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Speaker 1: Airbnb was able to create tens of billions of dollars

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by democratizing hospitality. We believe there is a huge opportunity

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for someone to make tens of billions of dollars by

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democratizing social media marketing and advertising. You take a picture

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of your latte and you're going to get paid ten

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dollars for sharing that picture or reel of your latte

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with your friends on your social media and we pay

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you through Venmo or PayPal. The Financial Survival Network now

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more than ever, the Financial Survival Network.

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Speaker 2: And welcome. This is Financial Survival Network. I'm your host,

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Carrie Lutz, and well got a really interesting company to

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share with you today. The name of it is thumbs

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Up Media and that's thumzupmedia dot com. That's their site

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NASDAC symbol tzup with me?

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Speaker 1: Now?

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Speaker 2: Is there?

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Speaker 1: CEO?

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Speaker 2: Robert Steele? And I Before I start the interview, Robert,

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I just want to preface it. I looked at your site.

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I looked at your concept of being able to effectively

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get your message out without having to go through a

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huge gatekeeper media concern where you pay a lot of money,

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you waste a lot of money. And I think it's brilliant.

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On that note, tell us exactly how it works and

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where you're at in the process.

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Speaker 1: Sure, thank you, Kerry, great to speak with you today. Yeah,

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So we believe that there is a need for what

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we think of as Uber for advertising. So just like

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how Uber was able to create tens of billions of

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dollars in value by democratizing ride sharing, and similar to

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how Airbnb was able to create tens of billions of

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dollars by democratizing hospitality, we believe there is a huge

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opportunity for someone to make tens of billions of dollars

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by democratizing social media marketing and advertising. And that means

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opening it up so that everybody can participate and everybody

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can make a little money. So with that concept, we

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came up with the thumbs Up app. It's currently in

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the Apple App Store and it's in the Google Play Store.

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So we have more than a thousand advertisers on the

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platform where people can go to one of our advertisers

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and they can get paid to make a social media

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post to their personal friends to the thumbs Up app. So,

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as we were talking about just a moment ago, we

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have a coffee shop in Los Angeles called the Frenchy Cafe.

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So you can go to the Frenchy Cafe and there's

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a sign on the counter that says get paid to post.

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It's got the QR code for the thumbs Up app

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on it. You point your phone camera at the QR code,

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it puts the thumbs up app on your phone. You

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take a picture of your latte, and you're going to

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get paid ten dollars for sharing that picture or reel

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of your latte with your friend on your social media,

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and we pay you through Venmo or PayPal. And then

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also this works for consumer products. So we have a

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soda brand called Bossa Nova Soda and soda Bossa Rather

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and you can go to Ralph's or Vaughn's here in

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southern California and get paid ten dollars to share a

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photo or a real of soda Bassa with your friends

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on social media. So when your listeners hear that, we

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want them to think, Wow, if it's working for that

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one beverage brand, it could work for every beverage brand,

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And if it's working for that one coffee shop, it

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could work for every coffee shop. So we're very excited

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about the thumbs Up technology and believe that this is

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the future of ad tech and social media advertising.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it truly is democratizing it where like I said,

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you don't have to go through the huge gatekeeper and

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it's much more targeted and it's much more personal too,

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isn't it.

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Speaker 1: Yes, And we think it's fun. You know, the influencers

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are are kind of everywhere in the culture, and so

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this allows everybody to be an influencer for a moment.

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We're not targeting professional influencers, We're targeting the general public

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and we think that it's fun. You know, who doesn't

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like to make a little extra money for telling their

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friends about things that they like?

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Speaker 2: And is there requirements? How many followers you need on

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Instagram or TikTok? How does that work?

