How The Rideshare Guy Turned Uber, Lyft Drivers into a Media Empire

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0:20[Music] thank you all right so welcome Harry Harry Campbell the Rideshare guy thanks for having me on Greg how are you so I remember hearing your story 2015 2016. um I had heard that there was this guy named the Rideshare guy who was a an Uber driver I think who started a Blog that was getting a ton of traction in 2014 I was working full-time as an aerospace engineer for Boeing but I decided to start driving for Uber and Lyft on the side and while it's not rocket science being a driver it is tougher than it looks as an engineer though I was very diligent about

1:15tracking my income and expenses and constantly experimenting with new strategies and even new opportunities in the gig economy like food delivery and scooter charging along the way I started a Blog to document everything I was learning and to share my journey with other drivers I called it the Rideshare guy Lyft actually turned me on to you so I was building a community platform at the time and they basically were like hey there's this guy who's like doing stuff for Uber and like you need to like we want to compete against him and I was like oh what is happening so anyways I heard about you mythical status and I

1:51wanted to bring you on the show to talk about a bit of your story and how you can yeah and and what you're up to cool well I guess my first question to you is what took you so long to have me on if you heard about me in 2015 or 16 I guess better late than never right I mean you know there's the the adage never meet your Heroes and yeah I I I've actually in my past have kind of waited not you know to meet people I've followed and over the last year or two with this pod it's given me a great excuse to just

2:23like hit people up and be like hey do you want to chat for sure I know I feel like there's so many cool people doing interesting things like the podcast is probably the perfect Outlet or venue you know like we could have a good conversation we might as well record it so other people can hear so as a podcast host myself of a couple different podcasts right now I can definitely empathize with you there you go so for for people who don't know about you can you give a little background about uh what your you know I'll call it a media Empire around uh the Greek economy

2:53is and what what's the scale today definitely yeah no and I appreciate uh that term because it is a little bit tough to describe what I do and I mean really kind of what it boils down to though is you know I started driving for both Uber and Lyft all the way back in 2014 on the side you know just to try it out make some money I had a full-time day job as an aerospace engineer working for Boeing so kind of the opposite of what I do now but uh obviously during that time period the company started exploding raising crazy amounts of money hiring hundreds of thousands of drivers

3:26and you know I was really just like a leech on this rocket this rocket ship and so the companies exploded and you know I think really um because there were so many people out there and this job was new too right like people had driven taxi people had driven cars but driving for hire in this kind of fashion was so new there was just so much interest and excitement around it and so I kind of latched on to that I started my blog I started doing three or four articles a week myself and um you know I started a YouTube channel I started a podcast the Rideshare guy

3:56podcast which I still run uh to this day so it's sort of a weekly podcast a little bit more focused on ride share and gig delivery industry topics these days and kind of like I started off as like Nitty Gritty I went out and drove Friday Saturday Sunday night here's how much I made um you know this person puked in my car here's how to avoid a puker you know and I will say there is like no shortage of topic uh of content and topics that you can kind of cover you would think like how hard is it to be a driver but really it is kind of a lot harder than it looks

4:26and it's not rocket science but I think I kind of just took advantage of the fact that there's so many people doing it it was growing so fast and people didn't really know what they were doing and it's a little harder than it looks and so over the years I've built out a team of contributors were on probably every box on the internet you know we've got the Blog podcast we've got a couple different podcasts YouTube is probably our fastest growing platform right now we have I just got our monthly ports I think we have about 150 160 000 subscribers which is you know not huge

4:58but a pretty good size you can make a full-time living off of that we do around a million uh views a month on YouTube seventy five thousand email subscribers um so you know it's basically to say we've got a pretty good reach across all our different platforms you know we kind of we've got the tick tock Instagram you know all of that we've got the courses for drivers we've got audio books Kindle books uh kind of I usually joke like any box on the internet if you type in something related to Uber Lyft gig economy will probably Pop Up For Better or Worse so that's kind of what the

5:33business uh looks like today and I'm happy to dive into that or sort of what I've what I've kind of transitioned to focus more on but that's kind of the high level right now over the last 12 months there's been this trend on you know for these Anonymous accounts um people are calling it the guy Mafia oh yeah they totally uh or I'm totally on board with the guy Mafia yeah so what they mean by that is like the strip mall guy the Self Storage guy the designer guy and uh you know you really pioneered that concept I think um how do you how important do you think

6:11the name the Rideshare guy was to unlocking a lot of the success in their early days yeah so I will say I totally ripped it off from one of my Idols the points guy so I was a big uh before I ever started the Rideshare guy you know I've always been dabbling in online businesses you know I started three personal finance blogs I was doing freelance travel writing just kind of covering topics that I was interested in and I kind of feel like you know I wasn't an expert from all of those you know businesses or gigs that I that I did but you know I learned a lot and

