The Money Mondays

Building Billion-Dollar Brands in the AI Era | Zeta Global & Cameo Founders ๐ŸŒ EP143

32 min
โ€ขOct 13, 20258 months ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

Episode features two founders at Zeta Live conference: David Steinberg (Zeta Global CEO) discusses AI-driven marketing cloud and the Athena conversational AI product launch, while Steven Galinas (Cameo co-founder) explains how the platform connects 60,000+ creators with fans for personalized video bookings and brand partnerships.

Insights
  • Serendipity and in-person networking remain critical for innovation even in the AI era, driving unexpected business connections and partnerships
  • Successful M&A strategy requires building internal expertise (boutique investment bank model) rather than diverting operating teams, with strict integration criteria
  • Creator monetization platforms succeed by solving the gap between fame and financial reward, enabling micro-influencers to earn alongside A-list talent
  • Marketplace network effects compound when talent referrals and user-generated content (shared videos) become primary growth drivers over paid marketing
  • Pricing psychology matters: transparent, formula-based pricing ($/minute) reduces friction and increases adoption versus arbitrary high price points
Trends
Conversational AI agents (like Athena) moving from backend analytics to front-end user interfaces, democratizing data access for non-technical marketersEnterprise marketing consolidation through strategic M&A targeting loyalty data, messaging platforms, and automation tools to build unified stacksCreator economy maturation: platforms shifting from celebrity-only to open enrollment models, enabling algorithmic discovery of emerging talentCharity integration as core marketplace feature, not afterthought, driving both user engagement and brand trust in creator platformsInfluencer marketing ROI measurability improving through direct booking platforms, reducing agency intermediaries and attribution complexityFounder-market fit as competitive moat: domain expertise (agent, creator, trader backgrounds) outweighs pure technical or capital advantagesIn-person conference experiences gaining strategic value as differentiation in digital-first B2B marketing landscapeTalent referral systems outperforming traditional acquisition: 17% of Cameo marketplace referred by creators, generating 65% of lifetime GMV
Topics
AI-powered marketing automation and conversational agentsEnterprise customer data platforms and loyalty programsCreator economy monetization modelsMarketplace network effects and growth strategiesM&A integration criteria and synergy identificationInfluencer marketing and brand endorsementsPricing strategy for creator servicesTalent acquisition and referral systemsCharity partnerships and cause marketingIn-person event strategy for B2B companiesVideo content as primary social currencyFortune 500 customer acquisition and retentionFounder-market fit and competitive advantageViral content and organic marketingPersonal branding and monetization
Companies
Zeta Global
AI-driven marketing cloud serving 567 enterprise clients including 44% of Fortune 100; launched Athena conversational...
Cameo
Marketplace platform connecting 60,000+ creators with fans for personalized video bookings; founded 2017, 9 years old...
Marigold
Enterprise business acquired by Zeta Global for $325M, providing loyalty programs and messaging platforms
Magic: The Gathering
Card game referenced in origin story of Cameo; Caches Marsh went viral for stolen Magic card, sparking platform idea
Wizards of the Coast
Company that owns Magic: The Gathering; mentioned as unable to monetize viral moment for Caches Marsh
Bloomberg
Media outlet where David Steinberg appeared during Zeta Live conference week
New York Stock Exchange
Zeta Global rang opening bell during conference week as publicly traded company
Google
Tim Armstrong served as former head of global sales; now runs QR code platform for digital-physical connections
AOL
Tim Armstrong served as former CEO; mentioned as accomplished marketing ecosystem executive
Wingstop
Brandon Boone serves as CMO; referenced in Cameo origin story as friend who named son Maverick
Seattle Seahawks
NFL team where Caches Marsh played; featured in Cameo founding story and early platform growth
Detroit Pistons
NBA team; Andre Drummond used as pricing model example for Cameo ($200/minute calculation)
Snapchat
Social platform that normalized selfie video creation, enabling Cameo's business model timing
Vine
Short-form video platform where Cameo co-founder Devon and Cody Co built massive followings pre-Cameo
Instagram
Platform where creators promote Cameo links via bio and story swipe-up feature; primary fan engagement channel
TikTok
Platform where Zeta Global identifies trending creators for talent acquisition
Pledge
Charity partnership platform; Cameo offers 95/5 revenue split for charity bookings via Pledge
Hulu
Streaming service referenced as source of emerging talent for Zeta Global's creator identification
People
David Steinberg
Chairman and founder of Zeta Global; serial entrepreneur with 7 companies founded, 4 sold, 2 taken public
Steven Galinas
Co-founder and CEO of Cameo; built marketplace connecting 60,000+ creators with fans for personalized videos
