The Truth Behind In-House Creator Ad Agencies and Why Creators Love a Live Tour

0:00Hi, everyone. This is Scalable, a weekly show about the business of the creator economy.

0:04Jasmine Enberg: 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. 130 countries. That's how big creator tours are getting. And everyone from Alex Cooper to Dar Mann wants to fix influencer marketing. Today, we break down these stories and explain why more creators are launching their own ad agencies and taking their content on the road. Plus, we talked to YouTuber Max Reisner, the CEO of Creator Camp, who recently went on tour to promote his new movie, Two Sleepy People, and just launched an ad agency.

0:41Hi, Jasmine. Hey, Kaya. And hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into our weekly show about the creator economy.

0:48Jasmine Enberg: Today, we are doing a deep dive into two big trends that we've been following. First, everyone from Scott Galloway to Max Klemenko, who you might recognize from his Career Ladder series on TikTok, is seemingly going on a live tour. Meanwhile, we're also seeing more creators launch their own ad agencies. Later in this episode, we will be joined by Max Reisinger, the CEO and co-founder of Creator Camp, which does production, in-person events for creators, and has its own agency. They've created campaigns for Anthropics AI chatbot Claude and even the Swiss government. That revenue supports their other work, including making movies for movie theaters.

1:24Jasmine Enberg: So as usual, we have a lot to get into, but first a message from our sponsor. Every marketer we know has felt the same panic. The ad ran, the results were not amazing, let's kill it. But our friends at Agentio have the data to prove that's the single most expensive mistake in creator marketing. Agentio, the agentic platform that makes creator advertising truly scalable and measurable, is also the title sponsor of the Scalable Summit happening on May 6th in Los Angeles. After analyzing more than 10 ,000 YouTube integrations, Agentio found that click-through rates climb roughly 10 % with every additional integration with the same creator, and conversion rates are 1.9 times higher by the sixth one.

2:02The audience stops seeing an ad and starts seeing an endorsement.

2:05Jasmine Enberg: That's how Bomba scaled spend by 327 % while cutting its customer acquisition cost in half and delivering 5.3x return on ad spend, all managed by a single team member. The same playbook is available to you too. Go to agentio.com to download the YouTube marketing playbook and book a demo. It suddenly feels like every creator is going on a live tour or has gone on one. Scott Galloway is the latest, announcing another one last week for his Prop G show. In November, he wrapped up a tour with Kara Swisher for their Pivot podcast. And they're already planning another one for this year. Scott, we're hitting the road, bringing Pivot live to the people.

2:45seven cities, Toronto, Boston, New York, DC, Chicago, San Francisco, and LA, of course. When do they sleep? I have no idea. I'm tired just thinking about that. Then there's Max Klamenko, who is best known on social media for his Career Ladder series. Max Klamenko is taking the idea of a tour and putting it on steroids. Get this, he is visiting 130 countries over the next two years. He kicked off this tour in late March.

3:11Jasmine Enberg: 130 countries is wild. And let me tell you how wild, because I went into an internet rabbit hole after you told me that figure to see how it compares to other big tours. So it's not a perfect comparison because I looked up musicians. They were the easiest to find. But obviously, first, I looked up Taylor Swift. She did 56 cities in 21 countries in about a year and a half for the Ares tour. But the record for the most countries visited in a single tour goes to artist Joss Stone, who hit 200 countries during her total world tour, which is a very on-the-nose name. That tour, though, took five years, which also blows my mind for different reasons, but also just goes to show how ambitious Max's tour really is.

3:56Jasmine Enberg: At the same time, though, and this is why it's not a perfect comparison, creators like Max probably operate at a much smaller scale than, say, Joss Stone or Taylor Swift. The sets aren't as extravagant, the props are probably minimal, and the entourage, I would think is a lot smaller. I mean, I imagine it's probably mostly just Max and his ladder and maybe a small crew. But these creators are also operating on a much smaller budget, most likely, and touring is expensive. It's also time-consuming and it can really take a physical toll, especially when you're flying all over the world the way that Max is.

4:29Jasmine Enberg: I mean, I took 51 flights last year, which is scary to think about. That's crazy. I know. Mostly for work, but also for fun. And I am still exhausted now. And plus, while some creators like Scott Galloway are pulling in millions of dollars, unless you're selling out stadiums in every city, it is really hard to imagine that these live tours on their own are super lucrative for most of the creators. So the question, of course, then becomes, why do this? And simply put, live touring is less about the money. It is much more about being in person. It's about meeting fans. It's about creating a stronger bond with audiences.

5:05Jasmine Enberg: and people just really want to be in person these days. Plus, creators can also get a ton of content and they can book sponsors along the way. So one of the stats we pointed to in our newsletter in an article about how IRL events or the new influencer trips showed that more than half of enterprise brands actually worked with creators on live events last year. And that was up from 34 % in 2024. This came from influencer marketing platform Linkia. And it feels like tours like these that Max is going on are probably a natural fit for these brand creator partnerships. Yeah, and I think obviously it's great for the fans, but I think it's equally as important for the creator to really see the fandom and the community and everything they've built around them.

5:48I had a little bit of a flavor of this because one of my favorite parts of my most recent role at The Information was hosting an annual Creator Economy Summit. And I remember actually hosting it virtually during the pandemic and being really shocked at how engaged everyone was, even kind of with the remote format, the chat was, you know, going live. I got so much amazing feedback on it. I was there. I tuned in from Finland. Wait, that's so sweet. I didn't even know that. Oh my God. But yeah, I think like even in that format and virtual events can kind of be hit or miss. And I know we all had to sort of do it in the pandemic, but I was pretty blown away.

