Today, @the_real_theo_harvey comes back from his week-long spring break vacation ,and now, the boys are back at it with another fire episode together with @mrbenja.
The TikTok Ban is getting hotter by the day, will it finally materialize? What's the next new video platform for Americans to use just in case TikTok does get Banned? The Oscars are done, awesome winners but, is it still relevant? and many more!
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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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Follow us on Instagram - https://instagram.com/show_vs_business
Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/showvsbusiness
Like us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ShowVsBusiness
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuwni8la5WRGj25uqjbRwdQ/featured
Follow Theo on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@therealtheoharvey
Follow Mr.Benja on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BenjaminJohnsonakaMrBenja
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Today, @the_real_theo_harvey comes back from his week-long spring break vacation ,and now, the boys are back at it with another fire episode together with @mrbenja.
The TikTok Ban is getting hotter by the day, will it finally materialize? What's the next new video platform for Americans to use just in case TikTok does get Banned? The Oscars are done, awesome winners but, is it still relevant? and many more!
----------
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.
----------
Follow us on Instagram - https://instagram.com/show_vs_business
Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/showvsbusiness
Like us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ShowVsBusiness
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuwni8la5WRGj25uqjbRwdQ/featured
Follow Theo on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@therealtheoharvey
Follow Mr.Benja on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BenjaminJohnsonakaMrBenja
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Theo Harvey: This is show versus business where pop culture meets pop money with your host, the real deal, Harvey and Mr. Benja. So Mr. Benja, what's been going on? What's been going on,
Mr.Benja: man. Hey man, I missed you last week. I'm sorry, but we're back. You're back. It was filler episode for those who saw and what do we do in filler episodes?
I have to brave the waters, alone and you've had to do it before We're better as a team. So we're back at it and this week. Let's see what we got going on we got a tiktok ban that's happening. So that's just been going down. We've been talking about that The House doesn't like it. The Senate doesn't like it.
So now we're trying to get rid of TikTok and banning stuff. Some interesting things people, how they're dealing with it, how they're affected by it. Some interesting points you want to get into. And of course, we're going to talk about your boy. What's his name? I forgot his name. Mr. Come here guy.
I forgot his name. Terrible. See how I'm not even in this world like that. If you hold on, we'll tell you his name later on because it's coming. Also Don Lemon, his show on X got canceled. X going to give it to Don.
The more shenanigans, right? We're going to talk a little bit about the Oscars. I don't know if anybody cares, movies and theaters and. Everybody's out here copying everybody else. What's the future going to be? I don't know. A. I. Is copying. People are loving it. Some people are hating it. Crazy world out there.
Some fun topics, but how does that
Theo Harvey: sound to you, Theo? Mr. Benja sounds awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, last week I was out and you may hear my voice a little bit, maybe a little raspy of all the fun times shenanigans I got into. We did a spring break trip with the family to DC, the nation's Capitol.
And Mr. Bidget, have you been to DC before?
Mr.Benja: I stayed up there for a summer.
Theo Harvey: There you go. There you go. So you did, you've done all the monuments, done the Capitol scene, the scene, the sites which is, I think everybody has to do it at least once I've done it multiple times, but this is the first time some of my family members and I'm including.
Parents and older relatives in their 70s who've never been, to DC to see certain things. And so
Mr.Benja: this was just a family trip. You guys got together and said, Hey, we're going to go. That's cool, man. I haven't done
Theo Harvey: one of those in a while. Yeah. Yeah. It was like one of those things. My brother lives in Texas and we decided.
He said, I'm coming down for Christmas. Let's do a spring break trip together. And DC is what we decided on. It's a big group. It's about 23 of us when you include all the babies and the older adults. And so four siblings with, Each one has at least two kids and nieces and nephews and cousins.
So it was, it's a big group. So I'll share with that on the Instagrams and all that shortly, but yeah, man, Mr. Benji, I learned a lot. It's just the national African American museum. I talked about my experience. There may be Couple of months back, or maybe last year, I talked about it and just how impactful that was, but also seeing that information displayed on my parents eyes, seeing their stories, and communicate with them about that.
That was super exciting for me just to get them to. Think about the past and what they went through. And cause they lived, civil rights movement, obviously. And so it was one of those things that was just very fun, Mr. Benja. So highly recommend that everyone does that.
We even actually. Appeared showed up on the Hill, the Capitol Hill. We got a tour of the Capitol and we did talk to our our tour guide who happened to be an intern and told us all about the great things that were happening that week when Tick Tock was banned. So I'll talk more about that later.
We discussed the banning of Tick Tock, but yeah, overall, it was just a great week, man, just spending time with family and and then friends as well. So shout out to Dr. Jackson, if you listen to this right now, but yeah, man, it was good, man. What about you?
Mr.Benja: Nice. That's very cool, man. Very cool. I started so I want to let you know, I'm not on drugs at the moment.
Theo Harvey: No story starts well, when you say I'm not on drug first, when I'm not on drugs, not well for what you're about to say next, but go ahead. No,
Mr.Benja: It was so there's this old, I forgot who said it, but they were like talking about art and everything. They're like there are some things that you experience.
And as an artist, you go through and you keep trying to recreate that experience somehow, like you try to capture it whether it's, First kiss, skydiving, traveling to Washington, D. C. You get these experiences and then you try to channel them through your music, your art, your photography, whatever.
The thing is, same thing goes for same thing goes for drugs. It's like you start feeling things that you normally would have held yourself back from feeling or you couldn't access. And it's funny. I was, I had a I had this feeling. And it was, somebody was annoying me. It was, I was getting bothered.
And then it's for whatever reason, I never walk around without my flip flops on, but I got real California for a second and I just walked out the house with no shoes on and took a walk barefoot. I'm not caring if I step in glass and everything, this is very California not black people kind of thing, but I just had to do it anyway.
So I'm like walking through the grass and everything. And the last time I did this, I was like, when was the last time I did this? Oh. I got stoned once with some, some friends introduced me to weed and everything. And I was like, okay, that's the last time this happened. And I realized I could tap back into that feeling.
