The global creator market has been said to be valued at over $100 billion 😮 The attention of the masses have shifted from TV screens to mobile and laptop screens. The content we consume is no longer set productions, manipulated by fat cats in suits - but intimate moments and creations posted by solo artists on free social media channels.

Things are changing. Consumer behavior demands real connection and storytelling. Creators are doing this better than any corporation... and the corporations know this. So they're ready and willing to pay creators to leverage their audience. But creator beware - these opportunities do come with their risks - and if you're going to succeed in this new economy, you're going to have to be smart about it!

Gabe and Ray break down the creator economy, and share some valuable insight from their experiences in working with top creators in various fields. You're not going to want to miss this one!

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Yeah, welcome everyone to the Rise and Flow podcast.

We're your hosts, Ray Khan and Gabe Estrada.

And we

are attorneys, for creators especially in this new creator

market, which brings us to this

episode.

In today's episode, we're gonna dive into the creator economy, what it is,

and some of the trends that we've.

As attorneys for successful creators.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And as creators ourselves, I mean, we're placed in a very kind

of interesting position, right?

Because Yes, absolutely.

We're attorneys.

But again, we're creators, right?

We're marketing our law firm on social media and we have to keep

up with a lot of these trends.

Absolutely.

Creator is not a certain title that represents a particular type

of person showing up on YouTube or TikTok an influence or anything.

But it's much more general term than people think to believe, right?

Anyone who's marketing theirselves professionally on LinkedIn is a creator.

Anyone who is an Etsy seller, an Etsy market owner, right?

They're creator as well.

And that's why, The creator economy is such a huge thing right now, right?

Yeah.

Creator economy is said to be worth over a hundred billion dollars worldwide.

It's just incredible.

It's crazy.

And again, we're living in this very kind of special time, right?

Because marketing all of the traditional.

Forms of marketing, right?

That you'd spend, hundreds and thousands of dollars sometimes on now shifted

to this new kind of influencer type of marketing style and it just opened

up this whole brand new economy for businesses and creators, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Right.

Like as you mentioned , we're attorneys, we have our own

law firm, we're a business.

Yeah.

And in this day and age where social media.

Like a no brainer to use to market your business.

We are creators at the same time, just naturally because we show up

on social media, we create content that is targeted for our audience.

It allows us to create helpful educational content that one, serves

our audience and serves the people we.

Want to serve our potential clients, things like that.

Yeah.

But also gets word out about who we are, gets word out about what we do and how we

help creators, with their legal troubles,

so.

Right.

Yeah.

And it's funny because like, that term influencer or creator,

sometimes it has, I guess the what, depending on how you look at it.

Yeah.

Has it.

Positive kind of connotation to it, but it also could be viewed sometimes negatively,

especially with the older generations with more established businesses, right.

That kind of see this new kind of like TikTok world and they see it

as kind of maybe childish, right?

like, because you gotta remember when TikTok came.

There was a lot of people that were saying, Oh, it was just a

bunch of people just dancing on it.

A bunch of kids dancing On the platform, right?

Yeah.

And it's shifted so much,

right?

Yeah.

Or even from Instagram, right?

Yeah.

Like our Instagram influencers, right?

There was like, almost like Instagram, well, it was influencers in the Wild

and it was like kind of poking fun at like some of the cringeworthy

content we saw on Instagram, right.

A few years back.

People are making, getting made fun of or posting, pictures of their

food or just taking pictures in, certain like Instagrammable moments

and properties and things like that.

So yeah, there was almost like a, it was almost like, yeah, that connotation

of being a influencer, right?

But also just the opportunity that lies underneath that as well.

Right.

And we kind of saw that with, as we moved on from kind of like the vanity

that Instagram kind of prioritized to.

More helpful educational content that we kind of see on other

platforms like YouTube, DIY video tutorials, things like that.

And then a.

Now on TikTok and other platforms.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that's the biggest shift and that's why, this whole creator

economy exists now and a lot of companies are taking it more seriously and are

really starting to refocus and kind of repurpose their marketing just goals.

Right.

And they're.

Right.

Some of these big companies are now taking a big chunk of their

marketing and putting it in towards influencers and, social media.

, which again, we're all about that.

Right.

We're all about empowering our clients and making sure that they are equipped

To be able to communicate right, and especially handle some of these bigger

accounts when these big corporations are reaching out to, content creators that

may not be as, as, a legal savvy or even sometimes even business savvy, to be

able to deal with these big corporations that sometimes are predatory and they

are taking advantage of creators.

And I think that's one.

Our goals, right in inflow is to make sure that our clients are educated to

make sure that they're not getting taken advantage of by these big corporations.

Or even just, not even have to be big corporations, just any company to make

sure they're not taking advantage of our clients and make sure that they're

getting paid for what their content

is worth.

Yeah.

It's, it is really remarkable to look ba look at, right?

It's kind of like the gold rush, right?

And as we mentioned, like that hundred billion dollars world.

That market cap is just, it's just so massive where a lot of companies want to

get their hands on it, and that's becomes, don't know, 10 years ago, maybe not

even 10 years ago, five years ago, Yeah.

Facebook marketing was kind of like the go to platform for a lot of companies to

get word out, build up small businesses.

Yeah.

You were, making Instagram posts, promoting them.

Boosting them.

Right.

Paying Instagram for.

A little bit of exposure.

Right.

But when Apple came out with that iOS update two years ago now Yeah.

That kind of put a pause on all that, right?

No lo like Facebook marketing wasn't as potent right as it was

and kind of hasn't recovered since.

And this is why we're starting to see Facebook and Meta as it's

known now kind of, reshifting and pivoting into the Metaverse, right?

