The Creator Economy Is About To Change Forever | Justine Flom | DSH #2098

Summary

Podcast Summary

Digital Social Hour #2098
Episode: The Creator Economy Is About To Change Forever | Justin Flom
Date: August 9, 2026
Host: Sean Kelly
Guest: Justin Flom

---

Overview

This episode dives deep into the rapidly evolving creator economy with viral content mastermind Justin Flom. Together with host Sean Kelly, they dissect how algorithms really work, what platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube want from creators, and why traditional methods of monetization are collapsing. Justin also reveals the logic, experimentation, and investment behind his mind-blowing "fun house" projects in Las Vegas, offering practical advice for creators and candid views on AI’s encroachment into content, platform politics, and the real business of social virality.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The (Not So) Secret Behind the Algorithm

• The Algorithm = The Audience: Both speakers hammer home that “the algorithm is just human” (Justin, 00:00), meaning platforms simply surface content that holds the most watch time and attention.
• Hooks & Barriers to Exit: Justin shares his “barrier to exit” theory: On swipe-based platforms (TikTok, Reels), it takes minimal effort to scroll away, so every shot must immediately promise value. “You have to immediately understand what you’re waiting for, and then you have to wait for it.” (Justin, 02:47)
• Short Form vs. Long Form: Short form is all about a single payoff at the end—put multiple payoffs and viewers swipe away early. Long form (YouTube main) requires a compelling title & thumbnail; otherwise, no one clicks.

2. Monetization Meltdown

• Collapse of Platform Payouts: Justin explains that platforms realized they don’t need to pay creators for users to remain engaged. “TikTok did a secret test… If users only see unpaid, user-generated content, does usage drop? Not at all. So TikTok goes—why pay creators?” (Justin, 07:23)
• Brand Deals Now Rule: According to Instagram’s Adam Mosseri, “If you want to make money on Instagram, it’s brand deals. The ecosystem works without pay, so why pay?”
• YouTube Main: The Last Payer Standing: Only YouTube main (long-form) reliably pays creators, because high production costs demand it. But: “Nobody’s creating a YouTube long form for free. It’s too hard.” (Justin, 09:20)
• Followers Don’t Matter: Platforms no longer reliably show content to followers. A massive hit can be mostly to non-followers: “If you could take away all of my followers today, I’d be okay.” (Justin, 14:31)

3. Testing, Iteration & Data-Obsessed Creativity

• A/B Testing Everything: Justin invests heavily in testing—sometimes running 40+ edits before publishing a video. He A/B tests edits, thumbnails, and even buys low-budget ads to scientifically gauge engagement dips. “You can track where the dip happens in the edit, which is important because watch time is the most important metric.” (11:19–12:15)
• Retention is King: Viral virality is dictated by retention—percent of video watched, and for some algorithms, total time watched. Shorter videos can achieve higher completion percentages; longer ones need to justify their length and survive with lower percent, but higher total time (60:47–61:34).

4. Building the Viral Fun House: Vegas Real Estate as Content Studio

• House-Based Content Strategy: Justin describes his home as a “fun house”—a series of wild, theme-park-style rooms: a giant net over the stairs, foam pit, ball pit, secret trap doors, upside-down rooms, and now, a mind-bending “vanishing audience” mirror illusion (57:02–58:21).
• Ingenious Business Angle: He owns several connected Vegas houses and runs a production company that rents the “studio” house, maximizing write-offs (24:19). “Now we’ve got a full write. So now that what is essentially just a mortgage, which is the same as a new employee, I get to write off everything happening in it. Huge help on the tax side.” (24:25)
• Joy Per Dollar: “My joy per dollar spent is so high… what it costs to renovate one of these new modern homes—some guy spent a million on a railing! That’s dumb.” (35:45)

5. Content Creation in the Age of AI

• AI’s Evolving Threat (and Hype): Platforms and business models are bracing for AI-generated video and music. Justin already uses AI music for narration, but audience response is mixed and divisive (51:09–53:43).
• What Makes Human Creations Special: Despite AI advances, true audience connection comes from physical reality and human stories: “What the public knows… this is a real thing that exists in some guy’s house somewhere. That is an itchy, sticky thing in the brain.” (48:07)
• Experiential Future: Justin believes “experiential based stuff is going to increase,” both for content and in real life (50:53).

6. Platform Grievances & The Future of Social

• TikTok’s Opaque System: Justin rails on TikTok’s lack of transparency and creator support: “TikTok, I hate you. Give a rep to creators… The only reason my content ends up on TikTok is as a rights manager. If I don’t put it up, someone else will.” (64:47–65:16)
• Trial Reels & Testing Gaps: Both wish YouTube would add “trial reels” so creators can test with non-followers and optimize edits before a big launch (62:33–63:48).
• Advice for New Creators: “Just start uploading, that’s it. There’s nothing I can tell you better than the algorithm would tell you.” (69:28)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The algorithm is just human. Mr. Beast says anytime you hear the word ‘algorithm,’ just think ‘audience.’”
  (Justin Flom, 00:00, 01:59)

• “Barrier to exit is, how hard is it to leave something? …On TikTok, it's just one inch of your finger going up.”
  (Justin Flom, 02:47)

• “If you deliver [the payoff] earlier… your finger almost automatically goes up.”
  (Justin Flom, 04:49)

• “No one’s ever chosen to watch a Justin Flom video ever…They swipe up, there’s my big dumb face… and they just go, alright, I’ll see what this is.”
  (Justin Flom, 05:42)

• “We’re in a broken creator economy right now. It’s a big problem.”
  (Justin Flom, 07:23)

• “Create for the algorithm, don’t create for your followers.”
  (Justin Flom, 12:53)

• “If you’re getting no views, you’re doing bad videos. I’m very sorry.”
  (Justin Flom, 14:07)

• “The platforms want to make money, so they’re going to give it to the people that need to see it.”
  (Justin Flom, 12:53)

• “What do I need? I go, just start. I’m sorry, there’s not anything other than just starting.”
  (Justin Flom, 69:28)

• “My biggest video of all time…17 seconds. Almost 2 billion views. The watch percent on it is 130%.”
  (Justin Flom, 60:47)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–02:47: Demystifying the algorithm and content hooks
• 05:38–07:23: Platform monetization—what still pays, what doesn’t
• 10:50–12:15: Dark posting, A/B testing, and scientific content iteration
• 16:47–18:19: Attention span, pandemic shifts, the rise of vertical video
• 23:04–26:40: Genius fun house logistics, house-as-studio business model
• 32:13–35:44: Casino carpets, Vegas quirks, and crazy room investments
• 34:03–36:09: Largest room spend ($30,000+), why it’s worth it
• 43:12–44:49: The Las Vegas Sphere, experiential revenue models
• 46:56–50:53: The AI threat and why humans still win
• 51:09–53:43: AI-generated music, meme culture, and Internet theft
• 57:02–59:23: The “vanishing audience” mirror room and viral illusion concepts
• 60:08–62:18: Retention rates, viral video club analogy, importance of watch metrics
• 64:47–66:03: TikTok’s opacity, platform gripes
• 69:28: “Just start:” Key advice for new creators

---

Tone & Takeaways

The tone is fun, irreverent, and loaded with candor, with both Justin and Sean debunking social media myths and revealing the focus on strategy, not chance, that underpins viral success. Justin is both self-deprecating (“my big dumb face”) and rigorous in his craft, mixing showman’s creativity with a data-obsessed approach.

He’s bullish on the unique value of human-made, real-world, experiential content—even as AI looms as a creative and economic threat. He’s clear-eyed about monetization’s challenges, urging creators to “just start” and to create for algorithmic discovery rather than chasing vanity metrics like follower count. On the business side, his Las Vegas “fun house” is both content goldmine and tax savvy studio—a vivid, offbeat testament to blending entertainment, experimentation, and entrepreneurship.

---

For Listeners

If you haven’t listened: You’ll find candid and actionable breakdowns of what’s working in content creation right now, where the big risks lie, what the future will likely hold—and a ton of wild stories about building viral “fun houses” in Vegas. Essential listening for anyone in the creator economy or simply fascinated by how digital media shapes culture and cashflow.

