The Secret To Being An ETHICAL Cult Leader - (Hint) It's Easier Than Ever!

Long-form live streaming or long-form content is how you build like a diehard community. What do you think is going to give people the confidence in you more? Seeing other people's accounts do well or your own account do really well?

There's a lot of like things that align with sales and content creation.

Everything you need to be thinking, how can I scale? How can I scale? How can I scale?

Hey, welcome to the Howdy Podcast. Today's guest is Levi Nix. The YouTuber.

Let's go.

How's it going, man?

It's going good, man. How you doing?

Doing good, doing good. Your last episode did great. People loved it. They learned a ton. And that episode wasn't even planned.

No, it wasn't.

So we figured we'd get together again, um, talk about some more social media stuff. Uh, he's done lots of big things, grown lots of following. Um, some might say an influencer, but yeah, man. So Let's go ahead and get, get into it. We met what, how many months ago now? 2 or 3 months ago?

4 months ago? I think it was long ago. I think it was longer than that. I want to say it was back in like January or maybe even February.

Okay, so he opened up the studio in February. Yeah, so it was like 2 weeks after we opened.

Yeah, it might have been last year almost, honestly. Like, yeah, it was a long time.

So a while back now.

Yeah, 6 months plus probably.

Been really cool. We've got to collab on a lot of things. Levi has been kind of a mentor for us, teaching us how to do the things on social media, some tips and tricks. And so yeah, that's how we met. And now we're here talking about social media.

Sorry to cut you off. When, when I was getting my haircut by my barber, he was like, you need to go check this guy out, this Flights and Sights guy. And then I was like, who's this dude? And I saw your content, thought it was crispy. That was really good. And I was like, there's no way this guy's in Abilene. He's like, no, he actually is. So that's when I DM'd you.

Yeah.

And I think we had like an Instagram call and then, yeah, the rest is history.

Yeah. This, this from my perspective, this guy with like 85K followers, I didn't know where you were from. Like, I didn't know. And you were like, hey, can we hop on a call anyways? I was like, sure. And I was like, how in the world did you find out about me? He's like, oh, my barber.

Yeah, literally. Shout out to Sunny Fades, Kingdom Cuts.

But that just shows the power of social media.

Yes.

Like, um, that's happened countless times now where people reach out randomly. Um, I got a call this morning off of a random forum.

Really?

Somebody recommended me on. Um, some people type into Facebook social media management.

Yeah.

I have posted so many times saying the word social media management, so I was the first one that popped up.

Yeah.

Boom, we got a client. So just the power of social media is huge. And I think there's 5 billion active users on Facebook, on social media in general, so many every single day. And so like, my thought is, why can't you get a little tiny sliver? How hard would it be to be— to get 1,000 followers, to get 10,000 of those subscribers? Like, and so this is just a testament. And so today I want to kind of talk about how you got there.

Yeah.

First of all, explain everything that you do. Let's, let's go back, talk about your story a little bit. Where did you start?

Where are you at now?

How you got there?

So I graduated college and got a degree in music education, actually. And then I thought I wanted to be a music teacher, which you just don't make a lot of money. So I switched into sales, did sales for a while, played music professionally in Austin for a bit, opened up for like Gary Clark Jr., Lisa Marie Presley, Willie Nelson. And then after I did that, I was a musician and then COVID hit. So I was like, I got to do something. In between all this, I've still been doing sales. Yeah, working corporate. But so I did that for a bit. And then once COVID hit, I was like, I need to pivot. I need to do something else. I can't do live shows. So then I just got on TikTok and started posting videos and like tried to find my lane. Yeah, eventually relationships kind of hit. So then I just doubled down and was like, I'm going to make a video every day for a year. I don't know why that felt like a good benchmark. I think it's because I heard from the rapper Russ. I don't know if you ever heard.

Yeah, yeah.

But he was like, make a song every day for a year. And watch you blow up. And I was like, I'm gonna make a TikTok every day for a year. And then it just— and then I hit like 10K, and then I kept doing it. Then I hit like 40K on Instagram, and I think I'm like 26K on TikTok, but I haven't posted. But, but then I kept doing that, and then I did that for like 3 years, just hit 100K maybe a month or so ago. But then I was like, let me transfer this to YouTube and let me start doing long-form content. And then I started out, you know, with no subscribers, and then over the past 9 months, I'm almost to 60K.

Yeah. So why did you decide to go to YouTube?

Uh, well, long-form content seems to be making a big comeback. Yeah, I feel feel like podcasts are really popular for a reason. Like what we're doing right now, this is going to be in a long-form setting where it's like no edits, no cuts. It's more real, it's more organic, it's more like an actual conversation.

Yeah.

And I feel like people are getting back into that since COVID happened. Like how many people started binging things? Yeah, you probably binge some stuff, you guys probably binge some stuff, but like, yeah, watching 10, 15 episodes of something. Like dude, when COVID hit, me and my girl watched all the Harry Potter movies in like 2 days. So it's like people are used to binging now. And it's more popular and it's more like colloquial. Everybody's doing it. So I was like, well, let me dive into that. But I set myself a parameter. I was like, I'm only going to do a 20-minute episode and I'll drop it at the same time every day. Yeah. But yeah, that was kind of the point of it. And I just felt like I had more to share on TikTok and stuff on Instagram. Like, you don't get to share your voice. It's like you doing voiceovers and acting. And I feel like I have a lot of knowledge to share. Yeah, I like working with you guys, but I have a lot of knowledge to share when it comes to relationships and helping men and stuff like that with, you know, style, relationships, grooming. And so I was like, let me— what's a lane where I can get this out? And doing YouTube was that lane.

