← Sweat Equity
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- [00:00]
A
Brett Malinowski is a content creator with over 750,000 followers across platforms and is now the head of marketing at WOP.
- [00:07]
B
Content Awards is the reason I joined wop. We want people to be able to build full blown software apps and then sell it to creators and creators can offer it in their communities.
- [00:13]
A
In this episode, he shared his framework for creating viral YouTube videos, scaling content systems across thousands of different creators and a whole lot more.
- [00:21]
B
Just really important to be on the lookout of. Where's the attention at? Is there a gap in who's getting the views? Is it small channels getting the views or is it the traditional players? And if you see that gap, insert yourself and you should be able to gain an audience.
- [00:33]
A
This is a must watch for anyone looking to build a brand in 2025. We talk about how to spot trends, we talk about how to leverage AI in all of your content workflows.
- [00:40]
B
When you make content on a novel thing, it does extremely well. And so I would play in the dynamic of AI or AI video or whatever it is, I would create an offer that was more novel.
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A
We talk about how to scale your business, whether that's a community product or a brand or an info product.
- [00:57]
B
In business, I would say titles. I think once you are at a certain level of understanding thumbnails, they're all like, here's try to get them to stop with the thumbnail. But the title is like the outcome you're actually promising.
- [01:07]
A
And above all else, I think he shared a lot of cool stuff and insights on how to write better marketing copy. The core central thing that drives growth for most of our brands. It's a little bit of a longer conversation, but I promise if you stick around till the end, you'll get the most value you've gotten out of a sweat equity in a long time. All right, let's get into the episode. Tell me about your YouTube background. Like, I want to, I want to understand the growth from the beginning.
- [01:27]
B
Yeah, so four years ago, I've always been a videographer. Like I was like my first passion turned into a marketing agency. And about four years ago I started making content myself. I think that YouTube is very clear to see like where attention's at and there's just, I view it like supply, demand. And there was early technology. We have, there's like a new technology. A lot of attention goes there. So when crypto was a big trend in 2122, I started making content covering different crypto, like blockchains, everything like that. I started making content and I think I went from, like, zero to 10,000 subscribers in, like, two weeks. Because I'm, like, one of the first people to start covering that on YouTube. And then that kind of trend, like, had a good year of, like, attention in it, but then obviously, everything kind of dies down. Next thing, Chat GPT came out. I made one of the first videos talking about how you could use the GPT API to build software. So, like, AI SaaS got, like, another a hundred thousand subscribers in, like, a month. Like, that was a huge growth spurt. And then just continuously, like, paying attention to, like, where's the attention at? And then just inserting yourself with a consistent style of content in those trends is a really good way to consistently grow on YouTube.
- [02:30]
A
Yeah. And one of the things we were talking about at the beginning of this is how much there is a gap between good content and what people are searching for on YouTube. How do you go about finding those gaps? Is it just understanding? ChatGPT has popped off. Crypto just popped off. Okay, I'm gonna go make a video about it immediately. Or what's your process there?
- [02:47]
B
I mean, when I first. The first time I did it was pretty much luck. Like, I fell into it out of genuine interest in the space. But then after, like, four years, I've kind of seen, like, a repeatable process. And it's typically, like, right now, AI video, I'm seeing the exact same.
- [02:58]
A
Right.
- [02:59]
B
Similarities. And it's like you just see channels where they have, like, a few thousand subscribers, get 50,000 views, 100,000 views. And so that's just a very clear sign there's more demand than there is supply, and there's an arbitrage there. And it gets filled very efficiently in, like, two to three months by a lot of creators. But almost every big creator you're seeing in the personal brand business space pretty much always insert themselves during one of these arbitrage moments. And then there's, like, five new creators who now become, like, permanent main characters.
- [03:26]
A
Right.
- [03:26]
B
They continue to make content, and the smart ones will pivot to see where the attention is. But just really important to, like, be on the lookout of, like, where's the attention at? Is there a gap in who's getting the views? Like, is it small channels getting the views, or is it the traditional players? And if you see that gap, insert yourself, and you should be able to gain an audience.
- [03:42]
A
Yeah, let's talk about getting views, too, because something that, in full transparency. Our struggle as a podcast, I think, has been. Has been packaging. And this is a concept Patty Galloway talks about. You know, I'm sure you're very familiar, like, walk me through your packaging process, because I think that's something you do really, really well. And our audience would learn a lot from. Yeah.
