YouTube, Insta and TikTok: A Guide to Growing Your Social Media Following (Jordan Schwarzenberger - part one)

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30Find out more at polandyourplacetogrow.com.

0:36Every day, millions of customers engage with AI agents like me. We work round the clock and have the facts at our fingertips. We're fast and effective, but incredibly patient. And we're built on Sierra, the leading AI-powered customer experience platform. No-hold music, just answers and action. Visit sierra.ai to learn more. That's sierra.ai.

1:07BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, it's Amol here and welcome to Radical. These are conversations about the deep global trends changing our world and some pretty radical ideas that you might find useful in order to win the future. Now, YouTube turned 20 this year. In that time, in the last two decades, it has completely revolutionized the media landscape. It's given a platform to anyone who wants to create content to be just that, a creator. And it is now the primary source of TV viewing, not just for young people, but increasingly for older people. The really amazing thing about the latest stats from Ofcom is not just that YouTube is TV for 16 to 34 year olds, But it's also that people who are slightly older, people who are 55 or 65, even 75, are increasingly turning to YouTube because they love the convenience and the fact that they can follow their passion.

2:00Now, someone who has mastered the art of turning those passions into brands and turning those brands into money through content is our guest on this week's episode. He is Jordan Schwarzenberger. And Jordan is the manager of The Sidemen. You may or may not know that the Sidemen are Europe's largest YouTube collective. So what Mr. Beast is in America, to a certain degree, the Sidemen are here in Europe. They have more than 150 million followers and over 50 billion views across their various social media channels. They have built a huge, massive, transnational and deeply committed and loyal following, particularly among what we call Gen Z viewers or Generation Z.

2:44That's people born between 1997 and 2012. And those people love them. They really love them. They're committed to them. They follow them on a hourly and daily basis. And that following has become a very lucrative business with spin-off businesses. So as you're about to discover, they've got restaurants. They've got a vodka brand. They've got a Netflix series coming up. And Jordan is someone who's held up by lots of people as being one of the outstanding digital entrepreneurs of his age. He's made a lot of money. He's done it through fundraising. and he's someone who has turned the Sidemen into Europe's leaders in this particular space.

3:16And it turns out he's got pretty radical ideas about how you could use the tools of modern digital technology to take power away from places like the BBC and to take it for yourself. In fact, I don't want to give too much away, but in what you're about to hear, you basically get the Jordan Schwarzenberger guide to making a lot of money online. I think this was a riveting and very radical conversation. I really hope you enjoy it.

3:50Is it a public thing how many children you've got? Have you spoken to? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how many children have you got? I have three. So five-year-old, four-year-old, one-year-old, nearly two, and then got twins on the way end of November. When did the twins arrive? End of November. End of November, but they're identical twins. Oh, my days. And there's a whole series of complications. Identical twins are messy. they're troublemakers I thought the whole point is they're not meant to be well they are because they share a placenta so if you want to get into it that comes with this I mean think about it you're sharing you're sharing dinner you're sharing dinner teaching every day yes but one hogs more hog more than the other and you can have this imbalance we've literally been going through that right now how old were you when you became a dad 22 22 were you younger than most of your peers so most of your mates had kids or not no no I'm still like the only person Gen Z did not have children so like I'm the only person that I know who has kids.

4:41Still, I mean, half my friends are still probably finishing master's degrees that they shouldn't even be doing. And you're 28, right? So most of your ways, because the average age that people have kids now is in their early 30s. What would you say? Because it's interesting. You're sat in a very place where a couple of weeks ago, we had a demographer, a guy called Paul Morland, who was talking about the changing shape of populations and the fact that young people don't have kids, declining fertility rate, aging population, and the problems this stores up for us as a country. And basically, the numbers speak for themselves.

5:05Young people, partly because they can't afford to, generally speaking don't have kids why are you i would argue against that though i don't think it's about money i think it's about no i think i think it's i think it's a it's a much deeper thing i think it's around purpose meaning why it's the why children are sacrificed they're hard when you've grown up in a culture which has always been uh sort of feeding the notion of self people get very narcissistic and they get very self-centered and i think our generation's grown up in a culture which has just glorified the self so they don't know how to sacrifice and give up would be my assessment and then paired with no meaning no depth i know you know faith no sense of sort of deeper reason there's no purpose what's the point because i think for me and i'm catholic right so i have a deeper sense of the why of life in relation to children in relation to vocation in relation to all these things so i my my perspective is very different to a friend of mine who on a very natural level would go, why would I want to?