6:43kind of like got my feet wet I guess you would say and so I totally loved the points guy was like the only travel blog I read and you know it's when I kind of started brainstorming ideas and names for my site the Rideshare guy kind of rose to the top of the list and I wouldn't say that it you know like when you introduced me you said the Rideshare guy like I walked into rooms that Lyft and Uber and they're like oh it's the Rideshare guy so it definitely there's something there with the branding but I think that uh you know like a great brand on top of a great Community or on

7:12top of a great platform is like the key to success right if you just have a great name it you know not like rock you know any Revelation or anything like a great name on its own doesn't do much but I think like that kind of in tandem I think has uh you know helped me a bit made me a bit more memorable so I'd say it's in like that 10 to 20 percent range that it's given me like a little bit of boost like if I would have picked a shittier name maybe I would have got 10 or 20 percent less revenue or deals or

7:38connections I think it did have an impact but maybe not a huge one you know my take on that is I think it had more than a 10 or 20 lift I think a name is like naming in general is just really underrated um especially when you were coming up with this name like the points guy was pretty massive but like you know it wasn't as ubiquitous as it is now I actually think what's gonna happen with the guy Mafia is there's there's almost like a saturation I I do I kind of on my on one of my podcasts that I'm doing right now called wannabe Angels which I

8:12think is another good name for investor you know it's like an investor podcast and uh I think we always joke like the best part about that podcast is the name and uh I always mention it you know we have a vertical SAS guy I'm like oh you should be the vertical SAS guy and with this whole Twitter guy Mafia I think there was a car dealership guy who I follow and you know I think I saw this uh another guy Nick Huber sweaty startup uh he tweeted out some list of accounts to follow the other day and it was all like the blank guy and I'm like oh man

8:39people are really leaning into this guy Mafia and I mean it does sound good but I do think yeah some of the novelty and cachet is probably wearing off like I I don't know that I would name the you know a business the blank guy today because it does you know it's a little bit saturated at this point right like it stood out when I did it when you're coming up with a name for a business do you have any naming Frameworks or how do you come up with names for companies products podcasts communities I feel like in general I either let someone else smarter than me or more creative

9:16than me come up with a name and work with them so my co-founder for my conference Jonah he came up with a name called curbivore uh because it's sort of at the intersection of last mile delivery and policy and restaurants and Retail everything that's happening at the curb you know right he'll pick up and drop off so we do an in-person event in LA and everybody loves the name herbivore uh you know sort of like play off of herbivore but you know eating the curb and other than that though like when I came up with the Rideshare guy name and wannabe angels with my co-host Colin for that podcast I think we just

9:46wrote down like for Rideshare guy I specifically remember writing down like a list of 50 different names and I think the key that I've discovered with naming is you kind of want to be Niche but you don't want to be too Niche you don't want to be too broad like the I knew for sure that I didn't want to be like the Uber guy because I was like well what if there's another company Beyond Uber right and so you know I think Rideshare guy was sort of like a little bit lucky that I picked the right Niche but you know for a while in 2018 and 19 our most

10:13popular content on both the blog and YouTube was actually scooter content when bird and lime and all these companies were exploding and so I was sort of like oh man everything everyone thinks of me as the Rideshare guy but like our most popular content is All About Scooters now and charging scooters and in the last two three years honestly we've had a lot it's probably 50 50 now but like we have a ton of interest in delivery and so you know people still think of me as the Rideshare guy but like half of our revenue and traffic probably comes from you know last mile delivery now so ubereats instacart

10:42doordash you know those types of topics so I think to me I think about it like hey I don't want to be an expert in every one of these domains I want people to think of me as the Rideshare guy anything any Uber or Lyft question come to me I'm the guy to talk to uh but you know we also dabble we know enough to be dangerous in some other areas like food delivery and even though you know I might know quite a bit about food delivery I'm not really trying to like actively Market myself as like the food delivery guy if that makes sense yeah I mean would you ever consider sort

11:13of unbundling the Rideshare guy into multiple accounts slash businesses so I thought about it when the scooter craze was happening because it was you know it was still gig work but I mean we were doing YouTube reviews of scooters and posting it on the Rideshare guy YouTube channel so you have like a video about how to drive for Uber and then the next video is like a scooter review right pretty random but our scooter reviews were getting hundreds of thousands of views so I was like all right well I kind of have to do this and I think what I've learned over the years is you to

11:44segment audience you really have to have a big following I think it sounds great in online marketing you know if you've got an email provider they're like hey you should take your Rideshare people you should take your delivery people you should take your full time who likes videos who like articles and create all these different segments and in order to do that you have to have like a massive following I would say like in the millions of people in the hundreds of thousands maybe to really start segmenting like the only segment we do is like ride share and delivery right so we have like two really high level

