The Exchanges

Q On the affiliate side of things, what, what does like an Uber pay for a referral to, you know, for a driver? Just to give people a sense of like,

A So probably one to 200 dollars. I mean, in the heyday, they were paying 500 to a thousand dollars. And that's sort of where, like, I kind of feel like I had a little bit of a cheat code in the first few years. Like I shouldn't have been making, I ended up quitting my day job within about nine months of starting the rideshare guy. And in a normal situation, I probably shouldn't have been able to do that. Uber was kind of like a once in a generation kind of company where they were growing so fast and raising so much money that they were just paying literally 500 to a thousand dollars for driver referrals. And they were double sided. The new driver signing up was getting money. I was getting a lot of money. Um, and so we kind of monetized off of that. So these days it's come down quite a bit and maybe more in the one to 200 dollars range for delivery services. It might be 25 to a hundred, maybe up to 200 and some of the top markets, but sort of ride share delivery. And then, you know, all of our other affiliates might be more in like the five to 50 dollar range. You know, if it's a free mileage tracking app, you know, that might be Maybe two to five dollars per download. If it's more of a bank account, you know, that might be more than the 50 to 100 dollar, uh, kind of range.

AI assessment note: “So probably one to 200 dollars. I mean, in the heyday, they were paying”

Q When you're coming up with a name for a business, do you have any naming frameworks or how do you come up with names for companies, products, podcasts, communities?

A I feel like in general, I either let someone else smarter than me or more creative than me come up with a name and work with them. So my co-founder for my conference, Jonah, he came up with a name called Curbivore, uh, cause it's sort of at the intersection of last mile delivery and policy and restaurants and retail, everything that's happening at the curb, you know, ride, he'll pick up and drop off. So we do an in-person event in LA and everybody loves the name Curbivore, uh, you know, sort of like Play off of herbivore, but, you know, eating the curb. And other than that though, like when I've came up with the rideshare guy name and want to be angels with my co-host Colin for that podcast, I think we just wrote down like for rideshare guy, I specifically remember writing down like a list of 50 different names. And I think the key that I've discovered with naming is you kind of want to be niche, but you don't want to be too niche. You don't want to be too broad. Like the, I knew for sure that I didn't want to be like the Uber guy. Cause I was like, well, what if there's another company beyond Uber? Right. And so, you know, I think ride share guy was sort of like a little bit lucky that I picked the right niche, but you know, for a while in 2018 and 19, our most popular content on both the blog and YouTube was actually scooter content when bird and lime and all these companies …

AI assessment note: “the key that I've discovered with naming is you kind of want to be niche”

Q If you, if you were to summarize a decade of your knowledge and building content base niche businesses, what comes top of mind? What is, what is the most powerful advice you can give to people who are interested in becoming the future rideshare guy of their own spaces?

A Yeah. I mean, I think it's kind of summary of some of the threads I've mentioned is, you know, pick something that you're interested in, pick something that has some or a lot of business opportunity. And, you know, I think it feels good to help people. So, you know, if you're, you know, can find, find something that's, you know, more helpful to, you know, drivers making 15 to 20 dollars an hour, I think you'll get more personal satisfaction out of that than helping, you know, hedge fund guys. Uh, so, you know, if you can kind of gravitate towards that and then on the actual sort of tactical Nicole's side. I think content and working online, I am such a huge proponent of it because the amount of work that goes into one piece of content and the potential reach is infinite, right? I mean, you can literally put out a blog post or a video that reaches five people, 10 people, a hundred people, or one hundred million people. And obviously the higher you go up in that stack, you know, it's a little bit, it's a lot tougher to reach a hundred million than five or 10 people. But I mean, Our most popular video on YouTube has five million views, and it's all about truck driving. Super random, but you know, it's like, you can kind of do that. I love the kind of short form platforms right now. We're investing a lot in short form content, uh, TikTok, YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, because di…

AI assessment note: “pick something that you're interested in, pick something that has some or a lot of business opportunity”

Q There you go. So for, for people who don't know about you, can you give a little background about, uh, what your, you know, I'll call it a media empire around, uh, the gig economy. Is and what's the scale today?

