Inside The $100,000,000 Empire Of Dhar Mann

What's up, you guys? It's Graham here, and today I'd like to introduce you to one of the most successful entrepreneurs you probably didn't expect, Darman. At the age of 30, after nearly having to move back in with his parents, he developed a series of motivational stories, life lessons, and feel-good sketches that have accumulated nearly 100 million followers, 40 billion views, and a business model that no one has been able to see until now. For the first time, we're getting an inside look into his brand new 50,000 ft studio that literally recreates entire neighborhoods, apartments, and shopping centers, the inner workings of his business that generates millions of dollars every single month like clockwork, and his advice to every single young entrepreneur who feels frustrated, stuck, and unable to push through to their full potential. So sit back, smash the like button, subscribe if you want to see more interviews just like this, and now let's begin.

Yeah, so I grew up with immigrant parents that had come from India with, like, the American dream and like $6 in their pocket. When I was born, we were living in a studio apartment that we shared with two other families. So there wasn't even enough, like, plates and spoons and forks and knives to, like, share for everyone. You literally had to wash dishes just for the next person to eat. I saw them struggle really hard from when I was a little kid. But my dad started a taxi business that ended up becoming very successful; this is pre-Uber. I sort of saw the evolution of our lifestyle as I grew up.

So we went from a little apartment to then owning a two-bedroom home to then having a three-bedroom home, and I saw them fulfill their dreams, but they were just workaholics. So that's definitely where I get my work ethic from; just seeing sort of their rise to success.

Yeah, everything is like very groundbreaking new because we just started having major traction on YouTube probably in the past year and a half. Sure, so it just goes to show how quickly things can start to take off once you really figure out what works for you and you double down on knowing your audience and providing them, like, a value that they really like. What was your first business that you did?

It was probably selling baseball cards because I was really into collecting cards when I was a little kid. Then I just had every single little business that you can imagine. Like, when CD burners came out, I would burn CDs and, like, sell them to friends at school—not that I'm recommending that, you know, to anyone. But I had every little random business you could think of. I was always very entrepreneurial since I was a little kid. We would live upstairs, and then we'd have, like, a team of, like, 20 people working downstairs because we were running multiple businesses. It was like we shared one fridge; we shared one living room. So anytime she’d go to, like, go get her food or anything like that, half the time it was eaten or her drinks were drunk.

How did you come up with the concept of the Darman video? So, when I was 30 years old, that was probably when I went through the lowest time in my life. Celebrating my 30th birthday, I was on the verge of not being able to pay rent and having to move in with my parents. My life was not like where I imagined it to be, and 30 is one of those milestone birthdays where you hope that your life is starting to come together. The only thing that kept me going at that point in my life is hearing inspirational stories from other successful people that I looked up to and what they went through on their journey to success.

Like, I remember how inspiring it was to me when I heard that Walt Disney's first company went bankrupt. A lot of the most successful entrepreneurs that you could think of, they went through many seasons of failure before they actually achieved great success. So, that really inspired me; I thought, okay, maybe this is just the journey that very successful people go through. Eventually, that paid off because I was able to just sort of level up as a person.

But there are so many other people out there that are where I was at 30 years old. For me, right, they're struggling with some sort of a hard time, and I wanted to help that person get through tough times. All the content that we shoot is just relatable life lessons. So in this video right here, there's a dad who's forced to choose between his girlfriend and his daughter. Oh no! And I guess you have to watch the video to see what he chooses.

Every single day, we have about five to six productions that happen a day. That's incredible! So yeah, this is an example of one of them. Thanks for guys, have a great shoot, thank you! I had a number of videos that were flops in the beginning; they weren't even breaking a thousand views, and it was taking me so much time and energy that I was not able to spend time with my girlfriend at that time.

I was not, you know, able to go to parties and events, and I was just being this workaholic for what? I was not getting any views. So I was always one day ahead of my posting. I remember I felt so defeated one night going to bed because I'd stayed up all night editing a video, and like I wasn't getting any views, that I told my girlfriend that this is the last video I'm ever going to post. It just doesn't make sense for me to continue this. So, I scheduled it to go live at 6:00 a.m. She tried to talk me out of it, but she realized I was done.

