Building the Future
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
165.4281
Summary
In this episode, Ben Shapiro returns to the audience for a new Town Hall-style town hall-style meeting. Today s town hall is a chance for the audience to get to know the company and hear from Ben and his team behind the scenes.
Transcript
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Thank you. You all still have jobs. We've been doing these town halls now really since the
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beginning of the company. We used to do them quite frequently on a monthly basis. It's a
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good way to let the company know everything that's happening, make sure that everybody's
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plugged in. As we get bigger and bigger, it gets harder and harder. You guys get less and
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less access to the executives. And one of the mistakes that we made is we stopped having
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them for a long period of time. We've made a commitment that we're going to do these more
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and more. And in fact, you'll all recall that we did one quite recently. So why are we doing
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another one so soon? Well, the answer is we realized that we made a real mistake in not
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streaming this out to the public. So much of what companies do these days, they do behind
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closed doors. We think that's wrong. For a company like ours, it's wrong, especially because
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our audience is our customer. Our audience is the most important. Our audience powers
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all of this. They pay all of your salaries, much as it pains me to admit. I like to take
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credit when you buy houses and have fancy cars so I can take it away from you out of nothing
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but spite, god king spite. But of course, that's not true. It's our audience who makes all of
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this possible. So why shouldn't we let our audience see what we're thinking? Why shouldn't
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we give them access to the inner workings of the company? Our paying dailywire.com members
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in particular have a right to know what's going on inside the heads of the executives
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of this company, why we're doing the things that we're doing. And you have the right to
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know why we're doing the things that we're doing as well. As I say, as the company gets
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bigger, I know sometimes you guys get pulled with the currents. You don't know exactly what
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direction we're going. We make you do new things every day. It's just good for us to be
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able to take these opportunities, reset, make sure that we sync up and that we're all charging
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the same hill together. And I think that includes our dailywire.com customers and audience as well.
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So I want to give you an update on what's going on with the company, what we've accomplished
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so far, what fights we've picked, what fights we've won. And I want to tell you about the
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fights that are yet to come. First, it's been an unbelievable 2022. In the first quarter
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of 2022 alone, we have launched more new content than in all of 2021 combined. And since our last
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major town hall in November, we've launched more content than we had launched in the previous
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two years. I'll give you just a quick retrospective. I know the pace has been grueling and many of
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you have worked on any number of these projects, but not all of you have worked on all of these
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projects. Since our last time together, we've created a bestselling children's book, Johnny
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the Walrus. We launched a new Ben Shapiro series called The Search. We launched a second new Ben
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Shapiro series called The Third Thursday Book Club. We launched our first original feature film
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called Shut In. Our third feature release, The Hyperions. We also launched our first comedy special,
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Truth Yeller with Adam Carolla. Our first docu-podcast, China, The Enemy Within.
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You didn't let me finish Fauci Unmasked with Michael Knoll, so there's no need to clap.
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Absolutely no need to clap. A new social media show, comment section with Brett Cooper.
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The female Ben Shapiro is already doing almost as well as the male Ben Shapiro. The show has
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really taken off. It's an amazing new addition, and it represents a new foray into social-first
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content. And of course, we launched the number one sports show in its first week, Crane & Company.
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For those of you who haven't seen it, there's a bus waiting parked right outside behind the studio with
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that giant three faces on it, ready to head down to the final four. In that same time period,
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we've moved into our new studio in South Florida. We've picked up 14,000 square feet of new office
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space here at our Nashville campus. We've added 75,000 new paid DailyWire.com members. We became
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the seventh largest podcast company in the country per pod track, hit our 15th consecutive month as
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the number one most engaged publisher in the world on Facebook, according to Newswhip. We killed it at
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the podcast up front, and we crossed the $100 million annual revenue mark for the first time.
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And at this moment, we have an annualized run rate of $150 million.
