Jason Wong - Creating The "Holy Meme Bible" & Making Viral Products

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What is going on, everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. On today's episode, we have Jason Wong here with us. Jason Wong is the CEO and founder of Wong House. He has led the quote unquote dank team in creating some of the brand's most iconic products, such as the Raymond Noodle condoms, the Holy Meme Bible, the the Send Nude Bath Bombs and the Sad candles and many more. That being said, Jason has been behind, as I just listed out, some of the most viral products on social media. He at one time had over 30 million followers on Tumblr. He's been in the social media game for years now. He understands meme culture, creating brands behind products online and much, much more. That being said, make sure you follow him on Instagram pugpug and let him know that you listen to the podcast. He's crushing it. He's 22 years old, an immigrant, moved to the US at 8 years old, and his story is phenomenal. So that being said, make sure you screenshot this podcast, post it on your Instagram story tag Pug, tag myself and enjoy the episode. What is going on, everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. Today we have Jason Wong on the show. Thanks so much for coming on, man.

Thank you for having me.

So we've been connected on Instagram, you're known as UG on there and you're the founder of Longhouse, which we can dive into. But for the people that may not know what you do exactly, you're behind some very viral products and brands. But I'd love to give you an opportunity to tell the listeners today more about what you do and what you've built.

Yeah, so I started as a social media influencer back when I was around 13 years old. So back on the Tumblr platform way before Instagram had about 30 million followers. And that was really one of the first tastes of, you know, not really fame, but like a lot of attention and having a lot of eyeballs on me. And at a really young age I understood that eyeballs meant money. So I was making money off advertisements. I was doing affiliate marketing way before it was really what it is right now. And all those eyeballs transition into customers to buy products. And so I began building products, physical products like the Meme Bible, the Meme Bands, now a beauty brand, and just a lot of internal products that we've built within a company, all really stemmed from the fact that I started really young and understood that eyeballs and Internet equals money.

Got it. How old are you now?

I'm 22.

Hell yeah. So the Holymean Bible, that's obviously a product that I'm sure so many people have heard of and seen, if not have personally played the game, but read the book and, you know, just the whole thing. What is that for people that may not know?

Right. So the Honeymoon Bible is a kind of like a, a yearbook, if you will. You know, like at the end of the year you always have at high school. There's things that happen during the year, the memorable things. I want to change that concept into things that we're all very familiar with. So the funniest moments in the year through the Internet culture, the icons, the trends, the slang, the pictures that make our days a little bit better and turn it into activities like hangman, crossword puzzles, color in finding, where's waddle, stuff like that, but in a mean format. And the purpose of making it at first was really just to have like a light hearted product for everyone to enjoy because I personally felt like I was spending a lot of time on the Internet looking on all this stuff. But I didn't really go back to reading books or like coloring stuff and doing things I used to really enjoy. So that was the first step of making it and then eventually it got really popular and it now became like a series of books I release every single year.

Very cool. What would you say is the key to building a viral product on social media? Because I'm sure so many people listening, you know, that's one of their goals, they see case studies like yourself. But what is the first step, based on your experience, to launching a viral product that actually, you know, does well in the social media world?

So the key about viral products and viral content in general, even making a Piece of content. A picture that really go viral is not really inventing the wheel, but seeing what's been working and plugging your own elements. So I'll take your Instagram, for example. Like, built your empire. I love that Instagram. It's been. It's yours.

Right. Just for the clarification. So I stepped away from build your empire. No worries. You're good.

Okay. But, like, I. I've been following it, but, like, even when you ran it, I know it's a content that you had follow a lot of the same patterns. That worked out really well, and that's why it's so popular. Same concept and principle can be carried over to making products. So the. The context behind Meme Bible was that I noticed that there's an adult coloring book for coloring swear words, like, you know, saying the F word or whatever, but you can color in. And that book did about a million dollars that year. So I was like, okay, cool. Can I, you know, change that concept into something that I could do and plug in my own elements into it? And all the other stuff that I created that went viral follow the same footsteps. And that's really it. You see what's been working and see if there's ways for you to change it up, change the angle, change the price point, even change the audience that's being catered to. So that's really the first step to creating a viral product, because other than that, it's really hard to find validations, and it's just really expensive to go for a new product with no validations behind it.

