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Making It with Jon Davids
160 - This Writer Has a $320M Real Estate Side Hustle | Taylor Sheridan
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John Davids
This Guy flipped a TV show into a $320 million real estate empire and he did it right in front of us. His name is Taylor Sheridan and he's the guy behind Yellowstone. He just might be the smartest man in Hollywood. I'm going to tell you all about him today, all the shows that he's made. And I know you guys want to hear this because when I posted this story on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube and LinkedIn, it got over 10 million views. Thousands and thousands of comments, more than I could possibly get to. I'll do my best, though, so I'm gonna get deeper into it today. That's coming up in just a sec. My name is John Davids. You can call me J.D. welcome to the show and thank you for sending us up the charts across the world. This is now the number one marketing podcast in South Africa, Brazil, Israel, Qatar, uae, Canada, all over the world. But we are still only ranking number four or five on the US Podcast charts for marketing. And Gary Vee, Russell Brunson, I'm coming for you, but I need your help, guys. Please. If you like the show, subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you're getting the show. Tell your friends if you're getting any value. That's all I ask. Of course, get my best stuff to your inbox@johndavids.com now let's get to the show. You're listening to Making it with John Davidson. All right, so let's talk about Taylor Sheridan. Let's rewind all the way back to 2015. Taylor's been working as an actor for years. He was actually on some pretty big shows, but he's still on the D list, maybe the C list. He's not an A list actor and he doesn't think he's gonna get there anytime soon. It's time for a change. So he pivots from acting to writing, and it turns out he's actually pretty good at it. A couple of his scripts turn into hit movies. In 2015, he did Cicero. He was the screenwriter. Then there was Hell or high water in 2016. Again, he wrote that Wind river in 2017, another Cicero de of the Soldado in 2018. So this guy's doing really, really well behind the camera. And now it's time for his big, big hit. And that is a little show called Yellowstone. He dreams up an idea for a show about a rugged rancher trying to survive in a fast changing world. And Taylor's about to make it really, really big. So teams up with Paramount and Yellowstone hits the screen quickly, builds an audience. It touches a nerve with everybody from rural towns to coastal cities. It's got sweeping scenery, it's got family drama. Just enough savage murder to keep you hooked. Y'all know the Train Station. If you haven't seen it, Train Station is quite a sight to see. People love this show. Before long, Yellowstone is reaching 10 million viewers per episode. Now he's got a blockbuster on his hands. And so Taylor triples down. He writes spinoffs like 1883. That's the precursor to Yellowstone. 1923, that's another precursor. But a few decades later, there's actually another show in the works called the Four Sixes, which I think has been in the works for quite a while. And there's actually some integration with the main Yellowstone show. It's going to spin off to its own series. And all these numbers have me thinking about money. And I know Taylor thinks about money too, because he's pretty darn good at it. These shows are really expensive to produce. Like really, really expensive. All that nature porn ain't free. It's not just pricey actors and big crews. There's big sets and on site shooting. You've got these mega ranch locations. You've got filming spots from Africa to Malta. Especially when you get into the precursors like 1923, these guys are shooting all over world. And we're talking about scenes with dozens and dozens of animals plus cgi. There's the boat, there's that animal attacking that guy in the opening scene of 1923. All this nature porn ain't free. And with dollars spilling out the door, Taylor is going to grab his fair share, as he should. And this is where the story gets really good. Because when it comes to Yellowstone, Taylor calls the shots, no questions asked. Paramount gives him a lot of leeway. He's able to do a lot. He's able to spend the money. No one's asking questions when the cash is pouring in. You know that ranch the show uses to film? You know those horses that appear in all those running scenes? Taylor owns them. $25 per day per horse. He also owns one of the ranches, not the main ranch, but one of the ranches that are used in the show? He rents that out for $50,000 a week. And this one's my favorite. Remember that spinoff I ment called the 6666? Well, the 6666 is actually a real life historical ranch, very famous. And the new show that's being called the Four Sixes will actually be filmed at the Four Sixes Ranch with a whole