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- [00:00]
Colleen Witt
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
James Dumoulin
Guaranteed Human Whoa.
- [00:05]
Coca Cola Announcer
What a vibe we've got, y'.
- [00:06]
Colleen Witt
All.
- [00:07]
Coca Cola Announcer
As always, it's classic HBCU energy. Nonstop action, the band is rocking and the crowd lit. Chants echoing, drums beating, everybody showing that school pride. Moments like this, yeah, they call for an ice cold Coca Cola. Crisp and refreshing. That's a game changer right there. Mm, yeah, that taste always hit the right note. Just like the band at halftime. Passionate fans, school colors everywhere and a nice ice cold Coca Cola. That's a winning combo. No matter the place, no matter the moment, everybody knows fan work is thirsty work. So grab a Coca Cola and keep that HBCU pride going.
- [00:43]
James Dumoulin
Black Friday's here and the Home Depot's got the best prices of the year. You can get up to 40% off select Smart devices like the Ring Floodlight camera, which is perfect for keeping your home safe during the holidays. Don't sleep. Upgrade your home into the smartest holiday home this season. Whether you're hosting family or throwing an annual holiday party, the Home Depot has savings on top brands and exclusive deals all in one place. It's your one stop shop for an entirely connecting home. So start shopping now at homedepot. Com. The wait was worth it.
- [01:13]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
The keys to your dream home have been secured. Now comes time to fill it with memories. But first, furniture and movers. When's the housewarming?
- [01:21]
James Dumoulin
Who's cooking?
- [01:22]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
Or should you cater to all that? Planning can be stressful, but ensuring your home shouldn't be.
- [01:26]
James Dumoulin
And that's where State Farm comes in. Because State Farm agents can help you.
- [01:30]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
Choose the coverage you need.
- [01:31]
James Dumoulin
Just call, go online or check out the app. An agent is ready to help so.
- [01:36]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
You can focus on showing off your new home.
- [01:38]
James Dumoulin
If you know, you know like a.
- [01:40]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
Good neighbor, State Farm is there. Running a business is hard enough. Don't make it harder with a dozen apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting, another that's software overload. Odoo is the all in one platform that replaces them all. CRM, accounting, inventory, E Commerce, hr. Fully integrated, easy to use and built to grow with your business. Thousands have already made the switch. Why not you try Odoo for free at O-O-O.com that's odoo.com Life gets messy.
- [02:14]
Anabe Sofa Announcer
Spills, stains and kid chaos. But with anime, cleaning up is easy. Our sofas are fully machine washable inside and out so you never have to stress about messes again. Made with liquid and stain resistant fabrics that Means fewer stains and more peace of mind. Designed for real life, Our sofas feature changeable fabric covers, allowing you to refresh your style anytime. Need flexibility? Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly. Perfect for cozy apartments or spacious homes. Plus, they're earth friendly and built to last. That's why over 200,000 happy customers have made the switch. Get early access to Black Friday pricing right now. Sofas start at just $699. Visit washablesofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life. That's washablesofas.com offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.
- [03:13]
Colleen Witt
Hey, guys. Welcome to another episode of Eating While Broke. I'm your host, Colleen Witt, and today we have very special guest School of Hard Knocks. James Dumoulin is in the building. Did I say that right?
- [03:26]
James Dumoulin
That's correct. That works.
- [03:26]
Anabe Sofa Announcer
I did, yeah.
- [03:27]
Colleen Witt
Okay. Okay. I don't know if you're being super nice to me or not. So we are all the way here in Austin, Texas. I literally been like, do not miss a follow up when it comes to getting you. And you're very responsive and I'm super thankful. I watched your show School of Hard Knocks and I love that you really make the show about the content. But then you're always curious about like, who's James? You know? Well, at least for me, I'm like, who is he? And you? I felt like when I watch a show, you're almost so hidden. It's like you have to like really stalk to find out who you are. So I'm excited to be able to have you on Eating While Broken. Before we get into all about James, I would like to know what you're going to have me eat today.
- [04:13]
James Dumoulin
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me on. I love the concept of your show. I'm a media. The media mogul. That's what I like to call it. But I love interesting concepts and I thought that this was a fascinating concept for a podcast, so I really liked it. But we're going to be actually having a 12 count chick fil a nugget meal with fries and our sweet teas. That's a classic. It's something that I've, ever since I was a young kid, grew up eating and still to this day, sometimes I indulge.
- [04:39]
Colleen Witt
Well, let's go ahead and try it. I. I'm not a huge chick fil a er, even though in LA it's like the most popping. You know that and in n out. But I've had this before. My favorite thing at Chick Fil a is the cross fries. But you said fries, and this is all they gave us. They don't have regular fries. I thought they gave us.
- [04:58]
James Dumoulin
No, this is. That's what they had. The waffle fries.
- [04:59]
Colleen Witt
Oh, okay.
- [05:00]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
Okay.
- [05:00]
James Dumoulin
And great job on the sauces, too. Barbecue and Chick Fil A. Those are. Those are the go to. And I didn't even say that, so.
- [05:04]
Colleen Witt
Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, perfect. So take me back. I mean, we've all had it. Shout out to the listeners, you know, a good Chick Fil a meal. The sauce is definitely the best. Let's go ahead. Now. When was the last time you ate Chick Fil A?
- [05:21]
James Dumoulin
I want to say maybe like a month or so.
- [05:24]
Colleen Witt
Okay.
- [05:24]
James Dumoulin
A little bit of time.
- [05:25]
Colleen Witt
Okay, well, take me back to the nostalgia of Chick Fil A.
- [05:31]
James Dumoulin
Absolutely. So my first job ever.
- [05:33]
Colleen Witt
Mm.
- [05:34]
James Dumoulin
I actually worked at Chick Fil A. So for, like, 10 months when I was a sophomore in high school. Was making 7:25 working at Chick fil A.
- [05:41]
Colleen Witt
7:25. Jesus.
- [05:42]
James Dumoulin
7:25 an hour is crazy. But you almost kind of have to, in my opinion, experience that in. In any capacity. Some. Maybe it's working in the food industry, you know, as somebody who's taking orders and stuff like that, to kind of realize that, hey, this isn't what I want to be doing forever. And then my second job was actually construction. So I worked construction for two years. My junior and senior year of high school. Paid a little bit better, but still was, again, one of those things where it's like, hey, this was. This was cool. You know, made a little money doing it. Was smart with it, saved it, but just wasn't something that I wanted to be doing forever.
- [06:16]
Colleen Witt
Yeah, I did fast food shout outs to McDonald's, but I realized very early on that as crazy as this may sound, I thought that job was really, really hard. The fast pace of it, the. Just. I honestly said I tried fast food and I tried waitressing, and both were absolutely, like, choline. Two jobs that you could never have for the rest of your life.
- [06:38]
James Dumoulin
It's draining.
- [06:39]
Colleen Witt
It's draining. You have to be, like, real positive. What if you're having a bad day or, you know, if I'm anxious, I can't remember anything. So I learned you're right. This is two careers. And I tell my friends all the time, like, I can't be a waitress and I can't work in fast food. Absolutely would suck at it. And I respect everyone that does those jobs even more.
- [07:01]
James Dumoulin
Yeah. And it does teach you some skills as well. You know, like with Chick Fil A, one of the things that, you know how their structure is, is they kind of instill in you to like, treat people with kindness and have that customer service which you can take with you in a lot of ways, depending on what type of business you go into, if you're selling. Because there's a lot of no's, there's a lot of people that are rude. I've experienced it a ton. Especially when we were, you know, coming up, starting our channel, going up to random people, um, I was told no in every possible way that you can kind of hear. But also remembering sometimes, like when you're working that fast food, working at a place like Chick Fil? A, you get treated like shit behind the counter and you kind of just have to learn to keep a smile on your face and just keep going. And you can't let that ruin your day. You know, I always think about it this way. It's like there's 24 hours in a day. Why. Why let one second or one minute ruin the entire day? So I think that's something as well, you know. Cause anybody that's working that position, I'm sure like you said, working, you know, fast food at McDonald's, you probably have some people that were super rude. And oftentimes most people just kind of let that ruin their days, which is very understandable. But the minute you can kind of realize to kind of just take it as, hey, it is what it is, onto the next one, we'll be okay, the better you'll be.
- [08:09]
Colleen Witt
I have to steal that logic because that is impressive. I never even thought of that. Usually even, even when something bads, I have to be like, it's just this moment, just isolate it. Right now, I try to imagine how you got the skill set of walking up to people. I imagine that you had this sales background. But to hear you were in McDonald's and construction prior to starting your channel, what part of those experience led you to. Seems like as a fan of your show, it seems like you, you respect and love entrepreneurship.
