81 Branden Hampton: How to Create a Million Dollar Social Media Empire

"The modern day celebrity is the social media influencer." - Branden Hampton This is Branden and he has millions of twitter followers. He holds some of the worlds most valuable pieces of social media real estate and he's here to teach The School of Greatness how to excel in social media. Come join the conversation and get your hands on the resources: www.lewishowes.com/81 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 81 with social media guru Brandon Hampton.

• 0:09Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:35Lewis Howes?

  What is upgrades? Thanks so much for tuning in today on the School of Greatness podcast. I've got a new buddy of mine on today. His name is Brandon Hampton and we got connected recently. And I was immediately intrigued by this guy because he has one of the largest independently owned social media followings. Out there. Now there might be some companies that have some bigger followings. But he's the only guy I know who's got 31 million followers over all of his different accounts. He's got some huge accounts, which we'll talk about here in just a second. And it's amazing on how he's grown these accounts over Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest so quickly.

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  And how he leveraged some interesting things to grow such a massive audience and then monetize that audience. So in today's episode, we're talking about really how to grow this audience on such an epic level. Again, I've been on social media for a number of years and I've built some big followings, but nothing to the scale that Brandon has. So it's a whole new level of social media growth and following engagement. That he's going to be talking about and sharing some of his secrets here. We're also going to be talking about the new age of social media real estate. Now this is some interesting stuff, but buying not domain names, but social media names.

• 1:56Lewis Howes?

  And how powerful you can leverage these names with different brands, with selling products, services, affiliate marketing, things like that. So kind of some interesting topics we're covering today. I was very excited to interview Brandon and had him in the studio. So I'm going to bring him on in just a second. And with that, guys, let's dive into today's episode and interview with Brandon Hampton.

• 2:33Lewis Howes?

  What is up everyone, thanks again for joining me back on the School of Greatness podcast. I've got a new guest on, his name is Brandon Hampton. What's up Brandon?

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Not much man, how are you?

• 2:42Lewis Howes?

  Doing well, I'm excited. Brandon, we connected, when did we connect, like a month ago or a few weeks ago?

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, about three weeks, yeah.

• 2:48Lewis Howes?

  Three weeks ago, we started reaching out to each other on Facebook I think, or Twitter, then everywhere else. And I'd never heard of Brandon, but after we started talking, I realized we had a lot in common and knew some mutual friends. And I'd never heard about him before, but he has one of the largest, if not the largest, independent social media following out there in the world right now with over 31 million followers, real targeted followers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and other places online. And I was just like, oh wow, that's pretty interesting, how did you do that? So we've been connecting over the last few weeks and now he's here in my Santa Monica rental for the summer studio. And we're kicking it near the beach, so thanks for coming out man.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, hey, I'm digging the spot, I can smell the ocean from here, so I definitely don't mind it.

• 3:39Lewis Howes?

  I just moved in like a week ago, so it's like a few blocks from the ocean and I've been telling myself every morning I'm gonna wake up early and jump in the ocean, but I have yet to do it yet, so hopefully soon enough I will. But I'm excited about this and you just wrote an article about, you've kind of been like behind the scenes for a while with your social media following. And you've only been working with bigger brands and no one's really known about you being the owner of all these accounts. And you've got some big accounts, can we just talk about some of the names that you have on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook maybe?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 4:09Lewis Howes?

  You're like @fitness on Instagram, right?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Correct, yeah, I have @fitness, which is one of the most searched terms, topics for Instagram.

• 4:17Lewis Howes?

  Probably one of the most hashtags too.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  One of the most hashtags, yes, you know, it's, there's a few different niche categories that are better, you know, in a visual sense. And fashion and fitness definitely fall into that category, so for Instagram and Pinterest, those are, you know, the topics that get a higher engagement on those platforms.

• 4:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  I have @notebook, which is, you know, 5.1 million followers on Twitter.

• 4:43Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really insane and... You know, I I got in really early, which definitely helped to be sort of one of the pioneers in this space.

• 4:54Lewis Howes?

  What's early?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  I've been doing it for a little over three years now.

• 4:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so some of the other spaces that we cover again is fitness. We do fashion. I have a skincare page. Really, what we did is initially I sat down in the early stages and I said, I've I've kind of got the model down of what builds engagement on a social media account. And now it's time to map out what categories I need to be in. And of course, naturally, since the way that you monetize a social media platform is through advertising, I made a list and I said, what are the highest monetizing categories in the world? And naturally, I flocked to those and

• 5:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  somehow I just ended up managing all these women based categories.

• 5:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and if you don't know who Brandon is, he's got this huge beard on. It's like, you know, a bearded man right now, so Paul Bunyan or something. You just need the shirt. Very cool. So you realized how to capitalize on one account in one niche and you're like, hey, let me just repeat the same formula over a number of different industries.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, it's it's really about just the process and once the process was perfected, you can recreate that over and over. Some some categories are more broad where you can reach a bigger audience like Notebook, for example, having five million followers. Really, it's just positive messages. It's talking about love and relationships, which concerns everybody.

• 6:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  But then if you go down to, you know, like a smaller targeted category, like maybe outdoors and camping, maybe you're just reaching a specific subset of people and it's not mass appeal. But then you get a higher level of engagement and and loyalty from that particular audience. So that's why we're trying to get our hands in as much as we can.

• 6:37Lewis Howes?

  Right, interesting. And it probably helps if you build one following up, then you can kind of leverage it to build other followings up and, you know, kind of cross promote some of them.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah. We're really using the larger, broad audiences to build up those smaller ones. So it's, you know, if we have five million people, you know, collectively, we don't necessarily know who they are, um, you know, demographic wise, but we can go to them and say, hey, if you are interested in fitness, or if you're interested in shoes, um, you know, follow this particular page and then those people will sort of, um, reorganize themselves and then trickle over. And now they are a fan of love and positivity, but they're also a fan of shoes.

• 7:14Lewis Howes?

  Right. Very interesting. Yeah. On LinkedIn, I used to do this on LinkedIn years ago with the group section. I would create the sports industry group. It's the largest sports group on LinkedIn. And then I would create subgroups. So people from all over the world were on the sports industry group, but then I wanted to create a group for sports marketing and sports PR and sports in New York City and Los Angeles. So I could create these smaller groups and be able to message out to them as well. So it looks like you've just been doing that.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we, we literally did the same exact model and, you know, for, for almost any industry, for any category, it works. Whether you're building an email list or a social media following, or you're building up groups, you put people into the biggest category that you can and then you, you know, uh, get them to join the smaller targeted stuff. So you know where they live, um, you know, what sex they are, potentially what income. And again, this goes back to, you know, the basics of, of, of building the correct audience.