- [04:01]
B
So everything on my YouTube channel is done by me, like, 100%. I don't have any other person on my team. My girlfriend does my thumbnails.
- [04:06]
A
Okay.
- [04:06]
B
I'm the psychologist behind it. And so my whole approach to YouTub psychology, first and foremost, like, just with any personal brand, you want to be making eye contact with the camera. And so if you have a thumbnail, you want to be looking at the person. Because there's just something about, like, making eye contact with someone where you feel, like, subconsciously obligated to look back.
- [04:25]
A
Totally.
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B
So you always want to be, like, looking them straight in the face.
- [04:27]
A
Yeah, that was. That was really direct there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You didn't break one time.
- [04:31]
B
Yeah. Next, you want it to be really bright. And so I'm going to do use a thumbnail tool called would you click? Which basically lets you see your thumbnail on a mock feed next to your competitors. So I'll put Alex Hermosi in there. I'll put Iman in there. I'll put anyone else in my niche, and then I will put my thumbnail up there just to see, does this pop? Now, to make it pop, I like to use a picture that looks like a real office, but it has contrasting colors that will look good on dark mode and light mode. So I'm going to use, like, a real office space like this with windows kind of blown out with some greenery, because that's going to pop on both colors. I'm going to blur that out, insert myself there. I'll have one outcome. So in my space, it's making money. So it's usually $100,000 a month, $2,739 per day, whatever it is.
- [05:15]
A
Right.
- [05:15]
B
Big text up top. And then I'll put, like, the category. And so for me, I'm making a lot of content on software, so I'll just put SaaS. So that way the people that are seeing this in my target audience will know, okay. If I want to make $100,000, my desired outcome in my demographic, this video is for me. And that's just trying to get their attention.
- [05:33]
A
So have you heard of Cocomelon, the kid show? So apparently they pioneered retention editing. I don't know if you knew that.
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B
I did not know they did that.
- [05:41]
A
Everyone says it was Mr. Beast, but actually, Coco Melon was this kids show that scientifically knew that kids would like continue to maintain attention as long as they cut every one or two seconds. Interesting. And that's all I could think about while you were talking about that is you're just like, click me, click me. And you understand that people are skimming. You know, it's like, okay, someone interested in SaaS wants to make money, Boom. Like high saturation. Just click here, right? And then from there, that's your thumbnail. But how do you do titles? Because that I feel. And a follow up question to that is, which one is more important in your opinion? Titles or thumbnails in business?
- [06:17]
B
I would say titles. I think once you are at a certain level of understanding thumbnails, they're all like going to do the. Like you're trying to try to get them to stop with the thumbnail.
- [06:25]
A
Right.
- [06:25]
B
But the title is like the outcome you're actually promising and like what you're going to deliver. So first off, like when I write a video script, I'm trying to basically come up with like, what is the one line that someone's going to walk away and describe this video to their friend? Like, if I made a good video that was remarkable, they will go tell their friend what is that one line they're going to say of describing the video? And that's what I'll use for the title. The title is typically just the exact outcome that the person's going to get. So I made a video today on how we made that GTA AI ad at WAP. Yeah, I got like 1.7 million views. And so the title is literally how we make AI videos that get millions of views. And it's just a very clean one liner. You want to make sure. Obviously like AI video is a hot search term. So I'm obviously paying attention to where the attention is and that's why I'm making that video. But how we made, how we make AI videos to get millions of views. And then I'll put the. Either in a parenthesis. The tools that have a lot of SEO, so VO3 Luma or whatever it is, or if a lot of people saw the GTA ad, I'll put GTA ad breakdown or whatever it is just to keep it familiar.
- [07:22]
A
So talk to me about that GTA viral ad.
- [07:25]
B
Yeah, so AI video is like pretty much, I would say as of when VO3 came out to me, that's when I made the switch. Like we are going to be the case study on how brands use AI video. And I just immediately assigned our creative Director to like only use these tools and come up with something. He's extremely creative. We came up with this concept of it's not like 100% perfect to make real life like UGC, people that are consistent. And so we found a really good blend of basically using the GTA animation style, which is very relevant to our brand. A lot of people talk about making money online. It's like a video game.
