 Has Mrs. Claus been acting up, not bringing you enough milk and cookies? There's only one stocking stuffer who's going to fix her attitude. And that's tactical soap, all-natural, pheromone-affused soap for men and proud channel sponsor of 21 Studios. I'm Anthony Dream Johnson, and I approve this soap. Order now. The link below. Use coupon code 21C for 10% off now, ho, ho, ho. George Bruno in Orlando, Florida with the 21 Report, kind of a post-game show after the 21 Convention for the past four and a half days talking to CEO and founder of 21 Studios and the 21 Convention, Anthony Dream Johnson. What a great convention. Thanks George. Thanks for having me on the show. Tell me about your initial impressions. Here we are. The room is being emptied out. Everything's coming off the walls. Things are getting packed up in boxes. People are getting ready to go to the airport. Now that you have a chance to just take a breath, what are you thinking? And have a drink. What are you thinking? A couple of different, not so much thinking, pretty burned out, obviously. You know, emotionally, all this stuff, professionally, all this stuff going on, a lot of busy, you know, it was crazy, busy, busy. But I think about the, I try to reflect on my emotional state at the end of every event. And each event is different, but even in that different, those differences are a consistent theme. For me it's always an element of sadness. I see each event as like a living thing that is built and built and prepared and prepared, but then it's born, it lives, and it dies. It's actually always like being in the room like the last person and like watch like lights go out and everything kind of go, go out. I remember actually in Australia when I met Mike McNally, there was a moment, and we had a really huge room that he was badass. And this event reminds me a lot of that event, like a big turning point. That was our first event in Australia, and we had three, first year we had three events. So it reminds me of that, sadness, but it's not, it's not an ugly sadness or a bitter sadness. It's like a beautiful sadness. This event was unbelievably, it was unbelievably epic and badass. This surpassed even the 10 year anniversary, which was a high mile milestone. I agree. That was my last year, the 10th anniversary event, was my first year at the event. And I will say this was, and that was excellent. This wasn't just one notch better. It was out of the ballpark. And everybody and our producer can attest to this in all of the interviews. And I asked people what their impressions were. Everyone was saying it was, there was a lot of moving parts, a finely oiled machine, people staying on time, getting whisked from stage to studio. And just everything, like there was no detail was left unattended to from security. I don't think I even had to hold, like push a door open. There were people at every, people would just see a shadow approaching a door and open a door for me. And no door was left to slam. People were just like little things like letting, like allowing the door to come in slowly and not just click. We duct tape the, the like ledges on the outside so it's quiet when it closes. Just every single detail. It was, well right from the first minute what I saw was a auditorium which reminded me of a TV studio. And having been in broadcasting for many years, it just reminded me of a major network studio. The work that went into that was amazing. You're a big part of that too. I mean, in terms of the professionalism and the details and everything, you stepped the game of our speakers this year. They're going to look better. They do look better in camera mode. Yeah. And the final versions, we edit them, produce them, the perfect final versions. Yeah. Awesome. Like that extra two, one, two percent was what we need for the speakers. Fucking nailed it. It really was amazing. Just little things like doing the hair and makeup and getting people looking good and rolling the lint and just, you know, I brought in my ear trimmers for people, just things like that. And even the show though, I think you're the best host we've ever had by far. With full respect to our past hosts. Thank you. You're the level of maturity and wisdom and experience that we need for a show like this. Great, thank you. Killed it. My pleasure. I noticed a lot of the speakers, they're also on other speaking circuits. They speak at other conferences and so forth. And it was unanimous amongst the guys that speak throughout the year that this was the most together, organized, efficient, effective. The only thing I can say is, finely tuned machine that they've ever been part of. We are the terminator of the Manusphere machine. We certainly are. You're not kidding. You are not kidding. The way, the way I like to describe it, I was talking to, I think one of the volunteers this morning and you're an attendee, I like to treat the attendees and everyone here, not just the attendees, the attendees, the speakers, the staff, everyone, even the crew that, you know, from outside companies and stuff. Everyone like gold and like family, to the, to the best extent that I can. I'm not literally family, but I try to treat them like I would a cousin. Someone actually, I care about bloodlines. Sure. And I think that's what shows us that's part of what makes this event so not just run well, but feel like it runs well. So it's the physicality of it. It is running well. And then it's also like there's actual care and time with that too behind it. Yes. Technically, it was superior. And I've worked in multi, multi-million dollar studios. And here we are in a hotel that you turned into a studio. Oh yeah. The auditorium. Gorilla Warfare. Gorilla Culture Warfare. 