BIG BADASSES IN BUSINESS

0:00You're a professional web creator who needs a platform that works as hard as you do. Wix Studio is built for you. Whether you're a designer, developer, or marketer, ready to amplify your impact. Build intuitively with advanced design features and AI-powered tools. Manage your clients and projects efficiently from one workspace. Scale with dynamic systems and fully managed infrastructure. Create exceptional websites with hyper-efficiency. Go to wixstudio.com. This folder called Good Fucking Ideas. If you don't like what I'm about to present to you, I'm going to put it in this folder and I'm going to sell it to one of your competitors next year.

0:35The whole game is being in the right circles and being around the right people. Buff Life with capital B, which means be. Be. Be who you are. Be the best you can be. Being young in the industry and being a leader there, that's a hardship. Consistency is key. My whole life is structured, and so what do you need out here to be successful? Two things. Discipline and structure. To be successful or to find success or to find happiness, the most important thing is to find what you're passionate about. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month.

1:14Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now. Hey guys, Ryan Offord here, host of the Radcast. Oh man, it's time. That's right. Some of the biggest badasses in business. We've brought together some of the best of, some of the best guests we've had the last couple years. Giving some of the best business advice to be a fucking badass. That's right. We've got Kyle Creek, the captain. We've got the voice of the octagon, Bruce Buffer. We've got so many big names. I can't even keep up. Howie P.

1:54the legend himself. We got so much advice, made my head explode. It's all together in one episode for you, for me, to go back and listen to. We got so many great guests, it's hard to keep up, but this is going to keep you up with being a badass in business. You know where to find us, theradcast.com. Listen, enjoy. Let's all strive to be a badass. The marketing impressed me with you guys. I actually admired you from afar. So I was like, okay, this is a company that knows what they're doing. So talk to me about the brand. As much as I enjoy advertising, there's still nothing that I enjoy more than being able to write in a way that truly connects with people.

2:36For two and a half years, we built up our own fan base the old school way and got it to a point to where it was big enough, but we couldn't get any bigger unless we brought in the right partners. It's time is such a strong, somewhat generic statement that I own in respect to where I own in trademark wise that I don't want to abuse it. I want to build it. So it's careful marketing, careful, consistent marketing. The thing that we found most successful is what flavors are relatable to our consumers. So you think back to your childhood. You know, did you grow up eating cinnamon rolls or cosmic brownies or, you know, did you love the icy flavors from the gas station?

3:17What can you pull a story from and put into a cookie? I look back on everything that I did when I was a kid or even, you know, having a nickname like Lights Out at 16 years old and getting a tattoo on my right forearm. It was branding. It was marketing. I think that we just use the word for it now. So, you know, though I had mentors and things, I was doing this long before anybody came into the picture. I'm a very curious individual, and I read everything. And I want to know how they did it, why they did it, what was their mindset, what were their failures. So, yes, this has been baked in me for a long time.

3:56We're talking social media. We're talking to Kyle Creek, the captain. What's up, man? Thanks for having me, man. I'm excited to be here. Your best work, which has made you Insta-famous, Twitter-famous, whatever you want to call it, but it's obviously helped your career, helped your social media. The campaigns the clients turn down are the ones that blow up on social media. Any client out there listening, I know some of you are past, present executives. Yeah, you got to push the envelope if you want to move the needle. It's true. So I actually have a folder on my desktop to this day, and this folder's saved, and it's called Good Fucking Ideas.

4:33I probably, I haven't looked lately, but I've been saving ideas there since maybe 2015. And every new laptop I get, I transfer the folder over. And so there's maybe a thousand pieces of copy or scripts or different campaign ideas in there. And I used to pitch clients often when I was doing a lot of new business. And I would pull up my desktop as the pitch started, and I'd point to that folder. And I'd say, see this folder called Good Fucking Ideas? If you don't like what I'm about to present to you, I'm going to put it in this folder, and I'm going to sell it to one of your competitors next year.

