Victoria & Alina, Senior Managers @ YouTube

Welcome back to another episode of The Graduate Guide. Today I'm joined by my co-host Jake. And, uh, yeah, we've got two very special guests. Uh, it's going to be a deep dive into all things YouTube and content. And yeah, joined by Alina and Victoria. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thanks for having us.

Yeah, so we just start off, uh, with each of you explaining a little bit of your sort of journeys in your, in your career. Um, obviously both have worked at Google and Yeah, what was your sort of route into that and when you realized that you wanted to be in that space of content creation? Well, content, yeah.

Sure.

Well, for myself, I work at Google, specifically on YouTube as strategic partner manager, meaning I help creators grow from zero to sometimes millions of subscribers under one year. So essentially I'm a small little accelerator person in one. And I really, really enjoy that. And given what's happening in the world right now in terms of how important personal brand is and how being a creator is a legitimate profession, I'm curious about all sorts of platforms. So I also act as a startup advisor to different startups. And specifically now with Alina, we work on helping C-suite executives and founders grow their personal brand, specifically on LinkedIn, given it's a platform that's is also very important.

Yeah, I have a funny story because it's not like I dreamt of coming into content creation space. I was a student like many of you, and actually someone reached out to me on LinkedIn and asked if they want, if I wanted to be referred to Google. They like, I saw your profile, I think you might be a good fit. So yeah, this is like a fairy tale story, but actually those stories happen. So that's why it's important to be online, to have online presence, to have your profiles optimized and be there, be out there. And then I joined. So for the first time, I thought that this was like a scam and somebody just was pranking me. But then I went through the interview process. So I applied. It was all valid and legit. And I started in ads first, in ads organization. Then I moved to YouTube. At YouTube, like, I found my love with content because I started in operations, in product operations, where I worked with big media partners. So not only individual creators, but also like, I don't know, media companies, music labels, animation studios, traditional media. So you name it, like gaming companies, many different partners. And then I gradually moved to go-to-market team and then to product management. And I left YouTube in 2022 and I joined a startup where we were working again with different platforms and doing analytics for Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, and all other platforms. The company's called HypeAuditor. So yeah, and now I'm also acting as a startup advisor and together with Victoria, we are advising founders and C-level execs.

Amazing. Victoria, you mentioned earlier on that creators now a legitimate career, right? And it's interesting because I, I started, you know, watching YouTube when I was 12, and, you know, at the time it was still a little bit of a taboo thing to become. And like, you know, it wasn't really this— well, it definitely isn't what, what it is now. And obviously, like, YouTube's grown a lot from the early days, and it's a whole different beast now. And when was it that you realized that, oh my God, there's like a— this is like a really big thing. Like, not only are these people gonna generate all these views, but they're gonna be leveraged by businesses to like actually as a new form of marketing? When did you realize the power of it?

Um, great question. Um, I think all of us, while we like to talk conceptually and say, you know, we imagine things and this industry will grow and this creator will grow, whatever it is, at the end of the day, we're very physical beings. And once we start seeing physical results, it hits our heads. So for me, the aha moment happened when I was in Dubai and I would personally see the growth of influencers there and I would see tangible results. And the first time would be when I was at a conference in, I don't know, 2017. And one of these creators that was creating silly videos on Instagram that I just thought was funny and cool and from Latin America, Lele Pons. She's a huge YouTuber, came to Dubai and I thought I'll visit her. And there was a massive crowd that would not let you come close to her. And for me, that was the aha moment where I realized that, look, this is very serious stuff. I mean, I know personally creators, YouTubers that whenever they fly into a country, and let's say that country is struggling with population of a mall. Let's say the mall is about to close down because they don't have enough people visiting and shopping. They strategically choose that mall, and that mall that day needs to shut down because there's too many people coming into it. This is the power of creators. So I think once I physically started seeing it myself, this is when it became unquestionable to me. I mean, this is the power a creator has, and the rest is, to me, you know, a bunch of, uh, other examples I can bring. But for me, the aha moment was when I physically saw the power of content creators.

