00:01
You're listening to the Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast. If it's radical, we cover it.

00:23
Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey, guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. It's Friday, July 21st, 2023. At least for us, we don't know where you are or how you are, but hopefully doing fantastic. We've got our weekly business and marketing news and just everything you need to know. I'm joined by my good friend.

00:51
And my co-founder of a K Chris Hansen's joining me today on the Radcast. What's up, brother? Happy to be here. Feeling the Friday energy. I love it. Hey, Friday vibes, hashtag Friday vibes. You know, we did one, I did one monologue version last week. Official day of AK. Yeah, exactly. Hey, it is Friday. Every day is a vacay at vacay, but yeah, I did one monologue episode. Then I'm like, Chris, join me now.

01:20
I gave him like an hour notice and he asked, but that's what a good friend is. One hour. Dude, I'm in the sauna. I'm there. Let me get this sweat out of me and I'll be there, baby. Exactly. Yes. It's our weekly marketing news. And Chris, I don't know if you saw this. I don't I'm not a big lottery guy, but me either. I think I've the only time I play the lottery is so there's two things I like to give people that are like not really my good friends, but someone that maybe I need to give a card or birthday gift to.

01:50
I like to put scratch off cards as like a as a kind of a cool instead of like 20 bucks in a card, throw some scratch off and like a birthday card or something. So I like to do that. And occasionally we'll go to the gas station. If I've got like cash that's random in my pocket, like I got a random $15 or something and my kids are in the car, I'll buy. I'll bring out like 15 scratch off so they can like get a kick out of it. And look, just so you're listening with the with the lottery commission.

02:17
Just letting them scratch them. They're just for me. I'm using them for child labor. Just for I would collect the winnings for them. But I don't really do the lottery, but the powerball is up to 900 million. It's insane. It's a big number. It is a big number. It's so funny to me. So everyone scrambles like when he gets up there, right? Nine hundred million, one billion.

02:38
Yeah, because it wasn't enough when it was 100. What is a million? That's I'm not playing. They're like, honey, I'm not getting off the couch. Go to the gas station for 100 mil. Needs to be closer to a bill for me to get off the trailer. Like hanging out like a hundred mils. I get me off the couch. But 900 mil gets my attention. I'm like, why is it that it's like a game like you know, is a million dollars. It's game changing for most people. Yeah, absolutely. But.

03:08
I'm only playing when it gets to 900 million. But there is a one in two hundred ninety two million chance that you'll win, Chris. So you got to get out there. I need to go buy one today, then one in two hundred ninety two million chance of winning the entire. That's what like basically the population of the United States.

03:29
Essentially. Yeah, I think so. Like essentially it was like 360 million or something in the US. So close enough. One in you got a one in the entire population chance of winning. But as my good friend, Jim Carrey said and Dumb and Dumber, you're saying there's a chance. Maybe a guy like you and a girl like me getting together. I'd say one in a million.

03:54
I love that movie. It's a classic. It is. But if the, so here's some details for those of you listening. I know you're wanting to get out there and play the Powerball. If you choose, if you win, you have two options. You could choose the lump sum, which is $465.1 million. Checkwritten at one time. Or you get 30 years of annual payments.

04:20
that are worth an estimated $900 million before taxes. So you get over 30 years, you get the whole 900 million or you get 465 million at once. Which one are you taking there, Chris? 465 all at once or 900 over 30 years? I'm taking 900 over 30 years. Ah, okay. You want the whole kitten caboodle. It's better from a tax perspective because if you take the lump sum,

04:49
You're getting hit over the head with a hundred and twenty five million dollar tax bill day one. So you really take home about three forty. Yeah, I'd rather wait it out. Wait it out. I want the long term game plan. Give me that 30 year comfort. I don't you don't like what are you going to do with that much upfront? Yeah, because what is it? Thirty million a year. So 30 times 30 is nine hundred million. Is that right? Because 30 times. I think that's right. So you get 30 million a year for 30 years.

05:18
You can live a great life on 30 million a year. The only problem is, and as someone that's gotten their life, maybe more in order than me, you can take that. Quitting bad habits and everything. As someone that still drinks a little bit, I'm a little worried if I had that much more money and thus free time, that I hope that my bad habits wouldn't increase. And I just mean going to more part of the things that decrease my lifetime. So thus, am I going to live 30 more years?

05:46
That was that was what would come through my mind is, OK, I guess your kids do. Fair concern. You do see that happen all the time. Yeah. People get that kind of windfall. I've got look, I do. OK, you do. We do. OK. And I guess I could do it all I want now, but it's a little it's those extra numbers do kind of change things a little bit for anyone. You can you can do whatever you want. You do whatever you want, whenever you want. And I don't know with kids and family, I think I'd stay on the rails. But I don't know. I just feel like Nicole and I would travel more. We'd.

