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- [00:01]
A
Really excited to introduce you today to Jenny Stojovich. She's a VC and a top LinkedIn creator, thinking really critically about AI social media, feeding the proverbial content beast, and the mistakes we make along the way. And as you're about to hear, that is actually how Jenny and I met. We talk about how we met and we zoom out to the lessons that anyone on social media today needs to follow. This is Jenny's story as much as it is mine. So just gonna get into the conversation. Jenny, it is so wonderful to meet you in person. Thank you so much for coming over to my studio and having this conversation with me. I'm so grateful.
- [00:37]
B
Yeah, absolutely. It turns out that we have a lot of mutual friends going back quite a while. I can't believe we didn't actually intersect before this.
- [00:45]
A
We intersected. Our meet. Cute was not as cute as I would have hoped. But for anyone who might not know, how did we meet? URL. We're meeting IRL for the first time.
- [00:59]
B
So I have followed you for a while on Instagram. I love your content. It sounds like we actually have been following each other, but not knowing each other. And I had been scrolling, I think this was on Saturday or Sunday of last week, and I came upon a post that. That was posted on your account. And the post was essentially almost the exact same post that I have posted previously a few weeks ago. And so at first when I. When I looked at it, I thought I was seeing something because I was seeing my own writing, but under your account. And I thought, okay, this must be a glitch. And I started scrolling and it looks like essentially my exact post had been rewritten about your family instead of my family. And so I ended up posting about how they were the exact same post. And I think the first time we actually officially met was in the comments section of that video. Yes. How was that for you?
- [02:02]
A
I was completely offline for the first time in my entire life. I was at something called the Hoffman Process, which is where they take your phone away for the entire week. That's never happened to me. And I'll talk about this at another time, but it's like 10 years of therapy in a week. And we joke on the phone that I was like, this is my final test. This is crazy.
- [02:23]
B
The timing.
- [02:24]
A
The timing. So typically we would have four human touch points and two AI touch points. I don't think you can be a CEO in this world and not use AI to support you.
- [02:34]
B
Of course.
- [02:34]
A
So we've trained an AI agent on all of my source material. So 17, 18 pages of my five books. We take the biggest questions that our audience is asking, we feed it to that AI agent and to get drafts based on our own source material. And then we have another AI fact checker that helps us make sure that everything is correct. Where there was gray area and where this process broke down was my directive to jump on trends very quickly. And my mistake was in not defining what that trend would be. And so while I was offline, where it broke down was not taking another look, which I always do, at everything that goes up because it was interpreted as a trend.
- [03:22]
B
Yeah, I totally understand how something like this can happen. And that was the same thing I said when we had the phone call. I said, I'm assuming my work got picked up as a trend and that your team or the AI had scraped it to repurpose. I think it's just a series of unfortunate events. Right? Trends are very difficult because the way that we consume content has changed so quickly. And with AI happening so quickly, you know, is the AI infringing because it recreates a royalty free song that was fed in from, say this Ed Sheeran song and has some of the same notes and then does that mean that Ed Sheeran can then go after you for buying the AI royalty free song, for instance? That was an actual conversation I had last night with Tyler Chow, the creator's attorney, because it's not clear and actually might in fact be infringement. And so I think the problem that's happening now is we are just getting so inundated with content and we're using content so often that it's not clear where, where is copyright, you know, what is a trend? What is plagiarism? Are they all kind of mishmashed into the same thing? And I think that it's going to be really difficult for an AI agent without specialized training to be able to do that, because you have to think on the other end when you submit and say that there's an infringement. But Meta's got a bot and an AI that's also looking at it as well. And it's also making its own assumption. And so we were saying before the show, one of the things that's really interesting is that the way that it's governed in a court of law with things like fair use is not the way that your youtubes and your Meta governs it, because they're private companies. So most of the time they'll just automatically rip a post down if there's any complaint. And that's Happening. You know, every single day, there's creators that are losing their major, major youtubes with millions of followers because of those complaints.
- [05:13]
A
By the way, we've had 4,000 Instagram posts, and this is the first time anything like this has happened, which is not an excuse by any stretch of the imagination. One mistake is one mistake too many. And so for me, it is absolutely unacceptable. But at the same time, I'm a human and I make mistakes. And we have humans behind the process and imperfect AI that makes mistakes. And how do we see a mistake and learn and grow? Because the truth is, even as we tweak this process, there's probably going to be another mistake in the future. We'll figure out the process again. The first time we spoke on the phone, you said I didn't respond to some of the messages. Did you think I was ignoring you, or how did you envision what I was doing?
