SvB #84 - The Business of Reality TV

The guys start off with Digging in the Crates [2:42 ] on what Reality TV meant for them growing up, then they get into the News [31:02] and discss the reality of Henry Cavill wearing the cape again and who will control DC Studio and finally the SvB Feature [1:00:00] The State of Business Reality Shows

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Show vs. Business is your weekly take on Pop Culture from two very different perspectives. Your hosts Theo and Mr. Benja provide all the relevant info to get your week started right.

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Theo: Welcome, welcome, welcome to Show Versus Business, Your weekly take on pop culture from two very different perspectives. Amio Theo, on a line. I have the man himself, Mr. Benja. What is up my man?

Mr. Benja: What's going on Theo? What's going on? So good to see your face here in video and whatnot.

Theo: Yes, man. We are live and a living caliber brother.

So let's get get started, man. I'm excited about this one. . So this is a interesting episode. We're actually going do talk a little bit about the business of reality tv. So we have some, yes. So we'll do a little bit digging into Crate, what reality shows we love back in the day. Talk a little bit about the news some interesting things with Henry Caval, Black Adam.

And then last but not least, we're gonna end it with our feature, which is about who's making money, reality tv, and why is this important to us as business folks, as show folks. So, Mr. Benja, how was your week?

Mr. Benja: Week was was interesting. I remember last week, the previous week I had said, you know, I wasn't feeling that great watch Black Adam felt a little rejuvenated.

Well, after I watched Black Adam this, this last week I kept on the rejuvenation kick and I'm, I'm working on some projects. I did some video recording and. Things are, are flowing. I'm learning new software tools. I'm feeling good.

Theo: Yeah, man. Yeah, man, that's awesome, dude. Yeah, same here, man. You know, I was down for the last couple of weeks, but you know, I've been on this 10 X thing and you, you kinda restarted rejuvenated me, Mr.

Bencher. And now I went down the rat hole of YouTube, found another guru that I'm listening to, and I'm like eating that up. I'm about to join his mastermind group. But it's, it's got me excited again about running my business. Just got back from a conference you ever heard of Bit Blacks in

Mr. Benja: technology?

Yeah, I used I've worked with them before.

Yeah,

Theo: they, they got a good, good little gig, man. They had a big event in Orlando this past week. And I was on the panel. I, I had to run my own panel on digital health, which is my day job. Loved it. Had a good time. So yeah, man, I'm, I'm back in, I'm back in, I'm back in 10 X mode, man, so I'm feeling it now.

So so yeah, it's been, it's been a good week for me. I'm excited. Yeah, man. So this is what you need, man. You just gotta fill that cup, man. You just get depleted. But once you get back in the mix is all to the good man. All to the good. So, Mr. Benja, man let's go ahead and get into it today, man. I think we got a lot to cover.

So let's get into digging into c. All right, Mr. Ben up. We're gonna talk a little bit about reality TV show watches back in the day. So we were there at the birthplace of reality tv, when it came came on our, our TV show. You know, I'll just, what we watched back in the day. Yeah. So what do you remember, What was the one that we all kinda watched and we're like, What is this?

Mr. Benja: Well, I think we should just real quick, throw in the, the little history because it's not like reality TV was at Reality TV as we know it really changed in for one particular show. But before that, people had played around with the concept with like, you know, candid camera where you just have, instead of being scripted, just kind of have a camera around following people and their real life reactions.

And, you know, that turned into, what was it, America's Funniest Home Videos where we had all these shows where we wanted to see people react, you know, in, in real life how they react. So there was a lot of that, but I do remember that one classic show, and I think you share it with me, that really changed things.

That was MTVs the real world.

Theo: Yes. Yes. . Yeah. That was the one I think. What, what? I even remember the PM preamble. They said it so much. They said at the beginning of every episode, they said seven surgeons picked to live live an apartment together and find out what happens. . Well, you stop being fake or something and you start being real.

Real.

Mr. Benja: Yeah. and the way they, the way they chopped it up with the different people's voices, it really worked out. I'm listening to this like, wait a minute. These guys don't sound like radio jockeys. They don't sound like TV hosts or newscasters. These just sound like regular people. It it, you don't, I don't think people understand how, how, how throwed off that bait people when they, when they first saw this, Even just the intro with the voice and the, it seemed so low budget, but so entertaining at.

Absolutely.

Theo: Absolutely. Outside of, I have a hot theory, hot take on this, go outside of you know, personality type reality shows, you know, hey, this is how celebrities live, or this is you know, they're gonna be a lifestyle brand, you know, on like, Keeping Up The Kardashians the first season of a reality show is always the best because no one knows what to expect.

And so , yes, that's as real as you're going to get. Cause even the producers after a while, so we'll talk about this, the producers are the one who run that show. They write it, they build up kind of almost like a Stockholm, you know syndrome. Sy what's it called? Stockholm Syndrome. Syndrome, Thank you.

Stockholm Syndrome with their the, the cast cuz you know, and they kind of manipulate them to do certain things and you, you can see it behind the scenes and you probably, you know, we'll talk about later, but that first season, no one knows what to do, what's it to expect? So that's the real to me. And so, to your point going back to original thought, the season one of Real World New York was groundbreaking.

We saw that. And we were just amazed. These are some 20 something year old kids, you know, moved to York. Now they, they realized they had to, to pivot real fast and kind of change up the castmates. That's what makes the shows interesting cuz I think the first season it. What, seven castmates, but like five of 'em or six of 'em were based in New York and they picked one person from Alabama.

It was Julie. I'll never forget that. Yeah. So she was kinda doing, the mix was just like, Oh, these New Yorkers are weird. So so anyway, so we saw that man, and that was like, wow, this is just gonna have a camera follow these people around. And yeah man, we used to watch that. We was just a fascination.

Do you, so real talk, do you know anyone that ever applied to that show back in the day?

Mr. Benja: I yeah. Well, not, well not, not the real world, but I know, I know three people that have been in reality shows. So I'm, I'm trying to think if I should mention the story or not to protect the innocent

Theo: If you, if you guys say that do probably not, but yeah. Was there experience about it? I mean, you know, being a reality show or just applying for it, do you have some insight on that you can talk about in general?

Mr. Benja: Yeah. You know, what they're looking for is ratings, views, and people think, Well, I'm the best at this.

And, you know, so like, yeah, I don't care if this is a cooking reality show. We may not want the most, the, the most efficient cook, the, the best person on the grill or whatever, but you know, this guy over here, You know, he knows how to he knows how to fix cars and, you know, he's trying to run a, run a cooking business and fix cars at the same time.

So he became this food truck operator. So he got these chefs there, and then there's this one guy working outside, fixing this car, and you're like, What's this guy doing? It's like, and then they cut through the camera and the guy says, Well, hey, I don't know why, you know, he's over here. All he's doing is fixing his car.

I don't even know how he got on the show. And like, dude, that's the reason he got on the show is to piss you guys off . So

Theo: create that conflict. .

Mr. Benja: Yeah, there's a, so there's a whole, you know, the whole machine behind the scenes that's really trying to make these relationships interesting. And you know how during the shows, they always find interesting things for them to do where it's like, Hey you know, I heard there's a concert down the way and da da da.

They may have looked in your history and found out that one person like, can't stand this band because, you know, the drummer is from some political party in some other country and said some things one, one year. And it's like, What? You're going to that concert f those guys? And it's like, Oh my gosh, this is, so, I mean, scripted is a strong term, but it is really laid out to where you have to have certain things play out and certain things are just gonna happen because that's the way the show wants it to be.

Theo: Yeah. And you know, we'll get into like some of the machinations they do behind the scenes, but but you know, compared to if we go back to the real world compared to now, that show was so tame. I mean, you know, I think there was, that was kinda like, cuz to your point, we've done, you know, kind of quote unquote candid camera.

I mean there's an even term, what's it called? Cinema Verte, where, you know, you actually kind of follow folks, you know, around with a camera. They did this series in England called Seven Up, Where kids, you know, they followed kids from seven years old all the way up to like, yeah. 70. And they kind of followed them every seven years.

And so that, so, so there's been stuff like this, but it was, that was the first time it was like literally, you know, a weekly show that you watch for like 12 episodes, 13 episodes, and you follow these, these kids and they create these storylines.

Mr. Benja: Yeah, I think the key thing that happened is the, the the real world was that one, one instance in entertainment production where they bridged it from documentary and you kind of being outside of the situation to no, we're going to have a drama filmed in documentary format and we're just going to watch this thing happen.

In fact, a few artists, like, like performance artists had done things like that before where they. got a bunch of people together and made them live together and would have the public come look at them living together. It's like mm-hmm. . And it was kind of a weird performance art kind of thing. Like, yeah, these people don't know each other.

Performance art. People were like, Wow, that's really bizarre. I would never have all these roommates. And it was just weird. But yeah. Road Rules. Was that, or not Road Rules The Real World, Was that one show that kind of changed everything?

Theo: Yeah, definitely did. I mean let's see, it was 13 episodes. It premiered on mtv.

People don't probably remember what that was, but Music Television Channel where they showed videos of music videos and they say, Hey, we're, we're the voice of the culture, so we're gonna do this unique thing. And that's when Real World became a, a big thing. And it premiered May 21st, 1992. And yeah, man, it just kind of, you know, I think we all kinda watched it, were fascinated by it.

It was pretty short episodes and pretty quickly though, I think they realized they had something, it was a hit. And so they just, you know, they've had seasons, you know, pretty much ever since. I think it stopped not too recently, but. All your favorite characters, you know, that characters now, not people anymore, keep consistently show up in this World Rules Challenge or whatever called the Real, real World challenge, where they do these like kind of competition sports games, right?

For folks who been on Real Worlds. And you mentioned this other show called World Rules, which is a offshoot where they actually put people in like a van or something. They would travel around and hang out together. And so now some of these people who've been on this show for like 20, 30 years, they still show up on this athlete show called the, the Challenge.

And some people still watch it cuz you know, it's like following you know, actor, actress,

Mr. Benja: you know, it's funny. And Road Rules was an early, The Real World Road Rules and all these other early shows, they were, they did something that I always tell creatives to look out for where you're, you're kind of messing with something and you're not sure about it, and then you see two people interact.

One may be you, one may be you might just be watching some other people. But whenever somebody brings something up like, Hey, have you seen the real world? And someone else goes, No, what's that? And when they describe it, if the other person looks at them in complete, like, Misunderstanding. Just complete confusion.

Then, you know, you might be onto something. Really. So, so yeah, if like, if someone says, Oh man, I am really into this. It's crazy, it's cool, and da da da da. It's like, okay, what is it? It's the real world. The real world. What's it about? Oh, dude, it's just like, and they don't have the words to describe it, but it's, it's exciting them so much.

And they're like, Yeah, it's Well, guys, guys are standing in a, in a room, right? And they're, they're roommates and dude, you just gotta watch it. And the other person's like, Okay, they're roommates and they just kind of live their lives. What do they do? It's like, Dude, you should have seen it last week.

Some they puck drank this person's orange juice, right? . And when they drank his orange juice, like, who cares? And the other guy is mad, right? He's so mad because he can't understand why anybody would, you know lower themselves to this level of stupid television. He's just mad because like, ah, that sounds stupid.

Anytime anyone does that, you might be onto something interesting.

Theo: Cause it's a feeling they're transcribing, right? Not, they may not have the words. They may not. The concept really down, but the other person gets the general feeling and it's like, okay, I don't know what you're talking about, but there's something here so I should just explore it myself.

There's more of a curiosity than anything. Well,

Mr. Benja: I mean, yeah, the other person just can't understand why you would be into that, but the other person is so into it and they can't describe it because there's no language for it, because it really hasn't existed yet. So someone's trying to describe something with no language, no context, no point of reference.

It's like text messaging. When text messaging first started coming out, like, Dude, I got free text messaging. Some old person in your family was like, Why don't you just call somebody spending all that time pressing buttons? You can just call them. It's like, it's like, yeah, but, but, but you could, you could text them and you can't explain it.

Why it's better

Theo: What's texting? I I mean it's, it's just is. Yeah. I love it. Oh, I wrote that down, man. So yeah, I think that, that is, that's insightful cause Yeah, it's not, haven't existed before, but there's something there and now there's just enough a spark to spark the other person to go check it out and that's what you need to go viral.

Just that spark to kind of just explore and see what it is. Yeah. So yeah, and that's how real world was. It was like one of those things. And then, you know, it got to a point where it. Became almost like Portman viewing. And then you had characters, you mentioned a character called Puck that showed up, I think in the second season or third season, Real world San Francisco.

You know, he was basically out of pocket. He just did whatever you wanted to do. So people now, but so, so that was my theory the first season. No one knows what to do after that though. You know, the contestants people show up on the show. They know, you know, the ones who figure out exactly what they're doing mm-hmm.

they stand out and they remem rememberable. There was become Rememberable and or they use a platform to elevate themselves. So even in that same there was a gentleman who had hiv aids and he ended up passing away I'm trying to remember his name. It was Real World, Pedro, San Francisco, Pedro.

And that became a big platform for him to talk about that cuz you know, how many people had any, anybody had HIV at the time. Right. And so it was, you know, it was amazing for him to do that. But the same time they still had somebody named Puck who was on the show who was an asshole. Right. But he do what show he was on.

Right. Just to put himself out there and run and, you know, become who he became. So, make a long story short, I think tho you know, those shows, you know, people start figuring out. Pretty quickly how to, how to game. And even the producers, they figure out how to manipulate people to do certain things over time.