They can be a funny look, but this is going somewhere though.
Theo Harvey: Okay.
Mr.Benja: So I tapped back into that feeling and I'm like, you know what, if I really think about it, meditate and work at it, I can just get back into that calm mode because this was when I was in the video game industry and I was getting like hella stressed out.
So I get stressed out about something. Some people say, Hey man, we got some of this plant over here, this plant, you can come check it out. And I'm like, all I'll try out the plant. And. I tapped back into that feeling. It was like, you know what? I'm not that worried about that.
I'm good. So I was basically getting in a mindset of just recreating that feeling that I wanted, which was not being bothered. And. And I started looking into it, man, and just being able to not use a substance to get where you want to be without that substance. I started to look at that in terms of caffeine, sugar, all these feelings.
You can get to a point of generating them. The feelings yourself without actually doing the thing. So I haven't said anything about this before, like the past. I started in March or maybe a little in February. I started really trying to think about this and I'm working through some stuff, man, and it's helping my workflow and my business activities to no end.
Okay. Oh,
Theo Harvey: I love it, man. What's what you've untapped something, a feeling, that feeling you get that you need to be on substances that you're tapping into that feeling and trying to recreate that and getting that to higher levels. So you don't need the thing at all because you're experiencing that without it.
Mr.Benja: Yeah. And we think that was an extreme thing because I like, it was like getting hard for me to work. And I was like, all right, I need the weed. I need the. Whatever it was. And yeah, I was trying to get through some work and I couldn't push through it. I'm like, why can't I push through it?
Do I really need, this big thing of Mountain Dew? Cause I get like a liter bottle of Mountain Dew and a bag of cookies and just start coding until four in the morning, that's, I was ready, I was like I'm growing up the, that's what I'm saying. I made it this far.
Theo Harvey: No, man.
I agree, man. That's some of the things I try to fast at the beginning of the year, alcoholic. I talk about this and one of the things, I fly a lot and sometimes, it's always good to have a little nip of something, while you're flying, easing nerves a little bit with some of the turbulence up there.
But, but yeah. Since I, I wasn't, I am drinking now because we had the big family trip but I'm going to try to, I'm going to try to maintain that and maybe I'll just do it for like events, but I try to stay away from, drinking obviously on planes and, and to your point, you just, do some breathing exercises and you get the same calming feeling that I would have gotten from alcohol.
So I definitely know what you're, You're talking about there and I'm trying to do more of that because you're right. I don't want to have to say that I need this, it's almost it's like a crutch, Ooh, let me get this. And that's something I never want to go down the path of when you think about it.
So yeah, man, I think Those are some of the things that I'm super excited about what you're doing there, man. And totally hype that you tapped into that that super power.
Mr.Benja: Yeah. I'm telling you it's great for me, man. And there, there are three things I got from this.
We can clip this. Mr. Ben's just three, three awesome things about getting away from reliance on. Substances. I'll just put it that way. No, first of all you got to get away, getting away from a habit. So you're not habituated to do something and you can control when it happens or when it doesn't. Second, you're not it's not something you need.
Like you can do it. You can go through the process without the thing, habit or not. It's if I'm going to go do this, I have to do this. It's not necessarily. You can do it without it. You can go to speak on stage without whatever, you can study through the night without whatever substance.
And then the third thing is just only doing it when you're in the right mindset. If I ever got in a bad mindset and started on something, it might, that might tail spin me down somewhere. If I'm in a good mood and Hey, you know what, I'll have a drink. And then I, do it in a good way.
Not Oh man, I'm tired. I should have a drink to get into good state. No, I get in a good state and I'm like, man, I'm in a good state. Let me get a little sip
Theo Harvey: of something. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a challenge, man. And you have to be cognizant of your moods and. But your yearnings are and sometimes we just don't slow down enough to understand that.
And so I commend you to deeper dive that and realize where you're at. Of the things that, I'm the same way. I'm like, why am I, Oh, it's been a long week. I think I need a drink. No, wait a minute. Do I need a drink or do I want a drink? And then I slow that down and usually the feeling passes.
But sometimes, just. You just have to name it and then it goes away. That feeling, that's what I found sometimes. But yeah, man, kudos to you, Mr. Benjamin. I love it, man. This is a new levels. I'm
Mr.Benja: telling you it's part of this 80, 20 thing that we've been on. I'm like, what's holding me back from that 20%.
And then I look into the 80 percent and I'm like, Oh yeah, there's all that stuff. So that's what this actually comes from.
Theo Harvey: I love it. I love it. A couple other things I'm trying to take to another level, Mr. Benja, since we're talking about new levels, marketing, Mr. Benja, I've been deep diving on Facebook ads and funnels.
Mr.Benja: Yeah. We talked about the ads last
Theo Harvey: time. Okay. Yeah. So even though I was on a break I was still fiddling with some stuff and playing around with stuff and this is new levels to this, right? And it's a balancing act between, these new, Tools that maybe Frank Kern, Hey, you could try this or these other internet gurus have are trying to say this works for us and then applying it to your market.
But I think that's one aspect of it, right? The technical aspect of it. The other aspect is. Okay. What's the messaging? Is the messaging resonating with my group? And there's some key things I'm learning around some gates that you can look at, like some target numbers that you're trying to achieve to determine, if your opt in page is around 20, 30%, that means, your audience is resonating with your messaging, right?
If it's not, you got keep tweaking it. And I went back to what Alex said, back when he was really, in the weeds talking about ads and all that he talked about how they used to do once a week, they would just change the headlines and in the first image of all their ads when he ran a gym launch and that one little thing, every week, iterating off of that every week.
Got him better and better at creating content that, that converted on Facebook. So it's one of those things I'm learning more of and trying to figure out ways to communicate with my audience and yeah, super pumped about it. I'm trying to all little tweaks and stuff. But then you get down to weeds and you're like, Oh man, I can try this.