- [07:58]
A
Yeah.
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B
People in our brand really don't give a fuck. Like we cuss, we are just making a lot of money showing off lifestyle and everything. Like it's a very part of the culture of the make money online world. So that was really good, like matching and really good taste by our creative director. And then it's just the cultural relevance of all the references. Like we're showing Tai Lopez here in his garage made the narrator tjr, who's one of our creators, Brez crashing his Lambo, which is like a new thing that's happened this year. So, like really good cultural relevance of people in our community in the make money online world. Plus the GTA energy we all played GTA growing up, plus using AI tools. Like if it looks one to one like it was a straight up out of GTA animation that probably would have cost 50 to $100,000 for an animation studio to mimic. Probably cost three or take three months to make. Our creative director did it by himself in a week for like $1,000.
- [08:45]
A
And so fuck a copyright. Right?
- [08:48]
B
You know, that's, it's. We're in the air. That's the algorithms. Absolutely.
- [08:52]
A
No, I think having respect for the copyrights is, is slowly becoming, you know, a dinosaur move at this point. I mean, it's, it's like, why would you even do it? No one's getting nabbed until maybe a couple of years from now. But I think the real person that'll get nabbed and all of that would be probably VO3, not you guys for using the tool.
- [09:10]
B
That's kind of like the gray area of like you can repost thousands of content through clipping, you can post on the social platform. They're the ones making money from the ad revenue from that. Like they're monetizing it too.
- [09:20]
A
Right, right.
- [09:21]
B
And so like if a company reaches out and says like, hey, take this down, we're happy to take it down, but I think it's more of a net positive for Grand Theft Auto in general.
- [09:28]
A
Absolutely.
- [09:29]
B
It's free.
- [09:30]
A
It's just free advertising. I mean, it's free impressions, which I think that philosophy is something that you guys have done a really good job pioneering. This is something I see with all of my clients. Everyone that works with us understands an impression is good. And a lot of people in particularly the E commerce, brand marketing, kind of D2C world don't understand that because they've been burned by some sort of celebrity partnership in the past and they're like, well, not all impressions are good. You know, they, they think some are stale. And to an extent that is true. But I think what you guys are doing with the content rewards thing is sort of pioneering this idea that like you just want to go for a critical mass of top of funnel attention and figure it out later. Right. Build the systems to capture that. So talk to me a little bit about like this content rewards, like how it came about first of all, like what you guys spotted and then also some of the best case studies that you've seen thus far.
- [10:22]
B
Yeah. So content rewards is the reason I joined wap. And essentially over the last three years I have a podcast and I've interviewed these kids that are like 15, 16, 17 years old that are making millions of dollars with software. Yeah. And I saw like recurring pattern. Every single time they were doing mass short form content, they'd find they'd make content with a small group of creators, find a format that would win, then get hundreds of people, just copy that format and repost over because go viral once, it'll go viral again. So I saw this time and time again and I had been trying and toying with how, like having to make it. But it really struck me that you need like a community platform to like actually make this work. And so I've always had a good relationship with the WAP guys. I decided that it'd be probably better to come in, in house, lead their marketing and then actually get the app built inside. And so content rewards, basically the concept of you just set a budget, you put $5,000, say I'll pay you a dollar for every thousand views if you post content under these requirements. Then you just post it, submit it, automatically tracks the views, automatically pays you out. And so it's basically just a complete distribution hack. You can post the same content over and over and over again and get millions of views. And so the app itself was something that we were seeing happening in the underground world. Like we were seeing these people do it in discords and they were making a lot of money. And it was people like Mr. Beast. It was like the biggest creators were doing this already and we just kind of observed that so it was a really clunky way of happening and really just said, okay, we can probably structure this. We have good payments infrastructure, we have a community platform. Let's just make this a better tool for marketers and clippers to just come together.
- [11:50]
A
Are you looking at expanding it at all to Twitter, Reddit, stuff like that? Because I think what Stake does on Twitter is fascinating. Where they post those, you know, old viral Twitter memes and then will watermark it with their logo because they can't advertise traditionally. And something that I think you guys have done an amazing job of, again, not to, you know, neck you a little too hard is like, I think you all have taken the gray in your productizing it, right? It's like that gray area. You're going to say, we're going to make this actually something you can just seamlessly use. Right. So like, how are you going to expand into different channels for content?
