Why Most Info Brands Never Scale Past $10M (And How to Fix It)

Yo, what's up guys? We got a legend here today. Oren John, the internet's creative director. He's been behind the glow up of a lot of brands that you guys have seen in the D2C e-commerce space. He is currently managing partner or operating partner in a fund that's looking to, to buy beauty brands, I believe. Right. And then also just in general dissecting, doing some of the actually the most, the coolest psychological and creative strategy dissection on the internet as far as his content goes. So truly a fan, dude. Happy to have you here.

Oh yeah, I'm, I'm stoked just to come in and chat and get into it.

Sweet. Well, I'll start off with one to combine. Like I said, my audience has a lot of growth operators is what a lot of us call it. I look at you and I think a lot of the internet does too, as being that someone who can operate in addition to just strategize. Where do you see the future for growth and creative strategists merging? And a lot of like growth agencies and boutique agencies, as you know, sometimes those tracks separate and then, I'm, people are asking me like, what are you doing on the creative side? I'm like, it's all kind of getting blurry.

Yeah. It's what it's like in the world I'm in. So I do this day to day in consumer brands and beauty. Right. And I love beauty because it's the fringe. Everyone and no one's afraid of anything right there. They're the first to scale on TikTok Shop. They're the first to do influence or the first to do brand trips. They'll spend money. It's ultra competitive. Uh, and so being in that, the biggest thing that we've noticed this last 6 months or so is the organic and, uh, paid teams are like not separate anymore, right? It is extremely synced. And so that's been really interesting because obviously a lot of like paid people are really uncomfortable in organic, a lot of organic people are uncomfortable in paid, but the asks are the same and the more synced they are, the better it goes. Uh, and so like that's been the primary change, uh, I think probably worth, worth looking at.

Interesting. So as far as like that separation goes, and I feel that too, because I don't fancy myself as good as organic, like my whole staple of my career is paid media from day one. I'm launching and I'm scaling, uh, where it's a bit different. And I see just like the skill set is vastly different. Someone who came up on the organic side, um, what are you noticing, I guess, from the front lines as far as how they're working together or what's the separation roles of duty?

Yeah. And so one thing that's been interesting, um, I was just talking to a company we're looking at the other day that they're incentivizing their organic team on any organic assets that scale in the ad account is like they get like a spiff. It's basically like, you know, cause a lot of people are running, obviously like they're trying to put a lot of their existing organic social into those accounts, but basically incentivizing that organic team to think in both lenses to create things that, that may work that way. I think that was smart, actually tying it to like a goal. And then the other piece is the scale of it, right? So where it really started to make sense in my work was we have a lot of creators, right? So for, for paid social, you're, we have UGC creators, right? They're going to go run ads for whatever. We're also doing that on organic, right? A lot of good beauty brands, indie brand really has 5 or 6 creators, right? They also have multiple accounts. They have all these subs and you're like, why are we briefing all of this separate when the voices you're getting used to on organic, the faces that represent your brand already have affinity that's going to help it succeed in the ad account. And so it's little stuff like that where you're like, well, why not just like brief the same people with both sides of the, of the equation?

Interesting. As far as like your personal, like if you come in and help a business grow, do you typically set organic strategy and paid strategy together? Or like what's the chaining?

That's usually what I'm working on. It's like, what did I work on at Ambassador? I'm briefing both.

Right.

I want to get, and I, and I'm, you're still briefing some of it separate, but basically like when I come do a toolkit now, so a lot of what I do is I'll make a toolkit for either like a monthly refresh for a brand. Like, hey, we need new assets or it'll be a campaign. We're launching a new product where, you know, or it's summertime or whatever it is. We need to do campaign assets and it will be a combo of like, here's how we're going to roll out the product. So the teaser, the unveil, the actual launch, and here's assets for each of those and briefs on that. Then here's like, what are all the core assets? We have the things we repeat. We have stuff we test that's going to go on organic that ties to like your organic content pillars and the goes to ads, it ties to your common ads types. Uh, but then also it's like with all that comes, okay, here's like retention and hook guides. 'Cause that matters for both. And especially for the ad teams. 'Cause a lot of the ad teams, like they think of hooks so aggressively, not in terms of like the zeitgeist or the meta. And you kind of have to have both. And even like transitions and stuff, it's like, okay, well here's, you know, an analysis of the previous. And so it's like a packet. I do these big packets in Notion and it's like, all right, here's all the transition content we should try. Here's tutorials to send your editors. And to your point of like, people have to do more. Like, I feel like the strategist now, like, I'm not only being like, you should do this kind of hook. I'm like, here's the CapCut tutorial to send to the UGC girl so she knows how to do it. Oh no, you don't have a UGC girl? Okay, I will get you the UGC girl. I feel like you have to, you're going farther down the chain to make sure the assets are good. Because it's easy, frankly, it's easier than ever to get those people, find those things, you know?

I think so too. And when I think ease now, I think AI and just in general, um, it's changed the game for growth and creative strategists. People have asked me that recently. They were like, what are you doing for AI creative? And I told them probably not as much as someone like you. Um, or maybe, maybe not. I don't know.

So like, we're, I mean, we're running AI, we're doing like AI, like 3D stuff and stuff for launch videos. But also we have our whole, also Cut30, which is like the main, that's like the mid-ticket course that I have. Like we've built out a whole toolkit for that. And for my higher ticket thing, it's like a SaaS that people have. It's a video database that has like, we track accounts. You can search for outliers. It will automatically break down the frameworks of the hooks. Um, like that's a whole, like I can, I can screen share if that's interesting.

My audience loves screen share. It's my love language.

All right. So basically, yeah. So we have this, this is like our internal tool, um, where I can go browse. I can browse by formats, concepts, elements, types of hooks, account types. So I can go into formats and it's like, all right, cool. What were 10 shots? What are facelifts? What are green screen videos? What are one shot videos that are working? And we go into it and it's like, all right, cool. I can now filter. By all the normal stuff you could filter by outliers. Okay, what's a 1 point, you know, so what's a 2x outlier? I love it. Go into the video, I get, I get an outline, provocative opinion, you know, and then I'm getting the hook analysis. What's happening? Title. What's happening?

Visual.

Okay. No one's talking. There's no verbal hook. Here's why.

Perfect, dude. You're actually teaching people how to critically think as you're going through it. It's like basically frameworking it too, so the team can understand.

We just made the framework and this is literally how I brief. And so what goes with the AI is like, I can't just copy and paste this, but I can go make a 2-minute edit and it's a different edit.

Right.

Um, and so that's, so we built that. It's just an internal tool that, uh, Colin, who's our, um, who's like one of my partners on it, he just, he vibe coded the whole thing and it's, it's all, it's massively useful.

Dude, what a fun time. And that's all like included if they're in the Cut30 program.

If they're in Cut30, they have access to that.

Then we have another one that has all the basics, like transcribing and stuff. Sweet. Yeah. Cause I know like my creative team in post-production, they're a big fan of your work and how you operate too. I don't even think they knew that. So shout out to that.

We just added in like the last, the last piece. I mean, look, you're, I mean, as you know, in Info, we're just trying to add value constantly. And now I'm doing like higher, this like higher ticket stuff too. I want tools where people can be like, all right, I am not just getting the tools. I'm learning how to use them. I can deploy them in my org because I did this, like this program. And there's a lot like that that really, you know, you know, it's credibility.