So are you wanting to start your own podcast, but it's been kind of intimidating to get started? Whenever you think about all of the equipment like cameras, microphones, lights, and then you get into software that you have to buy, it gets overwhelming. Our mission here at Howdy Media with the Howdy Studio that I'm currently in is to make it as easy as possible for you to get creating. So if you want to start a podcast, a YouTube channel, if you want to film some short-form content for your social media, this is the place to do it. We have everything you need from cameras to microphones to lights, everything. And not only do we have everything you need, but we have the skills to edit, produce, and distribute it directly for you. So if this is something you would be interested in, we're going to put the link in the description below. And we can't wait to work with you. Yeah, I feel like you can go way more in depth, and I've found more value from YouTube just from the stuff that I consume.

Yeah.

And so that's going to be one of our things here for Howdy Media and for my personal brand, like, to really push YouTube these next 6 months. Well, I guess indefinitely. Never stop pushing YouTube.

YouTube's the best, man. There's so many people on YouTube. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of people on TikTok, Instagram, but like, people will get on YouTube and watch a 45-minute video.

Yeah, I feel like they're on there more to be entertained.

Yeah.

And so you don't have as much time to sit there and have genuine conversations, um, and just talk to people.

Well, tell you, in my opinion, YouTube also slash live streaming, long-form live streaming or long-form content is how you build like a diehard community.

Yeah.

TikTok and IG, it's hard to build a community off of like appetizers. But it's much easier to build a community off of entrees.

Yeah.

Like you guys, I love going to the Beehive because they have good steaks.

Yeah.

You know, I don't— you know, Monk's is good, but I'm not going to— even though I go there every day, Monk's has got good danishes or scones, but I'm not going there every day for a scone. But I will go to Beehive every weekend for like a good steak. So it's like people come back for a little bit more.

So you mentioned a background in sales.

Yeah.

How much has that affected what you're doing now?

Oh my gosh.

And your success in that?

Oh, that's a good question. So I studied a lot of different sales ideologies and philosophies. So there's the Sandler, Straight Line Method, Gap Selling, Miller Heiman, all these, all these different methodologies basically to teach you the psyche or the psychology or the psychology between like how people buy and how, how you should sell.

Yeah.

So the Sandler is big on pain. So building up pain buckets. So like for the ebook I've been selling, um, what I've been kind of leveraging is the pain points behind men not having the right personality to approach women.

Yeah.

So I came up with an ebook that gives you the 4 pillars of personality. But if I don't know how to leverage that from a pain perspective, people are like, oh, it's cool, it's another ebook, I don't care, I don't need it.

Yeah.

But you know those infomercials that are like, are you sick and tired of your dull knives? It's kind of like that. That's Sandler. Like, you need to have the pain before you can have the solution. But sales has helped a ton because of just how to, how to have good brand messaging. Yeah. How to know how to talk about yourself, talk about your product, but also know how to entertain people. Because, you know, doing a 45-minute sales presentation— I don't know if you ever sat in one, they're pretty boring. Um, but you got to have one-liners, you got to be quick, you got to be witty. And then, you know, going back and forth, people asking you questions. And that's why I did a reaction channel, so I can like react and it's more organic and it's not just like pre-planned, pre-recorded, and I'm just showing you what I want to show you. It's kind of like you get 20 minutes with me a day and it's raw. Um, but now sales has been completely foundational when it comes to branding, marketing, And then how to sell yourself completely.

And I feel like there's a lot of like things that align with sales and content creation.

Yeah.

So like, for example, you take an Instagram video, your hook is like supposed to be eye-catching. So in order to sell something, you're like, like you said, pain point, something to like get their attention. Yeah. And then it's like, okay, then you go through like the answer, you give them the solution. And then once you do that, there's like a question, an answer. And did you answer in a way that makes them feel like they've learned something? And that's delivering on your promise.

Yeah.

And so whenever you sell something, you're like, hey, we can do this for you and you'll get this result. Here's how to do it. And then they do it and it delivers. Then that's like a great sale.

Yeah.

And then they leave referring people like sharing your content. So I feel like there's a lot of parallels that people can learn with sales.

Well, and it's a good way to, to, to take a customer. Current customers are the best advertisement.

Yeah.

It's the same thing when building a social media online community is like, now I have guys that show up every day. Shout out to all you guys that show up every day. And then now if somebody comes in trying to throw some shade or something like they self-govern and they'll like back me up when I sometimes can't. And so it's cool to have people there that are like, nah, Levi said this back then. He actually does, you know. So it's really cool because every day is so different. And so because now I've featured my dog in the back and I'll give him like a treat. Today he was sick, so he like threw up on his bed and I was like, I'm sorry, guys, I didn't know he's going to throw up. And some people are like, you don't treat your dog good, you're a dog hater.

And I'm like, actual dog.

This is my— is my actual dog. I have a Mini Aussie. Okay. So he just sits back on his little bed. Okay. And then I'll give him a treat or a carrot. But like this morning he threw up, so he had an upset stomach. So I was like, why don't you just chill on the bed? No treat today because I usually give him like a carrot or a fish or a bone or something, but his stomach was upset today and he threw up just because he has an upset stomach. And some people are like, you're not treating your dog good. I'm like, bro, if you watched 10 episodes prior, he gets a bone every day. And so people will come in and defend me.

So you do it on the—

yeah, on the, on the, on the YouTube videos. Yeah, he sits in the back. And then— but it's also good because it's like, it's a question piece, right? Yeah, like you have you foreground, you have the background, but then I have another thing there. I have my dog Loki, and now people are like, Loki's such a good boy. Boy, and they get bought into that story. So it— yeah, and it just like roots them more to be in your community, and then you can get them to Discord and, you know, stuff like that.

That's a good idea. Do you use Discord a lot?

Oh yeah, all the time.

So do you have your own community there?

Yeah, 100%. I've got— and I've got multiple channels, so I've got like a— I've got a general chat, I've got a suggestions chat, I've got a memes. So like people can put in suggestions of videos for me to react to. If they think it's good, I'll react to it and shout out the guy that, you know, offered me the video.

How active are you on—

I'm on there every day, every— like, usually every morning and every night. Now, I'm not, I'm not like in there in the chat like, what's up guys, how's it going? No, I don't blow people up. The, the Discord's more or less for people to talk to each other, the community to converse back and forth. It's for me to kind of just like check in and see what's going on. Yeah, that's what I do.

