The LFG Show - Ep. 12 - Business Challenges: Jordan Rolband’s Recipe for Digital Marketing Mastery 🍕

My first time online was doing eBay. This was like back in the late 90s. Basically, I was selling watches for a guy in New York. 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, and then all of a sudden, the business started to take off. We wound up becoming one of the fastest power sellers ever on eBay.

If you're planning to be in this industry, it's about being consistent, finding things that you really know well, going super deep with them before going wide, and then just remaining consistent. I think a lot of people get in this industry; 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, but they're not going to weather the storm. 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. [Music] LFG fam, we just shot a [ __ ] banger right now. I can't wait till you hear this [ __ ]; it's it's like next level. No one's talking about this. Shout out to our sponsors because without them, this [ __ ] 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 it, putting up big numbers. Let's [ __ ] do this, guys. Get the [ __ ] book on Amazon; we're going to drop a link here. Take your [ __ ] to the next level. Let's [ __ ] [ __ ] go.

Welcome to another episode of the LFG, let's [ __ ] go show. We are in a special location right now. It feels like I'm taking you out for a date. And behind us, they got all these [ __ ]. We got hearts, we got flowers for Valentine's Day. We—they closed off the section of Ralph's, one of the best pizzas in New Jersey here—and uh, we're here with my man Jordan Roan. He is the CEO and co-founder of DFO Performance. He is an OG in the industry; been doing this ship 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 [ __ ], and before we go into this, let's give a shout out to Ringba, who's sponsoring our show. Ringba has got the best call tracking performance software out there, so shout out to Ringba. Adam Young, Harrison over there, great to have you in the show, my man.

Y David, what's up, man? I'm excited, cuz bro, you know I moved to Florida, right? I haven't had good pizza. It was Super Bowl yesterday. Sorry for the 49ers losing. Good [ __ ] game though. Happens. Don't be back—he'll be back. That's right. But listen, I like [ __ ] pizza. I think Jordan likes pizza more than me, so I can't wait to be doing this with him, and I can't wait to get some good [ __ ] pizza. So let's get into it, man.

You're 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. Uh, one—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, Poroi gave it a, you know, mention—mentioned them. He gave it an 89, which is a pretty high score for him. Very high. I'd say that's probably a pretty accurate score for Ralph's. Um, they make a nice thin pie here; they also make a very nice uh, square pie. So you'll see, you know, they'll bring out the pizza soon. You'll see it is uh, you know, it's interesting because we are two guys in here, and it is decorated for Valentine's Day, so it feels—it feels a little fun—fun—fun. Um, but it's cool. I mean, they—they set us up here in the back room. Very nice of them to do that, to let us do the show. And uh, yeah, man, I mean, it's good to sit here with you, and it's nice to have you back in Jersey.

Yeah, I was in Florida last week. Yeah, I know. We saw each other in Florida. Had a good meal with your family. That was great, man. And uh, we've been seeing each other a lot recently. You know, we see each other all over the world, so it's great to be back home in our neck of the woods. You know, man, the—the interesting thing between you and I: one is we're a similar age. Yeah. Two is we happen to be from the same exact place, the same town in New Jersey, which is really random. 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.

Absolutely. It's awesome. So first of foremost, I—a lot of people in the industry know who you are. You've been doing this for a long, long time, but let's—let's talk about—give a little background to the people who don't know who you are. How do you get into the game? Like, tell us a whole history.

Yeah, man, I mean, so my—my first time online was uh, in E—you know, doing eBay. This was like back in the late 90s, and I've told this story before, but uh, basically, I was selling watches for a guy in New York, and um, he was doing all like antique flea markets and basically selling—I wouldn't say retail because he was set up in the Diamond District, so on 47th Street. And I was working for him, and I was going to auctions and buying watches. And so I—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 really like—we were going to shut it down. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, the business started to take off. And we weren't putting like high-end watches on there, so these weren't like selling Rolexes, but we were doing like Casios, Timex—at that time, Tag Heuer and Movado were very popular, so we were doing like 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 secrets died with him, so I had no connection and no way to get the watches again. Oh, man, I was like early 20s, right? And so when he died, the business died for me. So I—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—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." So was kind of heartbroken because I had my set—my—my mindset on like basically being in this business, so I had to figure out what else to do. And so I—I spent the next few years kind of just like wandering about. Um, a buddy and I 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 like the guy in charge of buying data—raw data or what kind of data—like data that you sell now, but I knew nothing about data, so I was like 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, buying Google ads. And that was like kind of my first foray into like internet marketing. And this was 2005–200ish. Okay. Right at sort of the peak of the market—the mortgage market runup. 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; it was doing some for insurance, um, but I—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 um, I don't know, probably about two years later, after like just sort of figuring everything out and putting all the pieces together, I had set up an offer and like went live with my first official offer on one of the affiliate networks. I know this is probably early 2008, and so we were in market then, the—and then 2008 happened. And so the whole market crashed. And so I—thought that the lead business was going to die when the financial markets crashed. And what I realized is that being in the lead industry and our—and the position we were in is 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. Why? And so there was always a place for it. So I built up a company, um, exited that company in 2011. Right. So now I'm fast-forwarding, and I left Florida; I came back up to Jersey; exited that company; went to work at an agency in—in New York, right, for a short period of time, just to sort of figure out what my next play was going to be. And uh, a year and a half later, wound up starting DFO Performance, and uh, that was—that was a long, long time ago. That was, you know, 11 and a half years ago now, and so it's been an interesting adventure since then.

Yeah. And—and I love that. As I've been in this game since 2015 and the lead gen side, right? I've been in call centers since 2005, but you know, 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 old. You've been doing this how long? Like [ __ ] over 20 years, man. It is definitely uh—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.