6:04It costs money, time, can't do my own thing, can't go on holidays, can't, you know, do whatever I want whenever I want to do it, can't chase money, whatever it might be. So when you're driven by, when one's driven by self, it's very difficult to see children as something positive and something worth sacrificing for. But I would never say money because look at history. Throughout the whole of human history, people have had many, many more children with no money. So money isn't the factor of children. Also, children aren't that expensive. I think that's a bit of a myth. We're going to talk about this, and the fact the way in which the modern media landscape, which you've understood, I think, better than most people, nourishes and advances the idea of the self.

6:43It's so interesting what you say, especially the relationship to your Catholicism, because one of the themes that we've developed on this podcast is about how the 20th century saw the great ideological victory of freedom, the idea that we should be free to pursue our own interests, to experiment, to be autonomous, to live your own. It's the arguable victory of freedom. In the West, freedom was the, it wasn't the story of the West in the 20th century that they had these rival totalitarianisms. And at the end of the 20th century, maybe not now, but at the end of the 20th century, it looked like liberalism was on the march.

7:12And kind of culturally, the idea that you should be free and have individual liberty was held up to be one of the supreme goals of politics. It is, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's a good thing. Exactly, exactly. Whereas now what we're living through in this kind of what some people call the twilight of liberalism or the post-liberal world is a feeling that maybe something else. There are kind of other ideals, other goals, service to God, service to family, love, duty, belonging. There are other things which we should hold up as being as important as individual self-fulfillment. And in a way, what you're talking about is the reason you had kids early is because you, I don't know if it goes so far as to reject, but maybe you do.

7:50you reject the idea that autonomy and being free to do what you want to do is the ultimate good in life yeah i think it's it's about the nature of sacrifice and the nature of um even on a very natural level even versus a theological level the notion of sacrifice the idea of nothing worth having that in life is ever easy right and people know that on a natural level that the things you really suffer for that you go to the depths for that's always where you get the most amount of satisfaction even on a very basic level it's just hard for people to do that whether it's going to the gym and like really working hard to build muscle and then you feel really satisfied you've overcome that or whether it's doing a tough mudder why is everyone running why is everyone like digging into these things in in their everyday life that are difficult now more i think than ever on a health level just on a basic natural level they're seeking discomfort they're seeking difficulty because living a very soft life which is all driven essentially by pleasure is never going to make you happy and it never it never has made anybody happy and it always leads to decadence and depression and so many problems on a personal level and on a cultural level and I think because our society and our culture is driven entirely by ease and comfort and, you know, consumerism, which all leads up to, you know, making your life easy so you can have as pleasurable a life as possible.

8:58And we're all part of this, right? Like advertising, all the products we sell, everything we do, everything we consume is all driven by, buy this to make you feel happy, buy this to make you, you know, enjoy life more, whatever it might be, the purpose of life being quote unquote happy, whatever that even means to people, people mistake that for pleasure. So I think we live in a culture which glorifies that so much so that people have become so soft and so lazy and so I think unhappy with that because there's no satisfaction in easy. Do you worry that the business that you're in, not the bit of it you're in, but the business you're in more broadly, social media, digital creation, brands, turning IP into something enormous, intellectual property that is.

9:37Do you worry that the business you're in is one of the roots of the problems that you've just diagnosed? I think it plays a part for sure, but I don't think it's necessarily intrinsically wrong or evil. I think it's all about self and the way that we as individuals manage ourselves in relation to the things outside of us. I wouldn't necessarily, for example, say that, you know, that a casino is, of course, isn't intrinsically evil, um, or any of these things that we may look at and go, oh, well, those things feed bad habits. Alcohol isn't intrinsically evil. Having a vodka brand isn't intrinsically wrong.

10:07Um, but it's, it's the way the individuals in their own lives, and it all comes down to the individual and their notion of discipline and their ability to manage themselves within a culture, which is, of course, trying to get them to buy things and trying to encourage them to do things. But we all have self-responsibility, we all have free will, and therefore we have to make decisions and choices that are good for us, right? So I think it goes way deeper. You can't necessarily blame the corporations. Again, it's part of this narcissistic culture, which removes the idea of self-responsibility, I would say.

10:36I really hope you're enjoying this conversation with Jordan Schwarzenberger. And if you are, please do subscribe to this podcast on BBC Sounds. That way you won't miss future episodes. And if you do subscribe, just make sure you've got your push notifications turned on because that way you'll get an alert whenever we publish a new episode and you'll never miss out. Right, back to the remarkable, the revelatory Jordan Schwarzenberger.