Because you know that huge income stream is no longer there, right?

So all that money that these brands are pouring.

Facebook ads needs to go somewhere, and that's when they started working

directly with influencers who kind of had organic reach, right?

On these platforms that these brands already were on.

But couldn't just sell to their customers as easily as they could.

With a creator recommending their product or a creator talking about their

product and getting that exposure to that creator's trusted audience is so

much more valuable even than Facebook marketing was when it was at its peak.

Well, yeah, cuz even

if you think about it, like anyone that's had experience putting

some of these Facebook ads out there, you, you know that you'd go in there.

Find a post that you want to share, and then Facebook would

let you choose your demographic.

Right?

It would say, do you want to target, your 18, 25 year olds, or, it'll

let you kind of swipe the little, that little little knob right to.

To pick the age group that you want to target, and then it would say

like, Well, demographic, do you want to target local audiences?

Or within a hundred miles, or whatever.

And then you get to choose your interests, right?

Yeah.

Do you want to target people that have interests in sports and music?

Whatever You got to choose and you pretty much could ca put together a target.

Yeah, well as soon as Apple and all these companies and rightfully so, because what

a lot of these companies were doing is they were exploiting people's data, right?

, and that was a huge shift, right?

And that we saw is that when people started realizing that, Facebook,

Instagram, all these companies were monetizing their data.

All of a sudden there was a big pushback against that, and that's when

Apple decided, Hey, you know what?

We're gonna take our clients privacy very seriously.

They did that update and then basically blocked out all of those things that

Facebook would allow you to choose.

So no longer can you choose the age range because.

The iPhones blocked it out.

You couldn't choose the interest because again, they weren't, these

apps were no longer able to track basically all your purchases and your

shopping and all that stuff, your web browsing.

Right.

It was huge.

Like, if you went on Google and you went on certain websites,

it was called Facebook Pixel.

It's a kind of like a Yeah, an add-on to or plugin for a

lot of these websites that.

Offer and connect to Facebook.

But Facebook, we get all that data about you as a user,

about your most recent Yeah.

Websites you visited, your most recent, like add to cart information.

They would know exactly where you were and what you've been doing, right?

So when you go on Facebook, that same brand would show

up on your suggested post.

Right.

So that was kind of like the whole like, Oh, Facebook's listening.

Listening to, Yeah.

it's happened to

all of us.

I'm sure it's happened where, we're talking about something

and all of a sudden, boom, it's on your Facebook feed, right?

Yeah.

And it's like, wait, what the heck are they're

actually listening, right?

Yeah.

And that was the trend we saw, like when Apple, had that iOS update and

protected consumer information like.

That's when we saw a brand kind of really pouring a lot of money into their budgets

for working with creators directly.

Right.

And that's where we started seeing some of these predatory contracts come into play.

Right, exactly.

Where they own all the information or there's, we'll pay you a minimum amount

or maybe we won't even pay you at all, we'll just give you free product.

Right, right.

And now we're seeing this whole like UGC market come up where

people are just UGC creators.

Right.

Yeah.

Obviously if you don't know, there's a difference between influencer

marketing and UGC creation, right?

Yeah.

UGC stands for user generated content, right?

. So now we're seeing a lot of UGC creators out there who literally just get sent

packages and maybe they don't have the biggest audience in the world, right?

But they can still provide like an organic feel to, Hey, this

is me and this is me using Dr.

Squash soap, right?

I actually did one of these, Yeah.

I don't know if they ever aired it, but we got sent.

Dr.

Squash soap.

We took some funny videos of us using it.

I was like in the shower, rubbing it on my shoulder and stuff.

yeah.

Yeah, it was funny.

My girlfriend's like filming it to me and she like, we had to like get

some videos of her saying like, my boyfriend used to stink, squeeze,

and all that old deodorant stuff.

And and I was like, Yeah, I.

Struggle with body owner.

This is all lies was just reading a script.

They were telling me.

Oh, so scripted.

Okay.

Yeah, it was scripted cuz yeah, that's the difference between like

influencer marketing and UGC marketing.

Right?

Like UGC is this, you're paid actor.

Really?

Yeah.

And you're just, using it and you're not posting it directly to your audience.

But the brand will take that and post it on their own social media

as kind of like a testimonial way.

Right?

Right.

But it's all scripted and it's all, this is, and this is blowing up as well.

Basically the brand's trying to leverage that organic feel that people

are used to on social media, right?

If I'm on social media, I follow Gabe, because you have

awesome Star Wars content.

I take your word on Star Wars products really seriously, right?

So if I want to get a certain toy, And you're explaining it to me that it's,

as real as you can get for being a toy.

Yeah.

I'm going to go ahead and purchase that.

Cause I'm, that's my interest and I take your word seriously based

on the fact that I know you're a pretty die hard Star Wars guy.

Right.

And I think I kind of going back to that, right, because as you

guys know and I kind of, we talked about it in that first episode.

Yeah.

My, my social media kind of blew up with my Star Wars stuff.

I'm a big Star Wars geek.

I collect these life size star.

Prop replicas, right?

And they're the, these license pieces.

And I think I started seeing that shift, right?

I, so when my account started blowing up I started noticing, yeah, it was company

after company hitting me up saying, Hey, we'd love to send you some stuff.

We'd love to, for you to review this.

And that's when I really realized just on my, just my personal, account that

I was like, Whoa, I guess I kind of am like, quote unquote an influencer.

I hate using that word.

I, these companies saw me as an influencer because of the broad reach and it, and

I think what's most important is that because my content was so niche, right?

It was very specific to Star Wars prop replicas, right?

So life size replicas there, they knew that.

The, my close of half a million followers on TikTok were there

specifically to listen to me talk about these types of props.