So you've—you've seen—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 do is pivot it, right? You mentioned how your mortgage was hot, then it—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 cuz the rates—I mean, I think pivoting is—is huge, right? I mean, so what do you—what's the commonality of the—the people that been able to stick—that weather the storm? What would you say is the common traits and the ones that happen—you know, David, like 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—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, the 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—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—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 um, 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. Now, to answer your question, I—I—I have seen a lot of people go, and um, you know, 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. 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 down times—because there are always down times 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—that you really know well, going super deep with them before going wide, having a great understanding of them, and then just remaining consistent.

Yeah, I—I love that advice because there's so much shiny object 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 gravitates—it jumps in it. I think you're seeing it right now with ACA, right? Everyone—their mothers—in on it. And so you know it has a shelf life, right? But if you can be—find a focus—you know, for me that was solar back in 2015 for a while. I mean, I know we're top five in the country in solar for a good period of time. Now solar's gone the other way, but good thing that you know we started to rinse and repeat into other verticals like debt and—and—and Medicare and things of that nature, so that's helped us all online, but I—all gen, right? So like all—all yeah, we never did and all like playing around with consumer—consumer information, right? And essentially solar could lead into mortgages, could lead into insurance, home improvement, because they all sort of sit—they all sort of fit within the same kind of categories or vertical.

Exactly, which is smart, right? And that's—and that's what I'm saying by being consistent. It doesn't just—you—you don't have to say to yourself, "Hey, we're only going to do mortgage and nothing else," because I think that would be foolish because of, you know, like things change within the economy, 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 P—or pin submits or Neutron 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—just go really deep.

I love that. And—and let's talk about that because obviously you—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—maybe it's—it's—it's a work in progress, right? So what would be your advice to someone that's maybe got—they got three people in their team, five, and they're trying to get to that next sacrifice?

Yeah. So again, speaking of those same people, right? Instead of going out and treating myself to things, right? Because this is a—a lot of people get enamored by this business, right? 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, right? And so making those sacrifices, and there's definitely a lot of risk—risk and reward in that, right? Because the—the risk is you could build up this huge team, and the company never actually comes to like true fruition, and now you've sacrificed your own personal gain because you've—instead of taking from the company, you've paid employees, and you've paid, you know, to have benefits and paid for better offices and paid to really build a team and a culture as opposed to just running a cash flow 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—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, you know, 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—like 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. 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—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 were like, "Well, I can go do this." And on one hand, that's kind of like a—it'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.

Yeah. And that's—that's amazing because I think a lot of—in our industry, there's a lot of people like—they're someone's like—scarcity mindset, say they want to keep everything close to the vest, is what it is, right? And when someone leaves, I'm like, "Oh, this [ __ ] guy left me." You hear like—

this [ __ ] talk but to me it's going to happen right. If someone's got H potential, you're not going to be able to hold them back, and you hope that what will happen is you help them to remember that. But do you feel like it's benefitting you long term? I mean, I would imagine it has, right? It it it can hurt and it can benefit you, 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 [ __ ] me, right. And that happened. 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.

Absolutely. W, this is you're just spitting [ __ ] gems right here, man. This is nice. And I think that again I I got I started my company 2015, right, and I never I never expected us to grow the way we grew. It it was like a side hustle to just turn into something, just snowball and evolved, and that's generally how it happens, right. And it's and look, man, I I've seen you like 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 and and like drop knowledge in front of people, and in our industry people love that kind of thing, right. And as long as you're giving good information and providing knowledge and some benefit, and then again the good people reciprocate that back to you, right. And that's how you've been able to build your business.

Yep. And and and you you weather the storm, right? When things you you you get to pivot accordingly. 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, at and you're you're you're great at that too. Look, man, when I when I met you like we hadn't we were doing nothing in lead gen, right? Like I was totally e-commerce. I remember having a conversation with you and I said to you like 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 like want to jump back in like hit me up, I'm happy to have a conversation with you. And I remember seeing you a year later and I was like, yeah, I'm starting to play around a little bit, and you 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 is so like where we've really been playing in lead gen now because it's been about a like a solid year where I've taken it very serious, some of the advice that you've given me has 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 it's been great.

Yeah. And I like I certainly thank you for that, and you know like if there's anything I can give back to you like gu, I'd be happy to do so. That means a lot to me. And that that's really what it comes down to is that I think a lot of people get in this industry and they always looking to take take take take, right? There's a lot of takers, too many takers. And but those are the people that they might have some short-term success, but they're not going to weather the storm; they're not going to be around for a long, to whereas the people they're willing to give, they're the ones.

Yeah. You we might get [ __ ] 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 going to give back to us at the end of the day. 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 a pretty good chance of having success and not just success but like sustainable success, right. And I mean, if you look at businesses, it's really 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.

Very. Think I think I'm on my eighth year, so I'm almost there, man. You got you've got two more years to two more years. All right, we've we've established ourselves, right? I mean, we we hit that period and and look, man, there's there's been and 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 COVID, obviously we were able to take advantage of a massive runup in the marketplace, but with that runup 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 do need you need revenue and profit, right? Otherwise, you can't keep those people employed.

Let's talk about that cuz that that's an experience that I had myself, right? I mean, what's where when you hit your peak in terms of employees, what was your headcount at the time? I think of the uh beginning of 2021 was probably our biggest, and we were somewhere in like the 420 to 440 range.

Wow. Right. And that's starting the business in 2013 with four.

Wow. So that's like pretty significant scale. 100 100 yeah, 100 times from four to 420. I mean, we went from like freaking 3 to 60, 60-ish, and I was like the hell, right? I mean, I can't imagine going from 3 to 60 to 400. It just happens, I guess, you know. And look, some of those people are are call center people and you know people that work in warehouses etc, 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 you have the worst leadership in the world, and everything's bad about what you're doing doing, right. And so there's the the give and take of that, the good and bad.