• 8:10Lewis Howes?

  Right. Now, what's your favorite platform to build an audience on? And which one does the best for you in terms of driving, you know, exposure to something, whether it be an advertiser or your own products or services or a website?

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Sure. Different platforms have, you know, there, there's two different things that you can focus on. Number one is, uh, for a particular category, um, each platform is going to serve a different purpose. You know, for example, Twitter and Facebook, um, are more about driving traffic and being able to post links and embed content. Pinterest and Instagram give you the visual slash brand awareness section. So if somebody just wants to post an image, uh, for a company, um, that brand gets its exposure. Because you consume that content immediately. You don't have to watch a video. You don't have to read an article. You don't have to click away from the website. As soon as you see that picture, you've consumed that information. And that's why

• 9:06Speaker 01

  I think in this society where people are getting trained to get lazier and lazier. It went from, you know, people reading five or six page articles to reading a short blog post, to reading a Facebook status, then it went to 140 characters and now it's just, look at this image.

• 9:21Lewis Howes?

  That's it. What's next?

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I

• 9:24Lewis Howes?

  How much shorter can we get?

• 9:25Speaker 01

  I think that's about it. And that's why Instagram is really thriving right now. It's like the peak of laziness. And you get, yeah, it's a peak of laziness and you're also getting the most information at once. You know, who, who wants to sit there and read an article when you can just look at a photo and consume the exact same information?

• 9:40Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy. And it's got an interaction too, which I think works because you can double tap. So that's the, or you can comment, but it's like easy to interact with the image.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, the, the engagement for brands especially is significantly higher on Instagram than it is on any other platform. And that's why a lot of the brands are, you know, starting to flock to that because they can, you know, play the old tradition of content marketing, which is you put a simple message in front of somebody and just remind them that you exist. And next time they go to buy a product in your particular category, then they think of you first.

• 10:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, they're reminded of you. So I want to, I want to talk about the future of real estate when it comes to online social media accounts in a second. But before that, I want to dive into kind of your story about how you got into this. And you wrote an article on your LinkedIn page recently about kind of your story, working at a, I think it was AT&T store back when you're like 20, 21 in the mall and killing it in that arena, doing really well and kind of like, you know, being successful there. And then you got out and went into real estate, right?

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 10:47Lewis Howes?

  So why did you get into that originally before real estate? And what were the lessons you learned? Selling people services and phones?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Sure. Originally I was, you know, I had the normal aspirations. I, I got really good grades in school. I did really good, uh, you know, on all my formal testing. I wanted to go into some sort of computer study, like computer engineering, because I had always been interested in technology. And so I got a summer job between high school and when college was supposed to start. And I realized how much money I could make very quickly. Um, I've always been, you know, interested in, in the dynamics of how people work and being able to influence decisions in a positive manner, you know, as far as being able to get someone from point A to point B, point B being uh the conversion of a sale. Right.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Without actually having to deceive people, without having to lie people, uh without having to manipulate. And I found out some really good tactics to do that. And I mean, I, I just kind of put the numbers in front of myself and said, you know, if I go to school for X amount of years and spend X amount of money, I'm going to be working, you know, 12 hours a day as an engineer for somebody else, or I can sort of dive into sales. Um, I can learn the trade and I, I know that if I'm well at it, I, I can go apply those, you know, same mechanisms to anything and not just necessarily cell phones, but I can go sell things or services using those same concepts. And that's how I ended up.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  I mean, I, you know, I, I made a few thousand dollars within my first month and I sort of got addicted to the ability to, you know, learn the sales process and I, I mastered it very quickly. And against, you know, my family's wishes, of course, everybody, you know, wants their, uh, you know, kid or grandson or whatever to attend college like you're, you know, like you're supposed to by the book. And uh, so I did the cell phone thing for a while. I, you know, after two years in the company, I was managing seven stores in the LA area. And I was, you know, I think I, I couldn't even buy beer at the time. I was like 20. And uh, after a, a long stretch there with the AT&T stores, I went over into real estate

• 13:05Speaker 01

  and said, okay, it's, you know, this is currently where the money's at and I can do what I did for cell phones for um mortgages. Bigger properties. For mortgages, sure, sure. So now it's not, you know, activating a phone for somebody. It's um helping them execute the loan on their house or helping them refinance their house. And uh, I happened to do very well with, with the mortgages as well. And in, in both companies, I, I really excelled in, in. Was you know, shattering the different company records and stuff like that. So I said, okay, I get it. I'm good at this. And I always wondered, what is the bigger picture? Where am I going to take this information? I'm not going to continue working for these companies, you know, which is ultimately why I ended up leaving them. Because I understood the concept of these sales companies that you work for is that no matter how good you do,

• 13:50Speaker 01

  the beginning of the following month, you're back at zero. And they don't care what you did last month. They don't care about the record because the record does not, you know, help them hit their quota and answer to their bosses for that particular month. So they always want to know, what are you going to do today? And what are you going to do this month? And you impress them yet again, and then you're back to zero for, you know, the 50th time in a row.

• 14:12Lewis Howes?

  If they were smart, they would really make you feel, you know, like you had more ownership in it. Or if they wanted to keep you around, they would give you days off or, you know, something.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah. And with the, you know, the real estate company, I actually just, you know, I was probably 60 days off of my biggest month ever. You know, in my short, you know, 23 or 24 years of life. I had my best month ever two months ago and I had requested some time off. It was actually a holiday weekend. I booked my trip, you know, they gave me the green light. And the office and the region were not hitting their sales goals. And I had already hit mine for the month, halfway through the month. I had already hit mine and they said, you know, you can't go, we're behind, we're behind. And I said, that's, you know, that's not really my problem.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  And they told me that if I left, that I wouldn't, you know, be able to come back. So I actually went in and dropped off a letter of resignation and went on my trip.

• 15:15Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that must have been a stupid mistake on their end.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean.

• 15:19Lewis Howes?

  You could just go start your own mortgage company, probably if you wanted to.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I actually, I started working for a good friend of mine. And, you know, I was able to not only do what I wanted with my time and have the flexibility. But I also was able to make, you know, a significant higher cut on, you know, the business that I was doing.

• 15:39Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  And of course, the freedom was, was what was important to me at that time.

• 15:43Lewis Howes?

