Misfit Founders
Misfit Founders
Crafting Authentic Connections in the Creator Economy with Gabriel Padilla
Ever wondered how a former model conquered the world of social media marketing without spending a cent on ads? Gabriel Padilla takes us on a riveting journey from the glitzy catwalks of Los Angeles to the bustling corridors of his successful social media agency. Discover the pivotal moments that led him to harness the power of organic content and DM conversational marketing, transforming followers into loyal customers. Gabriel's story is a testament to the potential of passion and strategic thinking in the dynamic landscape of digital entrepreneurship.
Gabriel opens up about the stark contrasts between the modeling industry and social media creation, emphasizing the mental and physical toll of modeling versus the more constructive engagement found online. He shares his insights on the importance of authenticity, the value of passionate user bases, and the significance of owning your audience through direct channels like email and SMS. This episode promises to equip you with practical strategies for sustainable growth and audience engagement, all while maintaining your unique voice in the creator economy.
We also explore the evolving dynamics between creators, brands, and PR agencies, shedding light on the challenges of aligning interests and measuring real impact. Gabriel's entrepreneurial wisdom offers invaluable lessons on balancing personal freedom with business demands and navigating the ever-changing social media landscape. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned creator, or simply curious about the inner workings of the creator economy, Gabriel's experiences and insights provide a comprehensive guide to thriving in today's digital world. Join us for an enlightening conversation that could redefine your approach to social media and content creation.
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What is Mr Beast? He's still seen as a creator himself and his whole brand is a media company. That's been one thing that's been a little disappointing. Creators are not currently seen as business. You can have 10 million followers and they still see him as a consumer and it's because, again, they don't own their audience. You know modeling, it's the same as anything. If you go into a casting, the casting director might not like the shape of your eyebrows and you have no idea that. That's why they don't choose you right.
Speaker 2:But with social media, it's true, there's weird stuff.
Speaker 1:But in social media you can kind of see what your audience resonates with and what provides the most value to them, and value in the form of inspiration or entertainment or whatever it may be.
Speaker 2:Over time you make your luck. The more you work towards it. The more options you build for yourself, the less luck you need. If you know what I mean. If someone becomes a billionaire at 21, 22, I'll be like stroke of genius or incredible luck. Stroke of genius or incredible luck, Give you a sense. Oh, I love your shoes. Oh, my goodness, Love me a good pair of loafers. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's humid, though, so, as I stepped outside today, it's just sticky, so might end up changing them.
Speaker 2:We'll see see raining and stuff. Well, gabriel, thank you so much for doing this in very last minute, because I think it was like last week. That was okay, let's do it quick. Um, so you're are you. Are you from? You're not from here, from austin, because I had um aj mentioned that you were um visiting him. Are you going to be at sastok as well?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, it's actually why I came out here. It's my first time in Austin. Aj, who's speaking at the event, invited me out and I'm on a conference tour, so couldn't turn it down.
Speaker 2:Conference tour. I love that. I love that. Well, we'll talk a bit about why you're on the conference tour in a second and what the strategy is with that. But first, maybe a quick introduction of who you are and what is it that you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do.
Speaker 2:I yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, the conversation is between us.
Speaker 2:And look, this is a genuine introduction, because I do very little to no digging into my guests, because when you tell me who you are, I am genuinely learning about yourself. So it makes it more like an authentic conversation, getting to know each other.
Speaker 1:okay, nice yeah, so, uh, gabriel Padilla um, you know I'm a social media creator turned founder. I'd moved to Los Angeles when I was 16, from a small town doing modeling, and, uh, found that you needed to build a social media presence increasingly. So, uh, you know, I've decided to figure it out. I've always been into numbers and marketing and so I figured it out. And then I had friends that were also artists and entertainers, and businesses as well, that were kind of feeling the press of social media. This was back in about 2016. So, you know, started helping them for gas money or they'd buy me lunch and then, obviously, if their friends ask, if they're, you know that's how it kind of spread and I'm not going to charge them gas money. So I built an agency and so I've done that for the past eight years. You know, social media marketing for creators, artists. You know, brick and mortar businesses, e-commerce. We actually did our own e-commerce brands in 2020 and did very well with it. We did seven figures without any Facebook ads, any emails, specifically through DM.
Speaker 1:And so we realized there was something there. So then I built a DM conversational marketing agency and we've really helped our clients a lot, generating a lot of revenue specifically from their organic content. So zero ad spend.
Speaker 2:Well, I suppose that the fact that you're coming from the social media background you learn the ropes, as they say, with what works and what not that helps you with building the same type of I would say success for your customers. Yeah, is that what you're? That's how you developed your agency and built you know what. One thing that I would say is, when you told me, social media influencer turned founder entrepreneur, to me that sounded like something that happened recently. But you've been having your agency for eight years now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, yes, okay yeah, because I was initially when I was turned okay. So you, you've been into doing social media and content and so on for quite a while and recently you started your business. But no, you've been, you've been doing this for for eight years yeah, now, social media agency loosely, I think it wasn't a.
Speaker 1:You know I'm gonna form the llc and start a business today. Again, it started with helping friends and, you know, realizing that I could charge for it and, uh, you know I didn't want to overcharge and so, again, it was just gas money and I was getting them thousands of followers a month and then boosting, you know, their engagement, getting a lot more eyes on their account. And then, as I connected with bigger and bigger clients. You know we were able to do that, but it actually was, I would say, more recent when, not to say, I completely stepped away from being a creator.
Speaker 1:But if you look at my Instagram, I haven't posted in a few months, and the reason being that I'd found it was, you know, very difficult to use my audience and actually build a business from it. So, the e-commerce business we did on my agency anything you don't see that on my Instagram Because travel, lifestyle, some menswear kind of stuff I didn't know how to take the attention from my social media and turn it to customers. So, yeah, I was more focused on other people's stuff. And then, more recently, I found that there's a way of doing it. That's why we built the software platform, we launched the new agency where we help people specifically take that attention on their social media and and turn that into podcast viewers or customers or email opt-ins or whatever it may be, because that was actually something that was really difficult for me was I did always want to be a creator, but I've always been an entrepreneur since I was, you know, like eight years old, lemonade stand. The basic did well at that for an eight-year-old, to be honest.
Speaker 1:But you know, it was always a thing where I was kind of wrestling with, where I'd focus on my social and then my business would struggle and I'd focus on my business and I wasn't really able to do the two. So so that's kind of the mission I would say. I've not formally stepped away, but I've really put my focus on building our company, ellipsand, so that we can work with creators and make it easy for them to, you know, take their audience and put that towards building something they love and not having to separate the two like I did.
Speaker 2:Right, Okay, so it kind of stemmed from and it's a platform. You said it's a piece of software as a product.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And it stemmed from your own challenge of being like well, how do I marry my audience with a service or a product?
Speaker 1:Exactly exactly, and it was a common problem I had. You know, and when we build audiences, a lot of times businesses would say you know, this is cool, I have all these followers, but how do I know that this is actually going to make a real impact? And even as a creator, you know, I went to Jamaica recently with a PR agency and you know, when I post on Instagram and I'm you know, this awesome trip at Jamaica with this resort, there's, I'd say, 0% of my 300 plus thousand followers would be like I'm going to book a trip right now to Jamaica. You know it's a common problem that I was seeing kind of in the space that you know, creator agencies were unable to kind of show their clients the direct impact.
Speaker 1:Everything's like CPM and kind of more esoteric or you know nebulous. You know benchmarks, so it really kind of goes all the way from the top to. You know Very large enterprise, netflix. You know kind of same thing. They don't aren't really tracking subscribers from their posts To to creators, to small mom-and-pop shops. You know, actually getting people my parents have a restaurant in my small town. It's. It's very difficult to actually leverage your social media.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah. So how do you do that? Tell me a bit about your software, Because now you made me curious. How do you take that esoteric numbers and transform them into tangible?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think the best way of explaining is kind of how social media is treated now. It's almost like you go to Times Square and you see a billboard for Coke or whatever, or let's say your podcast, and it's like you know you go to Times Square and you see a billboard for Coke or whatever. Or let's say your podcast, and it's like go to my podcast, you know, subscribe to my podcast. You have no idea if that billboard location is better than the others, or if you know anybody's actually seeing that and going to it, you might find that you're getting podcast subscribers, but if you have 10 different billboards or whatever, it's very hard to tell. So social media is kind of the same thing where you know people say like go view my podcast streaming on all major platforms, you know, and it's you know from. From a attribution perspective, you know tracking the actual conversions of the customers or other people who are clicking the link going to your podcast. It's very difficult to see which posts resonate. So you can create more content like that. But even if you look in the way the algorithm works, you know retention is such a huge thing on social media where if you post a minute long, you know, chop up of your, your podcast and you said in the caption you know, go to link in bio or go search it on here. If someone watches 10 seconds, they exit away from the content. That's telling instagram that, hey, you know the retention is low. Yeah, that this is bad content. So, even if you have all of these followers whether you have, like, you know, a hundred, a hundred thousand or you know five million, very small, small portion are actually going to be, you know, directed or they're gonna be exposed to your content, and then it's gonna be even worse if you're trying to push them kind of off platform. So we saw that as a problem in that, you know it's not a very good user experience because also, if you're justiping through Reels or something, you know it's a, you don't want to lose your spot on the Reels page and so a lot of times you just won't do anything. So instead you can actually set up and this is, you know, through their API and everything like that. So, very like, meta is really pushing messaging. So you've probably seen it before where if someone says like comment podcast, or you know this is episode 43, you comment 43 and right away you get a dm from your account or whoever's account. It says here's the link to it.
