How The Rideshare Guy Turned Uber, Lyft Drivers into a Media Empire

Today Greg is joined by Harry Campbell, the founder of The Rideshare Guy. In this episode, Greg finds out how Harry turned a blog into a media company that was built to sell.

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LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:
Production Team:
https://www.bigoceanpodcasting.com
Harry Campbell:
https://twitter.com/TheRideshareGuy
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCwyU2RqlalzpKIrUhYWHfw

SHOW NOTES:
0:00 - Intro
2:55 - Branding and The Guy Mafia
9:52 - The Rideshare Guy business model
13:30 - Media businesses built to sell
27:06 - Harry's wisest words

Creators & Guests

Host

GREG ISENBERG

I build internet communities and products for them. CEO: @latecheckoutplz, we're behind companies like @youneedarobot @boringmarketer @dispatchdesign etc.

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This is the startup ideas podcast. Hosted by Greg Isenberg (CEO Late Checkout, ex-advisor of Reddit, TikTok etc).

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Greg: All right, so welcome Harry. Harry Campbell, the ride share guy.

Harry: Thanks for having me on.

Greg, how are you?

Greg: So I remember hearing your story 20 15, 20 16. Um, I had heard that there, there was this guy named the ride share guy who was a, an Uber driver, I think. Who started a blog that was getting a ton of traction and for people who don't know about you, can you give a little background about, you know, I'll call it a media empire around, uh, the gig economy and what, what's the scale today?

Harry: Definitely. Yeah. No, and I appreciate, uh, that term cuz 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 2014 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 leach 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 higher 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, a ride share guy podcast, which I still run, uh, to this day. So it's sort of a weekly podcast, a little bit more focused on ride share and gig delivery industry topics these days than kind of like, I started off as like nitty gritty.

I went out and drove. Friday, Saturday, Sunday night, here's how much I made. Um, you know, this person puked in my car. Here's how to avoid a puer. You know, and I will say there is like no shortage of content and topics that you can kind of cover. You would think like, how hard is it to be a driver?

But really it is kind of a lot harder than it looks. And it's not rocket science. But, uh, I think I kind of just. Took advantage of the fact that there were so many people doing it. It was growing so fast and people didn't really know what they were doing, and it's a little harder than it looks. And so over the years, I've built out a team of contributors.

. You know, we've got the blog podcasts, we've got a couple different podcasts. Uh, YouTube is probably our fastest growing platform right now. . I think we have about 150. Thousand 160,000 subscribers, which is, you know, not huge, but uh, pretty good size.

You can make a full-time living off of that. We've got the courses for drivers, we've got audiobooks, kindle books, uh, kind of, I usually joke like any box on the internet, if you type in something related to Uber, Lyft gig economy will probably pop up

Greg: So right now, over the last 12 months, there's been this trend on, you know, for these anonymous accounts, people are calling it the guy

mafia. There's

this,

Harry: totally, uh, are, are, I'm, I'm totally on board with

the Guy

Mafia.

Greg: yeah. So what they mean by that is like the strip mall guy, the self-storage guy. The designer guy and uh, you know, you really pioneered that concept, I think. Um, how do you, how important do you think the name the ride share guy was to unlocking a lot of the success in their early days?

Harry: Yeah, so I will say I totally ripped it off from one of my idols, the Points guy. So, uh, I was a big, uh, before I ever started The Rideshare Guy, you know, I've always been dabbling in online businesses. You know, I started three personal finance blogs. I was doing freelance travel writing, just kind of covering topics that I was interested in.

And I, you know, I wasn't an expert from all of those, you know, businesses or. Gigs that I, that I did. But you know, I learned a lot and kind of like got my feet wet, I guess you would say. And, um, so I totally loved the Points guy. I was like the only travel blog I read and, you know, so when I kind of started brainstorming ideas and names from my site, the ride share guy kind of rose to the top of the list.

And I wouldn't say that it, I. You know, like when you introduced me, you said the ride share guy. Like I've walked into rooms at Lyft and Uber and they're like, oh, it's the ride share guy. So it definitely, there's something there with the branding, but I think that, like a great brand on top of a great community or on top of a great platform is like, I.

The key to success, right? If you just have a great name, it, you know, not like you know, any revelation or anything, like a great name on its own doesn't do much. But I think like that kind of in tandem, I think has, uh, you know, helped me a bit, made me a bit more memorable. So I'd say it's in like that 10 to 20% range that it's given me like a little bit of boost.

