Dani Austin & Jordan Ramirez: How They Got To $40 Million+ A Year As Influencers

0:00Yeah, I mean, like our first full year, I think you already shared it. Well, you said 20, it's 40. But yeah, we did about$40 million and then this year we're on track to do 30%, 35 % growth. yeah um it's it's crazy i feel like i can rule the world i know i could be what i want to i put my all in it like my days off so we are here in the uh shed yeah the shed yeah like this studio like i'm looking at the video it looks legit yeah people don't know what this looks like from the outside this is definitely like a sketchy um like i've seen a netflix documentary about a shed like this well you got here five minutes later than we did it was it was like 100 degrees in here.

0:43Right. I was like, this is going to be a sweaty podcast. And this is, you guys are different than I'll say our normal guests, which are almost always like kind of business, like tech, software type of entrepreneur. Y 'all are entrepreneurs in a different way. And you're Instagram famous. So that's cool. That's amazing. You tagged me in a story yesterday and I got to say, my wife has never looked at me that way before. She was like, oh, because she's never listened to one episode of this podcast. No way. We've done maybe 400 episodes. She's not a podcast person in general. Like she doesn't listen to anyone's podcast.

1:18Yeah. But you would think maybe she'll listen to a lot. We got little kids now. There's just not a lot of like time to like do things like that. Yeah, I get it. But I think she'll listen to this one. So I'm excited because she's a fan of yours. And so we hung out at dinner last night, got to know each other a little bit. So I'm excited. Maybe we'll do like you guys give me like a 60 second intro of who you guys are. Why introduce yourselves to the audience. Sure. I'll go first. So my name is Dani Austin and I started creating content online about 10 years ago. I was actually living in Austin. I was at the University of Texas, sophomore, like just making videos on YouTube in my dorm room.

1:57You know, kind of just grew from there really fast. Then got on Instagram, all the other platforms. We now run Divi, which is a scalp care, hair care product brand um and we do that together we have a lot of fun doing that honestly online we just share anything about our lives from like be having two kids under two to um you know fast or affordable fashion um yeah we kind of been doing that together for you know five years so she's been online for 10 years you know we met we didn't work together until we got married i was in like Austin tech scene before we got married. And then, uh, you know, I was telling you last night, this just became a lifestyle and it was all consuming.

2:41And so she would be in like Turks and Caicos and I would be in a boardroom and I'd be like, Oh my gosh, like what, what am I doing in my life? And so around 2018, we took the leap to work together, jumped into kind of like the influencer space, which we, it didn't have a name before that. It was just like, we created content. And then I think the media started covering it a lot more. and then they labeled me an Instagram husband and then they labeled our industry. How do you feel about that label? It was fine. I'm glad that I did it. Wait, that's so not true. At first, you hated it. Yeah, it's true.

3:13People at that party, they're like, what are you doing? He's like, you never knew. Well, when you're coming out of college, so much of your identity is wrapped up in your title, especially being here in Austin, Texas. In the tech scene, it was like, oh, what startup are you part of? Do you all have funding? What's your title? What employee number were you? and so I was still kind of caught up in that mindset and then you know we jumped in together it was like I remember the first article that came out was by a writer named Taylor Lorenz and she wrote an article about what is the Instagram husband.

3:40I got a history with Taylor Lorenz too yeah. Really yeah dude it's crazy a lot of people have a history with her now but you know she so she she wrote that article and she quoted me in it and then I was like labeled the Instagram husband but yeah and so we we did the influencer industry for five years together and just honestly created content together. And then COVID hit and brands started really investing in that space. We should also say how this came about. Yeah. You listened to the pod. Yes. He's a huge fan. I'm a huge fan. Huge fan. And so we, I didn't know that. I didn't know who you were at that time, but I did an episode where I was talking about creator businesses.