Let me try that. Let me put video. What's it called? A video Linux. So you can see how long people watch your VSL and then you can try this. He just wait, go back to basics. Let's just see if people just. Click on some basic stuff first. Yeah. So anyway, super excited. And I'm trying to, promote a book.
And so I'm trying to figure out new ways of doing that. So you may see things around me like
Mr.Benja: that. Like I see a book in the background. What is this all
Theo Harvey: laid up? Since you asked Mr. Benjamin,
Mr.Benja: you got to get one of those frame holders. That's great.
Theo Harvey: Yeah. Yeah. I lost a pocket guide to practice value creations, kind of a mini book about 60, 70 pages for doctors and medical practices who are looking to help grow revenue and their practices.
And so one of the things I'm trying to figure out is how do you get the message out about just beating people over the head with it? And so when I'm doing my video. Content now, just having that in the background, communicating about it, I have it as a link. And now as part of my video content that I sent, send out, you'd be surprised, man, people click on it and they look at it.
If it's for them they could check it out. And even if it's not retargeting baby, I'll catch them later. So anyway it's interesting time for me on marketing and just really deep diving on that. And whether, whether for my business or when I decided to step away from this side of the business, I'm sure I'm going to create something else.
These skills, they never go away. And so we talked about this, right? You have the mindset. The bigger vision, the skillset, which I'm learning just basic tools of marketing and the tool set that's always evolving and changing, but that's so base level, as long as you understand the first two, the tool set, you can evolve.
And so that's where I'm evolving now, my mindset and my skillset when it comes to marketing. So just super excited about that. Yeah.
Mr.Benja: Did we talk about this? What's that a physical book as part of the marketing?
Theo Harvey: No, this is new. I threw it together pretty quickly. Yeah. Cause I know you had one and you have talked about it and I was like, you know what, can I get a book done in a month?
Now, and AI helped with some of that and brainstorming and putting together. Yeah. But there is some tools you can use and, shout out to folks who are interested. I can definitely help them with that. But yeah, I think that the hardest part of a book is, is just getting the starter, right?
All the things you have to do to get it done. But now that I had that base level done of how to get an audio book, a regular book out and all that stuff. Now I feel like, okay, the next book is going to be even better because now, the dude, the. The, what to do is done off our plate is just now making the content.
So phenomenal that, it doesn't matter. So anyway, so yeah. B I think just having that physical thing is just it's something substantial enough where people feel like, okay, this guy is legit and he's trying to do something. So let's just start
Mr.Benja: if yes, you are on. My page right now, or I'm on your page because you got your book out first.
But yes, I am. I'm so on this right now. What I was doing, I was had an ebook and I was like, you know what, let me reformat this to just be paper first, because I was doing it as an ebook to be more magazine like, and I was going to print it up all nice and stuff, but it's you know what, as I scaled back and started figuring out what I was talking about and Dan Sullivan's big on this too.
I told you I'm still on
Theo Harvey: his kid every quarter. Yeah. Every quarter new
Mr.Benja: book. Yeah. Okay. That's where we mentioned it. I knew he said something, but I wasn't sure what it was. Yeah.
Theo Harvey: He does the mini book guides. That's, I the thing is you want to have something. Yeah, you go. Yep. 90 minute book.
It is. You just want something physical. We live in a virtual world and a lot of jokers out there just selling stuff, it's something about having a book out there. People are like, Oh, you're legit. This guy is, those he's talking about. And that you just want just that little edge.
And then that just differentiate you that much more for the competition. Yeah, you put that bug in my ear. I actually spent a lot way more money to Get this team to help me to write a book. It was too long of a process for me. And so I just said, bump all that.
And so I just went this other process. And so now that I understand this, yeah, man, I think every entrepreneur needs to have a book and just have it out there so that you can leverage that as an entryway point into, all the other things that you can offer.
Mr.Benja: You just hyped me the hell up. I don't even want to talk about it.
I don't even want to talk about it anymore. I just, I love it. I love you. I love it. But I know you'd like to, I know you weren't doing all the marketing stuff where you're going, did you watch anything? And we're going to talk about the Oscars later, but I don't know anything that you've been looking at.
Theo Harvey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Me, I'm, dispatches from the watch, you know what? I'll be what I check out every now and then. So again, have you heard about that new FX Hulu series?
Mr.Benja: I'm getting a ton of ads for that on the I heart radio podcast streams.
Theo Harvey: But no, I haven't. Good stuff, man.
Yeah, good stuff. It was a miniseries back in the 70s. It was based on a book an English man, discovers, Japan and finds a huge, fuel based system that's, very more advanced than you can ever imagine. And so this is now taking it from the, Japanese point of view, right?
So it's very, it's a lot of subtitles because they all speak. Japanese. And so I said, of course, the English man, they have a translator and they speak a lot of English, but it's like very duolingual type of show, but very fascinated that, they put this on a lot of shows, but this is the game of thones.
The new version of Game of Thrones, right? Where you have complex characters, motivations, storylines. So yeah, I'm digging it, man. It's very insightful. So that's one thing TV recommend and a movie. I recommend American fiction. Have you heard about that movie? Yeah, so this is the guy who wrote Watchmen.
He was one of the writers for Watchmen. He won an Emmy for his role, the latest Watchmen on HBO Max. And his name is Cor Jefferson. And he wrote and directed this movie about a writer who's very edgy. Educated, just a regular kind of writer who happens to be black and he can't get his book.
So his book sold because people say he's not black enough. He's not writing that ghetto fiction, we used from the ghetto. I hate my dad, that kind of stuff, those ghetto fiction novels. So in a when he needed money at this most inopportune time, he decides to write one.
And becomes a bestseller. And so now it's just it's a comedy of errors where he's portraying someone who's not like a gangsta rapper slash convict. Which is not as educated. Yeah. So it's very interesting. American fiction. And it's, and I like it because it's also it's a mirror to how.
White folks perceive black folks right through one lens, even though we are human beings, we could, contain multitudes. And so I think that's what this movie is about. So as a matter of fact, we'll talk about later, but core Jefferson won Oscars, and he used to be he just won an Oscar for best adaptive screenplay.
