He Dropped Out in 8th Grade and Built a Viral Street Interview Empire | Ep. 432 with Shanes Ginsberg CEO of Street Poller

0:00The worst piece of advice I ever received was to go to college. You dropped out of eighth grade. Did a teacher say something to you at that time that made you say, I need to leave school? Most of the skills that actually serve you in real life are not taught in school or in the current education system. I went to a business conference with Kevin O 'Leary when you're 13 and Edward Snowden. You know, you're sitting in rooms with like half a billion dollars cash and then you have to go back to Algebra 1. 5 billion views, 300 ,000 street interviews, the largest street polling network on the planet.

0:34Built by 21, worked with Coinbase, Polymarket, and Moonpay. He doesn't buy attention, he commands it. The CEO of Street Polar Media, Shane Ginsberg. There's going to be an anti-AI trend, honestly. I think people are going to...

1:00you dropped out of school i also dropped out of college you dropped out of eighth grade did a teacher say something to you at that time that made you say i need to leave school i don't know if it was a teacher specifically that had said something to me i think it was more so associated just with the way that i was raised you know in my upbringing um so like because my dad, he, you know, he teach people like how to sell on Amazon, but he was doing that in 2003. So that was before PayPal even existed. So I grew up as a kid going to those business conferences with him, which, you know, how do you go, you know, into a business conference with Kevin O 'Leary when you're 13 and Edward Snowden, like out of all people.

1:45And, you know, you're sitting in rooms with like half a million dollars cash. And then you have to go back to Algebra 1. I think that I would do something to any kid's brain when they're developing and young and like make them realize that most of the skills that actually serve you in real life are not taught in school or in the current education system. Was there something that you wish was told to you at that time? Like looking back, was it the best decision to leave? Should you have done something different? No, it was the best decision. Everything in my life has gotten me to this point. you know i always thank god every day but i don't i don't regret any decision that i ever made you know you just got to learn from your mistakes how was the interaction with snowden did you get to talk to him yeah he was on like a uh like a little recording device it was pretty weird um and he was in hiding i think it was maybe 2016 and he was like a big keynote speaker at the time at like all these business conferences.

2:46So we spoke for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. And yeah, he just said what's good. At the time, I didn't really know too much about politics. I didn't really know who he was, but I thought it was pretty interesting the device he used when he would speak at these events. If you could tell someone who's a teenager about making sure that they act like a sponge of all the information that's around them, you went to these events, but I imagine most teenagers wouldn't care at all about what's happening. What made you act like a sponge? Maybe like a bit of autism. I mean, I don't know. I've just kind of always had that like in me.

3:25It's not really something that's been like developed, but I would say that is definitely the way that I am for sure. So your company has done over 300 ,000 interviews, which is insane. 300 ,000 street interviews. I think I'm at like a thousand virtual interviews. I couldn't imagine 300 ,000 straight interviews. Is there an answer that you've heard that somebody has said that still follows you to this day? That's a good question. In what context? Just in any answer, any question? Could be off the wall. It could be inspirational. It could be something that made you cry. We asked someone 500K or dinner with Jesus and they were Jewish and they answered dinner with Jesus.

4:14And that was a very interesting answer, I would say, which is like not an answer that I was expecting. But I would say that you'd be surprised about how people feel on the streets about certain topics and about certain things. And over time, you can identify certain patterns and answers in people's responses to certain questions that I feel like the media doesn't do a good job at showing to the public, you know? Okay, let's say you have three seconds and a phone and you obviously have complete strangers around you What can you say to get them to stop to even pull them? Well, I mean that that goes into like our intellectual property Which is honestly part of the way that we train all of our pollers So going back to you know the point of you saying like you've done 300 000 street interviews Hasn't been me.

5:00I mean obviously some of the interviews that i've conducted are a part of that total number but that's across our whole team, you know, of pollers, which we have over 25 of them across the U S. And so the first three seconds of the interaction of approaching somebody on the street is honestly the most important, you know, you gotta be smiling, charismatic, and just somebody that they'd want to have a conversation with, because at the end of the day, that's all that it is, right? It's, you just imagine that there's no camera and you're having, you know, real conversations with real people about things that others care about.

