Discover the transformative journey from eBay entrepreneur to the pinnacle of online marketing with Jordan Rovan, the mastermind behind DFO Global Performance, as he pulls up a chair at Ralph's pizzeria to share the highs and lows of his storied career. With New Jersey's finest pies as our backdrop, we traverse the evolution of digital marketing, lead generation, and the resilience required to pivot in the face of market crashes. Catch a glimpse of the camaraderie that not only defines the pizza industry but also serves as a blueprint for successful partnerships in the business realm.
Get ready to absorb a wealth of knowledge as Jordan and I unpack the strategies for building a business that stands the test of time. From the importance of delving deep into your verticals to the pitfalls of financial mismanagement, this episode is a mentorship session in itself. We reflect on how personal journeys shape professional success, and how the values of giving back and perseverance can pave your way through the unpredictable waves of the business cycle.
With an eye towards the future, we speculate on the impending shifts in marketing and pay-per-call, offering predictions that could revolutionize your approach to e-commerce. Jordan's personal insights on health, wellness, and maintaining balance amidst life's chaos are pure gold for anyone looking to succeed without sacrificing their well-being. So, buckle up for an episode that's as much an ode to the perfect pizza slice as it is a masterclass in entrepreneurial growth and adaptation.
Discover the transformative journey from eBay entrepreneur to the pinnacle of online marketing with Jordan Rovan, the mastermind behind DFO Global Performance, as he pulls up a chair at Ralph's pizzeria to share the highs and lows of his storied career. With New Jersey's finest pies as our backdrop, we traverse the evolution of digital marketing, lead generation, and the resilience required to pivot in the face of market crashes. Catch a glimpse of the camaraderie that not only defines the pizza industry but also serves as a blueprint for successful partnerships in the business realm.
Get ready to absorb a wealth of knowledge as Jordan and I unpack the strategies for building a business that stands the test of time. From the importance of delving deep into your verticals to the pitfalls of financial mismanagement, this episode is a mentorship session in itself. We reflect on how personal journeys shape professional success, and how the values of giving back and perseverance can pave your way through the unpredictable waves of the business cycle.
With an eye towards the future, we speculate on the impending shifts in marketing and pay-per-call, offering predictions that could revolutionize your approach to e-commerce. Jordan's personal insights on health, wellness, and maintaining balance amidst life's chaos are pure gold for anyone looking to succeed without sacrificing their well-being. So, buckle up for an episode that's as much an ode to the perfect pizza slice as it is a masterclass in entrepreneurial growth and adaptation.
LFG fam. We just shot a fucking banger. Right now, I can't wait till you hear this shit. It's like next level. No one's talking about this. Shout out to our sponsors, because without them, this shit wouldn't be possible. Shout out to ringba. Shout out to adam young the paper call revolution. There's big, big money in paper call. Whether you're someone who's a novice looking to get into it, whether you're someone's already doing and putting up big numbers, let's fucking do this. Guys. Get the fucking book on amazon. We're gonna drop a link here. Take your shit to the next level. Let's fucking go. Welcome to another episode of the lfg. Let's fucking go show.
Speaker 1:We are in a special location right now. It feels like I'm taking you out for a date and batting behind us. I got all these fucking. We got bat hearts. We got flowers for Valentine's day. We they close off the section of Ralph's, one of the best pizzerias in New Jersey, here.
Speaker 1:And we're here with my man, jordan Rovan. He is the CEO and co-founder of DFO performance. He is an OG in the industry, been doing this shit for a long time, so I'm super excited to have him on the show here and we're going to have some great pizza. We're going to talk about some good industry shit. And before we go into this, let's give a shout out to Ringba, who's sponsoring our show. Ringba's got the best call tracking performance software out there, so shout out to Ringba. Adam Young Harrison over there Great to have you on the show, my man, yo David, what's up man? I'm excited because, bro, you know, I moved to Florida. Right, I haven't had good pizza. I was Super Bowl yesterday. Sorry for the 49ers losing Good fucking game though Happens Great game, they'll be back.
Speaker 2:They'll be back.
Speaker 1:That's right, but listen, I like fucking pizza. I think Jordan likes pizza more than me to eat some good fucking pizza, so let's get into it.
Speaker 2:Man, you are lucky because, as you mentioned, we are in Ralph's Nutley, new Jersey. Ralph's has been here for 60-plus years. It's funny because, as much as I like pizza, I hadn't been here until a few years ago. One of my buddies put me on. I started coming here and the first time I came here I was like, wow, this place is legit. Obviously, portnoy gave it a. You know, I mentioned them. He gave it an 8.9, which is a pretty high score for him, very high, I'd say. That's probably a pretty accurate score for Ralph's.
Speaker 2:They make a nice thin pie here. They also make a very nice square pie. So you'll see, you know, they'll bring out the pizza soon. You'll see, it is interesting because we are two guys in here and it is decorated for Valentine's Day, so it feels a little fun. But it's cool. I mean they set us up here in the back room. Very nice of them to do that, to let us do the show. And yeah, man, I mean it's good to sit here with you, good and nice to have you back in Jersey. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I know. We saw each other in Florida, had a good meal with family. That was great man, and we've been seeing a lot of each other recently. We see each other all over the world, so it's great to be back home in our neck of the woods.
Speaker 2:You know man the interesting thing between you and I. One is we're a similar age. Two is we happen to be from the same exact place, the same town in New Jersey which is really random, ran Shout out to Elizabeth and then you told me you moved to Florida and you literally live a block away from where I am in Florida. So for some reason, the world wanted us to connect with one another.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. It's awesome. So, first and foremost, I mean, a lot of people in the industry know who you are. You've been doing this for a long, long time, but let's talk about give a little background to the people who don't know who you are. How'd you get into the game?
Speaker 2:Like, tell us the whole history. I mean so my first time online was doing eBay. This was back in the late 90s and I've told this story before. But basically I was selling watches for a guy in New York and he was doing all antique flea markets and basically selling I wouldn't say retail, because he was set up in the Diamond Districts on 47th Street and I was working for him and I was going to auctions and buying watches.
Speaker 2:And so I heard about eBay and so I was like, hey, man, let's set up a distribution channel on eBay. So we set it up, started off very slow, we were going to shut it down and then all of a sudden the business started to take off and we weren't putting high-end watches on there, so these weren't selling Rolexes, but we were doing Casios, Timex. At that time, Tag Heuer and Movados were very popular. So we were doing Tag Heuer and Movado and we wound up becoming one of the fastest power sellers ever on eBay. And so I thought I had this amazing business and I was going to be like a billionaire by figuring out how to conquer eBay, and the guy suddenly passed away, and when he passed away, basically all of his trade secret died with it. Wow.
Speaker 2:So I had no connection and no way to get the watches again how old were you at the?
Speaker 2:time. Oh man, I was like early twenties, right. And so when he died, the business died for me. So I went to work for a guy in the diamond district after all this happens, thinking that I would graduate college at some point shortly thereafter and then basically go to gemological school study diamonds, become a watchmaker. And after six months of working with the guy, the guy was like, look, you're a super nice guy, but this is not work. That's cut out for you. You don't have great eyes, you don't have great hands. Go find something else to do.
Speaker 2:So I was kind of heartbroken because I had my set, my mindset on, like, basically being in this business. So I had to figure out what else to do, and so I spent the next few years kind of just like wandering about. Buddy of mine moved down to Florida, presented me with an opportunity. I said, sure, why not, I'll head down there with you. Moved down to Florida, a year later I found myself generating leads for the mortgage industry and the insurance industry. I was originally buying data, so when we first started I was the guy in charge of buying data.
Speaker 1:I know his data. What kind of data?
Speaker 2:Data that you sell now. But I knew nothing about data, so I was calling up all these marketing companies and trying to buy data. A bunch of us like a bunch of them burned us on the data. Some of the data was like really bad, but it gave me a good learning experience. And then I started messing around on Google one night and sort of figured out that I could actually generate leads very cheaply for us, for our company, online by Google ads. And that was like kind of my first foray into like internet marketing.
Speaker 2:And this was 2005, 2006-ish, okay, right at sort of the peak of the market. The mortgage market run up, okay, and so I was generating leads and the problem I had is that I couldn't figure out how to scale right. So, like I could generate a bunch of leads for our call center that we had in Florida for mortgages. I was doing some for insurance, but I was like man, I could probably make money if I could figure out how to sell these to all these other mortgage brokers and insurance agents that are down here. How do I do that? So I started going on all the forums and reading, and that led me down the dark rabbit hole of affiliate marketing. And so, I don't know, probably about two years later, after just sort of figuring everything out and putting all the pieces together, I'd set up an offer and went live with my first official offer on one of the affiliate networks. I don't know, this is probably early 2008. And so we were in market and then 2008 happened, and so the whole market crashed, and so I thought that the lead gen business was going to die.
