Zaid Admani // 100mil+ Views, Going Viral On TikTok, Creative Spirit vs. Slave To Algo

Speaker A: In today's episode, this is, like my

Speaker B: most passionate, like, hot take that I have about the creator economy, whatever it is. I think Mr. Beast is an incredible businessman. His work ethic is insane. I'm not talking crap about Mr.

Speaker A: Beast. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: But, yeah, like, the way he talks about content is, like, annoying to me. I'm like, dude, like, you don't have to, like, have 100 different zooms. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Crazy text in your face. Like, that's. That's like soul sucking, man. And it's like, I, you know, I've seen some of his content and I'm like, oh. Like, everything is, like, optimized for 100% retention. It's like, dude, you're just. You're like a drug dealer now. You're just a drug dealer giving people more and more potent drugs for to get their attention. Everyone is now copying Mr. Beast's style. It's all about, like, even TikToks now. It's all about, like, big text and just, like, zoom and then to ching and boom explosions. And I'm just like, dude, stop. Like, this is. This is just takes away the soul of, like, what it is to create. And maybe I'm just a boomer. Maybe I'm just wrong when it comes to this. And everyone's like, no, dude, that's just. That's. That's the game. If you can't play the game, don't play the game, then, fine, I understand, but I don't want to play that game. I never want to play that game of, like, just having to hyper optimize everything for every millisecond of attention. And I'm like, this is. This is terrible. Why would you want to create like this? You're at the mercy of the algorithm.

Speaker A: All right, welcome to another episode of Creator Lab. I have a special guest there for you today, Zayd Admani. Welcome to the show, brother.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me on, man. I'm excited to do this, finally.

Speaker A: This has been long in the making for people who don't know. We've been Speaking in the DMs, on Twitter, I think even in Telegram, which is funny because we've gotten not investment advice, Nia, Telegram Group chat, which is for the other podcasts I do. And you're in there commenting sometimes as well. But I had actually seen your stuff pop off on TikTok, uh, probably like a couple years ago. So that's how I first saw you. And then I was like, wait a minute, this is the same guy. I didn't realize it was the same person. So nice to finally have the worlds collide in here, man.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm excited to talk today.

Speaker A: And I will say as well, we gotta get this captured on the pod. We both realize we're both from Pakistani background, so you had to represent. I'm trying to think if I've had other Pakistani people on the show, maybe I feel like there must have been some at some point. But that's a nice little bonus for me today as well. Gotta send this to the parents after. They're gonna be happy. Gotta represent, you know.

Speaker B: That's right. You know, I was telling my parents as well, I'm going to be talking to the Pakistani podcaster and they're just immediately like, oh, ask him where he's from. Ask him what his favorite, favorite, uh, favorite dishes. And I'm like, oh, you hari all day.

Speaker A: You know, just.

Speaker B: I'm more of a biryani guy. Uh, spicy for me.

Speaker A: Oh, okay. Biryani is hard to beat though. You're right. Yeah, yeah, it's hard to pick one, but yeah, those would be. They're both up there for me, man. Anyway, well, good to have you on. Appreciate, uh, you making time. Uh, let's let people know what you're doing, why we connected in the first place. Your Admani explains on. On socials. Um, but I saw you popping off on. I think it was during the pandemic probably. Right. I think you were going pretty hard. I think you started making stuff in 2019 on TikTok, but later, 2020, it popped off. Uh, so. But we're gonna also talk about you're also a civil engineer, like from your background. So, uh, and I think you might. Are you still a part time civil engineer?

Speaker B: Still a part time civil engineer.

Speaker A: Okay, cool. So your parents must have been very happy back in the day. And then you said, I'm going to make content on the Internet. How did they react to that? That Pakistani parent life?

Speaker B: Oh, man, that was. It's. Oh, I'm very, very lucky that I have very supportive parents.

Speaker A: Um, yeah.

Speaker B: And. And so when I first told them it was, you know, they were kind of like, can you really make money from this? And yeah, I have a wife, I have a kid. And so they're like, uh, you sure about this? And then I was like, well, I'm not fully quitting civil engineering yet. I'm still, you know, I'm still going to be part time. And then I show them some of the checks that were coming in from some of these brand deals. And they're like, oh, my God.

Speaker A: They're like, you need to quit. Yeah, exactly. That's amazing, man. Oh, that is. We'll go later in the show, like into that moment as well, transitioning. Because I think that is something that a lot of people struggle with, like leaving their job or even going part time. I think it's interesting option for a lot of people. Um, but that's, that's really cool. You've got that background. But how do. What about the tick tock side? Because you're also, you know, killing it on there. You're also posting them, obviously on Instagram. I'm assuming you started on TikTok and then started posting more stuff on Instagram later, right?

Speaker B: Yeah. So, like, my, my journey with TikTok is so interesting. I remember when I first downloaded it, 2019, I think it was September of 2019. I was vacationing in Italy with my wife. Uh, we were in Italy. Um, and on the flight over, I was listening to a Gary Vee podcast. I was a big Gary Vee guy back in the day, and he was talking about this app called TikTok. It's like, hey, if you ever just wanted to make content, try TikTok. Now. I've always had like this itch of making content, you know, like I'm, I'm 31 years old. I kind of grew up in like the YouTube era of like, people making YouTube channels and like the old school days of like, smosh and all those things. And I'm like, I want to do content as well. But I was always a little bit too, um, I guess self conscious to make content. Back in the day when I was 18, 19, 20, like, it wasn't cool to be a content creator. So I downloaded TikTok. And you know, you have some downtime when you're on vacation. Like, you know, you're waking up downtime. Scrolling through TikTok, I'm like, this is pretty cool. This is in Italy, right? And so we get back over to the States and I'm like, I'm just gonna try posting some stuff. And I had zero expectations of, of what to do. I was just goofing off because, you know, like, none of my friends were on TikTok. TikTok was still very, very new. The pandemic hadn't happened.

Speaker A: People were just doing dances back then, right? Like musically style, like, because there was, uh, the musically takeover or whatever. I think that was a big part of the culture of it. But yeah, that and a lot of people even today still think that's what it is. They don't realize there's people like you doing stock market, economy, business stuff. Like, my feed has got like, there's so many positive things on there and we can come to that in a little while. But yeah. So back to you goofing off. And, uh, so you. The first one you made, was I in Italy or you come back by then?

Speaker B: The first one was in Italy. It was just me, like walking around the Amalfi coast and I didn't know what I was doing. I'm just like, oh, check out the Amalfi Coast. Just like, no voiceover, just like a music playing in the background and just like some, some like landscape shots of it and. And just like did 5,000 views. And again, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm like, I have literally zero followers. How did this even get 5,000 views? I'm like, okay, this is really interesting, but didn't think much of it. I was like, okay, whatever got you

Speaker A: with that dopamine hit? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: It got me with the dopamine. And so as I, as I started using TikTok a little bit more just as a consumer, you know, like 75% of the stuff was dances. But I got lucky where I got shown some funny comedy skits, which really reminded me of, um. Oh, my God, what's the name of the app back in the day?

Speaker A: The, uh, second one. Yeah. So when you said it, I thought of the same thing and my brain went fuzzy as well.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: It's the Twitter. The Twitter one.

Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Um, so they. So I'm like, this reminds me of like, you know, of that back in the day. And I'm like, I've always wanted to do like funny sketch videos like that, you know. So I again, just started goofing off. I started making funny videos and I'm like, I need to find.

Speaker A: It was called vine, by the way.

Speaker B: Vine. Thank you, thank you. Vine. Yes. Vine was goaded. Yeah. Um, and so I started doing like vine style videos where I'm just like going back and forth, just doing like funny videos. And I ended up, like, wanted to do videos about stuff that I was passionate about, which was always like finance news, tech news. And so I remember my very first viral video was I did a funny reenactment of Snap, uh, of, uh, Facebook copying Snapchat stories feature and just like doing like a play, the character of Mark Zuckerberg, played the character of Evan Spiegel, posted that like on a Sunday night expecting Nothing. Probably spent less than 15, 20 minutes on it. Like, the lighting's bad. The video is still up on my feed, by the way. And. And like, I think overnight it had a hundred thousand views. And I'm m like, oh, wow. Getting ready for work the next day. I'm like, honey, I just got a hundred thousand views on TikTok. I think I just added like a thousand followers.

Speaker A: That's crazy. And how many followers did you have at a time?

Speaker B: Zero, I think literally zero. Maybe like one or two. Yeah.

Speaker A: Wow. And this is when. Yeah, I mean, you can still do this on TikTok, but if you're doing this, uh, early on, there weren't many people creating the sort of content you're talking about.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So it just popped off.

Speaker B: Yeah, it was a funny video. Uh, and it was like, like the. In like the style of tick tock. And. And it worked and it popped off and it did great. So I just started, you know, after work, just started doing videos, like, you know, two or three videos a week. And most of them would do well. I would get a hundred thousand, you know, a couple hundred thousand followers are starting to go up. I'm not thinking of like, this ever becoming anything besides, like, this is just really fun. I was doing civil engineering at the time, and I really wanted a creative outlet. And that's what TikTok was for me. It was like, okay, I get to make content. It's fun. I'm like, interacting with people. I'm not thinking that I'm ever gonna, like, turn this into a job or anything beyond just, uh, a creative outlet. But I keep doing it, keep doing it. Pandemic happens in 2020. World shuts down. And it gave me more time to make content. And Everybody gets on TikTok, right? Everybody gets on TikTok. I start doing more content there. And, and that's kind of where the story picks up. I gain momentum, gain followers. Um, you know, and. And then like near the end of 2020, like, brands are hitting me up, like, hey, would you want us to sponsor you? And. And that's when I'm like, oh, my God, this actually might be something where

Speaker A: I can actually make a living, make some money.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, not even like a living, but I was just like, maybe I can just turn into a side hustle. Maybe I can make an extra 10, 20 grand, 30 grand, uh, a year from this.

Speaker A: You were doing it for free anyway, right? That was the point. You.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: I like the way you work, use the word, goofing off. I'll Come back to that later and having fun. Because, I mean, if anyone who's seen your videos, I told my editor you're coming on. And he was like, oh, man, I love his videos. I can't wait to do this one. Because it's just like. I mean, he does a lot of short form stuff too. So he follows, uh, that world quite closely and just. Yeah, you can see that coming out in your videos. And it's like, even like Callaway, who I just had on two episodes ago, who. I know you follow his stuff, Kyle. Um, very different style and as we'll get into later, very different approach as well. Like, even the way his is super highly produced. Yours are highly produced too, but there's a different style in yours and you do the kind of acting out, like you said, a lot of the time playing characters. And what I love about that is it's clearly like, that's authentic to the way you are. Right. Like, you. I want to know a bit more about this because it doesn't sound very civil engineering to me. But, um, because again, I'm judging from the outside without knowing any civil engineers. Right? But civil engineer, you think of like a very structured, rational, like the opposite of creativity in a way. But in a way there is, I'm sure, lots of creativity involved in that job too. But just really curious to dig into that. Did you like doing skits and stuff with your friends? Did you ever do theater at school? Like, did that part come. Come out early, early on?

Speaker B: I never did theater in school or anything like that. I was always a little too shy to ever, like, be in front of like a crowd like that back, you know, when I was in high school. You're insecure, right? In High School, 18 years old. Uh, but I always enjoyed doing, like, we would have like, class video projects. Um, and I would always take the lead on that. So I was like, okay, I have the camera, I'll do the editing. And I would always. I would, I would love doing that stuff for class projects. And I would always try to make sure, like, the, you know, like, I would try to write the scripts for those as well. Um, you know, and so I always had like, a passion for it. I mean, even when I remember when I was 18, I wanted to do, like, I started a YouTube video, YouTube channel. I'm like, I want to do this. Um, but, you know, it just, it just, it just. When you're that young, you don't really know, like, it's okay to do things like that. You're always like, oh, I'm just. I need to focus on, like, becoming an engineer or whatever the case is.

Speaker A: The real job in accolades, you know? Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, again, it wasn't cool. I'm talking, like, 2009, 2010. It wasn't cool to do Internet stuff. It wasn't cool to be a creator. It's cool to do that now because we have people like Mr. B and things like that who are, like, making it cool. But back then it wasn't so. But I always had a passion for. I always, like, like doing that stuff. Like, the biggest example of that is just the class projects. Whenever we had a video class project, we were filming it at my house. I was gonna. I was gonna have all the scripts. Uh, we were gonna go to, like, Goodwill and get the different outfits. Like, we were. I was doing it all, and I was editing it together and like. And I love doing that stuff. So it was. It made sense. Yeah. So I just found it really easy and natural for me to be like, okay, well, now with TikTok, you can just. They made it so easy to create content. It didn't have to be highly produced because YouTube had, like, that high production quality, like, hurdle that everyone was, you, uh, know, everyone's kind of afraid to overcome. But TikTok, you didn't have to do that. You can just, like, goof off and you can just make it funny and, like, you can do it using your phone. Um, and that's what I liked about it. And I think I went in there. I think the biggest thing for me was I got two things that were huge for me in the beginning. Number one, I found early success. Even, like, the early hint of a video going somewhat somehow.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: It just. It felt so good, and it made me want to keep doing it.

Speaker A: I think something's working here.

Speaker B: Right? And I think if I did, like, 10 videos and all of them flopped, maybe I wouldn't have been motivated. But doing like, like, uh, doing three or four videos and having, like, two of them get even, like 5,000 or 10,000 views, I'm like, okay, well, this, this. It feels good. And then the other thing was, I knew that nobody, nobody in my immediate family or my friends group or anyone was on TikTok to where they could see me and, like, judge me.

Speaker A: Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker B: There was nobody on it.