Yeah. So is it, is it made for who's the, who's the program perfect for? Like a creative that's sitting in a team, someone who's an entrepreneur? What's kind of the idea?

I guess two levels, like Cup 30 is perfect for anyone that wants to either be a creator or learn how to manage creators. We actually get a decent amount of people who are like brand owners who are like, I just need to know how this works so I can task somebody. So we get a lot of that. And then in the one that I have, that's like a higher ticket is for like people that are, they're doing creative strategy in an org, whether it's for a creator, whether it's for a brand, whether it's like, or they're doing it freelance. It's like we're doing paid or organic strategy. We want to be a weapon at it. That's what the higher ticket one is.

Dude, that's perfect. We are, we are ISFP myself. I'm going to check that out here later. Um, dude, as far as like, so you have the strategy and you have the implementation and chaining. How do you actually deploy and test, um, creatives and scale up? What's, what's your scale-up methodology?

Yeah, it was a good— well, in inside Meta, it's your typical, like there's testing account and then there's campaign by, by product type. And we are, uh, and then if we have enough traction on the product, there's a test campaign for the product and then the scale campaign for the product. But so we're, I mean, I think it's a pretty typical structure for Meta, but honestly, I will do with whatever the media buyer wants to. I mainly just like, how am I, am I giving them enough assets? Um, is key, but we're also, we use a lot. I encourage a lot of brands to test trial reel stuff. Um, because again, if you're, if any of your assets are decent, like running them on your organic and seeing what works is like, we run a ton of ads off of organic on TikTok and Instagram all the time by just putting them in the ad account.

Right.

Uh, and we're basically, I'm trying to get to the point where like 80% of the creative that's on organic would work in an ad account. Again, for consumer products, it's a little bit different. But even for, I look at it with my content, I was like, man, I could probably run 40% of my content as an ad to a gated download if I really want to. And if it was smart about it. And then trial reels is just like variations of that, right? I look at trial reels like if you have anything that works, people are all mad right now about creative doesn't scale the same in Andromeda. Like you can't get a million dollar ad, you can get a 100K ad. And so what we're looking at is like, okay, that's not necessarily that bad of a thing if I can make 3 variants or 4 variants, like basically of that style. And I'm just kind of iterating it on, on trial reels to be like, okay, can I use a woman? Can I use it? Whatever. And so we try that a lot to see if it like just gets organic interest and then don't even post to main. It's just putting it in the ad account. Trial reels is a gift. Trial reels accounts and then dummy TikToks are a gift. Just put a TikTok you just wrote, put your ads on as organic and see what gets any views.

You know, I do. That's so smart. So like, and to you, some, some, there's some cross-channel synergies there and then there's other chains that don't work. Like what, do you have a preference in how you chain on the trial reels?

Uh, it doesn't really, it doesn't really matter. I think it's mainly just like, what are you trying to test? You know, and even with TikTok, like dummy TikToks, we'll do it by creator. Like if we start a new UGC creator on a brand, make a dummy TikTok, because then, uh, you can kind of see what's going to work naturally, but then also you can just, you can either whitelist that or, you know, like, and it has, it comes from, if you can test if it's going to be better from the company account or the whitelisted account, it's like little shit like that. But we are, uh, we're buying so much of YouTube. There's thousands of ads. The ad accounts of everyone I'm working with. So it's like, there's such scale and there's other people on the team that like, these are all just things that are like happening that we're into for whatever period of time, you know?

Yeah.

So it does work.

Right. Well, I feel the same exact way too. And as far as like dummy accounts go, do you go as far as to like, are you heavy on clipping or just like the general idea of clipping a la Andrew Tate style?

We haven't tried it on our brand yet. I just started clipping and my clip accounts went live literally like yesterday, um, for me personally. We'll see how that goes. So that's new. We haven't been able to kind of get that, but this is just more like, okay, for every person, give that person an Instagram or TikTok. We do it more on TikTok, but it would work on IG. And it's just like, again, it's just giving you, I'm a huge fan. We've done this so many times of testing the ad on the ad account versus the ad on the founder account or just a random creator account. And it's so funny how often the whitelist one works better on the same asset.

Dang, that's dude. That's good encouragement for me too. And it also takes a lot of the, um, what do you call it? The, uh, red tape out of it too, if you're working with a creator who has high standards of which, yeah, in person, right?

Person. I'm looking at that now too. It's funny. One of the things I'm working on personally, we were working on before this is I'm hiring someone to do, I'm just hiring a woman who's like a pro to just do my same content. Um, like just out of just pure curiosity.

I've done that before for myself. Yeah, it works. And it finds a different pocket of the market and an ICP that like, Same interest, same psychographic profile, just by sheer nature of them being women and maybe delivering in a more feminine manner, you just find.

So I've noticed a new style that's, uh, that's going really viral for me, but it's, it's higher. It's 75-25. I used to be 60-40 men, women on my Instagram and TikTok. And now I'm popping like my, my shit is as big as it's ever been, but it's 75-25. And I'm like, fuck. Okay. Yeah. Let's try to pump it through.

Too masculine. Yeah. No, that's funny. It's funny to be hyper aware of that. Like you're, you're aware of that much more than other creators where I tell them their analytics and they're like, bro, I don't want to know. I don't want to know.

Oh, well, also I get a lot of brand deals because I reach more women marketers than the women marketing creators because I have the big old following and it's 40% female. And then they don't realize that they actually end up reaching a lot more men than they think. And then, so if you want to, like, if you want to reach that demo, I'm actually one of the people to go to, which is, that's why I was like the L'Oréal creator for last South by Southwest.

It's, it's funny. Yeah, you heard it here, guys. If you want to sell to women, you get Oren involved and it's going to be good.

Well, not anymore, apparently.

So yeah, his recent content run in 2024 was, uh, was getting on that market. No, but it's, it's, it's, it's super cool. And I've noticed the same thing with our brands. It just surprises you of just like looking at just the gender mix of who you're attracting. And that's even without ads. Like you're not, you're not, you know, steering that in one direction just because you want to.

Right.

Yeah.

Yep.

So I mean, dude, like I have, like I've seen it, I've seen it so many times in the info space where it's like personal brand comes in, they buy a certain methodology or course from someone and I see them just carbon copy the methodology to a whole different market. It's not a thorn in my side because I can't even reach that anyway, but it's always like, ah, it's super interesting. I saw Daniel Leslie do that with Sam Ovens when I was at consulting.com. I've just seen it. I've seen it so many times.

Well, now there's a meta. We refer to it as the meta, like my friends and I. I don't know if that's the actual term people use, but the meta is like what's happening right now. You know, and, uh, and what's interesting now is that like, uh, so obviously we train a lot of creators in Cut30, we're on our like 20th cohort of that. And so we see a lot of like, okay, we train you to do one of a few styles, you find the one that you're good at. And then again, you do that, you do a copy of an existing thing that works in your niche. But now what's sort of happening is, um, is basically the meta is changing kind of quick in that it's like every 90 days, the types of content change. Like you can't thrive the same way as a green screen creator that you could last year. And so if you keep doing that, you're basically like, you blame the algorithm or whatever, but everyone's doing higher produced sit down videos now. And so I've already shifted. I'm already like, I saw it. We're ahead of it. We have the tools and I'm working on it, but a lot of people won't shift their method. And now there's like, you cannot not shift your method, I feel like. And that's a really interesting thing for personal brands because it's harder work than most people want.

