Creating Virality on YouTube with Cameron Manwaring, Co-founder of Shareability

From Silicon Valley to all around the world, I meet with startup founders to hear their powerful stories of failure, obstacles and success. I am your host Luke Baird and this is the Cult of Startup Podcast. This episode is brought to you by Audible, which is a service I have used for years. Because I am not the fastest reader, I take about twice as long as most people to complete a book.

This is why I prefer to digest great reads through audio and I have a book recommendation for you. My most recent listen is Ryan Holiday's Growth Hacker Marketing. What I love about this book is how Ryan outlines companies like Facebook, Dropbox and Airbnb who didn't spend a single dime on traditional marketing, yet with modest budgets and using testable, trackable methods, became the juggernauts they are today. And all you have to do to get your free audiobook and free 30 day trial is to go to audibletrial.com free cult of startup and choose from their selection of over 180,000 titles that range from books to magazines.

You name it and all that is again is audibletrial.com cultofstartup go find yourself a great read and let me know what you think. Hello friends and family and welcome to yet another episode of the Cult of Startup podcast. I'm your host Luke Baird and our guest today is Cameron Manwaring. In this interview we discuss how hustling and being present for opportunities completely changed his life.

We start by talking about his early days in entrepreneurship where he started his own window washing business to avoid working at a taco joint, and how he broke the all time record for a class assignment to have $1,500 in revenue before the end of the semester. We then get into the meat of our conversation where Cameron started working with Devin Supertramp, who may have heard of a YouTube celebrity who at this point in time only had about 30,000 followers. Devin invited Cameron to be his manage. They together produced over 70 videos and today Devin's following has grown to over 4 million people on YouTube.

From this, Cameron started a company that consulted on creating virality on YouTube called shareability, that has worked with brands like Turkish Airlines, Pooeree and Cricket Wireless, not to mention celebrities like Cooper, Bryan and Ronaldo. Additionally, Cameron was selected as a Forbes 30 candidate in 2015. If you're looking to find the right reasons to go into YouTube for your business, this is the interview for you. As always, thank you for listening and enjoying.

Let's start with your initial window washing business you had while you were going to school at byu. Well so yeah, I've done business stuff for quite a while in terms of startups and entrepreneurship. I, I think it really goes back to even before where I was just doing kind of yard work and mowing lawns and I was doing different door to door sales things as a kid growing up. And then the window washing was definitely the first business that I would consider an actual business.

It was the first time I had employees started out where I was just, you know, I was on my way to go and see about working at this job that was a fast food job and just basically going to be, you know, cooking tacos. And while I was driving on the way, I just remember pulling off to the side of the road and it was a job I knew almost for sure that I would be getting. A friend of mine, it was his parents that owned the place. And so, I don't know, there was just no adventure there as well as I just feel like I was about to kind of just, just tie the noose in terms of like my time and my freedom, my autonomy.

And so I pulled off the side of the road, have that realization that I think lots of people have at some point in their life of just going, I don't know that I want to be going to this job. Maybe there's a possibility I could work for myself. So I only had like 200 bucks. I went and used that money to go buy some window washing equipment.

I bought some squeegees, a couple of rags, some cleaner, different stuff. I couldn't even afford a ladder at the time. I actually had to go door to door schedule a couple houses before I was able to get my first ladder. And.

And that was that. I started out at first, I think very ignorant to the direction that it would take me. I was just going out door to door by myself, thinking that I was going to be the technician, the entrepreneur, the manager, all of those things wrapped into one. And by the end of the summer I ended up having six people working for me.

We had done over 200 accounts instead of Utah doing window washing. And I took that with me when I went up to BYU and went back to school. So that was like the first startup that I ever ventured into where I really learned so many different principles from sales to marketing to customer referrals to quality of service, quality of product. I think that was a real eye opener and a real life education into the many various aspects of what it takes to run a business and to do it successfully.

So that's kind of, you know, my first what I would Call company. I still hadn't figured things out very well. I think when I decided to finally stop doing window washing, I didn't understand the value of that I had all these clients or that I had all these contracts, etc. I sold the business, I believe, for like $90.

This other window washer, I pretty much just wanted to make sure all these people that I've been servicing were taken care of. And so at 90 bucks, the guy offered to get all the list of contacts, and I sold it off. So. So I was very.

While I still learned a lot, I was very new to things. That was the beginning. That was the first. All right, I got two questions for you.

First, is that business still going? And number two, like, you know, the guy still continue to buy for 90 bucks. And number two, what was the biggest lesson that you took away from starting a business? Like, that is still going?

I think here and there. I actually have a friend who started his own window Washington and took on a bunch of the contracts that that guy ended up not following up well with. So probably not as interesting to the audience, but, yeah, I think both of them are still going. In regards to your other question, I think the biggest takeaway was just how possible it was.

And, you know, we talk about it in this mystic, fantastic way of how entrepreneurship and working for yourself, it can just be this amazing journey. It really was for me at the time. I mean, I. I was able to go work for three days and make the equivalent in those three days of what I would have been earning in three weeks had I been cooking tacos.

So that was an eye opener for me. I mean, just that work is available out there. And as long as you put in some organization and you're smart about it and you are, you know, you're persistent in whatever startup you're taking on, just working for yourself and doing it on your own schedule. If as long as it's a good venture, it just taught me that it was possible.

And that was something that I didn't really know before. I think until you get the first paycheck coming in or you're earning your first bit of cash, it's kind of a scary thing just because it's new. So that was really it. I just realized this is possible.

I can be my own boss. I can start a company successfully, and I can earn a lot more in a short amount of time than I could otherwise. Yeah, that really reminds me of the Steve Jobs quote where he talks about, you can affect the world. You know, you can poke the world and nothing else is going to pop out on the other side.

Yep, yep. It's true. Very true. Awesome.

So let's shift towards you going back to school. So you go to BYU and I know there's some great stories on your class selection. Yeah, I've always had a different perspective on education. When I went up to university, I had already attended university for a couple years before and then I did a two year service mission for my church.

When I got back, that's when I started the window washing. Finally was heading back up to school. I was so bad at sticking with a major or kind of staying on track towards graduation simply because I just was interested in so many things. And, and so I actually, I just started taking a bunch of classes that were interesting.

I was, I, I still have so many general classes that I never took simply because I didn't find them valuable to myself. So I started taking a bunch of classes. One of those was an entrepreneurship class. I had done the window washing.

I thought maybe there's some things that I could learn, you know, from books or from class that I hadn't picked up when I was just out in the field doing things. So I took this entrepreneurship class and I think you're familiar, right? They, the teacher had this really great challenge where he wanted us to go out with our teen or our business within the class. They split us up in groups.

