0:00 [Music] Welcome back to another episode of Careful Boys, where we're still in the middle of eating this Vietnamese food. Anthony said he made his noodles too spicy. Woo! Sounds like a sign of weakness. Uh-huh. You're so weak. You want to arm wrestle? Dude, I'm down. No, no, we need editing. You might break his arm, dude. Chill. Does anybody till this day still owe you money? H technically probably. Why is that technically? Well, actually technically no. What? Yeah. Was that I had two This is weird. I had two um barbell employees before. Oh, and they were like in tough times. So, the reason why I said technically cuz I gave them a grand each. All right. So, you gave him
0:51 a grand each, right? I gave him a grand each to help him out. And I do remember like, hey, saying, um, you don't have to pay me back. Just help whatever. Get yourself in order. We had some drama. They end up leaving. And then they never pay me back. But then I also did say you don't have to. Oh, then they don't owe you money. You said you don't have to pay me back. Yeah. Yeah. So I that's that's technically. No. But it's still always on the table though. Pay back. You know. Damn. Just straight up. Okay. Cool. Jeez. What? There somebody. Didn't you like buy a bike for someone? Are you talking to me? No. Bart. No. Buy a bike. I thought you bought a bike. Bicycle for someone cuz they needed to get to ████ work. Oh, maybe they took the money and bought a bike. Oh, instead of paying their bills. Yeah. I don't know. It's good purchase. What did you owe your money from?
1:43 Me? Yeah. He bought money cuz he needed to get like his passport handled and he didn't have enough money. Oh, the expedite. Uh-huh. And we need to expedite it so we can do a gig. Yeah. I'll pay you back. That's expensive. I 300 bucks. A few hundred. Yeah. Yeah. It's like 400 bucks. Yeah. But at the time $400 was like a lot a big deal. Yeah. Like that's a that's a huge that's like $1,000 today. You guys know the um do you remember uh this touring concert called Jingle Ball? Oh, that sounds so familiar. Is that Kissfam? Kiss FM. Yeah. Yeah. Did they scam you? They still owe you. Kiss FM owes you money. Me and Fang had done like Ryan Serest, where you at? We did like seven or eight jingle ball shows uh during LMFO and we didn't get paid by uh
2:33 LMFO. But they're your friends. I know. So, what we chocked it up to was like, damn, they do so much for us already. It's cool. Yeah. Just leave. But that's like that's ████ funny. That was a good amount of money. And they just never it wasn't that we like asked them and then they said like oh yeah it's coming it's coming. We just like I think we got last minute added on like cuz they just needed two more people. So me and F were like yeah we'll come through. And then it was maybe like a week or two and then we just never we were waiting it. We were kind of shy to ask cuz we didn't know them like that yet. So we're like oh they'll tell us they'll send us a check and it just never came and I never mentioned it. They'll pay you right now. What if they paid Stephen? You know what? If if they because like the artist never knows anything about that, right? It's like management. The management's different. Yeah. It's like the whole business. So, they wouldn't even have
3:24 the the records to show that I was telling the truth if I asked now. I see. Cuz it's not even the same people. But like Yeah. If if I wanted to tell the artist like, "Hey, you know, like we did these shows and we never got paid." Absolutely. He would pay me. But it would feel weird. Yeah. Cuz now your relationship's different. Yeah. cuz I still feel like the what was done for me as a friend was exceeded. Cuz that's like you work at a restaurant and you're a waiter and you didn't get paid but you go to the cook and you ask them to ████ pay you cuz it's a celebrity chef, right? So it's like I don't know like it's Gordon Ramsay's I don't know he owns a restaurant but if it's a celebrity chef it's it's the business. It's like not necessarily their thing, but you know, it's kind of like how Subuin was asking the artist to pay him that day of Or it's kind of like how remember I told you that the company you used to work for owed money to us, they
4:15 never paid us. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was like that. Like they're not around anymore. Who am I going to ask? That happened to us like three times where we didn't get paid for two gigs and one of them uh our ex manager stole money from us. Now you guys were giving him money. Yeah, dude. So, there was a competition. There's a there was a competition where we won. And this was in like South America and it was like $8,000 or $8,000, whatever. We're like, "Sick, we won. All right, we never got paid." And then we're like, "F███, it's another country. How do we figure this out?" And it's hard to like sue and like take action when you already flew back home. You're like, "Okay, true. Oh, yeah. We did a show in Australia and they still owe us like half every time." Yeah. They they had a really um they their show just flunked. Like it just it it didn't