Like if I would've picked a shittier name, maybe I would've got 10 or 20% less revenue or deals or connections. I think it did have an impact, but maybe not a

huge one.

Greg: You know, my take on that is I think it had more than a 10 or 20% lift. I think like, naming in general is just really underrated. especially when you were coming up with this name, like the Points guy was pretty massive, but like, you know, it wasn't as ubiquitous as it is now.

I actually think what's gonna happen with the Guy Mafia is there's, there's almost like a saturation of guys

now.

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?

Harry: 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 Kevo. Uh, cuz it's sort of at the intersection of, uh, last mile delivery and policy and restaurants and retail, everything that's happening at the curb, you know?

Right. Hail pickup and drop off. So we do an in-person event in LA and everybody loves the name Kvo. Uh, you know, sort of like. Play of herbivore, but you know, eating the curb. And other than that though, like when I've came up with the ride share guy name and wanna be angels with my co-host, Colin, for that podcast, I think we just wrote down, like for ride share 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 wanna be too broad. Like the, I knew for sure that I didn't wanna be like the Uber guy cuz I was like, well what if there's another company beyond Uber? Right? And so, you know, I think Rideshare 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 were exploding. And so I was sort of like, oh man, everything, everyone thinks of me as the ride share guy, but like, Our most popular content is all about scooters now and charging scooters.

And in the last two, three years, honestly, uh, we've had a lot. It's probably 50 50 now, but like we have a ton of interest in delivery. And so, you know, people still think of me as the ride share guy, but like half of our revenue and traffic probably comes from, you know, last mile delivery now. So Uber Eats, Instacart, DoorDash, you know, that, those types of topics.

So I think to me, I think about it like, hey, I don't want to be an expert in every one of these domains. I want people to think of me as the ride share guy. Anything, any Uber or Lyft question come to me. I'm the guy to talk to. but you know, we also dabble, we know enough to be dangerous in some other areas like food delivery.

And even though, you know, I might know quite a bit about food delivery, I'm not really trying to like actively market myself as like the food

delivery guy, if that makes sense.

Greg: would you ever consider sort of unbundling the ride share guy into multiple accounts slash businesses?

Harry: So I thought about it when the scooter craze was happening because it was, you know, it was still gig work, but I mean, we were doing YouTube reviews of scooters and posting it on the ride share guy YouTube channel. So you have like a video about how to drive from Uber, and then the next video was like a scooter review, right?

Pretty random. But our scooter reviews were getting hundreds of thousands of views. So I was like, all right, well, I kind of have to do this. And I think what I've learned over the years is you to segment audience, you really have to have a big following. I think it sounds great in online marketing, you know, if you've got an email provider, they're like, Hey, you should take your ride share people.

You should take your delivery people. You should take your full-time who likes videos, who like articles and create all these different segments. And in order to do that, you have to have like a massive following. I would say like in the millions of people in the hundreds of. Thousands maybe to really start segmenting.

Like the only segment we do is like ride, share and delivery, right? So we have like two really high level segments and um, I've experimented with a lot of different others and it's just so much work that goes into like managing those different segments. Like if you launch a brand new account, unless you've got, like, unless I had a million subscribers on YouTube, I think that.

It would be really difficult to kind of get those economies of scale from launching a second channel. I think you see like Mr. Beast, he's got his main channel and he's got his philanthropy channel, and that works out really well. But he's the biggest and best creator on all of YouTube, right?

Like I'm way below Mr. Beast. So I think that would be kind of my personal experience and caution is that it sounds so good on paper or on a pdf, or you know, when you're ticking the online course, like, oh, segment, this and that. But in reality, it's a lot of work and I don't really recommend it unless you have a

huge, huge following.

Greg: Could you talk more about the business model of the whole, of the whole companies? So you've got all. All these content, you know, properties. and, and you know, you mentioned courses, I'm sure there's ad revenue. Like how do you, how do you think about business model and when did you

Harry: Yeah.

Greg: business model?

Harry: I wasn't really expecting to make much money at the start. In general with content, I always tell people like, do it for a year. Pick something you like. Pick something that has a good business opportunity and see what happens. But at the end of that year, I think you should sort of be happy with the journey and the results.