Speaker A: Very interesting. That's a really good point.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I definitely want to come back to that because that is, like. I had a whole section later on about getting out of your head, because that is, uh, probably the Biggest hurdle for anyone not doing a lot of things, to be honest. But also specifically content creation. Because, um, you. It's that same underlying feeling of like, what will people think? And especially it's like, interesting. You said as a kid, you don't really have that, right? Because you're kind of just. Well, maybe when you're like 18. It's different when you're 12, right? Or 9. Like you, you don't really think about. You're just kind of living as a kid.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: When you're 18, you're a little bit more self conscious. You're trying to get girls to like you or whatever it is, and you're like, oh, what am I, Am I going to look like the cool kid or am I looking like a geek? Like, doing all this stuff online? And that is actually one of the hardest things for a lot of us who put anything on the Internet is. And, uh, I don't even do TikTok stuff, right? Like, even just a voice on an audio podcast is different. Um, but still you get like comments, right? You get that one out of a thousand comments that is negative and they're like, oh, that person sounds like this, or they say this word too much or whatever it is, right? And you, that is the hardest obstacle for a lot of people because that is the part where you'll stop and you then stop compounding, essentially, right? And I've had that even with this podcast. Like I've had. Not necessarily. I haven't really stopped the podcast because of that, but I've had that with other things I've done in the past where I kind of, uh, outgrew it for a while. And then, and then it was like, oh, is this even worth my time? Like, for example, the Arsenal website, you've heard me talk about it a hundred times. Like, that's something I've been sitting on for a while, that I did literally as a 16 year old. Didn't think about it. Like you said, no one I knew was reading. At first it was just into a blog. Strangers on the Internet found it and it kind of grew its own, uh, life. And then eventually when it had a bit of success, I'll tell my friend to school, oh, by the way, you're Arsenal fan, you might like reading this. But when you're now established and you've got all your network and people who know you, for one thing, that is an honest take, right? Like, it is very difficult to get out of your head on some of those things. So, I mean, since we're Talking about. I'm curious, how did you deal with that? Um, and specifically with the lens. You mentioned your parents, and I'm just asking this because we're both Pakistani. There is a specific thing with that, too, because there are some, you know, you've seen the Hassan Minhaj comedy, uh, special there, probably where he's talked about that phrase. Look, Kang, exactly. What will people say? Essentially, that's kind of translation, and everyone has that. But specifically in our culture, like, that is a massive thing. Right. So I'm curious if that was something you struggle with.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, in. In the beginning. Right. Um, but I think I got over that pretty quickly. Uh, so again, I. I started blowing up on TikTok. Uh, I was like, what? So, 2019. I was. I. I was 28 years old. Right. So I was like, 28 at the time. Wife and kids, relatively secure in my own skin at the time. Um, and I was starting to have success. So then I'm like, even with a little bit of success, and I was like, okay, I don't care who knows. Like, I'm like, I'm cool. I'm. I'm gonna do this. I don't care who knows. It feels good. I was telling my parents, um, and it was great. Um, but. But I think. I think. I think I was only. I only felt that way after I had that success. I think the biggest fear at that age was I didn't want to fail and other people to know about it. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B: And so I think as soon as I saw a little bit of success, I was like, oh, man, I'm this.

Speaker A: I want to show off about this. Yeah.

Speaker B: I was like, I, like, this is great. And then, you know, once TikTok started becoming more popular, people asked, uh, me approach me like, hey, like, I saw you're on TikTok. This is really cool. Like, tell me more about it, because I think everybody wants to do it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But nobody wants to put themselves out there. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and so I felt comfortable doing that, you know, after I found a little bit of success. And. And it only took, like, two or three months for me to just, you know, be more open about it and telling my friends about it. Um, and. And, you know, just. I think you can do that once you have a little bit of, like, success, but also security. Yeah. And momentum. Completely love them. And.

Speaker A: And so we should actually tell people. So I didn't mention this up front, but you've got almost 400, 000 followers on TikTok now as of this morning, about 390. I bet by the time this goes out, you hopefully have hit the 400k already. Um, over 15 million likes. I can see that. Do you have any idea, ah, roughly how many views you've had? Because you've probably seen an analytics or.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think it has to be over 100. I know it's over 100 million. I haven't checked it recently, but, um, yeah, it's over 100 million, which, yeah, it's just kind of cool to think about.

Speaker A: That is insane. Right? I mean, just a scale of like, you even said the first video got like. Was it 5,000 views?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Which is like, again, for people who've never created something on like, let's say YouTube. YouTube, you, most of the time, you're never getting 5,000 views on the first. I mean, like, I don't even get that for stuff I've done for ages. And it's just a completely different beast. Right. And so, um, let's talk about that though, because I think that does actually really help the people put it, putting stuff on TikTok. Like you said that early momentum encourages you to keep going in a certain direction and that allows you to then hone your skills, getting more reps, all the things we know that help you become successful in doing that. Um, And I think TikTok partly does that because they're smart. Like, literally, if you create a new account, you normally get a little boost right in the beginning. And then secondly, um, the big changes, like the for you page, the interest graph versus, uh, the social, uh, graph, which is like, we've had primarily on Instagram and Facebook before now everyone's kind of moved to interest graph because TikTok has kind of led the way in that change that.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And so what would happen is for, uh, your video will get in front of new people from day one versus just your friends. And so that was a big change. So was there anything else on the TikTok side that I think really helped? Because I think you mentioned the music. I also think, like, the style of it being just kind of fun. Yeah, it kind of encourages that fun. But is there anything else I'm kind of missing there?

Speaker B: No, I think, I think it was like, the ease of creation was huge. Right. Like, oh, yeah, you didn't have to have a fancy camera, you didn't have to have perfect quality. I mean, if you go, if you scroll all the way down to my early videos, like, the quality is so bad. Like the lighting is not. I'm not even using a ring light. Um, but it didn't matter. I mean, at least back in the day. I think now it's starting to matter a little bit more. But. But still, Even compared to YouTube or even Instagram, I don't think it matters as much. You can still, it's all about the content. It's all about, like, the pure content. Is it engaging? Is it, is it, is it funny? Is it educational? Which is great, right? Cause it lowers the barrier to entry. You don't have to worry about, like, oh, like, is my lighting perfect? Is my audio perfect? Is my camera a $700 camera? It can be your phone, it, uh, could be an iPhone, 6 for all that matters. Right? And as long as your content is good, people will hopefully show up because of how good the algorithm is now. Over time, it's gotten harder and harder. As with any social platform, there's more creators, uh, competing for attention. So it definitely is much harder now than it was two years ago, even a year ago. But I still think at its core, like, it. If you make good content, TikTok will put it in front of the right audience.

Speaker A: Yeah, love that, man. Um, so we're going to do a whole deep dive in a second about your process, how you create videos, recording, even editing. I think you're going to open up descript and show us, because that was different to what callaway showed us with Adobe. Um, but let's talk about the civil engineering thing for a second because again, like, paint a picture of what that life is like doing a hybrid now and making that decision to leave or not, not to fully leave, but to go part time. Because I'm assuming you were full time at some point.

Speaker B: Right, right, right. I was. So the story behind that is. So I was, you know, picking back up on the story that I was telling earlier. You know, I was making TikToks just for fun. All of 2020, the world shut down. We're all working from home. 2020. And then, you know, latter half of 2020, uh, you know, my company calls everybody back in. You know, I'm starting to go into the office more. And then the moment where it was like, where I knew that I needed to, like, start taking it a lot more seriously was take the content more seriously. Was early 2021 when the whole GameStop stuff happened. Right. If you remember the whole Fiasco game.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think we did it on the pod as well.

Speaker B: Yep, yep. And so I remember I had, like, I had a couple brand deals then. Not a lot of money. But there was like a couple affiliate brand deals, right? Um, and I remember I did a video. So the GameStop stuff happens. I'm at work, uh, something a GameStop news story breaks where Robinhood suspends trading of GameStop. I go into my car during my lunch break, um, and I just make like, I make a video, like a rant video. And it wasn't even like a typical style video. It was a rant video.

Speaker A: I love. This is in your car. That's so funny.

Speaker B: It was in my car because I was, I, I could, I couldn't do it at the office, right? Like, my people at work knew that I was doing content, but I, you know, they thought it was like this goofy guy doing content. But I go into the off. I go into my car in the parking lot, do the video, and next thing I know it like blows up. I think it's like a million views in like an hour. And I had an affiliate link in my bio, which I almost kind of forgot about. That result for some. That video was somewhat tangentially related to like, it was like a, a link for a public. The investing app, which I was partners with at the time. It resulted in like $20,000 of affiliates coming to me in like a day.

Speaker A: No way. That's crazy. How many views did that video get, do you remember?

Speaker B: Total? I don't know, but I remember, like, I looked at it, you know, about an hour or two and I'm like, it has over a million views. Oh my God.

Speaker A: Oh my God. What? In a few hours. That's a few hours. So it was just fresh and it was in. Yeah, it was fresh and you just did it in the cars. That is my car. I've heard that so many times from people where. The one that really popped off first was just this, uh, it just was in your head. You had to let it out, right? Like it was. So you were out of your head. You weren't overthinking the script or any of you. This has happened. This is how I'm going to explain it. Wow, that is incredible. So you made 20 grand in a day. Which again, whatever, you're happy to share knowing a rough salary for a civil engineer is a good salary, but like making. You probably don't make 20 grand in a day being a civil engineer, I take it.

Speaker B: Yeah, my salary, I think at the time was like 100, 100 and 510 ish. A, uh, year.

Speaker A: And again, good salary. But 1/5 of your year salary was made in one day from a video you made. And that is crazy. Okay, Exactly.

Speaker B: So that happens. And I'm like, oh my God. So that was in January, I believe, January of 2021. And I'm like, okay, I got to, I got to like, I'm like, I can do this. My content's pretty good. I need to start thinking about how I can transition to, um, a role where I can do more content. So I started looking for some jobs, um, and I was ultimately able to find a civil engineering company to do, to work part time. They needed someone and they were okay with me working part time. I went into it telling them, hey, look, I have this passion. I'm making content. Um, and I want this to be my full time career. Down the line, long term, I can help you. Um, working part time. And they were cool with it. And I'm still working with them today. Uh, and they're, they're, they're fantastic. I love working with them, love working for them. And, and so I, I moved, I moved over there. I moved to another company. And so that freed up my time to do content, more content in 2021. And then, and that, that was like the perfect timing. If you remember 2021, it was, it was zerp season, man, it was nuts. I mean, it was crypto season. Everything was just going nuts.

Speaker A: Best time to be doing it. Yeah, Absolutely zero interest rate phenomena. Right? So that's, that's what we all went through. 2020, 2021 Crazy NFTs, crypto popping off, meme stocks, basically all the crazy stuff that happens when there was zero percent interest rates and the liquidity that was in the market. So that was a crazy time. Um, so, and just really quickly, I just want to make sure. I'm sure a lot of people listening know this already, but you mentioned affiliate link. I do want to just clarify for people. So that means you didn't get paid to just post. It wasn't like a pay for this one video necessarily. It was a. If someone clicks my link to go into public, signs up, you get paid a sign up, uh, 35 bucks for,

Speaker B: for a new account. And so, you know, like 700 people signed up.

Speaker A: 700 is insane for one day.

Speaker B: I think it's because people were so pissed off at Robinhood and I think in my video I was like, if you want to, if you want an alternate to Robinhood, check out public. And because I was already using them, um, and it just, boom, it just drove the traffic. And I did not expect, I mean I had zero expectations. And I remember I just Coming home, driving home that day, I'm like, oh my God, this is insane.

Speaker A: That's insane. Yeah, that's the man. And I think a lot of people, you know, a lot of people kind of see content creators online and they, they don't necessarily even know how to make money. I think the obvious one is those brand deals. So we'll come back to that on the monetization front. But I did want to just clarify for anyone who's listening, who doesn't know what an affiliate deal is. Um, that's crazy, bro. So I do want to hear. Let's get into the actual content creation process though. Um, and actually, so one last thing I do want to say, I think your example of, of going and finding another gig essentially to do the part time to now focus on it is such a smart thing that so many people should be doing if that's what they want to do long term. Right. A lot of people just do this either or thing. It's like, I'm going full time or I'm not. And I feel like there's too much of this black and white advice given online. Like they're like, oh, like even what I do, essentially, like I have a small consultancy business, m market and I won't necessarily say how much of the week I work on it, but it's a few days a week, let's say. I'm not gonna say actual hours because I don't have defined hours because it's based on my own business. Right. So that's close to what you're doing in a way. Yours is like, you know how much you're going to work a week and then you can dedicate the other days to content creation, doing stuff with family, whatever you choose to do. But that is, it also takes that, that um, that defensive nature away from you because you know you're covered. Like, you can pay your rent, your mortgage, you can make sure your kids okay, right. Everyone's got their stuff sorted and for a certain type of person, that's what you need. Like I did it for a few months when I left my last job, I think I did three months and I wasn't sure what I was going to do. And I did create a lab hard. I did it in studio, in person, love doing it. But I'd come home and I'd be like, man, I really need to make this work. And my, like, you just see your savings going down. Oh man, I'm still spending five grand a month or whatever is on rent and like living in New York. And I was like, man, this is not like the, maybe I'll do that again in the future. But at that stage it wasn't the right balance. And now, uh, when I, when I switched doing it the other way, it just gave me that freedom to say, okay, I know what I'm doing, I appreciate that. And now I can just have fun with the other stuff and it could just fit into my life.

Speaker B: You know, I, I think that's an excellent point. And, and I think, I mean me working part time, I think is, is huge for me. And I think. Well, first of all, I, I had a wife and kid, right? So I think if I was like 19 or 20 or 21, I would have quit my job or whatever corporate job I had and I would have gone all in on content. I just couldn't do that, um, just because of where I was in life, you know, like my daughter at the time was like 2 years old. We had just bought a house. Like, it was just like, I couldn't. My risk tolerance was a lot less, a lot lower than like a 22 year old that straight out of college and blew up on TikTok. So I had to do that. But also. And we'll get into this, we can get into this in a little bit. But like me still working as a civil engineer I think is ultimately going to be a, uh, huge, huge, um, advantage for me moving forward. Because I, what I, what I really ultimately want to do is, is I love making finance content. I'm going to continue doing that, but I've learned so much in the content stuff and the media stuff and it makes me realize like, I can apply those skills to an untapped industry like civil engineering. And I think that's ultimately where I can make like an actual business that's not just me making TikToks, but like an actual business around it. But we can get into that.

Speaker A: Oh, that's, that's a really good point actually. Well, I mean, I guess since we are talking about it, I'm curious what, what that looks like to you. You mean like a company that's helping other civil engineers or is it a civil engineering company that's got like a media arm as their face? The way Andreessen Horowitz tries to, you know, differentiate, uh, with content LED approach. I'm just curious like what, what you think about when you, when you say that.