- [08:44]
James Dumoulin
Absolutely. So what's interesting is that I don't attribute any of my interpersonal skills of being able to go up and talk to people. From working at Chick Fil and working construction, obviously it's more of like a trades, like a hard hands on skill. But I actually like to say this because from 6 to 10, I lived in South Korea, so I lived overseas. My dad, he ran the largest overseas military base in the entire World. So he was a garrison commander. So I was from a military family. I lived in three different cities in South Korea, eventually settled back into the DC Area before moving to Austin five years ago. But when I was living in South Korea, I was watching my dad speak and lead in front of tens of thousands of troops, people from Korea, even the American soldiers that were over there. And I was constantly used to people coming up to him, coming up to our family, and just learning how to communicate with people, with elders, people who were way older, some of these people who were, you know, in significant positions of power in the military and the government over there. So I. I had to learn from an early age how to, like, act professional, how to carry yourself in a confident demeanor in the right way when you're meeting these people, these heads of states, you know, the top people, the military. And so I took that with me from an early age to every aspect of my life to going into. I was in Boy Scouts. I became an Eagle Scout. And all of my, you know, Scout masters were all elder people, ex Marines. But again, it's, you know, always having those kind of, like, mentors to kind of conversate with and be able to guide you. It instilled, I feel, like, that ability in me to conversate with people who are older, maybe from a business or financial standpoint, that maybe they're a little bit more, like, superior, more experienced.
- [10:21]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
And.
- [10:21]
James Dumoulin
And I think a lot of it I do attribute to being from overseas or at least living there for a couple years, traveling all the time. You know, we lived in three different cities in South Korea, but we also went to a ton of countries like China, Cambodia, Australia. And so I always say to me, there's two things that will teach you more about yourself than anything else. It's traveling the world and fighting. Fighting will instill in you a different level of humility because, you know, you can have no experience or a ton of experience, and you can still go up against somebody and get your ass beat. And that will teach you more about your yourself than anything else other than traveling. Because traveling, you're experiencing different cultures, different people, and in my opinion, allows you to look at the world from a much more global lens as opposed to, like, a very narrow view on things and not thinking outside of the box. So I think that between traveling and just being around a lot of older people taught me more about myself, how to communicate and handle those conversations.
- [11:14]
Colleen Witt
So take me back. So your parents are. You come from military background. They're affluent, middle class.
- [11:19]
James Dumoulin
I would say 100%? Yeah. Definitely middle class. You know, my dad was military for 31 years. He gets out and is kind of just going to work in D.C. as like a government contractor sort of thing. The typical thing that a lot of the military guys do is they're in the military, they get out and they do the contracting thing. So definitely middle class. However, you know, my dad was a guy who was very conservative with his money. He invested, you know, probably ended up becoming a millionaire by the time he was in his, like, late 40s or 50s. But regardless, did instill a lot of good money habits within us, meaning he wasn't blowing money, he wasn't spending money on dumb shit. If anything, he was teaching us how to invest at an early age. Because with him, you know, he didn't start investing until his 30s. Whereas my brother and I, you know, we grew up when we were working fast food. I started working construction. I was taking a lot of that money and putting it into the market. Started to invest in stocks, like, really early on, which, you know, again, it's everybody. Every millionaire and billionaire will tell you to start early because a lot of them, they don't start putting money away or they didn't start putting money away until they were in their, like, 30s or 40s. And so, you know, starting early is something that's very important as well, that was instilled in us.
- [12:23]
Colleen Witt
It seems like your father had a lot of transparency to even bring you to these places where you're meeting these leaders and watching him interact.
- [12:30]
James Dumoulin
Absolutely.
- [12:31]
Colleen Witt
So did you guys spend more time with your dad than your mom or.
- [12:34]
James Dumoulin
Definitely more time with our mom. Just because, again, you know, my dad was, you know, very busy a lot of the times he was deployed or he was constantly going to different military bases, going to meet with different head states, different military leaders and stuff like that. So for that reason, we definitely spent more time with our mom, but he was still very present, especially, you know, when he was finally done being deployed and came back. We were in the D.C. area, never missed a baseball game, was always, you know, there for his two sons. So I was very blessed to have, you know, two great parents and they instilled a lot of great life lessons in us. And it's. It's interesting because, you know, when we first started doing our channel that we have now, they were very hesitant at first. They were very, like, unsure of the idea because to them, it's like it's a foreign concept. Like, you can make money just by posting videos, whereas, like, now, you know, they're like our number one supporters. My mom's always telling me, oh, I want you to interview this person. I want you to go and do that. And so, yeah, it's really cool to kind of see.
- [13:30]
Colleen Witt
Is it you and your brother?
- [13:32]
James Dumoulin
It is. It's me, my brother, and then one of our childhood friends from the D.C. area, actually, who was. Actually. We met and we were in the same Boy Scout troop. All became Eagle Scouts. A little bit of a different. Of a different age gap. So my. Our good friend Josh, who's our other co founder, he's 26 years old. My brother's 24, and I'm 22, so.
- [13:50]
Colleen Witt
You're 22?
- [13:50]
James Dumoulin
22.
- [13:51]
Colleen Witt
Oh, my goodness.
- [13:52]
James Dumoulin
Yeah, 22.
- [13:53]
Colleen Witt
So usually when I have a younger person on the show and off camera, we were talking about this, I was like, oh, when we have a younger person, sometimes I prefer older because I'm like, you know, I want to know that you guys have hit enough failure to, like, really entertain me. Because I believe failure is, at the end of the day, that's the closest way to get to success. And sometimes with a younger person, I'm like, I don't know if they've hit their head enough. But with you, I was just like, the wealth of knowledge you have. I'm like, between your traveling, I assume I have this fantasy of who you are so you could feel free to pop all the bubbles. I'm like, man, he must be well read. He must be pounding books. And all day long on top of these interviews. Am I even closely right?
- [14:35]
James Dumoulin
No. I've maybe read one book in my entire. Maybe half a book in my entire life. I'm not a reader. I mean, I get knowledge in a lot of other ways from these interviews. And maybe that's one thing that I really do want to work on, is reading a lot more. Because I will say a lot of the wealthiest people, I know, they're avid readers, but it's just. It's just not my style of learning. I don't like sitting still and reading a book. I'd much rather get it from actually going to seek out other people and have those conversations. I always like to say that mentorship is like wisdom without the wounds. And so to me, it's like, I have.
- [15:05]
Colleen Witt
I love that.
- [15:06]
James Dumoulin
It's great, right? And I would say mentorship is literally the only way to. The only shortcut to success, obviously, learning from yourself, from your failures. But the way that you mitigate all that, like I said, is. Is. Is getting that mentorship is getting around those types of people. But you know how we say too. You know, I'm also not a big, big person of, like, structure. Like, I am probably one of the worst people I know about keeping a calendar and sticking to it. So. But everybody has kind of those things that they're great at and. And that they're not. And I would say that that's maybe one of my flaws is that. But no, I'm not a. Like, am obsessed about what we do, which is something that I've also noticed among, you know, and. And this is a great point is that a lot of younger people will ask, like, how do I figure out what that thing is for me? And at all points in life, because there's people in their. In their teens, their 20s, their 30s, 40s, 50s, that are still trying to figure it out. And like, I was asked that question the other day. And to me, the way you kind of come up with that thing where you know that this is what you need to be doing is when you just can't stop thinking about it is when you're genuinely obsessed. Like, I will be up at all hours of the day, all hours of the night, depending on, you know, the day, just constantly thinking about, you know, what can I do? What can I do better? You know, what. What can I. You know, how do I get more innovative? We just hit 5 million followers on Instagram yesterday, and I'm like, I'm constantly thinking, it's like, you know, how do we get to 10 million within the next, you know, year or two? You know, so I'm always thinking about that. And. But that's again, how I know that what we're doing is what we should be doing, because it's just the pure obsession with it.
- [16:35]
Colleen Witt
I love that. Now take me back. You graduated college in Texas when you were doing the fast food, you were in high school, your parents were definitely taking care of you, and then you were just taking the money and investing.
- [16:48]
James Dumoulin
Yeah.
- [16:49]
Colleen Witt
At what point the school of hard knocks start to enter the picture.