And if you've made money along the way, great. If it exploded into a huge business, even better. And so, That was kind of my initial, uh, framework going into the ride share guy, and within about three to six months I did start making some money, and that was more off of driver referrals. So Uber and Lyft kind of have famously paid thousands of dollars for driver acquisition over the years, and now it's kind of come down maybe more normal acquisition prices, hundreds of dollars for a driver and so.

Over the years, we kind of started off monetizing by mainly driver referrals, some affiliate stuff, which would be, you know, a gas, uh, uh, app like Get Upside is one of our top affiliate partners. You know, they help you save on gas, so pretty good fit, obviously for Uber and Lyft drivers who put a thousand to 2000 miles a week on their car.

And so today, We have three or four main revenue sources. Probably the biggest one would be affiliate. So that would be, you know, either signing people up, I kind of call it affiliate, you know, signing people up to drive for Uber, Uber Eats, Instacart, DoorDash, and you know, really any kind of platform. Um, signing them up to be a driver.

That kind of falls under affiliate. And then we also have other affiliates like you know, get Upside is a good example cuz they were sort of VC funded, had a lot of money at a certain point and I think they were paying us like $5, you know, acquisition for a free app download for like a perfect product for our audience.

Right. And I think at one point we probably did 50,000 referrals in a single month for them at like, The heyday two, three years ago when they were spending a lot on marketing and, you know, kind of, we were ranking number one for every code around get upside, get upside, you know, download, get upside, referral promo code, all of that.

And uh, you know, so the affiliate stuff is definitely temperamental and kind of goes up and down and they can pull the plug at any time. But, uh, affiliate is probably our main one. And then we also do a lot of direct advertising. And so over the past two, three years, we've done a lot of direct campaigns with, you know, the platforms themselves.

So some companies we might be in a. Affiliate and they're like, Hey, you're doing great as an affiliate. Let's do some extra work with you.

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

Harry: Yeah.

Greg: of like,

you know,

Harry: So probably one to $200. 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, uh, I ended up quitting my day job within about nine months of starting the ride share guy and I, 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, you know, literally 500 to a thousand dollars for driver referrals and they were double-sided. So like 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 so maybe more in the one to $200 range for delivery services. It might be 25 to a hundred, maybe up to 200 in 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 range.

You know, if it's a free mileage tracking app, you know, that might be two to $5 per download. If it's more of a bank account, you know, that might be more than the 50 to $100, kind of

range.

Greg: So the Point Guy is an interesting story. Um, so Point Guy started very similar to you. Uh, I think it

was he worked at, um, Brian Kelly. He

worked at, yeah. investment banker.

at, you know, JP Morgan or something like that. Uh, Morgan Stanley actually. And. You know, he just started blogging about, you know, points on different credit cards right after the, uh, great financial crisis.

So there was a lot of demand for, you know, saving money and, and, and, and he ended up taking a different path than you did. although he did monetize via affiliates like you did, but the different path that he took is he sold his business to bank rate, in 2012, um, which I think got acquired again in 2017.

Have you ever thought about Yeah, exactly. Have you ever thought about, and I'm sure you have, but like,

when is the right time to sell

Harry: Yeah.

Greg: about it?

Harry: until recently, I guess you would say, I've always thought about, my business as like, I probably value it a lot more than someone is willing to pay.

Like, hey, if Uber came and offered me, I don't know, 10, 20, 50 million for it tomorrow, I'd probably sell it. But I doubt that they value it in the same way that I do. Right? Cuz I put so much time and energy and you know, like, I also like what I do. You know, like every, like I only work on parts of the business that, you know, I enjoy and you know, I've kind of transitioned and done a lot of different roles and hired people and all of that.

So like I wake up every Monday morning like pretty refreshed, you know, I just went on vacation last week and I was pretty excited, you know, to come back to work and check all my emails, right? Cuz I knew it'd be like kind of fun stuff, you know, Greg emailing me about coming on the podcast, you know, fun stuff to do.

So, I think like when it comes to selling the business, I've never, you know, it's never been a goal of mine by any stretch, but I've definitely, over the past two to four years, built the business to sell. and really what that means for me personally is, you know, there's the brand, the Ride Your Guy. People know me, that's how they think of me. But if you go and look at our videos, our content, I've. Got a number of contributors. It's really not me anymore doing the content. I'm still, you know, not even in the face, but I'm still involved.

