From Finance to Netflix "Million Dollar Secret" with Chris Allen

0:28This is the story of the one. If nobody knows who you are, nobody cares. So ultimately we had to play in that game. And when you're nobody, like me, you have to take action on that. 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. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up, guys? Welcome to Write About Now. We're talking about what's now, what's hot. And, you know, you may have heard of Netflix, but have you heard of Million Dollar Secret?

1:14I think you have. It's a game show. It's a lot of fun. And Chris Allen is here to tell us all about it. What's up, Chris? What's going on, Ryan? How you doing? I'm good, man. I was excited. We get a lot of great guests. And sometimes it's like stuff from 15 years ago. Great. You know, 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. I have to admit, I started to go down the rabbit hole because there's so much content now. Like I had heard of Million Dollar Secret, but didn't know it. It's fun, man.

1:47It's intriguing. Well, yeah, I'll tell you what. This show is very much in the news right now. I mean, this is kind of like 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. Kardashians started it years and years ago, right? What's getting really popular is competition TV shows like Survivor, Big Brother have been around. Traders is kind of a hot name in the streets, right? Million Dollar Secret is Netflix's take on the traders.

2:21right 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 with million dollar secret you can tell they put a lot of resources behind this show yeah they did and uh i think they're uh proven to be right with popularity especially as we talked pre-episode worldwide we've got a worldwide hit on their hands uh let's set the table though i mean chris i mean we can tell your background i wanted to tell your background, but I definitely want to, for anybody that maybe not have seen the show, explain a little bit of the concept, how you got involved, all that.

2:59Maybe we can ball that into one. Yeah, for sure. So I came up in the finance world and I went to Notre Dame finance career. That was kind of where I started, did that for several years. And like so many young finance people, I burned out in my late twenties. And I said, 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. So So 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.

3:34But 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, I 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-Busch and he's like a South American Uruguayan immigrant, right? Child of Uruguayan immigrants. And he grew up drinking coconut water. 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.

4:03Said, you know, I don't really know what I want to do with my life, but that sounds as good of an idea as any. And we dove in to that world as people were creating new Spike Seltzers. We dove into that world and we've launched in 2021. We got about like 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.

4:35We tried to negotiate with a couple of them. We're like, dude, we can't even afford like a tenth of what you're asking for. Right. So I came up with this crazy idea of like, well, what if I just tried to become, you know, the celebrity front person myself and started pitching to reality shows. And ultimately nothing really was a fit. I mostly got cast into like 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. And ultimately Netflix called me in 2024 with this concept million dollar secret.

5:04And I knew right away it was a winner. You get a chance to work with Netflix. You just take it. They're kind of like an extending 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. Then I want you to delve into sort of the concept. But people realizing it pays to be known. Someone owns a trademark for that. His name is Ryan Alford. But look, we have this democratization of the internet and media and all these things.

5:40And yes, you got to be interesting, good looking and talented, which Chris knocks out all three. I'll give you that, Chris, man. You got them all going. You are. And I say really nice guy. Once you get to know you a little bit, I'm a quick study. Once we've been on, I can already tell like you're not a jerk. Like you got the right. I think the fans of that show, the fans of Million Dollar Seeker 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. But look, you were smart.

6:09I mean, you can't afford your own influencer, then become one yourself. And 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 because I think a lot of, especially consumer, like beverage, food entrepreneurs, they end up competing product attributes, right? They're like, oh, we make a protein bar that's like 20 % less calories than the next one, right? And 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.

6:44I have to buy the new Ryan Reynolds this, that, the other thing. I'm like, damn, nobody actually cares who you are. Nobody really – when you come out there, nobody cares about like X calories, X fat, X this, that. They're like, I want to go for whoever my reality TV star famous person is of my favorite actress, the guy who I see on TV. And I was like, well, if nobody knows who you are, nobody cares. So ultimately we had to play in that game. And when you're nobody like me, right, you have to take action on that. So it's a process to try to get on a show like this. It took me years to make it happen.

