How Interviewing billionaires on the street made James Dumoulin a millionaire at 23 years old.
James Dumoulin, the co-founder and face of The School of Hard Knocks social media platforms and YouTube channel, is everywhere these days – on your phone screen, TV, in your city, worldwide…Known for approaching millionaires and billionaires on the street for impromptu interviews, his videos, which average 10M + views, have garnered him a 17-million following across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube. Everyone, from Gen Z to baby boomers, has seen a School-of-Hard-Knocks interview. Even my dad, who is in his 70s, is familiar with James’ reels. James is so well known that Tom Cruise requested an interview from him.
The viral content creator happened to be walking by my table at Buckhead’s Yeppa & Co. when I pulled a James Dumoulin on him. While I didn’t use his famous opener: “Excuse me, sir/ma’am…” on him, I did ask for an interview and the savvy entrepreneur obliged. Before I knew it, James and I were chatting over a bowl of bolognese. A few minutes into our conversation, I could see why James is at the helm of “one of the fastest-growing business media channels in the world.” Not only does he articulate himself incredibly well for a 23-year-old –no doubt the result of rubbing elbows with the upper echelon these last few years– he implements the priceless knowledge he has gleaned from his interviewees.
James Dumoulin’s Passion for Business
“I had a passion for business, and I got really good at content creation,” says James. “In 2019, 2020, I saw that the creator economy was a multibillion-dollar industry and started to see media as an industry where there was a big transfer of wealth happening from a lot more of the traditional media outlets and platforms. The economy was shifting to the more on-demand content, social media, where everybody around the world is becoming their own social network.”
In 2021, James partnered with his brother, Jack Dumoulin and childhood friend, Joshua Smith, to create a business media channel. They grew the channel to about 25,000 followers, then decided to pivot. “We figured that most people don’t give a shit about 20-year-old kids giving business advice. We went to find those industry experts that have 20, 30, 40, 50 years of experience, and bring that to the next generation of people.” The pivot to interview-style content was one of the best decisions of their lives. “We were cold approaching millionaires, billionaires in the street, which hadn’t been done to that extent. In four years, we grew the channel to 17 million followers and a multimillion-dollar company.”
The team saw their biggest growth from 2024 to now. “We always had the mindset and the mentality of going to get that next big interview. In less than a year, I’ve interviewed Shaquille O’Neal, Tom Brady, Tom Cruise, Will Smith, tons of billionaires, the richest people in the world. And I still have that mentality of: There’s still so much more I feel we need to do… The minute you get comfortable, you might as well just give it up because if you lose that hunger, then other people are gonna come up in your space and take you out and I refuse to let that happen.”
Consistency and Virality
VUE: What piece of content made you go viral?
James Dumoulin: The pivotal interview for us was when we interviewed Mark Cuban [2022]. We just cold approached Mark after a South by Southwest event. But, that wasn’t our first viral video. Before we started to do a lot of known people, celebrities, billionaires, it was just random people off the streets in tech, finance, real estate, entrepreneurs… Mark was that really pivotal piece of content because it gave us confidence. Hey, if Mark Cuban is stopping to do an interview with us, why can’t we get everybody else?
VUE: What is the secret to obtaining the exposure you’ve gotten?
JD: Consistency is everything. One of my favorite sayings about content creation is: “Going viral is like hitting the lottery, but creating consistent content is like investing in your future.” We were relentlessly traveling to get interviews. We were relentless about posting our content every single day. We posted 400 times on Instagram and only had 50 followers. A lot of people post 10, 15, 20 times, they don’t get the results that they want, so they give up. I am a firm believer that as long as you just keep feeding stuff to the algorithm, eventually, your content is gonna get sent to the right people who need to see it.
Did Education Help with Building a Social Media Following?
VUE: You studied advertising at The University of Texas at Austin, do you think that helped you in business?
JD: No, I think more important than any college degree is the city that you live in. That’s what it is. In terms of helping build this platform and channel, no, because there wasn’t anything in school about how to build a social media following or about how to build a media company. I’m not saying that school is designed for my specific business model and whatnot, but I think that for real entrepreneurship, I don’t think that college was the smartest thing to do. But, it did the best thing for me, which was getting me out of my hometown [born in Virginia, James lived in South Korea from 6-10 years old and grew up in the Washington, D.C. area as his dad was in the Army], which I think every young person should do, especially if you’re not in a city that has a widespread energy of what it is that you’re trying to do.Living on the military base overseas, traveling the world a lot as a younger kid had a big impact on me. That enabled me to think a lot bigger than most people typically do, because I feel like a lot of people don’t really ever leave their hometown. Eventually, I moved to Austin to go to The University of Texas, where I started The School of Hard Knocks.
VUE: How has life changed since you’ve achieved your success? You ask billionaires: “How much have you made in a year?” How much have you made in a year?
JD: We had our biggest month in August 2025; we did $700,000 revenue, and over $400,000 in profit. We’re super profitable. This year, we’ll probably do over $6 million for the business. We’re a media company, so the margins are super high. We have four businesses, so that definitely helps out a lot. We make way more money off of our businesses than we do off of the content. That’s one of the privileges of the content that we make is we get to meet and learn directly from and build great relationships with some of the richest people on the planet and people that have built empires. I’m still traveling all the time. We get recognized everywhere we go, which is definitely pretty interesting, for sure. L.A., Dubai, New York… We’ve got a lot of people that are huge fans of the channel and the content, and it’s just really cool to see that, the impact that it’s had. That’s a big reason why we do it. I don’t think I’ve scaled my lifestyle up crazy. My focus right now, outside of the business, is buying a bunch of real estate.
