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- [00:00]
Yash Shivan
The best marketer is not necessarily the best salesperson.
- [00:04]
Host (possibly Brian)
I want somebody to be able to walk away from this episode and understand how this turns into a flywheel.
- [00:09]
Yash Shivan
One of the biggest mistakes brands make at VC is that they would see all of these creators and then give them no direction whatsoever.
- [00:15]
Host (possibly Brian)
Well, we just need a gift to 150 people. It's like, no, we need to bring 150 people into the story and then give them and package it in a way that they have a story to create around.
- [00:25]
Yash Shivan
Honestly, just one on one conversations with everybody is what they're doing differently.
- [00:30]
Host (possibly Brian)
What's up guys?
- [00:31]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Happening.
- [00:31]
Host (possibly Brian)
What's. Welcome to another episode of Sweat Equity. So today we, we typically don't do guests. This is actually we. We want to start doing more guest episodes. The problem with how we do our episodes and like why we want to have guests and it's hard to do guests is we do everything in person. We get to shoot something that is like, you know, we do it via Riverside or something like that just because of the quality. Like we want to maintain this like production level across the board anytime we shoot an episode. Because I also think there's less competition when you do it like at this point, at this level. But today we have Yash, the founder and CEO of Sorrel. Yash, for people that don't know, give, give the intro. And then I want to get super tactical on a lot of the layers with influencer and creator marketing and a lot because you have a lot of behind the scenes that you can, you can predict 20, 26 trends.
- [01:18]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah.
- [01:18]
Host (possibly Brian)
You know what I'm saying? And I want to get into, into some of those layers.
- [01:22]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Let's do it. Yeah.
- [01:23]
Yash Shivan
So I'm Yash Shivan. I'm the founder and CEO at Searle, which is the world's only and first influencer operating system. What we do is basically we help brands turn influencers from what's a more seemingly like a random, you know, chaotic channel into a more predictable, actually incremental sales driving channel for brands. That's what we do. Long story short.
- [01:44]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
So yeah, awesome.
- [01:46]
Host (possibly Brian)
Which is one like one of the. I feel like the biggest pain points with working with creators or influencers is the fact that like you pay somebody $2,000 to hold a bottle like this and you think it's going to be ROI positive and then you're not able to track it and. But it's evolved drastically. What I want to get into is you have so much interesting data you have, so you get to see amazing brands like A lot of eight, nine figure brands that are doing a lot of of interesting things with the influencer marketing, creator marketing. How has it evolved from 2024 into 2025? What have been kind of some of those bigger shifts overall as a whole, like within the category?
- [02:20]
Yash Shivan
Yeah, I think so. Just for numbers, we've got right now about 70 something odd, but like 70 or 71,000 active deals between brands and creators on the platform. So we have a lot of data on what's working, what's not working and so on. And some of these active deals don't end up working, some of them do end up working. So we see what works. To answer your question, I think 2024 was a lot of initial, you know, seeding, gifting, that sort of really kicked off in late 2324. Really. Now what we're seeing going into 2526 is more brands want to ascend creators beyond seeding because they realize that hey, seeding is, it works but then it kind of just stops after a while. Like you seed a product and then they post and then it just goes nowhere after that. And you just got to keep acquiring more creators so that the seeding engine keeps working. Now we're seeing brands build more continuity almost in their programs in different ways. And some brands do then whitelisting. Some brands would do UGC contracts, some brands would do affiliate ambassador, those sort of deals. 24, 23, 24 we saw an explosion in seeding programs. 25, 26 we are seeing more continuity almost building into the systems.
- [03:32]
Host (possibly Brian)
From a general perspective, what's that formula that you have? Say hey, there's 5,000 credits you can pick from, but you only have 100 to select from.
- [03:39]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah.
- [03:39]
Host (possibly Brian)
What would your formula to kind of be there to find like what the ideal career profile would be?
- [03:43]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yes.
- [03:44]
Yash Shivan
So I think like have a general sense of the quantitative metrics that you want. If you're seeding, for instance, don't go after like the really large creators like above 50k, like they're not going to post for just free product unless you have a personal relationship with them. So really small. So on a quantitative basis like smaller creators like 25k, 30k or less. So do that, have a decent engagement rate, make sure they're located in the countries that you're shipping to, blah blah, blah, all of that. And also make sure that they have some sort of alignment. Make sure that they're already creating content that lends itself to your product. So if, let's say for example, you're a wellness brand, and they're already creating wellness content that really works really well as opposed to a wellness brand. But they're a fitness creator who's kind of a fit from maybe a quantitative perspective. Like everything's a match, check, check, check. But like the content format itself is, is not a fit. So really like a lot of the discovery now becomes more qualitative as opposed to quantitative. Because platforms like Seral can take care of all of the quantitative. Like you can filter for all of this stuff, but you can't really filter for like, hey, are they creating the type of content that I already want them to create? So it's not like you're going to force a creator to create content that is brand fit. You almost have to find brand fit creators by default.
- [05:00]
Host (possibly Brian)
So yeah, one of the more interesting things that I've been, Brian and I have been talking about, that I've been talking about and I've been having in more meetings is like this idea of things are typically siloed, right? Where you have your organic content, you have your organic team, creative team that's publishing a good amount of organic content. Then you look at your influencers and creators who can drive millions of impressions and you see them as a completely different like almost channel. You never see these two channels coming together, these two entities like coming together to continuously drive like the organic piece. And if you're doing all this, this seeding and all this creator testing and like kind of working with mass creators, you have to have a way of identifying the outliers, the maybe if you work with a hundred, the five to ten, that can create very good top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of the funnel content. And then when you find them, bringing them into your actual organic strategy and seeing them as this is not just a creator, like this is a character of my brand. Now if I'm going to sign them to six, a six month deal, it's not just, hey, I'm signing you to 6 months deal to make X amount of content. It is, you're quote unquote, a character for my brand that is pushing my brand forward, right? I'm going to integrate you into my content strategy. I'm going to build a content pillar around you. I'm going to, if we have a campaign that we're working on together, you're the creative director for that campaign, right? It's like giving them reins to be able to control the, the, not the contract, but essentially the creative, like the creative direction that one fits with the brand. You know, the brand's ethos and the brand's mission and the brand guidelines and all of those aspects. But again, not seeing these as such contractual partnerships, but actually seen as getting these individuals as intertwined as possible into the actual strategy.
