# He Built 1.5M Followers With Zero Ad Spend. I Hired Him to Do It for Air Filters.

An episode of [Boring Money](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1892517879), 29 Sep 2026, 1 h 13 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2609588/episodes/19867674-he-built-1-5m-followers-with-zero-ad-spend-i-hired-him-to-do-it-for-air-filters.mp3

Stanley Henry ran hotels for 12 years. Eleven jobs in twelve years, because he was the guy they sent in to fix the one that wasn't working. New Zealand, Australia, the UK, a stint in Japan. In his last year he was running a hotel in Melbourne that did more profit in one January than it had ever done in revenue in a January, and his boss still didn't think he should be on vacation. He turned to his wife and said it out loud: as long as I work for someone else, they're always going to want more. Six months later he was back in New Zealand with no network and no brand. He had five or six coffee meetings a day for six months, posted about it on LinkedIn the whole time, and had no idea what the business was going to be. Then COVID locked the country down and everyone he'd met asked him to do for them what he'd been doing for himself. First client May 11, 2020. Seven people a year later. Fifteen staff writing LinkedIn posts for brokers and insurance guys for three years. Then he hired a 22-year-old with 400,000 TikTok followers to figure out video, and The Attention Seeker went to 300,000 followers in three months, 700,000 in eighteen, then Instagram, YouTube, a podcast. Today it's about 1.5 million followers across platforms, built with no paid spend, which is the whole pitch: an organic agency that is itself one of the biggest brands on organic social. Clients came the same way his LinkedIn clients did. They watched, then they called. Eighteen months ago the agency was 40 people. Today it's 15 and does more revenue. He replaced eleven project managers with an AI he named Kevin, a context brain on a server in the office that digests every meeting, email and document every six hours and then puts calendar invites in the humans' calendars telling them what to shoot. The editors are still human, because AI makes average and the algorithm only rewards great. This one is a little different from the usual episode. Filterbuy hired Stanley's agency a few weeks ago. I've believed in organic social for a decade and spent real money failing at it, and my personal brand started two years ago because I decided I had to learn the game myself. So the second half of this conversation is the actual plan for how you make people under 50 care about an air filter company, and how a small boring business anywhere should start. We break down: • Why a marketing agency that doesn't do its own marketing is the norm, and why doing it anyway was the entire business • LinkedIn in 2026: AI slop made real stories more valuable, not less. His team now has journalists calling clients for what actually happened this week • The One New Zealand telco rebrand that put them on the map, and Pizza Hut New Zealand going from 3,000 followers to 100,000 and beating Domino's and McDonald's on social in the one market where Pizza Hut is growing • Why his perfect client is a boring grudge purchase: banks, telcos, energy, insurance, air filters. People are either indifferent or they hate you, and both are easy to move • The 50/50 rule: the TikTok and Tracksuit study on brand versus performance spend, and why paid can't distribute bad content anymore no matter what you pay • His playbook for a local pest control or plumbing company with no budget: hire one young content creator at $6,000 to $7,000 a month, five videos a day, six months, a weekly start-stop-continue, and dominate your zip code. Most people quit at two weeks. A month to land it is fast • The Filterbuy strategy: take the filters out of the content entirely, build a social TV show called Filtered By, street interviews with unnecessary censorship, get the show loved for three months before anyone touches paid • Nike has 300 channels. Why one series per audience beats one channel trying to talk to everyone, and why you build them one at a time • What has changed on social in five years: nothing. Cheap tricks stopped working because everyone learned them. Good stories always won, and the winning edit right now…

## Transcript

[0:00] SPEAKER_03: If I'm gonna make someone rich, it may as well be me.
[0:03] SPEAKER_03: He took a big risk leaving behind a 12-year career to start a business.
[0:08] SPEAKER_03: I said to my wife, like, as long as I work for someone else, they're always gonna want more.
[0:11] SPEAKER_01: And that decision completely changed his life.
[0:14] SPEAKER_01: We thought we'd do 20-30 grand in the first month, and the first month was 150.
[0:18] SPEAKER_03: I think we're on here.
[0:19] SPEAKER_01: This episode will teach you exactly how to use your social media to grow your business fast.
[0:25] SPEAKER_03: What usually happens with a lot of small businesses, they'll do it for two weeks and they'll be like, oh, this didn't work, did it?
[0:29] SPEAKER_01: And Stanley even shows me what I've been getting wrong about social media.
[0:34] SPEAKER_01: Hired you, so obviously we're just we're on the right path.
[0:36] SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no, it's so smart.
[0:40] SPEAKER_01: So, Stanley, thank you for joining me on Boring Money.
[0:43] SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I I guess we're good.
[0:45] SPEAKER_01: This is gonna be a little bit different, maybe, than some of the other episodes, at least I've done on Boring Money, and that um this all started because Fultra Buy has um hired you for a project, which we'll we'll kind of talk about later.
[0:58] SPEAKER_01: And you're um in New York, and I and um we you and I have never met.
[1:04] SPEAKER_01: This is our this is our first conversation.
[1:06] SPEAKER_01: And um, you had asked to to perhaps meet meet with me because of the projects you're doing.
[1:10] SPEAKER_01: And I said, well, why don't we just um why don't we just film a podcast?
[1:14] SPEAKER_01: Because I'd um love first to learn about your story and your business, and then we'll kind of dig into what we're doing with Filterby and maybe how other people could apply a similar strategy or what exactly that looks like.
[1:26] SPEAKER_01: Sounds good.
[1:27] SPEAKER_01: Um why don't you um give me the kind of elevator pitch for you know what we do for for who you well, who you are, um what you do, and then we can go into how you got into it.
[1:38] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, perfect.
[1:38] SPEAKER_03: So yeah, my name's Stanley Henry.
[1:40] SPEAKER_03: Uh I am the founder uh of a company called the Attention Seeker.
[1:44] SPEAKER_03: Um and so pretty much it's in the name.
[1:46] SPEAKER_03: We help people uh find attention, I suppose.
[1:49] SPEAKER_03: Um we've we're an organic social media agency.
[1:52] SPEAKER_03: So what that means is we make content for brands, uh, we run their whole social campaigns, but we don't use paid behind it.
[2:00] SPEAKER_03: We do, we will get to paid as it is needed, but our thing is how do we create content that people actually want to watch and consume that also aligns with the brand?
[2:08] SPEAKER_03: And so that's been our whole thing.
[2:10] SPEAKER_03: Been doing it for just under seven years now.
[2:12] SPEAKER_03: Wow.
[2:12] SPEAKER_03: Um and and our whole like I guess philosophy is first we do it for ourselves and then we prove it, and then we do it for clients.
[2:21] SPEAKER_03: So over the years, I started off building my personal brand on LinkedIn.
[2:24] SPEAKER_03: That was like kind of my first sort of adventure into this content creator space.
[2:28] SPEAKER_03: I sort of took off on LinkedIn, I started to manage people's LinkedIn brands, and then we just hired in people to help us with TikTok and Instagram and YouTube and podcasts and the like.
[2:37] SPEAKER_03: And as we proved uh that we could do it for ourselves, people started to hire us uh to do it for them.
[2:42] SPEAKER_03: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, podcast, things like that.
[2:45] SPEAKER_03: And kind of the way brands find us is like the proofs in the pudding.
[2:49] SPEAKER_03: They've they've seen us, they've seen our content, um, and then they sort of do their own due diligence and they think, oh, you guys can do it for us as well.
[2:57] SPEAKER_03: And it's actually kind of how Michelle found us originally and Hannah and that and they talked to us, they've just been watching our content.
[3:02] SPEAKER_03: And so that's like a really normal journey for people to find us.
[3:05] SPEAKER_03: And it's also a really like interesting thing for agencies because I actually came from hotels and I didn't realize that agencies don't do what they do for their clients for themselves.
[3:15] SPEAKER_03: And so I just did it thinking that was what you did.
[3:18] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and uh it sort of took off.
[3:20] SPEAKER_03: And then it seems to be like a quite a good, uh, unique proposition for us that we're like one of the largest brands on social media as an organic social media agency.
[3:30] SPEAKER_03: It's not a normal thing.
[3:31] SPEAKER_01: Which which which kind of makes sense, right?
[3:33] SPEAKER_01: Like if you know what you're doing, you should you'd be doing it for yourself.
[3:35] SPEAKER_01: But but and so what did you do before this?
[3:38] SPEAKER_01: Why don't you like why don't you walk me through like how you got into building an organic social media agency?
[3:44] SPEAKER_03: So I actually used to run hotels for a living.
[3:46] SPEAKER_03: That was my career for about 12 years.
[3:48] SPEAKER_03: I used to um I started off in restaurants and bars, sort of worked my way up into hotels, and then um I just like worked my way up the ranks until I was general manager of hotels.
[3:59] SPEAKER_03: And I worked across New Zealand, Australia, the UK.
[4:02] SPEAKER_03: Um, I did a small stint in Japan.
[4:05] SPEAKER_03: And so I used that career to sort of travel and work and grow my career.
[4:10] SPEAKER_03: I kind of got I had 11 jobs over that 12 years.
[4:13] SPEAKER_03: Wow.
[4:14] SPEAKER_03: And that the reason for that was I kind of become a bit of a miss to fix it.
[4:18] SPEAKER_03: Like they'd put me into a hotel that wasn't doing well.
[4:20] SPEAKER_03: They're like, hey, can you go clean this up?
[4:22] SPEAKER_03: Get it working.
[4:22] SPEAKER_03: I think Gordon ramps you for hotels.
[4:24] SPEAKER_03: Exactly, exactly.
[4:25] SPEAKER_03: That's funny you say that because I always credit uh kitchen nightmares as my education.
[4:30] SPEAKER_03: It's like how I learned how to do it.
[4:32] SPEAKER_03: And I actually think there's some truth to it, you know?
[4:34] SPEAKER_03: Like he'd clean house, he'd make sure that the team, he'd get rid of like bad staff who just weren't pulling their weight, simplify the product, and then market it.
[4:42] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[4:42] SPEAKER_03: And that's kind of all I did as well when I walked in, fix the culture, fix the team, fix the product, simplify it.
[4:49] SPEAKER_03: Um, and then just make sure that we're doing good marketing to make sure that we can get out there.
[4:52] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you just described every good business.
[4:55] SPEAKER_03: Exactly, exactly, right?
[4:56] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
[4:57] SPEAKER_03: And so I did that for 12 years.
[4:59] SPEAKER_03: Um, in my last year of working in hotels, I was running a hotel in Melbourne, Australia, and I went on holiday in January, and it was my my first uh vacation in about two and a half years, and I decided I was going to a friend's wedding in India.
[5:16] SPEAKER_03: It was just that they didn't think I should be on like on leave.
[5:20] SPEAKER_03: But the hotel in that January had done more um profit in that January than the hotel had done revenue any January beforehand.
[5:29] SPEAKER_03: So I was like, I'm pretty sure I'm okay to be on annual leave right now.
[5:32] SPEAKER_03: Like this is okay.
[5:33] SPEAKER_03: My bosses also thought so.
[5:35] SPEAKER_03: But then I was at that moment, I sort of turned to my now wife, said, like, this is it.
[5:40] SPEAKER_03: Like, if I as long as I work for someone else, um this is gonna be the response.