4:17Yes. So content creators who have now spun off businesses that are doing really well that are not called Mr. Beast. It's like, okay, everybody knows Mr. Beast. so who are the who what are the other cool cool examples and we did like maybe five six seven examples and then danny with with divi was one of them and so i guess you heard that yeah well so like a couple nights before i think i saw a tweet that you were doing and you were like we're doing episode on creator-led businesses and i think i like told you i like rolled over that'd be so cool they mentioned all you guys on twitter and you know like i was like oh man like that'd be cool if they recognized divi but we're in a niche right that is totally not your niche like Like, you know, you had no idea who Danny was.

4:57Last night, Danny was like watching the first couple episodes of y 'all's podcast. I was like, no, this is Sean. He's cool. And yeah, I was on a plane a couple of days later listening to that episode. And then it was like, oh, have you ever heard of Danny Austin? You asked that to Sam. And Sam was like, no. That was funny. And then it was like, yeah, you talked about Divi and I really appreciate that. So I sent a DM and I was like, hey, man, we'd love to come and share a story. It's very different than most of the businesses y 'all cover. And let's play a little game. we went to dinner last night, Chinese restaurant.

5:27We ordered food. Let's see how well you know your husband. I don't know if he told you this already. He ate alligators. Yeah. Oh, he brought him more. He ordered chicken, the busy order pig. He ordered alligator. I did order it. And it was just kind of like a spur of the moment thing. There was a couple of things that were funny about this dinner. I think he was trying to impress us. No, I was not trying to impress you. This is funny though. So Matthew booked the dinner. And it was, so Sam Ellinger used to play football at UT Austin. And that's one of Matthew's really good friends. Matthew works for Danny and I.

5:54And I go, hey, find a cool restaurant in Austin that, you know, we can talk to these people. He books this like upstairs room. There's like a chandelier. It's a table for 16. There's five of us. Five of us. And they walk in. I go, Matthew, this is such a power move. And then on top of that, you know, I'm like, you know, we're all talking. So I don't know what to order. And then he's like, you should try the alligator. I was like, OK, I'll take the alligator. And they were like. And then he brought it home and woke me up. And he was like, you got to try this alligator. it really tastes like chicken you should just try it okay you didn't try the alligator yeah that was a crazy move uh i gotta give you credit i will never enjoy it i'll never forget it so yeah i guess that's maybe a lesson to be learned yeah they go to a dinner with somebody for the first time what are the weirdest thing on the menu they never forget it uh that's awesome so you guys uh you started doing this back in 2012 uh right around 2012 you're in college at the time what What was, because, you know, Instagram had been out.

6:49YouTube had been out for maybe five years by that point. But it sounds like when you're talking about it, it was very early days back then. What was working back then? How did, like, what did you have a tiny following back then? Like, how did it, what were those early years like? So the backstory is my brother, Landon Austin, he's actually a musician. And he started on YouTube. He just started posting covers of different songs. He had one video blow up because people thought that he was John Mayer. Yeah. It was actually covering Tay Zande's like Chocolate Rain song. Anyway, so that popped off.

7:20So my brother started to like kind of acquire this audience and he told me about the space, but I thought it was so weird. Like I'd walk by his bedroom and he'd be like talking to all of his imaginary friends. And I was like, come on, Landon, like you got to make some real friends. And so, but he ended up putting me in like a sibling tag because tags were really popular on YouTube back then, you know, like the Chubby Bunny challenge or whatever tag. So he put me in a video and, you know, in all the comments, it's like your sister should start a channel or she should share how she did her makeup or where'd she get her top.

7:51And so my brother actually made my channel for me and I didn't touch it. We went home over winter break and we were so bored because, you know, all of our friends are in Austin now and everyone's in college. And, you know, I was just like, you know, let's give this thing a shot. So my brother filmed and edited my first video. It was all like just affordable New Year's Eve outfits. and it popped off and within like three months i had a hundred thousand followers and i just started kind of posting consistently i knew of like a handful of girls out in los angeles that were doing this like full time and they actually had managers and there were agencies that were just dedicated like specifically to youtube which was like a totally different world so within three months i signed with a manager um and then every summer from then on out i would just fly out to la and do collabs because collabs were like yeah oh yeah collabs were everything they actually had just opened YouTube space in Playa Vista in Los Angeles as well.