Interesting. Where, where are you feeling like is the treadmill everyone's getting caught on? And I'll give you an example of like, when you say something like, it's not about format, it's about like pillar content or something like that. Where are people focusing on that? It's just like, it's become a hamster wheel or race to the bottom.

Yeah. Well, people are not testing enough. They're not testing enough styles. That's usually my key thing is everyone will, they'll get the thing that works and they'll do a lot of the thing that works and they'll post it. And then because they're getting there where they're hitting their metrics, they don't care. But it's like, if you're not, uh, basically having a couple styles where you're like testing into the next one, you're going to have these lulls where that content type stops and you don't have a new one. And then you're like a little bit spooked and you're trying to scale into it. This is like every creator ever. But if you're just running multiple at the same time, even though some might get less views and you're like testing your way into it, then you're like, you're never going to run out. And like, so I'm always doing that. You look at my account now, it's like a lot of big creators will have, they only put their bangers up. Right. And I was like, I truly don't care. I'm trying to test my way into my next banger. And you could literally watch the new style I have get tested from like 60K views to like 500K views.

Right.

Like, like scale it up. And I think like you have to be doing that. And people are afraid. They're afraid to have duds on the timeline. Or they're afraid to not just hit the winner. And it's, I think it's pure ego.

Yeah, I do too. And I'm curious when you deal with that too, like A, I've never noticed it mattering, like just from a performance standpoint, but B, I've noticed some creators go back and curate and they'll delete the ones that didn't. So they have just banger after banger, banger, banger. Does it matter?

Yeah, I think it, I think like if you were someone looking at a glance, be like, oh, this guy all has bangers, but like, I haven't seen it like disrupt the brand deal flow. I have a wide swath and I still have more deals than anyone in the space. And it's like, so I think it's like, it's pure overthinking. So I think people don't think about how people actually look at those accounts. So if you're hiring someone for a brand deal, you're not even looking at the feed. It's a, it's coming out of a, of Later or one of these influencer platforms are just spitting out creators with their average stats. So like, honestly, you're going to get hired from that more than it is they're going to your feed. You know, it's an interesting, uh, dichotomy. And if someone's going to hire you for work or DM you, they're going to DM you from a video. Like not your profile, they're going to see something they like and they're going to be like, fuck, I need to hire this guy. And then they're going to hit you, you know?

Cool. So from like a brand consistency, I didn't doom scroll your account all the way to the end on IG or something. Do you care about brand evolution and consistency over time? Or are you doing like a Playboy Cardi style rollout where you delete your whole feed and drop some like new? No.

Yeah, I haven't. I've never like, uh, I've only deleted like a handful of things for like whatever reason, but yeah, I just, it's just on there. It's all, all there. Okay.

Also, it can be more natural.

Yeah, we saw that when TikTok like hadn't the American ownership and everyone didn't get views for a week. I don't know if you were in the middle of that fiasco or not, but like basically everyone's views plummeted. But what happened is like my entire back catalog has just been ripping since then. I mean, videos from like 2024 and like basically, so they were like, okay, we're not going to approve any new content, but everyone's still consuming and they're all just consuming old content. And so I'm like, that's why I think it's worth to have that catalog. I mean, I saw that I was the number one TikTok result for Chrome Hearts. ESOP, uh, Remova for, for like a year, you know, when, when this was early. And it's like, that is, that's a huge impact on who you want to get in, you know?

Dang, dude, that's, that's pretty sick. Get into Chrome Hearts, uh, get into the Chrome Hearts volume. Dude, yeah, you do, you do really well in like, let's call it like streetwear aesthetic creative design. Um, I know it's like one book, it's been super inspirational for me and my team that you have in your back too. Oh yeah. This one.

You can see all the notes that our team uses for like, Bro, just archiving your own shit. I just, I told the creators, I was like, I wish I had every piece of design I've ever done the way that dude does.

Just in a book. I know, bro. Like, I want that book for myself. Maybe we can like inspire each other to make it in the future. Yeah.

I have to go, to go hunt down all the trash I made when I was younger. I look at fucking hella books later. I was saying, but, uh, yeah, man, I'm thinking about all those compilations. Like I was looking at this one, this is like all like football, all the, the soccer crests, all teams over time. And it's like, you're looking at logos, you're looking at tech, it's like, who gives a shit? Go look at like all the soccer teams over the last, you know, 200 years in a book. Like, ah, it's fire.

Dude, that is fire. It's cool to see the ones that have like leaned into more traditional like, like elements and haven't changed as the ones who like hyper change every few years and try to stay modern.

It's sick. I feel like that's the cool stuff to model your brand after. Like, yeah, my whole, my desk is all kinds of shit of that. Like even this, this is all like, uh, one of the businesses I'm partnering with, like an industrial design product firm. This is just every vintage video game. Like every like actual console or whatever. And you just look at the design, the way they laid these out. And it's just like, it's so like Winamp, 1990s, 2000s. It's like, it's inspiration you're not getting on the feed.

Dude, you just, you need to do like a book and a design, like content YouTube video. I'll just sit there and buy the whole catalog that you have. Yeah. Like I have, I saw some, you have some Teenage Engineering stuff too. Like I was like, man, I might bust these out on the pod. I just bought these little widgets and stuff.

I got the speakers around here somewhere. And I got, yeah, I had it on the, you had retweeted that video, but yeah, I just got the, the, this, yeah. You know, this joint and all the—

yeah. Oh dude, I played with that at MoMA Museum in New York recently. It's so fun.

Yeah, it's fun. And like, I don't do anything serious with that anymore. People who know my full lore, I have a bunch of credits on like, I have like songs on Showtime's Shameless and I did stuff for like Hasbro's Bop It. And like, I have like a whole, like a bunch of music credits from like back in the day. But I don't really touch it anymore. But that was the first thing that ever made me want to be like, okay, I'll waste 2 hours on this, you know?

Yeah, no, I Dude, I, the only synergy I have found sometimes is I have, um, I bought like this play sample pad for my kids. I forget, BlipBox or something like that makes a little kid sample pad and I'll just sit there with reels as I'm watching reels and sample them into my sampler. So I was like, all right, I'm doing like ad hooks, but into my sampler and then make it so it's like semi-productive.

Yeah. Well, that's what I wanted to, I ended up, I got it mainly because of this. I know like I bought the thing for the accessory. Yeah. I could just bought the accessory, but like I'm going to end the YouTube's like. Do the echo or like hit the button and it's the air horn. I think it's just fun.

Please do. Like triggering your own Foley sounds and doing live soundboard is like, I think the pinnacle of content enjoyment for me if I get there.

So I got to rely on— they're like, we're stereotyping ourselves a certain type of guy. I completely agree.

Yeah, I got to find ways to make it fun. Maybe that's, that's something that I want to ask selfishly too is like, we talked about your 1,000-day IG like run. And to me, having worked with— I'm always the behind-the-scenes guys and I make people do that kind of content at a voracious pace. But it's like, it's taxing for me to be that consistent on a platform like YouTube or IG. How did you get into A, the mindset to do it, and B, like, what were the actual challenges and what did you find?