Speaker 2:When the financial markets crashed, and what I realized is that being in the lead gen industry and the position we were in, it's kind of a really unique place to be, because, no matter whatever was happening around us, people always needed leads, and so mortgage and insurance leads turned into loan modification and debt settlement leads, which eventually led back into mortgage leads a few years later when the market started to correct, and so there was always a place for it. So I built up a company Correct, and so there was always a place for it. So I built up a company, exited that company in 2011. So now I'm fast forwarding and I left Florida, I came back up to Jersey, exited that company, went to work DFO Performance, and that was a long time ago. That was 11 and a half years ago now, and so it's been an interesting adventure since then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love that. I've been in this game since 2015. In the Legion side right, I've been in call centers since 2005. But I feel like I've been doing this. I feel like each year is like dog years, right. So I've been in call centers since 2005, but I feel like I've been doing this. I feel like each year is like dog years, right, so I've been doing this. What eight years? I feel like that's like 56 years. You've been doing this, I don't know like fucking over 20 years man, it is definitely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean somewhere around there, right, I mean between like playing around with data and then obviously working on buying media as kind of like an internal media buyer, but then also as an affiliate. Yeah, I mean a lot of time spent playing around on the internet, for sure.
Speaker 1:So you've seen a lot of people come and go, I imagine in the industry, right, and what would you say is, I mean, for the people like you? You've been able to. I think one thing you've been able to pivot, right. You mentioned how your mortgage was hot, then it went to hell, then it turned to loan mods and the debt, then mortgage came back and now that we know mortgage has been all over the place because of the race. I mean. I think pivoting is huge, right, I mean. So what's the commonality of the people that've been able to stick that weather, the storm? What would you say is the common traits and the ones that haven't?
Speaker 2:You know, david the way that I see it is this right, I think in this industry you certainly have to find your place and, like the main area that you're going to focus your efforts and attention. And I can see from like early in my career where I was sort of like bouncing around right, I gave you like the very short, compacted story, but the reality is is like we bounced around a lot right Me, people I was working with because at some point I had built up a team and I'd say one is creating consistency for yourself. So today, and over the last 11, 12 years, my primary business has been focused on e-commerce. Right, that's where I live today, and so, if I look at the breakdown of where I am, about 90% of my business is e-commerce related. The other 10% is on the lead gen side, but I spend a lot of my time still in e-com, right, and I will continue to do so. Right, I have no desire at this point to say, hey, I'm going to totally pivot out of e-commerce and only focus on lead generation, and for a number of different reasons. I mean one e-commerce will remain in the future. Right, people are always going to buy things online, so I don't see that dying anytime soon. Two is I just know the space so well now that there's no reason that I believe that it isn't an opportunity and there is an opportunity to grow, but it's all dictated, based on markets.
Speaker 2:Now, to answer your question, I have seen a lot of people go and you see a lot of people come and go for lots of different reasons, right, sometimes it's just they're not really that dedicated to whatever it is that they're doing.
Speaker 2:A lot of people come into the affiliate space. They expect easy money or easy success. They have those like really quick initial wins, but then they can't replicate that success and so they fall out and do something else. A lot of guys I've seen over the years, sadly, is, you know, they get so caught up and so self-absorbed in that like initial success and they're spending all their money buying the fancy cars and traveling around the world and jewelry and blah, blah, blah and wasting all their money and then when there are downtimes because there are always downtimes in every industry they're not prepared for that and they kind of just disappear. So I think one is if you're planning to be in this industry, it's about being consistent, right, remaining consistent, finding things that you really know well going super deep with them before going wide, having a great understanding of them and then just remaining consistent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that advice because there's so much shiny objects syndrome in our industry, right, I think we all fall victim to that here and there. Right, there's always some new offer and everyone, everyone gravitates towards it, jumps in it. I think you're seeing it right now with ACA, right, everyone their mother's in on it. So you know it's as a shelf life, right. But if you can find a focus, you know, for me that was solar back in 2015. For a while, I mean, I know we were top five in the country in solar for a good period of time way, but good thing that we started to rinse and repeat into other verticals like debt and Medicare and such things of that nature. So that's helped us along the line. All Legion, right. So, like all Legion, all Legion, yeah, we never did e-commerce. All Legion.
Speaker 2:And all like playing around with consumer information right and essentially solar could lead into mortgages.
Speaker 2:Could lead into insurance, home improvement, because they all sort of fit within the same kind of categories of verticals. Right, exactly which is smart? Right, and that's what I'm saying by being consistent. It doesn't just. You don't even have to say to yourself, hey, we're only going to do mortgage and nothing else. Yeah, because I think that would be foolish because of like things change within the economy. Yeah, but staying consistent to the verticals you're in. You're not like, hey, last week we were doing solar and then next week we're going to start doing like zip submits or pin submits or Nutrient two weeks from now. Right, staying consistent with what you do, especially as you're building your company. Once you have resources and expertise and you can grow your business, then of course you can hire people that can come in as experts in each particular vertical you may want to move into. But until you get to that point, stay focused and just go really deep.
Speaker 1:I love that and let's talk about that, because obviously you've man, you probably hired hundreds of people in your career, I imagine, right, and I think for in our industry it's hard to get. I know a lot of people maybe they're three, four or one man shops, right Is what it is, and they want to get to that level. But there's a lot of headaches with that scaling, right. So how were you able to do that successfully? And I don't know if you, it's a work in progress, right. So what would be your advice to someone that's maybe got they got three people on their team, five and they're trying to get to that next level Sacrifice, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, again, speaking of those same people, right? Instead, instead of going out and treating myself to things Because a lot of people get enamored by this business they come into the industry. They see affiliates making money and they're like man, I want what that guy has. I never thought about it from that perspective. I like nice things as well, but for me it was always building the company first and taking care of my team as opposed to taking care of myself and so making those sacrifices. And there's definitely a lot of risk and reward in that right, because the risk is you could build up this huge team and the company never actually comes to true fruition. And now you've sacrificed your own personal gain because, instead of taking from the company, you've paid employees and you've paid to have benefits and paid for better offices and paid to really build a team and a culture, as opposed to just running a cashflow business, which is what many people again, when they come in, they look at that and they're like affiliates. Oh, this affiliate I know he's driving a nice Lamborghini or this or that. Hard to build a business, though, if you're just spending the money on things right, as opposed to building out resources and thinking about your team. From there it's really a question of, like, proper hiring and understanding the goals of the organization and what you really wish to accomplish one year, three year, five years down the line. And if you never have a real, true vision on what that looks like, then it becomes very hard to build any kind of true organization. And obviously things do change along the way. You're always going to run into things the economy could change, your team could change, you could lose really good people that may then shift your organization.
Speaker 2:In our case, we were one of the first companies doing what I call performance-based e-commerce. Right, there wasn't many doing it. There was maybe one other company at the time. If I look at the landscape of that industry now right that we sort of started there's 20 people doing it now. Half of them worked for me at one point. Right, and they came, they learned, and then they're like well, I can go do this and on one hand that's kind of a shitty feeling, but on the other hand, it's like, well, hey, look, look, how many people we've put on Right, and whether it comes back to us in the form of being able to do business with them or you just know that you've been able to set those trends. It gives you that confidence to keep going and building.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's. That's amazing, because I think a lot of in our industry. There's a lot of people that they're it's almost like scarcity in my eyes. They want to keep everything close to the vest is what it is right. And then when someone leaves and we're like, oh, this fucking guy left me.
Speaker 2:You hear like this bullshit talk, but to me it's going to happen right If someone's got a huge potential you're not going to be able to hold them back, and I think that really just depends on the type of people that you hire right. And I've hired some bad people along the way that you know. Instead of like thanking me for putting them on and creating opportunity, they've tried to fuck me right, and that happens. I guess. The way that I look at it is if you have more people that give back than try to take, then you're in a pretty good position.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Oh, this is. You're just spitting fucking gems right here, man. This is nice and I think that again I got. I started my company in 2015,. Right, and I never. I never expected us to grow the way we grew. It was like a side hustle to just turn into something, just snowballed and evolved, and that's generally how it happens.
Speaker 2:Yes, and look, man, I've seen you. I've known you for I think about three years now, and I've seen you at every show. I know that you're a hustler. You obviously take every opportunity to get on stage and drop knowledge in front of people, and in our industry people love that kind of thing, and as long as you're giving good information and providing knowledge and some benefit, then again the good people reciprocate that back to you, right, and that's how you've been able to build your business.