Love that, man. So talk to me more about the other products you have. I know, you know, going from the ramen noodle condoms to the send nudes bath bombs. Like, talk to me about why these viral products and how did they come about? Because there's so many, you know, different ways and avenues you could go down. So buy these, right?

I would just go product by product. The Rameno condoms came as an inspiration after seeing a meme about this guy that had a ramen noodle seasoning in his wallet, and his girlfriend thought he was cheating because she saw, like, a corner ripped off. And I was like, okay, that's kind of funny. I can actually make it into an actual product, so why not do it? So I went to China, look through the factories. I learned as much as I can about making condoms, which is actually pretty. Pretty complicated. And then. But I'm really dedicated. Like, I was like, I want to make an actual good product, but it's also funny. At the same time. So it has to be real.

Yeah.

And then so that's, that's what came out of it. And for the sad news, bath bomb, Lush bath bombs were really popular at the time. And I was like, okay, cool. They have really good bath bombs and there's a huge market for it. Can I make it funny? And the first thought was the send nudes phrase, which was a trending phrase at the time. And again, drawing back to what I see at mean by was like seeing things are working really well and put putting it into products that are working well and marrying them together. And the Sandus bath bomb is essentially a bath bomb around like size of this, a little bit smaller that says sand nudes on it. And it's funny because people can take pictures with the sand nudes bath bomb while they're naked in the bathtub. Like, what other content can you get out of that? So those are kind of like context behind those two products. And they did relatively well because it's unique, like there's nothing else like it. We're not drop shipping, we're making it in America for some of these products. And people just love it.

Love that, man. Where do you see an opportunity to create more viral products like this in 2020?

So I would say like meme products have kind of run its course. And the reason why is because memes in general have evolved a lot over the past six years. So if you're trying to make viral content, I wouldn't really go for like memes and try to like put memes onto paintings or like mouse pads or whatever because those are pretty much outdated in terms of bio content and bioproduct. Things that work out really well are things that can be plugged into native content really well. So like sugar bear hair, you know, all the influencers are posting pictures every single day with really nice high volume hair can promote sugar bear hair, which is a vitamin stuff. So things that can be plugged into everyday content that you can send out a massive influencer has really high chance of going viral or getting a lot of eyeballs just because it's a lot easier to plug in these products into content. And trying to go out of your way to promote something that's not really native. One thing is to find what's the current trend and culture. Are people shifting to a certain language, the way that they live their lifestyle or whatever, and seeing if there's a product that can really fit into that and getting those people to promote it. That's really the first key I believe, very cool.

Do you think just with everything, I think everyone's on social media right now with quarantine and there's so much content going out there and different means happening. What is, like, how do you analyze the market to determine if something is going viral and how do you identify that early on before anybody else?

So the secret here, I'll tell you the secret is that typically you don't find it before another person. You find a person who finds it, who doesn't have the capability of making it as big as you can, and you work off their ideas. Just like, you know, the ideas that I had of all my other products, I didn't really invent it. I just saw what's working and twisted, you know, change a little bit out of it. So identifying trend requires you to live on the Internet. There's really no other way around that. You can't read email, like, you know, email summaries or like trend reports. None of that work. You have to live in the culture, get to live within the language that these people speak and see what are the things that they would like. So typically I like to feed ideas through social media, like tossing an idea that I had on Twitter, on Instagram, and seeing the feedbacks that people have for me. And I'll say, like, maybe I'll toss up 15 ideas and like 12 of them get shot down. And that's totally fine. That means I have three products to work off of. So being in direct communication with the audience that you're trying to target consistently, getting real time feedback has been one of the most crucial part of making my products. Because all these stuff costs a lot of money and I don't want to go into it blindly. Right, Yep.

I'm curious, I want to take a step back. How did you get into all this? I know you spoke about Tumblr and social media, but take us back to, you know, pre social media days. What was the transition that led you into everything you're doing now?