Yeah, and then obviously there's that physical element with actually seeing all these people not just as views on a screen but like in person. But then you're also like, especially more recently, you're seeing things like Prime with Logan Paul and KSI, and then like Emma Chamberlain with her coffee, like overtaken like, you know, industry standard companies in that space just through the power of their brand. And, you know, we can— those are like big-scale examples of it. But just for your average founder trying to build a business, like, it's becoming so obvious, like, even if it's a personal brand on LinkedIn, like, just how essential it is as a form of marketing. And also it's free as well, right? Like, that's the other thing, you know, to do it for yourself, like building a brand for yourself, like what you'd have to pay in like Meta advertising or whatever, you can just like build that brand and then, you know, put anything out there and you're automatically sort of ahead of the race. So what would you say is some actual, like, tangible advice to building that personal brand online?

I would maybe float off what you were saying where it is free, let's say, but I will argue that nothing is free. Like, uh, who is Armozi, right? He, he— I mean, he's a genius at some of these things, where he pretty much said that if you can't, don't have the budget, let's say, to create that content, whatever it is, and you want a 10x result, then you need to put in 10x of work or 10x of time. So for me, I see that it's not free, but you need to invest the time. So as in your investment, instead of cash, it's usually time. If you have a good skill, it's less time. If you have someone working for you, again, it's less time or money you need to invest. So my tangible advice is invest time if you don't have the money into creating content consistently. Really, really important, consistently. And especially on rising platforms, it will be a big, big, big deal for you. Yeah, I don't know if Alina wants to comment on that.

Yeah, just a quick thought that I had about ads. Even if you're starting a business, I don't know if you're launching whatever you want to launch, like D2C brand, I don't know, coffee shop, like, I mean, brick and mortar business, not an online business. It's really hard, or even a software business. It's really hard nowadays with paid ads. They're so expensive. It's not like it was in 2013, 2014, 2015, where you just like put some budget and try out the concept and just try out a landing page. Right now, the only probably way to do it with like zero budget is to go online and create a personal brand through YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, you name it. But like there's no, just no other way. I don't know how to launch any business nowadays without social media platforms.

And would you agree that potentially the creator economy isn't sustainable if you think about it? Like we have these huge examples of Lele Pons, for example, but for the average creator, in a way, attention just can disappear. What would you say to that? Do you, would you agree with, like, do you think it's like a weird space or do you think it's here to stay? Like, it can actually, someone can remain relevant?

I mean, that's a great question and I think it depends on vertical a lot because some creators, they just like, because of the nature of their topic that they're in, it would stay evergreen content. I don't know, educational content, for example, or I don't know, some tutorials, some particular verticals. But take, I don't know, say gaming, this won't be always there because just games change and popularity of the games change. And I don't know if I answer your question, but yes, I think the so-called shelf life for creators, it really exists. It's a thing. It's not like it's a misconception, but I think creators also became smarter. They started diversifying with like businesses with like, I don't know, Prime launching coffee, I don't know, clothes brands, something else. So creators monetize their audiences and they grow from just creators into businessmen and then they can do whatever they want because they already have audience and launching anything that you want is easier, so much easier with the audience. So I think like creators that, kind of grow in their mindset from just being entertaining into more like business people, they will stay relevant for a long time because they will evolve with their audience. The audience grows, creator grows.

Yeah.

So everything evolves. I don't know if this—

Yeah, I agree with Alina. I think as long as we're looking at it from a business approach, right? Creator economy, let's say just economy of a specific business. As long as smart decisions are made by participants of that business, it shall stay. And I mean, a lot of business transactions are made as we speak. Millions and billions of dollars are going into the economy. So it should be here to stay.

Yeah, and I thought if you sort of focus on the individual and less on like the sort of space as a whole, I think that that fear of irrelevancy comes with like— it's quite a manic depressive feeling, you know, like the high highs and the low lows. But surely, especially if you look at more of a business and monetizing it sense of things, like, are there, are there other metrics other than purely just the number of views or likes or whatever that creators should look out for, for why they should do it? Like, what are some other reasons that, you know, it's maybe not as apparent as views that people should be, you know, building a brand?

