More customers equals more success. And if no one knows you exist, you die. Don't make ads, make content. Jeff Frommers sold his creative studio in 2021 for $75 million. And the key to his success was something you would never expect. They ran social shows for Mike Tyson, Kevin Garnett, and All the Smoke, pioneering growth hacks like clipping and creating tune-in moments. Now in this episode, Jeff runs through several frameworks on how to create a service that's scalable, building teams and culture, and positioning your business for a successful exit. I'll give you a little secret sauce. All you're trying to do to acquire customers is...
My personal favorite part of the episode came later when he gave his framework for the ambassador-advisor-co-founder equity split to get brands connected with creators these days. But what he says first will blow your mind.
Jeff, welcome to the show. Super glad to have you. Some background on you: you exited an agency for $75 million. Obviously, there were a lot of failures along the way. So the first question I want to ask you for our audience is, what is, in your opinion, the difference between someone who's stuck at $30K a month with their services business and a business that has scaled to multiple millions in revenue per month? I think founders don't recognize that they can just ask their clients what other problems they have. Trust is earned. So as an agency owner, you've earned that trust with your client. And you build an agency to solve a problem.
And the question is, going out and acquiring more customers is hard. You have to go earn that trust again and again. So can you go deep and wide with a single customer by simply asking, hey, are there any other things that are problems right now? Or if I could wave a magic wand and provide you a service that could solve a problem that you have, what would that be? Yeah. Because if you're opportunistic as an agency owner and as a founder in any startup, then you solve problems for people who are willing to pay you for that service. So if you ask what problems they have and you already have the trust, and someone says the one, two, five problems that they have, you can go,
hmm, can I solve that? And if you think you can, then you have your first customer. And then you can go and ask your five other agency clients, hey, do you have the same problem? And now you have a new line of service. Yeah. So you think it's more about product expansion rather than trying to blitz scale and acquire a bunch of new people. I think it's hard to acquire customers. And then once you acquire a customer, you've earned that trust by fulfilling the promise that you gave them when you first sold them. Yeah. Right. And so rinse, wash, repeat that in the same industry is a successful strategy to acquire more customers. Yeah.
But you also leave a lot of money on the table if you don't know what other problems the person who is willing to write you the first check has. Yeah. So I always say you want to continue to expand the portfolio of clients because you want to take out the risk of having all of your eggs in one basket. If you fuck up the one relationship and 80% of your revenue is coming from one client, well, your business is now worth basically zero. Right. So you need to diversify your client list, but you should also be thinking about, even if it's something that you don't necessarily want to step into, just knowing what other pain points the people that you work with every day have
can give you insight into where you want to build in the future. Yeah. A lot of it's information gathering itself. You have to see the right path after you've asked them that question. Like, oh, are you having a content challenge? Yeah, but our email also sucks. And it's like, ah, do I even want to get into email? Or is there a way that I can make an impact without fixing their email marketing, their retention? It's like maybe you offer them a YouTube upsell, right? Where it's like, hey, you have an information resource problem. People can't really look up anything about your brand other than your short-form social media content.
You need a place where they can go learn more about you. That's a way to potentially fix a retention problem because you're training the customer to have more information before they're even wanting to churn. I think the other thing, if you think about an app that you use all the time, once you have a good experience, a good app will ping you and say, hey, would you like to write us a review? Yeah. Put a five star, write me a review. It's usually after an aha moment. In your old agency, did you ever ask your clients for a referral? I never had to ask, no. But they just offered it up. They offered it, right. And that was essentially how I built the business for two years.
Simply on referrals. Yes. On referrals and inbound, yeah. I think one thing founders need to do, and do it in a couple ways: just like you have a regular check-in with an employee, I think if you don't create a moment where you create a safe space, like a monthly check-in, to have a conversation that's not the nuances of the day-to-day, then does it become special? Yeah. And I think every client-customer relationship should also have something very similar. Yeah. Where you can set up a once-a-quarter just to say, hey, I just want to know how things are going. Because in the day-to-day, a lot of clients will share feedback.
But if you make it a space where you can talk about it, it gives you an opportunity to listen, to learn, but then at the end to say, look, we're thinking of expanding the business. Is there anyone that you work with that you think I may want to reach out to? Oh, you should talk to my friend Sally. You should talk to my friend. It's sometimes hard if you don't have that alpha mentality to go out and just constantly ask. And if your clients aren't proactively referring it, create the moment where you open up the dialogue so that you can then feel comfortable to ask. Because that conversation you've set up is for both of you to determine how you can expand the relationship.
Totally. Yeah. I think, and to that point, where a lot of people probably struggle, my guess, is they are struggling with bandwidth to be able to even take on new clients and deliver a good service. It's hard to hire people. It's hard to hire yourself out of the fulfillment of whatever you're selling. And so I think it'd be really interesting if you talked about how you guys approached your product that you were actually selling. It's obviously a service, but it had to be something that was scalable across, how many clients did you guys have at peak? Probably a lot, I would guess. Yeah, over 100. Over 100 clients getting the same kind of portfolio of services.