I think every single entrepreneur will give you this answer and you probably have to buy. So candy. In school, I was hustling. In school, I was selling soda, selling food, and I was like, man, I can actually be pretty good at selling stuff. And I'm pretty good at like communicating with people and like getting to know these people and understanding what they want. And it's those guiding principles that led me to build all these businesses. Because if you really look at a lot of our businesses, they all stem from principles that we have in ourselves. Like, I would Say, like within your own business, you really like to learn more about people. You're probably really curious as a kid, you're just intrigued by a lot of stuff and you're like, okay, cool, let me do a podcast to learn even more about it. So that's how you're guiding principle, right? Am I wrong? So for me, it was always about trying to entertain people. As a kid, I was a class clown. I was trying to make people funny because. Make people laugh because it was the only way for me to make friends. When I first moved to America, I'm an immigrant, so there was, there wasn't a lot for me to step back on. I just had to go for it. I had to make people laugh. I have to sell people stuff, I have to give people free candy just to make money and all that. Transition into building these businesses because I want to build entertaining products. I want to make money by selling these products and I just want to get my products across to as many people as I can through those, you know, qualities.

Got it. When did you come to America?

2005. I was eight years old.

Okay. When you came here, because I'm just, I'm super curious about, you know, that story itself. I loved, you know, immigrant. Immigrant stories are fascinating to me. When you got here, like, what was your life then and what was that transition like, being 8 years old? You know, you're conscious, you know what's happening, you're aware. So tell us about that.

It was tough, not gonna lie because, you know, it was just my mom and I moving to America. We didn't have a lot of money, we stayed with relatives. I lived in garage, like I lived in the basement for a while too, and just trying to get by because America, it's kind of hard for immigrants. A lot of people don't really get to experience that. But when you come to a brand new country and they speak a language that you have no clue about, you get peace a lot, you get bullied a lot, and you just try to fit in. And I would say, like all those years, it was a constant change in how I view myself. I was having a lot of trouble with my identity and it's just really trying to find a footing. And I think my footing was, you know, making people laugh and try to be there for people. So giving a lot more than receiving and just keep doing that and that, getting myself into more doors, meeting newer people that can give me the opportunities I have right now.

Yep, very cool, man. Where do you see the future of social media? Going, you know, especially with new platforms like TikTok and how Instagram is changing every day and adding different features and engagements, you know, down and you don't have to pay for awareness. Like what's your current mindset, bringing it back to the social media conversation, the future of social, because you understand it so well and you've been innovator in that world. So I'd love to get your thoughts on that.

I think content creation will be what will have a lot lower barrier of entry. Creators will be a lot more than any other platform, especially on TikTok, just due to machine learning algorithm allowing more people to shine regardless of how many followers that they have. We're noticing a trend with shorter content being the norm. So back in the day on Tumblr it's a lot long form media. Then you got into YouTube that was doing 10 minute videos and then Twitter came about with short form tweets. Vine came about with six second videos. TikTok came about with 15 second videos. So we're seeing that more and more people are creating content. So they like the viewers want to see more content in less time, so they're making more content and shorter amount of bands so people can consume more. And that's a huge shift than what we had five years ago in terms of creators, more small people are getting recognition rather than just the few that we're seeing on Instagram and Twitter. On Instagram, if you have zero followers, no one will see your stuff. On TikTok, if you have zero followers, at least 100 people will see your video. Just at least 100 because that's the first batch that they sent out to. So we're seeing that with this new algorithm in mind. People are more confident in creating content because they're like, okay, I have zero followers, but I'm still getting a lot of views on my content. Let's make more. So you're seeing a lot of rise of newer content, newer content creators and a shift in the way that we consume content. That's really the general feel of what does shift in the next few years.

Very cool. So regarding TikTok and like just that platform, how are you utilizing it and how do you recommend brands tap into the new awareness that's, you know, that's available on TikTok.

TikTok is currently our second largest driver in terms of revenue, only behind Instagram. And we have spent $0 on TikTok 0 with never pay anyone. And the key here was that we work with creators that are so small that they don't charge money, and we're probably their first sponsor, but they make really good content because content creation, TikTok is actually pretty easy. The barrier of entry is low, but so that means there's more creators for us to work with that aren't professionals. And for the most part, we're able to identify a key, like a key attributes between all these creators, like the way that they edit their videos, the way that they talk to their audiences. And we built an internal system to scrape all these influencers and like hundreds and thousands of roles and reaching out to all those people at the same time and just sending them products to promote. And we create guidelines on like how to best promote the stuff based on the past videos that work out really well for us. So we're essentially cloning all these creators because one, they're new, so they don't really have a sense of direction yet. So we're telling them how to make content and we're telling them how to make content with our products in it. So if you like go on TikTok right now and you look into a hashtag, thelashes, you guys see all these videos that kind of look similar with all the creators that are different, and they all get hundreds of thousands of views, all of them. And it's because we know the type of video that works out really well for us. So we tell each of these creators that work with us to make the same video. And we're kind of like duplicating ads in Facebook, but on TikTok. And that's really the thing that has been driving most of our successors, really. No other secret behind it. That's really it.