It was about five people per business. And so our team went out and you had to do everything from create a new llc, open a new bank account, you know, assign different people, different responsibilities and positions within the company, it'd create a business plan, all the things that you would do hopefully within any startup. But the kicker was that a good chunk of our grade was dependent on us bringing in at least 1500 dollars of revenue within the semester. So that was, that was eye opening.

I mean I'd already done some stuff with window washing and I hadn't thought about that. I thought, well, we start a window washing company, I know how to do that. I'm glad I didn't. I'm glad I jumped into a different realm that was new to me because it's, it's essentially what led to what I've ended up doing career wise up to this point.

So we started doing this business, we decided to do a consulting company and here's the reason why. Have you heard of Zoobies? I have not heard of Zoobies. Zubies is and or was a toy company and one that's a lot of people refer to pillow pets.

These Guys were the original pillow pets. It's basically a stuffed animal company. Stuffed animals with a blanket attached, kids product. And they've done pretty well.

They had had revenue in the low millions, had a contract with Walmart B on QVC several times. And so I knew he had some experience in business. But before we even decided what our company within the class would be, I decided to go talk to him. And I took a very backdoor approach compared to everyone else in the class was doing.

I went to him and I said, hey jc I know that you're doing your company and I know you probably have a ton of stuff on your plate. I have five students in the business school and we've all created a company. And over the course of the next three, four months this semester we're going to be working on a project. And I told him, I said, the minimum requirement is that we bring in at least fifteen hundred dollars in revenue.

I said, is there anything that you need done for $1,500 that US5 could do? And he said, yeah, as a matter of fact, I really need to do some market research in international markets in Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong. And he said, you think that's something you guys would be willing to take on? And I said, yeah, for sure.

So we, he wrote us a check for fifteen hundred dollars that day and we set the record for the class of the fastest to revenue. We basically just had it from the beginning. And then the rest of that semester just cranked out the work. But it was a great opportunity because everyone else was like selling T shirts or selling flowers for Valentine's Day or It was very product focused.

And that was very understandable to me. But what I didn't understand was a service business and being able to sell or provide something that's not tangible. And we did that. We found students at the university that spoke Mandarin, that spoke Japanese, Korean.

We had them making phone calls overseas, doing research for us. We put up products on ebay and their international sites, testing how certain things would do. And by the end of it, we have this full binder report, probably 200 pages that we delivered to this guy and, you know, all for 1500 bucks. And that was a real good lesson for me to learn where sometimes I think we get so focused on what we want to do for a business and what we want to charge people for.

And there's a lot of business opportunity out there where if you look at it from the back door approach, you know, there's needs that need to be met, there's Points of pain that exist already and that we have the opportunity to go and solve for those and create a business surrounding those different categories. And that was something that really launched into, you know, what I did next with YouTube. So you finished this class. It sounds like you learned a lot from it, that there's actually opportunity out there to make money through a service oriented business.

And you're the fastest student to actually accomplish this in that class. So congratulations on that because I'm handful of friends of also taking that same class at Brigham Young University. So my follow up question to all of this, you've got some business experience under your belt. You met a key player who sort of springboarded you into YouTube.

Who was that person and what did he do for you to help you go to the next level? Yeah, so Devin Graham, AKA Devin Supertramp. I had just met Devin because of, I guess, some of that same hustle. He was filming a video up by Utah lake on the salt flats.

And I saw just a post on Facebook saying, hey, filming a video out here. And you know, if someone wants to come be in the video, come on out. So I called my cousin. I actually was in southern Utah at the time, and I drove a total of six hours just to get out to where he was that day and to meet him and just kind of see what he was doing.

I was really interested at the time. He had maybe 20, 30,000 subscribers. So it was a very new field. You know, this was something that was very untapped in and it was just exciting to me at the time.

I didn't think of it at all in terms of something to do with business or something that I was gonna do for work. So I showed up, showed up at this video, met him, we got along. He ended up inviting myself, my cousin, to come join another video that they were filming two days later. And that video is called World's Largest Human Slingshot.

And that one is a video if people go and search, it's us getting launched off of this ramp into a pond with the help of a bungee cord and a four wheeler. And same thing. I just went up to that video. All I was doing was having fun.

I was just a participant. I remember going up to Devin and saying, hey, you know, I think I can do a triple front flip. And he said, yeah, have you done it before? I said, no.

And he said, well, we'll film it. And I went and did it. And so if you watch that video and see the guy doing the triple front flip, that's me. So I was just having fun.

I just met Devin as a friend. And then from that point, it was a couple months after the fact that Devin was filming a video that was down in Moab, Utah, and if you search world's largest rope swing, it's arguably one of his most popular and recognizable videos. And he asked if me and my cousin would like to come down and help film. So we woke up, we left it around 4am drove down, filmed all day, drove back, and I just remember riding shotgun and just talking with Evan and just asking about his channel, asking him, you know, what got him into YouTube, et cetera.

And based off of some of the marketing research that I've been doing in that class, you know, I just started having these different ideas. And so I brought it up and I said, you know, have you ever thought about doing this, this, this or your channel? Like, I think if you did A, B and C, 1, 2, 3, that this could help your views, this could help subscribers, this would help the content. And Devin just kind of, you know, nodded, and we just had a good conversation about it.

And, you know, I remember him making a comment saying, you know, I really think some of those things just might work. But it was just conversation. And we got ready to launch that video a couple weeks later. And of my own accord, I just decided to start implementing some of these ideas that I had.

So I started, you know, organically marketing and kind of doing this digital PR for the videos. And on that specific one, it was an amazing, amazing, amazing video. It would have done well no matter what, but because of some of the things that we were doing to get the video out there, it compounded that success in a really big way and in a very trackable way. And it was exciting.

And I was just doing it once again, just for fun, just because I enjoyed it. I was just enjoying the realm of YouTube and just said, this video was a fun video. And Devin called me up about two days later and said, hey, you know, I. I know we were just talking, and I know it was just a conversation as of last week, but I was wondering if you would like to come on and be my manager.

And I, you know, I just told him, I said, I. I've never done anything like it. I don't know that, you know, it's. It's.

It's a new field to me. It's something new and brand new. But I said, I'm willing to give it a shot if you're willing to. To give me a shot.

And so we met up for Lunch. We figured out a deal together and move forward from there. And so, you know, over time, I did just over 70 videos total with Devin. Everything from helping produce videos to mainly the marketing and strategy, helping film videos as well, helping edit at times, you know, just, just about everything.