I'm happy to answer from LinkedIn perspective. Um, let's say you're building a personal brand. Um, I actually highly discourage looking at metrics such as likes and engagement, especially in the beginning. Um, because if we're looking at it specifically from a personal brand perspective, if we're looking at it from a you're launching a campaign, that's a different story. But it's a personal brand. Look at what story you're creating and how much engagement you're getting over time in person versus online. Specifically with LinkedIn. Yeah, you can get that engagement, you can get that vanity metrics. But this is if your objective is not to grow just a brand, but a personal brand, you want to look at depth of engagement. Does that make sense so far? As in, for example, with one of the, like, mentees that I started with, she started having people coming to her and talking to her in person. They didn't necessarily like her post. They didn't necessarily comment on her post. She didn't necessarily get, you know, even 100 likes on that LinkedIn post, but she started having people engaging with her. Uh, and that's so much more, uh, valuable in my opinion, especially when you're just starting out with your personal brand, that you're building those basically in-depth connections.

Yeah, I completely agree. And I think, yeah, that in-person connection, like that ability to have built that, like the hard bit of building rapport, like having done the work for you, like having that reputation behind you allows you to like almost cut out like the small talk, if you will, when it comes to actually meeting in person. You know that you're like-minded, you can crack on, like you can tell that like a hustler, you don't need to like try and work them out. There's obviously always going to be that element. But yeah, that's definitely, yeah, a really good example, I think, of some like a tangible reason to, to build your brand. Have you got anything to add?

Uh, yeah, so I can speak a bit about YouTube in this regard. Um, I, if you're just starting, I wouldn't recommend to look at like views or watch time. So YouTube overall, um, is looking like, is optimized for watch time. So platform just like tries to maximize the watch time that the viewers spends on the platform. So you also as a creator, as whoever you're like, you're building your personal brand, you should try to make people stay on your channel. But in the beginning, it's very hard. So I would just look at the metrics as Victoria said, some non kind of maybe more quality metrics with engagement, your connections. And my personal example with LinkedIn, again, it's a different platform, but like one connection can change your life. So in that sense, you can really start with looking like at other things apart from just quantitative metrics. And then in time, it's, I think it's like a wide, wide known thing that with YouTube in particular, you need some time. Like, I don't know, maybe like 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, a year. It all like different channels developing like with a different pace. But it doesn't, it doesn't take off like immediately. Even if you start, it takes some consistency. And uploads before you actually will start to take off. And some, I would say, like determination and grit, because at some point you're like, why, why my videos are still getting, I don't know, 100 views while it's— this is my like video number 50 or 100. So it takes determination, but then usually like in some time it takes off.

Yeah, I think, yeah, that's, that's true of pretty much almost anything in life, right? But the problem is with building that personal brand, it's out there for everyone. Like, there's social pressures that, like, come into it. There's— yeah, you're putting yourself out there to be, to be judged more than just, like, if you're, you know, not quite getting a skill that you're doing in your bedroom, whatever. Like, nobody's gonna know about that. That's just, like, you know, internal resilience. But yeah, I think, um, they're probably— that there's got to be, yeah, some other sort of, like, defense mechanism— well, not defense, because that's the wrong word— but like ways of, um, sort of dealing with putting it out there in terms of like in the actual real world. Like, how do you— you work with some of the biggest creators, and I'm sure like one of the big things is that with as much as it does for their business and their brand and everything, there's also that really like negative consequence that can happen as well, like the dislikes and, you know, people commenting stuff. Yeah. What is something that people can prepare themselves for when that happens?