Speaker 1:And you weather the storm right. When things you get to pivot accordingly and you see if someone's been successful doing something and they pivot something somewhere else, there's a higher chance of that working right, higher probability of that working. So I think it's a gift that keeps on giving out there and you're great at that too.
Speaker 2:Look, man, when I met you, we were doing nothing in lead gen, right, I was totally e-commerce.
Speaker 2:I remember having a conversation with you and I said to you I was like you know, I'm sort of thinking about it. And you were like, hey, man, if you ever have any questions or want to jump back in, hit me. Yeah, I'm starting to play around a little bit. And you were like, if you need anything, let me know. And while you and I haven't made a ton of money together per se, you have given me some really good advice in terms of what I should be doing to like, get back into the lead gen space. And I'd say, look, if I look at like the last year where we've really been playing in lead gen now because it's been about like a solid year where I've taken it very serious. Some of the advice that you've given me has worked out really well for us right, the way in which we look at our data, obviously, the types of offers that we're running, the verticals that we're in. It's been great and I certainly thank you for that.
Speaker 1:And you know, like, if there's anything I can give back to you, I'd be happy to do so that means a lot to me, and that's really what it comes down to is that I think a lot of people get in this industry and they're always looking to take, take, take, take right. There's a lot of takers, too many takers, but those are the people that they might have some short-term success give. They're the ones. Yeah, we might get fucked here and there it's happened to me, it's happened to you but we're going to be the ones that weather a storm. We're going to be able to attract the people that are going to give back to us at the end of the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, look, if you do good business and you're innovative and you have ideas that you can execute on you generally have. Can you build a business that's going to be here for 10 years or more? Because once you get past, like that 10 year mark, there's a very high probability that you will have long-term sustained success. I think I'm over eighth year.
Speaker 1:So I'm almost there, man. You've got two more years. We've established ourselves right.
Speaker 2:I mean we hit that period and look, man, there's been and I'm very honest about it Like there's been ups and downs. You know, we've had some huge years and we've had some years where I'm, like you know, could have been better. Like, where did we fall short? And you know, I think that's when I again looking at e-commerce, because with, obviously, we were able to take advantage of a massive run-up in the marketplace, but with that run-up, it meant we had to hire a lot of people and really scale our business, and there's consequences to doing that, especially when you're not prepared and you don't have proper SOPs in order to do so. So we also felt that downside and that's sort of what made me start to think about the idea of, like, you know what? E-commerce is great and we always want to be here, but we certainly need to add some diversity, because when you do have a big team of people, you need revenue and profit right, otherwise you can't keep those people employed.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about that because that's an experience that I had myself. Right, I mean, when you hit your peak in terms of employees, what was your headcount at the time?
Speaker 2:hit your peak in terms of employees. What was your head count at the time? I think at the beginning of 2021 was probably our biggest, and we were somewhere in like the 420 to 440 range. And that's starting the business in 2013 with four, so that's like pretty significant scale right.
Speaker 1:So 100, yeah, 100 times from four to 420. I mean we went from freaking three to 60, 60-ish and I was like the hell right. I mean we went from like fricking three to 60, 60 ish and I was like the hell right. I mean I can't imagine going from three to 60 to 400. It just happens, I guess you know and look.
Speaker 2:Some of those people are are call center people and people that work in warehouses, et cetera. So they're not, like you know, VP level or executives, but there's still people that you're employing and that you're responsible for, and when things are good, they all love you. They love you, You're the best company in the world, and when they're not, they hate you and you're the worst company in the world and you have the worst leadership in the world and everything's bad about what you're doing. And so there's the give and take of that, the good and bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I've seen that what happens is when revenue is coming in, things are looking good, but you don't realize there's stupid stuff going on that you're kind of like, ah, you know it's there, but you don't worry about it. But when revenue goes the other way you're like what the hell? Then you got to start laying off. Then it's not fun anymore. It's fun when it's going good.
Speaker 2:Everything is always fun when it's going good right that everybody is a stock expert when crypto markets are on fire everyone's in crypto and buying crypto and they're experts, and the mail guy has tips that he's going to give you to make money in crypto, and when things aren't, no one wants to talk about it, and so I think it's also learning that life has lots of ups and downs and things are never going to be consistent, and maybe for certain people, they get to feel that consistency more than others, for whatever reason, because of just the way that things work out. Right, but? But the reality is is those that are successful are those that continue to work hard and persevere through good and bad, and understand that, like things, that there are, that there are peaks and valleys.
Speaker 1:Right For sure, just push through it, and I think that's very important for someone, especially someone that's had success early. I've read somewhere or someone saying, like if you could, anyone can make money in a, in a good economy, right, or a good market or whatever, but show me the person that makes money when shit's going the other way. That's. That's the fucking person I want to do business with, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I didn't have success early. I had to work hard for success. You know I thought I was going to success and then, you know, when I started building the, the lead gen business, you know, in 2008 hit like man, that was rough and I mean again, you and I are similar in age. A lot of young people don't know how bad to that like that crash in 2008 was. Oh no joke, head man. Like it was bad. People were just losing jobs, losing their homes, like things were really bad.
Speaker 2:And you know, I had made some money and that was like my first time actually making some real money up to that point and I got like I was really nervous and I lost a lot of money. Right, I had bought some real estate and I was like panicking, how do I hold on to this real estate right now? What am I going to do? The sky is falling and fortunately, again because of our ability and being in this industry, there was ways to pivot that were very similar to what I had already been doing. You know, debt settlement and loan modification leads were not much different than generating mortgage and insurance leads 100% yeah Right, very same skill set and criteria.
Speaker 1:Same audience, yeah, at the end of the day, I think we've got some food here, oh, nice.
Speaker 2:Here we go. Oh boy, Look at that, Look at how these guys make pizza. Man, this looks good, man. I mean look, yeah, as you know, I'm a pizza lover and I look at myself and I like all kinds of pizza and I do have a favorite. Right, I'm a square pie. I'd say that's probably my favorite, and I like a Neapolitan here and there, but from like a nice thin crunchy pie, this is beautiful. And I guess if Dave Fortnay were here he'd say, eh, it's got a little bit of flop. But to me the flop adds a little bit of character. And it's really about the back end of the pizza. How does the crust stand up? Because if you've got that flop in the front, you've got a nice amount of cheese on the front end of that pizza. That's true, I never thought about it that way.
Speaker 1:See real pizza. Good shit, I needed this. I might just crush this thing. Man, I'm fucking. I think you should crush it. I'm going to crush this thing. I got some bullshit. I had some bullshit pizza in Florida yesterday, man.
Speaker 2:There's a couple good places in Florida that I've now found. I think I was telling you about Old Greg's. Have you been there, mm-mm? Old Greg's is good, there's a Detroit place.
Speaker 1:I like too Square something.
Speaker 2:Square City.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Square Pie City. So I went to Square Pie City with actually another OG from our industry. He took me there one day. That was pretty solid. Yeah, I like that place. And then I found Old Greg's which also makes like a Detroit-style pizza. I have to say it's better. I got to with that.
Speaker 1:So you don't fold your pizza, or do you sometimes?
Speaker 2:I don't typically fold this kind of pizza. It sort of speaks for itself. If it's a little floppy or lighter, I will, but this is actually sitting pretty nice this is nice, man.
Speaker 1:You know what I like thin pizza. So I want to thank you, man, because you give me some really good recommendations, man, for spots, pizza spots that I've gone to with my family and stuff. I mean you gave me a place in Garwood NOLA, so that vodka pie is out of control, man, I mean. So that's good, you guys stick around the experts. The people don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
Speaker 2:You know, it's funny man, you're an athlete, right? Yeah, so my whole life I'm an athlete, right? I'm in my mid-40s now. Everyone always says, like, oh, you look pretty young. What do you do? And most of it's like I've eaten healthy my whole entire life, yeah, and I think I got like when I got to a certain point, I've eaten so healthy all my life, I just want to enjoy myself, and so I I originally was thinking that what I wanted to do was like go out and try different steakhouses. That was my plan, like to be like the meat guy, yeah, right. And so I was going to all these steakhouses and then I realized like there just isn't a lot of great steakhouses, like there's a very small amount of good steak houses and the rest of them are awful, right. Whereas with pizza especially living in the New York, new Jersey area there's so many good places you can go and so many different types of pizzas.
Speaker 2:you can try that. It made more sense to me and so I. You know, I didn't want to necessarily copy, like the, the, the Dave Portnoy style, but I understand why people do it now because, again, like, everyone has a different palette and you can just try. You can try this, you can do a square pie, you can do a Neapolitan, you can have toppings on it. There's so many different styles.