So these companies started reaching out to me and was like, It's perfect

because instead of us trying to pay.

Facebook and Instagram for these ads that you don't know who's

going to, get targeted, right?

It could end up being on someone's page that has no interest in Star Wars, just,

and it just happens to land on their page.

Now, they had almost half a million people that they knew they were there.

Four Star Wars and now they can pretty much target that

audience.

So, yeah.

Well it's kind of like wor, it's coming full circle with what was

originally just word of mouth.

Like, think back to the 19th century, right?

Where if you're a business, the only business you're getting is

probably local business, right?

And it's coming from not massive marketing, but it's coming from just

traditional word of mouth, right?

Hey, I know these lawyers in.

They're like one of the few lawyers in town and I had a

good experience with them.

Right.

And you should go see them as well.

My friendly neighbor . And that was kind of how word of mouth

and marketing was done back then.

And then what we saw basically in the 20th century was just the

rise of like massive advertising.

Right.

Right.

These huge, this is like mad men.

Right, Right.

Like, just, selling ads.

magazines, tv, commercials, things like that.

And that's str That was successful for the longest time.

Yeah.

But consumer behavior has shifted, right?

With social media, with the internet.

We kind of didn't want to be sold to anymore.

Right.

We didn't want to be manipulated by commercials.

Right.

We wanted to be inspired.

We wanted to basically, connect with people that we admired.

Yeah.

And took their word for it.

Once again, going back to word of mouth.

So it's kind.

Coming full circle to, that natural inclination of trusting someone you

know and who's your friend, or you think you're your friend on your social media.

If you're a follower, you almost have that pseudo friendship

with someone almost, right?

That you're going to take their word for something, right?

So it's kind of just coming back, like we've experienced that massive

marketing aspect of things and just shifting away from that.

And

if you think about it if you really, as you listeners think about the.

That you realize that, and you might not have realized it at the time, but

now looking back on it, so remember, you know the Super Bowl, right?

The commercials.

Yeah.

People would watch, even people that weren't interested in sports, they

would watch the Super Bowl because they wanted to see the commercials,

the cool, clever commercials, the halftime show, everything, related.

and then fast forward now and think about watching when Netflix came about, right?

Watching Netflix.

Now you could skip, right?

Well, first there was no commercials, and then when they started kind of

putting commercials, like let's say on Hulu, on streaming, Yeah, on Hulu and

all that stuff, commercials became.

A, a pain in the ass.

Yeah.

I mean, it literally became something that like, you were like, Oh, I hate, Oh,

I have to sit through three commercials.

I have to sit there through two commercials.

When we grew up in a time where you had, that was normal, right?

, we had to sit there and watch the commercials.

And even think about like Spotify.

Yeah.

Right?

It's like, when you first started getting Spotify, having to listen to

the commercials, ended up becoming such a, Feeling to the point where

it's almost detrimental to the company.

Yeah.

Right?

, because you're interrupting.

Someone's like, Good time to now insert these just awkward commercials that are,

Sometimes the volume is pumped up, like,

Oh yeah, super crazy.

Like me as a consumer, like.

Commercials have turned me off more than turned me on in a weird way.

I guess I would say that, right?

Like there, I can't remember the last time I saw a commercial and I was

like, Oh, I wanna buy this product.

Yeah.

I was probably more like apathetic to it.

Yeah.

But there's a lot more times where I saw a commercial, I'm like,

Oh my God, this is so annoying.

I'm definitely never gonna buy

this.

I'm never gonna buy it.

Yeah.

I, I've had that same experience where I literally, like, I'm really

into something and a commercial pops up, or it's like a co.

That keeps on popping up every break and I'm like, I hate this brand.

Like this is the worst commercial and I'm never gonna buy from them just

because they keep on like putting these awkward commercials in there.

And

honestly, it's just a change of format.

Right?

Yeah.

Because I'm thinking about when I do hear ads, right?

It just comes down to like the format of it.

Right.

And for an example, I'm a big fan of the Tim Ferriss podcast.

Yeah.

I, I admire Tim in everything he's built with his business, but I also

admire just the fact, like, his care about health and wellness and, just

general mind hacking and body hacking, things like that I'm interested in.

Right.

And I know that he thoroughly vets when he does put an advertisement on

his podcast and when he speaks about it, something personally, Right.

Like, and he, this is something he's built with his audience, Right.

That you.

if he's offering a product on his podcast.

Like I can trust or I feel like I trust him that he's tested the product, he's

used it and like there is some truth and authenticity to what he's saying, Right?

So when he is saying, Hey, go buy Athletic Greens because it's the best

supplement I take, and I'm like, Wow.

Like, I trust him.

Right.

And I'm gonna I'm interested now in trying that product.

Yeah.

It's, once again, it's still an advertisement Right.

But it just feels different because of that connection

I have to him as a creator.

And I think that's just something we're seeing just more so.

Right.

Yeah.

Like probably, I'm pretty sure at this point in time, like a

lot of us, just people in general who use the internet Yeah.

Have probably bought products because of someone influencing us.

Yeah.

Right.

Some creator that we admire saying.

I just launched a new makeup brand.

Right.

Well, yeah, Kylie Jenner, right?

Yeah.

I think that's a perfect example.

Kylie Jenner, my girlfriend loves Selena Gomez and she just launched,

she launched her makeup line.

Yeah.

And my girlfriend bought her makeup just cuz she loves Selena

Gomez and wanted to try it out.

Right.

Yeah.

And that's just, once again, Selena Gomez is a creator.

Right.

It's not like more, more traditional creator in the sense,

like where Yes, she's a song.

She's a singer.

Right.

So, or even an actress.

