of people like the content. And that's my perspective. I would love to hear your perspective as well.

Sure, yeah. So I would say the content of the guy you're talking about, I mean, the content of a lot of these courses is there's not too many new ideas out there. I mean, a lot of it is like we've sort of had sales books that have done this forever and sort of explained sales and how you sell. And I know a lot of. Even the models that he uses are like straight off of other people's sales techniques. So I have no doubt there's some validity to some of what they're saying, because a lot of, you know, self help courses are just sort of regurgitating what, you know, sort of we've kind of known in books and are getting rediscovered sort of through 1500, 2000, $5000 courses. My problem sort of with Dan, with this person you're talking about, is, is was that, you know, the endless upsells to success, right? They hadn't achieved success, so they're going to kind of endlessly upsell you. And so, you know, people are coming to me and they're saying, hey, I thought I was just paying for a $2,000 course, but then I got involved in this $200 a month club. And then I got in this thing and I got in this sort of endless cycle of upsells. And through the way that this business was structured, it was sort of like Sifu knows best. You gotta invest in yourself, this, this and this. And people would end up $15,000 worse for the wear. And I thought that was unacceptable. I mean, how can you take someone who's like a teacher, who's barely making, you know, any kind of money at all, and they end up quitting their job. They end up $15,000 worse for the wear. I mean, that is not like an. A reasonable outcome for somebody. Especially when that. When these systems online are infinitely reproducible. I mean, you're going to get somebody $15,000 in the hole for information that's infinitely reproducible because it's online.

That.

That to me is absurd. And that to me is what I wanted to call out. I'm happy you had a good experience with it. I wouldn't deny that a lot of courses they have some people who do benefit from it. That's not who I'm primarily worried about. I'm getting out the stories of the people who are not represented in a lot of these courses, in a lot of the testimonials. And if they do put their testimonial out there, they'll get sued, they'll get in trouble. So I just try to provide a platform for those people.

Yeah, fair enough.

And I think, I think this person in question deserves all the criticism coming their way. I think, I think even if a course has 20% of material that's usable and you invest in it, it's still your responsibility to use that 20% as best as you can.

Fair enough.

Cool.

Fair enough indeed. Thank you. Thank you, Chad. And go work on that tan.

I will.

Cool.

Thanks, John.

Cool.

So we're gonna close the end here. I might rapid fire a few from the chat.

Let's go.

Let's do it here. So do you have questions? I have thoughts on the person we just talked about, but I'll leave them for another day. Connor Humphries asks, how do you detect a bad product or a product with outlandish claims? Is it unrealistic to test products and confirm their legitimacy? Does it just come with experience?

That's a good question.

Yeah.

I think you have to validate, like, first of all, who's making this claim? Are they. If they're primarily an Internet marketer and they're telling you, for example, how to run E commerce, but you've never seen an E commerce store of theirs, they're saying it's all behind the scenes, whatever. Like, you have to just sort of hold some people to account as far as, like, they just don't have the goods, they don't have what? They just don't have the experience to show for it. And, you know, this is what's so cringey about sort of 20 year olds sometimes doing this, is that some of them just could not have had the life experience to tell you, be an expert in what they're telling you they're an expert in. And that's one thing to Stefan's credit is like you're running a copywriting course, but you've actually been a copywriter for years. And so it's like you have the experience in it. It's one reason that my beef with Grant Cardone is not that he knows nothing about real estate. I mean, I have a beef with Grant Cardone, but like, he definitely knows something about real estate. So that's like an easy test. I would also just say, like, what other claims they're making and then also, why are you getting involved? I mean, you should have a real interest in what you're getting involved in. Sometimes I see people, they buy a real estate course, they have no interest in real estate. It's like, why did you buy this? There is some level of responsibility that has to be eventually put to the buyer. And it's like, are you just buying this to get rich? I mean, number one, the marketing is probably bad, if that's your impression, is that I'm just going to get rich. But number two, like, you should buy things that you're really interested in giving a hard effort to. I mean, my brother, for example, I don't know if I should say this. Anyway, long story short, he does like, he's been really interested. He's like athletic and much more athletic than I am. And he's been interested in getting this type of kinesthetic movement or let's say it's whatever like a handstand or something like that. So he took a course to get it, but he's interested in applying it. And so for him it was worth the money. And he like applied the lessons and yada, yada, yada. And he's like, I really benefited from this. But there are plenty of people that, that's not right for them. Right. You're not going to suddenly get a ripped six pack abs and blah blah, blah. So I would say it's partly on you to determine is this course actually right? For me it's partly on the instructor to determine is this the right instructor and then it's partly on their claims. What are they actually selling you? Does it seem like this is something they could reasonably deliver on for most of the people? Cool.

Yeah, I think it's a great, great answer. We'll just do maybe one more. And this comes from Fade and he asked, does Coffeezilla discover something really cool between hundreds of scammers in Dr. I'm kind of wondering. Fade's in Italy, I think, and I think he meant maybe common. So he said, I can't talk too, but so let's see, have you discovered anything kind of common as you've gone through, you know, all these different kind.

