 No more falling. Faber standing. And it's time when I take flight. I'm never landing. I am the best song. I am the best song. So, podcast. Y'all know nothing about that low zero gravity one. Uh-huh. So, here's the deal, man. Uh, I decided to get the podcast going back up. Uh, this thing seems to be doomed from the jump. Uh, starting to get the podcast back up then get COVID from middle school kid. I've been dodging bullets since day one. I can't believe I got it up to this point. I didn't get too bad. Then the wife gets it. She's down pretty bad with it. So, it's been a, um, a nice little adventure last, uh, four weeks, but, um, back and, uh, again, like I said, I don't want to just sit down and just talk wrestling, wrestling, wrestling, stat, stat, stats, matchups, matchups, matchups. Um, but there, there are some things in the wrestling industry, um, that I, that I want to address. And, and one of the biggest ones is, you know, personal branding. And as colleges are starting to let athletes monetize their, their likeness, um, I think this is crucial. Um, and there's a lot of antisocial media people out there and man, we can agree to disagree, but I'll tell you right now, if you are completely depriving your children of, uh, uh, association or engagement and learning the dynamic of social media in my mind, it's, it's essentially like teaching them not how to, not anything about finances and just saying finances aren't important. I really feel like that's, it's that crucial to understand the dynamic of social media, um, the gravity of social media, um, and how they can leverage and, and actually use social media. Whether you like it or not, using social aspects and social connection technology is the way of the future. And I ain't trying to scare anybody, but when, when AI and VR and meta worlds start, start really formulating and, and things like that, and people are truly living and making a living in virtual worlds, not out in the physical real world, your minds are going to be blown. There are going to be people that are going to be making money in VR worlds. They're going to be making a living in a VR world. Like 10 years ago, if you said somebody was going to be making millions of dollars playing video games, you would have slapped them in the face, right? People are going to be making six figure, seven figure incomes from virtual worlds. Now, let's rewind back to just basic old social media, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Um, I think, and first off to me, personal branding is pretty much the intentional effort to create and influence the public opinion about yourself. Um, so if I posted nonstop about how much I liked automotive and, and building hot rods and street racing and this, that and the other, your perception of me would be that I'm a gearhead that, that, that I like turning wrenches that I like going fast, things like that, just based off of the content that I put out and the things that I show that's important to me, right? All different ends of the spectrum, right? However, that doesn't mean the content I post, the things I talk about, um, the Lamborghini that I took a picture in front of on the side of the road doesn't mean I own it, doesn't mean anything I post is reality. And I think that's where the rub is with a lot of people is because you can fabricate fake, fake, fake and have a perception of the general public that you have money or you're successful, or maybe you're really good looking and all you use is awesome filters to smooth your skin and this, that and the other. So there, there is, there is some, um, danger to it or some, I don't want to say risk to it, but there's an inherent risk when we're talking about younger athletes and when we're talking about kids in general, um, I want to gear this conversation in my perspective and I'll probably do a two part on it because I want to talk about why I think social media and personal brand is extremely important, whether you're an athlete, whether you're, your kid's going to grow up and be an entrepreneur or whatever it is. I think it's important for them to understand the dynamic of it just so they can function in normal life 10, 20 years from now. Um, but I like the dynamic of, of, of this personal branding and sports because, and I'll give you some examples of guys that worked on their personal brand, didn't make it big and their backup plan was still a pretty doggone good plan. Um, so the biggest, and I mentioned it earlier, being able to monetize your likeness as a college athlete is going to change the game, right? So like up until this point, like universities get millions and billions, the athletes get free education, all right? I get it, but and me talking about college education being a complete racket is a whole another podcast and I'm probably not educated enough to wax philosophically about it, but college education on some aspects is a complete racket. Um, but this, this is what I want to try to people, uh, give people food for thought and try to change their perspective a little bit. Um, and it's kind of funny. Um, I think it was like three or four days ago, I watched my one and a half year old grandson with an iPad navigate through, uh, YouTube interface. He loves Marshmallow, the DJ Marshmallow loves Marshmallow. And he was one of his videos ended and he clicks on the menu icon, scrolls, scrolls, scrolls, finds his favorite Marshmallow video, plays it. Same set. Same thing when that was