06:16
Hang out. I started be certain lifestyle things that at least in the short term might be, I don't know, more partying and drinking or something. I just social socially. You'd probably be drinking more fine wine on the Amalfi Coast. Exactly. On a yacht. Exactly. And so maybe I'd offset it because I did. I'd have we all have coaches and certain things, but I'd have probably like LeBron James style, the one coach all the time with you. You pay him like a million dollars or something. He's just keeping you in shape and like.

06:45
Working off all your bad habits. Giving you like IV drips every morning to counter the alcohol consumption. Keeping you steady. Which exactly. Look at Hollywood. They have these type of people everywhere. Yeah, I think I'd take the 465, try to offset as much of the taxes as possible and maybe start investing it, thinking that I could double it quicker than the 30 years. Put in some Bitcoin.

07:10
Put it in. I've heard there's like a good trader called like FX or something. Oh yeah, great trading platform called FDX. Yeah. Can I bail him out of jail and maybe he can help me invest it? So last week I talked about threads from Instagram and told people to thread lightly. I think people need to be testing the waters.

07:35
but thread lightly, Chris, thread lightly. They just come to you so naturally. It was like the first thing I thought to him, I'm like, okay, how do I need to tell people that they should try threads but not go too heavy? Thread lightly. So anyway, anyway, you can check out my full review on YouTube, I did a 10 minute kind of spiel on it. And all I'm saying is, I don't think it's gonna be a core platform.

08:01
I think it's great, it's interesting, but it's the exact copy of Twitter, but I think you got a mismatch of audiences. And sure enough, the data has come out, engagement's dropped to 50% since its peak. I think, yes, they got to 100 million users fast, but it's because Instagram made it super easy for you to transition. And I think it'll be one of those that people dabble in. But I think if you're a business and you want to gain customers and you want to do business, there's so many other opportunities on other platforms that I just wouldn't throw the bank.

08:30
at threads and sure enough, the data kind of supports it. So I don't know what your experience has been on it, Chris. I think I've posted two things on it. I it's definitely a softer environment than Twitter. Yeah. As far as more, but I've noticed people using it, like they're still posting their Instagram picture, but on threads with essentially their caption. So like you're just double posting. Yeah. In a way. I'm trying to use it for my mind kind of works.

08:58
in headlines and in piffy statements. So if I think of something, I try to just write it there as a medium and a pretty good engagement. But it's like a reposter. I don't do a lot of I just repost things that resonate with me. Same as I just don't think it's going to be a business driving until they get some ad components. You can't even really look at your total numbers like your total analytics. Yeah, you could see some of the basic engagement of like likes and comments.

09:27
but you can't look at the entire picture. So, till all that gets settled, I can't take it too seriously as a business driving platform. I just treat it as like everything else. It's another place to get a little more awareness, maybe a new user base. I still get, I get, I've done nothing on the platform and I'm approaching like 10,000 followers. Like I, but I think it's mainly just people turning over from the Instagram platform in general. So.

09:54
We'll see continue to tread lightly my friends and the data suggests that you should as well. I thought this was pretty cool. Chris, I've always wanted to make my own song, even though I can't, I can play like guitar and stuff, but I am not a good enough musician. But now Coke is doing this interactive thing at concerts and different activities and places where they do activations, where you can essentially make your own song, make your own cover out album, make all this stuff.

10:22
It's getting a little scary with generative AI, how easy it is to mimic. Yeah. I guess throw some beats together and go, I want to sound like post Malone and. A song about breaking up. I'm intrigued by it. Like what you just said, does it use my voice is using someone else's voice. I don't know how I feel about it. It's a little too robotic for me. I think.

10:48
But what's the auto tune like the yeah, within the studio that makes everybody's voice sound OK? They just add auto tune. Could they could I could they take like my voice right now talking? And I'm not a good singer. I can carry a tune at church or something, but it's not great. But you can sneak into the background chorus and look at AI combined with like auto tune. Turn me and this sound into a good singing voice. I don't know. Scary. I've got a buddy who did a whole album with AI.

11:17
And I didn't know it initially. I learned it later and it sounds good. But I'm like, I don't know, I'm one of these people like. Your soul resonates through music. So how much and how much variation is going to come with this AI? Is everything going to sound similar? How much differentiation can there actually be? But that's my problem with pop music now. Yeah, a lot of the rap beats, especially. And I'm and I like rap and I like hip hop. Right. But the beats.