Speaker 1:And, and by doing this, not only are you, you know, increasing engagement because you're incentivizing engagement, you get a lot more comments and a lot more organic reach but also you can track that. Hey, this post got us this many clicks to our podcast. So we're doing this for creators and I already have our marketing agency, which I launched actually last year, the DM Marketing Agency. We work with some bigger names Danny Morrell he has a big podcast. He's about like 1.7 million on Instagram. We just signed Tony Robbins and Dean Graciosi's company last week, mastermindcom. So, yeah, we've gotten kind of proof of concept and again, we generated, you know, about a million dollars in revenue in a year through doing this. So that's why I decided you know the current solutions available. They don't really make it easy for creators to do and it's not very trackable, so we decided to build our own and it's not very trackable, so we decided to build our own.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, interesting. So what's the? What's the next step with um, mr tony robinson's agency now? Do you help them? Is it like? It's a kind of like, oh well, for certain profiles and certain influencers and so on, you hand hold and help them set up and such, or just give them access to the platform, and you know yeah, yeah, so with you, premier scaling is my marketing agency, so we're using many chat, which is which is great like we're an agency partner.
Speaker 1:I spoke at their event last year. It's solid, but you really need an agency to set it up. It's not something you can right. You can, you know, set up something basic, but actually managing it and optimizing is isn't something you can do yourself. So right now we're building those campaigns for oh, there's some thunder.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're having this conversation over a proper storm in Austin. Really memorable, right. I was asking you what's the most memorable episode.
Speaker 1:That's what this is for Exactly. Yeah, so so we're actually creating a Libsyn, so it's you don't need to hire an agency to do this. It's very simple. You can schedule content and post content through our platform, set up a very simple DM flow where, if people comment or they DM you, they get a message and then you can actually track exactly how many people clicked the link and how many people start conversations from it.
Speaker 2:So we're launching today, actually, Right, so I get that, but what asking is like, for if, let's say, you have a very high profile um customer like a, let's say, an influencer, very high profile influencer, would you go through? Would you basically go beyond means and beyond means, above means whatever they're saying is and help set them up and say, oh well, here's some ideas of how you could use our tool and here's some strategies and so on? Or is it strictly here's the platform you have and usually you have your marketing team and and strategy and so on and you use it the way you wanted to. Or do you also help them with figuring out what would be most effective way to use your tool?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So, entirely selfishly, we are working very closely with people who get started with our initial users, because you know, if you are now, we're getting the founder talk, so I'm excited about startup stuff.
Speaker 1:You know it's so important to know your users and see how they use the platform, and the idea behind it is that we want our users to be able to sign up for free because you know you get started for free and you only have to pay if you actually get a lot of growth from it. So we can grow with our clients and you can set up your first post, your first flow, in about five minutes, intuitively. And so we're going to be working very closely, giving strategies and everything like that kind of helping more creators do this and, like I say very selfishly, because we want to know our creators more under, you know we're going to right now, we service, you know, instagram and Facebook. We support them. We're going to be building towards X. Also Twitch I don't want to build Twitch if we don't have people asking us for Twitch. So you know I want to. If our users say, hey, we would love this functionality when we post or we want to use this platform, then we can build around that intelligently, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, that's really good to know. I was curious. I'm actually quite curious about your content creator slash influencer journey. So you said at the beginning that you moved to LA.
Speaker 1:Yeah, where from Oregon.
Speaker 2:Southern Oregon. Okay, small town, so why was it? Because you were. You started creating content back home and then you were thinking but how did you move to?
Speaker 1:modeling. I was doing modeling back then so that's what moved you to.
Speaker 2:LA okay so it wasn't like oh, you're a content creator and no.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think really influencers and now creators weren't really much of a thing, like there were a few, most like the bloggers back then. 0% on my radar to do. You know social media in that way. I kind of it was I had to if I wanted to do modeling, and that's why I then found that social media gave you so much more freedom than modeling did. I mean, for one you can make more money and for two you can kind of run your own career, as opposed to having to kind of work with your specific agency. So that's why I chose that path and kind of left modeling behind.
Speaker 2:So basically you bumped into it because it was a need for your modeling career growth, and then at one point you stopped and said exactly, exactly. I like this better than than modeling yep, yeah, it was.
Speaker 1:It was so much better. And I mean it's you, you get to kind of connect with your audience immediately. Um, I think that was something that was really big for me is you could actually see the, you know, modeling it's. It's the same as anything, if it's like in in that industry, if you go into a casting you, they might, the casting director might not like the shape of your eyebrows and you have no idea that. That's why they don't choose you, right. But with social media, it's true, there's weird stuff. It's very particular stuff, you know maybe the way you walk, but in social media you can kind of see what your audience resonates with and what provides the most value to them, and value in the form of inspiration or entertainment or whatever it may be, so you don't get that into modeling.
Speaker 1:So like, for example, if you're going for a casting and there's five models and they choose one, they never actually tell you why, as in like why they chose that model, that model the only feedback I ever got was the feedback from a casting director on a job I'd worked with before, who said the reason why we didn't choose you this time is because that guy has more followers than you.
Speaker 2:Only time I ever got any any meaningful feedback whatsoever but I suppose do you reckon it's because when it comes to people's looks and such that it's I don't know? It's just not natural for people to say, oh, I don't know. I was hoping you would say that actually.
Speaker 1:No, they were ruthless, they would, absolutely they'd tear you apart in the room. It's a weird power dynamic that I found in modeling, where they would love, where it's, you know, like you're a good-looking guy, you take care of yourself. Women, of course, go through it as well. Um, and, and you know not to say that there were some incredible people I met in the modeling industry, but oftentimes I found in the casting department. You know the power dynamic of like this is a good looking person, I can just twist the knife. You know they all knew we were. We were, uh, trying to get skinnier, in better shape, and so, you know, I look, my agency even would would tell me that I was like, oh, you're too fat, and like it looked different now than I did before. But back then I now look at those photos and I was like man, I was like sub 10 body, fat, easy, and uh, yeah, no, they didn't pull their punches at all with uh okay, yeah, so they were.
Speaker 2:there was feedback, right as in, like in general, like oh no, you're no, you're too fat, you're too this, you're too that.
Speaker 1:I'd say not constructive feedback.
Speaker 2:Right and that it was like.
Speaker 1:That's not we didn't choose you because of this, it was just they would like to, kind of. I think part of it was they thought if they wanted to keep their models on their toes, so they would feel like they kind of need them for the feedback. And then also, just, you know, not letting them get comfortable and always, you know, I would say that there was some benefit in that because I was always always progressing, um, but I think it did really affect my relationship with food and with fitness and you know it was more of an obligation. It wasn't fun anymore. I was working out, you know, twice a day and and, uh, eating quinoa, ground turkey, uh and asparagus, and that's it, you know. So you know, good with the bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, in a way, extremes are never good, is it no? So, yeah, if it makes you fall into that extreme of you know, I need to be top 1% of their roster or whatnot, on job success rate for modeling gigs and so on, then you might go to extremes in order to to keep you there yeah and that's never good.