[5:44] SPEAKER_03: They're always gonna want more.
[5:46] SPEAKER_03: And I know that because I will always want more as a business owner as well.
[5:50] SPEAKER_03: So I know that this is what it is.
[5:52] SPEAKER_03: Um, and then about six months later, I had resigned, moved back to New Zealand.
[5:57] SPEAKER_03: And uh as I arrived in October, it was October 2019, I just decided I had no network.
[6:04] SPEAKER_03: I'd been gone for 12 years.
[6:06] SPEAKER_03: Um, I had no brand really.
[6:08] SPEAKER_03: I hadn't started building a brand at that point.
[6:10] SPEAKER_03: And so I just said I will just spend the next however long to start posting content, sharing my journey, and just like go along, meet as many people as possible and build up as big a network as I could.
[6:21] SPEAKER_03: So for six months straight, I just like had five to six coffee meetings with people every day, went to as many networking events as I could.
[6:28] SPEAKER_03: I had no idea what I was going to do as a business, but I kept on posting and documenting this journey as I was going along.
[6:34] SPEAKER_03: And then lockdown hit with COVID.
[6:37] SPEAKER_03: And in New Zealand, it was pretty intense.
[6:39] SPEAKER_03: Like for six weeks, we're locking key in our building.
[6:42] SPEAKER_03: We couldn't really leave.
[6:44] SPEAKER_03: And so I had all these people who had met for the six months prior saying, Hey St, can you help us with that stuff you're doing on LinkedIn?
[6:49] SPEAKER_03: Like we need to get out there, we can't network.
[6:52] SPEAKER_03: And then uh I still remember May 11th, 2020, and then it just snowballed.
[6:57] SPEAKER_03: And then a year later, there's seven of us, and we were kind of just full steam ahead from that point.
[7:02] SPEAKER_03: And you did it all remote, you hired remotely?
[7:04] SPEAKER_03: Uh and uh initially we had like a team.
[7:08] SPEAKER_03: Um, we had a few people remote at because I was still in lockdown at this time.
[7:12] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[7:12] SPEAKER_03: Um, but then as we sort of built out of that, we we actually ended up having a team quite local in Auckland.
[7:18] SPEAKER_03: Because a lot of actually a lot of the people who I'd met, my network I'd been building were people I had met in real life.
[7:23] SPEAKER_03: So actually a lot of the clients were in Auckland at the time.
[7:26] SPEAKER_03: So we actually, once we got out of lockdown, we actually started to hire um more people in Auckland at that point.
[7:33] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[7:33] SPEAKER_01: So you went from a LinkedIn agency to a more broad agency.
[7:38] SPEAKER_01: Like how how did you make that?
[7:39] SPEAKER_01: How did how did you make that transition?
[7:41] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[7:41] SPEAKER_03: So about three years in.
[7:43] SPEAKER_03: So we'll we're purely personal branding on LinkedIn for first three years of business.
[7:48] SPEAKER_03: And we got to about 15 staff at that point.
[7:51] SPEAKER_03: So it was successful.
[7:52] SPEAKER_01: And like what was your typical customer look like?
[7:54] SPEAKER_01: Like what like walk me through that?
[7:55] SPEAKER_03: Well, though, uh, so they were like your typical like either solopreneur who had like a lot of the people in like finance industries or insurance and stuff, like brokers and things like that, who like had their small little business, or they were business leaders in a sort of mid-sized company who a lot of them were either B2B um businesses, or they were like someone dealing with quite substantial life purchases, like a mortgage for a house or something like that.
[8:22] SPEAKER_03: And so um they were typically people who built most of their business off referrals and their network, and this was a way for them to just scale that network digitally.
[8:32] SPEAKER_03: Um, and that sort of like, yeah, funded us for three years.
[8:35] SPEAKER_03: It was like quite profitable.
[8:37] SPEAKER_03: Obviously, a lot of people had just transitioned over to digital by that stage because of COVID and what it did.
[8:42] SPEAKER_03: We had two more lockdowns in New Zealand in that first three years.
[8:45] SPEAKER_03: So, you know, wasn't great, but was good for the business because more and more people needed to be online.
[8:51] SPEAKER_03: Um, so that kind of yeah, that kind of was our first three years.
[8:54] SPEAKER_03: We we just literally were doing text posts for people, pitches and text.
[8:57] SPEAKER_03: We're just writing for them.
[8:58] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, as a bit of an aside on that, I'm curious, like in 2026, LinkedIn has a reputation for basically being just AI slot all over it.
[9:08] SPEAKER_01: Um, do you think that LinkedIn or the same type of strategies are still effective in 2026 or has it shifted?
[9:15] SPEAKER_03: I think it's more effective because of the AI slot.
[9:18] SPEAKER_03: Because AI slot, what is what it's doing really is it's it's taking everything that was uh interesting in the past and it's like rewriting it all.
[9:26] SPEAKER_03: And so like our approach to it now is um we have journalists in-house who call and ring each of our clients and interview them and just find real stories throughout their last few days.
[9:36] SPEAKER_03: And then we take so we're taking that like real human story, and then just you if you can just write well and if you can just stay ahead of where AI is, then you're actually making content people want to consume, you know.
[9:45] SPEAKER_03: Like if AI slop starts to all look the same, you start to see the patterns and it and whatnot.
[9:50] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and uh our job is just to try stay ahead of that.
[9:53] SPEAKER_03: And obviously, like AI learns what um is good, but then because it overdoes it, it stops being good.
[10:01] SPEAKER_03: And so we have to just stay ahead of it, stay ahead of the curve.
[10:04] SPEAKER_03: And so I think what where we a lot of the content that we create for people is actually right at this moment, is in combating AI.
[10:13] SPEAKER_03: So, how do we make it more real?
[10:15] SPEAKER_03: And like actually, like some of the content we're doing for yourself is like street interviews, and one of the reasons why street interviews are so popular right now is um it's quite hard to fake a street interview, it's really easy to see when a street interview is not real.
[10:28] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so and they're real people that you're interviewing and they can comment and you know get amongst it and stuff.
[10:33] SPEAKER_03: So it's the same thing with LinkedIn.
[10:34] SPEAKER_03: If you can make content that just it's almost impossible for it to be faked or be done by AI, then it rises to the top, you know.
[10:42] SPEAKER_03: So I think quality content will always find its way forward, and a lot of people on LinkedIn will say this like oh LinkedIn's full of AI slop and whatever it is, but um you just have to go on it for long enough and like really look at it that the the content that's getting the views is either good real content or it's very good, like it's very good AI content.
[11:05] SPEAKER_03: Like you can tell some of the guys who have like mastered the formula for it, um, and it's really good AI content.
[11:11] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I see it quite often, like stuff that breaks through, oftentimes on X or something like that, where you're like that was 100% AI written, but it's getting is is getting hundreds of thousands of views.
[11:23] SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
[11:23] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, people still resonating with it just because it's done with AI, it's still getting it's still resonating.
[11:28] SPEAKER_03: Um, but yeah, so that was that was like the first three years of the journey.
[11:32] SPEAKER_03: So and then how we like got into the rest of it is I realized that video was going to become more and more popular.
[11:37] SPEAKER_03: Obviously, TikTok had been doing its thing throughout that time.
[11:40] SPEAKER_03: And so I started to hire videographers to make uh video content for LinkedIn in New Zealand.
[11:47] SPEAKER_03: That didn't pay off.
[11:48] SPEAKER_03: LinkedIn video isn't big in in New Zealand, it is a lot bigger here.
[11:52] SPEAKER_03: Like you have the video tab on your FPA, but you don't have that in New Zealand.
[11:56] SPEAKER_03: But I hired a girl named Joni who had about 400,000 followers on TikTok at the time in 2022.
[12:03] SPEAKER_03: And I just said to her, like, let's figure out TikTok's obviously the best platform at the moment for short form video.
[12:09] SPEAKER_03: Let's learn how this works.
[12:11] SPEAKER_03: Try make us content as our brand, and then we'll try to learn what's working on the platform, and then we'll adapt it to LinkedIn.
[12:17] SPEAKER_03: That was my thinking.
[12:18] SPEAKER_03: But then we took off on TikTok within like three months.
[12:21] SPEAKER_03: We had 300,000 followers on TikTok, and then that just kept on going.
[12:24] SPEAKER_03: This is like the attention seeker didn't seeker.
[12:27] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[12:27] SPEAKER_03: A few months, like about a year and a half later, we had eight, seven hundred thousand followers.
[12:32] SPEAKER_03: Um, and people started to see it, obviously.
[12:34] SPEAKER_03: And then brands were coming to us and said, Hey, can you do what you're doing on TikTok for us?
[12:38] SPEAKER_03: The same way people were doing it when they asked me about my LinkedIn.
[12:41] SPEAKER_03: And we got our first big break on TikTok with a client called One New Zealand.
[12:46] SPEAKER_03: They were a Vodafone originally, um, and then they'll rebranding to One New Zealand, so a big telco.
[12:51] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[12:52] SPEAKER_03: And they kind of just gave us like full reign, just did we just need this to work.
[12:56] SPEAKER_03: We need our rebrand to go really well.
[12:58] SPEAKER_03: And like TikTok ended up like asking us to shop it around other brands and stuff to show how good content and good ads are for TikTok.
[13:05] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[13:06] SPEAKER_03: So it was huge.
[13:06] SPEAKER_03: And that kind of like put us on the map a bit at that point.
[13:09] SPEAKER_03: And uh, so yeah, that took off about a year in, year and a half in, we realized that Instagram had fixed its algorithm.
[13:16] SPEAKER_03: They kind of figured out how to get their Reels thing to work, so we started to attack uh Instagram.
[13:21] SPEAKER_03: We're in New York at the time when we did that, and that took off about two months later.
[13:27] SPEAKER_03: We had 300,000 on Instagram, and then we'd done the same on YouTube and you know, podcasts and all that sort of stuff.
[13:33] SPEAKER_03: So that's kind of been our whole journey.
[13:35] SPEAKER_03: Just we had seen opportunities where we realized that the platform was performing well, let's give it a go, let's hire the right people to get behind it, test our theories around storytelling.
[13:44] SPEAKER_03: If we just tell good stories that matter the platform, if we if we understand how the platforms work and what type of content's resonating, and then pair it with a good story, it'll always go viral.
[13:53] SPEAKER_03: That's kind of was our thought process.
[13:54] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
[13:55] SPEAKER_01: So, what does your business look like today?
[13:57] SPEAKER_01: Like, like how big is it?
[13:59] SPEAKER_01: How many employees do you have?
[14:01] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what is your ideal customer base look like?
[14:04] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[14:05] SPEAKER_03: So um funnily enough, we're actually about a third of the size in people than a year and a half ago.
[14:11] SPEAKER_03: We were 40, now we're about 15.
[14:13] SPEAKER_03: And the reason for it is AI.
[14:15] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I can imagine.
[14:16] SPEAKER_03: So content creators, content creation, we still do with people.
[14:20] SPEAKER_03: We actually like decided that the two things we do in our business is conversations and content.
[14:24] SPEAKER_03: Um, everything else, like we had project managers, we had 11 project managers in the team whose job was literally just to push stuff along the pipeline.