- [16:53]
James Dumoulin
Yeah. So, you know, I was. So I'll first say this. I mentioned that I had those first two jobs, right. Well, my senior year of high school, actually, this is the year I was working construction. It's about December 2019. And, you know, I start to hear about TikTok. It's starting to get really popular now. I think TikTok had been on. On the App Store. Like, it had been launched maybe late 2018, early 2019, but it really started to hit its stride late 2019.
- [17:22]
Colleen Witt
Whoa.
- [17:23]
Coca Cola Announcer
What a vibe we've got y'.
- [17:24]
Colleen Witt
All.
- [17:24]
Coca Cola Announcer
As always, it's classic HBCU energy. Nonstop action, the band is rocking and the crowd lit. Chants echoing, drums beating, everybody showing that school pride. Moments like this, yeah, they call for an ice cold Coca Cola. Crisp and refreshing. That's a game changer right there. Mmm. Yeah, that taste always hit the right note. Just like the band at halftime. Passionate fans, school colors everywhere and an ice cold Coca Cola. That's a winning combo. No matter the place, no matter the moment, Everybody knows fan work is thirsty work. So grab a Coca Cola and keep that HBCU pride going.
- [18:00]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder? With a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you are drowning in software. Instead of growing your business, this is where Odoo comes in. Odoo is the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one fully integrated platform that handles everything CRM, accounting, inventory, E commerce, HR and more. No more app overload, no more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business whether you are just starting out or or already scaling up. Plus it's easy to use, customizable and designed to streamline every process so you can focus on what really matters running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you try Odoo for free@odoo.com that's o d o o.com Life.
- [19:02]
Anabe Sofa Announcer
Gets messy spills, stains and kid chaos. But with anime, cleaning up is easy. Our sofas are fully machine washable inside and out so you never have to stress about messes again. Made with liquid and stain resistant fabrics, that means fewer stains and more peace of mind. Designed for real life, Our sofas feature changeable fabric covers allowing you to refresh your style anytime. Need flexibility? Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly. Perfect for cozy apartments or spacious homes. Plus, they're earth friendly and built to last. That's why over 200,000 happy customers have made the switch. Get early access to Black Friday pricing right now. Sofas started just $699. Visit washablesofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life. That's washablesofas.com offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.
- [20:01]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
Limu, Emu and Doug Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [20:19]
James Dumoulin
Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us?
- [20:22]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
Cut the camera. They see us.
- [20:23]
Hills Pet Nutrition Announcer
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- [20:31]
Knix Announcer
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- [21:32]
James Dumoulin
Going into 2020 is when it just, you know, passed Google as the number one search engine. And I was just watching TikTok casually, but I started to notice like there's these kids out there who are my age, who are younger than me, some older than me, and they're making ridiculous amounts of money, tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars a month just making content about stuff that they were passionate about because they were able to build an audience and monetize it. And I love the saying that where attention goes, revenue flows. And to me, I saw that in late 2019 and I just decided to start posting on TikTok. I didn't have any clear direction of how I wanted to take my brand or anything. I was just building my personal brand on there, just a personal TikTok. And I just kept trying different things, hopping on different trends and I would go viral. And before I knew it, within about 10 months on that account, I had 800,000 followers. Wow. So went from zero to 800,000 followers in about 10 months. So that was from like December 2019 up until August 2020.
- [22:37]
Colleen Witt
And it wasn't, it was, it was different types of video, types of content.
- [22:41]
James Dumoulin
My first ever video that I posted that went viral, so my first viral video was probably like my 10th to 15th post somewhere around then. But I try to tell people that it's like, look, most successful creators, I would argue the majority of them, if you ask them, hey, how many pieces of content did it take for you to have one viral video? A lot of them, it wasn't until their fiftieth or hundredth or three hundredth video that it takes to go viral. And like most people, they don't understand that and therefore they get discouraged because all you. My first couple of videos didn't go viral. So then they're just done. They give up. And it's like I try and remind people that like, look, some people. Yes. Does that, you know, happen overnight? Sure it does. A lot of the overnight stuff though. Where's the longevity in most people that go viral overnight? There isn't any longevity for the most part.
- [23:26]
Colleen Witt
Yeah.
- [23:27]
James Dumoulin
Whereas you know, people. It's a long game. Media content creation. It is a long game and if you want to like actually have, be very successful in it, you have to be committed to it for a long time. And so like I said, 10:15 post was the one that went viral. It was literally just me making a decision video on going to the University of Texas. So like I had applied to like three or four places and I was, did a video like showing all the places I got into and then deciding to go to UT got like 800,000 views. And I realized right then and there it's like, okay, I posted that video with, I had like maybe 200 followers at the time. And I overnight it got 800,000 views and I'm like, wait a minute. So you can literally have like a hundred followers and you can have hundreds of thousands to a million people that see a piece of your video. I'm like, count me in. Like, this is crazy. There's I. I mean obviously this has existed, but I hadn't seen it for myself. And so like I said it did that once and then was just posting a lot of miscellaneous content. So some of it was like me, you know, doing self improvement advice or making like lists of like my top favorite movies, my top favorite rappers, like, stuff like that. But. And it wasn't anything where like I could have built a brand out of it. So after those 10 months I hit 800k, but I kind of hit a wall mentally with it where I was like, I got it I got to do something else. This isn't it. And so I had connected with the child, the childhood friend, my brother. We were at like a friend's house. This is right before I moved out from Virginia, the D.C. area, to Austin. And we kind of just connected on the fact that, hey, we're all from the D.C. area a lot. You know, a lot of us. If you know anything about D.C. it's a very structured city.
- [25:04]
Colleen Witt
Yeah.
- [25:04]
James Dumoulin
Very federal, like centered around a lot of federal agencies, government jobs, contracting, defense. It's not entrepreneurial. So we kind of gravitated towards one another, being that my brother, myself and our friend at the time, we were all kind of doing our own thing. So we just kind of went back and forth and a year goes by. But it was ultimately my sophomore year in April 2021, where the three of us were like, hey, the creator economy right now is like a $500 billion industry. And we all kind of have different skill sets. My brother was an analytics genius. I knew content. My other partner had a digital marketing background. We're like, let's, let's, let's start a media channel together. All of our skill sets kind of compliment one another and we're like, let's start a business media channel. So we started the channel originally and it was just the three of us that were making the content ourselves about business. We weren't even doing interviews when we started out the channel, but we're like, nobody gives a shit about 3 young 20 year old kids talking about business content. We're like, we, you know, and we grew it from 0 to 25k in like 6 months.
- [26:07]
Colleen Witt
But we're like, that's amazing.
- [26:08]
James Dumoulin
Yeah, it's great. However, again, kind of how I hit that wall with the other one with this one, I was still like, how do we. It was all over the place. We're like, how can we kind of be different? And even though, you know, street interviews have been around for 20 years, like every major news site or channel, you know, has done street interviews with people. But I'm like, it wasn't done in a way in which I saw like the opportunity. So we just started going around cold approaching people, you know, finding people that have industry experience of 20, 30, 40 years in different businesses, from tech to real estate to finance to general entrepreneurship, and just tried to get those insights and be able to package it and pass it on to the younger generation. So that was, you know, sometime in 2021. And fast forward to 2025, grew it to 12 million followers. We've done over 4 billion views in the last, you know, four years. And I've learned a ton about business, you know, consecration, virality, everything. Now, there were definitely some setbacks and adversity on the way as we were, you know, building. But ultimately, I would like to see.
- [27:16]
Colleen Witt
Some setbacks in the. You know, I love failure.
- [27:18]
James Dumoulin
Absolutely. Well, I'm happy to get or.
- [27:20]
Colleen Witt
Or speed bumps or road bumps.
- [27:22]
James Dumoulin
Absolutely. So, you know, this is. That's been very. I think this story is very helpful for a lot of people. So one of the best pieces of advice that I've ever received was from a gentleman in Houston. His name's D.L. woods. Made like $16 million in a year. And, you know, the best entrepreneurship advice that he gave me was stay small enough, long enough, and you'll be big enough soon enough. And I absolutely love that all the wealthiest people will tell you to. The best investment you can make, especially when you're starting to become profitable and actually make money, is reinvesting and putting it back into the business. The reason why I bring this, this up is because this was very relevant to what happened to us. And had it not been for that, the three of us would have been screwed a hundred percent. So we're about a year into the channel, so my other partner, Josh, he had dropped out. So he had gone full time with this channel.
- [28:18]
Colleen Witt
He dropped out of college. I love that.
- [28:20]
James Dumoulin
So he had he. Before we even started, he had. He dropped out years ago.
- [28:23]
Colleen Witt
Okay.
