The Creator Economy Is Entering a New Era: Here’s Who Will Actually Win

0:00Short-term success comes from short form, but you're building long-term real personal brand with long form. In order to survive being cancelled, because we all make mistakes, but once you have a more evolved personal brand, people already know you so well, they forgive and forget a lot sooner. There's going to be a shakeout where a lot of the short-term creators who are focused on revenue immediately, they will kind of fall off. Who owns the value of the connection with the audience? It's not a hard asset. It's not like a music book. The creator will own it, but the creator needs to continue working at it for it to have any value.

0:35Welcome to another episode of the Creator Method Podcast. Today we have Shelby with us. Shelby is our content and brand manager for Valeria Inc. And so this is an exciting episode. And actually, I'm the host of this, but you are hosting today. And you are interviewing me on all things that are going on in the creator economy right now. But I want to start with kind of our origin story. Because you've never been on the show with me. You and I have never actually shot any content together. You've been with us now for two years, a little bit more. I remember we were on our way to VCon. So Valeria was speaking at Gary Vaynerchuk's VCon.

1:16And we were on the way there and I had Wi-Fi. And I remember Valeria and I were talking about the fact that we need this position filmed. We need this person who kind of lives and breathes content along with Valeria to ideate, to execute, to post, to do all things social media. And we had put out a job opening. I believe we had advertised that on Valeria Stories. You texted me through iMessage. So because I had Wi-Fi on the plane, it came through or you had got through to us. And I remember I messaged you. And before we even landed, you were awesome because you came to meet us that day. And you were living in Los Angeles at the time.

1:53I was living in Orange County. So it was like an hour and a half drive. But I was like, I'm going to make this happen. Yes. And you did. And you did. And you were so impressive. And kind of, you know, to make a long story short, here we are a little over two years later. You now have moved to Miami as of like a week ago. Yes. Two weeks ago. Two weeks ago. So how are you finding Miami as compared to like, well, you were living in different places in the U.S. But how are you finding Miami now? I'm loving Miami. I feel like there's always something to do. People are so friendly here. There's a lot of hustlers, you know, and like anytime I go outside, I'm like, I can make a new friend.

2:25There's always something to do. So it's great. I feel like the creative juices are flowing. It reminds me of Hawaii. It reminds you of Hawaii. Really? I've never been to Hawaii, but, but yeah, but what I can see here is that there are definitely a lot more creators coming here. And I believe that Miami more and more is becoming like the epicenter of all things, you know creator um i need to share with you a little story about a piece of content that just went up so valeria and i made our although like ai but we made our rap debut and so you know you would identify that trend you would put that trend out to the uh it's going around like my entire explore page on instagram is like orange backgrounds with everybody rapping in this ai thing and i think it's i think it's great jake who's our eldest who you know you guys have been talking the last couple of days who's 13 um i was at the office yesterday and he called me on facetime and he was like i really need to talk to you it's really serious i'm like what's going on he said i need you to take that down i said what are you talking about he said it's embarrassing um i'm gonna go to school and the kids are all gonna make fun of me i said first of all who the hell is like following me and mama i don't think that's happening because no no they are and you're you're causing me like a lot of pain in my teenage years so i explained to him this is a trend and everybody's doing it and he didn't believe me and i had to show him the like hundreds or thousands of videos of people doing this so he got on board finally i don't think he got on board i think he just accepted the reality like it's one thing if he was in the content and he didn't like something i would take it down that's no problem but i'm not going to take down something that only embarrasses me and not him for sure him indirectly yeah i feel like ben said that too yesterday he was like this is so embarrassing.

4:02I was like, no, but it's actually, it shows confidence. You know, it's a reframe. You're not, you're not wrong about that. You're not wrong about that. Anyways. Okay. Let's jump into it. You've got a bunch of things that you want to talk about in terms of what's going on in the creator economy. I want to jump into it. Let's go. Okay. So today we're going to be talking mostly about who owns the creator economy. So I feel like the creator economy right now has a new power struggle because platforms are wanting to broker the deal and the sale. So originally, the creator economy was more focused on like, you could just post a silly goofy video and hope it would perform well.

4:36But now operators are wanting to package creator IP, which you have actually been ahead of the game. Operators, sorry, how do you define operators? Like, are we operators here? I would say the operators are like the C-suite people, like the business team that surround the creators. That surround the creators or surround the brands that surround the creators? Because that's not often, like that's not common. So what we have in terms of our 25 or so, you know, personal infrastructure around Valeria with like a C-suite around her and all that, that's not common. So I just wanted to point that out.

5:05But yeah, but what's the what's kind of the question or the topic? So with that, as we're moving more into that, like the infrastructure that you've created and that we've had with Valeria Inc. since she started, that's where the creator economy is going into. I agree that that's where it's going into. Yeah. So today what I want to talk about is there's a few different sections. The first one is YouTube. Okay. So YouTube is becoming kind of like the commercial operating system for creators. Okay. Two days ago on September 23rd, YouTube expanded brand partnership and shopping tools. So that includes access to creator performance data, paid boosting.

5:39Yeah. It says that more than 1.3 million creators are in its shopping affiliate program. And then now AI assisted pitches and dynamic brand segments are in testing. So AI content is starting to become more prevalent as well. but the platform on YouTube it's sitting between discovery the sponsorship the media buy and the sale which is a little different to how it was in the past where it was just creating well before in the past it was a lot simpler right like YouTube and it's in its infancy and you know as it evolved YouTube was simply you you put in the content the content gets distributed and they would run a Google AdSense so like the the pre-roll the mid-roll the post roll so run those ads and then you do a revenue share with the with the creator and then that's how a creator would typically monetize on YouTube.

