I Grilled an Ad Agency CEO on How They Pick Creators

Brands like Nestle, Unilever, and General Motors are spending millions on creator partnerships right now, but most creators have no idea how those decisions actually get made, who gets picked, how far in advance campaigns are planned, or what separates the creators getting the call from the ones getting ghosted. So today I'm sitting down with Gabe Gordon, who's the CEO of Reach Agency, which is the agency of record for all of those brands, he's the one who's making all those calls, and I'm going to grill him on exactly what's happening inside those rooms that you never get to see. All right, so Gabe, I want you to pretend that you are sitting across from a big portfolio, conglomerate, CMO, Chief Marketing Officer, and they have just RFPed you. They said, Gabe, your agency reached, we want you to run a seven-figure influencer marketing creator marketing campaign for us. How does that conversation go down? Are they bullish on influencer marketing right now? Are they thinking, yeah, creator marketing is going to help solve all of our problems as a brand, like walk me through how that boardroom conversation goes down these days. Yeah, look, every CMO is wholly focused on creator marketing. It has, you know, I'd say second to AI and how it's impacting the workplace, but when you look at really what's in a more mature state of like the shift in marketing and communications, it is creator because it is reaching a mature level. With a lot of our clients, we're actually AORs, so we're actually having more intimate conversations with the CMOs because I think a lot of the questions right now are around scale. We've seen investment increase exponentially, and with that, it's more accountability. So how are we not just creating viral videos, but how is this sizeable budget actually driving business results? And that really is where they're looking. I think, you know, as they recently, it's how much should we be spending, right? But we're also, that's, you know, broadened in the fact that creator marketing is touching so many things right now. It's not just sponsored posts on social channels. It is driving 60% of the content and paid social. It's CRM. It's affiliate is direct sales. So I think with all these different types coming into and all these levers that CMOs can drive, really, it's the conversations they're having with their CFOs of how much money do I need to get? And how are we actually showing the ROI on that? I think the way to work with Raiders is sort of mature, and that way we're just trying to figure out how to use it more effectively to drive business results. All right, so I want to go deep on a couple things that you just said. The first is that you are now the AOR or agency of record for a lot of these larger brands. And I don't think a lot of creators really understand what this means because there's this, the great fracturing of the influencer marketing landscape that's happened over the last, you know, 15 years or so, is that, right, you've got media agencies, right, who are often also agencies of record are on retainer for a lot of these brands. And then there's the PR agencies. And then there's also influencer agencies, right, who are like doing purpose bill campaigns and oftentimes they're not AOR. It's like more of a project-based thing. So can you just walk us through the landscape a bit so help people understand like what does that even mean? But agency reaches out to me. How can I make a determination as a creator like what their relationship is to the brand? Yeah, no, that's a great point. It's still incredibly fragmented. Brands have multiple agency ecosystems and creators are frankly being pitched across the board because of their success. So yes, you named it. It's a media driven, right? It's through PR, the creative agencies because they are looking them as talent to drive relevant. It's coming from retailers themselves who have their own, you know, affiliate and creator networks as well. They're really becoming from everywhere. And I think the big challenge right now is that on average when you look at most brands, they're still on average, I think two people who are actually looking over creator marketing. And so there's still a lack of understanding, you know, at certain companies of really how to all these new connected parts really work together, especially when you're bringing in things like shop or marketing in e-commerce or CRM, I think the normal sponsored post, you know, awareness, relevant striving, that's tried and true. But has this evolved so quickly? It's still incredibly fragmented. That also, you know, for agencies like ours, let's say the phase one of influencer marketing, you know, five to eight years ago, there really weren't scaled agencies that could help very large brands. And so it would be at every time there's a campaign, there would be an RFP. But what I think the brands found over time is yes, having a trusted partner that they can learn and grow with that understands their business and help them with this challenge of the fragmentation and the evolution of how creators are being used in marketing became a valuable resource for them. Interesting. Say more about the CRM aspect. So this is customer relationship management, right? And so as you said, six to seven, eight years ago, a lot of these one off type