From Finance to Netflix: Chris Allen on Influence, Sales, and Startups

Nobody actually cares who you are. Nobody cares about X calories, X fat. They're like, I want to go for whoever my reality TV star, famous person is, my favorite actress, the guy who I see on TV. And I was like, well, if nobody knows who you are, nobody cares. Ultimately, we had to play in that game. And when you're a nobody like me, you have to take action on that. It's a process to try to get on a show like this. It took me years to make it happen. You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it. 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real. No theory. No fluff. No shortcuts. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford. What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now. We're talking about what's now, what's hot. And you may have heard of Netflix, but have you heard of Million Dollar Secret? I think you have. It's a game show. It's a lot of fun. Chris Allen is here to tell us all about it. What's up, Chris? What's going on, Ryan? How you doing? I'm good, man. I was excited. We get a lot of great guests. Sometimes it's like stuff from 15 years ago. Great. You never know like where the business or what the concept is, but something when it's here and now and been on Netflix and been popular, I'm always excited. I have to admit, I started to go down the rabbit hole. There's so much content now. I had heard of million dollar secret, but didn't know it. It's fun. It's intriguing. This show is very much in the news right now. You think about reality TV, you have kind of like your trashy relationship stuff. You got The Bachelor, Love is Blind, Too Out to Handle. You got those like slice of life things, the Vanderpumps, Real Housewives, whatever, just day in the life of famous people. Kardashian started it years and years ago. What's getting really popular is competition TV shows. Survivor, Big Brother have been around. Traders is a hot name in the streets. Million Dollar Secret is Netflix's take on the traders. It's kind of a very similar show, obviously got critical differences, but Netflix is like, okay, this is what's popular. We got to get in the game. And when Netflix goes in on something, they go in on something. And with Million Dollar Secret, you can tell they put a lot of resources behind this show. Yeah, they did. And they're proven to be right with the popularity, especially as we talked pre-episode worldwide. We've got a worldwide hit on their hands. We can tell your background. I wanted to tell your background for anybody that maybe not have seen the show. Explain a little bit of the concept, how you got involved, all that. Maybe we can ball that into one. I came up in the finance world, went to Notre Dame finance career. That was where I started. Did that for several years. And like so many young finance people, I burned out in my late 20s. I said, you know, I like I got to do something different. I'm seeing my bank account go up, but I'm not feeling any happier. I got to do something different. In 2018, I left. to the finance world, went back to business school, and I went to Wharton. And that's a hallowed hall of business education. I was with some really, really talented people. I felt like the dumbest guy there almost every day that I was there. But being around really smart people is great for inspiration and great for ingenuity. And that's a great place for businesses to start. And while I was there, I got really interested in startups. And that was around the same time that White Claw was taking off and everybody was drinking Spike Seltzer. So I met a guy who was working in Anheuser-Busch, and he's like, a South American, Uruguayan immigrant. a child of Uruguayan immigrants, and he grew up drinking coconut water. And he's like, what if we did what Spike Seltzer is doing, but we did it with coconut water and we kind of aimed it at health-conscious people. He said, I don't really know what I want to do with my life, but that sounds as good of an idea as any. We dove into that world. As people were creating new Spike Seltzers, we dove into that world and we launched in 2021. We got about half of the U.S. under distribution, started distributing to cruises, luxury resorts in the Caribbean, all that. But What's really cool about starting a business, especially with a co-founder, is you guys can kind of trade roles back and forth and cover for each other. And we were noticing that so many of these Spike Seltzers were having success with celebrity front people. And we couldn't afford a celebrity front person. We tried to negotiate with a couple of them. We're like, dude, we can't even afford like a tenth of what you're asking for. I came up with this crazy idea of like, well, what if I just tried to become the celebrity front person myself and started pitching to reality shows? And ultimately, nothing really was a fit. I mostly got cast into dating type shows. And I was like, I don't really know if I want to go running around making out with people on TV. I feel like that's not a good look for our brand, much less myself. Ultimately, Netflix called me in 2024 with this concept million dollar secret. And I knew right away it was a winner. You get a chance to work with Netflix. You just take it. They're sending power in reality TV. And this idea was so interesting. We didn't really know too much until we got there, but this idea was