 So, Mark, I got to tell you how this all came about. So, I'm Netflixing and chilling with my girl. Yes, we all do. And we're going through, and I had recently got, you know, people on the show, we typically talk about, you know, all kinds of shit, but we always talk about whatever we're watching on Netflix or Prime or whatever. And we always share what shows that like, oh, wow, this was a really good show. So, it's great because the audience sends me stuff in the DMs, all the time you got to watch this stuff. Well, I've been getting bombarded lately with this documentary, Fire. And I don't know anything about it whatsoever. And so, at any time I get like multiple, then I'll actually go do it. Cause, you know, there's always that one-off kid who thinks that we're alike. And so, he's like, oh, you should watch this. And it's like, not my taste at all, right? That was terrible. But this was a lot of people. So, I get on there and I'm watching it. I'm about 15 minutes into the documentary, which I know nothing about this whole situation and up pops your face. And I'm like, what the fuck? I know that guy. Yeah, I said, I had the same thing. Yeah, right away I pause it and I look at Katrina. I said, why do I know him really well? Where do we meet? Where have we talked? I know I know Mark. I know I know Mark. And she's like, are you sure? I said, no, I'm for sure. I don't forget a face and his voice, everything I remember. And then I watched for a little bit longer and then it dawned on me. Oh my God, that's we met at the Spartan race. So, for the audience, you got to tell us what you do for a living. And then maybe give them up to speed, how we met at Spartan, and then we'll get into the other shit. Yeah, so what I do for a living is probably a little bit different than the way it was portrayed in the documentary because it's been about a year and a half since I recorded that. I recorded it probably right around the same time that we met at Spartan. Oh, it's happening all at that same time. Yeah, it was all around the same time. Actually, it's a little bit of an interesting, not interesting, but a long story. I got introduced to Spartan through Fire Festival. So someone at, someone that had invested in Fire Festival, whose name I won't disclose, worked with Spartan and connected me to them and said, this guy did good work at Fire Festival, didn't work out, but you should work with him on whatever event you have coming up. Then I ended up at the World Championship, like five months later. So was doing this event, consulting, had produced my own music festivals for two years, and actually recently just moved into venture capital. So totally, totally 180, kind of just done with events for the time being. What were those music festivals you did? They were called 90s Fest. So it was all 90s theme music festivals. We did five cities between 2016 and 2017, starting in New York, Salt and Pepper headlined. It was basically like an opportunity for, yeah, it was fun. It was just a kitschy music festival, not at all cool or kind of driven. It was driven by social media in some ways, similar to Fire, but more about just kitchiness and like being a kid again. And we did 5,000 attendees in New York in the first year, Nickelodeon sponsored, it was a lot of fun. But events is a really, really tough business. How did you even get into that? So before the events stuff, I was working in finance. I was an investment banking for two years at Jeffries and Morgan Stanley and really never wanted to do that with my life. And after two years was like, okay, this is not what I'm interested in, started my first company, really wanted to build things. The first company was still in finance. We won't go into that one too much. But then I came across a friend who's been in the music industry since like 2008. He was promoting concerts in University of Michigan. He is a company called Prime Social Group. Shout out to Adam. I'm sure he's gonna love that promotion right there. And I helped them raise money in 2000, I wanna say 2012. And I was like, oh, this business is so fun, right? Like it's concerts. It's literally the business of fun. And it's kind of simple, it's you pay artists, you promote, you sell tickets. It's not easy, but it's simple. Is it a very profitable business? Festival promotion can be profitable, but you need to be unprofitable before you get there, if that makes sense. So usually a music festival life cycle, like the first two years, you'll lose money. People think if they see a sold out show that it probably made a lot of money. But the thing is that agents know exactly how many tickets their artists are going to sell. So they price that in when you're building a festival. What do you mean, explain that, what do you mean by that? So like the agents have perfect information on how many tickets their artists are sold in every single city over any number of years. So they know how much they're worth essentially. Yeah, exactly. So they're like, if you're gonna price a ticket at say like $25, I know that you're gonna sell whatever. I expect you to sell 5,000 tickets for this artist, let's just say. And that's priced in. And so they often will leave maybe like a 10% margin for a good promoter who does the job right. Oh wow, that's not a lot of room. It's not a lot of room at all. So it's actually a really challenging business. And actually, so Kevin Lyman produces the Warp Tour. He's been doing it for 25 years, 40 shows. And he, I saw him speak like, I think actually at X Live where I started to rule speak. And he said he only made money on tickets once out of. 25 years? Once in 25 years. So how do you make money? Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, so sponsorships, right? It's just like any other media business, right? Like you make money on sponsorships and then because it's events, you make money on food and beverage. So you want people to go and to order a lot of food to drink a lot, essentially. And then media, of course, and that's a huge aspect of the industry today is promoting after the show, doing these promo videos and pre-promotion videos and whatnot. And so yeah, so if you can figure out a way to make money on sponsorships by kind of having a demographic that's aligned in some way, shape or form. Then you can be profitable. And then the other way to be profitable is to be early always. And so festivals like Governor's Ball where they've been doing it for, I think Governor's Ball has been around for almost a decade now, I wanna say. Yeah, almost a decade. I think 2011 was the first show. They're the first major festival in a major market. So then you can scale up by actually just adding days and going bigger. But if you can't get to that size, it's really challenging. Do you know what some of the most profitable ones are? I would say Governor's Ball is definitely up there. Tom Russell and his team do a fantastic job out of New York. I'm not even familiar with that. I'm like Lollapalooza and thinking stuff like that. Lollapalooza is probably up there as well. Those are the C3 guys, Coachella, yeah. I mean, once you have that, so if you have a festival that after, say a certain number of years becomes a name in and of itself, like the ones you guys just mentioned, then you have a lot more leverage with the artist, first of all. Because it looks good for them to go to be one of the artists at this place. Yeah, exactly. It's really good for them to go. And then agents are often representing a really big name. And then they have a few undercard names that they really want to get on a show like Lollapalooza. So then you have the opportunity to start, you know, to start leveraging a little bit, right? Yeah, exactly. So you can trade, you know, you can trade. They'll be like, okay, fine. I'll give you this artist. And of course it's important. They want to get the full price for their artists because they're working for them. So it's not as explicit typically, but I think that it definitely helps from a pricing standpoint. And all artists want to play, you know, most artists want to play Coachella. It must be really tough then to launch one then. Because if you don't, you know, I mean, if you're a big name artist and some Mark guy calls you up and says, hey, come down to my festival. It's going to be badass. And you're like, fuck you. I've never even heard of this thing before. You're going to- It's on this island. So I imagine it's a good idea. It's actually really challenging. I bet. It takes years to build relationships with the agents. And oftentimes first year festival promoters or even any concert promoters will not succeed in paying the artist the full fee. So if you call up an agency and you say, hey, I'm, you know, I'm Mark. I want to produce this random show in Kalamazoo, Michigan. You know, and I really want Chance the Rapper to play. They'll be like, okay, you have to pay 100% of his fee right away. So that's another thing. Not only your festival is really challenging to make money, but it's also, it also requires a ton of upfront capital, especially for a first year festival. Because you have your, the majority of your expenses are your artist fees. You have to pay them all upfront to prove the model. Exactly. And so you have to, you have to be able to get a lot of investment before you even approach anybody. If you've launched one out. Yeah. The first step is raising, the first step is raising capital, which is like a grueling multi-month process because you don't have, you don't have a group of investors that really want to invest in events. You know, you have on the larger end, you have Live Nation and AEG. Those are kind of the two 300 pound gorillas in the industry and Live Nation owns pretty much every venue across the country that you've ever wanted to go to. And then AEG owns a number of others, large amphitheaters, et cetera. And then you have some large private equity firms that are getting into it, but they're really late stage. So, you know, venture capital doesn't invest in festivals because it doesn't give you that, you know, that large hundred X return on your investment that they're looking for with the tech company. So what you're left with is really high net worth individuals and private