That, it's just the same thing, right?

It's just that trusted creator and that's why that's so much value there.

That's why it's a hundred billion dollar industry.

And I mean, I guess kind of now shifting a little bit towards

the legal side of it, right?

I think because now and lawmakers realize this, right?

And understand.

Hey, just like back in the, 1970s right and sixties where the government

and policy makers decided that it was not cool to advertise to children.

right?

Yeah.

Right.

There's this whole act saying like, you can't advertise to your children.

And then you saw that shift in the eighties with Reagan.

He pulled it back and all of a sudden there was, everything

was advertisement for children.

And anyone that grew up in the eighties knows that when you watched,

the care bears, they weren't showing you a TV show or the care they were.

Sell you the Care Bear shows, Heman, GI Joe.

I mean, all of these shows were literally created to sell a product.

Yeah, it wasn't the other way around.

It's literally they had the product first and then they created

the TV show to advertise it.

So now fast forward to this new kind of creator economy, lawmakers realize.

A lot of us are dependent on these influencers.

And that's where the Federal Trade Commission comes in now.

Yes.

And that's something that we wanted to touch upon because it's a very

important part of this creator economy.

And we obviously we're attorneys and we want to bring that up

because the sense that someone's lying to you or being paid to is.

Codified in these laws.

Right?

Yeah.

And these restrictions that the Federal Trade Commission puts in place to

make sure that these advertisings are actually categorized as advertisements,

as opposed to just like influencers given their opinion, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Right.

Cause I think influence is probably, a lot of influencers

got popular because they were just giving their opinion Right, Right.

On things when.

Someone who's a foodie right?

Goes and says, Hey, I tried this restaurant and I

really love this restaurant.

, that's their authentic opinion about that.

I value that more than when I know they're getting paid to say that.

Correct.

Right.

If they're showing up like, Right.

And we're seeing this now where foodie, like, there's a lot of

food bloggers out there who get paid to show up to a restaurant.

Right.

Try the food and then talk about it.

Right.

And if they're, It doesn't even have to be paid.

Right.

If they're offering you free, If they're offering you like a gift certificate

or whatever it may be, that's a gift.

That's something that you're getting Yeah.

In exchange for your word on them.

Right.

And that needs to be disclosed.

And a lot of people don't realize that.

Like, yes, it's yes if you're getting paid, but also if

you're receiv any free gifts.

Yeah.

If you received anything in return, any consider.

That needs to be disclosed to your audience.

Yeah.

And that just comes down to being truthful, right?

Yeah.

It just comes down to not being deceptive and not being a weirdo about

it.

And the problem with the creators and that's out there is that

it sometimes doesn't become as organic as natural to straight up.

Just tell your audience, hey.

I'm getting this for free, or I'm getting paid to tell you this.

So a lot of content creators are getting themselves into trouble

because they're basically doing their normal reviews, their normal kind of

style of content without disclosing that they're getting it for free now.

And it's not just a basic disclosure, there's multiple

layers of disclosure, right?

Right.

Yes.

Can you talk about a little bit about.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it has to be in the video, like in the actual content,

number

one, right?

. Yeah.

It has to be set out loud, right?

It has to, the creator has to say, Hey, this is, thank you to my partner.

At, I don't even know.

At Star Wars, at Lucas Films.

Right, Right.

Like then, my partner at Lucas Films, this is advertising, this

is paid advertising, whatever.

It has to be disclosed verbally.

Verbally.

And then it also has to be in the caption of the video.

When I say caption of the video, it has to be written out in the frame of the video.

Yeah.

Not just the description.

Caption.

Right.

There's, when we say captions, it could be in two different things.

Yeah.

It should be everywhere.

Honestly.

No.

Because once again, someone might be listening.

without looking at the video.

. So you have to say it verbally.

Yeah.

And then someone might be just reading the captions to what you're saying on

your video without the audio playing.

So it needs to be dis just trans, That information has to be transferred to

the audience member at, in any way.

Yeah.

Right.

So yes, it has to be disclosed verbally in writing.

Yeah.

Probably in two places.

The description and also in the frame of the video.

Well,

and all of these platforms now understand that and they.

And all of 'em are gonna have an option to sponsor.

Right.

You get to click on, the sponsorship little section, right?

Yeah.

And then on the top it'll say, paid advertisement or sponsored post , which

is an added layer, honestly added layer to protect the influencer.

Because in reality, the brand, I mean, depending on the agreement

that you signed with the.

The brand's not gonna be the one that's gonna get hurt by the post the influencer.

The one that's actually making the quote unquote deceiving post Yeah.

Is the one that's gonna get fined by the Federal Trade Commission.

And Ray, if you want, mind ladies what's the per day per post?

Violation.

Yeah, it's 46,500.

I don't know, I can't remember the rest of it, but it's for, it's

over 46,000 per day per violation.

So if you have multiple videos, maybe you did a campaign for a brand two videos.

Right?

So that's $46,000 times two.

Time is the number of days that post existed.

So if it was up for two weeks, that's 46,000 Right.

Times two, which is, 90,000.

Per Yeah.

Times 14 mean it's a lot of money.

Yeah.

I mean, even if even just one of those would bankrupt any normal creator.

Yeah.

And again it's up to, right.

I'm not saying that obviously one violation and the Federal

Trade Commissions can be like, here's, $46,000 fine.

Obviously it's.

It's just it gradually

scales and there is precedent to this where the FTC did come down,

there was a tea company a couple years ago when they first, were kind

of regulating influencer marketing.

And in that enforcement proceeding, they did charge the brand.

They did bill out the brand to make sure they returned

money to the consumers, right?

That's all idea.