Kudos to him. So yeah, man, it's so those are two things I recommend showgun and you go watch a movie, go watch American fiction.
Mr.Benja: All right. I'm gonna, it's very good. I'm gonna check that out. I took a little note down, watch that. I'm also watching a game of thrones again, but I'm watching it through the eyes of reactors.
So the people who do the reaction shows dude, I figured out this fascination. I realized I used to do this back when I was making video games. I've watched people play the games and I'd be fascinated by trying to get my head inside their head. Holy crap, he went left. Why would he go left?
Interesting. Are there trees over there that make it seem like something's over there? Why did he go left? So I, so watching people react in different ways and analyze the show in a completely different way. It's just fascinating to me. Like there, when people are actively talking like, Oh, I noticed this, I'm seeing this, wait, does this mean this?
And it's a completely different thought process than mine or any of ours, because it's somebody else. So it's just gotten to be fascinating. They're talking about, Jon Snow and Robb Stark and all these characters. And the lady who's doing one of these reactions, she's really big on fashion and costuming.
So she's pointing out hints in the show that they dropped because of the fashioning and the costuming. There's a scene and they didn't, she's Hey, he didn't clean the, he didn't clean the blood off his cloak. He's still wearing the same cloak and it's got all the blood on it. And I'm just thinking in my head, Oh, it had blood on it from the last scene. And no. They usually have them cleaned up or something. And you assume that they cleaned them off in the river or whatever, but his is still bloody. And I'm like, Wait a minute and she starts speculating as to what that could mean and she was on point.
So I was like what? Just it's just wild. That's all.
Theo Harvey: I love it. I love it. Sorry. Are you getting excited for hot D? In June baby, yeah, we only got less than a month and a half away so I
Mr.Benja: might have to get back on it, man, because that's one of those shows where you watch it with other people at the same time and it's a new level of electricity.
Theo Harvey: Yeah. Okay. If we're going to watch it, maybe we'll do a little, a little recap, maybe weekly or something. Yeah. We'll get back into the hot decapping. Did I
Mr.Benja: just, oh God, did I just commit? We committed. I committed. That's good. We'll,
Theo Harvey: we'll commit. Hot decapping. I love it. Oh man. Yeah. Okay. Good stuff, man.
We'll talk more.
Mr.Benja: Since you mentioned Alex Ramosi, I wanted to jump on this really quick. So I sent you this link. I don't know if you checked it out, but there's this guy who Justin Evergreen. I don't know who he is. I'm sure he's a fine guy. May not be, maybe. I don't know. But anyway, he got me with this post that says Alex Ramosi puts out 733 reels per year, but only 10 have gotten over 2 million views.
And it's just stark black text on a white background. I'm like, what? Interesting. I'll click the next slide to see what that is. And then he starts going in. I want to know what these 10 reels have in common and dah. They all random. He just starts talking about how he collected and analyzed and used AI.
And I'm listening to this and I'm like, yo, dude is making basically the course methodology. By taking AI and running it over someone's content, breaking it down, creating a formula, a process, a course. And it's you too can do just like him. How do I know? Because I ran all his data through AI and this is what I found.
And I was like, Oh.
And I'm, it's just got me in this whole mind of everybody copying everybody. And I just thought that was very interesting that somebody would do that makes sense, but I don't
Theo Harvey: know. What'd you think of that? It's interesting. Number one. Yeah. I think I saw this before, but now that you put in my eyesight, but look, I think I think he did it back in December.
I don't think there's a recent post. But no, it,
Mr.Benja: it it showed up as a, it showed up as an.
Theo Harvey: Okay, interesting. And, I think Dan Henry is talking about that too. I think I told you, listening on his get clients core university course. And it's these marketers are trying to get faster and faster with testing things out, messaging. And so instead of making these big video funnels and all this stuff, memorize telling you, there's that aspect between the tools. Getting it done. And then the actual are you really resonate with your audience? I think a lot of, gurus are realizing, the BS of the tools and stuff, let's just dumb that down.
We'll talk about it and we'll sell it to you, it's not the most important thing. Most important thing is you're going to resonate with your audience. So the simpler and faster you can do that. So Dan Henry, for instance, instead of doing a big, long video again, for some some new, Product he was selling.
He just did a video, just a regular old sales letter, right? A written form. Hey, are you a marketer? What have you experienced this? Those old school sales letters used to get in the mail, right? Or you read in a magazine, he went old school on jokers. And he said it was better converting to some of his videos.
And Justin sound like he's doing something similar or two things. Number one, he's selling you to implementation, right? I created this system and you can buy it or try it out, but he's making it simple to get the messaging out. It's just text on white. And that's it. You don't need an image.
You don't need anything. And to me, I was like, that's, it's almost like you're zagging when everyone zigs. And so you can stand out a little bit. Yeah, to your point I love it. I might try it myself, Mr. Benja. Why not,
Mr.Benja: What what Frank Kern was doing for a while. He had the He had the iPhone text app, which is like some texts put in there.
So it's like he typed it and then posted it and you can see like the little, Verizon battery level and all that. And then his text. So you're just like, Hey, why is this? Oh, interesting. Okay. It's just a simple, super simple.
Theo Harvey: I love it. Just I didn't think, we talked about this marketing, aid, attention, interest, desire, action.
You got to get their attention first. And sometimes the way the best way to get their attention is doing something that's outside the norm, right? It interrupts that pattern. And if you're showing people, you might, you're right, man. I might just do some gritty videos, raw videos, just my face.
Outside
Mr.Benja: the norm, get in. Incredibly what's the word? Incredibly native, incredibly normal, regular, that's what his was. Of course, outside the norm, but what's outside the norm is weird and stupid and what's outside the norm and still relatable.
Theo Harvey: I love it. I love it.
And we talked about this with Heinz and his YouTube content, right? Being a little bit more calm and chill versus, the content we see from Mr. Beast, explosions and a big boat. Nah, I'm on the Island by myself. Why? What are you going to do next? So yeah, Heinz is just like, Hey everybody, let's have a cup of coffee and think, I love it.