So I say that to say that you know, I think Real Worlds was just that, that one groundbreaking. And, you know, you start catching up with folks and then, and then usually the first season, in my opinion, becomes those become the biggest star. We'll talk about other shows like American Idol First Season by far.

People, you know, they became the biggest stars, right? And there's still stars to this day, but usually other season's hard unless you're just like super talented or have a sense of who you are. But you'd be surprised a lot of people showed up on, on these reality shows. I did a, we should do a little, little rundown, but I know off the top of my head that the guy who did the ne the latest Rings of Power mm-hmm.

he became from a reality show. The, the, the, the executive producer, head writer show runner. He came, he came from, he came from reality show. He did a amazing race. Let's see. There was the guy who we just talked about San Francisco. They had a lot of interesting folks. The guy Jed, Judge Winick, he became a big time Common Books writer out of you know, the Real world.

San Francisco I mean American Idol. You know, there's tons of folks that came out that first season became big stars. You know and so, so it's just like you. That first season, early seasons, you know, people, you know, they can, they can come outta these experiences and, and do something, you know, bigger, but it's just it's just fascinating to me how these things kind of work out.

So but that was the first one. So what other show do you remember that remember watching back in the day? That was interesting?

Mr. Benja: Yeah, I mean, you know, as aside from Real World and Road Rules, those were the two that really set it off. And then I would just kind of casually watch other shows as time went on.

Gosh, I really can't think of any right now that like stuck with me as hardcore as that did. Oh, you know, I think I actually, you know, I'll go ahead and put this down on the list. I think I actually got into Jackass because of that whole reality kind of thing. It was interesting that you weren't, it wasn't just like people doing dumb stuff.

They, it, as I said, it added that drama and story element. So every episode you got to see like, their development happen slowly, where Steve was like, Dude, why am I the one who always has to, you know, do this kind of stunt? And it's like, well, this other guy's on vacation, you're the only one here. We already paid for the, the rental.

And it's like, Man, why do I have to? And it was just dumb. But you got to see that these were real people. Because of that, I, you know, Yeah. Jackass, and that just opened the door for all kinds of competition type of whatevers.

Theo: Yeah. I, I agree. I think oh, true story. Brad Pitt actually showed up Jackass, he's one of the guys, I don't know if you remember this, a couple of scenes where the guys in Monkey Mask, they were write their skateboards around town.

Mm-hmm. He showed up in a couple of those episodes and matter of fact, he showed up in an episode where they kidnapped him without the monkey mask. So, so yeah, it was a big thing. Yeah. Jackass as well. And so it does seem like these reality shows, they just have a moment, right? They just kind of captured at the time and they kind of just run with it.

The other one I, I remember watching and choose. Oh, another thing, Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Another quick thing they just did, they had launched a new Paramount Plus streaming series. They just did a retrospective. They brought all the cast mirrors back from Real World one in New York, and it is the one for I forgot San Francisco as well.

It didn't go well. I tried to watch it. Just the reminisce man. I mean, it's like, you know, those cats are our age, man, so it's like, you know, they just, Hey, we got kids. We're just hanging out for a week, you know, reminiscent. But, you know, they try to make some drama, but it, it was hard, man. So it just cool to see the cats back.

But they're all, you know, you know how you just get mellow, your old age, man, most of the time you just wanna sit back and watch Netflix, you know, relax or just watch those sports. Yeah. You know, trying to get in that drama in your twenties. Right. And so so they did try to do something, what was, what was that 30 years ago or something?

Retrospective to see where these guys were and where they ended up in their life after the real world's New York. And so so yeah, so like I said, I don't think they're gonna do any more of that, but that was interesting. Were

Mr. Benja: you about to say I, I remember there was the guy who who was known as the mi Yes.

He was on one of the real world shows, and he wanted to, he wanted to be a wrestler and ended up getting involved in like, you know, a wrestling reality kind of thing from the real world and ended up actually becoming a famous wrestler. So it's like, pay these guys nothing, you know, And we'll get into the business of it later, but, you know, pay him nothing.

Let 'em build up an audience and see who we like, we don't like, and it's just. It's just so, I I, I'm trying to put into words how weird it was to watch these people on TV shows all of a sudden start, you know, just spreading throughout the entire entertainment industry. It's like, you know, thinking of a talk show back in the day and all the talk show host.

Oh, I mean, I mean, in guest becoming actual stars. And that actually happened with what's the name, you know bad Bad Bobby, and and Doc from Dr. Phil, you know? Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . She's, she's making money now. So it's this whole weird thing and to try to explain to people that that didn't happen before.

It's just,

Theo: Yeah. I mean, the context. . I mean, this is pre-internet, right? And so now you have people become famous for just being themselves, and that just blew everybody's mind, right? This is the era that that Kardashians started to come into the forefront, Right. You know, early two thousands too. And so mm-hmm.

So this predated the, the influencer market. But, so, but I think what happened was it just got moved, you know, to, and it became a faster model on the internet because now you have all the, a better way to distribute the content as opposed to just being on tv, you know, 13 episodes once a year. Now you can have episodes all the time, Right?

And so it's very similar model. Yeah. It's faster on the internet now. And so,

Mr. Benja: yeah, I think it opened the door also. I mean, these shows opened the door to that type of thinking also, where it's just like, well, hey, I can just put me and my friends on TV and we can do whatever. Like, hey, they're the guys on Jackass, they're the guys on America's Funniest Videos.

They're the guys on whatever show. Well, I could just do that on my phone now, now and have my own little audience. So I think that whole energy and vibe spilled over from TV to what they were trying to do there. And people were like, I can do this myself. And that's what, like, put a lot, got a lot of the stuff put on the internet.

Theo: Oh man. It's very deep, Deep, man. Cause I was thinking about Derek Comedy. Do you heard of them?

Mr. Benja: Mm.

Theo: Back in the day. That was Donald Glover's first. Yes.

Mr. Benja: Okay. The, that

Theo: group comedy True. And you know, they put a, you know, I think the reality show, you know, reality TV kind of inspired that they were comedy group from New York University and inspired them to put stuff on YouTube and just, and that's how, you know Donald Glover became big time, Right.

Or Andy Samper. Right. You know, that's how he came, him and his comedy group. Right. They kind of put more stuff out there. Cause back in, back in the day, remember if you were a comedy group, you probably just, you know, little local stuff and just went to like you know, comedy shows and did it there, or, you know, improv groups.

But now you can put stuff on the internet and so, you know, because people say, Hey, you could be funny and stuff like that because reality shows, so like, you could do that type of stuff. So yeah. Going back to what your thoughts, looking through it, the miss, he actually was on Real World New York, back to New York in 2001, so Yeah.

And then he beca Yeah, I remember him too. I used to watch that. And then he he popped up in the challenge. He stayed on there for a couple years and then to your point, he just kind of followed the the chain up. And now he a big time wrestler now, and he always said he had that whole, I mean, you know, kudos to him.

He already had that branding. I remember he called himself the miss, even back in the reality, the, the reality days. So so yeah, it is, it is one of those things.

Mr. Benja: Yeah. And what's interesting is he wasn't ever. The, the winner or the top dog. He was just there and

Theo: noticed. Exactly. There's some comedians that came out as I'm trying to think, what was the actress's name?

She was in the the recent where was Jonathan Majors, He was in that show and she showed up and she used to be on reality. I think it's I get the actress's name wrong, but she showed up on that John Deere major show. It was yeah, I'm trying to, you know, him and haw, cuz I'm trying to figure out what its called.

But it was called and we saw it too. Let's see, it was Lovecraft Country, remember that show? And on that show there was an actress, Jamie Chunk, that's her name, and she used to be on reality show back in the day she was on real world San Diego . So she, you know, became a major actress and she, well, not major, but she's done some stuff.

So, yeah. And she was actually on there with. The miss. So anyway, make a long story short, there's tons of different folks that you know, kind of made it happen. All the reality shows, so, so, yeah. And one last thing, I just wanna put this out there. The other one that kind of, I thought changed that the game was survivor, season one.

I remember that thing. That thing was huge. Richard Hat, and Susan, I can't remember her last name, but he came in season one and it was survival, right? It was about like, you know, getting voted to, you know, who was gonna win. What an interesting concept. It was like, you know, you had to do all this crap. You were hungry, tired, you still had to compete.

And at the end, you know, you voted people off, but the very end, the people you voted off had to figure out who was gonna be the winner. I was like, Man, that's, that's a Jesus concept. And this one guy, his name was Richard Hatch. He, he just knew how to play the game. He was sitting there you know, just not doing anything.

Conservative energy. You know, he made some alliances and that was the first time people even thought about doing that. And when he changed the, he's changed the script on, on the one contestant, Susan Uhhuh, she came out with that snake, the doc. Do you remember that? That it was, it was a big thing. It was a viral moment where she basically was so mad that she got voted out, that she had this whole, you know Monologue about how this Richard Hatch was a snake and a dog, and he, you know, he can live without her or something like that.

And it just became a big moment. And then when, and then, but they had to admit that he played the game so well, that they had to you know, give him the million dollars. That, that was a big thing then getting a million dollars to win this. And he won based on that. And that was huge, man. I remember I had, I was in grad school at the time, I had to like rush on to go watch it.

And yeah man, it was like, yeah, that, that, that came out like, yeah, that was just a big, big thing back in early two thousands with the Survivor show. And it's still going on to this day. People love it, you know, a lot of folks that, you know, continue to show up on it. But you know, it was one of those things that that just blew up.

So, yeah, it was, it was, it was huge, man. But I guess you didn't get, you didn't, you didn't take part of that, is that what you're saying? Survive

Mr. Benja: Survivor wasn't my thing. I mean, I, I turned it on and was like, okay, this is interesting. And then for some reason it repelled me and I'm like, I can't be watching this.

And I would just, I mean, I'm not saying to be high and mighty cuz I've went like, turned the channel to Jackass or something. Right? , But something about Survivor, I was like, get out of my face with all of.

Theo: Man, but it was like so real to it was really political. It became like that over time because you know, people form these secret alliances and you had to like, you know, have other alliances. And so, you know, and the people who played the game well were the ones who ended up winning because they understood how to form the alliance at the right time and how to leave that alliance at the right time.

Yeah. Yeah. To bait . So they would have, they have like a super alliance, right? But then there would be sub alliances in those alliances. So it's like when these people, when we get this one person off, this is get rid of all it. And they would pick 'em off one by one, and that, that was a scare part. That's when you realize that's how the real world works.

And so I think a lot of folks kind gravitate toward that. I mean, we've both been in corporate America. We've both been in corporate America. That's exactly how that works. .

Mr. Benja: Yeah.

Theo: It's all these side conversations, Side calls, side talk

Mr. Benja: talks. You're sitting in a meeting like Rob, I, I, I thought you were gonna back me on the project.

Didn't you say it was a good idea? Well, not exactly Benjamin. I, I actually side with Aaron over here and we're against you. And you're like in a meeting, just like, no.

Theo: Yeah, man. Yeah. Well, people have sickle back and he said, You can always tell I had a boss one time. It was h. I knew how she, she, she worked and the one thing is she ingrained herself with the younger woman in our whole organization.

And you know how I knew, Cause one time we had a big company meeting and one time all the women came in with a little white water bottle she had got for them and they were all drinking from the white bottle. She knew exactly how to make sure they were like in her tribe immediately. Huh? . I was like, yeah.

I was like, Oh, okay. I see what you're doing. And so, you know, she was, yeah, she was really good at that. So, you know, I mean, it just, some people just really political. I mean, I, I know how to play the game somewhat, but I'm not all that. Yeah. It's just, ugh. It's a

Mr. Benja: lot . Yeah. You know, I, I tend to, I tend to try to bowl over a lot of that when possible and you know, it's like, you know, cuz you'll see people spending weeks and weeks trying to build together these little coalitions.

I'm like, Okay, let me crack my knuckles and I'll actually build an internal application that does the work and is gonna shut all y'all up. And, and I've no, I've, I've gotten kind of in trouble for doing some of that before too. Like, man, why, why, why would you make this? You, you know, they're trying to work hard on this and that.

And it's like, Yeah, too bad man. I, I saw them building a coalition so I had to take some coffee and Red Bull into the office for the weekend and just kind of blow them out of the water with all their nonsense.

Theo: I love it. I love it, man. Well, you know, we're all dog in the mix, right? So, you know, that's kinda, Yeah, that's kinda we always talk about,

Mr. Benja: and, and I have been bowl over by the mix as well, so , it's not like it always works.

Theo: It, it does not, brother. So, you know, it's one of those things you guys constantly work on, So, so yeah, we're all doggy in the mix, man. So anyway, Survival was one of those ones that we looked at. So anyway, Mr. Benja, let's move on to the news. All right, let's see. Usually we kind of break this down to, we do our weekly, but those that don't know, we do our weekly relevant news stories, you know, in midweek.

But Mr. Bend, was there anything in the reality show or just in general that you wanted to discuss and discuss and talk about

Mr. Benja: from the news? Well, you know if speaking of reality and strange things happening, Elon Musk is now the owner of Twitter. Like, owner, owner, let that sink in. So , after all this talk and back and forth, and is he really gonna do it?

Is he just playing games or why is he being loud? Yeah. You know, the, the Twitter stock got de-listed and everybody's got their, their little payout for whatever they, whatever their stock was worth. And it's like, I'm sorry, this is no longer public traded company. Elon's running things and some people are mad, some people are happy.

And this is almost like my reality TV now, watching people on Twitter react to Twitter being taken over by Elon.

