Co-hosts Rob Flis & WatchMojo founder Ashkan Karbasfrooshan chat about the evolution of the concept of an entrepreneur, from Prophets and Kings to 3rd Base Leaders, and what it really takes to be a "made man" in today's business landscape.
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00:00this program might contain strong language if you think you may be offended switch off now
00:14hello everybody welcome back to watch mojo and the inside mojo podcast where each week we look
00:26back on watch mojo's 20-year history on youtube i'm your host rob and with me as always is watch
00:31mojo's co-founder and ceo ashgan karbis fushan ash we did it we made the playoffs we did yeah no i'm
00:39very excited the canadians made the playoffs i mean the last time we made the playoffs in 21 we
00:44it was during the covid bubble so we kind of made it to the stanley cup finals kind of but it's a
00:50bit of an asterisk so you know this time i think the city is quite surprised and impressed again
00:56when you have a good culture obviously they're a very talented team you know it's the best
01:00built team uh that the habs have had since i've been following them in 86 when i was eight
01:06um but no when you have a good culture when you have talent a lot of things come together
01:10and if you don't have a good culture there's no amount of talent that can offset that so you're
01:15seeing a lot of things aligning for this young habs team and we are just stoked yeah very young team
01:21actually uh what are your expectations for this playoff run so believe it or not hockey has an
01:26interesting pattern where sometimes when teams just have an incredible regular season when they're
01:32on a high they kind of you know they deflate in the playoffs and then the next year they go on
01:37generally they learn like a couple years ago the boston broons who has a haps fan i must hate but
01:42clearly respect us we're obligated to be obligated it's in the passport um the broons set a record for the
01:49best uh regular season and then they lost to the florida panthers and they were shocked and then
01:53because of his retirement you know this year they didn't even make the playoffs so with the habs
01:57i do feel like they have zero pressure they're taking on the washington capitals whom we beat in 2010
02:04um and this time i think ovechkin this year was kind of very euphoric chasing wayne gretzky's record
02:12in some ways i think the capitals may feel like that was their high like subconsciously like they
02:18already won something so there is an element of upset and as one general manager in our future
02:24in our past used to say once you make it into the playoffs anything can happen and i think more so
02:28than other sports in hockey stanley cup is the toughest championship to win you know it's a grueling
02:34you got to win four rounds best of seven series so we're stoked i mean it's like we're loving it and
02:42then at the end we have not just the best young defenseman in lane hudson now we just got probably
02:48arguably one of the most talented young prospects in ivan demidoff so i mean we're kind of on a high
02:55very exciting go habs go all right this week we're talking about being a made man in entrepreneurship
03:01what can we expect for this episode so you know let's discuss it this way so entrepreneurship as
03:09we've talked on the show and as i've written and studied for like a couple decades now has become
03:14this thing you know where we think of entrepreneurs as these like rock star tech guys um and we look to
03:20them the media looks to them like it's kind of you know these these you know like smart people with a
03:27lot of principles and i've kind of said let's calm down like mark zuckerberg started facebook to rate
03:32the attractiveness of his classmates at harvard um evan over at snap started that so they could send
03:39six second nude pics you know like let's be honest jeff bezos really smart guy i mean let's just be
03:45clear he was an analyst he just picked amazon originally called abracadabra just because he was
03:50like books are an easy thing to warehouse etc etc and because of timing being relatively early
03:59and because of a low interest rate environment where money was cheap they were able to scale these
04:04global platforms and become super wealthy like not old style wealthy like oh they're you know got a
04:11billion dollars you know like jeff bezos is worth 100 billion mark zuckerberg is worth 50 60 and in
04:17north american western culture you know we do sadly look up to the rich even if some of them are lucky
04:24some of them just inherited some of them can be scoundrels so today's show i just want to talk
04:30about how that has changed and throughout history a lot of people have been entrepreneurs uh now we
04:36just view it and we associate it with tech entrepreneurs but it's always been this kind of
04:40new frontier that very entrepreneurial people have changed and we'll talk a little bit about you know
04:45has venture capital room that you know has it created this false set of objectives and and purpose
04:52and so that's some of the themes we'll touch on today sure let's start by talking about the origins
04:57of entrepreneurship uh you wrote an article that refers to profit versus profits can we get into
05:03that a little bit well the right juxtaposition is profit p-r-o-f-i-t and purpose you know and it's
05:11fine some people are very much driven they want to become entrepreneurs because they just want to be rich
05:15but yeah so in in our uh in our kind of preparation for this i use profit p-r-o-p-h-e-t and so you know i
05:25kind of went down a rabbit hole some time ago and i was like if you go throughout history really the
05:31first people who were entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial were the prophets and in some ways their disciples
05:37were intrapreneurs but if you think about it zoroaster who founded zoroastrianism moses and the 10
05:43commandments that we at watchmojo obviously look up to you know they all claim to have heard messages
05:48from god and i'm agnostic maybe it's true maybe it's not but it was really about a vision about a
05:53way to operate at the time your daily life you got a bunch of nomads you had a bunch of people living
05:58there were no real social constructs constructs there were no norms no rules of engagement how do
06:05you decide it's funny zoroastrianism which is a great religion in terms of good and evil