5:04I started leading my pitches that way. And it helped me get a lot of ideas across because they realized I would do that. And I still, every now and then when I'm consulting, I go back and I find stuff that I wrote in 2016 that I can update. And it's still a very solid campaign. It would work correctly. And so it's a folder I've had exactly for the reason you're saying. Whenever I tried to push the envelope for a client and they didn't want to, I just believed in it enough to know that someday it would work and I've just been saving them and collecting. It's cool to win ad awards and it's cool to get stuff like that, but there's nothing that will make me feel more fulfilled as a writer than hearing that I pulled someone out of a dark spot or I helped them laugh when there was nothing else in their life to laugh about.

5:48Where does your point of view come from? The captain that instigates, that writes this way, has a certain style that came from somewhere. It's all his own, which is, I'm sure you're an original, and you are. Something built your perception, your take on the world, your way of thinking. I would think there's been molding along the way. I think the way I was raised helped shape a lot of my view of the world because I was raised in Utah. I was raised in LDS. I was a Mormon. And growing up, I felt very suppressed and I felt very censored. And I felt like I had a very constricted view of the world because everything was viewed for this lens of the religion.

6:34And if I was going through something as a teenager that all teenagers go through and I wanted advice from my parents or advice from one of my leaders, I would always receive the answer in the form of, you should go look this up in the scriptures, or you should pray about it. And it drove me crazy, because what I wanted at that time was to have a human talk to me as another human. It made me feel very misunderstood, and it made me feel alone. So for many years, my primary fuel in life was trying to prove to my family I didn't need their religion to be successful. I didn't need their religion to be happy.

7:15And so that would probably be where some of my harshness came from, because it came from a rebellious energy. The other side of that is I wanted other people to not feel alone, because I had felt that way for so long. And I wanted people to feel understood. I wanted people to feel like there was others out there like them. And so that's where I'd say that mold of the two came together to where I had that rebellious energy, but also I wanted to genuinely help people not feel the way I did and see it as an example to other people that listen, you can speak up and you can receive criticism and your life can go on.

7:50Jared Johnston, what's up, brother? Hey, man. Thanks for having me on here, dude. Hey, man. My pleasure. Holy shit, this guy's written like 12 songs that I sing in the shower that I didn't even know were his original writings. You're a badass, man. I love it. let's give everybody a little bit i know we could talk for probably two hours about your story but you know maybe give us the a little bit of that background and your history and what makes you such a damn good country music writer man i grew up in nashville was born and raised which is kind of that's not the normal situation you know they i think they kind of call us unicorns the people that are actually born in nashville rather than moving to nashville and i came up You know, went to school downtown, Heem Fog.

8:32My dad was always a drummer at the Grand Ole Opry. He was a drummer for a bunch of older country artists in the 80s and early 90s. And then he started pitching songs, which means, you know, like finding songs from writers and taking them to John Michael Montgomery or whoever and trying to get them recorded. And so I saw that at a very early age. And I remember seeing how excited dad would get when he got a whole quote unquote a hold, which means the artist or the manager liked it for whoever. And I was just like kind of mesmerized by that whole thing, like the equation of sitting down, writing a song by yourself or with friends.

9:08And then two weeks later, it's, you know, a recording by Garth Brooks or whoever, you know what I mean? So I kind of started touring when I was 18, playing drums for a bunch of bands. And then I started writing songs, man, and real serious about it about 2005. Got my first publishing deal. And from then on, it's just kind of been a crazy, you know, country-western ride. How do you classify your writing style? I mean, do you think you have a certain style? I think the reason I've had the success that I've had, or at least part of it, part of the whole game is being in the right circles and being around the right people.

9:43And like I said, it's also like who you surround yourself with, the people that you're writing with, and the people that work your songs that are working for your publishers and stuff. But yeah, I just try to go into every room with something a little different and try to do things the way that aren't expected. The business of country music. You know, you've been in it for a while. I mean, 05, like you said, maybe getting your feet really into it with the songwriting. I mean, you've seen a lot of change, right? It can be pretty brutal. An example, I started in 2005. That's when I got my first publishing deal, making 30 grand a year.

10:19I had to turn in 10 songs a year, which is 10 hundred percent songs, meaning like if it's a two way counts as half of one. You know what I mean? Or if it's three way, so on and so forth. And that and it was a co-pub deal, which means I own half, they own half. So that's a pretty good deal coming into the game. And my publisher was a really nice guy. He helped me out. So late 2010, where I had my first number one, that's five years, you know, like and there would be a couple songs that got recorded. in between there, but you're not really seeing money from that unless it's on the radio. So you're living off that publishing, you know, the 30 grand a year.