Two things come up for me. One is remembering that to everything there's a cost, or how there's a saying that I've heard somewhere that the cost of being successful is looking stupid in the beginning. So just mentally preparing yourself that you will be a fool, you will be a beginner, and I see how a lot of people, especially that achieve success pretty fast, are very good at tolerating the fact that they look stupid in the beginning. Or maybe let's replace the word stupid. Let's say beginner. So be resilient in the fact that you're a beginner and the first few videos, the first few posts will be sometimes very objectively bad. And objectively, someone will comment and say, what are you doing? Like, aren't you embarrassed? Like, this is LinkedIn. This is a professional platform. Why are you doing this? Like, you're so self-centered. Inserted, whatever. You will get this negative feedback. So that's one point. Be ready and be prepared to be bad at something. And over time, with consistency, you'll get better. That's a fact. As long as, I don't know, you need to have— I don't know anyone that did not get better over time with content. You learn, you practice, you get better. And second point is, with creators, we sometimes say it's you pay a tax on fame. So let's say at some point there will be what, 1%, 10% or whatever it is of your audience will have something spiteful to say. Sometimes it has nothing to do with you. Sometimes it does have to do with maybe the quality of your content or something you posted. But very often it'll be just someone had a bad day and decided to write a bad comment. And you need to decide if you're willing to, let's say, pay that attacks, but most creators, especially the big ones, are unfortunately or fortunately super used to it, and they say, well, you know, just someone is having a bad day and they decided to take it out on me on the comments. I don't have to react to it.

Do you have something? Yeah, I agree, but also, um, whatever other people write to you in comments is not about you, it's about them. Yeah, they just like expressing the emotions that they can't, for some reason, can't process. In a normal way. So don't take it personally. And if you start having haters, it means that you started doing something significant and important. So I, for example, I still don't have haters. So I'm looking forward to that day. This will be a sign that I'm finally out there doing something great. So yeah.

The first time I post went viral on LinkedIn, someone commented they photoshopped my face in the LinkedIn. They photoshopped the face and my smile and wrote something and then like messaged something really very creepy. I reported them and then I found out LinkedIn actually has a very weird system of reporting anyways. And this is— I was like, wow, I didn't know this happens on LinkedIn.

But yeah, yeah, actually, wow, this is a creepy story. But what I remembered, what to prepare yourself for, kind of in constructive way. Just learn how to report things and how to protect yourself because you can easily block those people. I highly recommend you to like block, clean up your comments, don't tolerate hate speech, don't tolerate those things because platforms also, they like platforms overall, they don't welcome these people on the platforms. They want healthy ecosystem both for creators and viewers. Viewers also don't want to see hate speech. So if you're a creator and this is your channel, it's also a a bit of your kind of responsibility and right to block those people. So I would be just very kind of, I would become savvy in terms of like policies and who you can block. I mean, I was joking, I sometimes also receive some hateful comments and I just immediately block those comments. So yeah, just educate yourself.

Have you or like any of your clients experienced like creator burnout? Like, how do you manage that? Because like, personally, I've started before, like creator stuff, and what's really hard is like pumping out really good content consistently and then obviously not letting the ups and downs get to you and stuff. But how would you recommend like a system that's feasible and like, does it make or break people, do you think?

Do you want to answer this? Well, I can start, but you can add because I mean, this is such a multilayered question. It depends how you start and how's your growth going. I think overall, first of all, it is a problem. So you're not alone. There is such thing as creator burnout because you can't be creative 24/7. It's not a normal job. You can't just be all the time exactly the same way. I would say what helps a bit is to have like a discipline of kind of input, like basically of consistency that you, yeah, you try to produce like one video, say a video or like one post per week. You can start slowly and see how it goes. If you can, tolerate the schedule. If it's okay for you, it's okay. And then your task is to find kind of the middle ground, your balance, and like a bit of a balance, what is okay for you to post, to create, like what's your kind of pace. Number 2, you can also try to like at some point hire a team or delegate some of the tasks that you don't like. I found this instrumental for myself where I can delegate some of the things and just like not put my effort there. Obviously it comes with costs. So like if you can kind of, as soon as you get some monetization going, it's great to get some help. So team is fundamental. And number 3, I think the bigger the channel gets, if you become like very, very big, we know, we even know like companies that start, that come in like funds and buy out like equity in channels and they provide you with ops help, with teams, with like like, I don't know, producers, editors, experts. There are also different business models in the market that help creators not to burn out. But this is number 3, is only available when you become like a sustainable business. So obviously at the first stage it's very hard, but like if you can delegate some small tasks to someone like an assistant or a producer or an editor, this would be great because it already will give free up so much space and like, my, my, like basically headspace for you to create more.