100%. Unbelievable. There was nothing unprofessional about it. As a matter of fact, I find it to be even more professional than as a, as a watcher of a lot of interview shows and some of the technical stuff. This was right up there with everything that I love. Oh, we're just going to start it, man. It's only 12 years old. I just hit 13. What's on 40? We're going to kill it. It's going to be amazing. Oh yeah. It's going to be amazing. We're all going to have the best hair and the best fucking beard. Thanks to this guy. That's right. That's right. Yep. As far as next year is concerned, you said we're going to have another one in the States and one in Eastern Europe. Did I hear you correctly? That's right. Poland. It'll be July 2019. That is amazing. That'll be our first event in Europe in a while, but our fourth event for 21Con in total. We had our first one in 2010, and then one again in 2011-2012. So it'll be our fourth European event. So we have a lot of fans in Eastern Europe, don't we? Yeah. Oh yeah. All over Europe. Yeah. Definitely. I think we'll get pretty much all over European fans are going to go to that event. That's amazing. That is absolutely amazing. What was your favorite part of the event? Holy shit, that's a good question. It's like asking, you know, which one of your children is your favorite kid? I mean, the event literally, as far as I'm concerned, the event's not even done yet. This is the final little bit of it. And even the main conference room, the auditorium, that just got wrapped up now. It would be a combination of, like, maybe my own talk, I really enjoyed, you know, on a personal level doing that and just fucking digging into it. I really enjoyed Rolla Tomasi's talk. And then I really enjoyed the red man group the whole day today. There are those episodes in the barber shop. The grooming we just did, the shaving, what shape tutorial. That was interesting. Yeah. It was interesting. I love experimenting at the event with filming and new speech styles and workshops and stuff. The panels with RMG and then your stuff today. This whole day was like Monday, basically the bonus day was like an experiment day. And I love doing that. I love experimenting. You feel it was a success? Oh, fuck yeah. Hell yeah. And we'll do it again? I was as soon as possible. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. We'll get the barber shop chair and get all that shit. It's gonna be badass. Oh, I love that. I love taking risks, especially when they pay off. And I think this one really did pay off. About the three sessions of red man group. You feel it went well? It went really well. Yeah. We had a power issue at one point on the first episode, but other than that, it was fucking flawless. I knew it was gonna look badass. I tried telling some of the guys in red man group, the key figures that are on it more consistently. Yes. You know, Rolo, Richard, Ryan, and Donovan. I tried to amp it up because I knew, known as a director, I said, no, this is gonna be really badass. I know that, but so and I knew that they wouldn't quite get it no matter what I told them. I was like, I'll try to help set them up. They're not gonna get it. They saw it and all of them are like, holy shit. But even when I saw it, I was like, damn. So the optics of it were incredible. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Technically, the way he produced it with the budget he had and the timing and the available time to do it. And he set that up on the fly. That came out really well. I think that elevated both the convention, our ability to produce content for second parties like that. Yes. As well as the red man group as itself as a new media entity, a new show. I knew it would do it's been a, you know, Google hangout online kind of thing throughout the past year. We've done it. We've done, we did 33 episodes before today, 34, 35, 36. But those episodes are going to elevate it to a new level that's going to trigger the shit out of people that hate us. People that are just not good people. The everyone together added a synergy that, and I love the Google hangout version. Yeah, totally. It's the next best thing to being in person. But being in person was amazing. I mean, I could see flying people in and over three days, just slamming out, you know, like 20 episodes and just, you know, I think six months worth of red man group. What I suspected right before we did it, and I was talking to someone, Ryan, some other guests on it. I was like, I bet we're going to go, we only, these are short episodes. These are 80, 90 minutes. Yeah. Usually we do like two hours plus on the Google hangout. But I think we got even more content in in a shorter amount of time because it was in person. And it tends to slow down because it's like switching. There's like delay, you know, what's going on. So I was really happy about that. We got long, fairly long episodes in general, shorter for red man group and what we're used to. But we got even more content. It was faster on the fly, it was responsive, it was a live audience, like a TV show. So it was really fun. And the panel, all three groups were so different. