In short
Episode topic: How influencer deals and creator monetization work, why influencer marketing grew to $38B (2023), and how to evaluate ROI, platforms, pricing, and when to hire an influencer agency. Tom Stefaniuk explains the creator “progression” (AdSense → sponsorships → affiliate → selling own products), argues influencer value comes from trust and personal connection (not just impressions), and calls the space “wild west” for attribution and middlemen.
Guest backgrounds
Tom Stefaniuk is an influencer business manager/agency owner who started creating content at 16, built a sneaker/basketball channel, and later founded Small Screen (about 30 employees; ~$2.5–$3M/month revenue). No other guest is interviewed in the transcript (mentions a future webinar with Connor Gross).
Key claims
YouTube followers aren’t equal across niches; YouTube long-form captures more attention and yields higher-value audiences. Affiliate often comes before paid partnerships; top creators can charge “outrageous” premiums beyond CPM.
Notable examples
First YouTube check ~$113 after four months; shift in 2019 to selling his own product (sponsorships plus product) to ~$75–$90K/month. Agency handles brand deals, contract redlining, speaking tours, book deals, TV hosting. Example client: a barramundi fish farm using fishing-content creators to raise awareness.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Journey of Becoming an Influencer
0:46 to 3:00
Tom discusses his initial struggles and eventual success as an influencer.
“I'm going to throw a stat at you and I want you to tell me why it's happening.”
The Appeal of Influencer Life
3:01 to 5:00
Exploring why many aspire to become influencers and the lifestyle it offers.
“And this was after four months of work of making videos.”
Transition to Agency Work
5:01 to 7:20
Tom shares insights on the evolution from being an influencer to starting an agency.
“Or could I pay you to talk about this product?”
Understanding Influencer Earnings
7:21 to 10:52
Discussion on how influencers earn money and the evolution of their income sources.
“Do you need a wrench or a hammer or a screwdriver?”
The Rise of Influencer Marketing
10:53 to 13:11
Tom analyzes the rapid growth of influencer marketing and its financial impact.
“And one of the guys said, well, if you don't mind sharing, how much did you get paid?”
The Value of Influencer Relationships
13:12 to 14:02
Examining the personal connection influencers have with their audience and its importance.
“the commercial, maybe have some celebrity actor in it.”
The Power and Pricing of Influencer Marketing
14:02 to 17:48
Explore how influencers command premiums and how brands measure ad performance.
“but the value that those impressions create is so much greater with the influencers.”
Finding the Right Influencer for Your Product
17:49 to 19:06
Learn the importance of aligning products with suitable influencers for effective marketing.
“No one would have ever thought, oh, this is a natural fit for influencers, my commercial fishing operation.”
Budgeting for Influencer Campaigns
19:07 to 19:56
Understand how to allocate marketing budgets between different advertising channels.
“And I can put those dollars to a billboard, radio, podcasting, Google pay-per-click ads, again, depending on the type of product that you have.”
Evaluating Products for Influencer Marketing
19:57 to 21:16
Discover the attributes that make a product suitable for influencer promotions.
“And some of the more institutional brands that have been, you know, in existence for decades are spending maybe more like five to 10 % of their budget on influencers.”
Show all 24 chapters
The Evolution of Influencer Trust and Audience Value
21:17 to 22:48
Examine how trust in influencers is growing and the implications for marketing strategies.
“A high ticket is a general rule, but there's brands that advertise phone cases, you know, all they sell is phone cases, and they spend millions of dollars on influencers.”
The Importance of Engagement Beyond Follower Count
22:49 to 24:18
Learn about the significance of engagement metrics over mere follower counts in assessing influencer value.
“If I'm a girl on Instagram who's cute and have 20 ,000 followers, is that the same as somebody who does tech product reviews on YouTube with 20 ,000 subscribers?”
Monetizing a Small Audience on YouTube
28:00 to 29:11
Learn how influencers can monetize effectively even with a small subscriber base.
“Well, I'm going to make it about the numbers.”
Determining Subscriber Goals for Podcasting
29:11 to 30:40
Understand the download metrics necessary for making a podcast a full-time endeavor.
“Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you're putting it.”
Calculating Sponsorship Pricing
30:40 to 32:36
Discover how to set appropriate pricing for podcast sponsorships based on downloads.
“It's because of the quality of the volume that I have.”
Trends in Influencer Marketing Growth
32:36 to 34:12
Explore the increasing investment brands are making in influencer marketing.
“of an audience as an entrepreneurship podcast would.”
Agency Operations and Client Services
34:12 to 36:21
Learn about the services an agency provides to influencers and brands, from deals to tours.
“Well, now I got to ask, can you tell me top line revenue?”
Revenue Distribution Between Brands and Creators
36:21 to 38:09
Understand how revenue is shared between agencies, brands, and content creators.
“Are you then doing the distribution for it as well?”
Building Relationships in Influencer Marketing
38:09 to 40:09
Discover the importance of relationships and networking in securing brand deals.
“And how do you get paid for each one of those?”
Scaling a Successful Influencer Agency
40:09 to 41:51
Learn about growth strategies and profitability in the influencer agency business.
“Where do you just like going to conferences?”
Business Growth Strategies
42:02 to 43:00
Learn about strategic growth for businesses and the importance of client relationships.
“You're going to grow faster than everybody else.”
Influencer Relationships: Best and Worst
43:20 to 45:14
Discover the qualities of effective influencers and the pitfalls of working with narcissistic ones.
“What kinds of influencers do you hate and which ones are the best to work with?”
Equity Deals with Influencers
45:15 to 46:36
Explore the concept of equity deals in influencer marketing and their potential rewards.
“And obviously, that was a swift decision on our end, It's not someone we want to be working with.”
Client Showcases and Personal Favorites
46:37 to 47:30
Meet some of the agency's favorite clients and discover their unique contributions.
“So that's probably looking pretty good for him.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00I ran over to my mom and I was like, look, I told you I could make money doing this. She rolled her eyes at me because it took me four months to make$113. But two years into it, I was making maybe$30 ,000 a year. And then I made a pivotal shift in 2019 where I started selling my own product. I went from making$15 ,000 to$20 ,000 a month just off of sponsorships. You can have AdSense to$90 ,000 a month. We have creators that we get deals for that have no business charging what they're charging based on their views. but they're charging that because it's them. How big is your agency? We're doing about two and a half,$3 million a month.