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We also signed Jonathan Isaac. We deployed Cassie Dillon to western Ukraine. We launched our merch
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store. We helped elect a governor in Virginia after Luke Rosiak's remarkable reporting from Loudoun
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County. We kicked Joe Biden's ass at the United States Supreme Court, ensuring that Americans still
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have their most fundamental freedoms. And we launched a little razor company, which sold 45,000
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razors and subscriptions in its first seven days in existence.
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Along the way, we also announced our first feature documentary, What is a Woman with Matt Walsh.
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And in just two months, we'll be launching Gina Carano's Terror on the Prairie.
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It's been a hell of a run. I know that you've all worked incredibly hard. I know that this is a
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incredibly hard place to work. I mentioned the last time we were together, we know that there is an
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enormous amount of stress, even at our level as executives in the company. Sometimes we boast
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that we're piloting a rocket ship, but most of the time it feels like we're strapped to the side of a
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rocket ship. It's almost impossible for any of us to grow fast enough in our professional careers
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to keep up with the demands that the company is putting on it. And my hopeful message for you
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today is, it ain't going to get any easier. It's not going to get any easier because the stakes are
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just too high. It's not going to get any easier because almost no one is privileged enough in their
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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
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possibly go. Why? Why? Well, we don't have to. We've already far exceeded the wildest expectations of
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Caleb and Ben and I when we started the company. If we wanted boats, we could surely go buy boats. We
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could cash in, let you guys take it from here, and we could live lives of ease. But we're not doing
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that. Instead, we're pushing all of our chips back in. We're pushing all the money into investments in the
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future of the company. We're taking the biggest risks that we've ever taken in our lives because
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we have an affirmative vision for the future of this country. Because for too long, conservatives
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have responded to every new assault in the culture war with the same tired nonprofit cycle of lose,
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complain, and beg for donations. Lose, complain, and beg for donations. Then you lose some more and
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complain some more and beg some more for some more donations. And all the while, the left takes over
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every single institution. The left drives us further and further out of our own culture.
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The left indoctrinates our children with radical gender and race theory. The left takes away the
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fruit of our labor. They take away our claim to our country. And we're just not going to put up with
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it anymore. We're going to do something different, something conservatives have not done
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in my lifetime. We're going to build a future. Not lament the past, not grieve the past, make something
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completely new. Something that's, yes, built on the foundation of the past, the best ideas of the past,
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the best values of the past, but not something trying to take us back to the past. Because the dirty secret
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is the past was just another time. It came with all of its own problems. In the 1950s, the nuclear family
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was in great shape. And black people couldn't drink from water fountains in certain states in the
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south. We don't want to replicate that. We want to take the first idea, the nuclear family, a really
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good idea, and use it to build a future, a future that has the nuclear family, and where black people
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can still drink from the same water fountains as everyone else, right? We're not idealizing what's
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gone before. We're learning from what went before. That's what the left doesn't want us to do. The left
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thinks that you can just throw away all the best lessons of history and just imagine your way into
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an idyllic sort of utopian future. That's hubris. We're not hubristic here. We're delusional, but
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we're not hubristic. What do I mean by delusion? What I really mean is that we just believe in
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ourselves. We believe in this country. We're confident. We believe that our best days can be
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ahead. We believe that we can have a seat at the table, that our values can still be represented
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in the future, but only if we're the ones actively building it. There is so much opportunity in the
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hubris of the left. They keep tearing our culture apart and paying no economic consequence. Why?
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Because they know that we still have to buy their goods and services. They know that we still need a
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good razor. They know that we still need good shoes. They know that we still need good entertainment.
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And so they can take for granted that we will keep paying them, even as they tell us again and again
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and again that we have no real place in the world that they're building except to give them our money.
