SvB: Black Cleopatra, Buzzfeed Shutdown, Fake AI Drake, and Elon Watch - Ep 114

 The guys, @mrbenja and @the_real_theo_harvey, discuss the the controversy around Black Cleopatra, the lastest Buzzfeed shutdown, Fake AI Drake and our Elon Watch 

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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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Transcript

Mr. Benja: Badaboo badabee. Yes, this is show versus business, your weekly take on pop culture from two very different perspectives with your host, the Real Theo Harvey and me. Mr. Benja, come with all the relevant info to get your week started. This week, we will be covering five awesome stories. Number one, we're gonna have Netflix getting the side eye over a black Cleopatra and some other stuff.

Buzzfeed is getting shut down. Well, their news division is getting shut down, but they're kind of on the edge, so we gotta talk to them and see what's going on. And also we have Google calling for a radical change to search. Now when Google steps in the kings of search, they make a radical change. Industry wide, ver reverberations.

We gotta see what's gonna happen with that one. Also, we have ai, Drake, and AI weekend making the top of the chart, not the real ones. The AI ones. Interesting little story there. We'll talk about. And the Elon watch. We gotta keep an eye on the sky because. He's Elon, and if you don't know why you should keep an eye on him, you haven't been paying attention.

He's got some stuff and the spaceship just blew up. So lots of news there. You like the sound of that Theo 

Theo: spaceship's blowing up. Oh, man. Not in particularly, but it's very interesting to see all this happening, man. What is going on, man? You know, I just saw a year ago, we, we both went to Coachella and this is the second weekend, I think it was of Coachella.

And so you know, I thought about maybe half a second going back, but when I saw the artist, I think it was like black, pink and Frank Ocean who didn't show up. I think the weekend made it pop in. I was like, eh, I'm good. 

Mr. Benja: So, yeah, you know, they I was listening to some people talk about it. They said they've made it kind of a different vibe.

So I don't know what this new vibe is because I didn't really hit the old Coachella, but. Yeah, they're saying they're really trying to change it. They're not sure what it's about, kind of, but it's still a big, fun place to go. And it's a very odd thing. It's, it's, it's just Coachella in these like little two weeks.

The rest of the year, they're completely silent. It's not like you have mm-hmm. You know, documentaries on Netflix or whatever about Coachella. They're not branding themselves all around. It's just these weird two weeks. So the fact that they're, I don't know, changing, doing what they're doing, it's really interesting.

So, but we will have to go back. 

Theo: Right. Yeah, definitely, man. I was a, I was impressed in the daytime. I was like, oh, this is cool. Like a, you know, artsy fartsy type festival, you know, a lot of cool, cool little sights to see. But at Night, boy, that was a whole different animal, man. Literally the freaks came out that night, man.

I saw things. People were in touch with themselves, with and, and each other. Yes. And achieving higher consciousness. May, may or may not be with drugs. So it was definitely, the night was definitely a little bit interesting. But. And the music. I thought, you know, some of the artists we saw was very fascinating, you know Randall Jewel, that was my Who Do you remember the dj?

You you went to go see? Do you who, who was that? That we went over there to go pop over Tiki Monster. Yeah. That was pretty cool. I I thanks for, you know, showing me that. Yeah. And I love the vibe of I think Sunday. I think that was really my best time. We had time to just walk around cuz we went to the American Express Lounge.

Remember? Just kind of chilled in there for a little bit. Yeah. And then we saw the little, little smaller artists, you know, they were kind of doing their thing. And so I was like, man, okay, this is the vibe. I'm, I'm, I'm with everything else. I don't know those bigger Megan, the stallion Harry style type, yeah.

Audiences. Ah, I don't know man. 

Mr. Benja: I did like the, I did like the Danny Elfman. That's right. That, that I was like, okay, that dude really is that weird with, or Yeah, with or without drugs. He's that weird. 

Theo: Yeah. Yeah man. But it was just, you know, first time going and I think I got no tickets, like, you know, right in what early 2021 and I said, Hey, lemme just get it.

Cuz I knew the world was starting to open up. And so I think that was one of the big festivals that kind of popped up now that the pandemic was starting to ease out in 20 20, 22. So so it looks like everybody was like there, you know, excited to be there. And so it was definitely an interesting time.

I would definitely go back. I might even, like I said, I told, I was telling my wife I'll definitely go back. So I went to two big festivals that year, went to that one in Essence Fest and all we know Essence Fest. Yeah. Yeah. So I think Essence Fest definitely kind of, you know, my vibe, but, you know, Coachella had his moment, so I would just say that.

Mr. Benja: Yeah. Yeah. You come come to Essence Fest dressed like you came from Coachella. You might get a, a different reaction from the people there. 

Theo: Absolutely. Absolutely. But yeah. 

Excuse 

Mr. Benja: me, sir, are you okay? Seriously, I wanna talk to you. Are you okay? Why are you here, sir? Excuse me, officer. He might not be okay.

Theo: Oh, speaking of which man probably should have had this in our notes, but did you see there's a Freaknik documentary out now? 

Mr. Benja: Oh, yes, yes, yes. The freaking documentary. Wait, who's putting that on? Is that, 

Theo: I don't know. I, I need to do more research on that. I just heard, you know, rumblings about it and but those that don't know, in the nineties there was this place that all college students heard about.

That you wanted to go. And it was in Atlanta during around springtime called Freaknik. And it's basically bunch of young folks in the streets. Wild out, basically. Wild. Now go look up. This is, and this is bef I'ma before our time. Really? Right, Mr. Benja. And then, you know, we were a college age and we could have went, I never went.

I didn't get a chance to go. And then when I did, when it actually happened to be in Atlanta during the time, that's when they finally shut it down. Yeah. So I was like, man, I missed Freaknik. 

Mr. Benja: Well, what was it? There was like, there was like a string of 'em, right? Because it wasn't just Freaknik, it was Freaknik black black Beach weekend.

And then there were a bunch of other little things that would happen up and down the coast from Orlando, Jacksonville, Atlanta all in the region Southeast and yeah, the, the summer. Activities just got pretty crazy and intense. And I, I, I remember it was like, as, as, as young as I was, it was kind of like, you know, you really want to make the freaknik thing happen.

You can, you know, you gotta get somebody to vouch for you, you gotta get, you know, get a hotel and everything. I'm like, man, you know, I mean, I didn't. Not having access to all, you know, the cars, the credit cards and everything to be able to get your own hotel room. Yeah. It's kinda like you had to navigate carefully.

Yeah. You don't wanna get caught up in nonsense, but you still wanted to get caught up in some nonsense. 

Theo: Yeah. That was a, yeah, man, I, I, yeah, I kind of wish I did more in college like that. Cause I remember some guys in freshman year, they went and, oh, we gotta go to Freaknik. It was like what they did. And I heard stories, man.

I mean, you know, if you're a young guy, you're looking for some interesting things to get into. You were founded at Freaknik? Yeah. Not just music. I'm talking about, you know, everything. So like, you like them girl doing that. I mean, back then, you know, they weren't really twerking. They were doing other things, but it was pretty much pre twerking.

Mr. Benja: Yeah. Do you, you know, the cop, they, there's a, there's a cop from a meme where he's sitting, she, there's this lady in the. In a position. Yes. You know, on a, on a police car and the policeman's over there, just like, you know, ham in hands and just, just teasing. Just do you know, they actually caught it with that dude like 11 years later and suspended him.

Oh. 