- [12:26]
B
So we have Twitter. I don't think we'll expand to Reddit. I don't know how like, much that would work.
- [12:31]
A
It could, but I've seen some really interesting shit recently.
- [12:34]
B
It's not a bad idea. We're actually like working with a set, like an external team now on it to help, like run it. Because to be honest, it's like it became such a big thing inside of WAP that it almost is like a second business inside our business. So we kind of want WAP apps to be. We just want to build the tech for other people to build WAP apps. Kind of like the Shopify app store. You can build an app for people to use for their stores. Yeah, we want people to be able to build full blown software apps and then sell it to creators and the creators can offer it in their communities. So we're working with a separate team. I'm going to, I'll mention that, but at the end of the day, I do think that it's really at the early stages. Stake is exactly who I saw. Like that was like the moment where I'm like, okay, this is like systemized. Like, I've never seen this many videos get this many views across this many accounts. Like something is happening. And that's what triggered me to like deeply investigate the Discord servers. And I eventually found the exact server they were doing, saw how they were incentivizing creators, inviting them in and getting it posted.
- [13:23]
A
It's so incredible when you can take something that, you know, an industry that is literally banned from advertising, right? Gambling, porn, any of these, like different bad spaces and you're like, okay, well, they have to get extremely creative to go viral because they're banned from traditional means. If you can harness that stuff and take it to, you know, your brand, whether you're Even, you know, $5 million a year Ecom brand or a SaaS company, like, whatever it is, then you're going to have such a leg up on your competitors because they're not chronically online enough to even know that that's happening.
- [13:54]
B
So the earlier you are to it too, like, the bigger the delta of the opportunity that you capture. Like, that's something I learned at YouTube. Like, if you're the first or second people to cover a topic, right, you get like 2 million views, but if you're third, it goes down to like 200,000. Like, very drastic.
- [14:08]
A
Yeah. A lot of the stuff I'm hearing from you is really interesting in terms of a bias for action, because I'm hearing, I saw ChatGPT, like, we all saw ChatGPT in 2022. And you were like, no, I'm going to actually, like, aggressively attack this immediately and capture as much of this attention as possible. And you've seen. I'm actually annoyed by this niche. Not you in particular, but like, a lot of people, you know, AI creators, AI focused creators, were also crypto creators. Kind of the trajectory that you're talking about, it's like they kind of just pop from. I'm thinking in particular, there's this guy who is on Twitter and he'll just post like, this guy literally found the hack to, you know, build vibe code a $10,000 a month SaaS, and he'll just like, repost some viral tweet about AI. And it's just so slop, you know, it's just slop on the timeline everywhere.
- [14:58]
B
But I know what you're talking about.
- [15:00]
A
What I'm. What I. What I want to give credit, though, is, is your bias fraction, because it's like, okay. And that's a huge takeaway in terms of wap, which I want to get into and back up a second and talk about what WOP is. But you just told your creative director as soon as you saw VO3, we're going to only do this. You know, I think, like, that's something a lot of people when I talk to successful brand owners. You know, the big one in the E comm world is TikTok shop. I'm obviously very biased. I run a large TikTok shop agency. But I've seen how much that can change a business's retail position after going viral on TikTok. And that just only comes from the people who are jumping on that trend. You know, immediately you where there's smoke, there's fire. Oh my gosh. TikTok virality is crazy. I'm gonna go invest as much as I can in it. And so I think that's like a really key takeaway is like go have a bias for action towards these trends and then jump on them immediately.
- [15:53]
B
100. I think the jumping from that crypto to AI thing there was like a probably a three week period where I was like, I'm the crypto guy. Like I had. It was like tied to my identity.
- [16:02]
A
Yeah.
- [16:02]
B
And but I was like finding myself like obsessed with learning about ChatGPT and using it going into the back ends of the APIs. So the one thing to my defense on this is that I have a development agency throughout the entire time.
- [16:14]
A
Okay.
- [16:14]
B
And so we were just building smart contracts for people. Then we pivoted to building AI software for people. And so we could develop anything. It's just like objectively from a business decision decision. Where is the demand?
- [16:24]
A
Absolutely.