Speaker 2:I don't. It doesn't really matter what industry right or what even health wise right, you get fitter better and so on, but I don't know. There's some. There's also a mental um component, uh, I mean in the middle of it, uh, which is, you know, if you're trying to be way too healthy and look way too good, then you kind of like remove some of the you know joys and some of the things that keep you sane. Yeah, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1:I will say that my roommate back then he would, uh, he would eat. He was permanently shredded, like for him fitness was not like at least staying very lean was not hard. He would eat, eat like pasta, just boiled pasta. He wouldn't put salt or even pepper because he thought that it would. You know, like, obviously salt you can retain water, whatever, but pepper he wouldn't put, like he would just eat pasta. And I mean it seemed not hard for him. It was interesting he was. Some people are just like that. You know I wasn't, but we're living in Miami. You know my that. You know I I wasn't, but uh, we're living in miami. You know my family and my father's side comes from cuba. There's a bunch of cuban food, so I was in great shape but, uh, I did have some balance, I think, despite all the the craziness you know that's good and and also you realized I hate this um, I prefer social media, yeah and you know what.
Speaker 1:This is something I I don't actually think about too often, but it just brought up the top model in the industry. Great looking guy worth all these brands made about a million dollars a year.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So to think that, like the top of the top of the top in this industry, which you know is unrealistic, only the ceiling was so low and you'd have to put up with so much to get there. You know, that was the thing for me was, uh, you know, I, I think, when I, when I realized that I, I had not to say I, I care to necessarily make more than a million dollars a year. That's not really my driving force, but just understanding the you know where the money is, you know like there's the impact.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah interesting.
Speaker 2:So the top of the top of the top, like the best male model, would make a million dollars. So that means that if you're ranked, ranked whatever like 600 or something like that. You'd make pennies, pennies yeah, it really was.
Speaker 1:And the other thing, too, is I connected when we were living in Miami.
Speaker 1:We lived in a model apartment and there were a bunch of Brazilian dudes that were really big into modeling, like he used to be the, the face of Armani for like years and years, and they'd go to the beach and like everybody, oh my god, male models, male models, and again, like that, that's not what I'm after by any means, but they would fly out first-class to amazing destinations and, like you know, 20, 2016, 20 ish, you know that that for 2018, that kind of period was, you know, e-commerce was kind of really rocking.
Speaker 1:So, like you don't fly to the Bahamas in the first class, like they'd fly to Ohio, you know, and you'd go to a warehouse and in front of a white background and like, and then take another shot. You know, like the magic was gone too. So it's like, what am I doing? You know, so the money wasn't there anymore, cause people were kind of all getting into modeling. And then you know the, the, the energy, I guess, is the way I'd put it or just the. You know the relationships were not the best and and, yeah, so social media provided a lot more.
Speaker 2:So on social media, what? What did you start? So I suppose you started social media because of your modeling career and basically posting posts around your modeling life and shoots and so on. But did that continue once you kind of stopped with modeling that type of content, or did you move into other type of content? Tell me a bit about how you progressed, like what were your evolution in social media.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's definitely been some uh, some whiplash from my audience for my content. Definitely a lot of modeling stuff, and decidedly not modeling stuff anymore. Um, you know it was modeling and travel. You know, my girlfriend and I we lived uh, she's from finland, so we'd live in finland and we'd come back to the states and live in you know, different areas and lived in mexico city for a little while. So a lot of travel. We've always loved traveling and fortunately, having the agency has enabled me to do that, you know, on top of doing some trips as a creator as well. So, a lot of travel.
Speaker 1:And then also menswear, but nothing crazy, because, you know, I wish I had that incredible taste where I could have like seven different pieces of rings and everything, and that's never been. You know my vibe. I think you know what I was going for is is accessible but elevated. You know kind of menswear where, just if you want to look good as a guy, like without breaking the bank too much, or like you can invest in quality but without, like, constantly thinking about it, then, uh, yeah, menswear. And then you know fitness and travel okay, and that do you still.
Speaker 2:Do you still do that now this content.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you know I'll do some travel stuff the past few months with getting ready to launch Ellipsend. Like I said, we're launching today, so it's been a big run up of just preparing that by the way, congrats, thank you. You said you're launching a. Saas talk. We use the API. We're not doing any automation, weird stuff. So we just need Instagram to approve the final permissions to send messages and then we're live.
Speaker 2:Nice, yeah. Do you have some sort of launch party or something like that? It's right here.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:The whole week is a launch party. Where's the party, boppers?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I mean the way we see it. Just, I'm just excited to work with more and more Creators. So it's I'm, but we don't. We have a waitlist. We have. I have a community where I, you know, teach on a school, which is a cool platform like how to do DM marketing.
Speaker 1:But it did not need grandiose like launch, it's more just like hey, we're live, you want to get started like, let's, let's fix your problems. Specifically, I don't want to have a lot of startups will have a big bump, and then you know if they even get that big bump, that launch, and then you know the quality is not there and for me, I'd rather you know the YC's whole thing is it's better to have, you know, 10 or maybe 50 users who love your product and would chop off their arm for it than 1,000 or 10,000 that are ambivalent. So that's kind of what we're looking for is, when we work with creators, that the light goes off, and I want to see that. So, yeah, we'll party, maybe once we hit some milestones, but I'd say revenue milestones for the creators.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's the right attitude to have, to be honest, having a conversation earlier about a very similar thing which is, like you know, feeding on that, on that um reward that you get as a founder, as an entrepreneur of helping someone else, yeah, which is quite important for a lot of us founders, sure, I mean there's, there's a lot of entrepreneurs that also start and are driven by the financial gain of it, and primarily the financial gain, by all means yeah you do you well.
Speaker 2:for me and I think for a lot of other founders, and especially when we talk about sas and software and products, um, social media products and so on, it's just that ability to help as many people as possible and seeing their reaction of helping. It's a personal satisfaction as well as, of course, you also get more successful and more financially stable.
Speaker 1:It's a byproduct, it's a result of providing impact. When you create value in a space, obviously you can, then I believe in value-based pricing. We leverage that a lot with our marketing agency. I think we can definitely do a lot more of that, but it's more like we want to work with people in kind of a new field on the marketing agency side. But at the same time I think that, especially with something kind of new, we're trying to fundamentally shift how businesses and creators use social media for their businesses and how they engage with their audiences too. So I think that it's better for us to work closely with creators and focus on the financial gain as it comes. But the financial gain is a byproduct as they gain financially.
Speaker 2:And I mean that's a great byproduct, right yeah? You know, I've helped a hundred thousand people and I made a couple of millions, yeah, yeah, I mean we're raising a seed round.
Speaker 1:So I mean like that's, that's uh, where I'd say like I, I, what do they say? Like uh for for uh, startups. Like a salary is like for survival and then equity is for upside. So I think that's kind of my perspective here is like the marketing agency is doing quite well, so even we raise our seed around. I don't expect to take a salary or a meaningful salary, because I'd rather just kind of invest that in and I'm fortunate to be able to do that because I have the marketing agency. But yeah, I'm more.
Speaker 2:I see it as an opportunity for we can be the, the mouthpiece for branded creators, their audiences, like solving that problem and attribution, like being able to track where, as creators, like creators can say, we created this much revenue for a brand or this many email opt-ins oh yeah you know, I think, solving that problem it's a big problem and there's a lot of money there, so it is because, again, I think the one thing that we've got used to in this kind of creator and influencer marketing world is one of two, one companies that brands that invest in that just because it's data school, and they have to because it's like, well, we're at a stage where we have, um, quite a lot of marketing budgets and we want to continue to sustain the you know, brand awareness, because that's what it is at the end of the day. When you can't, you know, when I wouldn't, say, because you can, you can quantify and you can track brand awareness as well. There are ways, but most of the time, when you do not have the very specific means of tracking how a piece of content from an influencer or creator has positively impacted your brand, you put it under brand marketing and brand recognition and so on. So there's a lot of big companies and companies generally that do that because it's like, well, you know, it's our quota. We have to continue to invest in brand recognition because you know it has its return right.
Speaker 2:Your brand is always mentioned and appears in a variety of content. But then there's also the other side, which is brands, and usually this is startups and smaller brands that try. They realize that it doesn't. Either they don't have a way to track properly how them sponsoring an influencer actually helped them. Either that or it doesn't give the results that they initially thought that they wanted. Yeah, so they never do it yeah, nothing.
Speaker 1:Nothing will humble you more when you have hundreds of thousands of followers, when you, uh, when you post something to your podcast or product or anything and you get like no one, like basically, like that's it's. It's humbling and discouraging, and especially because a lot of you know creators and and you know public figures, whoever, even businesses like they invest so much time and energy into building their audience. But it's like everybody knows you don't own your audience if, uh, you know they're not on email or sms and whatnot. But but even so, I think that you know you can have 300 000 plus followers and that was always a big thing for me where, like you know, when I got started, unbeknownst to me, people, everybody was buying fake followers in the beginning and, uh, you know so many people that are still oh yeah, of course, but, like now, they've kind of, you know, because the algorithm didn't punish them so much back then and I'm not necessarily like throwing shade on it, I've I've never done it and I don't recommend.