8:44And they had this thing called the creator program where they only allowed of think like 10 or 11 of us in and creators of all sizes. And we were for it. You had to collab with two other creators in the program in order to be able to use YouTube space. So like when you got to YouTube space, I mean, they had everything from like their, you know, a red camera. They had studios. They had, you know, editing bays, editing suites they had all these classes you could take so i would go and work for my manager from like you know nine to five and then from five to like nine i would go to youtube space and just collab make youtube videos learn about how to edit and everything and you're like 21 at the time yeah i'm 21 no i was 20 actually it was 1920 i couldn't drink what were you doing when you're working for your manager just by day like so that's how these and stuff yeah no i mean i was like um in on like all of the negotiations like a lot of the creators were moving out to la and the brands would come to the office and, you know, meet all the creators.

9:39And I honestly learned everything about like the backend of the business. Cause at that time you weren't the star, but you were like, exactly. Yes. And then like also being around all these creators, I would meet some of like the girls that I loved and then get their number. And then we would collab and everyone was very, it was just very collaborative. Everybody's helping each other out. Um, so it was awesome. And, but then I was able to kind of take all of that back to Austin and there really weren't a lot of, you know, YouTubers in Austin, which also kind of helped me because I felt like I was one of the only ones.

10:08And so when I was, I did start kind of like pitching myself to brands because like, I also signed with my manager, but she was, you know, managing girls that had over a million followers. I had maybe 150 ,000 at the time. And so I started pitching myself to all these like startups in Austin. And what I found was what was happening was I was getting these brand deals or these partnerships, I would, you know, get to know them, pull them in and then forward them to my manager. And then I would look on YouTube and like all the other girls that were signed with her would be working with these brands.

10:38And I wasn't. So I was basically just like funneling these brands to my manager. So I realized at that time I was like, I'm not big enough for them to care. So I need to get out of this contract and just kind of manage myself and build my own team and like have people that actually care about what I'm doing. So as soon as I could, I got out of that contract and ever since then we've always kind of had like an in-house team um which we've learned a lot from that but um but yeah it's just kind of crazy how it's evolved and so how even when you were so how big is the audience now so now on instagram like total total on all of our platforms we have probably over 2 million 2.5 million is instagram main one is instagram which is like the perfect platform for us um most of our content is on instagram stories and the reason we like that is because it's kind of like reality TV where I wake up with my audience.

11:26Like literally when I wake up in the morning, I get on stories and I carry them throughout the entire day. And so it's just like the closest, I feel like people really feel like they're in our homes. You know, it's very stripped down. Yeah, yeah. It's a lot more authentic. It's kind of like follow my day. And so you've done that. Now you also launched Divi. Yes. Because that's kind of how we, when we initially found you guys, I read this thread. I read a Twitter thread. somebody else had written about this and they named five or six creators i'd never heard of that had businesses that were really big it was like divvy uh it's a you know this sort of like hair care product whatever and it was doing 40 million or something in revenue i don't remember what the exact numbers were but i remember being like wow that's like really significant and so cool like i never really like i never heard of that you hear the same three or four examples all the time when it comes to like, like Logan Paul and Prime and Mr.

12:20Beast and whatever, like, especially in the tech world, we kind of hear the same. We're not like as deep in. So you only hear the same, you know, three or four examples every single time. So how did that come about? How'd you, when'd you decide to, instead of posting for other people, like, let's create our own brand and how'd you pick the product? How did you like, how'd you have the confidence to go for it? Yeah. So, um, there was definitely an era on Instagram where everything was perfect. You know, it's like back in the day of like posting the perfect selfie or the perfect like latte art, whatever it was.

12:50And so I definitely played that game and it gets very exhausting. After a while, I started actually losing my hair when I was in college, whenever I was at UT. First, it started with like just me being so stressed out because I'm at UT. I'm flying to LA every weekend. I'm posting on these videos. I have like Neutrogena is like, where's the brand deal and I have like four exams the next day. So I'm stressed out all the time. So I pull in my hair, then I get hair extensions to try to like cover that up. That makes it worse. Then I bleached my hair. That makes it worse. When we get married, I think like a year in, I look in the mirror and I'm like, I literally have no more hair.