  Right, okay. So you're doing the real estate mortgage stuff for a while and then? Did you end it to get into the social media stuff? Or did you start stumbling upon this for fun on the side? And then you're like, oh, I can actually make money with this.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, first, first what happened is I didn't actually, you know, decide to leave real estate. It was actually, you know, kind of flourishing in oh, five, oh, six. I think.

• 16:04Lewis Howes?

  Everyone had to.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah, exactly. It's kind of like somebody picked up the market in a bowl and dumped it upside down. By that time, I, I had, you know, several rental properties and I had just bought my, you know, my primary residence that I was super comfortable in. And, uh, you know, if you, if you look at like a historical chart of where real estate peaked, like that's, you know, the six month period where I bought all these properties.

• 16:28Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  And I just got extremely unlucky with the timing. After the real estate thing, I went into, you know, a bit of a depression, probably, you know, almost two years.

• 16:37Lewis Howes?

  Cause the value in your properties went down right away.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  I mean, it was cut in half. Wow. It was cut in half, like over, over the course of, of 12 months. And I had, you know, um, at that age to have, you know, immaculate credit to have, um, and a decent chunk of money saved up. And, and then I put, you know, a bunch of money into these properties. I sort of had my life kind of riding on this between all my investments, all my assets. And then, um, my income, everything was revolved around real estate. So when it crashed, there was my savings, there was my income, there was everything. So I crashed. Um, it was, it was really back to zero.

• 17:14Lewis Howes?

  How old were you?

• 17:16Speaker 01

  I was, uh, in 2006.

• 17:18Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  So yeah, I was, you know, mid twenties.

• 17:21Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Um, and, uh, that was pretty, pretty devastating.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  And after that, I started a marketing company when I finally rebounded and was able to bring myself out of bed. Um, right. I started a, a marketing company and what we did was we did leads for, you know, debt settlement. We did leads for, uh, loan modification, for mortgage refinances. We were just sort of supplying the information of people who went on Google or they called into a phone number on TV and said, like, I'm interested in refinancing my house. And we would connect them with people in the mortgage industry who are able to. Perform that service for them. Sure. Um, so we were on the side where we didn't necessarily have to perform enclosed loans. Or we didn't have to, um, you know, acquire the customer. We just provided the information, whatever happened with it at that point.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Um, was really up to the salesperson. So it was a, it was a, a little bit less taxing, um, to not have that. Uh, you know, stress on you. And that's what I needed at the time was something that wasn't so stressful. And that wasn't going to make me feel like, hey, it's, it's do or die every single day. I wanted something where I can sort of relax. So. How are you getting those leads? Uh, we did two, two types of things. Um, number one was we ran TV commercials. So we, we, uh, partnered with a company who bought media. We would run commercials and they'd say, you know, call the eight hundred number. And when that person would call, we would route them to a buyer who, uh, you know, prepaid for a certain number of phone calls from the commercial.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Um, the other way was, uh, Google AdWords. We would run, you know, uh, targeted search, paid search results for different terms. And, uh, when they would search for something like, you know, how to get out of debt, we would connect them with a debt consultant and we would get paid for brokering that lead. Gotcha. Now, how'd you come up with this idea? Uh, I actually ran into a friend in the space, you know, told me it was pretty lucrative. He said, if you're coming out of the mortgage industry. Um, you know, although you didn't survive that, it's, you know, if you know the terms and you understand how the process works. Um, I can teach you the methods and, and you'll do, you know, you'll do really well. Right. Um, just like you did with the mortgages. So naturally I, I, I fell into it and it worked out really well.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Um, I had one particular client who pretty much bought up all that I can produce. So it was, you know, it was a cash cow for, um, a good, uh, few months. Sure. And, uh, I happened to get really trusting. I put that very large client on, uh, credit. And he stiffed me for probably a little more than I even made from him over those few months. Wow. Um, so, uh, that kind of put me back into the, you know, uh, back into the depression for a while. And it was like, man, how many, you know, how many times can I go back to zero? And it wasn't, it wasn't, you know, losing a little bit. It wasn't, you know, just a, a small pitfall. It was literally back to zero. Cause you're spending probably, you know.

• 20:16Lewis Howes?

  A lot of money every day or every week and month to generate these leads to buy the ads the media buys.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:22Lewis Howes?

  It's expensive.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:23Lewis Howes?

  You know, Facebook ads alone are expensive for me. So I understand if you don't profit off those buys. That's like a huge chunk of change.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:31Lewis Howes?

  That's gone.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  We would pre-sell it, you know, we would pre-sell, you know, let's say if if a customer wanted to purchase, let's say $20,000 in, you know, leads. We would buy the media and we would have to front that. And, you know, if our margin was 10 or 15%. You know, we can go in and we can buy 17 or $18,000 worth of media to produce the $20,000 in leads that we're going to do. We hedge our money for, you know, a two or $3,000 profit, but if that profit never comes, then the entire 17 or $18,000 is a loss.

• 21:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  And that's what ended up happening for probably about eight weeks.

• 21:05Lewis Howes?

  Man.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Where we ran our media and generated all the leads and never got paid.

• 21:11Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that sucks. Whatever happened?

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Uh, that's it.

• 21:15Lewis Howes?

  You never ended up getting paid?

• 21:16Speaker 01

  No, that's.

• 21:17Lewis Howes?

  You said sorry.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  That's all she wrote.

• 21:18Lewis Howes?

  Screw you.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Did you ever take action on that? Or would you have an agreement? Or is this kind of like your mistake?

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Well, his his response when I told him that I was going to take legal action was get in line.

• 21:28Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  So I just didn't catch it early enough. I didn't catch any of the signs. I was too blinded by the fact that, hey, this client's a fantastic client. He's paying me all the time. And, you know, he paid me every week when it was, you know, um, a couple thousand dollars. And then when it went up to tens of thousands, he came up with an excuse. And of course, me not wanting to jeopardize the client, I was sure, yeah, you know, I'll run it for you again. I'll run it for you again. And he got, you know, he tapped me out over the course of about eight weeks. And then, uh, yeah, that's it.

• 21:57Lewis Howes?

  Well, I look at as lessons, not failures.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  No, yeah, it's, I mean, it's all, it's all very valuable experience. And again, it happened at such an early stage in my life. I I lost, I lost houses. I didn't lose a home. Um, I just, you know, only had myself to to worry about. I didn't have a family at the time. And, uh, so that's, you know, that was the valuable lessons and and really, really good life experience that I got early on. So now I know better.