So how do you get people to get off of YouTube and onto the Discord?

So what I— here's what I do. Hey, You watch a lot of YouTube, right?

Yeah.

You know how sometimes you get on a YouTube video and it's like, what's up guys, it's Darren Drayvon, smash the like button, kick that subscribe button. I don't do that. I don't do the very beginning of the video because I hate telling people what to do right when they get in there. So I did something completely different, which I think a lot of people like, is like, what's up y'all, my name's Levi, let's get straight into it. I don't even say my name's Levi. What's up y'all, let's just get straight into it. And we just start reacting immediately. So inside of 10 seconds you're getting value. Now at the very end, if you stuck around, I'm like, hey, I appreciate you guys sticking around to the very end. I've got my Discord link if you guys wanna chat offline, give me some suggestions. Got my ebook in the description. I've got my Reddit down here. So I'll kind of like every video, I point them to one angle of like, hey, go here at the very end. And then maybe I'll get like 2 to 5 people every day that jump in, but you do that for a month and you'll have 30, 40 people in there. So I would say for you, like if the podcast at the very end of it have a call to action, CTA, we've all talked about that. The very end be like, go here for offline content or go here for this. I give them a reason to go there.

Yeah. So I've been trying to figure out where they should go, where, where they should go. So like one of the things that I started recently, I started a Facebook group. Yeah, that's called Howdy Media Insiders Group. And so I kind of wanted it to be the same vibe.

Do that.

So if you join this, like it's invite only.

Yeah.

So kind of get a little bit exclusive access to like the media team. Yeah, that's pretty cool. If you have a question or anything, like, um, I got on a, a basically like a, a coaching call type thing, um, the other day and he was like, yeah, I, I just don't know if I can invest anymore into this. Um, I was like, okay, well you can either pay for this coaching, like one, one meeting a week, whatever, or you can go join our free.

Facebook group.

Facebook group. So now I know he's interested. So like anything in the future, any course that we put out, he more than likely is going to sign up because I sat there and talked to him for 20 minutes. Yeah, gave him fire like advice on everything because he's a photographer, right? Um, he's like, how do I grow my Instagram as a photographer? Um, how do I get more clients? And I was like, well, first of all, you got to completely change everything you're doing on social media because Instagram No longer wins whenever you just post pictures.

No, they'd rather see something on my camera phone of you.

Exactly.

BTS or something.

Yeah, exactly. And so that was one of the recommendations. It's like, take exactly what you're doing, get behind the scenes, incorporate those pictures in the reel. Yeah, like show you taking the picture and pop up the picture, go to the next one, do the same exact thing. So like, I set up this shot because the sun was right here, the shadows were chilling out over here. There's soft light coming from above. Here's how it turned out, right? Yeah, switch. So just that kind of advice. And he's been commenting like crazy, like super engaged in the, in the Insiders group.

See, that's what you want.

So I— do you recommend doing that or a Discord?

Uh, depends on the people you're attracting. So I'm attracting a wide variety of people, all the way from 18 to 60. I have like I have a very wide gap of people. If I showed you my YouTube analytics, you'd be like, a lot of people, literally from 18 to 60 that follow me. So Discord is really popular with the younger cats. The older guys, not so much. But the older guys will email me. So if they really want something, I have my email there. For me personally, I do Discord because I have a younger YouTube audience. But for you, I think a free Facebook group where not invite only, But basically when they get in, they have to answer like 3 questions to make sure they're not trolling. And of course you can boot them or whatever. But like, I would have, I would focus on getting volume and then being restrictive, as opposed to being restrictive and then looking for volume.

Got it.

So like, you just need as many people in as possible, even if they're inactive. When somebody comes in that's new, that sees you have 5,000 members, they're just gonna be like, whoa. They're not gonna think like, oh my God, like that, even if 5,000 people aren't active. Like, I have 100,000 followers on Instagram. Not everybody's liking my stuff, not everybody's commenting, but just the sheer number of it gives you that validation and that social proof. So I would say just like have a question or something, or like put your name, put your email address, and then you can start gathering email addresses and doing marketing.

Yeah, that's what I would do. Email campaigns have been something I've been trying to figure out too. Yeah, um, because I have obviously my My main— I tried this out the other day. I took all my clients that had already worked or bought something from us, and then I sent out like basically just an update of like, hey, we're Howdy Media. Yeah. Now, and I got one call off of that email. But then I was thinking like, okay, what are the rules behind this?

That's the Wild West. I could give you some sauce right now. You put you on serious game.

Okay, let's hear it.

So you could literally get on Google and you could pay someone, a VA, to scrape all the email addresses of local businesses within a 100-mile radius.

Yeah.

Put it in an Excel spreadsheet. You could go get a Mailchimp account. Mailchimp is pretty cheap. Or you could do HubSpot. I think HubSpot sequencing might even be free. You could, you could build out a newsletter, a PDF, whatever, a general message, and then you could have each one personalized because in Mailchimp or HubSpot you can actually have it personalized. And you could send out 150 to 200 of those, the snap of a button.

So funny is I did that exact thing and that's where I started. I was like, okay, I have hundreds upon hundreds of email addresses, all include real estate agents and small business owners around this area, right? So I sent one email and then I started researching more and it's like, oh, you have to have consent. Have you—

not really. Like, not really. You just need to have your email validated. Now there's a lot of things you can do to get a health check on your email address, um, which are above my pay grade. I don't know how you do it. I've always worked for companies that get a health check on their email addresses. But like, you basically need to get your domain verified to a certain level where someone receives it, they don't think it's spam. You send too many emails, you're automatically thrown as spam. So if you send over 5,000 emails a month and you have more than a 2% bounce rate, like somebody reports it as spam, every single email you send is spam. What I would do for you right now is I would break it up into segments. Now that you have the email addresses, break it up into segments and send maybe like 10 personalized emails a day. If you do that for 20 days, what is that? 20 times 10 is 200. That's 200 a month that you're sending. And then you could like, you could have Mike or Naomi or whoever else, like Be like, here's the messaging, literally copy paste, send this on over with this pamphlet or with this PDF. And it would take you 20 minutes and you would probably get a much higher click rate. It would feel more relevant. It'd be a one-to-one as opposed to like a—

You say 10 a day?