Theo: Ah, man. Real talk man. Yeah, I sent you something in the, the group chat. Yeah, we see Shonda Ryan says she's gone showrunner from billions. He's leaving. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, the thing with Twitter, people are addicted to it, man.

I mean, you know, that's how a lot of them kind of made their, you know, I have another hot take. If you kind of became viral on one social media, you tend to stay in that social media, cuz that's kind of where your infrastructure is built, right? Your audience is built. Yeah. So it's hard for you to leave.

Twitter, especially news folks, you know, folks who post a lot there. So it's gonna be very interesting to see what's gonna happen to Twitter now that it's privately, privately owned by the, the world's richest man who's repeatedly been very vocal about putting other folks on the platform like, you know, President Trump and other folks who've been banned from the platform before.

Yeah. So, yeah, it, it's, it's, it is the ultimate reality survivor show, right? It's like, who's gonna, what's this gonna happen? It's a public square, but now that it's been taken over by a private entity who has biases and, and an agenda, Yeah. Is it really gonna be useful anymore?

Mr. Benja: To be fair the previous Twitter owners definitely have a bias, whether you're for it or against it, you know?

Like people were complaining that like, Hey okay, you kicked this person off for you know, dead naming a, a transgender individual, and the Taliban's still on there, you know? Mm. , like, what's going on? And it's like, well, this is what we care about right now. And, you know, you start all these political arguments and Twitter's policy isn't very clear.

It's, Well, we don't want hate speech. And this, someone showed there as an example, Well, here's some hate speech. And you know, here's something that's, that seems not so hateful that's off there. So there's been a lot of arguments back and forth on, on Twitter, and I think that's you know, a lot of that bickering and disgust may have been just because they were trying to quote unquote, please everybody and be this big publicly held entity that, you know, just is acting like a public service.

But I mean, is it really, Are they just trying to please everybody make money Now with Elon on there, he's like, All right wild, wild west, let's go. And what happens?

Theo: Well, it's like, how do you make money with this thing? Right? I mean, you know, someone made a good point. It's like social media. Yeah, you can make a subscription service, but I don't, I don't think anyone's done that well.

Right. With a social media platform, have a strictly subscription service that, and that can make money for it. So how do you monetize that? And then the other big ways, advertisement, But then if you have something that is spewing hate speech or just, you know, just free speeches, just winning wild advertisers not going to advertise on there.

Right. And then users may not wanna be on there because it's a, it's a bad experience. So then how do you monetize something that's just wild, wild west? That's what I'm trying to understand. I mean, it's

Mr. Benja: already, it's already an unpleasant experience for a lot of people, right? Because if you, if you've ever been scrolling around and someone makes a political statement, right?

They're like, Oh man, this is a political statement. It's very important to me. And you're following the thread. Next thing you know somebody from, somebody from porn hubs, like, Hey, check out my porn hub, where you can see pictures like , we can see pictures like this, and you're like the hell

Theo: and tired being screwed by the economy.

Check our porn up ,

Mr. Benja: where, where you can see this video click now to play. You know, and I'm thinking to myself, you know, who, who, who's moderating this? And it's, yeah. So it's already a kind of weird and frankly, dangerous place in a lot of situations. So, What does, what does that mean for the future of things?

I don't know. As long as they get rid of the bots and a lot of the doxing. I think, and I think that's what Elon's focus is, where if we can get the people together and stop turning this into a, what do you call it? You know, a platform where people have been manipulating the system of it. Yeah. It may be a little more uncomfortable, but I think it may be a little more what's the word I'm looking for?

I don't wanna say fair cuz that's not what I'm looking for, but it'll be a little more like, Hey, we're just people in here talking. As opposed to I have to be worried for my life if I post the wrong thing because the freaking taliban's on here.

Theo: No, that's a good point. I mean, the bot thing is serious because we, we talked about that with Scott's with Zach, Zach Snyder's Justice League.

We found out mm-hmm , why that was a bot army weaponized to get his original cut back into the scene. And so a lot of these conversations are happening and you think, Oh, this is, oh this is, oh this is the real world. Right? People are really looking for something like this. Cuz you looking at Twitter all the time, and guess what?

Twitter is not the real world. That's not. True by any stretch of imagination. Not only because there's a small percentage of people on Twitter, they use it all the time, but there's small, there's a large percentage of bots on there that's influencing things one way or the other. So I, I see your point. So maybe if e Elon can kind of, you know, mitigate against that, but then maybe the bots go away because there's no, is, there's no monetary value that they can get from this platform anymore.

So maybe just go away on their own. So, you know, but then if he's bought this for $44 billion, the goal is to make money. So I'm just trying to scratch my head. It's like, what, where, what's the, what's the monetization route, right? If you put it back public and square and people try to, you know, the bots come back unless you really figure out a way to get rid of 'em, because there's money there.

But if you don't, you know, then, you know, you're just in a situation where it just, you know, you get a bad experience and you gotta put a lot more money into modern modernization and making sure people are you know, respectful as free speech and all that so you can get advertisers on there. So it's, it's, it's a tricky problem.

I don't know why he wants to go down his route. Be honest with you.

Mr. Benja: I, I don't think he's thinking about anything current. That's not Elon Musk's Mo, just to think about what's happening currently. I think his answers and his solutions are a little more future focused. And what I mean by that is have you ever looked at the Twitter api to see what it can do, because.

It's pretty phenomenal what you can build out with the Twitter tools. You know, you can have people run like backend systems that are run through Twitter, basically like, Hey, anytime this happens, send out this tweet. And there's another, there's another bot you may have constructed that says, Anytime this tweet shows up, you know send me an email or do this or do that.

So there's a lot of, there's a lot of backend stuff that people are using Twitter for, and there are entire Twitter accounts that do nothing but spit out numbers that other Twitter accounts read, which is fascinating if you think about, it's say, Wow, there's an AI system that's running in, in the background of the world and we don't know what these systems are, how these systems are talking to each other because it's just good point.

It's just a global system of communication. Right. But

Theo: how did ai, how did Elon Musk come to the public conscience? Right? I mean, we kind of do 'em from PayPal Mafia and all that and building Tesla, but really he kinda came to the forefront. Remember his big thing was like, the AI is going to take our jobs, kill us, so we gotta control it.

So you think in the back of his mind, he think Twitter is, is, is probably ground zero, but the AI revolution, is that what you're thinking?

Mr. Benja: Yeah, it's definitely one of the players. A major player because of the way it's used. And I think that, you know, back to the, you know, what Elon Musk is doing with it business wise, let's say, you know, we're thinking about Twitter and entertainment the way it currently is, but let's say you look at Twitter and say, instead of getting money from people that you know, are looking at ads, let's say you need your Twitter account to build a Twitter group, right?

And this Twitter group, all of a sudden turns into basically Discord. So if you're already on Twitter, it's like, Hey, if you wanna make a, if you wanna make a group, you just pay $10 and all your Twitter access and everything comes flying into this group, you have all the protections, your user name, your friends are already there.

It's like, Oh, okay. Sure. And that kind of, with the API like I was talking about, that kind of stuff can be hooked into, into websites, into services like Netflix where you're using Netflix and you know, it tweets you privately or something before your next episode comes on. I don't know, there's all kinds of stuff.

Theo: So you say monetization's gonna come from subscription type services, right? You don't think advertising's the way for Twitter? I

Mr. Benja: think it'll come through subscriptions through, through service building. Like I, I want to use Twitter to do something. Like I want to research something. If I am researching all of these people, it's like, I can put together a crazy number of examples where I'm just searching through Twitter to say, Hey I'm looking for tweets in the, you know, what were people thinking in the year 2009 about this TV show and

Theo: so much data there for you can data mine.

So kind of using it as like a, a, a, shoot, I don't know, this is a good example. I was gonna say platform, but people are not building, well I guess they are building something on top of the data that Twitter has. So maybe using it as a platform, right?

Mr. Benja: Yeah. People have tried that to certain success, but, you know, being internal at Twitter, I mean we used to, I used to use that in, in video game development.

Anytime something was happening, I would just start searching Twitter every day to see where people were talking about. Like we were talking about Westworld at one point, cause I was working on Red Dead Redemption at the time and it was kind of had a cowboy theme. So I started following Westworld and watching what people talked about.

I started this, watching this list of people talking about cowboy shows. And I would always jump in, Hey, have you guys seen this show? And they don't know who I am, right? I'm like, Hey, have you guys seen this show? And they're like, Oh yeah man, it has guns and this and that. And it was just a treasure trove of information trends, what people were thinking about at any given time.

And it's public, which is, I mean, it's, it's visible to the public, which is weird. .

Theo: No, that's a fair point. So, so I would say, is that a good definition? A platform though? I mean, you, you, you, you talk about like a research tool, but I mean, in essence, what have Twitter's in the background of your, your technology to pull data that you need?

You know, let's say you create a tool for research, right? For video game, for video game developers, right? Who's looking for what people are thinking about or what kind of stuff you put, you know, your platform, your, your, your app up there and they, or website. But it will pull data from Twitter and make it a lot easier and accessible to say, Hey, here's a list of people just, or it is Twitter, easier to search by itself.

You don't need a something in front of it.

Mr. Benja: Yeah. Think about news organizations and that, that maybe that's a better example than video games. Mm. So it's, if it's supposedly the town square, then that data that they have on what people are actually talking about at any given time is invaluable to like political campaigns.

Theo: I should it be, should it be. Something that you try to monetize, Should it just be something that's just, you know, a government entity that controls it? Because it, government entities don't have to make money, They just provide a public service. Right? So I, I say this and I'll digress a little bit. They, I was listening to this interview with what's his name?

Chris Wallace? Mm-hmm. . He was on Bill Ma one time. He said news organizations, you know, for a long time they were public service, right? They would just be on tv. They, it was a loss leader. They would just had to do it as a public service on tv. Mm-hmm. . But they made the money from soap operas. Right. Cuz they sold soap, the, the TV shows, westerns, all that.

But the news organizations was like, Okay, look, we're just gonna put a couple million here. It is what it is. Right. But what changed was 60 Minutes. When 60 Minutes came out and it became like the number one show. I don't know if you remember that, Back in the day. Yeah, yeah. And it's on Sundays. Yes. And they found out, Oh, we can make money with News

That's what changed the game. Whereas like, okay, well we gotta chase where the money's at. So that's when we, you know, not just got 60 minutes and all these other shows. But then we start getting to the, the tabloid stuff with Inside Edition and, you know what's that? One of the more important? But it's just a lot of little tardy, you know, they were like chasing things that were a little bit more Considered news, but were they really, you know Right.

Sex scams, scandals, things like that. Cause they saw the advertising revenue coming in. So I say, all this say mean, you know, that's why we talk about this show versus business. Twitter, you know, is valuable when it's a breaking stories, like something happens tomorrow. That's big news. You know, we'll probably go on Twitter at first to see what happened during Covid.

Right? We all were on Twitter. Can they, you know, the, the biggest way to monetize that is advertising because that's where the money's at. So I, I question if they're gonna be able to just be a simple, you know, research tool or, or you know, a way for users to subscribe to it, to kind of create their own kind of, you know, groups and entities.

Because money is money and advertising is big, big money. And so I think if you're going go that route, you're gonna have to monetize, you're gonna have to figure out a way to make it more pleasant experience to more, make more people want to go. Because advertising is about scale. So, so I think you know, so it's gonna be interesting.

So I'm aver, I'm, I'm advocating that Twitter will probably go down an advertising route and that Elon Musk will probably, he's talking all this talk now, but he's gonna say, Hey, we're gonna just get rid of, we're gonna make it like, you know, real simple and easy. People talk shit and talking, you know, hate speech.

They're gonna be off the platform cause I gotta make money. So that's my, that's why I think it's gonna happen. , he's gonna realize that quickly. Yeah. You know,

Mr. Benja: I don't, I don't think as many people are leaving. Would suggest, you know, I mean, as a, you know, a, a couple high profile people would suggest, right?

I mean mm-hmm. , that's like with Spotify, Joe Rogan showed up and they're like, Yeah, he's way more important to us in the advertising dollar than, than you. So he's still there.

Theo: Yeah. Well, we'll see. I mean, yeah, you can keep it static, but you gotta grow, right? You gotta get bigger numbers. And so, you know, yeah, you have Joe Rogan, he's a big player.

You got a lot of folks jumping on. But then if women feel threatened, you know, if certain minority girls feel like they're not welcome, how you grow that, how you grow it, you know, you gotta, you know, it's, it's like the team broadcast TV back in the day, advertise. See, and that's the thing, you know, we're getting down some, some, some rabbit holes here, but Netflix is, you know, it's going advertising you know, all these show Disney Plus is doing advertising.

Mm-hmm. , I would say, you know, they're gonna realize real quick, That they gotta create some shows that like anybody can just watch. They can't create like these esoteric, you know, critically claim shows. It's gotta be something like ev like a CSI Miami or you know what's it, csi, what's, what's the other one?

Svu, Right? It's just something that's simple procedural, because when you do advertising, it's all about scale. And that's where the money's going right now because advertisers know they gotta get in front of many people. We talked about the CPMs, so I think Twitter is gonna be one of those things where they gotta realize like, how they gonna make this money fast?

You spend 44 billion, you wanna make an ROI on your money. And so unless he can kind of, like you said, turn around and make it real subscription service, which is gonna be

Mr. Benja: hard. I didn't say make it a subscription service, but I said keying into subscription models because they already, you can already subscribe to Twitter in a way, but

Theo: so it's gotta put more money into making that a reality, right?