Theo: Oh man. They found him, they 

Mr. Benja: found him 11, 11 years later. I was like, oh man. And now that this documentary's coming out, people are just scared. 

Theo: Yeah. These folks are, and I know some of these folks, man, I mean, I know folks who are doctors, lawyers now, you know, big time heads of programs. It's like, oh.

They're like,

and guess what? We have AI technology. You gotta do facial recognition. Hey, 

Mr. Benja: you know what's crazy? On, on those, on the low, if you upload all your pictures to Facebook and. You know, you can put it in a private album if you want, but upload all your pictures of Facebook. It'll go through and find all your friends for you or the people you know, it's like, Hey, is this Darnell?

We think it's Darnell. It'll be some dude in the background, in the window of a restaurant. And you're like, yo, that is Darnell. How'd he get there? And it's pretty amazing. 

Theo: Yes, man, this AI stuff. Man's gonna find all of us somewhere, man. Yeah. So Anyhoo man. Yeah. So that's, that's, that's what's going on with me, man.

Paying attention to the news and music festivals and stuff like that. So, man, do you wanna just get into this today, 

Mr. Benja: ma'am? You know really quickly, I just wanted to ask you, how's your how's your content doing? I know you've been banging out the content. We were talking about it a little bit off, off air, but how's it going?

Theo: Yeah, yeah, man. Good, good, good man. You know, slowly but surely growing the audiences across all platforms, couple hundred followers across all the platforms now. So I'm trying to get into thousands, that five figures, man. So That's the goal. I'm looking to maybe hire on another additional help in social media space to kind of help continue to grow.

Just released a chat, G p t long form video. And so we'll see how that does. But yeah, man. What's long, what's long form for you? Well, you know, eight minutes.

Eight minutes, man. You know, but you know, and I sent you some I think I seen you some training or some updates from Homo Alex Homo. So from your understanding, did he kind of revolutionize his short form content? I mean, is is that why everyone is kind of following his lead in this short form stuff?

Was he the one that kind of put down the map? 

Mr. Benja: I think, I think Gary V did it, but Gary V's. Got lost in the sauce so much because he's got so much other stuff going on. Hormo, he's pretty much focused on. Yeah, well I'm doing the short form content with this, this, and this right now. And I'm not selling you anything.

His little brand is so much more focused. You could easily pick it out. Gotcha. Gary V's. Still the granddaddy of all this, and I don't know if he makes more sense to you now that you're doing 

Theo: it, but Man, he does, man. I mean, it's, it's like you follow, you follow all these guys and it just fallen outta Gary v's.

Playbook. Matter of fact, it's getting to the point where all this, the people don't even care about hashtags anymore. You know, they don't care about when you post. They just say post. You know, sometimes six times in a row, the same video. So it's just amazing how, and then I hear everybody quote Gary v's book what's it called?

Jab, jab, jab, right Hook. Yeah. You know, and it's like, it's like, dude, this the, he was, and so he's just sitting back like, yeah, I told y'all. And so it's amazing how this is all kind of, you know, even the OG Ty Lopez, they're giving people, giving him credit, right. For some of the stuff he did. Right.

With the whole U2 ads and the, and you know, the book thing. So I mean and so on the course, right? So it's kind of like amazing to me. It's like, so that's my question to you, Mr. Bitches. So on my side, I'm ex enjoying exploring this and learning more about this space, but. You know, as we talking about this is like old news, what's the new, new thing that people are trying to look into right In this space?

I don't even 

Mr. Benja: know if I want to drop it here in public just yet. He's got some, I knew you did in public just yet, but, but yeah, I got some, I got some heat. It's a little too early to drop it in public. I got any of this stuff I'll play with for like a little bit, see who's doing the rounds and everything.

And I'll, I'll tell you offline, but yeah, some good 

Theo: stuff is coming guys. We got some offline knowledge. You might have to sign up for some behind the scenes content, man. What's it? This is Nikki. You ever see her Instagram? You know she's behind what's it behind the brand? ET Yeah. Et Yeah, she has a subscription to her ig and I guess that's some behind the scenes, you know, content.

So 

Mr. Benja: yo, if you ever jump in one of her, well, I don't know if she's doing it now that she's got the subscription, but her lives were, oh yeah, she still does them. She still does them. Her lives were fire. Justin p his lives were fired. He's like the, the business side, I guess, of support black college.

Okay. He talks about how he got them on the map and he's like, yeah, he basically ran the bait playbook, by the way. Mm-hmm. Nothing too exciting there, but he's good at the playbook. 

Theo: You mean the Gary V Playbook or 

Mr. Benja: just the No, he ran the ba bathing Ape. Oh, okay. That's, he took, he took what Bathing Ape did for street wear and like Gotcha.

Street culture and said, you know what, we could flip this to the internet era and do it this way. Mm-hmm. So he got, he got on certain people's backs, you know, or, or got certain people to wear his stuff. Ended up getting in two K sports with the support black college thing. Oh, okay. Interesting. And that's, that's what Bathing Eight was doing, but with street wear.

So he was doing it kind of in a different way for the internet era. So he's out there with some, with some good ideas about stuff. As I said, Early Derek Grace is, is the best, but you can't find that anymore. What he's doing now is just weird and interesting and he's playing around so, He's still, I got, still got stuff to learn from him, but he's in some other weird path that I don't, I don't recommend.

But 

Theo: yeah, I mean, what I'm, what I'm seeing with these influencers are doing just, you know, Ryan Pineda right? And his crew. You know, lives are starting to take off, you know, I see more and more lives now and just trying to engage folks and then you know, these challenges that, that, that's been around since Russell Brunson.

But you know, people are trying to do more of that. Cuz it sounds like if you have something to sell, if you can just get people more engaged, longer period, you know, yes, they're look in the short form to kinda get excited, but if they really wanna know you, they go down a rat hole, which is an hour long POD podcast, or, you know, a three day.

Challenge, you know I know what's his name? Grant Cardone had one recently. Right? Yeah. So that kind of stuff is what's, you know, getting people kind of, you know, excited about you and your brand for like, oh, you know, and I can sense that cuz even when you go to events, I was at the Rap Panada event, it's like they don't sell you anything, but they what they kind of do.

But, you know, it's just such an environment. It was just like, oh, you know, I just gotta buy 

Mr. Benja: it. Yeah. That's your access card to the next level. And you know, at everybody go back and listen to our, our piece on, you know, how nothing is new with this stuff. We'll take, we'll take you back to Zig Zeigler and, you know, young Tony Robinson.

The The timeshare salesman. It's all, it's all, it's all of new play on the same play. Yeah. You know, and 

Theo: I, I can't remember the guy's name, Flanagan, I think his name. I got his book on Flanagan. I've never heard of this guy. Yeah. Shit, I don't have it with me. It's, he, he, he was the one that created the perfect webinar and yeah, he talks about like how you.

Create this environment in a webinar, you pretty much are breaking down their pre preconceived notions, fault solving for their objections before they even say them. Doing things like proving your authority, you know, maybe having pictures of you hanging with Tony Robbins in the picture, you know?

Mm-hmm. Just proving all these things you're doing to kind of psychologically get people to say yes at the end of the webinar. And so he kind of create, that's what, and he was kind of very useful, right? During the pandemic, cause that's people way people were selling. So he kind of blew up a little bit.

But again, you know, it's just really about like creating these environments for people to, to to, to know you and get to know you better. And so, you know, podcasts like this is important so people know who we are. Yeah. At the end of the day, they don't follow companies, they follow people. So I'm excited.