Transcript

[Justin Flom]

Like, what's a video going to do to us? Because your wisdom and your talking head content could be created by AI today, the algorithm is just human. Mr. B says anytime you hear the word algorithm, just think audience and they're going to put at the top of feed whatever has the most time watched. The retention was great. 10 million views by the end of the night on zero followers. That's just the algorithm.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, guys, we got Justin on the show today. I've been trying to set this one up for a while. I think he has the coolest house in Vegas.

[Justin Flom]

So pumped, man.

[Podcast Host]

I'm pumped to talk about it. Yeah, I see videos all the time.

[Justin Flom]

It's crazy. We try to stay at the top of feed and there's. We'll. We. We should share the methods behind that because they're actually pretty interesting. It doesn't look calculated. I don't know, maybe it does to you, but the behind the scenes of how this content is created to get to the top of feed is actually like way more calculated than you would imagine.

[Podcast Host]

Really?

[Justin Flom]

Yeah, because. So we test all the content before it goes live. Okay, so like I built this crazy net above my stairs. So it's this two tiered like web system. It's crazy cool. That video I edited 40 different times before it ever went live. I could not crack that concept, which is crazy because the concept itself just crazy. Jungle gym of rope above stairs three stories high. Well, that's like wicked cool. And you would think that would be the easiest thing to crack. I couldn't get people to understand it. So it kind of goes down to. All right, if you're creating content like, well, tell me, with the people who are listening to this, watching this, are they creating content or are they just curious about it? What's the best way?

[Podcast Host]

I would say most of them are consuming it, but some of them are creating. Some of them are interested in.

[Justin Flom]

Even on the, on the consumer side, like I like to watch the behind the scenes of a movie and just kind of understand. Oh, wow. So that's how they did it sort of thing. So here's the deal. Every algorithm, and this is kind of basic stuff, but also deserves to be said. Yeah, the algorithm is just human. So Mr. Beast says, anytime you hear the word algorithm, just think audience and they're going to put at the top of feed whatever has the most time watched. Well, no one's going to finish your video unless they start your video. Sounds obvious, but it actually needs to be said. So my biggest job in everything I do is what's the opening shot? That's it. Now, if you're a talking head, you're talking hook. What am I going to say?

[Podcast Host]

100%.

[Justin Flom]

But for me, I don't talk. There's nothing I'm doing that's talking. It's got to be, what's the visual that's going to make people want to watch? So it's a couple things. Number one, they have to immediately understand what they're waiting for, and then they have to wait for it. So I have to create something that's novel because you're swiping, swiping, swiping. You're looking for new, you're looking for interesting. So I coined a term back in 2020 when I was figuring all this stuff out. It's called barrier to exit. So we know barrier, entry. How hard is it to get into something? Barrier to exit is how hard is it to leave something. So imagine you go to the movie theater. Okay. You got a babysitter for the kids. You drove there, you bought tickets, you went in, you got your drink, you're sitting down. That movie would have to really suck for you to get up and leave even higher. Barrier to exit for a live Vegas show. Like, now, like, we've really invested, so you're gonna finish that show even if it's mid, even if it's mediocre. But what's the barrier to exit on a TikTok video, it's just one inch of your finger going up. Not only that, we've told you that there's just going to be the world's best content one swipe away. It's even better for you. So you're highly motivated to swipe. So everything has to be in service of the audience. You have to fully go for them and go, here's what you're going to get out of this piece of content. Now, for you, it might be educational. This is the gold nugget at the end of that video. For me, it's some sort of visual comedic, interesting payoff. Like, this is what you're going to get. So they have to understand that immediately and then think it's worth enough to wait and then don't deliver that until the end. If you deliver it earlier. We just are in a dopamine cycle of dopamine swipe. Like when the brain gets that dopamine, your finger almost automatically goes up.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

So in short form, content, which is anything with a swipe feed, which is Instagram, Facebook X, YouTube shorts. That dopamine cycle means you can't put multiple payoffs into. Into a video because that first payoff will cause a swipe. So it's. It's not great for the content. Sometimes YouTube long form, you know, you're getting a payoff every 90 seconds if you're following beast rules. But in the short form, you got to go, okay, how much is this concept worth? And it might only be worth 20 seconds or it might be worth 2 minutes and 30 seconds. And if it is worth that amount of time, make it as long as possible, because then you'll have a higher watch time. You'll be higher in the feed.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. And you have tens of billions of views. What's the breakdown on short form versus long form? Is it mainly from shorts?

[Justin Flom]

All shorts. Now, there's a cool hack that at one time was valuable. It's not valuable anymore. But Facebook was a swipe feed with long form video. That means long form money. So YouTube long form, YouTube, main YouTube. Yeah. That's where the money is. It's where it's always been. Because, you know, a million views, there could be 5,000 bucks. Could be more if you're in the financial market. Could be a little less if you're doing physical comedy in the international space. But long form is good money. Short form used to be good money, but mostly it's like 50 bucks a million, depending. But Facebook, long form, that was a swipe feed, meaning you don't have to get them to click on a thumbnail and a title. They just swipe up, and suddenly there's the video. I used to tell people, nobody's ever chosen to watch a Justin Flom video ever. It's never happened. They swipe up, there's my big dumb face. I'm knocking a hole in the wall or pouring something on something, like doing something novel. And they just go, all right, I'll see what this is. So my videos don't actually work in the long form because if I'm doing a spray paint piece of Tom and Jerry, like guy paints. Tom and Jerry is a terrible title. I don't see a way to ideate that to a better title. Nobody's choosing to watch that. But if you swipe up and it's this oddly satisfying quick cut thing. Yeah, I'll watch. I'll hang. And on Facebook, where that video made the most money, specific to this Tom and Jerry example, I was able to make that a long form video, meaning three minutes plus.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

And because it didn't feel like it was going to be long form, they swipe up, they watch it. That's where the most money was. Now Facebook has just crashed the economy. I blame TikTok because we were talking about this before the pod and this will be interesting. A little insider knowledge for the listeners. Tick tock did a test secret where they like. All right, let's take a subset of our TikTok users and let's only show them user generated content that's free, meaning no Lele Pons, no King Batch, no Justin Flom, no creator. Who's getting paid to create content? Nobody. Who's getting paid on views. And let's see if this little subset of users only watching user generated content dips in their usage. Do they use TikTok less? Not at all. They didn't dip at all. Nobody noticed. So TikTok goes, why are we paying creators? We don't need to pay creators. People will be on the app even if all the content is this free. Whoa, that's a problem. That little test leaks out to Meta and to YouTube and they just go, all right, well, that's why we're in a creator bubble. We're in a broken creator economy right now. It's a big problem. Instagram says overtly, they go, we're not paying. We don't need to pay. The ecosystem works without pay, so why would we pay? And the CEO, who's great by the way of Instagram, Adam, he's like, look, if you want to make money on Instagram, it's brand deals. So creators are now having to go, okay, if the platforms aren't going to pay, then I have to figure out how to monetize in a different way, which I think is bad for the content because then everything feels like it's

[Podcast Host]

selling and no one likes that.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah, but the only platform that still pays is the platform that has to. Which is YouTube main. Yeah, because content there. Nobody's creating a YouTube long form for free. It's too hard.

[Podcast Host]

Costs a lot.

[Justin Flom]

Costs a lot. It's big production. And for you to get to the top of that feed, it's all thumbnail title. So it has to be I bought an island and lived on it. You know, it's. It's that beast style or it's educational where it's like, let me tell you the thing to do this and that YouTube will continue to pay for that because that market requires it.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, I can't believe how much the thumbnail and title matters on YouTube because I'm posting the same. We're repurposing our old pods with a Different title and thumbnail and they're getting 10 to 50x views. Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

So now do you, do you have a way of testing.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, there's a site that my editors use that split test all the thumbnails.

[Justin Flom]

Right.

[Podcast Host]

It's just like I think 5 to 10 per video or something. Some people test way more than that.

[Justin Flom]

Yes. And there's another way to test, which is I, So I test on meta because YouTube doesn't give me all of the things I really want to test. But on Meta you can buy ads and just track engagement on them and it's really interesting.

[Podcast Host]

Wow.