12:12segments and um I've experimented with a lot of different others and it's just so much work that goes into like managing those different segments like if you launch a brand new account unless you've got like unless I had a million subscribers on YouTube I think that it would be really difficult to kind of get those economies of scale from launching a second Channel I think you see like Mr Beast he's got his main Channel and he's got his philanthropy Channel and that works out really well but he's the biggest and best Creator on all of YouTube right like I'm way below Mr P so I think that

12:42would be kind of my personal experience and caution is that it sounds so good on paper or on a PDF or you know when you're taking an online course like oh segment this and that but in reality it's a lot of work and I don't really recommend it unless you have a huge huge following so what advice would you give to let's say a sweaty startup Nick Huber who you know is running 10 10 guy accounts companies right now and really took your branding advice to Heart yeah I mean I guess maybe I should be taking advice from him because he seems to be doing pretty well but uh I think

13:15it was someone like him I think that he's kind of unlocked a strategy that seems to be working pretty well and leveraging either his main account his main Persona and you know I think he might be kind of at that inflection point where he is big enough to uh you know kind of go and launch these other brands and I think as long as you're still doing something that you enjoy you know there's still a business opportunity and you're kind of able to leverage other properties that to me is the big thing and everyone is different you know like to me I'm all about like high leverage working as little as

13:47possible and making as much money as possible but that not everyone is like that and I think sometimes people try to force themselves into you know a certain pigeonhole but you know if that's not your like if you're the grind it out type of personality you probably shouldn't be doing things like me where like I won't even DocuSign something I'll send that to one of my virtual assistants because it saves me you know five seconds if it's like a basic document could you talk more about the business model of the whole of the whole sure companies so you've got all these content you know properties um and and you know you mentioned

14:20courses I'm sure there's ad Revenue like how do you how do you think about business model and when did you think about business model yeah so I would say to answer the when is you know I've done a lot of content over the years and content is tough because I think most people don't think of it as a product right when you think about a company forming you've got CEO Chief Operating Officer Chief product officer there's no Chief content there's a chief marketing right but it's usually less on the content and more on paid there's you know not there's very rarely a chief content officer but I think to

14:51me like I think if you're going to do content you have to think of it as a product you have to think of it in those other veins and I think that if you do it well it's tough um it can have similar returns it can be valuable it's not as competitive right if not a lot of people are doing something that means that if you do it really well you can kind of get outsized returns and so for me when I started the Rideshare guy I think really in any project that I do the three things I look for is something that I'm interested in something that has a good

15:18business potential and something that's going to help people I rarely will do anything in my entire life that's like one of those three categories it's always you know something more than the other right I go I just got a text message to take a GLG investor call right like okay that's going to be more for the money than it is to you know like help people I'm still helping someone but it's someone who runs like a multi-billion dollar hedge fund do they really need my help I'm probably doing that one more for the money okay um but every project those are kind of like the three you know sort of you're

15:45drawing a Venn diagram those are the three things that I look for and so when I started the Rideshare guy I thought there was a good business opportunity I thought it'd be really cool to help a bunch of people who are like trying to figure out uh this new line of work and I just frankly I think gig work is really cool uh you know I want to kind of share it with more people and obviously there's millions of people doing it now so there's something that people enjoy about it and I wasn't really expecting to make much money at the start uh you know I kind of in

16:12general with content I always tell people like do it for a year pick something you like pick something that has a good business opportunity and see what happens but at the end of that year I think you should sort of be happy with the journey and the results and if you made money along the way great if it exploded into a huge business even better and so that was kind of my initial uh framework going into the Rideshare guy and within about three to six months I did start making some money and that was more off of driver referrals so Uber and Lyft kind of have

16:40famously paid thousands of dollars for driver acquisition over the years and now it's kind of come down maybe more normal acquisition prices hundreds of dollars for a driver and so over the years we kind of started off monetizing by mainly driver referrals some affiliate stuff which would be you know a gas uh app like get upside is one of our top affiliate Partners you know they help you save on gas so pretty good fit obviously for Uber and Lyft drivers who put a thousand to two thousand miles a week on their car and so today we have three or four main Revenue sources probably the biggest one would

17:14be affiliate so that would be you know either signing people up I kind of call it affiliate you know signing people up to drive for Uber ubereats instacart doordash and you know really any kind of platform um signing them up to be a driver that kind of falls under affiliate and then we also have other Affiliates like get upside uh others in the cashback space like Ibotta fetch I mean I think in like one of our um you know get upside is a good example because they were sort of VC funded had a lot of money at a certain point and I think they were paying us like five

17:43dollars um you know acquisition for a free app download for like a perfect product for our audience right and I think at one point we probably did 50 000 referrals in a single month for them at like the Heyday two three years ago when they were spending a lot on marketing and you know kind of we were ranking number one for every code around get upside get upside You Know download get upside referral promo code all of that and uh you know so the affiliate stuff is definitely temperamental and kind of goes up and down and I can pull the plug at any time but affiliate is probably