so, so interesting. So I just had to take it, and I'm really glad I did because it's become sort of this global phenomenon. Yeah, man. A couple things to unpack there, and I want you to delve into sort of the concept. People realizing it pays to be known. Someone owns a trademark for that. His name is Ryan Alford. We have this democratization of the Internet and media and all these things. And, yes, you've got to be interesting, good-looking, and talented, which Chris knocks out all three. I'll give you that, Chris, man. You've got them all going. You're a really nice guy. Once you get to know you a little bit, I'm a quick study. Once we've been on, I can already tell, like, you're not a jerk. You got the right intentions. The fans a million dollars think it might be kind of split on that. Yeah, I think it's probably 50-50. But I can tell already talking to you for 10 minutes. I'm like, this guy's not a jerk. He's smart. He knows what he's doing. Look, you were smart. You can't afford your own influencer, then become one yourself. It does take some help and it helps when Netflix calls, but you did the work to get there. Yeah, it's kind of interesting. A lot of consumer, like beverage, food entrepreneurs, they end up competing on product attributes. They're like, oh, you know, we make a protein bar that's like 20% less calories than the next one. It gets to the shelf and then you start looking at a shelf set and you're like, how the hell will anybody pick me over these other 400 options? And then you see people start... streaming into the store because they're like, oh, I have to buy the new Kardashian vodka. I have to buy the new Ryan Reynolds this, that, the other thing. I'm like, damn, nobody actually cares who you are. Nobody cares about like X calories, X fat. They're like, I want to go for whoever my reality TV star famous person is, my favorite actress, the guy who I see on TV. And I was like, well, if nobody knows who you are, nobody cares. Ultimately we had to play in that game. And when you're a nobody like me, you have to take action on that. It's a process to try to get on a show like this. It took me years to make it happen. You think anyone cares about crime? It's Jake Paul's sports drink. Immediately, like, taking down Gatorade for a little while because it's Jake Paul's sports drink. Perfect example. I was told my co-founder is notoriously pessimistic about the fact that this works. I was just like, I just hate that this is the reality. I'm like, listen, man, I don't make the rules of the market. All I do is play by them. And unfortunately, this is right. Don't hate the player. Hate the game. Yeah, this is like the way it works now is like we've kind of replaced religiosity in our culture with celebrity worship. And that's just kind of how it goes. But with social media and streaming, being Netflix, being in this new media world, I call it now media. That's my brand. You took advantage of that. Talk to me about Million Dollar Seeker, what the premise of the show and what went down. The show is so awesome and has so many different layers to it compared to a normal reality show. You can think about 8000 different things when it comes to the show. But the basic concept is if 12 different people are talking about like 12 different archetypes. We got like a grandma. We got a grandpa. We've got a cowboy on our show. We got typical L.A. actress type influencers on the show. And then me sort of like the business guy. We arrive at this mansion in Canada where a mysterious owner of the house has prepared a welcome gift for all 12 people, which is a box to be laid on the foot of your bed when you arrive. In the box, one of the 12 people receives a million dollars on day one, like the second they get to the house. Eleven people get an empty wooden box. And the goal is essentially to figure out who has the million dollars in their box and vote them out of the show. If we do that successfully, the money is given to somebody else and the process continues from there. If the person who gets a million dollars on day one is able to keep their identity clean the entire season, they just go home with the million. Our job is to figure out who's acting weird, who has a guilty conscience, who's changing the way that they're acting, who's being nervous, figure out who it is, vote them out, and then get the money to our box. You've only been on our air for a few weeks. I'm going down the rabbit hole. I guess they've got things set up. What if this had been vetted too fast or something? The secret's out. Everything's been exposed. The secret's out. We know the winner. The way it went down is pretty interesting. If you think about it, there's a lot of different ways you can play that game. Yes, there's a lot. How much were you clued in to that? What the strategies may or may not be different angles and all that beforehand. So zero percent, which I think is what makes the game so good. If people are familiar with reality TV, they're on like season 50 of Survivor and like season 25 of Big Brother. And by the time you get 20 seasons into a show... A lot of times people are sort of game bots. They're super fans of the show. They know exactly. They're on like Reddit. They read the strategies. They know the formula. They call them game bots. It actually leads to a pretty dull TV. When you have that, we knew nothing about the game that we were playing other than that a million