Why I Hate Influencers

Why I hate influencers, and I am going to have to name some, and I'm sorry but I'm not sorry. And I know some people will call me an influencer. I do not think I'm an influencer. Like, the people that work for me, I tell them they don't work for me, they work for themselves. And anyone who thinks I'm an influencer, I'm not an influencer. There's another term I'm more comfortable with because there are a few types of influencers that I really don't like. Or at least I— that's not fair to say. What is fair to say is that they're not doing good in the world of being a creator. So sorry, I am going to have to name some. I don't know these people that well personally, so I'm not judging them, but I am judging what they say. So the first is Stephen Bartlett, um, and what a lot of people don't understand is you know, how many— probably millions of pounds— and how, how many dozens of staff members he's put into essentially creating content. Um, and he's probably as close to the BBC as you could get. Now, I think he's been fairly open about that, so I'm going to give him credit for that. But, um, I know for a fact he's paid for guests, and he's paid big money for guests, which I don't have a problem with. It's just smart business. But he goes around telling everyone he's never paid for a guest. So he's creating an illusion, um, of what it's really like to be an influencer, and that part he needs to be called out on. Um, the next one is Gary Vee. Now Gary Vee's been shouting forever that you have to do 5,000 pieces of content a day, and, um, what there is no context on is that Gary Vee's been a creator for what, 30 years, one of the old school original ones, has a massive team and is able to put 3, 4 hours a day into being a, uh, an influencer and has an entire team that can put it on every single social media channel and probably pays dozens of videographers and, and editors. And yet he's telling you that you have to put out masses of content every single day for 10 years to be successful as a creator. But he probably didn't start that way, and you probably shouldn't start that way. And it's not realistic because you don't have a huge team and you don't have hours a day and you don't have millions of pounds to invest in this. Now, this is another one who I have to call out, and that's Alex Hormozi. I don't know if you know Stephen Bartlett, Gary Vee, Alex Hormozi. Um, again, these people are doing well, but no one's really calling them out. I don't think anyone has the balls. But Alex Hormozi basically says, you know, just do content for 2 years, just give value, never sell anything. Well, if you sold your company for £100 million, that's okay, you can do that. A good friend of mine, Simon Squibb, is doing that. He's just chucking out loads of content all day, every day. He's a full-time creator, but he sold his last company. He made millions of pounds. He's got a whole house where he can create content. He's got a whole load of staff. He's got people following him around every day. His full-time job is being an influencer, and I think he's being a little bit more honest about that. Um, if you sold your company for $100 million, I'd say do 3 pieces of content every day per channel for 2 years, build millions of followers and massive interest, and then sell your products and services, and you'll go wildly viral. But it's not possible for virtually all other people, for 99.9% of the population. Now, the kind of creator or influencer that I, I think is being a bit more real is MrBeast, because MrBeast is saying how hard it is. MrBeast is saying how many videos he had to do not making any money. MrBeast is saying that he's putting all of his money back into the content. MrBeast is saying that, you know, just absolutely loves doing what he's doing. But the problem with Alex Hormozi, Gary Vee, MrBeast, Stephen Bartlett is they are unicorns. They are like Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi in the world of football. 99.99 recurring percent of people are never going to be that, and everyone's comparing themselves to them, or at least everyone's being influenced by them because they are the biggest creators. But that's fine if you are already a millionaire If you have 60 hours a week to put into content and being an influencer, if you have a massive load of resources, if you can build a massive team, which 99.99% of people can't. So I'm here to give you a bit of reality. So reality number 1 is you should start small with your phone. Number 2 is you don't have to have a studio and a videographer following you around and all this complicated stuff. You can just get a really simple little pod track recorder, little Behringer C1 cheap microphone, and you can start your podcasting. You can just do daily lives or daily shorts and edit them, edit them yourself in app and lob them up online. And start now and get perfect later, which a lot of people aren't telling you. Number 2 thing that you can do is you don't have to be a full-time creator. It's too scary for most people. By the way, I don't like the term influencer. Never call me that. I prefer creator. I'm creating content, I'm creating solutions. I'm not trying to influence anyone, you know. Only people who want to follow my content, um, am I interested in helping. Only people who want to help themselves. I'm not trying to influence you, I'm trying to inspire you, guide you, educate you, occasionally entertain you, rant at you, support you, challenge you. I'm trying to fucking influence you. Don't call me that shit. Right, not saying that you do, but you know, also there's so many fake influencers. They rented their Lambo for a day. They haven't actually made any money. You know, there's so many of them and you've got to be careful of them. I've been doing this for nearly 20 fucking years. I'm the grumpy old bastard in this. I've got the experience. Okay, now there is another way, and the other way is you spend 30 minutes a day planning and creating one piece of content. And then you just repurpose it on all the other channels. And you start with 30 minutes a day, which anyone can put in before work or after work or on the weekend, and you build it up. