Well, it’s officially been one full year of What a Month! It’s Ben. Thank you all for being a part of this journey with me 😊

In May, I spent a week in Brazil, dove deeper into my work with The Meat Mafia, and had fun around town in Austin. Read on below for more!

Brazil

One of my dad’s close friends, Paulo, is from Brazil and built a house in the beach town of Garopaba a couple of years ago. My family was all set to visit him in March of 2020 and then, well, a pandemic had us throw those plans out the window. But after a three-year delay, my parents booked the trip to visit him and so I decided to tag along and join them out there.

We started the trip in Rio, and since my flight got in several hours before theirs did, I spent the first day getting acquainted with the city solo. I walked Ipanema Beach and shopped at the Brazilian store Osklen. I then walked down Copacabana Beach and jumped into a pickup soccer game. I spent time at a small rock-and-roll festival that was set up close to the beach. And then I grabbed food at a restaurant called Cervantes that was recommended to me by a friend.

The fun story about Cervantes: 10 years ago, the wait staff pooled together money for the lottery, wound up winning R$12.7 million (R$635k each), and all promptly quit. The restaurant had to shut down for several weeks and hire a whole new staff before operations were able to get back up and running.

Beyond the lore, the sandwich I had with beef, melted cheese, grilled onions, and pineapple was quite fantastic 😋

The next day my parents and I did some sightseeing around Rio. We saw Christ The Redeemer — the famous 100-foot tall statue at the peak of the Corcovado mountain overlooking the city. Then, we went to the Selarón Steps — 215 steps covered in 2,000 colored tiles that was completed over the course of 23 years by the eccentric Chilean artist Jorge Selarón. From there, we explored some of the historic neighborhoods in Rio and sampled amazing foods before visiting a gaudy monastery in the city center.

On day three we hiked and explored Tijuca National Park — a rainforest that sits within the mountains of Rio — and saw monkeys and waterfalls and beautiful nature. And then the next day we boarded a flight to Florianopolis, where Paulo and his wife Nani picked us up from the airport in their red Fiat pickup truck and drove us the 75-minutes to their home in Garopaba — a beach town that serves as a Brazilian vacation destination.

Paulo and Nani had built their house four years earlier on a plot of land next to Nani’s sister and her husband. The houses share a pool and a tennis court and have views overlooking the mountains and water.

We spent our days going on walks, playing normal tennis and beach tennis, and eating great meals. And then, we’d gathered at Paulo and Nani’s house for dinner and had various members of their family join us, with Paulo translating stories from English to Portuguese and back throughout the night.

It was remarkably cool to experience Paulo and Nani’s life in Garopaba. To see the prominent role that family and community plays in their day-to-day lives, and to see the jaw-dropping nature that surrounds them and watch them care for their chickens and harvest bananas from their banana trees.

Overall the trip was fantastic and I certainly hope to make it back to Brazil again at some point in the near future 😊

The Meat Mafia

The Monday after I got back from Brazil, The Meat Mafia started our “Summer Blitz” — a 12-week period with aggressive growth goals that coallessed around a new structure for our team, us working out of an office, and our summer intern joining the fold.

We now have a six-person Austin team that consists of:

• ​Brett & Harry — Our founders and the names, faces, and voices behind The Meat Mafia brand.
• Chi — While in college, Chi created the Twitter account Cultivating Chi that he’s grown to 16,500 followers. He flew in from Florida to spend the summer before his senior year interning with our team where he’s working as a background content creator helping us grow The Meat Mafia brand on social channels and helping us better promote The Meat Mafia Podcast.
• Kasey — AKA Chef Donny Delicious, our third camera-facing creator and The Meat Mafia’s culinary expert. He produces a weekly cooking show on YouTube with killer content that we haven’t spent much time or effort promoting. We’ll be working hard this summer to grow the Chef Donny Delicious brand and following.
• Bri — Our researcher who recently graduated with her masters in nutrition. On top of her day job, Bri spends 10-15 hours a week distilling research that our team leverages for Twitter threads, podcast episodes, and other content creation mechanisms.
• Me — Doing all-things operations to provide structure, processes, and direction to The Meat Mafia, while tackling whatever miscellaneous behind-the-scenes things are needed to help the brand and business move in a positive direction.