• 22:24Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Or I think I do, at least. I hope I do.

• 22:26Lewis Howes?

  Going to school, right?

• 22:27Speaker 01

  No.

• 22:27Lewis Howes?

  So this was like a college tuition, you know?

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:30Lewis Howes?

  You spent, losing it all.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like, the whole reason I avoided college was for that reason, but I ended up paying it and then I got I got taught by the streets.

• 22:38Lewis Howes?

  There you go. It's, I think it's more valuable. Uh, very cool. So then, when you're doing the lead stuff, were you on the side doing the social media, kind of like building up different accounts and just kind of?

• 22:47Speaker 01

  No, I, I, I hadn't actually, um, really jumped into it yet. Um, I think somewhere in the neighborhood of about two thousand and, you know, I mean, I got, I got like a Twitter account in two thousand and nine.

• 22:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Um, and I had it for personal reasons and I would tweet and I didn't, nothing happened and I didn't really get it and I thought it was stupid. Uh, like most people did at the time.

• 23:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, uh, I think around the time that everybody else got interested in Twitter, I kind of circled back, which was when, uh, Aston Kutcher had the whole race to a million followers with CNN.

• 23:20Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  And as the media started to drive more attention, I said, okay, well, this thing's, this thing's for real now.

• 23:25Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  And whatever, what, what first started out was I started posting, um, just jokes. Funny stuff that I thought was funny that maybe other people were kind of scared to post and I just, you know, sort of off the wall type humor. And I noticed, hey, people, people like this and people were following along with me and, um, I got about five thousand followers and, you know, a lot of people didn't have five thousand followers at the time, even people who you actually knew who they were, better yet, somebody who, you know, you had no idea who they were and didn't have that amount of followers. Then, uh, you know, the, the first actual, you know, brand type category page that I created was The Notebook.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  And, uh, a lot of people don't really know the story behind it, which was that, um, some girl ended up following it when it had, um, I believe around fifteen thousand followers was, which was what I built, you know, the initial, uh, push.

• 24:19Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  I had fifteen thousand followers. A girl followed the page and she only had, you know, ten followers. And she tagged one of her friends in the post, um, you know, it was a love quote that she happened to like. And her friend happened to be Kendall Jenner. Okay. And, um, so I said, hey, you know, I got excited. I said, hey, you should tell your friend Kendall to follow me. Hmm. So at this time, you know, nobody really knew about Twitter and the value and how much an advertisement was worth or how much exposure was worth. And, uh, so she told Kendall, you know, this page wants you to follow it. She got excited and she followed me. And I said, hey, you should, you know, she had about four hundred thousand followers at the time. This is before, you know. What was this? This was, um, you know, four, four years ago. Wow.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  This is when, you know, everybody's starting to really pick up on the Kardashians, but the Jenners were still kinda, you know, Under the radar. Under the radar. Um, so I said. Now they're almost bigger. Those two younger girls are bigger, it seems like. Absolutely. And, uh, it seems like they have that, that purity behind them. So. Who knows? Um. So she started following you. So she started following me and I, I just went for it. I just, you know, I've always been, you know, the type who is not scared to ask for something if I want it. So I said, hey, um, you should retweet some of my tweets if you like them. And she's like, sure. So she has four hundred thousand followers, which again, at the time, you know, that was a lot of followers. Yeah. Uh, she's got, you know, eight million or 10 million or something crazy now. Um, she, so she's like, okay, sure.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  So she retweets like 10 or 12 of my positive messages in a row, which triggered Khloe and Kim to start following it. No way. Yeah. And, uh, that was, that was sort of the holy grail. That was when my page really took off. Uh, because Khloe and Kim both retweeted the same tweet, um, uh, sometime later in the week. And, uh, I think I went from seventeen thousand to a hundred thousand followers relatively quickly. Wow. And almost to a T. I know I started the, the page in February. I'm not sure which February it's been, I mean, but the religiously the pages started growing or the page started growing about a million to 1.1 million per 12 months. Wow. Around February mark. Yeah, it's got a 5.2 million now.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Right, right. Which is pretty sweet. Um. So yeah, that's that's sort of the, you know, basic story behind when the page started and how it got its initial momentum. And now the who's who of, you know, Twitter follows it. Everybody from, you know, Bieber to J Lo to, you know, Kim Kardashian still follows it and Rihanna. You know, all these people have retweeted it at one point or another during their, you know, I would, I always see when TMZ breaks, something like Rihanna's having relationship issues. I'm like, yes, she's going to start retweeting my love quotes again.

• 27:01Lewis Howes?

  That's funny. Yeah. So it's mostly love quotes and positive messages?

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Love quotes, positive messages, um, you know, truisms, just stuff like that. Sure, sure. I mean, it's categorically, you know, people are saying like it's, I mean, it is a lot more women followers than it is, you know, men.

• 27:15Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  But we try to hit both categories and put just general positive messages along with, you know, the love stuff.

• 27:21Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. And so you've, you've built up a number of these different, so that was kind of one of your first big wins is with Twitter, you know, four, four years ago, building this up and now it's grown. And then you started to basically just capitalize on other accounts. You're like, okay, let me leverage this into this account and this name and things like that. Um, so what are the things, what are some of the things, when did you realize like, hey, maybe I could, you know, monetize this? Did people start reaching out to you and say, hey, could you post this about our brand and we'll pay you or what was the?

• 27:50Speaker 01

  People, um, I had my email in, um, my bio and, uh, people just started emailing and saying, hey, um, you know, if you post this about our clothing brand or, uh, link to our website or post this YouTube video, we'll pay you.