Speaker 1:We were in Jersey city at Raza, which I think at one point got rated one of the top pizzerias in America. Right, I don't know what did Portnoy give it, you remember?
Speaker 2:So Portnoy gave Raza an 8.3, I think, or maybe an 8.1. Raza today is considered the second best pizzeria in the US and, I think, number 20 in the world. Wow, probably moving up, because now they just did some big thing. My guess is they're moving up. I found them when they first opened in 2012. I was like one of their original Damn, I didn't know, I didn't find out about them like 2018, 2019.
Speaker 1:It was a little tiny place, so when we went, you see how they oh, they expanded it, yeah, so he's been there since 2012.
Speaker 2:He also owned a place in Maplewood, new Jersey, called Arturo's, which he opened with a partner. They split and so now Toro's is Artie's. They make a similar type pizza. They have like very similar types of like little appies on the menu, but not as good. It's not as good as Raza. Raza is probably one of the best places I've ever been, and maybe I'm a little biased because I've been going there for a long time, but that is not a place that you give an eight,1 or an 8.3. Like Raza is kind of a special place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was one of the definitely top 10, if not top five, I had in my life. I'll tell you something interesting, because you know I'm used to like the regular pies. I don't like what's called gimmicky pies. I'll never eat like a pineapple, like fuck that shit. Yeah, I know. So anyway, with that had something there that you recommended, and I recognize the bartender there from back in the days yo, what's up, dave, all right, and he's like you gotta have. Well, one one word of advice corn whole pizza. I'm like what the fuck? I'm not gonna eat corn on my pizza. Are you kidding me? But you said I'm like, all right, fuck it, let's do this cornhole pizza. Dude, that shit was amazing. That's probably top five ever had. That was a great.
Speaker 2:I think it's seasonal, though right, they only make it during the summer, or something they make it during the summer and then in the winter they make a potato pie. I got to try that too.
Speaker 1:Listen, whatever the hell they do, whatever their special shit I'm going to do their special shit, but that sweet corn I mean that cornhole pie was amazing, but normally I would not. I'm not eating that shit. That's a gimmicky shit. That was amazing. Man, oh, are you going to fuck me? How about the finish it? No, I'm going to eat this man. Look, I like it when it's burnt. Man, you like burnt crust or no? I don't like burnt crust. Yeah, burnt crust is shit. That's why I like the Detroit. The Detroit's have to be burnt they burn the shit out of their pizza.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do like a burnt pie, which I think when you talk to a lot of people now and they look at like burnt pies that don't know they're like oh, it looks gross and it's like I love it.
Speaker 1:You're missing Dude. It's fantastic that gives us that extra like we're funny, because I go to a pizza spot, like wherever I'm in New York, I'll send you pictures. Man, it's like that's our porn, man, pizza porn.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:Here here's. Look at this pizza. We ask you how you like it. You know it's so funny. When I come back to Jersey I'll ask Jordan I'm in central Jersey, what do you recommend? He tells me where to go. It's always spot on. There's no bullshit. Good stuff. I feel bad for that pizza. The pizza's dead. It's like a girl that got set up square pie here.
Speaker 2:Here we go. There you go. Thanks bro, nice looking. Yeah, see, like nice charring on this sucker right. Yeah, go into your detail and get another pizza. That was good. I mean this is. I mean, look, so they make a square pie here. This is not like the square pie you would get at like a Nola's right. It's different. It's also not like a Detroit style square pie. This is just their variation of a square pie. It's even very different than like a Sicilian because it's like thin.
Speaker 2:But it obviously has a very nice texture and taste to it.
Speaker 1:So let's try this. Cheers to this thing. Cheers it up.
Speaker 2:Cheers it up, let's go.
Speaker 1:Bro. Hot, it's hot. That's nice though, bro. Good pizza is like fucking. I don't know what man this is. This is proof there's a god. I mean this thing right.
Speaker 2:This is proof there's a god you eat some shit like this is like it's not super heavy for a square pizza right, it's very like non-traditional, yeah, like if you look at it it's like a skinny square pie, yeah, but it's really nice. It is nice and I love the texturing of it on top. I like the way it looks. Your cheese, a little extra sauce. They char it, even the back end. You know you like the burnt. It's a little little little more charred of the back, which is nice.
Speaker 2:At least this one is to work your heart. Very nice undercarriage on it. It's solid man. Yep, I mean, they deserve the rating they got. Yeah, I see it. Yeah, it's tough man. Like, obviously I live in Jersey, right, so I'm probably a little biased, because people always ask me oh, I'm coming to the area, where should I go for pizza, and especially someone that's like, really into it? They're like New Jersey, connecticut, and it's so hard because obviously all three states have such amazing pizza and very different styles of pizza, right, and again, like thinking about what I was mentioning earlier, like there's so many people that don't realize that.
Speaker 2:Like not all pizza is created equal. There's a different experience. It really all depends on what you're in the mood for at that particular moment. Absolutely, I was going to take you somewhere else tonight, which was actually a pretty unique place in the sense that it's very Neapolitan style, which is a totally different type of pizza than this. But we can try that next time, yeah we'll do it next time.
Speaker 1:I got a buddy in Connecticut too. I want to get on the show, and that New Haven pizza is pretty good. That's one of my favorites. It's very thin. I mean they cut it a certain way, kind of like the Lorenzo's right. They cut it like I don't even know what kind of cut that is Crisscross type of cut.
Speaker 2:And they also make those pies I mean you mentioned like a gimmicky pie, but they make like the clam pizza.
Speaker 1:Oh, the clam one, that clam pizza's good man, that clam pizza's really good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the white sauceia where that's famous where you and I grew up is Santillo's and that burned down. What was that like a month ago? Yeah, so they had a fire there. I was sad when that happened, like for real, and he's been there for about 80 years. Yeah, so he's like an OG pizza guy. You know, for me he's one of my favorite pizzas Again, maybe a little biased because I grew up on his pizza, but it's fantastic. So the really cool thing that happened was, I mean, obviously Dave Fortinari is helping him with some like rebuild it right, which is very cool. So I totally respect that. But I think also what Coniglio's did which is cool is on Sundays they have him come in and basically they call it Centillo Sundays now and he comes in and makes pizza in their shop. That's so awesome.
Speaker 1:Which is pretty cool and you know that goes back to our. That reminds us of stuff in our industry, because you would think they're like they're competitors right, because santillo's and elizabeth and they're far away, but still they're.
Speaker 1:They're two of the top rated pizzerias in new jersey they are, yeah, they're competing but the fact that they will let him during his hard time, you know, go to morrison and do it. That says and I feel like in our industry that happens a lot, where you might have a competitor I might have a guy doing solar in my industry, in my vertical but we'll do business together, we'll find out. Okay, are you doing well? Maybe they're sucking in a certain state, maybe they can't make it work in New Jersey, but I can, so then I'll sell them leads in New Jersey, or maybe I'm hitting caps in Arizona. That's a beauty of good, that's real partnerships.
Speaker 2:That's the way good business should be done.
Speaker 1:That's how it should be, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think some friendly competition is healthy for everyone because it motivates us all and pushes us to do better. It's when there's unhealthy competition and someone wants to just try to own the whole market. Yeah, and the reality is like the market is big enough for everyone to play in fairly. There's no reason to try to monopolize it.
Speaker 2:It's not going to work anyway, but there's no reason even to have that approach. You're better off just creating good strategic partnerships and being able to work together and you never know again. Thinking of e-com and then moving into Legion, e-com was where we played, but I saw that the market was slowing down a little bit and I was like we need to pivot out. And because I had good connections within the Legion world, I was able to get pretty good offers up and running fairly quickly, Right, and I had some help from my friends. There's a few guys that like really helped me out getting back in because, even though it hasn't changed much, it had changed Right. And so they they gave me a push, they gave me a recommendation because they knew that we were a good company to do business with and that I was a very reputable person to be working with.
Speaker 2:And so they were like yeah, here go call these three people get stuff set up with them immediately and all those relationships have panned out and I'm still working with all those people today, which is amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's part of doing the right thing at all times, right, even if it's going to cost you money. Do the right thing Because it's a relationship business at the end of the day. We talk about generating leads and trying to do it properly and what verticals, but at the end of the day, it's a relationship You're, your brand is what it comes down to. So if you fuck one person over, everyone's going to know and they're going to be hesitant to do business. They do business. They're not going to open the doors for you, but because you've done the right thing and you've done it so long, be like okay, listen, whatever you need, they're going to help you collapse timeframes and that's worth a lot of money at the end of the day. You can't quantify it, but it's worth a shitload.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's like are you a giver or are you a taker, right, and there has to be like a fine line between the two. Obviously you can't just take and expect then people to do things for you, right? So it's finding that balance.