done, scroll, scroll, scroll, found his next favorite video and played it to me. Those basic skills of being able to interact with technology to number one is, is, is crucial. Um, and again, having your kids prepared for life technology is a crucial component of what they're going to do. All right. They're going to have to use technology. Just look at what happened during the pandemic. All right. Everybody was forced to use technology. You, you didn't have a choice to say, I don't use them, them, you know, them square boxes of pixels and stuff. Man, I don't have that stuff in my house. It's, it's just taboo. We just, you know, we pick up the phone and call somebody or we write a letter. No, those days are over with. Okay. So, so being able to, uh, not only educate your kids on that, on the pitfalls and advantages social media, um, but also teach them how to use them for their advantage, growing up to leverage them, whether it's growing a brand or just being able to use them, um, use tons of social media marketing, our business. There's not one successful business out there. I, I would venture to guess that's not a local business that only does business with people within a five, 10 square mile radius that doesn't use some aspect of social media to market their business or to interact with their clients. Um, and I think, um, people, you know, it's like people starting, uh, uh, Instagram accounts for their, for their five year old kid and they're just like, why would you want to do that? Like all you're trying to do is draw attention to yourself or this, that and the other. And, and you feel, you do what you feel like as a parent, what's too early, what's too late. Okay. Um, just like, you know, some kids can compete at an early age and some kids can't, they're not ready for that. Um, as a parent, you still got to make those decisions as you're, as you're introducing your kid to the world of social media, um, how it can benefit them or how it can benefit your family as a whole. Um, take the, take the burrows family for, for instance, um, you know, Laura's got her account, Beacon's got her account, Lauren's got her account and JB's got their account and you're, and you're thinking, oh, that's great. You know, I love following JB, Lauren, you know, Lauren's great mom, this, that and the other. And they're kind of the first family of wrestling. Um, but why'd you go create an account for Beacon? Why'd you go create an account for or, you know, and, and Ryze has probably got her account. Now, here's the deal. Here's the long play for the burrows family, right? So let's, let's dig a little bit deeper into that dynamic. So look at the burrows family. It's not, it's not just some cookie cutter family, right? They just, they kind of embody a lot of what we want in the American family, right? They got beautiful kids, their dads are rock star athlete, their moms are very, very well respected. Um, you know, wrestling wife in the community. She's very, she's very close to her faith. She puts out a lot of perspective as a parent. Um, it's not just, it's not just JB goes in one's wrestling matches and then Lauren sits home and takes care of the kids and all they got cute kids this, that and the other. Um, but you get, you get in tune with their story, right? You get in tune with Beacon growing up and you get in tune with, with or growing up and you get in tune with the dynamic of their family. Now, you know, fast forward to where JB's at in his career. He can't wrestle forever, but they've built that perception and that kind of window into the burrows family life. Now they can turn around and leverage that for a bunch of different things. You know what I'm saying? And you've seen JB sign contracts with, with, uh, with, you know, brands that were never around wrestling. You know, Ralph Lauren's never around wrestling. Chabani's never been around wrestling. So, and, and a lot of that, I'm sure marketing teams looked at it and said, Hey, we got a, we got a diverse family here. You know, we got, we got, we got beautiful kids. We got, we got this guy that's got a huge reach in, in an international rest, international sports world. Like let's approach them about doing some stuff that fits our brand. Now, if they would have just sat at home and just said, Hey, I'm going to be the humble closed off wrestling guy. I'm not going to do a single thing. I'm not going to put anything on social media. I don't want anybody looking at pictures of my kids. There's a bunch of creeps out on the internet. Hey, I get it. But at the end of the day, you got to have a plan for what you're doing with your social media. If it's just to get followers that think you're cool because you take pictures next to cool stuff that ain't, ain't yours, then yeah, you got a flawed blueprint, right? You got to, you got to, you got to flawed, you know, method to your madness. However, when you start calculating a plan to grow a personal brand, well, in this case, and you know, I'm using the Burroughs family, a family plan, right? And part of it's just, Hey, man, I got good looking kids. Look at my good looking kids. I'm proud of them. Scroll through Facebook this time of year with state tournaments happen. You don't see plenty of proud parents. Hey, man. So there's, there's all different dynamics of how you can put stuff out on social media and how you can go about growing perception or personal brand of you as an individual, as you as a professional, or your, or your family as a whole. So