• 28:04Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Is that when, that's when it kind of first hit me like, okay, there's, there's going to be, you know, some money in this. Um, I'm going to make a few extra bucks while I, you know, work whatever I'm, you know, doing for a real income. And, uh, and this is going to supplement it or this is going to be my, you know, my beer money or whatever it is. And, uh, so that, that's, that's pretty much how it started. And I started to notice that it got, you know, more serious. One of the, one of the first campaigns that I ran, um, for Instagram back in the day, this is when Notebook just had, you know, I think Notebook has almost 600,000 followers now on Instagram. This is when it had 90 or a hundred thousand followers. Um, I got approached by Sun Drop Soda. And they said, um,

• 28:46Speaker 01

  We want you to post a picture of a can of sundrop soda and we'll pay you a thousand bucks. With a hundred thousand followers, that was? With a hundred thousand followers and I said, okay, um, that's it. Okay. Yeah, sure. I can do that. And they're like, okay, yeah, you know, so find an image, you know, go, go buy a can of soda and take a photo or find one, you know, on the internet somewhere and use a caption and we just want you to use, um, hashtag sundrop in there somewhere and that's it. Wow. And so I said, okay. And it was, you know, it was like, uh, May or June, um, of a few years ago and I said, um, summer's almost here and I'm hashtag, or I'm, I'm ready to sundrop it like it's hot.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  And they loved it and they're like, best money we ever spent on marketing. So cool. Um, you know, we love the social media aspect, you know, thank you for that. And, um, I, I realized then, okay, if the big brands are, are coming after me, there's a lot of small ones in between. There's startup companies with budgets. So I started to figure out where are people spending money? Um, you know, one of the highest monetizing categories in the world, um, health and fitness, weight loss diet. Um, everybody wants to, you know, everybody wants to look good. Everybody wants to have a certain, um, you know, health, uh, aspect in their life. And that was where the majority of the money was being spent. So I started a fitness page. Right. The fitness page now has, you know, 2.1 million followers, has, uh, over 500,000 on Instagram.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  And, you know, that, that proved to be true, that there's a big desire, um, for advertisers to approach me. And, um, we did one with skincare, you know, we have a skincare page with 800,000 followers, um, on Twitter. And, uh, I, I, I do, you know, various different topics. I probably have, uh, you know, 12 to 15 different categories across all the social media sites and we have, you know, hundreds of thousands of followers in each of the categories. Right. So when you did the fitness, did you start at fitness or was it a, did you buy at fitness and how does that work? Well, at fitness on Instagram, um, it was an inactive handle and I had a different fitness name and I just approached Instagram, um,

• 30:55Speaker 01

  And because I had two million followers on Twitter, they said, okay, well, we'll give it to you. Um, I just had a certain level of legitimacy and trust that when they went to and they saw a verified Twitter page with two million followers, they said, oh, this must be a real company.

• 31:10Lewis Howes?

  Was that the notebook Twitter page?

• 31:11Speaker 01

  No, it was, it was the fitness one. The fitness one has two million.

• 31:14Lewis Howes?

  At fitness on Twitter?

• 31:15Speaker 01

  It's, it's actually not fitness. It's, uh, fitness is taken. A personal trainer owns it and she said she's going to die with that username.

• 31:21Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  So, um, yeah. So I have, actually it's a sort of like a unicode like dork trick that I used and it's F and then it's, um, L, T, N, E, S, S. And when everything's capitalized except for a lowercase L, it looks like fitness.

• 31:37Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:38Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  So I was able to actually use a word that doesn't make any sense that looks like fitness to build up over two million followers.

• 31:45Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Which means that, you know, the branding and the names actually have nothing to do with it if you know how to manage the content and the engagement. And, and for the longest time, it's, it's funny. I forgot to bring this up, but notebook didn't used to be at notebook either. It used to be the notebook and book had three O's in it.

• 32:02Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Really? So how'd you change it just because notebook became available?

• 32:06Speaker 01

  I contacted Twitter at one point when I hit about 2.5 or 3 million followers and they gave me at notebook because it was inactive and they verified my account. Yeah.

• 32:17Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's nice.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:18Lewis Howes?

  Very cool. Interesting. So you could build a following even if you don't have the name and then ultimately get the name.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 32:24Lewis Howes?

  If you want to do that.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  You can ultimately get the name or you can, you know, build it up as whatever brand that you want. Um, I know.

• 32:29Lewis Howes?

  You don't need the, you don't need to have the name to get it big.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  You don't.

• 32:33Lewis Howes?

  You can even have different letters and to make it look like the word.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You can, you know, you can do that or, you know, it's the same thing as, you know, like I, I build, I try to build up a lot of my, um, audiences under generic names, not necessarily brands or anything. So instead of creating a company, for example, like, like Nike wants to be Nike.

• 32:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  I don't want to have my own brand because I want to be able to advertise those companies. So I go with the, the most generic form, um, in that particular field. And I just say, I'm fitness.

• 33:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Interesting.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:03Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. I like it. So you take this concept of making a thousand dollars from one image and said, hey, there might be a way to make, you know, a lot of money with this. And since then you've built a business.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Selling ads to average. Yeah, we have, we have a bunch of different purposes per se, you know, my, my core business, my legacy business is to essentially acquire, you know, either usernames or pages and engage large audiences and, and, and sort of build up those followings. And then from that point, now we're able to do what we want with the eyeballs in, in, in many different ways. So if we know that we have a fitness following, we can provide them great content, you know, just as I always say, it's like a digital version, a digital free version of a magazine subscription. Sure. It's like, if you want to subscribe to women's health or men's health, you have to pay for it. They send it to you in the mail.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  It's got lots of good content in there, articles, photos, how to, and then you have your ads in there. So it's the same model. Same thing. You know, it's, it's just like everything else where you get a good balance of content and advertisements. Yeah. But, but in social media, we have a lot better idea of who our audience is and we can target those. So, you know. You get instant feedback too. And instant. A magazine doesn't get that feedback. Absolutely. Yeah. And, and for the advertisers, it's a lot higher quality as well as because, you know, you can spend, you know, tens of thousands of dollars to get the billboard on Sunset in Hollywood and everybody's just looking down at their phones while they're in traffic. Anyway, nobody's looking at the billboard. And for a fraction of the price, you can reach a more targeted audience and then you get complete analytics on who you reached.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  How long, I mean, we, we post a video for somebody that's five minutes long. We can tell an average, you know, visitors watching it for two minutes and 40 seconds. Crazy. How, how often, you can't get that on a commercial. You can't, you know, see how many people fast forwarded because they DVR'd the show. Right. So many different, uh, not, not just the fact that it's a lot cheaper, but there's so many different advantages to social media advertising and digital. Sure. Interesting.

• 35:05Lewis Howes?

  So you're kind of in the game of you're trying to buy pages now and names and acquire that, right?

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Um, for the most part, we've, we've built up organically, um, but there is sort of, you know, you're Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, they don't really condone, um, buying and selling of pages.

• 35:20Lewis Howes?

  Sure. People do it though. I know people on Facebook that buy, you know, fan pages with a million followers or whatever.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. You know, the, the, it's just sort of finding a happy medium, you know, like I've bought, um, different pages before where they'll have it tied to like a domain name. So you can buy the domain name and get the social media properties as the intellectual property of the domain and stuff like that. So there's, you know, there's legitimate ways that you have to do business in this space. You don't want to jeopardize your audience.