How do you look at something like a service offering that is scalable? Because I bet that a lot of people listening to this podcast are trapped in a world where they don't even see how they could scale their service offering to 30 clients. They're already drowning at eight. Yeah. I think two things. One is people, process, systems. The other is culture. Culture scales, right? And so the first few people that you hire become the culture of your company. When you're starting, the four or five people that you work with day to day, however you operate as the founder, imparts on those individuals. And your culture is what creates a company.
And so, when you get to 20 or 50 or 100 or 200 people like we had, those first five people are the army and lieutenants that will go out because you can't spend enough time with each person in the way that you would operate. And so, when you're building an agency, that agency's success is typically built on the founder. The founder's operating model, the founder's relationships, their culture of how they spend 10, 12, 15 hours a day working on said client's project because innately they want to deliver for that customer. What's so funny is, I think there are so many different stages of building a business. And when you talk to founders who have reached a level of scale,
there is a through line. All they ever talk about is people. It's always people, people, people, culture, culture, culture. And I think what's really challenging for a lot of early-stage folks is that, dude, I don't have a people problem. I have a product-market-fit problem. And especially, I mean, what we try and tell people on the podcast is, direct tactics to grow your business through content, right? The founder's operating model, the founder's relationships, their culture of how they spend 10, 12, 15 hours a day working on said client's project because innately they want to deliver for that customer.
What's so funny is, I think there are so many different stages of building a business. And when you talk to founders who have reached a level of scale, there is a through line. All they ever talk about is people. It's always people, people, people, culture, culture, culture. And I think what's really challenging for a lot of early-stage folks is that, dude, I don't have a people problem. I have a product-market-fit problem. And especially, what we try and tell people on the podcast is direct tactics to grow your business through content, right? Like, here's how to literally make a better short-form video. So, yes, people are important.
But I guess, how would you look at a product or offering holistically? And say, I'm in the content game. I'm working too hard. I literally can't scale this. Are there some frameworks you had for evaluating if something was worth scaling? I think one thing people should do as an exercise is understand if they have a brand problem. And so what does that mean? If I asked 10 of your customers what they think you do, what would they say? Would they all say the same thing, right? If then I would ask however many employees that I have, I would ask them all, when you tell your friends or your mom what it is that we do here, what do they say? Yeah.
When you listen to those two things, I guarantee for most founders, they will find massive discontinuity between those two things. And so that means it's really hard to scale when people don't know when to call you. As a brand, you can only be famous for one thing. Until you become a really big business, I have to go like this to think about when, Brian. So what are you famous for? What problem do I innately have right now that, when I think about that problem, you solve? Because if I don't know when to call you, then I can't make that decision to refer you.
And so I think if you're stuck at whatever revenue amount it is, a really good way of thinking about why the referrals aren't coming in or why your business isn't scaling is how people think about what you've built. And if people say too many things about what you've built, they don't know what problem you solve, and they don't know when to call you when they have that problem. Yeah, we experienced that a lot at Nibble, where we did TikTok Shop, UGC, and organic content. And so the referrals would come in this manner where people would say, well, do you still do this? Is this something you're doing? I don't know.
And meanwhile, our TikTok Shop clients would say, this is a TikTok Shop agency. Cut and dry. Easy branding, right? They can tell that to anybody. If we're doing successful work for them, then it's a really easy referral because the brand is, well, they've been great to us. They're a TikTok Shop agency. Incredibly easy for someone to pick up, clear, whatever. And then you get into the organic content piece, and it's, well, are you making carousels? Are you making short-form video? Are you managing and posting for us? Yeah. And so that actually got a little more broad and especially, I think, was not understood as seamlessly.
If I asked you when you were at Nibble, what do you got? You go around the table. Yeah. You're at dinner. Everyone says what they do. What do you do? Short-form content studio. So we were a producer of short-form video at scale that worked. And that was kind of why we were in all these different spaces, because we could obtain a lot of short-form video for the brand through TikTok Shop. We could create UGC from our in-house creator roster. Or we could create organic content, which was native and authentic to TikTok. And the problem was there was so much demand for all three of those things that I actually think it probably created some discontinuity.
Because every single new product you have is a new workflow. And when you talk about processes and systems, if you're building different processes and systems for different products, then it's going to be really hard to operationalize that in a way that works. I think I would take a step back and I would say, I hate when people tell me what they do. What you should do is tell me the problem that you solve. Right? That's it. I don't really care how the sausage is made. Everything that you just said went over my head. Because I don't give a shit how you make the sausage. I just care if the sausage is the best in the world, if it's cheap, if it's won awards, whatever it is.