Yeah. And I've seen that what happens is when the revenue is coming in, things are looking good, but you don't realize yeah, there's stupid stuff going on that you kind of like ah, you know, it's there, but you don't worry about, but when revenue goes the other way 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, but it's it's everything is always fun when it's going good, right? That's when the stock market's good; everybody's a stock expert. When crypto markets are on fire, everyone's in crypto and buying crypto, and they're experts, and no like the the male guy has tips that he's going to give you to make money in crypto, and when things are it no one wants to talk about it, right. And so I think it's also learning that like life has lots of ups and downs, and things are never going to be consistent, and maybe for certain people like 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, right?

For sure. Just push through it, and and I think that's very important for someone, especially someone that's had success early. I've read somewhere or someone was saying like if you could anyone can make money in a in a good economy, right? 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 [ __ ] person I want to do business with, right?

Yeah. I mean, I didn't have success early; I had to work hard for success, you know. I thought I was going to have early 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 at age; a lot of young people don't know how bad 20 like that crash in 2008 was bad, man, like it was bad. People were just losing jobs, losing their homes, like things were really bad, 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 had 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 uh, you know, fortunately again because of our ability and our and being in this industry, there was ways to pivot that were very similar to what I had already been doing, you know, that settlement and loan modification leads were not much different than generating mortgage and insurance.

100%. Yeah, right? Same very same skill set and criteria, same audience. Yeah, at the end of the day, I think we've got some food here. Oh, nice. 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'm I I look at myself and I like all kinds of pizza, and I do have a favorite, right? I'm a I'm a square pie; I'd say that's probably my favorite, and I like a Neapolitan here and there, but from a like a nice thin crunchy pie, yeah, this is beautiful. And I guess if Dave were here, you know, he'd say it ah, it's got a little bit of flop, yeah, but to me the flop adds a little bit of character, and it's really like about the back end of the pizza, like how does the crust stand up, right? Cuz if you've got that flop in the front, you've got got a nice amount of cheese on the front end of that pizza.

That's true. I never thought about it that way. See, real pizza fishing out right here. Let's uh dig in. Good [ __ ] I needed this. I might just crush this thing, man. I'm [ __ ].

I think you should crush it. I'm going to crush this thing. I had some [ __ ] I had some [ __ ] pizza in Florida yesterday, man. There's a couple good places in Florida that I've now found. I think I was telling you about um old Greg's; have you been there?

Oh, Greg's is good. A Detroit place I like too. Square something. Square City. Square Pie City. So I went to Square Pie City with um actually another OG from our industry; he took me there one day. That 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 was better. I got to try that. Greg's is really good. I was pretty impressed with that. So you don't fold your pizza or do you sometimes?

I don't typically fold this kind of pizza. Well, it's sort of speaks for itself if it's a little if it's a little uh, you know, floppier, lighter, I will, but this is actually sitting pretty nice. This is nice, man. You know what I like? I like thin pizza, so uh I want to thank you, man, because you give me some really good recommendations, man, for for for spots, pizza spots that I've gone through with my family and stuff. I mean, we get a you play some Garwood noas that vaka is out of out of control, man. I mean, so that's good good, you know, it goes show you guys stick around the experts; people don't know what the [ __ ] to talk about.

You know, it's funny, man, you were an athlete, right?

Yeah. So my whole life I'm I'm an athlete, right? I'm 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 in life, I was like, you know what, having eating so healthy all my life, I just want to enjoy myself. And so I 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 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 steakhouses, 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 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 Dave Portnoy style, but I understand why people do it now because again, like everyone has a different pallet, 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. We were in Jersey City at Razza, which I think at one point got rated one of the top pizzas in America, right? I don't know where did Porno give it; you remember?

So Porno, Porno gave Razza an 83, okay, I think or maybe an 81. Razza today is considered the second-best pizzeria in in the US, and I think number 20 in the world.

Wow. Right. And probably moving up because now they just did some big thing, so my guess is they're moving up. I found them when they first opened in 2012, so I was like one of their original.

Damn, I didn't know. I didn't find out about like 2018, 2019. 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. Um, he also owned a place in um Maplewood, New Jersey, called Arturo, which he opened with a partner; they split, and so now Oso is Artie's; they make a similar type pizza; they have like very similar types of like little appies on the menu, um, but not as good; it's it's not as good as Razza. Razza 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 81 or an 83; like Razza is kind of a special place.

Yeah, yeah. I that was one of definitely top 10, if not top five, I had in my life. I tell you something interesting because you know I'm used to like the regular pies; I don't I don't like what's called gimmicky pies. I'll never eat like a pineapple, like [ __ ] that [ __ ]. But yeah, so anyway, with that being said, we had something there that you recommended, and I recognized the bartender there from back in the day. Yo, what's up, Dave? About right? And he's like, you got to have well, one one-word advice: corn whole pizza. I'm like, what the [ __ ]? I'm not going to eat corn in my pizza; you kidding me? But you said I'm like, all right, [ __ ] it; let's do this. Corn whole pizza, dude, that [ __ ] was amazing. That probably top five ever had. That was a great. 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 a potato pie. I got to try that too. Listen, whatever are really good, whatever the hell they whatever their special [ __ ], I'm going to do their special [ __ ], but that sweet corn, I mean, that cornhole pie was amazing, but normally I would not I'm I'm not eating that [ __ ]; that's some gimmicky [ __ ]. That was amazing, man. But that was yeah.

Oh, you going to [ __ ] me? About to finish it?

No, I'm I'm I'm going to eat this, man. Look, espe I I like it when it's burnt, man.

You like burnt crust or no?