5:05 do well. They just thought that having a bunch of YouTubers would um get they were trying to do like uh what's that show they have every year? VidCon. They're trying to do Australia's VidCon. So they brought all of us out there and some people were smart enough to get it all up front. Some people got half payment. We were the dumb ones that got half payment. Some people just said, "Pay me later." All the pay me later people, they didn't get paid. Oh, man. I know that happened to Tim, right? When he went to Australia one time. Yeah. I think it was uh everyone on that trip that this a different show, but it was a show. Sucks to do all that and not get paid anything. I hate it. Did Disneyland pay you everything they owed you? Yeah, that's nice. They better. They got money. Disneyland was fine. Um, so so another gig that we did in South
5:57 Africa, uh, it was like a tour with Audio Push. You remember Audio Push? Yeah. Teach me how to Wow. Yeah. Jerk. So we did that tour with them. But I don't know what happened to them. I don't know if they got paid, but we didn't get paid after that hoping because they flopped in ticket sales. So, I don't I I don't understand like how are they promoting this or like what's go where's where does it all go wrong to where they're like betting on like this, you know? I heard that's like the most common one. It happens all the time. Going to pay you with what they make at the beginning and they don't really have it. But that's a gamble. But then it's like we can't do anything about it because it's a different country and it's like they are. Yeah. But that's why you're supposed to have good management that asked for money up front. Yeah. Yeah. And a solid contract. But the the thing I think I told you the story too, but this happened to to us when uh we got caught in one of those things. We did like five shows for this
6:48 one promotion company and they were paying us every show based on the what they were making at the show. We just didn't know it. So, uh because we were we did five shows and they paid us for the first show. Um they had the money for the first show. The second show they paid us from the first third from the second fourth from the third. They ████ ponzied the shows. Ponzi the shows. But then by the fifth show, for some reason, they had didn't have enough budget to pay us. So, we were like, "Well, then we're not going to go on." And they told us the night of the show, they were like, "We just can't pay you at all." And you and we're about to go on. And you're like, "Well, I'm not going to go on stage." So, then the manager was like, our manager, who was really cool, his name's Dave. You you Yeah, I know Dave. Dave was like, "Well, you guys have a choice to make. Either you stick to your guns and you be like, "We're not going on. Sorry." or you just
7:38 be cool to the fans and just do the show anyway. And we were noviceses at business and we chose to stick to our guns. And then so the club pulled a fast one and they had a guy go on stage make an announcement saying that we didn't want to go on because the club wasn't full enough. Oh, what the ████ They pinned it on you guys. ████ us on our reputation. We got angry tweets from all these people still in the club like, "What the ████ You guys are ████ up." And it was it was the wrong decision. But you know, sometimes it's like the right decision is the one that costs you more because we What are you going to say to all those people? You can't talk to them. You can say, "Hey, uh, so we didn't get paid." And yeah, we did, but like their their whole night is like ruined now over, you know, like they'll never see us the same way. They already bought tickets. They're already there. You don't really care about nuances like when an artist is late or when something
8:28 doesn't happen. Like you're, as a fan, you just don't care. You're like, "No, I came for this." So would do you uh let's say you were there like now would you have made the same decision or would No, I would have I would have completely just performed. You should have performed and at the end you could have been like these ████ ran out of money. We didn't even get paid for this but we're doing this for you. That's a brilliant idea right there. Yeah. ████ Nugget Promotions. Whatever their company was. I don't know. Shout outs to Golden Nugget. I still want to do a show with you guys. I want I really want a show with you guys. So, please don't, you know, but it's like when you look at the book of how to do business, you're not supposed to do that. But like, you know, in terms of where you are, like that was a regret. Like, damn, we should have done it anyway. And they never paid us. Damn. Oh, dude. I remember another show that we all did old school. Um, and it was
9:20 some kid, and I got to give it up to this kid cuz he's he's a good scammer. He got me or JK Tim Dumbfounded Jason Chen. Who else was there? Maybe J.R. Tina. No, Ricky Shucks. Ricky Shucks. Tim. He had this lineup. Cholo Adventures. Cholo. He and like basically he somehow got one person to say yes or he probably even lied. Yeah. And then everyone's like, "You doing the show?" And I'm like, "Well, yeah, I'm going to do it if you do it." Right. None of us got a deposit. None of us got anything. But it was a local show cuz I think more local shows are more like, well, we don't have to pay to travel, so ████ it. And you know what? If Dumb's going to be there, if Tim, if everyone's going to be there, I got to go. You want something?
