From Finance to Netflix: Chris Allen on Influence, Sales, and Startups

0:00This podcast features Chris Allen and Ryan Alford. Nobody actually cares who you are. Nobody cares about X calories, X fat. They're like, I want to go for whoever my reality TV star, famous person is, my favorite actress, the guy who I see on TV. And I was like, well, if nobody knows who you are, nobody cares. Ultimately, we had to play in that game. And when you're nobody like me, you have to take action on that. It's a process to try to get on a show like this. It took me years to make it happen. You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it. 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real.

1:04No theory, no fluff, no shortcuts. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford. What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now. We're talking about what's now, what's hot. And you may have heard of Netflix, but have you heard of Million Dollar Secret? I think you have. It's a game show. It's a lot of fun. Chris Allen is here to tell us all about it. What's up, Chris? What's going on, Ryan? How are you doing? I'm good, man. I was excited. We get a lot of great guests. Sometimes it's like stuff from 15 years ago. Great. You never know like where the business or what the concept is. But something when it's here and now and been on Netflix and been popular, I'm always excited.

1:43I have to admit, I started to go down the rabbit hole. There's so much content now. I had heard of Million Dollar Secret, but didn't know it. It's fun. It's intriguing. This show is very much in the news right now. You think about reality TV, you have kind of like your trashy relationship stuff. You got The Bachelor, Love is Blind, Too Out to Handle. You've got those like slice of life things, the Vanderpump's, Real Housewives, whatever, just day in the life of famous people. Kardashian started that years and years ago. What's getting really popular is competition TV shows. Survivor, Big Brother have been around.

2:12Traders is a hot name in the streets. Million Dollar Secret is Netflix's take on the traders. It's kind of a very similar show, obviously got critical differences, but Netflix is like, okay, this is what's popular. We got to get in the game. And when Netflix goes in on something, they go in on something. And with Million Dollar Secret, you can tell they put a lot of resources behind this show. Yeah, they did. And they're proven to be right with the popularity, especially as we talked pre-episode worldwide. We've got a worldwide hit on their hands. We can tell your background. I wanted to tell your background for anybody that maybe not have seen the show, explain a little bit of the concept, how you got involved, all that.

2:45Maybe we can ball that into one. I came up in the finance world, went to Notre Dame finance career. That was where I started I did that for several years. And like so many young finance people, I burned out in my late 20s. I said, you know, I like I got to do something different. I'm seeing my bank account go up, but I'm not feeling any happier. I got to do something different. In 2018, I left the finance world, went back to business school, and I went to Wharton. And that's a hallowed hall of business education. I was with some really, really talented people. I felt like the dumbest guy there almost every day that I was there.

3:13But being around really smart people is great for inspiration and great for ingenuity. And that's a great place for businesses to start. And while I was there, got kind of really interested in startups. And that was around the same time that White Claw was taking off and everybody was drinking Spike Seltzer. So I met a guy who was working in Anheuser Bush and he's like a South American, Uruguayan immigrant, right? Child of Uruguayan immigrants. And he grew up drinking coconut water. And he's like, what if we did what Spike Seltzer is doing, but we did it with coconut water. And we kind of like aimed it at health conscious people said, I don't really know what I want to do with my life, but that sounds as good of an idea as any.

3:44We dove into that world as people were creating new Spike Seltzers. We dove into that world and we've launched in 2021. We got about half of the U.S. under distribution, started distributing to cruises, luxury resorts in the Caribbean, all of that. But what's really cool about starting a business, especially with a co-founder, is you guys can kind of trade roles back and forth and cover for each other. And we were noticing that so many of these Spike Seltzers were having success with celebrity front people. And we couldn't afford a celebrity front person. We tried to negotiate with a couple of them.

4:11We're like, dude, we can't even afford like a tenth of what you're asking for. I came up with this crazy idea of like, well, what if I just tried to become the celebrity friend person myself and started pitching to reality shows. And ultimately, nothing really was a fit. I mostly got cast into dating type shows. And I was like, I don't really know if I want to go running around making out with people on TV. I feel like that's not a good look for our brand, much less myself. Ultimately, Netflix called me in 2024 with this concept, Million Dollar Secret. And I knew right away it was a winner. You get a chance to work with Netflix.

4:37You just take it. They're sending power in reality TV. And this idea was so interesting. We didn't really know too much until we got there, but this idea was so, so interesting. So I just had to take it. And I'm really glad I did because it's become sort of this global phenomenon. Yeah, man. A couple of things to unpack there. And I want you to delve into sort of the concept. People realizing it pays to be known. Someone owns a trademark for that. His name is Ryan Alford. We have this democratization of the Internet and media and all these things. And yes, you got to be interesting, good looking and talented, which Chris knocks out all three.