18:13our main one and we also do a lot of direct advertising and so over the past two three years we've done a lot of direct campaigns with you know the platforms themselves so some companies we might be an affiliate and they're like hey you're doing great as an affiliate let's do some extra work with you others like right now we have a few deals working with a lot of fintech apps right new banking apps for Gig workers you know combine your personal and business accounts you know get a cash advance or whatever it might be so we do a lot of uh direct deals and so that would be they come to us and

18:42maybe sponsor our newsletter sponsor uh do a sponsored blog post sponsored video maybe we'll do a pre-roll ad for them you know we've got like 10 or 20 different options that they can do that we have a weekly live show that they can sponsor and have a banner so I think that's pretty straightforward and then we have some other ancillary uh Revenue sources like I'll do Consulting deals retainers one-off calls we do have some products so we sell to drivers directly but honestly that's probably less than five percent of our Revenue like our courses and coaching and it's just been really tough for me to sell directly to

19:14drivers who frankly aren't making a lot of money we've had much more success you know negotiating with the bigger companies or VC funded or you know people with a lot of money to blow or to spend basically and you know then I also work with a lot of startups and so I guess that would be Less on the money side and you know I'm an advisor for 10 or 15 startups um I've been Angel Investing for the past three four years and I ended up starting a little mini fund so investing in some companies so you know I guess I haven't really made money off of that

19:44yet but hopefully someday I will on the affiliate side of things what what does like an Uber pay for a referral to you know for a driver just give people a sense of like so probably one to two hundred dollars I mean in the Heyday they were paying 500 to a thousand dollars and that's sort of where like I kind of feel like I had a little bit of a cheat code in the first few years like I shouldn't have been making I ended up quitting my day job within about nine months starting the Rideshare guy and I in a normal situation I probably shouldn't have been

20:11able to do that Uber was kind of like a once in a generation kind of company where they were growing so fast and raising so much money that they were just paying you know literally 500 to a thousand dollars for driver referrals and they were double-sided so like the new driver signing up was getting money I was getting a lot of money um and so we kind of monetized off of that so these days it's come down quite a bit and so maybe more in the one to two hundred dollars range for delivery services it might be 25 to 100 maybe up to 200 and some of the top markets but

20:40sort of Rideshare delivery and then you know all of our other Affiliates might be more in like the five to fifty dollar range you know if it's a free mileage tracking app you know that might be two to five dollars per download if it's more of a bank account you know that might be more than the 50 to 100 dollar a kind of Rage and where do you want to take it like what's exciting to you it feels like you've kind of like from an outsider honestly it feels like you're you're at the top like you're at the top of your Niche yeah and you've got like

21:10you're doing the courses you're doing the affiliate you're on all the platforms you've got a bunch of shows I'm sure you're making six to seven figures in Revenue a month on the business it sounds like you've got it pretty much like you want you know you've won you beat Bowser you know I don't know if we're making quite that much I'd be doing real well if we're that probably more like five to six figures a month but you know I think that uh definitely to me I would say that like I am definitely an entrepreneur at heart and so I've really kind of used the Rideshare guy it's just

21:44like like you know I think obviously you can see a lot of the work that I put in and you know this isn't my first rodeo it wasn't my first you know I have many businesses that failed right or many blogs or websites that didn't work out so well but I think it's like such a good springboard into other Ventures right and so really any kind of itch that I want to scratch as an entrepreneur I've sort of been using the Rideshare guy to do that over the past few years and I would say probably the biggest examples maybe more directly to the business would be you know like

22:12electrification we're really interested in like EVs and that intersections we've done a lot of of Consulting work you know reviews of different Vehicles you know so we're kind of investing we started a Facebook group that has six seven thousand or five six thousand EV Uber and Lyft drivers is like the only and kind of biggest group there so that's kind of like an area that I just was spending some time that I kind of invested time money resources and then uh the conference that I mentioned like I've done everything primarily digital you can make way more money Better Or Not way more but better uh returns you

22:45know I would say like marginal returns I guess you would say and so you know I wanted to do something in person bring people together and so the conference we've been putting on we've done it now two years in person in La our most recent one had 750 people um and that is really kind of at the intersection of last mile delivery restaurant and retail public policy and kind of anything and everything in between and frankly it's just like a really good excuse for me and my co-founder Jonah to put on an awesome party to bring a lot of people together to have really great food like I

23:12literally do that conference for myself like I don't do anything at that conference that's boring not fun you know we make some money off of it but it's not my biggest Revenue source and then uh the other area that I've kind of been personally interested in over the past few years is Angel Investing and you know I really you know I'm not going to go start a startup anytime soon I'm way too lazy for that way too much work but I do get a lot of energy out of helping entrepreneurs you know seeing people grow and you know maybe passing some of my knowledge and frankly like I