Dan Bilzerian
Host of Money Mondays podcast; interviewed both founders at Zeta Live conference
Martin Blanco
Co-founder of Cameo; former NFL agent and movie producer; met Galinas at grandmother's funeral
Caches Marsh
NFL player whose viral Magic card theft inspired Cameo's founding; first talent to launch platform
Devon
Cameo founding CTO; top 100 Viner with over 1 billion loops; brought creator perspective to platform
Cody Co
Top 30 Viner; best friend of Cameo co-founder Devon; referenced in platform's founding story
Tim Armstrong
Former CEO of AOL and head of global sales at Google; now runs QR code platform; met at Zeta Live
Brandon Boone
CMO of Wingstop; friend referenced in Cameo origin story; named son Maverick after LeBron connection
Andre Drummond
NBA player used as pricing model example for Cameo; $25M max salary player from Detroit Pistons
Gary Vaynerchuk
Referenced in sports card collecting story; initiated group chat that led to massive card market growth
Logan Paul
Influencer who joined sports card group chat; now holds tens of millions of cards
Steve Aoki
DJ/producer who joined sports card group chat; now holds tens of millions of cards
Tony Hawk
Professional skateboarder; raised significant funds for charity through Cameo platform
Kristen Steinberg
Wife of David Steinberg; co-founder of David and Kristen Steinberg Foundation focused on disadvantaged children
Quotes
"Zeta Global is the premier artificial intelligence driven marketing cloud today. We help very large enterprises to create, maintain and monetize customers at a substantially lower cost by using our AI and our data."
David Steinbergโ€ขEarly in episode
"Athena is a conversational artificial intelligence super agent. You can speak to Athena like you were speaking to me right now and ask it any question you want about your business, about marketing."
David Steinbergโ€ขProduct launch discussion
"The internet was creating a new world where there was this gap between fame and monetization. For the first time, people were kind of more famous than rich."
Steven Galinasโ€ขCameo founding problem statement
"Selfies are the new autograph. Today, if you see somebody famous, what do you do? You take a selfie. Your Instagram wall is the equivalent of your office wall."
Steven Galinasโ€ขPlatform concept explanation
"If you look at our executive leadership team, each one of them could be CEO of another company. I'm personally most proud of the individuals who have bet their careers on working with Zeta."
David Steinbergโ€ขTeam discussion
"There were very few people that could both build the tech to do Cameo or have the talent relationships. Founder-market fit was really important."
Steven Galinasโ€ขCompetitive advantage discussion
Full Transcript
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a very, very special edition of the Money, Money's Podcast where normally I'm inside an RV motorhome driving around the country but today, because of my dear friend here, we're at his conference called Zeta Live. His company Zeta Global is a multi-billion dollar corporation and he decides to put a lot of time and energy and effort to throw an event for over 1,000 guests. And I'm going to be 11,000. 2,000 people. Yes. Last year was like 11,200. Now there's 2,000 executives that are here inside the building and luckily I got them for the next 15 minutes so we're going to keep this podcast very short and straightforward. As you guys know, we cover three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity. He's done all of the above. He's very philanthropic. So we're out further to David Steinberg. Give us the quick two minute bio. So we get straight to the money. Hey, I'm a serial entrepreneur. I founded seven companies, sold four, taken to public. I'm chairman of another. Zeta Global is the premier artificial intelligence driven marketing cloud today. We help very large enterprises to create, maintain and monetize customers at a substantially lower cost by using our AI and our data. Wow. I've never said that before, right? All right. When you're running a multi-billion dollar company, how do you make the time and energy for this to have 2,000 executives here in New York City? How do you do it? How do you pull it off? Well, if it was just this, it would be easy. We started on Monday, Monday morning, or Sunday, I flew from LA to New York. Monday morning at 7 a.m. Eastern time. I was on Bloomberg. We then had a crazy day. We closed the New York Stock Exchange and rang the bell, ding-ding-ding. It is really loud. Yeah. It is louder than you expected to be. And you push it for longer. I almost pushed it at the wrong time, the guy freaked out. It was good I did. But we did that. And then Tuesday, we had our global town hall for our 2,200 global employees. And then I flew to Dallas to give a speech. I gave a speech at my friend Emron Khan's conference. Then after that speech, I flew back to New York, landed around 1230, got to bed at 1. 