- [06:43]
Yash Shivan
Yeah, I like that they use the use of the word character. I think I just call it ambassadors. They're almost like their own independent ambassadors for your brand. And the only way to find what I've found, the only way to find these outliers is by working with a lot of people and don't work with them in the sense that hey, I'm just going to now have a huge budget and start paying everybody, maybe just start doing seeding and then with your seeding, test different verticals like hey, wellness, fitness, yoga, mom, soccer, blah blah, blah, and then see like in two months you'll see which niche is responding to your outreach more often, is posting more often, is generally more enthusiastic when you speak with them and then like double down on those niches and then over time, because you're going to have to take 100 charts for you to find maybe five or 10 who are really good, like 50 people are going to post. Sure. But then the top 10% of those are going to be the true outliers who always get so many sales drive GMV drive views and then double down with them and then do those, what you said, like a six month retainer with those creators who are already, who've already sort of proven themselves with the seeding model.
- [07:48]
Host (possibly Brian)
So you do the kind of more mass seeding, 100 people, 500 people, whatever. And then when you find Those outliers, those five to 10, put them on a multi creative test, you're going to make a top of funnel piece of content, a middle funnel piece of content and a bottom of the funnel piece of content to see with your audience. Can you take someone from unaware to aware aware to educated educated to taking action.
- [08:11]
Yash Shivan
If you think about it another way, like the best marketer is not necessarily the best salesperson. And it's like salesperson is more bottom of funnel, marketer is more top of funnel. And that's where a lot of creative direction from brands can come into play. Because often one of the biggest mistakes brands make that we see is that they would see all of these creators and then give them no direction whatsoever because they're like, yeah, they're just going to post what they're going to post. Which is great in the sense that yeah, you want to give them creative freedom, but you want to almost have certain guardrails to make sure. Like what you said, like you sent it to 100 creators but only one or two of them posted. Maybe if you would have given some directions, like, hey, we've seen these four different types of formats worked really well in the past. Give them those guidelines and then they're going to naturally just some of them are going to create a certain style of format and then on like a community level with like across your 100ambassadors, you're going to naturally see some people naturally create more top of funnel, more middle of funnel, more bottom of funnel content. And then at a mass scale you almost have that nurturing. What you said was like the same influencer creating all three types. What I'm saying is like have your community and then naturally give them guidelines. And then naturally people are just going to self select them because they know their audience best. Like they know that hey, I'm going to create more mofo or bofu content. And then naturally across your 100, you're going to get like 20 people creating top of funnel, 10 people creating bottom of funnel, 10 people creating middle of funnel. And then you're going to see that split happen. And then your audience is almost nurtured by different people across. Because it's not like you're only following one fitness creator, you're following 10. And then every like group of three is creating top of funnel, middle of funnel and bottom of Funne. Then you finally see that conversion happen across influencers.
- [09:52]
Host (possibly Brian)
You want to give them guardrails and then you also want to make it as frictionless as possible to come up with ideas and opinion. So like this is again, this is based on the conversation I was having yesterday of did out or seated 100 people. One person created a piece of content, but there was no kind of direction given versus the inverse of hey, I'm going to let you do your thing. But these are the five. Like these are five formats.
- [10:14]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yes.
- [10:14]
Host (possibly Brian)
That work very well. And that could be like single shot pov. You know like when people are like pov, you were doing XYZ and now this. Yeah, right. Or doing a carousel format of your story and then intertwining product into your story. It's like, what have you seen work best? If. If I've done seating in the past and I've always got maybe 5% of people to, to create content. How do I get that number to 10, 20 and, and upwards?
- [10:39]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yep.
- [10:40]
Yash Shivan
I think definitely give more. I won't say guidelines, but guard rails and inspiration is probably a better word because what do creators want? Like or if your product can give them an excuse to create better content, then they're going to just naturally want to create that. You don't even have to force them. Because all creators want is great content. Right. So if you're able to find like, if you're able to give them guardrails or inspiration on like, hey, here are the formats that work. Here are like 5 different example pieces of content that all got like 100k or more views for each of those formats. Like, here's everybody. Like you have that proof and that proof doesn't even have to come from other creators. Maybe it's from your brand, maybe it's from another brand, like a similar brand. Like, hey, look at what that person did and do something similar. If you can spur that sort of the creative need to make really good content through your guidelines, I think it can do really wonders for your post trade. What we call is like, hey, after seeding how many people are posting. And another really good hack is like, make your unboxing really good. Because what that does is not only are creators then going to create dedicated videos, but maybe they also record a story of just the unboxing. Because if you're, if you're sending them a cardboard box, like it's like an Amazon thing, then they're not going to create an unboxing video. But if you're like sending them a PR kit, it has a personal, maybe a video or a note in it, something like that, maybe some swag, they're going to potentially create like a story series without even you asking for it. Because it's so, because the unboxing itself is so content worthy. So doing everything possible to increase the likelihood that the creator gets views off the back of your product or your unboxing. So think on those terms and then do everything possible to, to build towards that.
- [12:17]
Host (possibly Brian)
Yeah, I think the interesting take there is just thinking of your unboxing as that is a content piece. And so how do I create it in a way that it's a, it's a confirmed content piece. It has to be good enough for people to want to make a piece of content from. Right. Like if, if, like you said, if I just get a regular Amazon box or a regular cardboard box, there's nothing interesting, there's no story there.