10 a day, yeah.

10 emails a day?

10 emails a day, yeah. Do 20.

Just write—

No, here's what you do. Write it out, hey, hey Darren, This is my name is, my name is Levi. I own Howdy Media here in Abilene, Texas. I saw your website. I really like what you guys do. We've been helping other people. We've been helping this person, this person, this person help with their social media presence. We love working with local people. So I would love to just get your feedback on kind of what we do. Here's a, here's a link to my website if you're interested. And then here's my calendar link if you want to book a time to chat. And then I would just put like, are you against, you know, getting to learning or are you against getting to know each other? Best copy paste that and then just send it to 10 people a day. Make it very much so like, hey, we work with so-and-so here, social proof, and then be like, I love what you guys are doing. I saw your website. I think we could absolutely help with that. You know, we work with so-and-so to do this and then put a call to action at the end. That's, that's no leaning. So are you against a chat? People, if they say people want to say no, that means yes. Yeah. As opposed to like, would you like to chat with me? You know, not really. But if you're against the chat, nobody's going to be really against the chat. People are going to say no. You want to give them the opportunity to say no and then put a calendar link and you never know, they might. And then you— and then the next month, yeah, follow up. Hey, I sent you an email last month. I didn't get a reply. Like, there's a lot of money in the follow-up. I've got— I've closed so much business from like hitting somebody up one month and then I'm right back the next month. Hey, I hit you up last month. I know it wasn't right time. Is now a better time? And they're like, you know what? It's not. But call me next week.

Boom.

Now I've got it. Yeah, the follow-up game's really, really—

and is that— was that when you were doing a lot of sales?

Oh yeah, for yourself? To this day. Like, people tell me, hey, call me in the fall. Fall is September 1st. There's a lot of people are going to get a call from me on September 1st. Hey, I know you said call in the fall, sent you an email. I know you saw some value. Is now a better time? Oh, it is. Well, appreciate that. And like, have some notes that you have about them and stuff like that. Like, keep up with it. Um, and you could just have an Excel spreadsheet of all the people you've reached out to and then put a note when they reply. And it just— it's going to level your game up so much when you're building these relationships. And then eventually you can be picky and be like, you know, I'm too busy, I can't take any more calls. But like cold email and even cold calling, dude, like if you can get numbers of people and just call them up and have that script, write out a script of what you say every time, bro, you'll make— I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars from just cold calling people. There's so much money to be made in cold calling because everybody's afraid to do it.

Yeah. Yeah, I tried cold calling for a while whenever I got into real estate because that was one of the things like, okay, call—

it sucks.

Yeah, call 100 people this week. And so I did and I hated every second of it.

So let me put you— let me put something in perspective. So when I got my first sales job, yeah, I was making 160 to 180 calls per day. Yeah. Running demos and closing business. All, all by myself, 160 to 180 a day. And I did that for 2 years. So 100 a week, rookie numbers. Yeah. Get those numbers up.

Well, I will.

I mean, but it does make you want to blow your brains out. Yeah. You get used to so many. You're like, no, no, no. But you just go for the yeses. That's all I care about. If I get 2% yeses, like if you knew that out of 100 calls, 2 people would say yes, how fast would you get through those 100 calls? You would burn through those 100 calls. But a lot of people are just afraid to do it.

Yeah, and I've seen people use the, uh, phone— what do they call it? It dials it for you.

Oh yeah, parallel dialers, like where you can knock out—

yeah, they knock out 150 to 200 a day.

Yeah, and I'm like, that's what— that's what you use at my company, which is great. Yeah, we use 2 to 3 lines at a time. I can bang out 150 calls in an hour. Yeah, great.

All right, Mike, get ready to cold call.

Telling you, dude, if you make 10 calls a day with a script with good energy and it's relevant, people will want to talk to you. Like, if people cold call me and it makes sense, I'm like, bro, what's up? I'll hear you out. I just— most of the time, cold— 90% of cold calls are trash though. Yeah, they're really bad.

Very.

Hey, I think I saw you want an extended car warrant. I don't even have a car. People still call me about a car I don't have. Yeah, like, bro, you're calling the wrong person, dude.

Oh my gosh. Okay, so your transition to YouTube from Instagram. Have you seen a significant change as far as like actually making money, actually doing that as like an income?

Oh my God. Yeah. So Instagram, TikTok. Now TikTok Shop, I haven't really delved into. I heard there's a lot of people make a bunch of money with TikTok Shop. I just haven't— sure, if I dove into it, I could figure it out.

Yeah.

But Instagram, probably 2 years ago when they were doing all the bonuses, I was making like $1,500 a month. Yeah, I was doing pretty good.

And that's just off of views, right?

That's just off views. Yeah. So, but they would cap you at like 1,500 and you couldn't make any more. They recently reinstated the spring bonuses, summer bonuses, and they've been okay. Nothing like it was, but now the long form content on YouTube is like absolutely insane. So if just to put it in perspective, so I've got like 4.5 million views just this past month. And so you get about $4 for every 1,000 views. Yeah. You do the math there. It, it pays much more, much more. There's way more money in long-form content because in a 20-minute video, YouTube will run 3 ads and it's a 50-50 split in revenue. So they get half, you get half. Yeah. Um, as opposed to like other platforms like Twitch, where in Twitch they'll take, you know, 60% of the revenue, you get 40%, or 75— like, you— they take a lot of the revenue.

Yeah.

