The Michael Knowles Show - Building the Future

00:00:00.000 Thank you. You all still have jobs. We've been doing these town halls now really since the

00:00:21.480 beginning of the company. We used to do them quite frequently on a monthly basis. It's a

00:00:25.920 good way to let the company know everything that's happening, make sure that everybody's

00:00:28.380 plugged in. As we get bigger and bigger, it gets harder and harder. You guys get less and

00:00:31.320 less access to the executives. And one of the mistakes that we made is we stopped having

00:00:35.160 them for a long period of time. We've made a commitment that we're going to do these more

00:00:38.060 and more. And in fact, you'll all recall that we did one quite recently. So why are we doing

00:00:42.020 another one so soon? Well, the answer is we realized that we made a real mistake in not

00:00:47.200 streaming this out to the public. So much of what companies do these days, they do behind

00:00:51.800 closed doors. We think that's wrong. For a company like ours, it's wrong, especially because

00:00:57.440 our audience is our customer. Our audience is the most important. Our audience powers

00:01:01.880 all of this. They pay all of your salaries, much as it pains me to admit. I like to take

00:01:05.420 credit when you buy houses and have fancy cars so I can take it away from you out of nothing

00:01:11.460 but spite, god king spite. But of course, that's not true. It's our audience who makes all of

00:01:16.020 this possible. So why shouldn't we let our audience see what we're thinking? Why shouldn't

00:01:19.560 we give them access to the inner workings of the company? Our paying dailywire.com members

00:01:24.040 in particular have a right to know what's going on inside the heads of the executives

00:01:28.000 of this company, why we're doing the things that we're doing. And you have the right to

00:01:31.420 know why we're doing the things that we're doing as well. As I say, as the company gets

00:01:34.840 bigger, I know sometimes you guys get pulled with the currents. You don't know exactly what

00:01:39.240 direction we're going. We make you do new things every day. It's just good for us to be

00:01:42.760 able to take these opportunities, reset, make sure that we sync up and that we're all charging

00:01:47.260 the same hill together. And I think that includes our dailywire.com customers and audience as well.

00:01:53.040 So I want to give you an update on what's going on with the company, what we've accomplished

00:01:57.840 so far, what fights we've picked, what fights we've won. And I want to tell you about the

00:02:01.540 fights that are yet to come. First, it's been an unbelievable 2022. In the first quarter

00:02:08.020 of 2022 alone, we have launched more new content than in all of 2021 combined. And since our last

00:02:15.280 major town hall in November, we've launched more content than we had launched in the previous

00:02:19.860 two years. I'll give you just a quick retrospective. I know the pace has been grueling and many of

00:02:25.860 you have worked on any number of these projects, but not all of you have worked on all of these

00:02:29.860 projects. Since our last time together, we've created a bestselling children's book, Johnny

00:02:34.520 the Walrus. We launched a new Ben Shapiro series called The Search. We launched a second new Ben

00:02:50.140 Shapiro series called The Third Thursday Book Club. We launched our first original feature film

00:02:58.840 called Shut In. Our third feature release, The Hyperions. We also launched our first comedy special,

00:03:13.140 Truth Yeller with Adam Carolla. Our first docu-podcast, China, The Enemy Within. 0.76

00:03:26.000 Our second docu-podcast, Fauci Unmasked.

00:03:35.640 You didn't let me finish Fauci Unmasked with Michael Knoll, so there's no need to clap.

00:03:39.600 Absolutely no need to clap. A new social media show, comment section with Brett Cooper.

00:03:50.000 The female Ben Shapiro is already doing almost as well as the male Ben Shapiro. The show has 0.58

00:03:54.700 really taken off. It's an amazing new addition, and it represents a new foray into social-first

00:03:59.660 content. And of course, we launched the number one sports show in its first week, Crane & Company.

00:04:04.140 For those of you who haven't seen it, there's a bus waiting parked right outside behind the studio with

00:04:16.680 that giant three faces on it, ready to head down to the final four. In that same time period,

00:04:22.640 we've moved into our new studio in South Florida. We've picked up 14,000 square feet of new office

00:04:27.240 space here at our Nashville campus. We've added 75,000 new paid DailyWire.com members. We became

00:04:33.420 the seventh largest podcast company in the country per pod track, hit our 15th consecutive month as

00:04:38.920 the number one most engaged publisher in the world on Facebook, according to Newswhip. We killed it at

00:04:43.460 the podcast up front, and we crossed the $100 million annual revenue mark for the first time.

00:04:48.740 And at this moment, we have an annualized run rate of $150 million.

00:04:52.360 We also signed Jonathan Isaac. We deployed Cassie Dillon to western Ukraine. We launched our merch

00:05:07.540 store. We helped elect a governor in Virginia after Luke Rosiak's remarkable reporting from Loudoun

00:05:12.420 County. We kicked Joe Biden's ass at the United States Supreme Court, ensuring that Americans still 1.00

00:05:16.940 have their most fundamental freedoms. And we launched a little razor company, which sold 45,000

00:05:22.180 razors and subscriptions in its first seven days in existence.