06:10living you know well doing right fending off temptation and all that those concepts obviously
06:17inspired abrahamic religions islam christianity and judaism but like zoroastrianism actually at
06:25the time you you did you could marry like your sisters or your whatever your family but okay
06:30over time with science and medicine and biology they realized maybe some of these things don't make
06:35sense but my point here is just to say that if we're going to be candid if you go back thousands
06:40of years the first entrepreneurs were the prophets and then once kind of a religion framework was
06:45established like to kind of guide people in terms of how to live you really had these kings and
06:51commanders who were the first entrepreneurial folks cyrus the great kuroshe bozorg you know he built the
06:57first global empire he introduced the cyrus cylinder which was the the foundation it was version 1.0 of
07:04the declaration of independence that america is built on right he inspired thomas jefferson
07:08alexander the great alexander the great alexander the great was a born on first base entrepreneur
07:13his father philip of macedon was already king his mother olympia was like a political uh you know
07:20operative so to speak his destiny was so to speak you know destined to be um a king and they were
07:27literally the first people who would kind of like gather around people employees tell them this is the
07:33vision this is why we're doing this and it was sometimes emotional we are going to go avenge the
07:39persian empire burning of athens and 480 bc as alexander would say sometimes it was purely profit
07:45hey if we want to have a better life we need egypt's wheat we need persia's gold you know whatever the
07:52purpose or profit the prophets and the kings were kind of entrepreneurial in that sense then eventually
07:58you had explorers columbus was the first uh you know one of the first types of entrepreneurs who
08:03went up to angel investors and those were the genoese bankers to ask for money or then he would go to a
08:10venture capitalist or private equity fund the king to say give me money and then eventually you had
08:16sorry inventors and scientists thomas edison prolific patent holder you could technically argue that um
08:24you know we discussed how edison's patents led to a lot of the warner brothers folks to leave
08:30the east coast go all the way to the west coast to build like a geographic buffer so they could compete
08:36kind of unfairly right so like the themes of entrepreneurship um have kind of carried and then
08:41eventually the media barons uh joseph pulitzer william randolph hearst henry loose rupert murdoch
08:48some of these were self-made william randolph hearst actually borrowed 10 million dollars which
08:54at the time was like asking for 100 million from his mother to buy the san francisco newspaper and
09:00that became his um his his his base of empire same thing with rupert murdoch all to get to today where
09:06you had technologists and this is really the era that like i think we in 2025 think of entrepreneurs as
09:12elon musks but my point is it's always been the new frontier and i would say to bring it all together
09:18with youtube storytellers you know i feel today really influencers creators storytellers these are
09:24the real entrepreneurs now these are the people who are basically believing in themselves um and kind
09:31of wanting to walk to the beat of their own drum yeah cool to see this evolution i just want to let
09:36our viewers know that we have a poll going up on our youtube channel so head over to watch mojo on
09:39youtube and weigh in with your thoughts we want to know how do you view entrepreneurs are they rock
09:45stars are they leaders and mentors are they fakes and phonies or are they geniuses so pick one of
09:50those four and we'll revisit the results at the end of the episode michael jordan kind of phony
09:56well we'll see i'm curious about this one i've kind of anyways i'm not gonna telegraph what i think my
10:03uh the responses will be but we'll see when we when we get there um so we also have an interesting
10:08table that kind of tracks the richest people over time adjusted for inflation let's take a look at that
10:14so yeah this was something i think you know i would just came across you always hear about
10:18inflation adjusted and it you know it i was i was actually writing an article back in the day on
10:23iran and just saying how as the original first empire it was obviously the wealthiest nation at
10:29one point and then over time if you fast forward to today you know skip the gold skip the other
10:34you know minerals or you know things that led to its gdp in the last century it was because of oil and gas
10:41and it got a lot of attention from the brits the russians um and the americans and i noticed that
10:48whomever throughout history ruled over iran ancient persia happened to be the wealthiest because they
10:54consolidated a lot so first cyrus the great then alexander the great and even genghis khan who
11:00adjusted for present time his net worth was actually a hundred trillion or it could be calculated as a
11:06hundred trillion and the technique was they would say okay when genghis khan was ruling let's say in
11:11the 12th century you know what was the gdp of the world and let's say if it was uh 120 trillion
11:17and he controlled you know 80 percent of it then they would say well he was on top of 100 trillion but
11:23the point is if you go back here so today you know jeff bezos elon musk this is a few months outdated
11:30bernard arnaud who runs lvmh in france you know you have all these uber wealthy people and most of
11:37them they didn't make this money like through cash flow and this is to connect the dots back in the day
11:43entrepreneurs would generally start a business and they would take risk sometimes financial risk with
11:50debt and they would incur losses until they found their product market fit hit a tipping point broke
11:58even and then through cash flow would accumulate earnings over time that's changed in the last
12:05two three actually it's changed going back to the 1980s with private equity and then venture capital
12:10angel investing where a lot of people their wealth is on their the the ownership stake that they have
12:18you know like i understand the frustration when people are like i can't pay for medication i can't