Speaker 1:You know, I don't really feel great when creators do it, when they work with brands to inflate their numbers. But yeah, you know, that was a big thing in the beginning of you know, a lot of people did that and then they had huge, huge audiences that were attractive because they had chronological posts. You know it wasn't like so much. Like you know, they limit your reach in the same way, so that actually helped them build authentic following. So it was a small percentage and that's the frustrating thing I always, you know, struggled with was what's the point of investing all your time and energy into building this audience instead of buying fake followers If your content's not being shown to, if you're not able to activate, you know, like your audience anyway, and I think a lot of creators share that frustration, especially because you know creators can buy fake likes and fake impressions, they can fake those metrics and it's I wouldn't say PR agencies are complicit, but I think the current solutions don't really allow for there's like AI and stuff like that that can scrape audiences.
Speaker 1:But I've seen that, like work where someone I know they bought a lot of their followers cause I've worked with them and I knew when they talked to me, like, yeah, we bought a lot of their followers because I've worked with them and I know when they talk to me like yeah, we bought a bunch of our followers, um, and then it says like yeah, a very authentic audience and people who are very authentic have you know where the it says that it's not an authentic audience. Um, you know, I think that solutions don't really exist to kind of track for that. And that's the problem with social media where, yeah, you know brands and PR agencies for example, I work with brands and even influencers like you know the metrics that you show to prove your value followers, likes, even comments, impressions. You know every saves, every DMs from it, like just the DM metric. All of that can be faked to fraudulently present your value. I think that's kind of the problem with the industry specifically is there's everybody's kind of you know, put their hands up right.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, and I understand why you're so passionate about what you do, because, basically, being able to for influencer to go back to brand and say this is how much money I made you, right, it's like like you've, we've collaborated and I made you this much money, so our collaboration work, yeah, so let's continue to go to. You know, diversify our kind of like portfolio of um, of partnerships and so on.
Speaker 1:They do longer term. That happens a lot. You'll do like a pilot project and then and a lot of times brands will do that just to get your first you're like let's do, can you do like a very discount rate just for the first one? If it goes well, we use it for future projects. And then you never hear back from them again. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and and now I saw on who was it on? I don't know. I think I've seen a piece of news on tiktok where there's there was this, this family, this couple. Actually it was family, they had kids as well and they faked their social media and it seems to be a very common thing.
Speaker 2:They faked their social media success and that they were a travel content type of couple and family where they bought a lot of their audience and they were posting these pictures and videos from holidays saying that, thank you, this brand for sponsoring and in reality, they were paying for the trips, yeah, but they were doing this in order to build the profile, in order to get actual brands to, to pay them to say, well, oh well, this brand paid them to go on a, on a holiday trip and like, sponsor their um, their posts and so on. Well, we should sponsor as well, yeah, and that to me feels so.
Speaker 1:So wrong, yeah, yeah very wrong.
Speaker 2:So that's why I understand, in a way, why you're so excited about this topic, because you know being able to say the gig is up right yeah in a sense and say, well, there's now tools that you can and brands should adopt as a standard to say hey, yes, we'll work together, but I want to make sure that I get these kind of reports that are created with trusted tools collaboration, contributor rather than taking it at face value.
Speaker 2:Well, that person has a million followers and seems to be going all around the world, seems to be sponsored by these brands, and well, it seems to be working. So, and this, this is one of the things, and I've heard a couple of marketers the other day talking about this and saying you could, you could sell this kind of service or this kind of things to this, this type of companies, because they don't check.
Speaker 1:Just have enough followers and have enough engagement to your posts and they'll think you're successful, yep, and they'll pay you sponsorship and even more so, I I uh not naming any names, but people who I've known in the past would specifically Photoshop. They had templates on Canva where they would plug in and they would, yeah, they would just Photoshop there and there's no, there's no checking, like it's, it's, it's again like brands just haven't really cared, I think because they the issue is there's no accountability. When you're a PR agency, you know what you're delivering to your, your, your client. The brand is impressions, is number and also talent. Like look, we got this talent to. You know post, and I think there's something to be said. Where you know somebody who has poor engagement but has a good name, like you know there's value there and you know, like the perception of brands, good name. Like you know there's value there and you know, like the perception of brands, but the, the interests are so out of alignment. Where you know brands want to be getting money. They want to see how much actually money we're making agencies. You know the money they they're like well, we, we obviously aren't going to get money because obviously it takes a few touch points at times to do it or the there's no real call to action, whatever. It's all for brand awareness top of funnel and so they're going to kind of turn a blind eye. Right, if you know creators, they're not incentivized and I don't think they should have to be incentivized, but they're not incentivized to trust and verify, kind of thing, you know. And then creators at the same time are like they're not getting paid for the value that they actually bring as far as like sales. So they're you know, again, it just creates. If you can put interest in alignment where that that's the hope is that creators can say we generate this much value and so this is, we want to get a cut of it.
Speaker 1:For example, if I go to jamaica and I work, usually hotels don't pay. So if anybody's watching this and you see people traveling hotels, very rarely do they actually pay, but you, you know they fly you out. And you see people traveling hotels, very rarely do they actually pay, but you, you know they fly you out and you have an amazing time. So if I, for example, you know, work with this hotel and I post about it and we use lip send, and then you know they get their email or you know they might book right away, we provide that path six months later, which is more likely than someone booking right away purchase, you know, be able to track that back to me as an influencer. And then I could say and creator. I think I was actually scolded at a creator economy summit last month. I said influencer and creator.
Speaker 2:Now, yeah, influencers don't like to be called influencers. Yeah, cause there's a stigma.
Speaker 1:I get it Cause there is, but sorry I got totally subtracted. But anyway, as a creator, I could, you know, get, get commission on an ongoing basis from brands I've worked with and by being able to prove that I actually provide real value, I'm gonna cut of that. And again, that's kind of when we get into the value-based pricing, what we do with our agency and then agencies could provide to clients. Look the brands, rather, we generated this much revenue. You gave us this much for this. We did not only sentiment, not only perception, not only impressions, but actual hard revenue.
Speaker 1:And then brands can actually, you know, influencer marketing, creator marketing, is 11 times more profitable, greater ROI right Than traditional digital advertising. But it's only about like 10 to you know it looks at, depends on which report you look at. 10 to $25 billion a year is spent on creator advertising, where social media advertising $220 billion. And the reason being is because you know, in marketing if you can't track what's actually making money, then you can't scale it. You're going to get diminishing returns. Like, maybe at $20 billion you get a 11x ROI, but at $50 billion you get a 5x ROI, you know. So I think it just kind of opens up again, creating value for brands, for agencies and for creators and just putting everybody's interests in alignment and going a little further.
Speaker 1:Your audience Imagine Kim Kardashian posts about Skims and comments Skims. You get a message from Kim Kardashian you know it's not her messaging, but you don't care Saying hey, here's that discount for Skims. Or this is our new collection, our exclusive collection that you got access to by commenting here. You go Like that's such a cooler experience for the audience too, so they can actually engage with their creators and businesses.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, Exciting stuff. So is that where you're? Because you mentioned you're on tour now, for you're going to a lot of these events and expos and so on and talks. Is it for the product launch?
Speaker 1:is. I have a good track history in businesses, but in the startup space and fundraising and building, I can do the zero to one, but it's the one to a thousand that I'm very excited to learn more about. And especially at SaaS Talk, I think that the agenda is really, really appealing to me. There was one that we're actually missing now, but this is worth it, just to say but I hope it is for you too it's how to get you know, zero dollar customer acquisition cost, how to grow. So, on the marketing track, which is so cool because that's what we're doing is we're going through referrals of full use affiliates. You know, if people kind of connect their friends, um, and so just trying to learn, trying to immerse myself in the startup world, um, you know, as compared to, like the social media kind of creator world. So I'm trying to bridge the two so that creators can have their own startups or businesses, and you know that businesses can actually better leverage creators and social media in general.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm curious. So when you go to events like this let's say SASTOC, have you been at SASTOC before?
Speaker 1:No, it's the first time events like this.
Speaker 2:Let's say sas talk. Um, have you been at sas talk before? Is the first time? And then you, have you been? At other events like this already.