00:05:34.060 Along the way, we also announced our first feature documentary, What is a Woman with Matt Walsh.

00:05:44.320 And in just two months, we'll be launching Gina Carano's Terror on the Prairie. 1.00

00:05:52.180 It's been a hell of a run. I know that you've all worked incredibly hard. I know that this is a

00:05:59.420 incredibly hard place to work. I mentioned the last time we were together, we know that there is an

00:06:05.020 enormous amount of stress, even at our level as executives in the company. Sometimes we boast

00:06:10.120 that we're piloting a rocket ship, but most of the time it feels like we're strapped to the side of a

00:06:14.180 rocket ship. It's almost impossible for any of us to grow fast enough in our professional careers

00:06:19.340 to keep up with the demands that the company is putting on it. And my hopeful message for you

00:06:24.260 today is, it ain't going to get any easier. It's not going to get any easier because the stakes are

00:06:29.500 just too high. It's not going to get any easier because almost no one is privileged enough in their

00:06:34.960 lives to get to take a run like the run that we're on right now. And we intend to take it as far as it will

00:06:40.420 possibly go. Why? Why? Well, we don't have to. We've already far exceeded the wildest expectations of

00:06:49.120 Caleb and Ben and I when we started the company. If we wanted boats, we could surely go buy boats. We

00:06:54.660 could cash in, let you guys take it from here, and we could live lives of ease. But we're not doing

00:07:00.580 that. Instead, we're pushing all of our chips back in. We're pushing all the money into investments in the

00:07:05.920 future of the company. We're taking the biggest risks that we've ever taken in our lives because

00:07:11.020 we have an affirmative vision for the future of this country. Because for too long, conservatives

00:07:17.140 have responded to every new assault in the culture war with the same tired nonprofit cycle of lose,

00:07:25.060 complain, and beg for donations. Lose, complain, and beg for donations. Then you lose some more and

00:07:32.320 complain some more and beg some more for some more donations. And all the while, the left takes over

00:07:38.280 every single institution. The left drives us further and further out of our own culture.

00:07:43.600 The left indoctrinates our children with radical gender and race theory. The left takes away the

00:07:49.560 fruit of our labor. They take away our claim to our country. And we're just not going to put up with

00:07:54.960 it anymore. We're going to do something different, something conservatives have not done

00:07:58.540 in my lifetime. We're going to build a future. Not lament the past, not grieve the past, make something

00:08:07.760 completely new. Something that's, yes, built on the foundation of the past, the best ideas of the past,

00:08:13.800 the best values of the past, but not something trying to take us back to the past. Because the dirty secret

00:08:20.060 is the past was just another time. It came with all of its own problems. In the 1950s, the nuclear family 0.94

00:08:26.240 was in great shape. And black people couldn't drink from water fountains in certain states in the 1.00

00:08:30.560 south. We don't want to replicate that. We want to take the first idea, the nuclear family, a really

00:08:35.660 good idea, and use it to build a future, a future that has the nuclear family, and where black people

00:08:41.240 can still drink from the same water fountains as everyone else, right? We're not idealizing what's

00:08:45.500 gone before. We're learning from what went before. That's what the left doesn't want us to do. The left

00:08:51.380 thinks that you can just throw away all the best lessons of history and just imagine your way into

00:08:57.600 an idyllic sort of utopian future. That's hubris. We're not hubristic here. We're delusional, but

00:09:06.200 we're not hubristic. What do I mean by delusion? What I really mean is that we just believe in

00:09:11.100 ourselves. We believe in this country. We're confident. We believe that our best days can be

00:09:15.720 ahead. We believe that we can have a seat at the table, that our values can still be represented

00:09:20.400 in the future, but only if we're the ones actively building it. There is so much opportunity in the

00:09:28.120 hubris of the left. They keep tearing our culture apart and paying no economic consequence. Why?

00:09:35.940 Because they know that we still have to buy their goods and services. They know that we still need a

00:09:40.960 good razor. They know that we still need good shoes. They know that we still need good entertainment.

00:09:45.840 And so they can take for granted that we will keep paying them, even as they tell us again and again

00:09:52.160 and again that we have no real place in the world that they're building except to give them our money.

00:09:59.040 That's why we started Jeremy's Razors. And I want to put a little context to that number I told you a

00:10:05.500 moment ago. 45,000 Razors. 45,000 Razor Blade subscriptions, meaning recurring revenue into the

00:10:13.440 future. That's 45,000 Americans who said, well, we've had enough. We don't have to give our money

00:10:20.840 to people who obviously don't think we deserve their product. We can give it to someone who wants to

00:10:27.460 communicate with us, who wants to represent our values. We can give them to someone who has an

00:10:31.780 affirmative vision for the country. They can give it to me. And that's what they're doing. And there

00:10:37.540 are so many more of them. 45,000 is just the beginning. And Razors are just the beginning. 0.78

00:10:44.580 The hubris of the left has created an infinite sea of opportunity for us to go build new institutions,

00:10:51.120 new corporations, a new way of living where we and our values are once again welcome. 45,000 Americans

00:11:00.320 in just seven days. Why? Because we showed up. Because we chose to compete. You cannot win

00:11:10.640 if you don't compete. And conservatives for too long have simply not been competing. And it makes

00:11:17.620 sense, right? Why compete? We won. I mean, the 20th century was the American century. We essentially

00:11:23.140 defeated all of our enemies around the world. We defeated communism. We defeated Nazism. We put a man 0.88

00:11:29.540 on the moon. We conquered powered flight. We had unbelievable American hegemony around the world.