campaigns were maybe focused more around new customer acquisition, right? Talk to me about how brands are thinking about engaging with current customers when collaborating with creators. Yeah, this is still very new and innovative, but like if you look what Sephora has done, CRM, maintain the relationship with customers, use the email base coupons, you know, keeping people inside, you know, and fans of the brand. But Sephora actually took all that data and is turning their actual consumers into affiliate deals, having them post on their fats, because they are actual real consumers. And that's what brand really wants, not just paid people, right? I think always brands are looking for influencers that are actual users of the product, but we know that doesn't always happen. So I think when we're looking at also, you know, openness to normal consumers, smaller creators, tapping into your own consumer database, where brands have that connectivity and can offer them, you know, benefits in a program that actually makes sense to them that they want to do makes a lot of sense. Fascinating. Same more about the sample size thing. You know, you say you're having a conversation with the CMO and they're having a conversation with their CFO and they're saying, hey, I need you to, you know, allocate five million bucks for me, you know, or ten million bucks over the year, where this initiative. And they're saying to you, Gabe, tell me how much do I need to put into the budget to have actually an impact towards this business outcome that we're trying to accomplish? How do you, and then, you know, slice and dice that across all the different platforms, like, how do you counsel them? It's highly customized, right? Depends on the brand, the category they're in, the objective they have, and look, their ability to drive a true attribution, right? I give you're working for a frozen food brand, you're not going to be driving to a TikTok shop as it's hard to ship a frozen food, but if you're in beauty or other other product categories, it's a lot easier. And so I think what it really comes down to is, you know, the return on ad spend, which is a common metric, and being able to actually derive the attribution for that, which there are a lot of products out there that can help you do this. But it's really moving away from the large old advertising gap of, if you spend more media, sales will go up because we live in a world where that can be tracked, and it can be tracked down to a crazier level. And I think we're seeing that, especially with affiliate marketing. How do you, outside of influencer marketing, TikTok shop model, promo code, discount code, tracking link, how do you see attribution, how has attribution evolved since, you know, like thinking on a retail level or shopper marketing level when collaborating with creators, like what have some been some of the advancements there? Yeah, I think affiliate marketing is going to be gigantic, right? And I think overall brands are sophisticated enough to know that you have to do brand building and relevance building, along with performance as well, right? The two have to coexist to have a successful brand. But look, affiliate does offer the opportunity to sell directly to consumers. If you've made a metaphor to, you know, let's say past generation shopping experience, this is the checkout aisle, right? Do you have that in your feed all day long? And the path to purchase has shortened, considerable. It used to be, here's a link, go to a website, maybe buy it online, or get something where you have to go and store things like TikTok shop and what other platforms YouTube shopping, everybody's rolling it out. The ability to one click purchase is incredible. Interesting. So, given that you are ALR, right? You're basically on retainer for a lot of these, these advertisers and they're coming to you with their quarterly campaign that they need support with, at what point during the planning cycle do you start creating short lists of creators that like, hey, we think these 10, 20, 30 creators would be a good fit for, you know, this collaboration, because I think a lot of times creators are trying to reverse engineer this. How can I get on the short list of Gabe and his team, whereas they're putting me in front of, you know, a decision-maker at the brand? You know, because I think there's a lot of this legwork that, I mean, I've ran an agency for a long time too, and we would oftentimes put together these short lists of people before we ever reached out to them. We were like, we worked with them in the past, they're good, they're solid. We think they'd be a good fit. And so by the time, you know, we as an agency were reaching out to the creator, we had already done, you know, 80, 90% of the kind of legwork or the approval process to get the brand to buy in. And then now we're like great, we're in the execution phase. But like, how do you guys handle that internal at the agency and how can a creator get on your radar? Yeah, I'll answer it in a long way, but I think it's good to talk in Texas whether you're a creator or whether you're another agency. I think for us, we like to work at an enterprise level first and foremost. And look, are they spending enough, you know, what tactics have been working, what are new innovations that we should be testing out? And really doing roadmap planning, you