to me, if, if you're just going to shut it all off and say, look, man, my kid ain't going to be a part of it, or my kids don't get social media until they're 18 years old, strongly disagree, strongly disagree. Now, balance is key, right? You can do, you can do too much with anything, right? My wife thinks I'm on social media too much, but she don't mind the sales leads we get. She don't mind the camps that I, that I book. She don't mind all the things that I've done. I mean, podcast, I'll make any money off this podcast. I might make three cents off this podcast. However, it's more content that I'm putting out there with my perspective in an industry that I love than an industry that I make money in an industry that I've put enough content out in this industry to where I do have some people that respect me and look at to me, look to me from my perspective. And I understand that. I don't put stuff out and say, Hey, this, I show wrestling technique this way, because it's right. And if you don't show it this way, you suck and you're terrible. You don't know what you're talking about. I'm not even saying that anything I'm saying in this podcast right now is a hundred percent facts. I'm just giving you my opinion. But again, as you try to establish what you want the public perception to be with your content or, you know, insight into into your daily life or your profession or what you're capable of doing, you are trying to basically convey value to the world. And it might be value to the world in a sense of, you know, look at Jake Paul, people like that guy has zero value to the world. Well, he's got value to somebody because he's got millions and millions of followers, and he's parlaying that into millions and millions of dollars. If Jake Paul had one Instagram follower and Ben Askren had one Instagram follower, not one person on this planet would know anything about Jake Paul and Ben Askren fighting each other. Ben Askren's got a half a million followers. Jake Paul's got five point whatever million followers. So they said, hey, I'm going to punch this guy in the face, tune in and watch it. And they're like, holy smokes. I saw that. Did you see that? I saw that. Hey, let's let's order this fight and pay a hundred bucks for it and watch these guys punch each other in the face. Classic example of you saying Jake Paul adds no value to the world to anybody, right? He adds value to the world to somebody because people are still watching his watching his podcast, playing his videos, tuning in, scrolling through his Instagram. So things like that, again, you can take it to one extreme and just be the most hated guy in the planet and get Twitter followers and Instagram followers, or you can be more more dialed back in on the other end of the spectrum and only post educational stuff and only post, you know, spiritual stuff. But again, this thing of social media is taboo. It's just something that I'm kind of tired of tired of hearing. And it's just such an old school way of thinking. It's like, I don't understand it. So it's bad type, type mentality. And I think we've, you know, as parents, you know, we want to protect our kids from the world, right? We want to protect them and keep them in that bubble as long as we possibly can. All right. But at some point, they're going to come home and they're going to ask for the car keys and they're going to have their license and they're going to pull out of that driveway and drive down the road and we ain't going to be able to do anything about it. Right. So, so either we educate them along the way and prepare them and have them have a good total understanding of the benefits of social media and the pitfalls of social media and the ways they can get themselves in trouble or the way that they can leverage social media to enhance their life and enhance their future. Then, then I'm telling you, I think that's the route. You need to go just ignoring it and saying it's bad and completely keeping it out of their life until they're an adult or an older teenager. I think, I think is an extremely bad idea. And I posted something the other day about, you know, if you move your kid and this is where I'm going to kind of backtrack a little bit. I posted, if you, if you remove your kid from a sports team or a sports club because they're not getting enough press on social media from that club, then you got to do some reevaluate. Now, that being said, I do understand the dynamic of social media and how it can grow a business. Right. I choose not to market my wrestling club on the backs of my kids individual success. Right. I tend to let nobody's driving from Ohio down to Georgia to come to one of my practices on a regular basis, right, to be a regular monthly member. So my target audience is probably within a 45 minute radius of my club. So my kids having success locally and nationally and their parents for the most part, putting that on social media, to me, that's an organic reach. That's not a reach that I paid for or that I hammered through my corporate account in order for everybody to know, hey, Matthew Singleton is really, really good at wrestling. And hey, I know I told you yesterday, but Matthew Singleton is really, really good at wrestling. Again, today he won another thing. Now, I like to brag on my kids just as much as any coach does. But again, there's balance that goes with that. And to me, there's a little bit of a morality factor that goes into it as well. And, you know, a lot of people