From Meme Account to Media Business: Inside Assistants vs. Agents With Warner Bailey

0:00Jasmine Enberg: Hi, everyone. This is Scalable, a weekly show about the business of the creator economy. I'm Kaya Yurieff. And I'm Jasmine Enberg. Every Thursday, we take you beyond the headlines to tell you what's happening, what it means, and why it matters.

0:30Jasmine Enberg: This is so awesome later. Or sell fast now and pop the champagne later. Cash now, more later. Now available nationwide. Start your offer at opendoor.com slash ACAST. Profits calculated after fees and costs, eligibility and offer price may vary. Eight episodes in a row. My mic was broken. Someone didn't show up on time. What do you do when someone doesn't show up? Panic and pretend every time. We've had like a real get 30 million and it's done nothing for the business, but we've had, you know, video get 5 ,000 and we've gotten opportunities from that. There was this new festival that was coming out.

1:04We fought to get the ticketing rights to it. It was Fyre Fest. No.

1:13Jasmine Enberg: Hi, Jasmine. Hi, Kaya. And hi, everyone. Welcome to Scalable, our weekly show about the business of the creator economy. Every Thursday, we tell you what's happening, why it matters, and where it's all going. We also bring on founders, creators, executives, and other experts who are driving this industry forward. Today, we have a special edition of our show. We're bringing you our live conversation with Warner Bailey, founder of Assistance vs. Agents, which we recorded at Creator IQ's Connect conference in LA in October. If you don't know AVA, it started as a hilarious meme account about a decade ago, poking fun at the woes of Hollywood assistants.

1:47Warner launched it when he was actually an assistant himself at WME, and he thought that maybe five people would see it until Hollywood super agent Ari Emanuel sent one of his memes to the entire company. I was like, oh boy, I'm in trouble. But he's coming on the show next week, so we'll see how mad he is at me.

2:03Jasmine Enberg: In the years since, Assistants vs. Agents has expanded into a full-fledged business with a weekly livestream show, a newsletter, job board, and events that range from intimate dinners to an awards show for assistants with 1 ,500 people. Warner also told us his strategy for building a business around entertainment assistants who make an average of$46 ,000 per year, according to a study he ran last year. He also tells us why he still posts memes himself, even as he's expanded his team, how his previous startup fought for the ticketing rights to the now infamous Fyre Festival, and why he's now building tech to make assistants' lives easier.

2:37Jasmine Enberg: Let's dive in. Take us back to the beginning. I mean, you started assistants versus agents when you were in the mailroom yourself at WME. Is that right? Yeah, so I was in Music Central, music assistant. started a meme account thought it would be for about five people in our corner um and and that was the extent of of the creator career there but uh you know obviously since grown but um it was grown out of a place of trying for six months to break into entertainment i'm from philly went to school in dc it's not a big um entertainment capital and so it was yeah meme account that grew from a creative side of my brain that i wasn't really using as a assistant at an agency see if anyone's been there.

3:17And yeah, that's how it started. What was the first meme that you posted? Someone asked me that the other day. I think it was about reviewing a contract and the fact that, you know, we were probably not suited to review this level of contract. You haven't gone back to look? What'd you say? You haven't gone back to look what it is? No, I haven't. But I will. I'll dig it up and we'll post it. But I think it's about reviewing a contract because I was very bad at it. So it's funny because people always ask us, we met when Kaya was at CNN and she interviewed me for a story. And inevitably, when we tell that story, everybody's first question is, well, what was the story about?

3:48And we're both like, I have no idea. And like, neither of us can actually remember. So we got to go, we have to have it set up, like, dig it up for us.

3:56Jasmine Enberg: So did you feel like it was a risk to run the account when you were working there? Like, were you anonymous? Yeah, I mean, certainly. But like the thing that once people get to know me, I loved my job, had an amazing relationship with my boss. A lot of the content, if you're not familiar, it's a meme account. It's grown. Assistance versus agents takes the lens of a Hollywood assistant. And it came from, again, a place of feeling that there was just a crazy amount of things that you were dealing with on a day-to-day basis that no one's really talking about. And so it also came from a place of positivity, which I think was well-received by my peers.

4:30There's enough toxic culture of talking about things in a negative way. So it was certainly a risk, but yeah, I mean, I never, again, never expected it to grow outside of five people. So I I think in the risk, it wasn't, was it growing to 10 people?

4:44Jasmine Enberg: So when did that shift? Like, when did you think, oh, if this, there's something here, this could actually be a business? Yeah, when Ari Emanuel sent a meme to the entire company at WME, I was like, oh boy, I'm in trouble. But he's coming on the show next week, so we'll see how mad he is at me. But no, I think through, so I had a very traditional career. And so I, that was 10 years ago. So I started it, or almost 10. And so I went from WME to Live Nation, Build Tech in the pandemic times. So it really was at like a couple thousand followers to that point. But I started to sense that there was this community being built around this shared identity or feeling like you weren't alone at all.

5:21And so about four years ago, I thought, how can I apply what I'm doing in a traditional career to what I was, I guess, building at that point on within the accounts? There wasn't one moment, I would say, that shifted that mentality, but it was just a a series of it growing really organically and people interacting in a super engaged way. I also imagine that assistants really didn't have another or much of an outlet or resources, right? I mean, so this kind of became a way for them to bond with each other over, you know, the challenges, but also the fun stuff, I'm sure as well, right? Yeah. And so we started, the first event I threw, Flava Flav, shut up, is the most random thing of all time.

6:02How did I have? I don't know still to this day, but there are 150 assistants in Flava Flav. And we, I just started to talk to other people. And at that point I was a little removed from being an assistant, but just seeing people come together, I'm like the, I need to invest in bringing people in the same room. Cause so much of what was happening was in a silo. You felt like what you were dealing with was you were the only person in the world that was dealing with a tough situation in a new city for a lot of people. And so the events, when we started putting them on, really made me see that there was a growth area for the IRL side of the business that, you know, people exchanging stories and really getting a lot out of it and growing their community or growing, I guess, their network also professionally.