Speaker 1:Uh, business, entrepreneurship, startup yeah, I was at a cog x about a week or so ago in la yeah, um, that was, that was very fun. I definitely found more value in the networking um, um, personally because, again, I'm, I love relationships and I love I had friends there that I was, you know, connecting to and connecting with amazing people but I'd say, yeah, this is my. I did a creator economy summit. That's where I met AJ last month. Um and uh, yeah, so this is my third this year.
Speaker 2:When you talk to, say, individuals that either work for brands or founders of brands or, let's say, even software, because nowadays you're also getting a bit more SaaS businesses getting into influencer marketing and so on. So when you talk about your solution to this group not the influencer, the content creator group, but to this group what are some of the comments and some of the reactions that you're getting from people, let's say, that haven't had that much of a touch base with, let's say, influencer marketing?
Speaker 1:You know it's interesting because I've always felt a little bit like a fish out of water in the creator world because I'm a lot more entrepreneurial minded and marketing and business minded. So I've learned to, you know, speak that language. But it's actually so fun for me and it's you know, I'm learning to talk more concise and contain my excitement because I feel like I'm speaking the same language. I'd say the biggest thing that the feedback is solving the attribution problem. I think that's plaguing and I didn't even realize how big of a problem it was because I saw it localized to the social media creator world.
Speaker 1:But I think social media as a whole and even digital advertising, attrib know, attribution is like what everybody's kind of trying to figure out and there's a lot of solutions and some that solve them like pretty effectively, but it's not, you know, end-to-end comprehensive, the entire customer journey. So I'd say that's the biggest thing. And then, yeah, I think there's a lot more less talk of creator side in the when I'm here, it's more of like, how can you serve as enterprise? Yeah, it's interesting because vcs, um and other businesses they when I say like yeah, we're b2b, sass, and then if I lead with creators, I quickly found that, like, you're not b2b, you're b2c, and they don't mean c as in creator. They mean as consumer, because creators are not currently seen as businesses. You can have 10 million followers and they still see them as a consumer and it's.
Speaker 1:It's because, again, they don't own their audience and they should be able to, but more effectively like or more accurately, their audience isn't portable. They can't, they don't currently have a way of of taking their 10 million followers, or 10 000 followers, and actually putting them to something else, whereas, like if it was email or sms, they could. So, uh, that's been one thing that's been a little disappointing, that it.
Speaker 2:You know that creators are not seen as businesses or the potential and the creator economy is growing, but, um, yeah, I'd say probably the most interesting thing I've found this past a couple months that is very, very interesting because, at least for me, maybe I was there as well in the early days of youtube and instagram and so on, but now, with huge household name, even if you look at youtube with, you know, talking about the most notorious one, which is mr b oh yeah, it's great that that that's like. You don't look at that like a creator, you look at that as a business and I think that has shifted a lot of mindsets around around what a creator represents, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, you look at youtube and say, oh, there's a bunch of kids that are making video content for funsies, right? Like yeah nowadays, that is, that is a a market with a bunch of businesses, yep, um, and it's surprising to me that you know, businesses um organizations um SaaS, b2b and so on still see creators as consumer level type of thing.
Speaker 1:Well, I think the reason being and I'm a huge fan of MrBeast and I think he exemplifies what a creator should be in a lot of ways I think the reason still is because what is MrBe Beast? He's still seen as a creator himself and his whole brand is a media company still. So it's Mr Beast Burger's coming out and it already came out in Feastables and it's depending on who you ask. There's varying levels of how well that's that's been and you know, activating his audience. You know, I think I had Mr Beast Burger was great. But yeah, I still think that creators are seen as media companies at the highest level.
Speaker 1:And actually you know a good example of that if you're familiar with Carrot Carrot Card, carrot Financial. It's a credit card for creators. You know Eric Way is the founder of that. They actually work with creators because even you know big creators like Mr Beast and huge creators like banks don't see them as like underwritable where they won't actually extend financing to them because their income is up or down and like proving income and showing you how real income they don't even. It's not even on their radar. So even the biggest ones like, for example, mr Beast you know he's investing so much in a video, waits for that money to come back, invest more in the next one, that kind of like payment timeline. Banks are really not helping creators at all because banks still don't see creators as businesses. And again, I can't speak to specifically how Mr Beast's finances are. I don't know about that.
Speaker 2:But that's a general trend that you know. I think Carrot's solving topic, which is legitimizing content creators and influencers, businesses, because again, you would say, like 20 years ago it would be something different. But I mean, there's probably so many other industries and legitimate businesses that you have a very similar model, which is, like you know, spend a lot up front, yeah, then hope for the best to get the, the result, the result that you need, and then spend some more and so on. So, and banks don't have a problem with that, yeah, do you reckon it's just because of the? What is it that still keeps the financial system a bit shy around influencers?
Speaker 2:Because, even if I think about, when we think about creator programs like youtube, right, it could be, it's a big company, the serious company, like if, if you're concerned about youtube paying you whatever you earn on advertising and so on, like that, then you should be concerned about every single company in this whole country, because you know, if youtube is not to be trusted to pay their creators and so on, then who? Yeah, right. And then again, when it comes to um brands paying creators for promotion, for posts, for all of these things, like it's a servicing business, right, it really depends on how good you are at promoting yourself and selling yourself and getting brand money in the door. But then again you can be a marketing agency and that's the same thing, right, like how you promote yourself and how you work with brands and so on. So why is there a difference between a creator and a marketing agency when it comes to banks, financing and this and that?
Speaker 1:I think there's a few pieces. I think, for one, banks have financial models that allow them to extend credit to. You know different businesses that have different levels of risk factors. You know at play, and you know VC has been around forever, like venture capital has always been a thing, and so they've found their models for working with. You know a bakery, a law firm, perhaps, whatever, and so they look at something that's still pretty new and they're not entirely sure what that looks like. Also, I think that, again, there's no framework. If you want to be a creator today, how would you be a creator today? What would you do?
Speaker 2:Step one Well, I mean, the first step would be learning how to become a creator.
Speaker 1:Where do you learn?
Speaker 2:that.
Speaker 1:YouTube articles. But how do you know that the person who's given up all the YouTube videos? How do you know which is the right one? How do you know that they're not giving kind of like? You're going to watch that 25 minute video and at the end, knowing that they're going to be like and buy my course for the real secrets? You know, I think. Let me tell you something else.
Speaker 2:Right. I've learned software engineering and product development from Stack Overflow Right development from stack overflow right. I learned how to code by reading a couple of books by people some people better than others but mainly I've learned by doing yeah and learned by, you know, bumping into issues and basically finding answers on stack overflow and fixing my issues. And basically finding answers on Stack Overflow and fixing my issues and learning and learning and adapting.
Speaker 1:There is but there's a Harvard Business School. You know Computer Science 101, right, yeah, but no one asked me for it.
Speaker 2:Right, if I have a business that's moderately successful in the software development world, I have a SaaS right and I go to a bank for a loan, more than happy to give me their money. They have no idea that I've learned how to code and how to build a business with a code base that might be hacky. Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. So that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:But take a moment and look at the broader picture, right, and we're assuming Harvard Business School, they, of course, of course. So that's what I'm saying. But take a moment and look at the broader picture, right, and what I was saying. With Harvard Business School, you know they, or Harvard rather, you know they have the Computer Science 101 for free. You can learn that, like they're teaching that at school. There are frameworks, there is a right way and, of course, like I'm not technical, but everybody has their own conventions, a way of doing things, of course, but I think that there's tradition and there's enough of a framework, groundwork done that it's a real thing. My CTO and co-founder he taught himself to code, he went to community college and he now works for the Inc 5000 company and has 10 engineers under him, 100%, because there is a right way of doing it.
Speaker 1:As a creator, like, what's the right way to be a creator? What's the wrong way to be a creator? There's no course like there's no, there's no internationally agreed upon accredited course for that. And so with Stack Overflow, I think, think you know you, you can still it's. It's maybe a truncated version of, like, a longer curriculum that is accredited, but as a creator. It's just not as as concrete as, as you know, every there's. It's changing too all the time. You know like what, what content is good, what content is bad. The thing with monetization you know YouTube is incredible. I always recommend people, if you like, you want to be a creator as a career, set your sights on YouTube, because I think they pay their creators, you know the best and you can actually build the most authentic connection with your audience.
Speaker 1:Currently, but even so, like they could change like that, and they did and they do. Like platforms do change their algorithms, their policies and absolutely you know I could say a lot about, like the myth of security and safety working in corporate America, but even so, like you know it's, there's no stability because also it does happen where brands just don't pay. Sometimes Either they do net 120 payment terms or they just don't pay. What, as a creator, what are you going to do? Are you going to, you know, sue them, just don't pay? What, as a creator, what are you going to do? Are you going to, you know, sue them? You don't have a legal team. You probably are living kind of paycheck to paycheck a little bit, so it's difficult to do that. So I think there are risk factors at play, because it just hasn't been, you know, um made concrete or solidified rather as an industry. Yet Okay.