investors or friends and family who believe in your vision. And oftentimes the, you know, high net worth individuals that will invest in concerts are really ones that are just trying to have fun. So it's like a vanity investment. They're like, I want to hang out with Diplo, you know. So you're like, I'm going to have Diplo at the show. They're like, all right, great. I'll be backstage with him. So in order to sell it to them, because you're saying that they don't typically make money for the first couple of years, these investors, are they expecting not make any money? I think often they're expecting, you know, if you're upfront with them, they're expecting to make money after three years. There are, you know, there are buyers, like even just three or four years ago, Live Nation and AG went on a huge buying spree. This is public, I think, but Governor's Ball was, you know, acquired, well, let's say SFX was a public company and they acquired a business called Made Events, which does Electric Zoo in New York for I think like $45 million or something, something between 30 and $50 million. There's earnouts in there and stuff, but yeah, so there's exit opportunity after three years. And I think that, you know, in the interim, there's a lot of businesses that lose money in the first couple of years. Even venture-backed companies, I think it was like five years before Uber made money. I don't know if that's 100% accurate, but it takes years to kind of scale up and festivals are no different. The problem is you have to keep reinvesting. Every time you make, you know, if you make profit, then the next year you go out and even if you can reduce your artist's fees, let's say to 50%, you need to put that 50% deposit upfront, you need to get the venue. Oftentimes the venues change on you, right? You know, with 90s fast, we had this incredible venue in the heart of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, like right on the river. And it was a New York City kind of park-zoned space, but it was really just an empty lot. And we had a great event there, we wanted to do it again. And the New York, there were actually probably around like 20 events that summer in that same space. And then the parks department said, no, we want to turn this into a shared space on the weekends for, you know, for every citizen, not just people that are paying to go to concerts. And so they put a skate park in there. And then we had to scramble to find a new venue. And the venue is everything. So we did our second 90s fast on Governor's Island and you have to take a ferry to get there. So all of a sudden, you know, your attendance cuts and you have to really go big on artists to get people to say, okay, I'm gonna take a ferry to go to an event. So it's really challenging. You know, even if you make money in the first year, you're not guaranteed to do it in the second year. And I think it's really a labor of love, the events business and the music business in general. I think people do it because they love music, they love creating, they love the shared experience. It can be lucrative, but it's really a very, very small number of events and individuals that are making real money on festivals. Now, did you know that when you made the leap from finance over into event planning, did you kind of know what you were getting into beforehand? Yeah, I did. I wanted something simple. So, you know, my first business was like this really kind of like highfalutin finance idea. It was about inflation and was kind of, you know, me and my partner thought we were super smart. We were like, oh, we're so smart. You know, like this is great. And then it's like, that's not a business. You know, like we got, we fell on our face pretty much. And then I really wanted something simple. And the thing about a festival is if you can figure out a way to reduce your artist fees and bring people together for a shared cause, then you can expand your margins. So like economically, it made sense. And then from the stance of like, wow, this is actually really fun. You know, I wanted to get into it. And the concept behind 90s Fest was, there's these acts that are all touring, but they're, you know, at that point, they were 20 years out of their kind of prime. Many of them would take offense to that, but it's probably true. And, you know, they, my feeling was 90s are coming back. It's kind of this nostalgia cycle. BuzzFeed's like releasing these, which full house character are you? Take the quiz here. Janko Jeans were coming back. There's all sorts of. Those are the shit, man. Yeah, I used to wear them. I feel like, I think all three of them could fit in a pair of Jankos. Together, let's try it out. They hid my really skinny legs really well. You could do so many things with those on. Yeah, exactly. Hockey sacks and Pogs and whatever. And for some reason this was coming, I think every 20 years people get like nostalgic about their childhood. So this was coming back online. And my feeling was if we created something around this brand of everybody wants to be a kid again or a teenager or wherever you were in the mid 90s, the 90s were like, you know, boom times in the U.S. It was fun and it was kind of cheesy. Like we had Nickelodeon there as I mentioned and people were getting slimed and doing obstacle courses and Nick games and sports or gas or whatever, the aggro crag. I don't know if you guys remember that thing. Oh yeah. And so the idea was if we can bring people together on this concept, then we can get artists for much less. So your typical artist fees are like, let's say 85 to 100% of your projected ticket sales. And that's if everything goes right. We felt we could get our artist fees down to 50% by building a shared interest. And you see this a lot with fitness, with health and wellness, actually the festival that we modeled ourselves off of was Sweet Life, which is produced by the owners of Sweet Green. I don't know if they do it anymore, but they started in DC. They were really small talent budget and they sold out because people wanted to go somewhere with thousands of others that have shared interests. And so we were like, okay, the 90s is something that they can be interested in. And so we produced the festival and it kind of worked. The first year it worked and people were excited about it. And our artist fees, I think were 55% of our ticket sales. And it was a success. We had great sponsors, people had a really good time. We had great press, and then we kind of kept trying to scale that out across multiple cities. How are you getting in contact? At this point, you don't have any connections with agents and artists, do you? How do you get these? Oh yeah, so that's kind of the, I kind of fell into the music industry. So my friend Adam, who I mentioned earlier, started, I guess in 2008, financial crisis, colleges started to cut their budgets and they start with entertainment. So Adam was going to University of Michigan and he saw that they weren't doing many concerts anymore and he produced a NAS show at some arena nearby. And this was, I guess, 2009. And so he just fell in love with the business and he's been doing it ever since. I think it's been a decade now since he started. Did he have a relationship with NAS heading in or how did he? He did the cold call. Oh, wow. He just found NAS later, he did the cold call and booked NAS and I think, I actually think he lost a ton of money on that show, which is kind of like the, it's the right of passage in this industry or in the music space. And I think the number one, the number one quality of a successful promoter, I think is durability, to keep taking the punches and coming back and producing again and again and again. And then you build the relationships with the agencies, you start to pick up talent early on and help them grow through your events and agents start to route their artists through your venues or through your events because they like you. And so Adam met his partner, Zack, who was doing the same thing at University of Wisconsin and they ended up moving to Columbus, Ohio because I think that's where Zack is from. And so right when I quit my job in banking, Adam contacted me and was like, hey, we want to raise money for our company. SFX had just gone public and that flamed out, they went bankrupt. This was like a $1.5 billion company. When it went public in a year and a half, they were bankrupt, SFX, not prime social group. And so people, I think people underestimate just how hard it is to produce events and to throw concerts. There's really two major players and then a bunch of small independents like C3 who did Lollapalooza, they sold to Live Nation, Paul Tolette and Golden Voice sold to AEG, they do Coachella, even Bonnaroo, which has been successful for a number of years, just two years ago, had a terrible year. SFX's big event was called, what was it called? They did it in Atlanta. And this is another interesting thing. This event was like something like 30,000 attendees and it started pouring rain in Atlanta. And the attendees got trapped in the rain. The buses couldn't run on the streets, mud was everywhere. And they got stuck and it was cold, you know? I forget the name of this event, but that was SFX's largest festival. Man, I'm blanking on it, I'll remember it later. But anyways, there's often kind of stories in the events industry about this crazy stuff happening. Well, now this is starting to make more sense to me how you could get strung along in the fire thing for so long. Because I was watching the documentary and I'm going to myself, or thinking to myself, wow, Mark seems like a smart guy. How did he get into this for this long? Like, I'm obviously the way the documentary unfolds and they tell you, I mean, a quarter way in, I'm already like, what the fuck, get out, you know what I'm saying? But now that you're- A man in ship. Now that you're telling the stories the way you are with what- Apart for the course. Yeah, it's kind of like, it's probably pretty normal that you're stressed the fuck out all the way up until the day goes. You gotta lose money. So this is starting to make a little more sense to me how you could, how so many of these people, because if you're a viewer, like we were watching it on