6:47Jasmine Enberg: We're going to talk a lot more about events in a little bit, but we have to know, do you have your own assistant now? No, I have two people that are on our team here. I want to give them a shout out. I don't. And I don't think I, I don't know if I ever can, because that would be so high pressure to hire an assistant um i think we both would like it i would love an assistant let's hire one at some of our events we put qr codes and get an assistant from there so well we're in the market okay and so you said something that really shocked me you still post all the memes yourself yeah i mean we have we do have a team that helps um but yeah i my wife will kill me but i sometimes will be on the highway i pull over and be like i have this idea i go and make a meme and post it so um i don't text and drive but yeah i mean i i still love that I love doing it and it's funny because I feel that when I'm doing it it's like a it's this like different side of my brain that gets that on the creative side that gets tapped into me I still I still make a lot of them how long does it take you to go from that idea of the meme to actually posting it is it like 35 seconds I've never had a single scheduled post in my life and that kills our social uh person Jocelyn but yeah I think it's it's it's the reason also I think we've grown in the way we have is because we can be very reactive and cool so I purposely kept our team small in line with pop culture and the things that we're doing obviously we'll talk about on the show side are very much more thought out um you know planned months in advance but i think being able to be quick and reactive has been the reason why we've been able to stay in line with a lot of how fast things move in our industry of entertainment and how big is your team overall i know you said you have two people here yes we have four four five full-time we have four that work three that work on the show a couple part-time people as well um and we're growing hopefully making some more hires the next couple months what kind of hires are you looking for so the show i you mentioned AVA Live.

8:27We do a weekly live show and we'll talk about that, overcoming a big fear of being in front of the camera, being up here in front.

8:33Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, because you're very behind the scenes. Yeah. How does it feel? Is it weird? It's very weird. Yeah, it's very strange. The first time we ever went live, my mic was paused and we were live in front of in my garage recording that. I also dove head first into it. Going live is very different. Yeah, that's like really. So yeah, I mean, I had an immense fear of how I was being perceived or judged by the people that knew me in my traditional career. So I thought, you know, I had actually launched a podcast. We did three episodes and failed because I wasn't all in on it. So I said, the only way that this is going to work is if I build a cubicle in my garage from Facebook marketplace, have some cameras there and just go live.

9:11Because like at that point, can't edit. If you make a mistake, there's nothing you can do. And so it allowed me to expedite that fear of being in front of a camera by a lot. And so we do that every Wednesday, but, but in terms of the hiring, a lot of, I was listening to, to your most recent episode, um, which talked about cat GB2s on our show. We love her. And so hiring for very specific roles, um, and putting people in the best position to succeed and hiring a lot of young people, because I think we're still catering towards an audience that's, that's young. And so everyone on our team is within that age range.

9:45And I'm very purposeful about that and passing off a lot of the ideas to them. How have you found the hiring process to be like? And we have a segment that we're going to do a little later called Asking for a Friend, which are really just questions that we're thinking about all the time. But we just have hired a social producer, for example, part time. But it's really, really hard to find good people. And she's fantastic. But it just it feels it's not my strong suit, obviously. And so how have you found that experience? Yeah, I learned a lot about myself in that process. And the key when creators are going from being a creator to being called a media brand, whichever that's a buzzword, everyone likes to call it is really delegation.

10:24And I found that because I was doing everything myself, from running the ticketing of our events to do, you know, building in Photoshop, all of our assets to writing the newsletter as well, I found that I didn't put people in the best position to be successful early on when I made the first hires, because I still wanted to, I wasn't micromanaging, but you were so close to it for, for, for, for, for so long. And so letting go, I think being, and hopefully these two will agree that I, uh, I obviously hired well, cause they're amazing, but we, um, it's putting people in the best positions to be successful.

10:55Um, and also I hire people that I can see growing into certain roles versus having proof that they've done in, you know, in the past, maybe in a certain area in school, like I've never looked at a single resume to be honest, for any, any school we fired from, But it's hard, though. And I think it's a lot of what we're trying to do is grow and build in person. And I think it's so important to build a culture by having an in-person element to hiring.

11:20Jasmine Enberg: So you also just recently launched Lloyd. So tell us a little bit about what the startup does and kind of how it fits into your broader business. Yeah, so I had two failed startups in college, which is a good learning experience for me. What were they? One was a social music app, which was interesting, but it was fun. I was a junior in college. The second one was a back-end CRM ticketing platform. There was this new festival that was coming out. We fought to get the ticketing rights to it. It was Fyre Fest. No. It was. I don't think I've ever told that story, but that's what happened. So that company went down.

11:52Did you go to the Bahamas? No. I convinced a lot of friends to go, and once I saw it happening, it didn't go. So sorry to embarrass you up there.

11:59Jasmine Enberg: Well, Billy McFarlane's back then. He's back. Yeah, he's back. I may have to sit down with him and interview him and talk about that. But the startup that we had during the pandemic was called Looped. And it was built off of interactive live stream, virtual meet and greet. Very timely. I think it was a little too early, but it taught me a lot about distribution and building relationship between creator and their audience. And was a lot of the reason why we launched our show live. Because I saw that you could have a smaller group of people highly interactive and become a lot more valuable than producing something with more people, but being able to have them live.

12:33So those are the three. And then Lloyd, I think a couple of things were happening. One learned experience in working in tech, building tech. The second was lived experience. So what we're solving for is the chaos of working as an assistant and the fractured and fragmented flow of information. So everything's either on your background or Excel, and we're not servicing data to make decisions as a whole. And so, and the third that was happening was a lot of these horizontal tools, some of them maybe over like Google perplexity were approaching us and saying, how can you help us penetrate and break into entertainment?

13:07Because we had this highly engaged audience, about 350 ,000 young people, a lot of students, they're transient, they're entering a new industry. And so it was built out of those three things. And so I met our co-founder was at Hebbia and Ray built Robinhood early on and the other was at UT Ventures. So we each bring our own and then we have the distribution side. So it was built out of a place of passion, but true lived experience. And I felt that going and working with these companies, we've done things with like Netflix and CA and others and just talking to them about what are your biggest pain points.

13:39It really is the application of technology and implementing it from the top down has been hard for a lot of companies because of the distrust of tech. in an AI in entertainment. I'm sure a lot of people feel it. So it was a combination of all of those things. And so instead of taking, you know, brand dollars to just shill a product that I didn't truly believe in, why don't we build our own? It's a harder process, but it's been fulfilling. What was the hardest part of the process to you? The hard, well, I think it was shifting my time away from something that was working so well on the media side, the event side, and taking a huge risk.