Yeah. What I'll add maybe like between step 1 or 2 for Alina, like on top of maybe the discipline or having the schedule, let's say if you don't have resources to hire someone or have a team, try to lean into a potential community or a partnership. So it seems like you both are together, right? So the moment I started leaning into working with Alina and we have also Nastya, that it's just very, very helpful to have some sort of sense of accountability or mechanism where you meet with someone once a week. And again, they might not be working for you, but they are working maybe in parallel with you. And creators in general, they have some creator meetups or whatever they like to do to regularly meet so that you essentially, it's a nice soft reminder for yourself to post content, but you can also just have fun with these people and feel like there's someone to support you.

Uh, what if— is there a way of, like, you think identifying if content maybe is not for you? Like, is there like a— also like an exit strategy, would you say? Because like, let's say for example Lele Pons decides to stop doing content, what would she do then? You know, I mean, unless she obviously— assuming she doesn't have enough to retire and stuff, like, you've built this presence.

Add to that, like, use an example for that. Like, I think Casper Lee is a really interesting case. Um, like, obviously blew up massively on YouTube and then now is like very much considered like an entrepreneur before a creator.

Um, I don't— like, I think I want to reflect for a bit on this, but essentially what I like to go down is a framework of doing what you're good at and doing what you love. And what I've noticed sometimes what happens is you run into the rut of you either no longer love what you're doing, or you maybe were doing something that was a trend at the moment or something that you're not necessarily, like, let's say, in your zone of genius. So as in you're doing something you're good at. So my recommendation is overall, try to always go into this very, very powerful combo of something you like. So for example, it can be educational content around a specific topic and something you're really, really good at. Even if this topic isn't, you know, the number one in the world or whatever it is, but if you're good at it and, um, you love it, it's something very, very sustainable on any platform and pretty much almost in any medium, frankly speaking. So try to lean into that. Without burning out. So it's quite a tricky balance. But that framework to me helps you keep it sustainable and be at a very high level in terms of commenting on specific creators coming into a business. I think once a challenge is faced, it's sometimes because, for example, a creator was doing what they love, which is creating content, and now they became a business and now they are expected to do business tasks and maybe that's not necessarily what they love and not necessarily something they're good at. So see how you can still have a role of being a creator, basically something you're good at and something that you love. Maybe you hire someone that takes care of those tasks and so on because then it can get tricky. What do you think?

I think the craziest thing for me about all this and sort of relevant to the question beforehand is that whether you are someone who's gonna make the content or you're someone who doesn't want to go anywhere near content, you need to know about it. Like, you don't really have a choice in pretty much any industry not to at least, like, you know, learn about it. You don't have to be learning it to actually put yourself in front of the camera and create it, but like, you can be the background guy in the company now, but you still need to know what gets people like ticked. Well, how do you make a visual prompt? How do you make a you know, written prompts, how do you storytell, how do you do all this? It's becoming so relevant, the skills for content and the skills for like actually building a business in this generation. So do you have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, if you don't want— because there are some cases when you also don't want to learn those things, but in that case it's better to hire someone who can either teach you or be on your team. But I agree with you in that sense. Like, I don't see, as I said before, As I mentioned before about like ads and promoting any product you can think of, let it be yourself, your, I don't know, your business. It's really hard to imagine business without social media presence nowadays with everything that happens, like with everything, how the ecosystem works, how expensive it is to promote yourself in like paid channels. Yeah, building your social media becomes like inevitable. So I 100% agree with you. And in terms of the, kind of exits of where you can go. There are so many ways where you can go as a creator. You can, because your audience is a big, big asset and you can use it in so many ways, starting from just like monetization while you're still there. Obviously your audience will not always be there if you just monetize it and you kind of squeeze the audience in terms of only advertisement and not providing any value to them. But overall, if you're like, okay, content is not for me, but you have already accumulated some kind of audience. If it's an asset, it's also available for sale because there are people who are looking out to buy media like as a media, because this is a media at its kind of fundamental nature, I would say. So yeah, there are so many ways you can do that with your audience, with your kind of assets. You can become, as Casper Lee, like entrepreneur, build up on what you already have. You can launch, I don't know, D2C brands like Prime or some, like you can launch even a software like just MrBeast just launched his own analytics. Like why not? So you can do so many things. So I would even say that your kind of audience and passion with your, or like connection to people is the like primary. And then you're gonna see where it's gonna lead you. Sometimes product kind of is born based on what your audience is interested at. Not necessarily that you come out with a product and you say, okay, I'm gonna sell this or I'm gonna do this. But no, you maybe you start connecting with people and they ask you for something and they're like, okay, I can provide this value to people. And this is probably the healthiest way doing business because this is what people are asking for. So do what people want.