I like burnt crust. Yeah, burnt crust is a [ __ ]. That's why I like the Detroit; the Detroit tend to be burnt; they burn the [ __ ] out of their pizza. Yeah, I do like a burnt pie, which I think when 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 a you're missing; it's fantastic. That gives that that extra like we're funny cuz we I go to the pizza spot like wherever I'm in New York; I'll send I'll send you pictures, man; it's like it's said that's our porn. Man, pizza porn. I know here here's here look at this pizza, da D. We ask how you like it, you know, it's so funny, but I I come back to jury out as hey, Jordan, is this what I'm in? I'm in Central Jersey; what do you recommend? He tells me where to go, and like it's always spot on; there's no [ __ ] good stuff. I feel bad for that pizza. Pizza is dead; it's like a girl that um up with the We got a nice square pie here. Here we go. Yeah, thank there you go. Thanks, bro. Nice looking. Nice. Nice. Yeah, see like nice charring on this sucker, right? 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 Nolas, 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 it's even very different than like a Sicilian cuz like thin, but it obviously has a very nice texture and taste to it, so let's uh try.

Cheers to this thing.

Cheers it up.

Yeah, cheers it up. Let's go. R hot. It's hot. That's nice though, bro. Good pizza is like [ __ ]. I don't know what, man. This is this is proof there's a God. I mean, this thing, right? This is proof there's a God. You eat some [ __ ]; like this is like it's not super heavy for a square pizza, right? It's very like non-traditional; 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. Extra cheese, little extra salt. 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. At least this one is. It's a work of art. 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 and I'm coming to the area; where should I go for pizza? And especially someone that's like really into it, they're like, should I go to New York, New Jersey, Connecticut? Yeah, 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 100%, 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 which was which was actually a pretty unique place in the fact in the sense that it's very Neapolitan style, which is a totally different type of pizza than this, um, but we can try that.

Next time we can, yeah, we'll do it next time. Yeah, I got a body in Connecticut too. I want to get on the show, and that New Haven pizza is pretty good. That's one of my favorite; that's very thin. I mean, they cut it a certain way, kind of like the Lorenzos, right? They cut it like—I, I don't even know what kind of cut that is. Yeah, criss-cross type cut. Uh, and they also make those pies. I mean, you mentioned like a gimmicky pie, but they make like the clam one—it's good, man. That clam is really good. Yeah, the white sauce. Yeah, it's awesome.

So the pizzeria where that's famous, where you and I grew up, the Cillos, and that burned down was like a month ago. Yeah, so he had a fire there. That was sad when that happened, for real. And he's been there for about 80 years. Yeah, so he's like an OG pizza guy. I, you know, for me, he's one of my favorite pizzas—again, maybe a little biased because because I grew up on his pizza, but it's fantastic.

So the really cool thing that happened was, um, I mean, obviously Dave Foron always helping him with some like rebuild it, right, which is really cool. So I, I, I totally respect that. But I think also what Kigos did, which is cool, is on Sundays they have him come in and basically they call it Cillo Sundays now, and he comes in and makes pizza in their shop. That's so awesome, which is pretty cool. And you know, that goes back to our—that reminds us of stuff in their industry because you would think they're like—they're competitors, right? Because Santillo and Elizabeth, and they're far away, but still they're—they're two of the top-rated pizzerias in New Jersey. Comp, but the fact that they will let him during his hard time, you know, go to Morris, do it—that's—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—they're sucking uh, 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 need—I'm not hitting caps in Arizona, but—and that's a beauty of good—that that's real partnership. That's the way a good business should be done. That's how it should be. And 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; it's not going to work anyway. But there's no reason even to have that approach, right? You're better off just creating good strategic partnerships and being able to work together. And you never know, like again, thinking of Ecom and then moving into Legion—like Ecom 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 it had changed, right? And so they—they gave me a push; they gave me a recommendation because they knew that like we were a good company to—to do business with, and that I was, you know, very, very reputable person to be working with. And so they were like, "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.

Yeah, and I think that's part of doing the right thing at all times, right? Even if it's going to cost your money, do the right thing because it's a relationship business at the end of the day. We're talking about generating leads and and trying to do a property—what verticals—but at the end of the day, it's a relationship. You're—you're—you're your brand is what it comes down to. So if you [ __ ] one person over, everyone's going to know, and then they're not going to want—they're going to be hesitant to do business; they're not going to, you know, open the—the doors for you. But because you've done the right thing and you've been doing it so long—but like, okay, listen, whatever you need, they're going to help you collapse time frames, and that's—that's worth a lot of money at the end of the day. You can't quantify it, but it's worth a shitload. Yeah, I—butan it's like, are you a—are you a giver or are you a taker, right? And there—there has to be like a fine line between the two. You can't always give, right? But obviously you can't just take and expect them—people to do things for you, right? So it's finding that balance. That balance is really hard to find, and I think as you're—you know, when you're young and coming up in business, it's really challenging because you just don't know better. Yeah, 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. And I certainly found that over time, 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. Yeah, that's a pretty amazing thing. I love it. Yeah, all words of wisdom, man. That's what it comes down to. All right, 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 pepper on yours. What's the story with that? I haven't eaten—uh, well, the only meat I have is fish. I guess I'm a pescatarian. Okay, I've been this way since 2007, I believe. Saw 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 changed a few times, but I—I stuck with it. And listen, I'm got nothing against—I'm not like crazy—what do you call—hardcore with it. I mean, I think everything in moderation is fine. But yeah, I have to say though, I'm surprised cuz you look like the type of guy that would be like, "Give me some meat; go pretty hard in many aspects of life." Yeah, but it's done me pretty well. Good for you. Yeah, I get my blood work every 3 months. Uh, 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—being a good mental state, you know? So I'm on a bunch of peptides; I'm on a good vitamins, minerals, man. I drink—I don't even drink plastic water, man. I drink bottled water. So to me, it's like—the more energy I have, the more—that's—I travel like crazy. I couldn't travel the way I do—I take care of my—the funny thing though is like the pizza is my freaking weak spot, you know? I've been trying to eat less pizza, so I—I used to eat like a whole pie. Now we have—maybe today we'll go a little over. I have like two slices sitting—today, maybe three or four. Today, we'll do three or four. [ __ ] it. I haven't seen you in a while. We're in Jersey, right? Hell yeah. All right, Sal. Another—sorry you're not eating this pepperoni. All good. I—I also didn't eat meat for many years, um, and then found my way back to it about 18 months ago, and uh, no regrets so far. Good. This is a beautiful piece of pizza right here. I should have waited for you, man. I couldn't—like, I'm crushing it. And it's interesting because a lot of people do the—um, you know, the pepperoni cups these days. Yeah, and they're still doing like the classic flat pepperoni. Yeah, but man, I never thought about—it's pepperoni cups. I saw that for the first time I think in Prince Street in New York. Yeah, right? I never thought about that—ter doing the—the—the square pie with the little pepperoni cups. And delicious. Yeah, but I also like, you know, these—these make me think of like my childhood.