6 a.m. was up on Wednesday. Yesterday, we did our customer advisory board meeting. We did our buy-annual investor day. And then we took 150 people, including you, to dinner. And then today is Zayda Live. Oh my goodness gracious. And then a few minutes ago, I heard you debuted something really big. We did. Who is Athena? What is it? So Athena, which is the biggest product launch in our corporate history, is a conversational artificial intelligence super agent. So you can speak to Athena like you were speaking to me right now. And you could ask it any question you want about your business, about marketing. It will then tell you the answers. And it can automatically control the Zayda marketing platform in real time and run marketing and then give attribution all in one user interface. I have so many questions. Yeah. Well, ask Athena. Wow, that's magical. So who uses Athena? Who is it perfect for? Athena's to really help marketers today to no longer need data scientists, no longer need operating people to run their marketing. Everything can now be done by Athena. So we have 567 global enterprise clients today, including 44% of the Fortune 100 largest companies in the world. And they are going to have Athena fully integrated into their platform that everything goes voice enabled by Q1. Wow. Why do you like to create these experiences? Why bring these 2,000 people together? Why do you create this? Well, first of all, I find that even in an artificial intelligence world, Serendipity plays a big part of innovation. This, in person. Yes. Serendipity is learning people together and learning from each other and spending time. I mean, nobody does this better than you, right? We throw an event. We plan for 12, 1300 people. We end up with 2000. You throw an event. You have 50,000 people show up. It's, by the way, it's amazing. Serendipity was, it was so fascinating. You had Heather Ray Young and Terrick sitting next to me and you replaced them with the CEO of AOL. Well, he's the former CEO of AOL, former head of global sales for Google. Tim is probably, I mean, Tim Armstrong is one of the most accomplished individuals in the marketing ecosystem. Today he runs an incredible company around helping businesses to connect digitally with the real world with a special edition QR code. Yeah, it was fascinating. It was two hours. So the Serendipity was fascinating because my mind was blown by just listening to him. Okay. So, you're running a publicly traded company around the news all the time. How are you juggling the world? You've got beautiful family, you're traveling around, you've got, you said, 2000 plus employees, like this is a lot going on. How do you, David, manage all this? Well, first of all, it comes down to having one of the world's greatest teams. If you look at our executive leadership team, which is the 14 people that sort of work with me and I meet with every Monday, each one of them could be CEO of another company. And if you look at our senior leadership team, which is 6667 people, they are some of the most accomplished executives in the world. In fact, Dan, one of the things I'm personally most proud of is the individuals who have bet their careers on working with Zeta. Yeah. It's, you know, they feed their families, they build their future based on what we do as an organization. And we take that, we take it very seriously. So you recently bought another really big company. Yeah. I think you spent a couple hundred million dollars, like three, three hundred and twenty five million to be exact. Yes. Why did you buy that company? Why are you in the roll-up phase? You bought another big company earlier this year. Well, we don't, we're not in the roll-up phase. Just so we're on the same page. That's, that's not a term we use. We, in fact, if you look at our four pillars of M&A, the number one pillar is we have to be able to fully integrate them into our tech stack within 12 months of purchasing. Roll-ups generally run a lot of individual businesses and they can work, but that's not what we are. We bought Marigold's Enterprise Business for a number of reasons. One, we picked up one of the largest enterprise grade loyalty programs for very large enterprises, which allows our models, our algorithms to now train on that loyalty data in addition to our data cloud and our clients data. We picked up one of the most important messaging platforms for publishers in CELIGENT, which we're going to merge into our publisher cloud. We picked up a very large footprint in Europe and Amia, which is CELIGENT. And we picked up CHEDA Digital, which is one of the premier platforms in the marketing automation space. We, we got an additional 40 Fortune 500 customers and over 100 additional enterprise clients to cross sell our products and services into to make their businesses better. And by the way, we bought the business at a substantial discount to the multiple at which we trade. So the deal is accretive from the day we do it. Wow, cool. Now we haven't closed yet. We expect to close sometime in the fourth quarter. So how do you decide when you can say, let's say you have the pick of the litter, right? You're out there. You're working with so many thousands of companies as your clients and you have a lot of relationships because you're throwing these large conferences. So you have a lot of options. What do you think about when you're deciding I want to acquire that company? That would be a good fit for us and say to global. It's a great question, Dan, which is not to say your other questions weren't