0:37Tom, you own a company that helps social media influencers manage their business, but also helps businesses through those marketing channels with social media influencers. I'm going to throw a stat at you and I want you to tell me why it's happening. I just read that over 50 % of young people aspire to be social media influencers. Like that's what they want to be when they grow up. The last time I heard it, it was like 36 % of people, but that's good to hear that it keeps going up. Oh, good to hear. Okay. Tell me, to quote the Backstreet Boys, tell me why, why does it keep, why does it keep growing?
1:07Like what's happening right now? Well, I think it, if done properly, it really is like the dream lifestyle. It takes a lot of work. There's a lot of things behind the scenes that people don't see. And you know, what you see is the fun part most of the time, but I did it for eight years and it was great. Like you get burnt out and there's ups and downs, but you control of your own schedule. You can travel wherever you want and often get a ton of opportunities to travel. You meet a bunch of other people that are highly skilled or highly knowledgeable about a certain niche or highly talented in videography, filmmaking, and some knowledge base that they have.
1:39And you get to do really fun things while you're doing it. Like I have filmed videos of walking around the Philippines bartering at fake markets to see which stall would give me the cheapest Gucci purse. And I get paid to do silly things like that when I was making content. And I don't know how many things there are in life where you could just be a 12-year-old and make a lot of money from it. And I think that's the core of it. It's like this prolonged childhood that I think a lot of people are looking for. And then there's like the fame. I think that's a big motivator for some people. Personally, it would be my worst nightmare if I became famous, famous.
2:11But a lot of people want that attention. And there's really cool doors that it unlocks. You were a sneakerhead. You had a basketball sneaker channel. But you were also going to the Philippines to buy Gucci bags, which is freaking amazing. I got so lucky. I got invited to speak at all these conferences, give panel talks. And so I've been to every major American city. I've been to all over Europe. I've been to Melbourne. I've been to the Philippines. I've been to Hong Kong to go to these events. They would sponsor you? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I have to know this. You did it for eight years. How much did you make?
2:41How much money were you making a year? That's a great question. So it was almost nothing than a gradual build and all of a sudden a ton, at least like age weighted at the time. So I started when I was 16. I remember my first check from Google AdSense. At the time, it wasn't even Google AdSense because YouTube had not partnered with Google yet. My first experience with getting a check from YouTube was like$113. And this was after four months of work of making videos. And I ran over to my mom and I was like, look, I told you I could make money doing this. She rolled her eyes at me because it took me four months to make 113 bucks.
3:18But two years into it, I was making maybe$30 ,000 a year. And then I made a pivotal shift in 2019. So that would have been six years into it where I started selling my own product. And that was a big, big shift for me. I went from making at the time, maybe 15 to$20 ,000 a month just off of sponsorships, YouTube AdSense to immediately 75, 80,$90 ,000 a month because I started selling my own product. Holy crap. And it was really like, it was a, exactly. It was a holy crap moment. You said 70 to 80 grand a month. Yeah. When I was 22, 23, I was 80 grand a month is almost a million dollars a year. Or was that not to be fair?
3:59This isn't Canadian dollars to be fair. So let's call it. Oh, okay. So like 15, 16 bucks. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Let's call it like 58 to 62 ,000 USD. Still, still that's an, that is a freaking incredible amount of money. And that's something that I've heard with many of these influencers is like nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then boom, overnight, you're, you know, you're an overnight success 10 years in the making. What's interesting is there's kind of this gradual progression for many people, especially if you start on YouTube, where you first are sharing ad revenue through the AdSense program.
4:31So anybody who's on YouTube, they see an ad and they just can't wait for it to say skip. Like my kids are like, well, when's it going to say skip? Those are ads that are running in those videos. and YouTube will share that money that the ad company, whoever pays for the ad, it will share some of that revenue with the creator. So that$100 check was that first split, supposedly with YouTube. My first check was very similar where I was like, honey, I made a hundred bucks last month. And she's like, oh, that's great. So that's only like one cent per hour worked? Is that what she like she's always just like pulling me right back down but many of these creators have sort of a progression that you named where it's like okay first they're making some videos they're getting some views and they're sharing revenue with google and it's like oh that's interesting and then when you get to the point where you're sharing revenue with google you kind of have enough views that you start getting on other people's radars and so other companies start reaching out to you and they're like, oh, hey, Tom, could I pay you to sponsor this shoe?
5:33Or could I pay you to talk about this product? And you're like, sure, I guess so. So you get some paid sponsorships. And then it sort of morphs into the next level of the game, which is, in my opinion, affiliate. So you're paid at a little bit of amount of money, but then you also get a piece of every item that's sold on the back end. And then you get to the final boss, in my opinion, which is you start selling your own product. You've like built your own business around your distribution channel to your very specific niche, because now your audience, you very clearly know what they want. And so you decided to bring it in house.
6:05Why am I going to partner with somebody and let them pay me for my distribution? I'm just going to start my own product. That's typically what I've seen. Did I miss anything in there or is that pretty? I would flip around two and three. So I'd say usually the affiliate comes first before the paid partnerships larger because, you know, you think new balance wants to work with someone with 3 million followers, right? New Balance isn't expecting, nor should the creator expect someone to watch this YouTube video and immediately go buy their next pair of running shoes, right? They're going to two months from now, next time they're in the mall, next time they're walking down the street and see a New Balance store, then they'll go in and buy it.
6:37So we want to make sure the creator's seeing the value from the residual sales that they're making, not just the direct sales off of that one ad. So generally, the bigger you get, the more hesitant creators are to do affiliate ads, unless it's like a perfect one-to-one fit with the creator and the product. Because the cash now is much better than the potential of participating in the upset. Because you can do a great ad and your audience could just not connect with the product. Right, right. Yeah, that makes total sense. What do you think are the best platforms? It's like you did YouTube, obviously, but if you're making$80 ,000 a month on YouTube, could you have done an equivalent amount on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook?
7:20How do you think about the different platforms? It's a toolbox. What job are you trying to accomplish? Do you need a wrench or a hammer or a screwdriver? And I'd say the platforms are very similar. If you try to get quick attention, quick virality, as many eyeballs as possible, YouTube might be the worst platform for that. I would say go TikTok or Instagram really before you consider making a YouTube channel. But if you're looking for a really dedicated audience that knows who you are, feels like they have a pretty strong rapport or connection with the creator, I'd say YouTube is the only place to do that.