23:40think it's infectious to be around people that are like working their ass off if you don't necessarily have to do it yourself so it's sort of fun to be involved in that process and journey and you know so I've invested probably five or six hundred thousand dollars of my own money in 10 20 to 30 startups and maybe 10 funds over the past three four years and ended up uh meeting my friend Colin uh and we started a podcast called wannabe angels and so I think we've record we're about 15 published and maybe 20 episodes total in and that is to kind of scratch that itch but you know as you

24:11might imagine like the companies that I'm investing in I'm not you know I'm like investing in you know maybe less ride like Rideshare adjacent you know like gig economy food restaurant and retail Logistics Mobility you know anything that kind of like leans into these areas that you know I know a little bit you know enough to be dangerous about but maybe I'm not an expert in so I think that's kind of where I'm at in the stage of the business and I did actually just bring on a big business partner too to kind of help run the website of uh and the kind of back-end side of things we've got

24:41some goals there which we can get into but I guess on a personal level that's kind of like what I've been dabbling in so the points guys an interesting story um so Points Guy started very similar to you I think it was he worked at um Brian Kelly he was an investment banker yeah yeah investment banker at you know JP Morgan or something like that Morgan Stanley actually and you know he just started blogging about you know points on different credit cards and uh it was right you know right around the right after the uh great financial crisis so there was a lot of demand for you know saving money and and

25:23you know just points um and he ended up taking a different path than you did um although he did monetize via Affiliates like you did but the different path that he took is he sold his business to bank rate right uh in 2012. um which I think got acquired again in 2017. have you ever thought about it right yeah yeah exactly have you ever thought about I'm sure you have but like when is the right time to sell yeah or how are you thinking about it yeah so I this is probably I I would love to discuss this but I'll sort of caveat it with that I'm

25:59definitely not an expert here and that's kind of one of the reasons that kind of interests me about it like I've never sold a business and so like as an entrepreneur I think you know you kind of always want to work on new things try new things and so for me it's like I've done all these different things I've never sold Rideshare guy or never sold a business so it's like kind of that part is like almost more interesting of course I want to make money off of it if I do sell and I think like up until this point I've always up until recently I

26:23guess you would say I've always thought about uh my business as like I probably value it a lot more than someone is willing to pay like hey if Uber came and offered me I don't know 10 20 50 million dollars for it tomorrow I'd probably sell it but I doubt that they value it in the same way that I do right because I put so much time and energy and you know like I also like what I do you know like every like I only work on parts of the business that you know I enjoy and you know I've kind of transitioned and done a lot of different roles and hired

26:53people and all of that so like I wake up every Monday morning like pretty refreshed you know I just went on vacation last week and I was pretty excited you know to come back to work and check all my emails right because I knew it'd be like kind of fun stuff you know Greg emailing me about coming on the podcast you know fun stuff to do so I think like when it comes to selling the business I've never you know it's never been a goal of mine by any stretch but I've definitely over the past two to four years built the business to sell I would say that you know I think I

27:25think there's a famous saying like even if you're not going to sell a business you know you want to build it to sell um and really what that means for me personally is you know there's the brand the rides your guy people know me that's how they think of me but if you go and look at our videos our content I've got a number of contributors it's really not me anymore doing the content I'm still you know not even in the face but I'm still involved you know people still know me but I think that like if someone did want to come in and buy the

27:49Rideshare guy tomorrow it wouldn't be like they're buying me I think they're buying a brand you know most of the time if we get a media inquiry you know I've been quoted like over 3000 times in the media you know as a Rideshare gig economy expert but these days you know when we get a media inquiry I send it to one of my top contributors I don't even take those unless I have some pre-existing relationship with the reporter you know I want and actually like kind of stealing from the Points Guy I remember I heard this NPR interview once and they're like we're going to bring in you know senior

28:16contributor at the Points Guy Kelly some something you know Kelly whoever and she's going to talk about points and I was like that's awesome like the points guys getting mentioned in this NPR uh story and Brian the CEO or you know founder doesn't even have to be on the interview like that is really cool to me and so that's kind of how you know I think I've done a pretty good job of that over the past few years and I actually ended up um bringing on a business partner earlier this year uh they're called MMG media they've bought and sold a bunch of properties and they've exited uh businesses and their

28:46five-person team that have been really enjoying working with and really it's to kind of take have them take over a lot of the back end I think the things that would be even more attractive to a potential acquirer right like they're going to care a lot more about affiliate Revenue than upfront sponsored you know like advertising deals right like they kind of care more about um those longer term type things and so you know really kind of building the business you know I've never been an expert like I know I know the basics of SEO but like that's like my nightmare I don't want to sit there tracking