You know, people still know me, but I think that like if someone did want to come in and buy the ride share guy tomorrow. It wouldn't be like they're buying me. I think they're buying a brand. They're, you know, most of the time if we get a media inquiry, you know, I've been quoted like over 3000 times in the media, you know, as a ride share gig economy expert.

But these days, you know, when we get a media inquiry, I send it to one of my top contributors. I don't even take those unless I have some pre-existing relationship with the reporter. You know, I want, and actually like, kind of stealing from the points guy. I remember I heard this NPR interview once and they were like, we're gonna bring in, you know, senior contributor at the Points, guy Kelly something, you know.

Kelly, whoever, and she's gonna talk about points. And I was like, that's awesome. Like the points guy's getting mentioned in this npr, uh, story and Brian the ceo or you know, founder doesn't even have to be on the interview. Like, that is really cool to me. And so that's kind of how, you know, I think I've done a pretty good job of that over the past few years.

And I actually ended up, um, bringing on a business partner earlier this year. Uh, they're called MMG Media. They've. Bought and sold a bunch of properties and they've exited, uh, businesses and their five person team that I've been really enjoying working with. And really it's to kind of take, have them take over a lot of the backend, I think the things that would be even more attractive to a potential acquire, right?

Like they're gonna care a lot more about affiliate revenue than upfront sponsored, you know, like advertising deals, right? Like

Greg: So this is the first time I've heard about MMG Media and they look awesome. I'm just

Harry: Yeah,

Greg: On their website it says, we are obsessed with building notable brands that meet people where they are in their financial journey, they basically have three services. They either. Number one, they build or buy. Number two, they scale.

And number three, they sell. So sell meaning they've got strong relationships with the network of buyers. scaling is basically, I think similar in your, your boat where we grow revenue and traffic with a heavy emphasis on s e o and affiliate partnerships. Uh, and then the build and buy.

And they've got a portfolio. Looks like bank bonus.com. Um, millennial money. Financial residency and of course the ride chair guy. Can you talk us through your, like, your relationship with them and what they handle

Harry: Sure.

Greg: and, and

how it's been?

Harry: Yeah, definitely. So Grant, uh, the c e o 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 they've got a lot of experience and are good at some of the things that I'm not good at. And so I sort of feel like it was like kind of fitting two good pieces of a puzzle.

And so at a high level, that's kind of what interested me in the first place, uh, in working with them. And. I mean, we've got an official partnership agreement and all that, and they're kind of my official business partners. But I will say that, you know, kind of like integrating a business like mine that's been doing something, you know, in all our different ways for 10 years almost is like, you know, it's, there's a lot of moving pieces, right?

And so basically we're kind of at the stage where they're really focused on the website and sel and we've kind of actually completely redesigned the site backend architecture redone hundreds if not. Probably close to 2000 pages on the website and optimized for seo. You know, we're starting to, I'm about to record a bunch of, you know, like really high quality videos with a videographer for our top seven SEO affiliate type pages.

So we're really just trying to, at this point, to like build up the traffic. You know, it's kind of like, Hey, we've got this ship and now we're kind of writing it. In the correct direction. Not that we were doing a bad job before, but you know, if you look at like how much money can you make driving for DoorDash, that's probably like a top keyword, uh, for DoorDash affiliates.

And there's a lot of sites with lower domain authority, less credibility than us outranking because the SEO side of things has never been my area of expertise focus or something that frankly I even enjoyed. And so it was sort of like, hey, I knew we were always leaving some money on the table, but you know, I like working on things that I enjoy and that I'm good at.

They're basically like a 50 50 partner, I guess you would say. And so they uh, have a lot of upside in the business if we do really well, if we exit, uh, whatever it might be.

And so that's kind of, uh, you know,

what they're handling for me.

Greg: I feel like. This is a model that's gonna happen a ton in a bunch of other niches.

Harry: So what I really like about the deal that I set up with Grant and his team is that I'm really, I'm paying them nothing upfront. Like they are really putting their money where their mouth is and they have a lot of upside, but it, if. You know, things don't work out. They're not gonna make any money. And so it's sort of like com combining, right?

Like I think a good example, like I do a lot of stuff with the media and I usually kind of like workhorse it myself and you know, like work with the startups and companies to like get them featured or whatever it might be. And there's a million PR services out there, you can hire for thousands or tens of thousands of dollars and none of them will guarantee anything.