- [05:53]
B
Yeah, I think it felt like it was getting ignored and essentially like it was not valued, perhaps. I think that that is kind of the theme of what emerged out of how this went from, you know, a molehill to a mountain very, very quickly, as some certain things, when you hit a hot button issue on social media tend to. And so it felt as if this person who I look up to and follow, who has a large account, who I really like, this person's content, just thinks it's okay to come and totally, word for word, take my content that I spent time writing, you know, and to make things a little bit more of a burn, I think, because it was a story about my family and my son and that it had been rewritten about your daughter. And so it felt very, very personal.
- [06:38]
A
Yes, that makes so much sense. I think it was for a couple of hours when I got the, like, sos Take a look at what we should do here. And so my instinct was to jump on it quickly and say, let's. Let's get this down. Let's archive it so that I can go back and look and. And really analyze what went wrong. Own the mistake, take. Take it down and respond really quickly. But what did you need to hear from me at that point? Because it sounds like what was said, and we're all geniuses in hindsight, wasn't the right thing to say. And I completely own that.
- [07:10]
B
I think what I needed to hear was simply, I'm sorry, I take accountability for this. It won't happen again.
- [07:18]
A
Well, Jenny, I'm sorry, I take accountability for this, and it absolutely won't happen again.
- [07:22]
B
And I was a Public affairs leader for Google and Facebook and like major companies. And so I've, I, I've handled these types of situations. I've done, you know, emergency statements. I've, I've done, actually I've had a crisis myself with my own brand and had to do a statement. And so I think there's like three things you have to remember. You tell the truth, you tell it honest, and you tell it first. And so I think time was one thing that was against you in this because it had sat up for a while due to the unfortunate circumstance that you were offline. Right. Um, that's just again a series of unfortunate events. I think that people felt as if saying, I'm gonna look into what the team did, that perhaps it was dishonest or it was blaming of a social media manager instead of just saying like, I take accountability, this is my face. A lot of people that are not creators don't realize that there's an entire mechanism that's behind every brand. So people still have the assumption that you make every piece of your content because it's your face, it's your name, so they're assuming you made it right. And so I think that was another piece was, was lacking of the accountability. And I think what probably would have been a better way to handle it if it were me, I probably would have not done it in the comments section. And I can say this from experience, doing a crisis both for myself and for clients. The comment section is, it's rough. It's really rough because what happens is you give people the ability to weigh in and then share and then they can kind of pile on, it's pile on mentality. And so one of the tips that I give to founders and creators is if you ever are found in this situation, the best thing you can do is say, I put a statement up on my website. And I'm going to tell you why. Because what ends up happening is all of a sudden people all have to jump onto your website to read the statement. People are extremely lazy. The chance that they go back to a different app to go comment is very low. Once you get them onto a website, you actually diffuse the anger quite quickly. And the chance that they're going to keep engaging on this issue after already being on a web page is, is quite low. But in the comments section, you're basically like throwing yourself in the gladiator ring so they can directly comment to you
- [09:42]
A
what a gladiator win. That was the first instinct I had, was, who am I? I'm like A nerdy finance lady. Like, I'm not. I'm not Beyonce. I'm not putting out a statement. My first thought was to reach out to you as a human. We, like you said, have so much in common. I'm sure we're going to laugh at this moment that we met. But to reach out to you, apologize to you, and take this offline, because it's really easy to be a keyboard warrior and to pile on and to send hate toward people that you don't even know, or you don't even know their backstory. Or maybe you assumed by, you know, being offline, I was, like, on some fancy vacation when I was, like, in drama camp, you know, and that's okay. And we just make a lot of assumptions about what we think people are going to do, and there's so much drama that gets piled on, that gets created.
- [10:38]
B
Yeah.
- [10:38]
A
Online.
- [10:39]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And studies have shown this, too. There's a really great episode of Hidden Brain, the NPR series. So if anyone wants to nerd out on this and wants to, like, see the science of. Of the pile on. So they actually have shown that people's dopamine lights up when they get into the comments section. Like, it's a real thing. And so people actually get addicted to the keyboard warrior aspect. And so I think when you've got a specific algorithm that hits and all of a sudden people pile on, it's just like, people become addicted to it. And it was crazy, the amount of comments that started to roll in. And I think it's just, like, people, once they latch onto something, they just get so obsessed with it. And that's why, you know, when. When Jason reached out, our mutual friend, and he was like, hey, they're getting really. I'm like, okay, well, that's not criticism anymore. That's not okay. You know, And I was in the middle of doing a shoot at the time. I'm like, okay, I'll figure out how to, like, pull this down right now, and then we can talk about it later. But, yeah, they. They turned to really nasty really quickly. And that's not okay.