- [12:38]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yep.
- [12:39]
Host (possibly Brian)
But if it's an electrolyte brand and it comes with xyz, all sorts of different aspects, it shows you like your future runner, it shows you all like these different aspects. It's like, okay, there's a story being Told with, with everything here. We actually just did a. We're doing a campaign right now for a running shoe. And it's. It's in the works. Like, it's in the middle of. Not even the middle. It's like the launch of September 10th. So we're like in the teased phase of, of the actual campaign, right? And so we're doing a bunch of seeding to. To a lot of runners. And the story took place in a lab with like this mad scientist who made a discovery in the campaign center around that. And then we had like these big name athletes that came into. Came into for subject testing, right? Like, they weren't these big name athletes. They were subject A and subject B. And then like they proceed from lab testing to field testing. And so. But every, like the main character is really the scientist. And then like the two athletes are the subjects.
- [13:35]
Yash Shivan
And.
- [13:36]
Host (possibly Brian)
And then what we did is for the unboxing is like, okay, how can we take this organic piece and stretch it across all other touch points, right? So for the unboxing, it's like we created like a white medical kit for the shoe, right? So the shoe came in like a glossy, very medical feel to it, right? Because like, it was supposed to feel like it was sent from the lab. Then the other part was like we created a dossier. We created a dossier and it was like the case.
- [14:03]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
The.
- [14:03]
Host (possibly Brian)
The case folders, right, that were classified information. And it was like a report from the lab of everything about this shoe but like told from the, the scientist pov.
- [14:13]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah.
- [14:13]
Host (possibly Brian)
One of the things from the shoe was it's like it's. It weighs only 7.7 ounces, which is. Makes it like the lightest daily runner comp. If we look at other running shoes, it's like the daily Slater runner. So the shoe also came with. With a scale for you to hang it with. But that's also come from like a content piece that we made.
- [14:33]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah.
- [14:33]
Host (possibly Brian)
You know what I'm saying? And so like, there was all these layers of making it so that there's like this cohesive story. And like we had like the, the kind of like quote unquote, like, influencer card. But the influencer card was like a picture of the scientists, like, gifting this. And then it was told without like all the instructions, whatever. But everything in the whole campaign is written from the scientist pov, Right. It's almost like he's the copywriter, he's the one doing the seating program, et cetera. But I say that all to say it's like when we did this originally, it was like when you get in the first bits of the conversation of a campaign, it was like, well, we just need to gift 150 people. It's like, no. When you bring 150 people into the story and then give them and package it in a way that they have a story to create around. And it makes such a significant difference in the seating process.
- [15:22]
Yash Shivan
So powerful. And most brands don't even think about this. So if you're even like, you did a really good job, but if you're Even doing like 20% of this thinking, as simple as adding a personal note to the package. And you can, by the way, automate a lot of this using a bunch of tools that are available, add a handwritten note. A lot of our founders in the early stages, they're adding handwritten notes. Or really great example is Pura Vida's founders. They big brands scaled using influencers, exited mind figures, whatever. I think he's on the record, I think was watching a podcast of his saying he met the first 150 creators of theirs in person. Like took them all to lunches to dinners. And then you can do that. You don't have to go out to lunches with everybody. You could give them a quick FaceTime. Really make sure that you're caring for that creator community of yours and go all in and making sure that you're doing everything possible to give them the best shot at creating their best content possible. And that'll do wonders for the seeding layer of your program.
- [16:20]
Host (possibly Brian)
What about for smaller brands that are on a budget? Like, I'm not. I don't have the ability to scale to five, seating 500 people. I got 50 people. 1. How do you use, how can somebody like that use for all to like find, okay, I need these 50 people. And then also look at those 15 people and like, how do I get the most out of those 50 people? This is all I could do every single month. Like, what's, what's the best plan of action there?
- [16:43]
Yash Shivan
I think if you're a small brand, you want to maybe validate this before you go big. Like, you want to maybe prove some ROI, you can still work with 50 people or just make sure that you're going deeper with them instead of going broader. So that's one advantage is like you're small, maybe you could just go deep with 40 to 50 people as opposed to seeding 500 people like a big brand would. And then just go deep, have conversations with everyone, make sure that they're posting, you could. Like we have some small brands that are getting 80% or higher post rates after seeding. So you're sending product to 50 people, 45 of them, 40 of them are posting.
- [17:17]
Host (possibly Brian)
And what are they doing differently? Like we're just going to go deep. Like what are they?
- [17:21]
Yash Shivan
Text creators? Put them in a discord or a WhatsApp channel. Put them in a Facebook group. Make sure that you are just like honestly just one on one conversations with everybody is what they're doing differently versus everybody. And you can't do one on one when you're seating 500 people unless you have like a dedicated team. But you can when you're seating, you know, 30 to 50 people every month. And then you do that. Seating is one of the best ways because you have the lowest risk with seating. Like you're not paying them, you're simply risking your cost of goods. So if you've got 50 products lying around, send it to 50 really Good Influencers. Build relationships with them. Say you're in it for the long run. Have them post and then do everything we discuss, right? Like make sure the unboxing is great. Make sure you're giving them creative guidelines and all of that. Once they post, then you can maybe ascend them into. Because you want, you want them to have some sort of incentive. And maybe you don't have the budget because you're a smaller brand. You could do a really generous affiliate commission. Like we have some brands that do like a 60% affiliate commission. Again, make sure that your margins are allowing that. Or again, if you're fine, be losing money on the first order and then you make money on the repeat purchases. If you have a higher repeat order rate, make sure that you're doing 60, 70% commissions. And then creators love that because everybody else, all the big brands are doing like 20% commissions. If you're doing 50, 60%, then have that ambassador layer and then everyone you're seeding some like a percentage of them are going to post, turn all of those posters into ambassadors or characters for your brand, like you said. And then they have like let's say a 50% commission so that they keep posting so you basically don't have to have a wide base of seeding. What's the main goal here? Right, the main goal should be to get as many content pieces about your brand as possible. You want to create a halo effect on social media, right? There's only two ways to get that. One, have a really mass seating program and make sure that a certain percentage of Them post or have a small seeding program and then make sure that they post again and again and again about you. The way you build that recurring continuity is you build incentive structures. Sometimes that incentive structure is a retainer where you do like a three month, six month deal. Sometimes you can't afford that. Just do a very generous affiliate commission and make sure that they're posting again and again. Put them in a community, WhatsApp group, Discord group, whatever. Do like a weekly call with all of them and then make sure that they're repeat posting and then they're earning affiliate commission and build all of those content guidelines. So that. And they're making the right type of content with that tofu, mofu, bofu. So that they're all sort of generating affiliate commission.
