The AI Creator REVEALS How To Go From 0 to 400K Followers in 100 Days (USING AI) @rpn

You said in 3 years anything you can imagine you'll be able to generate using Ai and it will be indistinguishable from reality yeah I made a real on this and it went like super viral on Twitter and and Instagram and all that and I kind of like brought a lot of a light to this but yeah Veron you know he's got maybe 600,000 on Instagram and he's got a big following on YouTube and he no longer is even part of the process of creating his Reals you know he's got a team they use his AI

clone so like I was talking to ruin he's like yeah I mean like some weeks I won't even log in Instagram and I'll have 12 posts up with 25 million views that got me like 13 leads for his many businesses and like it's it's insane right and so right now I think for the next 12 to 16 months there going to be a big Arbitrage opportunity a lot of people are going to hop on this and you're going to see people who built Massive audiences without even they're not recording anything they're not in front of

the camera they're just out working on the rest of their business while this thing is sort of like on cruise control okay today's guest is Roberto Nixon and let me start by saying this Roberto makes some of the best short form content that I've ever seen and that's a big Proclamation because I've seen a lot of short form creators but I told him that when he walked in And I could not believe it that he's only been a full-time creator for two years and in that short amount of time he's gotten over 780,000 followers he

even went on a crazy run where he gained 400,000 followers in just 100 days and so of course we got into all of that and we broke down exactly how he went from zero to 400,000 followers in 100 days and there's even one point in the episode where Roberto shares a huge Arbitrage opportunity that You can capitalize on in the next 12 months and produce viral content without even recording it sounds insane but there's people that are already doing it so anyway I'm not going to say anything more you're listening to the Callum Johnson show

let's get into it I was on your Instagram this morning yeah scrolling through some of your posts reading some of your captions and there was something I read and I wanted to I wanted to say it back To you and get your reaction to it so you go just under two years ago I started making videos for the internet yeah they were terrible at best but I fell in love with the process obsessed over how to improve little by little day by day fast forward to last week I made the show the short film for

Orion that closed zuck's keynote at connect please start that thing you've been wanting to start today and just keep at it good things will happen and So here's where I want to begin for those that may not know how do you end up producing a short film for Mark Zuckerberg founder of meta Facebook obviously and what is Orion yeah dude that that was the the coolest honor of my life and I say it because when when I first was presented with the opportunity I was like well this is kind of Novel because I'm like two

years in making videos on the internet and when I say making videos it's like short form Reels 30 to 45 seconds a lot of it is just like news coverage of what's going on it's nothing like too too special are out there like the more cinematic stuff just came about in the last like few months so I'm like okay well this is going to be my first ever film and this is going to Premiere in front of a massive audience thousands of you know the most influential people in Tech and then millions of people watching

it you know from from home on on stream or or After the fact I'm like this kind of this like a pretty big deal for my first film right and so I knew I had to like go super hard at it and basically what it is to to give some context meta just launched Orion which is like to me I think it's Zuckerberg's iPhone moment you if you look back to 2007 when Steve Jobs launched the iPhone everybody remembers a line it's like when he says um every once in a while a product comes along

that changes everything and like That's a historic line by Steve Jobs so I feel like Zuckerberg launching Orion could be that because what basically what it is is AR enabled smart glasses and meta's big bet and a lot of big bets around the tech industry and people are talking about it is like the next Computing Paradigm the next um you know great Computing platform is glasses right like right now we may look back in 30 years and be like you remember when we were all just like Zombies looking down at a glowing rectangle and like

we weren't even present with the world so a lot of people think the same way that phones took away some of that light Computing from computers you know like we used to be on our computers now we do a lot of stuff with our phones but they didn't phones didn't necessarily replace computers the same will happen with the smart glasses where we're going to do a lot more of our Computing whether it be Messages whether it be games whether it be like light scrolling whatever it may be it'll be done in the glasses the phone

will uh you know will use a little bit less but they still won't replace the phones and so like meta desperately needs to own the hardware layer you know as they've noticed like apple takes 30% Google takes 30% of the native app platforms and so um that's their big bet and they finally launched it to the world after 10 years working on it and They tap me to make the trailer for it to introduce it to the world which is really really special um and and if I may say one more thing about that the

reason that they chose me and like we can go into this later but I have like two buckets when it comes to my content one is like the business side it's the monetizable stuff it's the scalable side which is like the split screen you know like news talking about what's going on in the tech World reviewing products Whatever it may be a lot of Brands they really want to tap into that uh into that format but the other side of it was like just for me like my my like the artist inside of me sometimes

just wants to make things for the creative Challenge and I'm like well that's not very monetizable this is really actually just for me but meta chose me because of those videos that I thought were not monetizable that's happened a couple times before in recent months so it's Like the thing that is actually made me the most money is the stuff that I thought wouldn't make me money and it was just purely for for the artistic Endeavor so I thought that was really interesting as well um but in a nutshell that that was a trailer and

we worked on it for 6 weeks Like Blood Sweat and Tears every second of every day just thinking about it because it came to me like pretty late August 19th so we had like a month to to put it together um But I'm really happy with the way it turned out the reception was great and the thing I'm really proud of is when you're looking at the stock price it pumped most during that video that's crazy so like I was really happy about that and I I think it was a mission accomplished yeah you know

I people to watch it cuz it's a great it's a great video um you know what you said a you said a big statement you said that it could be Mark Zucker bugs almost like Steve Jobs iPhone moment one of the things that's interesting um I learned about this recently there was an iPhone before the iPhone Apple didn't make it but there was like a smartphone um there was like an iteration of like a touchscreen phone I think it was like two guys in the West Coast um is it like pomos maybe yeah that might

have been an I think that was still physical keyboard yeah there was someone that had made a touchscreen Phone before the iPhone but it just never caught and so I'm curious for you like how close how close do you think we are to this AR reality like could Orion almost be like I don't know in in in the iPhones case that earlier version of the smartphone that was made by another company was like five 10 years too early right right exactly do you think that that could be the case with o yeah I mean I

think that first of all I think It's the closest thing we have the Jarvis right you know like the F like Tony Stark's robot sort of assistant I would I think like if it was available to buy today I think I could take it out and could already like I could go run errands and not bring my phone I think that's important to me um you know cuz you can take calls on it you can message on it um you can do a lot of the light Computing stuff that we our phones for without the

potential of maybe getting Sucked in for 2 hours watching YouTube or Candy Crush or Tik Tok or whatever it may be and I like that I think that's a novel I think that's a future that we want to get towards and it's funny too CU I should preface I don't say this because I got I'm like I'm a pretty close partner of meta now we have a great relationship but I've been saying this long before Meta Even knew I existed right and so like I've been pretty consistent with my content Throughout like the last few

years I do think it's where we're headed towards um and I had another note on that oh yeah the other reason why it's like one of the crazy novel things was this EMG band so it's called um electromyography and the way that it works is you just wear a band and it detects the brain signals coming down your um coming down your arms MH and I was like this is incredible man it's like the first time I was doing some of These gestures like this was scroll up scroll to the left and you felt the

haptics even though they're coming from a wrist you felt that at the finger level and it was really easy to control where you know like it's nothing new like division Pro had it as well Quest three has it where you're actually tracking with your eyes but then it's looking at your fingers and you can like the Click in essence is the finger tap right or the or the double index tap or The double middle finger tap like there's a bunch of gestures involved but usually has to be within the field of view because it's eye

tracking this because it's EMG like I could literally have my hands on the couch behind me in my pocket and I'm interfacing with the world around me and like that was the first I've ever tried of its kind like that was the real kind of holy [ __ ] moment when I was trying Orion I was like whoa I thought I've tried it all I've never like that was really interesting and so that's the moment that I realized yeah this this could be it man for like light Computing like I'm walking down the street Callum

text me and just with a swipe of a finger boom just texted you back without having to pull out the phone unlock it open the up the app and so I'm like okay there's something here um timing wise I would think like 2030 is for sure but even a little bit before like 2028 2029 I think these will start coming out mass production people start adopting them I don't think it'll be too rapid but eventually I think there's going to be a Pokemon go moment where there's going to be just this killer AR app in

the present world where everybody goes and rushes to buy these and I'm saying this now because I would love to listen to this podcast 5 Years From the future and see if I was right yeah um but I do think there's something there man that's Why I think like when people call it uh Zuckerberg's iPhone moment I feel like there's there's some Credence to that yeah no that's so cool no I want to switch over to AI cuz I know to talk about that as well as well and I want to read out quote you

said I heard you say this in an interview I believe at Vayner X when you were there you said in 3 years anything you can imagine you'll be able to generate using Ai and it will be indistinguishable from reality yeah Everyone with a phone in 3 seconds will be able to generate anything they can imagine can you just can you elaborate on that can you explain what you meant a little creepy right little dystopia um no man I mean I think we're almost even to that point the only reason I don't call it IND distinguish

yet is because most tech saavy people or anybody with a trained eye now can can um you know sort of tell like the scary part is you've probably been on Facebook like you Scroll your Facebook feed there's a lot of Boomers out there falling for stuff that's obviously AI but the stuff that's very near indistinguishable to reality right now you and I would still be able to tell like we' zoom in and we see like some text or some irregularities or some artifacting or whatever and we'll say okay that's AI but right now today and

age like I can you you have a lot of data on the internet you have photos you have audio I can make a video of you Doing pretty much whatever I can imagine and it's going to look pretty damn realistic to the point where 93% of the public is going to be fooled and like that's a scary proposition right and so one of my that that's the reason I started talking about AI you know knowledge is power we got to equip people with this knowledge so they don't so it reduces the ability for it to

be used maliciously but that's now we can fool 93% of the public I think in three More years even much earlier it's going to get to the point where it's like 99.98% of the public will be fooled by this stuff it's going to be so unbelievably like we're way past uncanny valley now and this is just like it it looks pretty damn real like it's it's it's um so everybody's got to just study up and and know that this stuff is possible you know what's funny so we had um we had someone on the show

last week his name is Zeta produces a lot of Content using AI on Instagram and he was telling me about this guy Veron Maya yeah who makes all and he sent me his page and he was like yeah this is all he all the videos are AI or something like he uses AI a lot to make his videos I was like this looks completely real yeah he may have got it cuz I I made a reel on this and it went like super viral on Twitter and and Instagram and all that and I kind of

like brought a lot of a light to this um but yeah Veron you know He's got maybe 600,000 on on um Instagram and he's got a big following on YouTube and he's like one of the biggest Tech creators in India and he no longer is even part of the process of creating his reals you know he's got a team they use his AI clone and they just feed it a script he reads it out complete per perfect lip syncing and dubbing in his voice in his mannerisms he his AI clone reads it out and then

his team like does like a lot of the Editing um you know the the the polishing they'll do the caption the distribution the cover whatever and just get it out there so like I was talking to rud he's like yeah I mean like some weeks I won't even log in Instagram and I'll have 12 posts up with million views that got me like 13 leads for as many businesses and like it's it's insane right and so like eventually this will normal it'll be so commoditized that it may not hit right but right now there's A

massive Arbitrage opportunity for people maybe like yourself who like really busy doing the pop but you want to get your reals popping you don't even have to you don't even have to do any work anymore right um and so right now I think for the next 12 to 16 months there's going to be a big Arbitrage opportunity a lot of people are going to hop on this and you're going to see people who built who build mass audiences without even they're not Recording anything they're not in front of the camera they're just out working on