7:15And look, you think anyone cares about Prime? It's Jake Paul's sports drink, you know, immediately like taking down Gatorade. for a little while because it's Jake Paul's sports drink, right? Prime. I was told my co-founder is like notoriously kind of like, you know, pessimistic about the fact that this works. Right. He's always just like, I just hate that this is the reality. I'm like, listen, man, like I don't make the rules of the market. All I do is play by them. And unfortunately, this is like the way it works now is like we've kind of replaced religiosity in our culture with celebrity worship.

7:55And that's just kind of how it goes. Yep. And, but with social media and streaming, being Netflix, kind of being in this, I'll call it new media world. Yeah. New media. I call it now media. That's my brand. But exactly. You took advantage of that. Talk to me about Million Dollar Seeker. For our audience, I'm sure there's a lot because you fit right in our demo. They've probably seen it. But for anyone that hasn't, like what the premise of the show and what went down? Yeah, well, I mean, if anybody hasn't watched it, you got to check it out. The show is so awesome and has so many different layers to it compared to a normal reality show.

8:32Like you can think about 8000 different things when it comes to the show. But the basic concept is you have 12 different people and talk about like 12 different archetypes. So we got like a grandma. We got a grandpa. We've got a cowboy on our show. We got like the sort of typical L.A. 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, right?

9:1211 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. So if 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. Right. So 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 him out, and then get the money to our box.

9:47You've only been out of our air for a few weeks. I'm going down the rabbit hole. But I was like, I guess they've got things set up. What if this had been vetted too fast or something? Yeah. Like the person completely. I mean, I assume it's all – has it all been aired now? It's all been aired, yeah. It came out in late March and was finished up by kind of like mid-April. Okay. And so the secret's out. Everything's been exposed. Because I'm only one and a half episodes in. The secret's out. We know the winner. And the way it went down is pretty interesting. Because, you know, if you think about it, right, there's a lot of different ways you can play that game.

10:23Yes, there's a lot. How much were you clued in to that, like, what the strategies may or may not be, different angles and all that beforehand? So it's 0%, which I think is what makes the game so good, right? If people are familiar with reality TV, I think they're on season 50 of Survivor. In season 25 of Big Brother. By the time you get 20 seasons into a show, a lot of times people are game bots. They're super fans of the show. They know exactly. They're on Reddit. They read the strategies. They know the formula. They know the formula. They call them game bots. It actually leads to pretty dull TV, I think, when you have that.

11:04We knew nothing about the game that we were playing. Other than that a million dollars is on the line and it was going to be some sort of a game to see. Right. So 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 you result in pretty messy gameplay. I mean, so we made a ton of mistakes and it gets super messy because of that. I think the reason is because we didn't know what show we run. We hadn't read up. Now, like I did a little bit of homework.

11:39I 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 like, what are we going to do? Like, how are we going to play this? Yeah. Real world game playing. I mean, for a million dollars all at once. So, Chris, you mentioned it a little bit, but like the Netflix factor and watching sort of that behemoth work and how it markets, how it like how privy were you to all of that that's going on with marketing the show?

12:17Yeah. All the components of the business side of it. Well, I think what's so interesting about the Netflix machine is that if you look at the statistics around like total percentage of hours streamed by Netflix compared to like the other players in streaming. So whether it be like HBO Max or Disney or Hulu or Amazon Prime, Netflix kind of like is television now. Like they're such a dominant player in that space that they've kind of just become television. And we know that they're global. Right. Netflix is they obviously market their shows. They market their originals and the shows that they have that do well.

12:54But it's also a really democratic platform. Right. Anybody who has Netflix knows like every day, it seems like definitely every week, there's a ton of new stuff coming out. Right. And what bubbles up to that Netflix top 10 is based on who's watching the show. Right. So 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. And, you know, Million Dollar Secret is a brand new show. So like 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.

13:24So we've kind of seen like what happens when you achieve that initial success is Netflix pours gas on the fire. Right. And what's so interesting about it is a global platform. Right. So like 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. And our culture is 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. And that is like pretty hard to wrap your head around.