Right. So it's like you could pay someone a lot of money with no guarantee of results. And to me, like that's like a space where there are definitely some good people, but I feel like a majority are just gonna, you know, kind of like. talk a big game, and it'll sound really good and you'll end up wasting your money.

and I think in the deal that I set up with them with mm mg media, they have a lot of upside, you know, sort of like they've got that social proof, but then they're putting their money where their mouth is. And to me, I think the biggest, uh, you know, reason why it's a good fit is cuz like what they bring to the table and what I bring to the table are two really good skills, but different.

Like, I'm good on the content and creative and relationship and marketing and they're kind of good on a, like, The more boring stuff. Like you can't hire the best SEO person in the world for a hundred thousand dollars a year. You probably can't hire them for a million dollars a year, to be perfectly honest.

Like you almost have to get the best people, you know, incentivized upside equity, you know, that kind of partnership. But it can be really, you know, complex structuring a deal where, you know, you kind of connect on a personal level and you You know, like you should almost like agree on a handshake basis and then you obviously have to like legalize it all up. But you know, it's like you kinda almost have to like agree on like bigger picture level, you know, before you go into anything.

Greg: I had a call earlier this morning with a entrepreneur who

has a partnership opportunity on the table. He's got, you know, a pretty good business and he doesn't know if he should bring them on as equity partners, and he's got this big fear that, well, what if, you know, what they say they're gonna do is not exactly what they're gonna do, and.

what advice do you have to someone like that?

Harry: I mean, I think that that is a very reasonable fear. I feel like most partnerships don't work out, to be perfectly honest. You know, like, uh, whether it's like a personal relationship or a business partnership, like I. Business. I mean, literally, you know, any, any time you bring two people together, right, or two groups together, it's like tough.

I feel like there's like, 10 different things that happened in my life in order to get me to say yes to this partnership with MM MG Media.

You know, the first thing would be like, Hey, I've done a good job building something up on my own. But I think to get it to that next level, I've tried and I haven't quite, you know, been able to do it on my own. Hiring the people that, you know, I've been hiring. Number two, I've done a lot of business partnerships.

Uh, you know, sort of like starting my first course that I started like eight, nine years ago. You know, we started off with another guy and it ended up like after two, three years, we sort of broke up and it was somewhat amicable and I think I kind of , paid him out of the business. But you know, it was like, I don't even think we had an actual agreement for that.

Like my Herbivore conference, co-founder, we usually at the end of every year, we like. Decide how we want to divvy up the money. You know what I mean? It's like not the best way of doing it. Um, , and then, you know, maybe third or fourth, like I've seen. Mm. M g in action, right? Like again, with that PR example, like there are one or two PR firms that I actually recommend to startups.

Cause I've seen them work with companies of mine and it's like, yeah, they'll charge $10,000 or $7,000 a month. Uh, but I've seen them. You know, with a good company and with a good pitch, get great write-ups and do good work. So it's like they've got that social proof and then, you know, with the mm mg it's like, all right, now they're putting where the, the deal we tructure, they have a lot of upside, but they're putting their money where their mouth is.

They're not taking anything upfront. So I think like, I would kind of look at it like combining. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 things. Anytime you're looking to bring someone on as a partner, like it can't just be one thing that sounds good. It sort of has to be like, wow, there's a multitude of factors that all lead me to saying yes.

And then I think the other thing too is like my business is quite different than, you know, like a bootstrap. You know, I would call my business bootstrap. I've never raised money or anything like that. Um, You know, a bootstrap type type of business. I think like giving up equity is a lot different than, you know, I think, I'm sure taking on like a 50 50 partnership as like a VC funded startup is like crazy.

But in Bootstrap world, you know, it's like completely different. And I think, uh, you know, different situations. So I think that's the other sort of

caveat.

Greg: The advice I gave to this entrepreneur was, Create a timeline of all the interactions that you've had with this potential partner. Just like, get a piece of paper, write down all the interactions that you've had. Okay. How many years has it been? 1, 2, 5, 10. Okay. Uh, how did they make you feel when they did this? Did they underpromise and over-deliver?

Did they say they were gonna do this thing and it didn't happen? And just all the things that you can possibly remember, just like write it on a timeline and most importantly, write the outcome of how you you felt in that moment. Because if you're getting into business with someone like.

