Warum Creator ausbrennen und was dagegen hilft

0:00You mentioned that a lot of creators start with one thing, then they eventually burn out, and then you go to the scalability. Like Graham Stephan's a good mutual friend of ours. And Graham has openly talked about how he is getting really tired on his main channel. >> years ago. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, I've noticed Graham every year talks about And even when I met him, he was doing like three videos a week, and you just run out of topics, and at some point you just become a news reactor. And it's not something he enjoys as much as doing. And the way he's found a lot of success now with his podcast channel And for a while, like he spun up a coffee business. Yeah.

0:29>> And he's also talked about how the coffee business didn't work. >> Yeah. And so, I think it's interesting because on the one hand, everybody's like, "Well, acquisition is one of the most important things to a business. If you're a creator, you're going to succeed." On the other hand, hey, Graham did the coffee business didn't necessarily work. Emma Chamberlain's talked about how Chamberlain coffee line also doesn't apparently make money. There are many creators who go to the business path, and it seems like, well, maybe that was not the right play. >> So, two really interesting things about this.

0:56Uh well, Graham specifically, and then also in general. So, um I think we need to be very careful about what audience we want to gather. Mhm. And so, Graham's audience has been predominantly people who don't want to spend money. Yes, frugal. And so, he gathered everybody together who don't want to spend money, and then was like, "Hey, spend some money." >> [laughter] >> And so, I think there's I think in some ways it's hard it's almost harder for him to sell something than almost anybody else

1:23>> Right. uh because of the nature of his brand specifically. That's why I think like for him, it's like doing media stuff in some ways is probably an easier he can sell to advertisers, and he can they can have the the good luck, you know, get But I think for him, like something that would have been on brand would have been like honey, right? Before the the the lore Yeah, before the scandal, right? But pre-scandal honey, I think would have been very on brand for him to offer. >> Save you money. Yeah, and he could have made a lot of money on that. And so, I think all discount-related things or discount-related financial services probably would have been good angles for him. So, that's thing one. Thing two is uh So, I guess that I Sorry, I was getting into thing two, which is uh picking the right product. Right.

1:55>> Uh so, you have right audience, right product. And so, I think that having the saving money audience, you can make money from it, but getting them to buy something that would be considered frivolous, which is just like coffee. Now, you can try and position it as like, okay, it's not Starbucks, fine. But, now you're literally dealing with a commodity. Like, it's trade like coffee beans are traded as a commodity. Like, very hard to be to have alpha from a brand perspective when the whole brand has been built on don't buy. Like, this stuff comes off the same factory floor as this stuff, and they just put a markup on it, right? And so, from a product perspective, I actually think creators are horrendously bad at picking products. Mhm. Like, the amount of conversations I've had with creators who are like, "Hey, I'm thinking about launching an X." And I'm like, what? So, on one hand, I like, these are real conversations I've had where they're like, "Yeah, you know, I read Peter Thiel's Zero to One, and I think I have to create like a totally new category."

2:40Yeah, monopolize. >> Yeah, and I'm like, dude, you already your your monopoly is the attention. You can sell a commodity. And as long as it's on brand, you know, like with with with you, you'll probably be able to do really well. The follow question is, will you do as well as you could have otherwise done if you picked a better product? Which then goes into kind of like circling all the way back to acquisition.com in terms of what we do, is we I only really solve for revenue retention. Mhm. It's like the really the only thing I care about. Um cuz on a long enough time horizon, anything that retains customers becomes huge. Mhm.

3:10If you know how to advertise at all, which if you're a creator, you do. And if you can keep the customers, then on a long enough time horizon, you become you you build a massive company. >> Right. It's surprising you said retention instead of growth, actually. Well, I base on like, level one, like, keep customers. Level two, grow those customers, too, and get them to bring more. Mhm. But, you yes. Uh and so, from a product perspective, though, I don't think enough of them are thinking about reoccurring and recurring revenue. And my two cents for anybody who's a creator who's listening to this, do not try and solve churn.

3:41Try and find products that people already don't churn out of. And then make it your own. I spent a huge amount of my career banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how to make something that people inherently leave, like a gym membership. Uh something that's sticky. Mhm. And I've learned a ton. And so there's lots of what I would consider like blocking and tackling tactics that I have learned that will will that will that will improve churn. Right. But to conquer churn, like how many of you have turned out of your internet lately? How many of you turned out of your cell phone bill? How many of you have turned out of your insurance?