• 35:47Lewis Howes?

  Sure. Yeah. I mean, we're in this whole new game now because people are buying, you know, they were been buying domains for a long time, but now it's like social media accounts. You can, you can get a lot for your social media account. If you've branded it the right way, if you've built the right engagements.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 36:00Lewis Howes?

  I mean, for someone who's got a million followers on an Instagram account or a Facebook page, you could, uh, you know, if you built it the right way, you could sell it for a lot of money.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 36:09Lewis Howes?

  And that's what the game a lot of people are playing. They're buying accounts for new, uh, social media platforms that come up because who would have thought three years ago Instagram was going to be this big or

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Facebook did.

• 36:20Lewis Howes?

  Or Vine was going to blow up or, you know, whatever. There's going to be, you know, just when I feel like it's too oversaturated, like there's too many things.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Another platform.

• 36:30Lewis Howes?

  Like Pinterest as well. It's like, I never would have thought that was going to get big. But who would have thought these would have been big? There's another one that comes out that's like easier or more effective or simpler to use.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 36:40Lewis Howes?

  That people get hooked on.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  And, and I think that there, you know, some of the older, and when I say older, I just mean a few years.

• 36:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, right.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Uh, older social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, they're sort of taking their true form. Um, because for a while they're almost in a stage of like identity crisis. It's like, what is Twitter and what is it going to be ultimately used for? And I think that right now it's just a communication tool. And I don't think that it's a social media anymore. I think it's a medium to get information. And, um, you know, A lot of people are using it for their communication because they like open conversation.

• 37:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  If I send you a text message, it's just you and I. But if I send you a message on Twitter that says, hey, let's grab lunch tomorrow. And, you know, Bob happens to be listening in, he can chime in and say, hey, I'm gonna join you guys.

• 37:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Um, people like the open dialogue and people are finding their news, you know, you can, if, if somebody, you know, passes away. Or if there's some sort of accident or catastrophe, you can find out seconds within that happening as opposed to having to read it in the paper tomorrow morning. And it's, it's, it's essentially replaced all forms of, you know, traditional media.

• 37:52Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  And that's, that's what people are using for communication.

• 37:55Lewis Howes?

  I don't watch, I mean, I rarely watch TV and even SportsCenter, which I love, I don't watch that much anymore. It's like for four years I didn't have a TV when I was building my business and trying to learn from scratch, everything. Just because I wanted to focus and now it's just like, I hear about everything like LeBron James and his announcement the other day.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:13Lewis Howes?

  And it was all over SportsCenter the whole day, right? But I saw it within the first two minutes of it on Instagram.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:17Lewis Howes?

  Cause he posted it himself.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 38:19Lewis Howes?

  And I was like, yes, Ohio has something to like cheer for, I'm from Ohio. And he said he was going back to Cleveland. I was like, I had ESPN then on all day just to hear about what they were talking about.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 38:30Lewis Howes?

  But that's when I turned it on after I saw the news.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, you, uh, you know, you can, you can get the headline and you can get the image, um, almost instantaneously. And then after that, it's just, you know, it's all about the details. You can watch the news for details or if it's something that you're passionate about or interested in. You know, like when, uh, it was football season, my Broncos were, uh, up until the Superbowl, you know, they're kicking butts. So I just turn, uh, SportsCenter on and listen to them hype my team up for an hour. But I wasn't learning anything that I didn't find out already on social media.

• 39:00Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Um, but I just wanted to hear them, you know, boast about how good my team was.

• 39:04Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Um, so, and, and then, uh, now, and then Facebook has sort of taken a backseat, um, as an information and content tool. And it's just, it's the social, social network, the true social network that people are referring to as like your close knit circle. It's like your high school friends and your, your. Immediate friends, your immediate family, you're sharing, you know, pictures of your baby and you're you're sharing your life news with stuff that you may or may not want to share on Twitter.

• 39:29Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Instagram is, you know, you're opening up to a world audience and you're saying like, this is my life in a more exciting instant format of photos and short video clips.

• 39:43Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  And, you know, for you're building your own brand, essentially, like we went back to brand awareness for companies. Individuals are now able to do this too. And there's, you know, like, for example, I went to a fit expo in San Jose this past weekend. And a girl had her own booth there. She had a million followers on Instagram. And that was, that's her, that's her, you know.

• 40:04Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  There, nothing before that. She had a million followers on Instagram and she got her own booth.

• 40:09Lewis Howes?

  She's probably selling like sponsors.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  She does sponsors. She has, you know, all these different, you know, supplement companies that she's working with, but her entire brand was built up around the Instagram following.

• 40:19Lewis Howes?

  Right. And her fitness stuff, probably.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  And her fitness stuff. Yeah, absolutely. So.

• 40:22Lewis Howes?

  Did you see Battle of the Bars there? Was this the same? Did you see all these guys doing bar like flips and stuff like that?

• 40:28Speaker 01

  They had some pretty crazy stuff.

• 40:30Lewis Howes?

  I had a buddy of mine who was actually on the show, Travis Brewer, who was there as like the MC or something. So.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 40:35Lewis Howes?

  I saw part of it on a YouTube clip, so I was just curious if that was the same one.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  It was the same one, yeah.

• 40:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's interesting. So someone was there who was like an Instagram celebrity.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 40:44Lewis Howes?

  Selling herself. That's hilarious.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  And yeah, I mean, and that that has become the modern day celebrity is the social media influencer. And again, I got into this space real early, so I understand that particular role from all different aspects.

• 41:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Part of the, the, the new business model and part of one of the projects that I'm creating is a centralized platform for social media influencers to be able to monetize their following. So somebody who, you know, two years ago, you had no idea who they were. And now a million people know who she is because she has a large following on Instagram.

• 41:22Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Instead of her being at fitness, which is a generic brand, she has her own identity behind this. It's like Michael Jordan doing the Hanes commercial. But instead you have a a girl who's very popular in the fitness industry who's fit, who may now represent your brand and can take $10,000 to put your athletic gear on.

• 41:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's crazy. And I talked to, I mentioned this to you, but I've talked to with Jen Selter a few times about her. I think she's almost got four million Instagram and it's like what she's done to build that up and make money with it. It's pretty impressive. And there's huge opportunity for people to build their following and create a name for themselves and become basically famous.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Sure, sure. I mean, she was on, you know, in the New York Post.

• 42:04Lewis Howes?

  A few times, yeah.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  A few times.