TV, you're going like, how did all these people just get fucking bamboozled like this? But it makes sense though now, like with what you're saying. So I'm assuming that at one point you go to, I think it was the, is it the X? The Xumas. Yeah, where Jarl Roll spoke and- Oh, X Live conference. Yeah. Is that where you made connection? Yeah, so that's a great bridge. I think, you know, I've had people reach out to me, people close to me and ask like, why did you stay? And maybe we can answer that later, but I think what you, that you hit the nail on the head, like the events industry is always a mess. Even the best events are a mess. Right, that's what you're saying right now. It's putting, literally putting out fires. My first event, I think I ended up de-clogging the Porta John's backstage by myself. Just grabbed a plunger and was like, you know, you're just like literally, yeah, it's a dirty business. And you roll up your sleeves and you just keep, you keep on kind of finding solutions. And, you know, in the documentary I mentioned, Billy kept saying that it's a mantra of a lot of event producers. You know, we just need to figure it out. And so I think that's kind of why many of us stayed for as long as we did, because even though it was messy, you know, there was a sense of, okay, maybe we can still pull this off. And there's a lot of pride. You know, people take pride in their work. Well, historically one of the greatest examples of a music festival that where everything went wrong, but when we talk about it, it's talked about as one of the greatest events of all time is Woodstock. Everything literally went wrong with Woodstock. And they even talked about it on the documentary so I can see how easy it would be to get stuck in that, like, okay, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this. How did they, did you contact them or how did they find you? Cause it sounds like you might've made a name for yourself after your 90s, you know, festivals. Yeah, so I wouldn't say I made a name for myself, but I had some relationships in the space and you're right, Woodstock, just to like mention that, you know, Woodstock was brought up in the documentary and people actually I believe died at Woodstock, right? So it was massive, it was a huge mess. But how did I meet Billy? Okay, so, you know, we went to X Live and I was there with Adam and Zack, my partners in Prime Social Group and 90s Fest and Zack was actually on stage with Ja Rule. So we're watching the panel and I'm sitting with my friend Joe who's now producing the Shaquille O'Neal Shaq's Fun House events. And Shaq's actually doing one down in Atlanta before the Super Bowl, I think on Friday. And we're sitting there and Ja Rule starts talking about this like, this festival that's coming in May and it's gonna be massive and it's on this island and it was like they're kind of coming out party to the industry and we look at each other and we're just laughing. We're like, yeah, right. You know, like, it's just so challenging to produce these events and it sounded so, just too good to be true. Yeah. And so first impression, negative. Fast forward around two months and the promo video comes out and it's, you know, these top models in the industry in the Bahamas, it's beautiful, the marketing campaign, genius with the orange blocks from all these influencers. What is this mystique? You go on the website, it's like these beautiful renderings of beautiful villas and I'm like, oh man, like this is interesting. And even then you're kind of, is this real? People are talking about it, private jets to an island and so I'm like piqued my curiosity and I ended up knowing the guys that produced the video. These guys Matt Productions and Brett Kincaid is in the documentary as well and they actually ended up producing the documentary. It's on the screen right now. They produce that video and they do great work and they do a lot of work for major brands. They also produce events. They produce a festival in New York called Full Moon Festival. They do Halloween parties. Really cool guys, really above bar, you know, honest, hardworking and do big things. And so I sat down with in New York just catching up with Max who's from the Matt Productions team, Max Pollock and I was like, so what's the deal with this fire festival? Like the video is incredible. You guys crushed it. He's like, yeah, thank you. I'm like, what's the deal? Are they real or what? And he said, yeah, they're real. You know, they sold out, they sold out both weekends already. In like two days, right? It was crazy. Like unheard of. Unheard of, right? To sell out your music festival in the first year is a huge, huge accomplishment. And of course, we now know that it was because they were just lying about what was available, right? A private jet was a charter jet, a villa was a tent, you know? So, my details. I feel like what did John Rool say on that call? False advertising. Yes, advertising. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, you know, so then I hear that and I'm like, okay, that's kind of interesting. And I'm actually thinking about going at this point. Like maybe my friends and I will go and I was trying to see if I can, if I could ask Max for a favor to get me. Right, Fonegal. Fonegal, take it or something. Like his Bella Hadid. Sounds awesome. Sounds great. And then about like two weeks later, I'm back in LA and my friend Harley calls me and Harley works at one of the largest venture capital funds in the country. It's called Inside Venture Partners. They manage like $1.6 billion, maybe more. And he's like, dude, what do you think of these fire guys? I'm like, I don't know, like, you know, it sounds cool, they're producing a good event. He's like, they're doing this app, they're making $20 million a year, you know? And of course later, it's discovered that he really was faking a lot of the numbers for the app as well to investors. That was a different company, right? He was bridging. That was his, the media company and the festival was meant to be the come out party for Fire app, which was a booking app for talent. So if you had a wedding and you wanted to get, you know. Which all in all is a great concept. It was a great concept. It's a great concept. It's a great concept. And you know, that's how Billy inspired a team of legitimate engineers to come on board for little pay and equity to try to build this thing. Now, anyone that knows the music industry knows that it's intentionally opaque. So, you know, there's not perfect information. You're not able to get artists. So even if you were booking through Fire, you were getting a manager, you know? Or the manager's manager. So that was imperfect to start, but you know, people were interested in the app. And of course with the revenue numbers that Billy was claiming, he got a lot of interest from these venture capital funds. So two venture capital funds submitted a letter of intent, which means they wanted to sign a term sheet for, you know, we're going to invest in Fire. And we're talking $20 million, $30 million check sizes. And these are legitimate companies. And I'm introduced to Billy through one of them. So of course I'm like, okay, this is legitimate. So you're at this point, you're like bought like, okay, this is for reals. Yes. And I hadn't spoken to Billy yet, but I'm like, this is, this sounds cool. And if they pull it off, it could be one of the biggest events in ever in recent history. So you're not only thinking it's cool, you're thinking you're excited about it. Super excited. And I was thinking, you know, I was thinking like being a part of something like this could be incredible, you know, from a career standpoint, from a fun standpoint, you know, excitement, it's adventure, you know, I have the opportunity to go live on an island in the Bahamas to work like, wow, what a dream, right? And so I get on my first phone call with Billy and, you know, we start talking, talking about the festival and whatnot in the app. And it was kind of pitched to me as, you know, I was kind of rolling off of 90s Fest at this time. And it was pitched to me as, you know, we really need good people at the company. Know you have event production experience. And I was kind of trying to move out of events into media at that time, which is one of the reasons I worked with Spartan, even though it wasn't event, we produced all this content, got that. So really interested in the content space, new media, podcasts, whatever. And, you know, Billy kind of hung over the carrot of, you know, we'll work on this, it'll be a test run and then you can join the company. And so, you know, we can talk about this later as well, but I think there's certain, there's certain things that con artists do, that's like a pattern. And, you know, I've had the unfortunate experience of being very close to at least one of them. And, you know, hopefully now I can start to see these patterns and maybe help others to, you know, to recognize them. But that carrot, you know, that little excitement, that kind of pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is a part of it. And so- That's what gets us to look to ignore that little voice, you know, when that happens and that's with all relationships, when they dangle that carrot, you know, you end up ignoring that voice that says, ah, this might not be a good idea, something's wrong, yeah. Yeah, I mean, exactly right. Had I trusted my intuition from the start, I never would have touched this thing. But it's gotta be hard though at this point because as someone who's in the event planning space like yourself, the things that you know that are probably the most difficult are getting handled right out the gates, which is ticket sales, selling out and capital behind there. I mean, you got big companies that are saying that they're gonna throw millions of dollars at it. If I'm in your spot, I'm probably going like, and didn't they bring you in just a little bit later than they had somebody previous? So they had hired two production companies before the third group, which were a bunch of independent contractors. And I only later discovered this, but they had hired, I forget the name of the first company. First company came in and said, okay, we're