Me too. It's funny you say cuz we talked about Sanos. That's where my dad and I—my dad—we—we—we grew up in uh, in Elizabeth, in uh, Port Elizabeth. So we'd always—always order Sanos, and back in the—pepperoni is my [ __ ]—like, always get pepperoni. So seeing that and—ter talking about it made me think about the pepperoni. I—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, including the call center? A little mid-60s, probably 65, 66. You 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 [ __ ]. I got robbed there, man—like, gangster as [ __ ] it was. 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 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. So I saw—I saw people—early 90s. Yeah, I told you a funny story—shot all the time. I told you a funny story. So 1989, I think we got our first color TV, man. Yeah, my mom came from Venezuela, making minimum wage, had worked two jobs, put, you know, food on the table. We got some nice TV. Lethal Weapon—watching Lethal Weapon on that—Danny Glover and what's the other guy? Mel Gibson. Gibson. Come on, man, bro. I hear it—boom, boom. I thought it was a TV. I'm like, "Man, this TV's got some good sound effects," right? And then like 5 minutes later, you hear—you see like sirens and you hear [ __ ]. I go outside; there's—I didn't see the body, but there was a guy wrapped up in chalk with a, you know, a white blanket over him. Wow. I'm like, "Holy [ __ ]," you know? I'm like, "This [ __ ] is real," right? So you know, every—every other week some [ __ ] like that will go down over there. But yeah, man, we—uh, 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. So having grown up that way—like, again, tough to grow up like that. Yeah, so you—you—you went to college, right? Yeah, NYU business school. So how did you get yourself in—like, how did you get through high school into NYU, which is obviously one of the—the most prestigious universities in the country? I tell you a great story, and I got to thank my aunt for this. My Aunt Gladis was the first one in her—my family—that went to college from my Venezuelan side that went to college. We're the big Venezuelan family. She was probably the second one that came to America in the 70s, and my mom came—My Aunt came—uh, so she went to school for like medical stuff over there in Venezuela, right? But when she came to America, like she—that was like—she didn't matter. So she had to be a waitress; she had to take like—she had to learn, you know, start from the bottom and then work herself up. So she became actually a scientist. She went to—I would see her bust her ass, and I always saw my mom bust her ass working, you know, minimum wages, but she always bust her ass. So I learned my work ethic from my mom, from my aunt. But my aunt—work—came up—worked at the corporate ladder, and she wanted to become a scientist, and now she's working on cancer drugs. Oh wow. Right? So she's—yeah, so from—so Venezuela and then Elizabeth—like, transplanted into—lived in Morristown, believe it or not. Yeah, that's where—that's where I grew up. Then she—then she moved—Al was on a chance earlier—she moved—she got married and moved to Morristown, New Jersey, where Kigo is—is at. And when I went to Morristown this year, I thought this was the richest place in America. Elizabeth—you don't got [ __ ] houses like that; you don't got houses like that in Newark, right? But I learned later on it's—it's—it's like middle-upper middle class, right? Rich is like Alpine, New Jersey. We've seen rich areas now, right? But so I went there, and so what happened was she told my mom, "Listen, Dave is moving around too much." I almost joined a gang. I actually joined—I—I started hanging out with my buddies at sixth grade in New York. We're doing like dumb [ __ ]—it wasn't anything crazy. We moved—thank God a week later—where in—YK—did you go? It was iron—mainly iron—B. We work—my—we had some violent [ __ ] going on; we'd always be in this dumb area. Dumb [ __ ] would happen. My mom always got raped—like, nothing happened—thank God. But like, she—she fought the guy back, but like, we lived in bad areas 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's like, "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. You ran track in college, right? Yeah, ran track in college. Went to NYU, and it—it wasn't the same. High school was like—I was a captain of my team, but with all that being said, is that me having that consistency helped a lot. I was around—I was doing track; I wasn't getting myself in trouble; I got good grades, good SATs, and I—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—that was a result of me getting out of that environment, man. If I would—if I didn't get out of that environment, who knows what the hell would happen. So they pulled you out of there like—he—like—eighth grade? Eighth grade. I finished eighth—I went to Harrison in eighth grade. I was supposed to go to New York East Side, then I went to Harrison. I was going to stay in Harrison, which was a little bit better, but still they were trying to recruit me for a gang in eighth grade as well. So you know, weird [ __ ]—up [ __ ], but—fu—good thing is I left that area, got out of that neighborhood, and boom, went to a decent neighborhood—without—so you know, thinking about like fast-forwarding to the future now, right? Like someone believed in you, yeah, and gave you that opportunity. And we were talking about that—like, believing in people, giving them opportunities—looking at, you know, business in a certain way, looking at industry even in a certain way, right? Because like life—our industry, I feel like, is very power-low. It is like—there's, you know, 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. Yeah, but if you can find those good ones, obviously they create big opportunities for you in all different aspects of this industry. 100. That clearly happened to you. 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. It's crazy. And—and that's one thing I want to do with the show is because I'm sure there're going to be people listening that they see like the flashiness in—in our industry, right? Which, I mean, it 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—having memories. I mean, I met your family—beautiful family—in Florida, right? And I think you—you were having a great time going out on the beach. You tell me that. So I do—I try to do the same with my family. And that to me is where it comes down to at the end of the day. And that's a beautiful industry—that you could 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—you—you—you tag along with the right people, good [ __ ] will happen. I mean, there's no set hours, right? So it's not a—it's not like a Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, 9 to 6 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—feel like this industry is 24 hours a day, 7 days—there's no vacations; there's no real downtime. And that's kind of the sacrifice. Yeah. 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 good at what you can do. You can have the flexibility that you want—to travel around, right? Because the—the reality of the industry, whether you're on the—like the marketing side, the affiliate side, or the advertiser side, is the industry has always been set as one that's like supported the digital nomad lifestyle. And so you meet so many people around the world, and those people, especially the ones that like are a little younger or don't have families, they're constantly moving around. The benefit is that—and I'm sure you've found this—is like you can call someone at anytime, anywhere in the world, 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. Absolutely. 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 made 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. Yeah, and you—you can't grow that way; you can't grow—you stay 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 [ __ ] crazy. You look at these tall buildings—like, "What the hell"—like, you know—well, I guess especially for someone coming from down Port Elizabeth, New Jersey. 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." I actually—here we grew.