13:58So I think I'd be curious, people like listening. So you smart enough to recognize that it pays to be known. And lo and behold, you went and did it for yourself. what has surprised you delighted you and scared the shit out of you now that it's come true well i think what surprised me again the most is just the global aspect of it like i was totally expecting to walk down the street and have people recognize me like you know 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 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 like you know my the fact that i can go to a different state and my face like prompts a response from people is something that you just don't expect like when you know you've lived your entire life in anonymity what has been uh scary about that is the the level of just online discourse and dialogue especially with anonymity so like i made the mistake like so many other reality tv stars do of like poking my nose around in reddit um and it was growing and like you know 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.

15:08I was trying to win, right? I was trying to win the game. So I competed hard. Like I'm a business person. I compete with disregard for feeling in a lot of cases. That is like pretty wild. The level like and toxicity of online discourse is actually pretty shocking to me. So like eventually I kind of just learned, okay, just leave that where it is and like focus on what's in front of your face. But yeah, that's, 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, you know, just the first foray into what I hope to accomplish is a little, little scary.

15:39The first time that you encounter it, I can only imagine with this, I don't know, the, the way with which reality TV sort of gets devoured and then much less, I mean, but I will say we have a pretty popular show. I didn't know I had made it until a Miami airport sighting. And then my forever, my kids thought I was cool. Finally, you know, But yeah, it's so awesome. I was, I was down in Florida. I took my dad on a retirement trip to Florida. And we, I got recognized out at the new Universal Park down in Orlando. And I got recognized by two people. And then four more people came over. And they were like, I know I've seen you somewhere.

16:20What show is it? So at one point, I was kind of holding court with like six people. and um my dad was like yeah he was he kind of panicked 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 and he called my mom and he's like your son is being mobbed by people on the bridge like what did what do we do i'm just his son like he doesn't know what from what has everybody has most people been in person been pretty cool everybody in person has been cool everybody it's just the trolls behind the keyboard though but they'll you know and it's hard to but you can't you gotta stay away from that man send me a message on you know if you're being tempted send me a message i'm gonna go back away chris back away maybe i need to do that right maybe you could be like my person my person i'll just like uh fire lightning i need to email you for a password to get into my account or something like that it's just no good because i you know i i do a pretty good job of like not i don't know listening to other people like not caring but if you go down that rabbit hole there's some really disturbed people.

17:23And then it's also, you'll start like questioning yourself, like, Oh, I mean, you're a good guy. Like I'm a good guy. You don't want to be impacting someone in that way. Right. But, but if they've taken it that far, it's a them problem, not a you problem. You know, what I think is so interesting about that too, is a lot of times they'll take it to like your, your court too. Like they'll put it on your personal pages and things like that. And in a lot of cases, like I went into this with the intention of like, if someone writes me a message, sure I'm going to respond to it. Right. Like I want them to feel seen by me.

17:53I want to feel like, yeah. And so like, it's kind of on the board. Sounds altruistic, but yeah. Right. Yeah. If somebody says something that's kind of on the line negative, I'll respond to them. Right. And then in that case, and then a lot of times what they'll do is they'll be like, they immediately fold and they're like, Oh, I thought you were awesome. Like, so sorry about that. Like, you know, whatever. So it's kind of interesting to see, like, are they just doing it for attention or like whatever it might be? I don't know. Um, but you know, obviously I think there are valid critiques out there too.

18:18Like there's a lot of times things that I did on the show that I was kind of like, yeah, it was kind of tough. Like, but you know, you're in a competition. It's not like we're out there holding hands and like dancing in a circle. Um, it's, it's a competition. It's also business. Like you nailed it. Like I'm pretty, I'm not like, 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. And I think there's a lot of people that just aren't cut for that.

18:47And so when you get to see it raw some people just get turned off you know right yeah i mean like anything else in you know your life is you try to do things with like the purest of intentions that you can but um in 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 that plays that game and this is like very real money like we were in there competing it wasn't scripted it was all real we were competing and i got very close to winning. Right. So as that happens, right. You know, you're going to see tensions rise.