dollars is on the line and it's going to be some sort of a game to see. In episode one, the owner of the house sort of tells us the rules on camera. That was actually the first time we realized what show we were on. And what's so cool about that is there's no strategies. And in a lot of ways, you result in pretty messy gameplay. We made a ton of mistakes and it gets super messy because of that. The reason is because we didn't know what show we run and we hadn't read up. Now, I did a little bit of homework. I watched the traders. I watched shows that I thought it would be like, and I saw basically the trends of what would work. But then when I learned what the game was, we basically had six hours that night to go back to our hotel rooms and figure out what are we going to do? How are we going to play this? Real world gameplay for a million dollars all at once. Talking with Chris Allen. Yeah. Chris, what was it like working with, you mentioned it a little bit, the Netflix factor and watching that behemoth work and how it markets. How privy were you to all of that's going on with marketing the show, all the components of the business side of it? If you look at the statistics around like talk. total percentage of hours streamed by Netflix compared to the other players in streaming. So whether it be HBO Max or Disney or Hulu or Amazon Prime, Netflix is television now. They're such a dominant player in that space that they've just become television. And we know that they're global. What's super interesting about Netflix is sometimes they obviously market their shows. They market their originals and the shows that they have that do well. But it's also a really democratic platform. Anybody who has Netflix knows every day, it seems like definitely every week, there's a ton of new stuff coming out. And what bubbles up to that Netflix top 10 is based on who's watching the show. Things can kind of catch fire for Netflix, similar to how they do on like a TikTok algorithm or YouTube algorithm. Out of nowhere, A Million Dollar Secret is a brand new show. They put it out there not knowing what would resonate on it. And I think two days later, we were the number three show globally. We've kind of seen what happens when you achieve that initial success is Netflix pours gas on the fire. And what's so interesting about it is a global platform. We're thinking about a lot of shows like Survivor, Big Brother. Those are like primarily U.S. based. And we think about reality TV and television. And our culture is like being U.S. based. What I wasn't prepared for is like every corner of the globe, people are talking about me. People are talking about what I did on the show. People are getting interested in what I'm doing outside the show. That is pretty hard to wrap your head around. You smart enough to recognize that it pays to be known. Lo and behold, you went and did it for yourself. What has surprised you, delighted you, and scared the shit out of you now that it's come true? What surprised me the most is just the global aspect of it. I was totally expecting to walk down the street and have people recognize me. I was like, okay, the night before the show came out, I was like, this is the last day of normalcy for probably a really long time. And then like, you know, that proved to be true. It did definitely prove to be true. I mean, like, you know, for example, you just go to the grocery store and you get someone come up to you and say, like I watched you on the show. The fact that I can go to a different state and my face prompts a response from people is something that you just don't expect. You've lived your entire life in anonymity. What has been scary about that is the level of just online discourse and dialogue, especially with anonymity. I made the mistake, like so many other reality TV stars do, of poking my nose around in Reddit, We had our subreddit was growing. You know, I was pretty controversial on the show, surprisingly to me, because I don't really feel like I'm a very controversial person. But there are certain things that I did on the show. I was trying to win. I was trying to win the game. I competed hard. I'm a business person. I compete with disregard for feeling in a lot of cases. That is pretty wild. The level and toxicity of online discourse is that it's pretty wild. actually pretty shocking to me. Eventually, I kind of just learned, okay, just leave that where it is. Focus on what's in front of your face. That's, I mean, like anybody who acquires, let's call it like instant fame. And I say that like in air quotes, because this is still just the first foray into what I hope to accomplish is a little scary the first time that you encounter it. Yeah, man. I can only imagine the way with which reality TV sort of gets devoured and then much less, but I will say we have a pretty popular show. I didn't know I had made it until a Miami airport sighting. And then my forever, my kids thought I was cool. Finally. It's so awesome. I was down in Florida. I took my dad on a retirement trip. I got recognized out at the new Universal Park down in Orlando. I got recognized by two people. And then four more people came over. And they were like, what show? I know I've seen you somewhere. What show is it? At one point, I was kind of holding court with like six people. My dad was like, he kind of panted. It was the first time he'd seen me get recognized in person. He kind of