[Justin Flom]

Like, like imagine if you're testing thumbnails, just do an ad with a click through and go, all right, well let me put up an ad of this thumbnail. I don't care if it goes to a dead link, I don't care if it goes nowhere. I just want to see what gets more clicks. And, and you can do that and you can do it with five bucks.

[Podcast Host]

Yes.

[Justin Flom]

So everything I do. So back to that initial story of me testing 40 different edits on this one video. I'll buy ads and I'll. It's dark posting and essentially, you know, it's not new because I've described it to marketers before and they go, oh, you just ab testing. Yeah, but it's. I don't know any other creator who's ab testing the edit, who's.

[Podcast Host]

I only know the title and thumbnail.

[Justin Flom]

Right. But to actually go, no, no, no, I want to see because I can track where the dip happens in the edit, which is important because you said

[Podcast Host]

earlier, watch time is the most important metric.

[Justin Flom]

Right. And, oh well, if they just dipped. So I remember, you know, six years ago I was doing some unboxing video or whatever and my daughter, who was at the time 2 years old, walks into frame and I saw a crash in the retention line. What's up? Well, we can hypothesize here. Two year old walks onto frame. Okay, well, whatever's in that box because we don't know what we're unboxing. Well, it's not going to be sexy, it's not going to be dangerous. Nobody's getting naked and nobody's blowing up because there's, there's now a toddler there. So. Okay, we can't change genres mid thing like that. That, that was an interesting data point.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, I would have never thought that one.

[Justin Flom]

Right. And so now if I do have my kids in the video, we open with them. Like we just, we say on the onset there's kids in this video. That's the genre we're in. The feed will give it to the people because. And this will surprise some listeners. Okay, so if I get a hundred million hit and I've got 30 million subscribers, what percentage of that hundred million is my subscribers? Now, you probably are closer to the answer on this because, you know. Yeah, but the answer is, think about what your answer would be. It's 3%.

[Podcast Host]

I was going to guess 10. Yeah, 3%.

[Justin Flom]

And I go, well, hang on. These, these people, they decided to follow me. They have clicked the follow button. They said they want to see my. What's up? No, the algorithm knows better. The algorithm knows that person's viewing habits. They know whether or not this per. And look, the platforms want to make money, so they're going to give it to the people that they that need to see it. So create for the algorithm, don't create for your followers. So I cast a very wide net. I need. So I never. It's never. What's up, guys? This week at the house, we're doing none of that. That's this week. Do I have to catch up on something you did last week? You're talking like, I know who you are. I don't know who you are. Predominantly it'll be swipe up, who's this guy? And, and let's just watch. So building followers doesn't even matter because you can get 100 million hit video with a thousand followers.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

It's all about the content and how it interacts.

[Podcast Host]

Right. Because you have 34 million followers. Yeah. You just assume that no one knows you.

[Justin Flom]

I can still post a video that gets 20,000 views. If it's a bad video, the algorithm will stop it.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, I noticed that too.

[Justin Flom]

It will not. So there's just, you know, I got bad news for people. If you're getting no views, you're doing bad videos. I'm very sorry. I wish there was a better way to say it. Okay. But that's, it's just around the content now.

[Podcast Host]

People have it backwards. They go for followers, they're always like, how do I get more followers?

[Justin Flom]

Right. That's wrong.

[Podcast Host]

It's totally wrong.

[Justin Flom]

It doesn't matter. If you could take away all of my followers today, I would be okay.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, I have. Similar to you, 99% of my Instagram is from non followers and I have 12 million there.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. Instagram, look, it's vanity metrics. We, we like. There's certainly benefits that come from high follower accounts. But none of them are monetary. None of them are in feed. It's.

[Podcast Host]

It's just getting DM replies for me. Yeah. Social status, that's it.

[Justin Flom]

That's what it is.

[Podcast Host]

Doesn't help your views.

[Justin Flom]

No. But, but Neil Patrick Harris will reach out and I go, yeah. His follower count kind of is validity, like, yep. That sort of thing. So that's nice.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. It's crazy how, how much it shifted because when you first started, I think followers did matter. Right.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah. I mean to what they. What followers do is they give you a bigger pool of testing. So if you have no followers on TikTok, uh, then you post a video and it will send it out to 10 people. If those 10 people watch the whole video, they go, cool, send it to a hundred. Those hundred people keep a high retention rate. Send it to a thousand and then ten thousand and then a hundred thousand and then a million and suddenly. So this happened once, my ex wife, I helped her film a video. No followers, nothing. No shares, no tags. Didn't do anything. We just created a good piece of content of a sawing in half magic prop in a living room. It's novel. Cute girl saw it in half. Like, this is interesting. The retention was great. 10 million views by the end of the night on zero followers. That's just the algorithm. But if I've got 30 million, that means my initial testing pool is going to be 10,000.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

So I just get a few more bites at the apple because there is a chance that TikTok sends the video to 10 people who don't care about whatever the thing is that you did. Now the algorithm is getting even better every day. So if you're talking bitcoin. Yeah. Then it's going to. It's not going to send it to a soccer mom in Idaho. It's going to send it to somebody just because it knows what you're saying in the video. It can kind of contextualize. So it goes, I think he's talking bitcoin. Send it to these bitcoin bros. Yeah. And, and you'll have a better shot.

[Podcast Host]

But yeah, with the attention span dropping day by day, year by year, has that affected your watch time at all with your videos?

[Justin Flom]

So it's an argument is attention span dropping. I mean, our usage of the phone hasn't dipped our attention span. Like how do you define attention span? Right. I'm sitting here on the phone still, my attention is on all this. What it is. There's now so much competition and the competition is great. So previously I would have hung out for three minutes on a simple little DIY hack on how to store my eggs in my fridge. Well, now I'm not, because we seem to be done. Look, everything's cyclical, but we seem to be done with the hacks that were huge during Pandemic. And now we're into like, entertain me. Look, social media is. We're in social media 2.0. It was dead back in 2020. We shifted from social to just media where social was. We're going to talk to our friends, we're going to see what babies are born in our high school friend group, this and that, that died in Pandemic fully. And Pandemic became. We're just going to watch other people entertain us. And mostly in vertical video feedback.

[Podcast Host]

Right. And during the Pandemic, that's when you were just starting or.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah, I mean, all. I used to be a magician. I traveled around. I did casinos and corporates and churches and, and fairs and, and cruise ships, whatever. And I was a magician for 20 years. And then all those live shows went away and I thought, okay, well, I can take a vacation for the first time in my life right now. This would be cool. Or I can actually do more work right now and just try out this different thing. And what it really was, was getting into the data, something I had never been interested in. I wanted. I was an artist. I want to create what I want to and put it out there, and if people like it, great. If they don't, great. And that's just such an arrogant way of thinking. What actually I, I ended up doing was what does the audience want to see? And I'll create that. You know, I've got something artistic inside me that I really want to put. I, I'm going to put it like, you know, dog food medicine inside peanut butter. I'm going to hide it into the thing that the audience actually wants. And, and then, then I can get my art out there. So my job is to come up with a stupid idea and then go, okay, how would the audience interact with this? So I'm. I'm getting to do things. So the crazy fun house that I've built, that's what's getting the most retention right now, which is, you know, the third iteration of my career where first I was a magician, most people knew me as a magician. Then I was a spray paint artist for five years. Nobody knew me as a magician. I was the spray paint guy.

[Podcast Host]

Interesting.

[Justin Flom]

And then now I'm the guy with the fun house. And neither, neither audience Knows about the other. It's weird, but as I'm doing the house stuff, this is all stuff that I would be doing anyway. Like, nothing's more fun than putting crazy art installations in a house. Like, last night, I just finished a ball pit. This ball pits are 10 times better than foam pits. I found out this is fantastic. Like, an adult sized deep ball pit is great. I would love to do that anyway. But now I have a job that pays for it.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

And I get to get to do that. But it goes back to that. You know, videos are more expensive to produce now. Not because of the tech, not because of the editing, but because of the production that goes in. The people want to see a giant ball pit. They don't just want to see you, you know, show an origami little paper thing. So now, okay, so I'm 5,000 deep in balls. Commenters, make your own jokes. And then I. That video, will it make 5,000? It might. It might not. It doesn't really matter because I'm kind of building this greater than the sum of its parts sort of thing.