4:11>> for that matter. Yeah, exactly >> them and you're still with them. >> Of course. And so you think about these products and so I would rather find products that people already don't leave and have no affinity for and then try and just shift them over and they're like, wait, how can Well, aren't they technically turning out of them? Yeah, but I'm being laser targeted in how like Yes, that's the point. That's the advantage that you have as a creator is that you can bring those people over from what is otherwise a commoditized product that they don't care much about but still pay for. Rather than trying getting people to care about your product in order to buy it.

4:39>> You might remember 2021, everyone is really excited about the creator economy. Everyone thought it was going to be the biggest thing in the world. One, because COVID, everyone was at home and watching online videos. And two, because TikTok. Short forms were going on the scene. Everyone was getting millions of followers. And then 2022, 2023, there actually was a bust. Where a lot of people were like, oh, creator economy is not going to be a thing. And it's because people weren't able to monetize. They have all these short form followers. I have really strong views on this. Oh. Yeah. What are you thinking? So, I think it's because the people who are allocating money didn't understand media Mhm.

5:09>> at this level. Like I I would I would wager that you and I probably understand the creator world and media better than most. And I I think that fortunately, unfortunately, I think short form content does not build tremendous influence. Right. I think it bring awareness. Uh but if we think about influence in terms of like what percentage of likelihood can we get the audience of this person to purchase something?

5:34Um you just need Okay. So, four elements for influence. So, you've got likeness. So, it does this person look the way that I look? Mhm. So, because of that I will trust them more and be more likely to follow their directions. The second is credibility, which is say-do correspondence, which is basically does this person have evidence or proof that what they say is true.

5:59Uh third is you have power. Uh and power comes from someone doing some directive that you have stated. Mhm. Uh and then yielding a positive consequence from it. And so, I'll give you an example of this. So, uh Huberman made a short about if you have the hiccups, how to stop having hiccups. >> Right. And I remember watching it and being like, well, I don't have hiccups right now, but I'll try to remember this when I have hiccups. And about a month later, I had the hiccups.

6:25>> it. There's power in what you said. >> Yeah. And then I did the thing and the hiccups stopped. Mhm. And so, in that moment, Huberman gained influence over me. I'm more likely to follow a directive in the future. And so, status is the is the fourth thing that gives you influence, which is relative control over over reinforcers, meaning uh if I am a bartender and I control a scarce resource, which is alcohol, I have status in this setting Mhm. uh because I control the things that reinforce.

6:53>> Does it matter how rich or powerful you are? I'm the bartender. >> In this setting, I control what's scarce, right? And so, uh if you were a billionaire, you control money. And so, you gain status just from that. Presidents and politicians also have status because they control resources of the government, right? But they still control resources. And so, um women have status because they control a scarce resource for men. Great point. >> real. Yeah. And so, they can influence behavior. Mhm. And so, all of those things um increase the likelihood that you get hear-its from uh or or or compliance from a request. And so, if you have all four, then you are incredibly influential. Right. And big picture, our goal as creators is to gain actual influence so that we can influence uh the behavior of a large group of people, right? And the way to do that most powerfully is to give them something, some sort of directive, that they follow and their life gets better.

7:50And then they're more likely to adhere to a follow you know, a follow on request. That makes sense. So, if that's the case, it's very difficult for you to do that well with very short content. And so to put this in context, let's say that somebody has consumed 20 YouTube videos of mine. And let's say that that those videos on average were 30 minutes. All right, so that's 10 hours of of content that they've consumed from me. Okay, right?

8:17Let's do the math here. If the average short that I put out is let's say 20 seconds, okay? So, if we have 20 seconds for a short, that means it's three shorts per minute. So, 10 hours times 60, we have 600 minutes is what my longs were. Yep. And we'd have to triple that. So, they would have to consume 1,800 shorts of mine. God. Right. And so I think that what's happened is that people have wildly over-leveraged followership and views for influence.