Speaker B: When I think about it is, you know, there's, you hear about all these B2B newsletters and B2B media companies. And there's really nothing like that in like the civil engineering space specifically. Like what I, what I do is I do water plants and wastewater plants. And so there's really nothing in there except for like old trade magazines that like nobody under the age of 35 reads. Oh yeah, there's no like newsletter. There's no media or content that's addressing civil engineers that are either young in their career or even like experienced ones like myself that want to be up to date on what's happening in the industry. So there's so much opportunity there, uh, to like bring digital media. Yeah, I think it's huge. And you're addressing a high income audience as well. Um, and, and, and so I think that like I've learned so much in the content side, short form content. I've gotten to the newsletter space. I've built so many great connections of just, you know, the network has grown because of my TikToks. So I think ultimately what, what I want to do is apply everything that I've learned as a finance content creator and use those skills and bring it to like civil engineering. Whether it's how to make high, engaging short form content, how to bring that audience to a newsletter, how to, how to convert that newsletter audience, um, to whether it's a educational, continuing educational course for engineers. That's huge for engineers. They have to keep continuing education as part of their licensing. Um, there's so many opportunities there. And I feel like now the joke I always make my wife is like, I'm probably the only civil, uh, engineer in the world that knows short form content the way I do.

Speaker A: It's true. I mean, I don't disagree with that. I mean, I think literally just the numbers kind of speak for themselves in this way because like to already be a civil engineer is hard. Right. Like a lot of people don't even get through to that process.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Once you've done that, it's also hard to do content creation at that level where you've got hundreds of thousands of people following you, millions of views. So just that intersection is really unique. So that actually brings us on to that next kind of area. And so we'll get into the nuts and bolts of creating. But I want to talk a bit about that idea of like, you know, the bullet point I have here is like topics you cover, but really it's about how do you differentiate yourself, how do you come up with that in the first place of these are the types of things I'm going to talk about and these are the ways I'm going to talk about them. You've heard in our kind of world, creator economy, whatever you want to call it, uh, I don't love that phrase, but you know. Yeah, but that world, there's a phrase called personal monopoly, which is actually quite an interesting idea. I don't know if you've heard that phrase. You've. You thought about it for yourself. But I do actually think, as much as it sounds like a very think boy, um, buzzwordy thing, it's actually quite a useful idea. So. Yeah. How do you think about that for yourself when it comes to the topics you're going to cover?

Speaker B: The topics that I cover, you know, it's the niche that I've found myself doing is just like the finance stuff. Right. So whatever you see on the CNBC's Wall Street Journals, Bloomberg's of the world, I just take that information and translate

Speaker A: it to like digestible way.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. In like a way where like a normal dude who like tangentially related, tangentially interested in the stock market, but isn't like, you know, obsessing about this stuff, like I would be and, and, and, and try to explain it in a way which is kind of funny, relatable. Um, and that's what I've been doing. Right. Sometimes it takes a form of like a skit. Uh, I still love doing those around, playing multiple characters and like turning it into like a funny skit. And what I've been trying to do more and more is it's just like, you know, just holding up my phone and just being like, you know, like Nvidia just like reacting to like the Nvidia earnings and just, and just trying to make funny jokes that way and explaining what that means and why they're going up and sometimes admitting like, I don't know what's going on here, like, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. The way I see it often is like your, your smart friend who's also entertaining, which I think is quite key. So we'll come back to that. Educating versus entertaining. But, um, so if I went to dinner with you or like we're catching up for coffee or whatever, I was like, oh, you follow that world better than I do. So what happened with Nvidia? I saw that in the news, but could you explain it to me? And you do it in such a succinct, entertaining way. So I think that, yeah. Now hearing you describe that, that's a perfect way of describing like your, your interesting friend. You don't have to be the world's number One expert. And that's kind of another thing that I think a lot of people in their head about, which is what gives me the authority to talk about stock market or whatever else topic they're interested in. So I really do love that, that,

Speaker B: uh, approach, man, I get that, I get that question a lot. It's like, wait, you're, you're an engineer. Why are you talking about stocks and finance? I'm like, dude, I went. If I can get through engineering school, I'm pretty sure I can understand, like, what's going on with, with finance, you know, finance news. And I don't have to be an expert, you know, like, you don't have to be an expert to, like, participate in the stock market. You don't have to be an expert to understand what's going on with companies and with investing. And I think that's one of the reasons a, uh, slight advantage that I have is like, compared to people that are like, experts in the field. Right. When we become experts, and I'm guilty of this, when it comes to engineering, we end up trying to, like, impress our peers. It's like, oh, let me tell you what these, all these terms mean, and like, you try to use all these fancy terms, right? Uh, to make yourself sound smarter because, like, hey, I got a, I got a business degree. I know what I'm talking about. I never got a business degree. I'm pretty much self taught, you know, you can learn a lot from reading books and YouTube.

Speaker A: And so I can say I do have a business degree. And 99% of stuff I know is the same way you learn it, right? It's like, it's the same stuff, man. Yeah.

Speaker B: So I can explain it and, and in a way without trying to sound sophisticated and smart, because I don't have to, like, I'm not trying to appeal to, like, that base. I'm just like, you know, I'm just like that dude at the, you know, at dinner that, like, just is obsessed with Tesla stock or Nvidia stock or Disney and just like, explaining it to you in a way that, like, makes sense that we can have a conversation about. And I think that's been a key advantage when it comes to just me making content about finance.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that, bro. Yeah. So let's get into a few examples, because I think that's normally the best way I learn. I, uh, think obviously people can check out your videos as well first. And Rafa, my editor, you could put in a few examples. They've probably already done that on the on the YouTube version of this. Uh, but most people only listening. So just click through to YouTube or in fact click through to your TikTok channel that and just explore your page first, but then come back because we're going to be talking about actually showing how you. How you create this from behind the scenes. So, like, just let's go through the whole process. Like, you just mentioned that one in the. When you went in the car, right? Like, it was in your head. And you said, well, let me just go and create a video. I even think, like, one. I don't really write much on Twitter, but the one Twitter thread that, like, really popped off for me, which has been pinned on my profile for ages, was I was catching up with a friend. He was talking about something, and I was like, uh, why do people not get this about this? And I came home and it was just in my head and I just wrote it fresh. I didn't edit anything. It wasn't planned, it wasn't scheduled. And that one straight away resonated with people because it was just like me talking to someone. Exactly. But I'm assuming all of yours aren't like that, Right? So you have different types of videos. So maybe give us an idea of the types of videos you have. You talked about the roleplay ones, the speaking to the camera ones, and, um, then we can get into that process.

Speaker B: Yeah, so I got. So I got so three main types, and it's actually kind of narrowed it down to two. So I got like, the one which is like the sketches, right? Where it's like me taking a business story and turning it into, like a comedy sketch where it's multiple characters. You know, some of the ones that are popular, like big tech goes to brunch, where they just recap their. Their month or their. Or their week and just talk about. And you know, I have Apple Amaz on Google. They're just all talking, you know, um, uh, busting balls, things like that. And it's funny, and people seem to enjoy that. And those. So those. Those end up taking the longest, right? Because those I'm thinking about, like, I'm writing the script, I'm rewriting the script, like, how to make this funny. I'm shooting it, I'm reshooting it, and, you know, multiple outfits, things like that, those end up taking the longest. Uh, so I don't do those very often, but I try to do them, you know, at a weekly pace. So that's one bucket, the other bucket, really quick.

Speaker A: How long does that video take, roughly?

Speaker B: It can take four to five hours.

Speaker A: Okay, cool.

Speaker B: You know, writing the script, filming to

Speaker A: get that, that outfit, you know.

Speaker B: Yes. Yeah.

Speaker A: So that was the first type of video role play. Really quite highly produced in that case as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Those that have a green screen like I do, I, I, I've increased the production of those videos, um, as I've been doing this over time. So those take the longest and, and in a perfect world I try to do them every, every day, but it's just, you know, life happens and you can't. So I've been, I've been trying to do them every week or so. Um, the other videos that I'm trying to do more of, I think that there's, there's just, there's still a huge opportunity, uh, is just like picking up your phone and like creating a video like as if you're on FaceTime with your friend explaining stuff. It doesn't have to be produced, it doesn't have to be scripted. It could be raw, authentic and just off the dome, explaining, reacting to a news. And I'm trying to do those more and more. And, and because they don't take as long, I can, I can bust, you know, I can do it out in like 30 minutes. It, uh, may be even faster sometimes depending on, on how many green screen screenshots I have to do. But that could be something like reacting to Nvidia earnings. It's like, oh my God, the Stock is up 9% after hours. Like, what's going on? Let's just do a quick little review of what's going on with the earnings. It could be as simple as, you know, it could be things like that. Um, so I'm trying to do those more and more. Like I, ideally I want to get to a pace where I'm doing like two of those a day. I think, I think, I think that's doable. And the more you do those, I think the more it's just easier, the easier you get.

Speaker A: Because I mean, doing it, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Because like even now I'll, I'll do it. I'm like, oh, I didn't say that properly. Let me say it again, let me re record it. I'll take like two or three takes sometimes to just to do a video like that. Um, so I'm trying to do those more time, more a day. Because I think my thing is like I'm still all about volume. I think volume is the most important thing when it comes to short form content. Like it's all about volume. Um, especially if you're starting out, um, and especially someone like me who's like not making super highly produced videos in general. So it's all about volume. Um, so that's the other bucket and the third bucket that I was doing a lot of last year, but I just haven't had the opportunity to do this year is more of the personal stuff. The more of like the vlogs behind the scenes. So I was doing vlogs showing like this is the day in the life of a part time civil engineer slash content creator.

Speaker A: And I was like doing the voiceovers

Speaker B: and taking people through the field and taking people through my day and like trying to show some of like, you know, being a dad, being a husband. And I love making those, but those, I think that the downside for those is they sometimes would take me out of the moment because I'm always like, I'm always thinking like, what, what's the video going to be? Like, what's the theme for the video? What's, you know, where should I put my camera?

Speaker A: That's a good point.

Speaker B: And so I was able to do those for a while, but then I'm like, I should. I, uh, just. I wasn't able to keep up with it and it just became a mental burden to do those. I want to bring them back.

Speaker A: But that's a great point. M. I haven't even thought about that. Just like, especially the one you said with your family, like in that moment you kind of want to put your phone away. You kind of want to just be there, enjoy that properly. And. And so maybe the, the work ones a little like a behind the scenes as part time civil engineer or greater. Like what. It's like kind of what we're doing today, like showing the behind the scenes a little bit I think is really interesting, but I think that's an important distinction. Like kind of the boundaries you have around, like why are you doing this all in the first place, is to be able to spend time with them. So you kind of want to make sure. Well, maybe it's not just that, but you know, a big part of it I'm sure is as well. So. That's a great point.

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely, definitely. I mean, you know, I was able to do it and it just, it just becomes too much of a mental burden. I'm like playing basketball with my daughter, but I'm also kind of like, oh, is the camera recording? Maybe I can like get this. Uh, you know, it just, it just became too much of a burden. And then I'm editing Them and I just, you know, I just couldn't find the right balance. There's a lot of great creators who do some fantastic vlogs on TikTok. Uh, Tim is one of them. I don't know if you know Tim, I can't pronounce his last name, but I'll send you a link to him. He does really awesome vlogs.

Speaker A: Do you know how to spell the last name?

Speaker B: If people want to C H I. It's like Tim. I just call him Tim. C Tim.

Speaker A: Yeah, send it to me after or something. We can include a link.

Speaker B: Oh, his vlogs are just, uh, fantastic, man. He just, he's so inspirational. Um, but I can never get to that level. And so I was just like, maybe I'll, maybe I'll, you know, maybe I'll just pause those. But actually it's dope me doing those vlogs that end up getting the highest engagement and the highest connection with the audience is because they get a chance to see like the real you. And, and they're like, oh my God, I didn't know you were a civil engineer. Like, let me, let me learn more about your life, what you're doing in the field. Tell me more about what it's like to be a dad and a content creator and an engineer. So Pete, those end up getting like, they might not get the most views but, but I guarantee you they get the most engagement because people are just so interested and like you're taking them, um, a peek behind the curtain. Um, and I think it was a good way to build like a deeper connection with the, with the audience, even if it doesn't get the most views. But I think your true fans are the ones that are going to love seeing that kind of stuff.

Speaker A: That's a great. Yeah. I even think the people that I follow outside, uh, of you, even just other people, I watch their stuff. And like a lot of the time what gets you originally is like the useful or entertaining one minute videos, let's say on TikTok. And once you see enough of that, you're like, oh, I just kind of like, for example, like gym, there's a few gym people that I follow who they're like, oh, this is a correct form, lifting weights and this is like nutrition stuff, whatever. And that kind of is the reason I'm following them. But then after a while I'm like, oh, this he's got a little humor. He's saying something here. And then after a while you're like, oh, now he's competing in this competition, oh, he's got a family. And it's kind of going down. I hate to use this term, but you're going down the funnel. Essentially you're deepening that engagement in a marketing point of view is going down the funnel, but in a non robotic way. It's just, you know, you're deepening engagement with someone. That was a question I kind of had, actually, which is what a lot of people I think struggle with is creating stuff that gives you that immediate dopamine hit of this one banged, it went viral, I got a million views, whatever, versus what you actually want to create. And that isn't always the same thing. Right. And sometimes there's an overlap. Uh, but I think there's, it's like any sort of content creation. It's not just content creation. It's anything really. Any work related stuff anyway. It's basically the incentive you have. Right. And it's, it's like here is. That is the most immediate thing you can react to because there's an actual number that's easy to see. It's harder to say how many people enjoyed this enough, um, that like, they made their day better. Like, that's a different thing. Right. Maybe you can look at like retention rate as an actual number metric, but like, unless you spoke to those people, that's the qualitative side you don't get to see. Um, and then there's like the personal stuff too, right? It's like, oh, I enjoyed that process of creating this. And that is a really interesting balance. So I'm curious, how do you balance that? Because I also think the way you're doing it with the part time job helps mitigate that. Because when you all, oh, I need to make money from this primarily as my primary income, uh, then you end up that, that is your incentive, right. Becomes the priority. So how do you balance figuring that out?

Speaker B: That's, that's, that's, that's like the challenge, right? I mean, I always try to, I always try to lean to do stuff that I, that makes me happy. Right. Like, I knew that those vlogs were doing great, but I just knew that like I, it wasn't great for me, like mentally. So I always try to do things that made me happy. Um, and not just only focus on the metrics. That's like easier said than done. I mean, you know, it's great when like you do a certain type of video and it's like, oh my God, I got 2 million views. I should probably do that again.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Of course.