29:17keywords and doing all the boring stuff and I'm really good at like getting out there marketing developing relationships making a lot of noise uh you know being quoted in the media writing op-eds you know being having content everywhere and less so like hey you know we covered this topic three years ago and you know this new post is going to kind of cannibalize our old posts in the eyes of Google search we should probably update this old one you know but that's sort of why I brought on my business partners they're very good at that type of stuff so I guess I would say that you know

29:45regardless if we end up do if we end up selling or not I think we're kind of like building the business behind the scenes now in a much more attract like I was able to kind of take the business to a point where I think it's like somewhat attractive from the outside because it's not just me anymore but now we're trying to build the business behind the scenes that's even more attractive if we were to want to sell in the future so this is the first time I've heard about MMG media and they look awesome yeah I'm just on their website I'm just on their website so I haven't really

30:15announced my partnership without I've kind of mentioned it or teased it and you know I'm sure we'll kind of announce it a little bit more uh I guess you're getting the exclusive right now Greg I love it I love it you're too good to me on their website it says we are obsessed with building notable brands that meet people where they are in their financial Journey and they build by they you know they basically have three services they either number one they build or buy number two they scale and number three they sell so cell meaning they've got strong relationships with the network of buyers yeah our team has yeah scaling is

30:51basically I think similar in your your boat where we grow revenue and traffic with a heavy emphasis on SEO and affiliate Partnerships uh and then the build and buy and they've got a portfolio that looks like bankbonus.com uh Millennial money uh Financial residency and of course the ride share guy can you talk us through your like your relationship with them and what they handle and how it's been yeah definitely so Grant uh the CEO I've known for a while since I sort of got my bearings in the personal finance world and you can sort of tell from the sites they listed off they've got you know they've been kind

31:29of more focused on the finance side of things and I think Millennial money is kind of their famous site that uh if you look up I believe he talked he has a blog post or two about him selling it to I want to say gosh I can't remember it wasn't Bank grade but it was someone like that that he sold it to and I don't think he announced the price but I think he announced you know it was a lot of money and I mean I think he ended up buying it back at some point too uh which is kind of funny um but yeah I mean so I've sort of

31:54personally known him for a while and I guess to me like Santa kind of seen them like you know you kind of listed off all the marketing copy on their site and I've kind of seen that in action so that's sort of where it's like hey to me you know that it's not that hard to write that on a website and create good copy and landing page but like to me you know the reason why I was even interested in partnering with them in the first place is because I've seen them do that in action build a site like Bank bonus from the ground up you know

32:17build his own site sell it and uh you know kind of do some of that and they've got a lot of experience and are good at some of the things that I'm not good at and so I sort of feel like it was like kind of fitting two good pieces of a puzzle and so at a high level that's kind of what interested me in the first place uh in working with them and uh basically we are still I mean we've got an official partnership agreement and all that and they're kind of my official business partners but I will say you know kind of like integrating a

32:45business like mine that's been doing something you know in all our different ways for 10 years almost is like you know it's there's a lot of moving pieces right and so basically we're kind of at the stage where they're really focused on the website and SEO and we've kind of actually completely redesigned the site back-end architecture redone hundreds if not probably close to 2 000 pages on the website and optimize for SEO you know we're starting I'm about to record a bunch of you know like really high quality videos with a videographer for our top seven SEO affiliate type pages so we're really just trying at this

33:15point to like build up the traffic you know it was kind of like hey we've got this ship and now we're kind of writing it in the correct direction not that we were doing a bad job before but you know if you look at like how much money can you make driving for doordash that's probably like a top keyword uh for doordash Affiliates and there's a lot of sites with lower domain Authority less credibility than us out ranking because as the SEO side of things has never been my area of expertise Focus or something that frankly I even enjoyed and so it's sort of like hey I knew we were always

33:45leaving some money on the table but you know I like working on things that I enjoy and that I'm good at and so that's kind of where we're at with them and basically I kind of brought they've got a five-person team and I brought them all on as you know sort of like a uh equity and I guess you would say sort of I mean they're basically like a 50 50 partner I guess you would say and so they are uh have a lot of upside in the business if we do really well if we exit uh whatever it might be and so that's kind of uh you

34:12know what they're handling for me I feel like this is a model that's gonna happen a ton in a bunch of other niches so what I really like about the deal that I set up with Grant and his team is that I'm really I'm paying them nothing up front like they are really putting their money where their mouth is and they have a lot of upside but it if you know things don't work out if they're not gonna make any money and so it's sort of like combining right like I think a good example like I do a lot of stuff with the media and I usually kind

34:48of like Workhorse it myself and you know like work with the startups and companies like get them featured or whatever it might be and there's a million PR Services out there you can hire for thousands or tens of thousands of dollars and none of them will guarantee anything right so it's like you could pay someone a lot of money with no guarantee of results and to me like that's like a space where there are definitely some good people but I feel like a majority are just gonna you know kind of like talk about talk a big game and it'll sound really good and you'll end up wasting your money