6:21And I think - Do you remember virtual happy hours? Sorry, I had to go there. I never did that. I never did it either. I couldn't, I could not bring myself to do it. No, that was a big no. Like I had like a virtual goodbye from CNN and I was there for so long. So that was just like sad. Like, you know, it's just not the same when you do it virtually. But it was really the first in-person event that I hosted that really opened my eyes to the fact that I had built a real community around my work. And there was just so much excitement and support for what I was doing. I mean, we blew past the expectations we had for tickets that first year.

6:54And we had way too many people for that venue. I'm surprised we didn't get in trouble. But I, you know, knew that in this next chapter, events had to be part of what we did. So very excited to build on this work with you at the Scalable Summit. And you know what? Maybe a live tour is in our future once we grow this show a bit more.

7:10Jasmine Enberg: I mean, we have accidentally been on somewhat of a tour already this year with the One Billion Follower Summit, with Sundance, with South By. So I think it's probably closer in the future than we would like to imagine. So true. But that was accidental. So but anyway, for someone like Max, you know, a world tour of the size makes a lot of sense. You know, first of all, his show is dependent on it. It needs to be in person. If you're not familiar with the show, he gets on a physical ladder with someone and he has to guess their career or he has to guess their first job. And formats like these on social media, you know, they're important to kind of create a brand and a reoccurring series around yourself, but they can also get repetitive or feel tired.

7:50So that means, you know, bringing in different audiences, putting twists on the format and also expanding it to new people who haven't seen it. Hence, 130 countries. Here we go. I spoke with Max at Web Summit Qatar earlier this year, where he told me about the tour. And I think the most interesting thing to me was the list of countries he's visiting is really fascinating. I mean, he told me that a big part of the tour is going to underrepresented places to help shine a spotlight on them and the jobs that exist there. Max himself is from the Ukraine, and he's frequently used his platform to highlight the Ukraine war that continues to drag on there, but feels, you know, largely forgotten by the rest of the world.

8:25A few examples of places he's going to visit, Tunisia, Latvia, Malta, and Guatemala. He just wrapped up the Caribbean leg of the tour, where he visited Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados. And similarly to you, this is making my head spin because I have been on 28 flights since January, including 10 long hauls, and I'm exhausted. I don't have to get on another flight for about two weeks, and I'm so happy. By the way, I did ask him if he travels with the ladder. And he told me that he typically sources one locally, which makes a lot of sense because checking a ladder seems like a hassle.

9:02I also asked him a little bit about kind of like the origin of why, you know, why this? And he was like, he told me he doesn't like to sit. So like, that was a big part of it. He wanted to be standing and do a segment where he was like, not just like sitting down, which is not the answer I was expecting.

9:19Jasmine Enberg: No, certainly not. I mean, I feel like there has to be more in between not liking to sit to going to making a series where he stands on a ladder guessing people's careers. There was. So he obviously is very interested in like the economy and jobs. That's always been something he's interested in. You know, he's worked in tech. He has this really interesting background. And he was like, oh, ladder, career ladder. Like, oh, we can do a physical ladder and talk about jobs. No, it is super smart. The very early origins I thought was interesting that he doesn't like to sit. That's so funny. But yeah, I mean, his show has been so fascinating to watch because I learn about new careers through him.

9:54Jasmine Enberg: Like there are people who've had careers that I'd never heard of. Another one that I really like is Salary Transparent Street. Have you ever seen that? They go around. I think it started in New York, but I think they've gone to other cities since. But they go around asking people how much money they make. And it's really fascinating to, you know, first hear what these people do for a living and then how much money they're making all from it. But to your point about, you know, Max going on this tour to underrepresented countries, I have to say he's not the first to do something like this. Not to harp on Joss Stone, but I got way too into this and really need to share.

10:25Jasmine Enberg: So she, when she went on tour, actually went to countries like North Korea, which, by the way, reportedly has the biggest stadium in the world, who knew? As well as Iraq and Yemen in an effort to promote cultural exchange. But I think what sets what Max and other creators are doing apart and something you started to speak about is that he's bringing people into the content. And his fans are really dying to get on the ladder and have him guess what they do for a living. So again, it's just a really good way for creators to build community, build connection. And that's what a lot of creators need in this moment right now to stand out because our feeds are so algorithmically driven, you may not see the same creator twice.

11:06Jasmine Enberg: I mean, take Max, for example. I didn't know his name when you mentioned that you were going to be interviewing him. But as soon as you showed me a photo or a video, I recognized his face. And then, of course, the latter because I had seen it on TikTok. And so a lot of creators just really need to find ways to build around that. And I think going on tour is going to become a bigger part of many of their strategies. Yeah, we're in this, you know, phase of the creator economy now where people like recognize the format before they recognize the they recognize the person also. But they often don't know their names.

11:36I mean, I often, you know, would host dinners and bring together different people in the creator economy in New York. And one of my icebreakers was like a recent creator that you discovered that you love. And it was a New York crowd. And one of the people at the dinner said, you know, this creator who has this very specific like New York, you know, shtick. And everyone at the table knew exactly who this creator was. Not a single person knew his name, which just is like mind blowing and shows that especially for short form creators, like you really have to work that much harder to build community and get your name out there.

12:09You know, for Max, like it's not just touring, right? He's also using the opportunity to launch a YouTube show. He's also live streaming throughout the tour on YouTube, Twitch and TikTok. We just did a deeper dive into live streaming on last week's episode and how creators are using it as a way to stand out. So there you have a case in point, but check out that episode if you missed it last week. And the YouTube series called World of Jobs gives viewers a more behind the scenes look at the jobs that Max is exploring in each country. Earlier this week, he dropped the first episode from Jamaica, where he interviewed a factory worker at the Red Stripe Beer Factory, a chef specializing in jerk chicken and an Olympic bobsleigh star.