A Definitely. Yeah, no. And I appreciate, uh, that term cause it is a little bit tough to describe what I do. And I mean, really kind of what it boils down to though is, you know, I started driving for both Uber and Lyft all the way back in. On the side, you know, just to try it out, make some money. I had a full-time day job as an aerospace engineer working for Boeing. So kind of the opposite. Of what I do now. But, uh, obviously during that time period, the company started exploding, raising crazy amounts of money, hiring hundreds of thousands of drivers. And, you know, I was really just like a leech on this rocket, this rocket ship. And so the companies exploded. And, you know, I think really, uh, because there were so many people out there and this job was new too, right? Like people had driven taxi, people had driven cars, but driving for hire in this kind of fashion was so new. There was just so much interest and excitement around it. And so I kind of latched onto that. I started my blog. I started doing three or four articles a week myself. And, um, you know, I started a YouTube channel. I started a podcast, the rideshare guy podcast, which I still run, uh, to this day. So it's sort of a weekly podcast, a little bit more focused on rideshare and gig delivery industry topics these days than kind of like I started off. It was like nitty gritty. I went out and drove Friday, S…

AI assessment note: “I started my blog. I started doing three or four articles a week myself.”

Q I think similar in your, your boat where we grow revenue and traffic with a heavy emphasis on SEO and affiliate partnerships, uh, and then the build and buy, and they've got a portfolio. It looks like bank bonus.com. Um, millennial money, uh, financial residency, and of course the rideshare guy. Can you talk us through your, like your relationship with them and what they handle? And how it's been?

A Yeah, definitely. So Grant, uh, the CEO I've known for a while since I sort of got my bearings in the personal finance world. And you can sort of tell from the sites they listed off, they've got, you know, they've been kind of more focused on the finance side of things. And I think millennial money is kind of their famous site that, uh, if you look up, I believe he taught, he has a blog post or two about him selling it to, I want to say, uh, gosh, I can't remember. It wasn't bank rate, but it was someone like that, that he sold it to. And I don't think he announced the price, but I think he announced, you know, It was a lot of money. And then he, I think he ended up buying it back at some point too, uh, which is kind of funny. Um, but yeah, I mean, so I've sort of personally known him for a while and I guess to me, like I kind of seen them at like, you know, you kind of listed off all the marketing copy on their site and I've kind of seen that in action. So that's sort of where it's like, Hey, to me, you know, that it's not that hard to write that on a website and create good copy and landing page. But like, to me, you know, the reason why I was even interested in partnering with them in the first place is because I've seen them do that in action Build a site like bank bonus from the ground up, you know, build his own site, sell it and, uh, you know, kind of do some of that. An…

AI assessment note: “Grant, uh, the CEO I've known for a while”

Q So what advice would you give to, let's say a sweaty startup, Nick Huber, who, you know, is running 10, 10 guy accounts companies right now and really took your branding advice to heart?

A Yeah. I mean, I guess maybe I should be taking advice from him cause he seems to be doing pretty well, but, uh, I think with someone like him, I think that he's kind of unlocked a strategy that seems to be working pretty well in leveraging either his main account, his main persona. And, you know, I think he might be kind of at that inflection point where he is big enough to, uh, you know, kind of go and launch these other brands. And I think as long as you're still doing something that you enjoy, you know, there's still a business opportunity and you're kind of able to leverage Other properties. That to me is the big thing and everyone is different. You know, like to me, I'm all about like high leverage working as little as possible and making as much money as possible, but that not everyone is like that. And I think sometimes people try to force themselves into, you know, a certain pigeonhole, but you know, if that's not your, like, if you're the grind it out type of personality, you probably shouldn't be doing things like me where like, I won't even DocuSign something. I'll send that to one of my virtual assistants. Cause it saves me, you know, five seconds if it's like a basic document.

AI assessment note: “as long as you're still doing something that you enjoy... everyone is different”