Mr.Benja: Exactly. Howlett, there we go. I couldn't remember his name. Howlett. What was his name? James Hollett? No, I forgot his first name. I'm getting there, but that guy he's been doing the TikTok and Instagram reels. I don't know how all these influencers are going to take about, think about this, but the TikTok ban is coming.
And with all this talk about marketing and everything it's worth mentioning the TikTok band. Theo, you got some data on that, right? How's it, how's this going down?
Theo Harvey: It's going down in the DM. Yeah, how is it going down? The house of, you don't know a lot of folks may not know this, but we have to, we have a government and I'm just a bill, and you have to go through both.
The house, which is made up of all the representatives, which is people that represent certain districts in the States. And then you have the Senate, which is only two senators for each state. In the house, they
Mr.Benja: learned that. Did you learn that back in Washington DC on your trip?
Theo Harvey: I did. I had to remember all that.
They brought it back to my memory. Oh yeah. That's how you got to go through appropriations bills. No, but I knew a little bit about that. I was heavily. The politics stuff for a second, but anyway, I digress. Yeah, so they the house went through their committees, and they voted up into the house.
And this is interesting because this is like a bipartisan bill. This is one of the few things that both Republicans and Democrats. And Democrats agree on, which is super, it could probably get done because as we all know, politics is not agreeable anymore. And so this is very interesting time right now.
So anyway, they got through the committee process and they got voted on the house floor with all what 200 or so representatives and it passed. So now it still has to go to the Senate. If it passes the Senate vote, when it gets to the Senate, it goes the whole process again as it go to committees, then finally get up into the Senate floor.
And if it passes, then the house looks at it 1 more time to make sure there's no changes or anything like that. And then finally goes up into the present design. So this is has a very real chance of passing and it's very interesting. Unlike 2020, when Trump was talking about, let's ban tick tock and all that.
There's a lot. It's a lot quieter this time, Mr. Benji. And I think it's because the data starting to show that these tools, maybe tick tock and Facebook are not healthy for the younger generation. And they're thinking that ways to core tell curtailing some of the influence. That the social media apps app on our young folks, especially one that's owned by the Chinese government, which is by dance which is, a subsidiary is his own company, but, we all know Chinese communist parties, a part of that.
Mr.Benja: Yeah we've seen Chinese companies or even Chinese affiliated companies that were subsidized or pushed forward with Chinese money Chinese governmental backing have been co opted and We've seen this problem. I think Jack Ma was, he was talking about something going on with Alibaba and suddenly the Chinese government stepped in and was like, we're doing this and Jack Ma was like we're doing this and yeah, exactly.
And he ended up not being in the public anymore. We don't know what that means, but we know what that means. So yeah the CEO even came out and. He's very disappointed. He keeps talking. He keeps saying, hey, I'm Singaporean. I'm not Chinese. This doesn't affect us. It's like a guy We know how these strings are being pulled man.
Don't try to goose
Theo Harvey: us. Yeah, so it's interesting too because Tick tock, they're trying to Help sway, obviously lobbyists is a big part of the government process and they're trying to persuade the lawmakers to not ban tick tock. And one of the things that tick tock did, which was scary too, they knew everyone's zip code who was on tick tock rights of you and zip tick tock.
They can understand where zip code you live in. And that's important because. They can tell who your Congress person was. So what they did was they created a marketing campaign that popped up while you're watching Tik TOK. They said Hey, did you know Tik TOK may be banned? If you don't like that, here's the, here's your Congress person and here's their number.
Click here to call and complain about. That and people complain. I, so when I went on my Capitol tour last week, the interns there, they represented Texas, my brother got us a tour from his congressman, our congressman here in Florida, he came through, but we weren't going to go to the Friday one. So we wanted to go a little earlier in the week, but anyway so the interns that are from Texas and they were saying they were bombarded last week with, 16 year olds, 12 year olds calling, saying, don't ban tick And so that's scary in a sense, because they were trying to do something to, which is normal juice, the process and help their case.
But I think they made that case way worse when they showed how influential Tik TOK can be and try to swing our elections. So that's when everybody Oh, y'all shouldn't have done that. You over you, you're a habitual line stepper. You overstepped your line.
Mr.Benja: Yeah, it's yeah. It's funny. Some people are saying they're doing, there's a lot of people defending it without, I think, understanding what some of these companies can do, will do, and even if you don't know that they're doing it, are doing so, We talked about this last year, I believe in the, in a bit of depth about the TikTok ban when it first, we first started talking about it, but yeah, it's you don't need if you have the zip code, that's one thing, but you don't need like all this.
Personal data spelled out to find out about you, to get all the data and information they need from you for whatever nefarious purposes and it can take. It can go into very scary places, especially when you couple that with apps sharing information. So let's say you have CapCut on your phone and So if you're using CapCut, that's the video editing software and you're using TikTok, both of these apps can share data or basically like figure out ways to, if somebody uploaded it to the server, they uploaded with the same email address or whatever, we'll just go get that data.
And now, instead of somebody who has, one bit of data, they've got two bits of data. Three bits of data. Let's say you've solved the entire bite dance suite of four or five apps or whatever. It's, it starts to get really weird. And next thing you show up on dark web. I don't know. I don't know.
Theo Harvey: Yeah, it's very intrusive. And we talked about the Chinese government and their willingness to, to get a lot of hackers to, to get information. And so yeah it's definitely something that I think we're going to see more of. One thing, from a business standpoint, I always look at this.
How many hours are spent on Tik TOK, Mr. Benjamin. So when you look at the numbers, they said in 2020 the average. Global average was 13 hours and 18 minutes per month. By 2022, this figure had increased by 76%, reaching 23 hours and 30 minutes. So the average person across the country, across the world spends 3 percent of their month on Tik TOK or 5 percent of their total waking hours.
On TikTok. And so that's a lot of time. And so if TikTok is banned in some aspect or in certain countries, where's all that, that viewing has to go somewhere. And the rumor is obviously, you're gonna have probably YouTube views go up. Instagram views go up and then maybe.