12:44So a very eclectic mix there. But it just shows you right like between the live streaming strategy and the long form YouTube series, it's really emblematic of the different ways that short form creators are expanding. We've seen Alex Earl also launch, you know, a beauty series on YouTube as well, because there's just only so much you can do with short form, both content-wise and monetization-wise. So with this tour, Max is really maximizing for content and for business opportunities.

13:09Jasmine Enberg: So you know what I really want to know? Yes. I want to know how often Max is correct when he's guessing people's careers on the career ladder. Oh, that's a good question. Did you ask him that? No, the other thing he told me is that he doesn't post every single episode that he tapes. So he will only pick the best ones. I think he just wants to pick the best ones. And he, I mean, he tapes so much content. I mean, think about us. Like we don't post every single thing that we record, right? It's true. So that's two questions. The ones he posts, maybe he posts a lot that he doesn't guess. I don't know.

13:41I don't know.

13:41Jasmine Enberg: I mean, I've definitely seen ones that end before we find out if he has guessed correctly or not. But I don't know if he then has like a longer form YouTube video or something else somewhere where he reveals the actual career. He's pretty good at it. And you'd have to imagine like after doing so many of these, you must have a strategy. The other piece that he's expanded is as he's doing brand partnerships, like I saw that he did one recently with the CEO of LinkedIn. Like obviously he knows his job. So he had to guess what his very first job was. Spoiler, it was a tennis instructor. I just watched that one on my feed.

14:13So interesting. But moving on, more creators are spinning up their own agencies. Darman has one. Corporate Natalie has one. Even Alex Cooper has one. Issa Rae, who comes from traditional entertainment, also has her own ad agency, which she launched back in 2024. Mr. Beast has not launched one yet, but he is working on a platform to connect big brands and creators. Then, of course, there's Creator Camp, who we'll hear from later in the show. This isn't an entirely new trend, but it does seem to be ramping up lately. If you think about Influencer, right, which was founded by YouTuber Casper Lee and Ben Jeffries, that was all the way back in 2015, right?

14:49That was so long ago. But Jasmine, you've been following the influencer agency world for a long time. So what do you make of this?

14:56Jasmine Enberg: I mean, I have a lot of thoughts, as you might expect. But immediately, my first thought is that the solution to the problems in influencer marketing probably isn't more ad agencies, even from creators themselves. And I think more broadly speaking, many of these creators are probably looking to boost their own businesses more than anything else, because it's also really hard to build and scale an ad agency. But okay, positives first, because there is a lot of upheaval in the agency world, which means that there's also a ton of opportunity for new players to come in. And that is especially true for agencies that are specialized in influencer marketing.

15:30Jasmine Enberg: Like, if you think about all of the consolidation that's happening in the agency landscape right now, influencer agencies really are some of the hottest acquisition targets from big holding companies as they're trying to build out and bolster their influencer marketing efforts. And we recently spoke to Jenny Quigley-Jones from Digital Voices, which was just acquired by PMG agency about this. And then you have other holding companies that are building out their own influencer divisions as well as their own tech. And the best example of this is Omnicom, which has been expanding its influencer division that's called Creo.

16:04Jasmine Enberg: Of course, all of this is really coming from increasing demand among brands for influencer marketing. So a report from the IED shows that spending on creator ads will reach$44 billion this year, and the growth is outpacing traditional media. And these big traditional advertising giants know that they really do need to bolster their influencer efforts to keep up with all of this. At the same time, we are also seeing that brands just want new ways of working with creators. And established ad agencies really just don't have the best reputation. Like, yes, of course, they have their benefits like handling negotiations.

16:39Jasmine Enberg: They also add structure, but they can also complicate things. And brands really don't want too many middlemen between them and creators. They want to know how they're spending their influencer dollars. And they also want to have a direct line to creators on creative briefs as well as feedback. And that often isn't the case when you have a third-party agency involved. And now you're seeing a lot more brands moving their influencer operations in-house, at least to the extent that they can. And there's data now that actually supports all of this. So according to a recent report from the Association of National Advertisers, only about half of marketers have full visibility into how much of their influencer dollars are actually going to creators.

17:21Jasmine Enberg: I mean, that is absolutely wild. And then there's a stat that we've referenced before on this podcast from Creator Vision, which shows that 85 % of creators never hear feedback from brands. My point is, working with an in-house agency from a creator could really help to solve some of those issues. For sure. I mean, both of those stats are mind-blowing. It's like, how are these campaigns supposed to work or get better? How are these relationships supposed to be long-term if there's no communication? But I digress. So we've also spoken to creators who have launched their own agencies about this, including creator Kramp's Max Reisinger, not Max Klamenko, although who knows, maybe there's an agency for him in the future.

17:59But anyway, the creator's pitch is really that they understand the creative, they know the platforms, they're embedded in the culture. And the people who work at these agencies, you know, are creators with massive followings themselves, right? And they can apply those learnings to the work that they do for brands. Creators can also move faster, right? They're a lot scrappier, you know, there's less red tape and hoops to jump through. And that's really attractive to brands who really want to be in the culture relevant to audiences. And to your point in her announcement, corporate Natalie also talked a lot about how the influencer marketing industry is broken because there isn't that direct line of communication between brands and creators.

18:34And that can cause all sorts of problems from miscommunication on creative briefs to never hearing back about how the content performs. And her goal is to fix that by bringing creators earlier into the process and working together with the brands on everything from the brief to measuring performance.

18:50Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, on paper, all of this makes perfect sense. And for corporate Natalie, I think one of the big things that's working in her favor is that she's focused on B2B, which is still a huge white space for influencer marketing. And there's a lot of need for specialists who really get the space and she certainly does. But, and this is a very big but, it's going to be very hard for these new creator shops to convince brands to come on board beyond select campaigns. And even when they do, these creator ad agencies are probably still going to have to work with another preferred agency from a brand or an in-house team because while creators definitely understand the creative side of influencer marketing, most of them just don't have experience or expertise in the media buying side of things.