- [19:43]
Host (possibly Brian)
So what are some of the brands doing that really well?
- [19:45]
Yash Shivan
Abbey does that really well on our platform. Grooms does that really well. The gummy company, they're doing it there, but again they're very mass. So they're seating a lot of people.
- [19:55]
Host (possibly Brian)
Pretty sure that's Brian Grooms is a client.
- [19:59]
Yash Shivan
Are you doing seating for them? Oh you're doing shop for them?
- [20:03]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah, yeah.
- [20:04]
Yash Shivan
So Grooms is running their like own seeding through us. So they see to like thousands of people every month. So yeah, they're doing really good. Who else is doing it? Solawave, the skincare company doing really well. So yeah, they're. But again these are all pretty massive. But we have some small brands.
- [20:20]
Host (possibly Brian)
What are the small brands doing it?
- [20:21]
Yash Shivan
Well, one of the brands that comes to mind is Gourmend. They're like a, they're an interesting case study because they actually expanded their TAM through influencers because you gotta experiment, right. So they were focused solely on there's this thing called fodmap sensitivity. Just like some people are sensitive to fodmap foods, blah blah, blah. He actually discovered that there are people with migraine who actually like the similar type of product that has the composition that his product has and that he just expand because fodmap sensitivity is like super niche with migraine is a huge niche. And then he basically like 5x or 10x'd his spam through influencers because apparently one of the influencers also had migraine. And the angle that they took with their content was like, hey, here's how this helps with my migraine. And then a lot of other migraine creators started noticing, noticing them and they're like, well okay, is this completely ignored niche that we never worked with before? Now they work a Lot with the migraine creators, for example. That's a really good example that comes to mind.
- [21:20]
Host (possibly Brian)
Can you turn this process into a flywheel? For me, I want somebody to be able to walk away from this episode and understand how this go turns into a flywheel where it's seeding, finding outliers, putting on contract, repeating the process, seeding outliers, put them on contract. How does that look?
- [21:37]
Yash Shivan
Yep. So we look at it from a. I call it the. So we spoke about making it less of a gamble, right. Going from like gambling or playing roulette with influencers to making it predictable. Here's. I call it like the predictable pyramid. So at the base you have like a seeding program. You're seeding out to anywhere between 50 to 500 people every month. You're sending free product out. Some of them are going to post, turn them into ambassadors. That's almost like the middle layer of the pyramid where you're giving out these anywhere between 20 to 50% commissions, maybe discount for their fans, maybe doing giveaways occasionally with top performers. You're doing more engaged relationship based campaigns with these ambassadors and you're putting these.
- [22:15]
Host (possibly Brian)
Individuals into discord or WhatsApp.
- [22:18]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yes.
- [22:18]
Yash Shivan
So like building that community so that they can also work with each other so maybe they can co create some content about the brand, things like that. Some of our brands also lent Airbnbs, put the top performers in there for like a weekend getaway or something and then they all create content about the brand at that Airbnb. So things like that. So super relationship based. Who's doing that?
- [22:36]
Host (possibly Brian)
Sorry to cut you off.
- [22:39]
Yash Shivan
There's tons of like all of the big brands do this. So Sephora, Lululemon, they all sort of have these strategies and then some of our smaller brands, so there's, there's a brand based in the UK called Reformed. They're again like a wellness coffee matcha company they do really well with, with these sorts of mini micro events. So they would host like a dinner or a mixer of sorts and they'll have influencers in there and they all kind of create content together. So they do that and then you turn again you. Because with an ambassador affiliate program it's always going to be 80, 20 or even 9010 where like 10% of your ambassadors are going to drive 90% of the sales. Again it's going to like it splits because like 10% they're going to be really good at driving sales. Another 10% are going to be really good at driving views. So they're more of the top top of funnel. And then the other 10% is going to be more bottom of funnel where they're driving sales. In gmv, you take these two slices and then you do longer term partnerships with them where you're doing UGC deals, you're doing whitelisted contracts, you're then funneling those, those content pieces into your ads, your ads start performing better and so on. So this is sort of like the flywheel where you're seeding, taking the posters, making them ambassadors, taking like the top 10% slices across views and sales and then doing long term like retainer deals, UGC contracts, things like that. And then you will see like at the top of the pyramid you will have the highest signal of who works. So like hey, we saw that we seeded like 10 different niches, five of them usually qualify for the ambassador program. And then the top two are in the custom partnerships layer. You then take the top, you feedback from the top and then you feed it back into your seeding discovery process. Like hey, we know that yoga moms and wellness girls work really well. So now we feed that back, we stop doing all the other niches and go deeper into these. So your efficiency across the flywheel sort of increases. So that's what you do is almost create like this fountain of creators that's consistently generating content for you and then you can get referrals by the way. So once you sort of have these larger and then eventually once you do it, you can go upmarket with your seeding. Right, because you don't always have to work with all of the. I know I said like work with all the less than 50k people. But the great thing is all the 100k influencers follow all the 50k influencers. So once you're like really dominating that sub 50k niche, all the big people want to work with you. So maybe if you reach out to them directly from the get go, they don't want to work with you. Once you have like you spend six months really dominating like the smaller micro creator niche you're going to get like the bigger creators are going to start getting FOMO and they're going to reach out to you to work with you. So then you can sort of move up market in those niches and then that creates almost like social, I call it like the barbell of influencers is eventually over, let's say like a year's timeframe. What we see is brands have a lot of micro influencers. So imagine like a barbell with small, like tons of small plates on one end and then two or three big plates on the other end where you have like these big, you know, 500k, a million follower influencers who are promoting you which also creates social proof and then more nano creators want to work with you. So again it's like a meta flywheel also in a way where all the small creators help you get the big creators and then the big creators start posting which creates more awareness in the micro category and then they want to work with you and so on.
