Daniel Mac: The Guy Who Asks “What Do You Do for a Living?”

0:00When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter. You're the expert because you know what fits your life. And getting it right starts with good information. That's why America's beverage companies are sharing more information about our ingredients at goodtoknowfacts.org. No spin, no judgments, just the facts straight from the experts for more than 140 beverage ingredients. Visit goodtoknowfacts.org. Okay, let me get this straight. just going up to people randomly and saying, hey, what do you do for a living? To me, you were the pioneer. What led you to being brave enough to do that?

0:41Because going up to someone's car when they're in traffic, that could be a scary thing in this world, man. It was really scary. And I won't lie to you. Like I still sometimes get a little nervous, even though I've done it about 10 ,000 times to people. Getting yelled at, people getting mad, slamming the door in your face. You know, no one wants to talk to me, but you stuck to it. And, you know, here we are. It definitely stings, you know, When somebody tells you to get out of their face, you don't want to go out the next day and go film again because it's just pure rejection. At the beginning, though, in Dallas, I actually got banned for five years from the mall that I was originally filming at.

1:13About two or three weeks in, I almost got arrested. My ban is still alive right now. It expires in about a month, so maybe I'll have to pay them a visit. But yeah, I almost got arrested.

1:28All right, everybody. I got Daniel Mack with me. He goes by It's Daniel Mack. This individual has done something so brave. His journey started right around COVID, going up to people and saying, hey, that's a great car, man. What do you do for a living? And he's absolutely exploded. So we're going to dive into the creator side today and listen to his journey. And he's going to give us a peek behind the curtain on how he built what he built. And for those creators out there, this is an episode that you do not want to miss because you're going to get the chance to hear from somebody who's built something so incredible.

2:00Daniel Mack, welcome to the show, buddy. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. I'm jacked, man. Long time coming, bro. Me and Val have been talking about you for months and I've always like, it's a yes. It's a yes. And then finally, we linked our schedules up and here we are, man. So I appreciate your time. Thanks for having me. Do it. Hell yeah, dude. Dude. So, okay, let me get this straight, right? We see a lot of people doing on the street stuff, you know, just going up to people randomly and saying, hey, that's a really cool whatchamacallit. What do you do for a living? But to me, you were the pioneer.

2:34What led you to being brave enough to do that? Because going up to someone's car when they're in traffic, that could be a scary thing in this world, man. So talk to us about that. Yeah, I sometimes I think back and I wonder how I got the courage to first start walking up to people. I had never posted any content before ever. Like my first video on TikTok, it was August of 2020 during COVID, was me walking up to somebody and saying like, hey, I was an Audi RA in Dallas. And you're right. Nobody had done that on TikTok before. I won't lie and say that like no one had created any form of asking people how they got wealthy because that's been around forever in some way or another.

3:17But I definitely, I guess, pioneered more of the short form version of it. Uh, and it was really scary. And I won't lie to you. Like I, I still sometimes get a little nervous, even though I've done it about 10 ,000 times to people. Um, but I think it was a bridge of both me being curious about how people get wealthy and then also just a love for cars. Um, I was fresh out of school. I had just moved to Dallas. I'd never seen Ferraris before ever in my whole life. Um, and I thought at 21 years old, like how do I get a car like this one day? Um, and it may be something else for other people. Maybe it's a watch or, you know, or knowledge or, you know, anything like that.

3:55But I just thought like, Hey, like, what if I just asked it straight from the horse's mouth? And, uh, it was scary. And people were very confused at the time too, because the genre hadn't been, you know, going up to people on the street, wasn't really a thing yet. So a lot of the time at the beginning, people were just confused and thought it was kind of funny. Uh, but back then people also used to get a lot more upset or confused or, you know, yell at me and stuff like that. So, uh, it was a learning curve and it's kind of like, if you get the door slammed in your face enough, uh, you get numb to it a little bit and you gain more courage.

4:27Uh, but it was a mix of me being crazy and, uh, adventurous and young and, um, hungry. And my first video ended up getting like 30 million views. So the perfect concoction of just a new untapped kind of market essentially. Unbelievable, man. And it's crazy because that was a time where people were just chilling in their homes. And that's really when TikTok exploded was, was in the middle of that, that lockdown, the pandemic. You know, what I really love to you, you touched on something that I think is very valuable to really dive into, right? Getting yelled at, people getting mad, slamming the door in your face.