It's like you pay these fines, that money gets returned to the

consumers that were basically.

Frauded, Right.

Fraudulent transactions.

Basically.

That's what they claim it as.

And in that proceeding, they said they didn't charge the influencers, but

just because they weren't charging the influencers in that situation doesn't

mean that they can't do it in the future.

Right.

And brands can survive this type of situation, depending on how successful

and how much revenue they're bringing in.

But a creator can't, right?

Like that's something.

Bankrupt you, right?

You like easily.

So that's why it's more so on you to be as the creator, the individual

creator, understand this, right?

Because you have a lot more to lose.

And

that's why I think, and again, kind of going back that

why what we're doing with creators is actually so important, right?

Because a lot of these contracts they're legal contracts, right?

They're legally binding contracts that the creator is signing with the company and.

We handle so many clients that are influencers that are signing

these contracts, but just on the personal side, again, with the

whole Star Wars thing, I get these contracts all the time as well, and.

I started seeing a shift in those contracts as well, because when I

first started getting these agreements, they're very, standard agreements.

Hey, you get, we get to use your content, we, you're making this content, you

gotta post it here and there and that.

So very specific terms.

Now, what I started realizing, or started noticing is that all of these new.

Have clauses that basically say the creator needs to be up to date on

all the regulations, the government regulations, and will not hold the

company liable for those violations.

So basically these new agreements are starting to have clauses where, Basically

they're telling the influencer, Hey, we're gonna, we're gonna do this deal

with you, but it's up to you to make sure that you're following all the federal

guidelines for these advertisements.

And in fact, I've gotten an agreement where there was an a an addendum

to it, like just an a, an amendment that had a bunch of scenarios

that were copied and page from the Federal Trade Commission, basical.

So that way the company's literally just washing their hands from any liability

that the influencer kind of gets in

trouble for.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I, I mean, it's just both parties are just being, I think more influenced

to becoming more aware of this.

But there's a lot who have no idea.

Right.

But I think brands are starting to.

Understand and communicate this more because the brand understands that

they could be in trouble, but at the same time they're covering their butt

by putting it in a contract that, hey, you creator are aware of this.

Right.

We're doing everything in our power to let you know.

Yeah.

And we obviously your payment and us accepting your video is

probably gonna be to contingent on whether you do this correctly.

Yeah.

So, yeah, not only if if you're an influencer creator doing these

brand deals, you might put all the effort into making these video.

But hey, at the end of the day, if you didn't disclose it right,

they're not gonna pay you.

Right.

They're not gonna, cuz you didn't disclose it correctly right now,

you, that was just time wasted.

And you don't really have recourse after that.

And that just gets to another thing, like, beyond just the legalities of that,

it's just like the strategy as a creator.

Right.

Right.

And I think like if you're a creator and you're being approached by brands,

I think you need to be a little selective about the brands you work.

Because you owe that to your audience, right?

Like, as we mentioned, like consumer behavior is what kind

of gov like governs it all.

Yeah.

And if you're showing up and you're sounding like a commercial that we, as we

just mentioned, like we don't buy products if they sound like commercials to us.

Yeah.

You also don't wanna do that to your audience.

You don't wanna be, It's like a sell out and Right.

Exactly.

You want to make sure, like you wanna take what I call like that

Tim Ferriss approach, right?

Yeah.

Where it's like, I know.

When Tim Ferris has, he has multiple advertisements on his podcast.

I know all those advertisements have been vetted one by him and makes sense for

him, and he takes a lot of consideration to his audience members and what they

might like and shares it with us, right?

He's not just saying like, sometimes I listen to other podcasts and

they're just, There's like a Tide commercial on this podcast has nothing

to do with laundry or has nothing to do with like that product at all.

I'm like, why am I listening to a Tide commercial on this podcast?

Right.

About like creator trends, right?

Yeah.

So I think you as a creator also just have to be very strategic about who you're

working with and the brands you're working with and the products you are promoting

no matter how much money it's available.

You have to be very strategic cuz you can.

audience members credibility, who turned off and credibility, right?

Yeah.

That, I think

there is one little thing, obviously we have, you look at both sides, right?

, and you have to think about also the influencer space, right?

The creator space.

And it goes back to kind of supply and demand, right?

, because here's the thing, and it's very common in any niche, right?

Where a company reaches out to the creator, the influencer, and

says, Hey, we want to send you this free product for you to test out.

Now you have two choices at.

You could say, Sure, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it.

Or Here are my terms.

Right?

I'll do it, but here's how much I'm gonna charge.

Or you're going to refuse, right?

And just straight up doing it.

And they're just gonna move on to the next influencer, right?

They're gonna move on to the next person.

And that feeling.

Is I think the hardest thing about being a creator.

Is the feeling to think, Hey, I'm not good enough.

Or maybe there's other people that are equally as good or better, and if I

don't take this opportunity, they're just gonna move on to the next person.

And that's something just I think that's ingrained in us,

just I think as humans, Right?

Yeah.

It's the feeling of like, Hey, if I don't take this opportunity, they're

gonna give it to the next person, so I better just take it and just do it.

No foul, no harm.

If I just do it.

The problem with that is that, so, and we coach our clients on this all the time,

is that you have to value, you have to really put a value on your content, right?

, you gotta start shifting your mentality as a creator from, Hey, I'm just a.

A creator doing this for fun, which obviously it is, but also thinking about

the value that you are providing that company and, looking at that company as

this corporation that you know is, I mean, not all of 'em, but they're trying to

take advantage of your services to promote their products and, you, you should

charge 'em what you're gonna charge them.

Don't back off

of that.

Yeah.

Don't back off that charge.

And you're not missing out on much.

At the end of the day, you're building a brand.