So, I scheduled my video to go live at 6:00 a.m., thinking that'll be the last video that I ever post. I went to bed that night, and in the morning, Laura wakes me up. She's like, "Dar, dar, wake up!" And I'm like, "Oh, what's going on? What's going on?" She's like, "That video, it's going viral!" And I was like, "What are you talking about?" She wakes me up and, sure enough, the last video I ever planned on posting ended up being the video that went viral. It went on to break 100 million views on Facebook, and it changed everything from there. I just realized that you're always one video away from your next viral thing or from any sort of level of success that you want to achieve. So, I just committed myself that I'll never give up again after that.

What's the average cost to make a video, would you say? When we started, the average cost was like $3,000 to $5,000. That always had to be the goal because we just didn't have any monetization. It's come a long way since then, so I would say the average cost now is about $30,000 to $50,000. You know, I would say that we have, you know, 125 employees. We have 100,000 square feet of building space in Burbank, California, which is extremely expensive. Rent alone, we probably pay over $200,000 a month.

So, I think it just gives you some sort of a grasp as to where we are revenue-wise. You can obviously do math as well and build in, like, CPMs and try to figure out the ballpark of what the revenue is. But we're at the point where we're just reinvesting pretty much everything that we're making back into just trying to scale this up. We're also going from looking at our type of content from being like a single show to a media network where we're actually launching a lot of different shows as well.

As far as your revenue, could you break down whether it be from like Facebook first, if it's ad revenue, YouTube, if you ever do brand deals, sponsorships, integrations, maybe some brand placement? So, believe it or not, 98% of last year's revenue was all ad revenue. I did, I think I only did one brand deal the entire year last year, and I just wasn't thinking along those lines at all. So, last year, I would say it was about 40% Facebook and 60% YouTube. This year, we've decided really to lean into YouTube, so it's probably a 75% YouTube, 25% Facebook, and that was done on purpose.

And now we're starting our own in-house ad divisions where we're trying to recruit ad executives because we post, you know, five videos a week. There's so much inventory for us to actually place ads. So I do see brand deals becoming an increasing part of our future revenue. Ultimately, our next vision of our studio space is going to be an actual campus where we can do in-person studio tours and have fun activities and things like for all ages. This is what really changed the game for us on YouTube because anything kid-related, school-related really hits like what YouTube's core audience is, which is a lot of young people. So once we started filming in schools, that's where our views started exploding.

I got a question, just me! Pick me! Pick, pick! Yep, yep! What's your personal work schedule like?

Yeah, it's insane; it's not healthy. You know, like, I work until 3:00 a.m. every single night, no matter what. But as soon as I wake up from 9:00 a.m., you know, all the way up until about 6:00 p.m., that's where I just take all my meetings. I try to be in as few meetings as possible to just free myself up creatively because I'm still writing, you know, all of our scripts along with our screenwriters that we have.

But I try to keep, I would say, about 50% of my time to creative work, and then the other 50% to just running the company. Between 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. is reserved for family time; that was like a negotiation that I had with my wife, Laura. I have two young kids, and it's really important to me not to miss out on those crucial moments. Then from 8:30 p.m. all the way to 3:00 a.m., that's typically where I do my writing, thinking about the future, business development, that sort of thing.

So we built one set out, and then slow by slow, every few months, we just kept building additional sets. Then I think within, like, four months or so, we ran out of space. Everything was designed to be multi-purpose, and that's part of our business model—is how can you maximize your existing space that you have? So even though this is a hospital waiting room, it could also easily be, let's say, a news station. I wanted to build something where we could also show exteriors, where you could walk out of one set and go into another.

So this was Evolution 2, which is a retail center. So right here, we have, like, a thrift store for instance. You could walk out of the thrift store into the main area. This donut shop becomes a pizza shop; it becomes a wedding bakery. It could become many different things, and then over here, we have a corner store.

Has it been difficult to balance having a family along with running this business? Extremely difficult! And, you know, it's one of those things that we all have different areas of our life that we want to focus on, and you try to prioritize everything. But at some point, something's got to give, and so it's just so important for you to figure out what are you not willing to sacrifice.