the rest of their business while this thing is sort of like on cruise control and uh it's a big paradigm shift is there is there like um that is crazy it's kind of scary to think about with how much [ __ ] I've set like how many how much of me is on the kind of annoying too like the artist side of me like even though I cover this and I use all these tools like the artist side of me that Really values the human touch and creativity like I see why artists hate AI so

much because like the the artist half of me is like this shit's annoying like this sucks you know but just as I got it going ex comes in you know what so so the technology that even like a Veron is using cuz the the Arbitrage opportunity that you speak of speak to is interesting and I'm sure that there's people listening that are like intrigued by it is that like is the software or Like the AI almost Avatar that's being created is that something that is like unique to him or that's just like a general piece

of softw because it's trained on him but if you have any data on the internet like I can go home and in 20 minutes I can get a pretty good AI model of you just because of all the data you have on the internet I might do that no um but you know what you do is like Veron sits down and he'll be in the outfit that he wants with the background Of choice and he'll sit and he'll read like a 4-minute plate and then he'll feed that into the AI and it'll produce a model

based on those 4 minutes and right now it's very like it's going to take what you wear how you look your appearance how you talked but very soon it's already starting to happen like you'll be able to take that model okay I don't want to re-record another one so you'll be able to change its clothes change its background you'll be able to Age it up and down slightly even like say you're using the same model for 5 years you grown a you age a little bit you can actually age it up I mean like they've

introduced some of these companies haen being one they've introduced motion avatars now so instead of just talking head you're actually like walking and doing things and it's an AI model um Instagram just launched one that I want to show you because I'm one of the first participants um they Just showed it at connect where I actually have a AI model we went out to Studio in Culver City and like it was a whole big production process for Instagram but um I don't know if mine's active yet or if they're going to release it soon or

whatever but you can FaceTime with me on Instagram and dude if you didn't know it was AI like you may not like it's pretty incredible I like maybe you'll won like a clip for this pod but it's unbelievable and That's now so you think about in 2030 everybody's going to have an AI clone digital assistant to offload as much as you want to them like they could just be your general en QA guy your customer service guy or you could send them to zooms to act as you if you wanted like it's it's it's um

people don't realize this is happening man the world is changing very very fast unbelievable you know what you're you're someone that's so plugged Into this so I think you're the right person to ask I think there's a lot of these conversations going around and you even you even mentioned uh dystopian it's kind of dystopian there's a lot of these conversations around AI happening of like almost kind of painting an apocalyptic picture of like what it could do to society what it could mean for Humanity I'm curious what do you think Is your what is your

perspective opinion on what the effect is on society and like how we live our lives cuz even some of the things that I'm hearing around um you explain that someone could copy me in like a matter of minutes or like even in dating I've heard that they could we all going to be we're not even dating like real humans you're just dating like I don't know some AI thing like what is in terms of its effect on humanity and how we live our lives do You think our lives improve or get worse over the long

term okay quick break are you tired of scrolling endlessly on Tik Tok I know I am well what if your Tik Tok habit was actually making you money so a few months ago we had an entrepreneur called Rob Oliver come on the show and break down how there's 20-year-old kids right now that are making thousands of dollars a month as an affiliate on Tik Tok shop now so many of you were interested in that episode And we got such a positive response that we wanted to bring you even more practical advice from Rob on how

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that you can complete everything right from your phone phone or your laptop so if you're ready to get started on Tik Tok shop and learn how to become a top affiliate go to the link in the description join your first dollar today trust me your future self will thank you Now back to the show so the thing with tech if you look at sort of the history of Technology right it's like you can make the case that almost I mean any technological Paradigm Shift you can make the case that it's positive you can make the

case that is negative I mean Computing is any level of computing social media is another one uh I love social media because it's given me all the opportunities in the world and it's fit my skill sets and and it's just like Created such a great life for me and and I get to sit you know down with people as yourself and it's like but other people may make the case that it's caused addiction and it's ruined you know it's mental health there's a there's a huge crisis and the the way that I sort of approach

this and it may be a little naive but when it comes to AI Tech I'm like this is happening history shows that resisting technological advancement has always Been feudal it's kind of like an adap or die situation if you have any sort of economic ambition and it's very much going to happen people think it can be regulated away that's impossible you know people think you can I mean there's no stopping it it's 100% happening and so my thesis is always been well let me let's adapt to it let's figure out ways how to adapt let's

figure out ways how to leverage it incorporate it into our Tech stack and then educate the audience On on how to do it as well you know I'm doing all this research anyways let me let me make some content helping other people out as well um it's also twofold like on the content side I alluded to it a little bit earlier but it's like the knowledge is really really power when it comes to the stuff so the more people understand the progress where it's headed what's happening um the less it can be used again when

used nefariously because a lot of people will use it for Sinister purposes a lot of people are going to use it to increase their efficiency and productivity and maybe you know like um there's a lot of artists out there that can now create things that maybe they couldn't create before because they didn't have the equipment or the knowhow and and AI allows them to to do this um and so where I come from it I'm like I'm sort of a tech Optimist and I'm like well let's figure out ways to use this in a Positive

way um versus sort of the mainstream media's initiative where it's like let's focus on all the negative and all the crazy [ __ ] that this like they're all like this is Terminator this is Skynet this is whatever it may be and I'm like well that's what that's what generates clicks let's try to figure out how to generate clicks and build awareness and Affinity through like all the positives that this could bring um so that's where I kind of stand I Definitely can see like a lot of these AI use cases I'm like they're not

a lot of positive use cases like 98% of this is going to be used maliciously and I and I can kind of see that but at least if I'm educating the audience um and they're telling their grandparents about it and they're telling their parents and their cousins and they're sharing it with other people in their life it's like now those people are a little bit more immune to being Scammed like with an AI voice of a relative calling them if that if that makes sense and so I guess in summary it's like I'm a tech

Optimist this is happening no matter what we have to learn to adapt resistance is feudal so how can we be part of like the optimism Brigade and trying to like figure out what can we extract from this Tech that'll actually help us versus hurt us so hope hope that makes a little bit of sense but that that's kind of my Position when it comes to AI yeah I think I think to your point at the end of the day it's like um with a lot of this stuff and I think it's the same with social

media at the end of the day it's not really the tool or like the thing it's we're just humans so whenever you involve humans there's good things and there's bad things and one of the things that you mentioned is that in the next like 12 to 18 months there's like a huge Arbitrage opportunity using AI Specifically with content creation and so we're going to get into that later because you you were even telling me I me dude I could talk about this for 12 hours so like be careful if you open up we'll be here

a long time but we're going to get into it later how someone can build a following on Instagram you're like an expert at that you're so good at it um and then they can also use AI in that but before we do I want to cover your story let's do it man CU your Story is a special one and I was I was reading I was reading a tweet that you had put out and so I want to read parts of it back to you and we can just follow the thread so you say this

you say let me tell you a story when I graduated college no one would hire me I sent out 500 resumés crickets so I decided to spend 12 hours a day every day for 2 years mom's basement studying researching tinkering trying YouTube University learning building learning failing learning Shi eventually I built some apps I was really happy with reached out to every tech journalist for for coverage crickets no money for marketing so I learned social media and content built up a network of pages with over 10 million followers to leverage as my own distribution Channel

and it worked millions of dollars in Revenue sold for Millions I went for praying for a $40,000 a year job to building something for myself no handouts I've never had to rely on a paycheck from someone else and so there's more but we we're going to get into it long tweet it was a long tweet but it's good I want to start right in the beginning when I graduated college no one would hire me I sent out 500 resumés yeah crickets yeah can you just take us back in time for a second what was kind

of Roberto at that point in time if I Wanted to understand who you were as a person yeah so like the 20 second sort of summary up until college so like high school man like my whole life I was like a pretty good student I would say like above average intelligence all that then I I got kind of into the wrong crowd in high school and I remember like then I discovered like Eminem and Tupac and those guys man I just like probably a bad influence on me and I just started like I just I

just I feel like I became Somebody that I wasn't and then all of a sudden like junior senior year man my grade just plummeted I wasn't able to get into any school I was like applying left and right I mean I got into a few like called like Radford in Long wood and in VA cuz I come from like DC they accepted me but no shade to those schools I was like I ain't going there let me just go to community college so I did that for two years and then I went to a school

for music business actually Called full sale um my dad lives in Nigeria or lived lived in Nigeria well he still does but at the time um he went there with the world bank and they were able to like pay for my whole school and so I had like that super privilege and luxury to be able to go there I didn't learn anything there though I just became like party party man um so I finally graduated from there and yeah man I couldn't find a job I just could not find a job and I moved back

in with My mom and I was in her basement for like 5 years just bumming it at least to the outside person it may have looked like I was buming it but I was in there grinding and I was learning like one of the things that I mentioned in your conversation is like I'm I'm like one day I would love to be able to to give back to the people who didn't have my luxury of like having a place to live and food on the table like I would say if I had to go and

make ends meet and You know work at On the Border or like Chili's which I actually did for for a couple years but like if I had to do that to make ends meet I wouldn't have the time to learn everything that I learned in that period so in that period I learned how to code I learned how to design I learned digital marketing I was just in there I learned every and still now like every program in the Adobe Creative Suite I feel like it's a third arm like I know everything every hotkey Like

it's just an extension of me now you know and um and and it was those 5 years that I attributed to to like learning everything but yeah man like 21 22 to like 26 27 I was just a complete bump while all of my friends you know they went to UVA Georgetown Virginia Tech JMU um all the good schools in the area and they were all working for the big four accounting firms you know climbing their way up the ladder they had the BMW 3 Series they had this that And I was just like you

know this kid who was like cool in high school and now I'm just like a complete bum and and that um that chip on the shoulder still like exists in me today which is funny which is we can talk about that later but I think all struggle is actually a blessing in disguise cuz during struggle struggle makes the man you learn the most during the down Seasons so even in High season sometimes I find myself like weirdly nostalgic for the for the down Season but we'll get into that later um and so yeah then at

then at 27 I had um well 25 26 I was building a web design company fledgling I mean like my clients were like small dentists and Realtors and it was it was peanuts man you know what I mean it was enough to like get by but it was not anything significant um but then me and one of my partners at the time Chris Webb shout out Chris Webb wherever you are I haven't talked to him in a long time we decided to to build Mobile apps and like there was this rush in the App Store

this was like 2013 um and our first app was a weather app cut me if I'm going on too much of a uh a rant here but I was also big on Instagram at the time when it first had come out and with this weather app I went and I'll tell the story I don't know if she's comfortable with it or not but there was this influencer named Negan Mir Sahel one of the biggest in influencers on Instagram at the time not Even in that that term didn't even exist she was just like a fashioned

girl who's posting her fits on Instagram she had a million followers which today is probably like 30 million and I go up to her and I'm like hey how much would it cost to promote my weather app this 2012 actually she's like oh I don't know um like 200 bucks would that be $200 holy [ __ ] and so I ran an ad with her um and the weather app went number one in the App Store and I was like okay so this Was before influ this was like the birth of influencer marketing I feel

like I was part of that pioneering of it and I went to every single page with any sort of following on the internet meme Pages whatever it may be there was another one uh by this girl named Rachel if you're out there shout out to you she had a page called best scenes it was like movie scenes and um had like 2 million followers at the time and I was just like running ads through her and she was Charging like $7 and I was getting installs on the penny like I mean like probably a penny

for 10 installs it's like which now you have to pay like 3 $5 to get an install right um and so I was like okay what do we build for this shift right here so then we built an app called p laab and it was the dumbest app man it was like literally like you put shapes over your photos like you could put a star overlay over your photos and put text on your photos there's nothing Like that on the App Store and we just went through this meme page route and we were running ad