- [28:24]
James Dumoulin
Like I said, he's a bit older, so, you know, he dropped out to pursue a digital marketing agency years ago. So he had already dropped out. But he, you know, his digital marketing agency had a partner. They kind of went their separate ways. And then when he started doing this, he went full time with the content channel, like, really before we were ever making money. And as I said, with like, media content creation, it's a long game unless you want to dilute your brand. Like, you're not going to be making money, good money off of content for at least, you know, a year or two. But so anyways, we're like a year, year and a half in by this point. I'm probably a junior in college. My brother is now graduated at the time, so he's full time on the business. My other partner, Josh is full time. The three of us are full time. And we're at a point now where, you know, this is what, 2021. So a lot of people don't know this. 2020 was the first year that Facebook ever stagnated Users Meaning. Meaning in the entire 20 plus years that Facebook has existed, the only year, 2020 was the first year that they stopped growing. And the reason why they stopped growing is because you've got TikTok, which from a short video perspective, just started crushing everybody. Instagram had adapted with the reels, and obviously Instagram at the time was a little bit more relevant, that it was a newer app. Facebook was a lot older. So Facebook sees this and they go, you know what? We gotta start incentivizing people to create content, create videos on Facebook. So they roll out this monetization program on there that's paying creators a lot of money. And so we're about a year into the. To the Hard Knocks channel and we, we get invited into this program, and for a couple months in the program, we're making 25 to $35,000 a month. So this is like a year to year and a half into Hard Knocks. However, we knew content, but we didn't know the media business. So for that reason, our entire business model and our entire monetization was just relying solely on ad revenue. We didn't have a content agency at the time. We have one now. We didn't. We weren't monetizing in any other ways. We were approached every once in a while to do like a brand partnership or create content for a brand. But even then, it's like, at the time, we had a couple hundred thousand followers on TikTok and didn't really have a huge presence on Instagram. So we weren't making any great money off of brands. And there's three co founders. However, the ad revenue for those couple months that we were making 25 to 35,000 off of Facebook, we're like, man, this is. This is incredible. This is great. And again, one of those reoccurring pieces of advice that we were receiving was to again put the money back into the business. Don't be greedy. Don't take the money for yourself. Right? Which is what we did. So during those months that we were getting paid like that, we were all paying ourselves $2,000 a month, which is literally just enough to cover rent and expenses. So we, you know, none of us were saving money. We were, we were just taking the $2,000 a month out each for, you know, for the three of us, which covered our rent, covered everything else. Everything else went back into the business out of that 25 to 30k. Well, when you post a video on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or YouTube, I tell people this. When you post on their platform, you no longer own that content. They own that content.
- [31:44]
Colleen Witt
I didn't know that.
- [31:45]
James Dumoulin
Well, they do, because at the end of the day, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, they can. They can decide whether that piece of content stays up. They can decide whether they want to pay you off it or not. That's what I'm more. So obviously you as the creator that posts it. That posts the content. Yes. Do you technically own the content? Sure. But at the end of the day, when you post on their platform, who owns the platform? They do.
- [32:04]
Colleen Witt
Yeah.
- [32:05]
James Dumoulin
So for that reason, we posted a piece of content on Facebook and it was our own interview, but something got flagged and we ended up getting demonetized. So we go from making like 25 to $35,000 a month to literally like 3 to $4,000 a month off of just TikTok.
- [32:24]
Colleen Witt
Wow.
- [32:24]
James Dumoulin
Because TikTok was still paying, but TikTok at the time, you know, you know, paid pennies compared to what they were paying. So we go from making 25 to $35,000 a month, all the way down to three to $4,000 a month between three people.
- [32:37]
Colleen Witt
Wow.
- [32:37]
James Dumoulin
And it was like that for a couple months. And, you know, that's kind of when we're starting to have the conversation like, do we disband? Like, do we disband?
- [32:46]
Colleen Witt
Oh, my gosh.
- [32:46]
James Dumoulin
Well, we're just. Well, just because it's like, you know, we weren't. We weren't making any money off of it. And it's like they were full time and it's like, you know, again, making three to $4,000 a month, like, but what kept us afloat again was those couple months where we were only paying ourselves $2,000. Yeah, we put a lot of money back into the business. So we had a decent account. We're like, hey, we just need to figure this. This thing out and we can, you know, we'll be able to bounce back. And so at that moment, we came to the. We. We realized that you cannot build a business off of ad revenue because you don't determine how much you're paid. You don't determine when you're paid. You don't determine whether you. You may get paid or not off of that content. So we're like, we need to get savvy. And it reminds me of also in 2023, I had gone to, like, my first ever mastermind with a bunch of 8 figure, 7, 8, 9 figure Internet marketers, and a gentleman said a statement to me that stuck with me, you know, to this day. Is that great businessmen are terrible content creators and great content creators are terrible businessmen. And it's very true because some of the most successful business people I know, they're terrible at content, right? They know their business, but they don't, they don't know content.
- [33:53]
Colleen Witt
Yeah, yeah.
- [33:53]
James Dumoulin
And most content creators that I know are broke. Like most content creat, they don't understand the media business. They don't know how to monetize it. So then we began to look at, okay, there's three of us. What, what, what do we do to be able to kind of get on the right track and, and figure this thing out? And it reminds me of, I'll give you one other lesson and you know, you know, pass it back on to you. But there was a gentleman out in Scottsdale, Arizona, he owns like four eight figure businesses, huge real estate guy, his name's Cody Sperber. And he told me a piece of advice that, you know, I love this piece of advice is that a savvy entrepreneur, he looks at their business and looks at two things. Number one, all of the people making money off of their efforts and number two, all of the different ways in which they can be making money. So it's that vertical integration. So the wealthiest, the most successful people that I know, they look at their core business and they look at how are my competitors or how are my customers, like how are people making money off of me? And I'm going to go start a business there or I'm going to, I'm going to integrate my business there or like, okay, us, right? Our core business was media, was attention. How can we use our platform to then begin to make money? Which is exactly what we did. And you know, our first thing we started, okay, we're interviewing wealthy people, we're going viral with wealthy people. Let's start a marketing agency to therefore we'll go viral with them and then we'll close them on doing their content. Let's build their personal brands. And so we have a content agency where we work with some of the biggest, most well known entrepreneurs in the, in the space and we do their personal brand. So it's like, okay, there's one business. We're like, okay, the number one question that we get asked is how do, how do you connect with these people? How do we get access to them? So we started and built one of the biggest online communities for business owners to, I saw that connect and be able to, you know, learn every week from them. So it's like that's, that's what it's all about is like, okay, this is our core business. It's attention. We get eyeballs. How do we now monetize this? And you know, in doing that, you know, that's, that's what enables us to kind of come back from that adversity, was having that, you know, couple months of operating expenses in the business. We're like, hey, you know, we can either give this up or we can keep going. And we did. And it was worth it.
- [36:05]
Colleen Witt
Wow. And then during this little this, I want to say, how long was your hurdle for that gap?
- [36:11]
James Dumoulin
Six months at least.
- [36:13]
Colleen Witt
You guys were almost getting down to the wire.
- [36:15]
James Dumoulin
It was a while. I mean, I mean, yeah, I mean, I would say maybe like three to four months into it, we may have closed our first client, but we didn't know anything about scaling. We didn't, we didn't know. I mean again, we'd been learning a lot about business, but we weren't implementing it. And I always say that information changes situations, but only through implementation. And so, you know, now it's like, okay, we are genuinely like learning from these people and we're constantly adapting. Like we'll pay to have a phone call with somebody successful. I mean, obviously now our role decks, our network is unbelievable. And you know, we do our best to provide a value to as many people as possible and, and as many of these people that we really, really, you know, value. And therefore it's like, hey, if we go to ask them a question or hey, would you invest in this? If you or us or whatever it may be, it's now like never like a hard ass just because we've really done a good job about building those relationships and stuff like that. But it was a, it was a, a good bit of time, you know, so. And I would say we really didn't start making good money until probably sometime mid to late 2023. And then we started to clear six figure months. I would say probably back like last, like June, like last, last June. Like, like last summer was when we started to. Ever since then we've been clearing six figure months. And then our biggest month was this past December where we did over 600, 000 in revenue. And then half a million of that was profit. So geez. Yeah, half a million in profit last December.
- [37:39]
Colleen Witt
How now, so you have the school that people can they pay to subscribe and how, when you were going about building that school, how did you work out the infrastructure of how you were going to lay that all out?
- [38:00]
James Dumoulin
This is a great question. And this is where a lot of people go wrong, is that. And I'll give you one more little setback.
- [38:08]
Colleen Witt
You can give me as many as you want.