I, I'm just thinking for a business, 44 billion, I mean, gon had to spend a lot, gon had to make a lot of that back from subscription models. I don't know if people wanna pay subscription unless it's that valuable for, you know, certain businesses, like you say, game industry or

Mr. Benja: something like that. Okay.

So, you know, like. , Amazon Web Services, you know, I mean, they're just selling what they learned with their web services to other people. I think you could sell versions of the Twitter technology platform to people to do things with. You know, I mean, like, so I don't know. I don't know. As I said, you know, this is just speculation.

I have no idea what, what Elon's up to. And that's kind of the point I think behind what I was saying about Elon. He does these things that work and, you know, from, from PayPal to you know, his work with the boring company selling flame throwers his Thanky perfume. I mean the tho okay, those are like novelty examples.

But, but yeah, it's like, you know, he's got the boring company. He's got Tesla, he's got, you know, he ma he did PayPal. This is a string of hits. So I don't think he just walk in there saying, I want to be another advertising platform. He's gonna try something. And whether it works or not is up to, you know, whatever.

I do expect advertising will be in the mix, but I wanna see what he's about to

Theo: do. Hi, Mr. Ben. We'll see. Besides fire. Besides

Mr. Benja: fire,

Theo: everybody. Which he's done. So I'll go write this down. Predictions, you know I'm more leaning toward, you know, some kind of streaming, I mean advertising tier and you're saying maybe some kind of subscription, you know, you're not saying fully subscription, but you know, maybe something like that.

So, so we'll see. I mean, you know, it's a lot. So, real quick the only other thing I wanted to cover on this section, news guess what's happening with Henry Caval? So, spoiler alert, we talked about this. He's back, he's coming back. He's back as Superman. So everybody's excited. But guess what, Mr. Bender, Oh my God, he, he is no longer gonna be part of the Witcher.

Mr. Benja: Thank God. Wasted.

Theo: Wait a minute. I thought you loved every Witcher The Witcher season one and two. Are you kidding

Mr. Benja: me? Where'd you get that from? Ah, are, are you joking with me? That's what you thought.

Theo: I guess I, I guess I, I thought we liked him as the Witcher. I, maybe I did,

Mr. Benja: I, I may have said he fits the role.

Like he, he looks like the guy who should be the witcher or that makes sense for him. I never said I liked it. Cuz I, The Witcher is not my show, and I'm like, Oh God, get him on something else. ,

Theo: I thought he was decent in it. I mean, you know, I mean, he loved it. I mean, you know, that's, at least that's his, his claim to fame was, is like, Hey, I love the Witcher.

But as soon as he put that them blue pants on boy and that red cape, I'm outta here . So, so anyway, they're replacing him with Liam Hemsworth. Do you know who that is? One of Hemsworth

Mr. Benja: brothers? No. I, I mean, I know him as Hemsworth brother, but I don't actually think I remember him from

Theo: anywhere. I mean, it's, he was used, he was in the the what's it, Jennifer Lawrence what's it called?

I wanna say Mike and Jay. That's what's coming on my mind. But it was the Hunger Games. He was in the Hunger Games with Jennifer Lawrence, you know, those three books, you know, And so that's his big claim to fame. Since then, not as much, you know, unfortunately, he's not as well known as Chris Hemsworth or even.

Even his, his brother who shows up on your favorite show, . So but he is one of those guys that you know, handsome looking guy, so he's taking over for Henry Caval for season four. So, so I don't know. Is that a good thing or bad thing for the Witcher?

Mr. Benja: The Witcher? I, I don't even know, man. I don't, I don't know the Witcher or its audience enough to really say this is good or bad. You know, maybe Liam Hemsworth has more to prove and will do a better job with it. I don't know.

Theo: Yeah. So, so I agree. I think I think it's not a good thing because what's gonna, ah, you know, Henry Caval for, for all his flaws, people love him, man.

You know, he's, he's out in these streets, man. People, people ride or die with that dude. And so, you know, he was on the Witcher by, you know, he's got a lot of fans over there. So he leaves that, Well, I thought you loved it, Witcher. I thought that was your series. And now he's back as Superman. I mean, literally people are clapping.

When he showed up in my theater, and I think he said the same thing, he announced it, you know, so Dan b Dan b spoilers, he put it out there on Twitter, I'm back. So, you know, I think Henry Caval is people, people like, and so I don't think it's good for the Witch is series that you know, he's not gonna show up for season four.

I think it's because man, they're not gonna pay him enough money. . He's like, Look, I'm about to get this DC gu, I got time for this Netflix money, so I'm about to get this dc They're gonna put a man and steal too. And I'm about to get this money

Mr. Benja: under, under the watchful Eye of James Gunn.

Theo: Yeah. Let's talk about that briefly.

We talked about on a on a news story. So any updates or thoughts on James Gunn taking over? Did you get any other insights from listening to other folks'? Reactions to it? Thoughts?

Mr. Benja: You know, I'm, I'm glad they have a warm body in the seat and I'm glad this guy actually is gonna do a job and make something happen as opposed to some, some herb, you know,

Theo: Yeah.

I mean, I don't, I don't, I mean, his stuff is okay. I mean, you know, Did you like peacemaker? I liked it. I mean, so you know, his sensibility is different. But I think he has a, he has a point of view, which is good. So someone made a good point. You know, I was listening to some of your reactions. There's two things they could do, right?

You coulda had like a Hamada or James Lynn who came in and just like, you know, trying to find anything, something that works, right? Yes. That's one way to go about it. The other way is to have a vision of where this could go. Zach Snyder had a vision. Not a lot of people believed in it, but he had a vision at least, right?

So, yeah, I think James could come in with a vision of what this could look like. And for someone who came into Marvel and made Guardians of the Galaxy Pop, which was a, I mean, even for hardcore Common Book guys, like you and I, he made that pop and no one knew, who knew you know, knew who the hell these these guys were, and he made it pop.

I think he has a vision of where he is gonna come in D ceu, and just basically, let's find all the esoteric. O all these, you know, maybe swamp thing, you know, who knows all these different DC characters and we're going, we're going run this bitch . We're going find these ca these folks that no one even cares about.

I'm trying to think. I'm, I'm just running my mind. Who is some eary DC characters that we can just take and just make it happen? Man. So I think that's what his vision is. And then from there, can we build something that people would gravitate toward to different differentiate D C U enough from Marvel,

Mr. Benja: if I see a live action bouncing, boy, I, I'm done.

Everybody stopped right now. Look at DC Comics, Bouncing Boy. And if James Gunn can pull that off, you know what? You need to start a hashtag, bring Bouncing Boy to life. . And, and we'll see what DC does. .

Theo: I love it. I love it. I have no idea who that is, so I'm assuming you do so. I mean, plastic, Plastic, man, that'd be a good one to show off.

D C Q you know, who else? I'm just, I'm just drunk, You know, I'm more of a Marvel person it seems like, than more of a DC DC guy. We gotta get Pete on here, man. He can probably go through some stuff, but there's some eary characters, man. They, they can go down the run and just make it Hecky, you know, he.

I mean the Justice Society of America, Black Adam. Right? They talked about them briefly. Maybe we can, There's a ton of those jokers walking around and make those a reality. Yeah. So there's a lot of stuff, you know, he can kind of pull from to just like, Okay, put my stamp on. They're still gonna have, So someone said they're still gonna probably release the blue beetle, which is, you know, already kind of in production you know, the flash, which, you know, who knows what's gonna happen to Ezra Miller after that, but, you know, still gotta do that.

And then Aquaman too, right? That's still, those three are definitely going to, you know, go forward. There's rumors that, that, that black Superman, remember that one with JJ Abras attached and to Hoti Holts coats that they're saying that still might go forward, you know, even though it's gonna be different take, even though Henry Caval is back in the Royal Superman.

So maybe this would be kind of an esoteric different one. And then they mentioned that Matt Reeves, you know Batman? Mm-hmm. , you know, thing he, Matt Reeves is not even gonna report to James Gunn. He's gonna still report to the head of the entire studio and as well as Todd Phillips. So their little Batman, little esoteric and joker visions.

They're just gonna be under Warner Brothers film in general, not under D C E U, under James Gunn. So, So that's it. Those are the what, four, six movies, You know, it'd be kind Todd Phillips and Matt Reed's versions. That they have, that they're gonna probably do. So after that, where's he go from here?

So many good

Mr. Benja: characters to pick from. Static Shock Wildcat, Mr. Terrific.

Theo: Oh, I was so want to see a Mr. Terrific show movie man. That dude was, I mean, he was a cool design. I don't know anything about the character. It's just a cool design. Yeah.

Mr. Benja: E exactly. So you know, imagine if Batman had not like, made gadgets, but basically, you know, bio-engineered himself in a way and just kept on like, making himself more and more awesome.

And you end up with Mr. Terrific. It's an interesting character, a power girl. You know, it's, I mean, and yeah, if they keep on with the Dr. Fate helmet like we learned in Black Adam, I think there's just a ton of places to go.

Theo: Yeah. So, so maybe we'll put some out there. Maybe show versus business a tweet at James Gunn.

Let him know James Gunn. Man, we got some ideas for you, man. Hell to be, Yeah. So, you know, he, he, he might listen, man, who knows, you know, maybe he'll put us as a the advisors on, on his what he's trying to do out there. So I was trying to see what his Twitter following is. It's. He's got a lot of followers, doesn't he?

Shoot, I'm trying to think here. You know, too. Yeah. So he is big time. So 1.3 million followers. So yeah. So yeah. So yeah, there you go. We got, we got, we're gonna follow James Gunn and we're gonna put it out there. So, so James Gunn holler that, how that show versus business. We got some ideas. So anyway Mr.

Bender, so last but not least, let's get into the state of reality shows, man and business specifically reality shows. So let's go into that. Let's talk about our feature. All right, Mr. Bender. This is, this is one we've been talking about for a while here. So you know, we can kind of cover a little bit about this, the background, things like that, you know, where do you wanna start?

Mr. Benja: Well first we didn't make a complete section out of it this time, but I think it's funny how we were both, I don't know, in the mood for it, I guess. And Undercover Billionaire shows up with one of our, one of our I don't wanna say gurus or whatever, but one of the people we check out every so often, Grant Cardone, he did this show, Undercover Billionaire, and I decided to check it out and I was so enamored with it.

I was like, Man, this is real. He's jumping out there, doing his thing and talking to people and. Yeah, it's, it's terribly fascinating and in light of what we talked about weeks ago with the whole Discovery plus buyout of Warner Brothers or Warner Media, you know, it's like, well, where's all this power coming from?

What have they been doing all this time? And it's making money with reality TV be for the most part, right? You have their documentaries, their reality shows, their competition shows, but these are all low, relatively low budget in terms of like, Compare Cake Boss to, you know, making a, making a full season of like Stranger Things or something.

There's no, there's no question, which is easier to create and which can bring in money faster. So and that, that's what kind of led to this you know, Grand Cardone and just thinking about, wow, there's so many untouched areas in this. This really could be bigger than we think. Right?

Theo: Absolutely.

Absolutely. So just give you a sense of the numbers reality shows, you know, we'll talk a few of them real quick. Hulu paid the Kardashian Jenners at least a hundred million for two seasons and 40 episodes of the Kardashians, which is basically continuation of their long term reality, long time reality.

Keeping up the Kardashians, right? And so a hundred million dollars for two seasons. So there you go. And then the Sharks, some Shark Tank, which is top reality show in the business area that we talk about sometimes. You know, each one pretty much gets paid roughly about $50,000 per episode. So, you know, you do the Math a hundred and let's say they do, you know, 10 episodes, half a million, I think they do like 20 episodes to do it by a million dollars.

Just sit there and they probably do all the shows like what, you know, five shows in a day, . So they could probably do all the shows in like two weeks for a season. And they're. , I mean, shit, I would sit there for, you know, a million dollars for two weeks of my time.

Mr. Benja: And, and the possibility to actually get in on some lucrative deals,

Theo: potentially.

Yeah, that's always good. So they're not using their own monies that people want to know. So one, one interesting thing I saw was like, okay, I wanted to do their, their net worth. And so well you, you see the notes Mr. Bridges, so I can't surprise you. So, so yes. So we'll put it out there. But Mark Cubin absolutely makes the most 4.5 billion, obviously, you know, with his, you know, Yeah.

Internet dealings. And obviously he owns a Yeah, The Thousand Mavericks, which is a basketball team. So, you know, you gotta have a B behind your name if you're gonna own a, you know, a sports team. But after that, I was surprised by this. So, Oh Mr. Wonderful Kevin O'Leary, he's about 400 million which is pretty good.

You know, he, he came from tv. I, I did, I, I listened to his podcast, somebody, he did a podcasts with somebody and he talked about his background. He actually he did, he first did like a lot before he got into business. He was like a camera guy. He did a lot of camera stuff, production. So that was always his first love.

And then he did the business first on the internet. I forgot what it was though. I'm trying to think. What he did first did. It was some kind of business he did on the internet with I think it was like around protection though. And he sold that and did some other stuff. And so that's kind of how he made his money.

Damon John, which we know back in Dave Fubu for us, by us, that was the big clothing brand. They started out nothing. And so I didn't know he got this much money from it, 350 million. But he basically was a clothing of the culture, right? For hip hop in early days. Yeah. So he's, he, he got in early on that and so that's why he's making his money.

So her, her jeck that's the the, the guy who sits on the right hand side. I didn't know that he's about 200 million, but he did like some cybersecurity firms, stuff like that. Robert, Thank you. And so he's doing big time. And then he got the two women on, on the you have Barbara Cochran and then Lori Lori's about 150 million.