7:51If you're not maybe looking to become an influencer and you're just looking to get eyeballs on a product or a business or something you can offer to people, I'd say probably X or Twitter would be the best to do that. And Facebook's just kind of, who knows what's going on on Facebook these days. So Facebook is the wild west. You can do whatever you want over there. So you went from making 80 grand a month to basically starting an agency because now you're working with content creators, correct? Yeah. Yeah, correct. What are you doing with them now? Yeah, that's a wonderful question. So I like to sum it up.
8:25If I was on a sales call with you and you were a potential client, I would say we want to let creators be creative and we'll handle everything else. June 26th, 1 p.m. Eastern, you, me, live webinar with my friend, Connor Gross, who I asked to come on and talk about all things franchises. We're going to talk about how much franchises really make, how to find the right one, what to avoid. It's totally free, but seats are limited because I'm trying to get it really intimate so you can ask as many questions as possible. I've gotten a ton of questions from you about franchises, so I thought, why not bring on an expert?
8:52I'll see you then. Link in bio. So we're their agent, business manager. We handle all the behind the scenes stuff. So that could be brand partnerships, negotiating those, doing outreach to brands that they like to work with, redlining contracts, chasing down a brand if they're a couple of weeks late to pay, organizing speaking tours, book deals, hosting TV shows, really anything that has to do with monetizing the social cashier that you've built for yourself. When did you realize it was a business? That's a great question. I think I realized it was a business three years before I started the business.
9:23I didn't start anything groundbreaking. There are other influencer management companies that existed a decade before Small Screen existed. But I was out for dinner with a group of my friends who were all YouTubers. This is where all great businesses have started. We were in a Chili's in Cleveland in the parking lot of a movie theater. Just like Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. It makes sense. Exactly. So we're in this Chili's in Cleveland and we had all been approached by the same brand to do this big campaign for a new product they were pushing. And one of the guys who had probably the biggest following at the table, maybe eight to 10 times the size of mine.
10:00He said it was the highest paying campaign he'd ever done. So tell me how big you were at this time. So at the time, this probably will views wise, he was clocking about half a million views of video. I was getting maybe 50 to 70 ,000 views of video. And how many subscribers at the time, probably about 300 ,000 subscribers. Okay. So this guy's got millions of subscribers. This guy had about a million subscribers, super engaged audience though. Interesting. Really, really engaged audience. And that's what brings in the money, not the subscribers. It's how many people are watching. Okay. And so naturally you guys are, you know, collectively making$150 ,000 a month and you decided let's go to Chili's.
10:37Exactly. As one does, as one does, but I don't know if you had Michael Girdley on here, but I think you'd have something to say about that. I have, of course, of course. The guy with the largest following, he, he says it's the highest paid partnership he's ever done. And one of the guys said, well, if you don't mind sharing, how much did you get paid? He got paid, I believe it was$20 ,000. Meanwhile, I had got paid 15. And his engagement was easily eight times, probably 10 times the size of mine. And that was kind of the initial light bulb where it's like, oh, this is a business. People don't know what they're doing.
11:11Did you say they don't know what they're doing? Because you were like, I got paid 15. He got paid 20. He should have got paid way more. Exactly. It's not linear. It's not like if I have 100 ,000 views, then I should get paid 10 times as much if I have a million views. It doesn't work exactly like that, but it certainly should be expanding a lot quicker than for$15 ,000 to$20 ,000 if your audience is that much bigger. That was the first light bulb that I had of, oh, I think I could help people with this. I love negotiating and arguing with brands. I guess you could say my dad's a lawyer, so I probably got it from him.
11:43But that was one of my favorite things in making videos is you could go to war with these companies and see how much you could get out of them. I need you to be my best friend because I am I'm so terrible at like the hard line negotiating and something. I'm much better like buying a business that I know. I'm much better at negotiating because I'm like, okay, I can still get what I want, but I know how to get the terms that I want. Whereas with assets that I don't, I don't know as intimately, it's, it's hard to feel like I know exactly what I'm doing. Do you know like how much money is spent on social media marketing?
12:14This isn't even social media marketing. Like this doesn't count Facebook ads, Twitter ads, anything. This is purely influencer marketing. The last numbers I saw, which I guess would have probably been for 2023, was$38 billion spent on influencer marketing. Can you give me a comparative number? What was it five or 10 years ago? Do you know? Maybe a couple billion dollars. It is expensive. If I had the audience that I had back then, if I had it now, the money I would be making off sponsorships would probably be tenfold. Really? Yeah. You would get lucky if twice a year you had a publicly traded company want to sponsor your stuff.
12:48It was very small. e-com companies that were sponsoring your stuff. Why has there been such a big shift? So why from like a billion, let's say to$38 billion over the course of five or 10 years? I think it's brand to realize it's such a low cost to get the same amounts of impressions you'd be getting on a TV ad, right? Your typical TV show has maybe half a million to a million and a half viewers. For that, you need to pay a production studio hundreds of thousands of dollars to make the commercial, maybe have some celebrity actor in it. Then you need to pay for airtime every single time you air it to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.
13:23And it's just a commercial, right? Everyone knows they're being sold to you. There's no personal connection. But for that same price of one commercial spot, I can book probably a multi-month engagement with an influencer that has the exact same reach. And I think the big kicker of why brands are so open to it is that there is a personal connection with their audience. And it's not a stranger on TV telling you to go buy the new hamburger. It's someone that you know, that you've followed for years that you trust their opinion. It's almost like that cool friend in the group who always has the new bar or the new band that they're listening to.
13:54That's kind of what influencers have become, where there's this implicit trust of, oh, they're ahead of the curve. They know the new trends. And the value in that, not to mention that you can get the same impressions for cheaper, but the value that those impressions create is so much greater with the influencers. I mean, here you say that, where it's like they can get the same amount of impressions, no production costs, they've got a ton of trust, feels like influencers are also in a position. Well, not just a no-brainer, but aren't influencers in a position to command a premium then? Absolutely.
14:24On those ad dollars? Some do. There's two types of influencers. There's influencers that have that it factor and influencers that are charging just on a CPM, just purely impression-based. And the influencers that have that it factor, they can charge outrageous amounts of money. We all have creators that we get deals for that have no business charging what they're charging based on their views, but they're charging that because it's them. And there's only one of them. And I think that's a really unique angle that people have in the influencer space. How do brands or entrepreneurs or whoever's paying for the sponsorships, how do they measure performance ROI?