14:15because I didn't have to go and build a tech company, but it was a long-term goal that took a lot of time away from something that was really working, but something that I truly, deep down, passionately believed in, that I talk about a lot about how this industry can be improved, about how young people deserve a seat at the table, how they can be empowered, how they deserve the tools to be successful. And it then was a mission to go build what I think was missing in it. So the hardest part was pulling myself away from something that was working at the time. And a lot of people were just like, just focus on that.

14:50And that can be your whole career. But we'll see. I think we feel that too. There's so many different things to do. And yeah, so many different directions. And not all of it is stuff that we've ever done before. Most of that stuff that we've never done before. How did you come up with the name? Yeah, I mean, well, who's asking? But yeah, so it's an acronym. We'll go with that. It also just sounds like a person, which I love. So it feels like assistants have their own assistant named Boyd. And that's the first thing that stood out to me, even though it's felt a little different. It is. Yeah, yeah.

15:20So, yeah, I think it was, again, built out of the idea that we were building something for a group of people, you know, or with the group of people instead of for them. And that was a big emphasis for us. So we brought on 20 assistants early on, gave them a little equity and helped build it with them. So it really is a building for the masses and working with these companies to implement it now.

15:42Jasmine Enberg: Interesting. Okay, we're also going to have Q &A at the end, so keep your questions in line from work. You touched on this a little bit, but how do you see kind of AI impacting assistant work in Hollywood? I mean, we hear so much about it taking entry-level jobs. Like, how is your community feeling about it? Yeah, and people are very scared, rightfully so. I was listening to a Bellany interview who's on our show tomorrow with Jeffrey Katzenberg, I think a lot of people up top think that it will grow opportunity for jobs, but I will say there's a threat from these companies who haven't worked in the industry to try to optimize or automate the work that exists in an industry that's built on humans.

16:20There's a relationship layer that you can't replicate with tech yet. And I think people outside the industry are trying to do that and break into entertainment hasn't worked because people feel that if we adopt this, the workforce will be depleted. And then you're automating work. And it's a race to the bottom, especially, I think, in the creator economy. If you're trying to automate a lot of that relationship game between, say, brand and creator, there's a relationship. and everyone here knows that, that grows with creator if you want to be successful. So, but I also think there's aspects of it, like how we're using it to be administrative that take away a lot of the time burden of when I was an assistant, I was working 16 hours a day and like overtime was great.

17:07But a lot of that time was just like work that was just, you know, trying to find information in your inbox or like something that you had on your background. So I think it, you know, I'm not convinced that it's going to be in that positive if the horizontal tools, these large scale companies are successful in breaking in. So that's what we're fighting against. Do you think it's very different to be an agent or an assistant today than it was back when you were? I hope so. I mean, I love my talent. I really just don't. I don't have any complaints. Like I both of my bosses have been on the show, our show, and I have great relationships with them.

17:42I think it's easier than ever to break into the industry because the definition of the industry has expanded greatly so if you look at entertainment it used to be traditional studios tv film you had to go to wme or ca to be successful if you wanted to be in the agent route but now ca and there's people here are hiring from youtube and others that are bringing in people with with skills outside of it I think the same is true with assistants if you wanted to be an agent you had to go and really to the mailroom and now agents are being hired who have specialized um skill sets especially that represent creators so i think it's a i think it's a i mean i think truly the agency route is is incredible because it teaches you a lot and exposes you to the whole industry

18:23Jasmine Enberg: but i think there's more ways than ever to break in yeah career paths are being disrupted like no matter what kind of victory you're in what's your take on kind of the headlines about creators saving Hollywood. Obviously, we saw Obsession and Backrooms have huge hits, but it feels like the headlines flipped from the opposite. It was like one second it was creators are destroying Hollywood, then creators are saving Hollywood. Which one is right? I would argue that in a year or two, there's no difference between what traditional entertainment is and the creator economy. And you're seeing it now, Fox Creator Studios, probably people out here, we were just chatting, he's doing an amazing job of investing in creators.

19:02Josh Richards and Crosscheck just launched a show with them that we were hosting something for us. I think it's all these companies are not trying to play catch up. I talked to someone at a studio who said she had a budget she had to hit with and bring on 50 creators into the company and invest in their IP. So it's an exciting time to be a creator. I would also argue that just because you have a large following on a platform like Instagram or YouTube doesn't mean that people can port over to a traditional streaming service. I think there's a lot of risk being taken from obviously monetary risk from the studios and streamers, but also the creator.

19:38You have to make sure that yes, there's money up front to be had with taking your audience and building the show and selling it to a traditional platform. Like is your audience actually going to go there and watch it? So we cover it from editorial standpoint. And I don't know what that answer is yet, but I also think there's an immense amount of opportunity for the two to continue working together and bring brands in along the way, which is happening.

20:00Jasmine Enberg: There's appetite, I think, for it from Hollywood now, which is different. There's throwing money at stuff. It's great. I mean, I'm like, oh, wow. Now is the moment to take the risk. Yeah. I mean, it's exciting. And I think a lot of creators are benefiting from it. And yeah, everyone uses like the backroom session examples, but I think there's a lot more. And I think we see it fundamentally in the same way. There's a lot of convergence. I think we like to kind of go to extremes where it always has to be one or the other. But you say it the best. You say it's not creator economy or bust. And I think that's true as well.

20:28And we're seeing that more and more now. I do think with the back rooms and the obsession of it all, I mean, we talk about this a lot, too. Like, they're both horror movies. And yeah, it's an amazing feat for creators to have such big blockbuster hits. But that's one small part of Hollywood. And to say that all of a sudden they're reshaping the entire industry, I think is a little bit premature. You've got to be vulnerable here. Do you want to make a horror film? I haven't seen either because I hate horror films. So don't hold it against me.

20:57Jasmine Enberg: I haven't seen either. We're at a screening right now of obsession. Please clap your heads. But no, I think. I see like the memes. Yeah, it's exciting. Congrats to those guys. Yeah. Cash Now, More Later from Opendoor gives you cash up front for your home, plus all the profit later. That's no chaos now, no cash left behind later. Skip the showings now, pocket extra profit later. This is so simple now. This is so awesome later. or sell fast now and pop the champagne later. Cash now, more later. Now available nationwide. Start your offer at opendoor.com slash ACAST. Profits calculated after fees and costs, eligibility and offer price may vary.