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Don't try and fucking eat the whole elephant first, like, you know, you're being told by all of these influencers. So if you like the idea of being able to start small and start on 30 minutes a day and start where you're at and weave it into your ordinary life for ordinary people to build your way up to Turning content into cash flow and information into income. Um, I'm actually gonna do a Zoom this Sunday specifically on this subject because quite frankly, I am a bit pissed off, um, with a lot of these creators out there who don't really have any— they just don't relate to you. You know, they're like showing off their amazing life and everything that they've achieved, which of course is great, but they are so far ahead, you know. It's like a 5th dan teaching you all their moves when you're a white belt, and the first thing you need to learn to do is how to tie your fucking belt. And that's a bit like what all these influencers are doing. So I'm going to do a Zoom session this Sunday, and the link is tiny.cc/RIPBrand. That's tiny.cc RIP Brand. Now, on this Zoom, I'm going to show you how to start on 30 minutes a day, 3 to 4 hours a week. You might add more after that, but at least you get started. I'm going to show you how to just do one piece of content on one channel and then get it on multiple channels and find out which channel's for you. Find out which channel works best for you. Find out if you want to be a podcaster or you want to do Instagram or Facebook or YouTube or TikTok, or which ones you don't want to do, how to cross-purpose all the content, how to unlock all the monetization tools on all the social media step by step by step. I've got a special guest expert in who's actually one of the top speakers at the podcast show, and he's going to talk to you about how he's built the UK's largest podcast agency and what he's teaching his podcast clients and what he's doing on his podcast that helps you be a part-time creator with a full-time full-time attitude or outcome. You can make 5 grand a month on a few hours a week. A lot of these big creators are making millions, but they're spending millions. I'm going to show you, and so is my guest, on how to spend virtually nothing and make 5 grand. Because surely it's better to spend virtually nothing and make 5 grand, which is realistic to everyone, than to spend millions and make about the same. As much as I admire MrBeast for his honesty, He says he doesn't really make money out of his YouTube, he just makes millions and spends millions. To me, that's kind of crazy, um, you know, unless you're just in this for the next 60 years and you've got some other grand master plan. So I'm going to sponsor and subsidize your place on this Zoom. It's coming this Sunday. There's no recordings and no replays. It's tiny.cc/RIPBrand, as in rest in peace brand. RIP brand, because actually the personal brand is dead. And I will tell you what's replaced the personal brand and is replacing the personal brand. The corporate brand died, the personal brand overtook it. Now the corporate brand and the brand and the personal brand are dead, and this new form of brand is overtaking it. And I'll share with you what that is and how you can do it too. Um, and just be careful not to compare yourself to all these influencers. Always get context of where everyone is at. I sometimes do it, I'm going to be honest. You know, I've been in the creator game for a long time But I run 14 other— well, I have 14 companies. I run many of them. I have 110 staff in the office, 150, you know, when you add in all my outsourcers. I'm doing a lot of things. I'm a creator 20 or 30% of the time. I have to be careful and pinch myself and not compare myself to Gary Vee or Alex Hormozi or, you know, Stephen Barlow, who are doing this all in full time. And that curse of comparing yourself to others is something you have to manage yourself. and I can help you with that as well. So the link is tiny.cc/RIPBrand. Um, I do hate some of the context you're not being given by these influencers. I just want to say that the people I've pointed out in this, um, live video, I don't know them that well personally, some of them not at all. I'm just sharing what a lot of people tell me about what they feel about these creators. I was at AdCon, and there's about 600 or 700 people there, and I did a speech, and I basically said all this about, you know, what Gary Vee and Alex Hormozi are saying, and I got a massive round of applause. It was just this big sigh of relief. There's more than one way to be a creator, and you can start on 30 minutes a day, and you can do it before work, and you don't have to spend millions, and you don't have to just do it all free for a decade. There are other ways, and I'll share those with you on my Zoom, tiny.cc RIP brand. Thanks for tuning in, and remember, if you don't risk anything, you risk everything.