6:24And then, you know, with, and actually even like, you know, 10 years ago when we were first starting out, Valeria was doing direct sponsored, like direct deals with sponsors and with brands on YouTube. So there was like the direct partnership. Right now, what we're seeing, not just on YouTube, but like across all platforms is that, I don't know that the platforms necessarily are trying to, from what I can see, I don't know, I don't necessarily know that beyond programmatic advertising, like those AdSense, like the, you know, the pre and mid roles beyond that I'm not really seeing that platforms are trying to get a piece of those deals really I think that what they're trying to do is they're trying to give us as creators tools in order to be able to do those deals on our own because at some point like I believe that the platforms realize that this has to become like lucrative for the creators so if they're involving themselves and they're trying to broker and they're trying to you know take a piece of these direct partnerships I think that would be kind counterintuitive for them i mean you you have to have a certain level level of freedom and autonomy because we as creators have autonomy to put content into the platforms and the content and the platforms rely on that autonomy and that freedom that we have the creative freedom that we have in order to give them content which they can then monetize with their advertising but then if they restricted us on being able to monetize on our own directly that would be counterintuitive so what i believe that they're doing is they're not necessarily trying to come in and get a piece because it's not like we've been approached by youtube to say hey we have a client and we want to you know allocate you know xyz budget to valeria but we want our 10 percent that hasn't happened what they are doing is to your point they're creating tools to make it easier for us they're creating discovery tools so that the brands can find us easier and what i see them doing is they're they're kind of um they're removing friction for discovery for a brand to discover us they're removing friction by providing brands more data about our audiences to make sure that it's a good fit for them to accomplish their like their their um their financial goals or their really commercial goals so i believe that's what i'm seeing and i believe in general what we're seeing is we're seeing that that quite frankly helpful nature of what the platforms are doing in order to help us um get more and more brand deals and they're certainly not getting in the way of it right so with Instagram it's already been a while where we've got the sponsored post tool which allows us to you know to tag that it's because we have to as per like the FTC the Federal Trade Commission but more than that the the ability to like boost and put media spend uh to put paid amplification so all of the and that then allows you to target that allows you to put a link on a piece of content so I'm just seeing a lot more um cooperation and a lot more um support of creators from the platforms because the platforms now realize that it's the creators more so the professional creators who are putting out content at scale because someone who's like a social user who's you know I call them kind of civilians who are doing this as a living there you know as you'll put out content when you go and you go on vacation and so there's a lot of that but the professional creators who are putting up four or five six posts today that's where I feel we're getting a lot of support now from all the platforms that's an interesting point actually with the four to six posts per day do you feel like because we had that phase in covid where everyone was like three times a day you need to be posting do you feel like as we're moving more into this commercial operating system of sorts with these brands that output and distribution is how people will be able to win yeah you look i'm a i'm definitely a big believer in volume um it's like going to the gym i believe that you have to do a certain amount of volume and a certain amount of reps not only to continue to take shots on a daily basis by putting content out but to get better at putting content out so if you're putting out three posts a week versus three posts a day you know that's you're seven times more effective like you're you're learning at seven times faster seven times the speed than if you're doing only you know three a week so yeah i believe that the repetitions are contributing to the you know the the escalation of talent development.

10:37And also, each piece of content is almost like a lottery ticket where you don't know which one will pop off. Now, that being said, when we talk about the concept of volume, we have to also talk about quality, right? So I'm not just saying, just look at the camera and say hi and then go away and not provide any real value. So to me, it's quality, well, sorry, it's volume, but with a certain goal for quality as well. How would you set the bar for quality? Well, look, quantity is not subjective. Quantity is quantity. It's a number, right? You know exactly what you put up. In terms of quality, I mean, it's hard to set a bar for quality because it is so subjective.

11:21I think at the end of the day, the quality of a post isn't measured by a single person. The quality of the post is measured by the market. So the market tells us if a piece of content does well. So to me, like the way that I would measure quality is I would measure it if it succeeds, if it gets distribution, if it gets engagement. To me, that would define quality. How to get to that quality is developing your skill. It's doing the data analysis of which of, you know, what signals can I see from my own data set? So if I've posted a thousand posts throughout my career, which of those thousand posts, like what are the top 10 percent?

11:56And now how do we extrapolate from that? By the way, I wanted to mention something that may be a little off topic. And I was telling this to Valeria the other day is I feel that her content lately, especially when I take a look at her grid overall and I scroll down, I like it a lot more than I did a month ago because both you and Valeria, you've kind of tightened things up where now you've got your, I feel like it's more well-defined, but still broad enough for, you know, the, the, uh, the branding of, of modern womanhood. Like, you know, I'm seeing the I'm seeing the short form comedic, which is like the viral stuff, which is great.

12:29I'm seeing the fashion really coming back strong and being consistent. And then the podcast clip. So those are the three. And then I'm seeing that correct mix of like five or 10 percent is still experimental. So I called her the other day because I know that she sometimes, you know, she gets concerned about that, that that continuity. So I feel like we're really hitting that stride now. I love that. Yeah, thank you. That I have another question, actually. So actually on that note with formats, how important do you think having signature formats are? Because there are a lot of people like on social media right now that are like, you need a signature series.

13:03Like signature series is how you build your brand. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I don't disagree with it. I think like if you don't do it, then you have something what I call a lifestyle soup, right? Which is just like kind of there's a certain randomness to it that that lacks cohesion. and you do need a certain amount of cohesion in order to in order to like to have a through line so that when an audience is looking at your content they understand what it is that you're about and then it's also a branded content like it's also like branding certain formats within your kind of overall you know brand bible so for example with valeria her outfit of the days it's very intentional that it's in the same place the same time because when someone is scrolling on their feed they'll see the background and they'll recognize that before they even realize it's Valeria and so it becomes familiar to them on a on a almost like a like non-conscious level where oh I know this piece of content so yeah I do believe in consistency and formatting and I believe that we should all as creators have our you know two or three formats of whether it's subject matter a certain background a certain activity that you're doing but you should always keep like you know five to ten or fifteen percent for experimentation because that's how you discover new formats because older formats or like formats that you've had for a long time they sometimes go away like they sometimes just stop performing because kind of you know the audience moves on from them but you haven't yet so unless you're doing that experimentation with five to ten percent of your content you're not getting um you know you're not you're not discovering those new formats so that so yeah i do think that it's important because if you're just randomly throwing all the time you're not creating like a kind of like cohesive enough concept that'll give people a reason to keep coming back and why that's funny actually because irani who's the project manager for creator method she's told me before whenever she needs a good outfit she'll look for valeria's closet in her feed and then she'll click that video yeah so it does become almost like a recognizable series well that's that and that's that's the difference between kind of push and pull right so when we're pushing into the feed valeria's pushing this concept but because she's pushed enough into that feed she's branded that fashion format now people are pulling because now they're they're actually proactively going to valeria's format because we've pushed enough to them where they know oh this is the place i can go to discover what i need for fashion so it becomes the the push then becomes a pull it's interesting because i feel like a lot of what you and valeria have done throughout the development of valeria inc and creator method is very intuitive but it's also ahead of the game in the sense that it's like that's something that now people are starting to hop on to yeah even with this about YouTube and it becoming the commercial operating system do you feel like YouTube and long-form is going to become the future for creators or do you so yeah I think it's the present for creators and here's my kind of take on kind of long-form versus short form so when we talk about long-form let's define it as long-form YouTube videos like three four five ten thirty minutes sixty minutes vlogs sit downs like sit down concepts like this this will be a YouTube video that's a long form short Short form is obviously, it originated with like the TikTokification of social media and TikTok started the format in like the full vertical video.