great, but that was a good one. So this is, as I said, I've been doing this. I've been CEO and founder of seven companies over 35 years. When I started my first company, I was the youngest person in the room for the first 20 years I was CEO. I am now universally Dan, the oldest person in the room that I walk in. No, it's okay. But some of the things you build these incredible lessons along the way. One of the lessons I learned is it relates to M&A is don't take your operating people off of their day jobs to go do M&A. So we built effectively a boutique investment bank inside of Zeta. And we look at a hundred different companies a year, seriously, to buy one. Because it has to hit all five of our criteria. One, we have to be able to integrate it in 12 months. We have to be able to sell them their clients, our products, or vice versa. Three, the deal has to be a creative from the day we do it. Four, there have to be additional synergies to drive incremental profit. And we have to be able to grow it at at least our own organic growth rate, which is greater than 20% a year now for four years in a row. And number five, we have to pick up incredible people. Wow. All right. So I know you're going to have to be running back shortly. The land to be side. Why do you think that companies or corporations that have some type of charity component for either their employees or their customers to like to see it? You know, if you're successful and you're not giving back to society, I don't know what you're doing. So I started the David and Kristen Steinberg Foundation a number of years ago. And one of the things I love about what you do, Dan, is your focus on children. Our biggest focus is disadvantaged children around education, around nutrition and around helping them to move up to the next level of success. And it's something that honestly, it brings me so much joy to do it. And I often say that the charitable giving that my wife, Kristen and I do, is almost selfish in that it makes me feel so good to do it. And I think it's in all frankness when you and I first got to know each other, it was the thing that I think bonded us the fastest. Okay. So where can people find David Steinberg, say to global, where can they find your world your ecosystem throughout their listening? Well, first of all, we can go to zeta global.com. Second, I'm on Instagram and X and post there pretty regularly. And very excited to have people join me. All right. I'm going to let you get back to your conference. Well, on the money moneys, we want you to have these discussions with your friends, family, and followers. It's not just about yourself that needs to understand about money. You might have to have discussion with people from your past, present, and future. Have discussion, talk about money. It's not rude to talk about it. We need it in our lives. There's loans, credit, financing taxes. These are real things, part of your day of life. So have a discussion. We'll see you guys next Monday here at themoneymundays.com. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Moneys Podcast. Normally, we're inside an RV motorhome traveler on the country, but today, we're at the zeta global live conference. I've been coming here for the last three years. It's so impressive they bring in over 1,100 chief marketing officers, CEOs, and our guest today is just like that. He is actually built to one of the biggest brands in the space. It's been fascinating to watch him grow over the years. I think he's on year nine of this company and building something that everyone around the world has talked about because he combines celebrities, influencers, athletes, comedians, all into one platform. I'm fascinated by it. So what we're going to do is cover three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give away the charity. On this episode, we're going to keep it much shorter. They're using me around 20 to 25 minutes. Normally, the episodes are 40 minutes because the average commute to work is 45 minutes. The average workout is 45 minutes. This episode will be around 20 to 25 minutes for your listening pleasure. So without further ado, Steven Galinas from Cameo, give us your quick two-minute bio. So we get straight to the money. Hey, I'm Steven Galinas, the co-founder and CEO of Cameo. Cameo is a marketplace where you can book over 60,000 of the most influential people in pop culture to create either personalized video shout outs for you or to become brand endorsers for your brands. So we have this marketplace. People can come on, search by what they like and then find the people that are there. I'm based out of Chicago and I'm in Miami as well. We've been at it nine years as you mentioned. It's been a crazy, blessed story. We actually had the idea at my grandma. There's funeral of all places. And the problem we were trying to start from, self in the very beginning was the internet was creating a new world where there was this gap between fame and monetization. So for the first time, people were kind of more famous than rich. And we were really thinking about what if we could create a platform that helped people get paid to become more famous, get paid to become more beloved. Because if you get a cameo from somebody you like them more than you like them