Right.

It's hard to think of it that way sometimes when you just have

to shift your mindset to that.

Right, right.

And when you do that, things become a little bit more clearer.

Right?

Yeah.

And then, over time.

Yeah.

That like, that audience and that leverage you're growing.

Will exceed anything you're selling yourself short with in the short run.

Right.

Yeah.

So, and then like a perfect example of this, and then we, we talk about the

creator commerce pipeline a lot, right?

Like becoming a business in some way, shape or form, Starting your own business,

becoming an educator, building independent streams of revenue based on the audience

you've built, based on the traction you've built and taking advantage of that, right?

Yeah.

Yes, being a creator is great, but it's also a lot of work.

Right.

It's time consuming.

Creator burnout's a real thing.

Yeah.

And I think after 2020, we got into 2021 and started really feeling that.

Yeah.

During the pandemic there it was new to be like, be a creator.

Yeah.

It was kind of fun.

It was not much else to do.

Right.

And after a year of that, we started seeing people just get burnt out.

Yeah.

Right.

Like it's a lot of work.

It's a lot of work to do a podcast, edit it, upload it, promote it.

It's hard to make a YouTube video do exactly the same thing, right.

TikTok right.

It's hard to be consistent.

It's hard to create quality content tent.

We just started seeing people just be over it.

Right?

Yeah.

And that's why we always talk about be like just being that

independent creator, right?

Yeah.

Building, some type of business out of that or some type of reoccurring

revenue out of that just being spared about the way you create.

Right, Right.

Even if you're creating less.

But maybe you're showing up in a more valuable way.

Right.

And we kind of see that with like Mr.

Beast.

Right.

Mr.

Beast was like that YouTube creator who started off just like trying

to figure out YouTube and obviously he's very successful at it now.

Yeah.

But Mr.

Beast was just offered a million, a billion dollars Yeah.

For his channels and his, everything he's worth, he denied it cuz he knows that

it's gonna be worth even more than that.

That's because he.

Beast Burger.

He's built like his chocolate bars.

He has products that, once again, he's got this huge audience, this loyal

audience that is about what he does.

And this is just some kid who just started doing YouTube videos 10 years

ago and now he's just reaping the benefits of what he's built from that.

Yeah.

Now you know, he's.

The like, obviously the outlier, because not everyone has a billion dollars

worth of channels that they run, but that's just the potential there, right?

Yeah.

And like I said he denied that billion dollar buyout because he

knows that, it could be worth 10 billion in another 10 years because

he's got that strategy of not just being, just a YouTube creator, right?

I'm just gonna make my money off YouTube revenue.

Right.

And sometimes we see that with people who are just like TikTok

creators, and I'm only gonna make my money off branded content deals.

Yeah.

Why don't you just be the brand itself?

Right.

Right.

And I think that's what we're trying to coach our clients on and creating their

own, like synergy models and their own, like multiple businesses based on Yeah.

The brand they're building.

Right.

Because the money's gonna come.

I mean, I think ultimately you gotta have faith, just like any business, right?

You're passionate about something that you want to put out there to

provide for your consumer, right?

Or your followers or whatever.

And the money's gonna just come.

Yeah.

And we're.

See that actually with some social media platforms, right?

Yeah.

Obviously the ultimate goal I think for a lot of years was

to get it into YouTube, right?

The YouTube space was the place to be.

For monetization because you're gonna get the ad revenue just by

having the videos up there and you're gonna get this stream of revenue.

That's something that you couldn't really do like on Twitter or

on Instagram or even on TikTok.

So what a lot of creators did is they started funneling their, they're

followers into their YouTube channel to be able to potentially make some money.

And then we started seeing a shift, right?

Where all of a sudden, Instagram and TikTok, right?

TikTok started coming out with the creator marketplace, right?

Yeah.

And all of a sudden now they opened up the doors for creators to monetize their

content, and then Instagram started doing the same thing with their bonus, right?

With the real bonuses.

And all of a sudden there's.

This new shift on, changing how creators are monetizing their content.

And then even further, YouTube was like, Wait a second, we're now, losing a lot

of our content creators and going to these kind of shorter format content.

Right.

Or vertical.

Vertical content, right?

Yeah.

Vertical content creators.

And a lot of people are getting off YouTube and now going

towards these other things.

So now YouTube changed their what are they called?

The not real, their Shorts.

Shorts, . So now they're saying, Okay, now we're gonna pay creators for their shorts.

And you have the potential to make money off your vertical content here on YouTube.

So it's really cool and so interest.

See these platforms changing their whole model and their whole algorithm.

Right.

And that's huge because you see an algorithm change when they're trying

to promote these new strategies on how to monetize the content.

So it's, we're seeing it literally in, in front of our very own eyes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Shifting.

And there's a lot of people saying like, Oh, because YouTube's now gonna

be like, probably the best monetize.

Platform for vertical video content.

I think that's still a red herring.

Even when Instagram was coming out with real's bonuses, like you

have to like have multiple videos go extremely viral to make like.

a modest amount of money on it.

Right, Right.

Yeah.

Like it's crazy.

Like it's almost like you're just getting a couple cents.

Right.

And TikTok, I'm not too familiar with the ation on there, but it's

also not like, it's something crazy.

Yeah, right.

It's nice to get paid, but I think it's just bonuses at the

end of the day, that's what it is.

It's nice to get like paid an extra couple of dollars for the condo you're creating.

Yeah.

Now obviously like YouTube long form contents a little bit more, you can

get a decent amount of money from that.

Right.

But I still think it's red herring and here's why.

, I think you're still a slave to the platform, right?

You're not gonna be making money on YouTube or TikTok

unless you're creating content.

Yeah.