14:58If I'm going to go run a Facebook ad, I can very clearly go, oh, this was my cost per click. This was the customers that are acquired from it. It feels more ambiguous with these types of engagements. On YouTube, it's almost always direct conversion ads. So they're expecting there's a link in your description, you know, you advertise whatever product you're advertising, there's a link in your description that people are going to click they save their 10 % if they click your links. And the brand knows, okay, we paid them$10 ,000. We need to see 37 sales or 85 signups or whatever the case may be for their product to deem this a profitable ad.
15:37And if you hit that target, they'll almost definitely rebook you. Now, on the flip side, this happens more on short form content with awareness campaigns, let's call them where a brand this is usually bigger, bigger brands that have money to just pump into a bunch of creators to get their product out there. Think like Facebook when they had their meta sunglasses, this is a giant push, the money they were throwing to creators. It was completely decoupled from the amount of views that they were getting. They just wanted their brand in every key person's feed for the next month. And they were paying a lot of money.
16:11And I guarantee you no one was checking, hey, this person lives in Toronto, and they advertise the Facebook meta sunglasses, did the sale spike in Toronto at all? I guarantee you that was not done at all, because they just wanted everyone to know that Facebook sold a pair of sunglasses with the camera. And if they accomplished that, then that was a win. It still seems like attribution would be difficult, right? Because it's like, I watch an ad. Oh, I like Ray-Bans. That's interesting. I'll come back later. Maybe you're at the mall and there's an impulse buy. And so you buy Ray-Bans, but it's not necessarily like, I can't attribute it to that ad.
16:42Have companies gotten more sophisticated with the way that they, I guess, gauge ROI or gauge performance of an ad? Or is it still just how many people clicked on that link and how many sales came from Outlink? From that aspect, it is very, very, you know, did you hit your target or not on some of those conversion campaigns? But one thing we're seeing brands request after doing campaigns is how many link clicks did you have, even if it was just awareness campaigns, right? Even if there was no expectation of direct sales, how many views did you get on this story? How many comments did you get? I think comments and shares are a big vector that people are looking at because if a million people see something and no one really cares enough about it to action on it, to leave a comment of their thoughts or to share it to their friend, that probably indicates that it wasn't the most successful campaign.
17:28But if there's a post of the million views that has 12 ,000 comments and 5 ,000 shares, that's a really good chunk of the people that watched it that found some value in it, wanted to share it to someone else. And I think this is where people like us come in. It is still very much the Wild West where there is no set formula. There is no set basis of this is successful. This was not successful. let's say we're a business owner i'm gonna put the business owner hat on i would think about it this way the first step i need to decide is whether or not my product is sellable through social media or is it like no all products are you just need to figure out where your niche or like who your person is that is marketing to you almost all products are probably sellable through social media so we have one of our clients going to the only barramundi fish farm in north america This is some breed of fish that is in the Indian Ocean.
18:19But someone has created an artificial fish farm here in America, in Florida, I believe, and they are paying one of our clients who makes fishing content to go fish this bear mundi to raise awareness that you can buy bear mundi direct in North America. No one would have ever thought, oh, this is a natural fit for influencers, my commercial fishing operation. Absolutely not. But if it's the right creator with the right pitch on the right product, you can really make anything happen with YouTube or social media in general. It's really more about thinking, where is my target demo? Exactly. Where is my ICP congregating?
18:55And then how do I access them? And then maybe going and finding that influencer who has access to them. And there's a community for anything. Like you name a niche and there's a channel with a million subscribers in that niche. If I'm a business owner and I'm just trying to think through, I have a limited set of dollars. $5 ,000 a month towards marketing. And I can put those dollars to a billboard, radio, podcasting, Google pay-per-click ads, again, depending on the type of product that you have. If I have a pie, and let's just say that represents 100 % of all my ad spend, how would you think about allocating to social media marketing?
19:30You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. I'd say the same thing in the context of the influencer campaign. You never want to spend all your money with one superstar creator, you kind of want to allocate a little. We've heard some brands say they're spending as much as 50 % of their ad budget. Those are some of the more software heavy, like where you're not actually purchasing a physical product, you know, sign up for this online security or VPN or some other type of software spending as much as 50 % of their ad budget on influencers. And some of the more institutional brands that have been, you know, in existence for decades are spending maybe more like five to 10 % of their budget on influencers.
20:05Is there a framework that you have? How would I think about whether or not an influencer would be the way to go to spend my ad dollars? It sounds like what you just said, that one of the attributes would be a high ticket item. What are some other attributes, if I'm a business owner, to think about? does your product look good? Not even visually, but like, if I watch a video with your product, does it make me excited to have this in my life? There are some products that probably don't do that, like a really nice pen. It might be a really nice pen, but like you don't get the feel of gliding it across a piece of paper by watching a video of it, right?
20:37Whereas something that's a little bit more visually appealing or looks more exciting, or you can really get that wow factor from, I think those generally perform better on social media. And some things with a little bit more nuanced or harder for most people to articulate over video. Now, there's an exception to everything. There's some very talented videographers that I'm sure could sell that pen, but it's a lot easier to sell a new pair of jeans or some bright pink Stanley water bottle. You're not saying whether or not I've created a video or a marketing campaign that looks good. You're just saying, does the product itself look good?
21:09Is the product sexy, let's say? Is it sexy? Is it high ticket? Are there any other attributes that you're like, this is perfect for influencers? A high ticket is a general rule, but there's brands that advertise phone cases, you know, all they sell is phone cases, and they spend millions of dollars on influencers. And those are, I mean, the margins are good, but it's a$30 purchase for each customer. But I'd say the other thing you want to think about is what type of people are you trying to get to buy your product, right? Because I mean, actually, I say that Fidelity has started doing influencer marketing, which is crazy.
21:39But generally, the people that they'd be marketing to would be a little bit older, maybe not going to influencers for advice. But even that is shifting. I think more and more and more, even with things like TikTok shop, or there's other companies that have multi billion dollar valuations that are totally based off of live stream auctions of selling products to people. It's a live video auction of influencers selling whatever product they're selling that day to their viewers. And I think we keep moving in this direction of there being more and more trust with influencers and more and more and more things being sold through influencers.