know roper that we used to do the rope well stuff with and this that and the other. And that was, we didn't disagree on a lot. But one of the things that we struggled with to see eye to eye on a lot of times was that aspect was marketing our club was marketing us as coaches was marketing our athletes and their success and what we were doing. It was more of a, Hey, look at what we're doing here. We're doing things different than any other clubs ever done. We're making super fans out of these kids. We're eat sleeping and breathing it. We're making them coaches and students of the game at an early age. And this is our culture. And this is what we built. And you can't argue with the success we had at it. But roper is a very with like reclusive introvert and he hated it. He hated it as much fun as we had doing the rope well previews. That wasn't, that wasn't him. That was me kind of ripping that tiny little bit of him out in front of a camera on a regular basis. And if you go back and talk to him, he never, he doesn't regret any, anything, any of that. But if it was just roper left up to roper to run a club, the media aspect wouldn't have existed. But my argument always to him was we can have the best product in the world. But if nobody knows about it, it's worthless, right? So if we're the best coaches in the planet, we got the best club in the planet. And there's a thousand kids within a 45 minute mile radius that can train with us that want to train with us. If they don't know where we are and what we're doing and how we're doing it, worthless, worthless, all right, from a business aspect. And when you sign a lease or build a building and pay to have mats put down and pay for all this other stuff, you tend to want to recoup your investment on something. So expanding a fan based off engagement is a tricky formula. And the more social media platforms that are out there, the more content you can put out. But you can also put out too much content, you can put out not enough content, you can put out content that's not focused on what you're actually trying to do. Like I mentioned earlier about if all I posted stuff was about building engines and racing cars and all I really wanted people to do was know that I'm a good wrestling coach, then that's problematic, right? So like with our Instagram account, I think before the pandemic, it was like the compound Instagram account had 75,000 followers. And I look at it now and we've lost like 10,000 followers since the pandemic and I'm scratching my head. I'm like, no way 10,000 people didn't want to and I didn't post a lot for a while. I didn't have a lot of technique to post, but I've been back posting regularly, regularly, regularly. And I just hadn't seen that jump. So like I'm trying to figure out, man, did that many people just not want to watch the stuff and less people are wanting to watch it now? Do I need to post different stuff? Is the Instagram algorithm changed? And I just I'm not tagging my things right? So that whole dynamic and like I said, I'll probably do a second part on this on specific social media things that me personally, I think work. I'm by no means a social media expert. A lot of what I've learned is just been a little bit of trial and error and having some success on various level and then just stealing from the best guys. If you're trying to build a personal brand in some aspect of the world and you're not consuming as much Gary Vaynerchuk as you can, you're an absolute maniac. That guy has been a wealth of knowledge for tons and tons of people. So I think it's extremely important to be specific about what you're trying to create as the perception of the general public. So as you're putting out content, it needs to be genuine. The biggest mistake a lot of people make is lack of authenticity. So your strategy for growing your social platform or growing your personal brand, if it's not authenticity, you're going to have to live a fake life for as long as you continue to do this. And like going back to the Jake Paul thing, man, that dude might be one of the best people in the planet. And he was like, you know what, I'm just I'm going to be the guy everybody loves to hate. And I'm going to be a complete turd, but I'm going to make a gazillion bucks off of it. Hey, man, if you could sleep at night on your bed of millions of dollars, great. I ain't mad at you one bit. However, that's a tough game to continue to play long term. And in some industries, you don't get outed real quick, right? As as being a paper gangster or whatever you're trying to do. So authenticity to me is is huge. And that goes back to, you know, if you're a parent and you're like, Hey, you know, I'm gonna let you have an Instagram account, you're 12 years old, whatever, 10 years old, you get your new, you got a smartphone, this that and the other. But I'm going to monitor your social media. I'm going to watch everything you post. I'm going to have access to your account. And if I feel like you're posting stuff that's not authentic to you, then we're going to take it down. And if it happens again, same thing, stay out too late too many times, you don't go out too late. You know what I'm saying? You're still have those, you know, you still have those thresholds and those levels of things you do as a parent. But again, I still think of just completely shutting it off is a scary, scary thing to do at long term. And again, and I'm not saying you sit down with your 10 year old and be like, All