5:34It's a brilliant idea and it's a brilliant strategy because you're going to get people at almost a vulnerable moment, but a moment where they might be more open than if you sit somebody in front of a camera. It's very uncomfortable. They get very uneasy. You catch them in the moment though. How did you learn that this was a real business strategy? It kind of just came together and developed over time. I had a brand that paid me in 2023 or maybe even like a 2022. They paid me like, you know, 1500 bucks for one video and they made 25 grand in sales in a day and a half. And I was like, oh shit, like I have a business.

6:18So I just have to scale myself. And a lot of other things kind of happened. And I didn't anticipate that AI was going to be the way that it was in the sense that over 80 % of the content on your feed is AI generated. And at the end of the day, it's like people buy from people, right? They don't buy from machines. And so that's why you're seeing platforms like Snapchat as of a couple days ago revert back to authentic content and human generated content. and you're seeing states like New York that are banning AI-generated content in advertising for this exact reason, right? Because you're portraying things that are just simply not true and it's misinformation.

6:56And that was a part of the whole reason in 2020 that we started this company was because the left and the right in the media, CNN and Fox were both so biased in their agenda that we just wanted to give everyday people a voice to say how they really feel and think. Do you find that these people are very open and they're excited to talk or are they typically guarded off? I mean, the street polling actually brings out a side in people that really you can't bring out. Right. Because to your point, it's just a stranger with the microphone. It's not really that invasive. It's not like you're sitting down in a studio where the lights are, you know, very bright.

7:37And there are 17 different cameras and four people checking your audio. So you actually get the best responses out of people because of its just authenticity and it's just on a random corner, you know, on the street. It seems like right now attention is the new gold. Attention is everything and every brand now is racing to get attention. You have a lot of marketing costs, advertising costs going up where brands, it doesn't even make sense for them to use maybe Google ads or meta ads or SEO anymore because it's too expensive or it doesn't work. When you talk to brands about this, how do you get them bought into the idea?

8:16Street interviews have been around for hundreds of years, right? Like the format clearly works with, to your point, capturing attention, you know? I mean, we were talking about like before you started recording, how there was someone that interviewed New York before there was even a FYP that you like watching, right? I mean, Jim Carrey has a movie in the 80s where he's literally just a man on the street interviewer for a TV channel. So clearly the format is validated in the sense that humans like to interact with it and they like to watch it or else people wouldn't make it and it wouldn't work.

8:51So that's just applied to digital advertising, which works extremely well because again, it's authentic, right? And it's real. So usually the brand already knows that the format works. They just want to go to the most proven source, right? That kind of created it as a way to market, not just, you know, laugh and kind of to do both at the same time. Jim Carrey inspired me. I wanted to be a comedian because of him. Just the way he played characters. I used to do monologues and pretend like I was doing Jim Carrey in a movie. Who inspired you? Yeah, I mean, I've loved Jim Carrey. Jimmy Kimmel when I was a kid used to do like a lot of man on the street interviews which his opinions nowadays maybe I don't agree with as much but when I was younger his show was like hilarious he would have like Drake on the street in like a disguise doing interviews asking people what do they think I'm sure you remember that like he he had some very creative ideas but as soon as I say it you can literally visualize the piece of content you know it's like it's that memorable.

9:59But yeah, I would say like the two of them for sure. You have 5 million following across platforms. I have 30 ,000 on IG right now. I really want to grow my Instagram. What am I doing wrong? How much are you posting? Like how consistently? I'm not even every day. I mean, look, you should probably try to post at least once a day, do that for three weeks and then compare your engagement month over month, you know, but it's a marathon, not a sprint. And it's just like, you can't really think about it. You just got to post content that you like, and that's funny. And then also what people want to see as well.