22:12Something I bring up fairly frequently is when a venture capital company invests into a startup, half of those dollars are earmarked for Google and Facebook, Alphabet and Meta, because they're just acquiring customers. That's our biggest spend is to go out and acquire customers to grow the market for themselves. And so I look at social media in particular. And when I started kind of just messing around on social media, people like Cody Sanchez or people like Alex Hormozy or anybody who Nick Huber with his niche following, you have a distribution channel and there is real value in that channel.
22:46So going from the business side to the creator side, what do you see as the most and maybe least valuable audiences? If I'm a girl on Instagram who's cute and have 20 ,000 followers, is that the same as somebody who does tech product reviews on YouTube with 20 ,000 subscribers? Does a follower count? Is it the same across all platforms? It's definitely not. Not even across all platforms, but across all niches. If you were able to amass 100 ,000 subscribers on YouTube, that would be multiples more valuable than someone doing lifestyle blogs on YouTube. Just who are you attracting? Who's watching the videos?
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23:25What is the intent of this content? And you're attracting generally someone with a lot more disposable income, a lot more time to look at these high ticket products versus if my audience is a bunch of teenagers. There's only so much you can sell for them. But YouTube, one for one, definitely has the most valuable followers. if I could choose 100 ,000 followers on any platform, without a doubt, it would be YouTube. Independent of what you're selling. If you were just like, hey, absolutely. Wow. Why? It's the ability to relate long form ideas to people I think is invaluable. You know, TikTok, you got a couple minutes and people are scrolling so quick where YouTube's a bit more of a commitment, right?
24:04If people click on your videos, I don't know about you, but I watched the video full screen. It's the only thing on my monitor. I can't scroll to go to a next video. I remove the full screen, go back to the homepage or look at the recommended and make an active decision to watch something else. So you capture so much more attention from people where, you know, even let's say this podcast is a 40 % watch retention that is still people watching you for 15, 18 minutes. Hey, I don't know if you remember this, but when we started this podcast, we entered into a social contract. I would spend time, energy and money producing this podcast, interviewing these individuals and giving you insights into how to build, buy, start, grow your business and you would like subscribe and leave me five-star review.
24:46Now out of that, we both get to talk to really cool people and hear really cool insights. We both get a ton of value, but I just want to help you keep your word. So would you do me a favor? Will you go leave a five-star review for me on Apple or Spotify? It would really help. And if you want, even share this with a friend. What about Spotify or Apple, right? Cause like that's in your earbuds. Like I'm listening to that. I have at the end of my podcast, I have this little ad that's like, hey, if you're still here, you either really love the show or you're gardening and can't take the earbuds out.
25:16You know what I mean? I think of podcasts as also really sticky. Do you kind of lump that into the same bucket as YouTube? In some sense, yeah. There's a little bit less of the social aspect. There can still be. I mean, there's podcasts that I've listened to every day for years. And once you get the little inside jokes and stuff on the podcast, it accomplishes the same thing. That's true. Because of the discoverability on YouTube, it allows people to spend more money. Whereas on podcasting, the discoverability is not there. Spotify is trying to do some things. There's just not as much ad dollars pouring into podcasts.
25:46I think the number, and don't quote me on this, but I heard this recently, the number, like we talked about,$38 billion spent on influencer marketing. And I think only$3 billion of that, maybe$4 billion of that was on podcasts. So it's a very tiny sliver. I know we've looked at it's so top heavy in podcasting where the Joe Rogans, the Caller Daddies, the big sports podcasts are making hundreds of millions of dollars. And then the person with a few thousand listeners is making nothing in most cases. Whereas if you have a few thousand dedicated audience members on YouTube, it would be a humble living, but you could probably find a way to make a living off of it.
26:22So I'm curious about this because I'm going through it right now. At what point do you as a creator sit and assess and think, I could turn this into a business? That's a really great question. For me, it happened naturally. It's something I wanted to do for fun. I knew you could make money, but it was more of just a hobby. And I thought, I remember saying to myself, if I could make$1 ,000 a month off of this, it would be incredible when I was making videos. And I think that's a lot of people's initial entrance into it. generally people that are really successful didn't start because they wanted to achieve success from it.
26:54And I think that's a corollary in all things in life. They started it because they enjoy doing it, whether they ever saw success from it or not. The people that are starting to chase fame or monetary success, it's almost never going to come right away. Sometimes it does. Well, we have clients that have posted two videos and ended up with a quarter of a million subscribers after two videos. But that is an extreme outlier. Most people, it is just like me, years of making videos before you see any real traction or economic reward for it. So I think loving what you're doing before you start would probably be the biggest correlation between starting and seeing success from it.
27:30Do you have tiers of influencers? Do you think of like, oh, this subscriber count, this is where you are at this year at this level? Like, do you think of it in tears? Not really. I think, for me, we're working with people at the end of the day, we're not working with numbers on our end. So whether someone has 100 ,000 subscribers, or 10 million followers. We're looking at them for their unique needs, what they're trying to achieve, what their expectations are. Obviously, some clients are bigger than others. You can never totally block that out. But once you get to know people for people, I think it becomes a little less about the numbers.
28:02All right. Well, I'm going to make it about the numbers. 10 ,000 subscribers. Can you make a living at 10 ,000 subscribers? And we'll just say YouTube. So we had a client a while back who actually stopped making videos, but she was clearing about 80 grand a year on 12 ,000 subscribers. And she had a very, very niche content. She was retrofitting an old bus. And all of her audience was men in their 50s and 60s that had money, wanted to spend money on construction things, on Home Depot tools, on you name it. And she was able to monetize incredibly well. How? How did she monetize? Sponsorships. Every single one of her videos was sponsored for between$2 ,500 and$3 ,500.
28:42dollars. Wow. Off such a tiny audience. Now that is almost unheard of. I think that's the only case where someone with around 10 ,000 followers has been doing it full time that we've worked with, but it can happen for sure. Okay. So in your mind, let's say, Hey, I'm Nick. I have Nickonomics. I have almost 5 ,000 subscribers. Cool. I want to do this full time. This is all I want to do. I don't want to invest in companies. I don't want to start any other businesses. Now I just want to do a podcast a hundred percent full time. What would the subscriber number be that I need to shoot for? more about the downloads less about the subscribers because brands are going to look at how many years are hearing this thing each episode i'd say if you could safely get to like a reliable base of 10 000 downloads an episode that would probably be where most people when you say downloads per episode is that just on youtube or is that across all platforms across all platforms okay so yeah podcasting youtube would be the the downloads for if maybe i'm on Twitter and I release my podcast on Twitter.