00:11:35.700 And like everyone who wins, you eventually get a little lazy. Victory makes you soft.

00:11:43.140 But here's the thing. Unlike a heavyweight champ in boxing who gets soft and ages out,

00:11:48.500 we still have all the energy that we ever had. This company represents a whole new generation

00:11:53.540 of Americans with traditional values. We have all of this energy to animate us as we get back in the

00:11:59.940 fight. We didn't age out. We just took a reprieve. And what we're saying at the Daily Wire is it's time

00:12:05.220 to get back in the fight. It's time to live like Americans. And by the way, you can't save America

00:12:11.060 if you don't live like an American. And what does it mean to live like an American? Well, it means honoring our

00:12:17.780 historic Christian values, of course. Honoring our historic political values, of course. But that's

00:12:25.140 not all it means. It also means honoring our cultural values, the cultural values that made America so

00:12:31.540 unique. There have been other countries filled with religious people. There have been other countries

00:12:37.620 with novel and sometimes very sturdy political systems. American culture is what gave us the American

00:12:44.180 century. And the American culture is truly different than anywhere else on earth. Americans 1.00

00:12:48.980 are people with radically bad ideas. Ideas like, when we finish repairing these bicycles, why don't we

00:12:56.340 see if we can conquer powered flight? Or ideas like, why don't we strap ourselves to the very top of an

00:13:03.140 exploding bomb and see if it will shoot us into outer space? Those are very American ideas. Nobody else in

00:13:09.140 the world does things like that. We're risk takers. We're innovators. And that's what the Daily Wire

00:13:14.980 wants to bring back. So if Harry's Razors is our statement to America that you don't have to give 0.98

00:13:21.220 your money to woke corporations who hate you. And if the Daily Wire itself historically has been our way

00:13:27.380 of saying to Americans, you don't have to give your money to woke corporate media that obviously hates

00:13:32.820 you. Our movie company, Daily Wire Entertainment has been saying, you don't have to give your money to

00:13:38.500 woke entertainment companies that obviously hate you. Where does that leave us now? Well,

00:13:45.060 now it leaves us with Disney. Disney, Disney, Disney. They're the gift that keeps on giving. They gave

00:13:50.180 us Gina Carano. I think we should give them a round of applause for that.

00:13:52.660 And they learned absolutely nothing. They learned absolutely nothing from their defeat in Virginia

00:14:07.940 because of the radicalization of children that was exposed by Luke Rosiak in Loudoun County. They

00:14:13.220 learned nothing. And today, because of the great reporting of Chris Ruffo, we got to see leaked

00:14:18.420 footage from inside Disney of high-up Disney employees saying things like, we have a not-so-secret

00:14:25.460 gay agenda. Saying things like, we insert, we make sure I get this quote right. We're adding in 0.98

00:14:35.300 queerness wherever we can. And that quote, no one is trying to stop the producer who was doing so. Another

00:14:42.740 executive within the company said, if anything, we don't have enough LGBTQIA representation

00:14:50.260 in content made for very small children. So what are we going to do about it? Well,

00:14:56.500 we're going to do the same thing we always do. We're going to build alternatives. Americans have enormous

00:15:01.300 economic might. They just don't have any alternatives. The Daily Wire is building those alternatives.

00:15:07.300 And today, I'm proud to tell you that we will be launching Daily Wire Kids.

00:15:23.620 And I want to be, I want to be clear that DW Kids is not a direct response to the leak tape that we

00:15:30.420 heard from Disney today. We've been working on this for months. Some of you in the room have been a part

00:15:35.860 of it. But we've kept it pretty close. We haven't let most of you in the in the room know, because

00:15:41.220 it just wasn't ready. We wanted a huge announcement. And our plan was to roll out the announcement

00:15:46.420 in November. Let's get past the politics of the midterm elections. Let's get past the Jeremy's

00:15:51.300 Razors launch. Let's get past terror on the prairie. Let's get past what is a woman. Let's get some 1.00

00:15:56.340 open runway in front of us. And then let's announce DW Kids. That's the, that was the plan. Disney took that

00:16:03.940 plan away from us. Because what they expose today to the world is something that we've known all along.