You wanna have fun and you wanna smile and you wanna have a good time too. So you wanna, you know, you wanna basically, uh, have records of how you're feeling about all these situations. And I asked this guy now and he to come back with me with this timeline, and he texted me actually today and he said like, you know what? There's been a few interactions with this person that have been pretty negative but they are the best. They are the best. And insert social proof here, insert. And I was just like, it's not worth it. It's not, it's not worth partnering with someone where you're gonna have, you know, 10, 20% negative, outcomes.

because it's very hard to undo these relationships.

Harry: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I like that framework and I think that, you know, I haven't thought about it too much, so this is kind of fun that you're asking me about this, but I imagine that like, if everything isn't aligned, like I, I, I feel like most often in business partnerships, things like diverge, then get better.

You know what I mean? Like, you almost have to be like 1000% on the same page. Cause you're gonna, it's gonna be tough. You're gonna have some ups and downs and, People's personal lives or situations change and that adds, you know, a wrench like, oh, I can't spend as much time cuz I have a kid now, or I moved, or whatever.

Right. So it's like, it can only add more to the mix. So if you're not like super aligned, I mean even one thing I considered in working with Grant and M M G O would be funny if he listens to this interview is like, I liked him as a person. I would much rather work with people that I like hanging out with.

And I know this sounds a little bit weird, but like it's really hard for me to be friends with people that I work with. If they're not good at their job. Like if they don't excel at their job, like I can't shoot the shit on the phone with them, like, Hey, how was your week? I'm like, no, no, let's not talk about your weekend.

Like why isn't this done? What, what's going on? You know, like my first priority is business and working together and if we can crush it, On that, then like, let's go have some fun together. Let's hang out, let's talk, you know, let's vacation together, whatever it might be.

Greg: Last question, cause I gotta run.

Harry: All

right.

Greg: if you were to summarize a decade of your knowledge in building content-based niche businesses, comes top of mind? What is, what is the most powerful. Advice you can give to people who are interested in becoming the future ride chair guy of their own spaces.

Harry: pick something that you're interested in, pick something that has some or a lot of business opportunity. I. 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 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 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 100 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 5 million views and it's all about truck driving. Super random. But you know, it's like you can kind of do that. I, I love the kind of short form platforms right now.

We're investing a lot in, uh, short form. Form content, uh, TikTok, YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, because discoverability is so high. You know, you put something out there and it can go viral a lot, um, easier. I would almost say it's impossible. Uh, not impossible, but it's very difficult for a blog post, you know, on a brand new site to go viral relative to a lot of the short form video platforms that are out there since they're more, you know, kind of algorithmic, uh, discovery based now.

So, I think kind of leaning into video and you know, really just kind of creating consistent content for a long period of time. Like be a cockroach, never die. That's why I say if you pick a topic that you love and you just like doing, you know, one podcast a week for 10 years, like good opportunity, I guarantee, you know, if you do one podcast a week for 10 years, good opportunities are gonna come your way.

And that might be more of the extreme, but you know, I always say like one year, you know, one year when it comes to content, try to. Be consistent for one year. Don't even worry about monetizing for the first year. If something falls in your lap, great. But, you know, I like that kind of one year,

uh, threshold.

Greg: Be a cockroach.

All right. Where could people find you? Uh, on the internet? And thank you for letting us crawl inside your brain for an hour.

Harry: Yeah. No, that was fun. I think you asked some, uh, good, uh, challenging and new questions and I haven't done, uh, an interview like this in quite a while, so it was fun. Uh, I would say if they're interested in anything rideshare gig economy, just type it into a box on the internet and we should. Pop up and if not, let me know if there's some box that we're not popping up on.

I'll uh, take that as a personal challenge. But we've got the rideshare guy.com, our YouTube channel, uh, the Rideshare Guy is growing pretty quickly. I kind of share my, uh, personal, you know, sort of thoughts on the ride share and gig economy industries on my weekly podcast, the ride share guy. And then on the content side, sort of the, uh, I'm probably most active on Twitter at The Rideshare Guy, and then I've got my new podcast.

It's more. Focused on, uh, investor investing in startups and things like that called Wannabe Angels. And we're doing a weekly, uh, live show there. That's, it's a new show, but getting a lot of traction and been a

lot of fun so far.

Greg: There you have it. The ride share guy. Love it. thank you.