know, whether it's for brand or portfolio across the year to make sure we're getting everybody on the same page and always developing, becoming more sophisticated as partners together. But when it comes to like an actual brand and a campaign planning, look, again, it really depends, brands are not always the same campaign every time they have new product launches, they might be venturing it to new categories, they might be looking at creators in a different way from relevant striving to actually driving purchase. So in order to get on, you know, a brand's radar, I think number one, being a fan, I think, is always helps, right? We know this is a comment active of like, hey, I actually use this product and I'm really interested in working together. So having that proactive outreach, I would say overall that comes down to, you know, creators rethinking, you know, the engagement process with agencies and brands, less here's my right card and where's the brief and thinking more like agencies themselves, right? Like, take a look at their feed, take a look at other creators they've worked with, it's very easy for them to notice that and say, come up with an idea or, hey, you're not doing this and I think I could be great at this. Brands love that, right? Because I think today, most of the time we've tapped into the creative potential of creators is once the deal's been negotiated, once they get a brief and, you know, and I think which is amazing, creators coming back and saying, actually, here's my idea, here's why I think it's going to work and having that collaborative conversation. But I think creators can do that, especially if it's a brand they really want to work with more upstream, showing that interest always counts, right? And that's how agencies typically engage with brands, they have to pitch, they have to show them their ideas and that's how they're evaluated. But as you said before, I think like the biggest thing is knowing that, you know, they're great collaborators, they've driven success because, look, brands are working with so many creators, right? And we all know this trends of not one-off pose having longer-term relationships, but that's earned, right? Even though it's a tactic it's earned. And so having that great relationship, that's collaborative, that is, you know, getting better for both parties with success is really what you want to show brands you're all about. So you and I have done quite a few deals over the years. I mean, I think most recently, my wife and I worked on a hostess campaign for Reach, you know, one of the things I was appreciated about collaborating with you is that like, if we do, if we did good work for you, you guys kept coming back to us, right? And I would love your take on like, what are the three, four, five characteristics of a good creator partner, where it's just like, okay, April and Justin, they're going on our short list every time, it fits a CPG brand, we know they're going to be a great, you know, fit, or maybe the inverse, which is like a nightmare characteristic, right? Like someone who's doing XYZ, like we're never going to be suggesting them again, like where does your head go? When I ask you that real quickly, here's a wild stat for you, nearly 80% of the people who hop on a sales call with my team when they're interested in joining my sponsorship coaching program found me through my book, not a YouTube video, not a podcast episode, a book. And that's exactly why I'm pumped to be partnering with Lulu, because Lulu is literally how I published sponsor magnet and got it into the hands of the creators who eventually became my best clients. Here's a thing about a book that no other piece of content can replicate, it builds trust at a completely different level, you know, someone who finishes your book doesn't just know you, they believe in you, and when they're ready to invest in themselves, you're the first person that they think of. Lulu makes it stupidly simple to publish your own print on demand book, no gatekeepers, no algorithms deciding your worth, no upfront inventory cost, you keep 100% of the profits, you retain your customer data, and you get free ISBNs with zero upload or revision fees. So whether you want to sell through your own site with their Shopify, Wix, or WooCommerce plugins, or tap into their global print network to ship worldwide, Lulu handles the logistics while you can focus on the creative stuff. So go to creatorwizard.com slash Lulu, and seriously, if you've been sitting on a book idea, just stop waiting. Your book might just be the thing that changes everything. Yeah, I mean, look, we always want to work with people who do well and are fans of the brand, right? And I'll say the caveat here is sometimes relationships get severed because the brand might just shift focus or change their consumer target. But yeah, 100%. Look, brands do not get the full equity of a partnership unless they're doing consistently, and that goes for the creator and the brand, right? Raiders don't want to be promoting indifferent shampoos throughout the course of the year, right? Because that's not natural. People use one shampoo mostly, maybe they make a shift, like that's where you're really getting the value of the endorsement aspect of it, beyond just great content that reaches a lot of people. And that's where you're really building brand if any, and