29:38Exactly. Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you're putting it. I'd say reliably about 10 ,000 would be where most people... Now, I think you're in a different situation. Your number is probably a lot lower because of who you're talking to. And I'm guessing a large chunk of your audience is business owners. You can sell niche softwares and financial products and things that most podcasts with just a general audience talking about true crime or sports wouldn't be able to sell. So you probably have, I would say, maybe, I don't know, 2 ,500, 3 ,000 people an episode, and you could make a good living off of it would be my initial guess, which is extremely uncommon, but you're in a great niche to make money off of the small audience.
30:16This is how many downloads across platforms I've been getting per episode. January 982, February 1061, March 1036, April 1268, and this month 2758. You're right on. Okay. I'm close to that, like 2 ,500 ballpark. But like you were saying, it's not necessarily because of the volume. It's because of the quality of the volume that I have. Absolutely. So we put a lot of emphasis on that of like real estate content, finance content, tech reviews. They carry so much more value per viewer than prank channel. Prank channels is probably the, that is the bottom of the bucket of value per viewer. Well, I'd say about maybe 200 prank channel viewers equate to one finance channel viewers oh my gosh dude so for somebody like me let's say i wanted to start because i have started getting sponsors for the podcast they're like well what's your pricing sheet like i don't know dude you know and i'll throw out some numbers and i've got some sponsorships but it's just always has felt like when i think about like subjective how would somebody like me go about pricing what i should charge someone i think a good way to start is like you said looking at your average download.
31:30So if you're looking at 2800, then you want to determine your cost per mil, your cost per thousand views CPM. So let's just round up and say you have 3000 views. So what's your cost per thousand views? Now, in most areas of influencer marketing, it's going to be between 20 and$70 per thousand views. Yours is going to be much, much, much higher than that. Yours is going to be in the hundreds of dollars per thousand views. And I can go and look at this on YouTube. You doing the math yourself. You can't look at it on YouTube, but you look at the views you're getting per episode and do the math yourself.
32:02So let's say you were in a typical ballpark. Just what my spend is per episode. Exactly. If you had 3 ,000 views and you were just making typical run-of-the-mill content, you'd probably only be worth about$150 on a$50 CPM base. Now, that typically trends to higher CPMs and it's a smaller audience and yours also tend to trend to a much higher CPM just because of your content. but you could safely be charging several hundred dollars per thousand views with the type of stuff you're making. Really? Yes. And that sounds crazy, but it's very rare that you have as hyper-focused of an audience as an entrepreneurship podcast would.
32:39My average view duration on YouTube is significantly lower than my average retention on podcasts. Why the disparity? Do you know? My guess would be the same thing we said about the fleeting attention span on TikTok versus YouTube. we can just move that one step to the right for YouTube versus a podcast, right? You still need to have your screen on. You still need to be looking at something with YouTube, unless you have YouTube Plus or YouTube Premium. With a podcast, I don't know about most people, but I put my phone in my pocket, have my headphones on. I'm not looking at my screen. I'm committed to the next hour of listening to those things.
33:13Are you seeing more and more dollars pour into the space? Like, are you seeing more and more established brands or private equity or just, I don't know, who are you seeing now pop in? that weren't here five years ago spend money on social media? Great question. Every time I think I've seen the strangest brand spend money on influencers, then all of a sudden we see the Bear Moody Fish Farm, right? There's always someone you never expected spending money on influencers that is now doing it. But like I said, we're seeing brands that you don't think of when you think influencers. We're seeing Fidelity.
33:43We're seeing life insurance. We're seeing, I mean, TurboTax spends a lot of money on influencers and big brands with products that aren't really glitzy and glammy that are pumping money into the space. It keeps going up and up and up. A really cool stat that we broke our streak in May because of the tariff situation, unfortunately, but we had 37 months in a row of increasing our revenue month to month, every single month for 37 months in a row. Brands are not slowing down. Well, now I got to ask, can you tell me top line revenue? How big is your agency? Yeah, we're doing about$2.5 million,$3 million a month at the moment.
34:21It's a good business. How big is your team? We have a team of about 30 people. Are you the Rich Paul of social media representatives? I don't know if we're LeBron's agent, but we might be like Jeremy Grant's agent at this point in our career. Do you like us better than being a channel? I love it. It sounds insane. My friends think I'm psychotic for saying this. Running a company, being responsible for 350 clients, 30 employees is orders of magnitude less stressful than making YouTube videos every single day. I'm behind the scenes. I don't have 100 ,000 people giving me their feedback on if they did or didn't like the title of today's video.
35:00I think doing YouTube, I always recognized it probably wasn't a forever career. There's not too many people doing YouTube for 20 years. I was always mindful of what was the next thing and wanted to do something scalable, something that could exist outside of myself. It's a really great niche to be and you get to help a lot of people and like you get to directly see the impact that you have on people when they buy their first house or they quit their full-time job or they put their kid through college or whatever the case may be because of the the deals that we're bringing in their way what are your services as an agency we really handle all the non-creative stuff we're not going to help you make the content we'll happily brainstorm content with you if you want but you're always going to know yourself and your audience better than we do we really handle the business transactions.
35:41You want to do a brand deal with Sephora, we will get in touch with Sephora and make something happen. You want to do a speaking tour, we will get in touch with production companies and event venues and give you a speaking tour. If you're interested in making a cookbook, we'll talk with publishers and set up a cookbook for you. So we're really just the business agents in all of these transactions. What if I wanted to self-publish? What if I was like, dude, I'm not going through roundhouse order. We have a client that did a crochet book of little crochet patterns. She's sold 10 ,000 copies in three months, which is a lot for books.
36:17But you're doing the business side of it. Are you also then, let's say they do a book or they're doing a speaking tour. Are you then doing the distribution for it as well? Like helping them place at other influencers? We'll help them with that. So the speaking tour, for instance, great example. We're making sure that there are other key creators showing up at these events that would bring in another audience to want to buy tickets and show up. Wow. making sure that there's, you know, everything's handled, there's going to be merch to sell at the events, we're making sure there's sponsorships, sponsoring the events, sponsoring the meet and greet, all of that stuff.