00:16:10.900 Something that anyone working in the entertainment industry has known for a long time. That they are

00:16:16.660 hell bent on taking your children away from you. But what they did today is they exposed it to the

00:16:23.460 whole world. And we want to say there is an alternative coming. We've been working on it

00:16:28.500 four months. Which is why I'm proud to tell you that three months ago we hired our first two writers

00:16:35.140 under DW Entertainment, Eric Branscom and Ethan Nicole. Now these are two writers who came to us by

00:16:41.060 way of the Babylon Bee, one of the funniest websites in America today. But before that, they were the

00:16:46.980 writers on VeggieTales, the animated series. These guys have a deep history in animated kids content

00:16:53.940 that has our values. There's six scripts in to our very first animated kids show, which is called

00:17:00.980 Chilla Time. 0.73

00:17:13.860 Chilla Time is a family of chinchillas who homeschool their kids. And they don't homeschool their kids in 1.00

00:17:20.020 sort of the normal way. There's not a lot of sitting around at tables. There's not a lot of arts and

00:17:26.660 crafts. There's completely immersive insanity. When the Chilla parents want to teach their Chilla kids 1.00

00:17:33.060 about George Washington, suddenly the kids find themselves fighting in the Revolutionary War.

00:17:37.700 But things don't ever go quite like they're supposed to because, of course, we're the Daily Wire and we're

00:17:42.180 not making polemics. So our goal isn't to make a piece of educational content. No, our goal is to make some

00:17:48.660 really great kids content the kids actually want to see, but where they gain some perspective. They gain

00:17:54.420 a sort of baseline understanding of what we might call cultural literacy. So there's no, there's no

00:18:01.300 proof that as they act out the Revolutionary War, anything will actually happen the way it happened

00:18:06.820 in history. But there is absolute, you can count on the fact that it will be absolutely hilarious when

00:18:11.780 it does happen. And more importantly, unlike Disney, which used to create wholesome content,

00:18:17.300 which used to create content that parents could trust their children in front of,

00:18:21.060 parents will be able to rest assured that their kids can watch DW Entertainment, DW Kids,

00:18:26.820 excuse me, Entertainment, without having to review it first and then explain to their kids

00:18:31.700 why mommy and daddy don't actually agree with that TV show later. Our second piece of DW Kids content

00:18:38.420 is called Doodles with Noodles.

00:18:47.620 And while it looks like another animated show, it actually isn't. This is just the only art we had

00:18:52.020 on short notice. Doodles with Noodles is actually a live-action puppet show in which our very own

00:18:57.060 Ethan Nicole will teach kids how to do drawings alongside his friend, the puppet Noodles. Unfortunately,

00:19:04.900 while Noodles is very eager to participate in the drawing process, his drawings never quite turn

00:19:11.780 out the way that Ethan intends. It's an absolutely hilarious concept, and we'll get to see kids

00:19:18.020 actually learn skills that they don't have while, again, also being utterly entertained, which is our

00:19:24.660 first goal with all of our entertainment content. Again, we're not making polemics. You know, we're not making

00:19:30.980 Hillary's Hard Drive Part 3, and we're not making Hillary's Hard Drive Part 3 the animated series

00:19:36.500 for little kids. We're also not making, you know, with our entertainment content, you know, we're not

00:19:41.620 making like conservative Christian content that people really want to want to see. We're making content

00:19:48.980 that has underlying values that conservative Christians all agree upon, but that they actually

00:19:56.740 want to see. Now, with our kids' content, we'll play it much safer than with our adult content. Why?

00:20:03.220 Because you're supposed to give kids a safe environment to be kids. You're not supposed to

00:20:08.260 be challenging kids with radical new ideas. You're supposed to be able to trust your kids in a culture.

00:20:13.220 The left has this phrase, they love to use it, it takes a village, they say, to raise a kid. If that ever

00:20:20.340 meant anything, it should have meant a village is a collection of people who all share common

00:20:26.580 values. It's supposed to mean that any adult can trust their child with any other adult. You can

00:20:31.940 send your kids to school and assume that they're not going to have radical gender and race theories 1.00

00:20:36.980 shoved on them. But we don't live in that village anymore. In fact, the tape that we saw today of

00:20:41.860 those Disney employees was a direct response to a bill passed in Florida. They say it's the

00:20:47.140 don't say gay bill. They say that because they're liars. They say that because they like to frame things up

00:20:53.460 so that people won't use their critical thinking and realize what's actually taking place.

00:20:57.620 The bill in Florida is specifically meant to say that very, very young children, the youngest of

00:21:02.740 the young, the kind of kids who might like doodles with noodles or chill a time, probably have a right

00:21:08.420 to go to school and not hear radical gender and race theory. To say that that shouldn't be too much

00:21:16.180 to ask is, it's absurd to even think that that's a statement that would ever have to be made. If it ever

00:21:21.540 did take a village to raise kids, it took a village you can trust. And unfortunately,

00:21:26.660 in this modern America of ascendant leftism, you cannot trust the village with your kids.

00:21:31.700 You will be able to trust DW Kids content with your kids.

00:21:35.860 Again, lest anyone think that this is us simply grabbing the moment and trying to force a round

00:21:51.220 peg into a square hole and we're all we're doing is reacting to the news cycle. Well, we are reacting

00:21:55.460 in terms of the timing of this announcement. But this project is well underway. As I said,

00:21:59.380 we have six scripts already for chill a time. We're seven figures into this project and we are committed

00:22:04.100 over the next three years to spending at a minimum $100 million on kids content through DW Kids.