21:42Jasmine Enberg: So because your audience is primarily kind of entry-level agents who I think you said their average salary is like$47 ,000, so how do you monetize that audience? Yeah, it was a long game. And we were talking about this last night, you know early on it took me five years to land our first brand deal a lot of that we weren't really going I wasn't going after brands the first three or four but a lot of that was education around the buzzword now is niche everyone's going after certain niches but I think the days of and someone had just mentioned this on stage we walked in of like chasing those vanity metrics of views yeah are becoming more and more irrelevant when you can spin up a Tilly Norwood or Higgs field whatever and have 50 creators going after as many views as possible.

22:24So it took a lot of time of sitting with brands and educating them on, we have this audience, they're hyper engaged, but what's happened in the past nine years is they went from being an assistant to being execs of these companies. So that was a easier sell now to brands. We just signed a deal yesterday that I've been working on for a year. And a lot of it came down to, we can capture young eyeballs, bring people out. And we have an event this weekend, 750 people. So that's like top of funnel, but then we can also sit down and I know you do the the dinner this summit supper series and we can have a 20 person uh dinner where you know with a brand who's trying to understand the landscape from the exact position so we've now because of time can activate both but uh really it's through you know a lot of brand partnerships we do as i mentioned we did 20 events last year which is probably too many we cut that down to a core of probably 10 this year um and then we do you know our job board hit a million job hits this year which is crazy and we're putting a lot of emphasis and investment into that But a little bit more about the job board.

23:24Why did you decide to go that route? Yeah, I mean, I went to, you know, Georgetown grade school, but like really, really, really hard to break into entertainment. There was a small group of people who were interested in it. It took me six months to land an interview and and, you know, hundreds of job applications. And I just remember being in D.C. alone in my apartment, being like, I have no idea how to even approach getting a job entertainment. I mean, I don't even know what an agent did. I had booked shows from them when I was booking music shows in college, but I didn't really understand what an agent did.

23:55And so, or the difference between a manager. And so it was built out of a place of being in their shoes and talking to a lot of students. We recently launched an ambassador program. We have ambassadors on almost 200 campuses now and just sitting with a lot of them and being like, what's their biggest pain point? And it really is like knowing what jobs are out there and then the layer beneath that and how to actually get them. So we started writing a newsletter anonymous autonomously for five years ago and putting seven open jobs in there just from LinkedIn, whatever I thought was interesting. And those were just getting so much engagement over time and time.

24:27And then, so we, we spun off, um, about two years ago or a year ago, I had, uh, a senior at Cornell and now works on our team, send me a cold email, said, love what you're doing. A lot of my friends are applying for jobs or, you know, through your, your newsletter, you should build a job board. I hired him on the spot. It was my first hire. We built it together. Now I've expanded around that. So it was built out of a place of, again, lived experience of struggling to find that job. And then now we have resources that are like resume tips and things along those lines. So do you charge for those resources?

24:57How do you make money? Yeah, absolutely free. We charge placement for jobs and there's a huge data play that we have through it. So we have a lot of data partnerships and then work directly. Like we're going to Netflix in two weeks to do an event on their campus. We've done four or five of those that are more geared towards job seekers entry level as well as mid-level jobs so there's we're truly a b2b company everything we do is 99 is free for the end user so like that is a risk again but i think the long term of that is that you know we've been able to align with a group of brands who believe in what we're doing and sign long-term partnerships to to grow that and like the tickets on sunday are five dollars and we're copying people that don't have jobs right now well that's us too i mean our newsletter is free our podcast is free and then we bring in brand sponsors and partners to monetize that way the only the only thing that costs is our event our summit which we which we charge that caters towards a different yeah absolutely and that was amazing event at lighthouse oh thank you it's all from afar but what have you learned through that event what did you both learn about yourself and the brand well you had done events before yes everything is really a lot harder than you think it's going to be and you spend a lot of time on like these weird little details.

26:09Like I got really obsessed with the chairs that we were going to have on stage and also the bathroom situation. And I got a little delulu a couple of times with all of the stuff that was going on, but it's a lot of work. And I had a lot of respect for event planners after all of that. How do you feel about these chairs? They're great.

26:23Jasmine Enberg: I'm very particular about the chairs. If you look at your revenue as a pie, like is it brand partnerships that are the biggest driver? Is it like, how does everything kind of shake out? With Lloyd too, we monetize. So we fully registered two weeks ago, but we've been... Is it SaaS or... Yeah. I mean, essentially it's platform-based B2B, call it SaaS, but with implementation AI. And there's, the way that we were initially going, I was direct to consumer, rolling those up and going B2B, but we flipped it to go to strictly B2B model. There's a self-serve as well. So 90 % last year, brands, probably 95.

26:53And the goal would be to flip that to IP. We have some things that we're working on, writing a book. Horror film, no. Horror film, exactly. And some longer form things that were, we'll flip that model from not being so brand reliant because a lot of that's a risk right like you could have an amazing month and what we're really focused on is signing long-term deals with brands so there's less like chasing of we did like 40 brands in one year and then now again wanted to reduce that down to a lot fewer that i like really believe in and use the platform because i think there's fatigue around just being sold stuff over and over and over and so i've been really particular about that so right now slice the pie probably 90 percent brands and the goal and it's gone down to probably 70 % and the goal is to continue to flip that for own revenue streams and dabble in merch and all those like, you know, stuff.

27:42Jasmine Enberg: Have you guys done merch before? We've done a lot of merch, yeah. Like little phrases on things we've done. Like out of office, we did a big thing. No worries if not. No worries. We found a bunch. Corporate buzzword for it. Circle back. Circle back, yep. We had a little cowboy with a lasso. Yeah, we've done a bunch of stuff. But I think now what we're going for is like just giving merch out as like a marketing tool at our events. Okay, we're going to play a game. We're going to shake it out. So we have a game called Green Flag, Red Flag. I've heard rumors. And normally the way we play this is that we ask our guests for one green flag and one red flag, but you are game to do this in a little bit of a different way.