And help set up the Devin Supertramp llc, set up accounting, you know, really got things set up as a business for Devin and, and so that was really good. You know, Devin's one of the most talented videographers that I know and, and has grown into one of the most successful YouTubers that's, that's ever existed. I think he's, you know, over 4 million. Probably coming up on 5 million subscribers as of now.

Yeah, or 4.16 million subscribers right now. He'll be at 5 before you know it. And that's the thing. Devin.

Devin is a hard worker and it was just a good introduction. You know, I think I could have worked alongside a number of other YouTubers and not have gotten the same experience that I got with Evan. So just being introduced in that world of YouTube and working on those 70 videos, that was YouTube 101. I mean, I knew strategy and I knew business entrepreneurship, but that was the best class I could have ever had in terms of social media, shareable content, and YouTube itself.

Every week we were releasing a video. Every week I was able to learn what was working and what wasn't working. And so it wasn't that, you know, it was still a new field at the time. I knew just as much as Devin knew about anything YouTube related.

Devin knew videography better than anyone. But in terms of YouTube strategy and how to get videos to go, that was something that both of us were really venturing into. It was a very new field for, for the entire world. So that was exciting.

That was a very exciting time. And same thing, it just took being open to, you know, I think the difference in success, or else it just fizzing out as an interest was committing head first, you know, jumping in the pool head first and saying, I'm going to learn everything and anything I can about this category and, and see what's there. And it sounds like you feel like doing that through experimentation is the best process. Yeah.

Hands down, I think, you know, failure is the best education. Failure is education without a degree. Until you go out and try things and fail at things, you're never going to also have the opportunity to succeed. And that's kind of what, you know, pivoted and what I ended up doing after Devin at the time, you know, Devin was making almost nothing, something that Devin has admitted publicly.

Up until that point, Devin had never charged for a video that he had done. Every single time he had done a video, a brand would approach him as long as they covered the cost of what, you know, cost to do the video. Devin did those videos for free. And we went from zero revenue to growing fairly fast.

But even so, and with the structure of my deal, I calculated the hours of the time that I invested and spent working with Devin for, like, the first six months. And I think it was something like 17 cents an hour. Oh, gosh. And so, you know, there was a lot more education, and at the time, as opposed to that, we were raking in the dough.

But I was willing to put in that time, and I was willing to put in that effort regardless of if I was seeing any money at the time. So, you know, just. Just going for that experience that if I. If I would have done that, I wouldn't have gained the understanding of what I do now.

That led to the creation of, you know, consulting virality, which became contagious, which then became shareability. And, you know, I'll always value that experience, both on what I Learned from the YouTube side of it, as well as just the experience of going into a field that's relatively unknown and having the determination that you can figure something out and make it work. Because there was no book on YouTube 101. There was no college classes or university courses that help people understand how to create shareable content.

And. And so it was a very new field that we had to, you know, figure out what worked and what didn't and basically write the rulebook ourselves. That's incredible. And what a story, because on YouTube, it was relatively infinite in nature, and nobody had really figured out entirely how to monetize well on it, how to market yourself.

And it sounds like Devin was just like, oh, cool, so company's gonna sponsor us to do this. I'm down to lake pal and launch myself out of this. Exactly. Yep.

All right. I have a couple questions that I want to sort of tease out of what you were saying. So you said there were a couple of big things that worked, and there are things that didn't work in marketing videos. What were those actions that you're taking to try to get the video out there to different audiences?

So when it comes down to it, the first thing is just in terms of how shareable the content is itself, you can do all sorts of marketing things on the back end, but if the video itself is not shareable, or the content itself is not valuable. It's not gonna go any further. So as an example, you know, the perfect share ratio is one to one for every person that sees it, every person shares it. You know, that's perfect.

A lot of content is far from that, but that's what you're going for. And so in terms of what's going to drive something, what's going to make something go out there, there's a lot of various reasons when it comes to what makes content shareable. You know, people share things that are educational, that are, you know, funny, that strike an emotional chord. People share things that help define themselves, that help them feel part of something bigger than themselves.

There's all these human emotions that drive someone to act, that drive someone to share, not only to view or watch a video, but to take that action and share a video. And a big thing that was new for us in YouTube was we had to break a lot of molds, you know, a lot of brands. As we started approaching brands and actually making money with YouTube, they were so used to this traditional model where they would come to us and say, we want you to make this video, you know, AKA a commercial. And you really had to do what they wanted.

You could go shoot the video and film everything the right way. And at the end of the day, you may have a brand manager that's, you know, jumping down your throat and telling you, you need to change this and change this and add more product and add more mentioning of the brand, et cetera, et cetera. And traditionally that was okay. You could just go and please the brand and do whatever they wanted to do, and they would put the money into it in the back end to make it go.

So a traditional commercial, you're gonna go create a piece of content, and it doesn't really matter what it is, because then you're gonna pay for a guaranteed amount of eyeballs to see that video. With what we're doing, we're focusing on creating a piece of content that's gonna be organically shareable, AKA something that could do well without any paid marketing on the back end. Because if you have a hundred people in your audience and the content is 0% shareable, you can post that video and maybe a hundred eyes will see it, but it won't go anywhere from there. Whereas if you have an audience with 10 people, you could share a video that is 90% shareable.

And the audience is going to continue to go and go and go and be shared more and be spread more. And that's why they call it the viral video. You know, there's really a viral element to how that content can multiply and spread and share through articles, through reposted videos, through the video itself. And so it's a very different dynamic, and it's something that's very common now, but at the time, there were very, very, very few brands that understood that aspect of it, and it would give enough trust for you to film the video in the way it needed to be filmed.

Yeah, it's a big trust from the brand to go, okay, well, we're. We're going to give Devin this project. He's gonna produce whatever the heck he wants. We want to deal with maybe snowboarding or something like that, but in the end, it's his piece of art.

Correct. And. And it's, you know, in many cases for an artist or someone, in Devin's case, it's like, yeah, it's a piece of art. And there is something to be said about working with a brand that allows you to film it in the way you want, but it becomes more than that.

It's. It's less even about that. It's a piece of art. It's that sometimes, and especially when we started out, the brands really didn't know what was going to be shareable and what was not.

They were so focused on the traditional advertising model of saying, this is our brand. I compare that sort of branding to cattle branding often. And for anyone who's familiar with what cattle branding is, they take all these cows, they herd them into a corral, they send them down the shoe, and then one by one, they're branding them with this hot piece of metal that's literally burning their skin. And that's what companies and commercials are nowadays.

You know, they're saying, here's our product, here's our company, here's how amazing we are. Buy, buy, buy us, us, us. And what that causes is for us to have such a negative experience with that advertisement that we skip it as quick as we can. You know, I don't even know how many billions, if not tens of billions of dollars are wasted in skipped advertisements and skipped videos and commercials that people will change the channel because they don't want to be sold to.