- [16:24]
B
What's the best, like audience attract? So I am very like, I use my YouTube channel really strategically and intentionally to just make content for people in my target demographic and then subtly promote my business. And so it's always just been like future technologies where I see attention at and we'd position our development agency to build people, like get their attention and build for them if they wanted to do something.
- [16:44]
A
I mean I would actually say one of the biggest things that separates my respect for certain content creators versus others is like the business underneath their media. Because a lot of people are good content creators but they're not making bread. And I'm kind of like, you know, what are you doing with all this attention? Right. Like if you were so smart you would actually be running it up on. On something as well. And you'd be an entrepreneur, not just content creator.
- [17:09]
B
I would say that is the most important thing to understand. Like I always choose the business model first before I ever make a piece of content. And I made content knowing that I was going to start a business. And so I thought like what was my content thesis to attract my target demographic to then convert them into that business. Like that you have to start at the bottom. It's called content thesis. So very important back to like your identity. I think a lot of creators get stuck into this. Like I'm the AI guy or whatever. I am this person. I think that's often because they might have captured tension first without thinking of the business model where everyone who's stuck around and consistently grown, all the top people are moving. Like if you look at YouTube right now, like Jordan Welch was a drop shipping guy 5 years ago. Now it's AI dropshipping. Same with Eman. It's now AI info products. Like you're just like positioning your original thing with the other trending keyword that you know people are interested in and applying it to your context.
- [17:57]
A
Yeah.
- [17:57]
B
And that's how they've been able to stick around for five to 10 years and not just fall off after their first wave.
- [18:01]
A
Yeah, no, you have to be flexible. Shameless is another word you could use for some of that. But no, I'm kidding. So back to business models. What the hell is wap?
- [18:12]
B
Yeah, so WAP is basically just a community platform where you can sell apps. So very similar to Discord where they have channels and bots. Ours are just called WAP Apps. So you can like host a course, you can have a chat, you can have community, livestream, whole shebang. Where it gets different is that we actually have an app store that's a third party developer API. So any developer can actually make WAP apps and they can make the WAP apps, creators can install them and sell them to their community. And so Content Rewards was a WAP app that we built where basically people would install it in their community, put a $10,000 budget in. Any dollar that gets, that gets spent, we would take a percentage of that. And so it's just a really good high leverage business model for software developers because they can build apps and the creators can just do the distribution for them. But also for creators. It actually in my opinion is a pretty big innovation because you're able to offer more than just a course in the community. Now for everyone that I just mentioned that you say that you're giving shit for, they have been limited by their ability to make software. Like they've only been able to make courses or communities because they're not technically able to sell anything else. Well, now we're creating this app store where you can offer full blown software to your community very, very quickly. And so I see that AI software, no code software, something I talked about on my channel for a long time, but AI software is like actually here, anyone can now build software with just cursor. And so I do think the problem that is presenting now is that everyone's going to have their own software tool. They're all going to be on their own website, which is just like an island. And you're going to be on like this marketing hamster wheel of having to send traffic to your website or else you're doomed. And so it's going to get way, way more competitive. I think a much better, more strategic approach will be to build your app, house it in a WAP, and actually treat it like a community where your tools also inside or you can build, if you're a creator, you can build your community. Like I used to teach YouTube, so I have a YouTube course, all of this stuff. I can actually just build that mock thumbnail app inside of my WAP with AI in like 20 minutes. And I'll add that as like a bonus to joining my community. So that's what I think is the division that made me join, I'm very excited about that, is creators can now sell software. Yeah.
- [20:11]
A
I mean, that's why you guys just raised a lot of money, because that's a really bold, ambitious vision and I love it. I think it's very future oriented and makes a lot of sense. It really clicked when you said, you know, like, Godsey doesn't sell a software or I guess maybe he sells like, I don't know what he does now, but that's really interesting. And I also agree with you that everything's gonna get commoditized, you know, every single feature. I mean, you're seeing this now across the board. It's like vibe coded app, viral tweet. Everyone tries it, immediately churns, like, why will they stay? Because they have loyalty to that creator, because they're housed in the community and they can hear the community's concerns with the product and then immediately ship new features to fix those problems. So 100%, that feedback loop is extremely powerful, especially because, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I would bet that most of these no code AI apps are having absolutely massive amounts of churn. Like 100%, like 90%, 95% churn. And so you know when you're like religiously following you as a creator, and I mean, the Mr. Beast thumbnail tool thing recently, like that was an example where the community was like, this is ass. And he was like, all right, screw you guys. Like, I don't want to do it anymore. Then, you know, and within a wop, there is potentially like, maybe that fire could have been taken care of before the product was, you know, really, really out in the market. So that's interesting.