Wow. So, for example, as a tangible product, if these creators are making these product videos on TikTok, you're driving traffic and selling these products through the link in their bio. Or how do you track that? Because I know it's a platform that it's unique, it's new, and a lot of brands are testing with it. But how have you seen success with testing that to bring an ROI to your product?

Right. So link in bio is a feature that not all accounts have, so we can't really bank on that. And we actually don't ask any creators to put it in their bio. You can't link within a caption either. And the best you can do is, you know, put the ad on the account. Right. But what we found is that a lot of people that see us on TikTok that really like our product goes to Google. So if you go on like Shopify's back end report that says short, medium, Google. And you're like, on the surface, you're like, okay, everyone just came from us by searching for us. We don't know where they really saw us. But in the Shopify account that we have on the back end post checkout, we actually asked the customer where they found us. So after you buy the stuff, you check out, there's like, thank you, Casey, for purchasing. Here's your order number. Can you please tell us where you found us? And here's 50% off for providing an answer. And we're seeing a. 70% of the people that check out always gives the answer because they want a coupon for the next purchase. Right. So that's how we're able to see attribution. A lot of people don't do that, but it's a free secret.

Very cool. And then. And regarding that when people are checking out, you've seen a lot of people just saying TikTok. Is that more. So the point you're coming to of that's how you're seeing the conversions from TikTok is just by a survey, in a sense.

Yeah. And it's statistically significant enough where we can see that it is the second largest driver behind Instagram because a lot of people come to us through our Instagram ads or Instagram influencers. And we knew that already, but we didn't know if TikTok was working. So once we add in the option for people take TikTok. And there's a long time when we did TikTok without putting out that as an option. And now that we did, we see that there's a huge amount of answers in terms of like, which TikTok influencer they saw it from. They can put in their own response too, besides clicking the button. So that's been the most interesting part. Another key was tracking by coupon codes. We're seeing that a lot of creators that put coupon codes within their caption, their codes get used by the customers.

Love that. Very cool, man. I want to sort of pivot the conversation just regarding. I wanted to touch on something. We spoke at the beginning regarding just your Instagram. I've been following you on there quite some time. Hug. Where does that name come from?

I just saw it was available, so I took it. I got it off this guy actually. It's just. God, I didn't really knew how to use Instagram, but he had the name. So I just like, hey, do you want to like, give me your name? And it worked. This was really long time ago, by the way. This is like, this is before people are really selling stuff. Like nowadays people are selling usernames or selling like tick marks or whatever. But this was so long ago. That username wasn't really that big of a deal.

Yeah.

So I got in really early. I have, like, for the most part, I have like these things within, like all these platforms. I just kind of got used to having og.

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know if there was like a deeper purpose behind Pug in a sense. I was like, okay, that's no meaning.

I don't even have a dog. I don't have a dog. No, no. But dude, if you look at my tag pictures, it's all dogs. And then I get. Sometimes I get like hate mail. But it's really funny hate mail because they're like, dude, you're not a dog. And it's like a very simple one sentence message that I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, I guess I'm really not a dog. But like, I mean, if you want that.

Okay. How are you. How have you been utilizing, you know, Instagram from a personal brand perspective? Because I obviously you put out content on there, we connected on there, you're building an audience. But how do you look at social from a personal perspective and how do you utilize it?