10:54And you're trying to keep that deal every year too, which is if you're not getting a bunch of stuff going on, it's tough. Now I had the luck and the blessing of being also like what they call triple threat. So I was writing for other people. I had my own band with a record dealing Warner Brothers at the time called American Bang, I also was producing a little bit of stuff. So there's many irons on the fire there as far as business speaking. And I try to look at it still that way. I mean, there's a lot of busy cats in Nashville, but I would say right now with the Cadillac 3, all the touring, the production work, I'm producing Kip Moore's new record.

11:29I'm doing, just did Sam Williams record and a bunch of stuff like that. And then also the writing every day, it gets pretty it's pretty crazy but if one thing's not doing as well you got something to follow on the other side you know we couldn't tour bruce buffer what's up bruce hi how are you everything good everything's great man and i love the t-shirt where did it's time come from let's just that i want to know where that came from when i started in the ufc announcing and i've been managing my brother michael buffer you know the legendary greatest announcer of all time let's get ready Rumble.

12:02We met late in life. When we did, I owned two companies. I had my first company when I was 19. I've been an entrepreneur ever since. I've owned a variety of companies, a couple failures here and there, but most all successes, I'm proud to say. When I met him, knowing that he was the announcer, he was and everything else, we eventually, I sold two companies and became his manager, managing his career and everything. I wanted to announce back then, we agreed I wouldn't do boxing, and I said something would come along, and boom, this is a very short version. And boom, the UFC came along and I worked my way into the UFC, but I never wanted to be Frank Sinatra Jr.

12:33I never wanted to be, no respect Frank Sinatra Jr., but I wanted to create my own style. I wanted to grow with the UFC to help market the brand, being the marketing and branding person they am first and foremost before I do anything else. And I told him, I said, I need to grow with you as the announcer, but I didn't think I needed a catchphrase. I'm not catchphrase driven. I was more like, it's not what I say, it's how I say it. So it wasn't until about seven years later that his time came about. Everybody always was going, let's get ready. Let's do this. They all wanted to be Michael. I just didn't want to come across like that.

13:03I told myself if in three years I could build my own identity, my own style, I would continue. If not, I would quit because I just didn't want to be that way. So every day I wake up, and I was kidding before, but I'm serious, I look in the mirror and go, it's time. It's time to have the best day that I can possibly have. So I used to open the show saying, it's time to begin the ultimate fighting championship. And then Dana White and the Fertittas brought it. bought the show. Dane, I met, he said, I don't want you doing that at the front anymore. Top of the show. And I said, fine. But then I got down to the main event and I realized, Hey, everybody's sitting here for five hours.

13:37They watching the show, the main events about to start. Um, the fighters been training six to eight weeks with its biggest moment in their lives. This is definitely it's time. This is, this is, it's time. And this is when it's going to happen. And I started incorporating it in and gradually over time, it developed to the style that I do it now, whether I'm jumping or doing whatever. I never know physically what I'm going to do until I do it because I never rehearse. Never. I feel the energy of the crowd. I just let it fly. But when I was in Brazil and 20 ,000 Portuguese speaking people said, it's time with me.

14:06I knew right then it hit. And that's when I started building it up. And then eventually over the last 15 plus years since then, you know, I've developed into products, you know, and many things happening worldwide. And now as time has taken on a very individual branding of itself. I plan on reaching a billion dollars in sales with its time, whether it's sales of other, not in my pocket, you know, sales of other companies, everything, as I achieved over a half billion dollars in sales with Let's Get Ready to Rumble. But I love my brother, but I'm a competitor and I'm going to come in first. The UFC has had this meteoric rise in the last 10 plus years, but like, did you see that coming?

14:46I knew from the very first day I got involved, it was going to be the biggest thing in fighting sports. You know, when you're in business, you need to be able to hopefully recognize the brand, recognize the future. I always think three steps ahead in life, like chess. I apply that to every aspect of business and any business I've owned or been involved in. Because to me, all business is the same. It's just the product that's different. But you've got to recognize what has the chance to be the big hit. I knew that was going to be with Let's Get Ready to Rumble. I got contacted by another company called Party Poker back when poker was not even as popular as today.