Yeah, when I was starting it, I don't know what made me stick with it when I started it. I'm always like kind of a doer, but I had never made content. My wife was like, you're crazy. Like, well, no, she wasn't quite like that. She was, she was very kind about it, but I was like doing this and like, you know, I was like, is this a midlife crisis type thing? Um, and then the baby was really young.

My wife asked me something similar. She's like, are you okay? Are you trying to be an influencer?

Yeah. And then, yeah, so then we were in that arc. So that arc was like hard, but I just kept doing it. I was really, I would just make little goals. I was like, I'm not going to stop till I get a video that makes 5,000 views, which took a lot longer than I thought. But now people are always like talking about creator burnout and shit. Now I'm like, well, I make, I make 7 figures off of just brand deals. Like I, I'm never going to stop, like, you know, to make little TikToks and I get all this other benefit in my life. I like everything around me. I was like, there's, I, you, you'd have to like, physically stop me from making a video tomorrow. Yeah.

Cool. That I had a similar like trigger point too. It was the first time as like our company got more successful. I started approaching creators who have more pedigree than like in our, the gap in our social status was just like too big. And I remember I had, uh, uh, when I met Dan Bilzerian and started working with him on his info brand, he wanted a reference. He was like, could I like two people? I'm like, that doesn't happen to me. I'm like, I, I need a reference. I had to call Pace and be like, Pace, yo, could you vouch for me with Bilzerian? He wants a reference. And I was like, I don't like this. So to me, I always knew like the personal brand multiplier was just huge. It's like more than a 10x as far as deal flow or inbound. Of course you can curate it right. And I think you're, you're obviously getting out of it. The one thing I see with people is they don't curate the right audience or don't know what they want. They end up like, that's when the fame sets in and they're like, why am I famous to the people I don't even want to be around?

Yeah. It's like a lot of this, like just actually like planning and doing the things that like are exciting to you. But yeah, I'm just like my content's aligned with the value that's in there and I'm, uh, and like the benefits are too high. And then like, also, I don't know, I would like do more, honestly.

Yeah.

It's just, I think there's just so much. This is also one of those I look at, I feel like a lot of people, especially in positions that like we're in, so we always feel like we see the future, we're ahead, we know what's happening, we're cooler than other people. And I felt like that my whole life. I felt like I never had the resources to act on it. I was too poor. I just had a kid. There's always some excuse, right? And then this is, and this time I'm like, there is a, there's so much alpha. In taking advantage of these algorithms right now. They're giving us free attention you used to have to pay for as ads. There will never be like, you could argue like, hey, I could have that in some capacity, but there will never be another moment to make you as much money as fast or to give you as much change in your life as fast as this. And I'm like, I am pedaling to the metal while I am finally ahead of one of these.

I, I couldn't agree more with what you just said. If you had to like put a number on that, like building your personal brand this year, As far as like the multiplier or advantage you'll have as opposed to putting it off next year, what do you kind of see happening if you don't focus on personal brand now?

And so I think we've already seen it. Like this was the first year right now is the first year where I'm like, man, there's a lot of creators and they're really good. But that means, but they're also really scaling. I know multiple people that have really blown up like hundreds of thousands of followers in the last 6 months. So it's like, it's not harder, but I do feel like at least for this era where it's like I can yap and I don't need crazy editing or designers or whatnot, I think you, it's 12 to 18 months. You know, and then it's like, you'll still be able to do it, but that's when like truly anyone, like you're any director level and above person who wants to like make that jump and like really get it with some authority as an expert. I think like we're, we're kind of in that last year. Um, and obviously your perspective can change, but I think that's kind of realistically where it's at. Cool.

Sweet. That's, it's good to know. And that's, that's kind of how I think of it too. And the only take that I have is like, okay, if AI does get to the point where they can yap better than actual humans, which seems likely. And the AI influencers will— there will be rosters of creators that are AI if it's not already happening that you're aware of. I'm sure it is.

It's also just another content type. I look at it like, like traditional media figured out carousels this year. In the last 9 months, ID Magazine and Business Insider, they're like, oh, this is something we can actually do and not suck at on social. And so that all the alpha there's gone. Right. And, and like, uh, and, but that's fine. It's just a content type. If you build a personal brand, I can still rip a carousel. Right. Um, and so I feel like it's just another type. There'll be AI. It'll just be like, The carousel piece, it's just like cutting down the piece of the consumption pie. But, but this pie is so big. If people don't understand it, it's replacing radio, it's replacing television, it's replacing every website on the internet that people went to for any level of information or entertainment. All that is the TAM. And that TAM is so much bigger than the amount of creators there are today.

Dude, that's encouraging. I, uh, thank you. Thank you for saying that too. 'Cause sometimes when it feels like, like you said, when you feel like you're early, you feel like the window's closing faster than it actually is. And you're just like, all right, well, that ad type's done.

Well, I see that to be— I'm sure you see the way people deploy capital, right? Where you're like, okay, cool. I have ad dollars. People are still going and doing a media buy with like Huck News or MSN or wherever. So you're like, okay, there is still much alpha to be had. Like there's still agencies recommending a media mix that doesn't include like Substack newsletters or whatever. You're just like, okay, you know, this is, there's a lot of room.

Good to know. Sweet. Then sweet. So like, you're not going to quit. You have a bigger vision. Has like your content goals now changed as far as like, I'm sure you're getting way more opportunity than you probably even realize. That seems to be the case with any brand that blows up that I've been around too. It's just like, wow, I have inbound opportunity. How have your filters changed?

Not— Yeah, this is what's really hard is I like— so yeah, so I've been a year now at this firm that I work with and, and that was an interesting opportunity, right? Where like I was starting to see, oh, I can leverage making content into doing like a position I never would have considered, right? And like being able to like operate inside private equity and which is interesting. But then even then, like, I don't know, my I'm making 4 or 5 times as much as when I did that like a year ago. And then you're like, so these things compound so fast. And then you also look at like, I was with Gary Vee this summer, uh, we were in, in Cannes and it was like, they're basically like, oh, why aren't, why aren't any of you creators doing an agency like Vayner? Right. And you know, and so you're starting to like see all the options. You're like, oh, why wouldn't I say? So I, it's overwhelming, honestly. And so I'm having, that's the hardest part I have is like, is, is seeing that longer term vision. And since I, I'm realizing I probably can't execute that level, I don't have the Virgil level foresight to that book. I like, I'm mainly looking at like, what is like per year, what can I realistically do without falling apart? And this year a lot has been around scale. We've hired people, like I mentioned, we just hired a closer, just like where I've got growth operators now. Like I'm really trying to turn the corner on like the info business. Like, and then it's like, cool, once that's fully flowing, then look at the next piece. But I, you know, you, I feel like you can't build out that grand vision, but I kind of turn that like to you. You've seen these businesses scale and done so many of this. Like, what do you, Like, how do you approach that?