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Speaker 1: Great question? Thanks for asking. So the way that it's

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set up right now is that we try to keep

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the configuration for the advertiser super simple. But there's an

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advanced settings button that you can click on when you

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set up a campaign and thumbs up that gives you

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a bunch of configurable choices. So one of those choices

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is that the brand can decide what the minimum number

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of followers is that they're willing to pay for so

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that the default setting is fifty five zero. But if

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a brand only wanted to pay people that have one

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thousand followers or ten thousand followers, then they would just

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set that number there, and then the app would tell

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the user that this campaign requires a minimum number of followers. Now,

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we encourage the brands to keep it at fifty because

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what we see is that in aggregate, after a brand,

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after a brand or an advertiser gets one hundred posts,

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just one hundred posts, they're going to see that they

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get three groupings, they get some that are between fifty

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and one hundred, they get some that are between five

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hundred and five thousand, and they get a couple that

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are ten thousand, one hundred thousand more of the professional

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influencer follower count. Because what happens is that there's enough

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of these professional influencers out there that they run into

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a thumbs up advertiser and they're willing to take the

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smaller payoff out from us because they actually like the

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product and they want to share it with their audience.

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So if the advertiser just runs the campaign long enough,

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they're going to find that the average number of followers

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shakes out to be between two and three thousand. So

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the reason why we want them to get the smaller

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follower counts as well as the larger follower counts is

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because the data shows that the smaller follower counts that

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those their friends are going to pay way more attention

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to those posts on a percentage basis because they actually

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know those people.

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Speaker 2: So it's dilution. The larger the channel, the less personal

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connection there is, unless you're some kind of celebrity or something,

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in which case you're probably not thinking about ten bucks.

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But I can see scalability here, right, Robert, Absolutely right,

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So what's the goal?

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Speaker 1: Like?

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Speaker 2: It looks to me like this is the kind of

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thing that could go viral very very quickly.

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Speaker 1: Sure well, the way that we position this when we

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are raising capital is all say something like that, there's

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thirty three million small businesses in the US on average

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in any given year, forty five percent of them by

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digital ads. That's about the fourteen million. So our goal

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is to get to the point where ten percent of

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those small businesses have given us twenty percent of their

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ad budgets. On average, they spend five hundred dollars a month,

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So that math shakes out to about one point eight

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billion in AD revenue on our platform, and our revenue

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from that would be four hundred million. So if we

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can get ten percent of the small businesses of by

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Digital Ads to give us twenty percent of their AD

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budgets just in the US, then we could be at

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four hundred million in revenue. And if we can trade

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it five times to revenue, that's a two billion dollar

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company right now market caps about eighty ninety million, So

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that's a tremendous amount of upside for people that get

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involved in the stock. I'll just remind your listeners the

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stocks and Moost, Tzup, Tom, Zebra, Umbrella, Paul, and then

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we're just now segueing into opening up our major brands activity.

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So we believe that this is that we're going to

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have household name brands in the thumbs Up platform, and

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we've we've been putting out some feelers in that community,

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had some very very good initial calls with names that

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everybody would know that I can't share yet because they

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haven't sign on the dotted line understood.

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Speaker 2: And what I also like is the simplicity because when

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you go to the big platforms, no matter how sophisticated

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a computer user you are, that stuff can drive you nuts.

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And also analytics, like basically you need AI to set

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your ads up and you need AI to figure out

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whether they're doing anything. This is the utmost of simplicity.

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Speaker 1: We've had many people look at the at the configuration

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for a thumbs up campaign and tell us that they

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think that businesses will use thumbs up simply because how

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much simpler it is to set up a thumbs up

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campaign then to set up a native Facebook or meta campaign.

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It's it's just a couple of clicks and you're in

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and people are telling their friends about your business.

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Speaker 2: The cost of these campaigns on the platform, you never

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really know if they're successful or not oftentimes until you

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pump a ton of money into it. And the difficulty

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so you kind of need an expert to help navigate

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through the through the hurdles of placing ads on the platforms,

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and then you know they don't always take off. Sometimes

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they take time, they don't go when you want them

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to go. This seems like almost immediate and you find

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out your response like that, That to me is really

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really fascinating.