Um, but on YouTube it's a 50-50 split. And then that doesn't include Super Chats where somebody can you know, and I do TTS. So like on livestream, it's a TTS. If somebody donates like $2 or more, it'll actually show it on screen and then it'll read it out like in an AI voice or whatever. And then people can become members. And I have membership tiers, you know, $5.99, $10.99, $20.99. And so people— member— I have members-only videos. So like after 2 months I make videos all members-only. So if you want to watch my old content, you have to be a member. And then if you want to stick out in the livestream, you do a Super Chat. And then the views, you're also getting revenue from it.

So you do that all on YouTube?

All of that on YouTube.

But none of that's third party?

No, no, all that's on YouTube. Now the, the TTS stuff, like the alerts, that's through Streamlabs, and you got to set that at— set that up in your OBS. But no, Super Chats, members, all that. And then you have your— you can do affiliate stuff. So if you want to say, hey, go buy this grill, you can literally put an affiliate link there. I haven't done that yet, but then you can do Teespring, or you can sell t-shirts, or you can sell ebooks from a third-party site. Yeah.

Have you done any affiliates ever?

Uh, yeah. So I have an Amazon shop. Okay. Makes maybe $50 to $100 a month.

Okay.

But it's just like my favorite gear. And so people will go in there and buy it sometimes. Some months it's zero, some months it's $50, some months it's $100. It's not very consistent, but YouTube has its own affiliate thing in there.

Okay.

Because just like Amazon, so that you can promote like other products, it's just a lot of stuff that I'm like, I don't care for it. I don't promote things I don't believe in or I wouldn't use. And a lot of it's like farm equipment or get this new, you know, acrylic water hose. I'm like, I don't care about water hoses.

Yeah.

So it's just like, I'm not going to promote that stuff. If it was cologne or something, yeah.

So these last few videos, and I just did a studio tour, if you haven't go— if you haven't watched it, go watch it. Um, I put all of the gear that I have in the studio, I put it in an affiliate link in the description. It's made like $28, dude.

That's 200 views. That dude, I'm telling you. So, well, here's the thing. For affiliate links, you could get 100 views, but if 100 people buy, that's money.

Yeah.

So, but you— but the thing is, if you want people to buy, they have to trust you. There's a difference between rapport and trust. Rapport is like when you meet somebody for the first time, they feel like you're really nice, like, oh cool, like Darren's a cool person. But trust is like, hey man, you dropped your wallet, I picked it up for you. And you're like, wow, I actually trust this guy. So getting from rapport to trust as fast as you can is the way you build like a diehard community. And that's what I'm really good at. I don't know how, but it's just something I'm good at because I think it's because I'm vulnerable. I'm honest. I own up to my mistakes. I say the dumb things I've done and people are like, wow, I do stupid stuff.

Relatable.

Yeah, nobody's perfect. So I'll be like, I messed up here. I had a bad past, whatever. I made stupid mistakes, you know? And then people are like, I made stupid mistakes too. Nobody's perfect, dude. And nobody wants you to seem too perfect.

Yeah.

Like nobody, I hate those people that are like, I just hate it because nobody's really like that. You know what I mean?

Exactly. Yeah. The community side I want to really build up because then I feel like it also kind of funnels through people who are less likely to buy anything from you.

Yeah.

So like if they're even halfway interested in the services we do, if they're halfway interested in growing on social media, like anything of that nature and they join our group. That just the conversion rate, I feel like, is going to go way up in the future. I'm thinking like a year, 2 years down the road when this group is like thriving and whenever you can.

Yeah.

If we say, hey, we're going to be putting out a course on Instagram this month, it's $100, it's $200, then there's going to be a lot of people who buy it because, yeah, or even if it's free, I don't know.

Well, here's, here's the way I see it. There's, it's, it's like a tier system. It's like when you go from an acquaintance to a friend to a bestie. So same thing with the things that you're pushing out. So there needs to be a freemium, needs to be something free, low barrier of entry, right? I can get in for free. I can dip my toes in the water. I'm cool with that. Then you need to have like a lower ticket item, which is my ebook, $10.

Yeah.

Then you have a higher ticket item, which would be a t-shirt, $20. And then even higher ticket item would be, you know, a course or something like that. So like, I think having those tiers allow people to dip the water because if they see value, because my— what's free is my YouTube. It's free for you to watch my YouTube.

Yeah.

They see value in the YouTube and they're like, you know what, I'll go buy this dude's, uh, ebook. And then like, you know what, I'll become a member. You know what, then I'll join his Discord. And then it starts to funnel, and then now you have like thousands of people talking about you, backing you up. And that's that social proof. But you have to give them value first. It's the Gary Vee philosophy, like give them something free and then offer something for money. And then when you offer something for money, they're like, I'm gonna buy it because I like what's free, so the bought stuff must be even better.

Yeah.

Um, and then constantly ask for feedback. So anytime somebody buys an ebook I get a notification in Discord and I immediately, I'm like in the video, I'm like, who bought that? Who bought it? Like, and what did you think? And they're like, I loved it. And so people are seeing me ask, what did you think? They're typing in the chat. I loved it. At least 5 other people are going to be like, maybe I should go buy it.

Yeah.

So ask people to buy something too.

Whenever you offer a paid something like a paid course, paid book, like whenever they're going into it, they're invested in already.

Oh yeah.

So like pay $100 for a course. Well, if you don't learn anything, if you don't pay attention and don't apply it, you're going to waste that $100.

Yeah.

So like it just gives you that much more incentive to utilize what you're learning. And I feel like that's the biggest difference between like the people who consume free content versus the people who consume paid content.

Yeah. Oh, 1,000%. Well, people that spend more money usually take it more serious. Exactly. From my experience, the more somebody's willing to pay, the less of a headache they are. It's always the people that pay $50 that are the biggest headache. I don't know why.

It's 1 million percent.