5:04Cause people will look, you know, at your social media platforms, your YouTube, your Instagram, your TikTok and be like, this is easy for him, but dive deeper into the moments of rejection because a lot of times people see that and be like, all right, abandon ship. This isn't going to work. You know, no one wants to talk to me, but you suck to it. And you know, here we are. Yeah. I've definitely posted some, uh, some compilations of people getting angry with me. Those actually are some of my best videos. It shows people that I really do run up on the street and go up to random people. But yeah, it definitely stings, you know, like when you, when somebody tells you to get out of their face it's, it burns and you know, you don't want to, you don't want to go out the next day and go film again because it's just pure rejection.

5:49I would say now I've kind of created like a code of ethics for myself as far as who I'm walking up to and where I'm walking up to them. So somebody's windows up, I don't like to want to bother them, but if they got their window down, they're in a Ferrari, they're on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles or something like that. I will run up to them because they're, you know, they're in an area where they're kind of wanting the attention and whatnot. At the beginning, though, in Dallas, there was no Rodeo Drive or anything like that. I actually got banned for five years from the mall that I was originally filming at about two or three weeks in.

6:22I almost got arrested. And my band is still is still live right now it expires in about a month so maybe i'll have to pay them a visit but uh yeah like i almost got arrested uh and you know they are acting like they were gonna arrest me and that i was trespassing but i had never been warned yet so that there were some hurdles for sure and i've gotten some weird interactions with people and things have gotten pretty heated so it's uh it's every single time you never know what you're gonna get when you walk up to a random person well you know that's a good point right you know your band is you know almost up and going back to it now, I think people would recognize you, right?

6:58But then you were just some younger kid, you know, putting a camera and a microphone in front of people's faces. And, you know, again, man, it definitely isn't an offense you should be arrested for, but I can imagine how those early moments can give you a sense of resistance, right? But there's true determination, Daniel, in being able to say, you know what, I'm still going to go and do this tomorrow, right? Oh, 100%. Yeah. I mean, like I was working nine to five in finance at the time. A lot of people think that, I will say at the beginning, my story was definitely luck because I had one video, it got shown to three people or something because I had zero followers.

7:40And then it got shown to more people and it snowballed. So, you know, even the very first people that viewed the video, if they didn't like it, then, you know, I would have not had that first video do well. But then after it did well, after work, I'd clock out at 5 p.m. for my job. I'd drive to this spot before I got banned. I'd work until the sun went down, go home, edit, film, I mean, edit the content, do my original brand deals, pretty much wear like 9 or 10 hats at once, and then wake up, do my 9 to 5, do the same thing. And then on the weekends, I'd fly to L.A. and I was filming from like 10 a.m.

8:17on Rodeo Drive until like 7 p.m. Friday. And then Saturday, I didn't have the money for a camera person or editor and no one to travel with me. I was staying in like some very sketchy hotels because I couldn't afford it. I was like 21 years old. I had like$10 in my bank account. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. listening to this podcast smart move being financially savvy smart move another smart move having state farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling just another way to save with a personal price plan like a good neighbor state farm is there prices are based on rating plans that vary by state coverage options are selected by the customer availability amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state This episode is brought to you by eBay.

9:04Buying parts for your car? You'll know that. Will it work? Feeling. But on eBay, buying parts is different. eBay's free returns means if it doesn't fit, or if it isn't what you expected, you just print a label, drop it off, and get your refund fast. No haggling, no stress, and at least 30 days to return any eligible item. Millions of parts, free returns. eBay. Things people love. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. uh so i did that week after week after week eventually i ended up moving to la because i it was cheaper to you know live here rather than getting a rental car and doing that on the weekends and then i quit my job which was scary and and all these things at the beginning where i didn't have the bankroll to make it easy and i was working like 120 hours every second i was awake i was doing something to try and balance both these jobs so uh it was luck at the beginning And then I essentially kind of positioned myself in the right spots and worked hard enough to be able to lift myself up and get a team and then get an agency and all this stuff.

10:09But it took years and years. So not luck eventually. That's for sure. No, it's compelling though, right? Because I can listen to your story. So I started my show in 2021 and I started it in my vehicle, right? It was just an iPhone. and I didn't have money to put towards production, right? And I, for a long period of time, I filmed my show after my car inside my house. And then I started getting out, right? And then had a production team and then I up-leveled to a better production team. And now I have an all-star team and I have Val, you know, I have partners now. And this thing has grown in so many different ways.