What problem does it solve? And I think as an agency owner, I would think about how to brand your process so that they can only get it from you. Right? And anchor it in the problem that you solve. Content at the speed of culture. We framed that up. That's what we owned. And so, if you wanted content at the speed of culture, you didn't care how it got done. You just knew that you would call us. Brand and own a process. Think about what you do. Because a lot of times, if I put 10 competitors who all did the same thing, they would all tell me what they do and how they film content, make UGC.
But at the end of the day, it's, we acquire three times more customers than our competitors. Yeah. With the same dollar investment. That's the solution to the problem. And then, if you are good at your job as a founder, what can you brand that as? Yeah. Something that, we invented clipping. Right? In 2017, when we ran our podcast network, we reached 50, 100 million people a month. It was always on and everywhere. Right? And that's what we wanted. As a brand, you want to be always on and everywhere. You want to tune in to a long form. Right? And then you want to be discovered in the social feed. This is 2016, 2017. Right? Ads are meant to be skipped. Don't make ads. Right?
Make content. Add value. Right? And I think people need to take a step back and say, if I just made all of these 50 things, right, and I said, okay, I want to go sell a book, what would be the title of the book that I could read the title of? It's like a headline of a news article. It's like your hook. Right? Where I can go, I want to read that. Don't tell me all the 50 things. Give me the hook. Package it up. So then I get intrigued to go, I want that. I want to read that. Right? Which I would say content at the speed of culture does.
And I think if you dig into why content at the speed of culture works, it's because there are a lot of things you're saying with a short sentence. You're clearly articulating that you're going to be in tune with what's going on right now. And you're also articulating that it's going to be delivered fast so that the moment isn't gone. I think a lot of people miss moments, and that stings as a business owner. Lost opportunity when you had an opportunity to be in the conversation and you don't. So the problem that you're solving is almost this loss aversion. Right?
It's like, oh, if I'm working with these guys, then I'm not going to miss the moment in culture that I could have participated in. Yeah, I think one other thing that I try, and I'm a little older than you. I don't look as bad as I have. He uses a chalkboard. He used a chalkboard in high school. Yeah, yeah, I did. He asked if I had a fucking chalkboard in high school. I was on the active board, for the Gen Zs out there. We had one of these projectors where my teacher would put something on it. Oh yeah, the little laminated. The laminated thing, and then it would project it on it. I had that in preschool. In preschool? That's cool. Yeah. Distant memories. Yeah.
You didn't play Oregon Trail. You don't know what that is. No, no. That's fine. We had a computer lab. Now everyone just. Your generation turned out better than us, though. You're fucked up. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're best. Only escalating. If you think about life, right? He uses a chalkboard. He used a chalkboard in high school.
Yeah, yeah, I did. He asked if I had a fucking chalkboard in high school. I was on the active board for the Gen Zs out there. We had one of these projectors where my teacher would put something on it. Oh, yeah, that little laminated. The laminated thing, and then it would project it on it. I had that in preschool. In preschool? That's cool. Yeah. Distant memories. Yeah. You didn't play Oregon Trail. You guys don't know what that is. No, no. That's fine. We had a computer lab. Now everyone just. Your generation turned out better than us, though. You're fucked up. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're best. Only escalating. If you think about life, right?
There was a ton of evolution for thousands of years, but not social transformational technologies. And so if you think about the cell phone. Yeah. If you think about social media, right? Like GPS. Certain things completely transform the world. And my generation, at least, I was old enough to first see cell phones arrive in school. I was the first generation where I was old enough to experience life as a teenager before social media transformed it. Right? You got out at the right time. We got out. Got out of the game at the right time. Yeah. We're trapped in the middle of that. And then these new kids. It's so funny.
I'm curious your thoughts on this. But I, yeah, for anyone on this pod, if you don't know, I'm 30. And so I see a bunch of kids, 23 to 26. We were at dinner last night with a couple of guys who were 24, 25, doing some really impressive stuff. And there's just this culture of internet money that has planted itself in these digitally native kids. Since they were 14, they have been able to trade crypto and shit like that. There are ways to make money when you're really young and digitally native.
And sometimes I wish that I was in as early as they are because all I can think about is, wow, if you're doing this, if you're in the game at 24, you're probably going to be in an insane place at 29. Right? When you got the battle scars. Or do you think that having a normal upbringing and going through college, going through a couple of jobs, positions you better to be an entrepreneur when you're in your late twenties, early thirties? No, I think life is a lesson learned. However you learn it, it doesn't matter. I also think there is no norm, right? What feels normal to you is not normal to them. It's just that's what you did. And so society continues to move.
I think that the next generation has unlimited opportunity if they take the step to unlock that. Right? I find myself watching Ray Dalio speak at a conference that would have cost a $100,000 ticket. And maybe only a thousand people have watched that video on YouTube. But I got to watch it. I get to listen to people that I could have never had access to. Right? I think. It's really powerful. Yeah. And anything that you want to learn today is accessible. The question is, were you designed by the system to be willing to learn? And the system is, you could say nature or nurture, right? Both my parents worked two jobs. My mom was a teacher. My dad was a cop.