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Speaker 1: One of our first clients, a small spat in Santa

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Monica said that Thumbs Up paid for itself within the

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first two weeks. So as soon as he got in

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the app, he started asking people that were coming in

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the door how they found out about it, and he said,

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it paid for itself within the first two weeks. So yes,

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that particular for small businesses, they see uptake right away.

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In fact, in the beginning, we had a strange problem

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where you know, when things are new, When things are new,

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people have different types of psychological reactions to him. So

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we had a restaurant in Santa Monica that actually left

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the program because we were sending too many people to them.

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I remember right righter speaking to the guy and I said,

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I said, you know, we're happy to remove you from

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the app, but I just want to make sure I

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understand that you're saying that the problem is that we're

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sending too many people to you. And he said, yes, Well.

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Speaker 2: You know, I watched one of your spokesman, mister Wonderful,

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talking about it, and one of the questions he always

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asks on Shark Tank is what's your cost of customer acquisition?

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I know your cost, you mentioned it prior and that'll

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probably come down, but your customers there their cost of

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acquiring their customers through you. It seems like it's dirt cheap.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I give you two different answers to that. So

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we're very much in a growth phase. It's still early

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days for thumbs Up. You know, we're in the in

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the in the thousands of brands and users were not

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in the tens of thousands yet. So in the beginning,

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it costs money. So the way we do this is

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we pay the ouriser. We give them one hundred dollars

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campaign to give it a try. And that's very, very

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common in ad tech. So Google right now, if you

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sign up for Google as campaign, they'll give you five

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hundred dollars. Reddit will give you five hundred dollars. So

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we give one hundred dollars right now. We're not as

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bankrolled as those two companies, so that's a standard way

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to get an advertiser started in digital advertising. So that's

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a cost, that's a customer acquisition cost. And then we

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primarily grow through a network of commission only sales reps.

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So we pay our commission only sales rep one hundred

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dollars when they sign up a new advertiser, and we

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give that advertiser one hundred dollars in a promotional campaign,

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So the customer acquisition costs is roughly two hundred dollars

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right now. And then, as you said, but for our advertiser,

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you know, they're they're paying us. If they pay the

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thumbs up easer ten dollars, we charge them sixteen dollars

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for that. So six dollars is our revenue. Ten dollars

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is what the user gets paid. So if one of

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the user's friends comes to the business, then their customer

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acquisition costs was sixteen dollars, and if two of their

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friends come, then their customer acquisition cost was eight dollars. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So for local advertising, which now with the demise of

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local newspapers of local media, this is phenomenal. But I

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see the far bigger play the national advertisers because you

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have this behemoth corporation, multi billion dollar company, very cold

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and impersonal, and then you've got you know, social media

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people saying, hey, I'm recommending these guys. I mean, there's

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a certain genius here that I see to this and

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it the ease of use. Yeah, okay, so maybe I

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can't retarget at this point. Maybe I can't retarget everybody

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who who watched the ad, All right, I don't really

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care about that, and maybe I can tag it, Maybe

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I can do it. But the cost and the value

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of the customer, you know what, a coffee shop customer

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who's a daily person. That could be two hundred and

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fifty dollars a year and I paid ten bucks to

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get them. That makes my cost of acquisition like four

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percent or something like that. Pardon my math. Ten as

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about four percent two and a half percent. I can't

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see in terms of cost effectiveness anything that even approaches this.

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Speaker 1: Yes, and one of our use cases that we pitch

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to larger brands is imagine a sports stadium and we

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put a thumbs up offer on the jumbo tron and say,

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get paid ten dollars to share a video of your

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enjoyment of the latest snack product at the concession stand

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from some major snack manufacturer. So imagine having ten or

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twenty thousand people in the stadium telling all their friends

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about the new flavor of chips at the concession stand.

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We can do that. We're pitching that right now, and

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we think that's a game changer for advertising and marketing.

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Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about you, Robert. Obviously

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this is not your first rodeo. You seem to me

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you have the personality we would classify them now as

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disruptors that you look at the system, you see it's limitations,

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and then you come up with a way to bypass

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its limitations or capitalize on them. What else have you

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done throughout your career?