Up in the same area pretty much, you know, so it is what it is, and it's great. And that's that's one thing I want to do with the show, is to show people that this this this is these are people that are making [ __ ] happen. This is how they made it happen, and yeah, maybe they 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. I mean, we put a lot of work into building our businesses 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 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 like what what life would be like if you're moving around and traveling a lot.

Yeah, and again, on one hand, you 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 or at some point you just may not have a family; yeah, you're never around. But on the other hand, the benefit again is like I feel like I know someone in probably every country in the world that if I just messaged them on Skype or or text messaged them and said, "Hey, I'm going to be in town in a week," they would be happy to meet with me, happy to take me out for a dinner and like share an experience with me together, and we could potentially do some business together, which is like the bonus of it all. That is, yeah, that's great.

I think it's also by being authentic, right? If you're authentic, you're not looking for something from—because you're trying to get something from it, you don't want to be around people like that, right? So I we're very similar in that way. I think that we're we're looking to give, provide value, and that opens up doors at the end of the day. Yeah, for sure, man. Right, sure. What's this one? Oh, F, what's this guy? That's interesting. This is a uh man, I was just handed a square. I'm guessing this is pepper and sausage, probably some spicy pepper on here if I had a guess, right? You got the green and the red pepper on here, got some sausage. This looks pretty good, huh? Looks it looks like you got the works.

Not for you. Yeah, not for you. Are you jealous? Are you jealous? No, it looks like the works; that's what that looks like. He got his smorgasbord of everything. One day, one day I'm going to like take you out and throw a couple drinks into you and then be like, "Hey, have this pizza. I swear there's no meat on it." I want to give you a vegan one, one day. You're not—that's—I want to get you back. Vegan sauce? I'll try this one. Yeah, now I'm going to have to go home and like do an extra workout since I uh—all good. It's going to be snowing tomorrow. You do a lot of shoveling. Yeah, that's true. Make it up. I will be, for sure. Cheers. Cheers on that. What, let me ask you a question. You know, speaking of like eating pizza and working out, you mentioned you know taking peptides and doing other things to keep yourself young. So I mean, you look great for your age, you have a family, you're traveling a lot. Why what are some other things that you do to just keep yourself functioning at such a high level? Because I I feel like I have pretty good energy, but you are like massively high energy. How how—

I think, you know, 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. My mind's always racing. I now I live on the beach over there in in Hendo Beach, and I I sprint pretty often. Sprinting is amazing; like it just it makes me feel young again. Does it like give you like that almost like that dopamine shot that you need to like function at a high level? Yeah, you get—listen, I—it's—I always feel like uh—yeah, I'm a dopamine junkie, man. I think we I think anyone in business, you you kind of like we're addicted to this [ __ ], 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 'cause 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. Listen, I miss I miss Jersey, I miss New York, and I come to New York twice, New York, New Jersey twice a—all the time. Yeah, I get 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. She eats a lot more greens than I do. I try to incorporate greens as much as I can.

Now, is your wife in the is your wife in the industry? She help you? She's 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, see me speak over—I spoke uh on stage there, when was a month ago, and it's funny how many people remember her from back in the day, and people know her from my Instagram stories, like, "Oh, so nice to meet you. I like, who is that person?" Like, "Yeah, I saw you on Instagram," and whatever. But yeah, it's uh she is—I like bringing her to shows with me because, man, she she's awesome. A bunch of guys were we're in Columbia; my wife's from Medellín. A bunch of guys from the industry came to Medellín last week; we went out to dinner with them, went out to the club with them; they freaking loved her. She's a lot like me, but she's a lot more disciplined. In a lot of—I'm disciplined in a lot of ways, but she's a lot more—Is she Al—is she like also super high energy, though? Not as much as I am. I'm I'm on another level, I think, but she's uh but she helps balance me, man. It's what it is, and I think that helps at the end of the day, right?