Speaker 2:That balance is really hard to find and I think when you're young and coming up in business it's really challenging because you just don't know better. Once you get to a certain level of success, but also just time spent within a specific industry or just doing business in general, you realize the importance of that and you realize that you can balance the two out and create great relationships, impactful relationships with people, and that the world will give it back to you in one way or the other.
Speaker 2:And I certainly found that over times, especially during challenging times like you, find that people are more willing to go out of their way to do things for you because they've been there and and you've done something for them in one way or the other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a pretty amazing thing. I love it. Yeah, oh, words of wisdom, man, that's what it comes down to all right.
Speaker 2:So what do we got coming here next? Oh so, this is actually my favorite. Now I see that I've got a. I've got a beautiful pepperoni and like this one stands up beautifully. Right, this is just a beautiful piece of pizza. This is my. This is from this place. This is my favorite slice of pizza. Now, I see you don't have any pepperoni on your story with that.
Speaker 1:I haven't eaten Well, the only meat I'll have is fish. I guess I'm a pescatarian. Okay, then this voice is 2007,. I believe so. Tony Robbins one day and I'm all about energy, right and he was like you got to eat good, you want to have good energy, you can't. He was like I think he was vegan at the time. I think he's changed a few times, but I stuck with it and listen, I'm not nothing against, I'm not like crazy. What do you call hardcore?
Speaker 2:I think everything in moderation is fine. But yeah, I have some meat, yeah, I go pretty hard in many aspects of life. Yeah, it's done me pretty well, man, so good for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get my blood worked every three months. I got a doctor in Miami who's been great for me. Man, looking at my levels and everything in terms of not nothing to do with eating meat, but in terms of, like, high performance I always want to have be in. I don't even drink plastic water, I drink bottled water. So to me it's like the more energy I have. That's why I travel like crazy. I couldn't travel the way I do, Right.
Speaker 2:Without basically taking care of yourself.
Speaker 1:The funny thing, though, is the pizza's my freaking weak spot. I've been trying to eat less pizza, so I used to eat a whole pie. Now I have. Maybe today we'll go a little over-hyped. I have like two slices sitting Today maybe we'll have three or four. Today we'll do three or four. Fuck it. I haven't seen you in a while and we're in Jersey, right, Hell yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, this is pepperoni. Sorry, you're not eating this pepperoni. It's all good. I also didn't eat meat for many years and then found my way back. This is a beautiful piece of pizza right here.
Speaker 1:I should have waited for you, man. I couldn't have like I'm crushing it.
Speaker 2:And it's interesting because a lot of people do the, you know, the pepperoni cups these days. Yeah, and they're still doing like the classic flat pepperoni.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but then I never thought about it. Pepperoni cups I saw that for the first time, I think at Prince Street in New York. Yeah, but man, I never thought about it. It's pepperoni cups. I saw that for a first time, I think of Prince street in New York. Yeah, Right, I never thought about that.
Speaker 2:The uh, the uh square pie with pepperoni cups and they're delicious. Yeah, but I also, like you know these. These make me think of like my childhood, Me too.
Speaker 1:It's funny, that's where my dad and I my dad we grew up in Elizabeth, in Port Elizabeth, so we'd always order Santillas and back then pepperoni was my shit, like I'd always get pepperoni. So seeing that and hearing you talk about it made me think about the pepperoni.
Speaker 2:I just have to comment on that real quick. So you just mentioned something. You're a successful business guy. How many people work for your company now?
Speaker 1:Including the calls there. A little mid-60s, probably 65, 66.
Speaker 2:We've got 66 people working for you. Yeah, for those that don't know that are listening back in the 80s and 90s. Yeah, the port of elizabeth was gangster as fuck. I got robbed there, man like gangster as fuck it was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like you you grew up in a place where most people have no hopes or aspirations of doing anything in life, because it's it's tough. I mean, I also grew up in elizabeth, but not in that part of elizabeth and that is a really rough area of elizabeth and it's nice because today they've cleaned it up and oh, way better, it's significantly better. I also grew up in Elizabeth, but not in that part of Elizabeth, and that is a really rough area of Elizabeth, and it's nice because today they've cleaned it up oh, way better.
Speaker 1:It's significantly better than it was. But back in those days that was a really rough place to be. Not only that, so my parents were divorced right, so I would see my dad. I don't know if I saw him every week and every other week and I don't remember but I would go there, and I was living in Newark at the time. Newark was the most dangerous city in America.
Speaker 2:So I saw people like Early 90s. Yeah, I'll tell you a funny story Gunshots, all the time.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you a funny story. So, 1989, I think we got our first color TV. Man, my mom came from Venezuela to make a minimum wage, had worked two jobs, put food on the table, tv, lethal Weapon Watching Lethal Weapon on that, danny Glover. And what's the other guy? No, gibson, right? No, gibson, come on, man. I hear boom, boom. After all it was a TV. I'm like man, this TV's got some good sound effects, right. And then, like five minutes later, you see like sirens, and you hear this shit. I go outside. I didn't see the body, but there was a guy wrapped up in chalk with a white blanket over him. Wow, I'm like holy shit, you know, I'm like this shit is real, right. So you know, every other week some shit like that will go down over there. But yeah, man, we, I forget about that. I go from Newark, then I go to Elizabeth, which wasn't much better, right, but you know, I think that gives us street smarts, man, and that helps navigate the business world.
Speaker 2:So having grown up that way, like again, you went to college, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, nyu business. So how did you get?
Speaker 2:yourself in it, Like how did you get through high school into NYU, which is obviously one of the prestigious universities in the country.
Speaker 1:I tell you a great story and I got to thank my aunt for this. My aunt Gladys was the first one in our my family that went to college from my Venezuelan side, that went to college with a big Venezuelan family. She was probably the second one that came to America in the 70s and my mom came. My aunt came, so she went to school for medical stuff over there in Venezuela, but when she came to America that didn't matter. So she had to be a waitress. She had to learn, start from the bottom and then work herself up so she became actually a scientist. I would see her bust her ass and I always saw my mom bust her ass working menial wages, but she always bust her ass working. You know me, knew what wages, but she always bust her ass. So I learned my work from my mom, from my aunt. But my aunt came up and worked at the corporate ladder and she wanted to become a scientist at Novartis working on cancer drugs. Oh, wow, right, so she's yeah, I learned from Venezuela.
Speaker 2:She's from Venezuela. And then Elizabeth like transplanted into Elizabeth Northgate. Yeah, she lived in Amora, believe it or not. Wow, okay, Amora. Yeah, that's where I grew up.
Speaker 1:Then she moved. I was telling Chance earlier. She got married and moved to Morristown, new Jersey, where Coniglio's is at, and when I went to Morristown to see her I thought this was the richest place in America because, elizabeth, you don't got fucking houses like that. You don't got houses like that in Newark. Upper middle class, right, rich, is like Alpine, new Jersey. We've seen rich areas. Now right. So I went there and what happened was she told my mom listen, dave is moving around too much. I almost joined a gang. I actually joined.
Speaker 1:I started a gang with my buddies in sixth grade in Newark. We were doing like dumb shit. It wasn't anything crazy. We moved, thank God, a week later when in Newark, man anyway. That being said, um, my, my aunt was like dave is moving around too much. I always got good grades because, like, the colleges want to see consistency, right. So she'll have dave move with me to morristown for high school. That'll help him get into a good college. That was tough for my mom to do, but we did it and that was the best decision we made, because I went there, I ran track, we had a good track team, we're all county and you ran track in college, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, ran track in college, went to NYU and then it wasn't the same. High school was like I was a captain on my team. But, with all that being said, is that me having that consistency helped a lot. I was around, I got it. I always wanted to go to school in New York, got into NYU business school and boom, that's what happened study marketing, man. But that's how that all happened. But that was a result of me getting out of that environment, man. If I didn't get out of that environment, who knows?
Speaker 2:what the hell would happen.
Speaker 1:So they pulled you out of there like eighth grade eighth grade as well, so you know weird and fucked up shit. But good thing is I left that area, got out of that neighborhood and boom went to a decent neighborhood.
Speaker 2:So, you know, thinking about like fast forward into the future now right, Like someone believed in you yeah, we were talking about that like believing in people, giving them opportunities, looking at business in a certain way, looking at our industry even in a certain way, because, like life, our industry, I feel like, is very power low. It is. There's good people, but there's also a lot of people that I think in this industry that don't want you to succeed. But if you can find those good ones, obviously they create big opportunities for you in all different aspects of this industry. 100%.