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That's why we started Jeremy's Razors. And I want to put a little context to that number I told you a
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moment ago. 45,000 Razors. 45,000 Razor Blade subscriptions, meaning recurring revenue into the
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future. That's 45,000 Americans who said, well, we've had enough. We don't have to give our money
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to people who obviously don't think we deserve their product. We can give it to someone who wants to
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communicate with us, who wants to represent our values. We can give them to someone who has an
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affirmative vision for the country. They can give it to me. And that's what they're doing. And there
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are so many more of them. 45,000 is just the beginning. And Razors are just the beginning.
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The hubris of the left has created an infinite sea of opportunity for us to go build new institutions,
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new corporations, a new way of living where we and our values are once again welcome. 45,000 Americans
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in just seven days. Why? Because we showed up. Because we chose to compete. You cannot win
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if you don't compete. And conservatives for too long have simply not been competing. And it makes
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sense, right? Why compete? We won. I mean, the 20th century was the American century. We essentially
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defeated all of our enemies around the world. We defeated communism. We defeated Nazism. We put a man
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on the moon. We conquered powered flight. We had unbelievable American hegemony around the world.
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And like everyone who wins, you eventually get a little lazy. Victory makes you soft.
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But here's the thing. Unlike a heavyweight champ in boxing who gets soft and ages out,
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we still have all the energy that we ever had. This company represents a whole new generation
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of Americans with traditional values. We have all of this energy to animate us as we get back in the
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fight. We didn't age out. We just took a reprieve. And what we're saying at the Daily Wire is it's time
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to get back in the fight. It's time to live like Americans. And by the way, you can't save America
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if you don't live like an American. And what does it mean to live like an American? Well, it means honoring our
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historic Christian values, of course. Honoring our historic political values, of course. But that's
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not all it means. It also means honoring our cultural values, the cultural values that made America so
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unique. There have been other countries filled with religious people. There have been other countries
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with novel and sometimes very sturdy political systems. American culture is what gave us the American
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century. And the American culture is truly different than anywhere else on earth. Americans
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are people with radically bad ideas. Ideas like, when we finish repairing these bicycles, why don't we
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see if we can conquer powered flight? Or ideas like, why don't we strap ourselves to the very top of an
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exploding bomb and see if it will shoot us into outer space? Those are very American ideas. Nobody else in
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the world does things like that. We're risk takers. We're innovators. And that's what the Daily Wire
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wants to bring back. So if Harry's Razors is our statement to America that you don't have to give
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your money to woke corporations who hate you. And if the Daily Wire itself historically has been our way
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of saying to Americans, you don't have to give your money to woke corporate media that obviously hates
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you. Our movie company, Daily Wire Entertainment has been saying, you don't have to give your money to
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woke entertainment companies that obviously hate you. Where does that leave us now? Well,
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now it leaves us with Disney. Disney, Disney, Disney. They're the gift that keeps on giving. They gave
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us Gina Carano. I think we should give them a round of applause for that.
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And they learned absolutely nothing. They learned absolutely nothing from their defeat in Virginia
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because of the radicalization of children that was exposed by Luke Rosiak in Loudoun County. They
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learned nothing. And today, because of the great reporting of Chris Ruffo, we got to see leaked
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footage from inside Disney of high-up Disney employees saying things like, we have a not-so-secret
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gay agenda. Saying things like, we insert, we make sure I get this quote right. We're adding in
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queerness wherever we can. And that quote, no one is trying to stop the producer who was doing so. Another
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executive within the company said, if anything, we don't have enough LGBTQIA representation
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in content made for very small children. So what are we going to do about it? Well,
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we're going to do the same thing we always do. We're going to build alternatives. Americans have enormous
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economic might. They just don't have any alternatives. The Daily Wire is building those alternatives.
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And today, I'm proud to tell you that we will be launching Daily Wire Kids.