12:22pay for groceries tax to rich i don't pay taxes i mean taxes fund we're canadian we're pretty we're a
12:27lot more left in that sense america like the gop all they care about is get rid of my taxes right so
12:32our mindset being canadian is a bit differently but when people are like out there like tax to rich elon
12:37this and that i'm like you know he's not sitting on 200 billion dollars of cash yeah he's not hoarding gold
12:44in that sense he's the owner of four or five businesses and he owns let's say whatever 20
12:51of businesses that are worth a trillion dollars ergo that's the 200 billion so if the value goes
12:57down he may be broke so to speak and he has like 13 children to pay for also so the children the baby
13:02mamas yeah i mean he's prolific in that sense he's open source to sperm basically
13:07i'm just repeating but but so my point is there has been a shift culturally where it's gone from
13:16being master of your domain running a profitable going concern generating profits reinvesting some
13:22putting some away to now you basically have a lot of people who are wealthy on paper because some
13:30investor came and said well i'm going to buy 20 of your business and i'm going to value it at
13:34100 million so here's 20 million that 100 million is not real value in my opinion it's a notional
13:42amount where two parties agreed on a value on paper so that they could come to an agreement where party a
13:48sells a stake to party b the investor but when people then point to that big amount i'm like well
13:54that nobody came and bought that you know it's like you could say your house is worth five million
13:58and you could sell one percent of it to somebody because they want to be a homeowner let's say
14:03your home is not really worth five million your home is only worth five million if somebody comes
14:07and gives you a check for five million first at home yeah basically a lot of people associate
14:13entrepreneurship with freedom you know not working for anybody else uh you know having control of your
14:19own destiny so to speak do you agree with that and has that changed over time well okay yes and no
14:24first of all i think that is a paradox it's a myth where you think freedom but you're actually
14:28like entrepreneurs have to be servant in to succeed you have to serve your employees you have to
14:32serve your clients you have to serve the community whether you believe it or not or like it or not
14:37so you don't actually have freedom in that sense if anything you're more like 247 if if like as an
14:44example if you manage a team and you mess up and you're not there to fix it guess who has to clean
14:48up the mess it's more responsibility at the end it's more responsibility and it's 247 but but yes to
14:53the to the point you're making i do admit that entrepreneurs are rarely driven by profit
14:59f you know p-r-o-f-i-t it's not what drives us because if you're driven by profit you're going to
15:05go get a job that pays you a ton of money there is purpose there is another reason there are
15:10insecurities i think most of them is just freedom to do what they want for me i was at a point when
15:16i was 26 27 where every time there was a problem i wanted to resolve it one way and my my boss it was
15:22his right he was the ceo he wanted to always resolve it in a way and we didn't really agree on
15:27those principles not saying he lacked principles just that our we viewed things differently so for
15:33me it was freedom from that baggage from that mental strain of every time there's an issue i
15:38gotta finagle my brain to you know look at donald trump now donald trump says something one of his
15:44lieutenants goes out there says something differently and then they gotta backtrack to do what our supreme
15:48leader donald trump wanted you know everybody's back trumping these days um so yes i do think it's
15:54freedom but i don't necessarily think it's like literal freedom when you're like i could do whatever
15:59i want because you actually find yourself more uh or less free so to speak you know right we've touched
16:06on this a little bit before um not all of the biggest entrepreneurs in the world are self-made a lot
16:11of them started on third base um what's your estimation of that who are the real ones who have kind of made it
16:18for themselves okay i don't want to shit on born on third base entrepreneurs which is a term uh i think
16:24was lauren switzer who's a coach uh he coached at oklahoma then he went to dallas cowboys and he
16:30basically said some people are born uh on third base but they wake up thinking they hit a triple
16:36you know but they're actually born in the right family so i want to just and somebody asked what do
16:40entrepreneurs do so i'll segue to answer that so the reality is there are some people who are born
16:48in certain families or to a certain father and mother who started a business and will either inherit
16:54or not they actually have the privilege and the opportunity to not do anything some then choose
17:02to actually pursue and to quote paraphrase philip and alexander to build for themselves a kinder
17:08grade them for the one i leave you is too small type of thing um those people i have nothing but
17:15respect for because the insecurities and the traits that they need when they don't actually have to do
17:21anything to really really make a name for themselves i have nothing but respect now sometimes they don't
17:27have the sense of awareness sometimes they think they hit a triple but they were born on third base but
17:33that doesn't take away from their ambition their drive their desire and who am i to criticize them
17:38right but there is this just i used to call it wantrepreneurs ventrepreneurs which are like
17:45not in it for the real thing which is what what is entrepreneurship what do entrepreneurs do
17:51entrepreneurs is really somebody that mobilizes resources recruits people
18:00identifies identifies a purpose a goal brings it all together with a plan to then accomplish a goal
18:11those are kind of what entrepreneurs do so yes if you break down those things
18:18it is true that now you have way too many like wantrepreneurs who want to be entrepreneurs but
18:25they don't necessarily understand what it takes like are you willing to sacrifice forego immediate
18:31gratitude gratification for a possible future most people don't most people for example like when we