right, what's our blueprint for your personal brand? Now, there's that are at kid, who his dad started the Instagram account. I'm sure you guys seen that he was like trying to do box jumps or back flips or something like that. He's a little tiny Iranian kid. He's got abs. He's all jacked and ripped or whatever. But you, he's got like millions and millions of followers now and his dad started just filming and posting on Instagram his early training videos. And the kid's like a rock star now and he's like seven years old. Now, that's an extreme, but I guarantee you right now, as long as that kid continues to develop and deliver and become a great soccer player, that kid's going to be fast tracked to a bunch of opportunities that some of these other kids might be just as good or better soccer players than them. But this kid has appeal. He has draw. He has reach is way more appealing, right, to a college program. Think about, I don't even know what the best college soccer program is in America, but think about the best college soccer program in America. And I got two kids that are just as good that play similar positions, but one kid's got five million followers coming on my campus and one kid doesn't even have an Instagram account. Man, as a coach, as an AD, as a university, I got to look at that. At the end of the day, my athletic department is a business. At the end of the day, my university is a business, right? So, man, I can get the same kid, same talent, but this kid right here, he's a good kid. He's not a turd. I'm not taking a risk on him, but he's got he's got five, five million Instagram followers. I'm for sure going to pick the kid with it with a large social media following because every time we have a game and this kid posts on social media that we got a game, every time we, you know, we do something cool as a as a as a team and this kid puts it on a social media. Man, that that's probably bigger, bigger footprint social media wise than than the whole school has or the whole athletic department has. So these things are going to start to become bigger and bigger factors when it's recruiting involved, when your kids look into monetize. And I don't care what you say as a parent, you're telling me I'm going to send my kid to this school, which is $60,000 a year for this kid to go to this school. Maybe he's half ride, maybe he's full ride, whatever. All right. Say he's no ride. All right. But I got this. I got this platform in the bank that I can leverage on his, you know, his, his identity, his likeness, his personal brand. You don't you don't think that you don't think that that's going to play a factor in what what decisions some parents make versus others. You don't think that's going to be a factor when I'm sitting down at the negotiation table and and Kale's telling me my grandson might might not start for his team. And and, you know, Kale was probably a bad example because he probably didn't care about social media. But I'm sitting in front of a program that that you know, that that could leverage my grandson's five million Instagram followers to to grow their their fan base. It's going to be a factor. I mean, it'll obviously be a huge, a bigger factor in the mainstream sports, the baseball, football, basketball, because that's where the millions and billions of dollars are. And I'm not saying, Hey, everybody, go run out, start Instagram account, start a Twitter, start a Facebook for your, you know, for your kid, because you're going to make it rich one day and you're going to get 100 percent ride. What I am saying is there's levels to everything and there's layers to everything. And some of you guys that are refusing to recognize some of these layers and levels, it's it's it's in a sense you're hamstringing your kid a little bit. But with creating the platform and with creating the social channels, I mean, the big social channels or Tik Tok or not so much Snapchat's a little bit different. Instagram, Facebook, and they all reach different audiences. Like with me, when I post something from my Facebook audience, I'm mainly targeting parents and coaches. I'm not I'm not trying to reach the kids with anything I'm putting on Facebook. 90 percent of the kids these days don't even have Facebook anymore. They turned it off. They never even look at it. All right. If I'm trying to reach my kids, I'm more Snapchat, Tik Tok, Instagram, like Instagram is kind of the go between, right? So like you got Facebook, old people, Instagram, old and young people. Then you got Tik Tok, Snapchat, the younger, younger group. And then Twitter is kind of a mixed bag of everything. I think most kids have a Twitter, but they don't interact on it as much. It's more, you know, late 20s, 30s, that type of group that's constantly active on Twitter, things like that. And I don't want to get too detailed with all this stuff. But the kind of the thing I'm trying to get to here is your goal with your social media, you know, can early on just be identity and personal brand. Then you can parlay it into something else later down the road. And I like using this kid named Giovanni Ruffin. I don't know if you guys remember this. He put out a highlight video of him training and he overlaid Eric Thomas, the hip hop preacher, the motivational speaker. He overlaid one of his speeches on top of it and it went viral. It blew up. This was probably 10, 12 years ago. I think East Carolina kid didn't make it big in the NFL, didn't make it big, you know, in