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Dhar Mann admits falsifying dates on city grants to accelerate reimbursements
“I decided to take some shortcuts on my grant application. I changed the dates on my paperwork to make it seem like the projects had been completed and contractors had been paid sooner than they were in order to start the reimbursement process faster.”
Oakland revoked Dhar Mann's cannabis license following his criminal fraud charges
“People that were doing business with me no longer wanted to work with me, and the city of Oakland even revoked the cultivation license I had won based on the charges alone.”
Dhar Mann settled criminal fraud charges with a no contest plea
“So I went in front of a judge, and the judge said if I agreed to pleading no contest, paying a 40,000 dollar fine, and doing probation, I could have my case completely expunged at the end of probation as long as I didn't mess up again. And there'd be no jail t…”
Digital video creators average $5,000 in ad revenue per million views
“A good rule of thumb is a creator will make around 5000 dollars per every one million views, and that's the reason why we have to operate on digital budget. So we have to break, you know, I would say like five million views just to break even.”
Distributors cut off Dhar Mann's hydroponics supply after cannabis press coverage
“So the night of our grand opening, I got contacted by the big distribution companies saying they were cutting us off from receiving any product.”
Displaying a flashy luxury lifestyle accelerated Dhar Mann's Instagram follower growth
“It didn't take me long to realize that the flashier I was on Instagram, the faster my following would grow.”
Dress Your Face Live grossed six figures in its first 24 hours
“Within 24 hours of our website going live, we brought in six figures of revenue.”
Mann: Fast Production Cycles Give Digital Creators a Major Advantage
“And that's one of the great things about being a digital media creator is that it doesn't take us two years to work on a film like traditional film companies. I could write a script and one week later, two weeks later, Put it out and have real-time feedback fr…”
Dhar Mann Studios derives 97% of its revenue from platform advertising
“It's still 97% through ad revenue coming from Facebook and YouTube. And the remaining delta is us having brand sponsorships in certain videos.”
Dhar Mann spends roughly $25,000 to produce each 25-minute YouTube video
“So for our main channel, which we do 25 minute videos, our cost is around 25,000 dollars.”
Mann bought an orange Lamborghini at age 21 from mortgage business
“So I remember a big moment for me was at 21 years old When I bought an orange Lamborghini.”
Dhar Mann launched a 15,000-square-foot 'Home Depot of weed' in Oakland
“So I started what later became known as the Home Depot of weed, and it was a 15,000 square foot hydroponic store right by the Oakland airport where we sold all the supplies patients would need to grow their own cannabis. Not the actual plants or any flower, ju…”
Oakland awarded Dhar Mann one of its first medical marijuana cultivation permits
“The city of Oakland around that time was about to issue medical marijuana cultivation licenses that were going to be the first of its kind. And fortunately, I was one of four companies to be awarded the permit.”
Mann: Desperation for success makes investors ignore obvious red flags
“When you're in it, it's amazing how many red flags you're willing to look past because you just want something to work so bad.”
Mann: LiveGlam reached 100 employees and shipped over 1M products annually
“Within a couple of years, Laura and I had hundreds of different products, and we got to about a hundred employees. We moved to an actual fulfillment center, and we got to a point of we were shipping over a million products a year.”
Dhar Mann's 2018 video on stay-at-home moms surpassed 200 million views
“And sure enough, that video within a few hours had gotten thousands of shares and over a million views. And I'll never forget. It was posted on August 30th. And today that video has gone to receive over two hundred million views.”
Dhar Mann Studios amassed three billion Facebook views by late 2019
“And by July that year, we hit one billion views. So it took us just over a year from starting to hit that milestone. But by October, 2019, three months later, we hit two billion views. And then two months later, by November, we hit three billion views.”
Dhar Mann: Facebook ad revenue reached six figures monthly in 2020
“In 2020, I think we were bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars from Facebook.
Guy Raz: A year?
Dhar Mann: No, it was around six figures a month.
Guy Raz: Wow.
Dhar Mann: On Facebook.”
Dhar Mann Studios ranked as the #2 global YouTube creator in 2021
“So we went from hardly getting any views our first couple of years to 20, 21 finishing as the number two creator on the platform globally. And number one, in scripted.”
Dhar Mann: Studio expansion is fully bootstrapped without outside investors
“It's all self-financed, all bootstrapped, and all made possible through Facebook and YouTube.”
Mann: Dhar Mann Studios plans traditional media syndication in 2024
“You know, later this year, we are planning on syndicating our content on traditional media platforms.”
Dhar Mann: YouTube videos averaged only 1,000 views from 2018 to 2020
“So for two years that happened from the middle of 2018 when we started on YouTube all the way to 20 20, they stayed at around a thousand views. So I completely disregarded YouTube. But on Facebook, we were experiencing rocket ship growth.”