00:22:18.340 That's in addition to the more than $100 million that we'll spend over the next three years

00:22:22.580 on DW Entertainment for adults.

00:22:30.580 How are we going to pay for it? 10% pay cuts across the board.

00:22:35.700 No, we're going to pay for it because we believe that there is an underserved audience that is

00:22:40.820 longing for these alternatives. There's an underserved audience that has just been waiting

00:22:45.860 to purchase content that they can believe in, to give their money not to those woke corporations and

00:22:50.420 woke media companies and woke kids entertainment companies that hate them, but to companies like

00:22:56.740 ours that honor them, to companies like ours that represent them. We already have hundreds of

00:23:04.180 thousands of dailywire.com paid subscribers. We need hundreds and hundreds of thousands more.

00:23:10.900 Why? Well, because $100 million on entertainment content, $100 million on kids entertainment content,

00:23:17.860 $150 million run rate in the company. Those are giant numbers. I grew up, you know, middle class in a

00:23:24.980 very small town in West Texas. I know that $1 million sounds like an enormous number. $100 million sounds

00:23:31.140 like an almost incomprehensibly big number. Disney in 2021 spent $25 billion on content alone.

00:23:41.140 Netflix spent $17 billion on content alone. That's two. They own all of the media companies, all of the

00:23:53.140 entertainment companies, all of the kids entertainment companies. You hear numbers like that and you think,

00:23:58.340 well, what's the point? There's no way that we can win. I don't see it that way. We need more money than we

00:24:06.340 have, so we'll go make it. We need more money than we have, so we'll compete that much harder.

00:24:11.700 We need more money than we have, so that we can make even more content and do even more good.

00:24:15.780 But we don't need $25 billion, and we don't need $17 billion, and we don't need those other billions

00:24:20.900 and billions and billions of dollars. In fact, we have them. Because in my view, all that money

00:24:28.580 is just marketing for us. Go ahead, Disney. Make $25 billion worth of content inculcating radical gender 1.00

00:24:37.620 and race theory in children who are six years old. I don't have that money to spend on marketing.

00:24:44.340 I'm glad you do. I know that 50% of everyone who encounters that content is going to want to come

00:24:49.460 over to dailywire.com and subscribe here instead. They'll like what we make more. They'll trust what

00:25:05.140 we make more. And we're snipers. They're just machine guns. We'll hit the target every single time,

00:25:12.180 because we have to hit the target every single time, and they don't. And the funny thing is,

00:25:17.940 they think that when they miss is when they don't have a queer lead in a movie aimed at children. 0.70

00:25:23.940 That's when they think they're missing. I'm here to tell you we'll never miss,

00:25:28.260 and we're not aimed at the same target. What is all of this for? Well, as I said,

00:25:35.140 it's for a positive vision of the future. It's because for too long conservatives have believed

00:25:42.020 that they could just preserve something, that they could hold on for dear life. Buckley used to say,

00:25:47.460 conservatives stand to thwart the rails of history, hollering stop, right? I don't think he used the

00:25:51.940 word hollering. But that is a bad vision for conservatism. That is a losing vision for conservatism.

00:26:00.420 That is not the vision that animates the people in this room. You are builders all. You are true

00:26:05.780 Americans. You are innovators. You don't want to live in a decaying culture. You want to build an

00:26:11.060 ascending culture. Our best days can be ahead. Walt Disney said we can accomplish all of our dreams

00:26:17.860 can come true if we believe. That's what we're saying. We have to believe in that future. I don't

00:26:25.380 think that the future that the Disney company is building today is the future that Walt Disney

00:26:31.300 dreamed of. I think that it's the future that's actually only being dreamed of by a tiny segment

00:26:39.380 of radicalized extreme left. I don't think that your average Democrat wants their kids having

00:26:45.620 those values inculcated in them. I don't think that anyone in this country wants it except a tiny

00:26:51.060 minority. So let them spend all of their money alienating everybody. And we'll be over here waiting. 1.00

00:26:57.620 We'll be challenging them in commerce. We'll be challenging them in news and commentary.

00:27:01.860 We'll be challenging them in entertainment. We'll be challenging them in kids content.

00:27:06.100 We believe in our Daily Wire audience. We believe that they will subscribe. In fact,

00:27:10.660 if you're watching right now and you're not a dailywire.com subscriber, I'm asking you not for a

00:27:15.220 donation. I'm asking you not begging. I'm asking you go buy something, something of real value.

00:27:22.020 Go buy a membership to the Daily Wire. Go buy a membership to Jeremy's Razors. Put your money

00:27:28.740 where your mouth is. Come take part with us in building the future. In fact, if you go to

00:27:33.860 dailywire.com slash build the future right now, you can become a dailywire.com member. If you want to,

00:27:40.180 because I know the price is high, if you want to save a little money, you could use promo code

00:27:43.860 build the future and we'll give you 45% off. Or don't. Because we need all the money that we can

00:27:50.660 get. What is it worth to you? What's it worth to you to have content that you can trust your

00:27:56.260 children with? What's it worth to you to have entertainment that doesn't sucker punch you

00:28:00.260 every time you turn it on? What's it worth to you to have a good shave without believing that the

00:28:05.380 company that's selling you the razor wants to cut your throat? Figuratively. What's it worth to you?