8:46>> Mhm. What's interesting is that like small businesses, I remember Michael showed me this actually. He saw this little cue card, he took a picture of it from like car detailing business or something. And they said uh for 400,000 views on TikTok or 10,000 views on YouTube >> Mhm. $500. So, any creator who wants to make something about their car car detailing organically, they'll pay them $500 if they get 10,000 views on YouTube or 400,000 views on TikTok. So, they had they had already basically appropriated that as 40x is the equivalent uh amount of influence. And if it were me, I still would probably rather have the 10,000 views on YouTube. If we're looking at this um what's her name? The the dancing girl, Charli uh D'Amelio, right? So, I think she's had a couple of things that didn't work as well that like

9:33>> Right. And again, it's if I make a brand built around slapping strangers in public, right? Just as as a complete extreme. And then I launch a credit card. Does that really carry? There's no say do correspondence. I have no proof, right? So I have no proof that >> did partner with a credit card company, by the way. Right. And I think she had a popcorn and to be clear, I'm I've I'm there's no shade here. That's not my my my point here. My point is to help creators monetize.

10:01And so I see the point of short form as one thing. Which is to drive them forward. Or if you can, obviously deliver some sort of value like I got from Huberman in that in that short short clip. But the thing is is that the likely that that occurs is really really low. I have a pretty decent memory and I remembered a short from a month earlier and then actually did it and got a result. Super unlikely. Now, if you listen to Huberman on a daily basis for example, he probably gives 80 directives over his every podcast. And all he all you have to do if you're a long form listener is listen to one of them over a month and your life gets better and he gains influence. And so when he then makes a product recommendation, cuz I'll bet you that the Huberman collabs have probably crushed. Athletic Greens. Yeah, if you want. And he's got Rogan, he's got the sunglasses thing. Um I think he's promoting David Barrs, uh which is actually how

10:51>> protein. Yeah. So like uh and those collabs I think have probably gone pretty well, right? And Rogan also to the same degree. Like when he makes when he makes recommendations, like a huge amount of people like including presidential recommendations, a huge amount of people follow. And this is where it gets really interesting. So again, it's all of those elements. So if you have a let's say somebody is a long form host, doesn't talk about politics at all, shows no knowledge of the stuff, has a big audience, brings uh brings somebody on, their endorsement probably matters little. If their audience pays attention to a political candidate, then that's basically just functions as an ad and the political candidate is doing the influencing on their behalf.

11:31But for their endorsement to matter, not just their distribution, they have to have demonstrated some credibility around the topic so that people say, "This guy is informed." >> to be other than you've reached a million people or whatever. >> Right. >> Right. Joe has done a ton of political stuff. And like it, don't like it, whatever, he's demonstrated that he's at least spent a lot of time trying to research the topics with the intention of just trying to find truth from an independent perspective. I'm not getting into like the the weeds on either side here, but just that that has been the intention. And so, he has tremendous influence because most people think, at least I think most consumers think this way, uh I don't want to do all that work. Right. Uh I'll just trust him.

12:07See, what's fascinating you described the primary function of short form to drive to long form because you go to a broader point. You're saying that people had followers, but they didn't have influence. Yeah. Because influence comes from the four things you just described. >> Yeah. Likeness, credibility, power, status. >> Yeah. Initially, what was going through my mind was, yes, 2020-2023 saw a bust because a lot of investors confused influence with followers. >> Yes. Because there were more followers on the ecosystem through short form, yes, totally, but nothing else. The initial premise I was operating was in 2025, which now I'm rethinking was, "Oh, but now people have figured out how to use short form to upsell to products and services, whether on school or Yeah, or school.

12:47Yeah. Or these other 15 different monetization methods where these short form units are just becoming really marketing creative." >> school's the best one. Yeah. I mean, it is the best one. Well said. >> Well said. The premise for me was, oh, now short form it's actually just marketing. Like, they're just like commercials. >> Yeah. And so, the monetization is coming back. The short form is not really successful in growing your influence, but it is successful just from a distribution POV. Think of it as like awareness ads. Yep. And so, what happens is the objective, in my opinion, so like the ones you just like school, for example, if you're a short form person, it's like, "How can I just get them to take the tiniest amount of action?"

13:25Which is to go into a community where I can get way more interactions with them on a much faster feedback loop so that I can gain the other three or four more like harder, right? But what's interesting is like the people who I think are doing really well monetization right now for TikTok are doing TikTok Shop plus lives. And what's a live? Well. I think there were some creators that were still wildly undervalued and many that were wildly overvalued.

13:53And this is the you know, the classic story of like I had two people that I paid 100,000, you know, I said 100,000 followers on Instagram and I had both of them do a shout-out for my thing and one guy drove 10,000 customers and one guy drove zero. How is that assuming it's not bots, but like there's definitely legitimate creator accounts that have 100,000 followers that have zero influence. Real quick, if you're a business owner and you're not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift.

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