16:13And then, of course, you know, Instagram followed and YouTube shorts followed. Even LinkedIn now supports the full vertical videos. Short term success comes from short form. Short form will get far more distribution than long form will in the short term. So if you're looking for short-term monetization, short-term brand building, where there's nothing wrong with short-term gains, but exclusively short-term gains without a look at or without a consideration for the long-term value proposition that you're creating and audiences that you're gaining that will be with you for the long-term so you can create a durable personal brand that you can then monetize in many different ways, you need both.

16:52so if your question is what is my opinion between short form and long form you need short form for short-term distribution and short-term even monetization but you're building long-term real personal brand with long form and the reason for that is because if let's say one of valeria's videos where she like a podcast episode and it has 40 or 50 000 views if you look at those 50 000 views let's say the average duration is 20 minutes i think that's a million minutes if i'm not mistaken 50 000 times 20 something like that i mean i have my phone but oh i don't have my where'd my phone go let's see what i have done with my phone oh no my phone's here but no let's do that math really quick because if you look at if you look at uh what did i say 50 000 views times 20 minutes average duration that's a million minutes a million minutes divided by 60 minutes is 16 ,667 hours.

17:51So what happens is it's hard to form a relationship with audience when you're doing it in chunks of like 15 seconds. Because it's sporadic. When someone sits down and commits to watching you for 20 or 30 minutes or an hour, and then you aggregate that over 50 ,000 people, that's real brand building. So I guess to answer your question, was your question like, how do I kind of rank short form versus long form? Yeah, like, do you feel like as we're moving more into the whole equity and operatorship behind creators, do you feel like we'll be moving into people prioritizing long form more than short form?

18:29People I believe will have to. I believe that the people who don't, who aren't well-rounded, who can do both the short form and the long form, will lose to the people who can do both. you know it's interesting i remember and i often bring drake up as an example of like when i talk about content creation because he's obviously a very skilled content creator um he once told a story famously when he told his dad he goes you know dad i want to be a rapper and so he told his dad i want to be a rapper his dad said to him if you're going to be a rapper you also have to be a singer that's how i remember the story i think it's accurate so his dad said to him you have to do both so drake you know took his dad seriously and he went and he developed both skills and i believe one of the reasons he's really at the top of his game is because he does both and he can do both to such a degree where he can do it in the same piece of content like in the same song he can do both and so my point is is that being good at long form that's almost like you know you can i would equate that to being a good rapper like you can do short form really well sorry short form you can do really well long form is like singing it's more of a I think a skill that takes a longer time to develop I think yeah no I agree doing both I believe is the key so I think any content creator they need to be able to really nail short form and understand the mechanics of short form and understand how to really gain attention and create connection with audience on short form but for long-term brand personal brand development and durability you need to master long form as well.

19:59I like that, actually, because I think part of why Drake has succeeded so long, even with everything, like all of the scandals and everything, is he has range. So he's able to kind of, he's a master of his craft, honestly. Reinvention and constant evolution of a personal brand, I believe, is the key. If you look at any big celebrity, like Madonna, you know, I often use Madonna as an example. Madonna reinvented herself. A lot of people who weren't around for her early days when she first came out, like like a virgin and uh i don't remember the other ones but there you know a number of different songs like she experimented with every music genre and by the way drake does as well beyonce did a country song recently which is a really like far departure so having range and and being able to consistently reinvent yourself while at the same time sticking to what you know what got you there so that's why there was a time when valeria said you know she had a departure from the fashion content because she started when she was 26 years old and then as she got older it almost felt juvenile to her where it's like I'm so much more than my aesthetic and my fashion so she kind of not stopped but she really decreased fashion and my response to her was that you're still interested in fashion like you're still intentional with your outfits so why did you stop creating content about it so I believe you need to reinvent yourself but at the same time you should really stick to the things that got you there in the first place like not abandon it Drake will never abandon rap he might become a singer he might become a country singer now he's having his goth phase of everybody can see he's got his new goth girlfriend and so now he's exploring different things but he will always come home to rap that's so true I have another question yeah so for Valeria and creator method how would you define whether a creator building an owned enterprise or just optimizing an account like for posting?

21:52I think a lot of it comes down to infrastructure. So, you know, we know a number of creators that they've got very meaningful audiences. They've got, you know, varying levels of engagement, depending on kind of what's going on in their life, but they haven't systemized it. But again, your question was, what's the difference? How like if so a lot of people are just posting to post, but how would you differentiate between someone that's doing it like a hobby and then building an enterprise with creator ip if you're a creator who wants to build a durable personal brand that can have different businesses and different monetization models you need to systemize it so if you're simply posting every day yeah you can post every day and you'll get brand partnerships you can post affiliate links you can monetize but what's going to happen is your your distribution meaning the amount of reach you get on a monthly basis is gonna go up and down.

22:47Your distribution on a monthly basis is gonna go up and down either way, whether you systemize or not. But when you systemize, even when your distribution drops, you're still monetizing. Valeria in the last 10 years, if I look back through our financials and we look at our monetization on an annual basis, it continued to grow throughout that 10-year period. And there were periods of time when just the human factor would happen, where Valeria was busy or preoccupied or she had a baby, we had a baby. And so when those things happen and she needs to get pulled away a little bit from the content or let's say the business demands more of her operationally so she's making less content, the distribution may go down.

23:27But because she's systemized and she's created a personal brand that's durable, the revenue doesn't go down. Right. Because the monetization opportunities stay even if distribution goes down. Whereas if all you're doing is posting for the sake of posting and all you care about is going viral and you haven't systemized, you haven't created an infrastructure around you, then as soon as your reach goes down, your monetization plummets. Like we have, regardless of if Valeria is reaching 80 million people a month or 120 or 60 or whatever it may be, depending on also seasonality and just her life in general, regardless of what that number looks like at any given time in terms of our distribution, the number of inbound opportunities that we have and our resulting revenues continue to rise.

24:10So that's, I think, the difference between posting for the sake of posting and actually creating a career. Now, there's nothing wrong with posting for the sake of posting. Not everybody has to become a career creator or a career personal brand. I'm not suggesting one is better than the other. But it's okay if you have chosen to do this as not a hobby, but it's your livelihood, it's your business. But you don't care to create a system around you. You don't care to have employees and manage all of that. That's fine. But if you do want to make this a career, you have to systemize. And that's something that we teach in the creator method.