Come home, and then at night he worked a second job. And mom would teach during the day and then teach at home. So both of my parents worked all the time. They never once told me, they never taught me to work. Right? But through attrition and just seeing them, I just always had a job. I always worked. But the job I think that you got 10 or 20 years ago, the idea was this nine-to-five thing. And I think before that it was like, I'm going to work at this company for 20 years. I'm going to get some pension. And then I'm going to, I don't know, move to Florida. Go move to Florida and get in with the retirement homes. Yeah.
And I think what's really interesting today is that I don't care how you make a living, but if you figured it out, you're ahead of every other single person. So what advice would you give a young kid who's really worried about this AI job loss stuff? AI is going to displace millions of people in the middle class. Because the majority in this country of people who work in the middle class provide knowledge, right? And knowledge is completely democratized today. If I was going to school today, what would I learn that I cannot have an agent do today? And what is the value of that knowledge, right? Is AI going to make me an entrepreneur?
I think today, if you are prompting Claude or you are asking ChatGPT to find you dinner, right, you are not setting yourself up for success. Tell them what to do. If you're a Gen Z kid, you're 23, and you just got your degree and you're literally reading the headlines every day. And you're like, holy shit, I just paid 100,000 in student loans. I'm not going to have a job in four years. I'm a white-collar worker. What should they start to think about doing to be able to prepare themselves to even be an entrepreneur? Yeah. Look, I think AI will create millions of entrepreneurs, but only for the people that want to solve real problems.
And the question is, how do you find a problem? Go ask people older than you. So many people don't understand that if I went to LinkedIn today and I reached out to 20 or 50 people that I could never have imagined ever working with or working for and just shot them a DM and said, hey, I'm a young college kid. I'm thinking about building this thing. Would you spend 15 minutes with me? I just wanted to pick your brain. I have a really interesting problem I'm trying to solve, and your experience is perfect for it. So many people, I guarantee you'd have a 90% hit rate.
There's so many people wanting to offer their time to someone who's aspiring, who's trying to solve real problems, right? Find those individuals, right? When you sit around a table thinking about what you want to build, that's not the way to do it. Think about what world do you want to live in in five years? Where is the world going? And then where do you, so I think about hyper-personalization at scale. You guys are in commerce, right? If I'm going to go to a website today, if I go to skims.com, you can imagine in six months, 12 months, no more than two years, Kim Kardashian will be my shopping coach. I will see her face. I will be able to try on the clothes.
She will talk to me as if she's my best friend and she knows me. She will tell me it looks good and it doesn't, right? And I will check out with her by my side. And that will happen a million times a day at scale because today I can generate her name, image, likeness. I could generate her voice. I can pipe in all of the data. And when I hit Shopify's site, I'm already a logged-in user. My cookie's logged in. It knows everything about me. It knows my purchase history. And Kim's going to say, Jeff, great to see you again. Oh my God, I think you should totally try on this new blank. Yeah. That's going to happen. Yeah. Right?
If you want to go watch a movie, today you go pick what you want to watch. I have two little boys. I might in the future go, I want to watch Mickey Mouse, Spider-Man, and Iron Man in Paw Patrol's neighborhood. Make it 20 minutes. Something's happening. The fire hydrant blew up. Yeah. It's kind of like how Nickelodeon will play, or Disney will have, an NBA game, but it'll be on Disney Channel. During Christmas every year they do this, where Disney will have the Christmas Day NBA game, and then the VR will turn them into Disney characters. So it'll be like Victor Wimanyama is just Goofy the dog.
And they'll do it in a Disney animation, but they'll recreate the game with their usual animation style and characters. And I feel like that's exactly what you're describing. Look, if I was a young kid today, here's what I would do. I would remember that no matter what I want to build, if I don't have a voice, no one knows I exist. Make it 20 minutes. Make something's happening. The fire hydrant blew up. Yeah. It's how Nickelodeon will play, or Disney will have an NBA game, but it'll be on Disney Channel. During Christmas every year they do this, where Disney will have the Christmas Day NBA game, and then the VR will turn them into Disney characters.
So it'll be like Victor Wimanyama is just Goofy the dog. And they'll do it in a Disney animation, but they'll recreate the game with their usual animation style and characters. And I feel like that's exactly what you're describing. Look, if I was a young kid today, here's what I would do. I would remember that no matter what I want to build, if I don't have a voice, no one knows I exist. Start building your presence, right? Because what is the best thing to do is to prototype an idea to the people who listen to you. So the larger that population is, right, the more feedback that you can get.