- [25:44]
Host (possibly Brian)
So yeah, what are you looking at in in 2026 something that Brian and I were talking about is one changing monetize the way you monetize or you reward creators by on like a CPM basis also creating more content challenges like 45 day sprints where it's more gamified where you can do, you can reward based on the CPM basis, you could add drops. So that's something similar to if you're saying like a drop of hey, this week if you make the video that gets a hundred thousand views you, you'll get X. Like what are some of the interesting things that you're seeing some of these forward thinking brands doing?
- [26:16]
Yash Shivan
Yeah, one of the things that we are noticing on the second layer of the pyramid is the ambassador. Like you mentioned, pretty much all of the comp is either flat fee which is like no, tied to nothing, tied to the deliverable but not tied to any performance metrics or it's CPA based. So it's cost per acquisition, which is affiliate. Right. But really if you think about it, a creator's job is to basically get impressions. So why not have a CPM commission deal which is something we're also working in the product right now because we can track the content and the impressions on. Why can't brands also then do a CPM tier as opposed to a cost per acquisition tier? There are CPM tiers that are coming. There's also cost per click by the way because it's kind of like Facebook and Google, right? Like Facebook you pay cpm, Google you pay cost per click. Why not have those two models also included in your influencer channel? So CPM even cost per click. So like hey, as long if you're for the bottom of funnel creators you do a cost per click model. For the top of funnel creators do a CPM model. So that's definitely coming. Brands are already doing these challenges by the way. So you know, like hey, this month whoever creates content name, you can tie it to some sort of campaign like you've Got a New Year's campaign coming up. Like hey, make sure you make content about how you're using our product in your New Year's resolutions. And then whoever gets the most views or drives the most sales gets like a big. There's some brands giving out cars. I know that. I think ridge.com is giving away a Lamborghini or something like that for their creators. So yeah, things like that I think we are seeing coming also a lot of I think equity deals we are seeing more. It's like light discussions with some founders but they're considering actually partnering with creators in the sense that hey, actually give them real unlimited upside in the value that the brand is creating instead of just the sales that they're driving. So especially with the, the heavier end of the barbell, like I said, like somebody has got 3 million followers like why can't they have what's called like csops or creator creator stock options. Like why not give them some stock options and then tie them to certain performance metrics or post metrics and things like that. So we're seeing that definitely seeing drops. We're actually seeing a lot of. I know we spoke about smaller brands. We're seeing some smaller brands have success doing drops with creators where they're like hey, we will make a product specifically for your audience and you're going to post about it for like three months straight. The creators love it because it's not another generic sort of product that they're pushing. It's like a product, custom product for their fans. And they, you know, every creator has their own perks or the slogan or something like that. Like hey, this is specifically for your fans. And then they would have like a limited, you know, 50,000 units or something like that. Really do a drop with that creator. And the creator obviously is incentivized to push for that. And you could do like a, maybe like an equity deal on that or some like a huge 50, 50 revenue split or something. So some of our smaller brands are really crushing it with those co branded. Co branded products. We're seeing like sh. Gorman's I think is. Is about to do it like chef brands like hey, we create these soup recipes like ready to made. Ready to make soups. But this recipe specifically to. That's cool for your audience because you're like a Asian food content creator. This is like an Asian soup versus like a Mexican versus like you know. So it's very interesting what you can do and what's. What's coming. I think definitely on a broader scale, different Ways to monitor, to help creators monetize their relationship with their audience beyond just sort of retainer deals or affiliate deals is something we're seeing coming.
- [29:43]
Host (possibly Brian)
Yeah, I. There's a book called Emotion by Design by like the old CMO of Nike.
- [29:47]
Yash Shivan
Okay.
- [29:48]
Host (possibly Brian)
And there's one line in here, in there that he said that was like, when Nike was first getting started. He had been in Nike for a long time. Like, big budgets weren't a thing. Everyone thought, oh, you work at Nike, like, you have big budgets. And he's like, no, sometimes I would only have $10,000 to like put on a crazy event. Right?
- [30:01]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah.
- [30:02]
Host (possibly Brian)
He's like, with those $10,000, it wasn't about how big we could think outside the boxes, how creative can we get within the box? You know, and kind of what you were touching on right here is me thinking about that line comes to life of like, how creative can I get and how different of things can I do with, with an influencer? Because like you're saying it might, you might not have the budget to pay that influencer 5,000, 10,000, whatever dollars to create content for you, but if you pitch them on an idea that is completely outside of what another brand would, would pitch, as in, like, hey, we're going to make a limited edition product that now we're going to do for three months and like, we'll create content for you. If you want to create content about it. Of course they're going to want to because it's probably the first time that they're going to have their face on a cereal vest or on a, on a protein bar or whatever. Like, you now are in such a different territory where it actually feels more aligned. Right. Like, it even feels more aligned than just saying, hey, I'm going to pay you X amount for X for Y deliverable. But if it's, I'm going to deliver this, I'm going to create this feature for you, or I'm going to do XYZ for you that you're a part of. You have ownership over, you have creative direction over. It's a different, It's a different relationship.
- [31:07]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah.