For me, I decided early on that I'm not willing to sacrifice my family time. I'm not willing to sacrifice my physical health because that's often something that people will let go of. So I still go to the gym every single day and make time for that, and then my spiritual side, you know, is also important to me. I still meditate, I pray, I read books; I'm constantly trying to develop myself mentally.

The work life is the part that, even though I put in an insane amount of hours, I don't put in as many hours as I would even like to, but it's just forced me to try to be a lot more efficient with my time. So instead of thinking of it as how can I have more hours dedicated to work in a day, think of it as how can I accomplish more during the hours that I have? That type of thinking has helped increase my productivity exponentially in those limited hours that are available to me.

These are actually wide enough, these streets, for you to drive a real car on as well. So we could have scenes where the car pulls up to the barber shop and you're getting a haircut. You get to the arcade and you can play different video games. It's supposed to be like you're dropped in the middle of a neighborhood, and you can go into all kinds of different stores and retail, different experiences that you want to have.

I'm so curious where you're investing, whether it be in the business, if you're into real estate, stocks, index funds. So, 40% goes into real estate; 30% I keep as cash in the bank, which a lot of people would advise against. But I actually think it's quite safe, especially just what's happened recently. 20% is in equities; the stock market, and bonds, and then 10% goes into higher-risk investments such as crypto and things of that nature.

How did you come up with that concept? Trial and error. You know, I was never someone that, like, wanted someone else to manage my money. So I learned, like, I turned—for instance, I'll give you an example because I know you like to do these types of videos. I turned a $100,000 investment into $2.5 million, and how it worked is I was going to buy a Tesla. This is how I got into the stock market, and this is when I first started making money through the cosmetics business. I looked at it; I was like, it's $100,000.

Like, do I want to put $100,000 into a depreciating asset that is going to be worth $60,000, like, five years from now, or should I invest that? So, I bought Tesla stock instead. And so the $100,000 that I would have put into buying a car, I bought the stock that turned into $2.5 million. You know, not everyone gets as lucky, and I've definitely had my fair share of losses as well, especially recently. But it was simply trial and error, and then once I realized that it's not good to be too invested in just one financial sector, such as stocks, and I saw real estate explode over this past year, I've realized that I need to be more heavily invested into real estate.

So, I would say it's a strategy that I have that's constantly being refined based on my own experience, and so I'm always a student first. But I like to do my own research and not just trust someone else to manage money because, ultimately, that's a skill that I think every entrepreneur needs to have. So, I'm actually like QuickBooks Pro certified. I've taken accounting classes; like, I'm quite savvy when it comes to financial money management, and I'm self-taught because I think that's such an important skill to have when starting businesses.

No, none of our designer stuff is actually real because that would just cost a fortune and be too big of a liability on set. Like, these sneakers would probably go for, like, $10,000 or something if they were real. So I would say learn how to save money, first off. There's a saying in poker that says you could be better than 90% of poker players and still end up broke if you have poor financial saving habits. Or you could be better than 51% of poker players and have a very successful life if you have strong money management skills.

Second, which is, I think, just advice that could benefit us all and is also advice that I need to remind myself is don't compare yourself to others. It's so easy to see others doing well. How many views are they getting? How much revenue are they making? How many followers do they have? We can get caught up in those traps, but it's like that saying goes, that comparison is the thief of all joy. I truly believe that. If you're a music fan, like, I was really into Michael Jackson and Tupac when I was growing up.

I heard this Drake song that said it best, and it goes, "Mike never tried to rap like Pac, and Pac never tried to sing like Mike." Those are my dad's words: if you want to make it in life. That was so powerful because you can find your own lane to doing things, and you don’t need to be like anybody else. You just need to be the best version of yourself.

Hope you guys enjoyed this video! Make sure to smash that like button and subscribe. Thank you guys so much for watching! As always, feel free to add me on Instagram, and don't forget that you can get all the way up to $10,000 as a bonus when you sign up at public.com, Gram again down below in the description depending on how much you transfer from another brokerage. Thank you again for watching, and until next time!