They Stole My Million Dollar Business Idea...So I Hired Them Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 So, 6 months ago, I opened my front door and three men I had never met walk into my house carrying about $40,000 worth of camera equipment. They came to see my mother and they were there because of a YouTube video I posted last year that I completely forgot about. And what happened over the next 2 days was completely unexpected. My mother said things on camera I've never heard her say in 50 years of being her son.

00:22 And what these three guys figured out about starting a business is something that all of you should pay close attention to because it's the right way to start. So, a little over a year ago, I posted a video on this channel called three million dollars side hustles no one else is doing. And I meant every word of it. These were genuinely real market opportunities that anyone watching could take, build, and keep every dollar from and I would have been happy about it.

00:50 And the idea I spent the most time on in that video was a professional documentary service that films your parents' life stories on camera. And I'm talking about a real cinema quality documentary produced by a professional crew with your parents sitting down and telling the stories you never asked them to tell. The stories about how they met, about what they did before you existed, about what they actually believe deep down.

01:14 And in that video, I laid out the entire business plan from the pricing model to the partnerships with hospice and retirement communities to the gifting angle for milestone birthdays. Everything a person would need to actually build the thing was sitting there in the video for the taking. Now, over 10,000 people watched it. I got lots of praise for the business ideas I presented, but no one did anything about it except for three guys.

01:37 And they did the complete opposite and how they started is why I'm making this video today instead of the Amazon video I originally planned to film this week. These three guys are named Chris Mims, George Montoya, and Kellen Ho. They live in completely different locations across the United States, but they all have Hollywood production backgrounds with about 15 years of real professional experience between them across cinematography, editing, and directing.

02:05 And they watched my YouTube video, and they did what nobody else had the guts to do. They actually went and built the business. It's called Immortalized Films. They're incorporated, they built the website, and they designed three pricing tiers that go from a remote interview package all the way up to a full production package where they fly a complete film crew to your location and shoot at multiple sites over multiple days.

02:28 They set up the entire business from scratch, and then they sent me a message asking if I would be their first customer. And I still have that message on my phone. And here's the part that impressed me the most, because this is one of the lessons of the video. They didn't ask me for any advice. They didn't ask me for permission. They didn't ask for a partnership or a cut or an endorsement.

02:47 They just watched my video, went and built the thing, and then reached out to me the same way any founder reaches out to a customer. And that is the entire difference between people who build businesses and people who watch videos about building businesses. The people who take action are always the ones who win. So, naturally, I said, "No, thanks. Not interested."

03:09 Seriously. I mean, letting three random men I had never met into my house to film my family is not a small ask. I'm a very private person, and it was not something my mother agreed to easily, either. And she's in her 80s, and she lives in my neighborhood right now. And the idea of sitting down in front of a ray of cameras and answering questions about her entire life on video to be watched by her sons and her grandchildren and eventually her great-grandchildren was not something she had ever considered before I brought

03:38 it up. But after some persistence from the guys, I eventually said, "Yes." But it had almost nothing to do with the business itself. It had to do with my father. My father passed away in 2009 when he was 79 years old. He was healthy on a Monday and then he was gone 10 days later. We still don't know exactly what happened because my family did not do an autopsy.

04:02 He was fine, then he was sick, then he was in the hospital, and then he was gone. And it literally happened in 10 days with no warning. Now the problem is that I have almost no video of my dad. I have a couple birthday parties, my wedding tape, and a handful of home videos from when my brother and I were kids, but that is the entire archive. There was never a sit-down interview with him, there are no stories in his own voice, and there's nothing that captures who he actually was as a person.

04:30 And for over 17 years, I've wished I had 1 hour of my father sitting in front of a camera talking about his life, and I will never get it now. These three guys were offering me exactly that with my mom while I still could, and that is why I ultimately said yes. So the doorbell rang, and Chris, George, and Kellen walked in with lighting kits, professional cinema cameras, audio equipment, and the kind of setup you would see on a Netflix documentary.

04:55 And they filmed at my house for two full days. Now here's the part I did not expect. The first hour or so was a little bit awkward. The guys were extra careful in the beginning because they had never met my mom, and they were super polite, they were professional, and my mom was a little bit nervous, too. It was the kind of awkward you get when strangers are trying to figure out how to talk to each other, only they were $40,000 worth of cameras pointed at my mom.

05:22 But then something shifted. My mother sat down, they asked her a question, and she just started talking. She did not use a single um or ah in the entire interview, her delivery was perfectly smooth from the first sentence to the last, like she'd been rehearsing her whole life for this. Now I've known this woman for 50 years, and I did not know she was capable of speaking on camera like a professional.

05:43 It was one of the most surprising things I had ever watched. And she went on for 6 hours that first day. I did not think that an 80-year-old woman could sit under lights and talk for 6 hours straight without slowing down, but she did it anyways, and she had more stamina than the crew. And that's when I realized something. I did not fully know my own mother, and here's what I mean.

06:05 My mom is a scientist, and she discovered a cure for a rare disease called glycogen storage disease. It affects roughly one in a 100,000 kids, and before the cure she discovered, there was no treatment. That is the ending of the story that I already knew, but I had no idea about the beginning. My mom's family fled communist China during the Civil War when she was a small child.

06:27 Her father was a high-ranking official in the Hunan province, and when the communists took over, her mother packed up all five kids, left everything behind, and got them on a boat to Taiwan in 1949. My mom was the middle child of five with two older sisters and two younger brothers. And here's something in the interview that I've never heard her say in my entire life.