But it is what it is. So yeah, just, you just got to know that. That's why I don't offer anything that's crazy expensive because I don't want to have to do customer service. I don't want to have to do refunds. I'm like, dude, if you can spend $10 on an ebook, you'll spend $10 at McDonald's. So it's like, all right. And it's super— yeah, it's super short and sweet. It's like 5 pages. It takes 10 minutes to get through. But see, the biggest thing for me is instead of just like offering philosophical advice and like high-level overview stuff, I like to give like action items. So the new ebook I'm about to roll out is the 4 Steps to Style. And so it gives you the 4 steps of the things I think you need to do, but then there's action items with each. And then I have all these style guides that I've included. So guys, I'm like, what haircut should I get? Go to the style guide. What glasses should I get? If I'm getting some shades, go here. What kind of watch should I wear with this outfit? Look here. Um, what, what should I have in my wardrobe? What are the top 5 or 10 pieces I should have? They can go to like this wardrobe capsule. So it's like give them everything and make it like dummy-proof with action items.

So on YouTube, is that what you're pushing right now, is your relationship ebook?

Yeah, so the personality, the 4 Pillars of Personality is like the big ebook I'm pushing right now. But I'm also pushing people to Rumble because, you know, Rumble's like YouTube in a sense. Um, but it's more uncensored because YouTube can be They can be fickle. I'm not having issues. Hopefully I never do. But you got to be careful.

So what is Rumble?

So Rumble's like, it's like really right-wing conservative political version of YouTube.

Got it.

It's uncensored. It's like truth media or, you know.

Yeah, it's where all the right-wingers—

yeah, yeah. Social media, Trump people. Yeah, it's all like the— it's all the people that have been canceled or all the people like like Andrew Tate's there or, you know, Steven Crowder's there. So a lot of those guys that are kind of like edgy or risky brand risks, they go to Rumble.

Yeah.

So they don't have to be censored or anything.

Yeah.

And risk any ad revenue. That's why I don't do any political stuff though. I just do relationships. I make it light, I keep it satirical. I put disclaimers at the end. I'm like, hey, I'm just joking. I'm not trying to be mean. Like, I keep it light. I do roast some people because I think some people deserve to be roasted, but also make fun of myself. Yeah, say that I look like I have a lazy eye, crooked nose, a big forehead, a bird beak chin. Like, I make fun of myself, so it's like, if I make fun of myself, I can make fun of other people too.

Yeah. So, so I was trying to think. I just had a question.

No, you're good. No dead time.

No dead time.

No dead time.

Just keep talking until you think—

well, what's, what's been the hardest part for you so far with growing everything that you're growing? You've got a lot of things going.

I do have a lot of things going. I think it— the The hardest thing has been the, uh, niching down.

You'll believe me one day, dude. You'll believe me one day and just have one Instagram account.

Well, no, no, I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about just like what we offer.

Oh, okay, okay. You're a multimedia company, that's it.

So like, I've made it very clear these last— this like month that we do video production and social media management. We used to do very like, we still do some of the other stuff, but I don't advertise that we do all that other stuff, right?

Well, you gotta— what, what do you make more money on? The SMMA, the social media management, or the video production?

Video production.

Then drop the social media management, and if people want it, charge a crazy premium for it.

It's just, I guess it's just comfortable. Yeah, it's consistent.

Well, it's what you know, it's consistent. But you, here's the way I've looked at things and the companies I've worked at, like when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. It may be one little feature that everybody loves. Oh my God, we like this so much, but it's a big headache and it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort.

Yeah.

Drop it. And then people are like, well, I really wanted that. Be like, hey, we still offer it at 4 times the price.

Yeah.

And more than likely they'll probably pay for it.

Yeah. So. That makes me think now, like, or the reason I do all that is also so we can learn more because I'm thinking for the future if I really want to get into like teaching about the social media, like creating classes, creating workshops. Like I feel like that would be really fun and fulfilling.

Yeah.

Also lucrative if you do it right. Don't know how that is yet. Yeah. But I feel like that's where I would want that to go. Yeah. Where everybody in the area sees us as experts. And whenever we put something on, we make it so dang valuable and they learn so much that they go to it every time.

This is good. This is a good learning lesson here. What do you think is going to give people the confidence in you more? Seeing other people's accounts do well or your own account do really well? I know the answer.

I mean, probably my own account.

Exactly. Stop worrying about everybody else because you really can't control that. And if you double down, like, I bet you right now if we went out and reached out to 10 people, I could get their attention way faster just because I have 100,000 followers and people believe I know what I'm talking about. It's just like when you go look at a personal trainer, if it was a guy who was a slob and another guy who was absolutely shredded, I'm taking the shredded guy's advice even though the other guy's got certificates from here to the floor. I'm taking the shredded guy's advice.

Yeah.

So that's kind of the, the mindset people are going to look at. It's like, well, I mean, Darren's good, but he has like 2,000 followers.

So we could still be the experts.

Yeah.

And not do that.

You, you, dude, helping other people is great, but like you have to walk the walk for them to believe that you can talk the talk. Like you have to have the social proof. And right now, that's why when I get on YouTube or sell an ebook, people are like, Levi knows what he's talking about. He has almost 60K subs. He must know what he's talking about. Yeah. I have so much validation online where I don't have to sit there and beg or plead or go back and management is not really bringing you enough bread, and yeah, just drop it and then be like, we just do video production. And if they really want that, be like, buy the course, figure out how to do it.

Yeah.

Or, you know, charge a premium for it.

And then it's for social media stuff.

Yeah, yeah, social, like, if the managing stuff, because like for me, I thought about doing an SMMA. That's what they call it, social media management or marketing or whatever. If you want to do it, it takes a lot of time, and time is money. I like YouTube because I can go in for 30 minutes a day and I'm done. I don't have to clock in, I don't have to clock out. 30 minutes a day, I'm done. Now I might have to do it 7 days a week, 365 days a year, whatever, but it's 30 minutes. Social media marketing is constant. You need to be replying to comments, you need to be hitting up people, you need to be liking stuff, you need to reply. It's like, it's not worth it, dude. Like, if you really broke down the amount of time you're spending versus how much you're paying, you scraps pennies. Yeah, probably a couple bucks an hour. Outsource that to a VA. Yeah, that's what I would do.