5:06I'll give you that, Chris, man. You got them all going. You are a really nice guy. Once you get to know you a little bit, I'm a quick study. once we've been on it, I can already tell. You're not a jerk. You've got the right intentions. The fans of Million Dollar Sugar might be kind of split on that. Yeah, I think it's probably 50-50, but I can tell already talking to you for 10 minutes. I'm like, this guy's not a jerk. He's smart. He knows what he's doing. Starting something new isn't just exciting. It's honestly a little terrifying. I remember right before I launched my podcast, all those what-if thoughts creeping in.

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6:14And once you're live, Shopify handles the hard stuff. Inventory, payments, shipping, returns, all one dashboard. Instead of bouncing between different platforms, everything's just in one place, which honestly saves us a ton of time. And that's the part people don't always see. It's not just about building a website. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify. Start hearing. Sign up for your$1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash Ryan. That's Shopify.com slash R-Y-A-N. I've been paying a lot more attention lately to what's actually going on inside my body.

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8:15look you were smart can't afford your own influencer then become one yourself it does take some help and it helps when netflix calls but you did the work to get there yeah it's kind of interesting a lot of consumer like beverage food entrepreneurs they end up competing on product attributes they're like oh you know we make a protein bar that's like 20 less calories than the next one it gets to the shelf and then you start looking at a shelf set and you're like how the hell will anybody pick me over these other 400 options and then you see people start streaming into the store because they're like oh i have to buy the new kardashian vodka i have to buy the new ryan reynolds this that the other thing i'm like damn nobody actually cares who you are nobody cares about x calories x fat they're like i want to go for whoever my reality tv star famous person is my favorite actress the guy who i see on tv and i was like well if nobody knows who you are nobody cares ultimately we had to play in that game and when you're nobody like me you have to take action on that.

9:06It's a process to try to get on a show like this. It took me years to make it happen. You think anyone cares about crime? It's Jake Paul's sports drink immediately like taking down Gatorade for a little while because it's Jake Paul's sports drink. For example, I was told my co-founder is notoriously pessimistic about the fact that this works. I was just like, I just hate that this is the reality. I'm like, listen, man, I don't make the rules of the market. All I do is play by them. And unfortunately, the player, hate the game. Yeah, this is like the way it works now. I was like, we've kind of replaced religiosity in our culture with celebrity worship.

9:39And that's just kind of how it goes. But with social media and streaming, being Netflix, being in this new media world, I call it now media. That's my brand. You took advantage of that. Talk to me about Million Dollar Seeker, what the premise of the show and what went down. The show is so awesome. It has so many different layers to it compared to a normal reality show. You can think about 8 ,000 different things when it comes to the show. But the basic concept is you have 12 different people. I'm talking about like 12 different archetypes. So we got like a grandma, we got a grandpa, we've got a cowboy on our show.

10:08We got typical LA actress type influencers on the show. And then me sort of like the business guy. We arrive at this mansion in Canada where a mysterious owner of the house has prepared a welcome gift for all 12 people, which is a box to be laid on the foot of your bed when you arrive. In the box, one of the 12 people receives a million dollars on day one, like the second they get to the house. 11 people get an empty wooden box. And the goal is essentially to figure out who has the million dollars in their box and vote them out of the show. If we do that successfully, the money is given to somebody else and the process continues from there.

10:43If the person who gets a million dollars on day one is able to keep their identity clean the entire season, they just go home with the million. Our job is to figure out who's acting weird, who has a guilty conscience, who's changing the way that they're acting, who's being nervous. Figure out who it is, vote them out, and then get the money to our box. You've only been on our air for a few weeks. I'm going down the rabbit hole. I guess they've got things set up. What if this had been vetted too fast or something? The secret's out. Everything's been exposed. The secret's out. We know the winner.

11:08The way it went down is pretty interesting. If you think about it, there's a lot of different ways you can play that game. Yes, there's a lot. How much were you clued in to that? What the strategies may or may not be, different angles and all that beforehand? So 0%, which I think is what makes the game so good. If people are familiar with reality TV, they're on like season 50 of Survivor. And like season 25 of Big Brother. And by the time you get 20 seasons into a show, a lot of times people are sort of game bots. They're super fans of the show. They know exactly. They're on like Reddit. They read the strategies.

11:40They know the formula. They call them game bots. It actually leads to a pretty dull TV. When you have that, we knew nothing about the game that we were playing other than that a million dollars is on the line. It's going to be some sort of a game to see. In episode one, the owner of the house sort of tells us the rules on camera. That was actually the first time we realized what show we were on. And what's so cool about that is there's no strategies. And in a lot of ways, you result in pretty messy gameplay. We made a ton of mistakes and it gets super messy because of that. The reason is because we didn't know what show we run and we hadn't read up.