24:49Yeah. Creator method. But creator method, we have creator ops. Creator ops, yeah. And everything. So creator ops is something that we created within creator method. So I think one of the things that differentiates us from other kind of education platforms and communities, we're solely focused on not solely focused but we're primarily focused on the on the business side of it so yes we have obviously a lot of curriculum and we have a lot of programming around posting how to use a camera how to lighting frequency of posts you know identifying what your brand is all of that deep work we you know we definitely talk about but it's the what happens afterwards right how do you make it long lasting so it's the business system so within creator ops We have like forum.

25:31And so we have people, we have people in our forum, the members that are in forum are people that are business operators. So they're either a creator where all of their income comes from directly from their content creation. So typically brand partnerships, affiliate links, and maybe their own like digital or physical product. And they could be a team of one. It could be just them or they could have like a small team. Then there are people who have like not even they don't have that much audience or distribution, but they have an existing business. That's, let's say, like a like a clinic or something or like a physiotherapy facility or a chiropractic practice.

26:06And now they're creating content as a as a form of marketing and to create a funnel to acquire new patients or new customers. So both are business operators that rely on content. And so in the forums, we go into the different business kind of challenges that they're having, and then we collectively talk about the solutions. That is a really big differentiator, I feel like, with Creator Method, because it's almost like teaching people how to get out of that feast or famine mode. Like even we have one member who now all of her plastic surgery clients come from social media. Not all. I know who you're talking about.

26:42And when she, when her and I first met, her audience was smaller than it is now. And she told me, because it was interesting because when I first met her, we were at one of our very first events two years ago. And I asked her, I said, oh, I was actually surprised because I thought that the demographic of creators who would join Creator Method would be solely based on Valeria's audience. And so I thought, okay, well, it's interesting that, not that she doesn't have plastic surgeon or like professional audience, but I just, I thought that it would be a different kind of application. and when I asked the doctor the question, she said, well, 75 % of my new patient referrals come from my social media and so she was with us, she's still with us and like after a couple of years, you know, she's 10xed or 20xed her audience size so there was now, it's a much higher flow of inbound patients and then a lot of other monetization opportunities came in like brand sponsorships and potential to have her own product.

27:34So yeah, I mean, yeah, to me, the most crucial thing that I think a lot of people are missing, a lot of creators are missing is you can have the content, you can get the distribution, you can have the relationship with you. Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade electrolytes. audience but then you have to have a business and integrating creating that bridge between the the content and the business itself and managing that bridge and everything to do with it that's really the key because you see a lot of fleeting instagram accounts you'll see somebody gain hundreds of thousands a million plus and then after a while you're looking at their numbers and you're like oh they're only getting like 3 000 views per video with a million followers so they had either bought those followers in some cases which i believe is happening less now or they at one point had a couple of viral hits or they had like a run for three to six months or maybe a year and now they're not iterating and their numbers are down their monetization is down so again system the systemizing helps with that as well to that point about paying for followers that kind of leads into the next little block which is how platforms are now starting to sell tools so for example meta has a new customer and the customer is the professional creator because we have um meta announced the creator and business subscriptions the 15 per month that's a while ago yeah the verification basically essentially but with that i have a question there because as platforms are starting to sell the tools more do you feel like these paid creator tools are helping people build independent businesses or i mean not that do you feel like it's helping them grow or paying to make it look like they're growing?

29:23No, I think, look, I think that anything that the platform can do to provide tools to help, which again, I've seen that evolution. And even now, if you go into your insights, you'll see all kinds of tools that'll help you grow. The data analytics are better overall, the suggestions of what type of content you should make. So I'm seeing that. I don't want to go too far away from your question, but basically your question is, do I feel that those tools will help creators grow? Yeah. Or do you feel like it's going to make them reliant? No, I think it's indirectly going to help them grow because when I'm either an audience member and I see that someone's verified, as an example, like the verification being one of the things that you can now pay for, which wasn't the case before.

30:01You have to earn it through other ways. When that happens, or either when I'm looking at it as an audience member or I'm looking at it as someone who wants to hire a creator to come speak at a conference, or if I'm an advertiser and I have a brand and I want to look at a creator if that creator is verified that creator is at least showing me intention so when I see that a creator is invested back into their career by paying for that even if it's only$15 a month as someone who would want to do business with that creator potentially that already gives me a higher signal of intention so I take that creator more seriously so I think it'll help the creator maybe indirectly grow because they're being taken more seriously by the people who are helping by the people who are providing the monetization, customers, audience, and whatnot.

30:45So I think that's the case. Right now, there's another part of it is that that subscription service from Meta, the higher you go, the more you're actually able to put links on certain. Oh, yeah. So I think that's a really useful tool to be able to put a link on a piece of organic social. Yeah, I agree. This is kind of a pivot now because I want to talk about how creator IP is becoming an asset class. And I feel like that's a new conversation, Creator IP, which you have been ahead of the game for for the last two years. But on September 14th, Stephen Bartlett's company and authentic brand group.

31:20They put together a$400 million fund. Yeah, I saw that. Launched OBSN. So they're combining audience development with licensing and distribution. And they're planning to deploy that$400 million into creator businesses over the upcoming years. Because the bet is essentially that a creator can be the nucleus of several businesses. Absolutely. and that the valuable asset is not necessarily the follower account, but it's the repeatable format. It's an identical point of view, a trusted audience that can go across categories. What you just said is key. It's the trusted audience because you can have millions of followers.

31:51You can have millions of views. But if you haven't developed your personal brand to the point where you have real trust from the audience, then it's going to be hard to create the business ecosystems. You mentioned businesses will be built around creators. It's kind of that central hub. That's what we're doing with Valeria. We're going to be launching a supplement brand. We have creator method. We have a media company that does brand partnerships. So yeah, Valeria is the nucleus of that. But yeah, but sorry, but I don't think you finished your thought. What was the question? With that, do you feel like the 400 million headline is a vote of confidence?

32:21I mean, obviously it's a vote of confidence in the creators, but do you feel like it's more so the creators or the operators behind it that makes it valuable? I think that it's a combination of the two. yeah I think it's the it's the it's it's having the two together so you can have a creator with a lot of charisma trust from the audience they're able to create content that gets distribution they're able to build a personal brand but if you pair them with an operator who is like kind of substandard or they don't have a sufficient amount of experience in execution then there's not going to be a lot of value to that union.