10:49But at the very beginning, man, I can really relate to having to wear all the hats because I was also a husband and a father of three, right? And I was also in corporate America in medical device sales. So I had to wear those two hats for a very long period of time until now this is the only thing I do. And I'm living this dream every day. And the one thing that always bothers me, and it probably should, you hear people all the time, well, man, it must be nice to be able to do that. I'm like, nice. I'm like, you don't understand the amount of fear, anxiety of leaving a corporate, a successful corporate career in sales, turn your back on all this money, the benefits to double down on a dream.

11:31I think like they make fun of people like us, like what are these people doing? Like, oh, he's going to be a podcaster. That's one of the, I made a joke the other day. It was probably like one of the most douchey things to do, quit a corporate career and be a podcaster. Right. And, but I had faith. I had faith to know that this was my purpose. This is what I was preparing for my whole life and in sales, right? And you might be able to relate to this and have a comment on it, but all the experience in sales and having to talk to, or getting the opportunity to talk to a bunch of different types of people really helped me in crafting conversations and becoming a good host.

12:12Yeah. I mean, I talk to people every day from various walks of life with various different professions And I would say that doing all that, I mean, like I said, I think I've interviewed probably about 10 ,000 people, maybe more, maybe a little less, all with various interesting stories. And that has definitely helped me be a better communicator. I think, like you're saying, with sales, it's people that go door to door. I have people that have started their business as roofers or doing various occupations where they're getting rejected and talking to people or closing a deal and trying to become personal with people.

12:48and that's like one of the most valuable things ever i think being a good communicator and certainly what i've done has allowed me you know aside from just the various cool places that i've been able to travel and cool places that i've been able to be positioned in just having those daily interactions with people is is invaluable for uh just the way that i operate in my life and whatnot um and yeah it was very scary jumping ship you know i was only 21 you You know, you say that you jump ship. I'm sure you're making more money than me for sure. So it's probably even more scary and you have children and all that.

13:22So I can't even imagine having all those pressures as well. And then deciding to quit something that's very successful for you and jump into a dream. I did the same thing on a lower scale just because I was just starting in my career. But it's weird because at the time, you're kind of conditioned your whole life to think that like the 9 to 5 and like working for someone else is what you should do. Like even my parents, they're older and, you know, God bless them. Like they're being reasonable, you know, in a lot of ways, because they're saying like, Hey, like you have this job in finance. I was going to become a financial advisor.

13:54I was getting my brokerage licenses. Like I was on the right path. I did everything right in my life to get to that spot. So why would I completely destroy it by quitting a job that, you know, is cushy and go off to go do TikToks, especially when TikTok was at its infancy. It sounds crazy in hindsight, but a lot of people do that and fail. And I even was a little bit conservative with how long I took to quit my job. I had millions of followers at the time, but it all happened so fast. And now it's laughable because I'm 21 years old. I have no kids. I have no girlfriend. I could move to a new city easily.

14:27And I would have kicked myself if I was like 40 or 50 and didn't make that jump. But at the time, when it's your whole world, it doesn't seem easy. And yeah, like I said, everything's easier in hindsight to look back on. So it was a wild journey. And yeah, it was tough at the beginning, for sure. You don't want to act like, you don't want to essentially seem stupid. And, you know, oh, you know, you moved out to LA and it wasn't going to work out. You know, what an idiot, quit his job. But, you know, that's how you make the most money, I've learned, is by starting your own business. Yeah, 100%, man.

14:59And I want to challenge you really quickly, not in the classic sense, but I think it's all relative. Yes, I had a wife and three children. Yes, I had a corporate career. But you also took a big gamble at the very beginning when you didn't have much going on, right? As far as a family and you were just getting going. That's also very scary, Daniel. One is not more scarier than the other because it's all relative, man. And a lot of people thought what I did was reckless. but I'm blessed because I have an amazing wife who supported me, um, not financially, but, you know, with just actual support and say, Hey, listen, I believe in you.

15:40You know, I know you'll do the right thing, but she goes, you're going to have to tighten up a little bit because it's going to be hard for a while. And she was right. It was very hard for a very long period of time, but we're just now starting to hit this hockey stick to where all of a sudden, you know, I'm starting to feel, she's starting to feel like, whew, guessed right, man. And then also, you know, the audience is telling me that I guessed right, right? I mean, this, we have to go with our passions in this world. Otherwise, the cars, the houses, money doesn't mean anything if you don't enjoy truly and have a passion for what you're doing.