Mr. Benja: That's, that's a good little takeaway for our little discussion here. I like that. Follow people, not whatever else. 

Theo: Yeah, follow people in our company. So that's what it is, man. I love it. 

Mr. Benja: All right, let's get to it with story number one. Netflix is getting the side eye over a black Cleopatra. At least that's the headline.

So what's going on? Netflix has a new trailer coming out produced by Jada Pinkett Smith. I'm gonna go ahead and throw that out there, up front. And she's got this, she's got this series where every season she focuses on some woman and their historical contributions their historical legacy, and just the basic story behind this time she's going in with Cleopatra, but with a decidedly black angle.

And the timing of this might not be the greatest for Netflix. What are you hearing about this deal? 

Theo: Man, to be honest with you, I just heard about it from you. This is the first I'm hearing about this. Oh, okay. But I will say this definitely that's controversial about, you know, what, you know, who's portraying her Right.

Is a, you know black woman out of England who's the actress is gonna kind of portray Cleopatra in this series. And, you know, a lot of Egyptians are, are not happy about that. And, you know, I, I. One take I have on this like years ago, man, I mean I'm talking about like nineties when I was in high school, back, even in California, you know, I didn't really think of Egyptians as like, you know, whole separate culture and all this other thing, but it was like all of a sudden it was like literally like overnight.

I just saw like a lot of folks I knew, they were like, oh yeah, we're Egyptians now. And it became like this big thing. No, I'm serious. It was literally no, I remember about where wearing 

Mr. Benja: the inks and stuff. Yeah, but it was just like a lot of the hieroglyphic. Yeah, 

Theo: like in the nineties even. So it was like, then it was like, okay, especially if you grew up in a place like diverse, you know, California or New York, you know, you just saw like.

You know, they identify as this. And I was like, wow, okay. I guess there, there's this, this thing, you know? And now we all know, you know, Egypt isn't the continent of Africa, but you know, they want to kind of differentiate themselves, like, hey, this is our country. This is what we represent, so, which is fine.

So I just say that to say, yes, they're very strong, you know you know, cultural group and you know, if they feel that they're not being represented well then yeah, they're gonna speak up. So, I mean, I get that part, you know, now we're seeing that with other communities, you know, stepping up. Hey, you know, like there was a, a movie called Aloha, and it started Bradley Cooper and I think it was what's her name?

I can't remember her name right now. She played Gwen, Stacy and one of the Spider-Man's okay. You know her name, man, it's just, it slips my tongue right now. But she was in La La Land Emma Stone. Okay. Okay. She played a character who was originally Asian and. The internet blew up, was pissed about that.

So, and then also, you know, Scarlet Johansen, you know, playing ghosts in the Shell. So this whole kind of, you know, which, you know, is a Japanese ma ma is it? Anime. Yeah. But so it's like this is not something that's, you know, a lot of you know, cultural groups wanna be represented well and by, you know, they wanna see themselves displayed in Hollywood.

There was these even controversial on the what's the movie? In The Heights? I don't know if you saw that. Lin Manuel version, you know, TV movie version. What he did in, in okay, his first play. And a lot of dark Skin Dominicans were upset cuz they're like, wait a minute, there's not enough us represented, you know, in this, this area of, you know, the heights, you know, in, in, in, in New York.

And so, so yeah man, it's, it's, it's deep man. So I, I see why it could cut this way. 

Mr. Benja: Yeah, there's a lot of on on, on the larger. You know, looking at it from a larger perspective, representation is very important. At least making sure that you're represented correctly, because when you don't, you're, you're getting in the territory of appropriation.

You're getting in the territory of erasure redefined narratives and what's the word I'm looking for? There's a phrase I can't, I don't know why it's not coming to me right now. But you're a revising history, you know? Mm-hmm. Getting into revisionist history mm-hmm. And telling the history the way you want to.

So this is where a lot of the outrage is coming from. It's interesting that it's coming up right now with, with this Cleopatra, because it's almost like a, you know, a, a reverse of what we've seen lately, you know, instead of, well, this person was black. A lot of the backlash is coming from like, no, Cleopatra was Greek, you know, she was from the Tmeic era and blah, blah, blah.

And. Dude, I watched so many people break down the history and the timelines. This is the seventh Cleopatra, by the way. So if you go down this rabbit hole, be prepared to become a I don't even know what the, you know, a, a master of North African Greek geology and anthropology, genealogy. It gets deep because I listened to this one, one girl, she was explaining the line lineage for like two and a half hours.

I kept skipping through. I was like going through like, wow, she's really breaking it down at the very end, she says, like this one little sentence. So, so Cleopatra was 25% Greek slash Arab slash Persian, and we don't know where the other 75% of her lineage came from. So, based on what I know, I'm gonna say it was European.

So yes, she was white. I was like, what? 5%, you know, so there's a lot of, well put it this way you know, I won't, I won't make that statement of, you know, she was quote unquote black, just flat out. There's a lot that goes into that statement and I, I, we don't have time for it here. Yeah. But clearly to me, at least not white is the answer.

But the white populace is very upset about this right 

Theo: now. Well, thank you for listening to a two and a half hour podcast on, on, on that and for us, so we didn't have to, so, so I hope you didn't have to say, I could have done something better with that time, but, you know, it's, it's definitely good to go through those deep dives and figure that out.

But you know what, this is not the only thing Netflix is in trouble for, man. Netflix isn't getting a little hot water or some other controversial things that happened recently. Have you watched the reality show? Love is Blind. 

Mr. Benja: No, I have 

Theo: not. Conceit very simple. And the reason why I kind of got into this show is during the pandemic and the conceit is, you know, and I had nothing else to watch, and it was a new kind of show.

I said, what's this about? The conceit is imagine you fall in love with someone sight unseen. Yeah. And then you finally get revealed, you know, could you fall in love with someone just, you know, based on their personality, who they are. And then if the looks don't match, you know, what your perceived notion would you still, you know, marry them and be with them.

Right, right. And so first season was definitely eye-opening to watch, and it was interesting, and it kind of reminded me of those back in the day when you just be on the phone all night with your girl, or, you know, trying to talk to somebody. Yeah, yeah. Hey, you sleep? No, I'm not sleep. Yeah. What about you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So right, right. And so that's kind of what the appeal to me's like. Oh, and this is like for the next generation, which let's be honest, we, we talked about, you know, influencers, Instagram, all that stuff. It's all about looks now. Right. You know what people look like. How's it, how they. Are they attracted to you first and then right, right.

Sliding the dms. So that's what's the interesting to see. So the first season you had like two marriages and they're still married to the, today out of the five couples that you know connected. So they had second season, third season. So me and my wife have been watching pretty consistently. Okay. But we, it is gone down to quality, we think, because it's more about pride.

Influencers want to, cuz obviously you go on these shows, right? In reality shows you become famous now or Instagram famous. And so, so now we do feel that the qualities down, but they had a controversial here recently where Netflix experiment with these live type of shows. You know, they did Quick Rock, Chris Rock Special they're gonna do a live reunion, right?

So this is a reality show, okay? You ever know anything about reality shows you come for the reunions because that's when all the, the stuff, you know, flab bear turn, the shit hits the fam man. People are ready to fight. They, if you ever, if you ever get immersed into the real house wise, You know, ecosystem.

