Celebrity Collaborations: Ben Weiss on Seizing Opportunities and Building Impactful Connections | S2: E55

0:04Hey everyone, welcome back to Founder's Story. something that I want to know is how do I work with a celebrity how do I get a famous artist to say yes to collaborating with me it's something I've always wanted to do I have my sights set on a few people but how do I do it that's why today we have Ben Weiss the host of Legends and Leaders and the founder of Flight X he's worked with incredible people like Lil Durk he had his sneaker and incredible people working on it too. And he's going to dive into all that and share the exact secret to success on that. But Ben, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on.

0:44Excited to be here. So Ben, how did your passion for entrepreneurship begin? What was that spark that you said, you know what, I'm going to be an entrepreneur? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, since I was young, I was always interested in technology and entrepreneurship. I think it started along two different things. One was that the Steve Jobs book came out by Walter Isaacson. And when that happened, my mom and I were reading that on the porch outside. I used to live in Arizona. I grew up in Phoenix. And there was just so many fascinating things in there about the type of, it wasn't just about making money.

1:17It was just the lifestyle that he wanted. He wanted this opportunity to do something bigger than himself, something to change the world, to make a dent in the universe. And that was pretty inspirational. I was like, wow, this guy could do that through creating really cool consumer products. And also, Daniel, when like the iPod started to come out and it was just this incredibly beautiful device that was just, I mean, it was gorgeous, you know, from the physical hardware standpoint, the software was really seamless. It worked really well. I saw that and I got one and I was like, wow, this is just incredible.

1:46Like I want to build things like this. Like this is just so disruptive. It's a small little thing, you know, but it has all this power. You can have so many songs on this and apps and eventually, et cetera. and it also had a camera. It was everything in one. It was like, wow, you can build something like this. This is what I want to spend my life doing. I want to build impactful consumer products. So that's kind of how it began. And then I went to college at YU, Yeshiva University in New York, and got a business degree there. And after that happened, I was like, got to make something happen. You got to figure out how I want to go on this path.

2:17And fortunately, I went to this birthday party of this guy, Moishimana. Moishimana is a, for those who don't know, has become a real estate billionaire and he actually immigrated to the united states and was sleeping on like park benches like had no money whatsoever and built up a real estate portfolio by investing in miami pretty early on and also transforming the area like if you ever go to winwood miami people have heard of the winwood walls you know there are these beautiful paintings and murals all over that he said he spent like two million dollars a year at a point just painting up the area making it something that people would want to be in and he throws this free birthday party every year um to my knowledge every year to really celebrate what he's done in that area and get people into like winwood in miami and so a friend at the time was like hey ben why don't you come to this birthday party there's probably some great connections for you to meet people here i was like okay you know let me do that so you know i didn't go haven't been to parties really like that at the time and so i dressed up in a nice suit with a bow tie you know like with nice shoes and everything you know i didn't know what i was going to expect there daniel so i showed up to this party and you know it's a fantastic time and i'm i have a friend the friend who told me to come there was like hey let me get you a vip so there's like three different vip sections he gets me into them and I basically spend my time networking and trying to connect with the right people and figure out, you know, how to really get an opportunity in this space.

3:32And I had some ideas at the time. I didn't really meet anybody in the first section, tried the second section, didn't really meet anybody. And I was like three hours into this, you know, at this party. And eventually right at the end, when I was about to leave, he's like, you got to come into this last section. So I came in and I met this guy who was super connected in hip hop and through him we got to Dirk and spent like 15 hours on a pitch deck and so on and so forth and luckily was able to get it done. Wow, I mean, there's so many things to dissect there. Steve Jobs, I mean, talk about not going into it just for money, going into it to change the world.

4:05So I'm glad that you brought that up. And also saying yes to the meeting. I know so many people that will, they won't do something. They'll say no because they're like, oh, well, what's in it for me, right? Like, what am I going to get out of this? or it doesn't fit into my day today. Not understanding that if you want to make it happen like you did, you've got to go out there and make it happen. And you've got to say yes. You've got to put yourself in the right people, which means it might be uncomfortable. It might make you feel uncomfortable. So you did that. So what's next? So you did this pitch deck, you pitched him.

4:39And then how did you really get this to move to the next level? Yeah, so I totally agree. You've got to put yourself out there and be willing to take risks. and I even with like meetings and stuff like I always am pretty open to taking maybe 10 minutes 15 minutes talking to somebody because you never know what could come of that so with this case in particular you know so I meet this guy he's well-connected in hip-hop and actually the way he looked at the time was he was wearing shorts and a hoodie and I'm at this billionaire's birthday party so I was a little bit like I don't know if this guy you know this really fits in here what's going on a little a little different um but I was like okay I'll give him a shot and so we got the meeting with Dirk I mean it took some time but I identified Dirk as somebody who would be a great potential fit because he had a great audience like 14 million people following him on instagram at the time a million likes to post and he was poised to have potentially the number one album in hip hop at the time and it actually did become the number one album his next album after that so i thought this was a good opportunity um so we had to work through a couple of different people we get this meeting and you know i give it my all like i'm just this young guy right and trying to make something happen in this space and you got this artist here who's you know worth millions and become very successful um and so just really told him like hey this is what the opportunity is if you're not going to get a brand deal from a major footwear brand you know you're not going to be able to monetize in this space and it potentially could be one of the most lucrative categories for you and we can bring you that type of quality that you know and love from other products out there we can bring that to this you know and we can also do it different we can make you stand out and be innovative like you're going to embrace nft technology we're going to give you a digital version um at the time as well and he i think he bought into that concept and saw the passion that I had and that the team had for wanting to do this with him.