- [11:45]
A
You know, it. It's something that I had never experienced. And so I. I felt like it was important to have this nuanced conversation offline.
- [11:57]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And I never thought this is what would happen, to be clear. And I said to Jason, like, the intention was just apology. And I think that when these things start to, like, grow into something so much bigger than they are, you have to really realize that there are human beings on the other side of it. And that I think is where it's, it's really tough to be in the public eye when I had a very similar thing happen to me. I had, I like to call them, they're, they're like my cancel sisters. Like I had a slew of, of very famous women celebrities that, that called me and said, I saw what happened to you, I've been there. Here's how to handle it. And so when you called me, I actually felt like a kinship of like, oh, I can help. I also caused this, but I can help. So let's like figure out a way to like make it better. And so, you know, that was why I posted video saying, hey, she apologized, I forgive her. Please don't keep showing up in their her comment section and DMing her. And I think like it's okay to make a mistake and to also get over the mistake. Like we're human beings and there are so much more serious things that happen in the world than a post.
- [13:02]
A
And how do you think about creators specifically in the finance space where a lot of these numbers are the same. So you know, 59 and a half the US government. So weird is the time where you can, you know, take penalty free withdrawals from 401k or an IRA. You know, 18 is usually the age of majority. How do you think about that? Because those numbers are all standard. Like that math is always going to be the same.
- [13:27]
B
Yeah, absolutely. The math will be the same, but the storytelling will be different because every creator has a way that they tell the story. So this particular post was, you know, telling the story through the lens of here's a baby and here is what I do with my child, and here is how we do it and here is why it matters. And so that particular composition of the story, I think is what makes it unique. I've certainly seen other finance creators that have shared these numbers, particularly a lot of male creators that share them. This is a space that's mostly men and I feel like you're one of the few women that I do follow in this space. So, you know, that's why I'm really glad we're having the conversation. But I've seen it shared in a million different ways. It's just not always from a mom's perspective or from the perspective of telling it through the child's lens or something like that.
- [14:14]
A
Yeah, I mean, I'm so excited to talk so much more about this. Like I have my daughter's Roth ira. My next book is going to be about how to raise rich kids and generational wealth. And I'm really excited to keep talking about it. I'm a little nervous now, so that's why I'm. I'm curious to get your thoughts around.
- [14:35]
B
Yeah, I mean, numbers are numbers. Obviously, they're always going to be the same, but I think it's like the unique storytelling lens that every creator brings in their flair and their style. And so I think that's a. That's. It's a really important topic that I don't think a lot of people realize is even available to them. And especially now that so many women, and moms in particular, are becoming creators. They're the fastest growing group right now. Millennial women. And it's really funny because you think, like, creators are Gen Z, but it's actually millennials. It's funny. You know, we're cool now. We're totally taking over. You know, in a conversation I had with Stan, they were telling me they had some data of how fast it was, like 60, 70 of the growth they were seeing was millennial women. Largely between our age range, actually. And I think it's because a lot of them are moms, and a lot of them are not being served by the traditional, like childcare that's available in the United States. You know, rushing back and forth between work and, you know, daycare, pickups and things like that, it's just, like, eventually becomes so expensive and so stressful that building a creator business from home is looking a lot more ideal, I think, for a lot of women. And so there's going to be a lot more opportunity to create these generational wealth paths. I think it's really cool that your book is hitting this exact topic, because I think it's the exact right time.
- [15:56]
A
Thank you. Thank you. It's something that I think about all the time, especially. My daughter's 16 months old. I was literally pregnant. Talking about, you know, how excited I AM for her.529 and her custodial Roth IRA and her UGMA UTMA custodial brokerage account, and all of these accounts. And I Trump account, too.
- [16:16]
B
That one too.
- [16:17]
A
All the accounts, no matter how you feel. We pulled up my daughter's custodial Roth Ira. She has more money than I did in my 20s, like, not even two years old. And the power of compound interest is such a powerful, powerful force. It's not that you need the most money. You need the most time possible. And so the earlier you start, you know, it makes me so happy that more people are talking about this, we obviously have to do it in a responsible way, but the more people that can talk about this, the better off we all are.
- [16:47]
B
Yeah. And what's really interesting, particularly about, you know, the Roth IRA and real work. Right. So the irs, just for anybody that's listening, if you are going to hire your child, you need to show that they're doing age appropriate real work when they're a baby, like our babies are.