18:37used to meet people from hollywood who would come and they wanted to talk about youtube the concept of
18:43risk was just foreign to them they were like well i'm this and that and i'm you know i don't i'm i'm
18:48open to youtube but how do i get paid today i was like it doesn't work like that it's a democratic
18:53platform and they didn't understand that they just had this sense of you know expectations that is
19:01not really conducive to succeed and then i also think not to shit on the 99 of entrepreneurs who
19:08raise money from vcs that the second you raise money from a vc early on you're not really an
19:12entrepreneur anymore you're an employee who has a lot of stock you're a ventrepreneur meaning you're
19:18they're you're their bitch whether you know it or not they have legal priorities over you there's
19:24things called liquidation preferences there are things called veto rights so you actually are no
19:30longer in control of your destiny like even if you sell one percent of your business it doesn't matter
19:35if you have control or majority because there's legal terms that are attached to things
19:39so yeah the entrepreneurs who just want to be entrepreneurs but don't know what it takes
19:43they're dead on arrival the ventrepreneurs are like walking dead because eventually you're gonna
19:51be like oh you think you're hot shit you think you're worth gazillions you get like the covers of
19:57newspapers you get invited to conferences but then one day joel pesci style you walk into a boardroom
20:02and there's a bullet with your name on it then there's nothing you could do and if you put up a
20:07fight yeah you may just drag out the inevitable you'll be escorted face down out of the building
20:12so but entrepreneurs old school don't really exist it's very rare to somebody to take the risk
20:21you know like the you know hugh hefner who was based in chicago way back and lived in at work for
20:28esquire one day esquire said we're picking up and we're going to new york and he was like i don't
20:33really want to but okay pay me five dollars more a week which at the time may have been 500 bucks more
20:38a thousand or whatever it was and esquire said no so he said okay he was looking for a reason to
20:43stay back in chicago and then he started playboy and he parlayed it into this empire that's old
20:49school even you have even richard branson richard branson took a lot of risks i'm not here to shit on
20:54richard branson richard branson is og hall of fame level entrepreneur but as like as i got as i started
21:00my career and i started to research entrepreneurs i realized like his later ventures carried no risk for
21:05him he would basically leverage the virgin brand to then go and bring somebody else who would take
21:11the financial risk now still entrepreneurship but it's not the same thing right and speaking of the
21:17level of inherent risk involved in entrepreneurship it is different for somebody who's completely
21:22started from zero and then somebody who did start on third base because a failure for for those two
21:28types of people looks very different like nobody is going to nobody is going to look down upon someone
21:33who started with nothing and didn't make it anywhere but somebody who started with an advantage and
21:38ended up screwing it up is going to be looked at very differently um look it's case by case right the
21:43reality is you know that line i've said hey good luck with that business pal i always believed in you
21:48buddy like to be honest like people not make fun in a malicious way people were like what what are you
21:53building a business on youtube you're hiring all these unexperienced kids like what are you doing you
21:57know so it was hard and if you fail there are people who will dance on your grave regardless of
22:03if you're like you know made uh you know self-made or if you're you know born on third base but look to
22:09be honest yeah there are some born on third base people who destroy a ton of wealth um and they just
22:16kind of could still carry on even if they're ridiculed um but there are others who kind of use that i mean
22:23i'm not this is not enough this is actually a credit um so montreal one of the prominent families
22:29the bronfmans the grandpa i mean i could see his house from here type of thing you know there's a
22:34nice house on the mountain the grandfather sam i think built bronfman global liquor business here
22:43and remember that line behind every fortune is a great crime by it was during prohibition in the
22:50states so they built their empire he was a hustler he was like he was just driven driven driven
22:54then the second generation shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves the second generation built it up and that
23:00was uh steven steven bronfman no steven is the son um charles bronfman sorry and edgar bronfman like
23:07edgar went to the states charles bronfman built it up here and then eventually their son edgar bronfman
23:14junior he decided like i'm not interested in liquor i'm not interested in dupont they own the
23:20stake in the chemicals company he was like i want to go into show business a lot of people made fun of
23:25him because they're like oh rich kid you know well now he's probably 70 or 65 um but my point is a lot
23:32of people bashed him and i had started my career in media and the stuff that he was talking about
23:38synergy and streaming he was just ahead of the curve now he did do this merger with
23:44universal uh in the states with vivendi in in france and it destroyed a lot of shareholder value
23:53so yes it was fair to criticize him on the financial outcome but in the end the stuff that he saw the
24:03vision he had was right it was the timing that was off but then he didn't kind of go and cry and i'm
24:09not here as this pr guy i'm just saying that you can't just simplify it as born on third base or not
24:13he then went out and took a controlling stake in warner music built that up um he's now i think
24:19the the chairman if not the zone maybe not the zone but he's the chairman of something else but my
24:24fubo i think my point though is that when you're an entrepreneur you do eventually develop the
24:31maturity to have a thick skin and block out all of that like because you sometimes don't control it
24:36right there's some entrepreneurs who start and then covet happens it benefits them they get a bunch of