The, the, what's it called? The Home Shopping Network, Queen and Barbara, who's more real estate a hundred million. So they ain't hurting, I guess they do this just they do this, This is, this is not where they're making their money, but you know, this, you know, which I guess when you're on that level, Mr.

Bench, I guess, let me, lemme just think about this. If you're on that level, it's not so much about what you have, It's so much about like, you know, you know, how do you get more exposure to new opportunities? You want the opportunities to come to you. You don't have to chase stuff. And the way you do that is become a celebrity now.

And so they figured it out. They like, Hey, we're celebrity people know who we are. The deals are gonna find me. I don't gotta chase the deals no more. And, and that way that's how I grow my net worth. So that's kinda where they are right now. Yeah. Like this is

Mr. Benja: Rick Ross the rapper, Rick Ross actually mentioned that like a lot of the stuff he does, like he's getting on online and talking and all that.

He mentions Wingstop a lot and part of the reason he said he does that is to find more people who wanna work with him and maybe start a franchise or put a franchise in their neighborhood or, you know, so if he's doing that on that small level, yeah, these guys are definitely like putting feelers out there and just keeping their names out there so they're easier to ha, easier to find when money needs, wants, needs to come to them.

Theo: Yeah. And I think the, the world has changed. I mean, you know, back in the day when we grew up, you know, digging the crates if you will, you know, there was these gatekeepers, you know, and you know, you kind of had to con, you know, you felt like you convinced people cuz everything was siloed, right? Yeah. You know, you only had like a limited area access to them and you had limited time and you had a gatekeeper and so you had to be clear on your messaging and try to get that limited market to kind of believe in you.

And then maybe you built it up big enough, you can go to these different silos Now with the internet, you know, everything's open. I mean, you know, if you wanna find someone that's selling, I don't know. Chicken legs, you know, with spicy sharaa sauce, you know, whatever, you know, you can look it up on the internet and you can find 20 companies.

So the challenge is not so much trying to find things, it's just more how do you stand out? And the way, the best way to stand out is like, be celebrity, be in the forefront. Like whenever our mentor, our video mentor, Uncle g be omni, the presents the omni the present. Yeah. And so, and so now I'm realizing that marketing is way more important than sales.

And so that's what the, the, the sharks are doing the marketing and that's cuz you know, it's so much easier if people come to you, you don't have Wait.

Mr. Benja: Yeah. Did did Grant Cardell say that on the undercovered billionaire? Cuz he said that recently, that he's like, right now marketing is more important than sales.

Theo: Yeah, I saw that podcast he did with what, Robert? Okay. Yeah, he did say it, He did say that on undercover billionaire. That's, that's crazy.

Mr. Benja: I mean, that's where we're at. But that's just like an interesting thought.

Theo: And he would know, because he definitely was the top aligned sales guy and he was selling used car, you know, cars.

He, he, the sales program, but he don't even talk about that anymore. It's all about kind of like marketing exposure, but getting yourself out there. And so that inspired me to kind of find, you know, ways I can do speaking engagements. Because I mean, I'm realizing more and more. You just gotta have to do it.

I think you're doing it too in your business, right? You're putting yourself out there more with social media because people gotta find you. You know, they gotta know you and then they'll do business with you.

Mr. Benja: Yeah, and I think, I think that's an interesting facet to the whole reality TV business is that it doubles as a marketing branding kind of thing, where you're not so worried about the product itself, but the personality, the people, the brand, are kind of blended into that product.

Like you mentioned, Keeping Up with Our Kardashians, we're running on 20 seasons of that. They're not running the show primarily for the money of the show itself, but they're keeping their brand name out there and they're keeping their marketing face out there, right?

Theo: Absolutely, man. Yeah, I think that's, that's only reason they're doing it.

I mean, and to be honest, it's kind of fun, you know, I mean, cuz. If you do it right, it's just, you're just exposing people to more who you are and you get validated because they accept you for who you are. And then it's self-reinforcing kind of feedback loop. And so I think that's kind of why people do it on that level.

They still do these reality shows. They still in the forefront. Cuz the longer you keep your brand out there, man, the more you can, you know, potentially make and grow your, your your your net worth. So yeah, so like I said I'll send you another guru I've been listening to. His name is Myron Golden.

Hmm. That's new one to me. Yeah, it's a new one. I'll send it to you. He's another guru. He's, he, he touched it from a more biblical perspective, but it's all the same stuff, right? I mean, and he's saying, Hey, a lot of the stuff the people are saying is rooted in the Bible and so he breaks it down from like King Solomon and all these different folks.

So, and you know, and he kind of breaks it down from like, you know, what does it mean to kind of grow your business? And so it's so I'll send it to you Mr. Ben and everyone's listening. Go check out Myron Golden. Definitely wanna recommend that. Well, I'll just give you a little snippet of it real quick.

One of the things he says is like, if you read Genesis. He say, mm-hmm. , what's the first thing? So in his, you know what he says when you read the Bible? He said, the first thing to kind of think about the Bible is like the first time God introduces anything in the concept, you know, that's his first vision of what it should look like, his original intent.

And he said, Look, he could have told you anything about himself in the Bible. He says, I'm good, you know, you know, I, I, you know, I'm just, you know, I like, you know, good food. What's the first thing he said about himself in the Bible? And so God created, okay. He wanted to tell you he was a creator. And so that means, you know, hey, he's creative.

And what's the thing he told us about us? What's the first thing he told about us? Made in his image? His image being a creative. So he's saying this, this is the insight that blew my mind. He said, So each, every human being is a creative aspect that you can grow and expand. And so once you realize that, and he said that was in the first verse of the Bible,

Yeah. Cause God could have literally told us anything about himself. And so that was the first thing he told us about himself. And then when he told us of how, who we are,

Mr. Benja: you know, if you think about it, that's a pretty bold brand statement. It's like, Hey read this in the beginning. I made this bitch , and it's like

It's just like, it's like, wow, that's your brand. It's like, that's my brand, bro. Everything else is based on this, everything

Theo: else. I mean, it is basically he's creative man. And so that's, And so we're most closest to God when we create in our lane, you know, wherever our lane is, you know, And so that's his, So, so I give you a snippet of kind of what he talks about, but he talks about a way more stuff.

But so that's like my new kind of, you know, gu I'm kind of listening to. But it is, it is kinda all the same. I mean, you know, we talk about reality shows and it's really about like figuring out like how you become successful in your business, where your creative, trying to create a sustainable brand or, you know, me and Mr.

Benji, we have our own businesses trying to figure out like what's gonna resonate with people. And it's really just about figuring out like, you know, what is, you know, how do you stand out and how you become in front of people so that you always top of mind. So when people who have that problem, they just like, Hey, you.

I need some new art. I go, you know, but let me look it up on the internet. Oh, there's Mr. Bencher. Oh, I see his, you know, YouTube for this. Yeah. Hey, I need something that deals with you know, technology and healthcare, You know, Oh, there's steel. That's his company. So you just want to be like top of mind when people have those problems.

And there's, what, 6 billion people, almost 7 billion people on the planet. Mm-hmm. . There's, there's enough people out there that have a problem that you're looking for, and the internet makes it so accessible now that you can, they can find you and you can find them, but you gotta figure out ways to get yourself out there more.

So that's kinda what, you know, I've learned from this, you know, that the sharks and also you know, undercover billionaire. Just gotta understand how this works.

Mr. Benja: Yeah. I'm actually going to subscribe to his podcast right now. Bible Success Secrets, which is interesting. And for those of you who don't know, I grew up in a I grew up in a private Christian school for my formative learning years, and yeah, it was, it was kind of wild.

But yeah, I know a lot of this Bible stuff, so seeing how a school wraps Bible stuff into, into everyday life now, seeing a podcast about this in a different way is definitely interesting to me.

Theo: Yeah. And I, you know, if you go to YouTube, you know how you go to videos, you can see his earlier video. You know, if you want to get the, the foundation of where he can and came with all this other stuff, the more you know, flashier stuff.

So what happened was Myron Golden, he connected with Brussel Brunson. You know who that is?

Mr. Benja: Give me them Click funnels

Theo: baby. Exactly. So, so that's what kind of put him on the map again. So, so, so now you know his background, but you know, he was, you know, resonating enough there at ClickFunnels. He got to speak in front of the crowd, so, so there's some legitimacy there, what he's talking about.

So, but also he has a, he's been around, he's 61 years old, so he's been around in the early days. So you see some of the older videos before he has his big old, you know, are beard. But I would say go back so you can get a, you know, a more understanding of who he is as a person. But then he comes back again in his new version and I, I kind of like that aspect.

So, you know, you know what he

Mr. Benja: needs though? What's that? He needs a show on Discovery Plus

Yes. Cause I don't see enough finance shows on Discovery Plus and they got a lot of all, there are all kinds of shows out there, but yeah, I, I'd like to say,

Theo: well, what, let's talk about that. So Discovery Plus David Zza Lost, you know, big play and that, and we'll talk about him in a second. How he built an empire on reality tv.

Let's be honest with that. Is there, It's a lot of reality tv. I haven't gone down the route Rat Hole of Discovery Plus, but Mr. Benja, I as one who's recently resubscribed to HBO Max , what have you seen that blew your mind when it came to reality TV on that channel?

Mr. Benja: Wait, HBO Max

Theo: or Discovery footage?

Well just, well, I guess Discovery Plus, did you subscribe Discovery Plus, or you just

Mr. Benja: Yeah. Stepped on so, so, so dude, I was like, all right, there isn't much I wanna see on Discovery Plus, aside from Undercover Billionaire because of Grant Cardone, we talked about that. So I was like, You know what, let me just jump in, get this seven day trial, right?

Get it through. I'll get it through Amazon Prime Channel. It's like six bucks, seven bucks or whatever. By the boom, by the being a seven day trial, I should be able to plow through undercover billionaire, just fine. I did that and on like the sixth day, all of a sudden it was like, Hey you know, you could also watch this.

Theo: And I was like, Ooh, what is this

Mr. Benja: Comeback City? It's about businesses, you know, who had kind of fallen down and now they gotta bring 'em back to life. And I was like, All right, lemme check this out. And then there was, I like, I like kitchen shows because I think kitchen shows are like design pins and if you ever have a company and there's a group of designers, I always tell them, Yeah, watch kitchen shows, and that's how you should be trying to fix up your problem.

So I started watching some of the kitchen shows. It gave me flashbacks of working in game development. And yeah, so, so I got on Discovery Plus, I'm, I'm just on it now. What? Yeah, I know .

Theo: So, And Discovery Plus, Let's, let's be Real. Discovery Plus has a, a ton of reality shows, right?

Mr. Benja: Yes. It is charting out reality shows at every moment.

I, I mean, that, that's pretty much all it is. There are actually a couple decent documentaries on there. You know, where they just walk. Once again, it's walking around filming people. I don't know if they have any, I don't know if I've actually seen any actual produced shows on there, aside from reality.

I, I may actually have to dig for that to see if there are like any movies or anything. I think there are a couple.

Theo: Well, you know, so that's interesting. I'm not Discovery Plus, but I may have to jump on there if you, you know, recommend it like that. So, look, Reality TV show, look, we know reality has built channels like Amy Bravo.

For those that don't know, they have tons of reality shows on just on ne, you know, linear cable television. But really it built an empire. David Zilo and Discovery. David Zalo, who currently is over Warner Brothers Media, Running Brothers Entertainment, and you know, runs, you know, all the D C U you know, he came from you NBC Universal, and even then he extended the Bravo Reality Show, CNBC Kind.

Mm-hmm. kind of reality. You know Shop NBC Reality who else is on here? He's, he got into more international markets, but he really understood that. He also saw oversaw a e the History channel if you ever been there. And that's nothing but like, you know, documentary stuff by IEE Channel, National Geographic.

And so he understood like, you know, this is, you know, quote unquote lean back television, television you can put on in the background and just be immersed in it, and it's pretty cheap to produce. Right? And so he's a massive understanding that, and he put the Empire enough where he was able to kind of go to you know, Discovery Communications and say, Hey, I can run this thing and help you guys build it even more.

And under that, he, you know, he helped build up the Oprah Refre network. He bought that Planted Green, and then the Scripts, networks interactive, you know, which had a lot, ton of digital education and other kind of reality type stuff. So that's how he builds Empire on, on reality shows. And they had enough money where they would just say, Look, we can take on the scripted film.

Of Warner Brothers because reality built the empire. And so that just goes to show you that the economics behind, you know, reality shows where you, they're cheap to produce, but there's content that, you know, just always on is comfort television. There's a market for that. And so I think you know, we'll see more, you know, more of that being used.

But I think this is like, I was trying to think, you know, who owns like reality shows? Comcast is more of a NBC Universal, Comcast, you know, they're like a cable company. So that's like, you know, asset at and t on Warner Brothers. They were like a, you know, couple company, Apple, you know internet company.

This is the first time I'm thinking like a, a company that was built off of reality TV has bought something that was scripted and, and made it work. So, so we'll see. I mean, well, has he made it work? We you know, debate's still out there. Yeah. But the reality TV is so lucrative that, you know, and this is, I'll be honest with you, I, I didn't think reality would last as long when it first came out, Mr.

Bender. But it, this is an enduring franchise with like sub genres at your ask that it's like, I mean, I kinda like seven eight here, but I'm sure there's like 15 more that I'm not even thinking about. And so that's the, a amazing thing to me.