[14:31] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and AI is a good project manager if you're best.
[14:34] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[14:34] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[14:35] SPEAKER_03: So now AI does all of that.
[14:37] SPEAKER_03: So over the last 18 months, as people have resigned, we had a lot of young people who went traveling or took on new jobs.
[14:43] SPEAKER_03: We just replaced every role, as much of it was AI as possible.
[14:46] SPEAKER_03: And so, yeah, so we're a lot smaller.
[14:48] SPEAKER_03: We do more revenue now than we were 18 months ago.
[14:51] SPEAKER_03: Um, but yeah, so we're about 15.
[14:53] SPEAKER_01: So you're a lot more profitable then.
[14:55] SPEAKER_01: Um one one thing I'm curious to dig into about is that like when you say you're replacing all these things with AI, um, do you have like a tech team that's doing it?
[15:04] SPEAKER_01: Are you doing it yourself?
[15:05] SPEAKER_01: Like walk me through like functionally how someone does that.
[15:08] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I actually um did it myself.
[15:10] SPEAKER_03: I'm a bit of a technophile when it comes to and I got really obsessed with AI about well, I've been using AI since ChatGPT came out and I've been obsessed with it.
[15:18] SPEAKER_03: But about uh December last year, December January.
[15:21] SPEAKER_03: And when Cloud Code and everybody, yeah, as everyone did, I sort of went went full into it.
[15:26] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[15:27] SPEAKER_03: Uh and um yeah, I've just been on the journey like I just the first like two or three months, I just was trying to figure it out.
[15:34] SPEAKER_03: I documented the journey on my personal Instagram at the time, which I hadn't really started to build, and that kind of took off.
[15:40] SPEAKER_03: Now we got like 38,000 followers in the last three months just showing that journey, and that's um like literally it's just me breaking things, just trying to do it.
[15:50] SPEAKER_03: Like the first year of AI was realizing that like, you know, like report reporting and like presentation decks and all that sort of stuff could have been that could be done with Chat GBT early.
[16:01] SPEAKER_03: That was easy to do.
[16:03] SPEAKER_03: So that replaced a lot of roles just by making something that used to take four hours, take ten minutes.
[16:08] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, to the point now where I I realize that, well, actually, I can just have a phone call with a client or a prospect.
[16:15] SPEAKER_03: That phone call can be recorded, and then the AI can just spit out the proposal straight afterwards, or we can have a discussion as a creative team, and then it just automatically does it in the background, just creates our creative pictures and things like that.
[16:28] SPEAKER_03: So that that way we can spend more we can spend more time in the room brainstorming and discussing.
[16:34] SPEAKER_03: Um, and so I just tried to engineer the whole AI system around that.
[16:37] SPEAKER_03: We built like a central brain for the business that he's called Kevin.
[16:41] SPEAKER_03: Kevin runs everything, like literally everything.
[16:44] SPEAKER_03: Um, and he does like some of the work that he produces now.
[16:48] SPEAKER_03: Uh we're like, well, we couldn't even have done that ourselves.
[16:51] SPEAKER_01: So, like, where does Kevin live?
[16:52] SPEAKER_01: Is he like on a like a like a Google Cloud server?
[16:55] SPEAKER_01: Like where where does he where where does he live?
[16:57] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we've got a server in the in the building.
[16:58] SPEAKER_01: So you can do it locally, yeah.
[17:00] SPEAKER_01: And are you big and do you do um run your own um models like there in addition to to keep your cost down?
[17:08] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, a little bit.
[17:09] SPEAKER_03: We've done it in the past when we were digesting um all our previous history of like data.
[17:15] SPEAKER_03: So I'd been I knew I uh AI was gonna get to this point at some uh stage.
[17:19] SPEAKER_03: So we've been recording like uh meetings for the last three years with Otta uh and all our emails and all our like documents and everything we built.
[17:27] SPEAKER_03: I had it local models, like processing all that data, so because that would have cost a fortune trying to put that through cloud.
[17:32] SPEAKER_01: Like just basically transcribing it and then chunking out the the information or the facts from it that you want to have.
[17:39] SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
[17:39] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
[17:40] SPEAKER_03: So we did all that locally, and like we're a content creation team, so we had the computers that could, you know, we had all the graphics cards that we needed, we had the big server uh in the office for all the content.
[17:49] SPEAKER_03: So we had like the perfect setup to switch to AI as well.
[17:52] SPEAKER_03: So we've got a local uh 200 terabyte server that sits in the office.
[17:56] SPEAKER_03: We had a bunch of machines, Mac Studios, and some um like Dell computers that had some like 4090s in them and whatnot.
[18:03] SPEAKER_03: So we had all the we had all the equipment we needed.
[18:05] SPEAKER_03: That's cool.
[18:05] SPEAKER_03: Um and so we did that at first, and then now, like to be fair, like we just use Claude now.
[18:10] SPEAKER_03: Like we don't, or and codex, a bit of both.
[18:12] SPEAKER_03: So we just use that.
[18:13] SPEAKER_03: Um the brain itself lives on the server, so it's just a folder that sits on the server, and we can all access it from anywhere of VPN, so the whole team has access to it.
[18:24] SPEAKER_03: And uh, but it most of it runs on like a little Mac Studio that just sits in the server and just does stuff all the time.
[18:29] SPEAKER_01: So when people say when you say your brain sits on the server, um like you know, and I want to interact with it, does that mean that like I can have a chat that has the context of that brain?
[18:42] SPEAKER_01: Is that is that what you mean by that?
[18:44] SPEAKER_01: Essentially, yeah.
[18:44] SPEAKER_03: Yep, it's just a context brain.
[18:46] SPEAKER_03: That's all it is.
[18:46] SPEAKER_03: It's just a really well-structured context brain that uh digests every six hours, it digests all the meetings, transcripts, all the emails, chats, everything that everything the business does.
[18:57] SPEAKER_03: Um, all the guys know that like anything on like company email and all that is gonna go into it.
[19:02] SPEAKER_03: It's not for like obviously we don't really care for like personal stuff, it's just chunking out all the good information that we need.
[19:08] SPEAKER_03: Um, and so yeah, every six hours it just like digests everything into it constantly.
[19:13] SPEAKER_03: Uh and then yeah, you can either just jump on your app on your phone on Claude Code and talk to it.
[19:17] SPEAKER_03: You can be on your computer.
[19:18] SPEAKER_03: We've got like uh interface for the guys where they can speak to it as well if they want to have a conversation.
[19:24] SPEAKER_03: Um, but for the most part, the way we think of it is that uh Kevin prompts the humans now.
[19:29] SPEAKER_03: So he'll put calendar invites in the calendars and give you a brief and be like, I need you to go shoot this content so I can do my job.
[19:35] SPEAKER_03: And that's kind of how like it's a little dystopian, but like kind of we kind of we spent a lot of time prompting the AEI so that the AI could prompt us.
[19:44] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because like you basically you built the the framework that like you're like, okay, well, these are the deliverables I want to have.
[19:51] SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
[19:52] SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and like these are the 10 things I need to give that deliverable.
[19:56] SPEAKER_01: So Kevin, you're responsible for making sure we have those things and you and Kevin knows who on your team is responsible for each of those inputs, basically.
[20:06] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
[20:06] SPEAKER_03: That's exactly it.
[20:07] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so does like for your video editing, yeah.
[20:11] SPEAKER_01: How how involved is AI in your video editing?
[20:15] SPEAKER_03: Uh these days, at the moment, it's still mostly human doing the editing.
[20:19] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but we'll use AI for like sound engineering, stuff like that, cleaning up the sound.
[20:25] SPEAKER_03: Uh for podcasts, does a lot of like camera switching, all that sort of stuff.
[20:28] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we won't actually like have it fully edit on its own.
[20:32] SPEAKER_03: Um we actually just think our our editors are just faster at the moment still and better.
[20:37] SPEAKER_03: So we don't like we haven't seen AI, and we test it lots, we haven't seen AI be able to produce good enough that well, it can only produce good enough.
[20:48] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it can't produce great, it can it can only produce it can produce average, but like if you want to break out in a social algorithm today in 2026, you have to be great.
[20:56] SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
[20:57] SPEAKER_03: And our whole business relies on us making like that great content because we don't have the luxury of putting a bunch of ad spend behind our content to prove ourselves.
[21:05] SPEAKER_03: Like where our whole pitch to people is no, I can get you five million views a month just by posting it.
[21:10] SPEAKER_03: Don't worry, I don't have to do ad spend.
[21:12] SPEAKER_03: And that's like our whole sell is that we're gonna help you reduce your ad spend here so you can put it in more like maybe like performance spend or do other things.
[21:22] SPEAKER_01: So walk me through how you think about um I I've heard a lot of people talk about the concept, and I I'm a believer in it, I think, that um organic social and paid social are merged, are largely merging.
[21:34] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[21:34] SPEAKER_01: Um, and like um paid can get you, can put gasoline on the fire to an organic strategy, but like, you know, it can't paid is not going to save you if you don't have a good or uh uh organic strategy or a good post that has organic reach.
[21:49] SPEAKER_01: Walk me walk me through how you think about that.
[21:51] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there's a really good study done by uh TikTok and a company called Trek Suit who um try to figure out if I overspent in performance.
[22:00] SPEAKER_03: performance or brand uh or like organic which would be best and they found that pretty much like a 5050 split of spend on both gives the most optimal results if you just do brand you'll start to um you'll start to diminish your returns on on what you get from it and if you only do paid the same thing will happen when we say brand that's organic that's organic is that that's that's that's really what you what you exactly um and I just don't want to lose it yeah um your typical customer what does that look like so these days our typical customers are actually like funnily enough are like big boring businesses like actually like product the product they sell is quite boring and um you know like you've said it yourself so I'm not really insulting you here but like filters are a great example their filters are as boring as it gets this is the boring money podcast yeah right it's I wear it proudly it's not you're not gonna offend me no exactly exactly quite the opposite if you told me it was exciting then I'd be a little offended so like actually when we met Anna and Michelle like that's what we said to them too we're like actually you guys are perfect but like think like banks and telcos and energy companies and like these big businesses who sell something that's of often a grudge purchase it's it's quite boring it's kind of the same they just have to do how do we take that and then just create branded organic content that just gives a like a positive feeling for the audience for that brand because it's something that we have to buy anyway like filters are the same banks insurance you know energy like it's something we just have to do why not just like create a content that people want to consume and want to and then like can have a positive affirmation like sort of feeling towards that brand that's kind of our whole thing.
[23:44] SPEAKER_03: That's our perfect client so obviously all our big clients are like that.
[23:47] SPEAKER_03: We got like energy companies insurance companies uh telcos things like that but um and then also underdogs like Pizza Hut New Zealand is a client of ours and they're dying globally like they're getting smashed globally but in New Zealand it's the only market in the world where they're growing and they're actually like beating dominoes in New Zealand.
[24:08] SPEAKER_03: And we're our they're now the largest quick service restaurant by way of followers in New Zealand out of any brand they're beating McDonald's in New Zealand.
[24:16] SPEAKER_03: And because of you yeah well in social at least yeah yeah in social at least like for the last three years um we've taken them from essentially like about 3,000 followers to now they've got about a hundred thousand across their their platforms.