13:25I was like, I didn't even want to leave the house anymore. So Jordan, I mean, are we talking a couple of strands of hair? What are we talking? No, I mean like bald spots, like patches, like patches of hair. And it was stress driven, stress driven and then hair extensions. So that's probably like more traction alopecia so what happens when you put hair extensions in like your hair can't withstand that weight and instead of just losing hair where the hair extension is with traction alopecia you actually lose hair like around that whole surrounding area so it was like multiple bald spots like all over so jordan of course my husband he's like wait i don't get it like why don't you just get a wig all the kardashians wear wigs what's what's wrong with that so he takes me to a wig shop in dallas like the first place he googles we walk in it's like a halloween store like the most expensive wig is like$40 bright neon yellow I'm like I don't know if it's gonna work they're like plastic wigs they're like the most expensive one is like 15 bucks so I leave there like so defeated I'm like I'm always gonna be bold you know so we actually um learn about this like wig shop in Los Angeles called the wig shop actually yeah uh from Jeffrey Star I was gonna say Jeffrey Star is another YouTuber anyway long story short we fly out there find my first wig I'm in wigs for a year.

14:38And actually, when I first got my first wig, I didn't tell anybody because I was so embarrassed. I was like, we actually took a trip to Chicago with my parents and my sister-in-law and my brother. And we didn't tell them the entire time they go, oh, nice haircut. You know, like, I mean, these things can look so real. It's insane. So about a month into wearing it, I just felt like a fraud. I was like, I got to tell people, I feel like I'm probably not the only female going through something like this. I think that like people will appreciate it and hopefully they'll be cool with it. So I shared that I was wearing wigs and it kind of just opened up this door of like all these females that are kind of going through the same thing, like this like hidden epidemic of hair loss.

15:21Yeah, my wife all the time. After we had our first baby, I think there's like a known kind of like postpartum issue with hair loss. And so she was talking about it all the time and I was like I was like what do you mean like it's nothing don't worry about it she's like no look at this and he's like baby hair whatever and it really bothered her and I didn't even think really even to try like what what would a solution look like so yeah I mean I felt that it can be very emotional like especially for females um because there just weren't a lot of people talking about it so um long story short I took the year and wore wigs and I was like you know what I'm just going to focus on my scalp health I'm going to focus on my wellness and really like give this thing like 100%.

16:04So meanwhile, there was actually this trend or I guess a hack online where a lot of women were using Monistat to grow their hair back, which is so strange. But the reason that was working is because it has a lot of like antifungal properties. What's Monistat? Tell Sean, Danny, you got to tell him. Is this something I shouldn't know about or no? No, you shouldn't know about it. Is it a good thing that I don't know about this thing? This is a good clickbait. Tell him. Okay, so all the guys on the podcast are going to be like, what the... By the way, we always joke that we have four female listeners.

16:35Hopefully that'll change after this episode. Four female listeners, we're all like dying inside laughing right now. They're all like putting their parts on their face right now. So monoset is what females use for yeast infections. Okay, gotcha. And so a lot of women were using this on their scalp though, and it's helping their hair grow. And people are taking before and after pictures, and it's like insane. So the reason that's working is because it has these antifungal properties in it, which nowadays, you know, they always tell you don't wash your hair. It's not good for you. So a lot of females are using dry shampoo.