- [17:02]
A
And they're both models. Look at us. Are we rivals or soulmates?
- [17:06]
B
Of course. Of course. Gonna have to, like, be paired up. I have a boy, you have a girl. So, you know, just say arranged marriage.
- [17:11]
A
Here we go.
- [17:12]
B
What's interesting, though, is there's very little real work with a baby unless it's modeling. Right. Like, there's essentially nothing else that's legal. Which means the main businesses that can actually use this are creators. And so it really dovetails the rise of the creator economy and this conversation and what you're focusing your new book on. I think we're going to see a rise of children, you know, being able to receive all of these different accounts for the first time ever. Because if you work a W2 job. Well, first off, if you. If you work a W2 job, you can't do this unless you have your child in Hollywood or they're a paid child model or actor, separately. But most people aren't going to do that. So the creator economy is actually unleashing this totally new wealth option for children.
- [17:55]
A
Absolutely. Yeah. Or, you know, they get a regular job where they're, you know, babysitting, but that's later. So our kids are so little that this is. Being a model in your content is the only option. Like, both of us had the same thing. But it's true. And it is a huge opportunity for more and more creators, especially women, to create generational wealth.
- [18:16]
B
Yeah, it's. It's a really big opportunity. And I do a lot of. A lot of my work because I'm a VC, originally, I focus on. I got, like, the 2040 playbook, and it's what the world will look like when my baby's in high school. Your baby will be in high school too, in 2040. Oh, that's funny. And. And so what is 2040 gonna look like? Will college matter? What do I do with my 529? It's got a $35,000 limit if I roll it over to the raw. So do I wanna make sure, you know, I. So this is where I really think about. I focus on, like, the AI future and how it intersects with generational wealth and the skill sets that will be needed and the types of accounts that will lock us in or free us up by the time our children are 18. I think is really important because if you had said 10 years ago, especially as us, the millennial generation that are just like the everyone had to go to college generation, everyone would put money into a 529 without a question. But now that college is an option, the 529 might be one of many vehicles that you consider in a way you didn't before.
- [19:19]
A
Yeah, I mean, they have just. Now that we're on the topic and gonna nerd out about it.
- [19:23]
B
Let's start out.
- [19:24]
A
They have loosened the requirements around 529. So you could pass it on to another relative. You could use it for yourself. You could use that 35,000 toward a retirement account. You could use it toward a trade school or other types of schools that aren't like traditional colleges. And I assume that they're going to continue to make it more flexible so that people who contributed to it use it. But it is something really important to think about in an overall, you know, portfolio of what you're thinking about for your child if you're fortunate enough like us to be maxing it out, you know, that's giving her so many options that I didn't have.
- [20:00]
B
No, absolutely not. I, I was the first generation to graduate high school in my family, let alone college. You know, this was not even remotely close to anything that was ever discussed when I was a kid. But I do think it's really interesting because the 529 is also in some states. I'm sure you followed this. They're actually loosening it up even further. You can use towards homeschooling, you can use it towards private school tuition. And I will make a hot take prediction here.
- [20:28]
A
Heard it here first.
- [20:29]
B
I'm telling you, you guys are going to say like I heard it on Nicole's podcast with Jenny, I fully believe we are going to see a massive revolution of homeschool based parenting through agentic AI. It is a really fast growing movement that's happening right now mostly on X, because that's where most of the AI talk is going on. But people are starting to program through Claude. They're hacking their way through and making AI tutors for their children. And in the states where you can just literally save from the 529 and in that same year pull that money out to use towards your homeschooling. I think we're going to see a ton of AI homeschooling, like a ton. And there's financial opportunity, I wouldn't say financial loopholes to be able to pay yourself this, but I guess technically in some states you'll be able to just pull that 529 money out and do this.
- [21:20]
A
I think you are spot on. We were looking at the Alpha School. Have you seen that?
- [21:25]
B
I'm very familiar with Alpha. This is something I spend a lot of time building content on is what the future of education will be for our kids. So Alpha's great. There's one that's opening near us, you know, in Santa Monica. It's $65,000 a year.
- [21:39]
A
Both me and my husband went to public schools and we're like, it's public school all the way.