Speaker 1:Best practices, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, that makes sense. I you know. In my eyes I could have the same legitimate reasons on why a software company shouldn't be.
Speaker 1:I mean, I agree. Just so you know, i'm'm a creator, I'm playing devil's advocate here, you know, and the other thing too.
Speaker 2:We're in reverse. You should be protected. Yeah, I know. I think it's important for creators to know. The other aspect, too, is is.
Speaker 1:You look at mr beast like single point of failure, right, like kim kardashian has, like certain aspects of her, you know, insured just in case stuff happens, right. Whether they have heard that, that actually may not be true. But the same thing, if Mr Beast were to get hit by a bus, carl's not going to take over. Maybe, I think, a lot of people like Carl he's a cool guy, but you know, it's very, very high risk factor. Whereas, like with a software development team, if you have one, that's actually a problem, if you have one engineer that knows everything and then they quit or they get hit by a bus, there's a lot of like technical debt or whatever that needs to be overcome, right, and I think that would be a risk factor as well. So that actually does. I think it's not a double standard where, if it's a single point of failure, that could. I think that it's not a double standard where, if it's a single point of failure, that could, if they just decide they don't want to do it anymore.
Speaker 1:The creators are notably like, you know, fickle is that what it is? I think fickle is the right word. We're like, hey, we're, and they have to be, because you know, if you can't be too invested in your content strategy and your way you do things, because Meta might change this algorithm tomorrow and you have to do now. You got to do long form and now they don't want photo posts, and now they do want photo posts, you know. So you kind of gotta just be able to go with the flow and and creators are creatives who tend to be more, you know, go with the flow kind of people. Um, so, completely devil's advocate I. I think that, again, creators, they create so much value, entertainment value there's. There's more more viewing. I think very recently I shared this at the Creator Economy Summit Very recently more hours are being viewed of YouTube content than television.
Speaker 2:That doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so they create so much value and entertainment value. I haven't had cable or whatever forever and they're not being compensated properly, but it's because the frameworks are not in place to give them a stable career, to give them stable income, to give them provable. I create this much value in this world, you know.
Speaker 2:And is that something that's bound imminent to happen, or do you reckon it's going to take more time? Like are those frameworks coming?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd say so.
Speaker 2:We're launching today yes, you're launching your contribution.
Speaker 1:That's, that's our hope is really to make it, you know, very, uh, very visible, very attributable, very. You know, everybody can say I created this much value, you know, and and not overcharge for the value they're created and not not leave money on the table, you know, okay, so but but your product aside, right. I'm maybe a little biased.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is there anything that you've seen as trends, as pushing the creator economy in a sense, towards being more established, more recognized and so on?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a lot of creators are venturing out. They're realizing that you know, um, brand deals, platform monetization, up and down, um and it's you can't really build a life, you can't plan years in advance, uh with that. So they're venturing out to build their own things, whether it's community, whether it's e-commerce product, whether you know it's, it's their teaching, coaching. I think that creators are looking to build their own and leverage their influence more. So that's I think that even venture is starting to see creator economy as something.
Speaker 2:But what I was really curious and wondering about is whether you see an obvious trend towards, you know, the creator economy moving into a place of validation and acceptance from the rest of our society and economy and so on. And because you know we're talking about what is not a legitimate thing, like banks don't give you money, VCs don't have anything for you and so on, it's still kind of like this obscurity in a sense of an economy.
Speaker 1:I was curious, apart from what you're doing, yeah, let's say I get hit by a bus today. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Have you seen any other trends or any other initiatives that are pushing towards legitimizing creators as a business right and seeing it as a business?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think as far as initiatives, you know there's, there's plenty of startups I found at the creator economy summit that were like kind of creating a landing pad for us, like if you you can, if you can get your audience to hear like we'll help you build your community, and stuff like that. I think that it kind of plays into where creators what I said previously creators are looking to build um their own thing. And in general, I think you know, mr beast, this huge deal with amazon, I think, as more of these things hit the news and assuming that that's a success which of course it will be, um, at least that's how I feel uh, that more you know, um, I think where the money flows is where it's going to go, and so if creators are able to show like, hey, we could get a small piece, this, we want to produce our own shows, and actually a lot of creators are doing that now. They're creating their own kind of show content, more long form, um, I think it will be more legitimized the the you know when they can kind of say that. You know, for example, we just had that inflection point rather, of where creators are now commanding more viewing hours. I think those sort of metrics, those sort of milestones, are going to solidify more.
Speaker 1:And again, there's companies that are working to solve this and it's a huge problem, just like I said, the attribution problem is a big problem to solve, helping creators, because they do create tremendous value if they can give them access to funding or help them legitimize um, you know what they're doing. I think that's kind of we need more news articles. We need more, more things, events happening of, uh, I would say, more milestones, less initiatives of you know, mr beast, getting that dealer or even smaller creators getting deals, doing travel shows and and stuff like that, because a lot of people who follow a creator doing travel content on instagram would watch their show on, you know, uh, hbo, whatever it might be, um, they would follow that oh, that makes sense, um, and sense, and I think that's a sense of what has happened with other industries or other economies that have been a bit obscure and kind of like putting a spotlight on that and having events and growing it as a you know know.
Speaker 2:Now it becomes a standard, that's a it's a normal thing to do this. Um, I'm still not sure whether it is a complete no-no to call um creators, influencers or not I don't mind that's I feel that that's self-imposed yeah don't call me an influencer, call it a content creator or a creator. Look, I think we've had a really good conversation around the topic that you're super passionate about.
Speaker 2:Which is, you know, creators and helping brands build better relationships and build a better economy around. You know brand creator relationship and so on. It seems like you're very passionate about it and this is a topic that I'm interested in, like I'm creating content and I've always been interested in this topic. So it's been maybe a tiny bit less about your founder path in a sense, more about the topic that you're into. But I do have a question because I'm interested in what exactly is it that moves the needle for you? So my question is so you've been a model. Then you transitioned into social media, doing mainly social media stuff.
Speaker 2:Started your agency because you had friends and more friends of friends that wanted help with social media, and now you're starting a product business. So you've had this transition. What has been, and the first thing that comes into your head, what? What has been a one constant for you as a, as a professional of someone that's you know, grew up, moved to la and started this whole craziness of a journey that got you to this. Probably, what was one constant that you can think of?
Speaker 1:I'd say freedom. Freedom has been a really big thing and it's something I've chased after and willing to kind of give up being comfortable A lot of times we're doing well in LA and itching to go somewhere, do something, and having the freedom to be able to do that was more meaningful than the comfort. So a lot of times it would probably be a lot further if I had stayed in LA the past eight years, potentially like professionally maybe, but where I kind of I want to kind of experience everything and not really leave anything on the table. So having the freedom to be able to travel and prioritizing experiences over comfort I think has been. And let me be clear when I went to Bali I did not have a good time because it was very uncomfortable and it was an uncomfortable experience. But I think just being able to kind of do whatever, whatever I want and whatever I feel like will will push the needle. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:And do you feel like with the agency, do you feel like you have freedom? Because the one thing that I realize is, with services businesses and agencies and so on, once you get in the world of helping customers and being there and doing things for them, does that still feel like you're having a lot of flexibility and freedom with doing things? How does that, how does that freedom translate to a services business?
Speaker 1:That's a great question and I would say you know, when you have an agency, you're answering to clients, and especially clients. You know an agency you're answering to clients, and especially clients. You know it definitely. You do have to compromise a bit of that freedom I found personally. You know I prefer working with clients that I really align with. That I know we kind of create value with. So I had a lot less. You know, my goal was never to. You know, I've never paid a dollar for customer acquisition, Like it's always been referrals and intros, because people that I help them do well, they connect me with someone. We have a level of trust. They'll let me do what I do and you do get the people that'll text you on a Sunday at 7 pm and say, hey, I need you to do this, this, this, this, this. But at the same time it kind of gave me the ability ability to say like no, or hire a team, um, yeah, so yeah, definitely go back to your weekend and leave me alone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which I will say like I you know, naturally I like helping people and I I kind of have to remind myself like not light myself on fire to keep other people warm.
Speaker 2:Um and that's a good analogy light myself up on fire to keep hunters. Uh, warm, okay yeah it's, it's, you know.