- [38:10]
James Dumoulin
Okay, absolutely. Well, this is just probably like the worst one of, if not the worst financial decisions that us as a company ever made. So one of the biggest mistakes that content creators make is that they get shiny object syndrome to where they're like, okay, you know, I'm, I just went viral, I'm getting followers and all this and that I'm going to start a clothing company, I'm going to start an E commerce store without even, you know, thinking about the most important thing within the audience, which is why they actually follow you. So what we did probably this may be like a, you know, 2022. So probably when we started to make a little bit of money or actually, maybe maybe this was actually. I'm sorry, this was actually probably before we even got demonetized. So we were again having those months where we were doing decently off of like just the ad revenue, probably like a year, year and a half in. And we're like, you know what we should do? We're like, since we're doing, you know, these interviews that are motivational, we're interviewing successful people, we should start, we should start a canvas store. Like, you know how like there's like motivational, like wall art and stuff like that. We're like, that'd be a great idea. And we're all going, yeah, yeah, yeah, like, like let's do it. And we even to the point where we were serious about it, we started to work on it and we even, you know, for three months hired or invested in, invested $5,000 a month in an outsourced CMO, meaning we had somebody that we knew who was incredibly talented. Like probably one of the most well respected Internet marketers, E commerce entrepreneurs that I actually know to this day, so absolutely crushing it. We paid him $5,000 a month for three months to come in and help us build it out, help us market it and sell it all for us to maybe sell five to ten canvases. So we spent $15,000 and literally we lost more. When you talk about paying for the designers, the manufacturer, like everything else. And the reason why is because we never talked to the customer, we never talked to the audience, we never figured out is this something that they even want that they're interested in. And so, but like Mark Cuban always says is that it's like nobody's going to come save your business. Like a lot of people have this idea that, oh, you know, I completely agree with the fact that do you need to hire like people, bring them on, do partnerships a million percent. Like my whole thing is, is like I'd rather have a slice of the pie that 100% of agree. Whereas like if people are genuinely talented and they're.
- [40:48]
Colleen Witt
The way you talk is just, you.
- [40:50]
James Dumoulin
Got to repeat that it's in sound bites, right?
- [40:52]
Colleen Witt
No, but the, the 100%, a small piece of the pie or 100 of a grape.
- [40:57]
James Dumoulin
This is genuinely like beautiful. One of my favorite and the most important things because a lot of, a lot of entrepreneurs, they want to be the solopreneur and do everything themselves without realizing that, hey, maybe, you know, like I said, perfect example is like a content creator who's great at content but they suck at business is like, like, dude, go find somebody that is incredible at business. They know how to build this out, they know how to market it. And you just do what you do, which is create content. And that's like my philosophy, even with me and my two other co founders, my brother and my friend, is like, hey, they know that I'm incredible at creating content. So with their philosophy with me is like, dude, go book the flight. You want to go film there? Just go book it. Even, even in those, even before we were starting to make like really good money, they were still like, dude, just book the flight. Just book it. You know, and that's like a great way to operate if you're strategic about it. But yes, it's, you know, as an entrepreneur, I would rather have a slice of a pie than 100% of a grape. Meaning it's like if, if you partner up with somebody who is extremely good at an area where you're not and you and your skill sets can complement one another, you're going to make significantly more money even though you're, you're giving split of the money as opposed to you trying to do everything yourself because there's only so much that you can do. There's only so much, you know, area for growing that you can do if you're trying to do everything yourself. And so yeah, I think that that was, you know, incredibly important. You know, like I was saying, it's like I'm a huge advocate of that. But at the same time, it's like, you know, most people, they, they fail to ask their audiences why people follow them. And over the last couple years, as we were starting to interview more super high net worth people, billionaires and stuff like that, people were always asking us and dming us saying, hey, who is this? How can I get access to them? How, how, you know, could you send us their contact and all this stuff? So to us we're like, okay, the number one reason why people reach out to us is literally for the ability to get in contact with or to figure out how we're meeting these people. And so we started to realize that, hey, you know, what business we're actually in. Yes, we're in media, but we're in the bridging business where we are bridging everyday people, consumers of content. And we're bridging them directly to the, you know, some of the most successful people in the entire world. And for that reason, you know, we're like, okay, let's, it just made sense for us to think about building a community that connects, yeah, the everyday people directly to these people, which is exactly what we did. And obviously it took, you know, six months plus to be able to build out the infrastructure. You know, we, there's a lot of on demand content masterclasses, there's weekly calls, but we also did a lot of, you know, polling, like saying stuff like, hey, if we built an online platform or community, what would you guys want to see in there? Or out of these four things, what is the number one like most important or like thing that you would want the most? And we did a lot of that for a couple months. And I think that's very important and very underrated that a lot of people mess up on when they're building their brand. Creating content, starting to get some traction is like before going all in saying, okay, I'm going to start a clothing company. What if people aren't following you for what you're wearing? Like prime example. I would argue, I would say that I probably know more about content and you know, just virality, the algorithm as a whole. More than 99.9999% of people. However, people don't follow me because of that. People don't follow our channel, the school of hard knocks, because we know how to go viral. So like if I wanted to, you know, build and sell, attempt to sell the, the viral video blueprint or how to, how to go from zero to a million followers on social media, it probably wouldn't hit. I mean, are there some people that maybe would bite just because of the sheer amount of volume and eyes that we have? I'm sure. Right. But is that what would make the most sense for our existing audience and our existing type of content and why people are actually following us? Definitely not so in a lot of it is. You have to remove your bias out of it. You have to remove any emotional attachment that you have to, oh, I'm great at this. I should go sell this.
- [45:08]
Colleen Witt
Yeah.
- [45:08]
James Dumoulin
And when it's like, no, it's like, what do people actually want? You know, I interviewed a gentleman, he sold his company to Hilton for $2.2 billion. Stephen Klubeck, he's actually running for governor of California. And.
- [45:19]
Colleen Witt
Okay.
- [45:20]
James Dumoulin
And he said, and he said that it's like, like, you know, the most. That's what he always preaches is like, talk to your customer, talk to the. You know, he owned like, over 400 hotels in 35 countries. And so that was. That's his thing. It's like him being in the hospitality business. He's always talking to people, hey, what can we do better? You know, what is it that we could add to our resort to improve and stuff like that. And now his big thing is, like, with the people of California is. It's like, you know, he, his. He said it this way. That made it really interesting to me. It's like that, like, the people of California are like customers of California. And so hearing that perspective, even shifting it to, like, what we're doing as a, you know, content creator, building out this business is like, we are always constantly trying to talk to different people. Are you familiar with Steve Madden the clothes? So, yes. So I interviewed him and one of the most fascinating things that I saw him do after we interviewed him were outside of his, you know, apartment in New York City. And he's just stopping, you know, random, random ladies on the street asking, where'd you get your shoes from? And he's just talking to different people about, what do you like about them? And all that. And I'm like, here's a. This guy's a billionaire. His company's doing 3 billion. 2 to 2 to 3 billion dollars a year in sales.
- [46:29]
Colleen Witt
Yeah.
- [46:29]
James Dumoulin
And he's just talking to random people, asking them about their shoes and stuff like that. And I'm like, that's really interesting. So even I learned a little bit, a little bit from, from everybody. But that's something that I've really, You know, those couple things have really made sense to me when it comes to, like, the decision for us building out. That's what went into thinking about launching the community and the infrastructure for that.
- [46:51]
Colleen Witt
Yeah, I get, I get nervous anytime, even with eating while broke. If I'm like, all of our revenue is coming from one area. I like to see split. I'm Like, I don't mind one, one part taking up 30 to 40%, but anytime it hits over that 40%, where all of our revenue's coming from, I'm like, we gotta find something else. We have to start really think, thinking. But it seems like you guys started to do that once the monetize, once the life supply kind of came out. You guys were like, oh, snap. Was there another painful lesson in the business where it was just like that. You literally kept. You guys started to argue, maybe kept up at night, started reaching out to your parents. Like, I don't know.