And today, creators rent their audience to brands who are willing to pay them for a post. But in the future, if you have an audience, then you'll be able to build a brand for that audience. Because today you can manufacture anything in China. You can drop ship it, never see it. You can build any app or consumer tech or piece of software in Lovable. And today is the worst it will ever be, right? So distribution is the real differentiator. But distribution is not trust. And I think a lot of people think about influence as, oh, this person's got a million followers. Do I trust this person? Trust is earned, right?
I may reach a million people, but do I trust what you say, right? If you've earned an audience by making them laugh, and that's all you've ever done, right, it's going to be hard to sell. It's going to be hard to sell them something that is actually really passionate to you, right, that you think could benefit them, but they just don't know you for that. So I think thought leadership, having real point of views, and niche. If you're a teacher today, you can be very successful. I have a friend who's a health teacher, makes under 100 grand a year.
I know for a fact that what he provides those kids, if he turned that knowledge into an app, he could have 10,000 moms across the country paying him 10 bucks a month to just give their kids access to the awkward conversation that they're not willing to have, right? And so he has no audience. So I think that if you want to build something and you have that entrepreneurial spirit, but you're not the person in front of a camera, go find the person that is. I think creators will be the co-founders and the capital of the business in the future.
Because every dollar, I'm an investor, every dollar that I put into a business, the majority of that angel and venture capital, 40 cents goes to marketing. Of which today, no one's buying billboards or newspaper, you don't even know what a newspaper is. It goes direct to creators and Meta. Direct to creators or direct to Zuckerberg, right? Yeah. And so if you can cut out the middleman by building distribution, if you came to me with an idea and three of the friends who were building that all had 100,000, 200,000, 500,000 followers that were in that niche, and someone came to me with the exact same idea, I would give that person money all day.
Because no matter what you build, right, more customers equals more success. Totally. And if no one knows you exist, you die. Yeah, 100%. We see this all the time. Most brands that are listening to our podcast came to us because they prioritize organic content and they understand the importance of being able to attract eyeballs yourself because we've never lived in a time where it's been easier to get free eyeballs. It's not free, but you control the eyeballs you're getting. 20 years ago, you had to pay for distribution to get anywhere. You had to go to Hollywood, network for 25 years, become an agent, all of that stuff. And now you can just break that mold.
I think, though, just remember you were renting that distribution. The question is, who owns your customers? Yeah. Right? I guess it depends. I think you could obviously get wiped off Instagram and TikTok. That's something that people always say. If you want to build an email list, I think that's fine. I do think this: there's a big sentiment amongst people who, I guess, came up in the last 15 years that an email list is the most valuable thing as an owned audience. But to be honest with you, I just don't buy that anymore. I really don't. I think it's becoming way less impactful. I think maybe Twitter article audience is, I think it's streaming, to be honest.
Streaming is the most valuable what? I think that is probably the most valuable owned audience you can have, is people who are actively— Willing to tune into? Because what you are able to do, and you look at TBPN as an example. I hate to suck these guys off, but they've done a great job. They literally don't have an audience on their live streams. It's like 400, 500 people a day. It's really not that big. But they're so good at clipping that up because they have unlimited content. And so they're able to reach their target demo probably 500,000 to a million impressions a day because they can clip up the actual thing. And so it's not about the concurrent live stream.
It's more so people are very, very familiar with them because they're so omnipresent. And that's why I think live streaming is probably the best place to build an audience today. What you're really saying is then who cares about who tuned in? If you have a camera on all the time, it gives you flexibility to clip out moments that then... I do think we're in the early days of... We're not even in the early days of it. You've seen Aiden Ross. You've seen Speed. These guys are building such massive, massive attention engines that they're getting deals with Dick's Sporting Goods. They're getting deals with... It's a bit of an arbitrage play on the clipping strategy.
Can I pay Clippers less than what I can monetize on programmatic? Some of these guys are paying 50 or $100,000 to Clippers to drive that. Yeah. At the highest end, it's a lot more. And obviously if YouTube can pay me more or Twitch can pay me more or Kick me more, I can arbitrage that. And that's a great business. That's just math. Yeah. I just think on TPPN, I just think, are you providing value? Because at the end of the day, there is value and then there is entertainment. I think they're providing commentary that people are very desperate for in a big concentrated... It's not necessarily big, but tech is very compact in a way.
I think people are always seeing the same stories in TechCrunch. This is why TechCrunch and a lot of the original... They were successful back in the day. I think they're trash now, but they used to be a leading voice because it's the same thing as sports. People want to see commentary on the current events that they're consuming. They want someone to articulate their opinion for them. And I think TPPN has done a great job of being so daily active that they're always going to have a take on the story of the day. I think the one thing we learned when we were producing shows and pushing them out is consistency creates behaviors. And so you program human behavior. Yeah.