Speaker B: And so I try to find like a right balance. I'm like, okay, the skits and the comedy sketches, they do the best. So I'll try to sprinkle those in once a week or so. And okay, so also I'll serve the audience. It's kind of like when actors, you know, like, like in Hollywood, like, there's a, uh, saying of like, one for them, one for me. So you do like one that's like an action movie that's going to pay all your bills and then you do one like indie film that's for you. I kind of try to do it that way where I'm like, okay, I'm going to make content that's going to make my audience happy and make me happy as well. But then I'm going to do one that I just want to do for myself, whether it's like, you know, just an off the cuff kind of video or maybe, you know, whatever the case is. So I try to find the right balance.

Speaker A: That's a good way. That's a good role, actually, because I think a lot of it is, that's a tangible thing you can actually take from it. Right. Like, and a lot of these things, you can just look at people who've been doing creative work for a long time and this is just a new form of creative work.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: And that's a great, um, analog there. And the mention, the one you just said there before kind of reminded me a little bit of Mr. Beast because, like, I think Mr. Beast, what he does is incredible. Right. It's insane what he's done in that world. He's the number one YouTuber. He's pretty much the number one outlet, media outlet, if you can call it that, in the world. Even though a lot of people listen to this, might not even watch his stuff, I don't actually watch most of his stuff.

Speaker B: I don't either.

Speaker A: Yeah, but I know what he's. I follow him on, like, the business side to be like, oh, that's really cool what you're doing. But that is actually something I've thought a lot about because I listen to a lot of comedians and I'm really fascinated by their process, like, what gets them going. As someone who is like, I would say I have a creative soul as well. Right. Like, I'm very, like, rational, numbers driven, business person in one side. But, like, deep down, I've always been a creative person as well. And I think you've clearly got that yourself. Um, and sometimes when I hear Mr. Beast talk about it, it kind of like, I don't want to say annoys me because he's allowed to do what he wants to do, right? And I respect it. But he's like, well, oh, that hurts. Retention. Don't do that. And I'm like, well, yeah, but if your whole thing just becomes about what gets 100 million views, you're now a slave to the YouTube algorithm or whatever it is, right?

Speaker B: And I will say it. Mr. Beast ruined YouTube. I mean, I think, you know, it's seriously okay. I have a lot of respect for Mr. B. This is like my most passionate, like, hot take that I have about the creator economy, whatever it is. I think Mr. Beast is an incredible businessman. His work ethic is insane. I'm not talking crap about Mr. Beast.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: But yeah, like, the way he talks about content is, like, annoying to me. I'm like, dude, like, what? You don't have to, like, have a hundred different zooms. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Crazy text in your face. Like, that's you. That's like soul sucking, man. And it's like, I, you know, I've seen some of his content and I'm like, oh, like, everything is, like, optimized for 100 retention. It's like, dude, you're just, you're like a drug dealer now. You're just a drug dealer giving people more and more potent drugs for. To get their attention.

Speaker A: And yeah, I think that's a fair point.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think Mr. Beast just. Everyone tried. Is now copying Mr. Beast's style. It's all about like, uh, even tick tocks now. It's all about like big text and just like zoom and then to ching and boom explosions. And I'm just like, dude, stop. Like, this is, this is just takes away the soul of, like, what it is to create. And maybe I'm just a boomer. Maybe I'm just wrong when it comes to this. And everyone's like, no, dude, that's just, that's. That's the game. If you can't play the game, don't play the game, then fine, I understand, but I don't want to play that game. I never want to play that game of, like, just, uh, having to hyper optimize everything for every millisecond of attention. And I'm like, this is, this is terrible. Why would you want to create like this? You're at the mercy of the algorithm.

Speaker A: No, I think it's a fair point. Yeah, go, go ahead.

Speaker B: I think you said. I think, I think you might have watched the same interview as me. But I saw Hassan Minhaj talk about this in an interview. I think it was with Colin and Samir maybe about a year ago.

Speaker A: And he was like, yeah, yeah, I think I did see that.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think he said this almost exact same thing where it's like you're. If you're constantly hyper optimizing for the algorithm, you're just a slave to the engineer who's working in Mountain View, California, and you're just. You're just doing whatever they want you to do. And that's. Yeah, like, I don't want to do that. If I have to do that, then I don't. I don't want this to be like a career then. You know what I'm saying? Like, I would rather make less money and still make money from engineering or whatever the case is and, and not play that game.

Speaker A: No, I think that's a fair point. And all I need. I think I agree with everything you said. The only thing I'd say differently is if MrBeast wants to do that and he genuinely likes doing that, good for him. And I'm sure you would agree with that too. Yeah, absolutely. It's more a personal thing of, uh. Like, I think especially when everyone's just following, copying and pasting essentially what he does. And so it's like it's. There's not. There's a sliding scale. It's like everyone is optimizing to a certain extent, but is, why are you doing this in the first place? And that's kind of what, even on my tiny scale with a little podcast I have, that is exactly what I keep coming back to, is that why was I doing this in the first place? And I've done this for like 6, 7. I did it since 2015. I recorded my first episode, put it on 2016, and I've done it on and off. I've done it through seven several different jobs. It's like, made me move to a new job. Now I do it partly full time as well. Um, and. And so. But then I kept coming back to, well, why am I doing that in the first place? And I literally, I had written out like From, I think 2014 or 15 when I first was thinking about doing it. And the reason I started doing it was because I love talking to interesting people. That was the core of why I've always. I've done it before, podcasting in my own personal life. And that was the original ideas. I'm already having his interest in this conversation with people. What if I just shared it with people. I bet people could, like, enjoy it as well. And that is always got to be there for me. And I think the, the reason why I've always had so much respect for someone like Joe Rogan. You can think whatever you think about Joe Rogan. He's become a political figure for some reason.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: But what I love about what he does is he just lives his life not optimizing for money. Though he's very rich. He literally still now he owns a comedy club and he previously would be going to comedy, you know, what's it called, Comedy, uh, store in LA every week, working on his craft because he loved doing that. He did martial arts, he did mma, um, you know, commentary, he did his podcast speaking to the most interesting people in the world for four hours when everyone said, you should be doing that for 45 minutes max.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: He's like, what? I don't want to do that. And I'm going to choose that. That path. And that, to me, has always been such a good model because ultimately, like, you can m. Make more or less money and you do need to make money. That's important. But if you're only doing it because it's going to optimize and get a few more clicks or a few more views, then that's the game you're now playing versus the creative game. Which is why most of us do it. Deep down. We're doing it because we enjoy that creative process and of course, the results and the money that comes from it. But if you don't enjoy the process of doing it, like you, what was the point in the first place, you know? So I think that's a really good point.

Speaker B: I do. You're so right on Bilal. Because I was thinking, sometimes I feel this way, and now it's not like I'm complaining, but sometimes I'm like, being a creator as a job like this being a job, sometimes it takes the fun out of it. You know what I'm saying? Like, because completely you're constantly having to worry about money. You're constantly having to be like, you know, like, uh, sometimes it does take the fun out of it. I still love creating, but having to worry about the money side of things and having to worry about like, oh, is everything optimized for maximum reach? Because maximum reach, results, maximum opportunity and all these different things. Yeah, I'm just like, there's a part of. There's an element of it. When it became my job to do this and earn money from it, I'm like, you know, Sometimes I just like have to take a step back and like, sometimes there'll be periods where I'm just like, you know what, not feeling it. I'm just gonna have to stop for a couple weeks.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, that's important to hear for a lot of people, man, because I think that's the side you don't really get to see. Right? Like you're only seeing what you're posting on it on TikTok or whatever. So think that I feel exactly the same way. Like, I still have so much fun doing this because I now have basically said I will post when I want to post. I know that's not optimized for views and downloads or whatever, but I accept that downside, you know, I mean, and when I did one, I was doing it every week, like high production, researching people, eight, 10 hours, doing in studio. And that was great. I'm really proud of those episodes. But now I get to have fun and talk to you about something. I still did prepare several hours, right. Listening to your stuff and like, you know, but I've also been following you for some time, so it makes it a lot easier. And that's kind of the filter I have. And the reason I brought up Joe Rogan was because that was a question he got asked was how do you select the people that come on a show? And he basically, it was such a simple answer. It was just like, oh, I just think like, do I want to have a conversation with this person or not? And it sounds so obvious. But that is actually the crux of like hours of think or like tens of hours of like analyzing all the variables without him necessarily even realizing because he can obviously think through, oh, is this gonna get more views or not? Is this gonna cause controversy? Is this gonna be covered by New York Times? Is this gonna be, uh, whatever? And he didn't, he just was like, I'm gonna record with a bunch of friends. We're gonna do MMA as well. It's not in this perfect little niche when everyone's telling you you need to be like, you know, specific thing. So I'm just going to do it because I enjoy doing it. And that's why I personally do respect those types of creative people the most. I'm not even using a creator, but like a creative person. And I think that's why, uh, the stand up comedians, to me specifically, uh, especially when they get quite successful, they stand out to me so much because they don't need to do the comedy clubs anymore.

Speaker B: Right, exactly.

Speaker A: And I've talked about Andrew Schultz on there a few times. I actually just saw him.

Speaker B: Oh, he's the goat.

Speaker A: Yeah, he's great. And, and uh, I saw him on Monday in the Comedy Cellar. Um, and like, again, half the people there don't know who he is. They don't know. He has literally the biggest, like, comedy podcast or one of the biggest ones, the biggest Patreon touring the world. Right. Selling out theaters everywhere. And he comes on and I could tell he's working on that next special. And he told some jokes where he literally reacted and said, oh, that was a good reaction for the 8 o' clock show. And I'm like, oh, he's, he loves doing it. Like, he's doing it. He's working so hard. And that to me is always like, I've respected those people the most because I know how hard it is to do it, you know, so.

Speaker B: Oh, me. Oh, I'm so happy to hear you say that because I, I, I love seeking out, like, comedians, to me especially, like, them just, like, I love seeing, like, them still grind, but they don't have to and just do it for the love of the game. Like, do it because they actually genuinely enjoy creating. And it's not just clicks or numbers or whatever. And ultimately that's the, that's where I want to get to. And that's one of the reasons why I didn't quit my job. That's one of the reasons why I quit my job. Fully. Fully. And that's another reason why I. Ultimately, my ultimate goal is to not have to rely on my content creation as my source of income. Yeah, because I think that that'll just free up more creativity and, and remove any sort of stress or pressure. Uh, and it can just go back to becoming a side gig kind of thing. Um, but, you know. Yeah, it's just great to hear that as well from you, from your side.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think I didn't really even plan for us to talk about this, but it came up and I think we're, it's actually a really important discussion because again, I feel like a lot of people just think there's one way of doing it. I have to create a course, I have to send people to newsletter, which again, is fine if, like, you want to do that. I'm not against it. It's just, uh, there's a time and a place for doing that. And I respect it a lot if you make it successful because people have paid for something that you created. And I also respect that as much as anything. But there's that creative part where I feel like a lot of people get sucked in and then you'd never go back. And that is a hard, hard thing to balance.

Speaker B: They're algorithm junkies is what they are. They're algorithms and that's what it is.

Speaker A: Yeah, completely. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn jobs. These days, every new potential hire can feel like a high stakes wager for your small business business. You want to be 100% certain that you have access to the best qualified candidates available. That's why you have to check out LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the right people for your team faster and for free. It's super easy to create a free job post in minutes on LinkedIn jobs. Add your job and the purple hashtag hiring frame to your LinkedIn profile to spread the word that you're hiring. Simple tools like screening questions make it easy to focus on candidates with just the right skills and experience so you can quickly prioritize who you'd like to interview and hire. Finding great talent is always at the top of the list for every entrepreneur I've had on his show. And they know that adding the right person can 10x their business. And many of them use LinkedIn jobs for that. It's why small businesses rate LinkedIn jobs, the number one place in delivering high quality hires versus leading competitors. LinkedIn jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to faster. Post your job for free@, ah, LinkedIn.com creator. That's LinkedIn.com creator to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. All right, so let's talk about, um, the actual content. We're going to get into that, ah, in the weeds. One question before we show some examples. I mentioned it earlier. Educating versus entertaining. This is a classic kind of decision, uh, that you need to make. It's normally a mix of both. But where do you stand on that kind of debate around where your content is? Is it primarily entertainment? Is it primarily education? Like how does that, how does that work in your head?

Speaker B: I'd say it's 60% entertainment, 40% education. Um, each video will have different, a, uh, different, uh, percentage there. Uh, I try to lean a little bit more on the entertainment side. I feel like if you're not entertaining, it's tough to just, it's tough to like even stand out. Right. You have to be a little bit entertaining. Um, and people don't want to be bored when, that, whenever they're learning or scrolling through social media or watching content. Right. Um, so I say it's probably 60%, but I always try to make it educational, um, as much as I can.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a great point. I would just add my 2 cents here. I think when I started Creator Lab, it was so much education, and I feel like I've always had a light way of talking to people. It's of kind conversational. There's a little humor sprinkled in. But it was not, like a primarily entertaining platform.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: It was like, really deep, like, how do you do stuff? Learning? And I have, over time, become a bit more the other way. Not investment advice, which is the second podcast, after having some experience, was primarily about entertaining. With education, it was like, you can't. And that's my. I've changed my mind on this. Essentially similar to you, which is you kind of need to earn the right to educate in a way. Like, the entertainment kind of comes first. It doesn't mean you have to be a comedian, but it means you have to be fun enough to listen to, I think if you want to hit a certain scale. And so I think that's a really nice way to think about it. But again, it comes down to the individual. Like, someone is just a really good teacher. Like, you know, I think that's fine, too, but it's a little bit harder, I think. Um, so let's get into a few, uh, examples. You gave those three types of videos, uh, earlier. Um, I think you might even share your screen here. But why don't we talk about the process? Because from the outside, I'm assuming you have to come up with an idea for a video, which is the topic, the style of video. Then you're going to maybe write a script, or you're going to go off the dome. That's kind of like the next step. Then you're going to record it, then you're going to edit it, and then you're going to post it. So are there any other steps? I kind of missed out, but that's roughly how I thought about it.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's pretty much it. Those are the. Those are the steps right there. I'm pulling up. I'm going to share with you kind of the entire process. I'm going to share with you, like the script. Oh, amazing writing process. Uh, what I use for that. I'm going to talk about, uh, you know, the editing. I'll show you, like, the equipment that I use and everything. So amazing.

Speaker A: All right, let's do it. I'm just going to shut up for a while now. So over to you all right, cool.