before, you'll buy more of their merch, you'll listen to their podcasts, you become a go from a casual fan to a rabid super fan. Okay, you mentioned it happened in a grandma's funeral. How did that come to be? And people are crying. This is a big moment in your life. And how did all of a sudden become this zillion dollar company idea in this moment? Yeah, it was crazy. So my, my uncle on my, on my mom's side is a movie producer and he had done movies like Rambo, Conan, Loan Survivor. And a bunch of the guys that he produced movies with came in for the day for the funeral from Los Angeles. One of those guys is Martin Blanco who ended up becoming my co-founder at Cameo. At the time, Martin had become an NFL agent and he had one client, Caches Marsha, Goodbody, both of ours. And Caches had just recently gone viral for having his Magic the Gathering Guard stolen. Martin was trying to find any marketing deal for him because as the agent, you make a higher percentage of marketing deals than you do for like a Ricky minimum contract. And yet, even though he is an NFL player that made them go viral, he couldn't get wizards of the coast of the company that owns Magic the Gathering to get any type of money. So we were really thinking about this big gap. And he was really down on his luck. He had just sold his watch to pay for his kids' private schools. He's like, Steve, and I'm losing money flying up to Seattle every month. I don't know what to do. He's like, I know this guy's a star. And one of his ideas was if he found a big, defensive ladman with like big aura and a personality, maybe that guy could be the next Jason Momoa or the next rock. And he thought that my uncle could cast Caches as a Rambo or a Conan. So that was his whole idea and finding him and you know him. He's got that look. So he pulls his phone out and he shows me this video is where stuck in traffic driving from downtown Chicago all the way back in Ohio. Just gridlock traffic. He pulls out the video and then he's getting his buddy Brandon Boone, who I think now is the chief marketing officer at Wingstop and branded literally like had just had a son. And he named his son Maverick because he was very close with Math Carter and a bunch of the guys in LeBronz camp. But he loves the Seattle Seahawks. And then it caches Marsh who's playing for the Seahawks at the time goes, hey, congratulations Brandon on Maverick. If he gets her athletic ability, I know he'll be playing for the Seahawks one day Go Hawks. Wow. And I saw this and immediately there was that Eureka moment. I'm like, dude, we should tell this. Right. Let's do our best. Okay. So when you say that's the new autograph, what's really interesting about that is a lot of people for many, many years with a weight outside of concerts, festivals, basketball games to get an autograph. And then about seven or eight years ago, the selfie became the autograph. Correct. Let's right around the time obviously cameo started to become big. Walk us to the concept of where the selfie is the autograph. Yeah. I mean, I think it's just simple when, you know, when I was a kid growing up in Chicago, you know, 98 bulls like that, that whole Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippin era. If you saw a Dennis Rodman at a restaurant, what did you do? You grabbed the, you grabbed the menu, you grabbed the napkin, they signed it like the Sandra hat. Today, if you see somebody famous, what do you do? Go up, take a selfie. And one of the things we were thinking about is in the digital world where your Instagram wall, where your Facebook wall or your Instagram grid is kind of the equivalent of like your office, where your office wall used to be. Instead of getting the sign jersey that's sitting in your office, like you need, you know, people want that kind of that digital experience. It's on their grid poster. It's on their Facebook wall at the time. And that's really again, selfies a new autograph. Okay. So on the how to make money side with the money, money's podcasts, you have 60,000 creators, influencers, athletes, comedians, et cetera, they're on the platform. Let's say someone is one of those. They aren't influencers, celebrity, athlete, and obviously you have other categories. Yeah. How did they sign up? How did they come to you? How do they find out? How do they make money? Yeah. Three main ways. The first is we have a team of people that are constantly DMing people that we think could be good. One of the cool things about Cameo at this scale now is is our search bar is kind of a window to the zeitgeist. So all of a sudden, like we'll see these names that are popping on the trending list that we've never heard of. And it may be somebody just went viral for starting a new TikTok trend or some new show on Hulu came out that we wasn't on a radar yet. So the second we see that our team will go attack and go get those people on the platform. Secondly, we have a talent to talent referral system. So that allowed us once we got into the locker room. So when we got cashus marsh on the Seahawks, anyone else on his team that he referred, he got 5% of their bookings for a year out of our cut. And those referrals were 17% of our marketplace were referred by other talent and they've done 65% of the lifetime