And so our element was creating something that's valuable, that people are not only choosing to watch it, they're choosing to tell other people about it as well. And so that's been something where I feel brands have a much greater grasp and a better understanding of what that is. But at the time, it was it was very new. It was something that was unheard of for many brands.

And it took a lot of educating and a lot of trust to get brands to, you know, allow us to film things in the way that we felt were best and that would work on this platform. Incredible. I would like you to walk us through a story of how you guys would negotiate a deal with the brand. Do they approach you?

Are you seeking out them? And what are maybe the possible terms and conditions that an influencer like Devin might want to be cautious of? Yep. So the game has changed.

You know, back in the day, if we were able to get 10 or 20 grand for a video, that was awesome, you know, that that was an amazing day. And a lot of it was because there was very little trust still for what we were doing in our industry. It was, it was very new. And even if we had a really good track record of success, it was still a very unproven category.

So when it came at the time, there was much more of us having to reach out and work with the brands and be very, you know, accommodating to what they wanted us to do. However, as time has passed, because of if a YouTuber has a track record and they can show that they've had consistent views and that they have consistent, you know, engagement with their videos, there's brands that are constantly coming to us, asking us to work on projects and saying, we'll give you full autonomy and full creative control over the content. And the numbers are much more in the hundred, two hundred, three hundred thousand dollars range. So, you know, per video.

So I think Devin and what we created, you know, since we're kind of still in that realm, he arguably has created one of the most brand friendly channels that exists on YouTube today. And because of that, we're able to work with a large array of brands. But yeah, getting, getting back to your question and sorry, I like being honest. I just want to, like, make sure I'm answering this for the audience.

So that's gonna help them. You know, I think at the end of all that, in regards to that question, we've been really successful and very lucky, you know, from my career and what I did, helping Devin, as well as helping many other YouTubers and then just brands throughout the world, I've now done over 1 billion views on YouTube. And so it got to the point for us and it still continues to be for shareability, where the brands are the ones reaching out to us and we're able to set our terms and work with brands that we choose to work with. That's, that's not the case for everyone out there.

You know, there's still a lot of hustling, a lot of selling that you have to do. So we talked about your experience with Devin and there are a lot of influencers out there who are looking to understand better how to negotiate these contracts. And imagine at some point in time, you eventually have the shift of push and pull kind of evolve so you no longer have to seek these clients, they're actually seeking after you. But in the infant stages, what should an influencer be looking to find within a contract?

I think one thing first of all is, and it may seem obvious, but I see a lot of people that do a poor job at it. When you have a channel and you have an audience, they are not there to watch your commercials. They're there to watch whatever content you're creating. So in Devin's case, you know, these people are there to watch the extreme sports, they're there to watch the, you know, beautiful places and the amazing videography.

People are there to watch him for a very specific reason. And because people love Devin's channel so much and he creates such a dating content, then once in a while he can have a brand sponsored, brand specific video that people are gonna be fine with watching, especially if he's still making the content, you know, audience friendly. What happens too often with influencers is they get into YouTube for the wrong reasons. They get into YouTube for the reasons of making money and not for the reasons of creating content.

If you're gonna get into any business, I would suggest you get into that business for the reason of making money. Otherwise that's a horrible business. But when it comes to YouTube and influencers, it's a, it's a fine line that you have to play. And I see too many people.

I was talking with my fiance just yesterday and she mentioned on Instagram this girl who said, oh, my boyfriend and I just got back from visiting this family owned berry farm and wow, it was so pretty and it was so amazing and the farm, they're even the ones that are supplying Wendy's with their Wendy's handpicked organic berry salad and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then ended there. And it was just like laughable. Like you read this post and it was so obvious that it was a Wendy's sponsored post that I would have unfollowed him almost immediately. It was laughable.

And I said, can you imagine if the girl had just been honest and phrased it in this way and instead had said hey, guys. About a month ago, Wendy's reached out to us and invited myself and my husband to go and visit this organic berry farm where they produce a lot of their stuff. It was a really cool experience and something more than I expected. Check it out here.

You know, there's a very big difference in the way those things are presented. And influencers would be wise to learn how to be natural, how to be organic, how to talk about brands and work with brands in a way that is beneficial to the brand. Because I'll tell you, a lot of brands come to us and they tell us, you know, we work on a project with Pizza Hut, and we did this video called Selfie the Dangers of Selfie Sticks. It was a mock psa and it did very well.

The Pizza Hut person came to us and they were saying, look, we need you to say that this is the $5 share grab and go box. You know, whatever it was, this is. This is that specific product. We want to make sure that that phrasing and that wording is included in the video.

And it's so tempting to just say, yeah, whatever you want. You're the one writing the check. We'll do it. But the reason that we were successful, myself and also Devin and any influencers that have been successful in creating branded content is because they're willing to stand up when appropriate and tell the brand, say, you know, I understand where you're coming from, but I think the most effective way for this to come across would be to do it this way, this way, this way.

And something that I share with brands all the time, I say, would you rather have, you know, a hundred people see your video and 100% of them know that it's your brand? They know that it's Wendy's. They know that it's that berry salad? Or would you rather have a thousand people see your video and only 50% know that it was your brand?

Either way, you're having five times more people know that it was Wendy's, know that it was your brand. And then you get this bonus 500 people that maybe they didn't make the solid connection that it was a Wendy's advertisement, but they got their foot in the door. So you have to provide value to the audience. And where brands used to really just kind of beat people over the head with their product or their service, you know, I think our generation's BS radar is off the charts.

You know, we can sense and we know when something's fake and something's just purely branded with the sole intent of gaining revenue for that company. And, and we're very careful to give our support. So I think as an influencer, you know, study that, go look at who's doing it really good, you know, see if you can learn from those examples of influencers that are interacting with brands in a really meaningful, valuable way. And I'll tell you what, if you have a good example of working with a brand and the brands are going to keep coming because it's a healthy.

It's a healthy relationship there. That reminds me a lot of thinking about GoPro's brand as a whole. When I think of GoPro, I don't think of this dinky plastic camera made in China. I think of experiences, adventure, being outdoors.

Is that something that, in your videos that you produce, do you try to share those experiences that are a bit more human? Of course. There's a lot of things to be said for the way that GoPro or Red Bull or some of these other brands have done their overall brand strategy and their brand voice. GoPro, like you said, they're not an electronics company, although they are.

They are an adventure lifestyle brand. And there's very few brands that have permission like GoPro or Red Bull does to. To plaster their logo all over an event. And it actually makes it somehow more cool as opposed to less cool or in your face or annoying.