16:16And that may fall on deaf ears, you know, because there'd be people out there that didn't take those opportunities like, well, I hate what I'm doing right now, but I'm making a lot of money and they may feel trapped. Right. So again, you know, major props to you. That is a very hard thing to do at a young age. Um, it's almost as scarier because, you know, you have this, I mean, I don't know. I don't, I don't want to say naive. It's not naive, but it's like, I don't have anything right now. If I fail, it's on me only. I don't have anybody else to, you know, to impact, but at the same time, there's no, there's no, um, lesser risk that you took than I took.

16:58Yeah. I, I, I guess I can see what you mean in a lot of ways, as far as having nothing, because, you know, if you're, if your first big job out of, out of school or whatever, you know, you can compare it to literally anything. If say you just graduated high school or, or you, you know, you had a great opportunity and you're 19 or it doesn't really matter, but yeah, that's all you have it is kind of like your whole world at the time so if you fail there everyone just looks at you or at least you perceive that everyone would look at you and go wow you really screwed up the very start of your life yeah so yeah yeah it's uh it is it was scary it was very scary i mean but you doubled down on it you moved you continue to pour into your platform and your craft and dude it's changed your life i mean it changed my life yeah yeah it's uh just the amount of absurd people i've been able to meet like sometimes i'll do compilations of like just some of these people and just being in the room with just like interesting people like i would just play beer pong with mark duckerberg last week uh at a meta event you stole my thunder i was gonna bring that up dude damn you damn you yeah like that's the third richest man in the world like that's a weird thing to do and actually i was sending my family like the beginning i would i would tell my family like i'm doing this crazy thing like i'm gonna go watch richard branson uh go lift off on a rocket for a brand deal and get paid to do it like that was one of my first big brand deals and that at the time to my family was like oh my goodness and it is crazy uh but it started to get a little bit numb to some of the crazy stuff i was doing because like But especially in 2020, it was the new frontier of social media.

18:41And all the platforms were basically throwing out a lot of money at a lot of different things. Like Facebook Reels was just starting. And they were giving incentive bonuses. And Snapchat was pumping out money. And everyone was kind of trying to compete with each other. And all these brands were just finally starting to get it. because a lot of them had this, you know, this kind of old mentality of like television marketing where people can, you know, they can't skip away from an ad. So it was the new frontier and there's a lot of educating to do, but I'm sorry, sure. Yeah, like there was even, I wouldn't say crazy opportunities because I'm doing crazy stuff now, but it all went from like zero to a million in like six months for me.

19:22And that was just like a crazy period. And I'm glad that I had good friends around me and good people that, you know, didn't, you know, make me change who I was and they kept me real. And if I was acting like a L.A. douchebag, my family would probably fly out and beat me with like a hammer. So I'm thankful that I had a good a good support base. I have a twin brother, too. And if I was acting like a kind of like an L.A. snob, I'm sure he would kill me. So, yeah. Well, no, that's important, man. Because, you know, I too, like my wife told me when I started this thing, she goes, hey, look, there's going to be a time where you have to really evaluate where you're at.

20:00And she goes, I need you to always be yourself. The moment you're not yourself, you got to reevaluate it. And I always stuck to and still stick to who I am. I don't say things I don't mean. I don't say things just to get a rise out of people or clickbait. I'm really authentically me. and it's nice to hear, you know, just like, look, man, I'm having this conversation with you now. I know people who know you and then I've watched you on camera, the same dude. That to me is a secret sauce that you can never lose ever. Yeah. I agree a hundred percent. I think it's, it's hard sometimes to find people that are genuinely who they are on, on camera and off camera um i'd say in some ways for some genres of short form content some of the people that i thought would be terrible you know off camera like i don't know i won't throw out any anyone in particular but uh like people that do like dancing challenges and stuff like that i think it's really easy um to want to hate on them and think that they're a certain way um i'll bring it to the other end essentially um where you know you have an impression of them because of how they act on camera, not like it's something that's negative, but just who you think that they might be.