[24:28] SPEAKER_03: Which for New Zealand is a lot of that we're five million people so it's a huge number.
[24:33] SPEAKER_03: Pizza Hut YouTube is Pizza Hut New Zealand like the the Pizza Hut US page is essentially dead uh if you watch if anyone watches Pizza content on YouTube they're probably watching the New Zealand content because that's how successful it's been so brands that are dying or like bor like just people don't really have like good feelings towards them or like have much feeling towards them at all is actually like a perfect client for us.
[24:57] SPEAKER_03: Because actually one it's super easy to change that narrative for us because most people either just didn't think about it or actively dislike the brand like telcos are a really good one.
[25:07] SPEAKER_03: Most people hate their telco they never love it.
[25:10] SPEAKER_03: They're either indifferent or hate.
[25:12] SPEAKER_03: Yeah it's like indifferent is working and as soon as it doesn't I hate you.
[25:15] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[25:16] SPEAKER_03: So that's like kind of a perfect client for us.
[25:18] SPEAKER_03: They're either just indifferent about the brand or they hate it.
[25:21] SPEAKER_01: Yeah because like your ultimate goal and our ultimate goal we're gonna talk about it in a few minutes but um is building brand affinity because like if somebody like like in our case I think a lot of these cases if somebody's thinking about air filters I want them to think filter by.
[25:36] SPEAKER_01: And I want them that to be the the the the the happy and like just kind of natural association that may that they exactly make.
[25:43] SPEAKER_01: So like um our goal ultimately is to to build that and so like how can you um create that affinity using social basically is the is the question.
[25:53] SPEAKER_03: Yep that's exactly it.
[25:54] SPEAKER_03: And so our whole approach to that is just create what we call a social TV show as like a base layer.
[25:59] SPEAKER_03: How do you just create content that's fun or it doesn't always have to be fun like we've got brands where it's far more emotive and like deep feelings and you often cry when you're watching it.
[26:09] SPEAKER_03: And there's others that are like uh that are super funny and like skits or rage baits or all sorts of different things.
[26:15] SPEAKER_03: So the genre doesn't really matter um but the feeling that you're uh making the person or the audience feel does matter.
[26:22] SPEAKER_03: So it depends on the brand and what they're trying to do.
[26:25] SPEAKER_03: Often it's humor for these boring brands because they want that affinity.
[26:29] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[26:30] SPEAKER_01: Yeah I think humor humor is part of how we we found you.
[26:33] SPEAKER_01: Yeah so like if you were um let's say you're a small boring business um and I even make it a little more complicated for you let's say small local boring business like let's say um I'm selling pest control services in um Milwaukee um Wisconsin or um you know and I don't have much of a budget um how would I start doing this?
[26:57] SPEAKER_03: Yeah um if you're a so if you're a small business and you don't want to like spend a lot of money doing it um my advice would be like if you if you truly don't have much budget you're gonna have to hire someone internally like you're not gonna just be able to pull up a phone like we were talking earlier.
[27:14] SPEAKER_03: You're not gonna be able to do that.
[27:15] SPEAKER_03: Like it's not realistic in 2026.
[27:17] SPEAKER_03: Yeah you're not gonna be able to do it especially if you want to do something humorous.
[27:20] SPEAKER_03: You can maybe do it on a personal brand at a local level on a platform like LinkedIn maybe but if you're gonna do it like properly on a normal like Instagram and Facebook and TikTok you're gonna probably have to hire an internal content creator and their full-time job's gonna be that um but that like the reason why I say that is the first thing it's not that expensive you know like even in the US you could probably get away with like six or seven grand a month for a young person to come in and start that process.
[27:46] SPEAKER_01: And so I you that's where I'd start but my so let's say I hire I find this person yeah they they have some social media experience but they're not gonna you're not gonna be they're not gonna be completely plug and play it just doesn't exist.
[27:59] SPEAKER_01: Like how do I lead them in the dry right direction?
[28:04] SPEAKER_01: Like what do I tell them?
[28:05] SPEAKER_03: Yeah my so what my approach for this sort of concept is is to hire that person and then just give them a target like five videos a day and then just give them six months.
[28:18] SPEAKER_01: So quant so quantity is the first lever you pull because you have to have quantity before you can work on quality.
[28:23] SPEAKER_03: And then what I'd say to them is every week you need to tell me what you did, what you learned, what you're gonna start stock continue.
[28:28] SPEAKER_03: And then that way you don't need to know anything you just need to know that that person is justifying themselves in what they're doing and they're going to continuously try to improve every week in what they're trying to do.
[28:38] SPEAKER_03: And then you just like if you're doing that much content like 25 pieces a week as a as a person who's been hired as a content creator within a few months you're gonna have it figured out you're gonna have it figured out enough you might not go mega viral but you're gonna have it figured out enough that you're gonna start to attract a an audience that's going to come along for the ride.
[28:56] SPEAKER_03: And then if you start to see the traction as a small business you might then go okay cool well maybe we need some help now maybe I need to get someone who can give this person a little bit more direction because maybe you can't do it.
[29:07] SPEAKER_01: But I like I swear that the reason I bring it up like what I think you know I think is basically the same the same thing as you but I think that I talked to so many um small local service businesses and I do think organic social is one of the um best places they can be investing and everybody has this um belief like well I don't have a national brand or I can't be doing it and I actually think it's quite the opposite um it's like if you can just put in your mindset of I'm going to dominate my zip code um and it may not mean like you're getting huge views, but if you can get like you know 10 extra views in your zip code uh a week or whatever it is, then you know that that can ultimately really start adding um to your credibility and ultimately your phone calls and and your conversion rates and all this kind of stuff.
[29:57] SPEAKER_01: And I think I do agree like that's one area where quantity does matter and like you can dominate like if your goal is to dominate a zip code way easier than trying to like in our case having to say well we're going nationwide.
[30:10] SPEAKER_01: That's a completely different animal.
[30:11] SPEAKER_03: Yeah yeah I agree.
[30:13] SPEAKER_03: I think that um when you're going for a local audience you're a lot of the platforms will start um testing on a local audience first anyway.
[30:21] SPEAKER_03: Like we see that all the time.
[30:23] SPEAKER_01: And especially if you mention if you the algorithms are so good like if you mention I'm the number one you know plumbing business in West Palm Beach, then like it's going to show to people on West Palm Beach.
[30:33] SPEAKER_01: I mean like the algorithm knows that.
[30:35] SPEAKER_01: So you just need like it'll come off your cues.
[30:37] SPEAKER_03: Exactly exactly that like we know that that will work one of the reasons we chose New York as a place here is that it's quite distinguishable for content so that people realize like okay wait this is American this is you know it's very easy to understand where you are straight away because New York's such a good character.
[30:52] SPEAKER_03: So there are places in local uh areas that you could probably find the same thing that your local audience will realize oh you're in the local town like they know exactly where you are um but yeah with quantity it will find an audience sooner enough if the content's terrible it won't do any harm necessarily like it's because people just won't be watching it they won't ever see it.
[31:13] SPEAKER_03: They won't even see it right and then once they do then it's working.
[31:16] SPEAKER_03: So then like just give it its time but most people will um stop too early in it.
[31:22] SPEAKER_03: And so my my Because this is discouraging it's not fun to post something you get two views.
[31:27] SPEAKER_03: It's very hard it's very hard and like it takes a long time like we say to people that like even with us with our clients like it might take us a month before we land it and we're really good at what we do.
[31:39] SPEAKER_03: And yeah and a month is quick.
[31:40] SPEAKER_03: Yeah a month is quick like we're like actually when we tell like our clients that they're like really you're gonna do it in a month we're like yeah like we'd hope to do it sooner they're like okay but that's really quick and you get that people get that but a small business who's about to go start they're gonna be two weeks in them like this is taking too long like you know and they're gonna give up straight away so if you're out there and you're gonna try it just give it give it time give it three to six months it is a long term play it's not paid ads.
[32:05] SPEAKER_03: Paid ads can work faster um it organic takes its time.
[32:10] SPEAKER_01: Yeah well everybody that um you know works with me and you've met a number of them knows that you know I'm very much a believe big believer in organic social and the power of it.
[32:21] SPEAKER_01: And that was actually why I started doing my personal brand two years ago.
[32:25] SPEAKER_01: It's not something that I ever imagined that I would be doing but I realized that if you want to build a big brand in 2026 and beyond then you know organic social is that's basically the game.
[32:37] SPEAKER_01: And doing that for air filters is incredibly difficult.
[32:42] SPEAKER_01: And I've tried and failed many times over the last decade.
[32:45] SPEAKER_01: I would say is it's some something that I've always been a big believer in, but never um really executed successfully um despite spending a lot of money and resources on it in various ways.
[33:00] SPEAKER_01: And I realized that I think part of or what I told myself is part of the reason why is you know I, you know, am not on any social platforms and um have no interest in being on them personally is always what I told myself.
[33:15] SPEAKER_01: And um so I said well if I really am serious about um making filter by the only household name for air filters that people know, which is what we're intending to do in the US and we're we're getting there.
[33:28] SPEAKER_01: We're we're winning that battle um that is my mission.
[33:32] SPEAKER_01: And so I realized if I wanted to do that I have to um go out and learn myself um what it takes to do that.
[33:40] SPEAKER_01: And so that was actually the genesis for building my starting to build my personal brand because I want to learn I'm very committed to to figuring it out.
[33:48] SPEAKER_01: And everybody on my team knows that and I've been putting um you know we hired hired um Hannah who you know is our I think senior director of growth and um I may be missing her title so I apologize but um but she um is in charge of all these initiatives and she knows that this is something that's really important to me that we figure out and um we're spending more against um you know advertising dollars on brand than ever you know we spend million you know tens of millions of dollars a year on that kind of stuff but um organic social is not something that we have ever cracked the code on um and and so um told her you know we really need to come come up with a strategy for how we're going to to do this and I have some I'm opinionated having had a little um taste of taste of it myself now um and that ultimately led to um hiring you and so I'm curious what is our strategy for the next you know six to twelve months yeah um for organic social um and by that we're we're I guess we're talking Instagram tick tock like that that's the primary yeah um Facebook and YouTube shorts Facebook and YouTube shorts yeah yeah okay yeah um makes makes sense so um what is our strategy for the next six months for that like how how do we how do we make filter by um like the the only air filter brand that anybody under the age of 50 in the US knows about I mean that that's basically what I've told my team many times.
[35:20] SPEAKER_01: And so how do we do that?
[35:22] SPEAKER_03: So it's a it was an interesting problem when we when we got it our our whole thought process around it was let's remove filters completely.
[35:31] SPEAKER_03: That was the first thing we did is how do we talk about what is the feeling we want people to have and as you said like affinity is the right thing.
[35:39] SPEAKER_03: That meant that we had to get rid of filters because that was not going to help us at all.
[35:43] SPEAKER_03: Anything we did talk about filters immediately like I don't care I don't I don't need that I don't I don't care about a filter like no one does no one thinks about that right like it's just we're until you need it until you do need it.
[35:55] SPEAKER_03: Yeah exactly so we actually had to just like okay when we went into our brainstorm sessions just like okay get rid of that how do we make people feel um good about this right so we we realized humor was going to be it and uh so our strategy is how do we create a um a T a social TV show?