19:37Jasmine Enberg: And that's where the big money really is. And also why these massive holding companies are going to have an edge on smaller players, including those from creators. I mean, that's one of the big reasons that we're seeing so many smaller influencer agencies get snapped up right now. Plus, these creator ad agencies just don't have the infrastructure or the technology that these big companies do. So their ad agencies are mostly being built on relationships and reputation, and that can only get you so far. So really, unless these creators are building teams with real media buying experience, as well as the tech that they need to support this, they're largely going to be working on organic social campaigns, which is just a very different thing than the big budget influencer campaigns that we see right now.

20:20At the same time, we always talk about this, but the merging, the hybrid, the convergence, right? We've seen also some big agencies now have creators on their payroll as well. So a really good example of this is Creator Collab from Razorfish. They have an entire team of creators who produce content for brands at what they say is a much faster speed and in a much more natural way than an agency could do on its own. One big difference, though, is that these creators are not going to be big name stars like a Dhar Mann or an Alex Cooper. They're probably going to be much smaller creators who are really good at creating content and want more sustainable and predictable income, plus all the benefits that you get at a traditional company like health insurance and paid time off.

21:00And, you know, sometimes they're literally just producing the content and not starring in it at all. But I think the fact that more established agencies are hiring creators does pose a challenge to these new creator agencies because that is their big selling point.

21:13Jasmine Enberg: To their credit, I think a lot of creators have recognized this, right? And many of them are bringing on experienced advertising leaders to help with their efforts. So the CEO of Darman Studios is Sean Atkins, who was previously at Jelly Smack as well as at MTV. Alex Cooper most recently hired Joanne Bradford as the president of Unwell. And as part of that, she's going to oversee the in-house advertising operations. If you don't know Joanne Bradford, she has been in the ad and marketing industry for over 30 years. She's held roles like president of online shopping platform Honey, COO and CMO of SoFi.

21:47Jasmine Enberg: And she's also worked in revenue and marketing roles at Pinterest, Yahoo and Microsoft. So quite the resume. So as an aside on Alex Cooper, because you know, we couldn't talk about her without getting into some of the drama that's been happening, which we dove into a little bit more. But the timing of that announcement of Joanne's hiring was really interesting, given it came during all the drama with Alex Earle. And then they also just announced that Cooper's first acting role is happening alongside Anne Hathaway amid all of this, which obviously is such a big announcement and such a huge deal.

22:18But, you know, I've talked to so many startup founders over the years and often, you know, they choose very strategically when to announce that they raised funding or hired an executive. Sometimes it's months later, right, to time it with a specific moment or maybe to distract from any negativity. But back to creator agencies, you know, there's also Ian Schaefer, who's the co-founder and president of Ensemble, which is Issa Rae's company. And Ian also is a seasoned executive, you know, with experience in media and investing. He will also be one of our speakers on a panel about the future of entertainment at the Scalable Summit on May 6.

22:50And Jasmine, you caught up recently with him about all this.

22:52Jasmine Enberg: I sure did. And he confirmed a lot of what we've been talking about. So he called the agency landscape a quote, minefield. And he also said that he thinks a lot of these new creator agencies are really just about scaling the talent themselves. And I think that's spot on. I mean, it's very unlikely that these creators are actually looking to seriously take on any of the big players in the agency space. Like I think the true value of these agencies for a lot of these creators is to have a more streamlined process for them to handle their own brand deals rather than actually trying to compete with the big leagues.

23:25Jasmine Enberg: And most importantly, running your own agency as a creator can help ensure that you get paid on time and well. Because one of the biggest complaints that we hear from creators is missing or late payments or low pay rates. And a lot of these issues also stem from or are exacerbated by traditional ad agencies, since they're acting as middlemen and taking a cut of payments. How much, you might ask? Their fees vary widely, anywhere from 10 % to over 50%, according to the Association of National Advertisers. but on average they take about 30 % of influencer spending coming from brands. That is now cash that could be in creators' pockets.

24:04Honestly, it's smart and I understand why these creators are going this route because so many people stumble into being a creator. They don't come into it with a real exit plan or even realizing it's a real business. And I don't necessarily mean a traditional exit like selling the business, though that obviously is something that creators are thinking about and can happen in this space. But a lot of them more so are thinking about like how to not be on the hamster wheel of always having to be forward facing on camera making content. We talked about this with Complexly CEO Julie Walsh Smith with the Green Brothers and you know how they've been, you know, slowly plotting that exit and not having to be the face of Complexly.

24:40But you know, for others, that means a physical product or building a brand or for others, it's this agency model that also lets them have a bit more of a behind the scenes role and work with other talent. Now we have our interview with Max, the CEO and co-founder of Creator Camp. He told us how he grew up on YouTube, starting by documenting his move to France, where he went to public school for a year when he was 15. Through that, he met other creators and eventually established Creator Camp, which started by hosting live events for creators, but now has produced a movie, which was released in theaters and also does work with brands like Anthropic.

25:11Creator Camp, as we mentioned, also just launched an ad agency. And what we found so fascinating about our conversation is how Creator Camp works, you You know, in traditional live and social media, for example, to promote its theatrical release to sleepy people, the team went on a tour around the country. Here's a little bit of their experience with that. Rubrik is the security and AI operations company built for what happens after an attack hits, not just the moments before. AI has turned the threat landscape into quicksand, moving too fast for any human to fully predict. That's why an agentic cyber resilience platform matters.

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26:04At the beginning of the year, we made a future film with our friend Baron, with no knowledge of how to actually make a movie. But we did it, and we want more people to see it. So it begs the question, how do we do that? And that's when we came up with the idea of buying an RV to take the movie on tour ourselves. Hi, Max.