Yeah, dude, it's, well, it's really interesting. So I figured you'll, you'll get a kick out of this. I saw you do a SimilarWeb, um, video earlier. SimilarWeb since 2022. Um, I've been crawling and databasing using SimilarWeb built with a bunch of third-party spy tools and just trying to know everything I can about the infospace. I feel like at this point I might be the most omniscient. So right now we track and repaying 21,000 courses and it's all in Snowflake. I can query it. So to me, where I start is always competitive analysis and how big is not the TAM, but let's call it the SOM or the SAM of that individual niche, right? So if you're like, yeah, I'm going to teach credit strategists, what I'm trying to do is trying to find like an 8-figure comp to let you know where the ceiling's at so you don't overscale or overexpose your own personal brand. And I see that being one of the biggest downfalls is someone gets to like, let's call it $10 million a year, 50% margin because info, your COGS are almost nothing. So like you should be operating somewhere between 30% and 70%. I think, um, if you're in that range, I've seen so many people overscale it and then it tumbles and collapses their whole personal brand sometimes. Like when I look at, uh, Tai Lopez, he recovered from it, but he definitely, I watched his team in like 2016, 2017 when we were working with him, overscaled to where he was like, he went from like 0 to 30 million a year in info, then to like 70 million plus in info and then back down to 30. And it's like this huge rollercoaster ride for your org and team. So to me, there's like, there's these stable points where you can build these antifragile brands that exist forever, where you don't need to get greedy and be like, how are we going to double like my personal brand exposure and whatnot? So I think like the key will be for you is there's very clearly, I'll show you comps within this database and, uh, man's got the gold.

Yeah. See the man as Tony who, uh, thinks about content and creators in that same way. I appreciate someone in their own niche with the same level of veracity, you know?

Yes, exactly, dude. I'm like, yes, I care about this stuff a lot and I've dedicated my whole career to it of just like going deeper than anyone in this specific area. So I'll set you up, dude, with after this with a text-based query version of this because I don't like to just add people straight to Snowflake.

Yeah, that's good because I'd be like, I have to go find those comps. Like I looked a lot at Seth Godin's Alt MBA, which is funny. People like don't think of those gurus as info product sellers. I'm like, bro, all these guys are doing info products.

All of them are in there. Yeah, we got to go to server. This server where I keep the dashboards is in Oregon. You can see all of our crawling stations here. And all of you. But this, this was like a summer project. Anytime I remove myself from the operating, uh, seat, like I've been CMO 3 times in the course of this company's history. Anytime I get myself out of the company, I just get to do just research passion projects. So this top trends dashboard, you guys will see if you're in my group, there's a 2026 version of this that's right now, this is the 2025 data feed that's coming through, but I've been tracking. Yeah, I guess since 2022, it has like almost 4 years of compounding growth and I can sort this whole chart. It's crawled through and found price point of mid-tickets and low-ticket front-end offers. And right now we're just looking at copywriting as a niche. I'll turn the whole thing on and we'll see kind of the biggest players in the space.

Copywriting is so fucking crazy.

Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, right. Like, so to me, like, I just roll through here and I'm like, cool. So you want to run? And obviously this is pulling last 3 years. I'll just do previous year. I'll see if it's updated or actually.

Yeah.

Last number of 3 years. We'll just get the whole table. Here and you can just see like certain offers. Becker is obviously an accounting— well, maybe not obviously their accounting cert program essentially, and they sell to basically test prep.

I was at like a Kajabi event. We were all at like a Lakers game or something. And like the richest guy in the room was the guy who trains stay-at-home moms to be accountants. I was like, got it. Yeah. Yeah, you're right.

Like, and to me, that's, that's one of the comps of how I approach go-to-market. So I just go through here and someone's like, how I, how I think about creators. We think about markets first and then matching the right creator to publish them in the space. And I'm like, for you, I'm just like, okay, who is, who is the current— if you were to come up and be on the come up, who is the current internet's creative, like, director? Okay, is Warren— is he faster, safer, have a better method? They can make more money. Like, what's the variable and unique differentiation that I can position around? And then we just go at it and scale. So to me, you can see our brand, Sub2 Pace Mori. That's our biggest brand, our portfolio right now. It's in real estate and creative finance. So like, for you, we can get as niche as we want, but let's just go marketing here. I'll take all these out and we'll just do marketing advertising for second categories and we can just see comps. So like Golden for sure is a comp and all the NBA, his team is great.

Yeah. And then they shut that down a minute ago and that's where like, I mean, look, I don't even know who the— I don't even know what the comps are, which is good.

I'll look you up now. Now we know each other here. This is, this is all I care about. And I usually correct people. So a lot of times people in our space, they'll go to masterminds and there's— I usually have this rule which is called divide by 3, like whatever someone tells you they're making, divide by 3 and that's probably actually it. But a lot of these, it's, or they'll just be like, at peak, I was at this. I'm like, I don't really care at peak. Like, what are you at now? So to me, I'd just go through here and I know, like, I think Legendary Marketer got hit with maybe an FTC, like, scandal. There's certain, like, things that in our industry, like, someone gets hit and opens up a huge market opportunity because the number one predictor I always tell people of buying a mid-ticket info product is have they bought mid-ticket info? So to me, these are all either JV partners or people to be aware of, people that you should buy into their community and just, like, understand where these people came from, what they tried to learn. And a lot of people like me are like chronic course buyers too, of just like, I want to learn something. Like, I, I just bought a $297 vibe coding class from a friend because I wanted to get better at vibe coding.

So look, I'm all about anything that will give me any edge I am getting, even if it's just for like the course stock. Does not matter the price. Yeah.

Okay, cool. Well then what's really nice is walking through here and just understanding your upper and lower bounds of like, what could I sell this at and how could I position? Oh, I know that person. Oh, they're selling at that price point and running at this. So like my rough crude calculations for upper and lower bound revenue is I have about 6 funnel models that I understand. I benchmark them out. So I'm like, cool, this flow landing page is somewhere probably between 12 and 35%. And the next step is this. And then it's just a math game. I process the high-end revenue off of the similar web traffic through a funnel point and then multiply by course price point.

So let's go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So you guys, I don't show this on podcasts often. This is a cool one, but I just saw Oren did like a similar web short form this week and I I was like, oh my man, anyone who knows SimilarWeb is like in too deep on competitive market research for sure. And it's way better than Alexa, any other crawler.

So yeah, yeah, completely. And that's why that one, I'm the, I'm like the face of their ad for the next month or so. So yeah, it's a good dude.

How's their team? Do you know them?

Uh, yeah, like just from the, the Mist deal, everyone was super nice, but like they're really looking at now it's like, okay, what percent of traffic's coming from AI? What terms are driving it? That's kind of the piece. And that's why we were really interested in it too. Cause it's like benchmarking that in beauty. Is of huge interest to us.

Right.

And like, it's very, and it's interesting actually, that's a fascinating topic in that like any celebrity brand has such a leg up on AI because of the way that they, they crawl it now because it's basically Reddit and YouTube. That's like providing most of the reference material. And so if there's like gossip Reddits and stuff like that, and they're talking about the brand products, it gets so much more ranking inside of what's being searched. That may not last forever, but it's like a huge leg up for the celebrity brands.

Ooh, interesting. And I've heard like, I haven't heard that, but I've heard like it now, like proliferating into ChatGPT queries. And the more people that use that, it's pulling from Reddit and whatnot, and people are being exposed.

Yeah, that's what I mean for the ChatGPT. It's like if you're a ChatGPT looking for a beauty product and it's trying to give you your recommendations, the data, the data it's pulling from is very biased towards Reddit and YouTube. And since that's mainly, you're getting way more conversation around Hailey Bieber than your average beauty brand, that leads to a proliferation of her brand within that. It's a very interesting scenario.