24:40valuations and then they go up and then they die because that was just something that made sense
24:44and everybody was working from home and then alternatively there are some who who do crash
24:50but they kind of pick up the pieces and they don't you know listen to the haters and then they go and
24:55fulfill their destiny as an entrepreneur you know you do only have to be right once but it's not like
25:00if you're wrong once then you can never repeat it's up to you you know right with the advent of social
25:06media and things like this entrepreneurs have kind of become celebrities in their own right which has
25:10probably resulted in a lot of bullshit going along with it so tell me about that what's your estimation
25:16of like the the level of fame that some of these guys have and which ones are genuine and and who you
25:21know okay so not to be a hypocrite since we're doing a whole podcast and we're here you know so like
25:27be careful what kind of stone i want to throw from this perch i will say though that a ceo is
25:32ultimately the chief cheerleader of a company so a ceo like i've always said i'd much rather be
25:39behind my computer firing off emails working on content working on partnerships than like being
25:44on a stage at a conference although i have to do that as well but i know what i prefer but the point
25:50is is if as a ceo you don't recognize that you're the chief cheerleader of the company it is hard for
25:56the company to stand out close deals recruit yada yada i've met so many wonderful people that we've
26:03hired who came up to me and said hey i heard you speak at this event or i read this article
26:06it resonated so it is also like part of the racket to attract and all that but too much of a good thing
26:14is a bad thing so yes in the era of the 2010s where if interest rates were low and there was so much
26:21money it's kind of like tilted to the other extreme where it was all about the noise and the pr and you
26:28know rock stars and there was nothing underneath of there was no real foundation so to me the advice
26:36i would give is at a given time you know you have to make noise at a given time you have to go behind
26:41and just be in the trenches so over 20 years yeah from 2006 to eight nine i was maybe more out there
26:48trying to just learn and make contacts in the mid 2000s we were so busy i was head down in the trenches
26:54just working a couple years ago i was like okay covid is behind us i can't be totally off the radar
26:59we need to get back out there and then sometimes it's also more tactical like you know a means to an
27:06end like we were trying in our case like we were trying to develop podcasts so i'm like hey this could work
27:12but that's the key there needs to be a raison d'etre there needs to be a method to the madness
27:16and there's way too many entrepreneurs who are kind of on this global rock star pr tour
27:22i had actually invested in in many startups there was one i like them i like what they're doing and
27:29i understand but it was like bro you haven't launched for a year every day you're in some
27:36other conference we're just funding your travel lifestyle but i was like you know ash you want to
27:45be an angel investor in startups not everybody's going to have the same now eventually they launched
27:50and i never said anything to them because i knew the methods of the madness but i understand the
27:56optics of another investor who maybe wasn't operationally experienced could have been like
28:00motherfucker we're just funding this guy to go to one you know beachside resort to another um and
28:07there's a balance you know you have to be out there but you can't be too out there that can't be your
28:11product your product cannot be traveling around the world's conferences that makes sense we got
28:16another interesting question in uh what is more critical being able to pivot as the market changes
28:21or sticking to your vision despite the short-term challenges i mean i hate the answer always it
28:26depends balance but the answer is balance and i'll explain very quickly so for us like i've already
28:29explained this the vision of inform and entertain the principles of producing content that people
28:35actually want to see our passion about like that did never change with us those fundamental you know
28:41vision beacon purpose was always constant but the tactics have to change you know if we would have
28:46been focused on like q a's as we discussed a couple weeks ago and we sit down with celebs and we ask them
28:51questions but they don't really want to answer the publicist keeps it dry it's like vegetable lasagna
28:56interviewing you know uh uncooked squash yeah like that's not gonna go anywhere so you have to adapt so i would
29:03say you want to keep the big vision stuff constant you don't want to sell that out in that sense but
29:09if your tactics are not leading to the desired outcome absolutely just be careful not to pivot four
29:14times because you're back to square one taking it back to youtube which is our domain um the platform has
29:21allowed for a lot of young entrepreneurs to kind of like you know take flight and it's resulted in some
29:27some huge businesses like if you look at mr beast for example that's like he's the biggest example
29:32right now um what do you think about that how has youtube enabled young people to kind of jump into
29:38the entrepreneurship lifestyle and kind of you know build something for themselves well let's start
29:43off by saying hollywood probably 120 whatever years ago was very entrepreneurial as well you know like
29:49whether you're charlie chaplin whether you're walt disney whether you're the warner brothers i mean
29:53those were the crazy outcasts and misfits and all that and they probably started very entrepreneurial
29:58organizations but then eventually everything gets fat everything becomes more profitable it attracts
30:05a lot of phonies and fakes and people who are just complacent and then it loses that edge and then
30:10there's this new thing that comes and disrupts it right so now we get to youtube so youtube is
30:14ultimately just this new platform as we've said that is totally democratic you know with a with a
30:20basic computer your phone you could edit and and be a media company there's no barriers to
30:26distribution you could upload and you could use social media to build so yeah i think any new
30:32emerging platform technology lends itself well to disruption and innovation it's not surprising and