28:16So what we're going to do is we're going to read you a couple of different things. We've either heard from other people that are green flags or red flags, and you're going to react to them. Not all of them came from somebody else. But anyway, first one. when a brand says, just be you or be authentic. That's a massive green flag. I love that. Really? I like that. I think, depending if they're serious or not, I think a lot of people, if they're saying, just be you, and here's a 12-page brief that you need to do exactly what we want. But I think the way that the most successful things we've done, Disney, we did a partnership for Send Help with Dylan O 'Brien and Sam Raimi, and they let us build a rage room.

28:56Brent right here had that idea. in a movie theater had Hollywood assistants break things in the theater. And that was our, I think the thing that stands out where they let us go crazy with that idea. So hopefully, green flag if they're serious. There's a brief impression. I think that was my surprise because I think most of the time when you hear that there's always an asterisk kind of attached to that where it's like just be you but also do this. Yeah. Kind of thing.

29:17Jasmine Enberg: Okay. The brand sends you a four page script but doubles your rate. Ooh. Depends what the rate is. No, I would say, I would say red flag because I think going back to that first, I think there's a lot of brand risk again with, and I see creators fall into this trap of like, obviously they got sent this brief and got paid a lot of money and they're doing it. And all the comments are saying, can't believe, you know, you would do this or align with this brand. You see it a lot in like sports betting or AI. Is it worth that double payment to then if you try and go back into another brand partnership, it doesn't feel as authentic.

29:51And so there's a fine line between it, but I would go red flag. The brand negotiates your rate down, but offers you a 12-month feel. Green flag, for sure. I think it depends, again, like if they're like, you're not getting paid anything, but we'll partner with you for a year. But I think I'm interested now in building long-term relationships with, again, brands that we really believe in. So, yeah, and also there's a sense of knowing forecasting revenue to be able to take more risks with it and hire more people and invest more back in the brand and you know that that money's coming versus it being more seasonal or campaign-based.

30:28I was going to say, do you think there's a place for one-offs or more? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, 100%. It would take a really long time to get one of these long-term deals, and especially when you're just starting out, no? 100%. I mean, all of our deals were one-offs until last year. Oh, wow. We just did an event. Alex here helped throw it. We partnered with Puma and Red Bull and had all the agencies, mailers, play each other in pickleball. Shout out WMA, they won. That was here? It was not in this. Oh, okay. It was out in El Segundo. But like Puma, awesome brand. Not sure how we would partner with them through the whole year, but they're going to come back.

31:01Same with Red Bull. We do a lot of events with them, but... You can wear Puma on your life. We got Puma tracks, which I haven't taken off besides put on our color-coordinated browns. Which we did not plan. Not plan. But so I think there's absolutely room for one-offs. And we have an award show coming up for Hollywood Assistants, and that is filled with one-offs because there's a lot of like liquor brands that we wouldn't want to partner with, obviously throughout the year.

31:24Jasmine Enberg: When a brand has blanket rules against you using AI, but the brief was clearly written by ChatGPT. Oh my God, you see it all the time. I mean, yeah, it depends on what you're paying, but yeah, I mean, it's a red flag because I think there's a level of getting in the room with someone. And if it's a creative partnership, you're going to want to see some level of human touch on that brief or in those emails. We get them all the time where it's like clearly written by ChatGPT. What are some telltale signs for you? I mean, well, LinkedIn, it's extremely obvious. But, you know, it's like broken out.

31:59I think there's obviously like the not X but Y is a big one for us. But, yeah, I mean, I think like I just I love getting people on the phone and like just talking to them.

32:10Jasmine Enberg: So that's what Natalie told us, too. She was like, it's crazy how when brands like don't want to get on the phone with you. Yeah, because like they're just blasting out briefs that are that are written by ChatGPT. and like you get in a room. And I think you can also, that is a thing that's happening with young people is where they're relying on this technology. And then you do go into, you know, a room or an interview or something. And you're like that, you know, that level of whatever you were writing wasn't true to yourself. So I don't know. I mean, again, it depends. I mean, I think there's plenty of brand partnerships we've done where like we don't have to get on the phone.

32:40It took a very clear, you know, objective for both. But there's definitely telltale science. And it's not just about getting on the phone before the partnership, but after too. I mean, if you're not sharing sort of results and data and performance metrics on how the campaign did. Like, how are you supposed to do better next time or, you know, just understand the performance of the campaign? I feel like there's still a lot of that missing where brands don't necessarily reach out and creators should be sharing too, you know, and kind of make it a two-way street. Yeah. What are some of the things you both are seeing brands that are separating themselves?

33:13How are they doing it? Separating themselves from each other, especially as it relates to investing in the creator economy.

33:18Jasmine Enberg: Well, I'm like obsessed with this idea now of like the definition of who a creator is is so different. So I've been talking to a lot of brands that are activating their own employees, sports leagues that are activating fans. Like it's not just kind of the traditional creator anymore. Or like Sephora, I'm on a panel with them later. They're doing makeup artists and hairstylists and people who do red carpets, but who don't have big followings. But this shift to kind of experts and like who a creator is, is really different. and like thinking creatively about like an employee can tell such a different story than a creator can versus a super fan.

33:50Jasmine Enberg: And there's like a place for everyone. But that's kind of interesting. And it's felt like it's a shift that's accelerated this year. Yeah. And then, I mean, related to that, I just saw a post earlier today about how more brands are tapping creators to be like employees. And we have seen so many cool campaigns. There was one by Chipotle not too long ago where they brought in creators to actually make burritos behind the scenes and they made that into a full ad, which I thought was really cool. Yeah, I mean, I think overall we're seeing just a lot more investment and interest in the space and all different types of brands.

34:24Like we have talked to so many legacy brands that year and their notions were all in kind of their entire strategy to kind of figure out how to bring creators into that. So that's been really exciting to watch. But I think there's still a lot of misunderstanding, misconceptions, and a lot to learn, you know? And now being, both of us conceptually understood the mechanics of how all of this worked, studying this as analysts and journalists, but now being in the room ourselves and negotiating these brand deals and understanding how they're really thinking is a completely different experience.