10:35Right. And that's a big part of it is like just making it shareable. How do you determine from the clips that you're taking, that is something that people will resonate with? Um, just with data, you know, after doing this so many times, we can just have an internal Rolodex and like bank of the contents, ideas, formats that work versus what doesn't work. And then we just kind of internalize that and, you know, have that work at scale. I've heard short form clipping, as we know, clipping as a strategy is the fastest or maybe one of the only ways to really grow right now on social media. If people don't know what clipping is, can you explain it?

11:14Yeah, I mean, clipping is basically mass distribution of content, from pages that you don't own and that don't look like they're you. So I guess the closest thing it would be similar to is astroturfing content. Right. But it's a very popular. Let me tell you about a time that Upwork saved me. I had two hours to get a submission to a major media outlet, and I thought there was no way I'd make it. I jumped on Upwork, messaged someone, and within 10 minutes, they replied. 90 minutes later, the work was done in my inbox, submitted on time. And here's the best part. Two years later, that same person still works with me today.

11:54Upwork is where businesses find highly skilled freelance professionals for specialized work from software development and AI implementation to marketing design business operations. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. AI shortlisting matches you to top freelancers in under six hours and with over 170 ,000 five-star freelancers, you can hire with confidence. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's Upwork.com, Upwork.com. their form of marketing. And I would say, look, the type of brand that benefits from clipping usually already has most other aspects of their marketing handled and the infrastructure already in place.

12:52If you have never ran ads on Meta, if you don't have many followers, clipping is more so an awareness play and a mindshare sort of play than it is a direct conversion where I'm going to put in$1 and get four back. So that's what I would say to clipping. And the, you know, the benefits of clipping will benefit a Celsius, right? Or a Warner brothers or Netflix, but are they going to do that for your average mom and pop, you know, candy company? No, not at all. Right. So could they add in the polling that you do the street interviews with the clipping combined? Would that lead to possible more success or what strategy would you recommend around leveraging the content from the street interviews?

13:39Exactly. Yeah. But that's just one way to distribute the content. You know, on social media, we have brands that'll put it on the company's landing pages, product pages, websites, use it in pitch decks, all that good stuff, you know, post it on their social medias, run it as meta ads, TikTok ads, any short form sort of video ad as well. Do you, what is maybe one of the funniest moments that you've witnessed? Yeah. I mean, look, there's been a lot of like, you know, there's been so many like where I'm like, I did not expect this person to give this answer. But it happens quite frequently, you know, but at the end of the day, that's just breaking down the traditional mainstream media narratives that have been circulating.

14:20Right. Which is because you look like this, you're supposed to think like this. And everyone that looks like this thinks like this and looks like this. They think like that. And that's not true. You know, people have very diverse opinions. and profiles and there's character profiles that you would think would say something different than they actually say, which is, you know, I think probably the biggest thing that I've realized is like, you can, you can't judge a book by its cover. You know, there's a lot of people that you think would say or feel one certain way about a certain topic, but when you actually just talk with them, it's a totally different answer, you know, than what you were expecting.

14:57When you think about from 14 to 21, you've had seven years that you've been learning about business, that you've been in business combined here, all the things that you've done. What do you think is going to happen in the next seven years when you're 28? I think that there's going to be an age of abundance where AI can do a lot of the basic things that take up most of your time on a day-to-day basis. And then I think that the thought and like what you do with that is what's going to matter most. you know, nowadays you can deploy a website in a day and a half because AI is that good, but it's only as good as the person that's using it behind.

15:34Right. So I think that not only is there going to be more and more of a shift towards real human interaction. And you're seeing a lot of people talk about this, like Gary V is yapping about this on the news all day, every day, which is, you know, there's going to be a shift towards physical brick and mortar, towards communities, towards concerts, towards in-person seminars, whatever the name may be towards street interviews, because AI can't replace humans and humans are going to be on this earth and have a place in society. At least while we're all here, you know, I don't think we're going to go away that quickly to the robots.