after ad and it became the most downloaded app on the planet in 2014 most downloaded photo editor not including like Instagram but like pure photo editor um yeah man then all of a sudden it's like holy [ __ ] I went from zero being a bum to making like a couple million dollars like profit in one year and um and then I blew through it all like an idiot we'll talk about now I Know why Like Rappers and ball players go broke cuz I was like oh I have money um but yeah man so that

was like kind of the birth of influencer marketing there too and like all these pages and influencers didn't realize that the power that they wielded so there was the most the craziest Arbitrage opportunity I've ever seen in my professional career since um and uh unfortunately subscriptions weren't even active yet in the App Store So it was all 99 cent in at purchases otherwise I may have been like set for life man um but that that was a really wild time and um and the and the rest is I've always been entrepreneurial since and so I've

never really since I was like 24 taken a paycheck um and I'm really proud of that and it always hasn't always been great know there's been Peaks there's been valleys there've been years I've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and Been like stressed out of my mind um but I'm I am proud of the fact that always just made it happen on my own you know back against the ropes I had to fight out I had to climb out of there and that's something that's really cool and so now in my content I try to

package all that up I feel like I've made so many mistakes and wasted decade plus it's like let me try to help other people like let I I see myself in a lot of like these young up andc comers and I'm like I feel like I could be a value to them whether it be mentorship or whatever it could be um so a lot of my storytelling content revolves around that if that makes sense M you know I know if I miss anything but I know I want to get deeper into it and one of

the things you mentioned is that um you said you went to like a almost like a music college right and you said you were like The Party Guy shout out to fale Orlando whisper Park man we can go through that whole my my ex roommate he's still a DJ DJ Nova we got in some trouble man but yeah we we parted a lot and I I guess I'm just I'm curious for you to reflect on that period of your life let's just say like I was a I was a fly on the wall maybe just

on like a typical weekend I don't know Friday night Saturday night what would I have seen you doing like who was Roberto at that time like Tell me behind the scenes dude man I was just lost I didn't know what I wanted to do um and so I think a lot of that was just um there's also another side of the story that I'd love to tell something else that was going on um but yeah I I just I didn't know who I was you know I um so I drowned that out with a lot

of partying and alcohol like you want to get specifics like Friday night we were living in W uh um Winter Park which is where the school was and there was like UCF was there in Rollins and a lot of big universities we go to these bars there was one called like kns Library it's the UFC kns I was just like there every weekend just again man just just buming it just just drinking cheap beer and I don't I don't like that that period of time is a little bit it's like my brain almost like deleted

it it all feels like just one one giant I don't know if you've ever had this in the past but it just feels Like one giant blur and I just remember just being depressed and anxious and I'll tell the story CU I never really told it publicly um but when I was 18 like I was I used to like smoke weed here and there with my friends and um one one day at this party I think I smoked something that was laced I don't know what it was laced with man but I was high for

36 hours I went into like this Cosmic Voyage where I thought I was dead first of all I thought I died and I Was like riding this canoe in space and all my memories were projected onto the ceiling I tell the story now to people like oh I know what that was that was PCP or yeah that was whatever yeah um but that that uh kind of like destroyed me for a decade man it it it turned into like a severe anxiety disorder a goreaphobia dpdr bro in and out of therapy I tried a bunch

of pills eventually like um I I don't even want to say the medicine cuz I don't know if it was Placebo or not um but it was Zoloft and I feel like that helped me could have been in Placebo anyways that was a whole journey 10 years but that that was the other thing was like this underlying severe anxiety disorder and yeah man I I just feel like those eight years are just kind of lost like almost like they don't exist like I didn't I was it was it was a very tough time man you

know and um it it's hard for me to even like talk About cuz I start even though it's it's gone like the Panic almost like starts setting it again cuz it was so strong and severe at that time um but I I do feel like a lot of young men especially have like similar Journeys that they're living right now so like it's very it's very important to me to be if I can of help to anybody like anybody watching this always feel free to DM me especially if you're going through something similar cuz I promise

you I Can relate um yeah it's just a very tough 20s man you know I was like I knew I was ambitious like deep down but I was like a you like a useless idiot that's how I felt man I just felt like everything I did uh was no good and um I definitely would hear the murmurs amongst my friend group like basically like he's just [ __ ] loser he's a he's a nobody and um that's always kind of stuck with me and and still motivates me I think uh up until this day but

yeah That was a weird weird decade man the lowest of the lows and then like weirdly like you know uncommon highs um and when the high did come I didn't know how to manage it right cuz I was like so insecure I was like let me go buy this Audi R8 and the penthouse and all this [ __ ] to prove to every body that I'm not there [ __ ] loser kind of thing but yeah there's any specifics you want to get into but that's sort of like the summary the Crux yeah you know

what I think I think you're right I think there's someone that is listening and being able to hear that story and see how it ended and what you're doing now would be more than just comforting it's almost like in it's inspiring and so one of the things I was thinking as you were speaking I think when someone when we start heavily drinking MH or maybe it's drug use whatever even recreationally I think to a certain Extent there's always a form of Escape escapism there oh man of course of trying to numb trying to numb some

sort of pain Modern Warfare 2 in 2009 whenever that was that was big escapism yeah yeah 100% man and so in that in that period of your life what was it that you were trying to escape from just this idea like damn like I'm a nobody I'm a loser like a [ __ ] up like it's it's kind of over you know and it's Funny because dude like I'm pushing 40 now and I feel as young as I've ever felt versus when I was 25 I thought a 35y old man was like decrepit like well

that dude's dying tomorrow like it's over for him right and so like and I know a lot of people are going to relate like people in their 20s for whatever reason they look at themselves and they say damn I'm getting old I'm 2 seven and like if you go 10 years into the past you're going to realize how foolish you Sound at this moment if that is you um because you don't realize how young you are and so like this was this it was like this double the stress and the pressure cuz I'm like [

__ ] I'm 26 now I'm 27 now like it's over it's kind of I'm cooked and that's what I was running away from it's just like well let me escape into video games let me escape in alcohol let me escape in the TV whatever it was um in a chasing girls because it distracted me from any real thought you Know and um and man I see that today more than ever now too mostly with the scrolling and the TV and the Netflix it's like that's a that's just people numbing their brain to not have any

real thought enter it and um I think that's what it was for me man I I I literally I was distracted every second of every day I did not want to think a thought because every thought was uncomfortable and so like I lived in this state of like consistent numbness and um all These Vice and all this other stuff was was just that man it was escapism you know you know it's kind of it's kind of crazy I think as humans we all go through this to differing degrees especially in a world like today where

there's so much distraction there's so much like easy dopamine it's so have you ever had that thing even when like sometimes you'll grab your phone you'll open it and you won't remember why it's just like Ryan bro that that's part of The reason that they're building that but yeah 100% 100% And and it's like this thing it's even scary to think about of like you just don't want to hear your own thoughts like is imagine a reality where you're trying to escape from yourself correct yeah crazy to think about and I think we all kind

of go through periods of like sometimes we feel lost and then we feel good again we feel confident it feels like it's going the right direction lost again but I Think for people it's to differing degrees the extremes the Peaks and the valleys are like are distinct they're yeah they're different when can you reflect on it as Roberto at 40 years old is there a moment I'm not quite there yet that still sounds a little weird hold on give me something now yeah when you reflect on it revert it what 39 39 39 years old

when you reflect on that period of Your life in your 20s yeah is there an experience an event a moment which in your in your head it's like that was the Pinnacle of me feeling lost of just being disillusioned what comes to mind when I say that I would say man when I made all that money because it's funny when when um and and this isn't like I really I think life is just a collection of Seasons it's ups and downs it's Peaks and Val anybody listening if you're on a High uh you haven't experienced

the high of the high yet right you haven't experienced the top of that Peak if you're on a low you haven't experienced the worst that's yet to come I'm sorry to tell you right but like once you experience life and once you get a little bit older you realize like it really is about the seasons and like you don't learn much in during the highs you only really learn to to appreciate them because you've been through the lows but Like all of the growth comes from your lows comes from your struggles and so like anybody

listen if you're in a low season I know it sounds for now and it sounds impossible but try to enjoy it as much as possible cuz in this time it's like you're really developing resilience and you're really learning about yourself and like you'll always be almost like I said a little bit nostalgic and sort of whimsical not not Whimsical like whis whiskful about this Time and um yeah when I finally got out of that low season and I thought everything was rolling because I had money and I then you realize like money doesn't really it

just sort of exposes who you are um that's when I became really depressed cuz I realized like okay all these like girls that I'm attracting with this dope car and apartment and watches and and luxury trips and all over the world and [ __ ] it's like nah that's that's the girl That I want not the girl that I need and so like another thing you realize is like um a lot of the things you attract when you're up are the things that you want not the things that you need if that makes sense not

the things that are really going to build you into the to the man or woman that you are going to become and yeah so that during that time I even got more lost cuz I was like wait a second I'm not happy even though what I was wishing so hard for and working so Hard for I finally got and I'm even I think more depressed and I'm more lost and so like that that was really tough to reconcile because it's like wait a second I'm not supposed to be depressed anymore I got everything that I

was after and I was even in a lonely or little bit darker place if that it's it's hard to like unless you've lived it I feel like it's hard to describe but I think in that point is when I really and obviously meeting my now wife it's like That's when the most growth that I've ever had where I started really reflecting like okay well what is important to me like what do I want to do with this life like where like who am I really and I would say that period like 28 to 32 was

very transformative because now I felt the lows and the highs and I wasn't happy with either so it's like okay well um so there was a lot of reflecting during those times um and and I'm sure a lot of my friends At that time they're going to hear this and and be surprised about that because from the outside looking in you know I was look like I was having the time of my life but no man I was I think I was even in a in a darker Place yeah if I was one of your

friends more on on in that time 28 to 32 yeah and I'm on the outside looking in yeah like what would I have seen in your life like what would it have looked like and like I said I had the penthouse apartment I had an AUD R8 I was every week on was in New York Miami first class best hotels like I was a true [ __ ] with uh financially but I also don't regret it because first of all it was a cool experience and second of all again like in your life you need

these certain Seasons to really mold you into the person that you're kind of destined to become I believe and so yeah that's what it would look like just like like a music video like that's probably what my life looked like and like all The friends that I attracted at the time who were like great people I love them all but like they were like kind of party friends you know they were go to the club and split a table or whatever friends so it wasn't like we never had like deep conversations or anything like that

um yeah so outside looking in it just probably and I see these guys today on Instagram you know like they're in Dubai with the watches in the yacht I'm like but those guys are going to learn Just like I did um you know that's what it it would have looked like yeah you know what what you said earlier is actually like as I was listening it made me pause like it was actually a profound thought you when um when you're up uh the things that you attract it's what you want it's not what you need

yeah and I think for a lot of the time we just think about Let me Give an example you mentioned that you were in Your mom's basement yeah for a period of time I wasn't in the basement I was in the guest room my mom's maybe like one like half step from the basement but like we always think about I think it always resonate it resonates deeply with me those moments cuz I felt like I was getting really tested oh yeah my my resolve my commitment to this ambition like building this show felt like it

was Being tested at every seam but we don't actually think that much about what about when you got all the things you think you wanted MH and then it's like I'm I want to understand where that where that profound thought to realization came from cuz I think that's going to be a moment for someone of like things are looking up you're getting everything you want but it's just that it's what you want it's not what you Need like what was the moment for you when you realized that in your life let me try to articulate