34:55Jasmine Enberg: And we found too that like brands prefer when you come to them with an idea. There's so many brands that are so open to that now and they're like, well, put something in front of us. And we're like, oh, well, that's exciting. And then it's a collaboration, right? I mean, you have to, it goes both ways, you know, the brand has a goal. You obviously have to help the brand reach that goal. And then they'll also give you some leeway to make sure that you can, you know, just be you. Yeah. Like actually just be you. You mentioned employees. I think it's really interesting. A lot of the best content I've seen are coming from employees at companies who they're allowing and empowering to actually make the content.

35:29And you've done some of this at the Emmys, right? We did. Yeah. Yeah, we were so we have a series called Unsung Heroes where we go on carpets and on sets and music festivals. And there's a bit different than that. But we we ask an artist or a talent who is someone behind the scenes that doesn't get enough credit. You want to give a shout out to normally we will then bring them in like Suki Waterhouse recently and many others. And it's been cool to see people on the team talk about that culture. And then we'll sit with people at the Emmys behind the scenes, people at a festival like Austin City Limits or Lollapalooza.

36:00and just hearing the passion that they have. Most of them have never been in front of a camera before. And they're like, let me do a retake. And we're like, that was perfect. The way you just, that was incredible because it comes from -

36:10Jasmine Enberg: Well, it's actually authentic. Yeah, exactly. And so now like we're getting more opportunities to do that with brands and then at events. But I think more brands are empowering. Sephora, you mentioned to my wife, Works in Beauty. We talk about that a lot where they're allowing their employees to make content on behalf of the company. And you used to be fired for doing that. Yeah, that's what I did. We had on Macy from Morning Brew. It was amazing. She started making content internally and then became their video person. She was on our show and we talked about that. But the only thing I do worry about, though, is if it gets too restrictive, like the reason why it works now, I think about Staples Batty, for example, went viral.

36:43And I think that gives brands more sort of comfort in doing this, seeing something that has organically happened and that people have resonated with. But when you start putting all these guardrails and restrictions around it, does it come off as less genuine? Do they start, you know, creating content that isn't resonating the same? And also two jobs. Yeah.

37:00Jasmine Enberg: Like if you're a barista and you're doing content or you're a corporate employee, how are you paying them? I'm really curious about the payments. Like, does that just get topped off on your direct deposit? Probably not. You know, some of these companies, but I think it's interesting. It opens up an opportunity for different roles of these companies as well. You could have a hybrid role. Who would have thought barista and creator? But that does like allow for storytelling from the people that are closest to the product. What about disclosure, right? You're being hired by a brand. You're technically supposed to disclose that it's a paid partnership.

37:28but what if you already work for the company like i don't think we've figured figured all this that's like that's where we're getting to now you're thinking over my head um that was cool i think i like seeing more people um talk about things that they they deeply care about and like i went through that as well where i had this deep again fear of being i still do i've never a team wants me to do all the time like i've never actually picked up the phone and recorded video actually once in my car um but yeah i still have that like fear of doing it and i think a lot of young people are putting themselves out there in ways that it feels exciting.

38:02People are passionate about things they care about and talk about and able to rally people around them, whether it be social or politics, whatever it is, it's cool to see.

38:12Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, we feel that too. The direct-to-camera videos are scary to us. We did an event with Alice and Olivia. We're brand partners with them. We're really excited. And my sister, who's 21, was helping us with content. And our social producer gave us a TikTok we had to make and we were like so scared to do it. And my sister's like, oh, you guys need help. And she just like does it. And we're like, how did you do that? So like it's so natural. Yeah, it was sound. Yeah, she was like, she's like, we'll add the music later. I was like, but how? How are you doing this? How do you know? Anyway, we've got one more green flag, red flag.

38:42Yeah, we went, we really went off there. Yeah, we didn't. No, it's great. Okay. Phone it back in. The brand asks for the rights to make an AI clone of your voice. Absolutely, red flag. Yeah, I mean, I've been... Do you do that?

38:53Jasmine Enberg: Do you have an AI clone yourself? No, but I know people that do. And I think it has been done well. I get really nervous about that because it takes a life to build a reputation, a second to destroy it. And I think the level at which the technology is increasing is frightening because now you can't actually tell what's real and fake. So I think that allows for a lot more gray area between what's real and not. And I think, I don't know how I'd react to seeing my face saying something that I actually don't mean. And that then becomes creepy, yeah. I think that's a scary, that's a Black Mirror episode or a whole season probably.

39:32But yeah, I think that's, I think people will regret doing these deals that they're offering their name image like this.

39:38Jasmine Enberg: Okay, next segment is asking for a friend where we basically just ask experts the things that we want to know personally and hopefully it's useful for anyone else. But okay, I have never spent more time thinking about YouTube thumbnails. And like, it also pains me to do like, I don't know what the name for this is, but I call it like the YouTube face where it's like, like the expression, your eyes are open. Like, I just can't, I know it works. It obviously works. We've talked to like Don Lemon, Piers Morgan, all these like ex-broadcasters who they're leading it. And they're like, that's what gets people to click.

40:07Jasmine Enberg: But how much do you think about your YouTube thumbnails? What makes a good thumbnail? Are you like up there with your mouth open? Like what is that? Brent here makes them for us. So we might have to bring him up. But I think I was so, I'm like, I'm not going to do it, right? Like the first seven episodes took screenshots of, you know, I think moments during our show, which like in the back, we have partitions of memes like pointed up. You have a great set. It's very fun. It's all Facebook Marketplace. Shout out to Facebook Marketplace. Facebook Marketplace. I lug in my car, load it up. But I think you have to lean into, you have to play that game, you know, in some regards.

40:46So I'm not an expert in it, but I think what we've learned is that there is a science and data back decision making behind it as much as you want to avoid those decisions. Same goes for clipping, unfortunately.

40:57Jasmine Enberg: Do you put your guests on the thumbnail? Yeah. All of them. Four to five every episode, which is hard because some of them aren't themed. So I think picking and deciding what is the thumbnail, what is the hook and what is the title of them have been more difficult. They always kind of match when you say you don't have a theme. Yeah, yeah. In terms of the theme of the episode, they all now have a visual identity where people will see that and say that's AVA Live. Hopefully at some point, you know, we're just we're only 28 episodes in. But yeah, there's definitely a science behind it. We've seen that the ones that we've, you know, really optimized have worked better.