• 42:06Lewis Howes?

  On The View and she was on Vanity Fair, had like a full couple of page spread of her. But yeah, you can get mainstream press, you can get a lot of sponsors interested if you build the right following. Now, I have a pretty social media savvy audience, people who are listening. They've been, a lot of people have followed me for five, six years now, since I was doing LinkedIn stuff and other social media training. And they're pretty savvy entrepreneurs for the most part. Everyone listening is. So, some of the stuff they may be thinking, oh yeah, I already understand that, or I get it, or I've heard how to do that. But what's like, for those who are really pretty savvy entrepreneurs already, what are some ways that they can tap into their own current following and ramp it up? Like, what are some things, maybe they haven't

• 42:49Lewis Howes?

  even thought of, or that they've just haven't paid attention to because they didn't think it was gonna work? What are some things that you do that work? And you don't have to share all your secrets, obviously, but just what are some things that like, anyone could do a little differently to see a big change?

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Sure. I think that, I'll give one example, and I give this example a lot because it's the most simplest form. A lot of people, you know, have to realize that, you know, myself included, you know, I'm not that interesting to a stranger. And it's nothing personal, and it's never anything personal on social media, but somebody, somebody doesn't want to know that I just got my Starbucks drink.

• 43:26Lewis Howes?

  Right. And you post that on social media, or on Instagram, you post some stuff like that, right?

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can. And, and it can get, you know, it can get some engagement, and it's gonna be from your close friends, maybe have an inside joke about it, or whatever it is, but-

• 43:40Lewis Howes?

  No new people are gonna follow you.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Correct, correct. The, the, the secret is, and again, you said, what's a trick that maybe some people are overlooking, even if they understand social media, is you have to create relatable content.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  That applies to the masses. So if I were to post right now, you know, on my personal account, you know, I have almost 50,000 followers. So I could say like, I just got Starbucks. That won't get any retweets. It won't get any favorites. Maybe a couple of people will respond and say, who cares? Or like, you know, shut up, you know, something funny. Right. But if I were to post, I hate waiting in line. That would get a significant amount of engagement because how many people can relate to the fact that they hate waiting in line. So maybe I got my Starbucks shrink and that's important to me because I wanted Starbucks. But what if I had to wait in line to get it? Now I can relate to a bunch of people because nobody likes waiting in line.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  So if I were to post that, the difference in engagement would be fairly significant. Interesting. So for for personal pages, that's what people always have to keep in mind is you have to figure out who who am I as a brand, as an individual, and what is my goal? Who am I? Who am I trying to acquire as an audience? And you create content around that. So, you know, it's it's literally like trying to set maybe like a mousetrap. And you put, you know, whatever is going to attract the mouse into the trap. Right. That's what you want to do. And essentially, if you want to look at it as capturing leads, capturing followers, that's the same way that you have to operate. You have to create the great content that people who you want to follow, you will like. Sure.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  From a business perspective, this is one thing that I've always said, and I would like to to think that a lot of people are listening. And if I go in to consult for a big brand, the most important thing that I can tell them, and this applies to, you know, it can apply to individuals as well, but brands make this huge mistake. And this is a very piece of valuable information that I'm about to give out. You are not your brand on social media, you are your industry. Hmm. So if you sell wedding rings, your goal is not to talk about wedding rings all day. Your goal is to post wedding videos, your goal is to um make suggestions on building and writing and managing a wedding checklist.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Your goal is to talk about everything weddings except for rings. So now you become a trusted source of information regarding the topic and the industry and the field of weddings. So when it's time to buy a ring. They come to you. They come to you. Yeah. So and and that's and that's the mistake that a lot of brands make, you know, it's you can go on like Nike's feed and they're talking about. Um, you know, the new Kobe shoes and they're talking about this and the Nike Fuel Band that's out and they're talking about that. If they just posted um sports, um athletic content. Sure. Just that was content with no message, you know, you have you have to look at it like. A TV show, for example, you know, I like Law and Order.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  If I want to watch Law and Order, I can watch, you know, let's say forty two minutes of Law and Order and I can take eighteen minutes of commercials with it. But what if it was all commercials? What if it was, you know, the other way around? What if it was uh seventy five percent commercials and it was fifteen or twenty uh fifteen minutes of show? I wouldn't watch it. Right. You know, I don't want twenty five percent show, I want seventy five percent plus show. Right. And that's what you have to do on social media is if you want to build that loyal audience, you have to give them what they want. And then they're okay listening to your, you know, let's say peppered in, you know, messages and stuff. So it's like, that's what we do on our fitness page.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  We talk about how to get flat abs in an article and then we talk about what foods to eat, we talk about what exercises to do. And then we say, oh, by the way, you know, this is the Nike Fuel Band and it's going to help you track your workout metrics, A, B, C, X, Y, Z. Exactly. And now we are the trusted source because we're providing them with great content and great information all the time. So when we throw in an advertisement, sometimes it doesn't look like an advertisement, it looks like a testimonial or um a legitimate. Recommendation.

• 47:55Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. So you've got all these different accounts. Uh, you know, I'm assuming, I'm assuming hundreds of accounts overall of them, I'm assuming.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Um.

• 48:03Lewis Howes?

  Maybe, maybe less, maybe more.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  There's probably in the neighborhood of about sixty to seventy across the social networks. Yeah.

• 48:08Lewis Howes?

  Cool. So call it fifty. Uh, you're just one human being. And if you were running fifty accounts all day long, pumping out content, it would be a little overwhelming and you wouldn't be able to do it.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 48:18Lewis Howes?

  So how do you manage all fifty plus accounts? Um, by one, curating content, creating content and finding it the right stuff because you know, you're telling people to make sure to create the right content and post the right content. But a lot of the times, what I've seen is you don't actually create the content. You'll find it and then you'll post it specifically on Instagram. You're not out there taking images all day long, these different industries.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 48:45Lewis Howes?

  How do you have, do you have a team that does this? Or do you, you know, do yourself? Do you give them guidelines? How does it all work?

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah. What we do is, um, I have about seven content creators that work for me. Um, and they manage, you know, some of the, the Twitter pages, the Facebook pages, which can be automated.

• 49:02Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  In advance. And then the Instagram pages, um, somebody's actually manning those, uh, sort of twenty-four seven. And you know, they have a responsibility of a certain amount of posts when they get assigned.

• 49:13Lewis Howes?

  Cause there's no automated on Instagram yet.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  No, no, their API doesn't allow for it. And, uh,

• 49:18Lewis Howes?