that's where the creator can be more authentic to their audience. So that's at the core of what's most important. But yes, it comes down to the working relationship as well, right? You can't always go into something and say, yes, we're going to do a full long a year-long ambassador shift for 12 videos, right? And the way we actually structure a lot of our partnerships is showing them that there's a path there, but knowing that we have to work together, because sometimes the creator doesn't like working with the brand, too, right? I think you have to be open to that. We might like working with someone, day by now, we're working with us and vice versa. It has to be, it's really like dating that way of via jive, via jive. And then look, we respect the fact that sometimes this product that's just don't resonate with a creator's audience, despite what they think, right? And so I think you have to go into these relationships open-minded, but I think the goal is always to do more, right? And think about things long-term, because that's what's most beneficial to everybody. I think that there's this, like you said, the holy grail, especially for a lot of creators, is like a long-term, protracted partnership that they have with an advertiser. But like you said, I mean, those types of relationships are earned, like I would imagine, like you would be very nervous to enter into a six or 12-month agreement with the creator that you've never worked with before. And then you enter into month one, and it's just like a nightmare. And you're like, oh my gosh, no, I have to work with this person for the rest of the year. So like you said, like the idea of blowing, you know, the agencies, the brand socks off on that first engagement, only give the, you know, your contact at the agency or the brand, fodder to go to their superiors or their colleagues and say, like, hey, this went amazingly, we should definitely, you know, collaborate with this person again. I think that's that's very I want to get your take on like a macro landscape, what's going on globally, tariffs, supply chains. I would imagine that all of that impacts how brands are thinking about marketing and advertising, given that there has been this kind of prolonged period of uncertainty related to like what's going on in the world, how, given that you work with some of the largest brands in the world, are they considering these things when they're deciding how much and how aggressive they want to invest in advertising? Yeah, look, overall business performance obviously impacts marketing budgets overall, but I'd say creator marketing is a bit immune to that to some degree in the fact that it's highly more efficient to traditional advertising. If you're looking at like cost of production, you know, talent cost, like most people look at ROI just basically from media metrics, which is how much did I pay the creator and what was my CPM or CPE, right? But whether or not taking into account versus traditional advertising is the cost of the production, the cost of hiring talent, plus the media as well. Even if they have in-house teams creating content themselves, that's a full-time employee, whatever's travel, etc. A lot of people are not taking account of the non-working cost. So that's been I don't think except obviously the certain industries that you know might be top of the news and they might want to go silent at the time. I don't think it is impacting it very much at all. And even with AI, AI is eating more the lunch of traditional advertising, not creators at this point, right? Because consumers love people. They hate advertising, right? And they need that authenticity from trusted advocates, that art creators that are talking about the brand in a real, relatable way. And that's not going to go away. What's your hot take on AI, UGC, AI influencers, brands or DTC brands trying to like create fake reviews with their products and using those for paid ads? It seems like such a murky territory. Oh, look, I'll say this. I think there's AI Slop, right? Which is not doing anybody favors. But look, I get why DTC brands are experimenting with it because it's cheap. It's fast. It allows them to really optimize messaging very quickly. But I also argue there's the influencers Slop out there. You know, there's a ton of platform in the effort to drive, in the effort to drive mass scale with platforms. Yeah, there's a ton of just creator Slop out there because it's you know, platform based briefs. It's stuff that you see in your feed every day that people just thumb over and people forgot the real magic in, you know, working with creators is telling your brand store in a different way and connecting with an audience. Not just cheap content that you can put out there that that performs better in media. I'd say that's really my hot take of like how this industry should be looking at it. AI or how they're, you know, engaging with their creators, you know, it's not, again, as we were talking about, like really what makes a great partnership and how brands are getting value is not, you know, opting into a brief on a platform and just cranking stuff out. You can get great stuff that way. I'm not saying it's totally gone, but I think that's if I was looking at creator marketing as a whole, there's a role in our place for it and I'm sure it will improve. But I think that within creator