06:49 Her father wanted a son so badly that she always knew she was, quote, the extra daughter. Those were her exact words. And I sat there watching this and realized that my mom had carried that around her entire life and never once told me. She grew up in poverty in Taiwan. Her father's government salary barely covered the household, and everything you would consider standard for a child today was completely out of reach.

07:13 But at some point, she decided she was going to become a scientist. She got into Taiwan University, and from there she earned a full scholarship to the University of Utah for graduate school. She flew to Utah not knowing much English, and she was all by herself with no friends. Her department made her pass four qualifying exams within weeks of arriving, including one in a subject she had never studied, organic chemistry.

07:37 So she bought a textbook, memorized the entire book, and passed all four of them. And while she was at Utah, she met my dad in the library. And he was a handsome electrical engineering student. He had a car, and he drove a bunch of girls home, and that is how she described it on camera, and that is the entire story of how they got together. 60 years of marriage started with a guy giving her a ride home from the library.

08:00 And then later they moved to Maryland, where she joined the National Institutes of Health, and that's where she did the work that led to the cure. Anyway, my mom's life story isn't what's important here. During that interview, she said something else that I want you to sit with. And she said, and I quote, "I don't think I'm that smart compared to other scientists.

08:16 My achievements are because I was in the right place at the right time, and I got lucky." That is what she thinks. She thinks she got lucky. She fled the civil war as a child. She was the daughter her father did not want. She came to America alone at 22 with nothing to her name, and then she built a career, a family, a marriage, and a cure for a disease that affects 1 in 100,000 people.

08:37 And after all that, she genuinely thinks she got lucky. Now, watching that final cut, there was another line that hit me harder than any other. And she said, and once again, I want to read this one exactly. I don't think I've ever planned anything in my life. I just follow wherever it leads me, and I consider myself very lucky. I thought about that line every single day since I heard it, because here's the thing about luck.

09:05 My mother did not have a plan when she got on the boat out of China. She did not have a plan when she flew to Utah alone, and she did not have a plan when she met my dad at the library, and she didn't have a plan when she started working on the disease that nobody had cured. She just kept following the next thing in front of her and acting on it whenever an opportunity showed up.

09:23 And what she is describing is luck plus action, and luck plus action is how basically every real business gets built. Chris, George, and Kellen did not have a plan when they watched my YouTube video either. They just followed the next thing in front of them and acted on it. They saw the idea, they moved, they built a business, and then they reached out to me.

09:45 Meanwhile, the 9,997 other people who watched that same video and did nothing were all waiting for a plan, and that's the whole game right there. I taught a class on e-commerce for over 15 years now. The people who fail are the ones watching business idea videos thinking that they're missing information. They think that if they just watch one more video, read one more article, or take one more course, they will finally know enough to start.

10:12 But the truth is that they already have the information. What they're missing is the action to go with it. Every founder I have ever met in 20 years of running my own business and being around e-commerce operators will tell you the same thing. You're never going to be sure, so just take imperfect action. By the way, if you have parents who are still around and you've been putting off filming them, do not wait on this.

10:35 I waited 17 years too long with my dad, and I will never get that time back. If you want to work with Chris, George, and Kellen, their company is called Immortalized Films, and the link is in the description. Now, before you go, I want you to see what these guys actually made. So, here's the teaser trailer for the documentary they cut about my mom. If you want to watch the full film, feel free to reach out to me.

10:59 >> I was swamped with examination. I was biochemistry major. We just met one day in the library. We met in graduate school. And he's electric engineer major in University Utah. He's a very handsome guy. And he has a car. He drove bunch of girls home. From that on, we just start dating. Automatically, we fell in love and get married. Then my husband got a job communicating satellites in Maryland.

11:51 He moved to Maryland 1967. I got my degree 1968 in biochemistry at PhD degree biochemistry in University Utah. I moved to Maryland 1968. I was thinking we should enjoy a few years with money and then Danny comes. I'm not sure we prepared to have a child, but somehow I got pregnant. So, I was a post-doc at National Institute of Health and uh my boss hired me.

12:34 I was not pregnant. After I have to inform her. I said, "I was pregnant." So, but everything fine. So, unexpected, but my husband is very happy. Danny's a little bit fussy kid. He won't eat. The first year he was born, he ate only drank milk. And anything you gave to him he threw out. So, I was so scared. And you know, both uh my husband I working and uh it's hard for us to have a second child.

13:21 That's the reason it takes 6 years to have Steve. >> Compare with Danny Steve so easy. He will eat every food you put in his mouth. We are We are very happy. Danny was so hard, but he's 6 ft tall big man now. >> Do you remember like you used to pin me down and then squeeze my cheeks as hard as you could until I would cry? >> Is that true? >> I don't remember that.

13:59 >> called cheekies. And then >> I do remember cheekies. I remember. >> That was the currency. Like if he would do something to me like drive me somewhere, he would demand 10 cheekies. Or he'd pinch my cheeks as hard as really hard. >> know that. Wow. >> So I'm like crying here and here. >> Oh yeah, you are crying. I remember what this now crying anymore.

14:20 >> But he did teach me how to >> Play ball. >> Play soccer. I remember my first game. Like you just taught me how to just cut back and forth in the first game like I dominated. That first game and you thought I was going to be a really good soccer player. But then But then I grew up and then I wasn't that good soccer player. >> Now if you want to see the other two business ideas from that original video that nobody has built yet, watch this one next. They are still sitting there for the taking.