this because the things that I wanted I wanted because I wanted to impress other people it wasn't that I wanted because it was going to add some sort of value to my like all the value that these things that I wanted at the time were were really just to kind of flex on other people cuz I was so insecure right and so um I think that's Sort of the foundation of this idea where it was like all these things are actually adding more problems cuz they're attracting people to my life that are only are probably

not in it they're not in it like for me they're not in it for the right reasons um and again it's just like yeah they just caused more headache okay now that now the property tax is higher now like there's just more bills or more like again everything was just to the flex And then you come to this realization oh wait a second nobody actually gives a [ __ ] about me and I always say this to people in like a nice decent way like nobody gives really a [ __ ] about us or our

story or anybody else's it's like people people are kind of inherently selfish but not a bad way where they're thinking about themselves so if they see somebody else's success it just makes them maybe feel a little bit more ambitious or if you're like in the Comparison trap and might make you feel bad about yourself or if you see somebody else doing bad you're actually like well at least I'm at them like it like it it all relates back to how you feel in a way and so I thought I was going to be the man

with all this stuff and all the people who doubted me were going to come back like oh [ __ ] you're actually nobody cared man you know and so that's another thing you realize and not to my mind is going to different Places so not to really digress but like another thing I realized why I love telling stories is like nobody really cares about my story or your story anybody's story unless they can see themselves in that story and so this can go to the later conversation we're talking about like growing an account and storytelling

and making content but it's like if if um yeah man like I went into that different direction but if if people can see Themselves in your story that's when they really start caring about you and um anyways I I went three different directions but the foundation of that thought is all the stuff that I wanted was only for the appearance that I thought it may present to other people and it came from a place of insecurity you know so now the things that I want is like stuff that's going to bring me and my family

value Comfort peace um and we can go into that now but like my what I'm trying to build now is completely different than what it may have looked like 10 years ago and which is a beautiful home a house full of love you know like it it it's just it's so different now where it's it's um it's like a departure from like the material desire to the more like spiritual or um like fulfillment F like what what truly is fulfilling to me like truly natural dopamine if that makes sense um and a lot of the

stuff is stuff you can't buy It's really stuff that you just have to like I said like my most important thing now is to build a a loving household and a comfortable house for my daughter and like other kids that we may have in the future like that's everything to me um so now I look at life through that lens when I'm looking at anything whether it's like what kind of business I want to build or what I want to do it's like that's the North Star it's like how is this going to secure a

Better future for my daughter or or more loving household for my family that kind of stuff um and I think that's just that's just growth man that's just going through the ups and the Downs of life you know and and you start like developing new Frameworks you know what so so you thought 2 years old you're kind of living almost like this kind of I don't know Playboy Larger than Life lifestyle um Playboy life is good yeah Yeah yeah shout out to Mo and fosy and all my friends at the time that was a good

time um I guess what caused the shift what made you what made you switch it up like even when you say that that that was actually the moment that you were the most lost which to everyone else that was like an onlooker or saw you at the club or saw your car they'd be like this is when he's most up MH but to you when You reflect on it's the most the period that you were the most lost what caused you to shift out of that I think it was just like really deep reflection on

that it's like wait a second and it was actually this Naval quote you know Naval um and he had a quote it's like I forget exactly what it so I'm paraphrasing but it's basically like the true measure of success is if you're truly like fulfilled or happy or maybe it was something like if you're so smart why Are you depressed or or something like that and then I realized like yeah man I'm living life wrong like I'm living life for other people outward appearances or I'm living life the way that I thought it was supposed

to be lived uh this guy just built that company startup he exited okay I got to build apps and then I realized no I got to live this on my terms man I got like such a unique set of skills and and a unique upbringing like I'm my own person Just like everybody else is and like we and so like I started really reflecting and I remember I moved out to Los Angeles at that time cuz I I was living in DC when I say DC it's Northern Virginia but um I say DC cuz it's

like a little bit easier to locate on the map but um I I went out to LA and I like I kind of knew I had a different foundation and framework of like what I wanted to do I wanted to pursue I only wanted to make money if it was something I was interested in so like that was the primary thing it's like pogb Zack pogb he had a quote that I really love because I inherently live this I was just never able to articulate it but he said excitement is a compass and so I

I started doing the things that like really excited me and I knew what kind partner I wanted to attract and yeah man just like older a little bit more wise I knew exactly what I not exactly but I had a better idea of what I wanted out Of my life and when I went to LA um I think the last six seven years since I've kind of achieved that in a way like I I stayed true to that North Star and I stayed true to that foundation and um yeah man I would say like for

the first time in my life I'm really like happy fulfilled like I have a direction I'm excited for the next 40 years I know exactly kind of what what I want out of life and that hadn't existed the first half you know like the last you know 38 Year 39 years I've never had this until now so that's why I say I'm like a bit of a late bloomer um I feel like I'm starting my life right now and I have all the energy and excitement and passion in the world and took a long time

to get here and so you know if you're out there and you're in your mid 20s 30s even 40s 50s like it's never too late to reinvent yourself and it's never too late to to get after the life that that you deser erve and that you want And um I I hope to kind of embody that cuz I do feel like I'm I literally feel like down in my court I'm just getting started like life has started for me at 39 years old and um you know that's a beautiful perspective you know when when people

talk about uh depression and you mentioned actually at 32 that's probably when you felt like you had the peak of like you were depressed it's I don't think I've ever experienced depression personally I Think maybe the closest that I got was 4 years ago I've just moved to America um and this is in 2019 it takes me six months to get on the job market it was like yeah such a tough thing I had no connections here my University was not respected here either um but I get this job in Consulting at a good consulting

firm and then covid hits everything lock down and like at the time none of these companies knew how to uh train graduates in a remote Environment their whole training schedule was like just sit next to this guy that's been doing it for years and then watch him and then you'll get it and now you're in a remote environment you don't have that and I remember I basically didn't really get any training and I was like useless at the job completely useless and it was like I'd grown up as a high achiever like someone that does

well in school goes to like one of the best universities does well At University gets like that was my whole psyche identity selfworth was based of being of value and now I'm in this environment I remember I had this new manager at the time and she would just keep telling me how I just was behind that they would expect someone that's been at the company 6 months to have been at this level and I remember there was one day when I woke up you know sometimes you wake up you feel tired this was tired but

it was like Different kind of tired felt like a stone like literally I felt heavy getting out of the bed like every action felt like there was something on me and it was only when I left that job I remember I handed out my resignation and it was like uh I was in Atlanta actually at the time um to build up the courage to go to to leave ID had to go on like a one or two week vacation and I remember when I told them I was leaving after I ended the call I Like

jumped for Joy I never people that's like a phrase right you jump for joy I actually genuinely jump for joy but but I'm I think that was the closest that feeling of just feeling heavy like waking up and feeling like you haven't slept for a second I think that was like the closest feeling that I got to depression I'm curious from your vantage point when you say that like you felt at that moment you were the most depressed What was the feeling so for me I can only speak like from anecdotes right like personal experience

and maybe I'll say like some controversial stuff now could be good get get get some some people talking [ __ ] in the comments um when I say depressed I think it was very situational I don't think it was necessarily chemical and when I say anxiety that was anxiety like I like it's worse than I could ever describe Like especially dpdr when it's like a d realization dep personalization like I was on a wall watching myself like I it was very out of like it was very physical manifestation of that like that was we could

do a whole other pot on that one day for hours of of what I experienced and that was like really really bad the depression side I think was situational again I think it was not real true clinical depression and the controversial side I think most people Who suffer from depression aren't actually depressed it's like and I come from a point of love and from experience I would use that as a way to like sort of like pamp like how do I even describe like I would use that as a way to make myself feel better

oh I'm not doing this cuz I'm depressed or I'm playing these 6 hours of Modern Warfare 2 in 2009 because I'm depressed it was like a way to like assuage the situation a little bit and like I do I do feel Like when I'm talking to young men especially now and they say I suffer from depress I'm like I don't it's like most of the time I don't believe it now but it's a self-reflection because there is clinical depression I think the science is is you know it's pretty much there but I do feel like

a lot of the time it's a story that we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better about our current situation and I say this too because one of the most profound and Impactful things in my life and this is going to sound crazy I this is like when I was like 32 33 and I finally just it was David gogins right and he said I forget he was saying on a podcast he was like just look in the mirror or like you look in the mirror and you're going to see a [ __ ] or

something like that and bro this was some maybe people can practice a lot of people may flame me and say this sounds crazy but I just remember Looking in the mirror one day and I'm like you're just a [ __ ] like I'm sorry that's what it was and like that very framework alone whether it was Placebo or not it helped me get out of so many situations where I realize I'm thinking like I'm like too depressed or no like you know just I'm sorry you're not and like just that framework alone that way of

thinking that little mental shift and mental model helped a lot and that's when I realized okay this wasn't Actually depression this was a story that I was telling myself because I was so down and I was in this comparison trap and I'm comparing myself to everybody out there on Instagram and all my friends and everybody else and like oh I'm just depressed no there a story I told myself it didn't actually exist the anxiety component yes but the depression component um chemically I don't believe it was there I think it was situational and I think

it was it was a a Justification that my mind developed if that makes sense um um so again that could be controversial but I see that in a lot of other people too when I talk to them uh you know some people in my life I won't name them obviously to keep their privacy but I'm like dude you're not depressed you're not depressed you're just down you're just down and and you got nothing going on right now but you're not depressed um so let me know you know if that if That's controversial but that's how

I feel about um kind of like the mental health epidemic happening today it's really more of a comparison epidemic manifested through social media a comparison epidemic you know what you you said this actually in that tweet you said no one will ever believe in you as much as you need to believe in yourself if you're facing a tough situation in life you can play victim you can cry yell kick and scream or you can do Something about it correct and I believe that if you're if you have an able mind and body and you have

access to the internet there are no excuses you have everything you need zero yeah 100% that tweet I'm talking my my younger self a little bit more so I made this video that went kind of viral on Instagram it's it's pinned on my page right now where I'm talking to my younger self and that's what I tell them I say listen you're not going to like to hear this But nobody's coming to save you and that's one of my favorite quotes in life because it is just so true if you're down if you're in the

basement like I was just bumming around for three years feeling bad about yourself cool that sucks because nobody else is ever going to give a [ __ ] even even like your parents who may love you and support you your best friends it's like they still got their own life and their own stuff happening man they're not going baby you And hold your hands to this [ __ ] and so it's like that's one of my favorite quotes nobody's coming to save you and I think I alluded to that in the Tweet cuz I'm talking

to my younger self and now I'm of the framework that if you have man if if you if if you're physically able if you have a healthy mind and a healthy body and nowadays with modern access to the internet like there's literally nothing else you need there's no excuses and the only excuses are Justifications that you create out of thin air in your head to absolve yourself from your current situation and I really believe in that and for some people that's harsh but that harshness is actually what I needed to become the person I am

today and so I'm a big believer that tough love is true love so now people in my life by the way my friend Jamal Smith small shout out to you I was gaining weight and I love having friends like this in my life he Says bro you're looking fat as [ __ ] I was like you're it's you're an embarrassment to me and I was like that's why I love you tough love is true love and I'm a big believer in that just like the reality the cold hard reality the worst you can do for

somebody if you really love them is like n it's okay everything you know like no no no tell them what they need to hear that'll go that's true love to me man that'll go a lot further than just like being that Voice nah everything's cool don't worry about it you know you know like when I when I hear your story it kind of feels to me um almost like a Redemption story and and here's what I mean I think a lot of times in those sorts of stories chapter two is actually better than chapter one

and so chapter one and and you let me know if I'm correct in this it's like you're motivated by this chip on your shoulder you even mentioned like being An immigrant like coming from an immigrant background the chip on the shoulder of people discounting you or thinking that you're not going to be anything and that motivates you to this certain level of success you build this app to millions in Revenue they get a couple of million from it and now it's like everything you said was correct like the chip on the shoulder it all worked

out and it's almost like you you get drunk off of that feeling that ego Boost that all of that validation and it's almost like you crash the car you know like it crashes again and actually the the rock bottom of that crash is deeper than even when you were in the beginning correct yeah that's the first chapter and then in the second chapter it's like now armed with with all of the wisdom and the knowledge and the experience from what happened in chapter one you can now build this new Peak and so before we get

into the Social Media stuff and how people can can grow a page from zero themselves to hundreds of thousands of followers um like you've done I'm curious what was that earlier on you said you were lost what was that first moment in Chapter 2 when you felt found where you felt like the the momentum had switched like you was gently just starting to go in your direction like what was that First moment in your mind I got to tell you man I love this quote forget who said it or maybe it's just like a popular

uh adage but be ego always comes before the fall and I remember I would always craft these identities for myself identity is a very dangerous thing to play with um and so my first identity was just like there's a loser bum blah blah blah and then the second one was was like oh now I'm like a tech guy and I have money and I'm like a cool guy and That was like the second identity that that I found for myself that was very dangerous because now I have to maintain that right now there's like this