And they've earned that. There's many brands that, that can't do that same thing. You know, there's very few places that could plaster their logo like Red Bull does and get away with it. The reason is they're providing something of value.

And no matter what we talk about today, when it comes to content creation, it'll always come back to creating value. We live in a very selfish world. And whether we like to admit it or not, the reasons behind doing the things that we do is often very selfish. If we share a funny video, we're sharing that funny video to appear funny.

If you, if we are sharing an educational video, think like a TED Talk. You know, we may be sharing that because it's interesting, but we're also sharing that. To say, this is who I am, this is the type of beliefs that I have and the intellect that I have, we're doing it to appear smart. So no matter what content we're sharing, we have to remember that the audience is only gonna share something that's valuable.

GoPro and Red Bull as those two examples, and they kind of go hand in hand. They have focused on the experience, they focused on the content of what Gopro provides, they focus much less on, you know, it's a 4K video and it shoots at 120 frames per second, and you can switch to wide angle and you can switch to fisheye and all that. They focus much less on that and much more on, here's the things you can capture, here's the moments you can capture. So I think it's almost so much of a difference from what many brands are going to be battling up against that it may not be the best comparison.

But know that they're providing value. At the end of the day, they're providing content. They're providing something that has value for the viewer. If we're providing something that's too selfish and it's too valuable for the brand, then the viewer is really not going to give a crap.

Definitely. And I love that. And I could totally see how these brands eventually are going to need the support of these influencers to sell because they're going to create higher quality content and showcasing their product in a much more personal way than they can themselves. Yep, correct.

All right, I've got one more question for your experience with Devin. You said that there were certain things that were working and not working in the styles of videos you were creating. What. What was the difference between those two?

That's gonna be different for every creator. When it came to Devin specifically, Devin is unique in that he has an ability and permission to create content in so many different categories, and he can get away with it, you know, his brand voice. Many would. When it comes to his brand voice, many people would, you know, categorize him or identify his channel as extreme sports or, you know, kind of extreme activities.

However, if you go look at his channel, he has all sorts of content on there. And so his is a little bit different. But needless to say, we did film some content in the beginning where we would try to venture into something too different and his audience would really push back. And so I think in regards to that, what worked or what did for Devin, there's a lot of reasons and a lot of details that would take us days to go into, but we really live in a flooded world because of the Internet and everything we have available at our fingertips.

Anyone can pick up a camera, create a YouTube channel and post content. Anyone can go buy a camera and become a professional, quote, unquote photographer. Anyone can have their MacBook and record music and release an album. You know, so in this age where what used to, you know, be a 10 or $20,000 investment into getting the equipment needed and Then the education on how to use the equipment and so on, so forth.

Now that a 10 year old kid can have access to an iPhone, which has arguably better quality video than we had even five, 10 years ago. So because of that, it's a very flooded environment. Everyone can do something, everyone can be a professional. And what that necessitates, why it's a good thing.

Everyone has that opportunity. We also have to be so specifically good at what we do. You know, Devin has to be the best at extreme activities and extreme sports that there is. He has to be known for that niche.

And for myself, I understand just as much about business strategy, about branding, about, you know, content creation, social media. However, I've specifically marked my niche in terms of people knowing me for YouTube because it's such a flooded environment. If I didn't pick a specific category, I would never be able to float above, above the rest of the crowd. And so when it comes to someone else coming out and creating their content or creating a business, I feel like we have to be in this almost hyper niche market nowadays, you know, where before we could have created a social media agency and I was tempted to, I said, no, we're going to stick with YouTube and only YouTube because we want to be the best at YouTube and be known for YouTube.

And I can promise you that if we had ventured and tried to do Facebook marketing and Twitter marketing, Instagram marketing as well, we would not have succeeded in the way that we have. That's fascinating and I love how you guys were said, okay, let's just go inch wide and a mile deep and nail us down completely. Rather than spreading yourself too thin and going, well, our Instagram marketing all right. And our YouTube marketing's all right.

Yeah, exactly. And how many social media agencies exist out there? Thousands, tens of thousands. Oh yeah, my space, I hear all the time, I'm a social media marketer.

I work on social media. It's everywhere. Like it's mind blowing. And so in that flooded market, how many people say, I create shareable content for brands on YouTube.

That's all I do. That's what I'm the best at, you know, and so that I think it's important for any entrepreneur, any startup to have that hyper niche, a niche within a niche, if you will, just because there's so much out there in the world now that you have to be so focused to be known. And same goes with content creation. Same goes with being an influencer.

Definitely it comes back in the same principles there for anyone starting a company. Certainly, certainly all right, let's. Let's flash forward in time a little bit, because Devin wasn't your last rodeo. You eventually started a company, it had one name and eventually became Shareability.

Walk me through how that eventually came to be. So. So, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of my introduction and my initial experience was, was most definitely centered around Devin and the Devin Supertrack channel. From there, like I said, I was making the equivalent of 17 cents an hour for the time I was investing.

I realized that I was not gonna be able to live off that at the time. And I'd help not only Devin, but a few other YouTubers build their channels and their presence and same thing. You know, at the time, I was taking a small percentage of the ad revenue that they were getting paid from Google, and it just wasn't enough to move the needle significantly. And so I just said to myself, well, what if I did the same thing?

I know I'm good at it. I know I'm one of the best out there at this point. What if I just did the same thing? But I focused on doing it for brands and for companies, and so that led to the creation of what became Shareability.

At the beginning stages, it was just myself and a couple people I eventually, through a training, met, who became one of my business partners in la, and he introduced me to another individual, and the three of us decided to create a new entity which became Shareability. So at the time, I actually sold 60% of my business to those two partners. And in exchange, I was able to bring on a couple of employees, have office space and have a salary. And then from there, we grew really quickly.

My partner, Tim Staples, who's in the digital and new media space. My partner, Nick Reed, he's a Hollywood producer. We actually ended up winning an Oscar together on a project that he had been working on previously and that we did the YouTube marketing strategy for. And yeah, the three of us just basically honed in and focused on what we've already talked about.

You know, we just said, hey, we're going to go and create really awesome content for brands that's going to do well on YouTube. And now we definitely do Facebook video and YouTube. You know, I think shareable content in the way that we do it is not limited to one specific platform. We chose YouTube at the time because it was the biggest player and had the biggest chance for success in terms of reaching a large audience.

But we've had some videos now that have done just as well, if not far better with Facebook video. And because Our strategy of shareability is much more focused on the content itself and creating shareable content. We're able to perform, you know, across the board. We're not limited to a platform update or, you know, simply being a one trick pony in one box.