Speaker B: So I'm going to show you my screen here. So for, for my videos, you know, for the typical skit style videos, which is what I'm kind of known for and my best performing videos, uh, I start off with, I have an ocean board and I just start off with like a script. Uh, so that for example, this is the video I'm talking about. I'm talking about my Apple earnings video. When Apple released their earnings a few weeks ago, I wanted to turn that into like a skit, uh, explaining you know, like the results, Apple's results, and why their stock dropped after they released their Q2 earnings. So this is the video right here. Got about almost 700,000 views. And that started off by me just you know, knew I knew what the video was going to be about. It was going to be reacting to Apple earnings. I have a little notion page, um, where I do all my content management and writing and stuff. And, and yeah, so I just have a little tab that says that's like the script. And I just start writing the script. Now this is like the final version of the script usually that has multiple iterations, but this is just like I start, okay, what are the characters going to be? And then I just go like the first step is just doing a mind dump. I'm just like, okay, let's just do a first draft of the script. And I'm just going, I'm just writing, not uh, even thinking too much about like how best to say a line. I'm just trying to get the rough draft in. And so I do that first and then I go back, try to add some jokes in there, try to think of like, you know, how to make it funnier, how to make it more educational, entertaining. Um, and I nail down the script, um, takes about 30 minutes to an hour depending on how caffeinated I am or how, how creative I am that day.

Speaker A: How long is that, that script usually do you know?

Speaker B: Um, I, I, so every video uh, I try to make over a minute because Tick Tock pays a pretty decent CPM now for a minute for a video that are longer than a minute. But I don't want to make being longer than a minute and a half because that's what the reels limit is. So like a reels is uh, supposed to be 90 seconds even though I think they're starting to raise that now. But still most of my videos are between one minute to a minute and 10, 15 seconds.

Speaker A: So okay, so what I'll do, you know how many words that Is roughly

Speaker B: what I'll do is I'll copy this.

Speaker A: I'm just curious.

Speaker B: Yeah, so I'll just copy this and then those other's like a word, uh, counter, thing. And I'll just paste it in there and it'll tell you how many minutes it takes to read it. So I'll just paste it in here.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, Perfect.

Speaker B: And then it's like. Oh, it'll take speaking time a minute and.

Speaker A: Oh, that's. That's good to know.

Speaker B: Okay, so I'll copy that in there and then that way I'll know. Okay, it's over a minute. I should be good. Um, so that's what I. So that's the first thing I do is I come up with a script. Then it's filming the thing, right. So I film the thing I have for filming. I used to use my iPhone. So I used to use my iPhone, but now I upgraded to the, uh, Sony Z1ZV1.

Speaker A: So you're away from the mic a little bit. It's hard to see.

Speaker B: So I use my Sony ZV1 mic, not my Sony ZV1 camera, uh, for all my, uh, recordings now for my skits.

Speaker A: Do you know how much that costs, roughly?

Speaker B: I think it's like 700 bucks.

Speaker A: Oh, okay. That's cool. Is it a mirrorless one? It's a.

Speaker B: It's not. I don't know if it's mirrorless. It's. I like it because there's no, like, lens, like a fixed lens to it.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. But it does. You get a bit of the blood background.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Sort of vibe with the, um, low depth of field.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: I used to do a lot of these on iPhone.

Speaker B: Oh. Before what I used to do is I, like, I had no green screen or anything. I would use the green screen effect on my. On the TikTok app.

Speaker A: Oh, God.

Speaker B: Literally record like this. Just like looking into the camera with

Speaker A: my phone and you just speak into the mic of the, of just the, of the apple of the iPhone.

Speaker B: Yes. But I actually have a little. I have a little thing for that as well. So as I started getting more and more views and I wanted to upgrade my equipment, the first thing I bought was this mic right here, the Shure mic. Um, I forgot what, uh, MV88. And so this mic would attach to the bottom of my iPhone and. And the audio quality would be so much better than just the normal audio coming from the iPhone mic. So I would just attach this and it would just help significantly with the audio It's a sure mic. So it's pretty, you know, pretty good reputation, pretty good audio. So that's what I did before I started switching over to the Sony camera.

Speaker A: Awesome, man. Yeah, so, so those are the uh, that's the setup. Pretty low, low lift. And you, you said you've got a green screen as well. Like you need it in the background now, but you used TikTok has a green screen function in it.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So. And then just really quickly I noticed, if you don't mind me saying so I see you've got a uh, podcast OS here in the back on the left hand side. I'm curious this and I have the same one is from. Is it um, Janelle or.

Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker A: Yeah, she. She did a newsletter one and uh, podcast one. Curious if your short form videos tab in notion is one you. Is it just like one you made yourself or was there like a template, something used?

Speaker B: No, I made myself. I'm actually. I'll share some of this. So my short form video. Um, no, I just made this myself. So I have like you know, a little a tab for every different piece of content. So short form I have one for newsletter, YouTube podcast, which I haven't really done in a while. But you know I have like, I just, you know I have a little tab for every little specific topic content that I'm doing, live streams, things like that. Um, and then I have a little sponsorship database, sponsored posts where I try to keep you know, everything organized and then miscellaneous research and things like that that I have a goals, tool, subscriptions, you know, whenever I mentioned in the press, I'll. I'll keep a little link here, random ideas, um, and then a little content calendar that tells me like when I've posted videos.

Speaker A: So just so I know how that works. Is that when you're creating uh, like that one we were in before the Apple video M. There's a field there for when you're posting or something like that. Right. And then it goes on the content calendar. Okay.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I have a little thing right here. It tells me what day I posted it and then I'll also put links of when it is very well organized.

Speaker A: Man, that's better than most people I know. That is very good.

Speaker B: I try to be organized and notion is just amazing.

Speaker A: Engineer side coming out of you, man.

Speaker B: Yeah, my engineering brain helps a little bit when I love this stuff. Uh, so I have like nodes and like sometimes if I have like articles and stuff that I want to use to help me like so if I'M thinking about a video. I'll just, like, post some tweets or articles or whatever that I can reference back if I'm, you know, just coming up with ideas for a video. So I'll put that in the same little notion page. Um, but, yeah, that's. That's pretty much it. So I'll do the script and.

Speaker A: And.

Speaker B: And after that, it's time to film. I'll film the video in front of my, uh, um, in front of my green screen, and then I'll show you what the final result looks like.

Speaker A: Uh, just clarify. So those. That is. There's two characters here.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: For one investor. So do you. Do you read through the investors one on one, and then you do the Apple side another, and then stitch it together? Or you go back and I'm assuming that's how you do it because you're wearing different outfits sometimes.

Speaker B: So. Yeah, what I used to do early on, because there was no way to, like, I used to record everything in the TikTok app, so I would have to change clothes every time.

Speaker A: Oh, my God.

Speaker B: No way.

Speaker A: So you'd read Apple is true.

Speaker B: Yes, yes.

Speaker A: That's crazy.

Speaker B: This is early on. I'm talking, like, you know, 2020 early on.

Speaker A: Okay, okay, okay.

Speaker B: But now, yeah, I just, like, read all the investor line, then I read all the Apple lines, you know, like, in separate takes so I don't have to constantly keep changing clothes back and forth.

Speaker A: But that is now on your SD card or whatever, because you've got it on.

Speaker B: It'll be on my SD card in my camera.

Speaker A: Got it. And that could have, like, times where you made a mistake as well. Right? Like, it's often not in one take.

Speaker B: Oh, we're about to. I'm about to show you that next.

Speaker A: Okay, cool, Cool.

Speaker B: This stuff. I will do multiple takes. Multiple takes of each line because, you know, it's. It's tough trying to figure out, like, what inflection you should use, how you should pause, what facial expressions you should use. Like, I try to, like, do multiple iterations of each line, and then I'm, um, like, okay, I'll pick the best one in post.

Speaker A: Yeah, completely.

Speaker B: And so I'll show you the post, uh, what that looks like. So then. Sorry, go ahead.

Speaker A: No, no, sorry. Yeah, go ahead. Uh, so this is from your script you recorded. Now it goes over to editing. Right?

Speaker B: Absolutely. So that's the next step. So I'll take everything in my SD card.

Speaker A: Descript. Here we go.

Speaker B: Yeah. Descript. Yep. I took everything in my SD card. And move it over to, uh, a hard drive that I have locally. And then from there, I'll put it into description. And this is what the final result is. Or this is what, like, the. The raw result is. Also, I'll have, like, a little tab. So I create a new, um, project under descript, and in there, I'll have three different compositions that they call it. So one for the raw investors, um, uh, you know, video, uh, and then one for, like, the Apple character. And then I create a final one, which is where I kind of put it all together. So I'll walk through kind of how this works. And this is starting to get pretty technical when it comes to, like, Descript specifically. So stop me if I'm starting to bore you with the.

Speaker A: Just real quick. Are you, um, this is in vertical already. So when you recorded it, was it in vertical dimensions, or did you make it into that?

Speaker B: Great question. Yeah, it's vertical dimensions. I keep the camera on its side.

Speaker A: Oh, like portrait. Okay, got it.

Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.

Speaker A: Oh, cool. Okay.

Speaker B: So, yeah, I recorded vertical. Absolutely.

Speaker A: One less step for you as well. All right, so now we can see the green screen before. Now you've got this in the background, right?

Speaker B: So this is what it looks like.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: This is what it looks like in front of the green screen. I'm recording it. Um, and I just say the lines. Now I got to figure out which direction to look, but I say the lines multiple times, and. And, yeah, just me saying the lines multiple times over and over again, taking multiple takes and, uh, for each. For each character, for each line. So I'm trying to see why I won't play.

Speaker A: I want. Oh, yeah, go. So, got it.

Speaker B: And just say it over and over again.

Speaker A: You look like a pro, man. I can see just, like, seeing you. I mean, it's like. It's funny, especially without the sound. You could just see, uh, you know, you're really acting it out, man. That is impressive.

Speaker B: And so it's just. It's just as you can kind of see, like, it's. You know, what Descript does? What I love is it just, like, uh, transcribes everything for you. And so now I know exactly. Like, I said this line. Let me just figure out the three takes. I see the three takes, and then I can, like, you know, listen to whichever the best take is. So, uh, so. So. So let me just back up a little bit. So I had the two characters in here. I have the investor, and I have Apple. I have the two characters, and I have all the. I have all the lines. Then I'll go and create a new composition and I'll just kind of pick the best lines based on the script. So I'm like, okay, I know.

Speaker A: Paste in, right?

Speaker B: So, so I'll, I'll go. So I'm like, okay, the video starts with the investor talking first. Then I'll go to the investor one. And then I'm like, okay, cool. I have multiple takes. Let me just find the best one that I like. And then I'll just copy it. I'll just go here, you know, I'll just copy and then I'll paste it to the new. Uh, let me just do it. Let me show you an example. I'll just paste it over.

Speaker A: Boom.

Speaker B: And I'll just.

Speaker A: Isn't it incredible? Descript. I will say, oh, my God, this is not paid for by Descript, but I think they've done an amazing job with it. Because for people who've ever done use Final Cut Pro, Adobe, even a Windows movie maker back in the day. Yeah, I mean, this was so much harder because you're seeing a waveform, not obviously a video, but the audio you don't hear, uh, you don't read. So this transcribes it and you see it side by side. So you can copy and paste. You can also take out the ums and ahs automatically because they've got a nice tool for that. It doesn't always work 100% with me. Like, I use it for my ad reads or for stuff. And it will. I'll often take out gaps and stuff, which is so helpful. But, um, but sometimes maybe it's my accent, but it doesn't always capture it properly. But yeah, that is pretty good still.

Speaker B: It is so good. I mean, I, I'm so bullish on this company. Again, they're not paying me to say any of this stuff. I mean, I'm m. A very, very happy customer.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, and I love their product. Um, and yeah, so with the. I used to use Premiere Pro, uh, like a year or so ago, but ever since I moved to Descript, I mean, the editing process has been so

Speaker A: much, so much quicker. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah, so m. Much quicker. So that's what I do. Yeah. So, like, you know, the editing stuff is, you know, the editing is like, I have a lot of people, A lot of, uh, people hit my hit, my DMs up saying, I'll be your editor. Like, if you want to hire an editor, let me know. I've never been able to give that up because I'll Be honest. Editing is part of my creative process.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I need to edit to see, like, which line I want to use. That's why I do you like.

Speaker A: You like it enough to. To want, uh, to do it versus, like, I'll say a podcast edit I did do originally, but that's like hour and a half, two hours. And it's like Rafa, who is doing mine now, he. He's great at it. He likes doing it. And he's not. Maybe if he did it for himself, it would be different too. It's like, if you're listening to yourself for a few hours, it's like, it's a different experience. So I think it's. If this is a bit different, it's like a one minute you're cutting it down, and it doesn't make quite a difference. Like, the. The taste of knowing what you prefer is up to you. So. Yeah.

Speaker B: And just to give you how much editing goes into it. So just one character. I have about 10, uh, what is this? Like, almost 15 minutes of raw footage. 15 minutes. Because I'm just doing multiple, multiple takes. And sometimes what happens is I'll, like, ad lib some stuff. I'm like, ah, that doesn't hit right. Let me just, like, let me just try it a different way and maybe it'll work in post. The last thing I want to do is, like, put my clothes back on and take another. Yeah, you know, take another.

Speaker A: So when you say put your clothes back on, like, it makes it so. I know, I know. It made it sound like you were doing this naked. Not just the green screen. Sorry. But I know what you're saying. Okay.

Speaker B: Put my costumes back on. So. Yeah, so, yeah, so that's. That's just like the. The nitty gritty process of just, like, finding, uh, a line, liking it, copying it over to a new. A new, um, composition, and then going to the apple one. Okay. Which one do I like more? Okay, I like this one more. Boom. And just doing that copy, going to the new one.

Speaker A: Do you use, um, any of the tools around taking the ums and ahs out? Taking gaps out? Any of those?

Speaker B: I'll take, like, the. I'll take the gaps, uh, out. But I don't really use the ums and oz part out because sometimes, like, I want the ums and oz in the video just to make it sound, like, real and authentic.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Um, I don't. I don't. I'll do the gaps. Because I'll have some gaps. I'll just use that to cut, to cut the gaps. And then I'll have to go back in there and fine tune it because sometimes it's not right. So then I'll just, I'll watch the video back. I'm like, okay, there's probably too much of a gap still, so I'll just manually like go in there and. Yeah, I cut that one. Exactly.