gonna build you a budget. They're like a festival in a box kind of business. I think they do events at MSG, you know, massive business. So they said, we're gonna build you a budget, whatever. And they flashed the budget, big presentation, $54 million to get it done, fired. Next company comes in a few months later, and someone from that company actually wrote an article about this, but they saw the site, the new site. At this point, it was no longer on that Pablo Escobar private island. It's now in Exumas, and they come in and they see the site, and I think it's now like four or five months out from the event, and they go, we need a year, and it's $35 million, fired. You know, no chance, try to negotiate down, say we need to get it done in time, no, fired. They leave. I think the company was called CIE. You know, so then now we're three months out, and all of a sudden, I think one person from that company stayed, and there were a number of other independent promoters brought in from, and producers brought in from Miami. And so then it's just like the network. I know this person does transportation. I know that person does hospitality. And all of a sudden, you have all these individuals now coming together who have never really worked together before. And coming back to why people didn't leave, everybody's working on their own little silo and working around the clock, trying to solve their own problem. And- It's harder to see the big picture that way, isn't it? Yeah, and intentionally kind of obfuscated. The big picture is kind of held back from every individual, and is really just funneled up to the top, which was a couple of individuals, Billy, of course. So I get brought in, when I first connected with Billy, it was the last weekend in March, and then I go to Exuma's to meet Billy and Ja Rule. I think it was the first week in April. And the event is May 5th, 6th, 7th, I wanna say. So we're one month out. Oh my God. And that's another thing. I'm in this documentary so friggin' much. I was there for a month. You know, they've been working on that for a year, but it's all good. And so I get down there, and again, right, like it's a little bit messy. I can't get ahold of Billy. We're supposed to be down there negotiating and figuring out what I'm going to do. He has this other gentleman whose name, I can't remember this guy's name. He's done a really good job of staying out of all this, so maybe it's for the best. But he was a former private equity vice president at a big fund, like really legitimate dude. If you look up his LinkedIn, you'd be like, okay, it adds more credibility. Karola's down there. She's an extremely well-connected investor. Her husband is in a massive finance company. And so now there's these kind of positive signals, but also I can't get Billy to talk to me. And I literally just flew from LA to Exumas. And it's like we're supposed to talk and he's just talking to everyone and people are grabbing him and he's trying to solve these problems. And I remember seeing him kind of looking at the Big Map. There's maybe 10 people in the production house which was at this resort called Grand Isle at the time. It was just like a condo. And he's looking at the Big Map and they're like, we don't have enough room on site for enough tents for all the guests that we have sold tickets to. And I see him kind of like trying to figure it out. And all of a sudden he's like, okay, we're gonna do a second site here where we're having this party and we're gonna build tents there. And some of the producers are like, well, pushing back. And he's like, no, no, no, that's it. And they're like, okay, well, I think we can make this work. And so my first impression of Billy was like, oh, maybe this guy's a problem solver. And that's how he got this far. But what I later realized was he just didn't really think through the kind of details of what it would mean to then do that, right? So now you're building tents in a completely different area. There's tide, there's wind, you need more security staff, you need more hospitality. It's just every decision you make in a festival or in any business has a ripple effect. And if you just make these quick decisions, yeah, it seems good at first, but then all of a sudden you have new consequences that you have to deal with. And so we're three to four weeks out from the festival and finally I get ahold of Billy that night. He's like, yay, talk to, I think his name's Kanal, talk to Kanal. So I go for a walk with Kanal and we get into a handshake agreement. He's like, look, we are covered with the site, we're covered with production. We really need help with booking houses for all these influencers that we need to house and for production staff and for investors and for press. And so I'm like, okay, cool, I can do that. And so my job became the housing guy and it was interesting about what I was doing is it sounds simple, but this island has a population of 5,000 people. I needed to find 500 beds, individual beds. Oh my God. And it's the busiest weekend. You're like knocking on doors or what? Actually, we had two locals, two local women who weren't featured in the documentary, kind of similar to Marianne, haven't been paid. One of them actually has had to leave the island because she recruited so many of the laborers to work and she wasn't really, she had just moved there, settled her family, she was from a different island and people were, after the festival were banging down her door for payment. So she had to leave. So we had two women literally going door to door. Another funny thing is there's no addresses on this island. So we had to build a map of our own map where we're literally drawing this house, that house and all the houses have names. There's no addresses. There's one, maybe two sets of keys. Anyway, so I had to find 500 beds on an island with 5,000 people and what's really kind of brushed over in the documentary is when they made the decision to change from Little Island, Pablo Escobar Island to Exumas, they kept the weekend against the island's kind of advice. And the government said, this is our, this is the National Regatta weekend. The National Regatta is a big sailing event down there. It's like the Super Bowl. So the island's hotels are all booked. So there's no hotel rooms. I gotta sit up. I'm gonna find backers. Start sweating again. It's crazy. Oh my God, you're stressing me out, man. It's like really tense in here right now. So yeah, so 500 beds, islands overbooked. We're literally renting houses from locals and they're gonna leave for the weekend. So what's that conversation look like? You knock on the door and say, hi, I know you live here. Can I pay you X amount of dollars to get the fuck out so I could put somebody in the car? I mean, what the fuck do you say? So that was like, most of the houses were kind of rental properties. But towards the end, it was like, yeah, hey, this is gonna be a crazy weekend. There's all this stuff going on. They're going to pay you and I'm not the one having the conversations directly with the homeowners. I'm kind of coordinating everything the two local women are because they're friends with them. So I can have the conversation and it just came down to money in the end. Like a lot of people were getting paid and what Billy would do was he would throw money at problems but often money that he didn't have. And that's another reason why he got such great people because they were being offered fees that were far out in excess of what they would usually get. These houses were getting rented for more than they would normally get. And so people would stick around and they thought, oh, this guy has money. And in the end it turned out he didn't. They spent a lot of money on the festival. I think all in they spent somewhere around 15 to $20 million. So real checks were being cut and whatnot. But yeah, it was just a mass scrambling, scrambling every day. And another thing is it's a huge coordination effort. So then you need to match people with beds. So it's kind of this giant puzzle. So we have 500 beds and that grew to 1200 because then we didn't have enough people on site. We ended up having much more staff than they thought originally when we went into this. There were 150 to 200 influencers that needed to come down. So I was told four to 500 beds in four weeks. I was like, okay, I got this, you know, whatever. Then I find out it's the regatta. Then I find out it's actually 1200 beds. And so we were calling in air mattresses. The air mattresses never came. They got stuck on the last cargo shipment. So as you, you know, I don't need to rehash this that much because it's in the documentary, but you can see that we just didn't have enough beds for the people that were coming. And it continued to be kind of glossed over as we'll figure it out, even to the point where the solutions that Billy was coming up with was, oh, we'll actually have a private jet because he was paying for the private jet on credit and not the houses which needed cash. And he was like, well, if a private jet fly people to Nassau staff. So you work all day, you hop on a private jet, you fly to Nassau, you fly back the next day on a private jet. Great. Like what? We rented a cruise ship, a 230 person cruise ship seven days before the festival. To fit more people. To fit more people. The cruise ship ended up being 20 feet longer than the dock. So we thought we could get the cruise ship on the dock. We kind of knew we were really trying to work with the Coast Guard to make it work in the end there like we can't. So now the cruise ship is 10, you have to tender. It's like a 20, so it's luxury, but it's a 15 minute tender on a lifeboat in the Bahamas and the ocean was rocky. And this is like for press and influencers. And I think in the documentary, there's a shot of one influencer is like, I'm not leaving this boat until I know. And so yeah, so that little silo, that little accommodation silo that I was spending every single day working on was its own mini disaster. I'm just trying to solve problems and figure it out. And of course the simplest solution would have been to cancel. The next simplest solution would have been to postpone. And the third simple solution would have been to