- [21:33]
B
Yeah, two things on this. I just think everyone who sells courses communities already recommend three tools like, and they use an affiliate link and promote it and now they can just build their own duplicate very, very quickly.
- [21:42]
A
Right.
- [21:43]
B
Second, the Mr. Beast thing, I think he got all of that fire was completely unjustified. And like, people in that space are very sensitive. I've noticed it when I was in the space for a bit observed, like, very strange. It is no doubt that AI thumbnails are going to be used and going to make thumbnail generation way better.
- [21:59]
A
So much better.
- [22:00]
B
And so I really think that, that if there's one thing that I can contrast, like my time to action.
- [22:06]
A
Yeah.
- [22:06]
B
Willingness to wake up tomorrow and just like almost be a new person. That's why I'm able to get an edge over all these people who like fight and cling on to like the old way of doing things. Like, think about the thumbnail designers. It's like the thumbnail designers should be using this tool to make their job easier and makes to be better. And so that's just like the people. I think I'm living in reality for that. And I just think some people just want to sit there and feel good.
- [22:28]
A
Yeah.
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B
I don't know.
- [22:29]
A
We'll leave the snowflake feelings out of the question. I think, you know, it's a broader conversation around. Every AI tool is actually an amplifier. We are not in the this is replacing you stage. I think that's been a lot of headlines. But my personal opinion as someone who has tried pretty much every viral AI tool over the last year, I see them all and it's like, I'm using Clulee and like, you know, it's ass. Like, it's terrible, dude, it's so bad. And you don't have to say that, but like, you know, it doesn't do anything and it's like meeting. It's like meeting notes, I guess, or, you know, it'll tell me what I. A lot of these things potentially I don't understand because I'm not a developer. And so maybe Cluli is better for developers where it's like, what was the coding mistake I made 30 minutes ago? Maybe that's the use case for it, I guess. But they have just been able to get a critical massive attention and monetize it. Right. And that's, that's, that's really where we're at is. Is like these apps have massive churn. That guy has a cult following and I think they're going to probably survive and thrive because all he can do is just print attention and he'll fix the product over time.
- [23:43]
B
I mean that's on my podcast with him, he was saying that no company's ever died because the founder's controversial. They died because they don't get money. Like they don't make money. And he's pretty based. Yeah, it's pretty based. And so I'm like, okay, fair.
- [23:54]
A
Yeah.
- [23:55]
B
And in their defense, I think he literally started it in February, raised money.
- [23:58]
A
In March and so I'm a fan by. Yeah, I want to, I want to be very clear that I, I respect and like what they're doing. The product has not delivered me value yet and I think that it will eventually be something that's really cool question for you because their CMO actually just came out with a video that I saw and he's pretty much built the infrastructure of content rewards internally. What do you think about that? Like should brands be building these kind of, you know, creator systems internally or should they be using platforms?
- [24:29]
B
If there's one thing that we did wrong with content rewards and I don't really know where this like was like exactly like where it came from. I think our marketing message could have implied it a little too heavily. So it set the expectation which is obviously on us. Like we definitely bear responsibility there. I think a lot of people think that you just get on the marketplace and it's automatic. Like you just like right. You don't have to do anything. And so to me it's like this is a tool for serious marketers to recruit creators into vet and get a mass amount of content out where you're like in there every single day. Like Dylan, our head of short form, like he is in there every day coaching people, talking to creators, showing them formats. Like anytime you had a good video he was like copy this. Like with these groups of people day in and day out, constantly talking to them and constantly kicking people out like treating it like a cult. If they don't post for two days in a row, they get kicked out of the group like very diligently on top of it because this is single handedly like the biggest gap in attention you could possibly fill. And so if you take it seriously, you'll see huge upside like a 10x cheaper views than anything else in the market. So like full focus should be put on this. Where a lot of these people used wop got on the marketplace and then they got videos posted and it get botted or there would be low quality views or from a specific country and mm, all of those things are in your control in the product. The botting obviously like is a Problem. The very small set of people we want to like help recoup funds. Like that's hard to fix but we do everything we can. But like low quality views people from different countries. Like you have controls in the product to turn off any country that you don't want to be posted in, you can turn off and control anyone who comes into your group that makes low quality content, you just kick them out and make it a wait list. So to me, I don't think that they should be doing in house tools.