Speaker A: And then what about. So that. That's really helpful. So it sounds like it ends up matching roughly your, uh, script originally, which you've already checked the duration while using that tool you showed earlier.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: So, you know, roughly it's around a minute 15 or whatever you aiming for now. Like, now you've got a video with a green screen, but it's the right, um, script. So what I saw in the final composition, you in descript, you already had the background. How'd you do that? I don't even know how to do that.

Speaker B: Yeah, so descript has this feature where you can, you know, do a green. They have, they have a, uh, green screen effect feature. So if you go to, uh. Where is it again?

Speaker A: I think it's effect screen. So you got it there. Yeah.

Speaker B: So they have a green screen one. But what I use is chroma key. So what green screen does. So what green screen does is if you don't actually use a green screen, it'll cut the background using AI. But if you have a green screen, you'll use chroma key and then you just like do like the little, the dropper thingy. And then it'll like, you know, pick, pick whatever. You know, mine's, uh, automatically done it. But like, you just tell what color green screen you have and it'll remove it. It's a little bit more cleaner compared to using the green screen feature because the green screen feature is using AI.

Speaker A: Oh, got it. Like, like the way Zoom would do or does.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: But. And then what about actually putting stuff. I've never honestly used it. I've used it mostly for just ad reads and stuff. So I don't actually do it for video much. How do you add like now there you've got the Apple image in the background. Do you do that in descript as well?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So what I do is I just like Google, like Apple offices, right. Uh, Google images. Find one that like works and then, and then save it and then I just add it to, uh. You can, you can add an image, uh, to like the descript timeline. It's kind of like, uh, Premiere.

Speaker A: It's like a background. Got it. Yes. Like an image. And so can you put. You can do that as overlays and stuff, too. I assume you can just change, because this is. You're using it as a background, and you've got two layers here, which is your. Your image of yourself is on top. So I'm assuming that supersedes whatever's on the background. It like. Like Premiere or Find.

Speaker B: You can change the order. Yeah, you can change the order to be like. Okay, I want. I want the image to be in the background. So you can, like, you can click it, and then you can select layer orders. You can bring it to the front.

Speaker A: Oh, There we go. PowerPoint, man. There we go. That's perfect. All right.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Damn. All right, so that's. That's very easy. And you can do all of this in descript. So you don't even use Adobe at all.

Speaker B: By this point, it's already canceled my prescription. I had a subscription that I was running.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: And I canceled it, uh, a couple months ago because I'm just like, I don't need it anymore.

Speaker A: Damn. Um, that's incredible. What about, um, You've seen, like, Callaway, what he does, and I'm gonna share this with him because he. He told me he would be open to trying Descript, and maybe there'll be ways. I know he does a lot of, like, edits with the images and stuff. Do you think you can do that in Descript with the way he does. He's got, like, his head on the top and he does, like, overlays and stuff. Oh, uh, yeah. And you can do that here as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, I've done videos like that where you. Yeah, where you have, like, the exact. You know, you're talking to the camera. Overlays. Yeah, same. Same kind of format. It's just like. It's just like, Premiere when it comes to that. Uh, maybe not as, like, advanced tools. Uh, but yeah, you can do a lot of stuff like that, um, on. On descript as well.

Speaker A: That's incredible. Yeah. Really helpful to see that. And again, for people only listening, I'd highly recommend clicking and checking the video out, because you can see the whole timeline here. And I know this is very in the weeds, but for someone like me, let's say if I wanted to create a video, most people will stop at, oh, I create a script. And. Yeah, okay, now what? Like, now you've actually shown me how to do it, I could replicate this. So this is really, really helpful, man. Um, all right, so now you've got. You export the video.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: This is a very specific question because I'm a sound person, you know, when you do the export, does it ask you to normalize the levels and stuff? Do you do that?

Speaker B: It does not ask me to normalize it, but, uh, you can right click it and you can like, you can ask it to auto level the clip.

Speaker A: Oh, cool.

Speaker B: So if I have a situation where I have to auto level, typically I don't have to because, like, my mic is always like, it's already good, but sometimes there'll be a situation, we'll have to auto level it. And yeah, like, uh, you'll have to do that, but it doesn't ask you to do that.

Speaker A: If you. Because now this was using your camera and your mic. If you were doing this, you're walking with your phone. I don't know if you did that recently because you're doing more of these ones yourself. Is there anything different when you're doing that version in descript?

Speaker B: Like, um, if I was doing it with my phone.

Speaker A: Yeah, because you don't have the proper mic and stuff.

Speaker B: Yeah. So what you could do. Yeah, I guess you could. You can auto level the clip. And what you can also do, they have this little effects feature, uh, effect where you can do, uh, uh, they have this thing where you can like. Oh, it's studio sound here.

Speaker A: Studio sound. That's studio sound.

Speaker B: And it'll like, it'll take hit or miss away. Yeah, it's hit or miss.

Speaker A: Yeah. All right, cool, cool. That's good to know because, uh, yeah, I have tried that one sometimes it works pretty well. Like you said, it's like, I think they take the background noise away and they're trying to like, enrich your voice, which when I've done this in the past, way back in the day in Adobe, like the. I think it was Adobe Audition, you literally take like a sample. Like, often when I did podcasts, I would start with 10 seconds of silence. So you capture the background noise of the room. Okay. Okay. And then you start recording and then you can take that background noise and say, remove that from the rest of the hour and a half interview. It worked really well.

Speaker B: Nice. I don't know you do that.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I don't do anymore, but, uh, that was. If you're really trying to take the sound level to another level, that's a good way to do it. Great. So this is that now you've got the video. Now you've. You do many overlays or anything like that. Or by this point it's just you speaking?

Speaker B: No.

Speaker A: As well, right?

Speaker B: Yeah. The captions are automatic. You can just. There's a little captions button. You just click this and you add captions. Like it's really easy to add captions. Um, and I'll do like some overlays. Like I think I had a couple overlays, um, when it came to, uh,

Speaker A: let's see, what's your kind of philosophy on that? Like, I know you're optimizing for scale versus quantity, right? So you want to make sure you're doing lots of videos. What was your philosophy on that? Around when you need an overlay, when you don't, when it doesn't really matter. Like, I'm curious what you think about it.

Speaker B: I always try to do it with the least amount of time as possible. So I'm like, do I really need this overlay? Like, does the audience.

Speaker A: Is it going to add much of a. Uh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, so I tend to lean to like not doing overlays. Like what I'll do is the only thing that I'll do is so I'll take this video, right? And I'll post it on TikTok. But before I post it on TikTok, I'll use like a tick tock text to have some sort of, uh, like description like that pops up, um, at the beginning of the video that tells the audience what the video is about.

Speaker A: Oh, that's. So it's the actual made in TikTok video. Yeah.

Speaker B: Like for example, this one, Apple Q2 earnings recap. Like this is. This is using TikTok's native, um, text.

Speaker A: The way are you showing another. I can just see the script.

Speaker B: My bad, my bad. Okay, hang on, let me, let me show you that.

Speaker A: That's actually a good point. Why are you bringing that up? Is that also because TikTok prioritizes videos that are made in TikTok.

Speaker B: I, I've heard that rumor. I don't have any stats to back it up.

Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, here you go. So for people only listening, there's the typical overlay you'll see both on TikTok and even Instagram has stuff like that. So, um, and does that. Oh, it just comes up for the beginning. So, yeah.

Speaker B: And sometimes I'll add a couple ones in the middle if I need to. Like in this one I'm like, okay, this is easy. I'll just show Apple Q2 revenues. So that way TikTok. Again, I don't know if this is true, but it's like, okay, this Guy's actually using TikTok's features. Maybe. Maybe I get like, uh, a 1% boost in the algorithm. I don't really know, I don't really care, but I just do it anyway. So I'm like, it can add a little bit. It doesn't take a lot of time. It takes like five seconds to add this overlay.

Speaker A: Great, man. And then so now you post it directly in the TikTok app on your computer. What? Does it make a difference?

Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think it makes a difference. Uh, you can post it on the TikTok web interface, but I just use my phone because I'll export it, I'll put it on my phone, and then I'll post it on Instagram and TikTok, so it's just easier to do it on my phone.

Speaker A: Got it. And now this is getting a little bit tactical, but just curious, I see you've got a few hashtags in here. What is the, uh, you know, again, there's only three hashtags. It's not like spamming it. Do. Do hashtags make much of a difference on TikTok nowadays, you think?

Speaker B: I don't think it makes that much of a difference. Um, so the hashtags that I. The one hashtag that I always use is my. Is my username, so Edmond explains. And I think that's nice because if someone wants to pull up all my videos, they can just click that and then, boom, they have all my videos, which is nice. And then sometimes I'll add some hashtags.

Speaker A: Oh, longer videos.

Speaker B: Like, there was one like this actually, like, was directed by Tick Tock. Tick Tock was like, hey, add hashtag longer videos if your video is longer than a minute. And. And maybe they were just like, it was a notification to do it and I did it.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, if they're telling you to do it, you're normally a good idea to do it because that means they're accounting for it. So. And then earnings. And so this is nowadays. But you. It's difficult to tell if it's making a difference. I guess I don't.

Speaker B: I don't think it makes that much of a difference. I mean, you could do like a TikTok. You could do like a spam it with. With hashtags. I don't know if it makes that much of a difference. I think.

Speaker A: What about on Instagram? Um, do you think that makes a difference on there?

Speaker B: I don't think it makes that much of a difference.

Speaker A: It used to be, like, five years ago, if you Posted on Instagram. You did want to add hashtags. Nowadays, I'm not sure if anything. I think sometimes it almost feels like spam algorithm. And like, for sure. Like on Twitter, for example, if there's more than two, three clickable things, whether that's an app mention, obviously a link just gets nuked completely. But, um, yeah, it's just that. That's interesting to know because, I mean, I guess it's interesting for you now because you have an existing follower base who've seen your videos. So even if they're not following you, they've seen your videos, it's gonna surface in their feed and if enough people see it, it will get out to more people. Uh, right. Is there any. The other tactical thing is time of day. I'm just asking that because I have heard some people say certain times a day for them, they post. Is there anything for you? You have a roar around that. Or you just let it fly whenever it's ready.

Speaker B: I just let it fly. I just let it fly. I mean, whenever it's done, I want to post it and just, you know, let it. Let it into the world. I haven't. I mean, I.

Speaker A: If I don't want to be sitting on that, man. You just want to get it out there.

Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. I mean, if I finish a video at like one o' clock in the morning, then I will wait. Wait till like, you know, when I wake up the next day to post it. But if it's like a normal hours, I'll just post it. If I finish.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Is there any other. Now the, the engineering brain. I'm curious because this is all very creative. Like, I love the process. Simple. It sounds like this could be done in a few hours. Right? Like, how long would that process have taken, you think? You said half an hour for the script recording was probably another. Uh, it.

Speaker B: I. Honestly, it just, it just, it depends. But I'd say like, for a video like that, it could take about four hours. Uh, 4ish hours. Like the script will take me anywhere between half an hour to an hour. It just depends. Like, sometimes I can. I can bust out the script super, super fast. And sometimes it just. I'm like, I just can't figure out how the video is going to end.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: What about, um.

Speaker A: Sorry, sorry, go ahead.

Speaker B: No, I was gonna say. So half an hour to an hour for the script and then, yeah, filming. Filming actually will surprisingly take half an hour to an hour as well, because I'm changing outfits, multiple takes, but let's just say half an hour most times.

Speaker A: I just love the outfit change, man. It's so amazing. And the editing, you think what probably takes around an hour or two?

Speaker B: Yeah, some, yeah, an hour, sometimes an hour and a half. Um, because like sometimes I'll have to add music in there or some sound effects. Uh.

Speaker A: Oh, that's a good, that's a good point actually. So what, what about music? Because obviously we talked about TikToks soul. Having a music background back in the day is still obviously a big part of it. What you do with music, Because a lot of people use like trending music for example, is that uh, and it's different on TikTok versus Instagram.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And then there's probably rules around using native. I don't, I don't know much about this but curious. Like in TikTok, do you select a song or is it adding music in the video itself?

Speaker B: No, you can select the song, but I don't use that stuff. I don't use TikTok's music anymore. Okay. I just, I'll just um, you know, I'll just try to find some royalty free music. There's a few websites, um, that are out there like epidemic sounds and things like that. I'm like, okay, this what kind of, like what kind of music fits this kind of skit? And sometimes I'll have no music and because what I've noticed is like the music doesn't make that much of a difference. Um, but like sound effects will be, you know, sometimes relevant. So in this case I had like a Siri sound effect and added to the video. So little things like that I'll add but sometimes I'll just do like zero music and zero sound effects.

Speaker A: Love it. All right, man, that's, that's really helpful to see. Um, the last few questions I have on that part and we'll wrap it up soon is I can see you've got these green screen ones where you're talking about like news or something. Like you've got a Sam Bankman fried one and you've got references in another one on the right hand side, the fourth one in the first row.

Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Um, so what is that again? It looks like the same process. You're using the green screen and instead in descript instead of the Apple image, you've just put those images instead.

Speaker B: No. So for videos like this. I'm not using descript for videos like this. It's either through Cap Cut or through TikTok's own video, uh, editing App.

Speaker A: Got it. Okay, cool. Gotta ask then. So what's that? Like, when do you choose to do capcut versus Descript? Is that more off the dome ones?

Speaker B: Yeah, off the dome because it's like, it's just so much easier. I can record directly in Cap Cut, so I can just record directly in Cap Cut. And I'm just like, I'm just gonna record there, edit it there on my phone. I don't have to open up descript, and boom, I'm good to go. And, like, I'll just. I mean, like, for example, this one, like, it'll just hang on. I'm trying to pause this.

Speaker A: Yeah, that looks so much quicker. Like, because you're. The green screen is working pretty well there without a real green screen. Right? So, like, that is. Well, actually, uh, when you're recording that on your phone, is there even a green screen behind you? No, that's just the phone.

Speaker B: Just the phone? Yeah, just the phone. And so, like, this. The. The feature works really well on Cap Cut or Tick Tock's editing app. And I'm just. I take a couple screenshots. I kind of know what I'm going to talk about. Take a couple screenshots of some articles that I think are relevant and boom, boom, boom, off the dome, talk about it, and try to upload it within 30 minutes sometimes, you know, just like, boom. And it's all.

Speaker A: Love it, man. All right, so that brings us on to the last couple things about this. So I mentioned it earlier, this idea of quality versus quantity. Um, well, sorry, actually, was there anything else before on your screen you want to share with us or before we cut out?