16:09And so I just think that there's going to be a anti AI like trend, honestly. What's been the best piece of advice that someone's given you about business? Let me tell you about a time that Upwork saved me. I had two hours to get a submission to a major media outlet, and I thought there was no way I'd make it. I jumped on Upwork, messaged someone, and within 10 minutes, they replied. 90 minutes later, the work was done in my inbox, submitted on time. And here's the best part. Two years later, that same person still works with me today. Upwork is where businesses find highly skilled freelance professionals for specialized work from software development and AI implementation to marketing design business operations.

16:55With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. AI shortlisting matches you to top freelancers in under six hours. And with over 170 ,000 five-star freelancers, you can hire with confidence. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, Upwork.com. Just to go all in, put all your chips on the table. What's more motivating for you though, to prove them wrong, that they were wrong about you? So you're proving them wrong or to prove them right because they believed in you.

17:44I like to prove people wrong. That's definitely more motivating. There's very few people that actually believe in you when you're first starting something. It's very few. There's like very few. So there's not really many people to prove right, except for yourself. There's a lot more people to prove wrong. And so I have a lot more options and like things that I can channel my energy and efforts towards proving like there's, you know, more variation. I think there's maybe two people that I could like prove right. and then it's not as fun. That's true. My wife yells at me sometimes. She's like, you got to start being motivated by other things because you can't.

18:17I just get so excited when someone doesn't believe in me for some reason. I think it could be a trauma from when I was younger, though, like my childhood. I'm not sure. I'm trying to work through it, though, Shane. I'm trying to work through it. You shouldn't. You should embrace it. That's the way you are. You should love it. You think so? Yeah. If it gets you up in the morning, why not? Unless you don't like it. It's like I feel like it's a character flaw. then scrap it you know what character flaws do you have or something that you're working on i would say look like i think uh i'm intense you know that's one thing for sure that some people don't like i'm very intense as like a person i'm just like yo let's get things done let's move a speed let's figure this out and some people don't like that but that's why they're not successful you know the most successful people i've ever been around they move with the unparalleled speed.

19:09It's just very quick to do things. And I don't think people like that. And I could say that, is that a character flaw to me? No, but to other people, when I was younger, they're like, you're very intense. But it's like the only reason that I'm here at the end of the day, because you just got to get it done. You're right, man. The most successful people I've spoken with, people would say that they're intense for sure. I mean, that's the only way you can survive, I think, in business. It's hard. There's ups, there's downs, you lose everything, and then you got to start over and you hit these milestones, you're excited, then everything collapses.

19:44You got to be intense. It's not for most people. I would like to say that most people can start a business. Like you said, it's easier now. But I don't know if maybe 99 % of people can make it in business. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I think it's the way it's always been, but you can't really worry about what all these other people are doing. I like to work with the best businesses and the most elite businesses in the world. But I think that, you know, yeah, being an entrepreneur isn't really built for everybody. Have you ever heard of the BHAG, the big, hairy, audacious goal?

20:22I have not. Okay. So what this is, it's from a book, a very famous book. It's basically a goal that it's so big that it scares you. It could be like a goal that you might not hit for 30 years. Do you have a BHAG? Do you have a big, hairy, audacious goal, like a massive goal that you want to hit? Yeah, I don't think of it like that because anything is possible, you know? So I don't really, like if I feel like if you automatically put it and categorize it as a BHAG, then how are you going to achieve it? Because you think it's scary. So you can't really think of it as that, you know? I almost want to say that you're like a reincarnation of somebody because I don't get to talk to too many 21 year olds that provide this type of information.

21:08This is someone who's like 70 years old, who's been through many. I mean, you might have, I don't know what you were doing in your past life, but I'm impressed. I'm amazed. I've talked to a thousand people and I don't know if I've ever talked to anyone that was under the age of probably 23 about business. So I'm very excited. if there's someone else out there who's 21. Let me tell you about a time that Upwork saved me. I had two hours to get a submission to a major media outlet, and I thought there was no way I'd make it. I jumped on Upwork, messaged someone, and within 10 minutes, they replied.