26:27Jasmine Enberg: Welcome to Scalable. Thanks for having me on. Thanks so much for being here. You have been quite busy lately. You just had a big movie premiere. You've also launched an agency. You're also still hosting live events for creators. How are you finding the time to do all this? Good question. I'm bouncing around, having a lot of fun, but I'm young. It helps. It helps. Tell us a little bit more about how you went from in-person events to now becoming a full-fledged production company and making movies. We really held off from turning CreatorCamp into maybe more of a traditional business for the first few years.

27:03We really wanted to just focus on building the community and bringing together the right people, but we were really against the idea of doing a management company or something like that for whatever reason. but we were like, there's something else here. Like, and we don't really know what it is, but like, let's just keep like going with the events and maybe an idea will emerge from it that can, you know, scale, pun intended. Really what we started to notice is that like the talent that we were meeting was like capable of so much more. At the time it felt like, you know, most of what creators were doing was just brand deals.

27:33And then we noticed just an opportunity or just like more and more things of like, hey, I want to make, you know, an hour long video. I want to make a movie. I want to maybe put something in theaters. Maybe I'm capable of doing X, Y, and Z. And eventually we were like, well, let's just try to figure it out ourselves. And then sort of a series of experiments and accidents led us to like making a movie, trying to get it into theaters and, you know, starting to do commercials and all sorts of fun things that we didn't exactly plan when we set out to start Creator Camp.

28:02Jasmine Enberg: So you talked a little bit about helping creators move away from brand deals, but I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into your strategy there because at the same time, you've also recently launched an agency. We're seeing this kind of across the board within the creator economy now. More creators are launching their own agencies. I mean, Darman has one. Alex Cooper launched one in October. Corporate Natalie is the most recent one to launch her own agency. What does an in-house agency provide for you that you might not be able to get from a third-party agency? And why did you launch this to begin with?

28:33Yeah, it's a good question. So we've been like sort of secretly running it for the last year and a half. And it came after an event that we did with the Swiss government where we had, I think, almost like almost 100 creators. It might have been like 80 creators come out for a summit event. And on the last day, we did a film festival, but it was like a one-day film festival. And creators were paired up in groups of three. And they went out to like 18 different regions across the country. And they made little films. And someone at Ogilvy saw those films and they're like, holy cow, these are really good.

29:00You produce these really fast and they like each got like almost a million views on social. Like how the heck did you guys pull that off? Like we have this project with Coke. Could you guys help us out with it? We're shooting in Japan in like six weeks and no traditional production company can sort of meet that quality and timeline. So we started with that and then kind of kept going from there, but focused mainly in commercials early on. And I think for us, what it gave us was like a financial backbone and an ability to like create recurring revenue, both for us as a business, but then also like larger opportunities for creators who instead of being paid for like a post, now they're getting paid to direct like an actual commercial.

29:36In some cases, don't even have to post it at all. And then it also just deepened our brand relationships across the board. So if we're going to do an event or anything, or maybe someone wants to sponsor the movie, it just like embeds them into our ecosystem and talent network. And I think that is like super, super important for us when we were early on with the business. So you alluded to some of the benefits for brands. I mean, And obviously, so many of them already have so many agencies in general that they work with and in-house teams. So, you know, what's sort of your pitch for working with you or, you know, as more creators are, you know, launching their own agencies?

30:12What's the pitch to brands of like, why work with you versus, you know, a longstanding social agency or other type of agency? What we're most confident about is that like most of the group that we're working with are creators themselves. Like a lot of our team, you know, has hundreds of thousands of followers and, you know, are looking to sort of translate those learnings that they've proved themselves to then actually apply to like, you know, actually work with actual brands. I think that's like the biggest edge. And then also on like the directing talent inside, like we view like our whole talent pool and funnel as folks that are going to be the next great directors, storytellers, and like in some cases could be the next like Tarantino.

30:49And we want to be able to like help them grow to make movies if they want to. And then there's also a lot of talent that is like really creative that maybe doesn't have the same desire to like bridge into entertainment, but wants to bridge into advertising and produce really, you know, thoughtful campaigns. I think for us, it's more about like understanding the culture element and like being native to these platforms and having done it yourself. And I think that's like a lot of the work that we've been doing on like the organic social side is where we'll help a brand run a social page and we're able to just get it going super, super fast.

31:19And in many cases, we're coming in and like sort of beating out these old agencies that are just like on these output deals, making 10, 20, 30 videos a month. And like they're getting 30 likes. And this is like a massive corporation. And so I think for us, we're just scrappier and we've done it. And so I think that's that's an edge. Recently, we did a cool partnership with Claude and Anthropic, where we had three different creators kind of partner together to work on a commercial that was collab posted and it was directed by Megan Tan. And we actually shot the whole thing on 16 millimeter film.

31:49So that was a really fun campaign of like, how do we combine and sort of maybe elevate traditional influencer marketing and like, you know, have these people be characters in a film or something that's more elevated, but then still sort of hit on those core pillars that Anthropic is looking to hit on. Do you think we'll see more creators launch their own agencies? Is that the future of the space? Or you think it's too difficult for most creators to do it? I think we will in some cases. I think it'll also just go like broader and like, you know, maybe like a car YouTuber just like builds out really good operational.

32:20Like that's kind of why we started at least on like one of our most popular offerings is like organic social pages. So we're like, hey, we grew our Instagram page to, you know, 250 ,000 followers in the last year. We built like a really good team in operations. Like we could help do that for others. And I think we'll see that probably across the board because like, why just stop with your stuff? So I think a hundred percent, I think the folks that are more operationally minded will.