Of scams that you've seen?

What are some commonalities?

I guess.

I don't think many of them see themselves as bad. I don't think many of them intentionally set out to like rip people off. And I think a lot of them do think they're doing a good thing. That is something that I initially did not believe and that I now sort of, I've tried to Increasingly have empathy. It's hard sometimes because sometimes I'll just get cynical. But, you know, in the case of some of these, like, kids who are, like, you know, putting out these courses, I think they probably have been told that they're like, they're doing the world of service by, you know, getting this information out there and making people take action and whatever. So I've tried to learn to have, like, more empathy on that. I also have noticed just how formulaic some of this can be. It just really is. I think I actually, Stefan, I think I got sent one of your. One of your outlines at some point.

Yeah.

And I thought that, like, I saw that in every single direct response ad ever since then. I don't know if it's like your specific formula. It's like, that's as a formula. But, you know, sort of introduce the unique mechanism. You know, case study or surprising story up top. Then you kind of have some claims, then you have the unique mechanism. I mean, I'm sure I'm butchering this, but you know what I'm talking about. And I've seen that ever since then. There's always a new word for, you know, freezing fat, deep fat, you know, the hidden fat, the dark fat. I mean, there's like new words for everything to just sort of retool existing knowledge. So, yeah, that. That's kind of a funny example of. Of one pattern that I've noticed. But, yeah, it's kind of is across the spectrum, I guess.

No, that's cool. And I think that does get back to the ego stuff of. Because for the people who do see themselves as the good guy, right. Then again, they get attacked. So then they're like, I'm going to gallantly, like, stand up. Right. But they do it without looking in the mirror and then being like, oh, shit. Right. I was the bad guy the whole time, or at least the ambiguous character in the movie. I wasn't like, you know, the superhero. So that's awesome.

Coffee. Where.

I mean, You've got your YouTube channel. What's the best way for people who want to want more of you, want to interact with you more? YouTube, Twitter. What's the best place.

Yeah, Twitter people have been trying to get me to do an email list because I got kicked off of YouTube and for a little while. And so I got my YouTube channel back, thank goodness. But I was like, I don't want to get an email list. They were like, but I just thought it was funny. No, I'm not doing an email list yet. It's slightly too Internet markety for me, but you can find me on Twitter. And yeah, I post regularly on YouTube. It's been a good show. Been a good show.

It is a good show. The funny, I mean, I really. I watch a lot of your videos and.

You'Re doing good work and you're.

Raising important questions, but they're also just wildly entertaining and funny and they're great entertainment as well, and you do an awesome job. And I was telling Coffee before we went on that I won't name this person, but a legend in the road of Internet marketing who is like, oh, Coffee Zo. I love that guy. His videos are hilarious. This is a person who everybody watching who is in this world would know. So a lot of people are watching, they're engaging. It's awesome content. I'd highly recommend people go watch Copy's videos, go to his YouTube channel and engage with him on Twitter with that being. Yeah, go ahead, Go ahead.

Oh, I just wanted to say. Yeah, just for the record, just so there's no mistaking it, because sometimes my videos just sort of have a certain angle to them and I don't get the chance to talk about the positive. There is good in direct response. There are ethical ways to do direct response, and I'm really excited by the chance that this conversation also. Stefan, you're trying to play into this also Jim, Claire, Michael Fortin. I'm really excited by the people who are trying to make this space better because I do believe that at the heart are a lot of people who are really smart people who know human psychology. They want to do this and they'd love to do it in a more ethical way. And I think there are ways to do it. So I'm excited by the change in this industry and I look forward to it continuing.

Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you coming on and talking about it with me. And like you and I have discussed internally, I'm trying to find the way that I can sort of lead.

I don't look at myself at all.

As a guru, but I know that I am a bit of a public figure in this very small little niche. So you put out the content you're doing and you coming on here, it helps to open people's eyes and to hopefully be a force for positivity and moving this whole industry that I do love. Just like I love direct response, I love marketing.

How do we.

And so let's not fuck it up by being so, like, making these crazy claims and doing shit that the whole industry is like when that book comes out, right?

I want people to be like, wow.

They used to do it that way. That's crazy. Not like, oh, they're still doing it that way right now, you know, and then, you know, suddenly the whole thing is screwed up. So, yeah, man. Thank you so much for joining. I'm really appreciative. It was an awesome conversation and really happy we had you here today.

It's a pleasure. Thanks, guys. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Thanks for hearing me out. Appreciate y'.

All.

Cool. Thank you, everybody also for joining. For those who are going to watch the replay on YouTube, make sure that you hit the like button. Leave a comment, let us know what you think. If you listen on itunes, make sure you're subscribed to my podcast. Leave a review. Other than that, I'll be back next week and we'll see you then. Thank you, everybody.

Awesome. Thanks, guys.