VUE: What was your first big purchase?
JD: We bought a 200-unit apartment complex in Texas. Didn’t buy a crazy car… I take trips all the time. Travel, experiences… all that are really important to me. I moved to Downtown Austin, which, when I was going to UT, was always something that I wanted, a nice place downtown.
Mentorship is Wisdom Without the Wounds
VUE: Tell me about your businesses.
JD: The best entrepreneurs look at all the different ways that they could be making money or the different ways people are making money off of them. It’s the concept of vertical integration. We took our core business and monetized it off the content, advertising, ad revenue, so that’s YouTube, TikTok, all those platforms paying us for the views that we’re getting. Brand partnerships. We’re great at creating content, we’re spending time with and filming with wealthy entrepreneurs, so, we launched the marketing agency to do all of their social media. We have a private entrepreneur subscription community with thousands of people who get access to live calls with the millionaires and billionaires we interview. Lastly, we have a high-ticket content consulting company. Since we’ve done over 4 to 5 billion views in the last four years, now, we consult for companies and people trying to do the exact same thing. We’re always looking for different verticals. We’ve got other stuff coming out soon.
VUE: Are you in business with the millionaires/billionaires you interview?
JD: I have a lot of great relationships. I can ask people in my network or people that I interview, “Hey, people loved our interview. Would love to have you on a call or come talk to my community.” And it’s always a “Yes!” because they always want to help out. In terms of being in business with them, we invest in real estate with them. We’ll get sent deals…We’ve done that a lot over the last year.
VUE: Is there anyone you credit for anything big that has happened with your businesses?
JD: Todd Nepola, this guy who owns a lot of commercial real estate/retail centers in South Florida, I remember him saying, “The richest people in the world all invest in real estate.” I think that was important. We have another business partner, Joel Kaplan, he’s done $30M+ in sales online. He’s a digital marketer. He was a big piece in helping us grow the other companies from the high-ticket content to the low-ticket subscription community. They were definitely two of the most impactful people on this, for sure.
Plans for the Future
VUE: Where do you see this all going in the next few years?
JD: I’m focused on distribution right now. I want to keep on growing and scaling to like 50M followers. I filmed a bunch of content in Dubai and Saudi Arabia. I’m gonna go get the richest people all over the world. I think that the globalization of content is going to be really important, and it’s not even just distribution on that channel. I want to launch a bunch of new channels and bring talent in to run them. We’re pretty much building our own media network. Kind of taking the same approach that Dave Portnoy did with Barstool Sports. I want to do that in our space and build one of the biggest empires in the world.
VUE: So, you’re on track to becoming a millionaire/billionaire?
JD: Well, we’re already millionaires; me and my partners all became millionaires this year. But definitely, you never know, there may be a ‘b’ in the works.
VUE: By 25?
JD: No, no, no. I’m gonna probably need 15 years for that, but definitely. I was a millionaire at 23, which was pretty cool.
VUE: That’s amazing. Do you believe in manifestation?
JD: I definitely believe in God. To have the work ethic and the discipline that we have, I think a lot of that came from something bigger than us. I’m a Christian; I think that had a really big impact on me. I was always kind of visualizing some of these interviews. I was always thinking long-term and how big that we can actually take things. We didn’t have anybody that paved the way for us. Our parents weren’t entrepreneurs. I grew up in a military family. You’re gonna fail a lot, which we did. We tried launching businesses early on that absolutely failed, that we lost money on. Mentorship is so important though, because mentorship is wisdom without the wounds. There’s people that spend 20+ years dedicating their lives to building a certain type of business, that if you can learn from them, they’re going to give you the playbook on what it took to build that type of company as opposed to you just trying to figure everything out on your own.
Believing that You Can is More Profitable than Believing that You Can’t
VUE: Do you have a mentor?
JD: A bunch of mentors. A lot of people I interview are mentors for different things.
VUE: What is your best advice for success?
JD: Believing that you can is more profitable than believing that you can’t. I think the reason why people fail or don’t succeed in their businesses is lack of belief, and people get discouraged so quickly. Think incredibly big, too. One of my favorite sayings is: “You can only grow to what you’re exposed to.” If you’ve been stuck in your hometown, that’s small, you gotta go out and see what’s actually possible. Robert Herjavec [Shark Tank] told me he didn’t even think it was possible that somebody could own a private jet until he was 25 years old. The earlier you realize what’s actually attainable, the better off you will be and it will cause you to think a lot bigger.
VUE: What would people be surprised to find out about you?
JD: That I’m just crazy. Like, I’m insane. But I think, again, it ties into just how obsessed I am with what we do and I am just so analytical about the type of content that goes out. You kind of get to a point where it almost ties into wanting to be a perfectionist.
VUE: Who is the dream interview?
JD: Elon Musk, President Trump, Kim Kardashian, Conor McGregor –those are my top four right now.
VUE: Are you still going up to your interviewees cold or are you arranging interviews now?
JD: It’s a mix right now. The thing that got us here was going up to people cold, so, I don’t think I’ll ever stop doing that. I probably won’t do interviews forever, but at least for the time being, while we’re running the channel. We’re one of the most viewed platforms in the world, I’m going to take advantage of being able to interview more celebrities and billionaires.
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