- [26:12]
A
Right.
- [26:13]
B
Unless they feel like they can make a better product. But I don't think that that's the case. I think that they just didn't quite understand.
- [26:19]
A
Yeah. Because I mean the, the, the other way to do this is build their own Discord server. Right. I mean that's probably what Cluly is doing, I'm assuming.
- [26:28]
B
Yeah. It's just tracking payments.
- [26:29]
A
Yeah.
- [26:30]
B
Like they probably could have built a bot to track payments and manually pay them out. The Clipper doesn't know how much they're earning in sequence. Like it's a much worse.
- [26:37]
A
Totally. I actually personally used it for my. I should have used it on the Drake video. I didn't get paid any extra on that. So you know, you guys owe me. But on the, on the Druski wine, I think I made like three racks.
- [26:50]
B
Yeah.
- [26:51]
A
Which is crazy. I made $3,000 on an already sponsored post. And you know, that was, I mean just free low hanging fruit money for anyone to do. Right. Like this is something that if you have a pulse, an iPhone and you know you can look up stuff on the Internet, you could go find this information and post about WAP and make thousands and thousands of dollars of side hustle. We want pretty revolutionary.
- [27:17]
B
I think so too. And I think it's a better way to do influencer marketing. I think a lot of the influencers like we were talking before this are like charging a lot.
- [27:23]
A
Yeah.
- [27:24]
B
I would way rather someone that knows how to make good content no matter their followers get paid way more than they could quote based off their followers. So like maybe at the time you could only quote $2,000. And that's like what people would pay you.
- [27:35]
A
Right.
- [27:35]
B
I would way rather pay you $5,000 for a video that gets a huge outlier that gets 2 million views.
- [27:39]
A
Yeah.
- [27:40]
B
And you should get rewarded for the views you generate.
- [27:41]
A
Chicken in the egg conversation though. Because these days, you know, I would say I charge above my. What. Probably what I deserve, but it's because I actually don't really want to Make a sponsored video. Like, I'm at a point where that's taking away from my other ventures where my hourly rate is very, very high and I don't want to spend an hour and a half on a video for a brand that I'm not that big of a fan of. So if it's like a random AI company reaches out to me on IG and they're like, what's your rate? I'm like, like six racks.
- [28:09]
B
Yeah, you definitely hit them with.
- [28:11]
A
I know that that is not fair whatsoever. They're not going to get any ROI out of that, but. Or they might, dude. I don't know. I mean, some of these enterprise SaaS brands, like six clients that come from a video.
- [28:20]
B
So I don't know, it's definitely still the norm. But like my idealistic visionary future of the world is like, I don't like negotiating with brands. I don't like to look at their deliverables, I don't like to get their approval. I don't like to like go back and forth. Like it's a big process. Like I'd rather just shopify, have a million dollar content award for sponsoring podcasts in the business niche. Pay me a $50cpm and I can do it whenever I want.
- [28:41]
A
Like you mentioned something we gotta get into because I'm sure you deal with this at a level that I have to deal with it too, which is, you know, at Nibble, we are constantly, I mean, I think between all of our brands that are on TikTok Shop, we had around like 14,000 videos posted in the last week somewhere around there. So that's an insurmountable amount of content to track and be like, was this brand friendly? Right.
- [29:07]
B
Yeah.
- [29:08]
A
And so talk a little bit about like you. You've worked with some really big brands like Polymarket and some other companies that, you know, I would say probably could be a little sensitive to. We can't have some creator saying this. So how do you navigate the approval process and like the guidelines for like concept rewards? Yeah, just in general when you're working with these brands.
- [29:27]
B
Like, so again, content rewards is like a tool that you can install in your community and you are responsible for approving or denying content. Like only you can tell what is good quality for your brand.
- [29:38]
A
Okay.
- [29:39]
B
And so there you build a community. You have content words in there. The clippers come in and submit content to your content award. Then you have to review the content and hit approve or deny. You always retain the right to deny. If it doesn't Meet quality levels of your brand. Like that's very clearly stated there.