15:14who wanted me to be part of it. One of the things I regret, I didn't grab that opportunity back then because I realized online poker was going to explode. And I'm a big part of poker myself in my private life. But when the UFC came on, yes, it was raw. It was a spectacle. It needed refinement. But I decided to stick with it, make the short money back then that I made, lose money going on trips, everything I could do realizing that if I stuck with this because consistency is a key in business, that I knew it would all pay off. And I have a simple theory, and that's whenever I do business of any kind, I have a three-foot theory, everybody around me be happy, healthy, and prosperous.

15:49And my goal is to help everybody around me get there because then it all comes back to me. What you're talking about is what life is all about, these experiences. And I always tell people when I do my branding and marketing, motivational speeches or whatever, one key thing in business is find out what you're passionate about. And if you can learn how to monetize it, you're not really working, you're living a lifestyle. And I call my life by design. It's just like my new company, Millions.co, where we're branding athletes and everything. This is my Millions.co t-shirt. It's Buff Life with capital B, which means be.

16:21It's real simple. Be. Be who you are. Be the best you can be. As someone that doesn't even eat sweets really that often, if there's a damn cookie on the table, and especially this kind of cookie, I'm getting it. It's Sawyer Hemsley, co-founder of Crumble Cookies. What's up, brother? What's up, man? Happy to be here. Thanks for the invite. Hey, man. No, it's all good. I'm glad you could join us, man. I want to get into your story and, you know, all the ice right here. No, no setup, no anything. Why do those cookies taste so damn good? A bunch of luck we put in there and lots of sugar. No, I'm just kidding.

16:52Honestly, we go through a rigorous process to make these cookies awesome. And we get a lot of customer feedback and we don't put them on the menu until they're perfect. So Sawyer, talk to me. I know you weren't. We talked pre-episode. I read a lot about your story. You're a professional web creator who needs a platform that works as hard as you do. Wix Studio is built for you, whether you're a designer, developer, or marketer ready to amplify your impact. Build intuitively with advanced design features and AI-powered tools. Manage your clients and projects efficiently from one workspace. Scale with dynamic systems and fully managed infrastructure.

17:29Create exceptional websites with hyper-efficiency on Wix Studio. This is the story of the one. As a custodial supervisor at a high school, he knows that during cold and flu season, germs spread fast. It's why he partners with Grainger to stay fully stocked on the products and supplies he needs, from tissues to disinfectants to floor scrubbers, all so that he can help students, staff, and teachers stay healthy and focused. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done. not originally a chef a cookie master or whatever but let's talk about a little bit of that professional journey and what led you to uh crumble yeah so honestly crumble started out as a side hustle never anticipated ever being a career i was in my last year at college up at utah state university in logan utah very rural community compared to the rest of the nation and just needed something to do on the side.

18:32You know, I was studying 15 credits, busy college student, and I was researching things that I could do. And I saw that there were bakeries and cookie concepts out there. But it was at the height of when DoorDash and Grubhub and the delivery services were coming out. And so I connected with my cousin, Jason, and I said, we should totally deliver warm cookies to people's doorsteps. and that was the main focus like aside from culinary and knowing all about food science and all that we just said let's just make grandma's mom's recipe and deliver it by using technology so people could stay at home in their pajamas or for girls night or date night whatever the convenience was there less mess and you get warm cookies just as you would making them yourself was it chocolate chip cookies, it has to be right.

19:23Like that's where it all starts, right? Absolutely. Family recipe. We actually mixed and blended, you know, my grandma's, some of Jason's, my cousin's family side, and we just tested. We just tried different brands of chocolate chips, of sugar, of flour techniques. And again, we didn't know what we were doing on the, in those early days. So we just networked and connected with other food professionals. We watched YouTube, read books, read cookbooks, you name it. We just were hungry to be that entrepreneur and to make something successful. And then we just went for it. From the get-go, the marketing impressed me with you guys.