Speaker 1:That clearly happened to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of people gave me chances along the way, and if you didn't have that chance like who knows where you would have been today, if you would have started this company and been the success story that you are.
Speaker 1:It's crazy, and that's one thing I want to do with the show is because I'm sure there are going to be people listening, that they see the flashiness in our industry which draws you in. But that's not really what it's all about. It's about creating a lifestyle to me on your own terms, going where you want, when you want to go, enjoying it, having memories. I met your family, beautiful family, in Florida right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks. I think you were having a great time going to that beach. You told me that I try to do the end of the day and that's a beautiful industry, that you can make a lot of money. You could also lose a lot of damn money, but if you follow the principles you're talking about and you tag along with the right people, good shit will happen.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's no set hours, right. So it's not like a Monday through Friday, nine to five, nine to six type of industry, right, no matter what part of the industry you're in, I guess, if you're maybe on the creative side or ops or something like that, but even that I feel like this industry is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, right. There's no vacations, there's no real downtime.
Speaker 2:And that's kind of the sacrifice. Now, on the other hand, the payoff is that you can make a lot of money, and you can make significant amounts of money. If you're really good at what you can do, you can have the flexibility that you want to travel around. Right, Because the reality of the industry whether you're on the marketing side, the affiliate side or the advertiser side is the industry has always been set as one that's supported the digital nomad lifestyle, and so you meet so many people around the world, and those people, especially the ones that are a little younger or don't have families, they're constantly moving around.
Speaker 2:The benefit is that and I'm sure you've found this is like you can call someone at any time anywhere in the world and say like hey, I'm coming in, and they're like cool, Can't wait to see you and they'll take you out to dinner and you'll have like an amazing time just hanging out with them until you move on to the next location, which is amazing. And I have friends that are like in finance or in insurance and they make good money, but they don't go anywhere. Anywhere, they're like vacation is like the Jersey shore or like Florida. Right, they're not like oh, I went to Dubai this year I went to Bangkok, I went here, I went there. They have the same little vacation spots and the same kind of circle of people, Whereas for us, we get to meet all kinds of super interesting people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you can't grow that way. You can't grow if you're staying up. You have to, you have to. Every time I travel, I like not only do I make a connection that really moves a needle or make some new friendship, but you grow as a person. It's like your brain grows because you see, like going to Dubai is fucking crazy. You look at these tall buildings like what the hell?
Speaker 2:jersey? Yeah, for sure it's. It's a pretty, it's pretty amazing, like if you look back on where you started to where you are, yeah, you're like wow, crazy, and you too, actually here we grew up in the same area, pretty much you know so it is.
Speaker 1:It is what it is and it's great and that's that's one thing I want to do with the show is that show people that this, this, this is, these are people that are making shit happen. This is how they made it happen and it made to get a little bit of insight out of it that can help them along the way. It's not easy like. It's definitely not easy, right, it's a lot of work.
Speaker 2:I mean we put a lot of work into building our sacrifices and building our teams and, you know, having great people that we work with. I've been lucky that you know I've had a a great um partner and co-founder right and, and you know he sort of when I met him and I'd done quite a bit of traveling but he was living overseas, so he really opened my eyes up to what life would be like if you're moving around and traveling a lot and again, on one hand you sort of miss some of the family things. So you have to figure out at some point how to incorporate your family into this, or at some point you just may not have a family.
Speaker 1:You're never around, no-transcript. I think it was also by being authentic, right? If you're authentic, you're not looking for something from because you're trying to get something from me. No one wants to be around people like that, right? So we're very similar in that way. I think that we're looking to give, provide value, and that opens up doors at the end of the day. Yeah, for.
Speaker 2:Oh God, what's?
Speaker 1:this guy. That's interesting this is a man.
Speaker 2:I was just handed a square. I'm guessing this is pepper and sausage. Probably some spicy pepper on here. If I had to guess right, you got the green and the red pepper on here. Got some sausage. This looks pretty good. It looks like you got the works.
Speaker 1:Not for you. Yeah, not for you. Are you jealous? Are you jealous, are you?
Speaker 2:jealous. No, it looks like the works. That's what it looks like. He's got a smorgasbord of everything. One day I'm going to take you out and throw a couple drinks into you and then be like, hey, have this pizza. I swear there's no heat on it, I'm going to have to go home and do an extra workout, since I oh good.
Speaker 1:It's going to be snowing tomorrow. You do a lot of shoveling. Yeah, that's true, you'll make it up.
Speaker 2:I will be for sure, Cheers man.
Speaker 1:Cheers on that.
Speaker 2:Let me ask you a question. Speaking of eating pizza and working out, you mentioned taking peptides and doing other things to keep yourself young. You look great for your age, you have a family, you're traveling a lot Yep. What are some other things that you do to just keep yourself functioning at such a high level? Because I feel like I have pretty good energy, but you are like massively high energy. How?
Speaker 1:I think your diet is one thing for sure Meditation helps. Ideally I'll go weeks where I meditate every day and it helps center my mind, to calm down because my mind's always racing. Now I live on the beach over there in Hallandale Beach and I sprint pretty often. Sprinting is amazing. It makes you feel young again.
Speaker 2:Does it give you almost like that dopamine shot? That you need to function at a high level.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Listen, I always feel like I'm a dopamine junkie. I think anyone in business. We're addicted to this shit. Right, it's better than being addicted to a drug or gambling or whatever, right? So the bottom line is that when you sprint, it helps release growth hormone. That's been shown. I'm on the beach. It's harder to sprint on the beach because you're sinking in the sand, right, it just makes me feel good. I breathe in that air. Right? It's way different than when I grew up. I miss Jersey, I miss New York and I come to New York twice. New York, New Jersey twice a month, you're here all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get my fix right, I get my pizza, whatever, but really it's having that balance. Man, it's just. I think my wife eats like I eat Same exact. She probably eats better than I do, honestly.
Speaker 2:She eats greens as much as I can. Is your wife in the industry? Does she help you? She's?
Speaker 1:not, but she helped me start the business. She helped me back in 2016 start Solar Direct Marketing. She was kind of like my right-hand person. She'd go with me to shows. She went to Legion World to see me speak with her. I spoke on stage there almost a month ago and it's funny how many people remember her from back in the day. People know her from my Instagram stories Like oh so nice to meet you. It my Instagram stories Like oh so nice to meet you. I was like wait, who is that person? I'm like I saw you on Instagram or whatever. But yeah, I like bringing her to shows with me because, man, she's awesome.
Speaker 1:A bunch of guys we're in Columbia. My wife's from Medellin. A bunch of guys from industry came to Medellin last week. We went out to dinner with them, went out to the club with them. They she's a lot like me, but she's a lot more disciplined. I'm disciplined in a lot of ways, but she's a lot more. Is she also super high energy, though Not as much as I am. I'm on another level, I think but she helps balance me. Man is what it is and I think that helps at the end of the day, right? So, to answer your question.
Speaker 1:It's really the. You know I take care of what hypocrite. When it comes to the shows or the drinking, I go a little harder. But what I've been doing recently because I put all this money to peptides is that if I drink, I'll have vodka and water Vodka or lemon. That way I'm not killing myself with those carbs, right. So I've been a little more mindful of that. But yeah, I think what I eat and I was with my mom in Colombia. My mom's, from Venezuela, talked about her work ethic. She's seven years old, she's still working, she likes to work, she's high energy. I realize how much I'm like her, so I think a lot of it is hereditary too. I get the energy from her, but I'm also trying to maximize it, optimize myself with the peptides, with eating a certain way and taking care of myself. You know Nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what it comes down to Like mineral water, like I was drinking that mineral water from, like it's got minerals in it. Man, I bought this uh, liquid death, liquid death iced tea. Yeah, it's like the first time I've ever had it.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't, I don't really know what's so special about it, but it does come kind of they're killing it by the way and I guess, like I was thinking of like when I looked at it first, I was like, oh, it looks like, uh, chinese new year, yeah, yeah that's probably why they do yes, a lunar, uh, whatever it is that's crazy, but it's actually not that good, so I wouldn't say that I would go out of my way to drink it.
Speaker 1:Marketing man.
Speaker 2:It's great marketing.
Speaker 1:Great marketing and as a marketer.
Speaker 2:I can appreciate the marketing, yeah, but it's not that good. What do you think the margins are on that? I have no idea. Man, 80%, it's probably pretty. Look, it's heavy. So shipping it's got to cost a lot of money. The cans are pretty nice, I I don't actually know much about their ingredients, but if I had a guess, yeah, I mean from a gross margin perspective they're 50 plus.