10:10 And it was It was literally a ████ show, dude. You go. It was raining. There was like three people there. This fool didn't promote it. He thought that just because YouTubers were going to be there, it would be like filled up like crazy and he was gonna pay us with the ticket money that he got. Mhm. Everybody. And then, you know, it ended up being really fun because it was like a great memory. And I'm like, dude, we just said yes cuz you we knew that you guys were going to be there. Like, we're going to be here cuz of you. And then the whole time we just ended up having a good time. We had we just laughed about it. Like, you make the most of it. Yeah. But I was like, yo, this kid and he was like some what sophomore or or or some Yeah. He was like a high school kid. And I was like, "Dude, we got finesse." But hey, good good job. You You pulled something off pretty big. You did a
11:00 Firefest before Firefest even happened. Oh, dude. I feel like there's a lot of like Firefest when that came out, you see that and you're like, "How many things really are that?" But then they just get lucky. Yeah. A lot. Yeah, exactly. They did it really good though. Yeah. Because is it because you can't really do anything about it? Like you can't really go after them unless you had more money than them to like I guess I mean or sometimes it's like the money you need to get your money back isn't even worth it. No, it's not. If you're like using a million to sue for half a mill, you're like ████ half a mill. Plus, it's so attractive to forget about it already. Just ████ spend a mill to get my half a mill. Is it even worth it? Unless you're like the type of person that your lawyer is already on retainer. Yeah, but the shows we're doing as kids. You're making three grand. Like, what the ████ Like, who's going to take that
11:51 job? Yeah. As kids. You were 5 years old. Yeah. Like, man, I don't want to. Yeah. You do an international show. I do see 20-year-olds as kids now, too. Me, too. I'm like, ████ So young. That's crazy. Yeah. That is kind of stupid, right? Cuz like it's like, what are you going to do? um this thing cost I don't know like five grand that they owe and then like you got to get a lawyer and then fight it and it cost you 35 grand. You're going to be like but then people are like that's the it's the principle you got to do it right. But even if you win the case if those guys are broke you can't even take any money from them. What are you going to do? They can't pay you with the zero dollars that they have. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. What would you say to event promoters and like event creators to avoid this
12:41 situation of happening? How could they raise funds? No. Get paid up front. No, like the people that are making these events that Oh, no. That's the game. They got to gamble. They don't know how else to do it. Sponsorship. I don't blame them. I don't blame them. Well, the companies can pull on them anytime. I really don't blame them because I'm sure I'm sure me and you and all of us have done events where that was the case 100%. They were gambling and it won. It's only ever so often that it doesn't and that's when you really are like that's on you too. You know, it's only a firefest because people didn't really show up cuz imagine we get ████ like Red Bull to sponsor something, right? Like we do a JK event. Of course, Anony's going to say something crazy gets us cancelled. Red Bull pulls out. Bam. How are we going to pay all the other people to ████ I'm most likely to bring Red Bull in probably. It's tricky because it's like
13:31 when it's like when you make it and then you tell all the people below you not to do free shows. It's that mentality of like but that's how you got to there. You know what I mean? Like you have to do the the dicey things. I think even if they're not ideal like everybody's road is full of that ████ I do think though that we uh were privileged to pay the price on like a new era of experiences cuz like even with dance events today, it's like now the culture moved so that every like international dance event is like a giant camp. It's like a company that's throwing a big thing with multiple blah blah. Whereas when we were first going out to do work perform Yeah. It's like some person at some studio or renting some studios bringing like one person out and like that was it. Nobody knew
14:21 any credibility. There was a season where it's like people were just doing ████ and then if you got like ████ over there would just be a blackbook of like interconnect. You just tell the next person don't work with this guy or like if you got hit up you would hit up your homies and be like do I work with this guy? No. But now it's like they're actual brands. They got IGs. they got like companies and followings and you know some sort of like okay that's credible but like we were fortunate because we were given these like crazy opportunities so we also were fortunate enough to pay the price on like getting ████ over. Yeah. Fortunate people come up these days on Dash they can make like 5 mil. Yeah. Back then it was like you're lucky if you got three grand. Yeah. But that three grand felt like 5 mil back then. That grand did definitely felt like 5 mil. Yeah. Actually, I don't even know what 5 mil feels like. What am I talking about? Your net worth, your
15:12 celebrity network. Yeah, but I I went straight to 19. I never saw five in my life. Stop there. Kept going.
// end of tape