41:31Yeah, we need to work on our thumbnails. Okay, but it really it does. It pains to both of us. But you mentioned clipping. What is your take on clipping? How much is clutch? Do you clip? Yeah.

41:40Jasmine Enberg: How does it help drive people, you think, to the episodes or no? What do you say? Does it help drive people to watch? Yeah, I mean, certainly. Like the show in many ways is an hour and nine minutes, hour 20 minutes. It is the clips that come out of it to drive new eyeballs. The difference is we're starting from a place where we have a community online on a certain platform. We're now starting something new, trying to port them over with a built-in audience. So the clipping economy is a, I don't know if I totally love where it's headed. I think where we're trying to do is stay hyper-focused, go depth versus breath, attack and the things that we really care about and serve as a community that we already really have while helping people get jobs and they become part of our community as well.

42:27There's certain things where we will do a campaign and, you know, we've had like a reel get 30 million and it's done nothing for the business, but we've had, you know, video get, you know, 5 ,000 and we've gotten opportunities from that views. And so I think a lot of what we're doing is different than, you know, a, say a beauty, you know, a creator or someone in those worlds where you have to compete with other people. Like I, my biggest goal in the company is not when a brand is pitching to not be put against anyone else. It's like, we exist in our own world because we're verticalized around this specific community.

42:59So I've been approached by a clipping company said, we can get a thousand clips from your one hour episode. I'm like, what does that do for me besides raise the views? but those are empty views, not people that we really care about bringing in to then, you know, either sell Lloyd or whatever products that we, that we're going for, or just entertain them. Like the things you're talking about are really specific to a certain group of people. So we'll do about 10 to 12 really good high quality clips each episode. That's a lot though. Which is a lot, but it's still, but we have five guests, four or five.

43:27And so they all, they have a lot to say. And so I love that you call it empty views because I have this theory that I've been flirting where I'm like, views are the new follower count in that sense, because it inflates the popularity of a show. And, you know, it doesn't necessarily reflect the people who are tuning in. And that is kind of a little bit maybe what you're saying as well, where, you know, if it's not necessarily driving people to the main show or converting sort of loyal.

43:51Jasmine Enberg: And you do the same thing. Like we, you know, obviously a gen pop audience can certainly learn stuff about the creator economy from our content, but we are aimed at business professionals, people who work in the space or are interested in the space. So we also similarly, I mean, And the TBPN guys have said this too. Like their total addressable market is like 200 ,000 people, right? Like I think that's a smart way to think about it. And we've been pleasantly surprised that that's really resonated with brands. Like our newsletter is almost at 20 ,000 subscribers and brands are like great. 45 % of those are executives and founders and that's resonating, even though it's a smaller number in kind of the grand scheme.

44:26Because you know exactly who they are and you're servicing to get an audience. Like I guarantee the 400 and so odd people that went to the Scalable Summit are that was a more valuable experience i'm speaking for you but i can i can imagine then say a video that could attract a large number of followers because of a brand they want to get in front of the people that you're bringing in in in person and so that's who you're attacking same here um or creator iq as well bringing these people you know in having these conversations in more controlled environments so we see the same and there's a breaking and entering there's a great company that's doing an advertising we love those guys you mentioned tbpn you all there's a lot of others who are now starting these live shows or verticalized entertainment companies where i don't they think it's probably bad to say like i don't care about how many views or like the metrics

45:09Jasmine Enberg: around the follower count i don't and also the guests don't care either yeah i've never asked a single guest ever what the show reaches and like actually have either yeah yeah it's great and like that's because we don't they see the value in it reaching an audience and ours is young eyeballs who are impressionable um and so i hope we move away from chasing views because we're not going to be able to compete with these AI bots that are now like popping up every day. They're getting millions of views. And where does that go at the end of the day? And what is the goal out of that? I wouldn't want to be in that game, I guess, because you're competing then with something you can't, you'll never be able to beat.

45:44And so I'd rather be really passionate about a certain audience and service them and build for them. I shared mine already, my details that I found myself obsessing over at the Scalable Summit. What's yours at events? What do you obsess Oh, God. That you didn't expect her. I have horrible ADHD. So, like, I mean, everything. But I would say, like, the selection of drinks usually not. I have some nice Diet Coke. I've been on a Diet Coke binge recently. But, no, I think, like, the best use of downtime. Earlier events, if, you know, we just would do three panels and say, here's an hour, just go have fun.

46:18And I think you lose a lot of steam when you don't program that downtime. And here, I think it's, you know, most hour, 10 a.m. on a Tuesday.

46:25Jasmine Enberg: I know. Oh, the molasses were flowing. So I think just the taking as really focused on what the break times and how you can get value out of those. So we're doing an event this Sunday, as I said. And so we'll do headshots. Cash Now, More Later from Opendoor gives you cash up front for your home, plus all the profit later. That's no chaos now, no cash left behind later. Skip the showings now, pocket extra profit later. This is so simple now. This is so awesome later. Or sell fast now and pop the champagne later. Cash now, more later. Now available nationwide. Start your offer at opendoor.com slash ACAST.

47:08Profits calculated after fees and costs, eligibility and offer price may vary.

47:14Jasmine Enberg: All right, audience questions. Do we have questions for Warner? Who would be dream guests on Scalable Pod and ABA Live? Okay, well, ours is Martha Stewart. because she's like the original influencer. And just an icon. Yes. Mine would have, well, Reese Feldman, I'll give you a shout out, but Jeremy Piven probably giving us the scope. We have Ari Emanuel on next week. So I think actually having Ari Emanuel and Jeremy Piven join, not knowing each other are joining, would be a dream. And throw Rexley in there, Lloyd. And so it's a good trifecta. That interaction, I think I would leave and then record it and see what happens.

47:50You may have to do that.

47:51Jasmine Enberg: Do you ever have people in person? Yeah. So we do half in person. We're trying to do more. It's literally built in my garage and there's, and it looks a lot bigger on camera. So we're like having people over my house. My wife's in there working. My dog is running around. I'm like, Hey, welcome to the house. We had Jeremy Zimmer from UTA. So it's a very interesting experience when they show up and we're at my house. But yeah, I try to, I think the in-person conversations are, yield such better conversations. It's hard because I'm in a room alone. I don't have a co-host with a headset on and talking to someone over essentially Zoom is pretty difficult.