[Podcast Host]

The Mr. B strategy.

[Justin Flom]

Well, what it really is, when the house tour. This house tour video did half a billion views.

[Podcast Host]

Wow.

[Justin Flom]

On Instagram, it did half a billion.

[Podcast Host]

That's where I saw it all.

[Justin Flom]

All platforms combined, it's probably at a billion. And it was this combination of all of these viral videos that I had done. I can't believe I didn't do it earlier, you know, because we had all these cool doorways and things that all on their own, did hundo mail. Hundo mail. Cool. I never thought to combine them because I was like, well, people have seen this. It's 100 million hit video. Nobody sees anything. Nobody sees it.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Justin Flom]

They forget it. They didn't see it. They swiped halfway through. Doesn't matter if 100 million people watched it. In terms of. That's the view. Count on it.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

10 million people finished it. But, you know, it's. That's not. That's not everybody. So when I combined them all, that created this new understanding of, like, oh, this is like a thing. Got it. So then I just bought the house next door to my fun house, which is. So here's the crazy setup that I have. This is. This is. I live the bougiest, craziest. This is stupid. But it's also what allows for all this, because people ask, how do you live in that fun house? Like, you have foam pits and secret passageways. Doesn't it get annoying every time you want to go into that room to wait for the door to open vertically, like a DeLorean. First of all, where's your sense of fun? Come on, this is the best. Second, my wife, my. So I got married two and a half years ago to my neighbor. So she was my neighbor. We were in previous relationships. We both ended up single at the same time. I highly recommend dating your neighbor. It's great.

[Podcast Host]

They say, don't. What? Sleep where you should or something like that.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah. No, look, this is fantastic. I was sneaking in through her window. She was coming over. We were doing a walk of shame. Every morning, our neighbors are seeing us in our underwear, walking back and forth. It was fantastic. When we got married, she's like, I'm going to keep my house. And I was like, I think you should. Because now I've got contractors at my house and we're doing crazy stuff every day. My house is always under construction. So hers is the escape, the spa retreat. That is the sanctuary, as we call it. And then I've got the fun house. So that's a really good setup. And then my next door neighbor, this sweet old Jewish lady, she was like a grandmother to my children. For the last five years, I've been telling her, hey, if you ever plan on moving or dying, like, I. I love your house because it's vintage Vegas. Archways, bricks, stones. Cool. So last year, she goes, all right, it's time. You want it? I said, I do. She goes, it's as is. Sure. And she goes. She named her price. And I go, yes. So on the financial side, you'll like this. This is interesting. So my rental company owns that house.

[Podcast Host]

Okay.

[Justin Flom]

My video production company rents from me, that house as a studio.

[Podcast Host]

Interesting.

[Justin Flom]

Because my fun house, well, that's my primary residence. Write offs are limited. If I'm replacing a toilet in my house, like, even though it's going to be in a video and all that, the write off is a little bit difficult to make that happen. Same thing for, like, my kids, bedrooms. The CPA is like, well, that's their bedroom.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

You can't.

[Podcast Host]

You can only pretty much write off the office.

[Justin Flom]

Right, Right. But in a house that is fully studio, no one lives there. Well, now we've got a full write. So now that what is essentially just a mortgage, which is the same cost as a new employee, and I get to write off everything happening in it. Well, this is huge. Now it just makes sense. So it's a huge help on the tax side.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Justin Flom]

But it's also now given me a place where I Was out of space. I got to do secret. This making stupid secret rooms is my job. And I'm out of space. What do I do? Like, people are like, man, I love that Blockbuster room. I'm like, yeah, it's gone now. Now it's a Christmas light room. Oh, so you're redoing rooms constantly now. There's a couple staples that stay just because they get just the best reactions.

[Podcast Host]

Might have to step.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah, foam pit. That stays. But that's the most profitable room foam pit ever done. Yeah. Because it's. So I had two closets on top of each other and I took out the floor. So now these two big walk in closets, you know, it's like, you know, 8ft by 10ft. Now it's this double decker room with a doorway from upstairs down. So first it was a trampoline room and then we put a foam pit in. Then it's a foam pit room. And then we built a modular trapdoor. This is our trapdoor 2.0 that can go in or out and the trap can move around the floor and I can decide where I want it. Oh, so now it's a trapdoor into the foam pit. So those three rooms have brought in. I think I'm at probably 50 billion views on just that real estate right there. It's just insane because you got all these trapdoor videos, all these foam pit videos, all these tramp. It's just crazy.

[Podcast Host]

You ever film the contractor's reaction when you tell them what to do?

[Justin Flom]

We have on the list we want to, we want to bring in a realtor just to show them the house and that sort of thing, to be honest. So now I'm doing most of the work. I've got a great contract. Guy named Ricky here in town. He's fantastic. And so talking with him, it's always like an Abbott and Costello who's on first sort of routine. I'm like, all right, so look, we're gonna put a door in the wall here. And he's like, all right, where's that door gonna go? And I go, it's not gonna go anywhere. That's a wall. But the, the wall is going to open up here and that's going to be a door. I thought you said the door is over here. No, this decoy door. The wall becomes a door when you put a door handle on it. And like explaining these weird inventions is always fun.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

But I bring him in because what I don't know about is like load bearing walls. Like, can I remove this Can I? Yeah, but we got to put in a new beam here and all that, the structure stuff. And we do it safe, you know, I'm not just anchoring into some studs for this crazy net system above my stairs. We had to rip open the wall and put in new beams and all of that, but it ends up being pretty wicked. We throw big parties at Christmas and in summer.

[Podcast Host]

That's awesome.

[Justin Flom]

And it's great.

[Podcast Host]

No, hoa.

[Justin Flom]

Right there is an hoa. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Letting you do all this,

[Justin Flom]

I make really look, I'm the youngest in the neighborhood by decades. And they, they've seen the videos now they're aware. So is the previous owner, the sweet lady whose house I bought. Her friends are like, we know what you're gonna do. We watch your blog. And I. And, and so they are aware and we actually filmed a fun video of just giving the previous owner a tour of what I'm doing in her house. And it's very fun. People, people like childlike wonder. And they get to see. They're like, wow, that's.

[Podcast Host]

Wow.

[Justin Flom]

I never thought you'd do that to a kitchen.

[Podcast Host]

All right. The nicest HOA I've heard of out here.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, luckily there's not a lot exterior happening. I haven't done a lot of stuff

[Podcast Host]

spray painted outside yet.

[Justin Flom]

No, no, I, you know, some people do that. Yeah, I gotta, I gotta live in the place. So we try to make it, we try to make it nice.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. So you're living at three houses now. Would you prefer doing that or having one big house that's worth 10 million?

[Justin Flom]

Ah, what a cool question. So would you rather have a 10 million dollar house or like 3? So this is how low I'll go. I would pick three houses at 1.5 mil. Like if, if the rule is you can't sell it and you can't like what do you want? You are 110 million dollar house or 3? 1.5 million dollars. I take 3. 1.5 every time. Look, center Vegas. So first of all, Vegas is the greatest place on earth. I'm never leaving. I've tried. Okay. I went to Nashville for a hot second in 2018, lived there for. I didn't even make it a year. And I had a hunch it wasn't going to work because I didn't even turn off the cable at my Vegas house. I hated it.

[Podcast Host]

You still have cable?

[Justin Flom]

Like cable, Internet?

[Podcast Host]

I'm more surprised at that than.

[Justin Flom]

I know. Well, look, that's. What are we gonna although cool thing with the three Houses. I beam Internet from the central hub where I have my servers, and that beams Internet to the other two houses. So they're all on the same network.

[Podcast Host]

What? Yeah. That far?

[Justin Flom]

Yeah. Well, it's this sight line thing. I got a tech guy.

[Podcast Host]

Not on Cox. You're on your own.

[Justin Flom]

It's on Cox, but with my own server. And. And this. It's. I don't.

[Podcast Host]

I.

[Justin Flom]

Look, I hire the guy.

[Podcast Host]

It's.

[Justin Flom]

It's my neighbor. He's super tech savvy.

[Podcast Host]

And.