just cut back the numbers to the amount of people that we could actually accommodate. But these guys just, I don't know, it's crazy. I asked myself why they didn't wanna listen. You hired people to kind of be able to tell you, hey, this isn't gonna work. And when they did, you just ignored them or fired them. What were the conversations like between you and some of the other people in the company who are organized? At what point are you guys talking to each other going, my side's fucked up. What's your side look like and what are we gonna do? Yeah, pretty much every day, you're chatting with people and it's like everyone's really strung out. Everyone's kind of trying to figure their own thing out. I don't even think I went to the site in the first two and a half weeks that I was there because my job had nothing to do with the festival grounds and so I was driving around the island looking at houses with these two women and one other man who I mentioned who's a Navy SEAL great guy. He trained Navy SEALs for like 20 years in the BUGS program. When you fly in, so you've seen the promo video which we had up on the TV just a minute ago and then you fly into this new island. What was your initial, did you get a look or did you just like, oh no? No, I honestly was not at the site. So I flew in and I drove straight to the Grand Isle where most people were staying on the production team and then it was just like I'm in front of a computer all day. Oh shit, so there's a part of you that thinks maybe we can still make it look kind of like that. Yeah, exactly and then of course, as you mentioned, like I start communicating with others, we all become friends. There's a camaraderie in this disaster which is one of the greatest things that came out of it for me was just like the people. Event producers are some of the most incredible people out there in my opinion because they work so, so, so hard behind the scenes. Most of them never get any credit for what they do. Each of them are kind of just blocking and tackling and they don't really get paid that much and it's just like they're in it because they want to be, again, they want to be creating these events, they want to be participating in the experience and they love, often they love music. And so like, you know, I'm building relationships with these people and it's incredible and I know they're all working hard, I know they're all capable and we all built this camaraderie where it was like the kind of contractors and then the fire full-time employees who had this like group of like five that just were inaccessible, pretentious, everyone thought rich and just frankly obnoxious, treating a lot of the staff inappropriately. I had to pull my first week there, I had to pull the chief marketing officer grant aside. We took a walk, I remember and he had yelled at me in front of the group or something and I literally pulled him aside and I was like, you brought me in here to fix your mess. Like, don't talk to me like that. It's crazy to me that, you know, you guys just couldn't postpone. Like- Could have. Like, so what? There was a second weekend. Yeah, was there like a thought process of that maybe Billy has this timeline, he's got this timeline to pay all these people off? Yeah, I think what it is is when you're, let's call it 10 million, I think it was ultimately 19 million but let's say it's $10 million in the whole. If you cancel an event or postpone an event without some kind of force majeure or natural disaster or whatever, you're on the hook for all of your R's fees, all of your production fees, everything and you're not getting that ticketing revenue. So people had booked flights, you know, they're gonna cancel, they're gonna want their money back. They're gonna want their flight reimbursement. So I think it was basically like in Billy's mind, if I'm kind of entering the mind of Billy, it's a calculus of if I cancel or postpone, I'm guaranteed to lose this amount of money. If I keep it, even if it's a mess, I could probably make back Y dollars, whatever. And so that's his calculus. So no matter how many times people said cancel it or postpone it or cancel guests or remove the influence or whatever, it was like, no, we have to move forwards. And yet he just couldn't see how disastrous it already was. Or not give a fuck. Or not give a fuck. That's what I, when I'm watching. That's a good question. When I'm watching, and then especially with how they kind of end the documentary where after this all unfolds, he seems to jump right into another kind of Ponzi scheme. So it makes me question, did he just not give a fuck since day one? Was he just trying to find a way to put some money in his pocket or launch his big app? A sociopath, you know, just has no care, doesn't care. It's hard, right? I don't even want to give him that much credit. In the documentary, Chris caught a clip of me saying, he's either a genius or a madman. I'm like, I can't believe I said that. He's neither. He's just a kid that wanted to be cool and wanted to be Elon Musk meets Richard Branson. And just like. Just playing with everybody's money. Yeah, exactly. And just like drive around in his Maserati and take private jets and meet models. And he was willing to go to any lengths to kind of project that lifestyle to people. And so I really have no idea what was going through his head. I mean, we literally, the writing's on the wall. Now people will then ask like, what was going through your head? Why did you stay? Right? And I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, we're on this island, we're trapped. You're paying for your own flight out of there if you're leaving. And a lot of people are working on bi-weekly paychecks. And you want to see something happen. You want to see it come together. And then also as it gets really close, you're like, if they're going to go through with this, how are people going to find their houses if I leave? Like I know that's like a little bit, maybe people will be like, that's bullshit, whatever. But it's kind of true. And one thing that I really didn't talk about much in the documentary that I'd like to just mention here is, so the day after the festival, after the first guests arrive and it's clearly canceled and it's a mess and whatever, we have 1,100 people on that island. And Billy and his core team are gone. Like no one knows where they are. The only person that stayed was Grant to his credit. He was hyperventilating in a paper bag, but he stayed and I thought that showed some level of integrity on his part. So now you have 1,100 people on an island and remember the charter jets were not scheduled to leave until Sunday, Monday. So we had no way to get these people off the island. And so there was a team of around 10 production staff who hadn't been paid, who had been working without sleep for a week at least and were there without direction whose job it was now to evacuate 1,100 people off of this island. And one thing that I learned is that a charter company has a legal responsibility to get everyone back. If they charter people out of the U.S. I think they have a liability if they don't bring them back. Oh, interesting. So we worked with the charter company. I wish I knew the name because props to them for getting it done. And we got everyone off the island that was on site in that next day. And that was actually when I discovered that Billy had committed wire fraud because the cruise ship was docked or not docked, the cruise ship was moored or whatever off the shore. Floating out there. And the person that we rented it from called me and said, hey, if you guys need help getting people off the island, we're in touch with the Coast Guard in Miami. We have enough food and fuel to get people there. It'll be, I guess, like a day or two day trip. And we're happy to do it, but Billy owes us 50% of the fee. So if we get the money in the bank account today, we'll take 250 people home. So I remember calling kind of the head of production who was figuring this stuff out, working with the charter company. I'm like, we have this solution. Let's do this. He gets ahold of Billy. Billy gives a green light. But of course it's we're, we don't, no way we can get the money in the bank account today. Does a wire confirmation work? So I call up the cruise owner and I say, hey, thank you so much. This is incredible. We're gonna send you a wire today. I'll get you the confirmation number. He goes, absolutely not. I'm like, what's wrong? He's like, we're not doing it unless the money hits the bank account. The last wire that Billy sent came five days late and the number was different. The confirmation number was different than the transaction ID that Billy had sent me. And so then more stories like that started coming out. You know, the Wi-Fi company, for example, I think had been sent a fake wire confirmation number. So the same way that Billy doctored his Apple stock certificate, he doctored wires. So like, you know that moment when you're about to send something, send a wire and there's like that little line and he just like photoshop that to my knowledge. Again, this is what I think he did. And just emailed a screenshot of it before sending the wire. So that's a federal offense. And so anyway, so yeah, so there's this whole crew of people that stayed even, you know, even for, I was there for I think 10 days after the festival or at least seven days after the festival, coordinating with the local government. You know, we had shipping containers full of liquor, which has monetary value, full of merch. There was, I don't know what happened to that fire merch. I think people are wearing it all over the Bahamas. And then it was like, it was high quality stuff. Like they did spend money on certain things. Yeah, there's a- I bet you it's worth money now to have money on it. I was just saying. The dream man, the dream of it. You could sell it on eBay. So we were staying and kind of coordinating with customs and security. And that was the day that a lot of the workers came down and were like, pay us. And I think in the end, we built a camaraderie with them because they realized that we hadn't gotten paid either. So it was like, there's nothing we can do. We're not the enemy. We want to help