Yeah, that's why I brought on help, so I didn't have to do all of that.

Yeah, and see, that's why you got Naomi doing video production. Yeah, but I would— so what I would do is I would drop the social media management, and if they're like, well, I really want you to be like, cool, I charge $2,000 a month, and they're like, $2,000 a month, that's a lot, cool, go to somebody else. Who else does it? Yeah, keyword, nobody. Newsflash, nobody else does it. So they'll pay the $2,000, right? So boom, now you're upping. So here's what you're doing. You're reducing your amount of workload and you're keeping the same amount of money. Yeah, it's a, it's a win-win, right? Like, why would you— would you rather have 10 clients all paying $100 a month or, you know, 2 clients paying— I don't know the math— $500 a month? Yeah, I'd rather have the 2 clients paying $500 a month because it's less to worry about. It's just same amount of money.

Yeah.

And then double down on the video production stuff and take time away from other people that are doing that to help with the video production because that's where the— that's where the money is. Um, so that's what you got to do.

Interesting.

Because what I did, dude, how I've been able to delegate, like, where do I spend my time, what do I do, is what, what am I able to get the most out of monetarily. And with YouTube, it's like, it's so worth spending 30 minutes a day. And then in the morning, I wake up, drink a coffee, and I reply to as many comments as I can in an hour. And then after that, I'm done. I have hundreds. I just can't get to them. I had a guy replying to him for a while, but I was like, it's not organic, it's not me. So I just got rid of him and it's just me now and I get to what I can get to. And if I can't get to you, I'm sorry. Yeah, but it is what it is. So it's that scarcity effect. But if you don't create any scarcity and people feel like you're always available, they're just going to run you dry, dude.

Yeah. Okay. So I remember the question I was going to ask you earlier. So whenever you're going to make a YouTube video.

Yeah.

What is the, the first thing you do? So whenever you're brainstorming videos, how do you create your ideas?

Um, so YouTube actually has a tab in the analytics, it's an inspiration tab. You can go in and you can see trending videos that are in my niche, which is awesome. Shout out to YouTube. I'll go in and I'll go check out the ones that I think would do well. I'm looking for a couple key metrics. Has it been uploaded in the past week? Does it have over 100,000 views? If it meets both of those criteria and it's long enough that I think I can react to it, I'll then go make the thumbnail make the thumbnail first. I make like 2 or 3 versions because now on YouTube you can do A/B testing.

Yeah.

So I'll make the thumbnail first, I go record the video, I put up the YouTube thumbnail test, and then I just let it ride. So do well, some don't.

Do you look at the views per hour with the vidIQ?

I look at how many days it's been live and how many views it has. If it's been out for 7 days or less and has over 100,000 views, that's money because that means a lot of people are clicking on it. Because you have to realize, like on YouTube if you go too big, like if you today started a celebrity react channel, you're not big enough for that. You're gonna get drowned out by everybody else doing celebrity content that is like in the— that are rubbing shoulders with celebrities. So you have to go down— this is what I was talking about earlier, tailgating, tailgating off somebody else's clout. So I'll go look at like, if somebody has like 10,000 subscribers, they have a video that they posted 2 days ago and it has 150,000 views, dude, that's money for me. I'll go in and I'll take that same video, make the thumbnail, and then I'll react to it and I'll get, you know, 50,000, 60,000 views on it because I'm kind of tailgating off that community. Copy the tags, copy the channel description, copy a lot of that stuff. Um, but you can't go too big. Like, I could, I could see myself in a year reacting to more celebrity stuff, but I'm just not there yet. So I need to react to like just regular people stuff, and then I can go to do celebrity stuff because there's so much out there. There's so— there's other YouTube celebrity status people with millions of subscribers. Like, I tried to do— when there was some drama with one of the YouTube, um, streamers, Dr Disrespect, I tried to do a video. This is when I was averaging around 10K views a video. I did a video of Dr Disrespect, it got like 2,000 views. I was like, okay, this isn't my lane, I'm not ready. So I just deleted it because I was— I wasn't ready. But you have to try. Um, but I believe once I get a plaque, hopefully this year, which is when you hit 100K on YouTube, um, is it the gold No, it's this small silver play button. The gold one's a million, which, a couple days from that. But once I get the 100,000, I might start doing like maybe once a week. But I'm very much so big on like treating the content I create on YouTube like changing your dog's diet. Like, at least my dog, he has a fickle stomach. So we'll introduce like a little bit and then keep it the same and then introduce a little bit more. Or like a baby's diet, I guess. I don't have kids, but you just introduce it little bit by little bit until people are like, oh, I'm used to this now. Um, because when I started my channel originally, I only reacted to the Whatever podcast, and I did that for like 3 months because I was like, I want to piggyback off of this podcast. And so I got quite a bit of subscribers, but then I just transitioned to do more like TikTok compilations, and that's when I started to flourish. And then I took my face off the thumbnails because nobody knows who I am. So I started putting up other people's faces and then making like one face, text, arrow. That's it. Like 3 elements and really studying like what do people click on and why.

Yeah. And yeah, the other day I was on YouTube and there's a suggested video and it had Alex Hormozi on the thumbnail and something about what he said.

Yeah.

I was like, okay, I clicked on it. Wasn't Alex. It was a reaction.

It was a reaction to— exactly.

I was like, this guy just—

but he got you to click.

Yeah.

And if, and if the thing is, if that guy can get you in the first 10 or 15 seconds, A lot of, like, a lot of people show up on my channel and they're like, I didn't expect this to be you, but they're like, I like you.

Yeah.

And then they'll click and they'll watch.

Yeah. So, okay, so I feel like in my mind, and you can tell me if this is wrong, but on YouTube there's like trend-based videos.

Yeah.

And there's search-based videos. So like tutorials.

Yeah.

I feel like that's where we would flourish even more. Like maybe we could use like the reaction stuff or whatever. To gain a following, and then for sustainability, we can do the search-based videos. What do you think about that?