That's what you looking for, the reunion specials, because, you know, and then cause what was doubly important, not just because the show aired, but they saw the show air and now they've seen all the reaction Oh yeah. To how they were portrayed the show. At first, when you film it, you probably don't think about this and just being me, having fun.

And then now the show's out and you see how they cut you and they Oh, you're the villain. I said, I, I was a villain. 

Mr. Benja: You, you've had, you've had months to answer that question. That floats in your head, I should have said this, or maybe I should have. You've had months to think about it. Reunion comes up and it's like, you gotta get it out.

Oh, I get it. Yeah. And 

Theo: now they're fighting and so they were gonna show this reunion alive, which is awesome. But the technology crapped out. People were sitting there on baited breath waiting to see this reunion and it's like, it was showing, and then it dropped out for 75 minutes and people were like, you know, it blew up on Twitter.

And so a lot of folks were upset about that. And so I think. You know, Netflix is getting a little hot water because can they get the technology right. And even to Chris Rock. I don't know if you saw that. It, it had little issues there too. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I saw it live well, didn't I see it live? I can't recall.

I think I did. And you know, it had a little burp here and there, but it was, it would, okay. But I think Netflix is, you know, trying to figure this out. So yeah, Netflix is going through some issues 

Mr. Benja: right now. You know, this is, this is people trying stuff and I can't, as a creator, I can't knock 'em for that.

You know, people trying stuff, you know, I guess on the business side it's a little shaky. It's like, you know, you kind of look at 'em and like, what are you doing? What are you doing, dude? You know, you're trying all this stuff and you're not really together with it all. You know, who is your audience? Right now a lot of people are criticizing Netflix for, in general, just being a little bit too woke.

And if you look at some of the content, I, I start watching it and I'm like, yo, what the hell is this? It is a bit. I don't wanna say one-sided, but it is, it is a little bit like they're trying to cater to that market, so. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And when you, when you feel like someone's catering a little too much, it's a little turn off to me, it didn't feel as natural as it should.

I guess that's what I'm saying. Well, I'll just 

Theo: say this. So Netflix a year ago was at three 80 in stock. Three $80 roughly in stock. Okay. I don't, if remember it happened a year ago, but then they had what they called the great Netflix correction, where they were saying, stream money and it's too expensive and we don't know, you know, we're, we're struggling here.

And that's when everybody's said, oh crap, this streaming strategy basically put everything out there and everybody downloads it. It, it is not gonna work for the long term. And so Netflix stock got hammered. I think we talked about that on the pod like a year ago. Yeah. We'll do, we'll do 

Mr. Benja: a streaming 

Theo: update.

Yeah. So what happened is it got down to, you know It dropped pretty bad, but you know, the hits keep coming. So they had, you know, stranger Things. They had what's the one Wednesday, you know, this Love is Blind, you know, Chris Rock? Guess where their stock is at today? What's that? 3 45. So they're pretty much back to where they were a year ago.

So, so, so they're, they're going, they're going back up. Now, granted, the hire was in the 600 s, but the, the, the important point there is that yes, they had a, a hit, I mean, with their stock and evaluation and stuff, because the overall industry is, you know, souring on streaming services, but Netflix pivoted and so they have, you know, more content, more quality content like beef, for instance.

I, I said, I couldn't believe it was on. Netflix. It's, it's a good show. Yeah. I'm watching this other show called the American what's it called? The American Diplomat or something to that, the diplomat. It's starring Carrie Russell. Great show. Yeah. I'm like, this is on Netflix. So their, their qualities creeping up.

They're doing live content to your point, and they're doing what's it called? Ads share. And they're seeing that they can make break even because now they're getting money from two sources, right? Yeah. Ad people pay less money, so they're still getting monthly fees, plus they're getting ad revenue, so they're looking at more money that way.

So, so like I said, Netflix is, is, is sucking, but not really from a profitability standpoint. 

Mr. Benja: Well, we'll, we'll see what they end up doing. And thankfully I haven't heard back about the rumor that Squid Game is going to have an American version done for it, so I don't think we need that. But you got it.

Yeah. Netflix is doing things, and this Cleopatra episode is the latest in, in, in their. I don't wanna say mess up because if you're gonna do it, do it. That's fine. Whatever. But I'm, we're just talking about from the business point of view, how they're courting their audience and what kind of brand are they building.

Very interesting. Yeah, and if anybody has anything to say about Cleopatra's race please jump in the comments. We'd we'd like to laugh and we wanna see your two and a half hour video.

Yeah. I, I clearly think she falls somewhere in the middle. We'll, we'll see how this goes. Oh, by the way, it's not a, it's not a serious show. It's a docudrama. So they're doing one of those. That's why people are taking it this seriously with rewriting history, because it's more about like, like 

Theo: the history channel where they, you know, show like reenactments of things, you know?

Yes, exactly. And they got these actors, they never say anything. They may say one line, the whole episode, but they're just looking off into the distance. Thinking while the, the narrator is saying, you know, certain 

Mr. Benja: things. One, brilliant, well, one brilliant idea would change the, the fruit snack industry for decades.

Theo: Exactly like that. All 

Mr. Benja: right. All right. That's that one. And another quick one, story number two, Buzzfeed is shutting down their news division and stock just tanked because of it. Oh man. You ever, you ever, do you care about Buzzfeed? Theo? 

Theo: You know, I was gonna ask you the same thing, Mr. Benja. I mean, Buzzfeed was kind of like first out the gate that tried to create an internet empire, right?

Yeah. When it first kind of came out there I was, I did some, you know, look down. I mean, I kind of knew of them, but I did know of 'em, right? It wasn't one of those things that sites I went to when they kind of first broke into the scene. You know, I think, you know, we all saw them for the, the online quizzes and listicles pop culture articles.

You know Quentin Brunson, that's where she got her start. You know who's on Abbott Elementary, right? Big star now. She did all these witty videos. I think there was a lot of millennials. They did like little videos. I'm like, how you and your boyfriend still loves you, or what a pack when you on a two day vacation, you know, this little, remember those videos back in the game you got 

Mr. Benja: Monday?

That was the, that was the one that got her the meme that made her famous, 

Theo: I guess. Well, yeah, well before that, that was like, you know, she did it just on her own. Right. But she, because of that, you're right. It was the girlfriend that, you know, didn't, you know, You can't take anywhere, right? Or didn't have any money.

But then she became, she became part of this crew of just actors. They would do all these, these, these videos, right? And that's back in the day when, you know, everybody's doing web, web episodes. I mean, people are still doing web episodes, but it was like that was a thing to do, right? If you were actors, I can't, I can't get a gig.

I gotta do my own thing. And so they did weather episodes, you know, that's how Issa Rae got put on of Awkward Black Girl. And so Buzzfeed did the same thing, but they did it in their whole format, which is like that clickbait thing. You know, you go to the site, they got eyeballs because they would ask you questions or put a list.

And so you gotta keep clicking the look through all the different lists. And so the videos are the same way. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I mean, I knew of him. And did you know the ceo, you know, his, who his brother-in-law is? No. Yeah, Jonah Perretti, he's Mel married to Chelsea Perretti, and she's an actress, and she's married to Jordan Peele.

Oh, so that's his brother-in-law. Yeah. So small world. 

Mr. Benja: Yeah. Buzzfeed showed up. They were doing their, their thing making, making list, making little things you could share and pass around, you know, 10, 10 ways you can use spaghetti to, to kill somebody. And it's like, what, okay, I'll re I'll look through this Buzzfeed, you know, and they, they quickly became pretty good at doing internet stuff, just being the internet links that got passed around.