Speaker 2:I don't know if they're quite as high as 80 percent yeah, it makes sense, but it's definitely like a 50 plus margin business gross wise their biggest expense of storage and storage and shipping? Yeah, because these things are heavy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh man.
Speaker 2:And look, it's also a very competitive space, like beverages in general is super competitive. Hard to crack Right, and so they did a really good job of like figuring out how to capture a large segment of the market in a very competitive space. Yeah, which you know. Yeah, I mean, look, it's what you do all the time, it's what I do, yeah, it's what we figure out how to do. We've got to differentiate ourselves in some capacity, right.
Speaker 1:What do you?
Speaker 2:see as like the. I mean so for someone that has come back into Legion and spent like the last year doing Legion. Yeah, what do you sort of see as like the next 12 to 24 months? I know there's some FCC changes that are coming up. I know that there's been more regulation coming around some of the bigger verticals that guys have been running in Medicare and ACA. What do you think the future holds for?
Speaker 1:us. I think it's the cream's rising to the top. As we speak, A lot of guys are doing something like I don't know what you want to call it shady or black hat kind of stuff. There's a lot more regulation going on, right, and I think there's a shift definitely towards pay-per-call. It's a good and bad thing in a sense. What happens is the guys that are running the shady angles. They're the ones that fuck it up for everybody else, right, they make the calls per lead more competitive or whatever.
Speaker 1:But we're talking offline here about transfers. You know, with this FCC ruling, age data pretty much goes out the window. Right, there's no place for age data. It's going to be illegal to call age data. But I think there's a way to do transfers off an inbound and to make it more highly vetted, right. So you're getting rid of the garbage that people don't qualify. So I think that pay-per-call people don't have to get really creative. They're going to have to get creative, and what worked yesterday is not going to work today. So I think pay per call and finding new verticals, tapping into stuff that other people aren't doing Right, I know, HVAC is a big, massive vertical but it's very kind of like solar and zip to number.
Speaker 2:So HVAC is HVAC, right yeah. Hvac so basically falls into the home and business market, right yeah?
Speaker 1:So I think you're going to have to figure out ways to kind of hit niches that people aren't in. You know, I mean, everyone's in ACA, everyone's in Medicare, everyone's in debt. It makes it harder. You have to be really, have some amazing media buyers right, and fucking people are ripping ads all day long. It's an issue. So it's hard to stay ahead of that. So you have to go into a different ocean. I mean, I go to Legion World Aff summit. You go to these shows. Everyone's talking about the same five verticals. Everyone's trying to get crumbs with this, this piece of meat right. You got to get a different piece of meat. You know, back in 2016, solar, no one was really in solar. I was one of the first guys got into solar. I I had a little bit of a competitive advantage.
Speaker 1:I weathered the storm so he's a first mover advantage is nice yeah so I think it's there, it's, it's out there. Um, that's one reason why I travel so much. I put my ears to the ground. What's the next thing? Where's money gravitating towards?
Speaker 2:Now you're going out to Affiliate World in Dubai, yes, and you're going to be speaking there on some of the changes that are coming up in the space and where you believe things are going Correct.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to talk about how you could pivot, talk a lot about pay-per-call. I'm planning to be there as well. Awesome, yeah, I'd as well. Awesome, yeah, love to hear you speak. Yeah, for sure, yeah. And I think a lot of guys don't understand the ramifications of these rulings. People just want ads and they don't realize they might be doing something illegal. And then they don't. They think they're not going to get caught because they might be in somewhere overseas and some country you can't even pronounce. But they don't realize that. Yeah, they don't realize that. And guess what? If your buyer gets popped, they're not going to pay you. You might have a few hundred thousand dollars on the street. You're never going to get back right. So I think that's. I want to educate them as to that, as to listen, you might think this is not going to affect you, but it will affect you. You can't run away from these quarter things.
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting I mean, having done e-commerce and then moved a little bit into Legion because I felt like that's where a lot of the activity started to move I've definitely seen more people now I guess because of some of the FCC stuff, but also probably because of the overall market saturation come back to us and say like, hey, I want to get back into e-commerce again.
Speaker 2:Or you know, what do you guys have going on right now? You know guys that I worked with years ago that moved into lead gen for a while, and now they're frustrated. Or their caps or their budget is shrinking, and so they've come back and asked us. Caps or their budget is shrinking, and so they've come back and asked us. And you mentioned a lot with calls and I think there's for inbound calls. I think inbound calls probably has a place in both the Legion world, but also in transactional-based marketing as well, with e-commerce and potentially even some like what I would classify as like nutraceuticals or beauty-type products, where you're leveraging that inbound call in a call center to make a sale like traditional TV.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, jordan, I'm glad you mentioned about tying e-comm to pay-per-call, because that, to me, is something I think they call it the blue ocean, right? No one's really doing that and obviously people are going to try it and they're probably going to lose some money doing it, but the one that cracks it is the one that's going to come out ahead. So I think that's big and I've seen that shift. I've seen people go from EECOM to Legion back, to keep going back and forth. But I think right now, because Legion how Legion has become so saturated, I think there will be a shift towards EECOM, which would be good for you guys, right? Because then you guys could benefit.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and I mean you know, and then having partners like Ar built a truly amazing platform. I've known, you know, adam. I met more recently, but I've known Harrison for a long time. Harrison, for a very long time he was my affiliate manager, I think back in like 2009.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he started, like in his early teens.
Speaker 2:He was in high school.
Speaker 1:He was in high school. That's what I love about it you could be in high school making money man. That's sick.
Speaker 2:And so they've built this platform and have a pretty amazing platform. I know there's. You know there's another platform out there, retriever, which I guess is also pretty good, and they seem to be kind of like the two leaders in the space. Maybe there's some bigger ones, but they seem to be the two leaders. And you know from what I've done now, like the research that we've done and the systems we've been playing with, like Ringba's pretty cool, yeah, and they're on the cutting edge of things for sure.
Speaker 1:They spend time on making it better and that's all that matters at the end of the day.
Speaker 2:That's how people can benefit, you know when you talk about like people working together. Like I look at those two companies right Ringba and Retriever and they're competitors but yet there's groups where, like both of their sales team is in those groups or even the founders are in those groups, like actively posting and sort of giving direction to people to have success within calls. Yet they compete. They're at the same shows. I've seen them at the same parties and events. To me that's like that's the way you do it, right. It's it's like we're competitors but we can also play within the same ecosystem because there is enough business for us out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good example of a rising tide lifts all boats. That's what happens there and I'll tell you. Adam Young posted it yesterday. He's writing. I think he's done with his book. It's called the Paper Court Revolution, and look out for that. He's probably going to drop some incredible insights.
Speaker 2:I mean Adam's super smart yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Harrison too. I mean I heard his story in the early teens getting to this game. And again, that's what I like about our industry If you've got the hustle, the wherewithal and you know how to spot patterns and recognize patterns, you can freaking do something amazing.
Speaker 2:I called Harrison one time. I didn't want to say this, but now you brought him up again.
Speaker 2:I called him one time and he answered the phone and I was like, hey, man, I've got a problem like with the offer I'm running or whatever it was. And he was like I can't talk to you right now. I'm in class and I'm like walk out of class. Like walk out of class, Not realizing right. And he's like no, dude, I'm in high school, I can't just walk out of class. Wow, and my jaw dropped. Yeah, I Okay.
Speaker 1:Wait, you threw it in college, right?
Speaker 2:I was like wait, what do you mean? I was like high school. He's like yeah dude, I'm in, like I think it was like 10th grade and I was like holy shit.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. This dude is like in 10th grade, just hustling, like well, look, some kids are like playing sports or, you know, studying or doing whatever. Most kids are not doing much of anything, right In 10th grade. He's literally answering business calls in 10th grade. Yeah, crazy. And so, like you know, fast forward to today. You could see why they're having this level of success. They are right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Like. It's very obvious I always say Tony Robbins says, success leaves clues. It's right there. That's a perfect example. Grinding it in high school, I mean, he was still committed to his, to his school too, he was in class.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it wasn't like. He was like oh, I'm going to walk out. He was like yeah, I'll call you back.
Speaker 2:And he did call me back the man of his word, but he was in class. When I heard that, I was like, and you know, I'm already in my my like mid to late twenties, and I was like, damn, you know, I started late. Yeah, and you know, I think, having grown up very similar to you and I didn't go to NYU, although I did go to college on a scholarship, nice, but for sports Yep, you know, I think back and I'm like I wish I would have taken things a little serious. Yeah, you know, like I try not to live my life thinking about regrets. Yeah, but you know, if I could do it all again, I would have taken things a little more serious.