Mirage that I have to maintain that's just like a dangerous path to go down and I think almost a losing formula nine times out of 10 right and so um I got to say man I got to attribute a lot of this to my now wife when I met my wife at the time 2016 2017 and I just gotten out of like two really turbulent Like bad relationships right um no no point of going deep into those on on this pod but like meeting my wife was such a profound experience man she really re almost

like re she I mean she reshaped me she like um helped me think about the world differently she brought like a lot of faith into my life which was always I was was always absent sort of in my life even though I grew up like my mom was Catholic all that um it it's just been so beautiful like getting to Know her and like becoming her husband and now having a daughter which is like my entire neurochemistry has been like reshift and rebalanced it's been really awesome but I do have to attribute it a lot

to her and it was like the first time kind of like I found home in my life if that makes sense it was just like very comfortably and it was like these conversations and and and the way that we see the world and speak about things that allowed me to like look into Myself in a way that I never had um but it was definitely a lot her a lot the move to LA being around like this new community of like Creative Energy it was a lot going on it was like a cocktail of so

many different ingredients coming together in that time and a lot of that was deliberate like I completely changed my environment I changed every I almost like started from scratch um and that was a really profound time man um and I and I owe it All to that so a couple things that people can take from that if you're kind of sometimes it's all about just leaving physically the location that you're in um I'm not just coming from a place for experience all my closest friends and family it's like we all agree the most profound change

of our of our life came from when we just got up and left to a completely new location with completely new goals and almost like this reinvention period um so again another Another word vomit uh uh a lot of words to just say I I changed physically mentally and I just sort of restarted reinvented myself yeah reinvention period I love that you know what can you take us deep into that um that experience with meeting with meeting your wife I'm I'm curious like like where were you at what was the location what was the time

what was the setting of like that first that moment where you felt like this is special like This is something that I haven't experienced before yeah man um first of all no shame in my game I slid into the DM that's how I met my wife I I I should probably just lie and tell a more romantic story um but um yeah man to be honest when I when I first met she looked like the very typical like La girl we were both living in West Hollywood and I was like all she's just probably trouble

but whatever um but then like I just fell in Love with her soul and the way that she thought man and I think the way that she reminded me of home was she had the East Coast route she's from Charlotte where we live now hence the move back to Charlotte um we had a lot of the same sort of ideology and philosophy and like similar worldviews and i' never I I just never had conversations like that with a woman before you know and and and not a reflection on that's a reflection on me cuz I

was just so shallow and so Whatever at um when I was younger and now I'm finding like wow this is this is very fulfilling and very different and very interesting um and it and it molded me into the person I am today I'm completely different than I was eight years ago bro completely different and a lot of that has to do with her but I think I think was just it was just something I never experienced before never realized existed until I met her and that was really beautiful to me so You know that's actually

kind of like a I think that's a crazy experience for uh it's almost like a profound experience for men because a lot of the times with women especially in the initial stages and I've definitely gone through this like if we're being honest like we're motivated by sex usually in the beginning 100% it's very rare that you'd be like a conversation that we had hist of the world bro like the most formative Wars on this planet were Started because of a woman whether it be a king or conqueror jealous or Envy or whatever it may be

trying to win their love but we can yeah that's a whole another rabbit hole man 100% agree do you even remember like do you even remember the first conversation not the first one but the first one where you were like this is just different yeah it was at Otis and Penelope in in West Hollywood which was which was our first date um that restaurant is since closed Man which sucks it was so good but Otis in Penelope and I just remember you know being a couple old fashions in and um just talking about things that

I never thought I'd talk about to especially on the first date um a lot of it was like ideology based right and I and I'd never spoken about my worldview and ideology and like how I view things almost with anybody to that point at the time let alone like a woman I was interested in dating So to a lot of people listening it's like that's all I talk about or whatever but for me it was very vapid and very shallow and you know uh before that and so that was transformative did you know then that

would be your wife almost bro yeah I really I really kind of do I really kind of do and throughout my life um especially just recently like I know now like I want that and I'm going to get it not not like a that that sound a little bit off but it's like yes like The feeling almost like the inition is very important to me now that that initial Instinct um but yeah I kind of knew man and she kind of knew as well which was interesting it was sort of like a Love at First

maybe not sight cuz I'm sure she saw me she was like but a love at first conversation yeah yeah you know it's um I think the best things it's like we're pulled we're pulled towards it like you can't even maybe it was Zach That said this as well Zach POG or maybe I just had the thought it's like the best things you can't even explain it like it's hard to even give a logical like if you going to explain it to someone you can't even give a logical explanation you just felt it just like your

I call it like gut instinct for me like it's just something in it was you were pulled towards it you were drawn in um well that's what I love you know like the uh alt tours you know like the great Film director directors of our time I come from a world of software and product so I built software for 10 years so it was all data driven like there was never any and and now in content is very much like a gut instinct sort of like these a tours where it's like how they feel about

something there's no data there's no analytics that come into play um but from the world I came from everything was software okay we had 72 Taps on this Button versus this button so that means we got to implement this or what you know like software is like purely analytical and now I'm in this world where like I don't even know what I consider myself now like the Creator content maker filmmaker whatever it might be and now it's pure Instinct and that's been really beautiful and so I agree with you and I also want to shout

out Zack again because I've lived so many of his quotes without like he has a Way to articulate things that I've felt um and so that's definitely one of them man like I I completely agree with that yeah no it's so good and and Zach is so good at it um okay I want to get deeper into the content creation oh yeah and you know what's funny we were I texted you last night I was like I saw something on YouTube um where I think it was on the thumbnail of a video and it said

um you would gotten 400,000 followers in 100 days and I remember I Instantly I pick up my iPhone I like open the messages I text you I'm like is this true and you're like yeah I got 400,000 followers across platforms in Tik Tok and Instagram correct and so there was something that you had said online you you go I've grown over 10 pages to ACC cumulative 10 million plus followers on Instagram most recently I grew my personal page by over 400,000 followers in the last 18 months so that's just in Hundreds of millions of views

it's year two of being a full-time Creator and I'm on track to pull in over half a million dollars this year through brand deals products and speaking engagements and so you go on to kind of list uh some of the ways that people can start growing a following on Instagram but but here's where I want to begin I think even in your content you kind of speak about it of being like you've been doing this for two years And so the for the person that's right at the beginning maybe they they haven't even posted a

video they do not think about themselves as a content creator like even recreationally they're not doing Tik Tok dances with their friends like they do not think about themselves as a content creator if you almost going to give them a master class what would you say is step one yeah so it's funny so I've been Doing this now a little under two years but for my personal as a personal sort of personality and it's a little misleading cuz I've kind of been doing it for over a decade now cuz I was the guy you know

like for all my apps and businesses and Brands prior I would build these pages and that was our predominantly the our customer acquisition strategy and it came from like the early Arbitrage days and that's when I really started realizing the Power of content so in the last two years it's really just been me as a personality and as you know as a I hate kind of hate the term but it's building my personal brand I wish my biggest regret now I wish I started that 15 years ago cuz it's a 100 times more impactful than

any faceless any media um you know sort of brand pages that kind of thing so right now I would actually give like pretty tactical advice to somebody con considering starting or Wanting to build a personal brand some sort of presence online which I completely I cannot recommend this enough I think it's the golden age to do this the amount of opportunity that's brought to me like it's endless like my email inbound is it just never ends like whether it be uh brand part partnership speaking opportunities uh co- people looking for a co-founder like it just

goes on and on and on and just having that built-in Audience is great because now we're building products like we have a new like I have I still have products available even though I sold my last company I still have a few apps like tone Studio that I do with a couple uh Jack Morris and Gypsy L shout out to you guys two of Instagram's biggest influencers I have site and I have this new one coming out called pulse the great thing about having an audience is I already have like a consumer base There's no

marketing that needs to be done I'll just make a video about it put it on my story send a tweet send it to my email newsletter whatever and all of a sudden I have 500 customers and I can learn from them and take their feedback and tweak it and learn and grow and keep shipping and like it just makes life a lot easier um so if you wanted to grow an audience the first thing I would do is is I should have thought this a little Bit because it's a lot of First Steps the first

thing I would do is figure out what your objective is and I think you got to be honest with yourself I don't think there's a wrong answer I just think it needs to be the right answer for you so do you have a SAS uh or do you have a product do you have you have just something to sell and you want to build an audience to sell this product or service to those people um maybe it's you just want to learn how to you know How to develop a presence in front of the camera

learn how to use a camera and editing software maybe it's just pure learning you just you just want to see how far you can take it um maybe it's a creative itch that you want to scratch and you want to tell stories and and that's I think every human has a inherent desire to express oneself and it's like that's the medium that you're choosing to express on like whatever the reason is just be honest to yourself About that cuz you sort of have to have a North star if you just start making content aimlessly there's

it's going to set you back a few years um once you've determined that you got to really figure out like where you're interest lie because I see a lot of people oh that just popping that trend's popping I'm going to make content about that and all of a sudden you're a prisoner either to that Trend or you're going to burn out because you're doing something that you Don't really enjoy in the first place and it's a long and brutal game y'all unless you're like a diamond in the rough you're going to be [ __ ]

at first and it's going to take you a long time so you have to be equipped with that knowledge this is a one two five year process I'm just going to try to get a little bit better over time over a long period of time and then what I think again maybe it's audio maybe it's written maybe it's podcast maybe it's Visual whatever it may be I'm going to recommend to to do short form video at first so you're somebody with with no skills no knowledge you just want to get into content take on short

form video first and you need if you have an iPhone you got all the equipment you need like there there's no excuse really the reason why I'm going to choose short form is because every platform right now is prioritizing it in their Discovery engines so um Instagram Facebook Snapchat Reddit Tik Tok Twitter LinkedIn those seven platforms I would say probably the seven big ones even threads now to an extent they're all prioritizing short form video content because that's where the demand is so they need to satiate that Demand with a never-ending supply of short form

video and the discovery algorithms are weighted heavier now towards short form video I think on all these platforms than in any other time in history so What you can do is you can take the same piece of short form and rep and I forgot about YouTube shorts so the same piece of shortform and you can repurpose it across nine different platforms now when you get a little bit more advanced the repurposing requires some different things maybe it's length maybe it's hooks maybe it's the way you package it maybe it's captions cover store whatever it may

be but at the beginning you can just re copy and paste To nine different platforms just as is with the same caption the same everything and eventually maybe 50 videos 100 200 whatever it may be you're going to start finding some traction and it's going to differ across different platforms but that'll allow you to choose which platform is kind of like your HQ if your content is more suited for YouTube shorts the algorithm is going to let you know all of a sudden you have you know 926 subscribers on YouTube okay I'm going to go

all in on this so that that's what I'm going to recommend first short form video around a topic that you're interested in and beyond that then you got to look for the format eventually you want to crack a unique format because I always say the format is the formula and so like what sets creators apart is having that unique format you know obviously unique to them um if if you're going to go out and copy somebody that works at the Beginning but eventually you're always going to be number two to that person you know like