30:39this is why i came up with the whole concept of storyteller entrepreneur it's not surprising that if
30:44like okay rupert murdoch inherited his dad's newspapers but he's an og built it like you can't like can't
30:50take anything away from him he built fox you know so if rupert murdoch was walking in the streets of
30:552015 he probably would not go to warren buffett chop down some trees hire a truck run it through
31:02ink print newspapers he would be like man i get to overthrow democratically elected governments using
31:10youtube fantastic i get to undermine politicians this way you know so it's just like a means to an
31:16end so absolutely youtube has been super democratic i love it as an outsider you know and if you're
31:22let's yes it's all perspective to some if you read my profile you're like white cisgender male
31:27fair okay but i'm also ashland carbus fushan born in iran uh born muslim you know starting a career so
31:35to me i have nothing but gratitude for the internet and youtube without it i'd be not doing you know the
31:42the best version of me so to speak and i love the fact that this has created so much but the next
31:50question the good and bad and youtube youtube has been on an accelerated trajectory where after 20
31:56years it's stronger than ever and yeah i think look i'm going to say this about the internet so i pitched
32:01an idea um i pitched two ideas i was like one was do we want to do please hear both sides i was like we
32:10could do top 10 only fans celebs like if we wanted for watch mojo not a bad idea not a bad idea because
32:16there's interesting stories and you know only fans but then i had read this expose on reuters about all
32:22the bad parts of only fans so i wanted to do more of an essay type the good bad and ugly of only fans
32:27i'm going to comment about only fans but it kind of appeals to just this fame obsessed world
32:31it does give a tremendous element of freedom agency to the one percent of one percenters
32:42who succeed that's good yeah but i think people forget it's like if every kid wanted to be an
32:49athlete but they never went to school because they just thought they got the skills and then they're
32:53unemployed the problem with youtube and only fans and social media is if you go all in hoping to be
32:59that one percent and more kids and polls want to be creators than anything else what happens when
33:04you're the 99.9 percent so a lot of using the only fans a lot of women gravitate when they're like
33:13well and i understand if you're like during covid if you were um a strip club employee a stripper
33:19um you now all of a sudden could use only fans to make an income but you also were like well i also
33:27don't put myself in situations around men that i'm uncomfortable and i get to do it on my terms
33:33so like you see the good even of something like only fans which again clearly regardless of your
33:38your morals you know you could like or dislike but then what happens when every young woman at 17 18 16
33:4518 19 whatever i'm assuming there's a legal age above which but you just go i'm gonna go totally nude
33:51and i'm gonna be on well you are limiting your options down the road yeah in terms of employment
33:57and even relationships and again it's it's 2025 it's your life it's your agency do what you want
34:02but there are consequences so that's a bit more extreme talking about nudity and only fans but youtube
34:08and social media is the same thing i think it's fine i am not somebody that will ever tell an
34:13entrepreneur or creator don't go for it go for it but i understand the odds are really against you
34:18you know so if you go all into youtube and you don't have a plan b it could become a very very
34:25depressing place where you know you waste your life when you have a ton of energy and a ton of
34:31creativity so you also have to know when to pivot yourself yeah i mean yes when we're talking about
34:38the one percent of the one percent we're talking about the people have become very wealthy doing this
34:42stuff but there is like a scale of success and and i think about this too in terms of music because
34:47that's i spent a lot of energy in that uh over the course of my life you don't necessarily have to be
34:53you too playing at the o2 arena you could be having a successful career playing medium to small size
35:00clubs you know and still make a great living and enjoy what you do but you know you're not a you're
35:04not a multimillionaire but you know i think the same applies to youtube as well doesn't it it does
35:09but the difference is if you're playing music i think like music is what you love and you might try
35:16different genres it's an outlet yada yada the problem we have with youtube forget even only fans
35:22with the problem we have with youtube is you know i have a slide that goes don't necessarily follow
35:26your passion but what is your comparative advantage demand and supply there's way too many people like
35:32the idea of music and writing is there's always infinite number of people that are going to voice it
35:37and many successful like van gogh it's like a myth was he poor when he died was he not okay we could
35:43agree none of them were seen as geniuses you know their life was challenging the problem with youtube
35:48is like what is it that you as a young person it's like linkedin influencers like there's linkedin
35:55experts whose expertise is linkedin yeah i'd love to have a conversation with you about linkedin because
36:02i find that to be the most phony social media platform there is okay so a lot of feedback when people
36:07text me they're like you're so transparent it's real but i go it's also because i can say things to
36:12open up to show because if you're a ceo you're like my of a company and you're not like a founder
36:18yeah your board might think this guy is you know losing it or this guy's too emotional in my thing
36:24it's a bit different you know some people know me as super conservative super zen some people think i'm
36:28super crazy but the reality is i could say things that the average person can't so my linkedin is
36:33different but that's why i don't spend that much time on linkedin i like x yeah it's the asylum
36:38it's real time but you get to see people for their crazy inner selves which i find more interesting
36:43all i'm getting at is if you're young yes it's good to have an early advantage as a storyteller