Movies and tvs shows. So it's interesting to see what's going to happen if tiktok does get banned. I, so my prediction is, I think they may limit the use for folks younger than a certain age because I agree, younger kids do not need these. I have a 12 year old, eight year old. And some of their friends are on Tik TOK and it's just no, that's just not good.
And so I think they don't need that. And then number two, so I think there will be a limit on who can access it also. So I don't think it would be a total ban. And then also I think they're going to find a way to divest by dance from Tik TOK in some way here in the U S at least.
Mr.Benja: It's dangerous too, is the link in bio, it's like people will play by the tick tock rules or the Instagram rules, even if you want to go there but whatever rules of the platform.
And then it's you click the link in bio and you realize they're just doing tick tock to pull you into whatever they're doing, which was why a lot of people didn't know that the Pinky doll. You remember the ice cream? So good.
Theo Harvey: How can I forget Mr. Benja? That's it. I know nightmares.
So my nightmares, yeah.
Mr.Benja: Like people just thought she was some cute somebody, but then it, she's removed it now, but then you go to her Lincoln bio next day, it's ask the titty and you're like, Oh my God, what is this? And her only fans and her uncensored stuff was right there on front street.
And it was just like, it was just like, wait, what? And yeah I've gone down some weird Lincoln bio rabbit holes and it's
Theo Harvey: okay one of the we talked about marketing, one of the key things you look for if your ad is working well, Is outbound CTR click through rate. And so you want to, and you want to make sure that, that, that ad and you want to average, 1%, even higher if you can.
So that every hundred people, one person's clicking your Lincoln bio, clicking on your ad to learn more. And now you got them. I got you now. You're my ecosystem. Yeah. I'll see outside of TOK. So yes, that's one of the key metrics. So FYI guys hint. That's one of the key metrics that all marketers are looking for, that their content with organic or ads that trying to get you out the platform and get in your ecosystem.
So watch it.
Mr.Benja: Yeah. You know what? Yeah, that's it's so weird. And you hit me with this number here. Like the global average is. Is around 5 percent of total waking hours. You got to think with social media, there are a lot of people who really don't engage like that. So I wonder what percentage, just like it's negligible and doesn't matter, but the numbers are actually getting skewed down because there are so many of these people who just jump on like once in the weekend or whatever.
Like I've changed my Instagram usage. So I can get this. It's now that I'm more, a lot more intentional with it, I can just get onto what I got to do and get off, but I'm the kind of person now who's pushing that number down. So there are people I'm wondering how many of their waking hours start pushing up into 10%, 20%.
What if it was like 30 to 50 percent of your waking hours? Think about it. That's it's very possible knowing how people used to play video games and watch TV. You have something in your pocket now. Oh my God.
Theo Harvey: And, be honest with you, Mr. Benjamin, the other thing I was thinking about, you can have the link in bio that gets people in your ecosystem.
You can just have branded content. That's what Frank Kern talks about. Just have a simple thing to go to, you don't even talk about it. Maybe just having a background, right? Or you just say, you say the same words over and over again, and they see your content so much. That they just go to it on their own.
They just look it up on their own. And you can also brainwash people with just the words you say over and over again. And yeah, it's, if you, and like you said, if you got 30 percent of a person's waking hours of just content, they're feeding, especially if you go viral on, on Tik TOK and it's, yeah, it's yeah, man, you're right, man.
I'm seeing interesting things happening, man. You'll watch you'll see YouTube videos and what's this? And he's, Oh, that's the only fans. Page potentially, or maybe there's some other stuff people are promoting, bedding sites. But you're like, Oh, but I thought they were talking about, just sports.
No, it's a bedding, trying to get you into the bedding ecosystem. Yeah,
Mr.Benja: that's how Andrew Tate became famous. Like he was the first, famous without really being out there. He was the first person to really on a huge scale like I'm doing a lot of marketers did within the marketing circles, but just on a huge generic person scale, what he had was this affiliate program was like, Hey, you get somebody in my course and they use your link, I'll give you.
It was like 30 to 50 percent and it ranged at from time to time. But he was like giving out big chunks. He's Hey, listen, you get people on, this is how much money you'll get. A lot of people got money doing that. And the way he talked it up was like, Hey, you can't be obvious with it. You got to do this.
You got to, and people followed along. And next thing at one point he becomes the most Google person on the internet. On earth, which is weird and bizarre, but,
Theo Harvey: and it's funny. Yeah. I'm seeing that too. And some of these courses I'm listening, they're talking about using promotions and giveaways, to grow your audience. So branded content, giveaways, promotions, affiliates. All that is just about expanding your influence and you know what, and so the granddaddy of them all, the Alex Hamozis and the what's his name? Russell Brunson is Dan Kennedy, right? He's like the old guru.
He talks about The one who spends the most money to get a customer will win. So if you put all this money into that's how Alex and Mosley, let's be honest, he did a lot of that stuff, right? A lot of content, a lot of branding content, Mosey nation, and things like that to get his name out there.
And, to your point, it can work. You just got to invest, man. You're going in a hole a lot as someone who's spending money on ads. It can be painful, but the hope is, one day, your goal rush is coming in. So anyway, yeah, man, we tick tock guys. Be careful. It's coming for you.
It's coming for you.
Mr.Benja: Unless it's not available on your phone.
Med is coming for you. Anyway, that's enough of that. But speaking of watching stuff I heard some Oscars talk and I know you wanna talk about the Oscar, so I want to just jump in here and get into the Oscars because I, you actually asked me if you get careless, you careless you to ask me if anybody cares.
And I'm like, not this guy. I don't even know if other people care because I care. So a little,
Theo Harvey: Mr. Benja, how dare you. Who's your, who's the, who's your favorite filmmaker right now, Mr. Benjamin, the one that you watch? Over and over again, just to understand how he did an actual sequence. One who you probably are, fantasize about what crazy things he's going to come up with next.