Right? Totally. I know at two o'clock on Thursday, an episode is going to come out. I know at two o'clock on Thursday, a newsletter is going to come out. I know on Friday, I'm going to see this clip. But if you start to be really consistent, then you condition people to have an expectation. And people are genetically predisposed to be in routines. Right? Not everyone is an entrepreneur who can just frantically figure out what to do that day. Right? People like consistency. And so if you program consistency, your episode always goes live on this date. They're very consistent. And that's what makes them really successful. Yes, they are solving a problem.
Yes, they are providing value. But they are also incredibly consistent. Yeah. Right? And persistence is really valuable. Yeah. And they also execute well. And they had a pretty nice differentiated position. I don't know, the Sports Center as tech news is pretty funny. I know at two o'clock on Thursday, a newsletter is going to come out. I know on Friday, I'm going to see this clip. But if you start to be really consistent, then you condition people to have an expectation. And people are genetically predisposed to be in routines. Right? Not everyone is an entrepreneur who can just frantically figure out what to do that day. Right? People like consistency.
And so if you program consistency, your episode always goes live on this date. They're very consistent. And that's what makes them really successful. Yes, they are solving a problem. Yes, they are providing value. But they are also incredibly consistent. Yeah. Right? And persistent is really valuable. Yeah. And they also execute well. And they had a pretty nice differentiated position. I don't know, the Sports Center as tech news is pretty funny. I feel like people like that. So they did a good job there. What are some of the other things? Because, so a little background on you. Ohm, OWM is your new startup. And just raised a pretty healthy funding round.
I put in a lot of money in my cap of my own. But yeah. Right. And raising again. So you're going from bootstrapped, exited founder to venture-backed startup. There's a reason for that. Obviously, you see a massive opportunity, which is creators taking equity in businesses for their social influence. So I'm super curious, what are some of the things that are really exciting you about that space right now in terms of what does a great brand partnership look like? Yeah. Look, I think creators should have upside and skin in the game for the things that they believe in and can make really successful.
And as a founder, if you go back to AI creating millions of entrepreneurs, they will solve problems. They will create products. They will all compete for attention. So that's it. So I've got those two kids making app A, two kids making app B, same app. These kids have built-in distribution, which one will be more successful, right? Yeah. And at a minimum, you got to look at the kids in the basement that don't have followers and ask, are they going to be able to obtain the distribution through different means? Because. Yeah. You can acquire distribution. You can hack distribution, but you earn trust.
Do you have any instances, just random aside, but do you have any instances of people who run potentially a non-faceless or a faceless account where they are not necessarily an influencer person, but maybe they have a narrative channel, right? There's this guy, Van Man, who doesn't show his face, but he's built a narrative about all products are toxic. And he has this sphere of influence in the Maha movement, but he literally doesn't show his face. He just posts me and she's 600,000 followers. Do you have any examples of maybe it's not someone who's a personal brand person, but they've created a narrative and they're taking equity in a business? People follow people.
They also follow personas. Yeah. Right. You can license that Van Man and maybe it becomes a product line that, when you show up to the car wash next week, all of a sudden you're like, oh, Van Man cleaning products. Like, oh. And because his brand is all about non-toxic and all those different things, it makes perfect sense for him to license the trust that he's earned over time. Who cares if it's a person? Do you trust the brand? Does that brand have value? It's a good framework. What's the difference between Nickelodeon? Yeah. Right? You see the brand. You see Disney. Right? You have an expectation for that brand. You don't think Walt Disney when you think of Disney.
You just think of the brand. Right? And so the question is, whether you're a person that's building a brand or you're a brand itself, if that brand has earned the trust of audience, right, how are you going to monetize that trust? Well, and if you're a brand, how, because I think a lot of people probably are looking actively to partner with a lot of smaller creators, micro influencers, influencers, whatever. And I really like what you just said about licensing trust, because that is what everything's about right now. It's like ads that don't look like ads, right? How do you seamlessly integrate your stuff into something that doesn't look like an ad?
You're licensing the creator's trust. I've been doing marketing since you were in diapers, right? I do think. Yeah. Close. I'll give you a little secret sauce. All you're trying to do to acquire customers is shorten the distance to trust. That's it. Yeah. The more you trust a brand, the more you'll buy. And if you trust Stephen Bartlett, or if you trust the Van Man, whatever it is, and he's willing to tell his audience that he believes so much in what Brian is building, that he was willing to invest and become an owner, that is the shortest distance to trust because you only invest in the things that you believe in.
And as a creator, you're building up an audience to get to a point where you can monetize that audience. How? Through ads. Right? That's how the majority of the creator economy, getting to $200 billion, we get to a point where we make content, make content, make content, and then someone else is willing to pay us to rent our audience to go and tell us to, hey, this is my new thing, right? Yeah. And so the question is, at some point with you shilling products that you do or don't believe in, you're going to disenfranchise that audience.