32:42Jasmine Enberg: So zooming out a little bit, what does your business model look like? I mean, obviously brand and brand campaigns play a big role, but are they the primary revenue stream or how are you making most of your money? Yeah, I'd say brands and commercials are the primary source of revenue. And then what we're looking to reinvest a lot of it into is the entertainment side of the business. So like owned IP and stuff that has more scale and then our own like branded channels as well. But I'd say it's largely the commercial deals and then hoping to grow the entertainment side to become larger and larger as the years go on.

33:11So Choosely Me People has now grossed$280 ,000. Is that right? Is that the most up-to-date number? Yes. And then if you count the fast... That was from the email. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell us about that. How did that come together? Yeah. So we came up with a thesis for what we were calling Camp Studios at the time, which is the film side of the business. And I think maybe early 2020, 2019, it felt like there was just more conversation in the space about creator-led businesses and creators starting a product and like you know having something that gave them scale outside of just like maybe brand deals and that was really interesting and originally we were like what if we do like YC but for creator businesses and we pair storytellers to founders and like build like an incubator and then we're like something's not quite right with this and then as we thought through more like the creators that we had in our network we were like what if we actually take the same concepts or sort of principles that YC was founded upon and like did that for creators but then like media is actually the product and something that has scale.

34:12And so the movie was like our first experiment. And we're like, if we can put it in theaters, we can go directly to our fans and we can not have to spend a bunch of money on marketing. And then we can create downstream value, maybe a streamer will buy it or something. And then when we met Baron, we're like, oh, this is the guy to make a movie like he's capable of, you know, producing something at that length. And then let's figure out how to make a movie. So you recoup the entire production budget in under a week without a studio, without traditional advertising. Let's dig into more of the strategy there.

34:44Like, what do you think were the keys to success? You know, how did you drum up attention for it without going the traditional Hollywood route? Keys to success. I think, you know, a lot of it came down to the marketing, honestly. I think that was like the biggest challenge and like actually proving that people would show up or like understanding our audience in a different way. If you go to a theaters, you know, they're not going to just give you, you know, a thousand screens across the country right away. And so I think a lot of what we had to figure out was like, where is this audience? What theater specifically?

35:12And like, how do we know that they're going to show up? Because we can't just spray like, you know,$10 million of meta ads. And so one of the campaigns we did was like, okay, we know we need to connect or collect emails. So we actually own part of this audience. But we also want to know where they are. So we needed to collect emails and zip codes. So we did a campaign where we built this like interactive map where if you put your name, your email and your zip code. We put your name with the credits of the movie at the end. And then with that campaign, we got like 20 ,000 emails in a week. And then we were able to go to movie theaters and say, hey, like we actually can see that there's 500 pins or names in New York and we can target them directly.

35:50So it was a lot of like trial and error and like really trying to like pinpoint, you know, where folks are and then kind of scale from there.

35:58Jasmine Enberg: How long did this whole process take? We started, the movie premiered in April at a fest that we did ourselves. So a year ago. Yeah, like a year ago. And then we went, tried to start going to theaters over the summer and then got our first, well, then we had to rent out four theaters. So we had to like four walled ourselves first. And we did like a roadshow in Seattle, LASF, New York. And then that got us our first, you know, 30 screens. And that was November. And then we got another in like December and then we went wider in January and now we're going international. So that'll take us through like probably like the fall and rest of the year.

36:33So it just keeps going.

36:34Jasmine Enberg: But why go directly to theaters? I mean, you mentioned that maybe a streamer would buy it afterwards with all the audiences now on YouTube and streaming. Why a movie for, you know, a traditional theater? I think there's something really timeless about theaters, but then also like for us, like the challenge that it felt like we had to solve was like, how do you prove that this should be bought because audiences are getting this for free. And if we just put this on YouTube, like we could get a few million views and maybe make a few thousand dollars, but like, how do we make a million dollars? How do we make 10 million dollars?

37:04And like, how do we actually prove that audiences would like pay for this or think about it in a different way? And so for us, it was about like, how do we not build dependence on Hollywood and how do we vertically integrate ourselves? And it felt like theaters were like one dimension away from like a Patreon, but it felt like this is a way to like bring community together at scale by leveraging the sort of pre-built ecosystem of theaters. And it just felt like, yeah, fans want live experiences. Everything is like rebounding post-COVID when you look at concerts or sports. But why not theaters?

37:37For us, it felt like more of a content problem or a marketing problem versus like theaters being dead or dying. And so they just felt the most exciting, honestly.

37:47Jasmine Enberg: And it also feels very on brand with the live in-person community element of it, no? 100%. 100%. Yeah. One of the biggest like breakout successes we've seen in the box office is Markiplier's Iron Lung, which grossed more than$50 million globally, which is pretty wild. And he starred in it, directed it, did the whole thing. But it's been really rare, especially in the box office to see a creator film do that well. I mean, what do you think has to happen to see more success stories like that? For us, we've thought about it more as like a capital problem. And like, you know, the space to make something like a lot of creators that we speak to are on that like brand deal loop.

38:26And like, you know, to go out and to have the time to make a film takes a lot of time and money to be invested in not only the production, but also the distribution. And oftentimes like, you know, they aren't maybe the size or scale of Markiplier. And, you know, like I feel like he's like the Taylor Swift equivalent of like the creator economy where you can have those massive outsized returns. But like, you know, if you aren't that, that's kind of why early on we were modeling it off of Y Combinator where we're like can we take a lot more bets at smaller scales and then you know the the ones that do really well have outsized returns but like we we're not going to like try to engineer each of them independently let's just like take a lot more bets but I think when you think about where the capital is coming from in in traditional space that's not really prevalent as we have a lot more consolidation like they aren't just throwing out a bunch of checks for creators to experiment experiment and make movies and i think that requires like a rewriting of like um sort of like the economics of media but it takes a different type of business to be able to invest in those products and to see a return because it doesn't even if you can make 10 million dollars that's not enough for sony like that's that's like you know that's a little ant for them so i think it takes a new model to to actually see value in those products so that creators can get the funding because right now I don't think they're getting the funding or resources to make any of these projects unless you are a market player and you have that amount of money yourself.