- [31:08]
Yash Shivan
And I think even smaller brands especially can afford to do that because they can go deeper. Right. Like I said, like, if you're seeing 500 creators, you have like a large influencer team. They don't have control over what sort of products you manufacture. But if you're like a founder and some early, you know, early team members, you can go all in on one creator and really, really scale. And again, you can almost scale this strategy in the same way. Like I spoke of. I haven't seen anybody do this, except maybe Hexclad is a good example because they work with Gordon Ramsay. Right. And he's like their biggest influencer in a way. And then you can find like, who's your Gordon Ramsay in your niche? Like, go find that person and then do build your program strategically in a way to like in a year or two years from now, really acquiring that, you know, your Gordon Ramsay of your niche. Like, who's like the really well respected, maybe celebrity, maybe influencer of your space that you can work with and partner with on like a equity basis. And I think Xclad even got Gordon Ramsay to invest in the brand or something. That's the story.
- [32:08]
Host (possibly Brian)
So, yeah, yeah, there's, there's a lot of interesting ways to do it, I think.
- [32:12]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah.
- [32:12]
Host (possibly Brian)
If you want to build a robust influencer creator program, you have to get very creative with how you partner with these creators, how you partner with the, the influencers, so that it's not just like this one off, one off deal. Like, I, I. There's a lot of running barons that I see that are building like, campaigns around some of the, like, people who started as ambassadors are now influences and like, they're like, they pitch them on an idea. Hey, what if you ran across the country and like, we make it this big spectacle and like, they're doing super cool stuff.
- [32:39]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah.
- [32:39]
Host (possibly Brian)
You know that like, you can probably get away with charging way less because you're building this, like, documented story that's going to be 30 to 40 pieces of content. And like, paying for 30 to 40 pieces of content would be. Cost a lot of money.
- [32:51]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah.
- [32:51]
Host (possibly Brian)
But the fact that you're coming with a creative story and a creative pitch and campaign.
- [32:55]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah.
- [32:56]
Host (possibly Brian)
It's a lot different. You know what I mean?
- [32:57]
Yash Shivan
Did you see what the, the perfect Gene did with. What's that guy's name? The, the Cameron Haynes son?
- [33:04]
Host (possibly Brian)
No, I, I know.
- [33:07]
Yash Shivan
No, he ran like a marathon in jeans. In jeans.
- [33:09]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah.
- [33:09]
Yash Shivan
Yeah, that was like that what you said just reminds me, I forget the guy's name. I know that Cam Haynes is his father who's, who's been in the truest.
- [33:18]
Host (possibly Brian)
Haynes.
- [33:18]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yes.
- [33:18]
Yash Shivan
Truest Haynes.
- [33:19]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah.
- [33:19]
Yash Shivan
Yeah. He did the. And then they painted a whole story around that and yeah. Weaved the jeans into. And that's such a unique. Like, nobody runs a marathon in jeans. But then this guy did and then it stood out. It's just such a naturally, I guess, regardless of brand, that's such a, you know, event that, that people just notice and then they, you know, did a whole campaign around it, which is, which is very interesting.
- [33:39]
Host (possibly Brian)
So, yeah, one, one quick tactical question. I want people to, you know, they're going to hear us talk about content challenges and talk about paying on a CPM basis. What should that target CPM be like? Should you be aiming for paying out on a $5 CPM basis or what? What's that number?
- [33:55]
Yash Shivan
I think we've seen CPMs. It's so hard to standardize influencer marketing because it's unlike paid ads. I think a really good place to start is just look at what your CPM is on Facebook or on TikTok and then maybe do something similar. So if you're paying like a, you know, $20 CPM on your for your Facebook ads, maybe do something similar for your influencers and then go from there and actually maybe even higher because an ad CPM by definition is going to be lower because you're targeting such a massive audience versus influencer. CPM is going to be higher because that's. Don't look at it from a CFO lens because if you look at numbers like, okay, it's a $20 CPM on Facebook and a $40 CPM on the influencer. Clearly Facebook's better. Not really, because Facebook has no trust. People skip the ads. Like, how much is the impression really worth versus an impression on Gordon Ramsay's content where he's making like a 12 minute recipe video and he's using your cookware in it. Like that impression is worth way more than like a quick impression on your Facebook ad. So like weigh all of those things. I think the really good place to start is somewhere in the ballpark of your paid media CPM and then buy us a little bit. Like add a few more dollars for trust and all of the relationship that the influencer has with their audience.
- [35:08]
Host (possibly Brian)
So basically take whatever your average CPM is, add a few dollars to it.
- [35:12]
Yash Shivan
Yep, yep, that's what I would say. And that's like, again, that's a starting place. I think brands can give, give a lot more CPM out because of the high trust, because more people are going to buy, you're going to get the content, you're going to build that awareness which is then going to make your Facebook CPM even lower because you're spending more here. And then there's more awareness in this space, which means you kind of like good impressions and good brand awareness almost like greases the entire funnel in the Sense that hey, if five influencers post about you every day, your ads across the board are going to perform better. More people are going to click, more people are going to buy and your AOVs are going. We've seen this by the way, AOVs like average order value. After influencers are turned on and like it's six months and people are posting, your average order value goes higher. Right. So it's like, hey, yeah, I'm paying a higher cpm, but I'm also making more money on the, at the bottom. Right.
- [36:02]
Host (possibly Brian)
So it's super interesting. I the more brands that we're talking to are like they're getting into that space where they want to be just paying based on a CPM basis and really doing it at scale.
- [36:13]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah.
- [36:14]
Host (possibly Brian)
And it's funny that like even on the organic side, because I've mentioned to you so we create a lot of organic content for, for brands and even us like we're aiming for, if you're investing X amount of dollars into organic production and strategy, like we're aiming to beat your meta CPM and then work backwards from that because it's the same thing that you're mentioning is like if your organic is dialed and you have an organic engine built out and you're getting say 10 million views every single, every single month that CPM is and you're let's say paying 20, $30,000 from. It's a very low CPM. But that impression is making an impression. Right. Is very different than like running an ad and just paying for someone to be on someone's feed that they scroll.