33:04So it's the combination of both. And look, I'll tell you, I have relationships with exited CPG. CPG is consumer packaged goods. I have relationships with exited founders. And as soon as they make an exit and they've sold a company for hundreds of millions of dollars, I just know firsthand they have top A-list talent, the management from those camps from A-list talent, contacting them and asking them, can we start a brand together? So as soon as a CPG founder who's exited and done really well, as soon as they've shown that, because that's a very hard thing to do. Like having a brand, like a physical brand and getting it successful is extremely difficult.

33:40I mean, that's outside of my wheelhouse. I'm on the media side. But finding someone like that. So when somebody does have an exit, they have all of the top tier talent reaching out to them saying, hey, can I partner with you and you can be where you can operate the brand. So really the values and the combination of the two, because if like Beyonce reached out to somebody who has never done more than 10 million dollars a year in like CPG revenue, that would likely fail. Meaning Beyonce alone wouldn't save it. Whereas if Beyonce reached out to somebody who sold a company for 500 million dollars, they obviously know what they're doing.

34:13That would create success and vice versa. right if you've got a cpg founder who's exited for you know 500 million dollars and they contact someone with like no charisma no audience no trust from the audience then that likely won't succeed it's the combination of the two and i believe that those are the synergies that we're going to see a massive evolution on now is those people finding each other is people like the talent finding the correct operators because you know that's that's really what it comes down to and And on the operation side, it's also that person needs to be on the operation side responsible for the quality of the product.

34:50Because talent can get someone to try the product. I don't want to shit talk anyone. But for example, I saw that Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, who obviously is super well known and I'm a big admirer of his work. He came out with a brand of men's skincare. I feel like I heard of that actually. It's called Papa Toohey. Yeah. Yes. Yes. so I saw it on Amazon and I ordered it okay and not to sound like a fancy guy I usually spend more on skincare than I spent on Papa Tui but because it was the rock and I looked at it the packaging looked great everything was great I ordered it and it came and I used it and I didn't like it so the rock was able to get me to buy once but the product right didn't you know and not to take anything away from the product maybe I'm just a little spoiled because you know I actually get a lot of the skin care that Valeria gets in PR and I get it it's all high-end so I'm fortunate in that sense but it didn't resonate with me so if there was a better product market fit there then maybe it would have done well and you know Prime is another example like Logan Paul's brand my understanding is that in their first year because he partnered with KSI to create Prime and they had like a banner I don't remember hundreds of millions of dollars in sales but apparently it's like down to like you know 20 like they took an 80 percent hit in um in sales because i personally didn't like the product like i tried it because yeah i personally don't like it again not to like shit on logan i think he's i think he's great um but for whatever reason i just it didn't resonate with me it was like it was too sweet it was like it was too thick the consistency so he got me to try it but the product because the operator for whatever reason maybe the operator didn't fulfill what they should have they didn't get me to stay do you feel like there's a risk there where like now with the rock or logan did it almost lower your perception of them at all or no no that's a good question it didn't because the reason it didn't is because they have durable personal brands they're not a fly-by-night meaning if i was following somebody even with less of an audience like more of a niche creator with a small audience and i tried their product like i was let's say following them for like six months a year and they were kind of cool like you know let's say one of the motorcycle guys if i was following one of the motorcycle guys that i follow and he came out with like a brand of uh helmet liners like i wear this thing on my head like a beanie between my helmet and if one of the motorcycle guys who's like a niche creator with a hundred thousand followers who i've been following for three to six months not a sponsored deal but he came out with his own brand of beanies and i tried it on and when i took off my helmet the first time it like disintegrated if that were to happen that would affect my perception of the creator if it's his brand but if Dwayne Johnson does it and I don't like the product he's not diminished to me because he's got he's such a he's so ingrained in in because I you know obviously I've known about him for a long time it doesn't affect it that's why it's important to build the durable personal brand because having a durable personal brand versus a kind of short form only fly-by-night personal brand it allows you to take more shots on goal and you will be i don't want to say forgiven but kind of forgiven you know we had a clothing line years ago that we shut down we didn't even skip a beat we had it we did it we did reasonably well with it for a couple of years but we shut it down because it just wasn't our thing and it was taking our attention too much away from the media because we were trying to figure out how to operate a physical product business and clothing's really tough is on the contrary valeria made the announcement i don't you probably even edited that or you created that content like where she made an announcement she was popping a bottle of champagne in her backyard it got like five million views when she talked about her failure so we actually had an improvement to valeria's personal brand after our product line failed so it doesn't affect depending on the creator yeah it's interesting this reminds me of something you said earlier how a lot of creators sometimes as they're scaling they forget to do the things that helped them grow and i see that a lot i feel like to the point of logan and the rock they've been able to sustain because nothing's really changed from when they started to now like it's i wouldn't say nothing they've evolved i mean yeah logan's got older he's not i don't think he's doing the same kind of crazy stuff that he was doing yeah 10 years ago yeah yeah but i feel like he hasn't become a sellout almost no you know it's just too strong the personal brand like he would have to like even he did he had that whole scandal when he right and he still came back from that so because he had that strong personal brand that he had invested into short form into long form consistency over years he was able to he made a mistake which we do i mean i'm not judging him for it yeah he made a mistake he made the mistake he apologized for it he took some time off and now he's back stronger than ever had he not have built that durability into his personal brand intentionally he would have been wiped out and they're and they're cancel culture and there are creators who didn't have that where there was some kind of a scandal they're gone right so in order to survive being canceled because we all make mistakes like i might say something out of turn that could be taken out of context you know and my my personal brand may or may not survive something like that but once you have a more evolved personal brand people already know you so well they forgive and forget a lot sooner yeah that's a good solution then to cancel culture because i've been seeing that a lot on tiktok right now where people are like i'm so over cancel culture because it was such a big thing for so long but no one necessarily knows how to prevent it but what you just said it's you have to have that strong personal prevent it by creating an creating a strong asset the stronger your asset but that's the same in anything if you have a business that has no systems no documentation you know the people who are operating it like your talent pool of your employees is not great like the wind will knock that down but if you've got systems if you've got everything is documented you've got you know like amazing operating procedures you've got a good brand you got all those things it's gonna be harder to knock you down mm-hmm how you said about asset class so one question I have with creator IP is I feel like we're also moving more into equity like creators are getting more equity and everything absolutely we we do quite a bit of quite a few equity we have quite a few equity relationships yeah with that how I'm not really sure how to format this question but how do you do it without losing connection to what made you powerful as a creator like kind of how we were saying not selling out like do you feel like there is any element where you lose power or like creative freedom as a creator when you get equity or no i mean i don't know i mean i'm a big look i'm a fan of equity um we don't like for us i prefer to actually invest in a company like there's a time with creators where they were doing like a swap and we had a couple of those deals from a few years ago where we would be We offered equity in exchange for Valeria's creative work, her distribution content being put up on our platform for a specific period of time.