36:47You're doing brand representation. But are you also working with companies that are like, hey, I want to run a campaign for this new product, or I want to grow my business, and then placing them with influencers as well? Yeah, so we do that quite a bit. We kind of have a separate wing of our business that operates kind of independently. We want to make sure there's no conflict of interest where we want to, you know, charge more for our creators just because they're our clients. And we'll handle a brand's budget. We'll have a brand come to us and say, hey, we're looking to spend half a million dollars over the next year on influencers.
37:23Here's our plan. Here's what we're trying to target. We go out, we find the creators. We know how much they should be charging. We know how much they've historically charged, which that's actually a huge advantage where a brand might talk to a creator and let's say they're talking to you and you tell them I will not work for you for less than$5 ,000 a podcast. Whereas if we're booking you quite often, we know that you took$2 ,000 for your last podcast and that you're going to take$2 ,000 again if we tell you that's a hard line. So we can save the brand a lot of money just because we have that historical context.
37:55If you were to break down, I'm just going to say 2 million is the number, $2 million a month, what percentage is brand representation? Or I guess, how do you name them? Working for the brand versus for the creator? Pretty heavy towards the creator, I'd venture to guess about 85 % of revenue coming in is us representing the creators. And how do you get paid for each one of those? On the creator side, I'm assuming you're just taking a percentage of what they bring in. On the brand side, probably just taking a percentage of what they're spending? Spot on. So there's some variance, but generally, we just take our 20 % management fee.
38:27And then, uh, you know, we're not making you money. We don't make money either on the creator side. So it's a pretty, pretty equitable agreement. Let's say Nike comes to you and they're like, Hey, I want to place it with some, whatever the influencers. And you're like, I'm going to save you money actually, because now the influencer is not going to have to pay their representation. And you're going to have to pay me as your representation. Like you both can pay me. So we're going to bring the price. That's a selling point. That is a selling point. I mean, we've seen insane. There are so many. This industry is the Wild West.
38:58And in the Wild West, you attract a lot of sharks and vultures just looking to get their little bite of the pie. We have seen ridiculous instances where Samsung will want to do an influencer campaign. So they'll contact an agency. The agency contacts another sub agency who contacts us, who then we go to creators that we don't represent at a different agency because that's who they wanted to work with. But we've done the math. There's been circumstances where the creator has got like 31 % of the initial dollar allocated. They got 31 cents of it because there's been so many middlemen in the situation, which is insane.
39:32So the more that you can cut that out, the better. Yeah, working with an agency that one can represent the brand, but also represents creators immediately, like you said, saves you 20%. I'm a creator. I come to you. I'm getting$10 ,000 a month in ad sponsorships. What's your cut now? So we would take 20%. But if you're one of our average clients, you'd go from making 10 ,000 a month to 17 ,200 a month. On average, our clients make about 72 % more working with us even after our feed. We make sure that we're not just sitting around waiting for brands to come in and be interested. We're going out and sparking that interest with the companies.
40:08How do you do that? Where do you just like going to conferences? Are you just scrolling Instagram all day? Like, how do you do that? Thankfully, it's a job that you can do from your phone and your laptop. I mean, I've never met 95 % of the people that we do business with. And it's really interesting because this stuff didn't exist a decade ago. But a lot of it is relationships, right? We know the person who's advertising at Nike or at HelloFresh or at Panasonic. We can email them, we can give them a call, say, hey, we started working with this creator. And we have that rapport. They know that our clients get stuff done on time.
40:39We charge reasonable prices. We have good success on the campaigns. And that's invaluable. You as someone that this brand has never heard of emailing them and saying, hey, please notice me, please pay me. 500 other people did the exact same thing that day. So us being able to already have that rapport and that existing relationship is really valuable. But on top of that, we do do a lot of cold emails. Every single one of our clients, if there's a brand they want to work with, we'll try and get in touch with them and make a partnership happen. So that could be a niche company that's doing$50 ,000 in sales a year and has never heard of us.
41:11We'll go send them a pitch and see what we can make happen. them. Well, dude, what's crazy is you've got a 25$30 million business, which is nuts. And tell me really quickly. Generally speaking, these types of businesses have what kind of margins 10 % margins 30 % pretty good margins, I'd say anywhere between 10 and 16 % margins really depends on the scale and exactly what's going on. But it's deep. You've got a great business, good margins. But the reason I really love it is because I love businesses with tailwinds. That's why I love healthcare is because we have an aging population and you can be an idiot like me and get into it.
41:44And it's like, healthcare is growing at 10 % a year somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like I told you before the call, like I'd never heard of CAC customer acquisition costs. What are you talking about? We just tell them we're open for business and they start coming to us. But if that's growing at 10 % a year and the rest of the economy is growing at 3 % a year, it's just math. You're going to grow faster than everybody else. It's very hard to fail. And like this business to go from a couple billion to 38 billion in a couple of years. And I would bet that's projecting to grow at 10 % a year over the next 10 years, I'm assuming.
42:16It's phenomenal. I love businesses with those tailwinds. What's your plan? What do you want to do? Are you just like, I'm kind of going with the flow. We'll see what happens. Or are you like, nah, private equity is snatching these things up in an eight to 10 multiple. I want to get to$50 million a year and get my margin to 15%. You know what I mean? Where do you fall on the spectrum? I think where I fall on the spectrum is every single day, making sure we can do a little bit better for the clients we have, attract bigger clients, do a great job for them. If someone came knocking on our door and said, Hey, here's 10x, then I'd have the conversation, certainly, but it's not something I'm actively going out and seeking.
42:49We're growing pretty quickly. We're growing at about 70 % a year at the moment and want to want to keep that up and keep doing a good job, keep hiring the right people and and see where the future takes the company. These are going to be the best. I'm so excited for these questions. Like who are the best and worst influencers to work with. But before I do that, before I do that, if you're listening, I know if you're listening before you get the cake, I need you to go like, and subscribe, please. Cause I'm trying to get better about not only getting a better following, but also make sure that my, my rating is good on Apple and Spotify podcasts, as well as YouTube.
43:23What kinds of influencers do you hate and which ones are the best to work with? So that's a great question. Some clients during the sales process asked us that as well. we love working with people that are doing things or sharing knowledge that they have or some skill that they have we generally shy away from the people that are like hey look at me so the the la instagram model or the the kid who vlogs about going shopping you know on fifth avenue and buying designer stuff so narcissists exactly and i think that's exactly it's exactly what it becomes is even if you didn't start out being a narcissist if all of your content is just about you you become a narcissist and sometimes a very miserable and erratic narcissist.