You have a whiteboard to figure out his last Christopher Nolan. What? Oscar for directing of Oppenheimer. How dare you not know that Mr. Benjamin, isn't that your guy? Isn't that your dude?
Mr.Benja: Yeah. I was happy for him. In fact, I was so happy when I heard the news, I actually watched a short little documentary slash interview where he explained the timeline of memento on a whiteboard.
He's actually. So the best way to explain this is, so you can't just structure it like a movie, you have to, and he stopped, and he's hold on, let me go to the whiteboard. If he started whiteboarding it, I was like, oh, here we go,
Theo Harvey: here we go. Just kudos to him, man. He, I, when I first watched Momento, I can remember man, I was like 24 years ago, man, when I watched it and I told, I saw that movie blew my mind, I actually had some coworkers come with me to go watch it again as this is the kind of watch.
And, after that he got Batman begins and all the, the trilogy he did. And now he got into, now he's doing more artsy fartsy, type of movies, but they all got little hooks to them, right? Dunkirk. And then obviously even with Oppenheimer, there was some little funny shenanigans he does, but very interesting filmmaker, man.
He's very technical almost to a fault. And sometimes he can be blamed for not having good characters because they're more like pieces in the plot to move the plot along. And for him to get a, finally get recognized for his efforts. Kudos to him. Did you watch Oppenheimer at all by any chance?
Mr.Benja: I should do
Theo Harvey: that. Yeah, it's on peacock right now. You can go watch it. Let me see.
Mr.Benja: Let me scratch that off the list.
Theo Harvey: Yeah, a good movie. I read the book too. Very faithful to the book. Yeah, like I said, I thought it was a little bit too long for my taste. It was three hour long about historical drama and the center is sitting around basically building a bomb in the aftermath of that, which is, great, but I thought they could have done more with that.
After the bomb went off, they didn't really show any of the after effects. They talked about it, right? But they didn't show what happened to the Japanese people. And which we've seen before, of course, but I felt like it was uneven. It was so centered on Oppenheimer and what he experiences.
But I digress. So anyway, so that's why I cared. I thought that was gonna end it. Also, that movie made nearly a billion dollars, a three hour biopic. Yeah, that is a lot. That's crazy. And that's only because it got tagged along with social media with another movie called Barbie in this whole Barberheimer phenomenon that just blew the doors wide open on cinema this year, because Barbie was a thing, it was another big thing that happened that made 1.
6 billion last year, a movie about a doll that no girl plays with now. This blew my mind. And so it's and it, because it became a thing. So it was like, so Barberheimer, I think it capsulates a lot of things that we talk about Mr. Benja. There was the, these unknown properties, IP properties, right? That kind of came together.
One was a book. One was a toy. Unique. Filmmakers that, Greta Gerwig Barbie and her take on it. And then obviously Christopher Nolan has interesting story, the way he tells his stories and then social media, man, just how just make these things bigger than they probably would have been on their own.
And Like I said, I thought it was pretty interesting to see, and this is the first time I think a movie that made that much money had a chance to win. I think the last time that happened, I think I put it on here. The ratings for this was only about 19 million. Yeah. I think I have the numbers there.
I can't find it right now. Mr. Benjamin, I lost in the sauce, but I think I put 19. 5 million. Yeah. I think 4 million viewers watched the Oscars live or maybe delayed. And that's the best is 2020, but it's a far cry from 55 million people watched it back in 1998. And that movie was the Titanic, which I think you, did you see the Titanic?
Movie. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I was at fam. I remember took a date to go see it. I never forget. I was like, Hey, pretty good. 55 million people watched the Oscars when Titanic one, it's historic run. And so that goes, shows you that, movies may not be as monolithic as they once were, unless they get some help.
From social media or something like that. And so those are some of the things that I thought was interesting. And that's why I want to bring up the Oscar, to talk about that. And you displayed that a lot of people don't care. So that's, it's interesting. Oh, real quick.
Do you know about this other thing called Ken? I'm just Ken. Did you hear about that? Did that go viral or did you, do you know anything about that song or what that was about?
Mr.Benja: I knew about the song. Didn't mean much to me, but what about it going viral?
Theo Harvey: It was just Ryan Gosling.
He was, this actor who performed live and it's just this viral moment whereby I was super excited by him dancing and acting like a goober on live television. So it was one of those things, right? But I don't know if it moved a needle. Maybe a little bit. And these Gen Z years, I don't think they care watching stuff live.
Oh, I don't know. They'd rather just watch it on Twitter or Tik Tok or whatever. And people, reacting to it as opposed to maybe watching it live. Cause you remember when the Chris Rock that's a good.
Mr.Benja: Okay. That's a good question though. It's like you'd figure with live and all the people connected socially there's a play that needs to happen there with the whole Instagram I'm on my phone live, what can happen kind of thing.
There's just something really interesting there. And
Theo Harvey: I don't think people want to go live. I don't think people want to go watch go. Cause to them, I think the TV process, like they need to know what channel it's on, where's the remote at and all that stuff. But if you're like, just live streaming it from your phone to the internet, I guarantee you get more viewers.
Yeah. Yeah. Livestream then you would on TV. So that's what they should calculate. How many people are watching live streams? Yeah,
Mr.Benja: no. If you had, let's say you had some, a phone. Let's say the MTV phone or whatever. No one cares about MTV right now, but somebody from MTV is like, Hey, listen, we got the MTV phone.
It's a special phone. It's going to be live streaming the entire night. We're going to pass the phone for me to Rick Ross. And then after a couple of minutes, Rick Ross is going to hand the phone off to Jada Smith after she has it for 15 minutes. Five minutes. We're gonna pass it off to Katy Perry.
And it's Oh, okay. That might be interesting. You just got this phone. You're live streaming with people. They're doing all kinds of stuff. And you're at the Oscars or something. What I'm saying is there's a play there and they're not taking up.
Theo Harvey: I think they've tried elements of it.
Maybe, if you do, that's what the hashtags are for, right? People are posting automatically. They're just, you just go to hashtag Oscars, right? And then you'll see what the celebrities are posting. You'll see different pictures of celebrities doing different things.