11:48
Certain things are all starting to sound same. So all this kind of melodrama going underneath boom, do, do, do. Oh, I got it. I don't know. And so I don't think we need originality. Exactly. We're losing. I'm through.

12:02
originality and individuality. Yeah. So I like it from an activation standpoint for Coke, cause it's fun and they can do it and people can kind of, it's something to bring alive and experience at a show and maybe it will feel like a star. But the broader side of like music creation, it's a little, I don't know. I could see it maybe inspiring people to, Hey, maybe I want to pursue something like this, but to make it too easy where everyone can do it, then what is the value in the people that actually have real.

12:32
talent. I think some of the imperfection of like live shows is not even like what you hear is imperfection, but more the improv improvisation is what make live shows so great. You hear a little bit of a different sound than maybe the CD. I'm updating myself or the streaming version. And I think that's what people had to go to live music for to hear and see how it's performed live. So I think they'll always be an appreciation of that.

13:01
It's just studio interactive marketing. Yes. Cool. Yeah. The magic of Coke. Are you a Coke or Pepsi guy? I'm a Coke guy. Yeah, totally a Coke guy. I'll have a Pepsi, but I'm choosing Coke.

13:19
Yeah, I'm a brand stop coke all the way. Pepsi's marketing is really good. And I know the CEO really wouldn't think their marketing is great, but it's kind of like Burger King. I think Burger King's marketing is pretty great too. But like my kids aren't asking for Burger King and they're asking for Pepsi. Yeah, no daddy, we need some McDonald's french fries. And I'm like, no shit you do. And you're like, so does daddy. Yeah. So is daddy with some Heinz ketchup. No hunts on that shit. No.

13:46
But yeah, Coke Zero has become, it was really a bad invention for me. Cause I stopped drinking Coke because I didn't want 250 calories on every drink. And Diet Coke was always, had that.

13:57
aspartamey taste to it. Coke Zero, man, was this like the greatest invention and the worst invention ever. I bought a two liter Coke classic last night. I'll admit it as much as we love to talk about health and wellness, too. I still get that. I get that craving. Oh, yeah. The original formula. There you go. Speaking of original formulas, if you go to roll off the pain dot com. Chris and I develop.

14:21
first class products here. It's called VK official sponsor of the Radcast and in all full transparency, the company we own. But I will say this, I say that I literally have old man tennis elbow going on and I had a bad wrist. It's fixed. But now my damn tennis elbow started up and was hurting after going to the gym this morning, rolled it on. It was feeling cool as I came into the office. And you know what? Don't feel the pain anymore, Chris.

14:48
It's like a little lubricant for that joint baby. It works, it's legit. It's very good. That CBD stuff is legit. So it feels cooling, the cooling effect, but then 20, 30 minutes later, it's like it really does roll the paint off. Yeah, I love it. So yes, go check out rolloffthepain.com. You'll get that CBD effect. And look, let's check. An Icy Hot, need to take a walk. That shit doesn't work, I've used all of it.

15:15
You need to go to Rolthepain.com, get the stuff that really works. You roll it on. Pain falls off eventually. And you know what has healing properties? My doctor even said so. I couldn't believe it. I was like, really? He's yes. CBD has healing properties that actually tackle not only the pain, but over time, if you keep using it, soaking into the muscles and the joints has healing properties. And it's been pretty much cured my wrist. And now being the act of that inflammation, I know that's what it is.

15:44
I don't even know what tennis elbow is, but that's what it is. Me neither. I've heard it for my whole life. I just don't need your elbow hurts. You don't want it. It's like right on the outside of your elbow. I don't know what it is, but I know I don't want it. I know. You don't want it either. And if you've got tennis elbow sore muscles or you know what? I've been using on my temples too for headache. Yeah, me too. Instead of like on the Advil, I'm hitting the roll on the temples. Go to rolloffthepain.com.

16:11
or you can visit our full product line at Take A VK. That's V-A-Y-C-A-Y, the only way to spell VK. TakeAVK.com. Chris, we had some big, a big country star on this week on the Radcast. It's Bencher Crandall. He's got the hottest song of the summer didn't do out this week, along with Cooper Allen, working with Coop Cooper, if you're listening.

16:35
I'm coming after you, baby. I want you on the show. Spencer's working on that. But they did a little duo. It's called Didn't Do. It's a little jam. It's fun for the summer. But Spencer was awesome. It's a good vibe. And he's a great guy. Very transparent, very open about his. He talked to, I even asked him, I was like, how the hell is country, you're on the road all the time. How are you not drinking, partying every night? And he's like, I was. He quit drinking six years ago. It's like, I couldn't keep up. And he's a younger guy. He's probably 30, maybe 32. He had to quit early. He's a dude.