17:04And so they're putting all this dry shampoo, all this product that's just like sitting on your scalp, blocking your follicle. And so your hair doesn't really have like a fair chance of growing. So when they're using Monistat, you know, it's kind of like detoxifying. It's getting rid of all that product buildup and your hair is growing. So the only thing with that is you shouldn't be using it long term. It's just like has a lot of harmful things in it. So my goal was to find a more natural way to essentially accomplish the same thing so i would like get into my bathroom and i studied bio at the university of texas i was going to so did i they don't teach you anything i learned photosynthesis for like seven years exactly i don't teach you anything about the human body she can hang with the chemist i can hang now she can hang she's like okay i remember that i kind of i kind of get it but it's amazing how much you learn when you really need to learn versus like my major now i wish i really would have paid attention because i think it really would have benefited me but could have known anyway so um so you know i'm like a little chemist in my in my bathroom i'm getting all these ingredients from online whole foods all over the place and just making my own scalp serums and i would you know share on youtube like this is how i make it this is where you order this and then mix it this way and and then people started asking they're like hey can you just like ship it to me right and so i go to jordan i'm like i really think this could be a thing a lot of people when was this like a couple years ago or this was a 29 uh no they probably yeah 2019 2019 2019 um and so that's kind of like where the idea originated from and it was totally clean so it's something that people could use every day and not feel like it's going to be harmful so we had a lot of like eucalyptus uh natural ingredients jojoba oil um but there were a lot of things i wanted to put in it that i just didn't have access to so long story short found partners found a great chemist and then came out with our first product which was a scalp serum and to be honest i did not think that it would pop off at all i really was just like i want to serve my audience I've been very like service driven with all of my content.

18:56I'm like, I just really want to serve people because I feel like if I serve them, they'll come back. So that was really just like the heart behind it. But what happened was a lot of people were buying it for like their day were down the street or their mom or their husband. And people started taking like before and after pictures. We never asked for before and after pictures, but I feel like that's kind of what made it blow up. It's the best marketing there is, right? Before and after. Yes. People started sending in their before and afters. And like, so then I would start sharing them, you know, left and right.

19:23And I mean, every day I'm probably tagged in like 15 before and afters, even to this day. So were there not scalp serums before that or there were, but they just weren't? You know, I think it was just such a new, like a niche, like, you know, putting something on your scalp, like a skincare routine, like creating that scalp routine was very new. People weren't really thinking about it. So I'm sure that there were scalp serums out there, but I don't think people were educated about like how to use them or why they were important. So our biggest thing is just like, if you're taking care of your skin, like you should be taking care of your scalp.

19:53It's kind of like an extension of, you know. And so I think once people kind of understood how to use it, then they went to Divi first because we were also one of the only like clean scalp serums out there. Gotcha. So the business launches when? 2020. 2020. No, 2021. 2021. October 2021. So we're not even two full years in, you know, and it's exploded. So I don't know how much you guys typically share. do you guys share revenue stuff or not really yeah i mean like our first like full year i think you already shared it well you said 20 it's 40 but uh yeah we did about 40 million dollars and then um you know this year we're on track to do 30 35 growth yeah um it's it's crazy and that's mostly from kind of the power of your community or that's that plus a bunch of other marketing that you have to do or how does the business grow i mean because that probably exceeded your expectations.

20:46I mean, that would exceed anyone's expectations. I always say like when we launched the product, we thought that we were launching it for like 10 % of Danny's audience. Like we were like, Hey, these people need to be served. Danny, you know, acquired this audience. They want a resource. And it just grew so far beyond that. And a lot of people think that, you know, Divi is all Danny's audience that's buying it. And, you know, she's only made up about 15 % of the overall revenue. And so it was just a product that I think took off and worked. It was just right place right time it was like during the era of the skinification of the scalp is like what the beauty gurus call it and so i missed that whole era yeah you missed the air well it's here it's now i don't have a skin care routine either so i i didn't catch up i didn't start with skin move the scalp i gave you two boxes yeah i know you're you're in it now um and so yeah it's it's just been wild i mean we we never expected and so did you guys look at like other creator-led businesses like who was an inspiration that you're like oh you know if we do this well this could be like you know whatever yeah skims or this could be like the kylie's lip thing or whatever i mean we've always admired the kardashians in a business sense like how they've how they've like used their reality tv to grow all these businesses and like we one thing we love about them is like how they all support each other it's like a an ecosystem like you're using you know kylie's makeup and then you're wearing kim's skims and so we always love that aspect of what they do but i I mean, in terms of like our inspiration, to be honest, everyone in our space was just launching clothing lines.