[Justin Flom]

And he goes, you know, you could do this. So now we've hooked in our phone systems through the phones. So you can pick up a landline phone in one house and it immediately rings the other house.

[Podcast Host]

No way.

[Justin Flom]

So they're all connected. So my daughters, when they're in their bedroom, they pick up the landline phone and it rings my master bedroom phone so they don't have to come downstairs. It's like, stupid. People hear that? My buddy Kyle was over the other day, and he goes, yeah, I can also call my wife in whatever room she's in with my phone. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, but this. Come on. This is cool, right?

[Podcast Host]

It's nostalgic, for sure.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah. Well, so we have a central hub of servers and an office phone line system, like dial 9 to get out sort of thing. So now the phone lines actually run a lot of the gags. So you pick up this phone, and Morgan Freeman will talk to you and then play a Seinfeld gag that comes out of the mirror. Like, it's just silly. Yeah, but, yeah, it's. It's fun. But, yeah. So to answer your question, there's. Vegas is the greatest in the world, and we've got these old neighborhoods in the center of town. I don't dig the Steve Aoki crazy fun. Dragon Ridge.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah. Like, I'm not out there. Okay. I don't like the style of home. Give me. Give me cozy and unique over the. The crazy, like, the modern house. Right? Like, I just, you know, these houses feel like I'm in the community college or, you know, like, I don't want the kitchen to feel like a Planned Parenthood myself. That's just myself. I want it to, like, I'm going to bring back carpet. We're bringing back carpet.

[Podcast Host]

You're a carpet fan.

[Justin Flom]

Look, I. We. We. We priced out what the tile would be to do this new funhouse next door. And. And it was just crazy expensive. So I called a casino company, and I was like, hey, what casinos got, like, a leftover roll of. I just need 30 yards of casino carpet. Crazy loud. It's purple, red and yellow. Like it's insane. And they're like, we got the Orleans. And I was like, send it 1200 bucks.

[Podcast Host]

Boom.

[Justin Flom]

I got casino carpet in the house. It looks insane. It's awesome.

[Podcast Host]

Very old. And a lot of smoke has been on it.

[Justin Flom]

Well, no. So it was a new roll. It was just unused. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I'll take. Cuz I wasn't going to print my own casino carpet. Too expensive. So I was just like, whatever you got, send it my way. And it's great New Orleans, but old Vegas has land, so it's got yards. And I'm sitting on a well. So I've got free, I got free water.

[Podcast Host]

Wow. Vegas.

[Justin Flom]

If you can get a couple houses nearby each other, this is the compound. This is way wealthier than one $10 million house. Because now like I, my kids, they're homeschooled, they're doing school at one house, I go to the next house, I work, I pop by, get to have lunch with them. I'm living the dream. It's amazing.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. From a business point of view, the way you explain the write offs, it kind of makes sense to me, right. To have that set up over one $10 million house that you can't write off anything, Right?

[Justin Flom]

Yeah. And as long as you can keep that sustainable, you know, like look, we're at a bitcoin conference. I don't have any digital currency myself. Everything I have is in the market. And then real estate. And that's. It's just the bank account where I keep it.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. What's the most you've spent on a room?

[Justin Flom]

Oh, great question. You know the net system above the stairs? That was 30 grand. Yeah, that was 30 grand. Because this guy, shout out tree net Willie. This guy usually builds crazy stuff in the trees. Like goes out to the jungle.

[Podcast Host]

Like a tree house.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah. And like it's insane stuff. And he's just a feel good chill hippie. And he brought over half a dozen of his hippie buddies. So I just had a house full of the most chill individuals who are just listening to Grateful Dead. Hanging the net in my house. And then we built a cube in the backyard. This 12 foot high cube with a. It's like a. We call it the Tesseract. It's got a cube on the inside, tunnels of, of cord and there's trampoline on top. 12ft in the air. My wife hates it.

[Podcast Host]

So you're already 12ft up and the trampoline's on the top.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah, it's a little sketch. Yeah, that's a little sketch. If you fall, you're. But though, so, you know, all in those two pieces was 50 grand. And I did not make that money back on those videos. That's fine. It, it kind of comes another way.

[Podcast Host]

Like it's, it's realized too with podcasts.

[Justin Flom]

Right. So that was big. Yeah, that and then the ball pit. Look, I, I, what am I, did I say six, five thousand. Six thousand in balls. But I'm still pretty cheap. Like, when you look at what it costs to renovate one of these new modern homes, like, I know a guy, he spent a million dollars putting a new railing in just, just on renovation. What are you doing?

[Podcast Host]

That's like a price of a house.

[Justin Flom]

Don't, don't. Dude. That's just dumb. I, my, my joy per dollar spent is so high. And that's because it's Las Vegas. I love being surrounded by weirdos. That's what I want.

[Podcast Host]

Vegas has a lot of those.

[Justin Flom]

It's great. Like, all of my friends are jugglers in absinthe or weird. Like, it's the best.

[Podcast Host]

I saw that show.

[Justin Flom]

And nothing's better than. So when I throw parties, I take out all my fire eating stuff, all my juggling stuff all. And I have magic props out. Like we had a water torture cell in the backyard. Hop in the water torture cell. Water torture cell. Yeah, this Houdini thing, it's just this big tank. We didn't fill it with water, but we made it so you could hang upside down in it for cool pictures and stuff like that. And we. When you're friends with circus carney trash, they get on the stuff and do cool things the best. It's. And you only get that in Las Vegas.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. Vegas has the most, I would say the most interesting people. Honestly, I never run out of guests over here.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah, yeah. And there's interesting money here. I think the economy, the economy of Vegas is hurting right now. Yes. But we've never failed to fix ourselves. It's always when you look at the Vegas eras, this is fascinating to me. Vegas will find the money. I like Vegas better than any other place in the country because money is paramount. So we will go, okay, let's do family Vegas. That's the 90s, you know, bring your kids here. We got castles and, and pyramids and roller coasters. And that worked for a hot second. And then we figured out, oh, all these families are coming to town. They're not gambling and they're using all of the free stuff. We're giving away that cheap shrimp cocktail steak dinner that was just to get you at the tables. Gambling families aren't doing that. All right, scratch it. What happens here stays here.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

Vegas is hookers and blow and nightclubs. Get on out here, have your hangover moment and. And then boom. That starts the nightclub boom. And we get that for, you know, whatever. Right now Vegas has pushed to the limit resort fees and expensive meals and all of that. It seems that their strategy is let's get the wealthiest people. Because in Pandemic, we didn't like the people. You know, Vegas was open, so we get a bunch of people from lower income areas coming out to spend their stimulus money in Vegas. Now I like that. And that's my crew. Like, look, my audience. I bump into my audience more at Golden Corral than I do at the Wynn. But the win looks at them. They go, no, that's not the clientele we want. Let's raise prices and try and get a different clientele. Maybe that'll work. But if it doesn't work, we can very quickly shift and do something else. But we seem to be coming into a headliner era with Backstreet Boys and Grateful Dead and Eagles. Right. So if we enter a headliner era, that's cool too. That'll be expensive show tickets and maybe there'll be a spot for, you know, smaller shows the way that it was in the 80s. But it's, it's always interesting. I think the Vegas economy will always find whatever that money making thing is. And it's not going to look like it did before Cirque du Soleil when that took over the town in 2000. That didn't look at all like what was before when the mob ran it.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, yeah.

[Justin Flom]

Which was all production shows. And the production shows, you know, was a different era than Elvis. Elvis is the 70s. That was that. And also at the time, you've got Paul Anka and Frank Sinatra and Sammy Dean. Sammy and Dean, you know, all of. All of that era. So Vegas will find itself.

[Podcast Host]

I hope so. Yeah. I see a lot of videos saying VCs own a lot of the hotels now. And it's kind of taking the life out of some of these spots.

[Justin Flom]

Look, there's, there's something to be said for VCs destroying the country always.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

Like, yes, there's a lot of money, but it's buy Red Lobster, tank it, because you're gonna, you're gonna cut all of the Costs and money. And as soon as it's worth nothing, sell it for parts. And the VC makes money, but everyone else is out of a job. Now we're at this brand. It's just sad. And so we'll.

[Podcast Host]

We'll see. We'll see. Yes, sir.