like ran away. He's like, I don't know what to do. And he called my mom. And he's like, your son is being mobbed by people on the bridge. Like, what do we do? I'm just his son. Like he doesn't know. Has most people being in person been pretty cool? Everybody in person has been cool. Everybody in person has been cool. It's just the trolls behind the keyboard though. Send me a message. You're being tempted. Send me a message. I'm going to go back away, Chris, back away. Maybe I need to do that, Ryan. Maybe you can be like my personal. My personal just like fire. I need to email you for a password to get into my Facebook account or something like that. It's just no good because I do a pretty good job of like not listening to other people, like not caring. But if you go down that rabbit hole, there's some really disturbed people. And then you'll start questioning yourself. You're a good guy. You don't want to be impacting someone in that way. But if they've taken it that far, it's a them problem, not a you problem. A lot of times they'll take it to your court too. Like they'll put it on your personal pages. And in a lot of cases, I went into this with the intention of if someone writes me a message, I'm going to respond to it. I want them to feel seen by me. Somebody says something that's kind of on the line negative, I'll respond to them. And then a lot of times what they'll do is they'll immediately fold. And then, oh, I thought you were awesome. So sorry about that, whatever. So it's kind of interesting to see if they're just doing it for attention or whatever it might be. But, you know, obviously I think there are valid critiques out there too. Like there's a lot of times things that I did on the show that I was kind of like, Yeah, it's kind of tough, but you're in a competition. It's not like we're out there holding hands and dancing in a circle. It's also business. You nailed it. I'm pretty, I don't think I'm a ruthless business person, but I'm very driven. And I can remove emotion from it. And it sounds like you're built the same way. And it's not because we're screwing people, but we're doing business. And I think there's a lot of people that just aren't cut for that. And so when you get to see it... raw, some people would just get turned off. I mean, like anything else in your life is you try to do things with purest of intentions that you can, but in a competition setting, there can only be one winner. And a lot of times, that's not going to be the nicest version of yourself that plays that game. And this is like very real money. We were in there competing. It wasn't scripted. It was all real. We were competing. And I got very close to to win it. As that happens, you're going to see tensions rise. You're going to see people do things that are cutthroat. Like if we were just playing a game for no money, I don't think that we would have done the things that we did, but it required difficult decisions to be made and difficult in a lot of cases, behavior in order to win. Yeah, man. So drink company, I sense a pivot coming. Where are we at with the business? One of the things that we wanted to do is obviously we've been out there in the seltzer world, and the seltzer world is very popular when we launched, and it's much less popular now. And almost every large drink brand is losing volume year on year. They're declining 15%, 20% in a lot of cases. And a lot of brands that came out in that sort of let's make a white-cloth knockoff, go try to find a case of Bud Light seltzer. You can't find it. Good luck. Good luck. Go try to find Coors Seltzer. It's hard to do. As that's sort of happened, it's been challenging on our business. One of the things that we've done is think about let's respond to the show and the show is global. We have a global audience. What we'll likely do is try to find something non-alcoholic that we can ship to our fans around the world, especially our fans in Brazil and the Philippines. Those markets where like this has really, really become a very popular show. In that regard, is transitioning the fame, the known to dollars, been more difficult than you thought? It's something that I'm very much figuring out right now because you don't necessarily know what it's going to look like. This show could have come out and totally flopped. What we didn't know is that we're going to become the number one show in Brazil for several weeks. You don't know that as somebody who's going out to a show and trying to anticipate. things there are obviously when you go on a reality tv show there are easy ways to monetize things through cameo and through subscriber based type of content those sorts on t-shirts with your shirt off like you know keep me away from reddit or something like that Those are the easy things. What's harder is like, okay, well, I have to say my ongoing business interests. How do we transition that? How do we make the fans of the show want to care about the drink that I'm doing? Because also they care about me, but they may not like the drink that I have. They may not like what product I was producing before. How do I make something that sort of aligns their interest in me and also their interest in a product that I can produce that actually will drive value to their life? I can't ship an alcoholic product in many cases to many of the places where the fans have resonated with me. me. You just pivot your business. One of the great things