44:05There's lots of creators like that that are all over the place, not reliable, can't hit a deadline. You'd think posting a picture for$30 ,000 would be a nice motivator to get something done on time, but sometimes it's not. Almost all the clients who are with are great people that, I mean, one of my favorite clients flew over to New Zealand to visit him and his partner in January. He reviews tiny homes and And he builds tiny homes as well. So think architectural digest style videos, but on 300 square foot houses and has millions of followers. But it's just his passion. He thought it was really cool.
44:35He didn't have money to live in a full-size house in his 20s. So started living in a tiny home, found this community. And 13 years later, he's one of the biggest names in the space. And he's a great guy because he built an audience around a passion. And I think that's, those are the people you want to work with. Someone that said, hey, I love this so much. I think there's other people that love it too. I want to talk about it. Not, hey, look at me, look at me. Who was the last client you cut and why? Oh, that's a great question. I mean, I can't name names. Of course, but what does it rhyme with?
45:07I can't do that. I'm just kidding. This is a first, and this is actually pretty dark. We had a client that was messaging teenage girls on Instagram at scale, and it got out all over Reddit. And obviously, that was a swift decision on our end, It's not someone we want to be working with. There's a couple of really cool examples that I love to look at. Dr. Dre and 50 Cent are two of them. So 50 Cent, I can't remember the exact deal, but somehow he got equity in vitamin water before it was purchased by Coke or Pepsi or whoever bought them. And then obviously Dr. Dre had equity in Beats that they grew and then sold.
45:43He's now a billionaire or at least close to being a billionaire. But I would say they were early in this ability to monetize as social icons. And now you see everybody doing it. The Rock has a brand of alcohol and Diddy had a brand and George Clooney has a brand. They all have their brands. Is there a coolest story that you've had where it's like you worked with an influencer who wasn't as worried about the cash up front that maybe negotiated an equity-like deal like that? Have you seen a lot of those? There are some for sure. like you need a lot of pull to be getting equity deals with established companies so it generally is more with smaller companies looking to really um you know really benefit from the influencers audience but we have seen some really cool deals uh one of my best friends who was our second client at the agency he got a really cool deal with an app that is now i think he got i don't know half a percent one percent equity but it's 20x in in revenue from the time that he uh he got on board.
46:41So that's probably looking pretty good for him. And there's a lot of opportunities like that with small companies. You need to really believe in the company though, because some companies are offering you equity because they don't have cash. It's like, well, do I want to take a flyer on this? And would I rather have the 15 grand I'd get right away or put my chips in on this one in a hundred chance of me ever seeing something from this? And if it's a great company, I would always encourage creators to at least look at the opportunity of the equity. Before we hop off, are there any clients you can say you work with?
47:12Yeah, I mean, we work with a lot of fantastic clients. If you hop over to our website, we have about 100 of them showcased there. But some of my personal favorites that I'll give a shout out to Seth Fowler, my friend I just mentioned, Amir Odom, and Living Big in a Tiny House, who we talked about as well, would be three that have become good friends of mine through working with them for years. Dude, what a great business. This is incredible. I'm excited to continue to follow you and your success. If people want to come find you, where do they find you? Find me on Instagram, Twitter at Tom Stefanik, or you could shoot me an email at Tom at smallscreenmarketing.com.
47:45Always happy to have a chat if you're a creator or your brand wanting to work with creators. All right. Hopefully you liked that episode. And if you've made it this far, you're either really committed or you're stuck doing yard work and you can't actually skip on your phone. So while I have you, the show is growing, but I have a favor to ask of you. Will you please help me grow the show? I want to reach more people. There's a couple of things that you can do. like and subscribe is the simplest thing obviously you want to get notifications for when the next episode is coming out but if you go the next step will you leave me a review five star on spotify or apple what that does is it tells the algorithm that oh hey this is a high value podcast because more people are leaving reviews for it and it then pushes it out to more people so that's why when people are like will you log and subscribe and put the five star rating it's not just to make themselves feel better.
48:33It's actually to get more exposure for the show. So if you do that for me, I would greatly appreciate it. And I'll see you next time.
From the publisher
MY NEWSLETTER - https://nikolas-newsletter-241a64.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Join me, Nik (https://x.com/CoFoundersNik), as I interview Tom Stefanik (https://x.com@tomstefaniuk) about the wild world of influencer marketing. We dive deep into why over 50% of young people aspire to be influencers, the incredible growth of this multi-billion dollar industry, and how creators like Tom built massive businesses from their passion.
Discover the different ways creators earn money, from early AdSense checks to selling their own products, and learn why some small, niche audiences can be far more valuable than millions of followers. Tom shares insights from his agency, Small Stream, explaining how they help creators and brands navigate this fast-changing landscape, negotiate deals, and measure success beyond just follower counts.
It's a fascinating look at the future of marketing and how real businesses are being built on social media.
Questions This Episode Answers:
How big is the influencer marketing industry and how fast is it growing?
What are the typical stages of monetization for a content creator?
How do brands and businesses measure the return on investment from influencer campaigns?
Is it possible for a creator to make a living with a relatively small but dedicated audience?
How should creators determine their pricing for sponsorships and ad deals based on audience value?
Enjoy the conversation!
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Love it or hate it, I'd love your feedback.
Please fill out this brief survey with your opinion or email me at nik@cofounders.com with your thoughts.
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This week we covered:
00:00 The Journey of a Social Media Influencer
02:56 The Evolution of Influencer Marketing
05:48 Building a Business Around Influence
09:09 Understanding the Influencer Economy
12:02 The Shift in Marketing Budgets
14:47 Measuring Success in Influencer Campaigns
18:01 Navigating the Influencer Landscape
20:44 The Value of Audience Engagement
24:31 The Value of Podcasting and Audience Engagement
27:25 The Importance of Passion in Content Creation
30:37 Pricing Strategies for Sponsorships
33:21 The Growth of Influencer Marketing Agencies
36:34 Navigating Brand Collaborations
37:28 Revenue Distribution Between Brands and Creators
38:28 The Role of Relationships in Influencer Marketing
39:25 Challenges in the Influencer Marketing Space
40:20 The Future of Influencer Marketing
41:43 Best and Worst Influencers to Work With
42:42 Equity Deals and Long-Term Partnerships
43:38 Closing Thoughts and Future Aspirations