11:10For over 30 years, Poland has been a launchpad for innovation at the heart of Europe, powered by world-class research and ambitious young talent. From bold startups to established powerhouses, Poland offers the momentum, resources and reliability you need to take your business further. Poland, where businesses don't just grow, they're built to last. Find out more at polandyourplacetogrow.com.

11:39you have built a big business you've raised a lot of money i don't know if you've spoken publicly about your second fundraising round but it's in the tens of millions yeah for so for us for um for sidemen's vc fund called upside which we've launched with them yeah five million you You run your own agency, which the Sidemen are kind of the sole client of. And you've created not only a kind of, it's not a set of YouTube channels, you create a kind of business with spin-off businesses. What were the Sidemen when you came to work, you encountered them and came to work for them? And what have they become?

12:16So in 2018, when they say, okay, Jordan, take us on. You could be our manager. What were the Sidemen then? Well, so 2021. 2021. Sorry, 2021. I mean, they were huge. I mean, this is what I'm saying, right? They were a Lamborghini. They still are a Lamborghini. If you can't sell a Lamborghini, you're not very good at your job. We were given the shot to sell Lamborghinis. Cool, yes. But at the same time, they were absolutely massive and huge. So they were at a point in terms of relevance, I think 9, 10 million subscribers, which at the time, there wasn't much bigger than that. I think they were the biggest at the time.

12:47But walk down any street, absolutely mobbed. I remember we went out. Mobbed by under 40s though, right? Yeah, yeah. If you don't know, ask your kids is what I always say. One of the things that's absolutely extraordinary in our culture is the divide now. 100%. Between, and there's lots of issues, salient issues in the news, where the world's occupied by people under 45 or 40 and those older, genuinely parallel. They don't seem to intersect. And so the sidemen who are getting tens of millions of views for some of the things they do, they're playing football matches at Wembley. I think they're on their fifth or sixth game.

13:20They've got some of the biggest YouTube stars in the world coming. I don't read about them in the Times newspaper or the Telegraph or the Guardian or the i newspaper really. Obviously very occasionally you do. It's a push. It's a push. Yeah. You certainly don't read about them in a way that's kind of concomitant with their scale. So when you take 2021 the Sidemen are YouTube creators. They've got a channel where they do all sorts of different content. Loads and loads of different things. Different sort of formats. Different sort of productions. And they've got 9 million followers. And you come in and you say what?

13:52so go back a step slightly so myself and two co-founders sam and aaron sam has been their accountant for the last 10 years so he's always been close to them he's always seen the money they've made the opportunity in the space the money that other creators have made and the growth but also the lack of structure so the problem was lack of operational structure no creator at the time still many don't but at the time they had nothing around them so it was purely them and and maybe a producer that they hired as a freelancer, whatever it might be, to help. But there was no infrastructure. And then Sam, actually, is their accountant, who ended up doing a lot of the business management stuff as well.

14:26So we sort of sit down and go, there's an opportunity to speak to them. Obviously, at YMU, I've been doing this all day, every day, right? Taking established talent, writing strategy, helping on how to make them more relevant in culture, future-proofing their brands, et cetera. That was something that I led, and I was chief creative officer of that business there for like four years. So, um, so, and I'd had this, I guess, autopilot of strategy, cause that's what I've been doing, how to write a deck, how to say to a client, all right, this is where you're, this is where you are. This is where you can be.

14:50How do you get there? And typically for most talent, it's the same stuff, right? There aren't too many things on the spot. There's too many, there's not too many wheels on the spoke, right? To be wheels on the spoke, spokes on the wheel. There's not too many spokes on the wheel, um, for people to do, right? You can maybe write books, you can do TV, you can make documentaries, you can do radio. Like when you go through the list, there's only certain there's a certain listening of things you can do and so when we get to the sidebar and it was okay guys let's apply this thinking to you do you want to have a conversation and see what we could do because they had agents and in the uk the management agent blur is is a bit of a mess sometimes because it means that managers just become agents who try and sell brand deals rather than building anything so typically the delineation is you have a manager who's building and strategically growing your brand and then you have an agent who sells you right like a caa w me etc now in the uk those big agencies aren't that big and they haven't been.