22:15So it was totally different. Yeah, it was very, very different. Were you tempted to do that, too? A hundred percent. Jordan was like, please don't. Please don't. The returns are insane. My parents, my dad actually has a showroom at the Dallas World Trade Center in Dallas. So he, you know, sells wholesale to Nordstrom, all these boutiques. my dad always told me he's like the one thing I ask you is please don't get in the fashion industry it's just yeah it's it's a lot and so um but one thing I knew that I wanted if I ever did launch a business is I wanted to have something that could be on subscription and so a lot of my ideas were mainly tech at first um I never really thought of like what like what would it have you know some service that you could get I had I honestly didn't have like a what like you had this like one yeah Yeah, there was one time where she like wanted to launch her own app because she felt like, you know, she could build a better community like through a different platform than Instagram.

23:09And we tried it. We called it, what did you call it? The Sassy Club. The Sassy Club at the time. And it was like we use this third party app system and we drove a large part of our community to it. And we tried to do like more. The whole concept was like, let's meet in real life with our audience. And so it was like we do meetups and stuff like that. And that was just really hard. It was kind of like a bumble. Right. Yeah, it was kind of like a bumble. And so we tried that, you know, it was pretty difficult. And then it was it was difficult to manage like the in-face interactions. Yeah. Let me ask you a question.

23:41I just hired a guy, paid a guy$5 ,000 to do a couple of like one-on-one like workshops with me. And it was all about this idea of personal branding, which honestly a pretty lame phrase in general. Like I cringe that I even did all this, but I'm putting it out there in the spirit of authenticity. so i paid this guy why did i pay this guy well this podcast itself has gotten pretty popular but uh i've always had this problem which was just like um you see some people and their brand is so clear it's like uh there's this guy who this guy named pomp and pomp is all about bitcoin he's the bitcoin guy yeah like you know him about but you know because of bitcoin he talks about bitcoin everything he loves you know every fourth word needs to be bitcoin yep and then you have like um tim ferris who's you know the four hour work week guy or four hour body four hour chef he's the four hour guy he's all about kind of life hacking your way there and so you go down the list and a lot of people who have built good online followings they have a clear kind of like they're the blank guy or they're the blank gal whatever like that's what they're known for and for me i've always been like well i don't know the business business guy that doesn't sound very like specific or focused and i was like oh i've gotten pretty far without that but maybe i maybe somebody can help me kind of sharpen this so this guy who i hired he works with like you know like jay shetty and like um a bunch of people who are like that like uh the guy who did quest bar thing tom whatever bill you um and he's like yeah you know like jay shetty his story is he was like kind of like in and out of trouble then decided to go be a monk and he was a monk and then he like got kicked out of the monastery because a monk came to him was like you know you like there's something bigger in store for you so he decided to make his life mission to bring ancient monk wisdom in a modern way to the world or whatever i i butchered i butchered that but something like that yeah he is consistent man right he's doing it every day i just knew him i was like the blue-eyed indian guy like you know that's what stood out to me like the guys you know monks were green eyes yeah but i was like okay i see how i see the value and if you really like sharpen this like whatever your brand is all about but then i've met people who are maybe like you who um you probably never hired a consultant or like did a brand workshop or like sat down with a piece of paper and like tried to architect it seems like it kind of happened organically and naturally for you so i have two questions for you one do you think you have like a focus like that like the blank yeah you are the you know just like the bitcoin guy do you have like a thing that's like our brand is is about this word or these three words or whatever do you have something like that um so when I started going through my hair loss I think was the first time that I kind of felt like I had that thing like I was kind of like the wig influencer for a while and then kind of like the hair loss influencer I mean as cliche as it sounds I feel like like I think our biggest thing is we've always just been very authentic and like goofy um and we've kind of I feel like what we've done is figured out how to collide those worlds of like being professional, but also getting, you know, taking your heels off, getting back home, just like, and being real about what it's like having two kids, like you're in heels, changing diapers, kids peeing all over you.

26:59But like, I would say it, it took like 10 years for people to kind of, I've never had, you know, this persona or this video pop off and go viral. And then everyone knows who I am. Like, I've never had that moment. it's just been like very gradual of, but I, but I totally feel what you're saying. Like I, I still go through those times where I'm like, okay, who am I? Like what's my identity? Like what do, and I, I do feel like there are some bloggers out there that are so good at like, okay, when you think of Chick-fil-A, you think of this one person, or when you think of like this one brand, you think of it.