36:51but just understand you probably don't really have a story to tell so then what that means is it
36:55becomes a bit of a um it it becomes a bit of a downward spiral where then everybody is just like
37:03who is that super annoying is it jack doherty there's one influencer who just goes around being
37:07a total cunt that's the only word to say so i'm like okay he's popular he's driving flashy cars so
37:15every young 13 14 year old instead of saying well i still gotta pay attention to school or i'm gonna
37:21have this hobby i'm a great guitarist and i'm gonna give tips you know what i mean but we've we've come
37:26to a place in society where everybody is just chasing attention and their expertise is being
37:33a bumble clot yeah i mean that's not a good place for society to go and that's also again tying it to
37:39entrepreneurship you have people who have like i'm on my fifth startup none of them have worked
37:45so maybe the problem is not the product or service you launch maybe you need to not be an entrepreneur
37:51maybe you should be an intrapreneur maybe you should be an executive right one problem when i
37:57go the vcs fucked up all of entrepreneurship is because they decided to just give a ton of money
38:02because it's only when they place money that they could charge management fees um to entrepreneurs
38:07that had no business being entrepreneur and i'm not saying that they cannot succeed but they would
38:12have been more well served if they would have had some experience under their belt yes makes a lot of
38:18sense uh so we got the results for from our poll in and they actually surprised me quite a lot because
38:24we asked yeah we asked uh what do you how do you regard entrepreneurs and 57 said that they are rock
38:30stars 22 said geniuses 11 said leaders and teachers and i thought the lead would have been fakes and
38:37phonies but that only got eight percent i know what's happening here and not to overthink it so i think
38:43when we did episode this is a lot about algo consistency like we initially were like do we
38:49even put this on watchmojo and i was like i sometimes chime in as a ceo i rarely talk as talent because
38:54then people are like well it's because you're biased but i was like if you mofos are serious about
38:58podcasts and you want to do podcasts and you don't leverage watchmojo we're all a bunch of morons you
39:03know like we're not going to start a podcast and put it in the third shelf in the attic and be like
39:07nobody saw it i think if we would have done this show on the if we would have done this poll in
39:12episode one the phonies would have been higher because i think you would have gotten a larger
39:16proportion of like passers-by on watchmojo that had no idea what this is by episode 13 i think what
39:23is happening is youtube's algorithm is serving up this kind of content to people that legit care
39:28about entrepreneurship so those people are not as skeptical cynical and like military or jaded
39:36you have people that are sitting here going wow this is useful as an entrepreneur oh this is useful
39:41as a storyteller so now i think that might explain a little bit what's happening which is good which
39:46shows again that youtube the algorithm works it's not just a bad thing it eventually finds the right
39:51audience for content and vice versa yep i would agree with that um so watchmojo did bring on investors
39:58a few years back can you talk a little bit about that what was the reason for that how did that come
40:01about sure so i don't want to lie i never uh when i started i've covered all this in my third book
40:0810 year overnight success so i got turned on by 100 vcs because i didn't really like content and
40:12that's when we needed the money and it was fine nothing illegal i managed to stay afloat yada yada found
40:19product market we're very profitable we always had more strategics like media companies that were
40:25impressed with what watchmojo was building because they were like you are creative but you can read a
40:29you know you're you're reasonable you're not like extreme finance extreme creativity um and they
40:36like that watchmojo was a brand and they like many things but it was also admittedly not an obvious fit
40:43to do a partnership with a company to really grow watchmojo faster by i told you by like 2015-16
40:5110 years in we were just this privately held company that was really doing well
40:56but we could have been just a you know house of cards we could have been this mirage so when
41:01ernst and young whom we now work with and it's genius of them we didn't use ernst and young at this point
41:07they just said hey we have the entrepreneurship of the year and i was like no i'm not interested in
41:11that but i remember going it would be cool as a validation to say this accounting firm vetted us
41:17did their due diligence were legit so when we won which was great i always said this is an
41:24entrepreneurship framed for an individual but it's really more for the team and it was a source
41:29of pride yada yada now five years later we were still independent and then when covid hit i was like
41:36hey man we dodged a bullet you know if one day donald trump as president goes i don't like youtube i'm
41:43shutting down youtube and some force majeure externality happens to us i am all alone the way covid was
41:50and then on the flip side covid made half of the industries uninvestable like right now if you're
41:57an investor and you invest in manufacturing you're not going to make any moves until you figure out
42:01what happens with tariff so in 2020 a lot of investors were like oh we're going to invest in
42:06this you know travel thing well not right now we're going to invest in this social club where
42:11everybody hangs really close together well we're not going to do that now so home entertainment we ended
42:17up getting a little bit more interest and we didn't need the money but i was like which i know
42:23to some people it doesn't make sense i was like i actually like governance i like running a well-run
42:30administration and all that and so i was like if we bring on investors it does signal again to the
42:36world that hey this is legit a bunch of professionals came vetted it and to me it was just like elevating
42:43the organization a bit more so the combination of fear um covid like event happening to us uncertainty