marketing is like my biggest watch out for brands. Interesting. Yeah, one thing I would love to get your take on is like, you know, YouTube recently had brand casts and they, you know, they've kind of talked about some of the new ways in which they're trying to engage advertisers for some original content and shows for some of the big creators on the platform. And so I think we've seen a lot of, I mean, I just saw an X that X is creating some sort of new new product to try to connect advertisers and influential X users. What is your take on like are there new platforms or content formats? Maybe similar to kind of the CRM approach that you mentioned. Sephora was taking that you're seeing some of your clients or partners get excited about that may not be super popular. So I think the platforms and the tools are incredibly necessary. Like creator marketing has been such a manually driven process from finding creators to verifying their stats to, you know, getting the results and the day. So all the platforms getting more involved in that with their first party data, verifying creators is is only a benefit to everybody. So I think those tools, those are those are the, you know, efficiencies as this industry has scaled that's going to make this work a lot better and allow like agencies like mine and brands to focus on finding the right people developing the right partnerships and not spending so much time just searching up creators on a platform manually. So I think that's amazing. And then YouTube, I think I'm incredibly bullish on, especially because they're a model of, you know, you look competing directly with streamers and creating pure entertainment, the long form benefit of content on their platform. I just saw a case study recently that I think 30 or 40% of the views on Lori Alice YouTube channel are over five years old. And the fact that they now have sort of co viewing experience both in the short form with shorts and a long form. That's incredible because I think you and I have both been this business since the beginning. This has been entertainment, right? And now seeing that the audience behavior has shifted over to television streams in addition to mobile, it makes them a real unstoppable especially with other things we're hearing like people do like long form entertainment, right? Not just these short posts. And again, that's where creators are going to thrive. They're by far the most creative class out there and are impacting so many industries from entertainment to advertising. And YouTube really has a handle on that. Why do you think there's, I don't know, at least from my perception, it feels like YouTube has had a bunch of false starts with this. Like they bought fame bit years ago, they tried to integrate it, they had brand connect and it was like, I don't know, it felt like it was a bunch of stops and starts. Like YouTube didn't really want to go all in on like, I mean, this is also probably why they created the whole MCN model back in the day too, is that like, you know, they didn't want to like deal with certain aspects of facilitating talent on the platform. So like, why do you think it's been kind of a tricky thing for them to go all in on this historically? Like if anything, it's been a developing product that's developed. Look, I think overall business have to say what role they want to be in, right? The TV networks didn't have their own agencies and handling everything. So I think the model from advertising still exists out there, but yeah, you need independent thinkers that, you know, can go into specific niches for certain product categories. It's hard to do that at a platform level. What they're doing right now, I think, is the smartest thing, which is really just creating the tools for those third-party partners that, you know, represent or work with the brands to do their job more effectively for them. One, I think, very big shift that a lot of creators have noticed over the last, you know, five to 10 years is that when some of these blue-chip advertisers were coming in and doing these very simple, like, pose with the product on Instagram, you know, type campaigns, they were partnering with a lot of, I guess you could call them more generic lifestyle mom type creators on the platform. Creators that didn't really necessarily have a niche, you know, like that, you would say, oh, they're that person for that specific purpose. And then, you know, you've seen the dental hygienist on TikTok at 50,000 followers. And now, Crest, for example, has a whole new surface area of potential partners to collaborate with that maybe historically would not have been a creator or called themselves a creator because there's certain platforms that have enabled content creation, though the barrier to entry has been greatly lowered. So, like, from your perception, how are advertisers looking at creator fit, like the actual niche of that creator when it comes to recruiting for campaigns and how that is shifted? Social platforms overall are such echo chambers that niche communities and the creators that command and control those and actually legitimately have that community are incredibly important. It's always a mix, though, right? And again, it depends. Are you launching a new product? Do you need broad awareness, right? That also depends on the product category. We work with Sherwin Williams and