00:28:13.060 I'm betting it's worth something. I'm betting everything that it's worth something. I'm betting

00:28:18.740 that boat that I could have bought. Ben's betting that boat that he could have bought. Caleb's betting

00:28:23.060 that boat that he's still might buy. And none of us think Ben Shapiro was ever getting on a boat.

00:28:30.100 I don't even know what I'm talking about. We're betting all of that on the idea

00:28:34.740 that Americans have just been waiting for these alternatives.

00:28:38.900 And we're going to give them to them. Thank you guys.

00:28:47.860 Does anybody have any questions? And we're also going to be taking questions from the online audience

00:28:51.700 as well. Is this? There we go. I have the questions from our staff. We have a couple.

00:28:58.500 Um, Casey asked that we have just gotten 45,000 orders of Jeremy's razors. What is next?

00:29:09.300 So the question is, we just got 45,000 orders for Jeremy's razors. What's next? And the answer is,

00:29:14.500 we have to build a razor company. The razors are real. This box says Jeremy's razors on it. That's a real

00:29:21.140 box. This is a real bag. And it has the little forward flag on it, the daily wire flag.

00:29:30.420 And here is a beautiful Jeremy's razor.

00:29:43.460 I know a lot of people online weren't sure if the whole thing was a joke.

00:29:46.260 It's very real. What we have is razors. What we have is shave cream and post-shave balm. And they're

00:29:57.300 great. What we don't have is a single employee for our razor company. And so what we've been doing

00:30:04.500 over the last week is moving very quickly to stand up a business that can actually support the amount

00:30:10.020 of enthusiasm that exists out there. We have a team that's been in LA, uh, in Southern California,

00:30:15.060 not in LA, uh, for the last several days sourcing what our next products will be. We need shampoo.

00:30:20.900 We need, uh, we need conditioner. We need hair gels. We need all the things that make a great men's

00:30:25.940 grooming line. And we need a woman's grooming line because it turns out 50% of our customers aren't men. 1.00

00:30:33.620 Not something we anticipated when we launched, uh, Jeremy's razors.

00:30:36.820 Uh, and we need people who can do all the logistics, all the sourcing, all the fulfillment.

00:30:42.020 We need people who can help us solve one of the age-old problems in this country, which is,

00:30:46.180 uh, not age-old, but generation-old, which is that America exported all of its manufacturing

00:30:51.140 infrastructure. Much like the people watching this at home on their iPhones or on their laptops or on

00:30:58.580 their computers or even on their TVs, these razors aren't manufactured in America. Just like that TV

00:31:04.420 and that laptop and that iPhone that people are watching on were not manufactured in America.

00:31:08.980 We didn't export America's manufacturing infrastructure overseas. That's just the

00:31:13.460 world that we were born into. And bringing that manufacturing infrastructure back to America

00:31:19.460 is beyond the capacity of a one-week-old razor startup. That takes enormous economic might.

00:31:26.900 But it's not beyond the economic might of a strong and successful

00:31:30.980 razor company. Which is why it's a shame that Gillette or Schick or Harry's or Dollar Shave

00:31:37.220 Club or any of the giants in the field haven't moved to bring their manufacturing back to America.

00:31:42.580 And it's why we're proud that, in success, The Daily Wire is committed to doing just that.

00:31:47.460 If we sell one million razor subscriptions, we will build our razors in America.

00:31:52.180 And if we don't get to a million subscribers, maybe we'll put enough pressure on those other

00:32:05.780 razor companies that they'll bring their manufacturing back to America.

00:32:09.060 All right, I'll ask the second one as you're putting all that away. Alex wants to know,

00:32:19.300 how do you think woke companies will respond to these endeavors?

00:32:24.020 Well, how do I think woke companies will respond to our endeavors?

00:32:29.940 Harry's razors chose to ignore us. Now, they didn't quite ignore us. They turned off all of their

00:32:35.460 social posting for a week. They turned off all of their social advertising on Facebook and other

00:32:40.180 platforms for a week. And one of their co-CEOs did mumble off something about hate speech,

00:32:45.940 because apparently it's hate speech to say that boys are boys and girls are girls. It's hate speech

00:32:52.100 to say that gender follows a biological sexual construct. I don't know when it became hate

00:32:59.700 speech. It certainly wasn't hate speech 15 years ago when every single person on the modern left

00:33:05.540 believed exactly that. Or for any of the thousands of years of human history leading all the way back

00:33:10.740 to the book of Genesis where it says male and female he made them. In other words, it can't be

00:33:15.620 hate speech to believe what the vast majority of humans alive today and all of human beings alive 15

00:33:22.340 years ago and throughout all of human history have believed. It's an absurd notion. But it's his way of

00:33:28.340 saying, no, no, no, it's not conservatives that I hate. It's just, you know, hate speech believed by all

00:33:34.340 conservatives and most Democrats. Again, keep talking. I wish that we had a marketing budget

00:33:42.180 just to market the things that they say and believe, because that's how we're going to sell

00:33:45.780 these razors. So we're standing up a razor company. That's the first thing. We're looking into

00:33:52.180 ways to make a woman's version of this and a woman's cosmetic line. And we're looking at so many

00:33:57.700 other companies. Tucker Carlson said when I was on his show last week, he said, it's like he had this

00:34:03.140 revelation. He said, you could do this with anything. And he's right. And we intend to.