12:10Now, like I did a little bit of homework. I watched the traders. I watched shows that I thought it would be like, and I saw like basically kind of the trends of what would be work, what would work. But then when I learned what the game was, we basically had like six hours that night to go back to our hotel rooms and figure out what are we going to do? How are we going to play this? Real world gameplay for a million dollars all at once. Talking with Chris Allen. Chris, what was it like working with, you mentioned it a little bit, the Netflix factor and watching that behemoth work and how it markets.

12:36How privy were you to all of that's going on with marketing the show, all the components of the business side of it? If you look at the statistics around like total percentage of hours streamed by Netflix compared to the other players in streaming, So whether it be HBO Max or Disney or Hulu or Amazon Prime, Netflix is television now. They're such a dominant player in that space that they've just become television. And we know that they're global. What's super interesting about Netflix is sometimes they obviously market their shows. They market their originals and the shows that they have that do well.

13:07But it's also a really democratic platform. Anybody who has Netflix knows every day, it seems like definitely every week, there's a ton of new stuff coming out. And what bubbles up to that Netflix top 10 is based on who's watching the show. Things can kind of catch fire for Netflix, similar to how they do on like a TikTok algorithm or YouTube algorithm, like out of nowhere. A Million Dollar Secret is a brand new show. They put it out there not knowing what would resonate on it. And I think two days later, we were the number three show globally. We've kind of seen what happens when you achieve that initial success is Netflix pours gas on the fire.

13:36And what's so interesting about it is a global platform. We're thinking about a lot of shows like Survivor, Big Brother. Those are like primarily U.S. based. And we think about reality TV and television in our culture as like being U.S. based. What I wasn't prepared for is like every corner of the globe, people are talking about me. People are talking about what I did on the show. People are getting interested in what I'm doing outside the show. That is pretty hard to wrap your head around. Are you smart enough to recognize that it pays to be known? Lo and behold, you went and did it for yourself.

14:03What has surprised you, delighted you, and scared the shit out of you now that it's come true? What surprised me the most is just the global aspect of it. I was totally expecting to walk down the street and have people recognize me. I was like, okay, the night before the show came out, I was like, this is the last day of normalcy for probably a really long time. And then like, you know, that proved to be true. It did definitely prove to be true. And like, you know, for example, you just go to the grocery store and you get someone come up to you and say, hey, like I watched you on the show. The fact that I can go to a different state and my face prompts a response from people is something that you just don't expect.

14:33You've lived your entire life in anonymity. What has been scary about that is the level of just online discourse and dialogue, especially with anonymity. I made the mistake, like so many other reality TV stars do, of poking my nose around in Reddit. We had our subreddit was growing. I was pretty controversial on the show, surprisingly to me, because I don't really feel like I'm a very controversial person. But there are certain things that I did on the show. I was trying to win the game. I competed hard. I'm a business person. I compete with disregard for feeling in a lot of cases. That is pretty wild.

15:01The level and toxicity of online discourse is actually pretty shocking to me. Eventually, I kind of just learned, okay, just leave that where it is. Focus on what's in front of your face. I mean, like anybody who acquires, let's call it like instant fame. And I say that like in air quotes, because this is still just the first foray into what I hope to accomplish is a little scary the first time that you encounter it. Yeah, man. I can only imagine the way with which reality TV sort of gets devoured and then much less. But I will say we have a pretty popular show. I didn't know I had made it until a Miami airport sighting.

15:30And then my forever, my kids thought I was cool. Finally. It's so awesome. I was down in Florida. I took my dad on a retirement trip. I got recognized out at the new Universal Park. down in Orlando. I got recognized by two people and then four more people came over and they were like, what show? I know I've seen you somewhere. What show is it? At one point I was kind of holding court with like six people. My dad was like, he kind of panted. It was the first time he'd seen me get recognized in person. He kind of like ran away. He's like, I don't know what to do when you call my mom. And he's like, your son is being mobbed by people on the bridge.

15:57Like, what do we do? I'm just his son. Like he doesn't know. Has most people being in person been pretty cool? Everybody in person has been cool. Everybody in person has been cool. It's just the trolls behind the keyboard though. Send me a message. If you're being tempted, send me a message. I'm going to go back away, Chris, back away. Maybe I need to do that, Ryan. Maybe you can be like my personal, just like a fire lightning. I need to email you for a password or something like that. It's just no good because I do a pretty good job of like not listening to other people, like not caring. But if you go down that rabbit hole, there's some really disturbed people.