They they started a news division and the news division was actually highly rated. By journalists. Journalists were like, oh, these Buzzfeed guys are actually doing good stuff. They're, they're breaking news, they're finding things out. They've got all these inroads. They can shuffle information to people very quickly.

This is pretty solid. But apparently that wasn't good enough, and it was starting to tank a little while ago. They announced that they were gonna do AI news or AI stories, and they're like, listen, we're, we're pretty much firing everybody in there and we're just gonna run AI stories. The stock actually jumped a little bit right after that.

Mm-hmm. And people were all excited, but then that didn't last too long because tire news divisions getting shut down. So when I went and looked at this buzzfeed's highest stock price was $10 in March of 2021. As of two years later, almost, almost to the day their stock price is 75 cents. So $10 to 75 cents.

Theo: Yeah, that's about right. I mean, look, I think they just never knew how to translate this into the new version. Influencers you know, using Instagram to connect with people. TikTok, TikTok, it was like they were good for the, let me. Know, pre-mobile kind of space and then, you know, maybe some mobile with some of the videos they were doing and YouTube stuff that kind of took off in oh five, in oh six.

But it was like, they never could kind of translate that into kind of like this new model where, where, you know, people were, you know, using in you know, Instagram and other ways to kind of connect with people. And so you know, so that's the thing, man. But they had a shot man. You know, that just shows you, it's just like, you know, you have a great idea of business, man.

That's why I love it, man. Just when you think it's good, you think everything's rolling. All, all, yeah. Things change. I mean, shoot, mark Zuckerberg, he had to change. Remember Facebook was all about this, you know, using computers, but now they went to mobile and they had to pivot pretty quickly, right?

That's why they bought Instagram. Or even who was it? Microsoft, back in the day, remember the internet became a big thing when we saw Netscape back in the day and Microsoft said, oh, we gotta get on the internet. So they came over Internet Exploder, I mean Explorer. No, they 

Mr. Benja: had Right Internet 

Theo: Exploder, which, which gave you instant access every time you bought the OS for, for Microsoft.

So, yeah, so, so you see, you know, big companies do it too, man. I mean, we're, we're gonna talk about Google. They're doing the same thing. They gotta pivot. And so Buzzfeed just never knew how to pivot, man. And that's probably why they, 

Mr. Benja: they suck. I, I thought they would've, and maybe I just haven't looked hard enough because I, I, I really don't follow Buzzfeed and their actions too much.

Being that they're falling off and no one cares about somebody falling off, but. I thought they would get like, acquired by somebody. They're like, Hey, you know, we can roll this out. Like in fact, I thought somebody like Facebook might acquire 'em and like, look, we're just gonna run, you know, you're, you're watching your stories and all of a sudden it's like buzzfeed story in your feed or your reels or whatever that could work.

Like, you know, Vox Media bought now this, who runs those really quick little documentaries and all that. So I don't know. You know, they were doing good and now they're not. So, dunno what else to say about that, but say on your toes, if you're running this internet thing. 

Theo: Yeah. And then they were doing stupid stuff like buying HuffPost, Huff flipping post.

Remember that site I used to go there all the time mm-hmm. Of post and, you know, it's just, I mean, I don't know, man, these old school internet media, man, it's like if you doing just man, and I think, you know, some, some of these companies do well because they, they, they figured out you know, how to pivot.

I mean, I'm thinking about like box media, you know, I think they kind of went down a, a line of like creating these media superstars like Ezra Klein, right? Or yeah, yeah. What's her name? The, the, the one I listened to shoot, I'm drawing a blank. She, she, she's on Pivot at Kara Switzer.

She came from there. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, they're not celebrities per se, but they're like business celebrities, right. And so they put in forefront so people follow them and then they bring clout with, you know, V Media. Or, you know, you think about New York Times, you know, they, they're, you know, obviously they just have a brand of quality, but what they've done was they create, you know, they bought a games division Right.

To kind of keep you involved. You know, they bought Wordle, right? Yeah. And they keep you involved in their ecosystem. Oh, by the way, why are you playing this game? Check out this hard hearing article on, you know, child abduction, right? It's like, oh, crap. But, okay. 

Mr. Benja: Yeah. So they're, yeah. As, as I said a couple episodes ago, they're amazingly present for being old school.

You know, I mean, new that New York Times cooking Instagram, it's got millions of followers and everybody's in there just in the comments like, dude, I don't know why they're doing it with ricotta cheese. That's disgusting. What you need to do is, and I'm like, yo, this, this whole cookie, New York Times cooking is just in there killing it.

So, man, that's 

Theo: just one little division. So, man, my mind is blown, man. What they did was create a community man, and we, I've read this from Russell Brunson from what's his name, Gary v. You know, Facebook groups, right? You had these groups of folks, you know, and, and they just c collaborate and they're doing all this stuff without you even involved.

And that's what they did. They created a community of cook, you know, people who love to cook, people who like to see movies, and now they're interacting. And so that keeps them on the site. So they, they, New York Times did that really well. So in addition to, And they, and they probably knew what their users like, so that's why they bought war, right?

They, because they're in that community, they probably understood what their demands were. So they knew what to buy for that community to keep them active. So, so like I said, we talked about, you know, using influencers, you know, like box media or creating community and Buzzfeed just never did that. And so, you know, I blamed the C E O I mean, you know, that's what your job is, man.

If you can't Yep. Can't move at the town. I mean, that's what I have to do. I mean, I have a company, I'm always like, man, we got, we gotta keep moving, man. Can't, you can't stay in the same spot, man. Cuz this thing man, that the inner man people will tear you apart, man. When time wait for no one, man, you got, you gotta move man.

And I don't know man, some people, and if you don't wanna move, I get that part then to your point, they should have probably sold, you know, if the CEO's like, I'm done, I'll have you more ideas. Yeah. Then you gotta go. So anyway. 

Mr. Benja: Yep. Speaking of making new changes and doing new things, we got one from Google and this is going to be story number three.

Google is calling for a radical change to search, and that means everybody's gonna be changing up their search. I don't know, Theo Google's doing some things. They got barred coming out and they have this new article that just came out saying they're devising a quote, radical search changes to beat back AI rivals.

This is from the New York Times here. So yeah, they're trying to protect their core business and, you know, everybody knows the core business is serious with a bunch of changes, including updates to a search engines and plans for an all new one. What do you think about this? 

Theo: I mean, yeah, man, we, we talked about this.

You know, Google makes billions of dollars on search. I mean, you know, we all. Go to Google to search for things. But we talked about this on our, our, our episode. Maybe we'll put that a link or something. But I, I think, you know, search sucks. I mean, we talked about that. You, you, yeah. If I search something like a, a, a keyword word, like vacation, how many damn ads, I'm gonna get a side on the top, you know, interjected in, you know, and most in 

Mr. Benja: local search.

Yeah. And mo and most of the real links that you get are just somebody typing up a blog post to get, you know, affiliate revenue or they're, they're basically typing up an ad in the blog. It's like, you know, 10 reasons why you should go to, you know, yes. You know, Barba. And it's like some guy's like, hi. Here's 10 reasons why you should go to Barumba.

So you can buy Coca-Cola, say you can order this. So you can, you're like, wait, what is this? Are you, yeah, 

Theo: by the way, click this link. You know, to, so that's, I mean, that still has some value, you know, people are still making money off SEO and, and other things, but, and ad revenue, you know, because basically that gets into intent if people are, you know, actively searching for it.