- [47:32]
James Dumoulin
You know, I don't know. I know that one thing I'll say about the. The partnership that I have with my. My brother and my good friend, and I think this is also very important because a lot of people will argue against going into business with friends and family, but I don't see it that way. I think there's one thing that you guys do have to have in order for you to partner up. Because I think the beautiful thing about going into business with family or childhood friends, where you know the kind of people that you are and what. I mean kind of people, not what you're good at and what you're bad at, but genuinely, like, when I see and I hear from a lot of entrepreneurs about why their business failed or why big companies failed, a lot of it had to do with a bad disagreement or dishonesty between the partners or the founders or whatever it may be. And that's the one thing is that I can say confidently that, you know, between myself, my brother, my other partner, I know them morally. I know that our values are all aligned, that we're all in sync and, and that I wouldn't ever have to worry about somebody taking a dollar behind somebody's back out of the business or doing something dishonest. I know that for a fact. I know for a fact that I wouldn't do that to them, obviously, because I love them, but obviously, like, I just was raised in a way that, like, hey, that's not. That's not the right thing to do, no matter what point you get to. And it's. It's really cool to be able to know that and know that, hey, if we're in this shit together, like, even, you know, during the. We call, like the trench days where we were just making $2,000 got demonetized down to the point where we're making like 4k a month collectively for a couple months. You. During those days, we were still just very, very, you know, close with one another, and we're. We're really in it together. But the problem with that is, and going into business with people that you know and that you love is that it does create a sense of comfortability for a lot of people to where when you're, you know, constantly around people that you grew up with or that you live with, you can become very comfortable because it's what you're used to, whereas it's like, okay, that's why people always say it's like, get out of your hometown. Go do something uncomfortable. I think that's some of the best advice that you can ever give somebody is tell, like, literally, like, leave hometown. Go get uncomfortable. It's gonna. You know, to me, low pressure means low performance. So even causing you to have a little bit of, like, pressure to. Where you have to make. You have to meet people. You got to make connections. You got to build without knowing people. I think that's a great thing. But I don't think we ever experienced that comfortability because we were never afraid to put one another in check. And most importantly, like, I said that one thing that you have to have is that you cannot be or you cannot be surrounded by a yes man. And none of us were yes men. Meaning if somebody felt a certain way about something but the other person completely disagreed, we were not afraid to just butt heads to the point where it's like, it could go on for a while, just, like, arguing, like, you know, pretty harshly, you know, genuinely. Yeah, I would say, like, yep, not in a. Not in a nice way sometimes. And that's a great thing about having that third partner is that they're able to. You know, when you have two people or that third partner is able to kind of go in there and reason with one of them or go agree with one of the two, it's. You're able to kind of come to a decision in a better way, because that person who's disagreeing with the other two is like, okay, if you two are saying this, then I don't really don't have a choice, because it's like, look, we're. There's three of us here. Maybe I need to see it from your lens a little bit more. However it takes those two to go at it and not be like, you know, just this person's, you know, feeling this way about it. Oh, if he's feeling that way, then I'm. Then, you know, he's absolutely right. We were never like that, and that was extremely important. So I think that, like, you Just whether it's you, you. The people that you decide to partner with, you just cannot be a yes man or a yes woman towards each other because, like, again, it's. You got to have those uncomfortable conversations sometimes to ultimately make the decision that's going to move the needle the furthest for your business or whatever endeavor that you're doing. So I don't know if there was, like, a specific thing in which. I mean, I'm sure that there were a lot of different things here and there on the way that were. But, like, to me, like, those were the. When I think of, like, setbacks that we had, it was definitely the one where we completely got demonetized for months. We're like a year and a half in making a couple thousand dollars, you know, or to that point, we weren't even really paying ourselves. Yeah, we're just living off of our bank accounts in Austin, which is a more expensive city than most places. Not LA expensive, but it's still getting up there. It is definitely more affordable, for sure.
- [52:07]
Colleen Witt
And you guys were doing a lot of this, too, it seems like, during the pandemic. Can we talk about that? Like, the hurdles you face doing that?
- [52:15]
James Dumoulin
So during the pandemic is when I actually started on my personal account. So that was from, you know, December 2019 to, like, August 2020 was, like, peak pandemic was when we really was. When I started to grind on TikTok. And so a lot of my, you know, close friends, relatives, people I went to school with, a lot of them were looking at the. The pandemic, not everybody, as maybe like a vacation or like time off. And don't get me wrong, like, whoa.
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Colleen Witt
All.
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Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
Limu IMU and Doug Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally Doug.
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James Dumoulin
Uh Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
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Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
Cut the camera. They see us.
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Hills Pet Nutrition Announcer
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings very unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates excludes Massachusetts.
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- [56:54]
James Dumoulin
I I feel horrible for people that like they were lined up to go to school or they were lined up to do something really great. I mean, I know a ton of people, you know, I think about all the younger kids, like the athletes that didn't get that showcasing to different schools or you know, whatever it may be getting in front of the right people. But I genuinely took it as such an opportunity. And I think that's also another important thing as well is that like when everybody's kind of, you know, chilling out and obviously there was a lot of reason why people, they had no choice because people were getting laid off from companies and in order for them to go find work, like people weren't really hiring. Like a lot of businesses were losing tons of money. Especially like if you were something that.
- [57:32]
Colleen Witt
Was like full on shutting down.
- [57:34]
James Dumoulin
Yeah, full on shutting down.
- [57:35]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
Right.
- [57:35]
James Dumoulin
Which, which was crazy. But I to me looked at Covid as an opportunity to get ahead on honestly. And that's why like I, when I was doing my like personal account and I went from 0 to 800k in the 10 months every single day during COVID I was posting 2 to 3 times a day every single day. It didn't matter where I was, whether I was on a train, flying somewhere, going to visit family, going to visit relatives. I was just posting nonstop, relentlessly. So I, I looked at that as an opportunity to where, okay, obviously, you know, I was a senior in high school. Our semester just ended in like March, which was crazy. And as opposed to waiting months before moving out to Texas to go to school in August, I was like, okay, what could I be doing now? Until then I still worked construction that summer actually, but I was still doing that. And then I was also, I was also, I was doing the construction but then I was just blowing up on the, the social media side of things. So I just looked at it as an opportunity to, you know, hey, why, why not run with this? Just kind of see where it goes.
- [58:39]
Colleen Witt
Yeah, I, I love mentorship. I love my mentors. I seek out, I try to tell. Because I mentor a lot of younger people and I always tell them I like to seek mentors that aren't in the same line industry remotely different industry, completely different, you know, stratosphere almost. For me, it's like I gain more knowledge. You, with everyone you interview, do you have a particular, like handful of mentors that are like in your or in your Rolodex? Or do you just everyone that you interview that kind of supports, like, do you just say, hey, do you want to be my mentor? Just trying to figure out, you know.
- [59:21]
James Dumoulin
That'S a really good one. There are definitely like a handful of people that I would say that I, I have in my Rolodex that I know that I could text them at any time of day or call them any time of the day, and that if I needed something that like, they would be there for me. But I, I look at it is that in your life you should have mentors for just about every aspect of your life, you know, whether it be spiritual mentors. Definitely a Christian. So I know that there's five to 10 people that I know that know more about the Bible than anybody else to where if I have a question about this or, you know, spirituality, my faith or whatever, I can always call on one of them and they'll be able to give me insights or guidance if I'm struggling with something. And then also when it comes to the business side of things, it's like, just because we're constantly meeting these people, we're nurturing, we're building these relationships, you know, a lot of them maybe I meet once or twice, but I try and stay in touch with them, I try and check in on them. Now some of them, you know, maybe it is literally just for, you know, you do an interview and anything comes up, maybe to do another one or another opportunity at some point like that, then we'll make it happen. But I would say I definitely. And especially when we started our content agency, where we started to work with a lot of super successful entrepreneurs closely to build their personal brands to strategize and everything that got us to know them a lot more and become a lot closer with some of these people. And so I've got a couple, you know, that I'll just kind of like shout out, there's a gentleman. His name's Anyi Adenukwe. He's from Dallas. He owns one of the largest sunspa tanning franchises in the entire world. And, you know, he taught. He taught us how to delegate. He taught us how to, you know, you know, stop working in the business and start working on the business like, remove ourselves, stop being employee entrepreneurs. He's also extremely successful in real estate. Him and another one of my clients, his name's Todd Napola, who owns hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate out in South Florida. So, you know, in January this past year, we made our biggest investment ever, me and my two co founders, into a huge real estate project out in Texas. And the beautiful thing about having the network that we have and the Rolodex that we have is that, you know, we're able to send the deal that we invested in to five, 10 different people that are. That own tens and hundreds of millions of dollars of worth of real estate where they've invested in great deals and some not so great deals. And again, the mentorship thing is like, it's genuinely wisdom without the wounds because we're able to ask these people and be able to get that kind of unanimous decision from them on whether or not this is a good idea or not without having that. And we're just going in blind to a deal or making a decision. The deal could blow up in our faces or, or it could ultimately be a bad, you know, decision. And then, and even within that, you're still going to learn a lot from it to be like, okay, hey, if this is in it, if this isn't, you know, then we probably shouldn't invest here or whatever. But being able to rely and have so many great people that we can reach out to and ask questions about, that's like a beautiful thing to be able to have. And we've definitely taken advantage of that. But also it's like, I look at it that not only do we ask these people for help, I'm always looking at ways to be able to add value to people. And I think that there's a lot, a lot of power in that. And what a lot of younger people and people from all across the board, what they struggle with is that when they're trying to connect with people who are, you know, higher net worth or, you know, money's not everything, but like, just in a capacity, when somebody's trying to connect with somebody that seems like maybe like out of reach or that it's like a long shot, a big problem is because they make it all about them.