00:34:16.260 All right. I'm going to move on to the questions that we've gotten from the live audience.

00:34:20.500 We have a few here. So when will DW Kids release its first show?

00:34:26.020 Yep. Well, our hope is to have something out by the end of 2022. The animated content like

00:34:31.540 Chilla Time will be the spring of 2023. And the reason for that is it takes about 12 months 0.99

00:34:37.860 to animate this content. Animation is much slower than physical production. Physical production,

00:34:42.180 you point a camera at something and the something exists. Obviously, that's not the case with

00:34:45.540 animation. It's a very painstaking process. But as you can see, we're far along in story development,

00:34:50.660 far along in script writing, far along in character development. So as I say, we will have some kids

00:34:57.940 offering by the end of this year. And we will have a full slate of kids content by spring of 2023.

00:35:04.980 Not just these two shows. By spring of 2023, we fully expect to have four shows for kids on the

00:35:11.540 platform for series. Got it. Another question is, how does one apply to work for slash with you?

00:35:18.820 Well, you go to careers at dailywire.com. And I'll just tell you what I said at the beginning of these

00:35:26.980 remarks. This is not an easy place to work. We're driven. We're on a mission. We're trying to do

00:35:32.180 something that no one has done in our space in our lifetime. We're trying to navigate incredibly

00:35:39.140 shark infested waters. And so we all work hard. You know, we have a coastal work ethic, we come to work

00:35:44.500 to work. But we also believe in that definition of happiness from antiquity, which says happiness

00:35:51.060 is pouring your best efforts into the thing that you believe in the most. So in that sense,

00:35:55.540 it's a wonderful but challenging place to work. We want the best. If you're the best,

00:36:01.300 go over to careers at dailywire.com. We'd love to have you. Fantastic. Will there be a separate DWKids app?

00:36:08.740 No. What there will be is parental filters on the existing app. And the app itself,

00:36:14.820 as we currently understand it, is undergoing seismic change. By the time the DWKids content

00:36:21.860 rolls out, the way that people interact with our app will have changed already. And then that new

00:36:27.460 content will accompany another change, which is the parental filters. So much like when you go to

00:36:31.620 Disney Plus, or when you go to Netflix, when you go to Hulu, when you go to any of these apps, you

00:36:35.860 you set whether or not a child is watching or an adult is watching. If you're a child,

00:36:41.620 you'll get Chilla Time and the videos of PragerU, which are on our platform and content like that.

00:36:47.780 If you're an adult, you'll get the DWKids, adult entertainment content, some of our harder political

00:36:54.100 content. Sadly, everyone will probably still get Michael Knowles, but there will be some sorting of

00:37:02.500 content that goes on. All right. We've gotten this one a few times, which is positive. What was the

00:37:07.460 promo code? Build the future. Build the future. That's what we're doing. We're building the future.

00:37:15.300 That's what conservatives haven't done. They have not built the future. The only way to build the future

00:37:20.100 is for people to use that promo code. Let's see. Is there any plans for preteen slash teen shows?

00:37:28.260 Yes, absolutely. In fact, I read a terrific script just this last week that is a live action show aimed at

00:37:38.500 teens. And I think that some of our, you know, not in this first year, but some of our

00:37:44.100 second year entertainment content, even what we're calling adult entertainment, will actually have more

00:37:48.900 like a CW type feel to it. So I think that, you know, we'll have very specifically kids content by

00:37:56.820 spring of 2023. By the end of 2023, we'll have more of what you would call four quadrant content,

00:38:01.940 where adults and kids together can engage in, in, you know, really high action or really high fantasy.

00:38:08.420 Perfect. And our last question is, how can I invest?

00:38:11.620 Well, make your check payable to God King, lowercase g, lowercase k. You know,

00:38:19.460 the Daily Wire took investment when we first started the company. In 2015, a high net worth

00:38:25.140 family out of Texas gave us what at the time was an enormous commitment. They committed seven and a

00:38:31.860 half million dollars to help launch the Daily Wire. We spent over 14 months about 4.7 million of those

00:38:38.740 $7.5 million. And then we quit spending it. And we never went back and took any more of it. Because

00:38:45.220 in month 14, the company became cash flow positive. And so since 2016, basically, we've powered all of

00:38:52.100 the growth of the company out of our cash flow. We've grown everything just with the money that we make.