Interesting. So this is like ethically gray. I try not to like say stuff, I'm like, oh, based off of that, with AI cloud bots, I'd set up like Reddit sweeps every day and you guys should have basically clipping armies that—

you know, look, that's what people are— this is— that's the battle that's happening right now. I think most people don't realize that. I mean, they probably do, but like Reddit is 50%+ shills and bots and everyone who was like had any level of karma on there is just doing paid now. And it's like that platform is a literal dead internet.

Yeah, dude, I've— we've got accused for shilling. I've had to change my Reddit strategy once, especially Pace got bigger. Because I used to post in our community and I wouldn't pay anyone. And I would tell the mods that I'm like, hey, you know, like I just saw a negative review about Pace. It's not true. So I post in the community because our community loves us. And I just told them to go leave their honest feedback. And he's like, shill, breadlocked, like blah, blah, blah. So we've had a love-hate relationship with Reddit already because of stuff like that. But to me, I just—

Yeah, but it's crazy how heavily they're weighting it inside ChatGPT at least is, is is a big negative because it's so gameable. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah.

Like that's— yeah.

But then a lot of these brands are afraid to go commit to doing what they have to do there because they don't want to get caught up in look at all the brands who are botting this when eventually there's whatever journalist story and it's like, fuck yeah, there's so many levels to it.

Right. And like, I, I've never botted like on anything like that because the risk of the, the exposure risk, if that were to be found out is too much for any of my brands to handle. Like it would just permanently damage trust and reputation. But as far as like real humans and like a lot of us in this space, and I imagine like for, uh, like Cut30, like you have a community of people probably in a platform on somewhere. Where are you hosting them?

Yes. Everyone's in Slack and Kajabi.

Everyone's in Slack, right? So like if something is really problematic for me and I post it in there, everyone loves me already. Yeah. Right. That's a, that's a way. It's one of my favorite ways to actually use an info brand is to just protect the reputation of the people that I'm in there. To me, if like, I really believe in the stuff that I publish and I really believe that it's a net up in the world. So if someone messes with my brand online, it hurts me too. It's like my own reputation.

What's lucky is at least what we've had with Cut Thirties so far is it's like so much, we have a good community there and it's like everyone's so positive and promotes it so well. And, uh, and that's, it's just keeping, yeah. And also it comes from, that's one of the benefits of the personal brand. I've given up so much free value that if someone buys something, they don't even do it. They're just like, look, honestly, I'm just paying you back for the 400 YouTubes. And like, it's funny how that works.

Yeah, that is funny how that works. That's the best feeling too. Uh, cause yeah, like there's the alternative flip of the coin where even I feel like Hormozy and a few other people have said this and it's become commonplace of just like, well, if the free value is so good, just imagine what the paid looks like. I, I rarely find that people actually think like that. It's more like the reciprocity debt, like you spoke to, that's created from just the free being amazing. It still works. It's just like psychological.

Even just the access, just like, okay, the ability to have it as a conversation is, uh, is really, really interesting. But even we're looking at like the one that I'm doing now where we have like a placement backend too. And I just feel like it's getting so competitive in that, like, all right, cool. Now we have the SaaS and you have the placement and you have the people are getting like rock dialed, which is a different era. Cause I've got a lot of people, creators launching courses for the first time who just had no idea. And then they don't want to do, they want to manage closers. They don't want to do almost like, yo, you got every one of these obstacles is like the, you're going to have to go through like the obstacles of the way and every single piece of And it's so funny because people follow— they think it's going to be easy money, you know.

Dude, I do. I totally agree. As far as— yeah. And just— well, it's because a lot of people in our space make it easy to, like, scale this up and they're like, we're all marketers. So you make the opportunity look as sexy as it can. But to me, like, that's where I take our complexity. To me, it's a joy to have an in-person sales team now. Like half of our— half our org, like about 80 to 100 people are in sales in our— our floor. And I love it. We're trying to in-house them now and bring them in. They used to all be these remote closing teams. But they are like the lifeblood of how an info business scales out.

Everyone on the team now, from sales reps to growth operators, came through Cut30. And so it's just like, everyone's from the community, everyone's together, and you're just like, oh, this is such a, you know, it's like, oh, you're a sales rep who makes great content? Awesome, like, you under here, like, let's go. Yeah, dude.

And that's perfect. And then they can sell with conviction too of the stuff. Like, look, man, I don't get it. Like, I'm telling you, I went through Oren's program and I was successful. Like, what are you not understanding? That's a cool feeling. Yeah, a lot of sales reps you'll find if you just hire higher guns with a lot of like, let's call it quote unquote high ticket experience under there, they just have more bad habits than anything.

It's— yeah, it's an interesting business. It's so funny contrasting that with just like the pure, like the brand deals and all the other stuff, you know?

No, for sure. And like you said, like you've, you've identified it right. It's like, to me, it's a cool— there's so much more benefit than, let's call it the enterprise value or like any sort of adjacent objectives that you have. You get the cash flow, you get to teach and do what you clearly love. And you get to build a team around it that also makes money too, which is cool. So for sure. Yep. Well, dude, where does— where does— ask about personal life too. I know you said you mentioned a wife. Do you have kids?

Yeah, I do. I have one.

So how do you set up your personal brand workflow and like changing of it? And I'll give you an example. Like for Pace, we do documentary style. We follow them everywhere. We cut from long to short. Um, like I know Hormozy, like, well, he told me he works for out of Twitter. Twitter is like how he bounces ideas and then he'll do batched content like later at night. What's your style and flow that's worked for you?

Oh yeah. So, well, basically like there, so we have YouTube and short form separate. Uh, anything that's YouTube becomes a carousel on short form that promotes back to the YouTube. Sometimes it'll be two. And like, that's been a great flow for me. It's like very obvious when you go to the page, like all 70% of the carousels are just a recap of the YouTube or the value from the YouTube and then push into the long form. And then all the short forms, like, is separate where I'll test some stuff now on, like, I was just testing a new pillar, like, basically a new style of content. Like, these, they're like 2-minute videos. And I tested it on Trial Reels. I tested it on more on TikTok. And then I was, then I brought it over to IG, which is like my main moneymaker. But, but that's all, we're not like doing long to short, doing tweets or validation or anything. I am like, we have a content plan for short. We have a content plan for long. We're adjusting it. I'm working on that plan like all the time. Where we're adjusting, like, you know, like basically every, every day something's moving lightly, you know, but based on what's happening in the zeitgeist or whatever, but we have like months worth, I'd say about 90 days worth of like stuff. Like I have like all the video ideas or scripts or whatever. And we're like adjusting piece by piece. And now I'm doing that with like, I have a YouTube strategist, uh, I pay, who's awesome, uh, Skydexian. And then I have a, uh, like my management and like the team that works for me are all really involved in my content of like, okay, Like I had a video rip on YouTube about Bad Bunny. That was the idea of like one of the girls on my management. Right. And it's like, we're all pitching into that. Okay. That's involved at this time, you know, cause let's do this here. What do we, and so it's a, it's kind of a group effort, but it's like literally every day.

Sweet. So it sounds like it's collaborative and, um, free-flowing as far as idea generation goes.