I met Daniel Mac um this last week in San Francisco the uh what do you do for a living guy if you're going to go out and do Street interiew what do you do for a living you're always going to be number two to Daniel Mack does you know so you always got to come up with your own unique formula um what I recommend I think a lot of like these so-called gurus and and stuff Probably wouldn't recommend this but I would recommend figure out what you're interested in go look at the archetype like maybe

five to 10 creators that inspire you we were talking about people that inspired us early and go copy exactly what they do like literally that may be controversial go copy them because what that's going to do first of all they've proven that that form uh format formula strategy works so it'll probably start Like you know building your audience little by little but you're also going to learn just by copying you're going to learn how to edit you're going to learn how to tell a story you're going to learn how to uh you know have a

presence on camera etc etc etc and once you start growing a little bit then you're equipped with like sort of the skills and abilities to kind of start crafting like think about like your early content as like wet clay and As you improve you you're like crafting it a little bit right and then all of a sudden you realize oh [ __ ] I I just like developed kind of like a signature thing I'm putting the caption here I'm telling the story this way I'm using this particular inflection on the word that's kind of unique

to me I'm going to keep leaning into that and over time little by little you're actually developing your own identity and like you become your own person your own Creator and you Start learning the game what works how to resonate with an audience how to communicate how to build like so many things and like and so before I get like too deep into it it's like just starting really it's that simple like that's you want to make content you just start and you're going to suck and but little by little you're going to learn and

you're going to grow um and if you maybe it'll be helpful if you have like more specific Questions but that's sort of like the overarching short form copy something that works little by little grow learn over time and after a long period of time you're going to look back two years later you're going to say holy [ __ ] I've I've come such a long way and like I'm My Own sort of like Creator now and I have this audience that looks up to me for me and like this is great I'm going to keep

compounding on this and you'll be amazed at how fast it can happen once You finally overcome the mental hurdles and just start yeah you know what let let's get more specific and I want to I want to go back and forth with you on this I think this is going to be good for people is um and I'm glad that you started with like what's your objective because really a lot of what you explained in that early phase I actually think it's really like mindset it's like what's your mindset going into this and you let

me know if you've heard this on Your side but I know for people when they speak with me uh I I went a completely other direction right like I think that objectively what you're saying is correct short form is the best way to start and go about it I just knew that I knew that long form podcast conversation you know you know and that's beautiful yeah yeah um but something I hear a lot is I'll speak with people and they want to do short form and maybe they even have an idea of What the content

will be about but there is no video released I find this to be the most frustrating conversation I have like there's they just don't they just don't publish it's like the the idea the idea is just sitting with them yeah and I I I guess it it must it's like almost a form of procrastination um but they they have this idea maybe they even have channels that they like and there's like they just don't want to publish whether it's And I don't know because this is what I had in the beginning I was terrified of

what other people were going to think I was just going to say that I think that's 95% of the time that's the case that is the ultimate mental hurdle that people need to jump over and it's so difficult and I get it and I can relate and everybody has it at the beginning you're terrified of what you're scared of failing and what fail this the fear of failure what it really is is the fear Of what other people of of what you suspect other people may be thinking about you if you're perceived as failing if

that makes sense right and so it's this whole thing because it's so backwards cuz then you you know you grow up a little bit and you experience life and you realize the only true failure is never even trying never even starting and so you're scared of failure because of what other people may think and then as we talked about earlier you realize Nobody's actually thinking about you nor do they give a [ __ ] it's like it's a spotlight effect you're the only one thinking about it and then 3 4 years go by and you

never give it a shot because of what other people may think and you realize wait a second the only true failure is never starting so I failed like you're you're going into the same trap you're trying to avoid it's such a it's such an interesting thing but it's hard to reconcile man and I get why it's So tough to to jump over that hurdle but 95 probably even 99 honestly perc of the time people don't start because they're scared of how they may be perceived if it doesn't go to plan or if they're shitty at

the beginning and it's like dude you're going to be [ __ ] at the beginning you know you know what's funny I remember one Creator put it like this and it was funny to me uh maybe because I was actually experiencing at the time in the beginning when you're like kind Of [ __ ] and no one watches the content it doesn't even matter if you fail like no one watched it like there's no views no one saw it 100% man and another good framework is like if there is somebody out there in their friend

group to oh my god did you see what Kevin he's trying that's a reflection on them and not you that's like literally a manifestation of insecurity if somebody's hating on somebody else trying something they may as well put a sign that says insecure on Their forehead 100 times out of 100 that's a man estation of insecurity or fear or reflection of of their own self and like yeah man it it's it here's another helpful framework go to any of your favorite creators scroll all the way back to the beginning and look at their initial content

and that's going to make you feel a lot better because everybody's going to start the same way you do complete garbage not that's a strong word no idea what they're doing Like it's it just it always starts like that man it's always rough at the beginning no matter who you are and um so the the longer you wait to get started the more of a disservice you're doing to yourself you know you know what the crazy thing is the people that are the best at this it's almost it's like this weird sadistic thing I feel

like when I see them they almost get excited in the failure like it's bombing like objectively B but they like they love it Cuz I guess cuz you've just seen the arc like you see where it goes from here you know what I have an interesting thought experiment which is let's say I take your Instagram your personal Instagram right now which I think I think it's like 465,000 followers around that number say that and God forbid touchwood say that I take it say that I take it all the way down to zero right now this

second 4:38 in the Afternoon but you have all of the knowledge the skills everything yeah and I'm not saying that you're just going to recreate exactly the same page but maybe you're going to start something new what is it what what are you doing in almost like those first I don't know 30 days like your your those first 10 videos that go out like just give me what is your what is your mindset what are you looking for when are you doubling down like almost lay out to me That first initial period those first 10

videos that first 30 days what are you doing yeah I mean for me it's going to be a lot different than most people just cuz I know now like I I I've equipped with a lot of these skills and understanding of how the algorithm works and what audience is looking forward so I'm just going to my page went to zero I'll just start a new one and do the exact same stuff that I've been doing and it's still going to work um now like More general what I'm doing at the beginning because I have started

like maybe 15 pages maybe 20 but like I said eight of them were like business pages so there were like app pages a little bit different it's always the same at the beginning I am experimenting my ass off I am trying everything I am the same exact piece of cont content I'm repurposing in eight different ways to present it so it's like eight different formats okay one may be a story one may Be a carousel post with a title introductory one may be a carousel post with like a video context introduction and then we go

into titles and then we go into like but I'm trying everything and then I'm figuring out what the audience what want what resonates what's working and then I just triple tunnel vision into that one thing and then I go all out but I never really get married to a format you always want to experiment over time as a Creator cuz Like the the the very moment you stop exper experimenting in maredo format that's the very like that's the moment your your sort of decline starts happening because these algorithms change over time what the audience wants

changes over time when people see something for the fifth time it's way less interesting than the first time so you always got to be you know kind of like when you're you're trying to get big you want to be shocking the muscles The very same thing with content you want to be shocking your feed and so at the beginning of any page or any brand or whatever if I'm going to start fresh for myself I am experimenting and that's actually the best time to do it cuz you don't of an audience that followed you for

a specific thing you know you just have like a spattering of like random people who may have like come across you what that's the best time to experiment and there's no better time than today Because all these algorithms are so tuned heavy to the Discovery right and so like dude 2018 2019 I've grown Instagram pages in every era that was like an impossible era because there was no Discovery mechanism it was like if if you didn't have another page or another or like it was basically pay to play it was like the only way to

grow was to pay through like ads or sponsored post shout outs that kind of thing now it's easier than ever man like right now Everything's tuned to Discovery the tiktock ification of the internet is like fully taken hold and it's here um and so experiment at the beginning with a lot of different formats and ways to to tell a story and that's what I'm doing every time you know let me let me come in so one of the things that you mentioned in the beginning is that almost your advice to someone starting out is that

you would actually almost copy or replicate your faor creators so Maybe we can just kind of piece the we can put the pieces which is like so say I'm trying to think of someone say even I see one of your videos and I see the the core like there's always an idea I think every Creator thinks like this or a successful Creator there's like an idea to a video which is like the starting point right that's like the foundation like what's the topic yeah um so you would maybe even go to someone's page see like

a a viral video that's the IDE a and then when you say you're taking it like eight different ways so the same idea you're doing Carousel IG real tweet like is that kind of how you're thinking about it at the beginning yeah like once you a little more set you don't want to like overflow yeah um no I mean 100% And and on the copying front like I would even say I mean there's two things I think anybody can especially if you're new and you're trying to figure out what to do I think There's two

pieces of advice that I may give that I think anybody can take one is like become a newscaster it's very easy format and and the reason why I say that is if you look at the trends if you look at the graphs every year there's like Leaps and Bounds like almost like an exponential graph now where more and more people are getting their news synthesized through their favorite creators on social media platforms generally short form a lot of long form As well um and so if you want to build if you want to become a

thought leader in your specific set of interests uh experiences whatever it may be start by explaining to people what's going on so if you're and and and like I'll give a practical example if you're in Fitness say you're a fitness coach you it's going to be hard to stand out if you're just doing the same thing as everybody else but why not jump on gp1s OIC stuff like that that's super hot there's a lot Of there's a lot of search volume for that why not satiate it so go out there and start making content talking

about hey this is what's going on now with OIC and FDA regulation these are some other new things going on this is why it's good for you this is why it could be bad for you that kind of stuff and just start educating your audience that's the easiest way to grow and build Affinity because it's just you're you're you're you're offering supply to the search Volume demand um and so the way that I did it when I grew again because I sort of knew the game and I understood and I knew it was going to

work just because I've been 10 years in the game I was like okay well I'm interested in Tech where in Tech is a search volume right now ai it's a new paradigm huge Trend let me go all in on this I'm going to be one of the first to really educate a mainstream audience on what's going on what they need to pay attention to so That's how I got my start and that's why those 400,000 followers in like 100 days that was when like AI search volume was just through the roof and I was one

of the only people one of the only voices and personalities there providing um you know supply for that volume and you can replicate that at any given time so if whatever you're interested if you're interested in in plants and botne go look at what people are searching for go go look at what the Trends are go look at what and then educate your audience on on what that may be and it's going to that's one of the fastest and easiest ways to grow I still believe that niching down um is the best way to grow