lot of promotion. Massive, massive promotion. And do you have any idea who just bought the Four Sixes Ranch? I think you do. Taylor Sheridan, my friends. This guy knows what he's doing. I got to say, I'm a fan of John Dutton, but Taylor Sheridan just might be my new favorite rancher. So, like I said, I put this out on social media and I got a ton of feedback. Seven million of you saw this and watched this and commented and liked this post on Instagram. Another 3 million of you on TikTok. Many, many more on YouTube and LinkedIn. And maybe we did it on threads. I don't even know. Okay, I got a lot of social media channels and I'm glad for you guys to see it wherever you are. So I want to get to some of the comments and again, there's thousands of them, so I'm just going to touch on a few right now. So the first thing, and this was probably the coolest, is that a lot of people who actually worked on Yellowstone in front of the camera, behind the camera, got into my comments and they were sharing their own personal stories. And it's amazing to see a show like this, which has been on the air for many years now and obviously touches people. The stories that are both in front of the camera and behind the camera and how universal the themes are. People were loving hearing from those on the show who were close to it. And I just love the fact that they got into the comments and shared their stories. Lot of people dropping other ideas. Hey, we need a John Dutton prequel show. We gotta see what happened before Yellowstone. What was John like as a kid? Probably the comment with the most likes is from Smart Money Simon, who says, let us not forget Lioness Lanman and Tulsa King. Taylor Sheridan needs his own streaming service at this point. It would be the only one I'd pay for and watch. And a lot of people agreed with that comment. A lot of industry people follow me on LinkedIn and a lot of the comments on LinkedIn were more about the business side of it. So Kristen Hodges says, what's missing from my analysis is that Taylor hates being in LA and makes a deliberate choice to work where he's most happy, which is outside of la, Texas, Montana, Utah and other places. Yeah, and I bet there's also financial benefits to doing that too. There were two other comments that I want to get to. So a lot of people, A lot of people love correcting me and believe me, I love being Corrected on social media because nothing, nothing increases engagement like people getting in and telling you you were wrong. So I welcome it. So I said in my social posts that Taylor Sheridan owns the ranch from Yellowstone. Now, I wasn't referring to the Dutton ranch, which of course is the Chief Joseph Ranch in Darby, Montana, which Taylor Sheridan does not own. I talking about the Bosque ranch in Weatherford, Texas, which is also used as a filming set. And Taylor rents that out for $50,000 a week. And yes, he owns a piece of not the whole ranch, but a piece of the four sixes. There's obviously an investor group. Nobody takes $300 million out of their bank account and buys a ranch by themselves unless they're Bezos or Musk. No one's got 300 million lying around. You're going to have a bank involved. You're going to have lenders. You're probably going to have a group of equity investors. So when I say that somebody owns a $300 million ranch, it's kind of a given they don't own it by themselves. That's okay, though. I appreciate the clarity. Taylor Sheridan is an owner in the Four Sixes, not the sole owner. Marketing executives, business owners. If you are running a company and looking for a fresh perspective on how to grow that company, take. Take a look at Influicity. That's my marketing agency where we work with brands across influencer marketing, podcasts, social media, AI content, paid ads, and so much more. But don't take my word for it. Go to Influicity. Check out our case studies from all the amazing clients we've worked with over the last decade. That's inf l u I c I t y influicity.com and I'll see you there. All right, that's enough with the comments. If you want to see more comments, follow me on all the socials. Let's get to the next big point. I love the fact that Taylor moved from the front of the camera to behind the camera. Think about this for a second. If he had been stubborn and said, you know what, it's taken me a long time, but I'm going to be a movie star. I'm going to be Kevin Costner. I'm going to be the guy in front of the camera, the leading man. He didn't do that. In 2015, he recognized what he was better at. Maybe he even was more passionate about being the star, about being in front of the camera. But he realized that his real talent lies in writing, in screenplay, in telling the Stories, how many people do you know and maybe even think about yourself. In this case, you're doing fine. But there's something else that's just a little pivot away. You don't need to upend your whole life. You don't need to