6:17And not everyone sees that all the time when you're pitching them. So his team basically is like, okay, give us a contract. So, you know, fortunately I have some family that are attorneys, so they helped me out with that. And we got them a contract, you know, pretty quickly. But it took some time, took a little bit, a couple of weeks after until we got them on it and signed. And it was significant, you know, to be able to get an opportunity like that. I think, you know, part of it was the timing of it, that everybody was interested in doing something in the nft space at the time and he didn't have a project yet and then also the fact that he understood it you know sometimes people pitch others on ideas and they don't fully understand the target audience and he understood hey i like shoes i am in the space i enjoy it let me actually make something that's my own even if i don't fully understand the nft components overall um and so we got that together and one of the biggest promotional opportunities for it was the full send podcast i had the opportunity to be on the full send podcast with him and put it together, helped with that, and which had around 4 million views, that podcast.

7:09And that did a lot of wonders for us and helped put that together through a friend of mine, Casey, who happened to know one of the managers behind the scenes and called him up. And he just met this, you know, one of them like three days before, and we connected it all. And then we're on a yacht in Miami shooting this podcast. So a lot of great opportunities came from it. I mean, if I'm going to shoot a podcast, I want to be on a yacht in Miami. Like there's no other place, maybe a yacht in Monaco, but I mean, a yacht in Miami sounds incredible. It seems to me like you're really good at seeing opportunities and then going for those opportunities, but also being able to get other people to buy into your vision, which I think is what Steve Jobs did so well is, you know, he's the visionary of which it sounds like you are too.

7:50You're the visionary and you're getting people to buy into your vision. And it sounds like you're very passionate about this. So, what do you see as being next? What are you doing next? I don't know if you can talk about any projects, maybe touch on your podcast as well. Sure. Yeah. So I mean, just to kind of talk about the point you just mentioned, like having a vision, I think is so important. You have to have a clear direction. Not everybody has a vision, and it takes some time to figure out what direction you want to go in. But I think there's an element of respect. And it's much easier to convince people to do something if you have a really all encompassing plan, and then they can see the vision that you have.

8:24I think it's a really important aspect, but it's got to be clear how to execute that vision you need to have steps in order to get to that point and make it clear to them this is not just a you know pie in the sky type of idea this is something that can be real and i think that that's what he related to there in terms of what's next so right now i've been hosting a podcast that has some similarities to what you do you know it's called legends and leaders because those are the two categories of people we want to interview you know people that have done something legendary or a current leader or previous leader and we've had on some great guests like kevin o 'leary from shark tank and missed universe from America last year, Arpinola, the person who invented Shazam.

8:57But the goal is to break down the steps in people's journeys. Because I think that a lot of times you see interviews with people and they're like at a certain point and they've achieved a lot and you kind of see them when they're at that point. And then they share a little bit before, a little bit after, but like the steps, I think, how did you get educated in this area? How did you go and scale this? What did it take to get the financing for it? I think those steps are super important overall to aspiring entrepreneurs, et cetera. And then also working on something else that we're going to unveil soon to kind of tie in, I think, what could potentially be the future for content creators and physical apparel products.

9:30And so that's something that we're going to, we're working on actively getting into. And I think there's a lot of exciting potential. When you realize you need to hire, it's usually already too late. I've been there wasting weeks waiting for decent candidates. If I had used Indeed, I could have hired way faster. So when it comes to hiring indeed is all you need stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites indeed sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast with sponsored jobs your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster and it makes a huge difference according to indeed data sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45 more applications than non-sponsored jobs one thing i love about indeed it makes hiring fast because it puts you right in front of the right people without wasting time.

10:18Plus, there are no monthly subscriptions, no long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And while I've been talking, 23 hires were made on Indeed worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash founders story. Just go to Indeed.com slash founders story right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash founders story. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Ben, I mean, this whole creator's economy thing is just, as we know, it's just continuing to be bigger and bigger and bigger.

11:05I mean, so many companies that I know, they don't even do regular social media ads anymore or traditional advertising right they're using user generated content uh they're doing now tick tock shop amazon live like all these things it's really becoming uh the creator's economy is like the backbone of a lot of marketing and a lot of abilities but there's also a piece where i don't see a lot of times where creators do something that is successful without without them selling somebody else's products, right? Or somebody else's brand. So how do you see that going? Do you see creators just continuing to sell other people's items or are they going to make their own items?