about it is those status of social media is that they can follow your journey and become aware of the things that you do. And that's been the primary strategy that I followed, that I've employed. Sometimes it's not about creating your own product. It's using the leverage you have to create the influence on other things that you get paid for. I'm not saying you aren't doing some of that. To that end, attention is fleeting. How do you keep the attention flame lit? You gotta be active is number one. And then number two is, yeah, being a business person, being a marketer, is like you gotta understand that you gotta produce things that people want and people want to follow. People have generally followed me for, number one reason is okay, they like me because I was a business person and I played strategically on the show. I'm the avatar for the business person on the show. And then in some cases, it's for more superficial reasons. Like they like the way I look, they like the way that I act, or whatever it might be. I found that in a lot of cases, like I just did kind of typical testing of different kinds of content. What does well for me is talking about what I do outside of the house, talking about business and talking about my learnings from my business career. People really like that. And then number two is like fitness and wellness content does really well for me. I try to produce as much that people are interested in to keep them around because ultimately the window for talking about what actually happened in the eight episodes of the show, it goes by very quickly. You got to keep them interested in you as a personality. So I'm a big test and react guy. So I produced a lot of different kinds of content and I saw what did well. And then I'm going to kind of just go down that avenue. Is it creating any other opportunities? Have you heard from other things, anything other coming across your radar from the show? The number one thing typically with reality TV is you get some interest from brands while your show is out. And that's starting to happen for me. I was taking some time for my social pages to grow, but I'm kind of at the level now where I can do that. And I, having been an entrepreneur and startup founder myself, I like to align with brands that. I resonate with. I'm not going to just take any deal kind of in the process of evaluating those right now, but that's really cool because ultimately I want to position myself as an influencer that has been in the business owner chair before, which I think is somewhat rare. I've been behind a brand of my own before and worked with influencers from the brand owner side. So I can be an authentic and real voice and a good mouthpiece for these brands and sort of connecting the dots between the brand and the consumer. What do you think the most important business skill is that you have? Ultimately, at the end of the day, everything kind of comes down to sales, sales and influence. I feel like that's sort of the fundamental business skill. You can learn finance. You can learn the fundamentals of marketing. You can learn, pick your discipline, supply chain. But in order to get anything done in business that you want to get done, you've got to sell to people and convince them of your business, that they should invest in your business. that they should buy your product, that they should trust you, all those sorts of different things. It just sort of comes down to influence and sales. I feel like that's sort of at the core of everything, don't you? 100%. Like if you can't sell, good luck. We can get caught up in all these product benefits or the financials. None of those financials matter if you don't have new lifeblood of the business coming in the door. Convincing is an interesting word. It's one thing for someone to be aware. It's another for them to have intent. And to drive intent takes convincing. That's a key skill no matter what you do. And if you've got it, you typically can do anything. Absolutely. What I've seen is the most successful entrepreneurs are kind of like lifelong salespeople. These are the people who are running trading card rings in middle school and I don't really think that that was me. I didn't necessarily feel like I was sort of a lifelong entrepreneur or salesperson. So it's been a bit of a process for me to kind of develop that skill. And as I've gotten better at it, I've become a better business person. Yeah, well, one way or another, I tell people this and it's self-serving. It's a little bit of a joke. I'll kill the punchline before I say it, but everything comes back to marketing. I was one of the rare people that my major was marketing, never ventured. I knew, learned at an early age how this world worked. You can market something and sell it. Marketing, we combine these worlds a little bit together, even though I think they're different. It's just necessary. It's human behavior. Understanding how humans work and understanding what it takes to move someone from one position to the other. And that's what marketing is. You've got a mindset. They assume this. They believe that. And you're moving them to here to get them to take an action. It's sort of been across the spectrum of human history. This is how empires were built with marketing and sales. It's built with military power, but it's grown with marketing and sales, the core human skill. And now like the arena of business, you don't have