- [21:42]
B
Yeah, we're both, my husband and I are both public school kids, you know, and so I think what you can do is what Alpha School does so well. So for folks that are not familiar with Alpha School, the Alpha School is an AI based private school. It started in Austin, I think close to like five or six years ago. It's got really, really great results. Children learn about two and a half times faster than standard public school curriculum. And what is really unique about it is that because every child has an AI tutor, they are able to get all of the book learning done in a few hours time in the morning. And, and so while you think an AI school means kids are always on computers, it's actually the exact opposite. The kids are constantly out living a more Montessori style curriculum because they can actually be outside, they can be running around, they can do hands on projects, they can, they build businesses and things like that. And so the AI tutor actually allows for them to do a lot more hands on learning. But that experiment that they're doing which has yielded really great results, that's actually been happening in China for 10, 15 years. So China's been doing AI based tutors and has really good long term data on it. And their long term data. You ready for this? They've done double studies where they have the AI tutored public school children in China and they compare them against the traditional curriculum. And over the long term the children with the AI tutor are anywhere from five to 10 times faster at learning, depending on the subject.
- [23:05]
A
That's incredible.
- [23:06]
B
Yeah, so it's like while it's experimental kind of here to talk about this. China's got a lot of long term data to show that it works. And so now that applaud is so easily in your hands and in, you know, quickly going to be in every home. We could essentially make our own AI tutor. Or if you're an entrepreneur, listening, you could make a business out of this. Probably quite a few businesses, especially teaching people how to do the financial piece to be able to fund this.
- [23:30]
A
How long have you been married?
- [23:32]
B
Almost 15 years.
- [23:33]
A
Wow.
- [23:34]
B
I got married when I was 21. Okay, yeah.
- [23:37]
A
What's the secret?
- [23:38]
B
I will tell you honestly, the real secret to being married is that you need to realize you're going to be married to many different people in your lifetime. You are going to likely get a new person every three to four years. So I am on my fourth husband, same man. Because things happen and you change. And so you have the choice each time that the other person changes, are you going to change with them or are you going to change in a different direction or are you going to stay in the same place? And so basically it's a roll of the dice in my honest opinion, if you grow together each time. And so we've had episodes in my marriage where my husband and I very much were growing intertwined. And then there's been times where I could feel we were starting to stray apart with the new lives. And so can you keep enmeshed together or do you decide to grow apart? If there's one thing that other than finance and AI, if there's the one thing that I know, it's I. I started giving marriage advice when I was married for 10 years and then once
- [24:33]
A
I hit like, yeah, that's like when you get your stripes.
- [24:35]
B
That's what I thought too. And I have, you know, you're also going to want to divorce multiple times. That's the other thing. Anybody that tells you that they've never had that contemplation in their marriage is like totally full of bullshit. Can we swear?
- [24:51]
A
Yeah.
- [24:52]
B
Okay. They're full of bullshit. Every single marriage goes through like the hanging by a thread piece. I think I've had that happen two or three times. Because trauma happens to you. You know this, right? You know you went through like one of the worst traumas you can ever have. I also have been through like really, really life changing trauma. And that trauma either bonds you or like flings you apart from my experience. So on that note though, I do think that your partner is your best investment you'll ever make.
- [25:21]
A
Could not possibly agree more. You and I are so aligned on that. Yes.
- [25:25]
B
Yeah. I mean, and also the thing that
- [25:27]
A
pays most dividends later on, by the way, my daughter is the Best thing I've ever created in my entire life.
- [25:33]
B
When I married my husband, I was in the middle of college.
- [25:37]
A
Wow.
- [25:38]
B
I literally was a college kid and I. When we got married, he was just out of College. He's making $28,000 a year. We were minus $10,000 in the bank account, had no money. I was still in the middle of going to university. We literally started not from, like, zero, but underneath zero.
- [25:57]
A
Yeah. You're. Your son has more in his custodial role.
- [26:00]
B
Yes. Than we then. We did. Yeah. And so, like, we ended up building, like, you know, we made a lot of bold decisions, had a lot of things go right for us, and it was all built together. And so that's something that is irreplaceable. Like somebody that, like, knew you back then, that still knows you now. That's why people like, you know, Kendrick Lamar has been with his wife since they were like 16. You know, finding somebody that can ground you in the old you is so special. That's a best friend for a lot of people too.
- [26:34]
A
What does your process look like? Because you're a new mom, you're an entrepreneur. We all need to feed this piece. We're all experimenting with the right AI support tools, with agencies, with freelancers, with all the things. So how do you think about it? And. And do you feel like you need to be online all the time?
- [26:53]
B
So this is one where I'm definitely very interested in your process because I'm very much building out my process. I'm a newer creator. I was originally a LinkedIn creator, so I'm. That's where my main platform is.
- [27:05]
A
That's where I followed you. Our mutual friend Jason, also at LinkedIn Creator, missed out, missed the boat on the LinkedIn Creator. But you've put out such incredible business content. I really admire what you've put out. I think you're the only person I Follow on link LinkedIn.