[36:11] SPEAKER_03: The one that we come up with for you guys is called filtered by and um it's the idea is that what we we had the thing that like life's better when it's filtered which was a a like a pistake I don't know if I can say that on these cameras but it's a piss stake is in that life is better filtered in your house with filters.
[36:32] SPEAKER_03: But actually life isn't better when you filter on Instagram and do all that sort of stuff.
[36:36] SPEAKER_03: So it was like this play on it.
[36:37] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[36:37] SPEAKER_03: And then we realized that like well what content series is overdone at the moment and we can make it better if we filtered it.
[36:44] SPEAKER_03: And that's how we got to street interviews.
[36:45] SPEAKER_03: We thought street interviews are everywhere right now they are good.
[36:48] SPEAKER_03: Street interviews are good so don't get me wrong but they are everywhere and people they there's a a sort of feeling for some marketers that they're saturated or there's too many.
[36:57] SPEAKER_03: So we thought okay how we how can we filter these and then we kind of again actually I've um I feel like I'm stealing all my best ideas of Jimmy Kimmel but he has his uh un unnecessary censorship segment that he has yeah where they like uh just bleep out things that people would say and it makes it sound like something else.
[37:14] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[37:14] SPEAKER_03: And so we said can we do that with people just having ordinary conversations about their home and life and then we filter it.
[37:21] SPEAKER_03: So uh the test filming that we did and we showed your team was and I've seen it.
[37:25] SPEAKER_03: You've seen it it was about cooking but obviously it's not about cooking once you bleep out the words.
[37:30] SPEAKER_03: And so um we felt like that's like a really good way of just like it has some brand in it and the fact that it's one it's called filtered by which is a great little play on words there.
[37:41] SPEAKER_03: And two it's like um there's a feeling in there that there's some brand laddering up that we can do later on as we want to do it.
[37:46] SPEAKER_03: But actually it's just a fun series.
[37:48] SPEAKER_03: It's just super fun.
[37:49] SPEAKER_03: It's really easy to and repeatable as well which is really important.
[37:52] SPEAKER_03: Which is really important.
[37:53] SPEAKER_01: And it and like what I like about it and what you know part of the the challenge for organic social and what I kind of gave the team is that um it's got to be content that somebody will choose to engage with.
[38:05] SPEAKER_01: And that that is the differentiating factor that um is so different.
[38:09] SPEAKER_01: It's like we're not paying somebody to see this.
[38:11] SPEAKER_01: They have to choose it.
[38:12] SPEAKER_01: And that's what the organic algorithm is designed to do.
[38:15] SPEAKER_01: It's like something that people are going to watch willingly when they when they get it.
[38:20] SPEAKER_01: And I think that so many brands where they get it wrong is they they want to um lead with their brand or make sure that they're getting their message across but really you need to be thinking like what does somebody want to watch and then like how can I associate myself with that like that is that is the kind of directive that the team got from me on this is how do we how do we execute against that?
[38:42] SPEAKER_03: Exactly that and that's exactly it.
[38:44] SPEAKER_03: So our whole strategy for at least for the next two or three months is just to get this series as a baseline content that people start to understand oh this is fun.
[38:51] SPEAKER_03: This is one of those like classic New York student interview series that everyone knows and loves.
[38:57] SPEAKER_03: We get that to happen first.
[38:58] SPEAKER_03: And then once we've done that and we establish some content creators and talent inside of this world then we can start to like take it in further places like we're going to the warehouse in New Jersey or the factory jersey on Tuesday, just check it out.
[39:09] SPEAKER_03: Yeah just understand how they are because can we go interview staff and do the same thing and like change what they say in different places and then just expand the series so that it like starts to get into more like the the factory the warehouses they will be like our sort of next tear up because it now takes it closer to the product but it's still the same fun series and we'll find these other ways of like evolving the strategy out as we go to have the same premise of like filtering the everyday life without having to like put a filter into people's face.
[39:41] SPEAKER_03: You know?
[39:41] SPEAKER_03: And so that's kind of strategy.
[39:42] SPEAKER_03: So eventually it'll just be an entertainment channel.
[39:45] SPEAKER_03: Like that's all it will be.
[39:46] SPEAKER_03: But what it will allow us to do well for Michael especially like Michael will take some of that content and we'll have like CTAs in and stuff and you can put performance spent behind it.
[39:55] SPEAKER_03: So it's the same characters, the same feeling, same humor, but now it has a call to action in it.
[39:59] SPEAKER_01: So people actually can make a and to me like I mean it's not it's not unique.
[40:04] SPEAKER_01: I hear people say it all the time um you know find organic content that gets reached then make it a little more of a CTA and put money behind it.
[40:14] SPEAKER_01: And that's not a new concept like I've thought of thought about that for years and then I've heard more and more people talking about it.
[40:21] SPEAKER_01: But it's easy to say and I think where it's very tricky to execute.
[40:25] SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of people that talk about it skip the kind of execution part.
[40:29] SPEAKER_01: And it's something I've struggled with like because I've wanted to do this and we just have not historically found the right partner to figure it out.
[40:37] SPEAKER_01: And so like I'm really excited to see what we can do with it because I believe in the strategy um and you know if you find organic content that goes that does have some level of virality or just interest then you know we have the budget to say hey we will we'll go and make sure people see it.
[40:55] SPEAKER_01: But you can't pay um Facebook to distribute crap anymore because they're they don't want people to to jump off of it.
[41:03] SPEAKER_01: And so like they're not going to they're not going to show it no matter how much money you pay them basically.
[41:07] SPEAKER_03: And it's just going to cost you so much to get it get it pushed out.
[41:09] SPEAKER_01: Yeah I think that's the mistake so many people make we we've made it is I think it's why we've never really been successful with social um but it's because it's really hard to do with air with air filter.
[41:18] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[41:19] SPEAKER_03: And I think for a lot of businesses who will be listening is that they will ask themselves like so what if people are just like laughing to your content like what does that matter like how's that going to give me sales and all sorts and like for me a lot of the times I'll push them towards like brands who are doing it really well and and watching like Red Bull is like the best one of the best examples in the world because like it's a pretty terrible drink but it's a massive business that uh purely like just makes really cool sort of documentary style uh events right like the guy skiing down Mount Everest is just such a good video like that so many people have watched like it's had tens of millions of views.
[41:57] SPEAKER_03: And yeah he might crack a Red Bull at the end and have a drink or whatever but a little bit of product placement but it doesn't you don't need to like just the brand is everywhere.
[42:05] SPEAKER_03: And so for for people who are trying to get into this world and do it like you have to and like as I was saying before if you're a content creator you just have to give it its time to breathe let the series sort of develop and get the brand equity that it deserves and then you can do the paid piece on top.
[42:20] SPEAKER_03: I think a lot of people will try that brand paid piece too soon and it will it won't work because the characters or talent or the show hasn't done its job yet to like establish it in the hearts and minds of people and then it falls flat and then they go, oh well this didn't work let's let's can it so I think like you know with you guys and as we talked with Hannah this first three month engagement is just get the show to be loved.
[42:41] SPEAKER_03: And once we've done that and we prove it then we can look at the next tier of stuff as opposed to just jumping straight in and saying it doesn't work.
[42:49] SPEAKER_03: Which for some brands it's like a real thing.
[42:51] SPEAKER_03: Like they just won't let it do its job.
[42:53] SPEAKER_03: And you know new TV shows won't always catch straight away.
[42:57] SPEAKER_03: Like the first season the Game of Thrones didn't catch straight away like it took a little bit of time for people to all jump into it and get behind it.
[43:02] SPEAKER_03: You gotta let it breathe for a little bit that's really hard for a lot of brands to do.
[43:07] SPEAKER_03: Like it's quite I was saying just off camera before um we have certain clients you guys are one of them which give us full trust and it's quite rare actually to find a client we actually tried to like test Hannah a little bit to see how much trust she'd actually give us um and every time she was like yeah okay fine like if this is what you said is right then we'll do it and she's like your next on the line not mine like because you've told me that what it is you're gonna lose the contract if it doesn't work.
[43:33] SPEAKER_03: And I was like yeah cool.
[43:35] SPEAKER_01: Like I wish everyone felt that way because like I'll put my money where my mouth is yeah yeah yeah I mean I think it's so tricky and you know I think that creative is such a um personal thing and I think so many people bring so much um personal emotion to it and and it's like um you know and I think it's it's really hard uh my commun I've failed enough to know that, you know, I don't know what works on organic social.
[44:04] SPEAKER_01: You know, like it's not I'm not the I'm not the one that can be the dictator of taste for that, because if we were, then it's it's probably not going to um work.
[44:15] SPEAKER_01: Um and so, you know, have to be very open to to that.
[44:19] SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think that you know, the the one thing that obviously um, you know, we're a brand for everybody and like we we want to be inclusive in that way and like don't want to alienate any customers because you know it's just not in our best interest to do it and um it's not the brand we want to want to build.
[44:36] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we have to be thoughtful about that.
[44:39] SPEAKER_01: But um, as long as we're inclusive, you know, of of you know, everybody, you know, and speaking to them, then you know, it we're pretty pretty open.
[44:49] SPEAKER_01: But I think it made that what I just said is also hard in that um, you know, because every building that moves air, every maintenance manager or homeowner or like you know, anybody whatever um look, shape, or size is a potential customer, um, sometimes it's harder to then find your lane on organic social because if you're just speaking to you know um one certain demographic, then it's then it's a lot easier to create content.
[45:19] SPEAKER_01: And whereas for us, it has to be broader um just by definition.
[45:25] SPEAKER_01: And I think that that actually makes it a more challenging.
[45:27] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I agree.
[45:28] SPEAKER_03: I think that what many brands forget though is you don't have to have one series on one channel.
[45:33] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, Nike has 100.
[45:35] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, so I think like we we said this to the team uh early on is that this initial series is going to go younger.
[45:42] SPEAKER_03: That's the whole goal.
[45:44] SPEAKER_03: Um, how do we get a younger audience initially build that out?
[45:47] SPEAKER_03: But then there's no reason why we can't just create a different filter by channel.
[45:51] SPEAKER_03: Your personal brand does a lot for us in demographic as well, so that's great.
[45:54] SPEAKER_03: Another channel.
[45:55] SPEAKER_03: And then how do we have these different channels as time grows to go after different segments?
[46:00] SPEAKER_03: Have one series that is like our core proper viral series that people kind of know.
[46:06] SPEAKER_03: They might not watch it all the time, but they've heard of it or they've seen it, and then find the other segments.
[46:11] SPEAKER_03: You know, this podcast does one segment, you know, there's different areas that you can tap into, and so just expand it out that way.
[46:16] SPEAKER_03: I think that's kind of how this um plays out and how a lot of brands like forget to do like it's something that we've done for ourselves.
[46:22] SPEAKER_03: Like we have my personal brand, which is very different on LinkedIn to what it is on Instagram, to what it is on a podcast.
[46:28] SPEAKER_03: Um, our newsletter is like one of our like it's the only place we talk about marketing is our newsletter, it's like 30 something thousand subscribers, and it's the only place we talk about marketing, which you think for a marketing company seems like something they should be doing all the time.
[46:40] SPEAKER_03: Um, but we realize that like people don't really care for marketing a whole lot unless they really are in the moment for it.