you. Were you afraid at any point? Like, oh, what if these locals turn on us and think that we're- I was at one point. There was one point the day we were getting everyone off the island where around 30 people came down. I mean, these guys were working in the hot sun for days, you know, on end and didn't get paid. And they were pissed off. And you know, there were, I think five of us in the production house at that point. And Skywalker, who's in the Hulu documentary, took two of his guys and he's Skywalker's awesome. Great name. Great name. I think his name is Daniel. But, you know, seasoned production veteran and really calm under pressure. And he walks out and kind of helped diffuse the situation. There's one shot in the documentary of someone kind of really in my face, really angry, really upset. And I think, again, it's just like they, you know, people are people at the end of the day. And I think they realized it wasn't us. I have to ask you, I had this like little bit of a conspiracy theory behind the whole documentary in terms of who's benefiting from this documentary, like who owns rights to these videos, like all that kind of stuff. Like I know you said like a bit of the marketing firm. Yeah, cause a lot of the video that was on the documentary was video that was done when you guys were putting the festival together. Am I contributing to this psychopath? Yeah, so that's a really good question. I had the same question. So like a lot of people, you know, I asked you guys about social media cause I've stopped reading my comments on social media now because there's such a mix of positive outpouring, which just gives you a big ego boost for no reason. And then negative outpouring, which is like, this guy's a con artist. He's just like Billy, you know, he's Billy's front man, whatever. For the record, I really dislike Billy. He owes me a lot of money. And it was a tough experience working with him. I refused to do any documentary that I knew explicitly would be enriching him. This is public knowledge now, so I'm happy to share it. The Hulu documentary paid Billy for his life rights and that pissed me off. And so I didn't do an interview with them. You know, their argument was, look, the Jinx on HBO had a murderer get interviewed. And sometimes you need to kind of, you know, work in that way to get the real story. So I guess to an extent, I understand that I don't blame them, but I just didn't want to participate in that. And so, you know, and then the Hulu documentary attacks the Jerry Media guys because the Jerry Media guys were hired as contractors to promote the festival on social media and to run the social media campaign. And so, you know, I think Hulu asks, are they culpable? And they asked me that, actually, when I refused to do it because of Billy. They're like, well, you're doing this other one. And in my opinion, I think they were irresponsible in that you should understand what you're promoting. You know, you guys probably get hit up to promote products all the time. We vet the shit out of them. Yeah, I was gonna say, you don't wanna promote a product and then it turns out that it's like causing cancer or something, right? So it's challenging, but at the same time, I think for them and for the models as well, which a lot of people are going after the models. That's, what do you think about that? That's kind of crazy. You know, like you get hired to do a job. You're going to a photo shoot, right? Like you have no idea, but again, it's like, I guess if a model did, you know, if Kim Kardashian did an ad for baby formula and the baby formula turned out to be, you know, carcinogenic, would people go after her? And maybe if she owned some of the company, I could see that, but if she got paid, I don't see how that could, you know, how that could work. You know, it's, here's some of the benefit I think that came from the documentary because there was a, I remember reading a lot about this festival when it all was going down. And it was getting a lot of hate in the sense that the people who got ripped off, everybody's like, well, screw them, they're rich people. Any rich kids flying in on private jets and who cares and whatever. And people were making memes about it, making fun of it. But people don't realize a lot of, and not that, you know, they deserve to get screwed just because they're wealthy. And they don't, nobody deserves to get screwed. But on top, but there's a lot of locals. There's a lot of people like yourself who work there, who, it's, I got anxiety watching the documentary. I can't even imagine the amount of the stress that went through that whole process. And afterwards. I get like mild PTSD watching the documentary. I believe. Luca who's in the documentary, you know, one thing that I think people don't realize, and now they hopefully do, is that, you know, this team came in and built a stage, like an incredible sound system. The whole stage shipped it over for Miami, worked day in and day out to get it done, stage light, stage sound lights. And that's Luca's company, Unreal Productions. You know, that guy's equipped, that guy rented equipment. That equipment was, what's the word? Embargoed, compounded, whatever it is, by the Bahamian government. Oh, shit. And was essentially held hostage to get payment that they were owed, that customs was owed. Oh, shit. And Luca was a contractor. So now he's on the hook for equipment. I think the thing went on for at least a month. Wow. Where his equipment couldn't get shipped back and nobody was paying for it, right? And he owed money to the owner of that equipment. So, you know, this is a guy that was coming to do a job. And, you know, a lot of us often talk about, and it's mentioned in the documentary, like had we not solved the problems, would we have continued, would this have continued? Right, cause it's like you solved the problems enough to continue. Yeah, and Luca, you know, I think Luca asked himself that as well. Like, you know, there were times when they didn't get paid on time. And if it had been like, no, then there's no stage, no sound, no lights, there's no show. So, you know, and the same thing, if there's no housing, there's no show. If there's no food, there's no show. So, you know, when Steven Starr left, we all were like, okay, canceled, seven days out, losing your caterer, you're done. Then Andy found a new caterer, right? And so solving problems. Cheese sandwiches. So the cheese sandwiches. You know how me, who doesn't like a cheese sandwich? I do want to go back to what you mentioned because I think, you know, we could talk all day about how big of a mess it was. And I think both documentaries do a great job of portraying, you know, just that. I think, you know, broader theme, right? Social media, how we all interact with social media. One thing that came out of fire is, I think, the new mentioning that you're doing a sponsored post, right? That's important. You need to tell people that you're getting paid to promote a product. I think that's something that is clear now and should have been clearer then. I think that, you know, that's definitely an important aspect of it. And something that I thought a lot about after the festival. And again, it's like, it's such a cut and dry story in some ways now because it's clear Billy was fraudulent. It's clear he committed crimes. We talked about why people stayed, how the events business is messy. You know, was he really trying to solve problems and get it done? Was he delusional? You know, those are interesting questions, I guess. But when I left, I kind of thought about, okay, what was I doing when I was there? And I was sitting in front of a computer, kind of going to houses, trying to organize this puzzle of who's sleeping where. I was on phone calls with influencers telling them that they weren't getting what they, what they thought they were. They hated me, all of them hated me. They're like, thought I was screwing them over because they weren't like a tier one influencer or something like that. You know, herding cats, but all the while I'm posting these kind of photos to my Instagram account, which is like view from the office, you know, and it's like blue oceans. And, you know, and I did go to the beach and it's beautiful. We want to share positive experiences, but like is fire just a microcosm of our current unhealthy relationship with social media where we all share the best snippets of our lives. Oh, I looked jacked in this photo. Here we go. Or like, I'm in this beautiful place. I'm traveling with beautiful people. And then really like, you know, it was like the background was my, it might as well have been just like a screensaver on my computer, you know? And I think we're all guilty of that in a lot of ways. And I don't want to loop Billy, who's a clear fraud into this. I wrote about this after the festival and I kind of looped him in as like, you know, maybe we're all just like him. Of course we're not all just like that, you know? But I think we're all culpable. That's a great point. And with that being said then, what happens to all of this afterwards? Like I know he's, is he going to serve time? He's in jail. Six years I think. Six years in jail, yeah. Right, and so. I think he's just. And what about all the people that, you know, bought tickets that they, do they just eat that? It's like, that's what you get for getting bamboozled. Like what happens to all them? I mean, there are lawsuits. I think the investor sued him. I know some production staff sued him. And of course there's like a massive civil lawsuit from attendees. One attendee says he was awarded $5 million in the Netflix doc and people are like, why doesn't this guy just pay, you know, everyone? And I think getting awarded and actually collecting are two different things. Yeah, if there's no money to collect. There's no money. And that's the point. No one's getting anything to my knowledge. You know, there's nothing in that entity anymore. The brand is totally tarnished. It's done, right? So no one's going to get compensated. How did this affect Ja Rule? I mean, people hate Ja Rule right now. They hated him before and now they really like him. I'm sorry. Like that was a bad business. I mean, 50 cents been tearing him up