Mr. Benja: Oh yeah. I mean, you, you're talking about the, you know, dating love, marriage shows, lifestyle, personality, urban shows, aka stuff they think black people are gonna love competition singing.

Competition, travel competition, cooking improvement shows, the, the couple business shows that, that's the one thing that's held me away from it for a while. But I do think Shark Tank really got me thinking in the mind of, I need to watch more of this reality stuff. I just wanna see how people play out with their business.

And Shark Tank's not on Discovery Plus, but they've got some, a couple other shows on there, like self-employed, Undercover, Billionaire what's the other one I mentioned, Comeback City. So there are a couple but there's a lot of, there's actually a lot of room for this to grow, which is exciting for me.

That's like, oh my, oh my gosh, there's all this stuff that's not being done on, on reality TV that could be done. Like, I don't need to see my 600 pound life. That's just not interesting to me. You know, following around people who live that are morbidly obese. But if I got a, if I got a show about, you know, artists trying to make it in in the art world, that would be

Theo: interesting.

No, I, I agree man. So you know, so who watches reality tv, right? I mean, you know, it, it's shown that it does heavily index to women and so we'll talk about that a little bit and I think that you know, it does kind of there was an article I put out there, Reality TV viewing linked to Women's Acceptance you know, through acceptance of, you know, understanding the traditional gender roles.

And so there's a lot of things around like how women kind of view what it means to be a woman on shows, you know, So you got like the Real Housewives of Atlanta or Housewives in New York. My wife loves those shows, right? . So, and a lot of women do because of you know, their kind of aspirational shows, like what's possible, but also, you know, cuz they have Rich and they gotta do anything they want in those shows.

But also there's that drama, right? You know, they argue of each other. There's fights, stuff like that. And it's so funny how you kind of look at the evolution. It's almost like the nba, right? Back in the day they used to fight all the time and, you know, throw punches and all that stuff. Now, you know, everybody's just, everybody's face like, Oh yeah, we're gonna do something, but we're not, you know, or, you know, we make too much money for us to go fight.

And the reality shows are kind of getting to that point where they used to, you know, you got watch next seat, next episode, because guess what? You know, somebody's like, You don't go talk to me like that. And they stand up and they cut it, you know, like, But did they really fight? No. Right, right. Back in the day, them jokers fought

Mr. Benja: Yeah. They, that they .

Theo: But now these people too, making too much money to be fighting, man. It ain't that serious man. So yeah. So anyway, my wife watches those shows and there's a lot of, And then one other thing too, and I'll let you go, but back in the day too, man, early two thousands, man, there was, there was a, a a, there was not that many black TV shows, like scripted shows out there.

So the only way we saw black folks was on reality TV shows, right? Like Flavor of Love and some other shows just, it wasn't that many black folks on tv and so you kind of got your fix from that and Tyler Perry shows, but, so they kind of sustained us to this point where we're not seeing a plethora of, you know, black television.

But there was a period of time where there was nothing on tv. After we went through the Cosby Shows and the Martins living singles. It just disappeared for like about five years. And the only time you saw black folks was on, I mean, business, you know, of whores, a vacuum, someone filled that opportunity.

Reality shows made it happen. So that's kinda why I saw from a, a demographic standpoint, women and then, you know, the black market.

Mr. Benja: Yeah. And shout out to Ron's house for pioneering a new way of looking at a black family. I think he actually did kind of what Cosby did on a smaller scale. Mm-hmm. , but he's like, Hey, listen, this is, you know, it's not all, it's not all stupidity.

And he was trying to actually put forth a positive image of black people, because I think a lot of reality TV was just you know, dumb shit. Mm-hmm. , you know, I was about to say something else. But yeah, it was just a bunch of exploitative type of nonsense. And I think we're, there's still a lot of that, but I think we're starting to get out of it a little bit and people are looking for better ideas.

So I'm looking forward to the future because there's still a lot that can be done.

Theo: Yeah, I agree. So, you know, so

Mr. Benja: go ahead real quick. Back to your point though I, I don. We were talking about women being on reality tv. The way I look at it is, it's like reality TV is what sports are to men, you know?

It's, it's kind of taken that whole novella, soap opera thing, and now we have a better version of that. And so, yeah, like dudes are watching espn women are watching Lifetime. And it's funny, well, not funny, but it's interesting how it's harder to find the numbers for demographics now. You know, where it's like, Hey, everybody can just watch whatever.

And I'm thinking to myself, Huh, Back in, you know, several years ago they would've just said, Women watch this, men watch this. Now it's kind of like, Oh no, it's just different. Different, different shows. You like it, you like

Theo: it, you don't, Yeah. I mean, you know, I think that's, that's the outlay of the streaming wars, right?

People are keeping the data themselves. They're not really kind of telling you who's watching what. Yeah. And so which is fine, I mean, but you know, eventually, now that we're getting into this advertising era, I guarantee we're gonna know the numbers better. back in the day, remember when there was ratings involved?

Mm-hmm. . And you had to advertise to a certain different graphics. You know, the advertisers do that data and oh yeah, so now we're getting to streaming wars and so now they're moving to advertising. We're gonna know the numbers now cuz they gonna know, they wanna know how many black women watch this show.

So if I have a, a product I wanna sell to black women, I got know how many you have so I can know exactly how much I gotta pay you. So I think we're gonna see more of those numbers, you know, in the next couple of years after this streaming kind of gets out there more. But I agree it's not real, you know, it's not easy to obtain.

But we'll see more over time. So real quick I guarantee you probably don't see of these shows. I mean be honest, I don't watch a lot of these shows. I watch, maybe I'm looking at this list that we put here, maybe one, one of these shows, you know,

I mean like, I think I seen every one of these shows like least once only because, you know, just interesting curiosity challenge reality shows if it's good show and, and the good show means it's been on forever. So if it's a good show, they know how to hook you. So if you watch one episode, usually that's enough crack that gets you there.

They're kinda, Oh, let me just finish this season out. Right? . So that's the challenge with the reality shows. That's why I don't like getting into it. But I will say this, So we look at the dating love merit shows. I got into Love Is Blind. I thought that was kind of interesting concept, basically. Okay.

Groups of folks that just, it's on Netflix. Group of folks that don't see each other in like two weeks, five days. They say they love each other after like spending, you know, hours and hours talk, remember back in the day, you know, used to be on the phone, you know, for girl and talk to for hours. That's kind of what the concept is, right?

You just talk, you just talk to talk, talk, talk, and you don't see 'em. You just follow this emotional connection and you feel like you love him and now you see him . So it's hilarious. And run by Nicholas Sha of 98 Degrees. So that's a guy that came from our generation, you know, running this show and it's a big hit for Netflix.

They're end of season three and so I think that's gonna keep going. So Netflix is, is running, you know, reality shows. So they got a good sense of that. So so that's a show. Me and my wife watch married at First Site. That's another, it's been on Lifetime for Life Forever. , we got into it during the pandemic.

And we got, you know, like you said, I watched one episode and got hooked cuz I start watching with her and so we just thought,

Mr. Benja: you know, Yeah, you know what you always say, I don't know if you realize you say this but like as we're watching something, as we're talking and doing the podcast, you'll say, Well the reason I know about cake bosses, cuz my wife told me to watch and I.

Okay. Yeah, my wife showed me. You do that a lot. And it's funny because , I don't know if it's like a disclaimer that you know, hey, I don't watch this stuff, but hey, my wife showed me. So it's great .

Theo: So yeah, so it is one of those things where you just kind of, you know, and you know, you build a connection to them, you know, your wife and you know, or your significant other.

And so, cuz you're right, it does over index around and I think they like the the fantasy of it all and just the connection. I, I don't know, I'm, I'm not like that, you know, I think most, a lot of men are not and some men love it, but I'm kind of like, you know, I see it once and I'm cool with it, you know, or I don't even wanna get into that drama or I got enough drama in my day to day life.

So so that's one thing. And then the Go ahead.

Mr. Benja: Do you agree with that statement it's sports for women?

Theo: I do. Yeah. I mean, cuz be honest with you, it is. Men shows are kinda like the same thing, you know, sports shows, Cause you remember back in the day it was just being like, you know, you listen to sports radio, it's like, oh, he dropped the ball in the fifth five yard line and, you know, yeah, he's terrible player or his arm is weak.

I mean, they talk about that now, but really sorry. That's, they talk about that. Yeah, they talk about that now. But you know, You know it's not as they talk about like, oh, his contract or, you know, for instance, I'm a Tom Brady fan, you know, right now he's going through a divorce. He's like, Wait a minute, is this dealing with football?

Is this a reality show? ? So they talk about like, Oh, you know, they don't like each other, you know, all this other crap. I'm like, Man, nobody trying to hear all that. So yeah. So I think it's one of those things that people kind of, you know, we're, we're getting to like the reality show of, of sports, right?

And it's like, not so much about the play on the field, but what's really going off the field. And so I think men are kind of trapped in that. That's our, that's all like a tele nova. Tele what? Novas, That's our, you know, stories. That's our reality shows. Yeah. Whereas women, you know, they, they keep up with, you know, We're Housewives of Atlanta, what's going

Mr. Benja: on there?

Yeah. Well, what's funny is when I watch the reality shows, I'm looking for more of the sporting slash competition angle of it. Like, you know, when I'm watching Cake Boss, I'm like, Oh man, she, she, she can't possibly fix up that souffle like this other girl, you know? She's, she just doesn't have the skills.

She doesn't have the arm for it. She can't whip up the eggs like that. You kidding me? And I'm looking at it from like stats and the sport sporty kind of angle when I'm watching these shows. Funny.

Theo: I love it. Yeah. Yeah, They're hilarious. And all thing, I wanted to give a shout. The Bachelor Land and Bachelor, because they just recently had.

Two black bachelorettes and two, one black bachelor. And so that was the only reason I jumped back into that. I think I saw like ear maybe the first season if that, but it's, but now they're, I put more diversity into the dating pool and so that's been making those shows a little bit more interesting.

So, so we'll see where those goes. Curious. No one's, maybe it has been one, I think I look it up. Like a gay dating, like a gay ba bachelor show or something like that, or a queer bachelor show. So I'm just curious if that's on a roadmap or so's the way coming. So that'd be interesting. So next one is lifestyle personality.

We talked about Keeping Up the Kardashians, say like the grandad of 'em all basically built on a brand and you know, these women are billionaires based on that show. And then finally Real Housewives, you know, blah dot, So they have Real Housewives of Atlanta, which is the most popular, New York, Utah.

And it's really these women who are probably not even married anymore or housewives, but they're just personalities. And so those are the ones that draw a lot of folks in.

Mr. Benja: Okay. Okay. You're talking about getting drawn in ?

Theo: Oh no,

Mr. Benja: I just, I just you know, I'm, I'm looking away here, here and there because like you say something interesting and I'm like, Hold on a second, let me look into that.

So there's this show called Boy Meets Boy, right? Oh, it, this is, this is, this is, this is interesting. I'm just gonna read the, the, the blurb here. Speaking of controversy, one of the first ever reality dating shows centered on lgbtq plus romance had hiss own messy twist. The 2003 Bravo series, Boy Meets Boy showed a gay man dating and choosing a match of other gay men standard.

However, unbeknownst to unbeknownst to the star, half the contestants were only pretending to be gay.

Theo: What kind of show? What,

Mr. Benja: who, That's, that seems like such a, Why would, I don't know what to say about that.

Theo: There's nothing to say. There's

Mr. Benja: nothing to say. I mean, why is reality TV pulling Canery

Theo: Yes. The Mac, the, the, the machinations that they do. Cause I mean, look, it's, I mean it's drama, right? And so they wanna.

There's a big part of it about embarrassing the people who are on those shows, right? And so it's almost like, look, let's be honest, a live of reality show, A lot of peoples look, you know, yes, they're regular people, but they're like the most beautiful people, right? They're phenomenal looking people. So there's a, there's a component of it that's like, I won't see them just embarrass themselves, right?

And so when they do, you're just like, Okay, I can watch these beautiful people because I know they're gonna look like fools.

Mr. Benja: I'm for, Yeah. I, you know, that's, And, and it goes on to talking this article about the exploitation of people in these shows. And I laugh, but that seems like a sad thing to do to somebody.

Yeah. I, I laugh because it's so out there and outrageous, and this is what these reality shows do, but that would not make me happy at all. Because the thing is, if the, the contestant wins the prize if, if they fool the guy, you know? Yeah. That's not good. So it's, it's weird. But yeah there, there are, there are several shows apparently, but that was just the one that stuck out to me when I, I did a search.

Yeah. So, I wonder how easy it would be just to make one of these and like start a YouTube reality show. Right.

Theo: I think it'd be very easy. You know, but you just gotta find the r I mean, but now all reality shows make it, I mean, you know, they just had a, I saw they had one called the Real Love Boat and that didn't last, and they just, you know, so it's, it's, it's, it's a weird mix of what's going to, you know, resonate.

I think the ones that do resonate, they kind of create their own genre, Right. You know, like this love is Blind concept. I think it gets to the core of what these reality shows about. It's just like, you know, yes, these people are amazing looking and all this stuff, but it's like, but can they fall in love with someone they've never seen before?

Right. And so, so, so maybe it's in the concept. It's gotta be some, some, some, some, some, some drama. Real world is about, These people are strangers, you know, can they live together right? From different backgrounds? So maybe it's just that first initial you know, concept of voice, right? It's like about, you know, can you vote for someone that you've never seen?