change your whole industry. You don't need to change everything. But if you just change to a different position or maybe you brought somebody else in to cover a weakness. I know for myself as this happened, it took me a long time to realize that I'm really not good at at operations, right? At influicity, at my marketing agency, I used to want to do everything. I used to want to have my hands in all the different pieces of the company. And then I realized I'm really good at marketing. I'm really good at business development and sales and I'm really good at high level strategy and thinking. Big picture and big vision and the day to day, keeping the trains running on time. Guess what? When I'm the one manning the trains, the trains are always late. There's always something wrong with those damn train cars. So I stay away from that. And if I was insisting that I should be the best operations person in the world, it would just hold me back. I love thinking about how you can do one little thing different. Maybe take your talents from here to here, just move a few inches over and all of a sudden, boom. You go from being a mediocre actor to being an absolute world class writer. Now the next thing, of course, maybe my favorite point of this entire story is the business mod. Business model engineering. Y'all know I'm a nerd when it comes to business models because that's the difference between success and failure. You have a pretty crummy business or generally a crummy business. In the content world, even the best of the best of the best don't make a lot of money on content. Sure, if you are one person who happens to be named Taylor Swift and your content is hit songs and concerts, sure you'll do great. You'll make billions off that. Or maybe you're Disney or a big studio and you can make hit movies and make billions of dollars, that's awesome. But for most people, being in the content business alone is not a great business. You've got to think about what you can do with that content. And so in this case, what Taylor does is he has a content business. He makes a show called Yellowstone and then he layers on other things. The real estate play is brilliant. Owning horses and then renting those horses out to the studios is brilliant. Buying the Four Sixes ranch and building a show around that, again, brilliant. Business model, engineering, merchandising, promotions, all the products and services they could sell around these brands, that is brilliant. And there's other ways that you can engineer business models on the operation side, on the client acquisition side, on technology, on outsourcing, on insourcing, on labor arbitrage, on location. There are so many things you can do to make an okay business much better. To make a mediocre business much, much better by just thinking about how you can tweak your business model. Content can be a good business, but building a real estate business on top of that, that's a very good business. You know, there's a story back when the Apprentice was on the air. Mark Burnett goes to Donald Trump and pitches the idea for the Apprentice. You all know what the Apprentice is, so I'm not going to explain it to you, but the deal that Mark Burnett and Trump made with NBCUniversal at the time with the network was, we're not going to take a huge paycheck. They got paid something. But we have the rights to sell the product placement inside the shows. So in the episodes, especially in seasons two, three, four, when the show was a big hit and you see Microsoft and you see Coca Cola and you see Budweiser and you see General Motors and all these companies who are being featured in the show, the challenges were all around these companies. It was all branded. Those companies were paying 2, 3, 4, 5, $10 million to be featured in those episodes at its prime. And guess where all that money went to Mark Burnett and Donald Trump. It was a cash cow and NBCUniversal missed out on that. So in this case, again, content, yes, they have a hit show. Maybe they could make a few hundred thousand dollars or a few million bucks per episode. Whoop dee doo. Let's go ahead and think of a much better business model. Hey, we get the product placement revenue here and then go ahead, fast forward a year or two when that airtime is worth a lot more money and you have an absolute cash cow. So these deals happen all the time. It's not about winning or losing or making a good deal or a bad deal. It's about thinking about things uniquely and putting together the kind of deal that Taylor Sheridan made. I mean, these are wonderful deals, too. So I love the idea of taking mediocre business models and making them much, much better. That's the story of Taylor Sheridan. That's the story of Yellowstone. And if you haven't seen it. I suggest you watch because it is a very, very good story. Let me know what you guys think. You can always get me at johndavids. Com. Follow me on Social. I'll talk to you all next.