[Justin Flom]

I don't know.

[Podcast Host]

Closing the buffets. MGM grand just announced they're closing theirs.

[Justin Flom]

Well, generations change, man. I don't think I, I don't think you and I are buffet people.

[Podcast Host]

When I was younger, maybe, but yeah, these days I'd prefer a nice meal over a buffet. Right.

[Justin Flom]

So. Well, we've got to get Gen Z coming out to Vegas. Gen Z doesn't drink, they don't smoke. We need degenerate gamblers here. That's what pays for these big beautiful buildings. How are we going to get them? So maybe it'll be experiential based, like Area 15, but you know, it's going to have to be a high dollar amount to cover the cost of building what it takes.

[Podcast Host]

They seem to be doing well. Every time I see them, they're expanding to a new building.

[Justin Flom]

That's right. And if you look at the sphere. Look, the sphere is sucking the most money out of the market right now because it's so expensive. And I don't know if there's going to be a market correction because that's just what it costs.

[Podcast Host]

They're losing a lot of money.

[Justin Flom]

Right, I know. And I bought. And my tickets to grateful dead were 800 bucks a piece.

[Podcast Host]

Why? It's for general admission tickets.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah, it's just. Well, no, I was, I, I. There's good seats to get in. In. Great. Look, so I did, I did Grateful Dead twice. The first time I was escorted out. Yeah, well, look, it's Grateful Dead. So there might have been some substances that. And, and then on the substances, you're watching the screen and, and it got to be too much. And so then I, I leave because I'm, I'm, I'm there and I'm going through a wormhole of dancing teddy bears, which is not. It wasn't a hallucination. It was what was happening on this on the screen. And I got, I gotta get out of here. So I go out to the concourse, which is all concrete, and I just lay down in the cold concrete. And I'm just laying there and security comes up and they're like, I'm. You can't lay here. And I go, right. That screen's intense. I'm gonna go get some food. So I go to the food. And I just point. I'm like, meatball sub. And I couldn't even get the sentence out. I pass out on the floor. I come to, and there's a medic woman who's pouring a gallon jug of water just all over my body. So now I'm soaking wet in the Sphere. Deadheads are walking by going, like, what's up with that guy? And big, big security guy comes over and he's like, hey, what'd you take? What'd you take? Wait, you. You're that guy. You got that house. You got that crazy house. And I'm like, yeah, I. I know this isn't. He's like, why don't we take a walk? So I didn't finish the first time I went. Second time I went. I did a lot better. And it was. It was spectacular. But the Sphere, I'll go to anything at the Sphere.

[Podcast Host]

It's the best. Yeah, I went to the Backstreet Boys there, and I was having anxiety during the animations. If I was on a substance. Oh, my God, I don't think I would have made it.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah, well, the crazy thing was, look, I walk up to security at the beginning, and I go, hey, is there a balcony where you can go out and smoke? And they go, no, if you leave, you can't come back in the building. So I would just suggest that you do it before. Light up. And I go, huh?

[Podcast Host]

Oh, inside.

[Justin Flom]

And they go, it's. It's Dead and Company. Like, it's Grateful Dead. You can. And I go, are you serious? And they go, yeah, we're not doing anything about it. So security told me. Yeah, but light up. So it felt like. Felt like the 60s. It was great.

[Podcast Host]

Must have smelled nice in there.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah, it was. It was fantastic. Can't, you know? And I now, what I hope, just decide. Not on the Sphere. I just want them to push play on that show. Because all right, now, Dead and Company is not going to happen again now that he died recently. So they've got the tape and it doesn't matter. When you saw Backstreet Boys, they're the size of a postage stamp down there.

[Podcast Host]

You could barely see them.

[Justin Flom]

Doesn't matter.

[Podcast Host]

I was watching the screen more than. That's right.

[Justin Flom]

So they have the audio, they have the visuals. Just hit play. With Backstreet Boys not being there, with Grateful Dead not being there, it's not going to be $800, but I'd still pay a hundred dollars to go for an hour and just do that. Like, come on, like like wizard of Oz. Yes, like. And wizard of Oz tickets are expensive because it's still a cool experience and the market has said, yeah, we will, we will pay that.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, yeah. If they could figure out a few shows like that, I think maybe they could turn it around. Hopefully they do.

[Justin Flom]

I think it's dope. I think it's great.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, they're losing a ton right now. I saw some crazy article about it.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah. But that's building more, which is.

[Podcast Host]

Doesn't make sense to me. But I don't know, the business mind is.

[Justin Flom]

Well, they seem to all these companies that are not making a profit. Look, I'm doing it myself right now. The creator economy is broken right now because of how little they're paying and we have to figure out a different way to monetize it. Everything's gone through this. We went through it with streaming, we've went through it with music. And what's important is that the people in that industry accept it sooner. If the music industry would have accepted Napster, then we wouldn't have. They would have made more money within that decade than eventually when they caught up and figured out Spotify. So the music industry had Napster technology already and they shelved it because they were making so much money on physical albums. So they said, yeah, we could do this file sharing digital thing, but then people aren't going to buy albums. So then Napster comes out, totally undercuts it. And eventually my favorite line was what Jack Black said when he was pimping itunes. He goes, easier than stealing, almost as cheap. And that is kind of the mantra, which is we're seeing it now in streaming. Like, all right, I'm going to go back to pirating if you're going to make it this difficult.

[Podcast Host]

Right.

[Justin Flom]

If I've got to have six streaming services to watch, whatever I want to watch.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

And you're going to sneak ads in or you're going to make. Nope, I'm just going to go pirate it.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, they're consolidating. A lot of those companies are struggling too. Yeah, the streaming companies.

[Justin Flom]

Well, we will think it's all how human nature will interact and we want easy. We will pay if it's easy. But if as soon as you make it complicated, then then we're upset.

[Podcast Host]

Agreed. Yeah. Creator. I know a lot of creators struggling right now.

[Justin Flom]

I think we're in a bubble and I think the bubble will knock out any mid. You know, just like any bubble pop. It knocks out middle income and, and low income. The now the big fishes they have enough that they can sustain through that depression. So a creator economy bubble, which I believe we're in, when it pops, it'll knock out anybody who's, you know, these moms who are selling makeup out of their bathroom or just mid tier creators, people who are $5,000 a month and less. Yeah, they'll. They won't be able to continue because just the. I'm, I'm not defending the platforms. I'm just saying, why does the platform need to pay them? Why? But I'm just looking at it from their investors, what Instagram has said, why should we pay for this? And now with AI Video getting better every day, like, what's AI Video going to do to us? Because your wisdom and your talking head content could be created by AI today.

[Podcast Host]

Crazy.

[Justin Flom]

Right? Now my content. Can AI create my content? Well, we've seen it try. So after I had a 500 million hit video of this penny floor where I laid pennies and then I epoxied over it and all that, there was this explosion of AI Floor renovation video. I saw those, right. So that happened after my thing cracked. Then AI Video makers go, all right, yeah, let's do a floor with lava. Let's do a floor with water and trees. And we epoxy it. But I think that even though that itches, one part of that my video itched, which is this oddly satisfying epoxy going on a thing and seeing the finished product. What it misses is what the public knows, which is this is a real thing that exists in some guy's house somewhere. That is an itchy, sticky thing in the brain where, yes, I can make a better foam pit video than I can, but I don't care. Like, there's this level of production where. Yeah. Is the new Star wars more cinematic in size? Yeah. But I'll take Obi wan's lightsaber battle 30, 40 years ago over this. Right. Because it's human. Because we have a tie to something that actually exists. We like things that actually exist. Even if you don't think I'm ever going to go see that guy's house, the fact that it exists on this planet is what makes it interesting that a guy really did that to his house, that human element. Right. Because I saw a great AI video that they stacked Planet Hollywood, Miracle Mile with trampolines. It looked great. Like, yeah. And did I give it 30 seconds of watch time? I did. But if that was real, well, there's way more market value to that because now they actually put trampolines through the whole mall, Miracle Mile, now, they didn't. They should. That might actually help Planet Hollywood. But it's. It's what's real. It's not. So the people who are talking about AI video, they're missing one important element. The piece of entertainment is not just the visual thing we're intaking. It is, what does this do to my worldview? What is this doing? How does this affect real life? Because we, until we all step into the void of, you know, not even being physically present, we still live in a real world and we want to experience those things. So experiential based stuff is going to increase.