Speaker B: Yeah, so the only other thing that I'll say is, like, so those are the two main type of videos that I do is like, you know, the educational with the green screen, quick off the dome. And then, like, the script, the sketches, the funny sketches. The third one that I try to do, you know, incorporate here there to be more personal and get people to, like, you know, get behind the scenes.

Speaker A: This is a Sephora unboxing video.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, like, uh. So I got my. My wife told me to. She. She got a Sephora box delivered to her, and she wasn't at home, so I was unboxing it for her. So I'm just like, Let me just. This is kind of funny. Like, the packaging was so big for a really tiny item. So I'm like, I could just. This be a funny little video. Spent like 15 minutes making the video. I'm like, boom. Upload and you know, like, it doesn't get the most views or anything, but it's just, uh, a good behind the scenes and against volume. Get people behind the scenes of, like, what. What I'm doing. Um, and so I try to do videos like that. And then these are the vlogs that I. That I was doing before. I'm just like, you know, going about showing the playlist.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like, right.

Speaker A: This is dope looking. Looking fresh in that hat, bro. Look at that. Love it. That's amazing.

Speaker B: So, yeah, those. That's. That's pretty much it as far as, like, what you see in my profile.

Speaker A: Very cool, dude. And then. So if you don't mind, have you still got an ocean open?

Speaker B: Yeah, I do.

Speaker A: Uh, could we just see the content calendar since we're doing it since. Yeah, the question I had was around the. The volume. Right. So again, like, this is. Is this. This is up to date, I'm assuming roughly?

Speaker B: It's, uh, pretty much up to date. Yeah. As you can see, I haven't been posting much the last couple weeks.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Uh, cool. But, yeah, this is pretty much up to date. Now. Sometimes, like, the off the dome ones, this is not, uh, perfect, right? Because, like, off the dome ones, sometimes I'll just forget to log. I try to log everything, but I'll forget to log them. All the. All the sketches that I do back and forth. I always have a little thing in

Speaker A: these because you've got to write the script already, so it's kind of where. So that's nice. But, yeah, I'm the same man. I have, like, a whole setup with. And my. Mine is a lot less than yours, but it's just like, sometimes it feels like admin. Like, even for my editor, I just. I had a whole view set up for him. Um, and then with naa, which. Which he also does, I literally just send him a folder of the upload and, like a title and be like, you know what you're doing. So thing. He does the rest. And so we've just switched to that with Crate Lab, and it's actually very nice, but I need to do it for my own because I have, like, sponsors in there and I have, like, you know, like, for my own admin. I do keep that. But, um, yeah, this is helpful to see. Um, but it's interesting because I have the same thing of, like, oh, was it actually the right date or did it change? And you. You have to get. It's like, in the job, like you. It's the hygiene of keeping the CRM up to date, like in a sales job or something like that.

Speaker B: Exactly. And so what I've tried to do is set like a weekly reminder. Like at the end of the week, I'll go back and like, just. Just spend like 30 minutes to log everything. Okay, I forgot to log this video. I'll do it. I'll do it real quick. And just so it's all organized and like, uh, I'm trying to think like five years from now. Imagine like five years from now if I want to, like, find a video. Oh, yeah, it's all here. And I can just like, go back to this calendar. It's so much easier to do compared to like. Or like, what was I talking about? A year from now I can go back, reference that video, and it's just. I just want to have that log with me. And it's just. I don't know, it's not. Doesn't take too much time either.

Speaker A: No, it's nice, man. No, I think it's nice to see in notion. It's well set up there. So, um, the question I had was around how often you're posting, and I know you said like, last few weeks it's been doing less, but just before that, is there a rough target you have for the week? How's that work for you?

Speaker B: You know, I don't. Ideally, I want to post every day. Right? Ideally, I want to post every single day. And actually, like, my. My goal at one point was to post 10 videos a week. And it's. I just, I don't think it's that hard. But again, we just get into our own heads about, like, oh, this isn't, like, perfect. This isn't good enough. And, you know, I've been doing this for a few years now, and I still get in my own head. I'm just like, oh, like, does anyone really care that, you know, this happened? And the answer should be, it doesn't matter, Just post it anyways. Because Again, to me, TikTok is a volume game. Like, at least that's what I think. It's like, just post it. You don't know what's gonna work, what's not gonna work. Yeah, just do it. And as long as it's not something off, just like completely random, if it's even somewhat relevant, just do it. And the more you do, the faster you're gonna get at it. But again, I still get in my own head. I'm like, oh, like, I thought this video about, you know, I don't know, some random, you know, like, Messy. Making this much money for Apple might be interesting, but, ah, maybe not. So I. I want to get to the point where I'm posting 10 times a week. Um, and, and hopefully I can get there when 10 times a week with at least one comedy, uh, sketch in there once a week. Um, so that's what my ultimate goal is. I. There's been times and months where I've been able to hit that, and there's been times and months, like right now, because we know we're having a baby soon, where it's like, I haven't been able to do it.

Speaker A: So it just, you know, congrats on that, by the way. I know the little, uh, inside baseball here. Well, I just happened to suggest the day that your wife was due, so, uh, I know. So we recorded a little bit before, but that's. That's amazing, man. Well, congrats on that. That's number two. Yeah.

Speaker B: Number two.

Speaker A: Yeah. Amazing, bro. All right, cool. So, yeah, well, that's helpful to see. So ideally, one a day is what you're aiming for, but, like, it isn't always that. Of course. It's always hard to do.

Speaker B: Exactly. I mean, the people that I found that have the most success that I like, I'm like, okay, this person's doing it. This person is doing really great. Are the ones that are posting a lot. Like, if you think about the Tick Tockers that are famous for being Tick Tockers, like the Alex Earls. Right? Or like, um, even like back in the day where it was Charlie d' Amelio and all them, they were posting a lot of freaking content.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: And I think what other. What some people have chosen to do, and I don't think it's wrong, is to go the more, um, higher production route, but less volume and that, that works too, if that's your thing. Um, but to me, I would just rather try for short form content. I was still lean towards lower production, but higher volume.

Speaker A: Quantity. Yeah.

Speaker B: Quantity over quality. Yeah.

Speaker A: And I think especially, I mean, an interesting example in contrast is Callaway, obviously, just had him on you. I know you've seen his stuff. I don't know if you guys have spoken, but he would probably agree with you in terms of. Especially in the beginning. You both said the same thing to me. The reason it's important in beginning is you have no followers. You're just trying to see if you can get good at this. So that is the most important thing, it seems like. And I've heard that across every podcast I'd say the same YouTube. It's just like getting in the reps, essentially. It's like create enough that you can get in a flow of creating and see, find your voice a little bit. Um, and then, yeah, then you can make that decision later. But I think a lot of the time, uh, in the beginning, people might be overthinking it. They're like, oh, it needs to be at this level before I can do it. And that is normally. You normally need to, like, you should be a little bit embarrassed of the first one. Like, the first 10, probably, you know, where you're like, oh, I'm not 100% there yet. And so that's kind of even me. Like, when I listened to episode 1-1-10 of Creator Lab, like, it was actually pretty good quality. Like, the sound was amazing. And. And I did a lot of work to make it sound good, but it's just the actual flow. I was a pretty okay interviewer. But even compared to doing, you know, hundreds later now, like, it's. You're just obviously better because you've done more. Right? So the most important thing was just starting getting out there. I do think it is slightly different for long form because it's a big ask, right? Because you're asking someone to try and you want to retain those people because there's a lot less people. Um, but.

Speaker B: But if you think about, like, I always think about, like, okay, so, like Dave Portnoy, when he was starting Barstool, the man was putting out, I mean, 20 blogs a day. Back when blogging was everything, right? It was blogs, blogs, blogs. That's all he was doing. Like, to me, volume is really, really important if you're starting out. And whenever I see. Whenever I, like, I don't scroll my TikTok, which is funny, I don't scroll my TikTok feed as much anymore. I just. Because I just don't have, like, the time as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, right.

Speaker B: But whenever I do do that and I, like, see an up and coming creator, I'm like, okay, I've seen this guy come in my feet a couple more times. Let me see what it is. And like, oh, he'll go from like 100,000 followers to like 600,000 followers in, like, say, a month or two or three. The number one thing that I've seen is that the person is posting literally five to six times a day. And I'm. I'm just like, oh, my God. And it's almost always that where they're just posting so much volume that, um, that. That, that they eventually they're, they find their audience, they find the right niche, they find the right um, topics and, and, and it's great. And, and, and, and then now with TikTok paying relatively decent money, I mean you can make 5, 6, 7, 8, $10,000 a month if you, if you can like get generated enough volume because it's all about views. And so I don't think about that. That's not my main driver. But I'm just like if you want to have growth, if you want to continue to, if you want to see growth or get started, like to me volume is the game. Like I would, I would try to dedicate at least two videos a day. If you want to start creating content, set your try to do two videos a day, um, for a month and see what happens.

Speaker A: That's. Yeah, that's great advice man. Uh, in the similar vein, if you, if someone was starting again from zero today specifically on TikTok, is there any, uh, anything you do differently? I think that was already great advice but anything else? Just before we talk about live, because I know you've uh, been doing some live as well. It's fine if nothing else.

Speaker B: But no, I think, I think volume and then do TikTok live and we can transition into doing.

Speaker A: There we go. Look at that. You're like a stand up comedian. So let's talk about life because I have been seeing a lot of creators on TikTok doing lives. Obviously there's Twitch, there's YouTube Live. Even Twitter or X has spaces, which is a form of life.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Different uh, but like a form of life, like being there in the moment. What's going on with that? Because I don't really fully know enough about it obviously. Um, I understand like why you know, some people like live but curious on Tick Tock because you pretty much do it every day. No, or I, I was a lot. Okay.

Speaker B: I was the month of August, uh, or the month of July and August I was pretty much going live every weekday. Um, and yeah, so this is what my theory is. Right. I think TikTok is going to, is pushing live and it's continuing to push live. If you think about like live streaming in America at least, like we really only have one dominant um, platform where live streaming is the culture. You know, Instagram. Twitch. Right, Twitch, um, YouTube people live stream. But it's really not the culture on YouTube to live stream.

Speaker A: It's not as big. It's. Yeah, it's kind of a peripheral thing.

Speaker B: Exactly. Same with Instagram. I mean Instagram Live was pretty cool during the pandemic. When have you.

Speaker A: With no one goes live battles. Yeah, the music ones, but yeah, but

Speaker B: no one goes live on Instagram anymore. Right. You don't see that anymore. It's just not part of the culture. Instagram is all about reels now. They've been successful with and stories, but no one does live. I think TikTok realized they can kind of dominate this niche and they can kind of stand out from Instagram because Instagram copies everything. When they did reels, how do they stand out? And live seems to be that feature of, like, casual live where you don't have to have a twitch set up, where it's like you have to. You have to have like a gaming PC and all this stuff. You can just go live on TikTok and they'll give you your audience just like they were doing early on with short form. So I've noticed that I'm like, whenever I go live, not only does it help bring new followers in, but it also helps the views of my existing videos.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And the biggest problem that you hear about when people talk about TikTok is, well, you're just. You're just a face in the algorithm. You can't really build community because it's just like, how are you any different from everybody else in the algorithm? You really can't build a connection with the audience. Absolutely fair criticism of TikTok. Well, how do you get past that? Number one, I think showing videos with your personality matters, and I think that's why some of those authentic videos with just your phone matter, because the people, like, will build a deeper connection with you. But number two is live. If people see you live and interact with you live, it's just a totally separate level of like. Of, like, deeper connection, you know, like, live is just so intimate.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, I think, like, I think it's the most intimate form of content. I mean, that's. That and podcasts, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: It's like. It's because you're in their ear.

Speaker A: It's almost like they're talking to you if they type it in the chat. Sometimes you can even bring people on, I guess. Right. Or you can bring people on as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, I've seen it happen. I haven't done that before. But you can bring people.

Speaker A: I remember on Instagram, people did that a lot in the pandemic. Like, they'll bring on fans. They're like someone famous. But. Yeah, so that makes a lot of sense. Okay. And so you're just doing that on your computer, I take it, uh, for something like that.

Speaker B: So what I used to do was just on my phone. Yeah. I stood on my phone and it was just me, like, going live. But I'm like, okay. What I want to do is, like, I wonder if I can, like, create some sort of, like, business show where there has a little bit of production value. I can stand out from the rest of the lives. And so with TikTok, they have their own proprietary software called TikTok Live Studio, which is, um, you know, which is like, kind of like the version of obs, which you can go live with. Um, and so I download. So it was only available on PC. And I didn't have a PC. I'm a Mac. I'm, um, um, an Apple Boy. Right. So I only had an Apple stuff. So I ended up going to Microsoft.

Speaker A: Funny story that it was on PC. That's like, what they normally do.

Speaker B: Yeah, I know. They didn't have it at all. So I was like, okay, well, this sucks. But I got. I got. I applied to get access to it. I got access to it. And. And so I'm like, okay. So I went to go. I went to Micro center, which is like a computer store, bought like, the cheapest PC that I could with, like, a decent graphics card. And I got started. This is, like, probably three months ago.

Speaker A: Oh, is that what you're doing now? Okay, I don't. Is this still only on PC?

Speaker B: Yeah. I'm gonna share with you what it looks like.

Speaker A: So funny. Okay. Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker B: So this is, uh. I don't know if you can see that or not. This is what the software looks like.

Speaker A: So you've got the ticker?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I have a little ticker at the top that I update. You can share your screen, you can share your. Your camera. My camera's not showing up here because I'm using it for the zoom, but, you know, you can share.

Speaker A: Are you. The recording we're doing now, is this on your PC too, or is this, uh, on a Mac?

Speaker B: My PC.

Speaker A: Oh. So you have to switch. You switch your whole thing to PC.

Speaker B: So what I've done is only for recording, only for things like this because I have, like, my mic hooked up, my DSLR camera hooked up because I use it for the live stream. So whenever I have, like, podcast calls or things like this, I just switch over to the PC.

Speaker A: Got it. Got it. Okay.

Speaker B: I'm still a Mac guy through and through. I have, like, two computers hooked up to this monitor that I'm using so

Speaker A: I can switch back to Switch. Oh, that's cool. Okay, got it, got it. So this is the, uh, live stream. Yeah, that's cool. Have you ever used any of the other live streams for anything else? Like, um, I forgot what it's called, but I've tried it. OBS is the big one.