It's really sad to say that I have not really leveraged it. I've been so focused on building products and brands that are detached from me that I haven't really focused on my personal brand. Like, I teach an online class on how to do E commerce, but I spent seven months filming that class and I didn't promote it once. I didn't put any asset behind it because I was just so busy building my brand or like my. My business brand. So I didn't really put anything towards my personal branding. So all the followers that you're seeing, all the engagements are from like years of just being there. So I don't have like 200,000 followers because I just never really put time into it. So it's something that I'm actively working on. Not really proud of my personal branding, but at least, like, you know, the other stuff are doing well. Some. I know some people's entire career is their personal branding, but I just never really got time to, like, focus on it. So, yeah, that's kind of the sad answer.

Very cool. I know just regarding social, because obviously we connected and I was just so intrigued by the different products and brands that you've built because I've seen them all over, but I sort of want to pivot, you know, if there's a young entrepreneur that's just about to launch their first E Comm brand, what is your advice to them if they're looking to, you know, find the manufacturing and do everything, not just drop ship it, but actually build a brand like you have.

So there's a few key skills that I think every single entrepreneur should have. Marketing, sales, finance, and being a team player. Those four qualities I think is the most important part. And all these qualities helps you make money. If you're a team player, you're able to make friends that can invest money into you. If you're in sales and marketing, you definitely know how to make money for your business. And the reason why I say make money is because one of the key things that lead to business to fail is that they run out of money. And I almost went to that path many times because I'm not good with my numbers. I'm not a numbers person. And one of the things that I found out over the years is that you really have to know your numbers. A lot of people will show Shopify screenshots of making 100k a day. And I know those people take home maybe $4,000 out of that 100k. And I know that because I source for them. I do manufacturing and sourcing. So a lot of these people come to me to make their products. So I know their margin and I see a lot of them flex Shopify dashboards, but they actually don't know how much money they're taking home. And there are some instances, I know some of my clients are actually making negative money at that number because all their expenses are so high. They're taking up like revolving loans, they're spending a lot of money on Facebook ads. You're spending on things that are not making them money. So the one thing that I would say every single entrepreneur needs to have is qualities that help them make money beyond their business. So you should know something that will allow you to provide service to people that if your core e commerce business is not making money, you can still keep your business afloat. So there's a time when we were struggling on the E Commerce side, but I was able to keep the company afloat by consulting for businesses. And I made a lot of money through that to funnel it back into business. And when you ask the same question that you just asked me, not a lot of people got to give you the same answer. It's because maybe they're just Fortunate enough to not have to get to that point. But I would say that for E Commerce, it's not as good as this seems on the surface. You really have to understand your numbers and you really have to know how to extend your Runway by providing services to make money for your business when your actual product is not selling as well. I would say, like those are the two things that I learned with the most valuable two lessons in the past few years.

I love that. How has everything happening, coronavirus quarantine, has that affected your business at all in terms of fulfillment, manufacturing, sourcing or how have you seen a transition with this current state of the economy?

So our company onehouse, which I know you want to dive into, so I'll give you like a very brief rundown. So one house is a brand development firm. We essentially have a portfolio of different businesses that we run. So we have restaurants which are closed right now because of coronavirus. So that's how it's affected. We do logistics and manufacturing. So logistics definitely got affected because prices of flights went up, shipping went up. So a lot of customers are like, oh, you know what, let's just order like in a few months. So we lost a lot of customers on that end. But E Commerce went up a lot because people are staying home and they're shopping. So our E Commerce sales actually went up during coronavirus. And I really hate to say that, but when the stimulus check went out, our sales went up to that same day. When a check went up, I'm like, man, what? It's like, it's good, but like I feel like in terms of society, you probably shouldn't be buying like non essential stuff with a stimulus check. But you know, that's just my two tips. And then we also have a drop shipping agency where we do drop shipping for people. So a lot of people come to us to replace Alibaba because we're able to ship directly from China through USPS through our drop shipping business. So that one's been doing pretty well because a lot of people are drop shipping essential products from us. So because we have a pretty diverse portfolio, even when the restaurant and the logistics side of stuff are going down, everything else is up and it bounces up.

Very cool, man. Yeah, I wanted to touch on some of when it comes to brands that you've worked with, I know on your site it's like Audi and Daniel Wellington Fashion Nova. I'd love you to give us some insight on to, you know, some of these brands, how you've worked with them and you know, consulted with them or however you, you know, position yourself to align with these type of brands.