But, to your point, it's nothing like official, but maybe
Mr.Benja: they should to your point. It's nothing like Yeezy in his car talking about,
Theo Harvey: Y. Dot
Mr.Benja: com. What else is there? Yeah it's nothing as live raw and awesome as that. That's what I'm saying.
Theo Harvey: They, yeah. They need to do more of that, man, to your point,
Yeah. So anyway, so thought that's interesting. Are people watching movies anymore or do they prefer streaming? What do you, what'd you pull outta
Mr.Benja: the, e during the week? I was just thinking about movies in general, and I came across this article that was saying, yeah, two thirds of us adults would rather.
Wait to watch movies on streaming. It's like we, we knew this kind of, but somebody actually went out there and pulled the numbers and was like, yeah, ain't nobody trying to get up and go to the theaters when they can sit on the couch two months and just see you later. It's yeah. It's and people complain about the cost.
It's you've got a family you take four, four people to go to the movies. That's your time out, your parking, your. Tickets. You're looking at, 100 experience. Easily,
Theo Harvey: easily. Yeah. Yeah. It's not cheap to go to movies anymore. And to, to your point, they really don't have a lot of, theatrical, in my opinion, movies.
It's not like you're watching a Marvel movie anymore, like every quarter, right? Like we had, Three Marvel movies a year or something that makes you want to go watch it and see it. And so it's like now, they're using social media to entice you to want to go, but it's not the same anymore. I would say this.
There's some data though, that shows shout out to the entertainment strategy guy. He actually said theatrical films massively outperform straight to streaming. So it doesn't mean people want it, but it's just think about it. If you have, it's almost like it's a product differentiation.
This movie is so good that we trust that it's going to be in the theaters now, as opposed to going to streaming. So it's just a con, a connotation of quality for that movie if it shows up in a theater and then even if it doesn't do well, guess what? Now they have all these different pathways they can do direct to, to what they call it POV, where do you go direct to video on demand, and then you can finally get to a streaming service and then you can do these other things.
And so it's just like the notation of quality is tied to these products, these movies that go to the theater versus that go to streaming, like you just said, the the the audience probably would prefer seeing streaming, but you make more money when you can get it on that.
That's why two movies that just got released what's it called? Argyle, which has got terrible reviews, but that's fine. Apple probably is going to make us money because guess what? Went to the theater first. Now it's on Apple, Amazon, Apple streaming, but they probably made money. All these other different markets and stuff and how they set it up.
So you make more money if it goes to the theater. That's what I'm trying
Mr.Benja: to say. Yeah. I think a lot of that has to do with Cache just being trustworthy. The market understanding that no, you actually sat down and put together an actual product and we now know that it's theater worthy. So of course it's going to be at least streaming worthy.
You know what I mean? And
Theo Harvey: this is I got this Mr Benja. This is what it is. That's why we talk about the book conversation versus exactly. I was there. Yeah, because it's that's the concept. It's if you put something in the physical world, people just assume it's worth more.
Mr.Benja: I have a book. It's okay, you say I have an ebook.
It's like
Theo Harvey: it's in the theater versus the streaming. Okay. It's like that extra work you did in people's perception may not be that much more work to you, but the extra perception makes it's a donates quality, right? They're aligned now because of the, how easy is to distribute digital products and goods.
Yeah.
Mr.Benja: Yeah. And, You know what? I need to actually look into that because there's a lot of that I think that I've not investigated properly enough. Just that unspoken cache, that little voice in your head that says, no, I trust that. Why? It's actually in the theater. So that means they did this and this.
It's got X, Y and Z. You can just certain things that bring along that trust that you may be overlooking. Yeah. But it's you know what, it's not much, it's not that much work. Just do it this way. And then you can go add on all the other stuff and be all crazy about
Theo Harvey: it. No, like trust. And how do you know, how do you get that trust faster?
Mr.Benja: I got an example. I was at an art show, right? And everybody's passing out their business cards and talking about their art and the process. And I realized I got the best interactions when I showed people my business card and actually told them my email address. My email address. It's actually at mr.
Benja. com. So everybody else had Gmail addresses, some, a couple of hot mails or whatever. One lady actually stopped me and was like, how'd you do that? And I was like, I got a website. When you was this, we use this was after 2010. She
Theo Harvey: said, how did you do that?
Mr.Benja: Yeah. And it was just totally foreign to her.
So she was just like, she thought some big corporate institution needed to have a corporate big corporate website for you to be able to do that. But unnecessary.
Theo Harvey: Nah, dog. Nah, dog. Mr. Benja. What's up, man? We got anything else we want to jump into? You got a rant you got a rant
Mr.Benja: in you I got a rant man Let me tell you someone sold on lemon a lemon because that was the alternate title Don got sold a lemon X gonna give it to Don Lemon, it's time to make lemonade because he just got squeezed, juiced.
So Don Lemon had the show from, he's from CNN. He had the show. He's going to jump on and jump on X, have the show there. He interviews Elon Musk. Everybody says it was a testy interview. Wasn't that exciting? He gets on there, does the interview, Elon Musk says I don't like that so much, and gets rid of him.
So now, one, you know what, you won't know what Elon Musk is about, but don't take that and be sad about it. This is Don Lemon's greatest chance to put his show somewhere and really get traction. I don't know what he thought he was doing by going to X. Maybe he could have been that other guy, but this is a good move for Don.
Don, X is going to give it to you, and you don't want it from Elon like that. Do your own thing. Dude, go post up somewhere. And this is actually a positive rant because Hey, big things are happening. Donald is going to do something. I love it. I
Theo Harvey: love it, man. Look guys, we're going to end on this with great insightful podcast.
Hope you take some insights today, but if you like what we do, please subscribe and comment at show versus business on X YouTube and Instagram. This is just a Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you listen to podcasts and then go visit our show at show versus business on our website. Get the latest information, Mr.
Benja great talking to you, man.
Mr.Benja: That's always peace.