Speaker B: But the thing is, I don't think TikTok is compatible with them. I think TikTok, it makes you use proprietary software, which is fine. The software works great. I don't have any issues with it. Um, so, yeah, I go live on here. Um, and. And it's. And it's great. Like, I can, I can do a lot. I can share my screen. It's like having. It's like having a business show where I'm just like, you know, taking questions from the audience. I'm like, scrolling through tickers, scrolling through heat maps of the stock market, you know, live streaming, Jerome Powell press conferences and live reacting to them. And man, some sometimes, like, the numbers on here are absolutely nuts. Um, and. And it's really, really, like, really, really fun, uh, because, like, you're, you're interacting with the audience, like in real time. And so I love it. I mean, I love, love, love going live.

Speaker A: So is this. How long is this one session? Hour and 43.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah.

Speaker A: So you, you were live for hour and 45 minutes. Damn.

Speaker B: Sometimes. Sometimes I haven't done an hour and 43 in a while. So, like, for example, so this last one I did on my phone, this is just like a little impromptu one that I was doing. I try to go live, like, right after I post a video, even if I'm like, in bed, just because I think it helps boost your, uh, videos a little bit. But the other one, these are the ones that I did on my, on my, on my computer. So like hour and 15, hour and four. Um, and sometimes the views can get just nuts. There was a couple of ones that I did. Or like, the views. I mean, like 13,000 views.

Speaker A: Just live reacting to people who don't know. Like. Like you've got millions of views on your actual TikToks. But live is different. It's like someone has to be there.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And it's like imagine those live people there in a room with you at the time. A lot of people at one time. So, um, and then I've noticed that too. Like, I see a lot of lives, first of all, pushed in the feed, and then secondly, as soon as I'm like, even on there for like 20, 10 seconds, I might be like, oh, who's this person? And you might click in and. Because often I'll click in to see how many people are in there. You have to kind of click in because I'm just curious. And then straight away I'll start seeing their videos in the feed. So I'm assuming that it's kind of like a retarget straight away on uh, on their videos. Then it might be a new person I've never seen before.

Speaker B: I think. Yeah, I think right now it's like the ultimate growth hack when it comes to TikTok. Like, and I think it's just great to like shows like if you're really good, if you're really entertaining, like Going Live is how you gain an edge compared to like if you're really good at interacting with the audience. Really, uh, really big personality. Going Live is how you gain an edge compared to like someone who might be like a superior script writer or superior editor. Because Live is all about like that authentic, like your personality oozes off the screen, your personality and like your, your like live interaction with the audience will make a huge difference. And I think that's, you know, a lot of people also use it as a way to like sell something, you know, so if you're, if you're live, whether you have like a product, um, whether it's like baseball cards or whether it's like a course or whether it's like a budgeting spreadsheet or something, you can use it. And the conversions on Live are like a hundred times. Yeah.

Speaker A: Oh yeah, completely. And that's even before TikTok and before social media. If you just think of sales essentially. Right. Like even, um, I'll just use an example. Like I was at uh, Charity Water, right. And so our job was to convince individuals, high net worth individuals and companies, uh, three big buckets, like regular individuals and then high net worth and then companies to support our charity. Right. And uh, you'd just see like you can run a video on let's say Facebook or Instagram, M like organic post paid ad. They would actually work incredibly well. Like we, because we had a really good 20 minute video that was just a beautiful like mini documentary.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So you can get scale of that.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: But even a high conversion rate and I won't share this, I'm just saying from all other people I've worked with over the years, an average retail conversion rate on a landing page is 3 to 5%. That's good. That means someone came in your page and they uh, clicked and Bought something or they signed up for a newsletter or whatever it was that was your conversion in person. Scott, the founder would go and speak in person to 100 people, a thousand people sometimes. I've been there when he spoke to like a concert full of 30,000 people or something. And the. There's people in audience like crying, like they're like they're so moved and that, that you can't do that online. Like there's a difference of just uh, seeing a video. And so I think live is the closest you get to that. Obviously in person is still superior in a way because you get that physical connection in a way, like you're sharing a space. But live is very close to that.

Speaker B: So I mean, perfect example is these Twitch streamers. They are, they are the most influential people on the Internet. The perfect example is Kai Sanat.

Speaker A: Right. I was gonna say you so shut down Union Square, dude.

Speaker B: I mean that.

Speaker A: Oh my God.

Speaker B: Who can do that? Name one. Tick Tock. Or like no one can do that. Yeah, that's like Leo DiCaprio level, level, level of like influence. Like it's insane.

Speaker A: It's wild. Yeah, it's very wild. Anyway, that's amazing. Well, that's really, um, helpful to hear your take on Live. Last question I have for you because I know we've been going a while, um, but this has been amazing, man. Thanks for sharing all that.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Everyone's favorite question, monetization. So how do you think about this? Because obviously the traditional route is you get brand deals, you know, and that's. Nothing wrong with that. You can do that. But I'm curious, like, how are you thinking about monetizing currently versus the future? And wherever you're able to share examples is always helpful without pocket watching. It's just good to know, uh, for someone listening, if they're interested how they could actually make money from doing something like this.

Speaker B: Well, before I'm talking like last year, uh, the only way to make money from long form content was brand deals because the TikTok Creator Fund didn't pay well.

Speaker A: Short form content.

Speaker B: Yeah, short form content. TikTok and Instagram weren't really paying much or, or anything at all, honestly. Like TikTok Creator Fund was, wasn't, wasn't like, was pennies. Um, so the only way to make money as a short form content creator was brand deals or having a product to sell to your audience. Right. Um, so those are the only two ways. And the way I mostly monetize was through brand deal. Some affiliate marketing, things like that. Um, and that relatively was, wasn't that hard in 2021, 2022, and then the latter half of 2022, the winds totally shifted. Number one, the reality is, um, short form content when it comes to a lot of financial products, that's my niche. It doesn't always convert well. Right. Because if you think about it, you're scrolling through TikTok, you're not going to stop to download a finance app or set up your 401k on fidelity or whatever app that you're advertising, or open up a high yield Savings account on SoFi. You're just not going to do that. Because I'm not going to put my Social Security number in an app as I'm having fun scrolling through TikTok.

Speaker A: Yeah, completely.

Speaker B: So I think a lot of brands realize that, right? It's like, okay, well, finance content doesn't really convert well. Um, on, uh, on TikTok. Um, Instagram is better. YouTube is the best. Um, but so like, those started slowing down, uh, when it comes to like actual physical products. I mean those move like crazy on TikTok. The people that are like interesting tech creators or makeup creators or influencers, like, oh my God. Because like, think of, it's fun to buy stuff. It's fun to buy something that you're going to use.

Speaker A: It's a 401k, which is like a bit more of a research thing, right?

Speaker B: It's like, exactly. No, again, you're not going to impulse open up a 401k. You're gonna impulse buy a camera or you're gonna impulse buy some. A hat or whatever.

Speaker A: Like a makeup piece of makeup. You're like, oh, that looks cool. Let me try it for myself.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. You're not gonna do that with your 401k. So I think that was a struggle for, for finance and a lot of, a lot of people that, especially in the 2022, when the market turned in the latter half of 2022, a lot of that slowed down. So it was kind of challenging. Um, so the other, the other route that a lot of creators are taking and I haven't done this yet, but I think I need to is offering up some sort of digital product. I don't want to like be a course bro, because there's a, there's like a connotation for having courses, but something whether it's like a spreadsheet that I use or did I create, maybe it's my notion template that I use.

Speaker A: I was going to say your notion thing. I would. Ah, yeah, I'D love to see something like that.

Speaker B: Yeah, so that's, that's one route that a lot of creators that have taken in finance and have been very successful at it. Um, but now with, with TikTok opening up the monetization a little bit more, they're paying for views so you can make. And I know some people that are making five to $10,000 a month from the monetization thing. I haven't gotten to that level yet. I'm probably doing around $1,000 a month for monetization on TikTok through their new fund. Which is, which is great. Was better than what I was doing before from monetization. Um, and then, and then, and then brand deals as they come. But again, it's. Brand deals are just so, it's just so hit or miss, man, because you just don't, you just don't know like when that's going to come your way. There's a lot of outreach, a lot of like work involved and it's very, very hit or miss.

Speaker A: So you break down an example of a brand deal. You don't have to use names. But like, how do. Because I'll give an ex example on podcasts, generally speaking, I don't do mine like this, but generally speaking, you have a number of downloads or views equivalent and then there's a brand who's interested in getting fund that audience and they say, okay, you've got 100,000 people listening, we will give you a CPM, which is cost per thousand essentially of whatever that amount is. Podcast is quite high. 18 to 25 is industry standard. Some people charge way higher, even $50. And so if you've got a hundred ousand, you do 100 times $25 and you charge that amount. That's generally how it works. Is that the same on TikTok or how does that work? Or is it more of a hybrid thing with the affiliate and stuff like that?

Speaker B: Well, before, back in the day, it was like, it was like, no, there's no rules. There's like, well, how much money do you want? Boom, we'll give it to you like 20, 21, 20, 22 range.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Now what I see a lot of companies do is move to a hybrid model where they're like trying to figure out how many views you typically get. And they do like a flat fee. It might be like a thousand dollar flat fee plus, I don't know, 50 bucks for every new sign up or whatever the case is. So it's becoming more of a hybrid model. Um, and, and I think that's. I think that's probably good. I think, I think. I think it aligns the incentives of, like, the brand. Right, right. You know, both where, like, if the video goes viral, you can make, yeah, $20,000 upside.

Speaker A: Right? Yeah. The way you got that 20k.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Uh, for the public thing, if you, if you had already been paid 500 at a time because you didn't have any followers.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: That would have been like, damn, I missed out on all this upside as well. So, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker B: So that's how I've seen a lot of brand deals be structured now. Um, but again, I think I've started to notice a lot of finance. It's just, again, finance is just hard to advertise. There's so many regulatory things involved with it as well. It's like, oh, you can't say this, you can't say that. Um, but, you know, uh, as far as most brand deals are structured that way.

Speaker A: Cool. And then does that make you want to create stuff on, say, YouTube or other? You've also talked about newsletter. I know primarily you're not doing this for making a living, but just curious if that changes the way you think about those platforms as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it does. You know, I've tried doing all that stuff, but I think I've noticed is whenever I do that, I spread myself too thin and then. And then, like, your content suffers everywhere.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like, oh, like my TikTok, I'm not posting as much TikToks anymore. I've been reevaluating, uh, that a lot. I'm like, you know, maybe I'll just, like, forget the newsletter. Maybe I'll still try to collect emails and try to do like, a monthly one to. At least I have some new. Have an email list, which is always nice to have. But ultimately I think I want to go back to, like, focusing on one or two platforms and just. Just try to dominate that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, so, like, for me right now, it'll be like live streaming and TikTok and just try to dominate that as much as I can. Um, but, yeah, it's definitely a challenge. Is definitely. Maybe you want to, like, think about, like, how to run this as a business, how to run this as a creator, um, and reevaluate, like, hey, like, how realistic is it for me to be? You know, there was a point where I was doing, like, zero engineering because. Because. Because the 2022 was just insane. Like, the early part of 2022 was like, okay, my God, I'M so busy. I have so many opportunities, you know. So now I'm like, now, like, how do I refocus my energy? Because. Because it has been very challenging this year where it's like you're going from like making 20, 30 grand a month, which is what the case was in 2022, to like literally making zero.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Where it's like, there's no deals.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, so it's just been a little challenging this year trying to figure out how to navigate that and how to pivot properly. Um, into. Into something where I can, you know, where I can see how come on a sustainable model to where I'm not just like wild shifts. Like 10 grand a month. Zero. 10. 15 grand a month. Zero. Yeah.

Speaker A: That's crazy. But that's great that you've got the part time thing too, because then you're covered either way.

Speaker B: So.

Speaker A: Yeah, that. Thanks for sharing that, man. Very helpful. I know we've been going a while now, so wrap it up soon. Yeah, no, this has gone so smoothly, dude. I really appreciate you making time. So glad we got to connect like this and uh, hopefully at some point we'll get do this in person. It is. Or New York or wherever.

Speaker B: You gotta come down to Houston. I know you guys. Have you ever been to Houston before?

Speaker A: I've never been to Houston, you know. No, I don't think I have the best good things.

Speaker B: Best desi food in the world. I mean. In the world. Yeah, in the world. Even more.

Speaker A: That's amazing.

Speaker B: Even more than London.

Speaker A: You could put even more than Pakistan

Speaker B: in the Western hemisphere. I mean, everyone says London has the best Indian food. I disagree.

Speaker A: Popping off. All right, I need to check it out. Definitely. We'll let you know if I'm able to make it over, man. But yeah, we appreciate you keep doing the thing, man. You're smashing on there. Appreciate to see you, uh, thriving on there and you've got a real talent for it, man. I think like a lot of things we talked about today were very interesting because it wasn't just about like, oh, how'd you grow and how'd you make money? Which is important, but like enjoying the process, doing stuff you enjoy. Adding something interesting to your life is kind of all, you know, I think that's as important as all the other stuff. So I think that's a good example for people to see and Ah, yeah, man, everyone should go follow you. Admani explains. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I explains. Oh, underscore. Sorry. On Twitter. I think you didn't have.

Speaker B: Did you ever I don't think I have it on Twitter.

Speaker A: You're right. I think I on. I, uh, was looking this morning on Twitter for some reason, but yeah, um, all right, man. Yeah, underscore explains. But people will find you on there. Start searching your name. You'll pop up.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And appreciate you, man. Yeah, we'll do this again for sure.

Speaker B: That sounds good. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker A: All right, brother. Nice one. Hope you enjoyed the show. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. You can also watch all of these visually, plus bonus clips on YouTube.com creatorlabfm M if you enjoyed the show, let me know what you think. You can say hello to me on Twitter. I'm, um, B Zadie, B Z A I D I or Creator Lab FM on any other channel. I really appreciate it. Help spreading the word with your friends and colleagues. It helps to get this out to more people and allows me to get better guests for you guys. And lastly, if you want access to exclusive content and free giveaways like the recent books that we gave out, make sure you're subscribed to the email list. I'll send out an occasional email with lessons learned from the episode. So if you're interested in that. And of course, the free giveaways, who doesn't like Those? Go to CreatorLab FM. Um, forward slash subscribe. Until then, I'll see you on Twitter and speak to you next week.