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And I want to be, I want to be clear that DW Kids is not a direct response to the leak tape that we
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heard from Disney today. We've been working on this for months. Some of you in the room have been a part
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of it. But we've kept it pretty close. We haven't let most of you in the in the room know, because
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it just wasn't ready. We wanted a huge announcement. And our plan was to roll out the announcement
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in November. Let's get past the politics of the midterm elections. Let's get past the Jeremy's
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Razors launch. Let's get past terror on the prairie. Let's get past what is a woman. Let's get some
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open runway in front of us. And then let's announce DW Kids. That's the, that was the plan. Disney took that
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plan away from us. Because what they expose today to the world is something that we've known all along.
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Something that anyone working in the entertainment industry has known for a long time. That they are
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hell bent on taking your children away from you. But what they did today is they exposed it to the
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whole world. And we want to say there is an alternative coming. We've been working on it
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four months. Which is why I'm proud to tell you that three months ago we hired our first two writers
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under DW Entertainment, Eric Branscom and Ethan Nicole. Now these are two writers who came to us by
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way of the Babylon Bee, one of the funniest websites in America today. But before that, they were the
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writers on VeggieTales, the animated series. These guys have a deep history in animated kids content
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that has our values. There's six scripts in to our very first animated kids show, which is called
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Chilla Time is a family of chinchillas who homeschool their kids. And they don't homeschool their kids in
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sort of the normal way. There's not a lot of sitting around at tables. There's not a lot of arts and
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crafts. There's completely immersive insanity. When the Chilla parents want to teach their Chilla kids
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about George Washington, suddenly the kids find themselves fighting in the Revolutionary War.
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But things don't ever go quite like they're supposed to because, of course, we're the Daily Wire and we're
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not making polemics. So our goal isn't to make a piece of educational content. No, our goal is to make some
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really great kids content the kids actually want to see, but where they gain some perspective. They gain
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a sort of baseline understanding of what we might call cultural literacy. So there's no, there's no
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proof that as they act out the Revolutionary War, anything will actually happen the way it happened
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in history. But there is absolute, you can count on the fact that it will be absolutely hilarious when
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it does happen. And more importantly, unlike Disney, which used to create wholesome content,
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which used to create content that parents could trust their children in front of,
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parents will be able to rest assured that their kids can watch DW Entertainment, DW Kids,
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excuse me, Entertainment, without having to review it first and then explain to their kids
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why mommy and daddy don't actually agree with that TV show later. Our second piece of DW Kids content
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And while it looks like another animated show, it actually isn't. This is just the only art we had
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on short notice. Doodles with Noodles is actually a live-action puppet show in which our very own
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Ethan Nicole will teach kids how to do drawings alongside his friend, the puppet Noodles. Unfortunately,
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while Noodles is very eager to participate in the drawing process, his drawings never quite turn
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out the way that Ethan intends. It's an absolutely hilarious concept, and we'll get to see kids
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actually learn skills that they don't have while, again, also being utterly entertained, which is our
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first goal with all of our entertainment content. Again, we're not making polemics. You know, we're not making
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Hillary's Hard Drive Part 3, and we're not making Hillary's Hard Drive Part 3 the animated series
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for little kids. We're also not making, you know, with our entertainment content, you know, we're not
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making like conservative Christian content that people really want to want to see. We're making content
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that has underlying values that conservative Christians all agree upon, but that they actually
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want to see. Now, with our kids' content, we'll play it much safer than with our adult content. Why?
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Because you're supposed to give kids a safe environment to be kids. You're not supposed to
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be challenging kids with radical new ideas. You're supposed to be able to trust your kids in a culture.
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The left has this phrase, they love to use it, it takes a village, they say, to raise a kid. If that ever
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meant anything, it should have meant a village is a collection of people who all share common
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values. It's supposed to mean that any adult can trust their child with any other adult. You can
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send your kids to school and assume that they're not going to have radical gender and race theories
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shoved on them. But we don't live in that village anymore. In fact, the tape that we saw today of
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those Disney employees was a direct response to a bill passed in Florida. They say it's the
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don't say gay bill. They say that because they're liars. They say that because they like to frame things up
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so that people won't use their critical thinking and realize what's actually taking place.