So to answer your question is really the, you know, I take care of what I put in my body, what I ingest. I kind of like I'm kind of a hypocrite when it comes to the shows of the drinking; I go a little harder. But what I've been doing recently, 'cause I put all this money into peptides, that I'll have—if I drink, I'll have vodka and water, vodka, water, lemon—that way I'm not killing myself with those carbs, right? So I've been a little more mindful of that, uh but yeah, I think what I eat and, you know, my—I was with my mom in Columbia; my mom's in Venezuela—talked about her her work. I think she's 70 years old; she's still working, and she likes to work; uh, 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 certain way, and taking care of myself, you know. Yeah, that's what it comes down to—like mineral water, like I was drinking the mineral water from—like it's got minerals in it, man. I bought this uh Liquid Death, Liquid Death iced tea; it's like the first time I've ever had it. I don't know, I don't I don't really know what's so special about it, but it does come kind of in—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 it looks like uh Chinese New Year." Yeah, yeah, that's probably why they—Lun—yes, lunar uh whatever it is. That's crazy. But but it's actually not that good, so I I wouldn't say that I would go out of my way to drink it. Marketing, man, it's great marketing. Mar—and as a marketer, 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%? I—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. I don't know if they're quite as high as 80%, yeah, sense, but it's definitely like a 50% plus margin business, gross-wise. Yeah, their biggest expenses are storage and um and shipping, yeah, because these things are heavy. Yeah, no man, that that's—and look, it's it's also a very competitive space, like beverages in general is super, 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 it's what you do all the time; it's what I do; it's what we figure out—differentiate ourselves in some capacity, right?

What what do you see is like the—I mean, so for someone that has come back into lead gen and spent like the last year doing lead gen, yeah, what do you sort of see is like the next 12 to 24 months? I know there's some FCC changes that are coming up. I know that like there's been more regulation coming around some of the bigger verticals that guys have been running in—Medicare and ACA. Why what do you what do you think the future holds for us? I think it's uh the cream rising to the top as we speak. A lot of guys are doing some like—I don't know, you want to call it shady or like uh black hat kind of stuff. There're there's a lot more regulation going on, right? And I think there's a shift definitely towards paper 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 [ __ ] it up for everybody else, right? They make the calls per lead more competitive or whatever. 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 collect data. But I think there's a way to do transfers off an inbound and to make it high—more more more highly vetted, right? So you're getting rid of the garbage that people don't qualify. So I think that paper call people—we have to get really creative; they're have to get creative. And then what worked yesterday is not going to work today. So I think paper call and finding new verticals, tapping into stuff that other people aren't doing, right? Right. I know I know this HVAC is a big massive vertical, but it's very kind of like it's kind of like solar is HVAC, right? Yeah, HVAC—so basically falls into the home improv bucket, right? 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—makes it harder. You have to be really—have some amazing media buyers, right? And [ __ ] people ripping ads all day long; it's the issue. So it's hard to stay ahead of that, so you have to you have to go into a different ocean. I mean, I go to Legion World, affiliate—sum—you go to these shows, everyone's talking about the same five verticals; everyone's trying to get crumbs of 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 that got into solar, and I I had a little bit of a competitive advantage. I I I weathered the storm. Always—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 put my ears to the ground, like, "What's the next thing? What's where's money gravitating towards now?"

You're 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? Yeah, I'm going to talk about how you could pivot—talk a lot about paper call. I'm planning to be there as well. Awesome. Love to hear you speak. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, and I think a lot of guys don't understand the ramifications of these rulings. People just weren't 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 I don't know somewhere overseas and, you know, some country you can't even pronounce, but they don't realize that—yeah, they don't realize that—guess what? If your if your buyer gets popped, they're not going to pay you. You might have a few hundred thousand due on the street; you're never going to get back, right? So I think that's—I want to educate them as that is—to listen: you might think this is not going to affect you, but it will affect you. You can't run away from these sorts of things, you know. You know, it's interesting. I mean, having done e-commerce and then moved a little bit into lead gen because I felt like that's where a lot of the activity started to move, yeah, 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," yeah, or, "You know, what do you guys have going on right now?" You know, guys that have like that I worked with years ago that moved into lead gen for a while and now they're frustrated, or you know their 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 um, you know, for inbound calls—I think inbound calls probably has a place in both the lead gen world but also in transactional-based uh marketing as well, with with e-commerce and, you know, potentially even even some like, you know, what I would classify as like neutral or beauty type products where you're leveraging that inbound call in a call center to make a sale, like traditional TV. Why—so Jordan, I'm glad you mentioned about tying e-com to paper call because that to me is something—I think they call 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 that's big. And I've seen that shift; I've seen people go from e-com to lead gen, back to—keep going back and forth. But I think right now because lead gen—how lead gen's become so saturated, I think there will be a shift towards e-com, which would be good for you guys, right? Because then you guys could benefit.