You know, like for instance, my industry kind of blew up remote patient monitoring. And it was like one of those things that kind of blew up overnight. I started doing Google AdWords for it. I got all these requests and stuff because people are looking for it, and it's basically a way for doctors to get compensated using technology.

And I was like, wow, man, this thing is taking off. But then the Google Ads spin became more and more expensive. I was like, I can't. Right, right. And so Google Ads was like, you know, A way for folks to kind of get top of search is, is I, I liken it too. And I got this from Russell Brunson. He's like it's like liken it to you know, you go into Yellow Pages back in the day, right?

You, you're intentionally looking for something and then next to your name of like, I'm looking for a hammer. You know, ACE Hardware store. Oh, it's Lowe's. There's, you know, this, there's that. So now you got lists and that, but now you know, shoppers are kind of price comparing you, so Google, you know, they figured that out pretty quickly to creating this, this ecosystem around ad, but it sucks.

And so they realized that when op, when Chat G P T came out, That's a way better way because now it's giving you, you know, some answers to something you really wanna know about as opposed to what someone's trying to influence you to know about. And that's, that's killing a business. And really, and what's, what's driving this too recently is there's 3 billion at stake for Google because Samsung for the first time ever, which is you, Samsung, Google device, it's considered replacing Google's search engine.

Well, Microsoft's bing as a default engine, 

Mr. Benja: so, oh my God. Finally, I'm vindicated 

Theo: Bing will be, your default browser is not yet official in Samsung and that's worth 3 billion in contract 3 billion contract to Google. But more importantly, there's a 20 billion contract from Apple that's on the table as well.

So, you know, that's really what's, what's got. Yes, they saw that when Chad g p t got, you know, blew up in December, but now they really. Feeling the pressure. And so that's why they're going all in on this AI because they have to man, their core business is, is at stake. 

Mr. Benja: Yeah. And it looks like, you know, from, from just standing back and kind of looking at it, you know, this is the first major change we've seen in search since Google.

Well, no, not even Google was released since search was invented back in, well, Google came out in 98, right? Mm-hmm. Search was invented. And what do you wanna say? I don't know, 94. You know, I remember coming outta, remember getting into college and as we said, with like N Cs a mosaic and all that, there was just the basic, there was just the basic search and it gave you a list of links.

I 

Theo: remember Netscape, man, we were in your room. Yeah. Looking at Netscape. And when it republic, we were just like, oh wow, this is blowing our mind. So that one had to be what, 95? Yeah. 96. But yeah. 

Mr. Benja: Yeah, so we're talking like 30 years and you're talking about technology and it fundamentally hasn't changed. So what does it change into?

I got a shout out Gary V once again. And, and I got this link. I'll send it out if I need to, but he basically says, search is going to become, you know, however you talk. You know, because you're not trying to search for something, you just have a question on your mind. Like, Hey, how can I do this? What's the answer?

Or, how can I get to this? Alexa, Siri, Cortana. Those are all steps in the direction of getting to something like a chat, G p T, and I don't know, I don't know if people have, you know, contemplated and soaked in the fact that this new powerful AI is called chat, g p t. It's literally meant to be a kind of discussion with a computer or an information base, or quote unquote ai, whatever you want to classify that as.

But think about Star Treks. Computer, the hollow deck. You know, they went in computer, give me this, give me that. Let me have this. How does this work? Could you explain to me? Could you show me? That's a way more natural and way more advanced thing and we're finally getting around to seeing it. And Google's gotta catch 

Theo: up.

Yeah, I mean chat, I mean, you know, I give it to open AI and Sam Altman, those guys, they just fundamentally understood how people interface with computers. I mean, it was almost like magical for the first time ever. You, whatever you were thinking about it, didn't he? And Hall didn't point you to something you had, you know, it's always like a, a thing to get to the thing, right?

Yeah. Now this is like, Oh, I could type anything and it would give me a response back. And it was just like instantaneous and, you know, somewhat correct. Didn't have to be a hundred percent correct. Yeah. But it was, you know, correct appearing. And that's the other challenge, you know, now we're feeling like these things are correct with, we already talked about there's issues with hallucination and things like that with the AI tools.

But now that we feel it, it gives you more confidence. It's almost like, cuz let's say I ask you a question about a topic and you, he and Hawn or whatever, I'm not gonna believe anything you say after that. But if I give you a question about, you know, like the video game industry and you just like, oh yeah, and this and this, this and this.

There's something about speed that gives you more confidence. Right? And I think that's the thing that they're giving us and, and the fact they give us and the direct answer. So speed and directness, I think. Convey confidence, and that's why that tool took off. So I'm, I'm looking at that, man, I gotta write that down.

Speed. And, and the directness, it gives you more confidence because I think that is something that really why chat chip took off. I mean, and that's even a real world if someone comes up to you. That's why Confidence Man, always win. There's fast, there's, it speaks fast and a direct look. This is what we're gonna do.

You like soap, right? Yes, I know you do. So this is what you're gonna get for soap. Do you like to be clean? I know you don't, you don't like to be dirty, right? This is what we're gonna buy. Soap is on 2 99. Here you go. Boom. You like, oh, snap. 

Mr. Benja: Yeah. Sounds like a fast talking car salesman. All right, I, I'm done with that one because we got two more AI stories basically.

If you got any more on that, no, we can keep it moving, man. Yeah, just keep a watch out for Google and see what happens. Because if you don't keep a watch out, you're gonna get hit by something like story number four. You're gonna have an ai, Drake an AI weekend. Make the top of the charts. What this kind of, I don't wanna say blew people's minds, but everybody stopped and turned around and said, huh, this is where we are right now.

So basically what happened is this guy, he makes an AI song with lyrics, with the voice, with the music. That all sounds like what Drake and the Weekend would've made. Calls it hard on my sleeve and sets off industry alarm bells because it shot to the top of the charts. YouTube TikTok. Yes, TikTok has actual music charts now if you don't know that you're slipping.

Spotify in a couple other places. YouTube got all these views very quickly. Drake didn't see any money off of it. The weekend didn't see any money off of it. Universal Music Group and I, I forgot what the other group in there was, was looking for it, but none of them got any money. So the lawyers came in, started banging on the door, and it's no more fun than games anymore cuz you know, people were doing little projects here and there, but this one actually shot to the charts so they banged on the door and said, Hey y'all we haven't worked out all the legal stuff, but I got a, I got a van full of lawyers downstairs.

Just, just turn it off right now. Just, just cut it. And all the searches, they all did. They're like, you know what, we're not about to fight with the music industry and copyright. We're, we're pulling outta this game for now. Crazy stuff. Huh? 

Theo: Man, this is very interesting precedent we're setting here. I mean, there's so many different ways we can go down this story.

I mean, definitely we talked about this AI cannibalization of like real artists material right? And repurposing it. And so taking money outta the miles of artists. So now you going into the big artists, you see what happens. So I still think AI's still gonna be cannibalizing, but probably smarter artists that don't have, or smaller artists that don't have the, the reach, I mean, you know of Yeah.

You know, r e r Grande or the folks, so that, that's, I think you saw the power there of what, what happens when you have a big following that they can't f with you? You know, the ai Yes. The, the technology's there to do this, but you know, now, you know, technology, just like life will always find a way. So I'm sure we'll probably see some bootleg Drake songs out there with ai.