GMV. So a lot of the biggest people we ever got came from our really happy talent on our marketplace, referring their friends and getting them on. And then third, and this is something we changed a few years ago. When we first started the business, you had to have about 25,000 followers to come on. That's just the level where we thought you could be, you know, but what we're noticing, when we looked at like the beginning of COVID all the way to Mother's Day 23, we looked at all the people that had applied that we hadn't let on. And it's kind of, it was a static thing, right? If you apply and you're like, I have 7,000 followers on Instagram, we don't follow, like we weren't tracking every single one of the people that applied. So they just ended up in kind of a no man's land. And one of the things when we looked at the purgatory, we realized there were thousands of people that we had missed. Like maybe they were going to get cast in Euphoria and becoming the biggest model in the world. When 60,000 or they've six, you know, they've six million, right? You know, somebody goes viral on TikTok. Someone was in the minor leagues and now they're starting for the Yankees. Like we missed some really big people. So what we decided to do a couple of years ago is open it up. So now anyone in the world can just go to camio.com slash and roll. Join camio as talent. And if you get booked, the algorithms will push you up and make you searchable. But the cool thing about that, if you join through enrollments, you can only get booked by sharing your link. So ultimately, what you're doing is you're enabling all these people to do influencer marketing for you. And then those who there's demand for will end up kind of rising up in our system. Wow. Okay. So someone comes on there. They kind of proved, man, I'm improved on camio. They're excited. How do they now make money? How do they tell people, is it all through social? There's an email text that they mentioned it on stage. Like when, how do they promote it? Yeah, all the above, I think obviously most people on the internet, like their biggest following is on the internet. So we always tell people like play where your fans are. And in this case, like what one of the things that happened just technologically, right when we were coming up, the Instagram story swipe up ended up being a huge thing that kind of happened like right is camio is going. So at that time, only verified accounts originally could post a link in their Instagram story and there were way less stories. So what would happen is first we would tell people like, hey, you have this link in bio space, go put that there. So like to this day, you still see so many people, www.camio slash Dan that are just like right there. Secondly, they'll be like, hey, you know, I'm on this thing, camio swipe up, come book me. And then third, you know, people have gotten really creative. If they have a newsletter, if they have an email list, if they're doing a tour, like they found ways to integrate that into the other Mark co marketing that they're doing to their fans already. And it's pretty organic. But by far the most important driver of camio's marketing is actually the fact that these videos all get shared, right? So 85% of the videos in our marketplace are booked for other people. So if I book a camio for you and you think it's funny, what do you do? You put it in the group chat. And suddenly all these other people know about it. And that's really how we grow. So there's been a lot of competitors that have come and gone and faded away. What do you think made camio stand out? Let's step outside, obviously with the C-owned founder. Let's actually like look at it pragmatically. Why do you think that camio stood out versus all the other ones that came in wins? I think it was a variety of things. Number one, I think the timing was really important. There had been people and you know about all about this like that had tried to do this earlier. But until Snapchat became what it was, the people filming a selfie video was still like if you tried to do a five years before like nobody had really done that before. So I think by the time we started in 2017, everybody was pretty comfortable filming a selfie video. So I think that meant a lot. And the iPhone camera had kind of gotten good enough to go do it. Secondly, there's a lot of teams out there around the world that either could build the tech to do camio or they could have the talent relationships. But there were very few people that could do both. And when I look at the founder market fit that our team specifically had, my co founder Martin was an NFL agent and movie producer. Now if he was Ari a manual or if he was Jerry Brookheimer, he would have been too big that he wouldn't have cared to go do this if that makes sense. So the fact that he was like in the space, he knew enough to get, he knew enough to get, you know, but he wasn't successful enough at that point to go do it. That was big. Secondly, my co founder, Devon, who was our founding CTO, actually was one of the first people in the world on Vine with over a billion loops. Right. So he was like a top 100 Viner in the world. His best friend Cody Co was like a top of course, top 30 Viner in the world. And one of the