15:39So you traditionally had sort of management as agents. So yeah, you get agents who have this weird business, or they've got a stable of so-called quote unquote talent and they just take a little commission. Yeah. And it's a terrible business. It's terrible business. Like I would never, what's a terrible business? The 10%, 15 % commission model of being a management manager and agent. It's an awful business unless you have a Lamborghini and unless you have somebody big enough to justify it. So the whole premise was, look guys, let's focus. And if you want us to do it, we'll come in, will totally take this on for you and run your business and help you grow it here's all the things we think you could do ranging from you know restaurants to alcohol brand to whatever it might be uh hotels membership clubs all sorts why could they do it and others couldn't what scale audience audience audience audience audience audience is audience power it's everything audience is gold which is why i'm so bullish on this idea of think like a creator because everyone should be building audience right now there's audience is leverage once audience power or attention power i would say well both i'd say they're the same but attention if it's not connected to audience they're two different things actually i would that's why i would say audience is power because attention can be vanity but audiences is actual connection to you on a on a consistent level somebody they're captive they're there attention people could watch what you do and then go away audience they're there for you can we get not to give away highly lucrative secrets can we give it away i'm here man give me the distilled schwarzenberger strategy for how you find a brand And you distill it and then you give it rocket boosters.

17:04Okay. So first thing, it would be the strategy. So it always comes down initially to strategy. So what is the strategy of this business and this brand? Who are you at the deepest level? Maybe not as deep as we've been talking, but who are you? Why do you do what you do if you're a creator, if you're a talent? Why do you do what you do? What gets you up in the morning? Who are you trying to speak to? What message are you trying to get out there? What do you love? What do you hate? Really get into the depths of the soul, if you will, of the brand. Like unpack. What it's about. And again, I guess, coming back to my Catholic philosophical understanding, what's the essence?

17:37What's the essence, which is so important. What's the essence of your brand, which is the whatness? What is it? And try and unpack that first. And then I think it's a case of going from strategy through to story. Then what's the story? What's the story that you have? What's the story that you want to diffuse into the world? What is it that you're trying to say? What is it that you're trying to sell? What is it that you are trying to get out there? And what's the narrative behind it? because ultimately all content has to have storytelling at the heart of it in one way, shape or form. Whether it's sort of secondary story and you maybe don't see the story on the surface, but there's a story that kind of undergirds it.

18:11I would say, for example, with the Sidemen, their whole story is a story of... I was going to say friendship and community. Friendship and community, but that's, I guess, the themes of the brand. But in terms of the story, the sky's the limit. It's like we've gone from this and we are now this and we want you to follow that journey. Who were they, just briefly? Who were they? seven i mean just seven normal kids grow up in different working to middle class families across the country across the country sheffield east london west london um watford with simon and jj pockets of friends they came together and they played games on on on um gta 5 grand theft auto the ultimate cyber was the initial server that they had and they they came together and just played and they got introduced from one another friends of friends then they formed the group Okay, so I've got from the, to what to the, what are you?

18:56The essence through to the story. And then, okay, and how are you going to consistently share that story on social at any sort of scale? And consistency is a big thing. It's everything. So what is then the, I guess, the form of the story? So how are you going to get the story out there? So whether it's through, you know, long form content and video explainers, whether it's through deep dives, whether it's through, for me, it's like green screens. What is the format that you're going to try and take that story? How are you going to take the story, take the essence and the purpose through into the story, then through into the format?

19:26So what formats are going to spell out? So, for example, let's say you're a football fanatic. You love Arsenal. I'm sure you're an Arsenal fan. No, I live quite near. My son's becoming an Arsenal fan. He says he sports North London to avoid conflict. That's fair enough. That's fair. A bit broad these days. Yeah, fair enough. So let's say you're an Arsenal creator. Your essence, what you are is a fanatic about Arsenal. and what you want to do is share your passion about arsenal to keep people updated around the world of arsenal constantly because you are so passionate about it then how are you going to then do that in terms of format what the formats that spill out or the strands it might be transfers or the strands first might be transfers it might be you know arsenal news it might be you know player reviews it might be match reviews whatever it might be and then from there okay what are then the formats and the brands the content brands for each of those strands so for transfers it might be like arsenal transfer daily or whatever.

20:15So you create formats for each of those strands of content. And then from there, it's okay. And how are you going to make those strands and those formats come to life? So what are you going to do? So on Instagram, if you're trying to grow on Instagram, Instagram will send you reels of Instagram sort of experts saying make your passion, your brand. What if you have lots of different passions? What if, for instance, Jordan, I don't know, if you're a 42 year old Asian heritage guy works in the news. Hypothetically, yeah. Friend of a friend, you know. Who's obsessed with various things, really into Bob Marley and the Caribbean, reggae, but also into cricket and also into artificial intelligence.