we're, you know, doing very specific products, you know, like wood stains, right? I'm not going to go to a broad person for that. I want, you know, someone who has that expertise, has that notoriety in the category to be able to not only explain it, but explain it with authority, right? And not only tell the story right, but make that connection with the community and endorse it. So, it always has to be a mix, I think, right? But again, it depends what the brand's trying to achieve at the time. But generally speaking, I think the metrics have shifted from, you know, efficiency on awareness to people who actually have true engaged communities. I mean, we're, we're even looking, we're looking at creators right now. Not like, obviously, fake followers, which is old, but like where they have affiliate deals, their ability to drive purchases. I won't name the creator, but, you know, I was talking with an agent and it was very interesting. This was a baking creator, but the baking creator wore jeans in one of her videos. And the affiliate sales, they were able to drive off those jeans versus baking products was incredible. And I think that's one of those things that we're still learning as an industry of like, what consumers are noticing from videos and broadening horizons of like what types of purchasing they are driving. Because if you were looking at traditional agency metrics, that's a baking, you know, creator, a fashion company would not necessarily look at that person even though they might have incredible style and just very well. But we're starting to see metrics, you know, with things like affiliate deals to actually see where they're driving purchase to know what they're good at, you know, informing consumers about and driving that consideration for. One of the things you were talking about earlier around that just the the efficiency and the spend working with your creator versus a traditional production, right? Because, you know, oftentimes the, you know, this creator has very robust organic distribution, right? And in a traditional production, you'd have to buy access on Facebook, you know, Instagram, or you know, a broadcast CV ad or whatever you have to pay to actually serve that ad. And this is in the example that you just shared of the, you know, the, this, the shirt and Williams paint stain or whatever and partnering with the DIY creator, whatever. Talk about how the repurpose ability of those assets, how integrated that is into the conversation when you're thinking about real as return on ad spend for a partner with the creator. So beyond this asset just going live on their organic platform, you getting the rights to repurpose this and run it as ads or put it on the brand social platform or put it on shirt and Williams website or whatever. How do you think about how that is evolved in terms of the overall picture? That's evolved immensely. Like six years ago, it was the organic asset being put out there. Then there was boosting that asset on the creator's channel. Then came sort of UGC, right? And the fact that creators can create content at scale and cheap, they don't even need a post on their channel. Then there's actually creating creator ads, right? So that's just in the media environment. But again, as we're seeing the development and scale of this amazing content that our creators are getting, yeah, we're looking at how can we put that on the Amazon page if it's a product demonstration. How can we use that on our website? If you are a baking influencer and doing a recipe, why not do that video there? So we're seeing that and we're even seeing things scale up to television in CTV where you're doing great, great creative. So I think it's only expanding even further, which really helps creators. Because again, they are sort of every single piece of the content framework that brands are using owned or external, they're doing better at. Yeah. One of the things I just saw Samir from Colin and Samir on Squawkbox. He was on CNBC the other day talking about connected TV in particular. And just mentioning that, you know, not only do creators need to be cognizant of the fact that in his example, for example, that the majority of their viewership is on CTV now, not on mobile, not on desktop, anything like that. And so that is materially impacting not only their content strategy, but how they're integrating brands. So for example, like ensuring we have a QR code, you know, during that integration. So people watching in their living room can scan the code. Do you think advertisers are understanding this, this title wave shift, especially on YouTube, something like long form YouTube and how they're thinking about integrations? I think they're starting to, right? YouTube's I think definitely leading it, you know, this platform's like to be who are making investments and, you know, distributing creator content. And then we're seeing platforms like Netflix, like, you know, create more traditional entertainment shows around creators and emerging audiences into longer form content. You know, I'd say on the deal aspect, you know, my background before doing this was an entertainment. You know, I think what it does is it opens up a number of different ways brands can partner with creators. And so going from the, hey, we are just sponsoring this video and owning it, you know, full right? It's, you know, why aren't