35:16um and I think in the deal that I set up with them with MMG media they have a lot of upside you know sort of like they've got that social proof but then they're putting their money where their mouth is and to me I think the biggest uh you know reason why it's a good fit is because like what they bring to the table and what I bring to the table are two really good skills but different like I'm good on the content and creative and relationship and marketing and they're kind of good on like what I would like joke the more boring stuff like you can't hire the best SEO person

35:45in the world for a hundred thousand dollars a year you probably can't hire them for a million dollars a year to be perfectly honest like you almost have to get the best people you know incentivized upside Equity you know that kind of partnership but it can be really you know complex structuring a deal where you know you kind of connect on a personal level and you guys are aligned like on a you know I almost think of like every deal I do should almost be like a handshake deal you know like you should almost like agree on a handshake basis and then you obviously have to

36:14like legalize it all up but you know it's like you you kind of almost have to like agree on like a handshake and like sort of bigger picture level you know before you go into anything I had a call earlier this morning with a entrepreneur who has a partnership opportunity on the table he's got you know a pretty good business and he he doesn't know if he should bring them on as Equity partners and he's got this big fear that well what if you know what they say they're gonna do is not exactly what they're going to do and you know um what advice do you have to someone

36:54like that I mean I think that that is a very reasonable fear I feel like most Partnerships don't work out to be perfectly honest you know like uh whether it's like a personal relationship or a Business Partnership like business I mean literally you know any anytime you bring two people together right or two groups together it's like tough it's like you know what I mean whether it's personal or where you know like obviously right was the stat 50 of marriages end in divorce right like I'm sure that it's higher or I don't know if I'm sure I'm sure it's in the same ballpark for business relationships based off my personal

37:27experience like you know when you get started with something it's just hard to maintain over time and so I think if you kind of go into it like to me it's all about leveling up like I've I feel like there's like 10 different things that happened in my life in order to get me to say yes to this partnership with MMG media you know the first thing would be like hey I've done a good job building something up on my own but I think to get it to that next level I've tried and I haven't quite you know been able to do it on my own higher hearing the people

37:57that you know I've been hiring number two I've done a lot of business Partnerships uh you know sort of like starting my first course that I started like eight nine years ago you know we started off with another guy and it ended up like after two three years we sort of broke up and it was somewhat amicable and I think I kind of paid him off paid him out of the business but you know it was like I don't think we had an actual agreement for that like my herbivore conference co-founder we usually at the end of every year we like decide how we want to divvy up the money

38:25you know what I mean it's like not the best way of doing it you know I've had experience and you know sort of know different people and like with that like I know what to expect right like I know that hey we haven't done a good job like up front we have you know a bunch of reasons for why we do it that way um and then you know maybe third or fourth like I've seen MMG in action right like again with that PR example like there are one or two PR firms that I actually recommend to startups because I've seen them work with companies of

38:51mine it's like yeah they'll charge ten thousand dollars or seven thousand dollars a month uh but I've seen them you know with a good company and with a good pitch get great write-ups and do good work so it's like they've got that social proof and then you know with the MMG it's like all right now they're putting where the deal we structured they have a lot of upside but they're putting their money where their mouth is they're not taking anything up front so I think like I would kind of look at it like combining two three four five six things anytime you're looking to bring someone on as a

39:20partner like it can't just be one thing that sounds good it sort of has to be like wow there's a multitude of factors that all lead me to saying yes and then I think the other thing too is like my business is quite different than you know like a bootstrapping I would call my business bootstrap I've never raised money or anything like that um you know a bootstrap pipe type of business I think like giving up Equity is a lot different than you know I think I'm sure taking on like a 50 50 partnership as like a VC funded startup is like crazy but in bootstrap world you

39:49know it's like completely different I think uh you know different situations so I think that's the other sort of caveat the advice I gave to this entrepreneur was create a timeline of all the interactions that you've had with this potential partner just like get a piece of paper write down all the interactions that you've had okay how many years has it been one two five ten okay uh how did they make you feel when they did this did they under promise and over deliver did they say they were gonna do this thing and it didn't happen and just all the things that you can possibly remember just like write it on a

40:28timeline and most importantly write the outcome of how you feel you felt in that moment yeah oh you know what because if you're getting into business with someone like you want to have fun and you want to smile and you want to have a good time too so you want to you know you wanna basically uh have records of how you're feeling about all these situations and I asked this guy now and he to come back with me with this timeline and he texted me actually today and he said like you know what there's been a few interactions with this person that have been pretty negative yeah and but they are the best