- [27:20]
B
I really appreciate that. I tried really hard. It's funny, I'm actually the number one VC on LinkedIn, but my content's mostly about women entrepreneurs, so I like to, like, wear that badge with honor that I have been able to become the most followed VC with women's entrepreneurship. And I never specifically say that it's a platform for women entrepreneurs. I just coincidentally always cover women entrepreneurs because why wouldn't I? If you cover male entrepreneurs, why wouldn't you cover women? And so for my team, I write my long form. I have trained a cloud voice for myself as well for various different platforms. The one that I'VE been able to get the closest, and I'd be curious if you're doing this as well, is the new Beehive mcp. So Beehive is my newsletter.
- [28:06]
A
Newsletter, yeah.
- [28:07]
B
So Beehive's a newsletter platform. Are you guys on Kit?
- [28:11]
A
We were on bulletin with Meta first. May rest in peace. And then when everybody needed to find a new home, we went to Beehive and then we just moved to ConvertKit now kit.
- [28:22]
B
Yeah, yeah, I've heard great things about Kit as well. So Beehive just launched the. I believe it's the first newsletter mcp. So it directly.
- [28:30]
A
Okay.
- [28:30]
B
So the MCP is your connection into your Claude. And so there are various different softwares. It's like Gmail, like they all have
- [28:38]
A
different canva the connections.
- [28:40]
B
Yes. So there's connectors and there's mcps. I believe there's a difference between how much data they can pull and what they can do. Because I actually give permission through the MCP for it to do actions in my Beehive. So I think that's the difference between the connector and the mcp. But like what?
- [28:55]
A
Open claw?
- [28:56]
B
It can actually. Yeah. Or like cowork. Right. And so I give it permission to do everything. So it has every piece of data. So I write three newsletters a week. Our total audience size is about 85, 000 or so. And so what we actually are able to do is it can see everything I've written. It can then see all the open rates, it can like, go go down to the most granular nuance of like, what made people like what? And then it then maps it with trending stories that are trained in my voice and the things I write about, particularly on LinkedIn. And then it comes up with concepts that it thinks that I could write it, I could write on. And it's really fascinating because I've trained it to look through my lens. It knows my personality, and it also knows to find contrarian thoughts around business and finance. And it surfaces all kinds of crazy trends and topics that I don't see anybody talking about. I had this like very viral newsletter last week on the widow economy. Nobody's talking about it. It's $100 trillion economy because most people talk about how boomers are going to die and then millennials are going to inherit it. But actually there'll be a five to 12 year period where widows inherit it and nobody's focusing on that particular niche. And so I coined the term widow economy and it blew up and it was actually Claude and I that conceptualized the entire piece. So I use. That's my most used integration so far. Um, I've got, you know, an agency in management. I've got a separate speaker manager. I've also got an assistant social media manager. And then I'm now onboarding a person to do video editing. I've been doing ad hoc video editing and I don't have like a dedicated person. So that's my very small team I started two months ago, guys, killing it.
- [30:38]
A
And how do you think about being online all the time or are there any boundaries for you?
- [30:44]
B
So we talked about this earlier. I only check LinkedIn and my Instagram is interesting because my Instagram is originally my personal one. So like my actual family and classmates from high school, you know, a decade and a half ago, will be on there. But those are the only platforms I look at whatsoever. Instagram mostly for the social interaction with people I know and then LinkedIn because I just like learning on there. I don't really, I don't go to TikTok ever. I open the app once a day to post the thing that I made for Instagram and then I close it. I don't really go on YouTube. I don't go on X X I do in the morning to get trending news topics, but it's kind of a nasty place if you scroll too far on there. So, yeah, I'm pretty much just IG for social, like my literal personal social life and LinkedIn for news. What about you?
- [31:33]
A
I mean, I, I try to stay as off as much as possible, but it's something I'm trying to figure out as we scale what that team looks like or what the tools we're using looks like.
- [31:48]
B
It's also. It depends on the platform too, because you've got X has like the Grok integration directly in it. So it's really easy to like get trending X topics because they actually allow for it to connect to the AIs in a way that you can just not have to go on the platform and then you surface trending topics. But LinkedIn, oh my gosh, it's like a walled garden. You can't really. It's not very easy to use AI to, to monitor it. And so I think you can get off of the platforms directly. As a consumer, if you have agents that are able to retrieve what's going on on the platforms and only surface to you what's most important, I assume that's the way that things are going to go. It only makes sense that these platforms will Start to create AI summaries that are customized to you that are, you know, probably there in the morning when you wake up. So I think it will be allowing us to get what we need from them for less periods of time. You're already seeing that in Google, right? Like when you open up your Gmail, you have like a whole summary at the top now from Gemini that tells you, you know, what emails and key things you need to do in the morning. So I think social will probably go that way.