Speaker 1:So I I try to put like I with the marketing agency, you know the way that I've come, always done everything and it's worked really well is like give so much away for free information or or value, or helping people so that they're like, oh, this is alex hormosi talks about this where, if, if you give all that for free, people like, oh, like, oh, my God, this is the free stuff Like I can't imagine how much I get from paying. Or they'll realize like this looks like a lot of work. I'd so much rather pay you to do it. And yeah, I think like learning to kind of duplicate yourself. So with the agency, I have an ops manager. He's phenomenal. Brought him on, brought them on recently as we were scaling. You know, always I've hired virtual assistants, I've hired employees. You know, trying to be very systematic. I think it's helped.
Speaker 1:But I would be lying if I if I said that I had freedom in my own way.
Speaker 1:I might work a 16 hour days, but I'm choosing to work 16 hour days, you know, because I'm like, hey, I like freedom, but I like staying at the Ritz when I travel Not every time, but I love finer things too. So if I want to have this, and I was always raised that way, my parents didn't really give me anything. As far as if we go on a school field trip and I'm like, yeah, dad, we're going snowboarding, he's like that's awesome, how are you going to pay for that, which I hated as a kid but like it taught me to be resourceful. So you know, it's kind of the thing like you know it's not greedy if you're willing to work for it and you provide value to others to get it. So, uh, you know I would work 16 hour days, much the chagrin of my girlfriend, definitely, but I still had that freedom because I could choose yeah, I mean, and I think some people confuse, confuse um basically freedom with um amount of white space, in a sense yeah right.
Speaker 2:It's like, oh well, you're working. You're working 12 hours per day when you're a business. That's not freedom, right, because you don't spend. You should have more free time, kind of like white space in a sense, and that's what some people associate with freedom. I completely agree with you. I feel completely free. I can be working 12 hours per day, but I know that at any point I can just shut that laptop down.
Speaker 1:You can create the white space and and create the white space yeah, and that's what people don't really understand.
Speaker 2:I mean not like there's, of course, people that don't understand that, but there's a lot of people that that look at you working 12 hours and say, oh my god, he's in shackles. The reality is not that whatsoever. It's, and it's because the perception of that white space and you know, if you see someone that's that's. You know, because we're talking about, uh, content creators and social media, and so you see someone always on holiday, driving, you know, super expensive cars and taking pictures with watches and Lewis 24 7.
Speaker 2:You have the false perception of that being freedom, right, when in reality it might be completely opposite. It might, you might have, we might have someone that's kind of like a, in a sense in shackles of having to create that content or or else it doesn't become. You know, they don't have certain means and then you might see someone that never posts anything or, let's say, is a very busy entrepreneur, or spending hours and hours at events and this and that and working hard, and it's like, oh, that guy has zero spare time, yeah, yeah. So I think it's seasonal too, right.
Speaker 1:I think you know, as entrepreneurs, a lot of times we go through a season of we work super hard on this thing, or or just in general work super hard, and then sometimes you know, personally this is maybe just a me thing, um, but sometimes there they'll be like a few days where I'm just like yeah, and I just you know I don't, and so I hang out and and then I get back into it.
Speaker 2:You know, isn't that just burnout like? There's different ways. You can call it die.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah I don't know. It's for me like I've always been a sprinter instead of a marathon runner and I think that that's more. It's. That's an incredible skill to be able to like just maintain consistency. It's something I struggle with. You know ADHD and everybody's ADHD. But, like you know, that's something else that I'm kind of passionate about, that, like I have ADHD and it's it's, it's awesome in some ways, but like it can be really frustrating. Um, and you know, so it's I.
Speaker 1:I've learned you learn to to the medicine helps, but then also you learn to kind of cope and and what I've kind of learned is I'm not the person who's gonna have the the. You know, wake up at 4 am, do a read journal for 30 minutes and then do ice bath for an hour and every single day, um, you know, that's just not how I'm effective, because that's where I get burnout, believe it or not, from doing the consistently. But if I know like, hey, I just have to sprint for this next two weeks and then I'm chilling, or, like you know, we're going to, we're going to launch or we're going to get a new client or whatever, you know this amazing project that, for me, allows me to what I would say avoid burnout me allows me to what I would say avoid burnout. Um, you know, I still get it, but I I think I've been fortunate that you know I'm a kind of passionate person, so I can bounce back rather quickly, you know oh, that makes sense and I and I I kind of agree.
Speaker 2:I think over as a serial burnouter where are you going? Burnout-er. Where are you going? Serial burnout-er, because I like I've always like just put 120, crash of tiredness and have to recover and just go 120. I think you get into a cycle where it doesn't, it's not burnout anymore, because you get used to how much you can cope with over a period of time, yeah, and you kind of like, do that and then take it slower and then go back to your, you know, 110 percent, yeah, that you don't go 120 to burn out.
Speaker 1:yeah, exactly, you know your upper limits for sure. I used to work until like 4 am a lot of times and I then found that the periods of burnout I had would be a lot worse. And so now I'm like, actually, for me, I've found specifically that sleep I have to get my eight hours Like I can actually. I really can function on two hours of sleep and I can do that for like days and days. But if I do that, when I do hit the wall it's bad, you know.
Speaker 1:And I think also something to say with burnout, like look at your life, right, I'm 27. I have my freedom, but I work harder than I. Honestly, I struggle to think of people like are constantly, always thinking about work in the same way I am, even though, of course, I take breaks, but you can do that for a period of your life, even though, of course, I take breaks, but you can do that for a period of your life. And that's kind of my path as a founder is I want to create value and build name for myself and establish myself and then really being able to focus as I turn 30, 35, 40. I don't care how long it takes After that point I've done that, and then I can only do the things that I'm excessively passionate about.
Speaker 1:So I think you can also go really hard for a period of a chapter of your life, you know, and you can break it up into micro chapters where, like, hey, this chapter 21 to 22, I'm going to chill, 22 to 23, I'm going to work super hard, you know, but that's kind of always been my thought is sacrificing. Now I want to have kids someday, but I don't want to be working or having to work or miss my kids, like basketball games, and that's my own thing. Like no, no shame to like parents who are making it work and obviously working super hard. My best friend back in Arizona has a kid and he works, you know, super hard. It's awesome, um, but that that's another thing that drives me is like clock's ticking, you know, yeah, I don't got time to chill if I want to have kids.
Speaker 2:True, very true. Well, I think it looks like you're on the path to it. It's kind of been the same. I've been the same. I've been a you know just dedicate, sacrifice my 20s in order to make something happen. It happened at 35-ish, right Like it took a while, but you know I'm in a place where I do the stuff that I'm really passionate about what was it that happened for you.
Speaker 2:Well, I built a software as a service business and I sold it at the end of 2022. And that gave me the financial freedom to, you know, do the stuff that I really love, like helping other founders through the podcast, focus on the creative side and filmmaking and other bits that you know, it was a bit of questionable decision to take in my 20s when you know you have to choose between making, trying to make money and so on, and versus the more creative, artsy side of yourself, right. So now I'm at I'm at a stage where, like, okay, I can focus more on the artsy side.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's exactly so. That's, I think, a lot of people. They look at the micro, like in this season of your life, and you can look at the macro of like how do you, if you make kind of a plan for your life, I've always kind of known that eventually I'll have that level of freedom, like full freedom, to really like not consider financial aspect of any of my endeavors, but it's always kind of been just something I work on now and I think a lot of people don't look at that and they'll look at like, you know, elon Musk, who obviously has an incredible financial freedom, could do anything and he happens to be driven to, you know, whatever you think of Elon Musk, like he's driven towards, you know, uh, massive fundamental progress and change, um, you know, and and so I think if people think that everybody, if you're working hard now, that that's your plan and I'm not saying mine wouldn't be, I don't know.
Speaker 2:But you know, I think also it's just sacrificing in the, the interim, so you can get to to that end goal, you know yeah, well, we're aligned with that and if you calculate it afterwards, afterwards, when that happens and you get to that point, it will be oh, I've spent this many years and this much of my time and so on, and now I have a family, I'm raising my children the way I've always dreamed of. Was that period worth it most most? Most often you realize that yes, because, again, that's, you know, that's been for us as well. I got that. I've lost so many friends and I've I've been through so many things, um, over the in my because I've started at 20 and you know I've tried so many things and tried to build something until 30, something, spent 10 years of my life doing this.