The principles are universal and infinite. And so we're able to be. We're able to remain relevant for now and for years to come. So you want to produce evergreen content, essentially, yeah.

Correct. So you guys eventually made a video with Ronaldo and you made a handful of other viral videos under shareability. I'm curious to hear the story of this specific video with Ronaldo and walk me through each of the phases of your production process and meeting the client, the storytelling that you draw up beforehand to release the video. Yeah, so one of those business partners, Tim Staples, had actually been working on a potential project with Ronaldo for a good year plus before we ended up filming it.

And we wanted to launch this headphone company that was a partnership between Ronaldo, Monster Headphones and ourselves kind of being the marketing arm of the whole operation. And so we had this idea. I came up with the idea, the creative for the video. We had, you know, developed it as a team about a year before we actually filmed it.

And because we had everything outlined, it was easy as just plug and play. In terms of Ronaldo, he was probably the best candidate for the creative that we could have ever asked for. So, you know, that one was a little bit different. And when we work with brands, normally we would go through a process of one, figuring out if the brand was a good fit for us as well.

Then we would sign the contract usually. Then we would go into the creative process and go through several rounds of creative that we review with the brand. Then we would go into production process, we go into post production, you know, get signed off on different things from the brand here and there's. Then we would go into the launch, which would include the distribution and marketing on our side of shareability, and then kind of follow up.

So that's kind of that timeline in regards to the Ronaldo one. We already have the idea. We pretty much just plugged Ronaldo in the equation. I flew over to Spain, January of last year for the actual filming, and you have to check out the video or include a link wherever you want that video.

But if you type in Ronaldo in disguise or Ronaldo dressed homeless or any of those terms, you'll find it. So while that may be, you know, the kind of strategy or the timeline, with most brands that we work with, we Already have this idea, as I explained with Ronaldo, so it was really more just plugging him into the equation. So, you know, we worked with Ronaldo in advance. We got his approval that this was a video that he wanted to do.

We were already fairly confident, based off of research and things that we do initially, to make sure that the video is going to do well. So flew over January of last year to Spain, got everything set up. You know, it was a hidden camera video. It was all real.

Every reaction that you see is completely real. Nothing was staged for anyone that knew they were going to be in the video. I was sitting, you know, just about 15, 20ft away from Ronaldo. He had a Bluetooth earpiece in, and I was kind of directing him through what to do, you know, passing the ball to this person, et cetera, et cetera.

Hey, here comes this boy. This is going to be the kid that we do the reveal with, you know, etc. So it was a fun, fluid production in that regard, where we had to really plan things out in advance and then just, you know, have a flexible script. From that point, we get the content, we start right into post production.

That one took a while for us to launch simply because the product at the time was not even fully developed. You know, we'd been working on the development with monster headphones and Ronaldo, but we filmed the video before it was ready for launch. So we go into the post production phase. We edited the video.

We would do a lot of testing with audience, both new and audience within the companies. We got to a point we felt really good about. And then came the day of launch with Ronaldo. It may be a little bit more obvious of why that video could have such a heavy jump start, however, at the time, we actually set a record for the fastest Facebook advertisement to go from like 0 to 10 million views.

I think we hit 10 million views within a couple hours. And that was largely, you know, partly due to the fact that we're in all those massive audience base. But the content itself was shareable. You know, like I said, you can have 100 million people and if you put it out there and only a small amount of those eyeballs see it, they see it, but it's getting that content to be shared.

So from there. And one thing that shareability has a very awesome talent with is our ability to do international marketing, essentially digital PR and sending out to, you know, blogs and publications and websites that have related content and that it's valuable for them. We marketed that video in over 20 languages, ended up getting 2 to 3,000 articles written about that video alone. And now because of the success of that one video, I'm fairly certain that the Ronaldo Rock by Ronaldo, which is the product, is now in hundreds, if not into the thousands of retail locations globally.

So that was. That video was to launch an entire brand. It was not just promote or market one product, but it was the announcement, slash, launch of a brand. So that was a really fun one because from start to finish, that one piece of content was the entire marketing strategy for launching a brand new product and a brand new company which is now flourishing and doing well internationally.

So the power behind that content, it's amazing. I've seen for clients that share ability has worked with, we've had tens of millions in revenue directly from content that we've created. And that's a fun day. Anytime that you can work on a project where you move the needle in a significant way, that's exciting, that's addicting.

And that's why, you know, we've done as well as shareability as we have is because we're not just the guys that are going to give you a little bump. You know, we're moving the needle in a very significant way. Is there a time where you guys felt like everything was lined up perfectly to be a success and it tanked? Yeah.

Oh, man. For sure. Definitely had our, our fair share of failures. I think one of those that, you know, we really felt confident moving forward and it just wasn't.

It just didn't quite pan out. We did one for famous footwear and you can type it in. It's called Mom Khana Minivan Drifting. And it was a parody on the gym Khana, you know, drifting through San Francisco and all the other locations that, that Ken Block has done that.

But we got one of the best female stunt drivers in the industry. We got a minivan. We put a Camaro engine in it and said, we're gonna go drift this minivan around the suburbs. And it was this advertisement for famous footwear kind of marketing towards, you know, moms.

And we, we really were pretty confident in terms of how that video would do due to some production quirks, due to some post production quirks. And just even if everything would have gone perfect, you know, it didn't quite hit the audience that we hoped for. There was. It did do well eventually and it got in the millions, high millions of views on Facebook and YouTube.

But the target audience that we were hoping that it would reach, you know, it just been miscalculated or Even if we calculated it correctly, it just didn't happen. I think that was one of the most frustrating things we could ask anyone that's produced content on YouTube or outside of YouTube. Sometimes, no matter how much work you put into it, no matter how hard you plan, there's still not a guarantee. There's a guarantee if you want to go buy the eyeballs, but if you want to have that video perform organically and do well on its own, you know, the way I explain it is at share billiards like river rafting guides.

You know, I've, I've been down the river thousands and thousands and thousands of times and I know where all the rapids are and I know how to get around this corner and how to navigate through this section and how to, you know, go around these boulders, etc. But at some point down the river, the raft is going to flip. And so while we can try and navigate and to get past as many obstacles as possible and get the video as far down the rivers as possible, there's still that chance that something capsizes and still a much better chance than most people who don't even know how to get the raft into the water. But you know, there's an element of risk and when you're gonna do anything in that realm, it can be really frustrating.

It's high risk, high reward in terms of. I've had some days where I was just on top of the world because videos were doing amazing and they were taking off and luckily that's been the vast majority. But we definitely had some projects that famous what were one included where it really just didn't hit in the way that we hoped for, you know, luckily, luckily a failure for us was in the hundreds of thousands. Yeah.