Uh, yeah, something I'm super interested in about making content is that, that blend of authenticity with maybe not revealing your whole self, you know, like sort of keeping maybe that like family side of yourself or the less like extroverted side to yourself, and then like, yeah, pairing it all together to be this thing where —people are seeing the most engaging and captivating storyteller without, like, you know, maybe when you walk down the street and you hit that level of fame, people think they know you or whatever. Like that, I mean, there are so many, like, there's so many elements to that question, but I think it's really something like you've got to consider who you're portraying because at the end of the day, a lot of these people have never seen who you are. So that first time they see you, that's now their opinion of you. And, you know, depending on maybe which platform you're on, every single video is an opportunity to alter that and change it as well. So yeah, what do you think is, um, yeah, the key to sort of trying to be your most authentic and like the healthiest way to portray yourself online?

Um, I have an opinion about that. Um, maybe it's not the key thing to keeping yourself authentic, but it's, um, let's say a piece of advice that that I give people that are starting out on their content creation journey. A lot of people ask, who will I become? Or what I post? What should I post about? Should I be a fashion creator? Should I be a comedy creator? Food creator? The list goes on. Or like, well, if I'm doing business advice, what kind of business advice should I be posting? It's like, that's the million-dollar question. And I usually say, well, just be yourself. And then it's just like, what do you mean? Who am I? And it's very tricky. But a way to quickly potentially do it is I recommend just tap into what you actually talk about. Pull out your phone and look at the last 10 conversations you had with your friends, or just pull out your notebook and write down 10 things that literally came out of your mouth in the last whatever. 10 hours, 1 week, depends how long you talk, how much you speak, and then write them out and you'll quickly understand what's happening there. And so that's a potential way of being authentic because then you quite literally see what regularly comes out of you as a person from content perspective and just Talk about that. That's how I create content quite often. I just pull out my phone and I look at photos that I recently took, and I took them for a reason. Usually either something was inspiring or something bothered me, or I just wanted to share this meme with a friend. And then I think about, okay, how do I frame it in a more professional way for LinkedIn, for example? And that helps me be more authentic online. And I noticed that That really helps with engagement, and that really helps me feel confident that when I speak to someone offline, that it matches the online persona. Does that answer your question? Yeah, sure.

In terms of authenticity, because I know there's a lot of brands such as Ryanair who are trying to push— I love Ryanair. It's quite funny, right? Their videos on TikTok and stuff. But do you think Do you think they're losing their authenticity by following those trends? I know from a brand perspective and human perspective, authenticity might look different.

Yeah, I think with brands, I just think you can't be very authentic, full stop. I mean, I'm sorry, because it's a brand, right? You created a business, so there's definitely strategy behind it. So I'd say personal brand and brand, the commercial brand, are really, really different. So I think, and human beings, I think, are used to that. We're used to the fact that this is a brand. Genuinely trying to sell something to me. So it's cool and it's fine. I think, yeah, Ryanair doesn't necessarily look authentic, but they're hilarious. So then I'm fine with them being inauthentic. And I think their audience is because their engagement is massive. But I think here maybe the point is it's okay that they're not authentic, but they do need to be within their brand, if that makes sense. So as in, if they're brand right now is posting a bunch of weird jokes constantly. Like, if I don't know, I just want to be relatable in the room. Ryanair. I don't know if everyone follows them, but yeah, okay, most people follow. They're hilarious. So then they need to stick to that brand. If all of a sudden they start posting, I don't know, very millennial-like memes or elegant posts about how they're rebranding or whatever. Well, basically what I'm trying to say is they need to be consistent. And the moment they become inconsistent, that's when we're going to lose trust. And that will look like they're being unauthentic. But whereas for me, it's not that they're being unauthentic, it's just they diluted their brands. They're going off brand. That's not who they are as a business. Does that make sense?