I think uh a lot of people disagree with this but I think you want to Niche down as much as possible in order to grow and from there then you can start branching out and really you know like your brand starts it goes into a lot of different places But newscasting educated your audience on what's going on on a specific Trend and uh Niche down as much as possible and that will be your engine to growth and then from there you can start doing a bunch of other different things yeah you know what just just

to add also to your point CU I think um I think the advice you give is so good but I think one of the questions that people have is like how do I know Trends or how do I even find this thing so two things come To mind for me one I think it's it's called Google Trends right what is the there's a Google thing where you can literally search words and it'll show you like search volume um Google Trends yeah Google Trends and and then the second thing is I think one this is always

what I said I said you should always be on the I went for the platform where I was a consumer I listened to a bunch of podcasts and then I did it and so like If you're someone that's always on Instagram you'll just have a natural awareness of what like you're always seeing the same real in this Niche or you're always like if you're in the fitness thing maybe you're always seeing the oen pick and it's like oh yeah this is trending like it's it's seamless it's effortless for you to figure out what's trending because

you're the consumer um I mean two two pieces are there one like I didn't come on your Show to plug anything but we're literally building a product to to solve that it's called pulse. press and like when I cuz one of the reasons I got successful on social media is I was always one of the first to break a story if you go look if there's something really hot that just happened in AI Twitter is like where it's going to be at first cuz it's written word but when it comes to I was always one

of the first guys and people are like how' you Do this well I would have 100 different tabs open always 25 different subreddits organized by new organized by Rising RSS feeds media Publications um tweet no alerts for a lot of Twitter accounts and so like we're building a product that consolidates all this but to your point it's like yes Google Trends is also really helpful but to your main point the thing that I love which is always harder to put into practice is make the kind of content you wish existed and if You're a consumer

of these platforms and and you know your algorithm is going to be tuned to you it's like what do you wish you could watch or like what do you want more of and like just make that and nine times out of 10 that's a lot harder to answer you know it's a lot harder in theory than it is in practice but like you that was such good advice that you just gave man it's like you already know as an as an audience member what you want and so as a Creator provide that Yeah you know

what I think one of the things um I found that creators I remember I spoke about this with uh our mutual friend Kane Callaway when he came on the show and see him tomorrow oh nice nice nice I love Kane he's great um but he was kind of breaking down like his almost like storytelling framework like the framework that he uses in his content and so I'm curious let's say that someone's listening and similar to What you described they've actually taken your advice so they're like okay I'm going to do the newscaster thing next 30

days of real every day some new story I'm curious what have you found because it's not just that you're finding a story then you're getting on camera turning it on and just going there's some sort of like thing framework way of speaking way of like organizing your points that you found generates the best results what is that Yeah that's a good question that would be like step two like step one all right let's go to the basic step two now you know when it comes to content it's really when it comes to any story it's

really setup conflict resolution you can kind of borrow that and apply it to content and when it comes to content it sort of evolves where it's like the first thing you want to do to be successful is figure out how to capture attention and that comes in in the form Of visual or ver verbal hook something that stops the scroll then you got to maintain that attention the way you do that is through storytelling and then just to skip ahead and then it'll come back then you have to reward that attention and that's probably the

most important part CU somebody's going to give you 45 seconds of time I'm just talking about short form here long form completely different ball game um if you're just going to waste their time And not reward that attention at the end if they're not going to learn something if they're not going to be Spire inspired educated entertained that's a bad look because they're not going to send it to anybody they're not going to like it they're not going to comment they're not going to save there's no single signals that makes the algorithm happy and so

you're just going to you know that that piece of content is going to wither away and so when it comes to Storytelling and one of the things that cway does really well one of the and we always talk about this it's like you have to introduce the conflict as soon as possible and that's what's going to it's that's what's going to make people continue watching and so if you're like okay um Callum just said this and then this happened and then his guest responded with this and then Callum responded with this and then like that

there's no story there so you got to Like you got to have like these two separate through lines that interweave in and out of each other through the story and so like Callaway likes to say and and I like how he uh describes this he says it's the dance between the context and the conflict so sometimes when I'm creating like a script and it may be just so simple it's like a lot of times the the the amazing new tool just speaks for itself and people are watching to see what the tool does like The

the the um the quicker you bring in that conflict that interweaves with the context of the story the better so as an example it's like open AI just launched GPT 40 and GPT 40 does this and also it does this and also they launch this new feature that's not very interesting but it's like open AI just launched GPT 40 but apple is furious all of a sudden oh [ __ ] okay there's a story there's some conflict now why is Apple Furious Where are you going to go with the story and then you got to

give them the payoff which is you know some sort of substance no no hype no sensationalism at the beginning and so in N9 out of 10 maybe 99 out of 100 pieces of content that I make or Callaway or anybody else who's who's kind of in this sphere you're going to realize that some sort of conflict is introduced very very early that will keep you watching that peque your curiosity and that Curiosity Loop Is everything if you don't make somebody curious they're not going to continue to watch and they're not going to give you any

of the signals that that makes the algorithm happy and so curiosity Loop interweaving of the context and the conflict and then some sort of payoff at the end where the where the audience member says damn I feel educated I'm happy I know this or that was entertaining as [ __ ] I laughed I cried there's got to be some sort of payoff And that's like the perfect short and it'll reward you with the send which is the most important sends engagement so if they're share with their friends it's great news if they save it it's

amazing obviously if they comment and like those are a little bit less important but that's really important and then you get the uh uh average view duration which is also huge and so like that's the cocktail that's the formula and usually storytelling is what's going to get you To that place and if you do it in bulk every day scale it up compound over time it's going to work yeah you know the Practical example you gave is so good and it's like just hearing it I you know what's funny actually living in New York is

there's a lot of characters in New York that are just naturally great at this day oh yeah you'll be on the bus sometimes on the subway and someone's like on the phone talking to their thing then she did this and it's like the as Soon as you introduce that conflict it's almost like we're hardwired as humans just to like listen a bit deeper what happened like it's um it's storytelling oneone and I think there's a there's a clear shift from being a reporter someone who's just telling the news you're just covering what happened to mixing

in those storytelling elements and that's when you're going to start to have videos that go absolutely insane and that's important cuz there's a Different thing so like when Apple has a or meta or Google whoever it is they have like a conference or uh they introduce something whatever like one of my strengths is speed so after every Apple presentation whether it be WWDC whatever I'm always going to be the first one out and it's going to be quality and people are going to say how'd you do this in 20 minutes that's just like muscle memory

I'm programmed that way and so I will um hijack the Novelty I'm the first one out so that video is going to do numbers like the last apple video I think did 8 million on Instagram like 2 million on Tik Tok because I was the first so that always works but if you can't be the first what's going to help you stand out you know six hours later nobody cares when they've seen it already three times so then you got to come in with a unique angle and um and that's when the storytelling chops come

in so I have Like two buckets it's like one I'm just going to be the first I'm going to be faster than everybody and it's going to be quality and it's going to go crazy but if I can't be the first okay how do I what like what direction do I come in from Apple just launched the iPhone 16 that's not that interesting eight hours later but Apple launched the iPhone 16 was something that we haven't seen on any other iPhone that I think might just change audio production forever okay That's a unique angle people

are going to continue to listen so um yeah a lot of uh Dynamics to this game especially in short form like long form you give people a little bit more of a chance to breathe and digest which is awesome um but short form there's a real art and science behind it that you have to lean into you know it's kind of like you got to play the game yeah I like I like the way that you said that Kane explains it like that dance I almost feel like after This conversation um I'm reading a book

on on storytelling at the moment I've read multiple books on storytelling um I'm reading the story selling method right now and it's like that I almost I want to study that conflict the way that because some people are so expert at introducing that conflict and it's so subtle but as soon as someone has that feeling of they just want to lean in they just have to hear Especially in short form you got them job done that's it and and it and it it appears in some of the places you least expected like some of the

comedians on Instagram Adam W he's he's [ __ ] to me he's brilliant Adam W Adam W he's like 10 million in he's like one of the biggest I think probably personality on Instagram and he's like he's just doing comedy skits then when you really study it you realize like all the all the like all these story beats almost that are Happening underneath it it's like it's very shrewd man it's brilliant so to your point what we were talking about earlier the greats make everything look easy and storytelling is no different and so sometimes you

listen to Somebody ramble for 6 minutes and like it just feels like time went by so quick yo how do they do that and then you go back and study and it's like it's very deliberate and it's not just sometimes words sometimes it's inflection some it's Casey and niad is like a god at this obviously you know a 15-minute video feels like 2 minutes you're like what what just happened um and so I'm a student of all this and and um I I I love the art and the science behind content you know I do

so and you know what one of the I think one of the biggest misconceptions when you talk about storytelling people think that like the events that you're reporting or like what you're saying it has to be Phenomenal things it was a car crashed and the car exploded and he flew out like the best storytellers a lot of the times the stories they're telling are like the events are mundane yeah like it's kind of like boring like the events are boring but they they're so good at the art this dance of Storytelling that it's captivating um

one of the things you you mentioned cuz not only are you prolific in making content the production the Storytelling the way everything is done is so expert as well and obviously you're someone that's deeply into the AI scene what are some of like the tools like how does AI come into your process yeah it's funny because there's no um I would say on the like captioning and coming up with like that makes it to my my workflow all the time when it comes to like content when it comes to the visuals there's no like it

it it's Just it's it's dependent on the piece of content like there's no workflow that I'm always copying pasting or adopting there's no like it it all depends so as an example when it came to the one speaking to my younger self I had to Dage myself that was done through AI right and so like in that specific piece of content okay I'm going to use AI as daging what was the AI like what um I'd have to find it was like this pretty expensive uh After Effects um I'd have to get back to you

on that but it was like an After Effects plugin yeah which is pretty good too now degraded the quality a little bit right it it it couldn't do it at that uh cuz I had like the 4K resolution so then another AI tool that I brought in was called topaz uh gigapixel I think is a photo product but topaz video which again it cost like 300 bucks but I just bought it because I'm like I'll use this lot in the future I was able to upscale The video and even if you want you can um

say your video was shot at 24 FPS and you want to bring it up to 60 you can actually like use AI to film some of those frames in it's really it's really impressive piece of software I like everything that topaz does so I re-ups scal that video with AI as well so deaged it re-ups sccal it with AI that video that was like the workflow then in a lot of videos I'm actually using generative fill to so I shoot for a lot Of my videos I actually shoot landscape even though it's vertical and the

reason why is because I like to do the split screen so landscape allows me to do that with some Breathing Room it just looks a little more aesthetic and a little bit nicer vers is like the stretched if I would shoot vertical I'd have to like kind of stretch it up be really close with the camera and I just have like I'm a sucker for like a specific look but because I shoot um landscape sometimes I Need to extend the scene a little bit and I'll use generative fill to extend the scene so it looks

really nice and seamless so that's another example what is generative f um so generative fill I use it I use it on Photoshop it's powered by their uh model which is called Firefly so basically I'm sure you've seen it on reals like if I if I took a picture of this room and I wanted to add another plant above you or like some hanging plants I would just lasso It and then I would prompt it hanging green plants um or if I wanted to put like a lamp next to you here I could just lassle

that in so when you're looking at it on a video plate if there's certain scenes in that video where nothing is moving then it's easy to bring in because then you could just mask it and so like sometimes I'll dress up the scene or extend the scene and it's really damn good bro because it keeps like it it takes the visual and And it may be the colors it may be the contrast it may be the Hue however that visual looks and it'll keep it consistent so it looks again we were talking about indistinguishable AI

it's like 100% indistinguishable from reality you don't know if that's actually there or not so if you ever want to dress up the scene extend the scene fill in the scene use Jer to fill and I use that a lot um what I don't do and where I think a lot of artists hate AI is because it's Like oh just one click and it it takes no talent but I do think like the market will eventually decide and I do think the markets going to reject if he could even tell at that point 100% AI

generated content in media so I think of AI as a tool that helps me achieve the final visual that I'm after not as a tool that replace the entire creative process um the very same as VFX programs you know or even Photoshop when Photoshop came out everybody hated it oh This is not real this isn't real art this is drawn by the computer um so I always think of these things as as creative tools that fit naturally into the creative process um so I dude I use Ai and so many ways it just all depends

on on the video on on the project yeah you know what if we go if we go back to that person that's just uh starting out and maybe they've even done their first 10 videos they've got a bit of traction and like they're starting to see a Format that's working they want to go deeper with it and they also kind of in a way they want to like they want to be more productive like they want to get more from their time and they want to start edding AI let's say they got a hundred bucks

is there like is there a tool that you would recom mend they go and almost like look out for or start to like think about implementing in their system which you could see would just even if it's Just in the captions or any like right right something that would it would just be like a huge value ad yeah it's interesting because a lot of these tools there's a lot of conversation around the idea that the incumbents are all going to win so as an example you could go out and pay $20 for Chad gbt or