42:01Now what I like to do is I like to actually invest cash because it's a different, it shows a company that there's a certain flakiness attached to celebrities of any kind. And so when a celebrity says, I'll do this, this, and this in exchange for equity, a lot of the time celebrities don't do anything. and now the business operator is kind of stuck with this partner who hasn't contributed. And so to offset that, what I like to do on companies that I'm interested in or that Valeria and I are interested in, we like to say, okay, we'll invest cash. And then if later you want to purchase media from us, you can.

42:37Certain media we will provide that will be editorial in nature. So we just invested in a sleep supplement. It's called Sleep or Die. It's awesome. We really like the founder. So we actually invested cash. and you know when we can we actually had valeria the founder on valeria's podcast because valeria genuinely wanted to talk to her about sleep and about her entrepreneur story because it was relevant to her podcast but if she comes back and wants us to do like agency work where we manage an like an irl event or we actually create like sponsored content then we would do that too but i think like i don't believe that there's any negative there's no there's not there aren't negatives about a creator having equity in a company everyone's doing this in scale steve bartlett is doing it um everyone's doing it so i don't see i don't see it being problematic and i think that if audiences see that i just i don't think a lot of them will care oh that makes me think of another question back to your ai video yeah the ai video so how sorry by the way before you ask the question are you gonna remember that question yes you know what i think the real flex would have been on that video or we can still do because i told valeria i said why don't we actually do it yes so everybody else is doing it fake so i've been trying to practice the lyrics but i gotta say look those are complicated lyrics you know and i'm just like i'm trying to i'm reading it i'm trying to i'm trying i'm trying to get it and i said to valeria but that's the real flex just to do it in real life but not lip syncing it actually wrapping it yeah yeah no she can do that little dance the little dance but i'll do the rapping that would be a flex I agree.

44:13But what was your question before you lose it? It's kind of to the AI point. So I was going through the comments because I like going through the comments for audience signals. And there are some people with AI that are like a media unfollow because you use AI. Yeah, that's all good. What's your take on that for creators as we're expanding into new forms of distribution? Like how do you not get in your head and let that – because you need to kind of test new things to stay at the forefront. But specifically, you're talking about people not liking AI because of the environmental issues and stuff like that.

44:44Is that you're talking specifically about that? Yeah. More so like when the audience has a strong emotional negative reaction to something a creator does, how do they navigate that? How does the creator navigate it? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, you're not going to plead. You're not going to. You can't be everything to everyone. And so I think this comes back to a broader topic of just like criticism and negative feedback. Right. Right. You know, like, I don't know if people don't like it, they can unfollow. I mean, really, it's that simple. It just it reminds me of I spent I spent a little bit of time with Kris Jenner.

45:16Right. I was in Kris. This is years ago before we started Blair's Business in like maybe 2014, 2015. I had this company and we were we were working with creators on monetization for their Facebook pages. So I had just through some contacts, contacts, I was able to get a meeting with Chris and I had a couple of meetings with her in her home. And I remember I said to her, Chris, like, if we go ahead and we ended up, we didn't end up working together, but it was very, it was educational for me to spend, you know, have those couple of meetings with her. And I said to her, I said, Chris, like, if we do this together, if we proceed with this form of monetization on your Facebook page, it's very clear that we're monetizing it.

45:56And so your, your audience, there'll be negative feedback, right? I wasn't, I didn't know nearly as much as I know now. This was 12 years ago. and she looked at me, and she said, I just never forget it. She literally said, she goes, fuck them. That's what she literally looked at me, and I was just kind of shocked. And she goes, we put so much work, me and Kim and Chloe and everybody, our whole family, we put so much work in to providing people with value to entertain them. We're killing ourselves doing this. If the audience has a problem with us making money doing what we're doing, she said, fuck them.

46:34I don't care. they're getting this for free and they're going to tell me what I should and shouldn't do in order to make money because I don't want those people that really resonated with me and so when we eventually like a couple of years later when Valeria and I started working together that's how I look at it so when someone makes a negative comment saying oh you're a sellout or you use AI and it I don't know there's like the environmental things around like a thousand people created that video thousands of people created that that trend that just happened with that rap I don't look at it as like you know cool if you're not into it I mean I'm not telling you how what to do and how to make money I'm not judging you just because I'm on a public forum cool say what you want and if they get really nasty I just delete and block them that's a good point because as we're going into more of this operator operatorship in the industry I think it's building businesses yeah Yeah, I think it's easy for creators to get in their head and almost play it too safe because they get worried about those negative comments.

47:35So I like that a lot. Listen, I mean, it's iteration, right? When you're starting out in business, like if you look at me, I've been in business for 30, 30 years, 27, 28 years. And I was a lot more timid in the beginning because I didn't know. Like I didn't know what I didn't know. And I was learning by trial and error, right? So I didn't know. So I don't expect the creator who is starting out, they've built an audience, they're starting to monetize, now they're trying to create a business out of it or businesses out of it the way we have, then I don't blame them for kind of treading lightly and trying to figure things out.

48:14So that's, I mean, not to pitch creator method, but that's why we have creator method. That's why in our creator ops forums and in a lot of the, you know, academy content that we create within the community and the events that we do, we talk about the business and the business systems. And that's a shortcut. But, yeah, I mean, it's going to be trial and error. It's understandable. I agree with you not to also pitch creator method, but it's also like the tools that people are learning. It's so that way they keep the power within their company rather than like outsourcing to an agency or a management.

48:48Because I have a lot of friends that are influencers. And as we're going to this whole business building for creators, they don't actually own the asset because their manager is the one that's like directing everything. Whereas when you have an operator on your team, then you're able to still own everything. Well, I think what's important is, I don't know if I fully agree with that, the asset is the personal brand, is the intellectual property that's associated with the personal brand. That's the asset. The management of it, let's say, for example, with brand partnerships. So when you work with like an agency or a management company and you give them your inbox, people who reach out to you as a creator to do brand partnerships with you and to basically pay you, you own that relationship.

49:37So I wouldn't necessarily give an owned relationship to an external agency unless I felt I couldn't negotiate on my own behalf. But we very quickly with Valeria, we hired like employees to manage that for us and to keep that database internal. So we continue to have those relationships internally. Whereas if I'm giving my inbox as a creator to a management company, and it's not a negative thing. That's just the nature of the business model. I'm not trying to vilify management companies. But if I give my inbox, so I'm working to create content, to create demand for my media, a brand will reach out to me who have a budget to pay me.