Yeah. But You know, I think that's, that's the interesting story too. And then, go ahead. 

Mr. Benja: Well, I was about to say, let me throw this twist in there. You said technology, like life always finds a way. How about technology is life? Okay, so if technology is life and it's starting to outpace us,

we started to get into that singularity and evolution talk. Man, it starts getting crazy. I mean, think about it. If we want our music and we want, like what? Oh, music. It's the language of emotion and, you know it's a uniquely human thing. It's like, yeah, that's, see that song? That's really good. That's ai.

Oh, it's still really good though. I'm just gonna bop it anyway. It's just a weird case, right? Mm-hmm. 

Theo: Mm-hmm. Well, you know, the a the avatars, the virtual avatars are gonna be a big thing. I mean, I can see my kids as they grow up. Yes, they're Washingtons influencers, but what's the best influencers? Someone that can be on video 24 7, like a max headroom.

I could absolutely see an avatar just blow the F up on YouTube and that's all. People watch bigger than Mr. Beast cuz he can do things the avatar could do be on 24 7 and never stop. And so that's the world we're getting to where it comes to, you know, actually creating life that a virtual life form, even before, you know, this singularity, in my opinion.

I think that's where it can go to because why couldn't you, you can do that right now with image. I mean I think I was gonna try to play with this too. There's some software now you could just create a digital image of yourself and say different things. Mm-hmm. And so why couldn't you create a, a avatar?

That people like and appeal and then have it do crazy things in the virtual world that, and most people think video's life anyway. So that would, I think that would happen before the singularity. And that's gonna be, that's gonna be a game changer when that happens. Our first real life virtual celebrity.

Yeah. 

Mr. Benja: I have a question. Okay. Have you, have you ever slipped up and done something very human with a software or ai? Like for example, I just was doing my thing and asked Siri a question after Siri was done, I hit the button again and said, thank you. Have you ever told 

Theo: Siri? Thank you. Well, yeah, Amazon, you know, I mean was Alexa, you know?

Yeah. When it, back in the day. Yeah. When I used to use it a lot more. Yeah. And that's another thing, Amazon had a. Prime position too, man, they could have took it over. So I just think about the business opportunities that everybody just effed up, man. I mean, this chat, G P T came out nowhere every, you know, you had Siri, you had Amazon, you had Facebook, Google, everybody was, you know, they had the knowledge and technology.

They just didn't do it. And now you see what happens. Now they're all like,

we gotta run. We gotta make this happen.

So it's, yeah, no, exactly. Exactly. This is what's happening when you don't, you know, deploy things that you have and you try to slow roll technology. Technology is life, technology makes a way. And so open AI just took advantage. I mean, we, I talked about on my you know, small plug on my, on my short form video, I talked about that.

It's like, man, transformer gender. Was it pre-trained chat, g p t during the pre-trained transformer, transformer came from Google. How do you communicate in these large language models? It came from Google and Google didn't do crap with it. And so that's where we are. 

Mr. Benja: Google's notorious for that, by the way.

I'm not gonna get into it now, but they be dropping the ball all the time, man. I mean, just all the time. Yeah. I believe that if, if you didn't know yeah, so I don't have much more to say on that except keep an eye out on artistry, creativity and these music media companies coming in and really dictating how copyright and intellectual property laws can be applied to your influencers.

Your A, Hey, I didn't think about that, but they're in a key position to really formulate like, Hey, here's how influencers can license out their likeness. The music movie, TV industries could really be the people to corral all that energy and all that. You know, all this growth that's happening in the influencer space back under their umbrella.

So, mm. I 

Theo: gotta look into that. Yeah, that's a good point. Kind like you had the studio system back in the day where Right, right. They would have, you know, they make their artists, right? Mm-hmm. And they're like, oh, here's cart, cart gable, and stuff like that, so, Ooh, that'd be scary. Then the, the industry is like, you know, basically just creating stars for you, which it's not like what's happening now.

Somewhat. Some people they do push. I'm like, I don't know if they're gonna make it, man. You even see that they all of a sudden somebody's like hot for a minute. I mean, we talked about John, the majors. It's just like, you know, they may be some, he may not be as hot anymore, do some other issues or mm-hmm. Anna Day Armes, is that how you say Armes?

You know, they're really pushing her. But I don't see it. I know she did that Maryland thing, a very, very beautiful woman, but I don't know, you know, just, there's something there. It's, I don't, it is missing for me for like a movie star type person, but But yeah, we'll see. 

Mr. Benja: Yep. And speaking of stars, we got one more, and this is gonna make story number five.

This is our Elon watch and don't do yes. Elon Musk and SpaceX are in the news again because a SpaceX spaceship blew up. So, and guess what? The SpaceX people were actually, you know, happy about it. They were, they were all excited about the spaceship blowing up, and Elon was, you know, shouting the praises. And people were like, well, why is this so exciting?

Why, why are you happy that a spaceship blew up? It's actually not a big problem for these things to go wrong and do what it did. But they were surprised that they learned as much as they did, that they advanced as much as they did. And now they actually have kind of a roadmap to have this huge. Starship make its way to Mars.

It's like they're really like, no, no, no. We're a lot closer than we were before this thing blew up. So, What do you know? Elon's still Elon's still in the mix. You know, pat himself in the 

Theo: back, right? Yeah. Elon's still Elon and ran. I mean, you know, we kind of lost a thread with Elon with the Twitter debacle and you know, him making fun of folks and, and being on boats and all his other crap, hooking fat on boats.

But, you know, this dude, I mean, you know, his claim to fame was he was going to bars, that was his brand. And then he started talking about AI and everything. You know, the AI stuff is starting to bear out so much that he's behind the scenes creating his own AI company cuz he was an original founder of Open ai, but they broke apart and all this other stuff.

So he's trying to create his own kind of non woke version of ai, right. If you will. But yeah, Elon is still Elon man. He's still going. Matter of fact, there's this article that said, okay, in the span of 24 hours, He stripped celebrities, journalists and other high profile users of their free legacy verification on Twitter.

So basically that blue check mark, he promised that the electric car maker Tesla would start chasing sales volume at the expense of profitability. And he launched, like you said, that giant space rocket all in 24 hours. So he's running like three companies, you know, high levels dealing with all this stuff.

I mean, you know, he's not personally dealing with me. Yeah. What I'm learning more is like, you gotta delegate. You have, you know, lieutenants who kind of run everything and you just come in just soop in every now and then. Like, okay, what's going on? Okay, you got it. And so, but that's amazing to kind of be doing something such a high level.

So so we'll see. I mean, you know, One thing I did wanna put, here's a quote I thought that was kind of interesting. When he originally created spec, SpaceX and Tesla, he felt they had 10% chance of success. Hmm. But he said, you know, but if the odds, if you can probably get them in your favor, you should make as many decisions as possible within the bounds of what is executable.

So this is like being the house in Vegas. Probability is the most powerful force in the universe, which is why the house always wins, be the house. So, you know, he's looking at ways to kind of create as meaning, you know, favorable outcomes for him. Cuz you'll see sometimes I think he'll take stuff from Tesla and put into SpaceX, right.

Or Yeah. You know, neural net right. He created right to kind of figure out how to use that for some of the AI stuff. So I think, you know, he's trying to stack the probabilities in his favor and so far it's kind of working so, Definitely our most interesting billionaire. He's not the the richest man in the world anymore thanks to his fullheartedly decision to buy to Twitter.