00:38:57.620 We never wanted to go back to that investor. Well, in particular, we didn't want to go to it early for

00:39:01.380 a couple of reasons. One, because we wanted to be a for profit company, not just a for profit company in

00:39:06.420 name only. We wanted to be a company that actually made profit. Our original mantra for Caleb, our co-CEO,

00:39:12.500 Ben, co-founder, me, we would say to each other all the time, make $1 more than you spend. That was

00:39:19.300 the mantra of the company, make $1 more than you spend. Why? Well, because so much of the right is

00:39:25.060 powered by a nonprofit mentality. Even certain for profit companies on the right are effectively

00:39:30.260 nonprofit companies. They run out of a nonprofit mentality. And that nonprofit mentality, as I said earlier,

00:39:35.780 can far too often be lose, complain, beg for donations. The nonprofit mentality is a losing

00:39:42.500 mentality. That's not to say there aren't great nonprofits on the right. There are, there aren't

00:39:46.660 many. There are great nonprofits on the right. And there are many, many, many terrible nonprofits

00:39:52.980 on the right who exist to take money from donors to make them feel like they're accomplishing something

00:39:58.260 while losing every single important fight. We did not want to be a part of that cycle.

00:40:04.260 We think that it's a shame that the political movement that purports to believe in market

00:40:10.820 capitalism, that purports to believe in free exchange or free markets, almost exclusively uses

00:40:17.940 nonprofit mechanisms to promulgate our worldview. And we think it's a shame that the other side,

00:40:24.020 which purports to hate capitalism and purports to hate big business, almost exclusively uses market

00:40:29.540 means, market mechanisms to promulgate their worldview. By our own worldview, we're going to

00:40:34.900 lose. We picked the less efficient mechanism. So we wanted to be a true for-profit company.

00:40:43.060 Now that said, as we've grown, we've realized that there's, there's more to being a for-profit

00:40:48.500 company than paying for everything out of cash flow. You have to have access to capital markets

00:40:53.620 eventually to scale. Almost all major for-profit companies operating at scale have had to access

00:41:00.340 capital. Now that doesn't mean, you know, being beholden to a single billionaire owner who,

00:41:07.940 you know, sometimes can wield a company as, as almost like a train set. It means real capital

00:41:13.700 markets. It means real debt instruments. It means perhaps even public capital markets. And we've been

00:41:21.540 in talks as an executive team about if and when we will need access to those capital markets. Today,

00:41:28.020 we don't. Today, we're not looking for investors in the core business. Tomorrow, we might. What it

00:41:33.700 really is going to come down to is, can we keep up with the growth without accessing that capital? If we

00:41:39.380 need that capital, we're certainly not going to make any sort of offhand commitment never to access

00:41:45.860 that kind of capital. Absolutely not. Obviously, every single company on Wall Street is on, you know,

00:41:50.660 is publicly traded because they want access to capital markets. Again, Disney is slotted to spend

00:41:56.740 33 billion dollars on content in 2022. 25 billion dollars on content in 2021. A day may come where we

00:42:03.940 think the only way to compete is to access those markets. But what we want is to control our destinies.

00:42:08.980 What we want is to control this company. What we want is to make sure that we're not subject to the

00:42:13.540 whims of the current ESG movement, which is environmental and social governance, which is

00:42:18.580 this movement in public markets and with institutional capital investors to essentially say, the only way

00:42:24.580 you can have our money is if you become what you hate. If you peddle climate hysteria, if you peddle

00:42:33.540 uh, gender and racial, uh, division in the country, we're not willing to subject ourselves to those 0.99

00:42:39.940 currents. And so we don't want to take that kind of capital until we're absolutely certain that our

00:42:45.460 future is secure. And that means growing under our own power for as long as possible and maybe forever.

00:42:50.980 I'll leave you with this if there are no more questions. I know it's with affection that you

00:43:05.220 all call me the god king, lowercase g, lowercase k. I've given a lot of thought to why Andrew Clay,

00:43:10.500 by the way, the left likes to say the self-proclaimed god king. I didn't proclaim myself

00:43:14.660 the god king. Andrew Clavin proclaimed me the god king. I've given a lot of thought to why Andrew

00:43:18.500 Clavin did that. And I think that it's for two reasons. One is because we were building something

00:43:23.940 fun and irreverent, something that didn't exist, something that hadn't existed on the right before.

00:43:29.140 And so he thought that it was good that we have a kind of irreverent way of referring, uh, to the

00:43:35.060 guy in charge. But I think that there's a little more to it too. I think that he wanted to make sure

00:43:39.700 that I never confused myself with the uppercase variety. He wanted to make sure that I kept my own

00:43:44.100 hubris in check and made sure that I stayed on mission. And our mission is obviously not to

00:43:49.380 advance the whims of the lowercase gk, but hopefully to build a future founded on the truths that we

00:43:56.100 learned from the uppercase guy. So I'll leave you with this thought from the uppercase guy.

00:44:00.420 It's the uppercase guy who commands that man be optimistic. It's the uppercase guy who says,

00:44:07.220 be fruitful, multiply, lift up now thine eyes to the horizon, leave the land of your fathers and

00:44:13.620 go into the land that I have promised you. That's a call to walk to a future. That's a call to believe

00:44:19.700 in hope that there's something better ahead, that our best days aren't merely behind. It's a command

00:44:27.220 to creativity. It's a command to build the future. So that's what we're going to do. Thanks guys.

00:44:37.220 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - April 09, 2022

Building the Future

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