[46:46] SPEAKER_03: So that's why the newsletter is long formed that allowed them to do it.
[46:49] SPEAKER_03: Our company brand is just fun and humorous and just playful, and we have all the personal brands inside the company.
[46:55] SPEAKER_03: So, and we also have like a um a community page, which is just like literally for young, ambitious people, but there's like 30 something thousand on that.
[47:04] SPEAKER_03: That just is like where our run club is and all our like event stuff that we do.
[47:08] SPEAKER_03: And we kind of think that for a lot of brands that you'll go, oh, but my Instagram is this, and it's like, no, one of your Instagram is this, yeah, the other Instagram can be that, and that can do a different demographic for you.
[47:20] SPEAKER_03: So a brand like yourself, which is both national but also like every age bracket, we can do something for all of them, you know.
[47:26] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[47:27] SPEAKER_01: Um, do you work with personal brands as well, or are you mostly just um national brands?
[47:32] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we still do a lot of personal brands.
[47:33] SPEAKER_03: It was the the how our business sort of uh started, so we still have a lot of that going on.
[47:38] SPEAKER_03: Uh, we often will either do just straight personal brands, like our clientele is like quite weird in that.
[47:45] SPEAKER_03: Like we have a lot of like solopreneurs still as clients who just we just help them with their personal brands.
[47:49] SPEAKER_03: I'll never be more than a solopreneur.
[47:51] SPEAKER_03: Um, they don't want to be.
[47:53] SPEAKER_03: This is their kind of their kind of world.
[47:54] SPEAKER_03: And then there's the uh the large brands that we work with, where we'll work with the CEO or the C-suite team or whatever.
[48:02] SPEAKER_03: Like so we still do a lot of that, like leadership teams, business leaders where we'll write content for them.
[48:07] SPEAKER_03: Uh some of our clients are a bit wider scope of personal brand where we'll do the video content and the and the podcast and all that sort of stuff as well.
[48:16] SPEAKER_03: But we don't um have as many of those clientele, especially coming from Auckland and New Zealand, Australia.
[48:22] SPEAKER_03: Like it's not it's not as big of an appetite there like it is in the US.
[48:27] SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, your sort of perspective on this is quite rare in New Zealand.
[48:32] SPEAKER_03: Like there's not a lot of people.
[48:33] SPEAKER_03: And so the people who are doing it have often already done it for themselves because there is no real agencies who serve them.
[48:39] SPEAKER_03: So our market's quite small there.
[48:41] SPEAKER_03: We have a couple, but not a lot.
[48:43] SPEAKER_03: Um, whereas in the US, it's a very different sort of view on the world here.
[48:47] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[48:47] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[48:48] SPEAKER_01: Makes sense.
[48:49] SPEAKER_01: Um what do you think has changed the most in the last few years about the organic social landscape?
[48:57] SPEAKER_01: What has changed the most?
[48:59] SPEAKER_03: That's interesting.
[48:59] SPEAKER_03: Um to be honest, like unlike a I actually think nothing's changed.
[49:05] SPEAKER_03: I just I think what's happened is the cheap tricks that people were using to get content to go viral for the first few years of TikTok and that, they thought the tricks were the things that made things go viral.
[49:16] SPEAKER_03: Um what I think has not changed is that just like good stories have always won.
[49:20] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[49:21] SPEAKER_03: Like that has always been the case.
[49:22] SPEAKER_03: It's just gotten more competition.
[49:23] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's just more competition.
[49:24] SPEAKER_03: So your cheap tactic isn't as successful anymore because millions of people are using the same cheap tactic.
[49:29] SPEAKER_03: And that cheap tactic might have worked as a hook and bait because the content wasn't as much, there wasn't as much content there.
[49:36] SPEAKER_03: Now, what you'll see is that like if it's a good piece, good story, it'll it'll find its audience.
[49:41] SPEAKER_03: Like no matter what the sort of genre is or whatever, it can have no cheap tactics.
[49:46] SPEAKER_03: It can just be someone just talking the camera, quite boring.
[49:49] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[49:50] SPEAKER_03: Like, but if they're telling a story that's meaningful, it's got something in it, like it'll find an audience.
[49:54] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[49:54] SPEAKER_03: So I think like as long as you do that, it's the same on YouTube, it's like long form, it's the same in newsletters, it's the same everywhere.
[50:00] SPEAKER_03: Um, if you can tell a good story, you know, a proper setup conflict resolution in in every story you tell, you'll find an audience.
[50:08] SPEAKER_03: Where a lot of people um go wrong there is that like they don't understand story structure well enough and they try to break it, or they try to like add in some tactic that they've seen, or they've seen some guy on Instagram say, Oh, you should do this in your videos, and it'll go viral.
[50:24] SPEAKER_03: And so they like force lots of stuff into it and they make it really complicated.
[50:28] SPEAKER_03: Actually, like the best thing to do is to strip out, like strip out as much as you can.
[50:32] SPEAKER_03: The videos that we're putting live on your channel uh this afternoon are as the simplest possible edit we can do.
[50:40] SPEAKER_03: And when we're saying to Hannah and the team, we're not gonna over-engineer the edit just yet because what we want to do is get a pure base level reading of like just this story in itself, how does it resonate?
[50:51] SPEAKER_03: And then we can add in like the additional pieces to get get it to go proper viral, but like where a lot of people do is they'll try add in all these little tricks at the beginning, you know, they'll try it over edit, and then it becomes this over convoluted, engineered thing that just doesn't work.
[51:05] SPEAKER_03: And so actually, like if I if I was anyone out there, I would try like strip it back.
[51:10] SPEAKER_03: Like, how simple can you get this stuff?
[51:12] SPEAKER_01: I actually agree with you.
[51:12] SPEAKER_01: I think it's something I've been talking with my team about, but I I very much agree with that.
[51:17] SPEAKER_01: And I think that what happens is people people get smart over time to the tricks, and so that's why ironically the strip down version, if it's high quality, is the stuff that's going to get through because it's the most most authentic today.
[51:33] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[51:33] SPEAKER_03: Um it's also um I say most people when they're watching, they're scrolling on phone, especially short form video, yeah, they're at their most stupid self.
[51:42] unknown: Right?
[51:42] SPEAKER_03: Well, you think about when you're scrolling Instagram or you're in your most stupid.
[51:46] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you're just looking for like a dope mean it.
[51:48] SPEAKER_03: That's all you want.
[51:49] SPEAKER_03: So I need it to not be complicated for the person to understand what I'm trying to get across here.
[51:53] SPEAKER_03: I need the story to come through instantly.
[51:56] SPEAKER_03: And so the simpler it is, the easier it'll come across.
[51:58] SPEAKER_03: The more human it is, the more simple it comes across, the more relatable it is, the more easy it'll come across.
[52:04] SPEAKER_03: So just breaking it down to its core insight and human truth, like what is the thing that we all understand, and just hit them with that straight away, and then just tell a good story.
[52:13] SPEAKER_03: And I think if you can do that, you don't need all the fluff that comes around it.
[52:16] SPEAKER_03: You can add it in because it adds in like there are reasons why you would do it.
[52:21] SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, in your case, we've thought about like, do we have like a sonic logo, like a jingle that comes into it so people hear it each time?
[52:29] SPEAKER_01: I've had one before, believe that the team probably doesn't know that because none of them are around, but I've done I've done it, but I've done it before.
[52:35] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but yeah, that's it.
[52:36] SPEAKER_03: Like you can add in stuff later on, but I think where most people have gone is they've seen this world come through from TikTok and Instagram and all that, and they've just tried all these cheap tricks, I suppose.
[52:47] SPEAKER_03: And so if it's what has changed is that those people who are making great content are actually stripping it back and getting it more real.
[52:53] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I see it, I see it everywhere now.
[52:56] SPEAKER_01: And um the problem is there's so many people that are used to the old way that it's actually hard to get people to work on on that.
[53:06] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, if you only could focus on one platform, what platform would it be?
[53:12] SPEAKER_01: For my business in particular, it would be LinkedIn.
[53:16] SPEAKER_03: It's by far our biggest really that's because you're focused on B2B.
[53:20] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but if it was a platform that I like to use, it would be Instagram.
[53:23] SPEAKER_01: Instagram.
[53:24] SPEAKER_03: And only because so if I could if I could actually I'll change my answer.
[53:30] SPEAKER_03: If I could focus on one platform and know I'm gonna be successful on it, it would be YouTube long form.
[53:35] SPEAKER_03: It's by far the most audience.
[53:37] SPEAKER_03: I agree, that's why it's my focus.
[53:39] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, by far.
[53:41] SPEAKER_03: If when I talk to brands, and that's probably why my first answer come out, is that Instagram is far easier to win.
[53:48] SPEAKER_03: It's far easier to win Instagram than it is YouTube.
[53:50] SPEAKER_03: YouTube is hard, and but that's why the payoff is so much bigger as well.
[53:54] SPEAKER_03: It's such a hard place.
[53:55] SPEAKER_01: I agree with you.
[53:56] SPEAKER_01: That is like it's my personal brand focus, but um as it to for a brand, I mean, I think we're with you at least more focused on Instagram, probably than TikTok.
[54:05] SPEAKER_01: I mean, TikTok, I see I think maybe it's a different strategy than like what you do, and that there's so much you can use other influencers, which we're also toying with in TikTok, um, where you don't control it's not brand content, but it's you know, um seeded content.
[54:22] SPEAKER_01: Um, I I do think that you know, if I was like if I was just a pure product brand, not air filters probably, but a pure product brand, that's where I would be focused would be TikTok probably.
[54:32] SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
[54:33] SPEAKER_01: Um I mean it's it's not novel.
[54:35] SPEAKER_01: Like you look at like comfort or um, you know, um a lot of these um energy, energy drink companies and whatnot, it's TikTok and that that's driving it, and they're just seeding their product to lots of influencers and then paying them affiliate commissions and paying them to post videos.
[54:50] SPEAKER_01: We're starting to do some of that.
[54:52] SPEAKER_01: Um we're figuring it out for filter.
[54:55] SPEAKER_01: But it's harder with filters because people don't want don't don't just want samples of filters where they they would love samples of their favorite energy drink or their you know comf comfortable clothes, their sweatpants or whatever.
[55:06] SPEAKER_03: But um one of the reasons I pick Instagram uh for a lot of that reason for brand and product is you have more once you've got an audience, you got more things you can do with them on Instagram.
[55:17] SPEAKER_03: Like it's TikTok, very few people do anything on TikTok other than scroll the videos.
[55:23] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but on Instagram, people will watch stories, they will look at static content properly.
[55:28] SPEAKER_03: Um their ad platform is way better, way stronger, obviously, with meta.
[55:33] SPEAKER_03: Um, so I think like from a product perspective, there's a lot more you can do organically, and also then with ad and placement.
[55:41] SPEAKER_03: The only advantage TikTok has is because it does have a that it's inbuilt shop platform.
[55:46] SPEAKER_03: It's quite strong, especially in the US.
[55:48] SPEAKER_03: It's very strong here.
[55:48] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, and they're they're rapidly iterating on all this other stuff.
[55:54] SPEAKER_01: So like I think that they're getting better at it from what I can see.