You know, but can you mark it because their voice is so pure and that you love what they sing about and make 'em a star? So I think, you know, I think the reality shows are they're trying to figure out, like, you know, I'm, I'm trying to figure out like, what is the one thing that just stands out from that brand that make a reality show flop and a reality show become successful?

And it's just, it's hard to tell, but, you know, but when she's become a successful brand man, it's hard that these shows, I think they're gonna be with us. So we just talked about The Bachelorette that's been on for like almost 20 seasons. Keeping The Kardashians 20 Seasons you know, competition singing.

We look at American Idol that's been on forever survival competition, travel, Amazing Race. Those been on forever. Competition cooking. Hell's Kitchen that I think that hangs together because, you know, you have a celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey. That dude, I don't know, he doesn't, he doesn't sleep, but he's just like, always has a reality show, cooking out there at one time.

Yeah. But you know, I think food is one of those interesting kind of things from a reality standpoint. It touches all your senses, you know that right? Food, it's like you got smell, you got sight, you got hearing, you know how it sizzles you got smell, you got taste and it's like, you know, and you got instruction and then you throw a little mix of personality in there.

So that's where you have so many celebrity chefs. I mean, that was probably the original kind of celebrity chef was Julia Childs right back in the day and she showed you how to cook. And so there's ton of those out there and but they're not going anywhere. So so that's kind of been there, there at the mo you put up here the improvement shows.

I love, I remember those. That was a big thing back in the day. I don't see as many anymore. I mean now, to be fair, there's a whole you know, husband and wife, couple chip and what's, what's her name? Gains the Gaines Club. Yeah, Gaines. Yeah. They got like a whole channel ,

Mr. Benja: they got a sec section in Target.

What you talking about?

Theo: But what was the big one that we used to watch all the time back in the day? Oh I can't remember what it was. It was home improvement or something. It was like, they would come in, fix everybody's house and they'll, Oh, this is amazing. Look at this space and all this stuff. And that was like huge.

But they have a whole channel, like home improvement and stuff. That's a big thing. I can't remember, but I watched them at one time. But let's get to this one right here. Sad life shows. What, what do you wanna go there? Just, that's

Mr. Benja: just sad. You know what's funny? I say sad Life shows where we see there are these shows that just like I mentioned cheaters, I mentioned hoarders, you know, Dr.

Pimple Popper My 600 Pound Life. It's like these shows that show you a downside of just living where people aren't where they want to be. They've got some health ailments, some social ailment, some financial ailment, and they frame it as if, I don't know how it's framed, but it's like, it's like the, how the news used to do shows where every once in a while they'd have a new segment on, Hey, here's the sad situation and it's just here to let you know how sad life is.

And there wasn't always an an, an angle of improvement or positivity. It was just, yeah, this is sad. And those don't seem to be going away anytime soon.

Theo: Nah, man, it's too much money.

Mr. Benja: I mean, do you watch any of those? The Sad Life shows?

Theo: I have saw a couple on my day. I mean, you know, the, the, I guess the Thousand Pound Sisters or whatever they're called.

Sure. I mean, but be honest, you cheetahs the banger back in the day. You remember that? Man? It was like, I saw the episode where the host, I don't know if you heard the episode on the boat where he found the cheater. So Cheaters was a show that was to run. You know, early two thousands I think they brought it back and basically, you know, people would be scared like, Yeah, I think somebody's cheating on me.

Can you do investigation? So they had to investigator take pictures of the people videos and all that stuff to go show it back to the person that hired cheaters in the first place. And they would get mad and they said, I'm going over there. And of course, cheaters will follow that person going back to confront their cheating, you know, cheating significant other.

And, you know, arguments ensued. One time cheaters followed the, that, that person back to significant other on a boat. It didn't end well for cheaters.

the host ended up getting stabbed. I don't know if you remember that. That's classic. Oh no, I didn't remember that one. Oh yeah, it was not good. It got stabbed and that was in the cheaters for a while. So, so yeah. So those things got kind of crazy back in the day. And but yeah, Cheaters was one of those.

It's just, you know, trash TV you just watch in the background and enjoy. But yeah, I remember that. Very, very enjoy.

Mr. Benja: Oh man. Yeah, it's, I know what you mean. , I actually used to watch Hoarders yeah, as inspiration. Let me, let me, let me preface this. I, I didn't think any anybody's downfall is inspiring or anything like that, but whenever I felt I was making too much of a mess of things, I would watch an episode of Hoarders and like, All right, gotta tighten up.

I'd clean my house, organize my files, threw stuff out just get stuff in order. And it didn't have to be like my house cleaning or my car cleaning or whatever cuz I never let it get too outta control. But it was just a mind state of you're letting things turn into a mess. I'd watched it episode of Hoarders and be like, I am not going to be that guy or that lady is out control.

I'm not gonna

Theo: be that. Mm-hmm. . Nah I remember seeing like one episode hoarder, that why I can't watch this. It's just too, You, you couldn't watch it. Why not? Nah. Just too much . I can't watch that kinda stuff mean that's, that's

Mr. Benja: the idea of it's too much. It's too much.

Theo: So, yeah. So anyway, let's get into like the business stuff, man, on reality shows. Maybe we, just to cover briefly the undercover billionaires, I mean, there's so many Shark Tank we talked about earlier. You know, you talked about Comeback City, the apprentices, the granddaddy, I mean, you know, for our previous president.

Forgot about that. Donald Trump ran that. That was like, you know, one of the first ones that kinda came out where he kind of had folks come on and did stupid challenges, like do a lemonade stand. did the opportunity to work with Donald Trump, you know? Yeah. You know, you put on here the hype and the work of art.

I'm sure you know, What were those about?

Mr. Benja: The hype is actually something, I'm watching it, it's pretty recent. It's a, it's about street wear. So you get these street wear designers that's on HBO Max right now. And the interesting thing about the hype is how connected it is to social media and what's going on right now.

So, you know, every week people will bring out their designs and show, Hey, I created. This bomber jacket, it's, it's leather and corduroy, and everybody's like, Oh, that's hot, that's hot, that's hot. And then you go on their Instagram and you can kind of see the whole thing playing out where, where they're like, Yep, my episode just came out.

This jacket's bomb. You can get it here at this, look at this website and buy it on Stock X and check out my website. So it's just this interesting competition show.

Theo: So it's re it's real time kind of like, you know, back and forth between the reality TV show and what's happened on Instagram. I love it.

Yeah.

Mr. Benja: The characters are out there doing the thing And The Apprentice, I mean, not the Apprentice work of Art, is that, that's a, that's a slightly older one, but it's kind of what got me into some of this I was watching. It's basically you take a bunch of artists to find artists and you know, every week they go through like, Hey, here's a new art challenge.

We're gonna make a, a sculpture. You're going to do something for kids, or you're gonna, you're gonna do an installation piece in this abandoned building. And, you know, they, it was testing people's artistry, and these are some of the competition shows, but they're, you know, like every week you compete, some guy gets voted off or some guy is, you know, saved from elimination because he did so well in the last competition.

Something about those where these people are struggling and they're fighting to have something happen and every week you drop, somebody gets dropped off. I don't know. Those are, those are irritating.

Theo: Okay. Yeah, I love it, man. I mean, those are kind of shows. That's interesting. I mean, I saw I can't remember the name was Ti was in It and Cardi B it was about rap show.

I don't know if you saw that one. It was on, it was Hustle and Flow. It was on, yeah. Hustle Flow. Yeah. That's pretty interesting. And they did different competitions. You had to do a battle wrap, you know, do your own video and so Chance the Rapper was in there too. And I thought it was kinda interesting.

So, you know, I like having the shows like that and, you know, seeing if people could become a star or a star designer. I mean, they have what's the other one? The Runway or something? There was another one like that. So it's always a

Mr. Benja: challenge. Project. Project Runway. Project Runway. Thank you. I actually really like that

Theo: one too.

Yeah, it's, it's. You know, those type of shows, you know, it can help or it can hurt you. I don't know. It's always .

Mr. Benja: Oh, right. You mean when someone like finds out, Oh, this guy's a jack wagon. I'm not dealing with him for it. Yeah, I really don't like their

Theo: Zs, but yeah, so that's, that's always hard. But they always, But they've done some interesting things.

I don't know if you remember was it face off or Mask off? They did, like, you know if you were like makeup artist, you know, what could you do when side, you know, different type of designs, Obviously America's Next Top model that, that that's come under fire in recent years of what the judges used to say to the contestants.

So anyway, so all those things are kind kind of interesting to me when I kind of look at those. But yeah, so if we go into like the show that we kind of wanna talk about Undercover Billionaire. This came out like season one. I think the guy from Bear Stearns, he kind of, you know, did one And it kind of went under the radar a little bit.

But you know, it was basically, it kind of was under that kind of brand of Undercover Boss that kinda ran CBS couple years where you would have a boss of a different company would come in and they put the fake mix mustache on, put the wigs on , and they would show up and they would hang out with some of their employees and like, Yeah, my name is Joe.

I'm just hanging out . Matter of fact, Saturday Night Life, I dunno if you saw that Saturday Night Life did a skit on that where Kyla Ren showed up undercover. Inside the Star Trooper lounge . Yeah. Like he was talking to him and then Kyle re was like, Okay, yeah, I'm trying to, you know, learn better from my employees.

And then the employee said something crazy, he got mad at him and he choked them out. And so, yeah. So anyway, that, that was kind of impression I got from Undercover Boss where these guys would come in and they always had like some heartwarming story where this person's like, I'm working my heart on, I just love my job and I'm gonna do this.

And then the boss will reveal who he was and he gave him a million, you know, million dollar check to do whatever, right? Go to school or help their kid. And so it was kind of like one of those like, you know, bosses are nice type thing. . So now they came up, they, they take the extreme where they did an undercover billionaire where they say, Hey look, look, you're a billionaire right now.

Can you, we drop you any city in this country? You know, probably some small city and you know, could you build a business from scratch with no nope. With a hundred dollars in your name, a cell phone, be truck and we changed your name. Could you do build a million dollar worth business in 90 days? And so the season one, I think it kind of went on a radar, but you know, the billionaire name kind of, you know, blew everybody, you know, through a loop.

Through a loop. And so, okay, let's check this out. And so it was okay. But then the second season had three billionaires. I put that in parenthesis cuz. Are they really billionaires? You know, are they just, you know, multi hundred millionaires or so? No, no.

Mr. Benja: They, they made that clear. It started out as, you know, the stern guy who was a billionaire and then they kind of didn't mention it, but in the second one they, they said that they're not billionaires.

But it, it was really subtle how they said it. It's like, no, no, no. These are just rich people. It's the concept. It's the

Theo: concept of the billionaire . Guess what? You put 'em all together, it's war a billion. There you go. Yeah.

Mr. Benja: Yeah. None, none of them in the second season were worth a bill.

Theo: Nah, no. Nah. So in it was Monique, I I let Mosley, she used to be married to Timbaland.

I dt know if you knew that. Mm-hmm. Did you, did you watch the whole scene? You just watched Grand card, Dylan's parts?

Mr. Benja: Oh no, I watched it all and went back and watched I went back and watched Stern season as well.

Theo: Oh, okay. Was it good too? Well, we'll talk about it in a second. And then Elaine Klute, I think that's how you say it.

Kati, she was kalo. Yeah. She was a real estate mogul and stuff like that. And Monika was more you know, in the music industry and then did some investments herself. So be honest with you before we get into who the third person was Mr. Grant Cardone I did, like when I saw the first couple episodes, I like both of the way they both flowed.

I liked how Elaine was more of like a go-getter, more aggressive. She's like, I've done this before, you know, I can do it again. And so she was like really motivating and talking to herself. And then Monique kinda came in with you know, kind of a calm demeanor. It was just like, you know you know, I'm gonna figure this out.

I'm gonna be safe. I'm gonna figure this out. Right. And then so I like how they kind of, you know, juxtapose themselves and, and how they went. But with Mr. Grant Cardone himself, , that took it to the next level. So what'd you think Mr. Binge of for the folks? Well,

Mr. Benja: I, I, I like them all for different reasons.

Really quickly Elaine threw me off because her style wasn't something that I would go for. And you know, you, you just mentioned a second ago about how it could be a bad thing for your brand. I know a lot of people may not wanna work with Elaine after seeing this, just because she may have insight on something and she just tells you, Go do it.

And then someone's like, Well, I'll do it my way. And then she comes back in and really jumps on that person like, You didn't listen. And I'm like, Yeah, she's got the insight. She knows things. Maybe she was trying to be a little bit too secretive about her past or like, you know, her, her influence in, in real estate.

But the way she went at people just kind of turned me off a little bit and not saying that Grant doesn't turn me off, or Monique. You know, purely awesome, but that just stuck out to me. But yeah, I do like their, the different personalities and you see that there's not just one way to kind of finesse things.

I, I, let me tell you what I liked. I liked how Monique was, she was so friendly and like humble with people. She's like, Hey, I really like what you're doing. You know, you should do more of this and that. And the guy's like, Really? Yeah, let's do this. Like, okay. And everybody's just kind of like, we'll do it.

And it was cool. And I could actually see that happening, you know? And, you know, Grant do, after reading, you know, some of his books and listening to a lot of his ways of working and then seeing it play out, that's what made the show. Cause the first thing he said was, I'm not touching this a hundred dollars.

I'm like, Wait a minute. They give you a hundred dollars to start with. And his first thing he says is, I'm not touching this hundred dollars. That's like, that's, that's not where my mind would've jumped. But when he said it, I was like, You know what? That's the Cardone way. And so , he first started thinking, All right, I'm starting from basically zero.