that. All you have is like pretty spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides. It's not going to get it done. Donald Trump and Barack Obama have a lot more in common than they realize. They're two of the greatest marketers of all time. No matter where you fall politically, it's what they are. We just captured 100% of the audience with those two, by the way. Exactly. Hey, no polarization here, but it's moving all the bullshit out of it. That's the truth. What does success in your mind? You made shit happen. Some people fall into shit. Some people stumble into it. You worked your ass off. Maybe you caught lightning in a bottle, but you created that. You got what you asked for and you're navigating it all. When Chris Howard looks and goes, this is my vision of success. What is there at the end? People want to look at a signature achievement. Getting on a Netflix reality show is sort of like an endpoint. This is a waypoint on the journey for me. I'm 34 years old. I have hopefully 40 more years of making stuff happen before I go retire to Florida and play golf every day. It's a whole process. Obviously, I'm asking myself that question every day, but it's really about making an impact on people. For myself, what do I need intrinsically? I just want to feel like I'm living authentically and that I'm happy. If I'm doing those two things, material, wealth, influence, whatever it might be, that's all sort of like a byproduct. But if I'm doing those two things, I'm probably doing okay. What I really want to do is think about, and I'm making an impact on people. I tried to create what I thought was a, healthier, better for you drink for people. Now with the megaphone of being on reality TV, can I create some content to help people demystify the journey of starting a business? Can I help people maintain their mental and physical health in the process of entrepreneurship, which is for me, I was a total fail. It was like learn from my mistakes. I hope to share some content about that. Can I inspire people? They look at my story and say, wow, could I do something like that? Or can I take things from him that I can learn? And then I try to make it just about service to people, you know, try to use this great, lucky accomplishment is somewhat lucky, right? Like accomplishment that I've made of being on this TV show and acquiring new fans around the world to help people through the things that I've just talked about, or just like by being a good person and trying to be somebody that they can look up to and makes them feel good. I think you're on your way, man. I'll give you one other thing. My favorite saying, everyone should always go ask themselves this question. To what end? Everything you're doing, everything you're thinking about, everything you're planning, when you make a brash decision, when you make a good decision, to what end? That's the question we have to ask. Think about the end of your life and look back on things and think about what decision do you think you wish you had made in the present. Try to gift yourself the gift of hindsight. It's a really, really difficult thing to do. But I do sort of think about those sorts of things. I'm out of that mentality that I had in my 20s. I'm like, I just got to get as rich as possible and all these different things. At the end of the day, it's about fulfillment and happiness. Luckily, I have a lot more doors open to me now having been on a show like this, which is really cool. And I just want to make sure that I make the right decisions. Yeah. And having purpose. That's really what the question is. When you say to what end, it's, well, you're asking, what is the purpose of what I'm doing? Chris, where can everybody keep up with you, the show, all the links, all that stuff? The Million Dollar Secret is on Netflix. It's not hard to find. You can read about us all across the internet. And then you can find me primarily on Instagram and TikTok. I'm diving into TikTok, which is a 35-year-old man. 34-year-old man is a little scary. So I'm brand new to that one. I'm also on all other socials under the same handle, which is at C Allen and D. And you can find me and kind of track my journey from here, which I hope is as entertaining as those eight episodes of TV. I hope this is just a blip in the story and not sort of the headline at the end of the day. Chris, appreciate you coming on the show, brother. I really appreciate your transparency and openness talking about all this stuff. Fantastic. Well, it was a pleasure, Ryan. Hope we get a chance to talk again, and maybe it's about another show that I'm on, or hopefully, you know, do something really cool in business, and I'll be right back. Hey, I think we put our heads together on something. I'm here to help you, brother. Hey, guys, you know where to find us. RyanIsWrite.com. You'll find the highlight clips, the full episode, all the links to the show, Chris's stuff, all this stuff. Hey, always ask yourself, to what end? We'll see you next time on Right About Now. Here's the truth. Information doesn't change your life. Execution does. So don't just listen to this episode and move on. Take the idea. Make the call. Launch the thing. Fix the problem. Build what you keep talking about building. For more, follow Ryan Alford on Instagram, at Ryan Alford. And watch or listen to every episode at ryanisright.com. This is Right About Now. Now quit waiting. Go win. Go win.