stories I'll never forget is the year before we started camio, I went to the Mayweather Pacquiao fight with Devon Cody and our friend Adam Q. And I'll never forget Cody ended up tagging a picture of me of our group. The four of us like in the hotel lobby of the area. And I didn't know to have my notifications off. And suddenly like my phone was charged for a whole night out in Vegas. There were so many likes and comments that my phone overheated and died in my pocket. And that was the moment where I'm like, holy, and I'd known Cody since college. I'm like, holy shit, like this vine. That's huge. Like in, in, in keep in mind, even with those likes, the two of them had not made a dollar on social media yet at this point. So I literally am getting stopped more from Cody and Devon than I am from my buddies that are in the NBA or the NFL. And that was a big unlock to me because they hadn't been able to make money. And I think Devon being a creator and fundamentally understanding that as are founding, you know, CTO, like that's a really, really unique skill set that got brought to the table. And then lastly, like I'm a marketplace guy. I'm a X option trader. So you're thinking about pricing was big. And one of the things that we were able to do really early was find an equation to help people price themselves. Because when came to a start, nobody knew what it should be. Should be a thousand dollars. Should it be that. And I had this idea of you're basically getting a minute of their time. So take their salary, which for NBA and NFL players, which we started with were publicly available. Divided by 2000 hours in a work year, 50, 40 hour weeks, and then find out what they made per minute. So when we on, when we onboard Andre Drummond from Detroit Pistons, who is a $25 million max salary player at the time, we did that equation. And first he thought he needed to be 40 or 10 grand to do a cameo because he's like, I got paid 40 grand to go to our bar mitzvah. But for me, I was like, I'm like, did like the mats actually saying, you know, 25 million divided by 2000 hours in a work year divided by 60, you make $200 a minute. So if you're charging $100 and you do two videos per minute, you're making the same effective rate as you are playing in the NBA on a max salary. And that was a really big, I think that pricing ended up being really big, unlock. And then once we had that set and the price was cheap enough that people could go buy, then you started getting the reviews because a lot of the early competitors we saw, yeah, they had to wait, but he was $5,000 and nobody ever tried it. So starting with, and also I think a lot of people too, try to start with the A plus list, and we really had this idea of solving the problem for the 99% of talent that really needed the money. All right, so there's a story I've been wanting to tell you for six years now, and really about the last half a decade in particular, I've been wanting to tell you about the butterfly fact. So in 2019, I actually went to visit you in Chicago, and you took me to a restaurant across the street. And I got this message from Gary Vee. He was at the national, at the sports card convention. I didn't know what the national was. He said, come over to the card show before you fly out. So I was going to go there for three hours, and I'm there to see you. So you're the butterfly effect for hundreds of millions of dollars of sales, by the way, but what gets you to the punchline. So I go to see Gary Vee, I go to the show, and I'm walking out with his son, and three hours turns to the three days. I just like, I happen to have $9,200 in cash on me. I know that number because I spent all of it with his kid. I was very scared. I became uncle Dan, and we went around and bought sports cards, right? Get back from the show, and I can't stop thinking about sports cards. And Gary and I started a group chat with Call the National, get 36 people in the group chat. It gets too full, so another group chat, so another group chat. And then Gary says, let's do a Zoom call, bring people on that have no cards, but bring interesting characters. So I invite Logan Paul, Steve Aoki, Lewis House, Rob G, guys that are now having tens of millions, hundreds of millions of cards on the Zoom call had zero. Rob G, about the most expensive Mickey Mantle card, Babe Ruth card, etc. And so from that Zoom call, that group chat still exists. Now Logan Paul obviously has tens of millions of cards. Aoki's got tens of millions of cards. Pokemon, Magic, the Gathering, etc. And it's all because of you. The literal butterfly effect is because you took me to a time restaurant. Well, first off, that's an amazing, an amazing story. I wish I should have got my referral fee on that. No, no, but the thing Dan that I really have appreciated watching your whole from the second we met, I remember you coming in and telling me at 17 years old, you had to trade marks and just all the businesses that you built, you're such a force of nature. And I think that's why people just when you add, there's a lot of people that can start a group chat. There's not a lot of people that can get the people in the group chat to go do that. And it's been incredible to watch from the sidelines of how you've taken this community