Speaker 2:Now, I did build a pretty nice business on eBay, which was cool, but I didn't realize how easily it could be disrupted, and it was, and once that disruption happened I'd have no business, and so when I was working for that guy, I didn't ask all of the right questions, and so it also taught me that when you're in business and you're with people and you're meeting with people, asking questions is a big part of success. The more you understand something and I don't think anyone minds answering questions and sometimes the questions can feel very invasive, but there's nothing wrong with asking good questions.
Speaker 2:And there's nothing wrong with admitting that you don't understand something when you don't understand it, as opposed to just walking out of a meeting like, oh, that was a great meeting and you really have no idea what the meeting was about because you didn't understand it. So asking those questions is critical.
Speaker 1:I think that's, and you're right. You've done that. First few times we met, you asked me a lot of questions about Legion. You knew I knew about Legion and I answered those questions. But you had a good reputation. You've been doing this for a long time. Right, I thought you were already in Legion. I didn't realize it was mainly e-com, but when you were asking me these questions I was surprised.
Speaker 2:Because you were asking me these questions, I thought you'd know the answer, but For sure, and like you know, I think again like having that experience, instead of saying like I'm going to go to these things and pretend like I know everything because I've been around for a really long time. Right, I'm like I'm going to go and be super humble and ask questions, because while I'm in a room full of really smart people, shouldn't I spend the time here to learn, as opposed to pretend as if I know everything Absolutely?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So sometimes you have to step back from yourself and say like, yeah, even though I've had success, I'm not the smartest person, I'm not the most successful person, I don't have the biggest company Like. I'm not going to know everything and in some cases I may know nothing about whatever is happening, but I can ask questions and if I ask good questions, I'm going to learn something. And every time I go, or every time I go back after as long as I go back and review my notes, I now become a little smarter. I love it.
Speaker 2:All great words of wisdom and I think for you know, just to add to that, like for guys like us that grew up the way we did, and I feel like there's a lot of people in this industry that you know share similar upbringings, similar upbringings for guys like us, right, who who don't always have the greatest opportunity to learn when we're young because of how we grow up or where we grow up yeah, like being in an industry around a, really around a lot of really smart people that are willing to share and there's so many different events and all you have to do is ask yeah, such a powerful thing it is powerful.
Speaker 1:All you gotta do is show up in one of those shows, spend $500,000, whatever it is, and you get a. You're around people that have done it. They made mistakes, they're they're. They're learning from their mistakes. They're running these big companies. They're running fast.
Speaker 2:You can even on like YouTube follow, the subscribe you know, I see all these guys that come to the show now from like different, from different countries, right, like India, pakistan, and they're so eager to be there and so happy to be there and this is not a knock on them, right. But if I go back, like 15 years or so, so many people had like negative connotations of like, oh, am I going to buy my leads from someone in India or Pakistan because all they're trying to do is like fraud me out. Right, and that was the case with many of these groups, right, and I'm not pointing out one group, but I'm just saying that's kind of the reality of our industry, right? And if I look at where it's evolved now, I meet all these guys that come in from all these different places and they ask good questions and they're really eager to learn. You wind up doing a lot of business with them.
Speaker 2:You find that they're they're some of your best business partners, right, and it's crazy because the whole mindset has shifted, like everyone's now actually trying to learn something today, as opposed to like how can they just pull a fast one and make a few bucks and then no one wants to work with them anymore, right? So you've got people that are really thinking about this like. This is a serious industry. There's long-term, there's really long-term money here to be made, as long as I do good business with people, and that's I've seen that. I've definitely seen a lot of change in that. You know, there's still some of those guys around that come in and that's everywhere right, not everywhere within our industry that like try to rip you off for a few bucks, but for the most part, like a lot of people are actually trying to do good business and that's really cool.
Speaker 1:I love it. All right, jordan. So if you had to start all over again, right, let's say. Let's say listen, God forbid, something went out with the business. You had to start all over again from the from the beginning man, what? What would you do if you're someone just getting into this industry, that that sees what we have going on? What would be your advice?
Speaker 2:First is you should understand media. Whether you're buying the media or not, you should understand how it works and its capabilities. Second is understanding all the different platforms right Meta, tiktok, youtube, really Google and then the suite of products under Google and understanding those at a high level, right, that's where I'd start, like if I were starting over again. That's where I'd start, because those are the easiest things that you can do and they're essentially free. I mean, obviously you have to be able to buy the media, but once you know how to acquire those customers, you can basically work with anyone. You want to get yourself started Right. Then, from there, it's making that decision of which trajectory do you want to go down? What's going to be your path of success? Right, and that I can't speak to. Right, for me, I didn't necessarily want to be the affiliate anymore or the media buyer, because it wasn't something that came natural to me. I found over time that I was a very, very average media buyer, but I was better at actually running a company and building out teams. So that's the direction that I would go, right, I would understand the platforms, I would understand all the media, and this is if I'm starting fresh.
Speaker 2:If things just didn't work out and I had to start over again. Well, I'd basically start over doing the same thing that I've done, just potentially optimizing it a little bit. Right, I'd want to understand what went wrong, because obviously at that point the business failed. So why did the business fail? So I would do a whole analysis of that. So I would step back for a certain period of time, but my guess is that within a few months I'd be right back in it and I'd have something that would be successful.
Speaker 2:I'd build out the blueprint for success for myself. And if I look at this space, I enjoy the e-commerce side of it better than I do the lead gen side, for a lot of different reasons, primarily because in e-commerce I get to deal with most of the founders of the companies, because they're smaller businesses, whereas with lead gen you sometimes will deal with the founders, but many times you're just dealing with people that work at the company. And for me, I like the personal relationship of dealing with someone who is the decision maker, as opposed to just dealing with someone who has to go ask someone else, who may have to ask someone else if we can potentially work together and then waiting. But that's just preference for me personally.
Speaker 1:I love it. Great words of advice, words of wisdom, right there.
Speaker 2:Last thing is a slice of marketing Sl, so I mean, you know, I think, like a lot of us right and and, and you know, you inspired me. Um, I've got my YouTube channel and podcasts that'll be coming out soon. It's called slice of marketing. Um, I've got the Instagram page up, although right now there's no activity on it. I think, as you know from following me on Instagram, I've been doing a lot of different pizza posting and I started to pull together some content and I'm hoping to have it out in the next month or so and really that'll be all about sitting down, enjoying amazing pizza wherever it is in the world and talking marketing or really talking about anything. But I think the primary focus will be on marketing, specifically performance marketing, marketing, because that's the industry we're in I love it.
Speaker 1:I love it. You're gonna do it international as well and you know I, I know you know your pizza. This is fucking phenomenal pizza. What would we rate the pizza today?
Speaker 2:oh, I mean to me. So portnoy has him an eight nine. Yeah, I'm a little, a little lower than eight nine. I give him an eight six. Um, this is an eight, this is a solid eight six to me, but me. But again, there's no 10s, there's very few 10s. There's very few 9.5s. So if I look at my pizza org, it's sitting at the upper level of pizza.
Speaker 1:I love it. I agree with that. I would say 8.4 to 8.6 somewhere there. Excellent pizza. I got my pizza fix that I wasn't getting in Florida. So thank you for that, my man. Yeah, my brother. Thanks to David man for making this happen, getting us back here. You know, we did like a pre-Valentine's thing here. Some Jersey shit. Yeah, I guess Valentine's Day is in what like two days yeah yeah, you got to make sure you get flowers and chocolates for your wife, or when you're married a really long time.
Speaker 1:You got to make it special.
Speaker 2:It's just another day. Well, to me it's like just another day.
Speaker 1:They support our lifestyle, man. That's just how we get there.
Speaker 2:I try to make every day special.
Speaker 1:So well, how can people find you? So what's the best way to find you online?
Speaker 2:You know I'm on Instagram IMJroll. Is you know my hashtag on me on Skype at jrollband1. Got it Okay so.
Speaker 1:LFG fam. There was a lot of information there to pack in. I think we got to do this again. We do this somewhere over another pizza place somewhere in the country or the world or whatever, but listen to what he's got to say. There was so much information, from scaling companies to media buying, to which verticals go in if you start all over again all that stuff so this was amazing. This is one of the top podcasts we've done so far, so I really appreciate you taking the time to make it out here. I feel like a lot of good information for our fan base here and let's fucking go, man.
Speaker 2:Let's make it a good year. I love the name, by the way. That is the epitome of who you are.
Speaker 1:That's who I am. Clock and go baby. All right, Good stuff.