16:31And then you'll start questioning yourself. You're a good guy. You don't want to be impacting someone in that way. But if they've taken it that far, it's a them problem, not a you problem. A lot of times they'll take it to your court too. Like they'll put it on your personal pages. And in a lot of cases, I went into this with the intention of if someone writes me a message, I'm going to respond to it. I want them to feel seen by me. If somebody says something that's kind of on the line negative, I'll respond to them. And then a lot of times what they'll do is they'll immediately fold and then, oh, I thought you were awesome.

16:56So sorry about that, whatever. So it's kind of interesting to see if they're just doing it for attention or whatever it might be. But obviously I think there are valid critiques out there too. There's a lot of things that I did on the show that I was kind of like, yeah, it's kind of tough, but you know, you're in a competition. It's not like we're out there holding hands and dancing in a circle. It's also business. You nailed it. I'm pretty, I don't think I'm a ruthless business person, but I'm very driven and I can remove emotion from it. And it sounds like you're built the same way. And it's not because we're screwing people, but we're doing business.

17:21And I think there's a lot of people that just aren't cut for that. And so when you get to see it raw, some people just get turned off. I mean, like anything else in your life is you try to do things with purest of intentions that you can, but in a competition setting, like there can only be one winner. And a lot of times that's not going to be the nicest version of yourself that plays that game. And this is like very real money. We were in there competing, wasn't scripted. It was all real. We were competing and I got very close to winning. As that happens, you're going to see tensions rise. You're going to see people do things that are cutthroat.

17:52Like if we were just playing a game for no money, I don't think that we would have done the things that we did, but it We require difficult decisions to be made and difficult, in a lot of cases, behavior in order to win. Yeah, man. So drink company, I sense a pivot coming. Where are we at with the business? One of the things that we wanted to do is obviously we've been out there in the seltzer world. And the seltzer world is very popular when we launched and is much less popular now. And almost every large drink brand is losing volume year on year. They're declining 15, 20 percent in a lot of cases.

18:21And a lot of brands that came out in that sort of let's make a white cloth knockoff. Go try to find a case of Bud Light seltzer. You can't find it. Good luck. Good luck. Go try to find Coors Seltzer. It's hard to do. As that's sort of happened, it's been challenging on our business. One of the things that we've done is think about, let's respond to the show, and the show is global. We have a global audience. What we'll likely do is try to find something non-alcoholic that we can ship to our fans around the world, especially our fans in Brazil and the Philippines, those markets where this has really, really become a very popular show.

18:48In that regard, is transitioning the fame, the known to dollars, been more difficult than you thought? It's something that I'm very much figuring out right now because you don't necessarily know what it's going to look like. This show could have come out and totally flopped. What we didn't know is that we're going to become the number one show in Brazil for several weeks. You don't know that as somebody who's going on to a show and trying to anticipate things. There are obviously when you go on a reality TV show, there are easy ways to monetize things through cameo and through subscriber based type of content.

19:18You're selling T-shirts with your shirt off. You know, keep me away from Reddit or something like that. those are like the easy things what's harder is like okay well i have to say my ongoing business interests how do we transition that how do we make the fans of the show want to care about the drink that i'm doing because also they care about me but like they may not like the drink that i have they may not like what product i was producing before how do i make something that sort of aligns like their interest in me and also their interest in what product that i can produce that actually will drive value to their life i can't ship an alcoholic product in many cases to many of the places where the fans have resonated with me you just pivot your business one of the great things about it is so those status of social media is that they can follow your journey and become aware of the things that you do.

19:59And that's been the primary strategy that I followed that I've employed. Sometimes it's not about creating your own product. It's using the leverage you have to create the influence on other things that you get paid for. I'm not saying you aren't doing some of that. To that end, attention is fleeting. How do you keep the attention flame lit? You got to be active is number one. And then number two is being a business person, being a marketer is like, you got to understand that you got to produce things that people want and people want to follow. People have generally followed me for number one reason is, okay, they like me because I was a business person and I played strategically on the show.

20:33I'm the avatar for the business person on the show. And then in some cases, it's for more superficial reasons. Like they like the way I look, they like the way that I act or whatever it might be. I found that in a lot of cases, I just did kind of typical testing of different kinds of content. What does well for me is talking about what I do outside of the house, talking about business and talking about my learnings my business career. People really like that. And then number two is like fitness and wellness content does really well for me. I try to produce as much that people are interested in to keep them around because ultimately the window for talking about what actually happened in the eight episodes of the show, it goes by very quickly.

21:04You got to keep them interested in you as a personality. So I'm a big test and react guy. So I produced a lot of different kinds of content and I saw what did well. And then I'm going to kind of just go down that avenue. Is it creating any other opportunities? Have you heard from other things, anything other coming across your radar from the show. The number one thing typically with reality TV is you get some interest from brands while your show is out. And that's starting to happen for me. I was taking some time for my social pages to grow, but I'm kind of at the level now where I can do that.