27:32Dude, that should have been mine. Chick-fil-A. You're a genius. You're going to be the whole time. Yeah. And it's like, and so I do try to find those things that like, okay, when in Dallas, when people go here, like, are they going to, what brands are they thinking of when they think of Danny? You know, but it's, it's challenging because also like, I'm very, you know, one day I want to be doing this one day. I like to like kind of shift and be on my toes. And so what do you think people get wrong when they try to build a following? Not like the people who are just obviously bad, but let's say people who have the potential work could be working out.

28:02What do you think are the mistakes that those people make that like, They're trying to be perfect all the time. And it's so unrelatable. I think like one of the biggest reasons that like people can relate is because we have made so many mistakes and we share them. And like there's times when we get online and we're like, man, that was bad. We should have done that. Like there was an example, a small example, but I was cutting up like fruit for my daughter Stella's lunch and I'm cutting the grapes wrong, you know, like where they can choke on grapes and like had no idea. Like my mom never cut my grapes.

28:32So like I didn't know I was doing anything wrong. but you know like the dms are flooding in the facebook groups are popping off danie's like cutting the grapes are you trying to kill your kid like you're influencing all these moms to cut grapes wrong and i'm like oh my gosh i didn't know like so you know you get on you're like guys i'm so sorry like i made a mistake let me like teach you the right way to to cut grapes instead of like deleting the content and being embarrassed about it and so it's like i think you cut them wrong the second time too i did i did i did um but yeah so i just feel like i have a lot of girlfriends like in Dallas that are you know trying to do something similar and they're trying so hard to just be perfect all the time and it's not really you said the word relatable I think that's a key uh key thing like we had the comedian Hasan Minhaj I don't know if you know him he's yeah he's on Netflix or something he came on and um and I was asking him something about because we do this like we're doing these live podcasts now sometimes so we're doing one this Saturday here in Austin and so I had asked him I was like hey I'm going on states kind of like stand-up comedy there's gonna be whatever like a thousand people in the audience how do i you know any what would you say like first five minutes how can i set a good tone here and he goes um he gave me two pieces of an eye so he goes first make it clear that you are there so he's like talk about the room talk about the person the front row talk about you know the city that you're in and like what it's been like for you to be there like just make it clear like yeah give them the fact that you're there and everybody will be present together when you do that and he goes the second thing is low status.

29:58I go, low status? He goes, yeah, like people make this mistake a lot that they try to be high status. They're like, I want your approval. So I'm going to present a version of myself that is high status. When in actuality, the way people relate to you and like you is doing something low status. So making fun of yourself, showing a weakness, being vulnerable, saying something that makes you look bad, not great, or like embarrassing to you. And so he's like, you know, comedy is actually a low status art form not like not high status which is what you're like if you go at a conference you go on stage uh it's typically gonna be all high status stuff people trying to say things that show how important they are and how smart they are and their resume and all that basically that's not how people relate to you and so what you're saying kind of reminds me of that is like a uh doing things that are showing the showing some of the flaws almost not just because they're there but like it actually helps it actually builds that relatability I know I agree I mean I feel like the times that we connect with our audience the most is like in those goofy times when I'm running around with no pants on and like we're like oh I relate same thing you know I think there's like a there's like a pushback on like a-list celebrities even towards influencers because it's like I don't understand like this is not relevant to my life at all what the Kardashians are doing in the private jets and all this stuff and like I think that that's where people feel at home you know is is in these kind of like like relatable moments, which is what I told Ben you need to do.

31:24I feel like y 'all do this so well on the podcast is like, you're not trying to be this business guru expert. You're just kind of talking about everyday people's business and your thoughts on it. And you're kind of riffing. And I think that, you know, I told Sean, I was like, I think he just needs to do more. He needs to get on Instagram stories and get on YouTube. That was my advice to him. So I went non-private, like, you know, I'm now not private. When we DM'd him, it was private. I was like, what's this guy doing? Yeah, I didn't bother with Instagram. But what did your fancy branding coach tell you?