42:50uncertainty and then obviously yeah i mean it's it's good to get investors to come and place a value on
42:55your business because until you do that you know like we i don't chase media stories but like recently
43:01axios did a story that included us generally on digital media the first question is uh did you guys
43:07you guys have any funding i was like yes it's like it's a shame it's unfortunate that that is
43:14a checklist item but i also understand that it's like it's a vetting process like okay some people
43:19have come professionals in suits they sized you up you know they put you through a colonoscopy and you
43:25you passed you know so it's it's kosher type of thing so that was all the reasons that we did it but
43:30you know it doesn't change anything you know it's still we're as vince lombardi says the score is for
43:36the guys in the stands you have to just out hustle the guy across you on the line of scrimmage and
43:41that's very true you also mentioned uh shutting up the haters what what does that refer to um okay
43:48in the context here so today i won't lie ultimately you're always just it's like what do they say
43:55everybody's got an opinion everybody's got an asshole whatever yeah that line so sometimes you could be
44:00like let's use a house let's not talk about so i could be like my house is worth 50 you're like my
44:08house is worth 20 you're like your house is worth 20 i'm like it's a 50 house we could go back and
44:14forth and yes there's municipal assessments that are historical but if somebody comes and buys the
44:20house for 50 and you sit there and you go this is a 20 house i'm like dude the house sold for 50
44:25so shut the fuck up you know if you want to say it's 45 we could have a conversation but if you're
44:31saying it's 20 when somebody came and bought it for 50 that's the price yeah so now if let's say in 2020
44:39i don't need to tell people about the merits of youtube like if today you still don't get the
44:45merits of youtube you're a moron like forget i can't help you at this point but if also you came
44:51and you said well watch mojo is this and watch mojo is that i always go there's some legit feedback
44:55i don't i don't view it as whining or haters but if somebody goes well i don't see the point of watch
45:00mojo is this and that i'm like well look these professional investors came and they valued us at
45:04you know 50 let's say or 10 so who is you to be sitting here wasting my time and also i'm a finance guy
45:11i taught finance at mcgill i you know i did i was like 20 years ago doing valuation models for
45:17wikipedia but it's no longer just your stupid opinion and my stupid opinion now there's a third
45:23party that's agreeing they came they did their thing they had more information on the business
45:28than you do sitting there with your bag of cheetos in your basement but sure let's go on four more
45:34hours of back and forth so yes that was for me a big reason because i would always tell them
45:38building on youtube relying on this business model doing this kind of programming will yield the best
45:45result and people would say no and that was their right but you shut up the haters when somebody
45:49comes and validates that and that is a part that i had to accept that entrepreneur change you know you
45:55could be profitable but it's just your opinion and it's just you know you're you're just one business
45:59out of many so you do need that third party validation whether you like it or not gotcha
46:04understood uh well this was a great episode we got some good engagement from the comments i'm really
46:09happy with that uh next week we were supposed to be featuring the launch of our documentary
46:13i understand that there's been a bit of a delay on that so i so i'm an honest guy so i don't want
46:18to lie half of it is doing this podcast which i mean we share a few notes and for me it doesn't
46:25take long to prepare but the time i would have probably banged out the vo would have been done
46:30but that's really half that's not i mean i have enough time and i'm pretty prolific the truth is now
46:34that i'm going to web summit in rio um and then off to buenos aires to meet some of our team that
46:41is in argentina i do want to just kind of soak that in a bit more because one in argentina i do
46:49want to talk to them because the team we have has a lot of interesting experience working and more
46:55traditional in the argentinian media model so i do think that is an interesting vantage point to just
47:01here not even sure if any of it will go in it but the global nature how youtube is also giving a new
47:07lease on life to a workforce that otherwise hey legacy media dying and you got to go work in insurance
47:12you know nothing wrong with that so one i was like wait for that and i'm always asking questions you
47:18know which gets me in trouble sometimes but so i'm gonna i want to incorporate that and then rio is
47:22more anecdotal because when i first went to a web summit event in lisbon i think 2018 and then
47:30web summit in toronto is called collision when i did that in toronto it was a lot more the floor
47:36tech product entrepreneurs so i do want to walk around and be like hey is there more of a creator
47:42presence granted it's another geography but so i basically said go to rio kind of finish all the
47:52the points the notes and then when i come back i'll probably hammer it out so we'll release it
47:57you know either on a few weeks from now or maybe even at the end of these 20 episodes kind of as
48:03the culmination but i did feel that like it would be a shame not to use rio and i did my second
48:07documentary fox in the henhouse literally at salt in vegas at anthony scaramucci so i usually use those
48:13settings a bit for you know fodder cool so documentary still incoming but uh i mean yeah dbd but uh in the
48:21meantime next week we'll be talking about 2022 and the end of the zerp era which uh to be honest i don't know
48:26what the zerp era is so that'll be uh interesting for me zero interest rate phenomenon yeah which
48:32was there you go which was a major game changer in uh in in the economy and our industry as well just
48:39through a ricochet effect fantastic looking forward to that thank you as always ash it's always a
48:45fascinating conversation thank you you're too kind uh and thank you for everybody who watched and
48:50we'll see you again next week take care everybody go habs go go habs go
48:55you