- [36:53]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yes. Yeah.
- [36:54]
Host (possibly Brian)
And I also think like the CPM on Instagram is more, it holds more weight because at the same time Instagram doesn't even give you impressions, it just gives you views.
- [37:04]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yes.
- [37:05]
Host (possibly Brian)
And so it's like you're really getting cost per thousand views. Yeah, like that's the metric and that's way more valuable because that's actually somebody watching like the three seconds of a video. That's much more valuable than just looking at the CPM side.
- [37:18]
Yash Shivan
Correct?
- [37:19]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah, totally.
- [37:19]
Yash Shivan
And I think also just generally from ads perspective with ads, like if you're trying to scale ads, you almost hit a limit. Because with ads you're almost, you're always targeting what you would call in market buyers. Right. Like because with interest based targeting or with keyword based targeting on Google, you're always going to have people who've somewhat to Facebook or to Google expressed interest in your category of products. You're never going beyond that. And the moment you start going beyond that or start like hitting the limit of that sort of at any given time, let's say like 3% of your market, who's going to be in market? Like, you start seeing your, you know, your ads start plateauing, your roas dish isn't there anymore, it starts plummeting, your CAC starts rising. So how do you like break through that ads plateau is you like expand your targeting to out of market buyers and then bring them in market. And the way you bring them in market is that top and middle of funnel influencer content that we spoke of. And they're like, okay, the influencer is the one who's nurturing. And then the conversion may be happening, is happening on Facebook ads or Google Ads and so on. So you have to almost look at it almost. Not just from a influencer lens, but hey, what role are the influencers playing in my entire marketing stack? So maybe influencers are my top and middle of funnel and the bottom of funnel happens on Google Ads, for instance.
- [38:37]
Host (possibly Brian)
So yeah, something me and Brian were just talking about this on the episode before you walked in is like, the marketing funnel is so different now too.
- [38:44]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah.
- [38:44]
Host (possibly Brian)
Like, it's not. What?
- [38:45]
Yash Shivan
It's not even a funnel.
- [38:46]
Host (possibly Brian)
It's not. No, it's not. Marketing funnel 1.0 is like dead. And if we look at quote unquote, like Marketing Funnel 2.0. Marketing Funnel 2.0 is led by either organic content or creators and influencers.
- [38:57]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yes.
- [38:58]
Host (possibly Brian)
They not only do they influence everything, they optimize everything else.
- [39:02]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yep.
- [39:03]
Host (possibly Brian)
You can have a campaign that you like. You were saying you go down multiple verticals, you do the yoga mom, you do the, the dog mom, you do the X, Y, Z.
- [39:12]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Right.
- [39:12]
Host (possibly Brian)
You go down these verticals, you get a data point to like, oh, wow, the yoga moms are the outliers. Guess what? Now we can change a lot of our paid creative. We could change a lot of our email, we could change a lot of our sms, we can change a lot.
- [39:24]
Yash Shivan
Of our organic like landing page. Everything.
- [39:26]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah.
- [39:27]
Host (possibly Brian)
And we were talking about it where it's like these two channels. One, they should be working together, they shouldn't be solid. But two, it is like the, it is the core for a brain. It's the nucleus of a brain. You know, it is the root. If we're looking at a brain as a tree and we're trying to grow a tree as, as fast as. Or as, sorry, as big as possible, it's like those are the roots now.
- [39:49]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yep.
- [39:49]
Host (possibly Brian)
Like the whole business should Stand on organic and essentially creators.
- [39:55]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yes.
- [39:55]
Host (possibly Brian)
And if you don't water those two things, everything else suffers.
- [39:59]
Yash Shivan
Yes.
- [39:59]
Host (possibly Brian)
It's going to be a slow death.
- [40:00]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yes.
- [40:01]
Host (possibly Brian)
And in trying to ingrain that into people's head is very difficult because it's like five years ago, like I've been doing organic content since 2015. So when nobody gave a shit about like when I say 2015, like I was creating four brands in that time. Nobody cared about content at that time. You know, like you were the last afterthought. It was like everybody's saying, I gotta do it. Gary Vaynerchuk's yelling at me, I think I got to do it kind of thing. And so it has shifted so drastically from 2015 to 2025 where it's become the most important thing and the thing that brands, brands really need to invest in. And it's funny how I don't remember who wrote an article about this, but it was like the new CMOs were social media managers and marketers.
- [40:47]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yes.
- [40:47]
Host (possibly Brian)
Right. Because they understand how content can literally influence every decision at every level of a different channel.
- [40:55]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yes.
- [40:56]
Host (possibly Brian)
A good piece of bottom of funnel content is a great email.
- [40:59]
Yash Shivan
Yep.
- [40:59]
Host (possibly Brian)
A good piece of middle funnel content is also a great email. Right. And like you scale that content into these larger pieces based on the channel. It's, it's, it's, it's awesome to see the brands that are actually doing that, they're scaling the touch points and they're scaling them in a way that is brand building at the same time as a performance engine.
- [41:18]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yes. Yep.
- [41:19]
Yash Shivan
I completely agree. Yep.
- [41:22]
Host (possibly Brian)
But yeah, man, what on, on the other end, looking into 2026, where some of the, if you had to wrap it into a playbook for our listeners, how, how would you turn like a lot of the things that you and I discussed today, because we, we went through a lot.
- [41:36]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yep.
- [41:36]
Host (possibly Brian)
How would you take the things that we discussed today and wrap it into a playbook that says, hey, start building the ops in the process for this in Q4 so that in Q1 you're ready to hit it?