[Podcast Host]

I agree. That's why I do events all the time as well.

[Justin Flom]

Right.

[Podcast Host]

You need, you need to see people face to face also.

[Justin Flom]

Yes, I think the next generation is going to do that. I think the next generation is going to unplug in a way that we don't really understand.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, AI videos. I mean, I would say every five videos now I see one. It's getting more and more though.

[Justin Flom]

So I'm getting an interesting pushback right now. In the last week, I've started playing with AI music where, okay, so I'm doing these projects on video and I want to narrate them, but what if instead of me talking, what if I had AI do a lyrical video to narrate what's happening? So I bust through a wall, I slid down my stairs in a sled and I bust a hole in the wall. And then that becomes a secret passageway behind a showgirl poster. And then it became comes an optical illusion. All right, cool. And I did like a hip hop song that narrates the whole thing and the audience is split. Half the audience is like, yo, that song's lit. Like that's actually fire. Holy shit. And then the other half is like, I can't believe you're using AI music. This is slop. And I'm on following now. That guy is, you know, he goes into the comments, this one of these people and he's like, you're taking money from real artists. I'm like, all right, well hang on, do you use Spotify, you hypocritical dick? Because if you do, that's taking more money from artists. Or what would you rather me use a Bruno Mars song and put that on Instagram, which is also theft. Like use, like Internet is theft.

[Podcast Host]

Okay?

[Justin Flom]

We've all gotten used to meme culture. I myself also, my videos are stolen. Millions of views every day. Because just when you post a video and you put in a Picture of Leo DiCaprio on Titanic as a meme. Well, that's illegal technically. Let's be real. Culturally, meme culture, that's what the Internet is. But that's a copyrighted piece of content. That's not, you can't argue, fair use for everything. Now I'm on the side of it. I've done it, I do it. But I'm just saying we live in this weird space on the Internet where people are like, you know, real artists. If I use a Bruno Mars song, that Bruno doesn't get paid. And if you're saying I have to hire an opera singer to do this operatic, crazy punchline video of me falling through my floor, this is a video I posted yesterday. Well, that's just not going to happen. I can't hire an orchestra and an opera singer to do a video. That's not going to make me 500 bucks.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

So, yeah, I'm going to use this AI music that's, that's going to do it, I think, morally justifiable.

[Podcast Host]

I think.

[Justin Flom]

I, I.

[Podcast Host]

There's just people that hate AI dude.

[Justin Flom]

They do.

[Podcast Host]

There's nothing you could tell them.

[Justin Flom]

Right. And you know what? It's, it's AI is a tool. Whether it's moral or immoral. That's a debate that I'm not smart enough to have. I guess whatever prompt I put in to figure out whatever thing used up a hundred bottles of water. Yeah, that sounds unfortunate. Okay. Sounds not sustainable. Seems like we should fix that also. What are we gonna do? Yeah, like, I'm not smart enough to figure it out. Let's just.

[Podcast Host]

Lake Mead will be out of water.

[Justin Flom]

I'm a comedian. I'm a, I'm a silly, just content creator. I'm just trying to do silly stuff in my house, you know?

[Podcast Host]

I mean, there's hundreds of millions, if not billions of people using AI daily. So you stopping your searches won't really impact much. Right, right.

[Justin Flom]

That's, that's the thing.

[Podcast Host]

What's the next room you have in mind, though?

[Justin Flom]

So this is a crazy cool thing. There is this old illusion, and we're looking through literature, trying to see if it's ever been done. And not just written about, but it's called the Vanishing Audience. So essentially, imagine you're in a small theater back in vaudeville, 50 people. And the magician on stage has this giant mirror, and you're looking at the reflection of yourself and the whole audience. And all of a sudden, big puff of smoke and you're gone. Your reflection is gone. You're now staring at your reflection, and there's nobody there. Nobody's sitting next to you. It's just an empty theater. In the reflection of the mirror, you can still see the magician, maybe, but you can't see anybody else. Well, the method to this I'll bust. The secret is two theaters facing each other. Identical. A mirror of this room on just backstage. And that giant mirror goes away and becomes just transparent. Nothing. So you're looking at your reflection of yourself in the mirror, and then that mirror goes away in a puff of smoke. And now you're looking at the room that you believe you're in. Everything's backwards, everything's identical. And as you move, the parallax of that follows. It's crazy illusion. So I get into my new house, and my buddy Ryan Stock, world's greatest sword swallower, my favorite magic creator and one of my favorite top writers, when I come up with silly ideas, he goes, you know, you got two identical rooms. You got to do the mirror room. I was like, I don't know, man. Like, I'm going to lose two rooms for this one gag. And he's like, no, you got to do it. So we did it. We built a new wall between these two identical rooms that have these cool archway mirrors that are perfectly symmetrical. We popped a mirror in the middle that slides and goes into the wall and goes away. This thing is trippy af. This is so cool. So I designed, using AI, a bunch of artwork that would be very asymmetrical. So there's artwork with text. There's artwork with women who are, like, bending over to give a kiss so she's bent in a certain way. And then the other room, exact mirrors of all of that art.

[Podcast Host]

Wow.

[Justin Flom]

And crazy furniture that you would never get more than one of the. And then crazy furniture, exact replica mirrored on the other side. So you walk in and you're looking at a mirror, and you're like, this is a crazy room. This is crazy art. And there's my reflection. And then all of a sudden, that mirror goes away. And now you're in a room, and you're looking, and your reflection's gone also. Not only is it a cool experience, but that's how they did, like, Mission Impossible when they do the mask. They build two rooms identical, with just an empty hole in a wall that looks like a mirror. And now you got Tom Cruise. And the camera can pan around to the other side. So you've got bad guy actor on this side, Tom Cruise on this side. Camera starts on Tom Cruise as he's putting on the rubber mask. And as the camera pans over to the reflection, now we see real bad guy. It's a cool special effect. Yeah, I can do it now. For real. In this room, there's so many gags. And if you get a twin, like, now you're standing next to a twin that you don't know, like she's got a twin sister. Your reflection disappears, but hers doesn't. Because now you're looking at her twin like, this is gonna be nice, trip. There's 30 videos behind just this one gag that I'm building.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

So it's almost done right now. There's no wall up. It's just a mirror hanging that slides around and it. It's cool.

[Podcast Host]

So that's the first room in the new house you're doing.

[Justin Flom]

So I'm already pretty deep. We've got an upside down room where I hung a chair from the ceiling so you can hang on the furniture that's coming from the ceiling. And there's a spot where when you put your phone to film or take a picture, it looks like you're walking on the ceiling or doing a crazy handstand. So that's cool. That doorway, which is hung from the ceiling because it's upside down. Door. You go through that, it turns into a color changing room where every wall is striped. This was inspired by Megamart, actually, at Area 15, because there's just really cool illusions you can do with black and white stripes because the white will reflect whatever color. So, boom, throw in some hue lights, and that's cycling. And then I figured out ways to hide artwork within the stripes. That was kind of a new thing. So that video is in testing right now, and it's testing out a 20% completion.

[Podcast Host]

Is that good or no?

[Justin Flom]

Garbage. Absolute garbage. If you. If your viewers want, like some real knowledge. All right, so here's what you need. There's this club called the Viral Video Club, okay. And the platforms put a bouncer at the front of that club. This is an analogy. That's not a real club. But the bouncer says if you want to get into this club, okay, you have a. You have to have an upwards of 30 to 40% completion rate just to get in. Okay. And. And then you've got the dance floor. All of million hitters, okay. Kind of viral whatever. But then there's the VIP spot up there. If you want to get up there where they've got 100 million hitters, you got to have an upwards of 60%.

[Podcast Host]

Dang.

[Justin Flom]

And now the platforms change what they want. Sometimes it's percentage complete, which means you better do a shorter video. Because my biggest video of all time, it's at, it's, it's going to hit 2 billion this year. Is this costume change. It's this Cinderella like dress that changes three times. It's a magic trick. You get to see the secret. Also it's cool, you get to see this woman's dress change and whatever. 17 seconds. Almost 2 billion views. The watch percent on it is 130%.