11:48And if so, how can a creator be successful if they're building their own brand? Yeah, I think it's a good point, Daniel. I think that content creators are going to get the same opportunities that athletes have currently. I mean, they've got just as much reach as these athletes. They've just as much influence. And arguably they have more influence in certain areas because they're the ones posting content and interacting with their audiences every single day. Athletes, a lot of their fame is a derivative of the performance that they have. You know, you perform on a basketball game, you gain a certain amount of following, just like we just saw over the Olympics with guys like Noah Lyles, you know, gain an incredible following after his performances with racing.

12:23And that's great and all, and they can interact with their audience. But a lot of these content creators, their job is to grow an audience every single day. So I think that that's just a bit different. and there's i think that the athlete level opportunities will be provided to this type of talent class to have their own products to have products that really embody what their brand is about and there are some that are building their own brands but i think that's just going to go and really become a much bigger portion of of these people's revenue and not just focus as much on ads because they've got the audiences and now there needs to be somebody that really offers to them the opportunity that also puts them on the same pedestal that athletes are with that type of quality of product with the opportunities to scale globally like athletes have and really the entire supply chain that's the same if not even better for these types of people so when that happens i think that's when this creator economy will become really a whole different place and will also inspire a new generation to go after their their dreams and the opportunities that they want because they'll be able to be in the products of the people that they admire and they love and right now you know it's not like everybody looks up to be you know to be an athlete and it's really shifted a lot.

13:26Last number I saw, it's like 50 % of the youth wants to be content creators. They want to go after that type of dream and ambition. They want to be a YouTuber, a Twitch streamer, et cetera. So we need to give them the opportunities to dream and believe that and what better way through apparel and other things in that category. How do you feel about college? So if I could be a creator and maybe I don't need to go to college or I can get a job, I don't need to go to college, or maybe I do need to go to college. There's a lot of back and forth dialogue around this i'm curious on on your perspectives at being the age that you are and the experiences that you're having so how do you see this should somebody go and be a creator maybe try entrepreneurship maybe the both or go to school what do you what are your opinion on this yeah it's a good point that's a good question um i think the college right now it really just depends on who the person is some people maybe aren't cut out for college and there's nothing wrong with that you can go on any path and become successful i really truly believe that that's possible but college is something that I went through I learned a lot from being in college because I thought that the discipline and you know you learn a certain regimen that is like a work-life balance for you later on I think that those things are helpful you do get exposed to interesting ideas I was fortunate to have New York City as the campus that I was on so you know there's so many opportunities in New York City if you want to take advantage of it you know for example because I was in New York I went to this talk at Cornell Tech and they had the president of Microsoft at the time.

14:52And this was when they were trying to deal with like AI and how to make AI not biased on certain things. And so I just walked up to him and gave him some advice on that. And then later Microsoft wound up putting something out that had some similarities to what we discussed. And at the time he told me, he's like, that was a good idea. You know, that that is an interesting angle. So you never know what can come of it. And I got to learn a lot from him and from other people in the area. So there are certain opportunities that can arise. I think that you've got to be mindful of the expenses that come with college.

15:17But statistics show that 50 % wind up earning like 50 % more if you have a college degree versus not if you do go into that field. But if somebody's an entrepreneur, I think it's a nice fallback. You know, it's something that I've got a college degree, it can be reputable for raising money from funds, they see, hey, you went to this college, they know a certain kind of product comes out of that college. So there are other benefits, even if you're an entrepreneur, you're not using it for a job that can come from that. Wow, I could say one thing about you is that you are a go getter, like, you have no problem going up to somebody and talking to them like who would have gone up to the president of microsoft at that time and given them advice when they're in college i think a lot of people would have imposter syndrome or just don't think that they should even do that and how's that going to be but i can tell that that you that is not something that impacts you negatively like you go up there you make it happen that's super inspiring and so i hope a lot of people see this and i hope they're also inspired if people would get in touch with you they want to find out more because i know you have tons more things coming up on the pipeline how can they do so yeah um they could reach out to me on linkedin or any other social media instagram twitter or x um any of those would be good um but i think just like daniel you know it's important that you go and and you try to you know to go after what you want in life and what you know what's the what's really the worst that could happen if i didn't go talk to the president microsoft and you know i really i would have gained nothing no no other potential knowledge from that.

16:45And even if I shared with him an idea, and he didn't like the idea, you know, okay, so that's that maybe he doesn't remember me. I mean, there's nothing really to lose. So you know, if you have nothing to lose, then might as well talk to him, right? Hey, I like that. If you got nothing to lose, there's been some times where I'm regretful in life, like, and I should have talked to that person. Like, I was right there. Then I had times where I did talk to somebody, I said the dumbest stuff ever. But at least I did talk to them. So at least I could say I talked to this person, because if I didn't, I'd be more regretful.

17:17I think you're more regretful when you don't do something than when you make a mistake and you do something. So, you know, take that to heart. But I appreciate you, Ben. Always great having you. Love the show, podcast. Thank you for also having me on as a guest. And man, you got to come back because I can't wait to see what you're working on next. I know you got some stealth projects, something in the works that you're working on. So I'd love to follow up with that as well and see you again here on Founder's Story. Thanks for having me on. I love what you're doing. I think it's great for entrepreneurs and others to learn from people's stories.

17:49And I think you do a nice job hosting. So thanks for this.