there more deals of integrations or just product placements and creating more opportunity with less effort to help scale that because, you know, no knock on crest, but like doing like if someone's doing a 20-minute YouTube video, you're not going to talk about toothpaste for 20 minutes, right? Is that a challenge? Because I could. Some product categories have a challenge. Some product categories have a challenge, but like, you know, just just look at if someone's doing more an entertainment driven series than one of the lead characters is using that and, you know, there's 10 scenes where they're getting ready to go to work or whatever. There's different forms of how we can do partnership deals with creators that are lower touch and lower scaled and create and create more revenue for creators and create more opportunities for brands and, you know, make the process a lot more seamless and natural that I think has yet to be fully explored. All right, say I'm a creator who I am thinking about the future, right? I'm a little nervous about AI. I'm a little nervous about the increasing supply of other influencers, creators creating content and me becoming irrelevant. I'm looking five years out, 10 years out. How would you advise me to be thinking about where I should be investing my time and resources and energy as a creator so that brands continue to see me as an asset worth partnering with? It's really starting to think like an agency, right? I've seen more and more creators posting on platforms like LinkedIn because they are smart. They are smart from a business perspective, right? Say more. Why LinkedIn? Why is that important? LinkedIn is because that's where all the buyers are, is where all the brands are, right? And for them to talk about in a business context, what, how they've developed their channel and how they've achieved their marketing or business objectives is very relative. And I help, I think it's inspirational for brands because they move faster, they're quicker, they're analytical by nature, they're creative by nature, creators are this multi-threat. I think highlighting them as a creator in their process can help draw that sort of connection with a brand to understand that this is a partner I can work with beyond more of the, I'm going to rent them for a post, right? And start treating them more like in-house creative partners. And that might start with a post, go to an ambassador ship, it might be one of those deals that we've seen as they become in-house creative directors. And as they're growing their career, you know, off of the feet and creating live experiences or creating products themselves, it allows them really to expand the relationship of not only how they can monetize on their own, but how they can also work with outside brands. One thing I was, I was hoping you could, could touch on is the frustration that I hear from certain creators where a brand will come inbound asking about a certain scope of work. They're saying, hey, we want to do an Instagram post or a YouTube collaboration or podcast, whatever it is. And the creator says, yeah, we can do that. But guess what, I also have all of these other distribution mechanisms. I've got a newsletter. I've got a private community with 3,000 of my most engaged people like, let's do more of like a 360 type partnership where I'm talking about the brand in a bunch of different ways. And oftentimes, especially from it, it's usually from agencies, they're saying, no, sorry, this is what we sold through. This is the scope of work. It's only an Instagram and YouTube, take it or leave it kind of thing. Number one, why is that? Why are brands often rigid to expanding the scope of work? And number two, what can a creator do to articulate? Why would be worthwhile pursuing some of these other distribution channels? Yeah, I think it's a nature of how siloed, you know, the buyers are for creators these days. Again, there's a PR agency will reach out to a creator for one specific thing. A creator agency like ours will are only being asked to do one thing, you know, a e-commerce agency might be doing something different. So I don't think it's on the creator. I think it's just a nature where the industry is right now, but I think that's evolving very quickly. And my advice to that would be, look, I think, I wouldn't say give it away for free, but say, hey, I also want to do this. Is it okay? You know, and I'm not going to charge you and let them see that success because, uh, look, so much is doing something once seeing what happens and then seeing and then seeing how you can grow it. So to create that snowball effect, sometimes there has to be a little bit of investment. And hopefully it's mutually beneficial for that person, um, whether it's creating case studies for themselves or coming back and showing them results. So the next time, you know, when those results get circulated to a broader audience, they can help monetize that and they want to come back for more. Um, but it is a true challenge. It is a true challenge. And I think, you know, we as an agency, we try to strive and go deep into creators, uh, universe, right? Beyond just a single channel or multiple channels because their connection to their audience is deeper than, again, just Instagram, just YouTube, just TikTok, right? As they're building out their media, um, empires beyond that, even