What do I need to, Cuz he tells people that, like, you know, he asked, How much money did your bank account? Well, I got 200,000 saved away. You ain't got, you ain't got nothing. You got zero. What are you gonna do? What you've got? You've got zero. And he just basically drops everything down to zero as if you have nothing.

But when he had that a hundred dollars and he ran up on people like, Hey, listen, I've got no money. I've got no way to get this and that. I'm just trying to do this. Don't want to hand out. What can I do for you? I'm like, Huh. Everything he's saying actually playing out. So I like that about him.

Theo: Yeah, it was like, you know, when you saw it, it was more like you saw it in action, man.

Like how he he really would work and that that was the thing. Everything he said he'd do, he did. Now, you know, some of the stuff I thought was like, you know, the cameras weren't there. Who, how many people would help, obviously, but be honest with you. I mean, you know, I'm sure there was a lot of stuff, you know, he had to do from scratch.

Like for instance, he came up with that manifesto at the end of the show, and so spoil alerts who kind give you a sense of kind of the show. So go check it out. Undercover, you know, billionaire season two. If you shout out us who got a link, maybe wanna check out , but to go check it out. But but yeah, I think it's one of those things where, you know, you watch the whole season, you kind of gotta get sense of all the stuff he's been talking about.

Man, it played out like how he talks about it and he's always, you know, he did it down. I like that aspect. Now. Everything he did worked, you know, he tried to do cold calling. He realized that didn't work. You try to sell someone, they just, you know, blew 'em off. And so I like seeing that cuz it's like, yes, don't matter.

Even you have the skills, you're still gonna deal with that. But how'd he handle? Yes, he got down on himself sometimes he kind broke down a little bit, but he always had positive talk and got, you know, got back on it the next day. And so to me that was the most important thing I kind of got for that. It's like, you know what, you know, Yes, you know, he can have his own life, but it's a show he's on.

He's trying to prove something. Look, I can do this and you can do it too. And as long as you don't stay down, then you can still win. You just gotta, you know, stay in the game. Like you said, I'm not a quitter. I don't, I don't quit. I'm not a quitter.

Mr. Benja: Yeah. Like he went back to the, he went back to the gym owner, like even after the gym owner turned him down, he, he said, he was like, Yeah, I'm going back to this gym.

I just wanna talk to the guy. He's a good person to, to influence the city and everything. And I think one of the things he mentioned was that he just needs to be around people like that. So the guy had totally shut him down, wasn't giving him an opportunity, never really gave him much of anything through the entire show.

And he kept going back to him just to hang out to talk. And those were some of the best parts of the show.

Theo: It was, it was, yeah, I wrote some things down here. It's just, he said you know, stop being consumed by your fears. And I thought I was, Cause he was, you know, cause that he's right. There's anxiety that creeps on you sometimes is you're a business owner, You're just like, Is this gonna work?

Why am I doing this? Bla. But he said, Look, I can't stop doing that. I gotta have expectation that, that this is gonna be better and that's gonna motivate you to do work and it's gonna mo motivate you to do better work. And so I thought that was kinda interesting. And he said, Show up no matter what.

Sometimes he didn't wanna show up, right. But he just like, I, I gotta do it. I gotta do it. You know? I mean it happened. Let's see. Man, he had a lot of a man, He just put, he said, Money is useless unless it's being used. He said, Don't think about saving. Make it work harder than I am. And so he, you know, so like I said, I was looking at, he would have little snippets of things he would say, you know, in the interviews.

Yeah. But then you watch what he did and now to me, was more powerful than anything was just like how you went around, you know, talking to people, being around folks communicating, trying to be, you know, you know, he would try to sell 'em, but if it didn't work, you know, he'd move forward. One of the most powerful things he did was, I thought near the end where, you know, he talked about his story being a drug addict and all that stuff.

And he had opportunity. He was trying to sell somebody and he was trying to tell them about. You know, the guy was like saying, Hey, yeah, I've been through drugs, but I turned my life around all that stuff. And he grabbed our door, didn't say anything you like, What you gonna tell his story? And he's like, No, well, how about this?

I wanted to sign this contract for a year, you know, we'll do your marketing for you. And the guy said, Yes. He said, Look, you guys wonder why I didn't sell my story. He said, Look, I ain't got time for that. You know, look, we gonna sell this contract . I, we started, we started talking about old drug stories and next thing you know, we never get this contract done.

So I skipped all that and I just went straight to selling, you know, focused on what I was doing there, not trying to be a build a friend, trying to get this contract. And I was like, There you go, . I was, I mean, I think you were too. He was, because they showed the camera. He was the, the, the business owner. He was a roofer.

He was telling this story about being on drugs. They showed the camera on Grant. Grant, said, Nothing . I was waiting on it. We are war. And he then he explained why he didn't say anything. So I'm trying to get this money. And so so yeah man, I think yeah, it was definitely we highly recommend it. At least I do go check it out, you know, go kind of get a sense of how to be in the business world and reality world.

Any other insights you got from there?

Mr. Benja: Well I didn't want to throw Elaine completely under the bus. I did learn a lot from her, her ability to do menial task and use that as a way to build connections with people like. She was all over the place. Like, Hey, I'm gonna go talk to this real estate guy.

I'm gonna go talk to these these deli service people. I'm gonna go talk to this farm guy, but he doesn't wanna work with me, so I'm just gonna do a job at his farm for like, I do remember that $60 a day. And I'm like, What? You have 90 days, a hundred dollars and you're going to, okay. I thought she might swing for the fences bigger, but I, I thought I started seeing her plan where it's like, okay, she's just, she's not necessarily swinging for the fences on all these, She's just getting her a foot in the door in a lot of places and getting an ear out to people.

And for as much as she was talking, I didn't, I didn't understand how much she was listening at first, but she was really getting the vibe of the city and all the people. And I think her business, to me was actually the most impressive out of all of them in terms of wrangling all of that together. You know what I mean?

Theo: Really Interesting. Okay. I only saw Grant Cardones. I saw the beginning of Monique's and I saw the beginning of hers. Yeah. So maybe I go check it out and see how she ended up. Was it worth more to grants at the end?

Mr. Benja: You want that spoiler? Yeah. No grant. Grant blew them all outta the water . Even, even season one he even beat the Sterns guy.

He blew him outta the water too. So, and, and it makes sense for the kind of business that happened and, and the way everything went down. But Grant clearly blew them all outta the water. He's best suited for this type of,

Theo: Yeah. Yeah. Well, he, he said in I listened to some interviews after the fact. He said he had a plan going in.

He's gonna do real estate or he is gonna do marketing. Right. He knew those are the two things that he knew the best and he was gonna figure that out some kind of way. So, So he had a strategy going in hot. Absolutely. I'm sure the other ones did too. But he really had a strategy coming in and so, and then also he was playing the res too.

He talked about that. you with the, he, he's fighting with discovery folks, you know, who produce a show. He was fighting with the, he, he was, he was basically putting his thumb on everywhere he could. He was fighting with the appraiser, remember? At the end. Yeah. So he was doing everything he could to try to, you know, thumb to steal scales.

And, and to his credit, now he's leveraging that. I mean, you go to YouTube sometimes his ads show up. He talks about that all the time on the ads. I discovery reached out to me and they wanted me to, you know, see if I can, you know, build a business in less than 90 days. Well, guess what guys? It broke me down, but I made it happen.

You wanna learn now? Go check out here. So there you go. He's using it to build even more revenue for himself. And I ain't mad at him. I ain't mad at him.

Mr. Benja: Yeah. He's also I put a link in the notes here, but he's, he's learning from that. And basically he's, he wanted to see firsthand how reality shows were made.

I think as part of his, his goal. And he actually has a series of shows on his own website mm-hmm. , where he's just kind of doing. The reality show thing.

Theo: Yeah. I mean, you know, and, and, and it kind of humanized them too, like, you know, as a person, you know, not just, you know, Grant Cardone 10 X guy. And so but yeah, I mean the biggest takeaway for me man, is like, you know, I think they all have validity, their advice, but the biggest thing I'm taking away from is just that mindset, Man, you just can't give up.

And whatever it takes to get that mindset where you feel motivated to do a massive amount of stuff, you gotta find that, you know, whether it's from him or this new guy I'm listening to, I'm like, I'm gonna find it. Whoever it gives me that whatever I need to just want to do it. Because once you, you know, so basically you gotta listen to this stuff and be believe it enough that you can become that person, right?

And once you believe that, then you go be more motivated to do. And the more you do, the more you get results from that, and you wanna do more. And then it becomes a, you know, self-fulfilling prophecy at that point. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, but you know how it is. You know, sometimes, you know, things knock you down.

You just like, Oh, I can't do it. It's not working. And then you wanna give up, but then you just gotta, you got, you gotta fill that cup back up, man. Cuz you know, as long as you, as long as you're in the. You can, you can always win. And I think that's the, the thing I got from all three of 'em is just like, you know, they, they all had some dark nights, right?

Especially, especially at the beginning, but they just never gave up, man. And, and I think that's, that's what I, we encourage everyone who listens to this show as we start to think about what we're gonna do for 2023. I think our vision is to kind of help folks who are creatives to kind of you know, create sustainable businesses.

And you know, I think if you have passion for something and maybe we can help you figure out how to monetize it, you just gotta figure out, you know, you can't give up because there's opportunities here. So many opportunities. And if your mind starts thinking about the opportunities and believe in that, and not to doubt that it will never work.

Cuz work is always working. It's two things. It's either you're doing the work for the result that you want, or the work is doing the work on you so you can learn, which you didn't, that didn't work, and you can change. I like it. So it's two sides of the coin. It's either you're doing the work or the work is doing something on you, and then either way you win.

So that's kind of what you gotta kind of think. So, so, yeah. So anyway, reality TV can be crappy, can be trash, but sometimes it can be very, very inspirational.

Mr. Benja: Hey, we gotta we gotta do one of our own. I'm just saying. You know, I mean, you, you, you rounded it out perfectly with the, the information, the takeaway and all that.

And now I'm inspired to do a reality show. Coming in 2023 show versus business reality drama show, .

Theo: Well yeah, we may have some folks that we bring on and do a deep dive on their business. I, I have a guy that reached out to us recently that was a comic book. So maybe we'll have a you know, business breakdown with him and kind of walk through his business.

And you know what he's, how he's marketing, branding himself. And so maybe we'll do some, some of that,

Mr. Benja: Oh, give some show insights and some business insights on people. Hey, man, this is why, this is why I mess with you, man. .

Theo: So more to come. So more to come guys. We so go check us out. Show versus business. Well before we end, Mr.

Benja what, anything else you got for the, for the group, you know, next week or coming up?

Mr. Benja: What do you mean for the group?

Theo: Well, just anybody listening? . Oh, listeners. ,

Mr. Benja: you know, I'm sorry. I'm sitting here thinking about our little Facebook group or our you of our little side discussions that we have for the group.

Hey you know, business is real. Show is real. It's all, and it's interesting how this reality show thing got us talking in the conversation and we thought it might be a 10 minute thing, but as we kept discussing it, we were like, Holy crap, there's a lot of good stuff here. And it became this show. Always looking into opportunities, trying to find new things, you know, making your business happen, making your reality real.

It's, it's a fascinating thing. If you've never really looked at it, take a look and let us know what you think.

Theo: Absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, man, we're excited about what's happening in 2023 for us. And you more to come, Mr. Benji and I, We got some visions on what we want to do, but yeah, go check us out if you wanna learn how to grow your business and, and create a space.

Cause I think we got some great insights. You know, just, I mean, look, we're always learning, listening, and so if there's some insights we can bring to, to your business and help you grow, you know, reach out to us. So, Mr. Benjamin, man I don't have anything else, man. Anything else for the, for the week or anything coming up?

Mr. Benja: Nothing coming up. Especially, I'm, I'm going to be, You may have heard me talking about my Kickstarter. I didn't like the way it was coming out. Learned a lot of things, just putting it together. I recorded the video like four times already and figured out, okay, now this isn't what, Oh, that's not the business.

Okay, this isn't cool. Well, I like doing this. So there, there hasn't been a delay on it. I've just decided to do it properly and it helped me fix my vision up a little bit. So that's still coming down the pipe? Should, it'll be here in November.

Theo: Love it. Love it. Well, definitely, we'll look, we're gonna look out for that this week, not traveling as much, just preparing for some conferences before the end of the year.

Man, I'm really excited about this reality show we're gonna watch. We just threw it out there so . So you know, we gonna, we gonna figure this out. Go check us out. We get this reality show going man. But yeah, if you got an idea yeah, come on a show. We'll kind of break it down and kind of give you some insight and thoughts on what we're thinking.

Cuz I think we can help. So, but yeah, everyone thank you for listening. Look, this is what we do, you know, check out our other podcast. We got one on Halloween that's coming out that's already out there. Now we did one on black. Adam give you lace review some of the thoughts on what's going on. D ceu.

So yeah, so we got a lot of podcasts coming out and then we're getting close to our hundredth podcasts. And so we've been doing this for a while. Got a lot of great insights. So go check us out, show versus business. So with that being said, please light subscribe and comment wherever you listen to the show versus business, either on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Listen to us at Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Visit our website at show versus business. But if you want to hear us live, go check us out around nine Eastern, six specific Wednesdays IG live at Mr. Benja during his 80 D experience where we go over all the news from that week. Mr.

Benja, have a great week. Peace.

Show Vs. Business

SvB #84 - The Business of Reality TV

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