for like 15 years, man. I mean, yeah, Ja Rule came down a couple of times. He wasn't really, you know, involved from the standpoint of like seeing it happen. I think he just really believed in Billy, you know. That was his guy who was gonna, you know, take him to the next level. And so, yeah, I feel for Ja Rule in some ways. You know, he's a celebrity. People are asking, why doesn't Ja Rule pay all these people back? I mean, you know, maybe, I don't know how much money Ja Rule has. You know, it's a lot of money. So, yeah, it's kind of interesting the aftermath. You know, this, I was filmed a year and a half ago for this documentary. I can't believe we were all hanging out. After you filmed it. Yeah, with this. You were holding out on us. Yeah, with this was going on. So when you were. I was kind of hiding it. I didn't really want to talk about it. Obviously. I almost didn't get you to come down today. Yeah, so. Yeah, I'm sure my parents will be like, why did you do another interview about this? Yeah. They watched the documentary and called me and were like, why did you do this? Yeah. No, I mean. I find any cathartic from talking about it and, you know, processing it. It's a release. And I think, you know, two great things that came out of this. One is Marianne, who's in the documentary on Netflix. So a lot of us who agreed to do the Netflix documentary, Mark Musters, who's in it, Andy, who's in it, and a few other production people who were in the background but didn't want to be on screen, have been working with the Exuma Foundation to create essentially a charitable campaign to get locals paid back. Oh, wow. That's awesome. And so Marianne Roll has created a GoFundMe. It's not linked to Billy. We can talk more about like, there's comments on, you know, on this like, hey, this is just Billy scamming again. It's not linked to Billy. She was owed $120 something thousand dollars and she... That's the restaurant girl, right? That's a restaurant owner. She fed us every single day, like 30, 40 people, and then 30, 40 people on site. And then ultimately it was like over 100 people during the last two days. Every single day, around the clock, it was her full-time job. And she had just, the food was great, honestly. And from what she says in the documentary, she took her savings to pay her people that were actually supplying the food, right? I think she went into debt to be able to finance the supplies and things like that. So there's a GoFundMe for her right now. So there's a GoFundMe for her, but it's complete. She raised over $190 thousand dollars. And that might not have happened without the documentary. I don't think it would have. Like people are like, there was a comment that I saw that said, wow, you're waiting, wow, you waited so long to pay these people back. Nobody really cared. Nobody understood exactly, as you said, the full story. You know, that there were people in the background like Marianne that were really negatively affected by this. It was more about the shot in Freud of watching some rich kid eat a cheese sandwich. Right, that's what, that's kind of the feeling that I got too, that I feel like, because I remember like it happening and I didn't even think nothing of it. It just, it did. The memes that were made like Sal was saying. It was funny. Yeah, it was like, it was a jab at rich kids. It was more of a jab at rich kids. Like, ah, you got bamboozled by a bunch of instant models and shit. That's what you get. Like it was kind of like that. You don't really get to see all the people behind the scenes who got really fucked in this situation. So that's really cool. Now, did she start that on her own or did you guys help? So yeah, Chris, the director helped her set it up. The Matt Production guys posted it. The Jerry Media guys posted it. I posted it on my Instagram and it went really well. So she is now $190,000 in that campaign. I believe she said publicly on CBS that she will be donating the remainder to others that were affected. Now we created, a lot of people asked, why just Marianne? You know, like what about others? We then went ahead and partnered with the Exuma Foundation to create a second GoFundMe for the local laborers that weren't paid. And anyone that submitted an invoice to the Bahamian government, a lot of the production staff had kept their documentation of all the expenses owed, submitted it. We'll be able to get compensated if that's successful. That's raising $400,000. It hasn't really been publicly announced the way Marianne's was yet. I think that we'll be, I'm definitely gonna mention it this week. We'll link it to the show on the show. Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely awesome. We really appreciate that. Anything we can use our platform to help get these people paid that will help. Yeah, I mean, again, these guys like, man, it was hot and they're working all day building tents and carrying heavy equipment and whatnot. So if they get paid back, it's like a happy ending to all this. And so that's part of the reason why I ended up participating in the documentary and why others did as well. We felt it was a chance to kind of make certain aspects of this right. And I hope and believe that Netflix will be getting behind this new GoFundMe with their PR department. And I'm waiting for them to do that before, you know, before I kind of jump in because I want to make sure that it has the right people behind it. But the Exuma Foundation is very legitimate. You can look it up online. It's going directly to their bank account. It's not a scam, Billy's not involved. He's not getting enriched from this. And I think it could, you know, it shows like, again, going back to social media, the power of social media for positive change as well. You know, like social media was kind of people foam out into fire because they wanted to be a part of something that made them feel cool and they were jealous of that lifestyle in some ways. And then people shot and froided out of fire because they were excited to see a bunch of rich kids go down. And I think that shows two of the really negative aspects of social media and its power to create kind of this angst and the image of the other, you know. And I think this coming together for these GoFundMe's actually shows, okay, maybe we can use social media for good and, you know, to help raise awareness for different causes. Well, in my personal opinion, I believe social media to be really just a reflection of on a broad scale of our own, of human nature. I really do. I think the stuff that we see on social media that we don't like, we don't like it because I think we see elements of that within ourselves and the things that, and it just amplifies everything. You know, I wanna ask you a personal question because you said something very interesting. You said it in the documentary too, but you brought it up here where you talked about almost taking some responsibility in the sense that you said, you know, I was posting pictures of how beautiful it was outside and I wasn't really showing people how difficult it was on my own social media. You seem to be very evolved. Do you have like a personal practice or something that helped? Because I could see how people would just not try to grow from this and be like, I'm out of here. I never wanna talk about this again. It's not my fault. But it seems like you're trying to grow from this. Yeah, really evaluated. Where does that come from? Yeah, well, one, thanks. Two, I'm definitely not evolved. I'm a garden variety neurotic, just like many of us. And, you know, I'm addicted to social media. I can honestly say that it draws me in really strongly. I think we're all fighting a superhuman battle. Naval Ravikant is someone that I really respect and follow on social media. And he started Angel List and brilliant. You know, he posted this recently that, you know, the current battle against the mental battle against these behemoths like Google and Facebook who use human psychology, you know, to give us little dopamine kicks and kind of keep us coming back to the casino. The human willpower it takes to not participate in that is almost against superhuman in some way. So I think we're all susceptible. Tristan Harris started, I forget the name of what he started. He's an incredible person. I think he used to be involved with Google in kind of building, you know, getting people drawn in and saw the problems with that. He started a campaign against it and he talks about, you know, when you're trying not to turn on your phone or like take that hour a day off your phone, you know, you're competing against 3,000 of the best engineers in the world at Facebook whose sole purpose is to get you to come back. I've seen him do an interview. You have? Yeah, I've seen him do an interview. In fact, and the guys are gonna hate me because it's been a while since I've dropped the book Irresistible. But there's Adam Attler. There's, I'll check it out. It's great. It's a great read, Irresistible. And then so is iGen. And it really touches, it was mind blowing for me. It's almost been almost two years since I read it. And I used to just drop it on the show all the time and these guys used to tease me. The reason why I did, of all the books that I've read in the last five... Oh, it blew your mind. It did, it just, it will hit home for what we're in the middle of right now that a lot of people just are completely oblivious to. And in the book, they compare it to being addicted to cocaine and heroin and... It was the first forewarning, really, that was out there. Yeah, there's not a lot of books that are out there that are talking against social media. And it was the first one that kind of opened my eyes and even unveiled some of the tricks they use. For example, I don't know if you know this but even like Instagram, when you post a picture, Instagram does not release your likes all at once. They slow drip. They slow drip you. With people that you care about. Yeah, bro, that's like a... It's sick. Yeah, that's like you would tease in a drug addict. I'm saying giving them a free bump, knowing that they're gonna come back and get something else from you. That's dirty. It is. And I think we're, I think in a decade, maybe hopefully sooner we'll