any of these alternative football leagues. But what he did is he spiked his personal brand with that one video. He parlayed it into this little apparel line that he did. And now he's got a pretty massive social media following. He's a personal trainer and he does strength and conditioning stuff for athletes. He already had a good understanding of football and training for football and the grind and this, that and the other didn't make it in the NFL. Still had a pretty solid social media platform. Hey guys, didn't make it in the NFL, but I know you guys are all still following me because you like my story. Now I'm doing this over here. So everybody just says, oh, okay, cool. Boom. You're over here now. You're not, you're not scoring touchdowns in the NFL, but hey, I'm big into personal training, strength and conditioning, this and the other. So for, for you to say, well, hey, it's all, all or nothing. No, it's not. To me, it's a backup plan. You know, guys like that, it's a freaking backup plan. So worst case scenario, you're just like, you know what, I just, I didn't make it in the NFL. I went to dental hygiene school and I'm making six figures and now cleaning people's teeth or whatever. Done. Probably not going to put that on social media every day. Don't want to see people's teeth every day. All right. Not going to happen for everybody. But again, you're, you're establishing those like just like you're learning, you know, etiquette to eat at a fancy restaurant. That's like a, that's like a core value that you need to learn. No elbows on the table, you know, chew them with your mouth open. So as you, as you start figuring these layers out, you just start kind of positioning them how you want. And some of us think much deeper with a marketing mindset and some of us don't. And again, gravitate towards your strengths and weaknesses. And the ones, ones you don't either pay somebody to fill them in or you get on YouTube late at night and you figure it out. I'll give you another example. And this was possibly unintentional, but it ended up being an extremely different story. And I tell this story a good bit too. So I remember it was when David Taylor and Kyle Dake wrestled in the finals of the Southern scuffle. All right. Big, this was, I think this might have been the rubber match or it might have been the rematch. I can't remember. Dake ends up winning the match. Like everybody's like, Taylor's got it. Taylor's got it. Taylor's got it. Dake ends up winning the match. Taylor's devastated, lost to Kyle Dake again, goes in the back. They start doing the awards. David Taylor's out in the arena, signing autographs for all these little kids. All these little kids are dying to meet David Taylor, signing autograph, signing autograph. I'm not knocking Kyle Dake. Love both those guys to death. Kyle's tucked back in the corner a little bit. He's just waiting to get his OW award and then, and then leave with the team. Not saying he was being rude, not saying anything. But again, there's another layer of Taylor recognize his fans were out there wanting autographs. And I think a lot of it was just how he was raised. And if you know Dave Sr., please believe Dave Sr. didn't sit David down and be like, Hey, man, we got to work on this personal brand. You got to get your social media popping off this, that and the other. Last I thought of Dave Sr. He hates social media now. He's probably off of everything. All right. But again, that's, that's, that's a perfect example of a non social media play that ended up winning David Taylor so many fans early on that this guy comes out of college, don't make a world team for like 47 years. And he still signs a big shoe deal. He still has tons of fans. He still has people that wants to see that kid succeed. And then guess what happens? Those fans that were riding with him that never jumped off the bandwagon. Now all of a sudden DT's got it together. He found his right weight class. He's winning world titles. And, and, and he's like, Oh, by the way, I got this clothing thing popping off right now. You 100,000, 200,000 plus people that have been riding with me since day one go buy some of this stuff. Right. Now, if he would have just been like, I'm going to work, I'm going to work in darkness and silence and I'm not going to sign autographs and I'm only going to focus on being a four time NCA champ and I'm not going to do anything until I get my goals. And then when I'm a Olympic champion of the world, then I'll start an Instagram account. Then I'll start my social media and my personal brand out there. It's too late. It's too late then. And I'm the biggest proponent of it's never too late to reinvent yourself. But you think about day one college to win, say David Taylor wins an Olympic title this year, the time span that he has gained and lost fans. And I'm sure it's way more to the gain and way less to the loss. Him being able to go back and make up all that time, make up all those interactions and make up everything. And when I talked to him early on about this stuff, I was like, look, man, don't underestimate the value of interacting with your fans on social media. And that's the biggest thing I think all of these athletes fail to do. There's some guys that do a really good job of it. And I get it. You're busy. You can't stay on social media all day long, replying and liking and this that and you know, that's a trap too. I fall into it far too much. Just DMing with coaches, somebody will comment