- [32:50]
A
And you said that you had spoken to someone who was at Meta who has a whole resource list.
- [32:57]
B
Yeah, absolutely.
- [32:59]
A
People try to look through it or navigate what's only going to get more complicated.
- [33:05]
B
Absolutely. So a good friend of mine, Rebecca, she is a former counsel for creators at Meta and she's now out on her own as a creator attorney. And so her and I actually co authored a resource that we can drop in the show notes of what to do if you are a creator that does have somebody that's copying your content. So like, what are your rights? What is the recourse you can take? And on the inverse, if you're accused of copying, what are your rights and what actions can you take? Because one of the things I noticed from our situation was so many people didn't realize you have copyright protection when you produce something on social media. It's not clear to people. They don't realize that they actually do have protection in their content. And so, like, better explaining, what does that mean? What does that not mean? I think is really important. And the more that people feel like they have to feed the beast, as we call it, you know, Meta wants you to post. I think Jen Gottlieb says she posts like five to seven times a day to grow.
- [33:57]
A
That's crazy.
- [33:57]
B
Five to seven times a day on Instagram, she gained like 200,000 followers in two months by doing that.
- [34:04]
A
Wow.
- [34:05]
B
Is that nuts?
- [34:06]
A
I. I can't imagine. I mean, I looked at our stats and I was like, over the last 10 years, we posted at least once a day. That feels like I.
- [34:16]
B
They don't want once a day anymore. Yeah, I mean, it's the TikTok ification of social. It was TikTok that really introduced the concept of posting frequently. And you can tell because when you open the TikTok app, it doesn't show number of posts, it shows followers and number of likes. And that was a distinct design change that they put into it to encourage rapid amounts of content creation. So on TikTok to grow, they want you to post two to three times a day.
- [34:42]
A
Well, you were saying that you also learned that there are three main types of content that are technically violations. But you know, we had Gary Vee on the show with day trading attention and he was talking about the idea that Chipotle and even TikTok itself jumps on trending audio as a big part of their content strategy.
- [35:01]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So for folks that are looking to grow their creator business, I, you know, I work with attorneys that sell creator businesses. Fun fact, you can sell your YouTube for a hundred million dollars or more. I'm sure everybody saw the TVPN deal. It's a major business now. And so some of the first things that they look for is what is in your YouTube library and what can we actually use for licensing if we sell to Netflix or whatnot. And there's actually some very common popular content styles that are totally a copyright infringement. So the first one is reaction videos. Reaction videos are just fully using somebody
- [35:40]
A
else's ip, just like watching somebody's video, but videoing yourself being like, yeah, yeah, that's totally.
- [35:47]
B
You know, my friend Tyler, the creator's attorney, she said the number one thing we, we look for is create reaction videos first. And then if we see that they have reaction videos in their YouTube dead in the water, we don't even look at doing any sort of investments. So because those are automatic infringement. Right. Uh, memes can be as well. So I actually know of unfortunately a very large platform that was on Instagram. They had about a million followers. It was a well known magazine that had been posting for over 10 years, just like you very old withstanding account. And they made memes out of Wicked. And you don't really want to mess with the big guys. And they got multiple strikes against them for using Wicked content. And they actually got their entire account deleted by meta because it was multiple strikes.
- [36:38]
A
Wow.
- [36:39]
B
And it was just Wicked memes. How many times did we see Wicked memes? Everyone did it. Yeah, but those were all copyright infringement.
- [36:46]
A
So don't try not to jump on those or how are you. And you also said that Stitches are.
- [36:51]
B
Yeah, so the last one is Stitches and are technically also using somebody's content as well. And once again, you could also get a takedown notice. It's really tough to know because on one hand you want to grow. So using these like popular memes in particular, I think are, you know, a great growth tactic. But then on the other hand, if you get caught on the wrong side of it, you could get a takedown notice. Um, if it's something like YouTube. YouTube gets so many infringement notices from other accounts at this point. They just auto take the stuff down. Now they don't even give you an appeal process really anymore. So I think one of the things that's really important for people to understand is that fair use, which is obviously a concept, you know, well, as a journalist, fair use doesn't necessarily apply if you're a private company. Private companies are like, you can take that up in the court of law. We're just going to do the easiest thing possible. We're taking your stuff down and if you hit more, you know, two, three strikes, you're out. They could just demonetize your entire account.