And just like you guys, I have a huge list, but it's pillars based, right? So, and to give some context on like the pillar scenario for, for content, it's like, okay, you have basically 3 to 5 styles of content on your short-form account and you do at least one of those a week, right? And that's why I do like my core pillar. That's like more of a top-of-funnel pillar is like I do twice a week. I have another top-of-funnel pillar I do once a week. And then I have my like lower stuff that's usually once a week and I'm filling those slots and I have 2 brand deal slots each week on short-form. And so basically it's like, cool, 7 slots each week. What, like, how is it mapped to the pillars? And then we have as long of an idea queue as possible. Of, for each of those. And then if one starts to not work, because we measure those monthly, we have like idea, you can change it or iterate it or do better on it. Like I had a pillar stop working and that's why we launched a new one, right? As you bring in a new style and build it up.

That's so unique. Almost no one, maybe no one I've ever heard of has measured the, let's call it the format or the pillar in isolation. People are just like, oh, that creative didn't work, ignoring entirely.

Yeah. So this is, this is something we teach in Cut30 and is now what I roll out to brands. Specifically because you have to do it. I feel like you have to do it like this. You have to measure carousels to carousels. I have to measure my middle of funnel content to my other middle of funnel content. And then look at that in context of, okay, is it really middle of funnel or is it my getting mid views but high followers? And then you have to look at it month to month because the zeitgeist is changing and be like, okay, what am I, am I changing the hook? Am I changing the, like, even what we change, we have basically, we either change our production value, we change our hook or we like reform it entirely. And then like, that's basically your tools to work with. And if you have a pillar that stops working and you try Hoodoo Hooks, And you try a new production value and that's basically 2 months of trying to make it work. If it doesn't, it's gone.

Dang, dude, I might have to go through this course in content myself. So you're mapping the content pillars to the stage like Bofu Mofu Tofu essentially too.

Yeah, exactly. Because, and we want, like, even now I'm doing more top of funnel content than usual. And again, so like, and it depends on where you're at in your brand. A lot of people, like, if I was just revenue maxing right now, I wouldn't be doing any top of funnel, right? I could just be doing, I'd just be hitting my existing, all focused on existing followers. So I know that for instance, like my carousels hit 80% existing followers. All my videos are at least 50% new. And so you have to like, you know, find that ratio and it's different by brand. So yeah, I'll send you this. Like I have like a document and we have it. I mean, even with the AI, like we have, um, Excel has Agent Mode. So this is all in Excel and it's all, all the data from it. And then Agent Mode's just telling us like, oh, this is, it will even do the breakdown. Like, guess it's just standard deviation. You know, you're like, okay.

Ooh, this will actually make content more fun. Like if I see the numbers in there, I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah, we'll do it. It's not just that.

This is how you have to get to the proof to the CMOs. Like you wanna work with the brand teams. I'm like, we need a system. You're all— everyone's always, what do you quantify on social media? How do you set goals for the team? I'm like, okay, well, like, you have pillars. The pillars map to a stage in the funnel. These pillars either increasing or decreasing. And then you can look at it at the macro. Is our whole account decreasing or increasing? And what's the standout? And then all of a sudden, a CFO or a CMO is like, okay, well, at least I'm looking at numbers. You know, at least I can quantify, oh, this is what they're changing. This is how they're reporting on it. So that's been like my whole system that I brought into these brands, which is— and like why we're doing it, like, obviously, like, at a private equity level.

Dude, super cool. So if someone doesn't have any content pillars working for them at all, where do they start? Is there like a list of pillars you have them try and just figure out?

Yeah. So basically I look at like a pillar is basically a format plus a topic. And by format, I mean green screen, sit down, yap, vlog, you know, one shot carousel. So basically you have your types of content and then you have your idea. Okay. We're a roofing company. So we're going to do roof installs. We're going to do different types, the types of tile we're going to do, meet the team, whatever, like, or like, you know, workday. And so it's like, hey, that format plus that idea is a pillar. And you basically, you start with 3 and you need to make, you know, need to make a post every week for each 3, do that for a month. Now you have data, then you measure it against each other and begin improving. So that's a pretty straightforward exercise that basically any brand can execute.

That's super, super actionable for many. I can already handle it. So you do month reviews of the pillars and then add a new pillar. And if the one doesn't—

yeah. And then basically, so we have like a format you fill in at the end of every month. It's like, okay, we're keeping this pillar the same because it's doing great. We're, um, We are, this pillar is doing bad. So we're going to do X to try and fix it, you know, or we're swapping this, this pillar out. And, uh, and so then you kind of know, okay, well, we tried this last month and you see the end because you have to do anything 4 to 6 times on short form to determine if it works or not. There's just too many outlying factors. And so that's why I'm always like, you've got to give it the month of like, you can't be like, oh, we tried 2 hooks. It doesn't work. It's like, that's not the case.

All right. Note to my team. We're doing Oren style like content because it, mine, like so far has been half baked. This is technically a pillar, like me interviewing my Dream 100 people I want to learn from.

Pillar.

Like, it works for me, seems to be working for my audience. It's leading to revenue and opportunity.

But if you were like, okay, I want to get more views, like, we do this mostly for short form. Even if you're on long form, like, okay, I want this to get more views. It's like, all right, are we doing a, are we doing a fuck, a thumbnail style change? Okay, this month I'm going to do this style thumbnail for 4 times. And we're going to see if that increases the click rate or whatever it is, you know? And then if not, you're like, all right, let me do a production change. I'm only going to do these in person. Okay. Does that increase my watch rate? And then you was like, all right, I'm going to do this as a, it's 7 questions only. And I do this type of intro. And if you test that 4 times, then all of a sudden you're like, okay, I'm iterating enough that like I'm actually moving my baseline up.

Sweet. Is that part of the joy for you too? It's just like raising the average of whatever it used to be possible.

Oh yeah, yeah. I just love fucking winning, you know, like, and just anything I could turn into a formula, right? Anything where I'm like, I can prove it and like, okay, and then we can make a decision and then I can then enable someone to do that. I love that shit. I think in frameworks it's like my superpower.

Yeah. Cool. I can tell, dude, like everything mapped, I can tell there's just like mental models everywhere for you of like how you're treating life.

Well, that's also the only way you can train people. I learned that the hard way, right? I started as a designer. Eventually I worked my way up to like a CMO and I realized that a lot of that is managing creatives and managing creatives is really, really hard because none of them think like that. So if you can give them, here's this system and here's a system with which you can explain the creative things you want to do and justify them, then they're so empowered. I had to learn that as a manager.

Interesting. Okay. Let's stay there for a second because managing a creative team is no longer like, we have a creative director who reports in our VP of marketing now and he manages the post-production team, graphic team and social, um, organic teams. What is, if there's like one operating or managerial tool that you could recommend for us to like install, what would it look like? Or weekly meeting? What's essential?