21:4390 minutes later, the work was done in my inbox, submitted on time. And here's the best part. Two years later, that same person still works with me today. Upwork is where businesses find highly skilled freelance professionals for specialized work from software development and AI implementation to marketing design business operations. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. AI shortlisting matches you to top freelancers in under six hours. And with over 170 ,000 five-star freelancers, you can hire with confidence. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free.

22:27That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, Upwork.com. And they also are like, screw it, I'm dropping out of college. This is not for me. What's a piece of advice you'd give to them? they gotta go all in to put the chips on the table drop out or don't but stop saying you're gonna do it and then don't do it you might as well just do it but then what you have to do is you uh you can't give up so it might take you two three years to get some momentum but the first dollar i ever made from street polling was like two and a half years after my first video of doing it you know i had like credit repair company and i sold that and um but i wasn't making money and it wasn't like a business.

23:17And you also kind of have to love it too, because to your point, you can't really ride the highs and you can't ride the lows and they're only going to get bigger and lower as you go on. And so what you have to do is it should be something that's like passion for you to a degree so that it gets you up in the morning, right? Man, final question for you. How do you define success and have you hit that point in your life already? Or is there something you haven't done yet that when you hit that point at whenever that is, that's when you've made it? I don't, I don't think there's a specific point where it's like, oh, you know, I've made it.

23:55I'm going to chill on the beach, drink, vibe. I don't know if there's one specific point. I think it's hitting thing after thing, after thing, after thing. And it also is all personal. Like some people, their success is defined by how happy they are. Some people it's assigned by their business. Some people, their success is, you know, the way they look. Some people, it's what car they drive. That's to each individual person. I'm not really that like content. Like, you know, I'm happy. I'm not like chasing money. But I'm just like, I always know that it can be a lot bigger, you know? So I think that once you start getting complacent, that's kind of when you have issues in general, you know?

24:40business, life, whatever. I just came up with something and I'll share this final thing with you. You know, there's looks maxing. Is there business maxing or success maxing? I know that there's something I've heard of that Mark Andre said. Let me tell you about a time that Upwork saved me. I had two hours to get a submission to a major media outlet and I thought there was no way I'd make it. I jumped on Upwork, messaged someone and within 10 minutes they replied, 90 minutes later, the work was done in my inbox, submitted on time. And here's the best part. Two years later, that same person still works with me today.

25:21Upwork is where businesses find highly skilled freelance professionals for specialized work, from software development and AI implementation to marketing design business operations. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. AI shortlisting matches you to top freelancers in under six hours and with over 170 ,000 five-star freelancers, you can hire with confidence. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Upwork.com. I didn't say it. I can't get canceled because this guy's the CEO of a damn near a trillion dollar VC company.

26:15And he goes on Twitter and says that he's retard maxing on Sundays. So I know about that. But I think you can apply clavicular's lingo of maxing to anything to make it into a plural word. So you could have biz maxing, life maxing, success maxing. maxing we have with our sales guys they lead max you know deal max um yeah like podcast maxing that's what you're doing right i mean you have over a million subscribers you're for sure podcast maxing right now we we did podcast therapy maxing you have some good questions i i see why people like really like to listen to you because but you you do it in a way where you you kind of started it off with like get them comfortable and it's like all right how are you feeling today and is your mental health okay but i love it dude i'm all about mental health when i was a teenager i had a lot of struggles and so i always said my goal in life is to impact people positively and if i can help someone going through it i wish there was someone there like i wish there was an outlet that i could listen because it could have saved me from getting into a lot of things i wish i didn't get into.

27:22But, uh, Shaney pioneer in your industry at only 21. I know maybe age isn't a big thing, but I think many people would say, wow, a pioneer at 21. That's incredible. Sky's the freaking limit for you. Can't wait to see what else, but CEO of street polar media. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you, brother. Appreciate it. Make sure you guys subscribe.