19:22You're going to see people do things that are cutthroat. Like 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 required difficult decisions to be made and difficult, you know, 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? Yeah, no. So, I mean, I think, you know, one of the things that we wanted to do is obviously we've been out there in the seltzer world and the seltzer world was very popular when we launched and is much less popular now. And almost every large drink brand is losing volume year on year.

19:56They're declining 15, 20 percent in a lot of cases and a lot of brands that came out in that sort of like, let's make a white cloth knockoff. Go try to find a case of Bud Light Seltzer. Can't find it. Good luck. Good luck. Go try to find Coors Seltzer. It's hard. It's hard to do. So as that's sort of happened, it's been challenging on our business, right? One of the things that we've done is think about let's respond to the show and the show is global. You know, so we have a global audience. I think 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 like this has really, really become a very popular show.

20:31In that regard, is transitioning the fame, the known to dollars been more difficult than you thought? Well, yeah. I mean, 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. Right. Like this show could have come out and totally flopped. Like what we didn't know is that we're going to become the number one show in Brazil for several weeks. Like you don't know that. Right. As somebody who's like going on to a show and trying to anticipate things. So there are obviously like when you go on a reality TV show, there are like easy ways to monetize things like through, you know, cameo and like through subscriber based type of content.

21:10Like those on T-shirts with your shirt off. Yeah. But like, you know, keep me away from Reddit or something like that. Those are like the easy things. What's harder is like, OK, well, I obviously have my ongoing business interests. Right. Like, 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. Like how do I make something that sort of aligns like their interest in me and also their interest in like a product that I can produce that actually will drive value to their life?

21:43Like, you know, so I can't ship an alcoholic product in many cases to many of the places where the fans have resonated with me. So you just pivot your business. So one of the great things about it is like, so those status of social media is that they can follow your journey and become aware of the things that you do. And that's been the primary strategy that I followed that I've employed. Yeah. I'm going to give you a couple of tips, but you didn't ask for it. I'm going to. 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.

22:19I'm not saying you aren't doing some of that, but to that end, how do you like keep the, it's a, attention is fleeting. How do you keep the attention flame lit? Yeah, it's great. I think you gotta be active is number one. And then number two is I'm like big, I was obviously like I've been business person, been a marketer is like, you gotta understand that you got to produce things that people want and people want to follow. And what I think people have generally sort of followed me for is number one reason is like, okay, they like me because I was a business person and I played strategically on the show.

22:54I was sort of like the avatar for the business person on the show. Right. And then in some cases is for more superficial reasons. Like they like the way I look or the way they like the way that I, you know, act or whatever it might be. I found that in a lot of cases, like I just did kind of typical testing of different kinds of content. What does well for me is like talking about what I do outside of the house, like so talking about business and talking about like learn my learnings from my business career people really like that and the number two is like fitness and wellness content does really well for me right so i try to produce as much that people are interested in to keep them around because ultimately like you know the window for talking about like what actually happened in the eight episodes of the show it goes by very quickly you got to keep them interested in you as a personality So like, you know, I was, I'm a big test and react guy.

23:40So 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, that avenue. Is it creating any other opportunities? Like, have you heard from other things, anything other, you know, like coming across your radar from the show? I think the number one thing is typically with reality TV is you, you get some interest from brands while your show is out. And that's starting to happen for me. Obviously, it's taken some time for my social pages to grow, but kind of at the level now where I can do that. And having been an entrepreneur and startup founder myself, I like to align with brands that I resonate with.

24:14I'm not going to just take any deal. So, kind of in the process of evaluating those right now. But that's really cool because ultimately, like I want to position myself as an influencer that, you know, has been in the business owner chair before, which I think is somewhat rare. Right. I've been behind a brand of my own before and worked with influencers from the brand owner side. So I can be authentic and real voice and a good mouthpiece for these brands and sort of connecting the dots between the brand and the consumer. What do you think the most important business skill is that you have? So such a good question.