But you know, if a video didn't pass a million, I can tell you what, we were pretty bummed. And so it was a good and bad thing. But yeah, some of those failures, you learn very quickly what doesn't work and hopefully it allows you to reposition, refocus and next time, you know, get off the ground. Yeah.

When anyone asks me about content creation, what works, my recommendation to them is just that some stuff will work and some stuff won't work. You just gotta make sure you mitigate your risk as much as possible beforehand. Yeah. And just go try.

You know, I think, I think there's a certain amount of planning that can go into this stuff. One thing that people are too afraid of in this space is doing it the right way. And I'll tell you what, when it comes to shareable content just because, you know, my business partner Tim used to quote this the best way possible. He would say, you may have all the right cameras, you may have a sushi bar and a craft table and all these fancy, you know, lounges and directors and whoever.

It doesn't mean it's gonna make it shareable. You know, you could have just as much success with an iPhone, but if executed the right way. And so while quality and strategy, you know, is the best option to go hand in hand, you know, the biggest thing that we focus on is in the quality of the content we're creating. How's that content going to resonate with the viewer and with the audience, and how is it going to benefit the brand?

And it's. It's still a new space. Even though it's much less new, it's still a very new space. And I think it's going to take a good five or 10 years before we kind of get into a rhythm of really understanding, you know, what's affecting the viewer in the way that it does.

That's actually a perfect segue to a question I have for you. Is it too late for somebody to hop into YouTube and become an influencer or have virality? Never, never, never, never. It's.

It could be harder because it's not necessarily the wild, wild west anymore in that, you know, there's only a handful of people doing it the right way, but it's never, you know, there's a lot of YouTubers. In fact, I would venture to say in the next two years, you're gonna see a max. A mass exodus from YouTube in that whether people leave YouTube altogether to just give up or quit, or whether they kind of retire from YouTube. YouTube is a very draining industry, especially as a creator, and just go and look at history.

You know, the top hundred channels, in the top 10 channels on YouTube that used to stick up there for years at a time, those guys aren't even in the top 100 anymore. And there's newcomers that are constantly coming in, and it's something new and it's something exciting. So unless these creators are really, you know, keeping things fresh and pivoting and adapting and just contributing new, exciting things to their audience, they're eventually going to die out. And so, you know, everyone loves Breaking Bad.

Everyone loves Game of Thrones. We love all these shows. But eventually some new hit show comes up, and that's just. That's just the cycle of life and especially the cycle of content and marketing.

So if you're out There listening, and you have any reservations thinking, well, everyone's already done it, it really doesn't matter. You still have a possibility. What I would venture to tell you is if you are going into YouTube for the purpose of making money, I would say do not. If you're there because you love it and because you love creating content specifically as a creator or an influencer, if you're doing it for that reason first and you do it well, the rest can fall into place.

Could take you years, but it'll fall into place. If you're doing it for the purpose of making money, I think you're going into it for the wrong reasons and you're really hurt, especially initially. So that's specifically to content creators and influencers. If you're going to go start a social media agency or whatever else, you better have a way of making money or else it's a really dumb business.

Yeah, that reminds me a lot of what Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk both say. They each point out that you just need to start a blog, start writing every single day and write what you're passionate about or what you feel is in your heart. Just start and do something right away. Yep.

When it comes to YouTube, people go and create 100 videos before one takes off. And ours was different where we were going for videos that were going to take off every single time. But that's not usually the case. If you're going to go start a channel, you have to be consistent.

You have to be consistent in your quality. You have to be consistent in your content, your topic, and you have to be consistent in your timing, whether that means you're a daily vlogger or a daily blogger, or whether that means you're weekly or monthly, or whether it means you're consistently inconsistent and you kind of just post sporadically. Your audience needs to know you're there and they need to be able to feel like they're gonna, you know, go check your channel at whatever certain time and that they're going to get a certain product of a certain quality. So, yeah, go start doing it.

You know, your first videos mainly have 50 views each for the first year. And that's your grandma, your aunt and your two cousins, and your ex girlfriend. You know, that maybe your only viewers for the first year. And then you get that one video that you get a great idea for, it takes off and that sparks your channel.

But you have to be consistent. You have to drive. You do miss 100% of the shots you don't take. So don't worry about being too perfect.

You gotta go out there and just start creating and then adapt and pivot from there. I agree with that. Allow yourself to sort of be embarrassed by what you put out. Be.

Oh yeah. If you're not, you're, you're doing something wrong. I think you have to, you have to just be trying. I think if you've, if you've waited so long to have it just be perfect, you probably miss the mark or else, I don't know.

I mean, I'm not trying to negate anyone that's going to go out and plan ahead and be organized and do things really well that way. That's not what I'm saying. But I am saying that don't wait just because it's not quite where you want it or because it's not perfect. Go out, be embarrassed, have some failures because you're going to learn very quickly from your failures, whereas you're going to learn extremely slow in regards to just trying to adjust from something that's just in the middle.

You know, you got to go to that extreme sometimes to really learn. I like it when you said the beginning, which is failure is education without a degree. Yep, it is. Awesome.

Let's move into some rapid fire questions here at the very end. And I have a question from one of my Snapchat followers, actually. So I shot this out earlier today and she asked. I've been following her for a short period of time.

Her name is Mel Glaze and her question is I'm totally new to putting video on YouTube and trying to figure out if it's the right platform if I did choose to use it. What's a creative way to show snap memories from my phone that are in vertical format on YouTube with tons of edit without tons of editing, but in a way that it doesn't look super lame? Okay, Mel, if that's even your name, Mel, you know, from. That's kind of a long question.

What I think Mel is trying to ask is can I successfully be a YouTube vlogger by utilizing my Snapchat memories as my content? I think that is definitely possible. A lot of people that watch Snapchat stuff, both vine and Snapchat, it's been very interesting. A lot of people will go to catch up on them on YouTube because they'll go watch the stuff that's already been recorded and kind of like binge watch everything.

So yes, I do think there's a place. I do feel also that whether it's Snapchat or someone else, there's gonna be some great blogging tools similar that will allow for a widescreen format sooner than later in terms of a platform. Mel, I would say I would start with Facebook video. To be honest.

This has been constantly my feelings as I've kind of progressed. If it's a one off video for a brand, there is a reason to have it on Facebook and YouTube for various reasons. But if you're a creator, I have some inside sources that would, you know, I guess confidently lead me to feel that Facebook is also going to be rolling out some monetization sharing platforms within the coming months. So, you know, if you're gonna create something one, I would argue that it's gonna be much easier to get views and exposure using Facebook video and having a Facebook page as opposed to a YouTube channel and on YouTube.