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just the diversity of thought, the optical diversity. You had young, you had old. You had black. You had white. You had just everything. Bald, bearded, fat, tall, short, whatever. It was visually interesting. Yeah, it was. It was. I can't wait to watch it. It'll be actually interesting to watch. It's interesting how detractors, they try to always paint us in a corner. Whatever their particular, whatever reason they hate us, they'll be like, oh, you're a cult. You're this bullshit. You're that bullshit. But the reality is we have real diversity, genuinely in ideas, which is where it matters. Even physically, too, you see different races, religions, I'm an objective as atheists. But we also have hardcore Christians up there and we all get along. And then black, white, Jew, Asian, whatever you're right. It doesn't matter. And not everybody agrees with everybody, but we agreed on having a great show and being, we believe in free speech. And we believe in free expression of ideas as well. That is, I mean, we're, I think, a shining light on that, but that's becoming rare today. So for us to put that in that show and see that so vividly, it's going to be really badass. I think the internet's going, some of the internet's going to love it, and a lot of it's going to hate it. Because it's expressing that, the freedom of speech in the First Amendment so strongly among such a diverse cast of characters with, well, pretty strange, not strange, but unique personalities, too. In addition to the ideas, in addition to the diversity of the physicality of it, it's a lot of fun. That's a really fun little show we got going. I like how the Red Man Group acts as a feeder for everybody's social media outlets and how everybody's social media outlets act as a feeder for the Red Man Group. They just kind of feed each other. We've been trying to nail a podcast, like the report, I think we're nailing out of the interview, the convention speeches we've nailed. But the podcast selling, we've never quite nailed with Twitter and radio. I think Red Man Group is the solution to that. I think we have to need, with 21 Studios, we need to focus on other content and then empower second-party companies like Red Man Group to do that. I think that's what we just did and fucking nailed it. We certainly did. And you're part of that. You're on the third panel with me. Excellent. Great stuff. I love how we're not an echo chamber. It wasn't a bunch of guys lined up, the Red Man Group I'm talking about, wasn't a bunch of guys lined up all singing the same exact tune. There was so much diversity of thought up there. And we give people the latitude to express those thoughts as long as it's consistent with the idea of reclaiming masculinity, manhood. It's important in 2018 and beyond. Yeah, hell yeah. And men and women are different. That's right. Men and women are different. That's right. May he rest in peace, proud of the men. You would have loved me and him, man. You guys were along really well. What about the party the other night? We had a party at Socrates House. What are your impressions of that? It was the biggest one we ever had there. He was worried the house wouldn't support it. I was like, I bet it will. And it did. You did the smoke workshop out back, those bad ass. Someone was telling me, you should have been there and learned. He taught me in person up in Philadelphia lives because they already had that workshop. Honestly, I thought I was going to have, seriously, four or five, six people. I really did not think it was going to be four and five deep all the way around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was interesting. I'm not surprised. And then everybody at the end wanting a picture of me while they're holding their pipe. So that was kind of a fun thing. And that's how organizations grow. And I think everyone with this organization were young enough. I'll speak for other people, not for myself. You're pretty young here now. You guys are 20 years older than you are. Yeah. I couldn't believe it. I know it. You're the young guy. I'm one of the young guys here. I thought I was going to be one of the oldest. But technologically, it's just great how everybody is up to speed with social media outlets and hashtagging and so forth. And it really, really is a media organization where everybody is their own director of media relations. Yeah. I think it's great, too, that we can build it. I've built this company since I was 17 years old. And I didn't think about it at the time I started it, but I've been building it in an age when mainstream media is collapsing, which is fantastic. I hate them. And then we're building something actually better that's truthful and focused on reality and facts and reason and open debate and a marketplace of ideas. So it's really fun building it and doing it right in this time where it's so controversial to do it. I think in the future, this company kind of company will be more or less the norm. Yeah. At least we'll have the cultural discourse to be much more slanted in this direction. But something controversial is to be pretty normal, you know. I love how we're getting the message out. You know, in the 60s, the three biggest networks were ABC, CBS, and NBC. Now the three biggest networks are YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. And of course, you can add Twitter to that as well. More eyeballs are on mobile devices across the world than there are on televisions. So it's not that big of a deal anymore to get on television because we're reaching more people. Everybody has a production company they can hold in their hand. That's right. That's a good way to put it. That's a really good way to put it. I like that. And I think we're really good at getting that message out individually and collectively as well. Yeah. What are your hopes and dreams for next year? Next year I want to have at least 500 attendees between both events. I think we can pull out both events very, very well, even better