20:00I actually admired you from afar with the marketing before I even tried your cookies. I was like, okay, this is a company that knows what they're doing. And then I had the cookies. I was like, holy shit, this is all coming together, why they're both working so well. So talk to me about the brand. So my background is in branding, advertising. My cousin's background is in technology and paid ads, things like that. So together, I think, first of all, we have an amazing partnership where our skills helped each other. How the marketing started is it all came down to the packaging and the experience of what our product was, you know, placed in.

20:40And that was our pink boxes, which you referred to just in the short time that we've been talking. And that's memorable. It's something that's energized. You can connect with that. It's a soft color and it attracts our target audience, which is our soccer moms. Right. And so naturally they were pulled to our packaging. And from there, we just knew we had to capitalize on Instagram because TikTok wasn't a thing back then. We were really engaged on Instagram, we would run paid ads on Facebook, and we would try our best to respond and answer every single message or comment on these two platforms.

21:15And it just really helped to our advantage to the point where people were just tagging their friends and doing the marketing for us organically. And so that's really how the marketing started. And then now with time, as we've built out our team, we put a lot of paid ads into TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and Pinterest and Twitter. But again, organic for us has been huge. It's been crazy because people love the product. And when you love a product so much, you want to organically promote that to your inner circle. What's been the biggest pain points or learning, you know, as you've gone on this journey?

21:48You know, you're a young guy, but you've been successful. You had a great idea, great execution. but talk about you know that entrepreneurial journey you know maybe the uh not the dark side but the learning side you know like it's everybody gotta get understand it isn't all perfect all the time right oh it's not like building a brand is not kicks and giggles it's hard you know it's it's lonely i there's a lot of days that you're just working your guts out and you're you're making it work and you have a lot of people counting on you you have to make it work right something that's been really tricky is I've been young.

22:21And so it's hard to earn respect in an industry where people are older than I am. And so it's important for me to be knowledgeable and be educated on the product. I'm not afraid to get in there and work the kitchen and know every aspect of the concept because I need to be able to speak towards that. And so just being young in the industry and being a leader there, that's a hardship. Second thing is having so many locations and youthful staff and employees consistency is key with the ex all pro sean merriman what's up brother what's up my man how you doing it's good man the acronyms could go on and on now we got life insurance i know we're going to get into it we got lights out uh podcast we got lights out apparel fitness and we got some damn kick-ass ufc and fighting and all that shit man you you got it going on brother talk about the football background and then we'll get into some business I committed to University of Maryland as a junior.

23:19And the reason why is because I was home. You know, I didn't want to leave. You know, my mom leave my high school coaches, friends. I wanted everybody to come and watch me play. So I went to University of Maryland, you know, had a great career there, but ended up leaving early. You know, when I found out that I was going to go somewhere in the top 10, top 15 of the first round of draft, I was like, this is a this this type of shit doesn't happen. right so you want to you want to take advantage of it and then the rest is history you know i got out and um got that nickname lights out my sophomore year in high school yeah i knocked out four four players in in one game in high school and i ended up getting that nickname lights out and i kind of carried that all the way through getting away from the game like the the highs of that you know like the emotional highs and everything how hard was that transition That first year is beyond tough.

24:08And I'll tell anybody that is about to retire, and I talk to guys all the time, right? They say they got a year, two years left, maybe three. I say, whatever you want to do when you're done, start doing it now. And that way, when you're done, you do it right away because if you have downtime, you're going to struggle. We transitioned. You were ready. You teed it up. You had NFL Network. You've got the apparel company, Lights Out. Nature or nurture? Like, were you just a natural born entrepreneur waiting to come out of the bottle? Or like, did you absorb and learn from others? No, I was just, I was natural, man.

24:44I've always, I mean, when I was a kid, I was selling, you know, five or six Nintendo games to get the one best one. Right. And I'll go out and wash cars, you know, during the summers, cut grass, shovel snow, rake leaves. and I would take it and use all the money for what I wanted to, you know, whether I wanted to go buy a new mouthpiece or football equipment or cleats. I was always hustling in a way. And I think that this entrepreneur word has kind of become more recent, but you look back on everything now, even to the point of branding. You did. You created the brand. I mean, you talked about for the Mohawk and the look and the feel and like you became, I mean, character, so to speak, but the persona of a brand or a machine.