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Speaker 1: Well, thank you a great, great way to phrase it. Yes,

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that's my personality. So been out this a long time.

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As a teenager, my parents bought me an Apple two.

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When I was like thirteen, I created a business making

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game controllers. So in the very very beginning, the computers

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didn't even come with a game controller, so I made

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them in my garage and sold them at local computer stores.

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You know, when I was thirteen fourteen years old. So

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that's exactly what you're talking about. I saw something that

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needed to be the exists that didn't exist. Then, you know,

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next shot at bat was tax processing. Actually, so in college,

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I became aware that the government had required a certain

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type of real estate business to report electronically and there

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was no way to do it. So the government had

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created this need and there was no way to do it.

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So I wrote a piece of software and built and

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sold that company. Not a huge exit, but all those

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pieces I created, the software, found the clients with a partner,

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and we did sell that business. So that was my

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second tech startup. Third was I started with two friends

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a computer aided design software business in late eighties early nineties,

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and it was very early in computer aid design and

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set up some of the first microcomputer based GIS and

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systems for local utilities. And from there I became dot

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com CEO. So in the dot com era, I was

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real early in the smartphone space. So the first time

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you could put aol map quest on a smartphone, that

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was software that I created. The first time you could

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put a Microsoft PowerPoint on a smartphone, that was software

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that I.

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Speaker 2: Created time ago. Here you're talking Robert exactly funny plus

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years yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: And then and then from there I got into the

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business process outsourcing space. So I went through a period

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where I was doing a processing running a company that's

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processing a billion dollars in accounts payable for New York's

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dock exchange companies. That was all, you know, right when

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that was even possible to do all that. And then

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from there I was in the copyright technology space. And

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that's a public company that I started that had Warner

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Brothers and BMG as clients. The technology I created was

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used to win two billion dollar lawsuits to protect copyrights

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on the Internet. And then that takes me to thumbs up.

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So that's a little recap of what I've been up to.

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Speaker 2: That's a great story. So obviously they weren't all winners.

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You had a few failures along the way, like the

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rest of us. You know, tell us you don't have

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to be specific about how it failed or whatever, but

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just tell us the best lesson you took away from

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one of your failures.

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Speaker 1: Well, yes, definitely have had some failures, but the lesson

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is don't give up that you know, for one of

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the I was a dot com CEO, is very early

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in the mobile space, and I should have just kept

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it up. So you get hit, it's normal. You're going

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to get hit with really things that seem overwhelming, but

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you can make it through, and it's a it's a

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head game, a mind game. And if I had that,

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if I could go back to Robert twenty years ago

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and say, you know, just pick yourself up and keep moving,

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don't give up your your your gut instinct about where

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the market is going is correct, and you'll live to

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fight a new another day if you just get up

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and stick with it rather than actually laying down the sword.

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So that's the number one thing that I learned is

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just stick with it.

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Speaker 2: It's the Winston Churchill cry never give up, never give up,

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never ever give up, ten most important words in the

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English language. So now you got this amazing concept in

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your seeking acquisitions and you wind up getting into crypto.

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There's a synergy there that I know is there, and

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of course it's a humongous industry and it'll grow a

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thousandfold from where it is now. And I realized you

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got ongoing discussions and das and securities regulations that prevent

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you from really telling us the entire story in broadbrush strokes,

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tell us the crypto strategy.

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Speaker 1: Sure, so thank you, Kerry, thanks for asking. And everything

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we're going to discuss is publicly released. So what happened

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was that we successfully got thumbs up on the Nasdaq

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stocks to the symple Tzup. Had the honor of ringing

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the bell at Nasdaq in November of last year, and

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very exciting walking down the hall seeing photos of Steve

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Jobs doing it and Jeff Bezos doing it. You know,

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it is definitely a high, a great moment, but it's

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also game time. It's very serious that now shareholders are

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going to expect significant revenue and significant revenue growth. So

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the reality is that it has taken us longer to

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get to the level of adoption that we had expected

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on the core thumbs Up platform. So we started looking

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at acquiring some digital agencies. I was signing NDA's in January.