That's continuously, being engaged with.

Yeah.

And that's once again, kind of leads to that burnout.

And that's why, we kind of see there's a lot of YouTube creators like.

my favorite's.

Like yoga with Adrian.

Right.

Like I, I started doing yoga with Adrian like seven years ago.

. And she's a huge YouTube yoga creator.

A lot of people know her.

Yeah.

But she shifted from just solely being on YouTube to

creating her own mighty network.

Where people pay to join her community or come for free for her

content that she's still creating.

And she still has a YouTube channel.

Yeah.

It's just not her.

Like focus.

Right?

Right.

It's still a top of her funnel.

Just like TikTok and social media should be the top of your funnel for your brand

to siphon them to your actual, right.

Your own basically owned real estate, your own digital real estate.

Yeah.

That's why we love the idea of like the community model.

Right?

Instead of just having all, everyone come and watch you on.

Why not create like a premium subscription where they're just coming to you, Those

of your fans who are willing to pay for you $10 a month to get that yoga content.

And also community, right?

Maybe other articles about wellness, other, guest posts and stuff like that.

People are willing to pay for that.

And now with her, she gets to own all that data.

She gets to own everything and she doesn't have to show up to YouTube every month

or like, in a certain way or shape or.

It's on her own digital real estate.

That way if you two ever kicked her channel off, it's not the end of the day.

Yeah.

Because she still has her own, basically.

Yeah.

Digital real estate online.

So, Exactly.

And it's, it is, it's very interesting to, to kind of see that we

even saw recently with Instagram, right?

Instagram started offering subscription.

Yeah.

Like the, your creator

subscriptions are No, they're red herring, honestly.

Yeah.

Right.

Because they know that, hey, These creators could do it on their own.

They don't, They no longer need Instagram, YouTube, TikTok.

Like, they could literally just create their community and take 'em elsewhere.

And so now they're trying to incentivize these creators to stay on the

platform by saying, Okay, hey wait.

I know, YouTube is offering, the subscription, for special content.

Now Instagram's gonna offer that as well.

But ultimately, you gotta think about this.

These companies just want you to be on that platform.

Why?

Because they're monetizing it.

They're making money off of your content, regardless of the way you look at it.

That's what they're doing.

. And it is terrifying for them to think that you're gonna pull their your

content because without you as a creator, without your content, they are nothing.

Yeah, they are exactly.

So I think, again, there is this shift of power and I love it.

I love, like it gives me, look, I'm getting goosebumps because

there's a shift of power from these corporations to the content creator.

And it's a beautiful time.

I mean, I love it.

I love it.

It's, there's really, I don't think in.

A, a shift of this magnitude to the people, right?

Yeah, to the, just the average person.

The amount of power that we have as creators these companies are terrified.

And in fact, even just the big corporations that wanna

advertise on these platforms.

Again, you're taking that power away from them, from their marketing companies and

from these, the typical Mad Men, right?

Mad men scenario, right?

With these ad agencies.

Very manipulative and all that.

We just took it back and now it's like power to the people, right?

Where it's somebody in their garage or in their living

room could now be the biggest.

Marketing agent out there.

Yeah.

So it's amazing.

Yeah.

It's almost like the best analogy is almost like, it's not the

most accurate, but it's kind of like thinking about food, right?

Yeah.

Couple years, like 20 years ago, Chili's, Olive Garden, Applebees, these were like,

Booming businesses doing really well.

And then we just started just consumer behavior changing once again.

Where it's like, I don't know if I want to go to Applebee's, I'd rather

go to the mom and pop restaurant.

No, that's doing like some really cool, awesome food that

I can't get anywhere else.

Yeah, and I think it's the same thing, right?

If I'm a content consumer, I'm not just gonna throw on Netflix and just watch

what's on Netflix putting put on me.

I can go on YouTube and I can find out my favorite creators and watch their content.

And now my eyes are coming from Netflix or traditional cable to a solo creator

who's just hopping on talking about.

Whatever.

Right.

Whatever I'm interested in.

Right, exactly.

So, and that's just happening tenfold across every industry.

It's a really exciting time, and I think there's so much opportunity out there

for creators to kind of just like once.

I don't take, It's like that go rush.

Right?

Like grab as much gold as they can.

Because it's out there just like us, right?

Yeah.

Like we started a law firm based on the same exact model creators use.

Yeah.

Where it's like we use social media to market our business and then we funnel

them into our own digital real estate.

Yeah.

Into our own, subscription.

Yeah.

Into our own client base.

Yeah.

It can be done in multiple ways.

And in because of that, we're able to compete with other law firms that had

a lot more revenue than us, Right.

Who have a lot more capital than us and we're still able to compete with them.

Even like Legal Zoom, we still compete with like legal, Zum, a huge corporation.

Yeah.

And that's all done because of what is given to us at the time.

Yeah.

Right.

So, and again,

it goes back to.

Yeah, the taking back the power.

And in fact, you know what another very kind of just perfect

example is the music industry.

Yeah.

Right?

. And I think that same shift in, in the music industry where, 15 years

ago, 20 years ago, it was like, the big, I don't even know the big five,

I forgot how many, There was these big record companies that you had to

go through if you wanted to blow up.

And now you got creators.

What's her name?

Billy Eish.

Right?

Eilish.

Yeah.

Right.

Like.

Literally recording stuff in their home and they just became the

biggest artist like out there.

And that's literally where this shift is going.

Yeah.

Where the people are in charge of basically their future, right?

Like we, we control everything

here.

Exactly.

Well, I mean, I always go back to Nipsey Hustle, right?

Like if anyone, any of our clients who show up on a consultation or

call with us, I always have a book.