But if you know the problem that that audience has or why they tune into you every day, right, maybe you could actually tell them, look, this is the thing that I wanted to build, and I found these two guys that already built it, and this is why I'm partnering with them. And I'm now an investor. I'm an owner, right? If you look at marketing, you're trying to shorten the distance from those seven touch points of what it takes typically to get someone to buy to five or to three or maybe to one, meaning if you trust the creator or the person that's in your life. It was a Peloton problem for a while. I used to do a lot of marketing.
And someone's in your home, and they're talking to you for 45 minutes while you're going through this. And people would be on the streets, and they'd see a Peloton instructor, and they'd run up to them like they knew everything about them because they're in their home talking to them for 45 minutes every single day. Live, too. Live, right? They trust that person. So when Ali or someone says, I believe so much in this brand, it's authentic because they knew the person. They've been talking about this problem. Oh, my child's a celiac, or he has eczema, or I don't eat gluten, or I really love yogurt. And all of a sudden, you're like, this is mine. Right?
I want to use that as an opportunity because we were last night, we were at dinner with a bunch of creators here in Austin. They have millions of followers across the four of them. And you had a framework that you talked about where you said someone can be an ambassador, an advisor, or a co-founder. And I think that would be super helpful because our audience is very brand heavy. So most people that listen to this are operators or marketers at D2C brands. And yes, I know that framework was useful to the creator. But at the same time, I think it's super helpful for how people are going to bucket the use of equity shares toward creators.
Like, well, we want 25 ambassadors, 10 advisors, one co-founder. So talk a little bit about that framework and how you view it because people are very worried about too many shills. One creator promoting 10 different brands, is that going to carry the same weight? So I think that was a really helpful framework for a lot of our listeners. Yeah, I call it the creator-partner framework. And this is how brand marketers should think about time commitment to compensation. It's a direct correlation. And I think about it as advisor, ambassador, or co-founder, right? And so when I'm building a business, I don't care what you're building.
Who is going to help you with creator strategy, creative strategy, content strategy? If you've got some ex-Coca-Cola exec or someone who spent 20 years in the industry, that's awesome. But if no one knows you exist, you die. So who is advising you on how to cut through the algorithm? Who is advising you on how to garner attention, right? And I think creators can invest their social capital, just like millions of executives do today as advisors to these brands. And so what does that mean? So I think that was a really helpful framework for a lot of our listeners. Yeah, I call it the creator-partner framework.
And this is how brand marketers should think about time commitment to compensation. It's a direct correlation. And I think about it as advisor, ambassador, or co-founder, right? And so when I'm building a business, I don't care what you're building. Who is going to help you with creator strategy, creative strategy, content strategy? If you've got some ex-Coca-Cola exec or someone who spent 20 years in the industry, that's awesome. But if no one knows you exist, you die. So who is advising you on how to cut through the algorithm? Who is advising you on how to garner attention, right?
And I think creators can invest their social capital, just like millions of executives do today as advisors to these brands. And so what does that mean? That means that in a traditional fast agreement, which is a standard type of template that startups use, here's a quarter point of the business and some things that you have to do. As a creator, that means I'm simply advising you. I'm not being paid to be a megaphone.
But of course, if I spend time with the CEO once a month and I'm listening to the problems and my audience is their potential customers and I'm really helping, the goal and intent would be: I'm so invested in this person and this thing that they're building that I want to tell the world, right? So I think every company should build a creator advisory board, the cab, right? How do I find those individuals that can help me grow my business by providing the advice on how to garner attention? In the middle is ambassador. So that means that person is talking about the brand.
And you've got all the levers that an ambassador should have, no different if you're paying them in cash or equity. Whitelisting, use of name, image, likeness. Are they going to say in their Lincoln bio, am I a hashtag owner of, right? Can I use them on our web pages? Every time they jump on a podcast, are they going to talk about it, right? If you want someone to link, category exclusivity, huge.
If you want someone to lean in and be an ambassador for the brand, and you're going to say, you can't talk about any other supplement brand, I'm going to use your name, image, likeness, you post about it once a week, and you're going to give me a quarter point and no cash, and maybe I'll get a return in three, five, seven, maybe 10 years, that's not going to happen. And so the way we think about it is, you're asking someone to put a lot of time in. You should expect to compensate them for their time. Keep them hungry, but don't let them starve. Give them some small monthly retainer. Give them an MG. Pay them for their time.
The industry for the last 10 years has been built on, when I talk, I get paid. You pay for a post. You pay for my influence. If you shift that to, I'm now investing my social capital, and when I talk, I may get paid, hopefully for a multiple on that currency, right? But that's hard for a lot of people. So if you want someone to really help the business, set up milestones that you know are going to have real impact. Our whole thesis is equity should be earned. If I wrote you a check for 100K in your new business, you'd give me equity. But if I'm a creator, I could provide $500,000 of value. And maybe we negotiate and it's worth 100,000 at today's fair market value.