Yeah. I mean, look, the way I used to, when I ran it at Brand, the way we had it was, uh, like, well, like, let me, okay, I'll break this down. Basically every week it'd be like, we have the Monday meeting or whatever it was. And, uh, all the tasks, like marketing's a services org. You have to, you're asking for ads, you're asking for this creative, that creative. So we would log all that. It was ClickUp at the last org I used. It doesn't matter. It could be Asana. Could be whatever. And it's like, cool, is there a form where people can submit that and they can get the whole brief and that gets assigned? Everyone can see what, what, who has what. And then we would do a lot of this like minor reporting. So my last org, I had like the events team, I had the design team, I had the content team, and then we had the actual core like marketing paid team. And so each of those 4 leads had team members and it was like, all right, we can see what's assigned, what's on everyone at any given time. And then at the end of the week, I'm asking each of those people to be like, okay, what was, what, what from your team, just go through that list, give me the list of like what got done, what's on the docket for next week, and then what the blockers are. And if they're identifying those blockers every week and they're giving the list of who accomplished what, they're very readily seeing, oh, this person isn't pulling their weight, or, oh, I actually like this blocker from sales is still there. Can the executive like please fucking call it out? And so just giving that process of enablement for their creatives, uh, so that they had some structure, but then pretty much giving no other structure. Like, I'm not making you go to a bunch of meetings. I'm not making you input a bunch of fucking bullshit, but you have to just follow the like Monday, the track it, the Friday report. Like, it's like just getting to that level was really helpful.

Cool. Sweet. How about bonus systems or incentives for creatives? Uh, that, yeah, I've struggled with that over the years.

I feel like with content teams, I feel like it's really easy when you do just the pillar systems. Part of why we have it where I'm like, look, are we, I don't need, it's not about views, not about whatever. What is the metric we're looking for? We're looking for shares. We're looking to increase our top of funnel. Is it better? Is it better by 15%? All of a sudden I can treat that the same way I treat any other goal. It's just like over those metrics. So a lot of times we're trying to bonus them on that. Like I mentioned, after I saw this shit the other day where I'm like about creative scaling in the ad account, I'm like, great. I love spiff-based systems for creatives too. If you're not used to getting extra money and so you're just like, great, like give them something to latch their teeth onto. Yeah. But that's always the hard part with designers, videographers, anyone who's not actually tied to the end asset. It's like, I'm trying to tie everyone to an asset if at all possible, like did the asset scale, did whatever. But if you can't, yeah, it's not a, I mean, most of the designers have ever worked for me, like are not, we're not on a bonus program, you know?

Yeah. No.

Yeah. How have you tackled that?

Well, so here's what I do, and I come at it from a media buying perspective. So I'll give you an example. This is an old Trello board for when I ran media. Similar to you, like, I don't like shooting people down and I love creative teams. So anytime someone has an idea, I'm like, that's a great idea. Backlog that into the Trello board. And everything sits into ideas. And then during the Monday meeting, I'll drag and prioritize 2 or 3 ideas that we want to take action on. Up next. And then traditionally what I've done is my teams have grown, like at consulting.com, I had different color designation tags in Trello for edits. And I would encourage them, I was like, cool, when media bar launches, it goes into in progress. And then on the next meeting, we review, and then we're going to live sort into ad wins and ad losses here. And then that color tag associated with the post editor would throw it in. And if they want, I'd dupe the card out, move it back to ideas. And I'd be like, cool, someone recut that then. Like that creative worked. And now like anyone else can recut that idea. And try to move it into wins and then $100 spiffs for wins that sit above ROAS baseline.

Yeah, exactly. And the spiffs on— it's funny, so many— the ROAS now is like, it's like, whatever, it's like get scale. It's always, oh, our spend is our biggest problem. Once I get spend, I can— we can iterate into ROAS. But it's actually interesting thing you brought up there. We talked about the beginning is that whole thing where people are sharing stuff in Slack. So one thing that we've been working on recently is trend because the hardest part everyone has is they're like, okay, we do this thing quick. No one on the team has bandwidth. Has to go right now. And so we've been trying to get, uh, what we're called quick-term creators. Cause basically like it could never happen internally. No one ever has the time. Like maybe you get lucky, but it's like, who can we get? Like which of our UGC or whatever are like, if we give you an assignment, what is the rate that you will guarantee to have us back an asset in like 36 hours? And so if you get one or two of those people and then the team basically has unlimited access to those folks, like at that rate, if they want to use it and have a good idea, that's been something where like, trying to piece together now. We have like our first person in that I think is a lot of teams should do because it just gives you the ability to be like, oh, I need that thing and it's hot right now and get it done.

Dude, that's more encouragement for like, I've been playing around with that same concept and it's a group thread out of Slack that I just call bounties, edits for bounties. And I put, I put an Apple Pay number that I'm willing to pay for an asset in the time I need it turned around.

You can just grab it. That's probably better just to have a bunch of people in there and they can just grab it. That's, uh, yeah. Fire. But if you need to have, you need to have the stability to like really issue, like issue those things out because there's so many of these that like, I, it's, no one's going to grab it in there. How can we just get it done?

Yeah. Right. And especially like on the weekends and you know, it's out of scope and I feel like bad about, I'm like, I know you're doing, I do know, but there's creative, but it's funny.

Like I always feel bad about, I'm sure you do too. Like I want to hit this person on Sunday, but there's like a lot of creative people that are like, oh, I'm going to get $250. I don't give a fuck. Like what time? Like you could be anytime. You're like, okay, you need those people like identified, right? Yeah.

Yeah, you're right, dude. Sick. All right, I'm going to keep doing that. It's— we're on the edge of creative briefing here now. Advanced. I don't know if it's degenerative creative briefing, but it's certainly like this blitzkrieg style that I like to play because like creative velocity, I'm known for that. Like the ad buying world, because you have unlimited shots. And like you said, with trial reels, it's like, cool, algorithm self-selects the stuff out. So you don't see my losses a lot of times with ads, but on organic feed, it can be a little different.

Well, it's been good to see that. Like I have this more, especially since we started doing info products where it's like everyone's so aggressively about like making money and, uh, And everyone's like, well, it's like double the budget, all that, all that shit, you know, all the stereotypes. But it's been good to bring that attitude into the creative side. Cause even now, like I had this conversation with the e-com team the other day where I was like, we're getting, the ROAS is like 3.7 on this product we're working out. I'm like, we didn't, we're spending what? Why didn't we double the fucking spend? Why aren't we spending more every day? Why are you not pouring more fucking creative? Like, are you want to be poor? Like what the fuck? And like, and so far that attitude is so not pervasive in like normal, you know?

Like, what do you mean, sir?

I'm like, I'm looking at this math. I was like, look back at napkin math, not your Snowflake-level equation. But I was like, there's no reason. This is spending like, you know, spending $17K a day. This should easily, this should be able to spend $80K and then be at our normal ROAS level. And like, we're really fucking scaling, but no one has the balls to push the giggle button. And like, that's, it's interesting to like have that mentality. In info, we all have that mentality. In e-com, like that is not, you know, yeah.

Yeah. There's not so much add a zero, um, which is like, you know, it's all very like, okay, incremental, like add your 10%, do the whatever.

Yeah. It's like button. And now I've seen it happen to Info so many times, I'm just like, yeah, like what's the, like double it. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. It's like, they're like, what do you mean? Like, uh, add a zero to the daily budget. Like we don't have any more creatives. I'm like, yeah, no, the anxiety will help you figure it out. Exactly. Yeah. Too funny, dude. Well, I'm top hour. I have a date with the wife. That's the only hard cutoff I have here, but it's important. I want to honor that. But dude, like genuine, really enjoyed this. I'm going to hook you up with the access I told you about after, and I'm going to get my team in Jump32 or Cut30 rather. Yeah, for sure.

I'll shoot you some info on and stuff. Yeah, we'll connect. I appreciate it, brother.

All right, sweet man. I appreciate you so much.

Cheers.