Of Nipsey Hustle in the background.

And he was kind of leading on this, early on, right.

When, Nipsey hustled the rapper.

He could have gone to, and he talked to record labels at, early

on in his career after a few mix tapes, and he just wasn't having it.

He didn't want them to own the masters to his mix tapes or

own the masters to his music.

He knew he wanted to own that.

Yeah.

So they said, Well, tough luck, Good luck trying to make it in this.

Trying to like have demands like that.

You don't have no idea what you're talking about.

Yeah.

So long no one's gonna wanna work with you.

Yeah.

So what did he do?

He went, he did it.

He created his music himself.

He promoted it himself.

Yeah.

And yes, it's the harder road to do, in that short term vision.

Mm-hmm.

.. But he had a long term vision.

Right.

He knew that eventually.

He will build up that fandom, he will build that leverage.

So when he did approach record label, he was able to demand what he wanted to

saying, Hey, I'm gonna own the Masters to this and I'm gonna do it my way,

and you guys are just gonna help out with what I want you to help out with.

Right?

And at that point they, they folded to it because he had already belt him.

Yeah.

And that's exactly what we're telling all crazy now, right?

Like no matter what industry you are in or what, who you wanna

work with or whatever it may be.

Yeah.

You have that leverage based on that follower count.

Based on that audience, based on who's engaging with your content that when

you wanna approach a bigger, I don't know, business partner in the future.

No.

You can demand it and you can back it up.

Yeah.

With the fact that, hey, if you're not gonna take this opportunity to

work with me, Nipsey hustle, right?

I'm gonna find someone who does wanna work with me.

That's beautiful.

Right, Exactly.

Instead of just, these bigger corporations trying to bully you into submission.

Right?

Yeah.

And again, that's why it's so important to really look at these contracts and really

look at, these brands that are approaching you as creators, as small online business.

Because again, know your value.

Know your worth.

We're telling you even if you're a small creator, you are the

most valuable piece of marketing.

Any of these companies can have.

Right.

Because a lot of times it's not about the follower count, it's about

the engagement of your followers.

Right?

Because you could have millions of followers, but if they're

not actually engaged in your content, then it's worthless.

There's no point in marketing through you.

Yeah.

But if they could, if you could show 'em that you have a community

that's really engaged, with engaged your content niche down.

That is probably the most valuable.

Thing you can have in this kind of creator

market.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

It's kind of, just being able to sell that to those businesses

because I know a lot of creators who have less followers than others.

Yeah.

Who get paid more per TikTok video more per, posts in general.

Because of the fact that they have a more engaged audience or they have a

particular niche audience that these brands know like, hey, we're getting

our product in the eyes of our exact consumers that we are targeting.

As opposed to some craters who have very large followings.

Right.

But, mixed.

Mixed audience, right?

So that's why it also is important to have that niche that

we always talk about as well.

So,

Absolutely.

But yeah, I mean, I love this topic again, we're, we can talk about

it for hours, we're

living in it, but I think some of the key takeaways obviously to, hopefully.

You you're getting some inspiration to go out there and make some content and

really just grow your brand, grow your audience and really get them engaged.

But I think, some of the key takeaways is know your worth.

Know that you are valuable, right?

Regardless of your following, you are very valuable.

Don.

These companies kind of bully you around.

I think that's number one.

Number two, make sure you're reading anything that you're getting sent to.

These are legally binding agreements that they're sending.

A lot of 'em are very predatory, so you have to really watch out because it could

be a situation where you end up signing this agreement thinking, Hey, I'm gonna

get this free little gift bag, whatever to review, and all of a sudden you.

You signed over all your content to this company to monetize however they want.

So make sure you're reading it.

Obviously, if you wanna reach out to an attorney, which is probably the smartest

thing, do that before signing anything.

And then the last thing is just.

. Just make content.

Yeah.

Have fun.

Have fun doing, Be strategic.

Yeah.

Build something bigger than yourself.

That's kind of like the purpose behind it.

All right.

Absolutely.

This is the time.

This is our time.

There hasn't been a generation out there that has had this opportunity.

There's no more gate keeping of these big marketing firms,

these big advertising firms.

We.

The creator

economy.

Yeah.

So, and it's in many different forms.

Absolutely.

It can be on video, it could be audio, it could be written.

Yeah.

You can show up however is most comfortable.

Love it.

Whatever fires you up the most.

Yeah, you can do that and you can do it.

For a living, which is crazy that there's so many people doing that right now.

Yeah.

And like even what we're doing.

Yeah.

Like when we became lawyers I thought I was gonna be chained to a desk and Yeah.

Working 80 hours a week and yes, enjoying a probably nice salary,

but also not having a life and not doing anything I was interested in.

But now look at us.

Yeah.

We're able to dabble into podcasting.

Yeah.

We're able to do short form video content.

Yeah.

We're able to.

Work with the clients we want to work with.

Yeah.

Basically people, we would consider our friends.

Right.

Absolutely.

It's awesome that we're able to kind of build our own

career in the way we see fit.

Yeah.

And that's not just for us, but that's open and, available to everyone.

And I think that's what's really great and I'm, I love seeing.

More people do that.

And I wish I could share this with other people who I know are struggling

with their own current job situations, their own career path and stuff like

that, to let them know that there are other opportunities out there.

Yeah.

And maybe it's not the quickest shift in the world, but there's

ways to learn about it and there's ways to just get started and do it.

So, Absolutely.

So get out there, make some content.

Thanks for listening again, guys.

Yeah, I mean, this is, this was a fun one and yeah, hopefully, we'll

get some more of these podcasts out to you and hope you enjoyed

this episode.

Yeah, thank you all for your time.

Thanks for tuning in.