Claud or any of these other llms but it's free AI now right and so it's like um Adobe is another good example they came out with firefly that generative fills like you Used maybe you go out and pay $20 for run Runway um text to video or image to video but now that's probably just going to come to Adobe Premiere like for free as part of the um subscription you already PID for But to answer your question I think it really varies I think there are some tools like so for example Runway right now when

it comes to text to video or image to video is really unique so you can I could feed it a video of you and then animate it into Whatever I want so for a lot of content especially if you're doing like Media stuff like as an example I run this page called metaverse the second e of three sometimes I'll use Runway I use like mid journey to Runway to animate a particular visual that I'm after to give a specific feeling for that piece of content content where stock photo is just not going to cut it

I don't want to go to unsplash and just get the same photo as everybody else I want something Very specific to my vision and I may use a mid journey to Runway that that's sort of like my workflow there um but I think it would depend Creator to Creator what they're trying to achieve um you know what kind of content what what the end goal is I think it's very hard to give sort of a blanket statement because there like for podcasters I may recommend um like Opus clip as one I personally wouldn't recommend it

because I think it like the human touch like if You're trying to be an a-level player you know if you're trying to be Callum Johnson you don't want AI to just spit you out 20 short form clips from from a long form and then you go post it I think it's still kind of like there's like some trust loss like it it's just not going to be the highest quality but like that's an example of what you could use as a podcaster Opus clip you feed it the long form pod and then it's going to

give you 25 short form Clips already Edited with the captions and everything that they that their algorithms think will perform well on social and then you have 25 Clips to post throughout the week and you didn't do any extra work that's an example of how you could use AI in uh in your workflow as a podcaster um you know but depends on on who you are what you're trying to do that give million different it's a good point that you make you know what here's where I here's where I want to go to to End

we we spoke earlier about 400,000 followers in a 100 days um I remember we actually had we had someone come on the show a few um a few weeks ago he was a dating coach I think he was actually using those meta Rayman met yeah I got him in the bag I love him yeah and he got like he had some video um that he was doing on Instagram some reals and I think he got like 600,000 followers in like a month something Insane but the the numbers that you described are crazy what is even

like what stage are you at like where is even your head at as your following is taking off to that degree and then like even your mindset are you like I just going to keep doing this same thing or is it just is almost like a surprise to you the next one that you post goes viral again like what is just that whole experience to you yeah I think I mean there there's one thing That you start realizing there's like several different phases of every Creator's sort of come up and one of the phases is

once you start getting these numbers you realize how vapid and pointless and empty they are views don't mean anything followers don't mean anything especially in a world that's been tick tocki where but like literally on Tik Tok follow doesn't matter cuz nobody's on their follow everybody's on their for you page so it's like every Video has to re reperform against the algorithm on Instagram is a lot more important which I respect about Instagram it's more of like that the community component is there but not every view is made the same you'll have uh Tik tokers

with 10 million followers who are going to make less money than an educational YouTuber with 10,000 subscribers right it's like all of the stuff is empty if there's no like objective or business behind it so what I realized for me what actually is uh what has actually been most impactful for me is not the amount of views or followers or whatever I get it's the quality of the view and the follower it's like my following you there's like Fortune 500 CEOs they're CMOS of some of the biggest companies in the world they're the developers and

entrepreneurs and founders of a lot of these like AI tools and companies and uh decision makers of some of these big and that's Actually what's helped me the most and so how I've done that is that comes through quality that comes through like that thought leadership that comes through me spending an extra 3 hours on the sound design even everybody's even though people are going to be listening it with like one bar of volume like half brain dead on their bed like with one eye open um but like that extra love that I put into

my content I think that compounds over time and I've been able To attract like a quality of audience so I would rather I would rather have a 100 views from 100 decision makers people with influential and economic influence versus a million views of like 14-year-old kids and the Philippines no offense still like the Philippines but you know what I'm I'm saying yeah it's like there's a an LTV like coming from the software world like a lifetime value to a specific follower and not every view is is built the same um and I could Go on

forever with different examples of this over this last weekend at meta connect I saw this where I don't want to name names but like I was around creators who've got the most views in the world every video is a 30 40 $50 million or 50 million view Banger and nobody knew who they were because this is just like feeding the dopamine brain like the the brain rot versus I was also with an educational YouTuber and she was a celebrity straight up everybody oh my God you change my life I listen to you all the time

I'm listening to you hours a day you're going to get so much love more love from a two-hour podcast and so much more Affinity than a 30 second dancing video where you're just hijacking the latest Trend right and so that's also especially new creators I'm like do not focus on the views because it doesn't tell the whole story it's the quality it's the affinity and most importantly the trust that you build With the audience trust is everything especially moving to the AI world that is the most valuable commodity and something that you can never break

because it takes years if not decades to build that trust and it can just be destroyed and with one wrong move um and so maybe if you want to end there I I want to implore people to not you can have 10 million followers on Tik Tok with 5 million views per video hijacking the latest Trend and you know hitting Your friend with a water balloon and just some brain rot [ __ ] where the value is is in that is in that quality that thought leadership really connecting with your audience on an emotional level

um and um it's hard to measure that that's the problem there's no way to measure Affinity what you speak to is almost like the evolution of a Creator CU I think for a lot of us um and I definitely experienced this I think I'm actually kind of coming out of this Phase now you definitely when you're initially getting into it especially if it's like your your face on it like it's like a personal thing you definitely have that stage and that phase where you're so enamored with the views and you're so en the followers are

going up and everything it's like it's dopamine it's like validation it's like oh they they like me 100% is is the feeling and then I think you start to and and a lot of the times it's when you start to have Um also you start thinking about monetization because the monetization is based really on influence it's based on you said this in an ad and it led to this amount of sales like it's which is different from views that is trust and you know that's really like building authority and credibility with people I think you've

kind of done a masterful job of your content is still entertaining but there's something about it there's like a trust that's being Built as well so almost has like the virality with the trust can can you just talk about how do you think about building trust like how what is that what is that shift from just making like viral to making before I answer that I want to give it an analogy of what you're talking about the statistics again coming from the software World you'd get a lot of people with like oh my app has

50 million downloads okay well let's take a deeper look in how Many of those people um converted into a subscription out of the people who subscribe what's the retention like what are the churn numbers like and all of a sudden now you're telling a completely different story and so it's the same with content I have 100 million views okay well how many people Subs how many of those were converted into a follow how many of those followers actually bought something for you or like you know like and so it's the same Thing but to answer

your question with trust I feel like my audience at least knows two things one if I'm going to take a brand deal and I say no to 99% of brand deals if I'm going to take a brand deals because I actually love that company or use that product so I've been lucky that a lot of the brand deals have been like Adobe Google meta like companies that I use every single day so like that's been very easy um I will never take a brand deal with product That I don't truly believe in or or don't

already love and use so that's like number one and then number two I'm always going to at least um I'm going to put paid partnership or I'm going to explain how it is a brand deal how I um so like with AI it's really important because I'm always talking about different tools and I want the audience to know it's like I'm covering this organically because this is a tool that I found that I love I'm not being paid I'm not on the board they're not giving me Equity there's no there's no uh personal gain for

me and so those two things are really important is like just the um the divulging of whether I'm being paid or benefiting or not and then also if I am going to be paid or benefit in any way it's got to be a company that I truly believe in and that I love that I think will bring the the audience value I think those are like my two big unbreakable rules um and hopefully over Time that will compound and you know sort of build that trust with the audience you know what here here's where I

want to end yeah we spoke about you you know in your 20s being like completely lost and this lifestyle around drinking around uh drug use that was almost like chasing girls that's always the one um to kind of almost numb that pain or distract yeah escap and and then at 32 It's like you you achieve the thing or at least you think it's the thing that you want but it's still the same kind of empty feeling that depression on the back of it the person that sits me before me today seems very settled seems very

sure of who they are and also where they're going and so I'm just curious like I don't know maybe we go back to one of these club nights that you were at when you were 30 years old and you've Pulled up in your Audi R and The 40-Year-Old version of you just happens to go into that section and meet the 30-year-old version and maybe you just find like a quiet room somewhere I'm curious if you just had a conversation and you had to tell that 30-year-old version of you just one thing what would it be

well funny cuz I would tell him something with the with the understanding that's just going to go through one year not the other so When I see like these kids in Dubai with the roles and doing the thing I'm like they got to experience that there's no like it's funny you know because we have we have the luxury on this planet of having all these old wise people who experienced life 70 80 90 years old they always give the same advice and guess what to a young guy who's just like in the game who's in

his growth stage who's like they're not going to listen to that right and so um I guess what I would say Is how would I how would I phrase this like one of the things that's different about me now I don't seek validation from anybody or anything external like I would love to have your respect I don't seek it nor do I necessarily Des desire it like my validation comes from my wife my child my family my best friends like God um and there's no external validation that I need hey the love I'll take the

same With the hate right like none of it really matters at the end of the day it's like my validation is very comes from a very small group of people um and that's what I would tell that 30-year-old sitting at the club it's like you don't have to impress anybody here you know it's like because all of it none of it matters it's all uh it's all vapid it's all empty it's like the only person you really have to make proud is yourself and like you got to go Find what that is and who you

really are before you can like make yourself proud you got to really understand who you are and so that's it man it's like it goes back to having that loving home that happy home it's like as long as my home is happy as long as my daughter is happy as long as I'm protecting her and shielding her from the world um you know as long as my wife's happy as long as I feel like I'm being a Good brother and a good husband and a good friend and all that that's all that really kind of

matters everything else is is noise and I do feel like The World Is A Lie in a sense right like all these things that we think we're chasing it's all kind of a lie at the end um it's fun to play the game it's um but it's more fun to be aligned with like a real deep and never ending purpose and I think the man now that I've become as I'm not necessarily like On the track but I'm I'm I'm getting there I'm like close and that's just that's a life of ups and downs and

experience and you know everything in between um and so there's nothing that I could tell that 30-year-old I think he's got to experience it and hopefully he finds his way um so be a guide be a mentor But ultimately you know that young 24y old guy he's got to figure it all out through experience and life experiences And and um so I don't have have a specific answer what I say that's perfect I think that's the perfect end thank you so much for watching this episode I hope you enjoyed it it's really a dream for

me that I get to do this it's surreal that this is what I do full-time and every week so if you enjoyed the content if you enjoyed the conversation stories please hit that subscribe button it helps us immeasurably with growing the Channel with getting guests all of those things so please hit that subscribe button and I'll see you next time