- [41:47]
Yash Shivan
Yeah. I think if you're looking at a Q4, I would really. And influencers are a long term channel. Right. So I wouldn't try to force influencers into influencing your Q4 sales because that's like literally upcoming very soon. But like in Q4, let's start by testing. Here's what you need to do. You need to take, because we're talking about paid and like allocation and so on. Take whatever you're spending on paid media right now. And you don't have to spend, you don't have to carve out more budget for influencers. Just reduce your paid spend by 10% and then put it towards creator and content marketing and so on. And then build that steering layer, build those ambassadors, build those customer relationships. And then going into 2026, you're going to have, let's say in the next three months, you're going to have, depending on when this comes out, you're going to have say, 100 or so ambassadors just going into the year, and then do a dedicated campaign with them where they're in a discord, you're having them on a zoom call and then you're kind of curating, let's say, a New Year's campaign. They're like, hey, everyone's going to post content about this theme on this day. So Your goal in 2026 should be to create halo effects around your brand as much as possible, around as many events or as many campaigns as possible. For that halo effect to happen, you need a community of creators. Build that community in Q4 and then leverage that over and over again, New Year's, Valentine's Summer, whatever, and then do those sorts of sort of drops and custom campaigns with creators and curate that top, middle and bottom of funnel content and leverage that feedback, inform the seeding and then have this always on sort of seeding program going, which is then again funneling people up the predictable pyramid.
- [43:23]
Host (possibly Brian)
You heard it here first. And also, Yash, break down how one, how you could do that in Siral.
- [43:30]
Yash Shivan
You could do all of this in. So our goal is to basically give you all of the tools possible and all of the automation and AI possible. Because this is all hard to do. Like, this is, you need a team or you need like one person dedicated. Our goal is to make it as simple as possible, especially for the emerging brands, because you don't have the time to do this. So we've got an AI that can find creators, reach out to them, manage some of these negotiations and so on so that your time is freed up. Not, you know, shipping hundreds of products or updating a spreadsheet. So I'll just manage all of that in the platform. So you are spending time drafting the creative guidelines or talking to them one on one, or creating these campaign ideas and so on. So Cyral can take care of like the discovery outreach, tracking those CPM commission tiers are coming by, like in Q4 that we launched that. So a lot of the operational and like, what's possible technologically with creators. Siral's doing all of that. Like finding different creators, finding the friends of those big influencers, all of that. The operations around seeding, shipping, product negotiating, doing those deals, all of that is possible. Paying out creators as possible. We have again, an AI that surfaces your top performers. So it'll show you like, hey, work with these five influencers. They're really good. Do those custom partnerships with them. So it'll do all of that for you. And then you can do more of the creative work yourself. So can take care of that. But again, I think on a more org level, just take 10% of your paid media budget, put it towards influencers if you aren't already. Because like you said, organic and influencers are going to be like the two pillars that you build your brand on over the next five years instead of, you know, it being like, I think a lot of it was paid and email marketing so far. Now I think it's shifting towards more organic and influencer content.
- [45:07]
Host (possibly Brian)
So, yeah, if you're upward, I think it would be interesting if you took that final playbook that you said or that you mentioned at the end and you make like a loom just saying exactly how you can do it in Sorol and then for the listeners, drop it in the comments. Like, if you want that, if you're one, if you're open to doing that loom, two, if you want that playbooking, if you want the loom that breaks it down, exactly how to do it, just comment influencers. I'll send it to you comment creators, something also. We'll send it, we'll drop it in the link. We'll drop it in the description as well. But I think that could be really interesting to see. Like, okay, These are steps 1 through 10 that you need to do. And like, you can start doing this now and start building this out for Q4 going into Q1. But again, if you're, if you're up.
- [45:47]
Yash Shivan
For I will, I will make that loop. Yes, comment, comment creators, and then we'll send you that.
- [45:51]
Host (possibly Brian)
And send it. Awesome. Awesome, man. Well, I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you joining on this. This was an awesome episode. We got to run it back. We have to keep doing this. I think there's, there's ways we could even think about, like, you got my wheels turning on, like, how can we do some creative, you know, like, you have some creative campaigns together. Whether that's like, let's take a brand that's a listener and like, build out their influencer program and cool Case study or whatever, if they're willing to invest into. Into it, something like that. Yeah, I think we could do something cool where it's like, it's documented. It's a. It's like a whole concept.
- [46:21]
Yash Shivan
Yeah. We could take one of the listeners of this exact show, build out their strategy, and then actually do like, prove this model out. Because we've seen this work so many times. If you just execute it the right way, like, all of the tools are in place. Everything is in place. You just have to do it. And you have to have the right mindset almost to think that, yeah, this is important. This is like Facebook ads 2015. You got to invest in it right now. Because people were skeptical of Facebook ads. Like, I speak with some agency owners who started back in like 2010, and they had to convince brands to put money on ads. It's like this is that time for influencers to like, really go all in, because you get that early movers advantage 100%.
- [47:01]
Host (possibly Brian)
Yeah. We should figure something out. And do figure out what a listener is willing to invest in it and scale it from something where they seed 100 people to 500 to a thousand and so on. And we build like a robust. Could be cool to like, build a robust creative program live.
- [47:16]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yes.
- [47:17]
Yash Shivan
That's exciting.
- [47:18]
Co-host or Guest Contributor
Yeah. Yeah.
- [47:18]
Host (possibly Brian)
Awesome, man. Well, I appreciate you being here. We'll obviously have to run it back.
- [47:22]
Yash Shivan
Of course. Yes. Thanks for having me on.
- [47:24]
Host (possibly Brian)
And sorry, lastly, where can they find you?
- [47:26]
Yash Shivan
Yeah, just go to getserault.com if you want to check out Saral and then search for my name. I'm Yash Chavan on pretty much every single platform or at YC the man. So, yeah.
- [47:36]
Host (possibly Brian)
Awesome. Thank you, brother.
- [47:37]
Yash Shivan
Amazing. Thanks for having me on.
- [47:38]
Host (possibly Brian)
Thank you.