20:49You don't have a single passion because you're a human being. Is that a problem? Yeah, I think it is a problem. It depends what type of brand you want to build. You can build a popular generalist brand, but it might not be very commercial. Commercial requires specificity. So if you want to build a commercial brand, you have to be specific. Cybermen aren't specific, are they? But they are so big that it doesn't matter. So for anyone growing, the advice is don't look at the Cybermen and try and be a general entertainer. it's very difficult you need themes in order to make money along the way now you might be fine growing a big brand around your personality you might just be so funny as you are so brilliant as you are that you don't that you don't need you don't need specificity because you're fine but the reality is brands won't pay you for uh for generalism they won't because brands want audience specificity so brands and creators need to think more like publishers is something that i'm banging on about to everyone i meet and talk about who cares a little bit about it the brand the creators need to think like publishers and what does that mean publishers think in verticals noisy music motherboard tech vice news news verticals create specificity and they create entry points for brands so if you're a food brand you want to hit a food loving audience why do you say that everyone should be everyone should be building an audience because audience is gold it's like we literally have the chance to build gold the reason why or to mine for gold the reason why is audience allows you to get your ideas out there at scale to collect data for yourself which you can own which can then become meaningful if you were to launch a product or you're to raise money or you're to build a community whatever it might be an audience allows you to become good once you can build the process of building it obviously the process is so important the process allows you to get to the point where you know how to connect at scale online because you are making content which reaches people and in order to reach people you have to get good at making content and you will suck until you start so if you build an audience and grow it to any scale, you'll have become good.

22:36And that is the best skill you need. That's how you market businesses today. That's how you can grow brands today. That's how you can create virality. If you can understand social and content, you can understand without any shadow of a doubt how to make money independently from any corporation. Do you see that as, I mean, not to overset, but do you see that as a radical form of empowerment? Because if I think about my 20 years of work, I spent nine years in newspapers, somewhat eccentric decision in retrospect, I love newspapers. I'm very romantic about them. I grew up reading them. I love newspapers.

23:08I love newspapers. I grew up reading sports pages. Yeah. Don't read it with three kids. Well, exactly. I grew up reading newspapers and then I worked in TV news. I'm now sort of doing a few different things. But, you know, is one of the stories of modern media the shift in power from institutions to individuals? Yes, 100%. And it is shaking everything, which is why this building is challenged, which is why Channel 4 is challenged, which is why everybody is challenged in broadcasting and in the big institutions, everyone, because they need to reconcile with the notion of decentralized media and the idea that everyone has both control of what they watch and they are no longer able to be dictated to, but also everybody has the ability to create themselves and to reach audience themselves.

23:50Decentralized media is a win for a certain, it's a win for the individual in lots of ways. Power to the people, my friend. Power to the people. Well, it sounds democratic in that way. It sounds very Marxist. And power to the people. Well, it sounds Marxist. It also sounds quite new labor, actually. But has it been a win for the individual, but has it in some ways damaged the collective? Yes. Why? Well, yes. Well, not, no. Sorry, let me dial back. I should have let you finish the question. Have we lost the idea of a common culture? Yes, yes. This is, you have put me a soapbox right there and I will stand on it and I will talk about this for a minute.

24:27Take that stand. I'm so fiercely passionate about this idea. Okay, so I made a video. I don't know if you saw my video about the monoculture. but it's a video that it's not quite like 1.2 million views or something it's like gone quite big a lot of people talking about it underneath it's driven a lot of conversation and the notion is this that 2020 splintered uh the notion of shared culture why tiktok tiktok tiktok emerging and blowing up and creating an algorithm that was so smart they could understand you by how long you spend on a video, totally shifted the entire landscape of culture in a way that I think we're still not really grasping as much as we should be.

25:07Why did it do that? Because it changed the behavior of consumers online and viewers online from being around editorial consumption to for you page consumption. So previously, again, I was in this world for many years before, Lab Bible, Vice, et cetera. You had publishers who were able to effectively control the cultural conversation because they were broadcast through social media as you would do news effectively it was a news feed in many ways and you had some influencers and some creators but very not tons but some but everything was driven by your following so you are you were capped in your following as an audience so if you had a big reputation before if you were new york times whatever you'd have a big following you would then reach a lot of people but there wasn't this notion of discovery and for you page tiktok comes along and breaks all of that because the algorithm now is about you training it to tell you what you want it to show you.

25:56You're the boss. You're the boss. You're God in your world of culture. So what that means is fast forward. Oh, wow. TikTok's really popular. Instagram copies it and does the same thing with Reels. YouTube copies it and does the same thing with Shorts. And now you've got Shorts. You are YouTube, biggest video search engine in the world. Not social media, but biggest video search engine in the world. And you have Instagram and Meta, biggest social business in the world. Now playing catch up with TikTok. So you have the three, the whole, the, the, the, the, I guess the oligarchy of, um, of social media of cultural connection, which we had, which is really the interface of the internet.