But you know, he'll be okay. 

Mr. Benja: Yeah. Well, the, the jury's still out on exactly what's going to happen with Twitter. He's, he's definitely got bigger aspirations than just managing Twitter and arguing with people over Donald Trump much more. 

Theo: Does he, does he though? 

Mr. Benja: Well, it's his, it's his, it's his, it's his single biggest media arm right now.

And he doesn't really spend on advertising. So does he. There you go. 

Theo: What, to your point. That's a good point. I mean, you know, he is, he. You know, he, he pivoted, let's be honest, he was like a nerd. He cr you know, he worked with the PayPal, PayPal Mafia, you know, you know, nerdy guy, you know, create this whole new industry and EVs and, you know, go into space talking about Mars and ai.

But they say, you know what, people don't give a damn about this stuff. Let me figure out what's going on Twitter. And he figured out was a nude oil. And so he figured out how to get attention. And so to him that's, that's. That was a smart play. And he figure, I mean, if he, you know, if he went from just this nerdy dude to like going all in on attention and social media, then that shows you that that may be the best route to go for you as your brand, because it just makes sense now.

That's the new world, and he figured that out. So kudos to him. He knows how to pivot and, and he knows about business. And you know, once again, man, we're just gonna call this, the gay v was right podcast man. He talked, he talked about this one tension, you know, is the new oil man. And you gotta draw attention.

And Elon knows how to do it for good or bad. And you know, to your point, you know, may be a little bit you know, kind like Grand Cardone, it may be a little psychosis involved with this because, you know, maybe you get addicted to it almost, and you feel like you gotta do more to run up one up yourself.

And I think that's what's happening to him. And Grant, you know, they'll be start saying stuff you like, oh Lord. 

Mr. Benja: Yeah. And we saw what happened with Donald Trump. He wa he took it all the way to the White House with that whole. 

Theo: So Sure did. Sure did 

Mr. Benja: amazing things, man. Amazing times. All right, man, well that's, that's it for me.

You got any more on this? 

Theo: Nah, man. This is a great show, man. Great show, man. What what, what's the plans for 

Mr. Benja: this week? Oh man, I'm still figuring out the matrix. You know, there are things going on and I talked to the Mayor Vege last week and we got some moves we're gonna make down in the depths of the the inner core.

So not nothing, nothing for the regular people, just people rocking with the inner core. But no, I, I've still got the, I've still got that book going on. Lemme tell you what happened with that, you know, cuz I, I don't want to seem like I just said I was gonna write a book and never really did. It got longer and where is it?

Here's a draft. It got, I, I didn't wanna make just like an ebook. So it started getting to this, it started turning into this illustrated kind of, you know, thing about, you know, what's going on with. I'm, I'm gonna drop it soon, but I love it. It's lay, it's laying the new foundation for what I'm gonna go forward with.

So after this one drops, I should be able to drop more faster after that. And I'm just happy with this creative vibe I'm on. So, 

Theo: man, get it down, brother. Coming, coming soon. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm in the process of looking at my book as well. Let's get that out. It sounds like, you know, if you're going to, I think, you know, I've been reading Russell Brunson's Expert Secrets, you know, and it's just like, you know, being that expert in whatever field it is, you need that book.

And then once that book is out there, then you kinda leverage that to do these courses, all this other stuff. So so yeah, so I'm a big believer in that. So I'm doing the same thing. You know, it's not gonna come out as quick as, as quick as yours, but I'll be working on it over the next, you know, couple months.

But my goal is to kind of have something. So, kudos to you, Mr. Benji. I mean, you know, just get it, you know, like you said, take your time, man, get it done. But once it's done, brother, yeah. You, you, you done. 

Mr. Benja: You know Cardone said that too. He was, he said he put out a, he did this intentionally, and that's what I'm coming to find out.

A lot of his moves are intentional. He finds what works and then rides that one to the next intention where he he created the Millionaire Booklet seller be sold. There's one other one that I can't remember. But then he jumped on and the 10 X Rule. Mm-hmm. The 10 X rule became the one that hit.

Yeah. Once that one hit, he wrote it hard, created the 10 x conference and the whole thing behind that. So, Yeah, I get what you mean, man. 

Theo: Just gotta get it out there man. I mean, cuz you just don't know what and the easier book I, someone I, I was I'm actually gonna take a course on this is like they said you know, kind of be as close to, you know who you are as now as possible, right?

So it's easier to write and get through it because, cause I had this real vision, I'm gonna write about the evolution of chat G p t, dude. I said, oh man, I don't know, that's gonna have to be a lot. It's gonna be, you know, outta sight. So I'm just gonna like focus, like, you know how you build a company, you know, in the health care space or something like that.

And so that way in my niche I can talk about it and knock it out because you're right, it's really the next book or the third book, right? That may, may be the one that hits, but least you have something you can leverage that to create, you know, your whole, I mean, that's what Ryan Panina did. I mean, he had a he created, he wrote a book first called Flip Your Future.

And he used that to, you know, Why he was doing that creative course and that helped him get to the next level where he's like, you know, he wrote another book and now he's got these conferences. Right, right. So the reason why I kind of follow him, he's kind of like doing everything I saw where he went from zero, you know, relatively speaking, you know, he had little stuff going on, but nothing to the level now and like two years basically following all the playbooks everyone else did.

And so when I'm listening on his calls and seeing what they do, I'm like, damn this. He's just executing at a high, high speed. That's it. That's the only difference. He's not doing anything new. He's not like, well, you know, I'm gonna revolutionize now. He's not like that. And sometimes my engineering brain, Things like that.

Sometimes I'm like, 

Mr. Benja: you know what? Yeah. Execute could cause as, as you execute and you make those decisions, I think the, the real world will tell you the answer faster than you being at the whiteboard. So, yeah. Yeah, 

Theo: because it's fun to be at the whiteboard, oh, we could do this, we could do that. But then when you actually put it out there and it's does you like, dang, all that time I spent on this crap and it do shit.

Ugh. Yeah. 

Mr. Benja: So is this, is this recipe gonna work? I don't know. Taste this, this tastes like crap. Okay, well we saved the day of that. You know? Yeah. I mean, and 

Theo: that's why I like Hermo Z's strategy too, is like how you test your ideas faster. And he says use Twitter, right? To kind of get Oh yeah. Things to, you know, and you told me that too, so, you know, kudos to you.

Yeah. So, so yeah. So I think there's, you know, there's a pathway here. So anyway, make a long story short, man. Kudos on your book. On my side, you know, just grind on the business. Got some new things popping off here. Coming here with some AI stuff we're playing with. So we're gonna launch that here next month.

So, and then yeah, going on vacation for a couple days. I need it, but grinding man. Grinding brother. 

Mr. Benja: Well, very cool man. Yeah, always, always happy to, to do this podcast with you and like hearing what you're up to. And you know, and I, we got some secrets we gotta discuss in a little bit. So 

Theo: secrets, if you go behind the scenes, guys, you know it's coming soon.

Show after business show versus business after dark.

Oh, wait, wait, wait. Show versus business. Uncut

Mr. Benja: warning. What you were about to see

raw. I need a tip. Drill,

Theo: yes 

Mr. Benja: or no. No. No. 

Theo: Hey guys. Well thank you for listening to the podcast. Please like, subscribe and comment at show versus business on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Listen to us at Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and go check us out on our website at Show versus Business. Mr. Benja. Have a great one.

Peace.