[Podcast Host]

Wow.

[Justin Flom]

Which means people didn't just watch it once, they watched a substantial number watched it twice. So very short video. Easy to get 130% watched on a short video. And if they're at that time, I would imagine YouTube was favoring percent, which is why that crushed. But Instagram a couple of months ago they were favoring time, not percent. So you can get a lower percent. Because now time is the important thing. Video better be long. Has to be a longer video. So a 2 minute 30 video. 2 minute 30 second video did 500 million views. That was the house tour because platform wanted time. They go, look, the percent finished on that is probably going to be 30%.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

Okay. But the average watch time on that is like a 45, 50. I, I think actually it was upwards of a minute. Upwards of a minute percent. Upwards of a minute watch time. It's unheard of in a swipe feed. Like people just don't get that if you have upwards of a one minute watch time in the swipe feed, you're going to have double digit, triple digit millions.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. You're in few company if you can achieve.

[Justin Flom]

Right. So everything is about that. Everything is about how do you have a higher watch percent or time. And then you know, for me, I'm just looking. Okay, what is, how much is this worth, this concept? Can I get 2 minutes 30 seconds out of it? As soon as it starts dipping below 30%. All right, we better shorten it.

[Podcast Host]

Got it.

[Justin Flom]

And I have to learn all of that before it goes live in feed, which means I'm working on back end in ads. Maybe trial reels. Yeah, if you're sleeping on trial reels, you're messing up.

[Podcast Host]

I love trials.

[Justin Flom]

It's the best.

[Podcast Host]

You get to test everything.

[Justin Flom]

The only thing I want from trial. So first of all, I've been talking with YouTube for now, year and a half about creating trial reels for you.

[Podcast Host]

Please get that through.

[Justin Flom]

Come on. Because if what I said is true, which is you got to cast a wide net beyond Your followers in order to have success. Show me my show. Show my video to non followers. Please just give me the option to ignore my followers to get my content where it needs to be. Okay. I want to give my. My content to my followers the best possible way. Don't trust me? I don't know the best way. I don't know the opening shot. I don't know the music to use. Like, I'm going to take some guesses, educated guesses, but I need my audience to tell me. And if I only got one shot to get this piece of content up, then I'm not going to hit it the first time. So let me put it into trial. Show it to randoms. They will tell me the truth about my content through their engagement. Then I'll launch it for my followers. But the only thing I don't know about trials is like, how many ideations, how many iterations can I have to slightly edit it? Right. Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Don't let you post the same video twice.

[Justin Flom]

They don't because people did. People hackers gonna hack.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

And early on, you. It was a hack for growth, man.

[Podcast Host]

It was nuts. There was no limit on how many you could post.

[Justin Flom]

No, you. You take your biggest video ever, post it in trial every single day endlessly, and you would just collect followers.

[Podcast Host]

I was growing like crazy. I was getting 150 million views a month when they had no limit.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah, it was great. And then they. They were like, that's.

[Podcast Host]

Now it's 10 a day, I think.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah. Well, well, really, they. They don't limit it. They're. They're tracking. I believe they're tracking. How similar is this to your last video?

[Podcast Host]

Okay.

[Justin Flom]

They get the ones and zeros of that video. Is it the same as the ones and zeros that you posted yesterday? And if it is, you're trying to game the system.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, they'll penalize.

[Justin Flom]

And, and, and they are looking out for that.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. I hope YouTube launches that though. Or Tik Tok. It'd be great.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah, Tik Tok won't. Because they don't give two shits about anyone.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, they might be the worst.

[Justin Flom]

I hate TikTok. TikTok. I hate you. Okay, just give reps. Give. Give a rep to creators. Okay. These creators are creating. And the only reason my content ends up on TikTok is it ends up as kind of a rights manager. If I don't put it on TikTok, someone else will and get crazy views.

[Podcast Host]

Got it.

[Justin Flom]

So I should at least be the one to do it. But It's a terrible ecosystem for content. It's a bad algorithm and it, and everything's based off of page health there. If you've got an unhealthy profile and they aren't going to tell you why your profile is unhealthy, Instagram will, Instagram will be honest with you. And they go, hey man, you're unrecommendable right now. Your profile's because of these things. So if you fix those things, you can be recommended again. And fix it. Just give me the tools to follow the rules. That's it.

[Podcast Host]

100.

[Justin Flom]

But if, if it's this hidden sort of thing. I lost my tick tock for two years.

[Podcast Host]

Geez.

[Justin Flom]

Because I had a little antique box and there's a little lever on it. You hit the lever and a tiny little wooden figurine would pop up holding a cigarette. I didn't smoke the cigarette. I didn't tell people to smoke cigarettes. I didn't light it. I didn't do anything like that. But just the visual of a cigarette. They deleted my TikTok for two years. That's nuts. And, and the system is you gotta find some shady guy, pay him 4,000 bucks and he talks to some other shady guy in India and then we get our TikTok back. That's a bad system. TikTok, like, what are you doing?

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. And half the time they ban you the next day and then you got to pay again. It's like a never ending cycle. It's bad, it's nuts. But dude, this was really fun. Do you do house tours or. Where could people get more involved with.

[Justin Flom]

I'm excited. Holly Madison, Playboy playmate girl next door. Now Vegas. Maybe Vegas mayor. If, if she runs. This would be, this would be exciting. She's coming to the house this week. She's going to do a little house tour. I, yeah, I like showing off the house. I've had cool real estate moguls come by for their content and all that.

[Podcast Host]

I'll get Grant Cardone there.

[Justin Flom]

Yeah, it's. Oh, that'd be dope. That would be. That would be fun. Look, I, I want to do that not just for the content, but also because I want to figure out the next monetization system. Look, I'm as confused as anybody to figure out how do we. It's all about how do you monetize what you're doing? I, I was really lucky. I had a dad who raised me. He's like, find the thing that you would like to do and build a job around it. And that was a great way to grow up because that allowed me to go, all right, well, I want to do magic tricks. And then instead of, like going the traditional route of college and whatever, I figured out, well, here's the business model to make money using magic tricks. And then that has shifted and flowed over 20 years. And now I'm raising my kids the same way. And it's really interesting, the questions they ask. Like, my 9 year old, she goes, hey, do people get paid differently for the job? I go, good question. Yes, they do. Who do you think makes more money? A doctor or someone who works at McDonald's? She goes, okay, so they get paid different. A doctor? I go, yes. Why? And she goes, is it harder? I go, right, so here's the deal. Your little Cousin works at McDonald's, right? And she goes, yeah. I go, what does your little cousin like to do? Well, she. She likes macaroni and cheese. She likes watching tv. And I'm like, right, okay, here's the great news. You can do that working at McDonald's. Like, that lifestyle, that's her thing. She's set like that. But what does dad like to do? And she's like, oh, well, he likes this thing and this and go in Vegas shows and billing this. And I go, right, I can't work at McDonald's. It won't pay for this. So what do you got to do? And she goes, if I want more money, I got to do the harder thing.

[Podcast Host]

It's like, right, nine years old.

[Justin Flom]

Right? So we have a mantra in the house, which is flams do hard things. Because I just want them to realize the thing you want is on the other side of hard. Like, that's just it. Like, there's no other way around.

[Podcast Host]

My whole life, just hard work. Yeah.

[Justin Flom]

You know, if I. If and. And if so, if. The rule is I. You know, I hear artists say, I gotta make a hundred songs. I gotta write a hundred songs to get a hit song. All right, we'll just start. Start like you have to. So the number one advice I give to young creators is that, what do I need? I go, just start. I'm sorry, there's not. There's not anything other than just starting. And there's nothing I can tell you better than the algorithm would tell you. If you just start uploading, that's it.

[Podcast Host]

Started up, guys. Well, thanks for your time and that was fun.

[Justin Flom]

Absolutely, yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Good seeing you. Thanks for staying all the way to the end, guys. Means a lot to me. If you could please leave a review on Apple that helps us climb the charts, it helps us get way more guests, and it helps us continue growing the podcast and the team. So it mean a lot to me if you left a review on Apple or wherever else you're listening. Thanks so much.