Speaker 2:A lot of people told, said it's just madness and all of that stuff lost a lot of friends or people in my life because of things like this, because you know no, this, because everyone's on their own path and a lot of people that you meet want you to be there. Right, I'm like I can't be there for this type of relationship, friends-wise, or so on over this period, because I need to build for the future that I'm envisioning. So it's been that, but at the at the end of, it was super worth it, because I'm in the place that I've always pictured and I'm surrounded by the people that have been there with me through the journey and that, you know, believed in this stuff and I was actually having a conversation with someone the other day about you know, when you're head down in doing some of this stuff, even the closest to you, like your parents and so on, can be like maybe you should get a job.
Speaker 1:But yeah, my mom. Every time we face sign, my mom says you have tired eyes. Every Like those are my eyes. Now, mom, that's how they are, you know? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a little heavier. What are your thoughts on? You know, I would never use the word lucky, but like the people who aren't so fortunate that they do work very hard and never get that breakthrough.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's a very abstract thing, because luck is part of it, right, but I think you also, over time, you make your luck Like the more you work towards it, the more options you build for yourself, the less luck you need, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Well, you're increasing your exposure to luck, exactly.
Speaker 2:Either that or you don't leave that much to luck, becomes a billionaire at 21, 22, I'll be like stroke of genius or incredible luck for all a network and a structure around yourself that enables you to win big with very little to do with luck, right. When you have relationships, when you have friends, when you have connections, when you have a vast experience in fucking up right in business, then you're treading on stabler ground, right. So there's always there's a factor of luck, I would say and fortune. But as you grow older, I would say and fortune.
Speaker 1:But as you grow older, I would say that that factor of luck can be lesser yeah in order to to become successful I think that's what you need more luck when you're younger than you do when you're old. That's exactly what happened to me right.
Speaker 2:So, like I've tried to since, since I was 17, when I started my first business, to try to make it happen, to make it big, to become successful and so on. It happened at 35, right More than 15, 16 years later, because I had terrible luck.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I've had more luck now, but also I've had a baggage of other factors that contributed to me being successful, because if I was lucky but didn't have a lot of the experience and a lot of the foundation of it, it wouldn't have amounted to much that luck. So, yes, it is luck. So, yes, it is. And I also know scenarios and people that have been working for a decade or more and it never happened for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, but I think it's a lot about how you're trading things and I think as an entrepreneur, you have to be willing to and a founder, you have to be willing to, at the end of the day, when the party's over, to be the last one there and be the unlucky person and like to really be willing, I think, just like kind of leave it all on the table, and that's kind of my perspective. So I'd rather be 65 and be like ah, I should have, I should have been an accountant, you know like, and had a stable, you know whatever. I'd rather do that than 65 an accountant and not say that I think accounts are fantastic, but like personally, uh, you know, it'd be like oh man, I really wish I would have like chased my dreams yeah, um, that's very interesting.
Speaker 2:But imagine you're, you're, you're on your deathbed and be like oh my god, I've been, I've been chasing the founder dream for for 80 years. Should have taken a job, goddammit, and your mom would be like I told you so.
Speaker 1:Oh, the best time of my life was my family, extended family. Stop like hinting towards like you should get a real job or like. You know I didn't go to school. So also, you know, that was for the longest time. I think maybe it was when I turned around 23 that that stopped kind of echoing. And I don't think negatively of school, just, you know, wasn't the right path for me. But yeah, I think you know, going back to my point, that's kind of I think it takes that to be very successful in this.
Speaker 1:It's just that knowledge. It's never been a question for me that, like I'm going to figure it out, like I'm okay with having like a, you know, 1% batting average. Right, I'll just make sure I hit 100 times. You know, and I've done that I've done. In 2019, instagram massively changed their algorithm and my business completely crashed and I was like, okay, I'm gonna.
Speaker 1:Instagram was starting to do their AR filters that you could like, you know, you might have seen them where every kind of creator had their own filter. We're gonna build a creative marketing agency around that. I started doing that and built affiliate built like I had a development team that was going to do it and did not pan out. But it's like, okay, that didn't pan out, let the next thing, let the next. And I think, as long as you're willing to kind of be the one who doesn't make it at the end, as long as you're going to give your shot in the hopes that you are, I think that you have high chance, because what is like, whatever percentage of startups, you don't end up being successful, you just got to create 100 startups and you're definitely gonna be successful.
Speaker 2:you know, intelligent. Obviously you can't really create 100 good startups, but, uh, yeah, yeah, and when we was talking just with um a jessel, it's like not feeling, not fearing failure that much, yeah, you're always going to fear failure. There's always going to be like, uh, and there's always going to be external factors. There's always going to be your grandma over there being like well, you know, I always seen you as a doctor or something like that. There's always going to be some, some sort of that. But I think, like you said at the end of your life going, oh, my god, it was an accountant, wish I would, would have chased my, my dreams. Who are you going to be most resent? Resentful towards yourself, first, and then all of the people that you listen to and were too concerned of disappointing right, if it doesn't happen to you. So, yeah, I think and that's one of the things that I think you're doing and a lot of people have been doing, and with good reason is take your parents and your family and your close ones advice, digest it.
Speaker 2:But at the end of the day, you do what you have to do and not get concerned about what others will say. You know, I still have moments where fleeting moments, where I think you know, but I'm getting into a different industry. Right, I should be a serial entrepreneur and doing the were fleeting moments where I think you know, but I'm getting into a different industry. Right, I should be a serial entrepreneur and doing the same thing. Go down this path, make something way bigger, more successful and so on.
Speaker 1:Well, you can. You're leaving yourself open to it, like, if you find the opportunity, you have this stroke of genius at some point. You know then you can right, and I mean to your point. Before you can, you can. Uh, I think for me, what, what kind of guided me is whether I listen to their advice and that I should do xyz, or this is the right way of doing things and I don't make it. Or if I do make it, they're still gonna have feelings about my success. You know they might say we were lucky, or oh, this and it's just. I just I think it's in general, you have to like, like you shouldn't like mute them, but like just turn it down a bit, like you said, digest it.
Speaker 2:But no matter where you end up on that map, like, people are always gonna have an opinion, you know and next time you go home for for holidays or something that if you see your parents um giving you the side eye about your business, yeah, yeah, fortunately I'm, I'm muting you, I'm yeah yeah, I'm putting the volume down okay, yeah, I I'd say I'm fortunate with my parents.
Speaker 1:Like they, they do support whatever I do, like you know, emotionally, like you know they'll, they'll be there for me to vent and and I'm really fortunate for that, you know, um, they've kind of let me choose and they had their feedback, of course, but you might, my dad's parents came from Cuba and they're big on the American dream. My dad was as well, but his parents were teachers. They raised him to be a teacher and he always had his like harebrained scheme business ideas growing up and we read rich dad, poor dad when I was like 10, you know, um, and he, kind of like, was really pushing on that. So, yeah, there's certain things I disagree with, definitely that the way they believe in in business and that sort of stuff, but yeah, well, it's always good to have a supportive um family absolutely and um, I'm sure that you're gonna reach a point not very far in the future where you'll be like I still have that freedom yeah
Speaker 2:I still spend time with my children, future children and so on, and go to their games and be a the father that I want, that I always wanted to be. Because, again, I think it's not thinking of these things and not preparing for these things that one day you reach a point and think, god damn it, I didn't thought this through. Look at me, I'm like I have this crazy business that keeps me shackled and I'm missing on my family's events and seeing my kids and being part of my kids growing up and all of this stuff. And usually it happens way later, when it's too late. Yeah Right, I know people in my life that have been doing that, not to give names. But the fact that you are actively and very consciously working towards that right now, it means that you're going to make it.
Speaker 1:Yes, make sure that that luck happens as you just gotta get in the right loom and then the right room.
Speaker 2:And then the luck exactly the luck is necessary, but you know being super proactive about chasing that dream of one day, you know, I'll have my family over here and I'm gonna be able to have, continue to have this flexible lifestyle where I can be with them whenever I want to. That's a really, I would say, a proper dream to to chase and thank you so much for doing this. I probably should let you go. I'm stuck.
Speaker 1:You're probably sitting here I gotta get in those rooms. No, this is fantastic. Another here I got to get in those rooms. No, this is fantastic. I'm missing another talk and I need to get to those rooms and have the conversation they're recording. No, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, appreciate the conversation, looking forward to potentially having another conversation somewhere in the future. We've talked a lot about the content creator bit, a tiny bit about your entrepreneurship journey, but let's see, maybe next year, a two-parter, two-parter podcast as last talk, we meet again and you tell me um how you feel about uh your business at that point. Uh, are you um punching the air or not?
Speaker 1:oh yeah no-transcript.