a technique video I put, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Next thing you know an hour and a half is going by and I'm like, man, wow, I'm on my phone right now. I got other stuff to do. So you got to have some balance there. But I'll tell you right now, everybody's had that experience where they commented on something one of their favorite athletes of all time or somebody they admire and they replied to you or liked your comment and you're like, oh, oh, oh, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. Yanni liked my comment. Yanni liked my mom. Yanni liked my comment. You know what I'm saying? So like, you can't underestimate the impact of you interacting with your fan base on any level. It's huge. It's absolutely huge to not only post content, give authentic insight into what you're doing, letting people know your range of skills or your range of lifestyle, but also helping, you know, helping people, communicating with people, helping them understand you a little bit better. And like I said, liking a comment, commenting back on something, you ain't got to do it all the time, but it's huge for your fan interaction, absolutely huge to your fan interaction. I'm getting more into execution than I am just the overall like talk about it, which I knew I was going to happen. But I'll tell you right now, one of the one of the biggest things that's going to happen moving forward is the social platforms that have the youngest market are going to own the future. I'll say that again. The platforms that have the attention and the participation of the youngest audience now are going to own the future. Like I said, with IA and AR and VR and meta universes and things like that, it's going to be absolutely insane as to the world that we're going to be living in in the next 15 to 20 years. And you don't want your kids, you know, showing up to the party, you know, empty handed. And I think that's going to happen for a lot of people. And there's a big debate. I really need to have somebody on the podcast that is against social media and then just kick those ideas back and forth on what's good, what's bad. And again, and I leave it up to the parent, you know what I'm saying? I'll leave it up to the parent because like my oldest son, no interest in social media this and the other. My youngest son, social media probably got him in more trouble than it helped at a young age. And part of my problem was I didn't regulate it enough. I didn't look at it enough. I didn't see what the communication levels were enough. And that was my fault as a parent. But that's just bad parenting. That's not social media is evil. And think about this. People got into trouble before there were cell phones. So you can't say social media is the devil. Kids getting so much trouble. So you think there was nobody getting in trouble as a kid in the early 80s? Nobody getting in trouble as a kid in the midnight? I please believe I got plenty of trouble. I didn't get my Motorola StarTac Razor flip phone until I was probably 17 years old. I thought I was a freaking pimp then. But my track record of getting in trouble up to that point was pretty hefty. You can ask my mom. So it's with anything. All right. And it comes with regulation. And it comes with monitoring. But I truly think that a lot of people that are scared of social media, it's due to lack of education. It's due to lack of the ability to monitor. I think it's due to lack of ability for them to just want to understand it and see how it can benefit their child. They just see it as an extra thing that's going to be a time suck. And it's only going to get them in trouble. And I strongly advise those people to revamp the way they look at it. Because here's the deal. This thing right here, and I'm stealing this quote from Gary Vaynerchuk. This thing right here is the remote control of our society. Whether you like it or not, whether you like it or not, this cell phone right here is the remote control of our society. And think about how much this phone plays a role in your daily life, your childhood. Think about this. Would you let your 12 year old kid leave the house right now without a cell phone? You would lose your mind if you found out your kid left the house without a cell phone because you don't have an instant line of communication with that kid. All right. Think about 10 years ago if you would have said your kid's leaving the house without a cell phone. Whatever. I don't care. Like he goes out and plays and rides his bike without a cell phone. Now if they don't answer their phone, if they don't text you back within 30 seconds, you lose your mind. So your perceptions change for that. So I think we need to start changing our perception a little bit more towards, okay, I'm scared a little bit about this social media thing. I'm scared a little bit about my kid creating a false perception of him or herself online. Let's educate ourselves together. Let's make sure our kids understand that not only the gravity of social media, but the power of social media, just like you would anything else, the power of education, the power of self-reflection, the power of anything else, right? How can we educate ourselves as a family, myself as a parent, my child as a developing human being, and let's all get on the same page. And hey, if we get her on the first time, just like anything else. Oh, curfew, you can't handle 12 o'clock curfew. We need to scale it back to 10 o'clock curfew. You get a