17:04
wouldn't survive in the business. He's like, there's guys that do it. They somehow pull it off and it doesn't seem to affect them. But like he was transparent about that and the music business being an independent artist. So that was a really interesting look behind the country music business with Spencer Crandall. Got a lot of songs. You may not know his first name, but when, soon as you start to go to Apple music, you'll play them. And if you've listened to any country music, you'll go, okay, I know that song. I've heard it like on the radio.

17:32
Next week, Jeff Duden, CEO of Homefront Brands and host of the Homefront Podcast. Jeff's a great guy and you're going to enjoy him. He's got a great podcast himself and he is crushing it in a lot of different ways. Really progressive CEO. So you'll enjoy that episode next Tuesday. Got some social media news here. So TikTok is coming out with an amusing streaming service. Makes sense to me.

17:59
It seems like a natural kind of like next step, right? Absolutely. Tik Tok is driving so much music right now with the viral trends. I almost think that's the one song that top 10, I would say every week is from going viral on Tik Tok. Yeah, exactly. And so much, all these guys, like the guys that just mentioned Spencer and Cooper out, like these guys have half a million, million followers on Tik Tok.

18:25
They get to test out music. The ones that are using it, it's crazy. Like you can use it in different ways for different businesses, different things. Like, so for them to have their own music, like streaming service that ties into the app, it's like a no-brainer. So it makes a lot of sense. It's launched in a couple other countries. It hadn't launched in the U.S. first. I think they're starting in, it looks like Australia, Mexico, and Singapore. So all of our Singapore listeners, you can get it now. So.

18:52
There you go. We actually are in the top 100 in Singapore, I think worldwide, baby. Never been, but I heard amazing things. Very clean. Yes. I'm going to go on like an Asian tour or something. Let's do it. Let's do it. I mean, start when we can get vacay, like outside of the U S take a vacay, take an Asian vacay. We'll do it. So Twitter courted Elon Musk.

19:17
is going to support long form articles with mixed media, surviving its long form content feature called Twitter Notes with support for mixed media such as photos, videos, gifs and tweets or GIFs, depending on where you fall in that camp. That's a very controversial subject. The company first launched Twitter Notes in June of last year, and it was recently rebranded as articles. Elon Musk has confirmed the news in response to a user's tweet.

19:44
regarding the renaming of the project, the feature could help retain writers who want more distribution for articles that would be otherwise posted on their blogs or newsletters. So Musk has raised the character limit to 4,000 and 10,000 for Twitter blue subscribers to enable users to post longer messages. There you have it. Are you a blog writer? You're written a blog. I don't think I've ever written a blog, but I do think...

20:13
There's a lot less people watching the news now and mainstream media and whatnot. So I think this is a great way to give independent journalists a platform to showcase. We need that. We need real journalism. We don't look at Tucker. Carlson was he's doing says leaving Fox a hundred million viewers with him and Andrew Tate or whatever, like crazy. Yeah. You want that interview? Which one Tucker and Tate? Yeah.

20:36
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Great interview. I think Tucker obviously has probably been the biggest thing that's shown. Like you don't need a major network to do journalism, your thing, but I just think it would be great to have more independent journalists and there's a lot that I follow, but it's obviously very limited in what there's more picture reporting and little updates of things. But yeah.

20:59
I don't know how many people are reading the newspapers anymore or subscribed. Not many. No, it's all online. The paper, the true paper and my first one of my first jobs is like literally newspaper ads and how big they were back early 2000s. And how that industry is like about almost dried up completely because everything's online. And but I do think it's smart for us to continue to add feature sets because if you've got threads breathing down your neck, supposedly

21:28
You need, and this was my biggest complaint with threads. There's no, they needed to come out with more or a more unique functionality, something that separated it from Twitter from day one instead of just being the exact same thing, at least the core function, and even less functionality than Twitter today. And so they can't bog it down from day one, but at least something to differentiate it. So I think Musk, number one, needs to get a little bit out of the way and let his CEO run the company. I think he needs to stay, do what he does best. But then,

21:57
But I do think having features that separate it and giving journalists a reason to stay on the platform was smart. So we'll see where that goes. Meta slash Facebook is release llama to, which is essentially text generated like suggestions is similar to chat GPT. It's Facebook's version that integrates so that it gives you text recommendations for me, captions or other things.