50:12I give that negotiation or I give that contact to a management company. I'm just giving away that relationship because now that management company will effectively have that relationship. And if they can't make a deal for me, they have another roster of creators that they'll make a deal with. And then I just I kind of send that I send that relationship off into the ether. Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade Electrolytes.

50:49And now it's gone. Whereas I'd rather keep it for myself. 100%. Okay, I'm going to pivot again now because this is a new announcement. So on September 21st, Donatella Versace and Revolve announced an independent beauty and fashion venture. So this was like four days ago. Donatella is going to lead the creative vision. Revolve is going to be behind the commerce operations, the marketing and the creator network. the brand name is not in the product is yet to be disclosed in there but this is a clear expression of the creator and the founder as the form of distribution my question here is as a creator slash founder what makes people come back once you're no longer part of the story like with the brands that valeria works with she's well i guess it's like the brand people come back for her they don't necessarily come back for the brands associated with her you mean the audiences yeah okay but what makes people come back you think once if she was to step away from a brand for example that she really loved like what do you think it is that so look in general what I believe that brands are doing wrong whether it's a clothing brand or a CPG product what they're doing wrong is they believe that the creator is the entire solution the creator isn't the entire marketing solution the creator is part of the marketing solution the creator is the personal brand the creator is you know always on content that they can that a brand can insert themselves into to be to be relevant culturally right all of that is true a creator also represents access to the creators meta business manager to place ads instead of the brand having to do it through their own account because audiences react better to sponsored posts by creators than they do by like those sponsored posts you see and feed from a brand so there's a lot of assets that creators bring but they're not the entire marketing mix they're a good portion of the marketing mix they're an essential part of the marketing mix and so when you ask what keeps audience if i understand your question what keeps audiences coming back to can to repurchase it's potentially like the creator continuing to feature them in new and interesting ways but getting back to what i was saying about like prime and papa to eat the product has to be good and it's got to be a good product market fit so I'm just saying you you can't people will keep coming back if the product is good if Papa Tui would have resonated with me I'm not saying it's a shit product it just didn't resonate with me and so if it had resonated with me I wouldn't continue consuming it or buying it because of Dwayne Johnson I would buy it on its own merit so the way that you get consumers to keep coming back to a brand whether or not the creator is involved or not let's make sure you have a really good product right product is king for that yeah yeah of course you can't it's like it's just getting back to the you know original con like our earlier conversation like you you you can't the the the creator and the distribution and the trust that a creator has is part of the overall mix of what's needed to have a successful product line whether it's fashion or cpg but you have to have a good product good systems good distribution good like brick and mortar distribution if you're working with you know retailers so yeah okay this is the last little segment that i have and it's going back into the ai discussion so youtube announced new ai creation tools and tests of multiple video cuts which i'm actually excited to try because valeri was telling me the other short form or on long form for long form okay on here they announced that uh two days ago september 23rd and then on september 15th so like two weeks ago tiktok said it's going to test improved detection of AI content my question here is when everyone can now kind of make polished content because of AI like AI can kind of be the brain for a lot of people I don't think it's the brain but okay yeah do you feel like taste is now more valuable for creators like as we're moving forward or do you think that it it's making existing distribution harder to beat I think I think it taste is important but I think trust is going to eventually it's all already the asset.

55:02Like people talk about attention being the asset, but attention without trust, I don't think has as much value. I think it's the combination of both attention and trust. So trust, I believe, is going to be the biggest contributing factor to both success as a creator overall, which goes back to building for long-term instead of short-term. So there's going to be a shakeout where a lot of the short-term creators who are focused on revenue immediately, they will kind of fall off. people who are building durable personal brands for the long term will continue when it comes to ai i believe that the only way to compete with ai yes you will be able to as a creator create a thousand different clips and deploy it and you will have short-term success but when an actual human being who is known to be a real person versus an ai person that's what's going to be that's that's the advantage is going to be through trust so i believe that we're actually entering with all of these tools like AI, the ability to create and post thousands of pieces of content overnight, all of that is great.

56:03But then what ends up happening is the clear winner will be the people who actually have created a true asset and who have acquired skills in content creation, like actual content creation versus AI. What role do you think AI is going to play moving forward? I don't believe AI is going to be in it. I don't think AI will ever be the origin of quality. I believe it'll be a tool that'll help organize and amplify the quality. So I think if your source, it's kind of like, is it iTunes? Or what's the one with the voice? Spotify? Voice tune or voice? I'm not sure. You know what I'm talking about. My kids play around with it all the time.

56:45Oh, like on TikTok where it changes your voice? No, it's some kind of an app that singers actually use to modify how a voice sounds. Oh, auto-tune. Auto-tune. Thank you. So it's like auto-tune auto-tune. You can equate that to an AI platform, right? It's perfecting the sound of your voice or it's modifying it, but you have to have an original something to put into it. Right. So you have to have that skill and then not only the skill, but again, the personal brand to back it up. Something that I'm excited about with AI actually is as we're moving more into this operator ship, as I'm saying is there's only one creator, Like you can't duplicate them across the board where we haven't, we have not done this with Valeria, but I've been seeing some big brands starting to use like AI versions of themselves and they, they write the script.

57:32It's as if they were talking it, but it's an AI generated video and it literally looks exactly like the person sounds exactly like them, which I think is exciting because at a certain point, there's only so many hours in a day. I agree. Or distribution. So I think that'll be cool. you know what I think will be really cool is on the paid side right so on the paid side it's kind of a known thing that unpaid media like when you're placing an ad right so let's say Valeria creates an ad for a client right and now we've created that ad for the client and it's like a 20 second spot and it's being put into either the brand will run it on their own business manager or will run around Valeria's business manager and now we're starting to do media buying for it that one piece of content that's great people can use that now what can happen is ai can come in take that 20 second clip and make 500 variations of it with different text hooks different um music perhaps um different uh scripting different movements different backgrounds so you can take a single piece of content and that's what we're starting to do with our with our brand clients when we're selling the media is like we're saying, okay, we're gonna charge X amount of dollars to create this 20-second ad for you that you can then run on your business manager and you can place ads on it and get paid distribution on it, but included as a license for 200 AI variations.

59:00So then we'll create the 200 variations and we'll deliver the original and then we'll deliver the 200 variations. And now they can put like a small ad spend on each of those 200 and then what happens is if they put like you know five dollars on each of the 200 200 times five that's a thousand dollars if my math's correct right so they'll spend a thousand dollars but that five dollar ad spend out of those 200 ai generated videos off of the original they're going to see out of those 200 these 10 had the highest click-through rates so now that optimization is i mean think of how advanced that is you've taken two you've taken a single piece of content, like a 20 second piece of content, like non AI, you've created 200 AI variations of it.