48:23So I try to bring people in person. We find that too. I mean, we cannot be in person that often because we're so far apart from people. So far. But even like just with the two of us, I feel like the conversations are just so much easier and more natural when we're in the same room versus doing it.

48:36Jasmine Enberg: And same thing with guests. You can just build a bit more rapport. Yeah. And then you have technical issues sometimes. And it like starts the interview off in the wrong butt. Because we're live as well. So I've been doing the first eight episodes in a row. My mic was broken. and someone didn't show up on time. What do you do when someone doesn't show up? Panic and pretend everything's fine. And we upload the whole video. So we're going to go back to make a highlight reel of me having no... And I've also never been in... I did two podcasts ever before I launched a live show, which I don't recommend.

49:05That's brave. But every single thing that you could possibly imagine that could go wrong has gone wrong.

49:11Jasmine Enberg: Does it make you feel better, though? Because you're like, I've done it. Yeah, and I'm like, well, I got embarrassed in front of a live audience. Let me go on to the next week. It happens even worse somehow the following week. But knock on wood, we've overcome a lot of those early struggles. We're learning a lot. Don't remember. No, I don't remember. From the chat, we're like, this is hilarious. It's like, you can't see him. You can't hear anyone. That's funny. It's awesome. But that also allowed me to overcome doing something like this and just being like, I've dealt with the hardest possible situation.

49:37And there's no like, it's not like on a news segment where you have a bunch of bankroll assets that you can just kick to. We're mid-interview or someone's coming on, people have been late. but then it's allowed us to then take that and do our live show in person in front of a live audience which we're doing for the first time on sunday um which we're excited about i'm a manager so i work with a lot of creators and just sort of curious how you balance between scaling with intention and kind of leaving room for like new things that pop up without sort of getting unaligned or misaligned to what your goal is that makes sense yeah i mean probably not the answer that I would have thought I would answer this with, but I think a lot of it had to do with our fundraise strategy.

50:18And I think early on, staying really nimble and small and not taking, we haven't taken money yet on a fundraise standpoint, which has been really difficult. And we've been offered, you know, deals that I was very close to. But I think allowing us to be really nimble and reactive and also then be proactive without having to, you know, go through a lot of steps or approval processes that take a long time. It has allowed us to be really reactive. So we launched the show in a couple of weeks, but we had this idea for the Battle of the Mailrooms where we had all these people playing against each other.

50:56We were nimble enough in a small enough team and we were able to act very quickly. But then there's also that idea of having a five-year plan and knowing goals, but not really knowing what you're going to do to get there. So for me, I don't really totally believe in the three to five year, one year plan, I think, with the rate of technology, but having an intention, a North Star and a goal, and then being just totally open to what comes our way. Because we could get an email that changes the trajectory of what our next three months could look like. But if we have this like really strict, you know, step by step process and what we're going to do towards the end of the year, it's hard to be reactive to it.

51:30So I think that's why I didn't fundraise and it's paid off so far for us to do that because we have to run things through a lot of people when we're launching new businesses or ideas. that being just really proactive and take a lot of risk too. Like a lot of the stuff we're doing hasn't worked in a lot of it, you know, throughout the process. But I think just staying wildly open to what opportunities can come your way and just saying yes to a lot of things you're not ready for. I think that's really similar for us. I mean, we have our sort of overarching goal for the business, which is to be the go-to resource for the business of the creator economy.

52:00And then everything that we do kind of answers a couple of questions. Is it right for our brand and our vision? And then is it right for our audience, which is business professionals? And if the answer is yes to both of those things, it's something that we'll consider. Otherwise, you know, you could be thrown into so many different directions because there really are so many different ways to build a business now in the creator economy. And you just have to make sure you're doing what's right for you and the goal that you have set for yourself. But I like what you say about leaving room for flexibility and not really having the steps defined beforehand because you truly don't know what's going to come your way every single day.

52:34Yeah.

52:35Jasmine Enberg: And I think it's, I mean, I went from CNN, which is a huge, you know, giant organization to the information, which was under a hundred people, very entrepreneurial. When I went to launch the newsletter there, they were like, all right, I started. And they're like, two weeks later, we're launching. I was like, two weeks? Like CNN would have been like, love CNN, but it would have been nine months to get the landing page up. It would have been 10 million approvals. So I think like I took that spirit, obviously, to scalable and now it's yeah we launched in less than a month and to be nimble right like it's just so fun like we can get on a plane tomorrow like i remember i was in doha at a conference and we got invited to a conference hosted by cory booker on capitol hill and i was like guess i'm going to dc in two days like you can just kind of pick up and go you know physically and also spiritually with the business so it's been fun the other thing i will add too is like i was very stubborn to like ask for help or go out and seek partnerships like meaning you know if we wanted to launch like a scripted series show or long form like i was like i'll just figure it out and do it like i have with the show and a lot of other things but i've been a lot more open to being like i will give up a larger percentage of a certain project because that the top end of that is way more like lucrative long term and just like knowing what you're not good at and like i've realized i'm not good at a lot of things and like then going and hiring or partnering with experts in those fields or people that can teach me a lot as we enter the new areas.

53:55I think people just try to like tough it out, like get through some things. Like there's so many people have done it before. A lot of people are doing it a lot better than you. And it's better to own 50 % of something large than just try to own 100 % of something not. And so I think that goes against the fundraising strategy, but we've done that for certain projects and it's worked out.

54:18Jasmine Enberg: Cash Now, More Later from Opendoor gives you cash upfront for your home, plus all the profit later. That's no chaos now, no cash left behind later. Skip the showings now, pocket extra profit later. This is so simple now. This is so awesome later. Or sell fast now and pop the champagne later. Cash now, more later. Now available nationwide. Start your offer at opendoor.com slash ACAST. Profits calculated after fees and costs, eligibility and offer price may vary. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show we recommend. In 2008, a promising young actor showed up on his first day on set, ready to film the action-packed climax of his new movie.

55:00Jasmine Enberg: He'd been training, cameras rolled, and he tore his butt cheek. That actor was Robert Pattinson, and the film was Twilight. Listen to our podcast, What Went Wrong, every other week as we unearth the chaos behind Hollywood's biggest movie flops and most shocking successes. Available wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.