39:46But I think that's more rare.

39:48Jasmine Enberg: So one thing that bodes well for creators in the movie theaters and movie businesses more broadly is that I just saw some research that the box office has actually had the strongest start to the year this year since COVID, bringing in$2 billion between January and early April. What do you make of all of that, especially when you look at some of the top movies from that period? A lot of them are animated films or franchises. How do you think about creators kind of fitting into that landscape? I think creators will start to carve out more and more of that space. I think there's so much room for it.

40:22I feel like it's still very, very early days. And I think what we get excited about is just creators thinking about it, not only in the lens of like, hey, I want to make a movie, but more so like, hey, I want to deliver a different type of experience to my audience. Or maybe here's a new monetization channel. The likes of like Dude Perfect have experimented with that before with their partnership with Regal. But like a question we ask ourselves is like, what does it look like for Yes Theory to put out their next video into theaters for fans? You know, it doesn't have to be, you know, the Iceman documentary that they did.

40:53But like, what does it look like for more and more creators to start to do that? because I think what people want is like new interesting types of content, especially if you already have that audience and fan base. But, you know, like if the Diary of CEO did his next podcast in theaters, I think it'd be interesting. Like I think some folks would go and like it's a space to meet other, you know, fans of the show in person. And like there's no downside for him because he's not having to spend, you know, a bunch of money on marketing for theaters. It solves a problem. And I think those win-win scenarios will just only continue to exist.

41:24And how do you think about this in this moment where everything is so like hyper personalized, right? Like for someone, you know, who's really into something, they might see this huge creator in that niche and you may have never heard of them, right? Like there's so many creators now. I mean, it's staggering. Like I hear of creators all the time who have like 50 million YouTube subscribers and I've never heard of them. And I cover, I've covered the space for many years, right? So like this big theme that's come up with so many different people we've talked to is just like this death of monoculture, right?

41:50And movies and TV shows played such a big role in that. So how do you think about that? But on one hand, it's like you can build a business, right? That's pretty niche and has a small audience and you can do really well. But to have the impact and to be in theaters and to like really be able to be in the zeitgeist, how do you do that in this new world that is just getting even more personalized with AI and all these other things? For us as a business, when we think through that, it's like oftentimes what breaks through is like first it has to be a really good product that speaks to the culture.

42:21But two, I think having marketing dollars behind something really amplifies a message or any sort of project that you have out into culture. And I think why creators sometimes lag behind today compared to maybe traditional things or lack that legitimacy is oftentimes a beast video could have 100 million views. And that's great. But is it really getting out to culture in the same way? Are people talking about it? is are there critics, you know, talking about it and sort of relating it to culture? Are there billboards? Like, can you really invest in like the world that's built around that media?

42:57And I think for us, like when media has like upside, you can invest into it. So if it's just on YouTube, like you're not going to put up a billboard. But the second, like, you know, it's in a place like a movie theater, like we can start to invest actual capital around that project. And I think that's when it can break out beyond just an algorithm or beyond like an initial audience. And I think that's our belief is that creators will be able to create products that can or projects or films or shows that aren't just for their core audience. I think we've seen like last year was this big year, I think, for convergence of creators and Hollywood.

43:31We saw so many streaming services. And if you think about like the Tubies of the world really going hard, Netflix, you know, bringing in creators. What do you think Hollywood still gets wrong about creators and the creator economy? I honestly think like the more time I spend in like, you know, spaces that are maybe more Hollywood focused or dominated, I feel like at the end of the day, these folks aren't actually that dissimilar, where I feel like a lot of the rhetoric is like, oh, these are like two fundamentally different folks. And I feel like I think there's a lot that creators actually have to learn from from Hollywood and like those internal structures and how it functions.

44:05Maybe it's just that they can't move as quickly also. But I think the thing that we've noticed is like, it feels like Hollywood is trying and streamers included are just trying to put creators back into like, the same boxes that have worked where it's like, okay, we'll just give them a reality TV show. Like that's a format we know. Whereas and I don't have the answer to this. Otherwise, I would go do it and make a bunch of money. But like, what is there a new format that has to happen? like remember when like lily singh was put on late night and it didn't work and everyone's like oh well sorry creators don't translate to hollywood i don't think that's the problem i think it's just that squeezing them into these formats doesn't work but i don't know is there something that you think streamers should do differently when working with creators or like i don't know i just feel like we've seen a lot of copy paste where it's like okay well let's just put their shows on netflix and see how it does with the podcasting side uh but yeah curious your thoughts i think like the truly groundbreaking work of the stuff that will actually shift culture that really will send out i think has to be built from the ground up fundamentally different and i think like yeah it is a new way of thinking about you know movies and and stuff or like what a movie even means you know and like how how you engage with an audience and i think to your point yeah like just taking a creator in and like putting them into a traditional system doesn't doesn't always work or change things i'd say like what what is that different at the end of the day and i think the the content is starting to blend more and more.

45:29And so I think like innovation to me, I feel like is Hollywood creating more space for creators to experiment and have access to resources, but not necessarily forcing them to conform to like how they think things should be and like what sort of end product they need for what they think will work or will do well.

45:46Jasmine Enberg: I also want to go back to your original answer though, in that creators have a lot to learn from Hollywood too, because we so rarely hear that these days. And I think that that is spot on. So what are some of the things that you think creators can learn from traditional movie studios and Hollywood more broadly? I think a lot of the talent that, even thinking through putting together talent in folks, I think even the word creator can be so broad. And something that we learned from a lot was we tried to host an incubator. Or not tried, we hosted an incubator with eight different creators and we wanted to take digital talent and actually get them to make their first short film.