Long story short, Facebook just has a much better discovery platform in terms of people being able to share and find content. And not find content, but share content and see content. YouTube's subscription model is broken and it has been for a long time. So if you're starting out right away, I would say, you know, launch them on both.

But I would explore Facebook video if I were you. And I was jumping into it right now. I would create a Facebook page and load my main and my main videos on Facebook and I would focus my energy on Facebook right now. I think it's very interesting that you note that because I know myself, I hop onto YouTube occasionally, but usually I'm, I guess you say linked to YouTube where with Facebook I stay within the same app and I'll probably watch one video and I might watch the next one or two in the feed because there are videos or something like that.

So I'm a little bit more engaged, I would say, on Facebook than YouTube. Yeah. And here's one thing to remember when it comes to any sort of subscriptions, you know, whether it's this podcast, whether it's Instagram, whether it's YouTube, subscriptions are helpful and they can give an edge to someone seeing it. But at the end of the day, the only real reason someone's gonna come back and watch you is if they think about you and remember you and take physical action to go watch you.

So where YouTube subscription model? You know, maybe you follow some people on YouTube, Luke, maybe you don't. You know, if you do subscribe to anyone on YouTube, I doubt you're going and saying, oh look, a new video came out because the subscription feed told me. Whereas on Facebook, if you are subscribed or following someone, it is gonna show up a lot better.

So it's just a little bit of an added bonus. At the end of the day, you still have great content that people are gonna come and search out simply because it's memorable enough and they know that it's there. Subscriptions are just a little bonus or a little, a little bit of help. But just because you have a lot of subscribers, remember that, that doesn't mean you'll have a lot of engagement.

You have to earn that engagement through the content you're creating. Yeah, and I can relate to that completely. For sharing experience, I have a YouTube account per se, and I've subscribed to maybe two people and I'll get emails from YouTube and I think I've ever opened an email from them, like, so throw this in the video. Don't care.

Exactly. You go watch those because you know they're there and you want to watch them, otherwise you don't. Yep, interesting. Interesting.

I never pulled it apart in that way and realized, oh, that actually leads to kind of sweetness. Yep. Awesome. So next question.

If you were to write a YouTube 101 book, what would be the main core principles you teach? Oh, man. YouTube 101. The thing is, YouTube is an opportunity and a platform.

I think what YouTube is useful for, it's useful for so many things. So if I was really, if I was writing a book on how to create a, you know, how to be a YouTuber101, or how to use YouTube as a brand101, or how to use YouTube for your startup101, how to use YouTube for self promotional purposes101. I mean, there's so many ways that YouTube can be used. Like in all honesty, it's like saying how to use the Internet 101.

Like what, what can you do with the Internet? You can trade stocks, you can, you know, have a podcast, you can watch Netflix, you can read blogs, and you can develop things like that. There's so many things you can do with YouTube. So in all honesty, the condensed thing that I would share is how to float in a flooded world.

I think that's more relevant. You know, something that's relevant right now. The past month in the world in our nation has just been insane. You know, from, from the shootings and the bombings and, and the black lives matter and police lives matter in Turkey and France and everything.

The elections, it's just insane. And I think we're really starting to understand how much information overload exists in the world and how it's not going to slow down for a while until we figure it out. Like it, it's amazing that everyone has a voice, but a question to ask yourself is, should everyone have a voice? And so when you're gonna do anything with YouTube, just know that it's an amazing platform.

It's an amazing platform that you can reach, you know, potentially any person in the entire world. You can reach hundreds of countries and languages and cultures and just, you can reach anyone. But how you do it. So when it comes to things, I just give a.

Whether you're starting a business or whether you're starting a blog or a podcast or a YouTube channel, are you adding value? Are you actually creating something that can float in an extremely flooded world? And I would just ask those questions, you know, very honestly and directly to yourself. Is my content going to provide something that is valuable to the world, whether that's humorously or whether it makes their life easier, etc, but really overloaded with content?

And it's really easy to think that a lot of people are gonna care about you. I'm not trying to be a downer, but, you know, just, just think about what you're adding to the world. So I know that completely evaded your question, but if I was going to write YouTube 101, I would write something along the lines of, you know, how to float in a flooded world. And what is the definition of valuable content?

I think we can understand how to create things that have value. The success, the money, the audience, all that will follow. And so there are different principles on what commentates value and what value means. And I would encourage listeners to, to really think through those principles, you know, and build your content, create your product or whatever it is around that.

Okay, so you use the word value a handful of times in that section right there. Do you have a basic definition of value that you could offer us something that serves a selfish need? The word selfish is a negative word, has a negative connotation in many aspects. But we, we all have selfish needs, and some of those are very healthy.

So you know that if you can serve someone, and that's a nicer way to say it, you can serve someone and you can provide value to them, whether you're enhancing their life through humor, through education, through an emotional experience. If you're an entrepreneur, you have a company, can you enhance or provide value through a superior product? Can you do it through a quality service, you know, whatever that is? I think value in terms of award as itself is pretty well understood.

And I would just say that we just need to be mindful of what we're putting out there in the world. Because there's a lot of things out there and I, I don't have much patience for people that are just putting out mediocre things. I guess that's the. I, I think there's too much of it.

There's too many mediocre things. And another thing that's not necessarily, you know, rose petals and flowers that I don't know that entrepreneurship is for everyone. You know, I don't know that creating a YouTube channel is for everyone. I think you need to ask yourself and be realistic and say, is this something that I feel that I can contribute value to the world and I'm not trying to sound like Gandhi, but.

But yeah, just in regards to. Just your own success takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. And I want people to succeed. I want anyone that ventures into that world to succeed.

And the best chance of doing that is to think about others first and know that it'll come back to you. I think that's a great point to end on right there. Where can people find Cameron? Well, you can find me on Instagram.

I'm Cameron. I am on Facebook for anyone that specifically wants to be friends. You know, I'm taking a break for a couple years in terms of work stuff, but I love business, I love strategy. I do work on projects once in a while with people if the project's a fun project or if the person.

Someone that I enjoy working with. And yeah, feel free to stay in touch, I guess, with how specific an audience is. I'll go and get my email. It's just the easiest one is BYU cameronal.com, so if you have a simple question or anything fun or exciting to send my way, then, then feel free to do so.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Cameron, for taking the time to interview with the Cold Up Startup podcast. You are an amazing guest on so many levels and offered so much value at your exact definition as well. Thanks, Lou.

Appreciate it and best of luck with the podcast. I think it's. It's great to have these resources out there and encourage you as well. Just.