Yeah, a lot of these brands came from inbounds. Just like, you know, having huge network over the years, a lot people recommend me to run certain parts of their campaign. So for Adidas, we did their Coachella campaign and activation. For Fashion Nova, I ran their influencer marketing on Twitter for a little bit, for like half a year actually. Even ran the one with Kylie Jenner. And then for Audi, I consulted further YouTube. So like, because we have a diverse offering, like we don't really just do one thing, we don't just do Facebook ads, we do a lot of stuff. All these clients who work at them in different capacities and there's different types of campaigns that we run. Sometimes like year long campaigns, sometimes it just needs to do something one time for them. Currently I'm doing BTC for Universal, so I lead a lot of e commerce stores. Universal has currently 533 stores and I help lead a lot of releases. So like whenever, whenever an artist released an album, we handle the e commerce side of it for them because merch sales directly correlates to their album sales and then their tour dates and whatnot. So at Universal we're seeing that a lot of downfall with tours because no one's touring right now. So a lot, a lot of focus came into E commerce. So I'm helping lead their e commerce effort to help offset the loss from, you know, not being able to tour. So that's kind of the stuff that I'm working with right now.

Just touching on influencer marketing. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs that are listening, they always want to, you know, test influencer marketing. So how has influencer marketing changed in your opinion and where do you see it going?

Oh dear. If you want me to be Honest, ever since 2018, it's not been the same. Things are doing so well from 2014, 2018 on influencer marketing. Whenever you work with an influencer, you see drastically spiking yourself. But over the years, because a lot of people got greedy, they take on more brand deals than they, than they should. It diluted the value of their promotion. So like back in the day, if someone who's a fitness influencer promoted this dumbbell or like this thing that gives you a six pack, everyone's like, oh my God, I need to go grab it right now. But nowadays, everyone has seen them promote the same type of product 20 times with 20 different brands. Is this fit to the better one or is this fit to the better One. Should I get this vitamin or should I get one? People have so many options to choose from because the same person that they truly believed in, that they looked up to promote so many products, that the value of the promotion and the influence drastically went down. So ever since then, I would say like 2018 was kind of a cutoff mark. Everything else kind of went downwards. Price of promotion actually went down as well. So if you're a brand, that's kind of good. But for the most part, if you're trying to get into influencer marketing right now, definitely focus on micro influencers. Influencers who want to become larger creators so they're willing to take in sponsorship deals at little to no cost. So I'm talking about anywhere between like 10,000 to 70,000 followers. All those influencers will be willing to work with you on the basis of just getting free products. And that's really the easiest and cheapest way for you to get into influencer marketing.

Very cool. Just touching on that. A brand like, you know, Fashion Nova and how they're utilizing so many of the top influencers, is there still a gauge of like, hey, testing with these larger influencers that can be a good thing or is it something that is completely, you know, overused in your opinion? Like what's your thoughts on that? If you have a budget to go potentially test with higher level people or do you just recommend doing the, you know, the micro influencers to start with?

A lot of the higher influencers are used because of brand affinity. You want to kind of align your brand to be this person's endorsement. So back at Fashion Nova, we work with Kylie on like an annual basis. So we were working them on like a bulk deal. That's why Kylie was posting for us like every other week. And Kylie on an individual post basis was like a quarter million dollars at the time. So not many brands could afford it on a one time basis. But because we work with them with a very long term campaign, Kylie became part of the Fashion over team on a long term basis. So people really align us with her at the time. And so we're able to buy it at a lot cheaper rate than, you know, buying at one time. Just like what we did with our cardi b. So all that has merit to it and for a brand as big as Fashion Nova, it's totally worth it. But if you're just starting out as an E commerce brand or let's just say that you're doing like 100k a month already, I would say that to be the most Efficient use of your money don't really go with big influencers, because a lot of times working with big influencers, buying you brand awareness, which may not have immediate return. And if you're like doing 100k a month, your profit is probably like 30k a month at most. You're not gonna spend 3 months of your profit to work with like an influencer for like $90,000. It's not worth it because you're not getting it immediately. Like, your, your cash flow is tight again. So I would say, like, if I were to be given like a 50k budget, I'll work with a hundred smaller influencers with maybe like 100, 200k rather than like one or two influencers for like, you know, you know, the same amount of money.

Very cool. Two more questions before we wrap up. One, being just throughout the process of social media, what would you say has been the biggest lesson you've learned just about yourself, but also about business? From the journey you've been on in.