22:23
So llama two and llama two, like llama, what do these names come from? I don't know. I don't get like a good visual, perfect visual. No, it's a very awkward name. Yeah. Meta llama. I met a llama. It doesn't roll off the tongue very well. It's kind of awkward. So human enviors find it roughly as helpful as chat. GPT safety layers have been implemented to prevent potentially harmful outcomes.

22:53
Have you messed around with chat GPT and it completely to tell you something just totally false? I have not, but I've seen people posting stuff or asking questions and then chat GPT being like we're ethical and we cannot entertain. Does it ethically want to answer the question? Yeah. So everybody's got their version of, and I'll tell people that use these things is it's a good starter. It's good for like research and starting point, but then you need to add it with your own point of view so that you don't.

23:23
Because I think otherwise you're going to start to see these same text threads with like exactly the same stuff. Because if it's been something out for you of a question you've asked, somebody else is going to post that same shit and start sounding the same. I used to want to sound like yourself. I definitely used it for some stuff. And I'm like, I do not talk like this. Yeah, this is not my. Yeah. Like, it sounds like a 19th century Victorian speech. And I'm like, that. But like you said, great starting point.

23:50
gives you a foundation you can play with. So I still need to dive deeper into it. We'll close out today, Chris, with some really important social holidays we wanna make people aware of. These are just the most important ones. So today is National Junk Food Day, the 21st. Yes, National Junk Food Day.

24:14
Set your little behind if you haven't planned for this, if you're like a junk food category brand. But I will be posting my Cheetos later. That might be the most American holiday I've ever heard of. Yeah. What's your go-to junk food? Candy. Yeah. Hairboat twin snakes and butter. Oh, very specific. Yeah. We're talking chips, Cheetos or baked lays, but dude, I got no sweet tooth. Oh yeah.

24:43
National Day of the Cowboys tomorrow, along with National Hammock Day. So hey, spurs up and get that hammock. I'm going to say those two go together. I just saw my cowboy hats from Texas. Maybe I'll start rocking those down in Miami tomorrow. That might go over real well. Yeah, there's a lot of cowboy hats here in Miami. No, not a whole lot. That's not a painted background there in his background. That is Miami in the background where Chris is at today. Sunday.

25:13
Gorgeous Grandma Day. That's a celebrate your grandmother. Yep. And it's Parents Day. So I'm going to celebrate myself on Sunday. They combined parents and grandparents day. I don't know. This is National Parents Day on my show notes here. So the teammates fed me send my mom flowers and national tequila day is Monday, the 24th. Are you a tequila guy?

25:40
Oh, yeah, I'm an equal opportunity. You don't discriminate. I don't discriminate. Like, I don't drink anything like daily or even weekly necessarily. I do like a. Crown vanilla with a cherry Coke. That's a go to in the summer, but. Pretty tasty. Which tequila go to. That's Amiga's.

26:01
Yeah. Oh yeah. If George could be some love, he's hurting so bad. I want to make sure I support him. Yeah, man. He's paying his bills. I know I wouldn't want him to not carry forward. National Tequila Day on Monday. And finally, we Tuesday, the 25th is National Wine and Cheese Day.

26:21
So there you go. It's a lot of holidays coming up. I do use that. I do go my kids like, I got you want some cheese with that wine? Use that a lot when they're bitching about like stupid shit. I'm like, well, some cheese with that wine. I love that. Dad jokes galore. There's the social holidays that you just can't miss. I think that's hey, it's summertime news. News is light here in the summer, Chris. There's not there's nothing too heavy really going on.

26:49
It's good. That's what summer's for. Keep it light. When like the trending article of the week is like the Taco Bell menu, there's not like major, major news. The Gordita crunch is back. Yeah, what are they bringing back? Like a chicken, crunchy taco or something? I don't know. It's like that. They brought back the Mexican pizza and so. I'm waiting for the Baja steak chalupa to come back. That was my go to. Oh, that was a go to. Yeah, that knee. Crunchwrap Supreme.

27:18
Exactly. Well, I think that's all for us today. You know where to find us, theradcast.com. Search for threads. You'll find my opinion on that. Search for Taco Bell. You'll find our parting shots on all the taco news. Hey, go buy yourself a Powerball ticket, 900 million. Now it's time. It was a time at 200 million, but 900 million, now is the time, folks. Yeah, now it's worth that trip to the gas station. Yes, and always go support.

27:46
the company we own and our sponsor. Take a vacay.com, V-A-Y-C-A-Y. Get your best plant-based wellness products, all third-party tested and approved by Ryan Alford and the Radcast. And of course, Chris Hanson. We have to approve them. We make them. Chris Hanson Yes, definitely. Definitely. Appreciate it, Chris. Chris Hanson Absolutely. Pleasure, man.

28:11
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