all look at these devices in our pockets and the way that they're used. And it's starting. Like the movement is really, really starting to take shape. The same way that we looked at Big Tobacco. People used to say smoking cigarettes was healthy. Now, again, like how do we reflect on what our role in this is as you guys are quote unquote, I guess influencers, right? I don't know if you can say it yourself. I hate that. I hate that. I hate that word too, right? It's the worst. It's the worst. We're podcasters. You're podcasters. You're a media company. You guys have built a media company, right? I understand that. But trying to evaluate the role that we all play and how can we shape the narrative so that we're improving it. And I think part of it, and I mentioned this in the article that I wrote After Fire is a bit about honesty and social media. Because the challenges, there's multiple challenges with social media, right? There's the addictive nature, which is kind of that engineering challenge that you described in Tim Woo talks about that in the attention merchants. And Tristan Harris is kind of building that up. And there's a number of companies actually out there that I personally support. And I'm going to mention them here, because why not? One is called Brick, Go Brick Now. My friend Tommy Sobel started it. It's a movement for taking one hour a day for starters to be completely off your phone, off your social media. You literally brick your phone, quote unquote, you airplane mode it, whatever, and go out and do something engaging in the real world with people that you love. And he's been building this movement through events. And I think that's fantastic. Another friend of mine, Andrew Murray Dunn, started a company called SIEMPO, which is now open source software for Android and not iOS yet, because iOS kind of really controls their software development for encouraging mindful use of technology. So like some of the tricks that these companies use, right? Your notifications show up, if you keep them on, in bright red, right? Your apps are multicolored and beautiful. So simple fix, grayscale your phone. Makes it less alluring. Yeah, you're not as driven by the dopamine kick of looking at the beautiful colors. Interesting, right? Makes sense. I shut off my notifications, but it actually in a way has made it harder. Because I'm like, oh, I'm missing something. I'll like catch myself if I'm sitting, waiting for something. I'm scrolling to reload my emails. And I think it's really a major challenge. I don't know that we have the tools as individuals to really, to truly navigate and resist, as you mentioned, these massive companies to sole purpose it is to captivate our attention. I think it's gonna, I think my personal opinion is gonna take at least one or two generations for us to figure this out. It reminds me, and this is because we're in the fitness and health space. It reminds me of the process food revolution. When you had all these people who were spending lots of time and money in engineering on making foods hyper palatable. And the result of that is this obesity epidemic. And we're just now starting to see that start to reverse a little bit. A little bit now people are becoming more and more aware, but it's taken a couple generations. So I think what's gonna happen, I mean, look at it this way. If you don't wanna be obese today, you have to have structure with your food and you have to structure in activity. Otherwise it's not gonna happen. I think with technology and social media in particular, you're going to have to have practices. It's just not gonna happen naturally. And I think it's gonna take a couple generations. It's gonna take us seeing our kids, this current generation of children, what do they call them, the Z generation or whatever. It's gonna take that generation growing up and seeing all the physical dysfunction and all the attention deficit disorders and all the lack of sleep now we're seeing what that's causing. It's gonna take one or two generations. We're gonna look at it and go, okay, we need to have these practices put in place because it's not as evident. I think we all see it. It's the canary in the coal mine, but it's not as evident yet. I think it will be more evident within a generation or two. So it's my personal belief. Do you see any opportunity being an events coordinator with potential things like, I know Burning Man is an example of that where people are sort of removed from technology and society for a bit, but that being sort of like something that people are gonna really subscribe to. Yeah, I mean, like I mentioned, Rick, you know, Tommy does retreats and go brick now. You can follow them on Instagram. You know, they just did an instinct choir last night. So when people come together and sing, they did Queen Bohemian Rhapsody. Oh, rap, nice. It actually builds, so instead of serotonin, which is the chemical in our brain, or dopamine, I think, and serotonin, which is kind of these more addictive chemicals, it builds oxytocin when you sing with people. So it builds bonding and trust. So they do these events and they're really fun. You know, I just did a weekend in Joshua Tree with friends, I didn't have my phone on for two days. I think it's really important to take it off your person. So some practices that I keep, as far as events, yeah, Burning Man, I mean, you know, it's a great place to connect. I think it's a little bit, you know, it can be a little bit excessive, I think a little bit preachy, right? There's gotta be a middle ground. I love Burning Man personally, I think it's fun, but even I'm kind of like a little bit taken aback by the Tulumanati and the amount of ridiculous money that's spent and everyone's dressing the same. So it's like. They're still taking pictures and posting them on Instagram somehow. We all do, I mean, I do it too, right? I'm sure if you look at my Instagram, there's plenty of Burning Man photos on there. It's beautiful. And I make some kind of deep comment that's probably not that deep. I stole it from Deepak's show, but I love it. I love it when you call yourself out. That's great, dude, that's great. But so I guess you asked earlier, so a couple of practices for fixing or fixing for coping with social media addiction or addiction to technology. One, don't sleep with your phone or computer in the same room. Hour before you go to bed, take your phone, take your computer, put it outside in the living room, charge it out there, whatever, and then do something, read a book maybe or work out or whatever it is, meditate just to get your mind right before sleep. Wake up, when I wake up in the morning, I like to do something other than check my phone first. So even if it's just as something simple as, I'm gonna shower before I look at my phone, right? Like waking up, the mind is still so malleable. We're kind of in between dream state and consciousness. And all of a sudden, the first thing you do is look at that screen. I mean, it can be alarming. Bad habit. And I feel, I mean, I feel, I don't know what you guys- You're building an addictive behavior that way, really. Yeah, and I don't know about you guys, but I actually, if I get in like a hole on my phone where I could go like 30 minutes or an hour, where I'm just Twitter, email, text, WhatsApp, Instagram, and all of a sudden I'm like, what just happened? Booty pics. Booty pics. Those get me every time. I don't know. They give me every time. I have to work. My girlfriend actually knows when I'm looking at booty pics. So I'm not allowed to. I just put it out there in the mail, you know what I'm saying? I mean, I'm like, why are you so many likes over here, Mark? She's like, why are you always liking booty pics? I can't help it. It got me. What is- She's gonna kill me for that. What a great way to kind of wrap this interview all up with you because it's so true that, you know, something like fire could have never happened to the level that it did without social media. Like that would have never, 20 years ago that couldn't happen. Fire was 2,000 people, right? Like it was a small festival. 90s Fest was a small festival. It was twice the size of that, right? Coachella is like 120,000 people. And yet it's huge. It's because of the amplification of social media. Yeah. Wow. What a great point. So you're out of that business now? Out of that business full-time, I still work with the Prime Social Group guys. I'm still happy to support other event producers. It's just, you know, it's really challenging for little upside for me, honestly. And I'm currently working in venture capital. I'm focused on crypto, actually, and blockchain. Oh, interesting. Very interesting. Yeah, and it's exciting. It's kind of, I love it because it merges technology and economics and governance. And it's a lot about free, people call Bitcoin free speech money. And there's a lot of talk in crypto about, we're very far off from it, but a decentralized web where your social media feed is not controlled by Facebook, Amazon, Google, Netflix. Not that these companies are inherently bad, but I'm a big believer in owning your own data. After Cambridge Analytica, what happened with them and Facebook, I think crypto has the promise of every individual owning and being compensated for their data because when you use Facebook, your data's being harvested and monetized. So if it's free, we're the product. And that's what it is. We are little bits of data that get fed into this mega system and we don't get compensated for it, Facebook shareholders do. And so I think crypto has the promise of ultimately creating a decentralized web, going back to the initial promise of the internet where we're compensated for our contribution to this kind of massive data machine that's being built. Fascinating, very interesting. Interesting. Well, shit, man. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I appreciate it, definitely appreciate it. We'll make sure to, we're gonna record an intro afterwards and we'll make sure to plug all those things you wanted us to plug and we'll put it in the show notes too, so. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, those are my friends, so I wanna get them up. Awesome, Mark. Thank you, man. Thank you guys. Wow.