with creative services as well, it doesn't always have to be something that has a distribution component to it. I think very early on, um, we were always happy if there was a larger production, the leverage and talent production company, even though the talent's not going to be in it, um, we've always looked at creators as having the ability to do a lot more. But a lot of that is, again, where the agency is, you're working, uh, with like what position they have with the brands. I think we're very fortunate in the fact that, um, a lot of times we've, we've been doing this for 14 years. So we've always had that direct connection to the top to really help evolve how brands are thinking about using creators and always having them open to testing and learning, right? Um, because this is so quickly evolving. And that's how some of our clients have just rapidly moved and been innovative into space. One of the things that I've always kind of summarized to, to our clients of like, uh, you know, how do you make brands want to hire you over and over? TLDRs make them look good. Make your contact if it's the brand, if it's the agency, you know, one of the things we talk about is putting together a post campaign report, like even though the brand is just asking for screenshots of your metrics, hey, why not put together a report that summarizes not just the quantitative results, but also qualitative stuff. Look at you got these DMs, you got these newsletter replies, you got all these things that maybe the brand didn't see and, you know, arming your brand contact so that they can put that in their internal reporting. Gee, wouldn't that be nice to, you know, make, make them look good? Is there anything else, anything else that comes to mind for you of like, what would make you look good to your, your client that, that a creator could facilitate? Honestly, it's, it's not about us looking good to our client. All my advice, and I'm going to go completely old school and at all. Um, get on the phone with the brand. Um, any agents who would be like, oh, this creator wants to talk to you, whether it's a pre campaign post campaign, and that helps build that relationship, that helps build that trust, right? And so whether it's to ensure what they're asking you to make, you feel good about and you're confident in, or to help celebrate it and then use as an opportunity to be like, hey, I think that really worked, but out of those comments, I think if I made a video like this, it would do even better. Start establishing that one-on-one connection. And look, we've, we've seen those things that like David Conn, the cans, other things where they connect one-on-one, and it changes the relationship so immensely, and it takes it from looking at a talent and looking at the channel passively, to like, hey, I know this person, I talked him, they can see how smart they are, they can see how they approach things. So I think that's the number one thing that you can really do, try to connect with people as much as possible. Do those types of conversations, facilitating those types of conversations sometimes get trickier when there's management or agency representation involved? I'm curious, your hot take and your experience working with lots of, by high-level creators, what is your take on representation and how aids the partnership process? Look, reps are always willing to it. I think they want to make sure there's that they're there, right? And the agency's not just using it to whether gain an account for themselves, but look, some of the most successful and some of the largest careers I've seen, get face-to-face with brands, right? And look, I think they don't go around the agencies if they know there's an agency, or sometimes they've come in through a DM to the brand, and we have 10 of relationships with our clients where they bring us in as well. But yeah, I think it's, I think that's just normal, like social dynamics, like figure out what's the right thing. You don't want to piss anybody off, but I think the objective is clear. Get on the phone with them. No brands are going to say no, you know? They always are flattered and like to connect with the creators. They're learning the space. I think they want to know the people they're working with, just like they talk to their agencies all the time. So by any means possible, but just be respectful of everybody. Like I'd say, if someone didn't know the agency and reached out to the brand, be like, hey, is do you have an agency we should invite to this call, or should I work with them to do this? You know, I think it's it's small things like that. But again, getting the call is the most important thing in building that relationship. If it's a category or a brand you're really passionate about, you really want to work with, the effort is absolutely worth the time. Man, Gabe, this has been fantastic, dude. What's the best way if someone's interested in connecting with you? Yeah, hit me up. My emails gave at Reach Out Agency. I answer all my emails as quickly as possible. But yeah, to cut our website, I'm pretty easy to get in touch with. Now, if you've made it this far, you might be thinking, okay, well, they painted a really rosy picture of brand deals right now, but it just feels like brand deals are harder for me to get right now. What gives? Well, make sure to check out this episode right here.