21:18And I've been shocked in a lot of ways where I've learned that a lot of people that I thought I wouldn't like, just because of how I might perceive that they may act, act completely different. And sometimes it can be on the opposite end. So it is really hard to find in short form media specifically. And this is something that where a lot of short form creators struggle is it's hard to get yourself out genuinely to your audience. And it's hard for them to actually know who you are as a person. So it takes a lot of years, especially in the short form, you know, kind of genre to connect with your audience and get them to build that trust.

21:52Because you can't, you just don't have the amount of time on camera to kind of portray who you are. So it depends on the style of videos that you're shooting. Like I personally try to do a lot of videos at least once a month or twice a month where I kind of go out of my my box and I talked to the camera directly like podcast style on just various topics, like how people get wealthier, what I've learned, or just like my journey and stuff like that. And that's been really important, but it's hard to build that trust. And it's yeah, on the internet, it's hard to know who's, who's really telling the truth.

22:22You know, it's, it's interesting you say that because you're talking about in a short form context, right. To where they don't have a lot of you, it's, it's quick hits, right. I've noticed on my end, like I'm listening to your story and you're like, Like, yeah, I went from zero to a million, like in a matter of months, I'm like, man, I'm stuck at 200 on Instagram, right? Because most of my stuff is long form, right? Whether it's YouTube, Spotify, Apple, and then we post clips on the show. And, you know, there's clips that I think, okay, okay, with the guest, maybe the content of the conversation, like this is going to fly and then it doesn't.

22:59So it's almost like it begs this question of what are they looking for? what is youtube what is spotify i mean uh sorry instagram and what is facebook and tiktok really looking for to show your video to people i think i think people really want to know that it really is platform dependent i think um and gary v talks about this a little bit i don't um i don't know specifically the way to which there needs to be massive massive differences between the way that you edit content, if we want to get technical. I know for a fact, though, that you need to tailor your content to each platform, at least in some ways specifically, like on YouTube.

23:42So you're about to make a trade based on a friend's text. But which you do you listen to? Is it, we could buy a house in Tulum. Get optioning those options. We could lose everything. or let's do a little research get your head in the trade and make the investment decision that's right for you learn more at finra.org trade smart when did making plans get this complicated it's time to streamline with whatsapp the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together use polls to settle dinner plans send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th and never miss a meme or milestone all protected with end-to-end encryption it's time for whatsapp message privately with everyone learn more at whatsapp.com example i think seo is really really important in the way that you like position your titling on short form videos for because people will still use the search bar on youtube for shorts when they're searching a particular topic.

24:56So if I make a caption, for example, say I interview, I don't know, the founder of Shark Tank Investor, and he tells me his best Shark Tank pick, for example, or like the Shark Tank pick that made him the most money. On YouTube, for SEO, I would caption that something like, Shark Tank creator shares his most profitable investment. But on TikTok and Instagram, because people are swiping in feed and they're not typing that in the search bar, I would make the caption something that encourages maybe the viewer to watch the full video or to something that's funny or something that's relatable or gets people to comment.

25:34And I think that's just one specific example of how platforms are used differently. I think you need to really pay attention to the way that viewers are consuming the media. There's a lot of other smaller technical things that I use personally. I use text on screen a lot more. I think people, you know, reading, kind of getting a general vibe for what the video is going to be about, especially in the first second when they're looking at it, giving them like a spark notes on the top, like your tech shark tank investor shares his top secret. Like these are some more technical things, which I think are very important.

26:07I think a lot of the times when people ask about how to get content to perform well, they'll give you give a lot more vague general answers. But I think you need to think about the technical aspects of how each platform operates specifically. And that should be something that is kind of at the forefront of how you operate on platforms. So, yeah, that's just one example that I have. I think trying different lengths as well on different platforms is another thing that's very specific. Like, I know that TikTok right now is currently valuing longer videos more. Things kind of like shifted. It was like a pendulum where TikTok took all the short form, all the long form watchers at the very beginning and they wanted really short little bite sized snippets.

26:52But then viewers started to get very fatigued in the last year and a half or so and didn't want to have to keep swiping, especially with more ads popping up and stuff like that, because it wasn't worth their time to sit through three TikTok shop ads. Like I'll be on my feed and it'll be like TikTok shop ad, regular ad, two second video, and then now I have to watch a new ad. And they kind of shot themselves in the foot a little bit in that aspect, because now people are like, okay, I just want to go back to YouTube and watch something longer. So that's another example of tailoring your links on different platforms.