Yeah. My final question to both of you. And I ask all my guests the same question, and I would have asked Victoria in the last episode we did together as well. But when you first started your careers, you would have had a certain idea of what a successful career looked like to you. Um, fast forward, having worked for the likes of YouTube and Google, like, you know, you would have learned a lot about what a successful career looks like. And yeah, how has it— how has it changed from the start to now? And yeah, what are your biggest learnings?

Great question. I think in the beginning, um, also I joined YouTube and I worked with, like, as you said, with one of the biggest creators in the world. And I thought that, um, these quantitative metrics as like subscribers, likes, watch time, this is like the main thing. And if you're not at the top, you're like not so cool. But then actually the more I kind of started working with creators and in the industry. And then I left YouTube and I started seeing how people are actually developing their media themselves as media business further on with like products with, I don't know, they're launching their own brands or like raising investment or coming up like with some crazy ideas, completely new. I understood that these like quantitative metrics, kind of vanity metrics, they're not always true. So you are so free in like in the creative sense of this word to do whatever you want with your like audience, with your creativity. So don't focus only on those vanity metrics, but also you can create whatever you want. So maybe the creator with like lower number of subscribers is much happier and much more stable in their life or where they want to be. Rather than a creator who is like celebrity level, but like is burnt out, doesn't know, like struggles with like authenticity or struggles with being relevant, staying relevant. So there are so many things that we don't see. And also sometimes social media is not 100% true. Like in many ways it's not. So in a way, some of the things are just vanity metrics and also kind of try to avoid the noise around you and around those things and focus on your authenticity, on your truth, because people feel the truth very easily on social media. That's why engagement for posts that are true and you're very authentic, the engagement is so much higher, at least in my experience. So yeah. Yeah, 100%.

Any changes on your side, Victoria? Yeah.

So the question is, let's say, how I see a successful creator, let's say, before and how I see a successful creator now after years of experience? Yeah. I think before, when I was new to the industry, I looked at it as being very successful from a content perspective. Maybe, oh, they create such great content. They're just so good at what they do. They're a genius. They're a genius. They're a genius. Now I believe more in the fact that No, they're consistent and they're humble. That's to me the formula, the new formula that I believe most creators, and I think you can agree with that, are incredibly successful, will be the most humble ones. As in, by humble, I mean don't try to make yourself small. No, but they're the people that will come to a call with their manager with a notebook and they will write things down even though they might have been at YouTube for 10, 15 years, or, you know, LinkedIn, whatever the platform is, they will sit down and they'll try to understand what is something new they can implement into their content strategy. The same with C-suite executives, whoever it is. I noticed no matter how big and, you know, how many accolades they have, they're a constant learner and they're consistent about it. They're not some kind of genius that fell from the sky. So, yeah, I recommend leaning into that.

Yeah, there's both great answers, and it makes me think about something that, um, Leo Olsen, who came on last week, uh, who's very big on, on TikTok, he, um, he sort of said like people can often, like, if you see him like living life and having fun, think, oh, like, he doesn't actually work hard, he doesn't do anything. But you can't just make content out of nothing, which is something that, you know, became like a really like interesting point, a way to look at it. It's like, you know, the Sidemen, for example, you see all like the traveling and them having fun and everything like that, but they've been like doing it for years and it's working so hard. Like, and everybody says like, like KSI, for example, nobody works harder than them. I think, yeah, it's a, it's a really refreshing way to look at things. So, uh, yeah, thanks so much for coming on the podcast because I really, really appreciate it. And, and Jake, thanks for co-hosting.

Thank you, thank you, it's a pleasure. Amazing.