I like to begin with the end in mind. What do you think is going to be the most sustainable for you to do every day for a year? Tutorials. You think you're going to be able to pump out a tutorial every day for a year? No, I don't think you can.

Not, not, not.

I think you're a great guy.

Not at the—

no, the quality I'd want, because that's what it takes. You're gonna have to do every day for a year. And the reason I think that's a good benchmark is because like, it lets you begin with the end in mind. It's a big volume game. There's dudes that have been on YouTube for 15 years doing tech tutorials and you're competing against them. Like as soon as I got in, I was like, I know I'm competing against guys with millions of subscribers and a huge fan base and a massive community. So like, I'm gonna have to put out a video every day. If they're doing one a week, I have to do one a day. So think about, can you do tutorials? You know, maybe you can do one, one a week. So maybe what you do is you do a reaction channel 6 days of the week and maybe you do one tutorial a week. Yeah. Hey, on Sunday, come back around and we do a tutorial. Yeah, that's, that's what I would do. But I would do what's sustainable and what you can scale. Everything you need to be thinking, how can I scale? How can I scale? How can I scale? Because if it's like you do a tutorial every day and it takes you 4 hours to do it, bro, you're just— yeah, you're going to get burnt out. You're going to hate it. You're going to like— you're going— you're going to run out of tutorials. Do you have 365 tutorials to do? So here's what I would do for you. Get on Think Media and just start reacting to— like, go sort by popular and react to all the really popular videos and go through 30 of them. If they don't do too hot, go to another channel. Go to that Marcus Lee Brown guy. He does all the cool tech. Just be like, I react to Marcus. His face is already known. Put his face in the thumbnail, copy his thumbnails, and just react to his content. Some people hate it, be like, I thought this was gonna be me, me, me. But who cares? You're gonna have haters. The more haters you have, the better. 'Cause people wanna make good stuff.

So you don't think there's any like, uh, weird rules against that? Does YouTube have any rules on that?

Yeah, I mean, people can copyright strike you. I've had it happen where they're like, hey, you can't use my content. But like what I do at the very beginning of my videos, I'm like, hey, what's up y'all? I got a banger from, and I shout out the channel, and then I put in the original video in the description. So I'm like, hey, I got a banger from, you know, Man Guide today. And so let's get straight into it. So I always shout them out at the beginning and I put their video in the title or in the description. So you can do that to avoid it. And if they email you, dude, they email you. Or if like I reacted to some Fresh and Fit podcast stuff and 3 months down the road they were like, they struck me and they're like, take this down, you can't monetize off it. I was like, cool, I'll just delete the video, which I did. Um, so it'll happen, but you'll eventually find a lane. It's good for me to do podcasts because it's just talking. It's like, how do you— you can't, you can't like copyright talking. So, and or TikToks, you know, unless it's like a trending sound, or, you know. So for you, I would try to say like, try to find a lane, and you're just gonna have to test it out. Like I said, you got to be a scientist, and you got to be like, I'm going to try— like, go pick 5 channels and then just start reacting to them and see which ones you get demonetized on, or you can monetize, and yeah, start there.

So if there are any small business owner— small business owners watching this, what would be your recommendation as far as like should they get on YouTube? And what would be like a reasonable starting point for somebody who doesn't want to be a YouTuber necessarily?

Don't get on YouTube.

So should— what should they use? Uh, anything?

Uh, depends what kind of— it really, it depends a lot. It depends on what kind of business you have. Um, I think if you're in real estate though, like, you gotta have some online presence. Um, you just have to. Um, it's so flooded right now with people, and there's There's a lot of really funny real— I follow real estate agents and I'm not even looking for a house. I follow them just because they're funny. Um, I would be on TikTok, I would be on IG, I would be on Facebook, I would be on— the answer is yes, be on all of them if you can. Yeah. Um, but I would use YouTube for like long-form community building, informative stuff, but also sprinkle in some of your own attitude. Because if you're just informative, people will go take a class. But if they're getting something from you that's a little different like, I like his personality, go do it. But yeah, if you're in real estate, do it. If you're a small business, I think you should absolutely have the short-form stuff, the TikToks, the Facebooks, the IGs. Like, I've been seeing there's an account blowing up. It's like a little Atlanta shop and all they make is like burgers and fries. But it's— the place is called like Lost in the Sauce Kitchen. People come in and they're like, all right, you guys give it a try. And it's just a girl holding the phone. They try it. What do y'all think? And they're like, it's okay. And she's like, get lost in the sauce. and that's the whole video.

Yeah.

That's it. Um, so like Monk's Coffee could do the same thing. Be like, all right, let us, let us video your first sip. They get your first sip and they're like, mm, that's good. It's like, put yourself in monk mode. It's cheesy, but it works. And then you do that 100 times. People are like, I wanna go get in monk mode. And then now they're going to Monk's every day.

Yeah.

So that's what I would say. Okay, cool.

So this will be the last question.

Yeah.

We'll, we'll wind it down. Um, what is your game plan throughout the rest of 2024 going into 2025? Like, are you going to stay on Instagram? Are you going to stay on TikTok? Like, what are your plans?

Oh man, I'd love to get off the short-form stuff, but it's not going anywhere, so I have to. Um, if TikTok sticks around, I would like to get into the TikTok shop. I've seen a lot of people do really well with that. But for the rest of this year, my big plan is staying on YouTube. I'm gonna— I want to write a few more ebooks. I want to come up with a course with you. I want to come up with some courses. Uh, I'd like to have a paid community on Discord where I can have like mentorships and mentees. Um, and then I want to hit 100K subscribers by November. It's kind of my goal.

The 1-year mark, pretty much.

Yeah, the 1-year mark at 100K subscribers.

Yeah, heck yeah. Well, thanks for coming on the podcast.

It was good to have you out, man.

Learned a lot. Hope you learned a lot today. Stay tuned for the next episode of the Audi Podcast.