Oh, yeah. And I mean, you know, and then having partners like Ringba, right? I mean, Ringba platform is is amazing; like they've built a truly amazing platform. I've known um, you know, Adam—I met more recently, but I've known Harris for a long time—Harrison for a very long time; like he he was my affiliate manager, I think back in like 2009. He started like in his early teens—he was in high school. Was in high school? That's—that's what I love about—you're going to be in high school making money, man. Life. Yeah. And so they've built this platform, and they have a pretty amazing platform. The research that we've done and the systems we've been playing with like like Ring—Ringba was pretty cool. Yeah, and they're they're on the cutting edge of things for sure. You know, they spend they spend time on making it better, and that's all that matters at the end. 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 teams are 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. Yeah, that's a good example of rising tide lifts all boats, right? That's that's what happens there. And I tell you—Adam Young posted it yesterday; he he's writing—he—I think he's done with his book; it's called Uh, *The Paper Call Revolution*, and look out for that; that's going to—he's probably going to drop some incredible insights. I mean, Adam's super smart. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Harrison, too. I mean, I heard his story—early teens getting into this game, and again, that's what I like about the industry—that you got—if you got the hustle, the werewolf on you, you know how to spot patterns and recognize patterns, you can freaking do something amazing. I called Harrison one time—like I I didn't want to say this, but now you brought him up again—I called him one time, and he answered the phone, and um I was like, "Hey, man, I've got a problem like with the offer 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 I'm in high school; I can't just walk out of class." Wow. And my jaw dropped. I was like, "Oh, okay, you think it in college, right?" I like, "Wait, what? 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 [ __ ], 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. Crazy. And so like, you know, fast forward to today, you could see why they're having this level of success; they are, right? It's very obvious. I always—Tony Robbins says success leaves clues; it's right there. That's a perfect example—grinding it in high school. I mean, he still committed to his to his school, too; it's—he was in class. Yeah, it wasn't like he was like, "Oh, I'm gonna walk out." He was like, "Yeah, I'll call you back," and he did call me back—man of his word. But he was in class. And when I heard that, I was like—and you know, I'm already in my my like mid- to late 20s, yeah, and I was like, "Damn," you know, I started late, and uh 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, um but for sports, yep, um you know, I think back, and I'm like, "I wish I would have taken things a little more seriously," you know? Like, I I try not to live my my life thinking about regrets, yeah, but you know, if I could do it all again, like I would have taken things a little more seriously. Now, I did build um, you know, a pretty nice business on eBay, which was cool, but I didn't really—I I didn't realize how easily it could be disrupted, um and it was—yeah, that once that disruption happened, I'd have no business. And so, you know, when I was working for that guy, like I didn't ask all of the right questions, and so it also taught me that like when you're in business and you're with people and you're and you're meeting with people, like asking questions is like like a big part of success, right? The more you understand something, and and I don't think anyone minds answering questions, right? And sometimes the questions can feel can feel very invasive, but there's nothing wrong with asking good questions, 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 right. So asking those questions is critical. I think that's—and you're right. You, you, you're—you've done that the first few times we met. You, you asked me a lot of questions about Legion, right? You knew I knew about Legion, and I answered those questions. But because I, you know, you had a good reputation—you've been doing this for a long time, right—and I thought you were already in Legion. I didn't realize it was mainly Ecom. But when you asked me this question, I was surprised because there—you ask me these questions—I thought you knew the answer. But then I realized, hey, you're getting into it. I was more than happy to provide that value, 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," right? I'm like, "I'm going to go and be super humble and ask questions," because, well, 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 right. 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. All great words of wisdom.

And I think, you know, just to add to that, like for—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—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—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. Man, it is powerful. All you got to do is show up at one of those shows, spend $500,000—what it is—and you get a—you—you're around people that done it; they made mistakes; they're—they're learning from their mistakes; they're running these big companies; they're running fast. You can even, on like YouTube, follow, subscribe to—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, you know, if I—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, you know, my leads from someone in India or Pakistan because all they're trying to do is like fraud me out," right? And—and that was the case in many—with many of these groups, right? And that's not—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; 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 to 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—there's really long-term money here to be made as long as I do good business with people. And that's—uh, 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—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. 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 on with the business—you have to start all over again from the—from the beginning, man. What—what would you do over? You're someone just getting into this industry that—that sees what we have going on. What would be your advice? 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—that I can't speak to, right? For me, I don't—I didn't necessarily want to be the affiliate anymore of the media buyer because it wasn't something that came natural to me. Like 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. Um, 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, 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, like 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, right? I'd build out the blueprint for a success for myself. And I, you know, if I look at this space, I enjoy the e-commerce side of it better than I do the Gen side, for—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 Legion 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, yeah, for me personally. I love it. Great words of advice, words of wisdom right there.

Last thing is Slice of Marketing. Slice of Marketing. Yeah. So I mean, you know, I think like a lot of us, right, and—and—and you know, you inspired me—I've got my YouTube channel and podcast 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, right? But I think the primary focus will be on—on marketing, you know, specifically performance marketing, because that's the industry we're in. I love it. I love that you're going to do it internationally as well. And you know, I—I know you know your pizza; this is [ __ ] phenomenal pizza. What would we rate the pizza today? Oh, I mean, to me, so for me, it has him an 89. Yeah, little—little lower than 89. I give him an 86. Um, this is an eight—this is a solid 86 to me. But you know, again, there's no tens; there's very few tens; there's very few nines and a half, right? So if I look at like my—my pizza org, it's—it's sitting at the upper level of pizza. I love it. I think I agree with that rate; I would say 8.4 to 8.6 somewhere there. But excellent pizza. I got my pizza fix that I wasn't getting in Florida, so thank you for that, my man.

Brother, thanks to David, man, for making this happen, getting us back here, you know, like a pre-Valentine's thing here, some Jersey [ __ ]. But us, yeah, I guess so. Valentine's Day is in what, like two—two nights, two days? Yeah. You got to make sure you get flowers and chocolates for your—for your wife. Or when you're married a really long time, you got to make—it's just another day. Well, to me, it's—I support our lifestyle, man, just how we get—I try to make every day special. So we ask how can people find you? What's—so what's the best way for them to find you online? You know, I'm on Instagram; imjroll is—um, you know, my—my—my hashtag on Instagram. You can also find me on Skype at jrollband1. Got okay. So 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—so there was so much information from scaling companies to the media buying to which verticals going if you start all over again, all that stuff. So this was amazing; this is probably—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. Feel like a lot of good information for our—our—our fan base here. And let's [ __ ] go, man. Let's make a good—man, I love the name, by the way. Appreciate, man, that like that is—that is the epitome of who you are. That's who I am. [ __ ] go, baby. All right, good stuff. [Music] [Music]