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The idea was to buy a company that had eight

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figures in revenue and that already had the types of clients,

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major brands that could pay for the thumbs Up technology.

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So in that process, we had raised eight million dollars

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in our reipo to Nasdaq, and we bought a million

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dollars of bitcoin, and we got more interest and exposure

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both in the press and on social media from that

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one action than anything we'd ever done before. It was

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really phenomenal. We got listed on the Total seventy, which

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was we were approximately the seventieth public company to adopt

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a bitcoin treasury strategy. Now I think there's more than

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two or three hundred. So the timing was really great

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for when we chose to do that. It gave us

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some unusual visibility. So then we bought another million dollars

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in bitcoin. So that led to a series of events.

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One of those events was that Donald Trump Junior bought

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some of my stock personally from me. That created visibility.

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Then he is an advisor to an investment bank called Dominari,

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and so then Dominari became Thumbs Up's investment bank. They've

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since raised US fifty six million dollars and they also

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a part of what happened was we got introduced to

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a acquisition possibility called doge hash Technologies. So we've signed

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a definitive agreement to acquire dough Shash Technologies, which is

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in the doge mining business, the crypto mining business. So

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that's very very exciting. So that came about not because

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Robert was a super strategist. It came about through a

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series of very interesting events that all started with a

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crypto treasury strategy Bitcoin treasury strategy. So now if you

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look at what we've filed publicly about the dough Shash

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technology story, you might imagine that very soon our shareholders

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might get a mailing where they get to vote on

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participating in this transaction, I will certainly be voting for

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us to participate in this transaction. So what could happen

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is that Thumbs Up Media Corporation could become dough Hash

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Technologies in name, might get a new stock symbol, and

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the company's business strategy going forward should be crypto mining.

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We've already released the dough Shash Technologies has four thousand

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crypto miners at various levels of implementation. And if you

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ask chat GPT how much money can a company with

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four thousand acik doge miners make, you'll get an answer

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a somewhere around twenty million a year if doze is

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about twenty cents, So we're going to have a credible

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shot at having eight figures in revenue. And this business model,

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we add more equipment and revenue should go up. So

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we already have fifty million dollars in the bank, so

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you might imagine that we buy several thousand more doge

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miners with that. So that is the strategy going forward.

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We think that that strategy can build a billion dollar

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business and we're very excited. Thanks for asking.

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Speaker 2: Hey, so you're wearing two hats effectively or you will be,

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So you got to have a team in place with you,

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tell me about your team.

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Speaker 1: So Isaac Dietrich is our CFO. Isaac has helped his

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companies that he's run raised more than one hundred million dollars.

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He started a company called mass Roots that had an

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app in the cannabis space, that did a pivot to

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become GreenWave Technologies, start company from scratch, built a technology,

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did a pivot, took it public on the Nasdaq himself.

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So right now the management team is myself and Isaac

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here at thumbs Up. But we just put out a

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release today that we've added a board member, Chris Enzi.

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So Chris has a great career, a very very strong executive.

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Did some time at right Blockchain, which is in the

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space that we're getting into. So we're starting to bring

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on some accomplished talent in the crypto space. So stay

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tuned as we get farther along on this acquisition, and

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I think you might see some more very very talented

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people come on board.

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Speaker 2: It's really exciting here. That's honor to work with you,

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and I suggest everybody out there go to Thumbsupmedia dot

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com that's th m zup and sign up for notifications

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so you find out when the renaming is going to

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take place, because oftentimes with renaming and refocusing, revaluations take

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place as well. Links in the show notes of this interview,

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and of course, the ticker symbol on the NASDAC is

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TZUP and Robert, it's been a real pleasure. I can't

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thank you enough for coming on the show. We'll talk

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to you again real soon.

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Speaker 1: Thanks, carry have a great day. The Financial Survival Network