[55:58] SPEAKER_01: We're we're not it's not meaningful for us, but I'm convinced like we're we're starting to invest in it because I'm convinced that they will figure aspects of that out.
[56:08] SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
[56:08] SPEAKER_01: Uh but it's an and game, is that we want to do both.
[56:10] SPEAKER_01: It's like for us, it's not it's not one or the other.
[56:12] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but I was just thinking, you know, I was curious as to your perspective of platform.
[56:17] SPEAKER_01: So like if you're in my situation, and kind of we can kind of wrap up with this, but I'm curious.
[56:21] SPEAKER_01: Like if you're in my situation, you see what we're doing, see where we are, what do you think we should be looking at in doing that we're not doing today?
[56:28] SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
[56:29] SPEAKER_03: Um that's a good question.
[56:32] SPEAKER_03: I uh I would look at um like my brain's going to well, actually, you're doing the the you're going through the strategy that I would do, which is you've built your personality.
[56:44] SPEAKER_03: We've hired you, so obviously we're doing it we're on the right path.
[56:47] SPEAKER_00: You're doing like the best thing ever.
[56:49] SPEAKER_02: You're so smart.
[56:50] SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, no, it's so smart.
[56:52] SPEAKER_03: Quadruple down on this, but quadruple down on the attention take your buddy.
[56:56] SPEAKER_03: No, but I I think we've kind of talked about it.
[56:57] SPEAKER_03: It's like it is actually that.
[56:59] SPEAKER_03: It's like you build a social series, you get this first one going, we invest in it properly, we do the right job, and then you build the next show, you build the next series, and you go after the next audience.
[57:09] SPEAKER_03: Um, I don't think that for a lot of brands, I think that you shouldn't try too much at once, even if you have the resources to do it.
[57:16] SPEAKER_03: I agree.
[57:17] SPEAKER_03: And because your mind gets split, and you'll also like something will work, and then you'll favor that and not the other one, and then it won't get its resources it needs, and then it'll die.
[57:26] SPEAKER_03: I've made that mistake too many times.
[57:28] SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
[57:28] unknown: Yeah.
[57:28] SPEAKER_03: And we're well, I've done it myself.
[57:30] SPEAKER_03: Like we've tried too much things at the same time.
[57:32] SPEAKER_03: So now we try, okay, every time we're going to go into a new platform and a new channel, let's just only do that, put all our effort into that once we've got all these ones working, BAU.
[57:40] SPEAKER_03: And so I think for you guys, like you're already doing so much at the moment.
[57:44] SPEAKER_03: A lot of it's in like a paid capacity space and influencers and both paid ads.
[57:49] SPEAKER_03: So as an organic series, I've and what we've said to the team is like, we're not gonna do two or three series here, we're gonna do one for the first few months and just get it right.
[57:56] SPEAKER_03: That way, you guys will give it the attention it needs, and so it'll all get its focus, and then we build on it from there.
[58:02] SPEAKER_03: So I think we like add layers to it as we go.
[58:05] SPEAKER_03: And I think I think realistically, you build the show, you build on top like what we would call like the service content.
[58:10] SPEAKER_03: So once we've established it, what's the content that's closer to the brand, like the warehouses and factories and whatever?
[58:16] SPEAKER_03: Go to that, and then what's the new show that targets a whole different demographic?
[58:20] SPEAKER_03: And yeah, like I said, increase our retainer and do more.
[58:23] SPEAKER_01: Like what is the right, what is the right mindset?
[58:25] SPEAKER_01: Like how when you like what mindset do you need to put put yourself in um when you're creating content?
[58:31] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like well, let's see, a lot of people will talk about this attention being a currency and and whatnot, and we've got to how do we spend that?
[58:38] SPEAKER_03: Well, when we watch, let's let's pick like a TV show that's like quite successful, and when you're watching that, it's the same thing, it's the same game.
[58:45] SPEAKER_03: You're spending your attention watching.
[58:46] SPEAKER_03: Let's just use Game of Thrones because I talked about it earlier, at least the first seven seasons when people were watching, they really enjoyed it and they went back.
[58:53] SPEAKER_03: So that feeling of making someone fully entertained is worth them spending their money.
[59:00] SPEAKER_03: When we go to the movies and we watch a great movie, that is a great purchase for us, you know.
[59:04] SPEAKER_03: Like when we've literally spent money and attention to go to the movies.
[59:07] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[59:08] SPEAKER_03: And we'll go back and watch another movie by the same person, right?
[59:11] SPEAKER_03: Like we'll go.
[59:12] SPEAKER_03: Marvel has like managed to figure out this machine to get us to go watch every single movie.
[59:16] SPEAKER_01: I think that's a great, that's a great analogy.
[59:18] SPEAKER_01: You're paying and you're giving your two hours of time.
[59:20] SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
[59:21] SPEAKER_01: So like that's that that's the that's the bar that you should be aiming for.
[59:25] SPEAKER_03: Exactly, right?
[59:25] SPEAKER_03: And so if I can get you to come back and watch every single Marvel movie, then I must have created something so entertaining and such a good story that you're willing to come back and watch the next one.
[59:34] SPEAKER_03: And so if I can do the same thing on social content where you don't have to also pay me 25 bucks to come to watch the movie, and you just have to spend your time in the movie.
[59:41] SPEAKER_03: You're gonna win.
[59:42] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, if you do that, you're gonna win.
[59:45] SPEAKER_03: But we we've talked about internally, like there is something very powerful about a founder or CEO leading some of the content.
[59:53] SPEAKER_03: It's just such an authority piece, especially when it's humorous and it's funny.
[59:57] SPEAKER_04: Yeah, one more question.
[59:58] SPEAKER_04: We have thoughts on Instagram going long form.
[1:00:01] SPEAKER_04: And the thing where Instagram wants to get in the YouTube long form game.
[1:00:05] SPEAKER_04: What's your thing on that?
[1:00:06] SPEAKER_04: What if what have you pulled around and specifically thought about that?
[1:00:09] SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
[1:00:09] SPEAKER_03: I don't know if it'll play out well for them.
[1:00:12] SPEAKER_03: I don't think it's why I'm there.
[1:00:14] SPEAKER_03: They could potentially make it work.
[1:00:15] SPEAKER_01: Because the market seems to be going almost the other way, like YouTube is going shorter.
[1:00:19] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I th I don't think people will beat YouTube anytime soon.
[1:00:23] SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't their model's too good, it's too lucrative for for creators.
[1:00:28] SPEAKER_03: They're 50% split or 55% split or what do they have?
[1:00:31] SPEAKER_03: Um, for the young creators who can like, I don't need brand deals, I can just make money from YouTube, at least in the beginning.
[1:00:37] SPEAKER_03: It's just gone to attract all the best creators.
[1:00:40] SPEAKER_01: That would be a tough game to live off AdSense, I think.
[1:00:42] SPEAKER_01: Of course, it would be, definitely.
[1:00:43] SPEAKER_03: But like as a way of like, you know, you think um young creators who are trying to make content, getting brand deals early on um when your channel wasn't necessarily like super viral is quite hard.
[1:00:53] SPEAKER_03: So like AdSense can at least like bring in some money to begin with.
[1:00:57] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
[1:00:58] SPEAKER_03: And yeah, you definitely don't want to live off that.
[1:01:00] SPEAKER_03: And like all the biggest creators don't, it becomes a small portion of what they are, but that's once the brand deals can come in.
[1:01:06] SPEAKER_03: I think that Instagram trying to go long form is uh I don't think it'll work out.
[1:01:12] SPEAKER_03: Like I I it they would have won it already, they would have figured out there's enough money behind them to figure it out.
[1:01:18] SPEAKER_03: I just don't think the behavior's there at the moment, they'll have to fundamentally change the way that we interact with the app.
[1:01:24] SPEAKER_03: It's it's it's not how the behavior works.
[1:01:27] SPEAKER_03: Um, it's which is why I actually quite like Instagram as a platform over TikTok, is that like stories is something that behaviorally we do a lot.
[1:01:35] SPEAKER_03: Like people will watch stories a lot.
[1:01:37] SPEAKER_03: Like for me, actually, most of the content I watch, the first thing I watch on Instagram is stories.
[1:01:42] SPEAKER_03: I'll hit that first before I hit the Reels tab because I want to catch up with where is all my friends at?
[1:01:46] SPEAKER_03: Where are all my the people I know?
[1:01:48] SPEAKER_03: What are they doing?
[1:01:48] SPEAKER_03: Where are they?
[1:01:51] SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
[1:01:51] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I think because Instagram is that and Facebook, it is different feeling.
[1:01:56] SPEAKER_03: Like it is about now.
[1:01:58] SPEAKER_03: YouTube isn't, YouTube can be evergreen, like it's a different thing.
[1:02:02] SPEAKER_03: We it it is far no one people didn't look at YouTube even a couple years ago as a social media platform.
[1:02:08] SPEAKER_03: They just it was like a video platform, a video on demand platform.
[1:02:11] SPEAKER_03: Now it is a social media platform, they're starting to realize that those lines got blurred.
[1:02:15] SPEAKER_03: Instagram started as a social media platform, it's not a video on demand platform, and people don't yet look at it that way.
[1:02:22] SPEAKER_03: I think the can the transition from YouTube to short form is much easier for them to understand because it's still video on demand, but it has that that short um social feel.
[1:02:31] SPEAKER_03: Instagram to go the other way, I think uh behaviorally, I don't think humans are gonna use it that way anytime soon.
[1:02:37] SPEAKER_04: It could, I mean, like a long way because I think Instagram's idea is that Instagram is a much better discovery platform than YouTube.
[1:02:44] SPEAKER_04: So it's easier to discover somebody potentially on Instagram because I think people are on it more than they are on YouTube.
[1:02:50] SPEAKER_04: And on YouTube, you're less in the weeds board in that stupid state that you talked about.
[1:02:56] SPEAKER_04: And so Instagram, I think at least I'm trying to think that we'll find it.
[1:02:59] SPEAKER_04: That's a big investment.
[1:03:01] SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
[1:03:01] SPEAKER_03: I mean, look, if they do it, cool.
[1:03:04] SPEAKER_03: Like we'll be there, we'll play into it.
[1:03:06] SPEAKER_03: Like if they if they're gonna make it work, we'll ride the wave.
[1:03:08] SPEAKER_03: Like every time these platforms do stuff and it's working, they're putting money, we'll give it a go.
[1:03:12] SPEAKER_04: Like these platforms usually when they try something new, they like incentivize energy to do it.
[1:03:16] SPEAKER_03: 100% right now, like artificially using edits to edit your reels and putting it out, like it will get you a booth.
[1:03:22] SPEAKER_03: Like they have told us in no uncertain terms that use edits, trust us, you'll get better results, like in editing and in edits.
[1:03:30] SPEAKER_03: Um But look, I think that it's gonna take a long time to beat YouTube at the long form game.
[1:03:36] SPEAKER_01: Like YouTube's beating the streaming platform, so like Yeah, that's why YouTube is the most valuable of the of the um platforms, in my opinion.
[1:03:44] SPEAKER_01: That's why my personal brand, at least you were YouTube focused to this point.
[1:03:49] SPEAKER_01: So if if you were advising a personal brand today or advising me on my personal brand today, what do you think should be the focus of that?