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The bill in Florida is specifically meant to say that very, very young children, the youngest of
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the young, the kind of kids who might like doodles with noodles or chill a time, probably have a right
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to go to school and not hear radical gender and race theory. To say that that shouldn't be too much
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to ask is, it's absurd to even think that that's a statement that would ever have to be made. If it ever
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did take a village to raise kids, it took a village you can trust. And unfortunately,
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in this modern America of ascendant leftism, you cannot trust the village with your kids.
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You will be able to trust DW Kids content with your kids.
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Again, lest anyone think that this is us simply grabbing the moment and trying to force a round
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peg into a square hole and we're all we're doing is reacting to the news cycle. Well, we are reacting
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in terms of the timing of this announcement. But this project is well underway. As I said,
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we have six scripts already for chill a time. We're seven figures into this project and we are committed
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over the next three years to spending at a minimum $100 million on kids content through DW Kids.
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That's in addition to the more than $100 million that we'll spend over the next three years
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How are we going to pay for it? 10% pay cuts across the board.
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No, we're going to pay for it because we believe that there is an underserved audience that is
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longing for these alternatives. There's an underserved audience that has just been waiting
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to purchase content that they can believe in, to give their money not to those woke corporations and
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woke media companies and woke kids entertainment companies that hate them, but to companies like
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ours that honor them, to companies like ours that represent them. We already have hundreds of
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thousands of dailywire.com paid subscribers. We need hundreds and hundreds of thousands more.
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Why? Well, because $100 million on entertainment content, $100 million on kids entertainment content,
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$150 million run rate in the company. Those are giant numbers. I grew up, you know, middle class in a
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very small town in West Texas. I know that $1 million sounds like an enormous number. $100 million sounds
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like an almost incomprehensibly big number. Disney in 2021 spent $25 billion on content alone.
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Netflix spent $17 billion on content alone. That's two. They own all of the media companies, all of the
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entertainment companies, all of the kids entertainment companies. You hear numbers like that and you think,
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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
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have, so we'll go make it. We need more money than we have, so we'll compete that much harder.
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We need more money than we have, so that we can make even more content and do even more good.
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But we don't need $25 billion, and we don't need $17 billion, and we don't need those other billions
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and billions and billions of dollars. In fact, we have them. Because in my view, all that money
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is just marketing for us. Go ahead, Disney. Make $25 billion worth of content inculcating radical gender
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and race theory in children who are six years old. I don't have that money to spend on marketing.
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I'm glad you do. I know that 50% of everyone who encounters that content is going to want to come
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over to dailywire.com and subscribe here instead. They'll like what we make more. They'll trust what
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we make more. And we're snipers. They're just machine guns. We'll hit the target every single time,
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because we have to hit the target every single time, and they don't. And the funny thing is,
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they think that when they miss is when they don't have a queer lead in a movie aimed at children.
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That's when they think they're missing. I'm here to tell you we'll never miss,
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and we're not aimed at the same target. What is all of this for? Well, as I said,
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it's for a positive vision of the future. It's because for too long conservatives have believed
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that they could just preserve something, that they could hold on for dear life. Buckley used to say,
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conservatives stand to thwart the rails of history, hollering stop, right? I don't think he used the
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word hollering. But that is a bad vision for conservatism. That is a losing vision for conservatism.
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That is not the vision that animates the people in this room. You are builders all. You are true
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Americans. You are innovators. You don't want to live in a decaying culture. You want to build an
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ascending culture. Our best days can be ahead. Walt Disney said we can accomplish all of our dreams
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can come true if we believe. That's what we're saying. We have to believe in that future. I don't
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think that the future that the Disney company is building today is the future that Walt Disney
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dreamed of. I think that it's the future that's actually only being dreamed of by a tiny segment
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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.
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.
00:29:43.460
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.
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
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
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.