- [63:02]
Colleen Witt
Yeah.
- [63:03]
James Dumoulin
When in reality it's like, how do you make it about this person every single time? It's like, you should always be looking at how I can deliver value to this person off the bat and not for them to come try and come up with ways of how you can, like, be intentional about what you can do for that person, how you can help them out, how you can add value to their business or whatever that they're doing on a regular basis. And not saying, hey, I'd love to come work for you for free and come add value for you. It's like, okay. But then now that person has to think about what you can actually do for them. And it's like, they probably don't even, they probably don't even need you. Whereas it's like, okay, you have a, you have a skill set here. This person's clearly lacking that. Boom, go and tell them exactly what you what and how you're going to do it for them. And it gives them much more of a reason and incentive to connect with you. So I think that, you know, there's, there's a lot to be said about that though, as well as in trying to, like, connect with and network with the right people. A lot of it just comes down to straight up just, just adding value to those people and those relationships to make them lasting and to make them worth it for the person who's taken the time to connect with you. Because a lot of, you know, mentorship, if it's not organic, it's literally going to be like, paid. You know, some of these people, it's crazy. Which is. Is almost all the time worth it as long, as long as it's with the right person. But, you know, to me, I mean, we built our network organically without spending a dollar on it. I mean, we've gone to masterminds and events and we've paid for people's time before, for sure, which I think is necessary in a lot of different capacities. But just from building what we built, you know, we've gotten hundreds of people in front of, you know, multi, multi millions of people. So giving them that attention, that exposure a lot of the times makes the people that we interview feel like, hey, anything you guys need, you let me.
- [64:44]
Colleen Witt
Of course.
- [64:45]
James Dumoulin
So which, which is a really nice thing to, to have and be able to do. Because now it's like, hey, a lot of these people, you know, we have them kind of in our back pocket that, like, hey, if, you know, we know that we have a question about this or want to get their perspective on this or Ask, you know, kind of guide us in this way. Hey, this person's the best in the world at this. Let's go figure out, you know, what we should do.
- [65:04]
Colleen Witt
Yeah. And I know I haven't let you eat, not one bite. We're gonna. I'm gonna let you eat this cold chick Fil A right after this last question. And my question is, what's a day in the life of James? Just, I really am trying to get to know you, so I just want to know, wake up today. Obviously, there was a text from me in there, but what's a day in the life of you on average?
- [65:27]
James Dumoulin
Yeah, well, that's what's really interesting. Like I said, I'm not the best person at keeping a schedule. There's times where, like, I'll set up three calls for 12 o', clock, and I'll just move all of them back, like, 20 minutes. And so that's, again, something that I'm not great at. And obviously, like, depending on, you know, the opportunity and how pressing something is, it's like, Okay, I will 100% make this priority, like, will not mess this up or whatever. But, you know, I would. I would say typical day in the life. I'll give you kind of like two. Two different ones. One, if I'm home based here in Austin versus, like, if I'm traveling, because that is when it kind of gets completely different. Because when I'm here in Austin, I do have much better structure. It's like, I woke up this morning, I ran two miles. Beginning a lot more into running. I've always been, like, into, like, lifting, but I'm like, hey, just for heart and health purposes. Have been wanting to run a lot more and get a little bit more of that, like, higher intensity cardio and exercise in. So I would say wake up. I like to get the workout out of the way early if I have a couple calls, depending. You know, we've been doing a lot of stuff out in Dubai and in the Middle east recently.
- [66:30]
Colleen Witt
See you out there a lot.
- [66:31]
James Dumoulin
So, yeah, we do. There's a lot of cool stuff going on, but we. We did a really cool partnership with. With the. The Dubai government. And so that was a big reason why we were out there or have been out there, and we'll continue to go out there. I mean, that's probably. I've been to 20 countries. I think Dubai is my favorite city I've been to.
- [66:46]
Colleen Witt
I've never been, but I see everyone going there. I'm like, yeah.
- [66:49]
James Dumoulin
I mean, obviously I was. I'LL say for us. Do we, do we have a slightly biased perspective? Probably just because, you know, we went out there for some specific reasons and got to do really some incredible things. But, but even if you're just going out there to visit, I mean, it's, it's beautiful, it's clean, it's safe, there's a lot to do. Different ecosystems, you've got the beach, you've got the desert, you know, the city life. So it's really neat. I'd highly recommend going out there and there's a, there's a lot hitters that are out there as well, so definitely recommend checking it out. But yeah, I would say, I mean, I'm a, I'm a work, I'm a wake up workout kind of guy. Probably eat the first meal around like 12. Well, I maybe have calls before and after lunch. You know, maybe I'm working on videos. You know, the one task that I have not been able to give up yet. And a lot of people like, they don't believe this or understand this. I still edit every single one of our videos.
- [67:43]
Colleen Witt
You edit?
- [67:43]
James Dumoulin
I edit every video. If you look at my last, probably the 500 to a thousand videos that we've posted on that channel, the school of Hard Knocks, I've edited every single one. And each video takes a minimum of an hour to edit. Like for example, before, before I came here, I put a video up today at 12. I edited from like 10 to 12 today.
- [68:03]
Colleen Witt
I. And I was assuming that you use schedulers.
- [68:07]
James Dumoulin
No. So, I mean, so I have a content agency and I have, we probably have five to 10 editors that work for us. I still edit every one of our Hard Knocks videos. That is crazy because, you know, I've mentioned I have a client, his name's Any, and he's again in Dallas. Very successful entrepreneur out there. And his, his, like I said, a lot of you hear a lot of, you know, successful entrepreneurs talk about delegating, buying back your time. Right? And that's his whole thing. It's like get somebody to do, to do the job 70% as good as you can and then move on. Like you need to stop doing those, you know, they call them the MWA activities, the minimum wage activities. Editing is definitely one of those activities. However, it's one that I just have refused to give up.
- [68:55]
Colleen Witt
Why is that you think? Is it, is it because you don't trust anyone else, particularly with the brand?
- [69:00]
James Dumoulin
Because I think the number one thing that we are my partners and I, but I would say that I am the absolute best at is taking.
- [69:11]
Colleen Witt
A.
- [69:11]
James Dumoulin
20 minute, 20 minutes worth of content. Because I would say our interviews, even the ones on the street, are anywhere on average from 10 to 20 to even 30 minutes. I would say I'm probably the best in the world or one of the best in the world at taking 20 to 30 minutes worth of content and putting it down to one to one and a half minutes. So the way that I edit is very interesting being that I will take, you know, different parts from three different answers and combine it into one to make it the most engaging and entertaining as well as just the overall pacing, the flow. I mean, there's a lot that goes into virality and like short form content. So I would say that that's wise that to me, in order if I were to explain it to somebody, hey, I want this piece here and this part there and let's put these two answers together and take out this and that. And if I were to do that and then also do revisions on top of that, it would take the same amount of time for me to get one video back as opposed to me just, you know, doing it myself. And at some point I'm sure like, I'm gonna have no decision but to like literally just, yeah, you know, kind of give the ropes off to somebody else. And, and I'm sure too that I will, you know, at some point also just train somebody who's really talented at what they do from like an editing standpoint and just let them do it. But yeah, that's, that's. I mean, so, I mean, we post, I would say now like every other day or once every, you know, two or three days. So I'm, I'm still editing all the videos, which are pretty, pretty time consuming.
- [70:43]
Colleen Witt
I'm not gonna lie. I love, I love to know that about you though.
- [70:45]
James Dumoulin
Yeah, it's interesting.
- [70:46]
Colleen Witt
I would have never thought. Never. Not even. Thanks for sharing that.
- [70:50]
James Dumoulin
Yeah, yeah, well, when I bring that up to people, they're like, you edit? I was like, yeah, I do edit. Yeah. Trust me, I'm a, I'm a premiere pro wizard, you know.