than this year, which is the best event we've ever done by far. So we can have those events at that size without compromising the quality, integrity, and the product itself and the design. I treat the event as like a product, almost like a physical item, and I'm obsessed with making it the best thing I can. I do like helping men. That is a part of what I do, obviously, but it's not my primary focus. It's design and product quality and service quality. I'm like, how much bad asterisk are you going to put into this fucking thing? So I'm excited for that. And I think I can do that at that size next year. No problem. And I think we're going to have it too. I like there was a lot of moving parts this year. And everybody played their role super well and didn't deviate from it. Like an orchestra. It was amazing. I don't have an instrument. I'm a conductor or whatever and just play with the wand, but it works pretty well. And there was a good chain of command too. I felt that there was a good respect for chain of command. There wasn't a lot of rogue stuff going on. And if there was anything that was a little bit deviating, it was corrected immediately. Oh yeah. Yeah. I think my guys, my team, you, the internal team, the AV team, all these guys, they're focused on getting the work done. And from that, I think men fall into hierarchies and they're pretty cooperative about it. Yeah. We're not addicted about it. Yeah. Yeah. That's really good to see. And I think we used to be more normal back in your grandfather's generation or my grandfather's generation. Yes. So we're bringing that back and that's a good thing. You know, in the military, they say you salute the rank, not the person. And in days of old, when one army would surrender to another, commanders of opposing armies would meet and salute each other. Even though one was surrendering, the victor would still salute the commander of the army that was surrendering because he was respecting the rank. Damn. That's pretty bad ass. And I felt that that was happening here. I felt everyone was working with the chain of command and no one had to repeat themselves. So operationally, I think this was a good test run for future growth. I couldn't put it better myself. We're going to grow a lot next year. We had two events planned and that's, I think we'll have even more planned in 2020. Tell us about the products that are going to be put out. As a result of this event, the speeches, the podcast, what's going to be happening? Well, we're going to amp up our pipeline. So our content goes to the pipeline. So we film it, you know, the first part of the pipeline is filming it right here live. And then after that, we have to edit it, play with it. We have a live during the event now too, but that's kind of separate. So we have to edit it, play with it, perfect it, export it. And then from there, we put it through the pipeline. It's going to go to 21 University first. That's our video platform. And after that, we put our previews on YouTube and Bitshoot and after that, we put out the full versions on YouTube and Bitshoot, unless we get banned. So basically it's a process of, you know, super premium quality experience and then distributing that out forward onto the internet over time. And we're going to get probably every single bit of video at this event out for free eventually. That's first. First, our premium subscribers at 21 University. All these guys here, the attendees got a one year pass for free included with a ticket. And after that, we'll put on the internet to go viral. And on top of that, we're rebuilding 21 University to better facilitate, 21 University to better facilitate all this happening. It's kind of like, it's something to the TV show, you know, they film it on set. They put it out, then the movie theaters, you pay a ticket, then maybe it goes on Netflix and TV after that and stuff like that. So it's a very similar progression of how it distributes outwards in the world. That's quite incredible. And they're going to get, I think now we're easily hitting 100,000, 200,000 views per speech, main speech, but that's, that's a big jump from previous years. It used to be like, you know, 50,000 and stuff like that. Yeah. So I think next year we'll see speeches, even the bar, you know, the, the tutorial you just gave, that'll hit easily between three channels. If we do all three of them, easy, 300,000 views easily over a quarter million, bigger than a mega church by far, bigger than football stadium or something. Absolutely, absolutely. And I expect also we'll get at least one or two speeches out of this event with over a million views on YouTube. Easy. Interesting. Yep. Your speech, your keynote, let's talk about that. Oh, yeah. Where did that inspiration come from? It was moving. It was powerful. The finale was quite incredible. Thank you. Quite incredible. And the, I'm an observer of the audience as well as the person on stage. And I was looking at faces and they were mesmerized. Damn. I couldn't see them. The lights are nice. Yeah. You know, right? It was, yeah. Yeah. I think that's going to go far. Oh, yeah, I think so too. I think it's going to go far. Thank you. Well, it's the end of several days of a convention. And I want to see you here in 2019. It's going to change your life. You're going to be in for a treat. You've been putting it off for a couple of years. Now it's time to get off that couch and take action on the things that have inspired you. This is George Bruno with the 21 report with Anthony Dream Johnson, CEO and founder of 21 studios on the 21 convention. Thank you, Anthony. Thanks, George, for everything.