46:25And we're like, cool, everyone's a creator, so therefore everyone's a director. And then, you know, I think we realized that like, oh, like maybe you're a really good DP actually and you actually maybe aren't a writer, but we think of you as being able to do everything yourselves. And I think maybe that's like the shifts and I think where creators maybe don't have as much experience in some cases is working with teams or like getting help with writing. And like, I think that's especially important when moving into scripting or like scripted content in general. And I think that's like the harder shift to get right where I think reality TV feels closer to what we see already today on YouTube.

46:59But I think as we moved to like more difficult formats, I'd say in some ways, scripted shows or like actual like movies. I think that's where like, just like saying, hey, go make a movie, like doesn't necessarily work. And there's a lot of gaps in something that we ran into ourselves when making the film. It was like, oh, this is like really difficult. And there's a reason why there are so many people on both the set and in post-production on a movie.

47:22Jasmine Enberg: So this realization that you maybe can't just do it all alone, which I think has been the mantra in the creator economy for so long. And I think, you know, we've heard from other creators too, that they're kind of coming to that realization now that you do need a team and it's okay to delegate. And it's okay to say, you know, I'm not the best at maybe scripting, but I'm really good at directing and kind of figuring out how to build from there. I would love someone to write our scripts for our show. I would too. How big is your team and are you expanding, hiring, keeping a lean team? We're 16 folks right now.

47:55And we're expanding pretty fast. So I think hiring is like actually our largest bottleneck in finding like really strong operational talent. And so we're actively hiring five new roles and that will probably keep growing as we expand on the client side. So yeah, growing fast, which is a good and fun problem to have.

48:14Jasmine Enberg: What roles are you hiring for right now? Mainly in like account management. So like actually helping run these accounts and being both client-facing and also creative side, but then also like operationally, so like more executive roles as like the team grows and the organization starts to grow. Like it's not just like us and the creative, we actually need like more of these miniature type roles. So I think that's like the biggest thing for us is just operationally, how are we running the business? What are our SOPs, the flows, onboarding, both like internally and externally and like really having to sharpen those flows up as just the client-side scales.

48:49You're moving out of Austin soon. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. These are like the last moments in our lovely office here, which has been such a fun space. But it's sad that we're leaving, but excited for a new chapter. Yeah. So where to? And are you recreating the office in the new place? Yeah. So we're moving to New York, Big Apple. So excited to be scaling up all the fun there. But yeah, we're on the hunt for a new space. I think it'll be hard to beat this spot. But we have some things that I think will get close.

49:18Jasmine Enberg: That's so exciting. Congratulations. Thank you. What prompted the move? Honestly, like, I think a bit of loneliness, I think, for the team. I feel like the social scene in New York, like all of our friends are there. And in Austin, I think it's great if you're maybe in your 30s. And this claim could be way off. Maybe I'm biased. But I think it's harder to meet folks our age here doing things. And we're like, damn, like, I feel like we're struggling to meet people over the last two years. And I feel like loneliness is like the biggest thing that can also hurt a business team-wide. So we're like, let's get some friends in New York.

49:48Jasmine Enberg: We're both a little biased that we both spent our 20s in New York. So I can attest to the fact that it's a lot of fun. It can also be lonely, though, even in a big city. But if you have your friends there, it's a great place to be at that time. Yeah, yeah, I'm excited. So Kaya brought up AI, so we're going to have to go there. Let's go there. Obviously, AI has been a hot topic in the movie industry, in Hollywood, in the creator economy. How are you using AI both in terms of your business and for production? We use it internally across organization for like, you know, even things as simple as like sometimes our cash flow, you know, or like certain automations with like invoices and whatnot.

50:29Big fans of cloud over here and use that a lot across the organization. I'd say like productions, we're not using them too often with AI at the moment. But I think a lot of like the new tooling is super interesting. And in cases where we've had to fix things, like I know with sound and posts have definitely used that a lot to like fix certain audio that they got messed up. Is there something you wish AI could do? Or are you like a purist where you're like, I don't think I want AI coming in, you know, making big, you know, full scenes for me? I honestly wish it could just like understand my tone of voice when I'm like writing an email.

51:04Like that's where I still get frustrated. I'm like, can you just help me with my inbox? I'm so overwhelmed. And every time I ask, it's like write an email. It still does the same damn dash. And like, it doesn't sound like me. And I'm like, I'm not even a movie like senior. I'm just like, help me with the most basic thing of all time. I think it'll help like, you know, creators be able to make things that they weren't able to before. I think that's what's exciting. It's like, it is coming. It will be a tool. And how can we use it to like punch up and create movies that, you know, we couldn't do this car scene before X, Y, Z.

51:33I think that opens up a lot of possibility and really democratizes things across the board for creators. And suddenly you don't need a big Hollywood studio to bring this idea to life. And then I think some of the best ideas can win as a result. And then, you know, it's kind of up to the marketing and distribution as well. But I think to me, it just continues to level the playing field for everyone. And I think that's where it really starts to get exciting for folks that are up and coming versus, you know, how do you cling on to things? I prefer to be a creator than a studio exec right now, I'll say.

52:04That is so real on the emails because it's like we're talking about like big picture what AI can do. And it's like it's so true.

52:11Jasmine Enberg: Why can't I do the boring things, the things that nobody wants to do? That's what we all want AI for, not to make our movies from start to finish, but to do our emails and all those boring, boring tasks. Yeah, yeah. Like I want to have fun and make a movie, you know, like don't do all the fun stuff. Yeah, do the boring stuff first. Okay, Max, anything we missed? Anything we missed that you want to talk about? No, I think we covered a lot. That was fun. Thank you so much for joining us. Of course. Thank you for the time.

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