- [70:56]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
Really?
- [70:57]
James Dumoulin
Absolutely.
- [70:58]
Colleen Witt
I don't edit anything. Really. Yeah, but I mean, our channel isn't the greatest on online.
- [71:06]
James Dumoulin
Yeah, I mean everybody, everybody gotta learn. Yeah, everybody, Everybody, you know, starts somewhere, you know. But I mean, so yeah, I would say again, editing workout calls, stuff like that is what like a typical day will look like when I'm like here at home base and then when I'm traveling, I mean, it's go, go, go, go, Go. So I mean it's like, hey, you know, first I was just in New York City. We did the interview with, we did, had two really cool people back to back. Barbara Corcoran, you know Barbara from Shanti.
- [71:34]
Colleen Witt
She loved your interview. I saw.
- [71:36]
James Dumoulin
Yeah, she was, yeah, she was great. And then right before her, like 30 minutes before her, we did the, one of the owners of Equinox. Do you know Equinox?
- [71:43]
Colleen Witt
I know Equinox.
- [71:44]
James Dumoulin
So yeah, Harvey Spivak was another great interview. I haven't posted it yet, but I did them back to back. And even before those two interviews, like I was out on Wall street for like two hours just filming organic content, like getting people going in and out of the stock exchange. Then did those two interviews, then after, then went back to Wall street, film for a couple more hours before it got dark, then had the community call and then probably went to go eat some, some food out in New York City. So you know, the days especially because when we're traveling to places, you know, we'll be there for maybe two to four days, we try and you know, film as much, take advantage of as much of the opportunities or the people that we can connect with or collaborate with while we're out there. So I think yeah, that's maybe like a typical day in the life, like here versus on the road. So. But no, I always like to say no day is ever really the when we're traveling, doing content because we're always doing some, some interesting things and connecting with some really cool people. So it's always a good time.
- [72:36]
Colleen Witt
Wow. Well, thank you so much for your time. I would like to, if you can share some of the things that we can look forward to as school of hard knock fans, is there anything we.
- [72:48]
James Dumoulin
Can look forward to, you know? Yeah, I mean just, I would definitely say get a part of the community if you're not already because I mean every, you know, week we're hosting some crazy great live calls with hyper successful people. You know, this month we've got three calls. Next week we got a call with a hundred million dollar venture capital entrepreneur. The week after that Ann Malum, she sold Solid Core for a couple hundred million dollars. End of the month we got another good one. So I would say definitely get a part of that. As far as interviews, my, my thing about this, and it's, you know, I'll, I'll tell you off air, we do have some really cool interviews lined up, up, but I don't like to say them like publicly just because I don't I don't know, I feel like a lot of people, they celebrate too early or they, you know, they say things before they actually happen. And especially in this world and in this business, these can fall through like that.
- [73:41]
Colleen Witt
Yeah.
- [73:42]
James Dumoulin
So even though I'm very optimistic and happy and looking forward to some of the different collabs and stuff like that that we have lined up, I don't like to address it too much publicly just because you never know. I mean, I, I've came super close to getting, like, some of the biggest people in the world, and just one little thing can ca to fall through. So for that reason, I, I mean, I, I, I'll tell my partners and that's it. Like, I don't even tell my, you know, family. Sometimes when you have something cool coming up, it's like when it happens, it happens and people will just see it. But no, I mean, that, that's it. Yeah. Just, you know, like I said, the community's growing. It's doing really nicely. Got about 3,3500 or 4000 members right now. So just trying to keep growing that and, and then just like I said, I'm always focused on growth. We got 12 million followers now. I'm just thinking about, okay, how do we get to 15, 20 million collective followers in the next year or two? You know, so that's about.
- [74:30]
Colleen Witt
All right. Well, thank you so much for your time. I super value and appreciate it. I will never forget this.
- [74:37]
James Dumoulin
Thank you so much. Happy to be here. It's a great podcast, great questions, good food, and thank you for having me on it. It means a lot, really.
- [74:44]
Colleen Witt
Thank you guys for tuning in. Peace out.
- [75:06]
James Dumoulin
Whoa.
- [75:07]
Coca Cola Announcer
What a vibe we've got, y'.
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Colleen Witt
All.
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Coca Cola Announcer
As always, it's classic HBCU energy. Non stop action. The band is rocking and the crowd lit. Chants echoing, drums beating, everybody showing that school pride. Moments like this. Yeah, they call for an ice cold Coca Cola. Crisp and refreshing. That's a game changer right there. Mmm. Yeah, that taste always hit the right note. Just like the band at halftime. Passionate fans, school colors everywhere, and an ice cold Coca Cola. That's a winning combo. No matter the place, no matter the moment, everybody knows fan work is thirsty work. So grab a Coca Cola and keep that HBCU pride going.
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Knix Announcer
At Hill's Pet Nutrition, we know that.
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Hills Pet Nutrition Announcer
Pet parent guilt is real.
- [75:48]
James Dumoulin
Leaving too long, playing too little. New homes, new babies, Waking them up.
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Hills Pet Nutrition Announcer
When they look so comfy.
- [75:56]
Knix Announcer
Running out of patience, running out of.
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James Dumoulin
Treats, running the vacuum. You can only do so much.
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Knix Announcer
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James Dumoulin
To help you give more love than.
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Knix Announcer
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James Dumoulin
Find the right food@hillspet.com ScienceDoesMore I have type 2 diabetes, but I manage it well. It's a little pill with a big story to tell. I take one once daily. Jardiance at each day start.
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Hills Pet Nutrition Announcer
And for adults with type 2 diabetes and known heart disease, Jardians can lower the risk of cardiovascular death too. Prescription Jardiance Empagliflozin tablets are used to lower blood sugar along with diet and exercise in adults with type 2 diabetes. Jardiance is not for use to lower blood sugar in people with type 1 diabetes and not for people with type 2 diabetes who have severe kidney disease. Serious side effects include increased ketones and blood or urine, which can be fatal. Stop Jardiance and call your doctor right away if you have nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, tiredness, trouble breathing or increased ketones. Jardians may cause dehydration that can suddenly worsen kidney function and make you feel dizzy, lightheaded or weak upon standing. Genital yeast infections in men and women, urinary tract infections, low blood sugar or a rare life threatening bacterial infection between and around the anus and genitals can occur. Call your doctor right away if you have fever or feel weak or tired and pain, tenderness, swelling or redness in the genital area. Don't use if allergic to Jardians. Stop use if you have a serious allergic reaction. Call your doctor if you have rash, swelling, difficulty breathing or swallowing. You may have increased risk for lower limb loss. Call your doctor right away if you have new pain or tenderness, sores, ulcers or infection in your legs or feet. To learn more about Jardian's 10 or 25 milligram tablets, ask your doctor. Visit jardians.com or call 1-888-968-6648.
- [77:47]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
And Doug here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [78:02]
James Dumoulin
Limu is that guy with the binoculars. Watch.
- [78:05]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
Cut the camera. They see us.
- [78:07]
Hills Pet Nutrition Announcer
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings vary underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.
- [78:15]
James Dumoulin
This is Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
- [78:18]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
And I'm Matt Rogers from the very same podcast. And guess what? It's the holiday season and you know what that means.
- [78:26]
Hills Pet Nutrition Announcer
Holiday parties beau holiday parties.
- [78:29]
James Dumoulin
They're the best. But there's always the stress of what.
- [78:31]
Hills Pet Nutrition Announcer
To wear, what to bring. Easy solution.
- [78:33]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
Okay, bring a bottle of Casamigos.
- [78:35]
James Dumoulin
Casamigos. Wow.
- [78:37]
Hills Pet Nutrition Announcer
That is the move you can make. Casamigos Mules or Casamigos Espresso Martinis or Casamigos Cram.
- [78:42]
James Dumoulin
And don't forget about Casamigos Margaritas.
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Hills Pet Nutrition Announcer
A Casamigos margarita is the perfect cocktail all year round.
- [78:49]
James Dumoulin
Casamigos is just the perfect gift that keeps on giving. And as the saying goes, anything goes with my Casamigos.
- [78:57]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
On second thought, a holiday party might be in order.
- [79:00]
James Dumoulin
That's a great idea.
- [79:01]
Hills Pet Nutrition Announcer
Please drink responsibly. Imported by Casamigos Spirits Company, White Plains.
- [79:05]
Odoo / Liberty Mutual Announcer
New Casamigos tequila, 40% alcohol by volume.
- [79:08]
Colleen Witt
This is an I heart podcast.
- [79:11]
James Dumoulin
Guaranteed human.