I've got to do a bunch of things. And if I do them, then I should unlock that value. And if I don't, then I shouldn't. So we have advisor, we have ambassador, and then we have co-founder. And a co-founder is someone who's leaned in. You should expect them to be spending time day to day on the operations. You could be a storyteller. Gentleman at dinner last night. He's a co-founder, right? But he's laser-focused on marketing, right? But he should know what's happening on the other side of the business. He shouldn't have blinders on. Because people follow people. And you have to change the way you talk about a brand when you're an owner.
You want to talk about it like, here's what's going on. This whole thesis of build public, right? If you look at Ryan Tran, you look at creators, what they have an opportunity to do is to start to tell their audience, I'm thinking about building something. Oh, I spent some time investigating. Oh, I was playing with these flavors. Or I went to this factory. I met these individuals. Your audience becomes invested in what you're going to deliver to them. And when you do deliver it, that's when they go, oh my God. He went with the chocolate. I knew that was the one. I want to buy it. I want to try it, right?
So the idea of build public for today, of every kid who's trying to build something, or every executive is talking about what they, they got married, and here's the 10 things I learned on LinkedIn. It's fucking ridiculous. But build public is a way of creating community, right? And if I just go back to one thing that I think is really important, if I was to tell a young kid today where this future of AI is uncertain, right?
If I had the opportunity to hire two people and you had similar resumes and one of you had 10,000 followers on LinkedIn or an audience and the other had none, I'd hire this person because they're going to be able to help me grow my business because they understand that when they talk, other people will listen. And at the end of the day, if I put 100 founders in a room and I said, what's the one thing all of you need? They would all tell me the exact same thing. They need more customers, right? Yeah. The other thing that I would tell them is that community is a superpower. Bringing people together is a superpower. I'm in a bunch of WhatsApp groups, right?
The people that brought those individuals together are heroes. They're the most valuable communities that I'm in. The ability to set up a dinner and bring people, right? The ability to have a Slack where people actually engage and show up, that is a superpower. And in a world where AI will create a lot of chaos, we will not be able to get through millions of years of evolution where we will search out our tribe. We will search out human connection. And whether we show up digitally or physically, we still want to be with like-minded people. So if you are thinking about the future, just take the initiative to put people in a chat.
Hey, every time now, and I've really made this a part of my process, I started playing tennis in a new town that I just moved into. And every time I meet someone who's good, I go, hey, why don't I throw you in this group chat? I was like, did the town have a group chat? No one had a group chat in the town. I'm a member at a golf club. There was no group chat in the golf club. You have all these members who don't have a place to know if someone's going to show up. And it's so great when you hear a thank you. Yeah, be the center of gravity. Be the center of gravity. But also energy attracts energy. So you're a curator of people, right?
Be the curator of your community because that community is something that has real value, right? And if you start today, maybe in six months it means nothing. But in three years, you realize that you've built up a community that someone else who doesn't have that superpower would be willing to pay you for. Whether it's increase in a salary, right? Because I shouldn't pay someone who has 15,000 followers the same salary as the person I was going to hire that has none. Because that person's influence has real value. And that's something that I want to teach more kids to understand, that influence is currency. That social capital should be invested.
And it's why I think every creator doesn't have to reach into their pocket to become an owner or an investor in a brand they believe in. I think they can reach into their audience because if I want Joe Rogan to talk about my brand, I can only get Joe from Joe, right? So I don't need his capital to help me go hire Joe. I need Joe to talk about my product, right? And so if Joe wants to invest, I'd say keep your money. Talk about my product. Talk about it as an owner, right? Tell people that you believe so much in it that you were willing to invest.
And so at home, we want to make more creators owners because I think every founder, every startup, every person who's thinking about building something should be thinking about distribution first. Because second-time founders know that distribution is a differentiator. Totally. That social capital should be invested. And it's why I think every creator doesn't have to reach into their pocket to become an owner or an investor in a brand they believe in. I think they can reach into their audience, because if I want Joe Rogan to talk about my brand, I can only get Joe from Joe, right? So I don't need his capital to hire Joe. I need Joe to talk about my product, right?
And so if Joe wants to invest, I'd say keep your money. Talk about my product. Talk about it as an owner, right? Tell people that you believe so much in it that you were willing to invest. And so, we want to make more creators owners because I think every founder, every startup, every person who's thinking about building something should be thinking about distribution first. Because secondly, founders know that distribution is a differentiator. Totally. And if you don't have it built in natively to you, then there's someone out there who owns the customer that you would love to have. They talk to them every single day.
And I guarantee that if they were invested in your company's success, you'd be more successful. Yeah. I love it, dude. Well, Jeff, thank you so much. I think that was super valuable for everyone listening. Tell them where to find you. Tell them where to find Ohm. Ohm is owm.ai. You can sign up. You get a free seven-day trial. If you're a creator, it's free. If you're a founder, we want to help you find more creators to be a part of your company's success. And I'm big on LinkedIn.