The social media world and building brands as an influencer? I think it's really important for all the creators nowadays to know that there's a life cycle to it. You're not gonna be famous forever. People are gonna get tired of you eventually, and you need to diversify your influence. Like, seriously, back when I had 30 million followers, I was very comfortably making a good amount of money, and I was like, okay, this is it. Like, I'm just gonna keep doing this forever. I, you know, raised my standard of living. I bought stuff that was really good for me at the time. But then I realized that once I lost that, I lost everything. Like, you know, you. You put all the eggs in one basket. And that's why I saw a lot of traders do right now, they move to la, they get a huge penthouse with, you know, six of their friends, and then they just spend a ridiculous amount of money. And then they're like, yeah, this is great. I'm gonna keep getting brand deals. One thing to really know is that if you're an influencer or a social media star, you're on lease property. You're renting your office from Instagram, you're renting it from TikTok. They can kick you out at any time. They can ban you. I got banned. I lost all my followers. But I was able to build the business before I lost it all, so I was able to be okay. I know so many people that lost everything. You know, when Fine went down and they didn't divert, they didn't, like, you know, allocate their resources into YouTube or Instagram. Now they're gone. They're just forever gone. So that's one big lesson, is that there's a life cycle to everything that you do. And whether or not you extend your financial Runway is entirely up to you. Like, never depend on one thing to work forever. And the same thing applies to business. Like, the same tactic that we used two years ago that was making us so much money, it's not working anymore. So don't fall back behind to, like, traditional ways. Always find ways to. End of the. Find new audiences, new platform to floor. We have definitely tested a lot of avenues that lost a lot of money for us, but it was worth it, because if we didn't test it, we wouldn't have found the other ways. So just constantly innovate. Understand that the space that you're standing on right now will crumble. And there's a time limit to it. Whether it's two weeks or two years, it will crumble. So you just have to keep stepping forward, finding new ways to get yourself in front of people's eyes.

Love that. Last question before we wrap up. I mean, I'm just so inspired by your story. You're crushing it. You're young, and I want you to take a moment to give your younger self a piece of advice when it comes to starting a business, because there's a lot of young entrepreneurs that listen to the show, and they aspire to work with big brands, run a company, to have a viral product. So what advice would you give to your younger self that someone listening today could take away from this conversation?

I wish I was out there more. I was giving more. I was putting myself in places where I can learn rather than staying in my comfort zone. And, you know, it's kind of cheesy, but I wish I was out. I was more social. I was a really shy kid as a. When I was growing up, I never really had a lot of friends, so I was kind of afraid to speak up. And I knew that over the years, once I started speaking up and getting myself into rooms that was not really comfortable in because everyone is so much more successful than me, once I got into that room and I'm like, holy shit, I am the smallest fish in this room. I have nowhere else to go before. I just have to make friends with every single one of these people, see what I can learn from them. I would do free work for these people, and I will use that time and opportunity to learn more about it. So when I first started When I first moved to California, you know, just like any other creator, I did free work for a person for a year. I did free work for the former chief data scientist of Amazon.

Wow.

So he flew me to San Francisco every other week. I didn't get paid at all during the whole year, but through that opportunity, I, you know, I met people at Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, got myself into the doors of these people and got work from these people, got recommended by these people, and it was all because I did work for a full year. So, you know, you just have to put aside your ego and understand that you're not as big us the world has the potential to put you in a place in. And that you just have to constantly be in a learning mode. Constantly hustle and hustle. So just getting myself into these rooms, talk to these people, making myself available for them to work with and just be. Just been doing that for like seven, eight years now.

I love it, man. Love that. Just, just. Just to wrap up, I want to say, number one, thank you so much for coming on today. But where is the best place that people can stay updated with everything you have going on?

My Instagram, Puck pg.

Love it. I'll make sure to link that down below. But that being said, Jason, I just want to say thank you again for coming on the show today. It was my pleasure.

Thank you. Pleasure. Thank you.

Monarch Legacy of Monsters An Apple Original Series the world is on fire. I decided to do something about it on November 17th. This place, it's not ours. Believe me. The most massive event of the year arrives. If you come with me, you'll know everything. I promise.

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