41:09they are the best and insert social proof here Institute and I was just like it's not worth it it's not it's not worth partnering with someone where you're going to have you know 10 20 negative uh relation you know outcomes um because you know it's very hard to undo these relationships yeah yeah I I like that framework and I think that you know I haven't thought about it too much so this is kind of fun that you're asking me about this but I imagine that like if everything isn't aligned like I I feel like most often in business Partnerships things like diverge then get better you

41:46know what I mean like you almost have to be like 1 000 on the same page because you're gonna it's gonna be tough you're gonna have some ups and downs and you know I feel like more often you know people's personal lives or situations change and that adds you know a wrench like oh I can't spend as much time because I have a kid now or I moved or whatever right so it's like it can only add more to the mix so if you're not like super aligned I mean even one thing I considered in working with Grant and MMG it'll be funny if he listens to this

42:10interview is like I liked him as a person uh and like I always prefer like I would much rather work with people that I like hanging out with and I know this sounds a little bit weird but like it's really hard for me to be friends with people that I work with if they're not good at their job like if they don't excel at their job like I can't shoot the on the phone with them like hey how was your week I'm like no let's not talk about your weekend like why isn't this done what what's going on you know like my first priority is business and

42:36working together and if we can crush it on that then like let's go have some fun together let's hang out let's talk you know let's vacation together whatever it might be and you know I hired my uh coo three four years ago and he uh you know we actually met at a fincon which is a personal finance bloggers conference and he was working for a top travel site kind of managing that and you know we like kind of instantly you know we hung out the whole weekend and we connected we had a lot of fun and I ended up bringing him on uh to the business uh

43:08for a few years and one of the things I enjoyed most about working with him was he was great at his job but also just I liked hanging out with him and you know he was like one of the you know kind of few people that I've hired over the years who like excelled at his job and also that I liked on a personal level and enjoyed talking to him and you know I went to Miami and um for a conference and you know he lives in West Palm Beach and I had him come down for a night we just like hung out and you know he talked about some

43:32business but we really just like hung out as friends for a weekend you know and like honestly like very little business purpose but you know it was like kind of fun last question because I gotta run all right if you if you were to summarize a decade of your knowledge and building content based Niche businesses what comes top of mind what is what is the most powerful advice you can give to people who are interested in becoming the future Rideshare guy of their own spaces yeah I mean I think it's kind of summary of some of the threads I've mentioned is you know pick something that you're

44:11interested in pick something that has some or a lot of business opportunity and you know I think it feels good to help people so you know if you're you know can find something that's you know more helpful to you know drivers making 15 to 20 an hour I think you'll get more personal satisfaction out of that than helping you know hedge fund guys uh so you know if you can kind of gravitate towards that and then on the actual sort of tactical side I think content and working online I am such a huge proponent of it because the amount of work that goes into one piece of content

44:44and the potential reach is infinite right I mean you can literally put out a blog post or a video that reaches five people ten people 100 people or 100 million people and obviously the higher you go up in that stack you know it's a little bit it's a lot tougher to reach 100 million than five or ten people but I mean our most popular video on YouTube has 5 million views and it's all about truck driving super random but you know it's like you can kind of do that I love the kind of short form platforms right now or investing a lot in short form content uh Tick Tock YouTube shorts

45:17Instagram reels because discoverability is so high you know you put something out there and it can go viral a lot um easier I would almost say it's impossible not impossible but it's very difficult for a blog post you know on a brand new site to go viral relative to a lot of the short form video platforms are out there since they're more you know kind of algorithmic Discovery based now so I think kind of leaning into video and you know really just kind of creating consistent content for a long period of time like be a cockroach never die that's why I say if you pick a topic

45:50that you love and you just like doing you know one podcast a week for 10 years like good opportunity I guarantee you know if you do one podcast a week for 10 years good opportunities are going to come your way and that might be more of the extreme but you know I always say like one year you know one year when it comes to content and try to be consistent for one year don't even worry about monetizing for the first year if something Falls in your lap great but you know I like that kind of one year threshold be a cockroach yeah be a cockroach that's a good one

46:19all right where could people find you uh on the internet and thank you for letting us crawl inside your brain yeah no that was fun I think you asked some uh good uh challenging and new questions and I haven't done uh an interview like this in quite a while so it was fun uh I would say if they're interested in anything Rideshare gig economy just type it into a box on the internet and we should pop up and if not let me know if there's some box that we're not popping up on I'll take that as a personal challenge but we've got therideshareguy.com our YouTube channel

46:51uh the Rideshare guy is growing pretty quickly I kind of share my uh personal you know sort of thoughts on the Rideshare and gig economy Industries on my weekly podcast the Rideshare guy and then on the content side sort of the uh I'm probably most active on Twitter at the Rideshare guy and then I've got my new podcast that's more focused on investor investing in startups and things like that called one of the angels and we're doing a weekly uh live show there that's it's a new show but getting a lot of traction and been a lot of fun so far there you have it the Rideshare guys

47:24awesome thank you thank you