59:44You then launch all 200 of them. You put a small, um, you put a small budget behind each one and then you'll know out of those 200, which has the highest click through rate. So once you, and then, so you take your top, you know, 10 out of those 200 or top 20 and you say, these have the highest click through rate. And then you put real ad spend behind those. So now you've taken again, an original piece of content, made 200 variations. tested through them with small budgets. Out of the 200, you pull 10 and now you know those 10 are the winners. Now you can go deep and put real media spend behind those.

1:00:16And now you're optimizing click-through rate and ultimately conversion. That I believe is such a powerful tool. So I believe that AI will be an even more powerful tool on the paid side. And even Meta, they already have these types of tools like natively on board that they're developing inside of the business managers, inside of the...

1:00:37zero sugar and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade Electrolytes. The platform where you're actually buying the media. So I believe that we're gonna get, as just as an industry between the platforms and the creators and the creative agencies, we are gonna get way better at creating content that will help consumers find products that are more relevant to them. And ultimately, I believe it's a positive flywheel. I look at advertising as actually a good thing because even now, without really the mass adoption of this process that I just described to you, I'm seeing ads for products.

1:01:20And as a result, like this t-shirt, this is an Instagram shirt that I bought. And I like this shirt a lot. And now I bought every color. I bought, it was targeted towards me, this thing on the back of my motorcycle helmet. That's like a, it's a light. It's a light that when I brake, the brake light goes off right it's got like this motion sensor inside of it this thing has potentially saved my life that's where people see this light yeah i would have never have learned about this product if the algorithm didn't say okay we know this guy rides motorcycles you know and we know what kind of helmet he has so we're gonna pitch him like this thing that attaches to his specific helmet so i'm just a big believer in in advertising in general as long as that advertising what i don't like is like if i'm being shown ads for like baby diapers like that's not a good that's not a good experience for me but if i'm being shown ads on like motorcycle sneakers do you know what i mean or things that are relevant to me that becomes a positive experience or like these t-shirts that i like right it kind of makes me think also like with the integration of ai into social media platforms it's amazing because now creators that start today they're not at the mercy of how many followers they have like it's per piece of content if a piece of content is amazing and you have zero followers it has the potential to reach millions of people and it happens all the time yeah yeah okay the last little question we have to end the episode is so in general i think that the next phase of the creator economy is going to reward the creators that can turn attention into that like creator ip repeat demand and everything but who would you say owns the compounding value once the initial attention has gone away what do you mean and what like explain the scenario to me because i don't know if we understand so with a brand like valerias or a celebrity yeah okay yeah would you say the value like who owns the value of the connection with the audience like do you think it is it's it's it's so sorry to interrupt you i I believe it's kind of, it's not a hard asset.

1:03:24Like it's not like a music book, right? Like, so you know how like when an artist creates a library of music, that music can be sold, right? This is an asset that needs, you need to continue working in order for this asset to continue monetizing. So I believe that the creator will own it indefinitely. Because even if you sell the rights to it, like if Valeria sold the rights to her personal brand tomorrow, it's not like a book of music where you can take that music, put it on Spotify, you're gonna get downloads and Spotify will pay you. There's an annuity to it. Like there's an ongoing revenue stream.

1:03:50if I own the rights to all of Taylor Swift's music, which there was that whole scandal with Scooter Braun. So I believe that as the creator continues to build their personal brand the way it is today, because it's not like the playlist model that they have with musicians, the creator will own it, but the creator needs to continue working at it for it to have any value. And so for a creator to really position themselves for really long-term building of wealth, when we talk about like an asset being worth something, they have to do i believe what we're doing and what a lot of creators that we know are doing and that is they have to invest in companies to get enterprise value they have to create their own brands in order to get enterprise value to then sell those brands and participate in like liquidation events with them so i believe the assets are created the personal brand is uh is an asset that requires ongoing input in order to really monetize it to build actual wealth and not just like you know a comfortable revenue stream you need to invest in other companies you need to invest in potentially starting your own brand with the correct operating partner and then like the traditional stuff like stock market and you know in real estate and stuff like that so I think the assets eventually come but the asset itself of a personal brand is fleeting and it is owned by the creator but it requires consistent work and input I love it do you have any other things yeah i do yeah the only thing other thing i wanted to talk about is first of all i want to thank you because you're like such a sport because valeria was supposed to do this with me today and she wasn't able to because of some time conflicts and we asked you and you jumped in right away and then the other thing i wanted to say is i'm very enthusiastic about these conversations and i remember the first time i uh i had valeria on like the first version of my podcast a few years ago people were um kind of critical of me that i was interrupting her a lot so if I've done that here no no but I may have and I apologize I just I get excited but I think a lot of people will look at that and feel I'm being disrespectful no Gary is actually like the nicest most kind charismatic person like I'm not even just saying that no I appreciate that but I can also see how and maybe I'm overcompensating but I can also see how when it's like a guy and he's older and it's like a woman and she's younger and then people look at that saying oh like you're talking over her and this and that so if that has happened and if that's the way it comes out no I apologize to you and to everyone else in advance, but I'm just enthusiastic about all this stuff.

1:06:15And look, I'm really excited that you're here now. It was a journey for you to move to Miami after, you know, two years. I know that Valeria is super excited to have you here. You've been a great sport. You've been a great also, like, you're great at the fact, like, we've flown you to Toronto, and you had workshops for our Creator Method members. I'm excited also that you're here because we do have, I think probably one of our larger chapters of Creator Method is here in Miami. So we're going to be doing a lot more programming. You're going to be there. And then the other big thing is because you were working remote, like you were able to really touch the content.

1:06:52But there was a limit to it. But now that you're physically here, and Valeria's even told me, she goes, the fact that Shelby is like at our house a couple of days a week and we're hammering at all this content. I haven't seen Valeria this excited about content in a while. It makes me happy, number one, because she's my wife and she's excited and happy. but I'm also happy because of the business outcomes that we can expect so I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you are a content creator and if you're at that point where you do have someone like a Shelby if you're lucky enough to get someone like a Shelby if you do then if they're close to you and you can collaborate kind of in real life I believe it's a huge advantage 100 percent Shelby thank you for hosting me on my show it's wonderful and I'd love for you to become like a reoccurring host slash co-host let's make it happen yes absolutely thank you thank you