[1:03:56] SPEAKER_01: Like, where do you think that the where do you think personal brands are moving?
[1:04:00] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's interesting.
[1:04:02] SPEAKER_03: Like you can do anything from like funny street interviews to a vlog.
[1:04:06] SPEAKER_03: As long as the story's there, it'll work.
[1:04:08] SPEAKER_03: And I think that like it depends on what your audience, what you're trying to get with your audience.
[1:04:12] SPEAKER_01: Um but it's hard.
[1:04:14] SPEAKER_01: Like you have to um have a consistent storyline to an extent if you want to build a consistent audience.
[1:04:23] SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, I think that's easier said than done.
[1:04:27] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[1:04:27] SPEAKER_01: Um, but I definitely I definitely think that the market is moving to a less produced um format.
[1:04:37] SPEAKER_01: Just because I I think that people are resonating with the less produced format in the kind of AI-driven world, that you're it's actually commoditizing um a lot of the more traditionally produced formats that that have worked historically.
[1:04:50] SPEAKER_03: I think when I we talk about cheap tricks and editing, you could edit something boring into something awesome by good with good editing.
[1:04:58] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree.
[1:04:59] SPEAKER_01: Editing is still key.
[1:05:02] SPEAKER_03: I think that if you those editing techniques, because they're so much more affordable to get a good editor, that now, because everyone's doing that in good editing, now the story has to play through.
[1:05:16] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I agree.
[1:05:16] SPEAKER_01: That's what's changed.
[1:05:17] SPEAKER_01: That that is what's changed.
[1:05:18] SPEAKER_01: I completely agree with you.
[1:05:20] SPEAKER_01: And that and that's really in the last year that that's really changed.
[1:05:22] SPEAKER_01: For sure.
[1:05:23] SPEAKER_01: But but that that that is that is what's changed.
[1:05:25] SPEAKER_01: Which means you can take away the editing now.
[1:05:27] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you have to have a good story.
[1:05:29] SPEAKER_01: You actually have, but you actually have to.
[1:05:30] SPEAKER_01: And and that that's what shifted.
[1:05:32] SPEAKER_01: It's like, and it it kind of it went, it almost went full circle because it started off where it's more raw was working, like, and you saw like those kind of vlog styles.
[1:05:42] SPEAKER_01: Well, then the people that were editing really well um were the ones that were winning, and that worked for a while, and now that's gotten oversaturated.
[1:05:51] SPEAKER_01: It's actually come back to just really good story that as that's winning.
[1:05:56] SPEAKER_01: So it's like it's it's actually come full circle.
[1:05:58] SPEAKER_01: And then we'll just keep going because these.
[1:06:00] SPEAKER_03: The best creators who tell the best stories will all improve the editing.
[1:06:04] SPEAKER_03: You know, over time they'll start reinvesting into more and better editing and make it look nicer and whatnot.
[1:06:09] SPEAKER_03: Um, because that'll be the edge that they take.
[1:06:11] SPEAKER_03: Because every it's a game, they're all trying to fight for a few extra views, and then and then something will happen, and then everyone will copy the editing techniques, thinking that's what got them the views as opposed to the story, and then the cycle just continue and continue.
[1:06:23] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's interesting, but I I definitely I definitely see it.
[1:06:26] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[1:06:27] SPEAKER_01: And in um even recent months, I see it.
[1:06:30] SPEAKER_01: And it's it's fascinating to me.
[1:06:32] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[1:06:33] SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, it's it's uh it's a it's a challenging game.
[1:06:38] SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't envy you and your business situation, honestly, because I I think you know it's a it's a very difficult business to scale.
[1:06:47] SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, agencies are by definition not scalable in my opinion.
[1:06:51] SPEAKER_01: Um and so you as which they can be great businesses, but it's but they're not they're not they're hard to scale.
[1:06:58] SPEAKER_01: And you know, you're playing in a game that's constantly changing.
[1:07:04] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
[1:07:05] SPEAKER_03: Um and cash flow as well, cash flow as well, yeah.
[1:07:08] SPEAKER_03: And so use that to fund my marketing team to build the brand.
[1:07:13] SPEAKER_03: And then once we got the brand, use the brand to do everything else I want to do in the future.
[1:07:17] SPEAKER_03: So at the moment, we're like six and a half years in.
[1:07:20] SPEAKER_03: The agency, so Connor, uh, who's my GM of the agency, he kind of runs the agency now.
[1:07:24] SPEAKER_03: He just wheels me in to do my jazz hands and do what I need to do and sends me on trips to go do stuff.
[1:07:31] SPEAKER_03: Um, but the brand side of the business.
[1:07:33] SPEAKER_03: I thought it was Kevin, not Connor.
[1:07:34] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Kevin tells Connor to send me out.
[1:07:37] SPEAKER_03: Sorry.
[1:07:38] SPEAKER_03: No, and uh, but like the brand side of the business, uh, yeah, like like three months ago, we started doing education as a like uh webinars and different like digital products and things as a as a way of like how do we take this brand and just produce a product and see if we can like start to scale that.
[1:07:55] SPEAKER_03: That's been super successful.
[1:07:56] SPEAKER_03: So yeah, it just took off like straight away because we had the brand.
[1:07:59] SPEAKER_03: We already had this 1.5 million followers that had been following us every day, and we just sort of launched it to them, did it on my personal brand.
[1:08:06] SPEAKER_03: So now my job realistically in the business is uh sell the agency and then go and have some fun with this brand that I've built now and be after like what are the other businesses?
[1:08:16] SPEAKER_03: So like the goal was always to build as big a brand as I could because I knew the agency wasn't scalable.
[1:08:21] SPEAKER_03: I can get it to be very good cash flow, very profitable.
[1:08:25] SPEAKER_03: Um, and then use that extra cash flow to then like scale this other thing.
[1:08:29] SPEAKER_01: I I think that I mean, for anybody watching this, I think that that's the I mean I think that makes a lot of sense.
[1:08:34] SPEAKER_01: And that's why agencies are can be great because you learn your skill set, like you can cash flow well, makes tons of sense, but rarely does agency as an in-game work well.
[1:08:44] SPEAKER_01: Like there are some people that have tried to do it and some somewhat successful.
[1:08:48] SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess Gary Gary V would be an example, like like he's undeniably successful um in doing what he's doing.
[1:08:55] SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, he's still capped at how big he even he can get with that.
[1:09:00] SPEAKER_01: And I think he's not many Gary V's are there.
[1:09:03] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1:09:03] SPEAKER_03: Not many people have done what he's done.
[1:09:04] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he's the exception that proves the rule, I guess, um in that case, um, because he's a one-on-one personality and obviously great at what he does.
[1:09:13] SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, but it for most people, I think thinking of it like an agency, I think it's a great business to start.
[1:09:19] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
[1:09:20] SPEAKER_01: And it's a great way to get paid to learn your skills, which is effectively what you're doing.
[1:09:25] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[1:09:25] SPEAKER_01: Um, but if you really want an exit or to you know build sustainable cash flow is how I think about it, then you know what putting that money in somewhere else is is ultimately how you get that.
[1:09:38] SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
[1:09:39] SPEAKER_03: And that's my me and my wife, that's totally our game plan.
[1:09:41] SPEAKER_03: It's you know, we we gave the agency the attention it needed to grow it to where it is.
[1:09:45] SPEAKER_03: And obviously, I still uh as a CEO still give it the attention that it needs, but the guys in the agency know like Stan's job, don't get him in day-to-day.
[1:09:54] SPEAKER_03: Like he's not here.
[1:09:55] SPEAKER_03: Even like me coming on this trip, it would have been better for someone else to come from a production perspective, but they know that like from a business development perspective or just like opportunity and content and all the brand piece, it's better that I'm in the country doing this.
[1:10:07] SPEAKER_03: So you know, actually going out filming, I I hate it.
[1:10:11] SPEAKER_03: Like I have to go into the filming of the guys, but it's uh it's by far the best thing for the brand for me to be here doing this.
[1:10:18] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, makes sense, and uh allow us to scale this other stuff, you know.
[1:10:22] SPEAKER_03: Like, especially the that quarter of a million a month, it's purely New Zealand and Australian market.
[1:10:26] SPEAKER_03: That's wild, you know?
[1:10:27] SPEAKER_03: Like it's yeah, that's wild, but that has to be very high margin.
[1:10:30] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's it's yeah, yeah, we do a two-hour webinar every week, and that's the main delivery point, and then there's like upsells from that, like that's incredible, yeah.
[1:10:41] SPEAKER_03: And then the upsells are delivered by like contract staff, and so it could take me two hours a week to do.
[1:10:47] SPEAKER_03: So we haven't even really tapped into the US market with it as well yet.
[1:10:50] SPEAKER_03: And so this trip is obviously make content with New York as a backdrop while I'm here, and then use that as content to sell it.
[1:10:56] SPEAKER_03: And we've just done like actually, it's been a really interesting case in point.
[1:11:00] SPEAKER_03: Um, we just make content on my Instagram, just talking about different things, AI, content, all the different the educations around AI, social media content, meta ads, and things like that.
[1:11:12] SPEAKER_03: The stuff that we do just as our business.
[1:11:15] SPEAKER_03: And we just make content showing what we do, and then one that goes well, we do the mini chat automation, and one that gets lots of comments, we just put money behind it, and then like they've just been selling really well.
[1:11:26] SPEAKER_03: We're getting like a$40 um cost acquisition for a$190 product, and then just we've just been scaling the ads as we've been going.
[1:11:35] SPEAKER_03: Um, and so that'll just continue to grow where it is.
[1:11:38] SPEAKER_03: But being in New York, I can now make like some New York content, make American, make it more targeted to American audience.
[1:11:44] SPEAKER_03: You know, there's a thing with American audiences, they don't really want to buy stuff from someone not in America.
[1:11:49] SPEAKER_03: We've found it's like quite hard to do to tap in here.
[1:11:52] SPEAKER_03: Whereas it's the opposite in the U in New Zealand, like we'll happily buy, we're a small country, so we'll buy from anyone in the world.
[1:11:58] SPEAKER_03: So obviously, making some US content will help us like then how make our ads more effective in this country.
[1:12:03] SPEAKER_03: So we think that that's quite a scalable product.
[1:12:05] SPEAKER_03: You know, you can have 50 people on a webinar, you can have 5,000, it's the same work.
[1:12:09] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so um we'll continue to scale that, but uh yeah.
[1:12:14] SPEAKER_03: Obviously, I don't want to just do education.
[1:12:16] SPEAKER_03: That was just like the first thing.
[1:12:17] SPEAKER_03: We just thought it's easy to spin up, we can test if our audience actually buys from us.
[1:12:21] SPEAKER_01: Um you have a proof of concept with a quarter million a month on that.
[1:12:25] SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's that's yeah, that's not a small education business for yeah, especially that quick.
[1:12:31] SPEAKER_03: Like we were surprised.
[1:12:32] SPEAKER_03: It's been a while, it's been a bit of a ride, but it's been fun.
[1:12:35] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[1:12:35] SPEAKER_01: Well, Stanley, thank you so much.
[1:12:37] SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate it.
[1:12:38] SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
[1:12:38] SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it, yeah.

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