- [37:49]
A
So how are you thinking about those types of content and other types of content moving forward after our situation?
- [37:56]
B
It's great, great point. So I have definitely included, you know, photos before that are like publicly available. I, I mean I think they're potentially. They could have a takedown. I think every single one of us, if we like look back at our accounts, like there's probably some sort of material we've used from somebody else. And I think it's just a matter of like, if you get big enough to a certain point, you've become at risk of somebody noticing. And I don't know what that size is and I don't know what that calculation is. So Shira Lazar, who's a good friend of ours, a mutual friend, she was just telling me that she still gets notices to this day in 2026 for episodes that were on her very, very long standing YouTube show from 16 years ago. She still gets no takedown notices.
- [38:45]
A
What's trending?
- [38:45]
B
Yeah, what's trending will still, every now and then she'll get a letter, a takedown notice and it's like an episode from 11 years ago. Yeah, it's crazy. And she's had a whole partnership with Shutterstock for, for years and years and years and she said that they just somehow it might be an AI tool. Honestly that probably looks into back catalogs because who has the time to watch 10 year old YouTube shows?
- [39:10]
A
Right, so what can we post? There are a lot of confusing guardrails right now.
- [39:18]
B
Yeah, I think it's a risk analysis. I, I have a community called the Women Creators and so in it's literally just sharing this type of expertise and we had this whole conversation last night at one of our events and it wasn't clear. You know, even the top creator attorney that represents These massive, massive YouTubers said it's not really clear. Even the AI royalty free generated content could potentially, if it has notes that were come coming from a different song that already existed. They could even have claims on them.
- [39:50]
A
But as the millennial women in particular keep growing and become creators or want to become creators or mom talk becomes a thing and you know, you think that you're leaving your nine to five, but now this is going to be, you know, rainbows and butterflies. Like be a creator, they said, it's going to be fun, they said. And then it becomes, yeah, all encompassing, everything's work.
- [40:14]
B
Like I'm sorry, you can have work that's more desirable and more fun to do. Right. Like you love doing this piece, but you don't love probably making the Instagram content right. Like everyone's got something different. You know, I have some creators I know that are just so cracked on their newsletter. Like they're just like, that's the thing I love. Like I hate being in front of camera, but it's the newsletter that really gets me going. I think it's like being a creator, you're gonna love some aspects and you're going to love some formats. Maybe you're really into long form but you hate short form or whatever it might be and then you're going to like hate some pieces. Like it's always going to be work.
- [40:48]
A
So what's the answer is to focus on one platform, one specific type of content.
- [40:54]
B
So my friend Simran Carr, have you had her on before friends?
- [41:00]
A
No, but I know.
- [41:01]
B
So Sim actually she's a great example. It was girls that invest and yeah, she had to change the name because of a trademark infringement to rebrand the book. It's like a whole thing. So Sim taught me the best rule of thumb is you need to have one strong short form and one strong long form. She said like that's apparently like the, the money right there. And I was like, okay, that makes sense. So what do you enjoy the most?
- [41:23]
A
I love having longer conversations. I think it's just so hard to hide behind a computer in the comments section, you know, trying to jump on trends, trying to figure out what's the algorithm trying to keep, keep up with feeding this beast and jump on that thing really, really quickly, you know, and, and any of the hate stuff that happens on social is, is really hard for me to stomach. So that's why I like kicking it old school and seeing people face to face and having real conversations. It's hard to hate somebody up close and personal.
- [42:01]
B
You know, I'm into that. I, I think it's really strange how we have such a short attention span now. And you can see it. You see it in particular, you know, and it's interesting because we talk about, you know, the younger kids, Gen Z, like, they can't. Or alpha. Even now, you know, they can't watch something for more than a few seconds, which is true. I think the. The average attention span Something like three seconds now used to be like 12, by the way, before COVID So that's really scary. But it's even happening with older people, too. Apparently boomers are very quickly losing their attention span as well, and they're all favoring short form, too. Everything's going short form.
- [42:36]
A
I feel like we have so much in common and so much to talk about. And as new moms, you know, having a child has made everything a thousand times harder, especially in business. But it has made me really intentional about how I live my life and how I am an example for her. And I think this conversation of taking things offline and, and saying, pull up a chair and have a real adult conversation hopefully can be an example to her. So thank you.
- [43:07]
B
Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me. I did not expect for us to meet under this circumstance, but I'm so glad that we did.