little too wild in those two hours when we go 12 o'clock curfew. It's all relative, right? We can scale it back and forth as much as we know, as we want. But my advice to you guys, man, and like I said, I ain't got this figured out on an elite, perfect level, the right balance, the right what to do. I just want to, I just want to strongly suggest to you parents that are anti-social media to do some research, do some homework, and see how it can add value to your child's life. See how it can add value to what your plans and goals for them are. And some of you guys might start later. Some of you guys might start sooner. And you can scale it up and back as much as you want. And like I said, I think I'll do a second part on this, because I really want to, I really want to talk to guys that I think are doing a good job of this. And, you know, the NCAAs are coming up this week, and you got some, you got some good personas that are in the NCAA tournament, like, you know, Gables cut and freaking, you know, WCW or whatever, WWF, whatever it is now promos, like at the end of Big Tents, you know, he's made it pretty well known that he, you know, he wants to do some professional wrestling stuff. I mean, if, if, if you're the recruiters for those guys and you're looking at this freak of nature athlete out there stomping mud holes and guys that are supposed to be the second best guy in the NCAA division one weight class, and then he's cutting promos after that. If you're not salivating to sign a multimillion-dollar contract, develop a contract with this kid, are you kidding me? And then the other end of the spectrum, you got a guy like RBY that's just cool, calm, collected, just dynamic, you know, just a creative breath of fresh air out on the wrestling mat. And then you got, and I don't know, and RBY really tries at that. And I think a lot of people have given, given RBY and Gable a lot of flak, like, oh, I like the photo shot. Somebody commented on RBY stuff a while back is like, oh yeah, this looks like an RBY photo, photo shoot or whatever. Who cares, man? The kid's working on his brand. He sees the big picture, right? He's put some little promo videos out here and there inside into his training life. Man, as a fan of a guy, I want to see what the inside of his locker looks like. I want to see him training in the, in the practice, practice room and the mat room, things like that. I love that connection with guys that I'm fans of, right? But these guys are already starting to figure out that dynamic and the, and the followers and the footprint and the fan base they're creating right now, whether they leverage in college or not, it's going to be huge down the road for those guys. So do this, do a little exercise this weekend. Like, and Burroughs asked me this question a while back. He was like, if you could sponsor anybody out of straight out of college, and this was a couple of years ago, if he's like, if you could sponsor anybody straight out of college, who would it be for your clothing company? And I had to think about it. You know, I had to think about it. And that's the thing is like, if nobody was relevant and had no footprint and, and no, you know, following or anything like that, that'd be an easy question. You know what I'm saying? But, but what, what personal brand currently in wrestling resonates with my brand? And two, what's their reach? And three, how often are they putting out content? How much are they engaging with their fans? There's so many layers of that as a business. If I'm about to sign somebody to a contract or sponsor them or this, that and the other, that's huge for me as a business owner. So while you're watching NCA tournament this weekend, start watching some of these guys, whether it's the way they carry themselves, the way they compete, the way they act before and after they compete, if they're, if they're, if they just have that energy about them. And some of it's intentional. Some of it's unintentional. Like DeSanto, I don't think a lot of that's intentional. DeSanto is just a hard nose, just coming at you and your face going to compete to, to every fiber in his being collapses, right? But again, if that's my brand of my business, man, if I'm selling like, I don't know, like if I'm selling like super durable, like toolboxes that go on the back of rugged pickup trucks for whatever, man. Like, and I'm looking for the most rugged dude in wrestling. Like, man, I'm looking for a guy like DeSanto. You know what I'm saying? So you start seeing how brands identify with styles and identities and things like that. And then you just kind of start seeing, oh, so like, there is a reason why this company is going with this guy versus this guy. And there's a reason why these guys signed this guy to a contract instead of this guy. You know what I'm saying? So like, think about it. Have a blast. Enjoy watching NCA tournament. I'm going to be doing a live watch party with my man Sam Herring from Home Mad Advantage. We're going to have some VIPs popping in throughout the three days. I'll get the schedule out soon. Appreciate you guys tuning in. Love the feedback. If you said this was all trash and it was the worst thing I've ever listed to in my life, I want my money back and I want my time back. Not giving you your money back because I ain't making any money. Just hear me out on it. Do a little research. Try to change your perspective or maybe change my perspective a little bit. Comment, like, share. Love you guys.