  It'd be sweet when it happens.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Sure. I mean, it will, but it won't.

• 49:21Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  You know, from, from my perspective, a lot of the social media publishers, because there's other people that do what I do out there. And a lot of people haven't got into the Instagram space because frankly, they're just too lazy. Um, and it's just them. So, you know, imagine just, you know, like, let's say a three or four times multiplier. Um, you know, you're running four pages and you have to post on each page five times a day. Do you really want to log in and out, you know, of Instagram twenty times to do posts?

• 49:46Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  On top of everything else that you're already doing. In most cases and circumstances, the answer is no. So what I've done is I've found a few people who are willing to do that at a smaller level. And maybe they run three accounts each. And they get compensated for, you know, doing an appropriate amount of posts.

• 50:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Um, so each, each page is given its own voice and it's given its own, um, set of reason and saying if it falls within this category, it's okay to be posted. Um.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  And we try to stick to a very similar voice. Sometimes we'll even switch content creators from one page to another to keep the content fresh, to keep everybody. So I have, you know, I have my brother, um, who is, you know, 21 and he's sort of like, you know, he's into like dirt bikes and he's like redneckish, but he runs one of my women's fashions account.

• 50:32Lewis Howes?

  That's hilarious.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  And he's very good at it.

• 50:34Lewis Howes?

  He's killing it, right?

• 50:34Speaker 01

  And he's killing it. Yeah. So, you know, some, some things, um, obviously are less sensitive to find an outfit and to caption it is not a big deal. But when we're dealing with stuff like people's health, um, for example, like we have people who understand and are in the fitness or nutrition space who actually will write content for us and then we can, you know, edit it, um, appropriately because there's, there's, you know, the wording and, you know, headline caption, um, space. There's a lot of copywriting tricks, um, that you want to use for content to resonate, but we have the information coming from somebody who's reliable.

• 51:08Lewis Howes?

  Right. Interesting. Well, this stuff's pretty fascinating to me and, uh, I want to know what's next for you. Like what's, what's the big picture? I know you're, you're kind of like restructuring your business. You've got a new site out called doug.com, which is a great domain name that you're curating content on there for. You've got a few other products you're working on. You talked about this social media influencer site, but what's kind of the big thing that's up next for you that you're working on that you're really excited about?

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think the big picture for me is just, um, sort of picking up as much digital real estate as I can. And I first used that term, um, a couple of years ago and I've kind of stuck with it and because I really feel that it does describe, um, what I do. And I'm trying to pick up all these valuable pieces of, uh, intellectual property. And there's different ways to monetize, you know, there's hundreds of ways to monetize each of these different pages that we own. Um, so to have access to that audience, um, On a constant basis, we have an ecommerce site. So, all of our fashion pages point to an ecommerce site where you can buy women's clothes.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  And we also have the publishing platform where we can now use our pages to monetize our content by dealing directly with brands. So, I think that at the end of the day, I don't own, Doug.com is not the market that I'm in. I'm not in the ecommerce business. I'm just in the eyeball business. I want to influence a large group of people under a bunch of different types of categories. And I want to give them great content and I want to find advertisers, not only for the benefit of monetizing and growing my business, but also the fact that as technology gets a lot better and we can target people correctly, people are getting advertisements that are relative to them and that can actually benefit them.

• 52:59Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. I love it, man. Well, I'm gonna lead it to one more final question in a second, but I want to make sure everyone can connect with you and learn more about you, which is over at BrandonHampton.com. You can go check them out over there. It's kind of just a landing page right now. But make sure to follow Brandon on LinkedIn. He's writing a lot of great content right now about how he does some of this in the business and his life experience. Brandon Hampton over there on Instagram, also Twitter @notebook, but also his personal is @CEO. Am I correct?

• 53:31Speaker 01

  @CEO on Twitter and then it's @money on Instagram.

• 53:34Lewis Howes?

  It's a great name.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Two great names.

• 53:37Lewis Howes?

  So, make sure to check them out there. And if you have any questions, you'll have everything linked up in the show notes as well over at LewisHowes.com. So, if you can go there and check it out, I'll have all his links. But to wrap it up and with the final question, which is what I ask everyone, which is what is your definition of greatness?

• 53:55Speaker 01

  I think greatness...

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Is defined as being able to effectively and efficiently do what you love to do while not only benefiting you and your family, but everyone else that you come into contact with.

• 54:12Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, yeah, because it's not about just you and your family. It's about the greater good in the world.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  It's about the greater good in the world. You know, you have to be able to find the balance. And a lot of people are, you know, I think there's even some people that put too much effort into others and not enough into themselves and the people that are closest to them, um, you know, the people pleasers. And then there's the people who are very greedy and self-centered and they put too much effort into themselves. So I think it's fine finding that harmony between the two and uh, being able to again effectively and efficiently master what you love to do. I think that's a very important part.

• 54:49Lewis Howes?

  I love it, man. Well, thanks so much for coming on and uh, everyone will uh, make sure to send everyone back to the show notes to check out everything you're working on and I appreciate what you're up to.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. Make sure you hit the beach.

• 55:00Lewis Howes?

  I will.

• 55:15Lewis Howes?

  Alrighty guys, thanks so much for tuning in today. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to go back to the show notes over at lewishouse.com/81. That's 81 for episode number 81. Got all the show notes back there, links to Brandon's pages and things like that. So you can check him out. Make sure to follow him. Post a picture on Instagram where you are listening to this episode. He is at Money on Instagram. So tag at Money and at Lewis Howes and let us know where you are listening. And feel free to share this out on social media with your friends on Facebook and Twitter again. If you've got other friends who are entrepreneurs and business owners, they're probably interested in building their following on social media.

• 55:57Lewis Howes?

  And if they haven't figured it out yet, then this is a powerful episode for them to listen to. So please share it on Facebook and Twitter and uh, spread the word about the School of Greatness Podcast. Trying to blow this thing up and get this out there to even more people. So I appreciate you guys so much for being on here each and every week. As you notice, we're doing two episodes a week lately. I'm trying to ramp this up to possibly three, but I'm going to make sure that the quality stays super high and gets even better. So I'm going to continue to bring on a great guest for you guys. And if I can get three a week, then I will. I'm going to make sure that it's high quality for you first and foremost with great information,

• 56:39Lewis Howes?

  inspiration, motivation to get you to the next level and have you stepping up into your own greatness. So again, guys, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  I'm not in the ecommerce business. I'm just in the eyeball business.