For the Summer Blitz, we have four primary goals for our team:

1. Grow our agency business — The way we make a majority of our revenue is by creating Twitter content for brands in the alternative health and wellness space. We started the summer working with five brands and are already up to eight clients now!
2. Grow our podcast sponsorship revenue — The Meat Mafia Podcast garners 30,000+ monthly downloads (and growing!), but we’ve barely tapped into our sponsorship potential. We’ll be making a push to substantially grow our podcast sponsorship revenue by the time the summer ends.
3. Grow our Twitter following — Brett and Harry sit at ~120,000 combined Twitter followers. Our goal is to hit 150,000 by the time the summer ends. By growing our audience, we’ll be able to educate more folks about nutrition and wellness and open more doors for the brand.
4. Make Donny Delicious pop — Kasey is a talented creator and the content he’s putting out is really good! Now, we’re investing time and effort into getting Donny Delicious to amass a following of his own. To do so, we’re going to start leaning into short-form content (TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts) and work on building up a strong Donny Delicious Twitter presence as well.

Since the start of the Summer Blitz we’ve had the whole team working out of a coworking space together on Mondays through Thursdays. And then on Fridays we work from home before migrating over to Brett and Harry’s place to film content for Donny Delicious and wrap up our week with a team meeting.

The energy on the team has been electric. We’re working hard, growing quickly, and having a blast while doing so. I’m realizing how much I’ve missed working out of an office and being in the trenches with a high-performing team. It’s a pretty special thing to be a part of and I feel grateful to have the opportunity 😊

One ask: The Meat Mafia is looking for design help! Someone that can create our logo and overall brand identity (color scheme, font, and brand aesthetic). If you or anyone you know might be a fit, I'd love to hear from you!

General Life Updates

Outside of Brazil and The Meat Mafia, life in Austin has been treating me well! I went to a University of Texas baseball game and caught my first Austin FC soccer game — both of which resulted in thrilling wins for the good guys.

One other highlight: a friend and I got drinks on a Wednesday and stumbled into a bar that happened to have a dachshund racing night. 50-100 or so wiener dogs filled the bar's back patio, and we spent our night watching races until a champion was crowned 🫅

Monthly Favorites

🎵 Songs: It’s been a country music month for me! Here are the two tunes I most frequently bumped in May:

• ​Last Night by Morgan Wallen
• ​Grown by Grady Spencer & The Work

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📹 Videos: I’m not sure the origins of it, but as of the last few years, NFL teams have used the May schedule release date as an opportunity to flex their creative juices and produce fun video content. My two favorite team videos from this year came from:

​The Tennessee Titans — The Titans released their schedule via a video where they asked people on the streets of Nashville to identify the logos of the teams they’re set to play each week. A lot of gems in this one, but my favorite three moments were:

• “That’s just the football logo” for the Browns
• A bachelorette party guessing “69ers” for the Steelers
• Two separate people being really confident about the Colts’ logo being the Cowboys

​The Jacksonville Jaguars — A couple of months ago, former NFL running back Arian Foster stated on a podcast that the NFL is scripted (link). The Jacksonville Jaguars creative team took that concept and ran with it — creating a video that starred the team’s Head Writer as he walks us through what goes into the script for each season.

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📦 Product: Nerdy Nuts — A South Dakota family produces this ridiculously good small-batch peanut butter with unique new flavors that they roll out weekly. I plowed through my Gooey Brownie jar, am currently making my way through the Chocolate Chipper, and have the Graham Slam jar cued up for after 😋

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Thanks for reading! As always, if anything I shared resonated with you, I’d love for you to shoot me a reply 😊

Til Next Month,

Ben

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