and you've really elevated a whole category. At that point, I collected baseball cards and stuff. I was a kid, but I didn't understand that world either. And now, the National Week in Chicago is such a big one. It's usually right around La La Plusa when we do our big cameo plusa. So we have a lot of our athletes in town coming in. That whole space has just blown up. I really appreciate the community building that you've done there. And it's just funny. Last night, Chip and I, I know you're going to interview Chip later, but we love talking about Eki guy, which is finding the intersection of what he love to do, what he great at, what is the world need and what you can make money doing. And from the outside looking in, it's so obvious that this passion and this, the hobby has become that thing that you're able to mobilize your own unique talents, the network you have, the Rolex that trust that people have in you. And it's such a fun, it's just been fun to watch. So I'm really proud of you and I'm I'm flattered. But you know, those hundreds of, there's hundreds of millions of cards guys. That was you. I, you know, I put you in the position, I guess, but like, you know, you can only lead the horse to water. And it's, it's just awesome to see what you built. So, congratulations on that. So on the charity side of this, we'd like to talk about charity and philanthropy. Why do you think it's important to have charity involved in personal brands or corporations? Is there a charity component to cameo? Can people donate to charity? Like, talk us through, why should there be some type of charity component in people's lives or companies? Yeah, I think at the very beginning when we started cameo, a lot of people were like, the athletes are not going to join in less it's for charity because it's a bad look. And in fact, when Cassius sent the tweet out that launched cameo, despite him being a rookie making, I don't know, a couple, a few hundred thousand dollars a year, people were like, I can't, you're a millionaire athlete, you know, you're charging people 20 dollars to talk to you like basically your scumbag. And Cassius almost quit before it started because the feedback was so poor when we originally launched. But at the same time, when you look at, when you look at like some of the moments that happened at cameo, one of the first ones that really stood out to me was Hurricane Harvey hit in Houston. And we probably had 20, 30 people on cameo. I think it was over Memorial Day weekend, if I remember correctly. What we decided to do is to give a hundred percent of all of our proceeds to Hurricane Harvey relief fund at that point. We got all of our talent to opt in and like, it was the biggest booking we could we had. So we realized that was there. And all the way today, now, you know, we announced a landmark partnership with Pledge at Super Bowl this year. And anybody that does cameo for charity, it's a 95 five split their way. So all that's coming out really like our fees to pledge like we don't make money from it. And that's been a really big driver. People like Tony Hawk, you know, have been able to raise a ton of money on cameo. And and it's just it's another like fun way for people to go. And you know, when they have a gift yet where they've got, you know, they want to give back, they have a foundation, they have a cause to go do that. You know, and we have a lot of talent that that raised money for charity every day on cameo. So I need to get you back on to do a longer episode. I got to do back to back to back today. We got the founder of Zeta Global coming in here in a few minutes. Can you give people, where can they find you? Where can they find cameo? Tell us all about where they can track you guys down and get a part of this company. Yeah, my work cameo on our our socials. I think maybe book cameo on X. And then outside of cameo, I started a podcast this year called the Zeke Guys Podcast where think of it as how I built this for consumer brands. And I'm interviewing the founders of really interesting consumer companies. So we've had companies like Dude Wipes on and lifelike Keyfer just a lot of really fun brands this year. And we tell the stories of like how, especially in really crowded spaces and without a lot of money, people built iconic brands. So check that out. You know, we're still early, but I think it's pretty good. Awesome. All right guys, you listening to the money Mondays, check out Stephen Golanis and cameo across social media. And this is really important. Have discussions with your friends, family and followers about money. We all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. We have to have these talks in our society because it leads to talking about credit. Should I take a loan? Should I lease? Should I buy? Should I purchase? How much should I my salary be? We think it's rude to talk about it. We need to talk about it because if your kid doesn't know what to ask for salary and they ask for 48,000, they could have got 58,000. That could change the course of their career by that simple question of just being able to ask their parents or their friends about simple things like that. We'll see you guys next Monday. Check us out on moneymondays.com. Check out Camille. See you guys soon.