- [29:53]
A
Right.
- [29:53]
B
And so it's 100% up to you to decide that you have to watch the content and just not blindly approve content. Which again I think we could have done a better job of educating people on. But that is the reality. It's like only the brand can decide.
- [30:05]
A
And so when you, when you did the Drake one. Well, when you did the Party Next Door one on the record, you had this, this is going on my channel so they can't come after you. Um, is you. You use that guy Eddie. Right. And so what's your strategy to recruit creators to run these campaigns? Is he a WAP creator or is he a WAP employee? Like so. Because that I think that's probably pretty critical to the success of a campaign. Is the guy running it?
- [30:31]
B
Yeah, well, a yes, but high level first strategy for all the marketers listening. Yeah, we don't do any selling from branded accounts. We will work with creators and we want them to post on their accounts and that is going to be like a satellite womp account. So he works with us. But we're really pushing this message through creators, personal brands. I think people trust creators much more than they trust a brand account. And so our brand account should fully be fun brand awareness, cool concepts like the GTA ad, right, where we will actually work with creators if we want to like have more middle of funnel, more bottom of funnel content where they will run this thing and they will make content around the business opportunity.
- [31:07]
A
You guys understand the info space very well because the, what you just described is something. Two examples that I can think off the top of my head. Like a lot of these creator communities, you know, the people who are actually recruiting new people are the creators themselves. It's not the head honcho, right. The head honcho just pitches a lifestyle and is like, you know, come get rich with me. And then he doesn't ever sell the product though. It's always his like, you know, people that have already taken it. Not pyramid scheme vibes. I won't say that, but a lot of pyramid schemes are legal today's day and age. And, and so that's one thing. And then do you know Hudson from Comfort Clothing? The they're the number one apparel brand on TikTok and I mean they're going to do north of 500 million this year. It's like third year of business. It's unbelievable what they've done. He scaled up a creator system where you know, they use all these people pay them a percentage of ad spend or, you know, a commission on their meta ads. And he's like, I never will ever reach out to a creator. Like, I'm not the one recruiting them. I want my top creators to reach out to other people they think are a good fit, and I want to give them autonomy to recruit because that trust is there.
- [32:15]
B
I don't know.
- [32:15]
A
There's like, it's. You're not getting sold something. Instead you're just getting an opportunity. Right. And that's a huge difference.
- [32:22]
B
The creator world is very like us versus them. Brands are always trying to extract from us, like, they're coming to us. They're trying to use our audience to get a return. And that's very much like, from the creator's lens, extractive. And like you were saying earlier, you don't want to work with a brand you're not familiar with, comfortable with, or whatever. And so that's a very real thing. And so for me as a creator, huge advantage because I can go to all of my. They're literally my friends. Half of them have been on my podcast.
- [32:45]
A
Right.
- [32:45]
B
I can reach out to all of them, though. If I haven't met the person, I'm one creator friend away from another creator referral.
- [32:51]
A
Yeah.
- [32:51]
B
So it's absolutely crucial. I think another thing, if you're doing marketing at a big company, like, your marketing team should have hundreds of thousands of followers on social media or do they really understand marketing? Like, if you know how to get followers, you will have followers. And if, whether it's your personal brand account or theme account, theme pages, I don't care. But, like, it's unexcusable for anyone on your marketing team to not have some sort of social media following. Yep. Everyone on my team, I think the average age is 21.5. They've either all made a million dollars or have a hundred thousand followers on a social media platform. So very important, in my opinion.
- [33:22]
A
That's an absolutely outrageous stat. But I think what you just described is a plague, an absolute plague on every marketing team in the country because you run into a situation where there is a quote unquote, creative strategist who has never gone viral. Right. Like, what are we even talking about?
- [33:42]
B
There's like, no conversation needed.
- [33:43]
A
Yeah. If you don't want to put in the work, good. Goodness gracious. Dude. I had a. I had a client, very recent client, and their head of growth came in and was like, yo, are we going to approve all these creators for samples? Like, have we checked that they're Good fits, good brand fits. And I'm like, dude, like, what is a good brand fit at this day and age? Like, any, any creator can take a unique angle and expand your tam tremendously regardless. I was like, you know what? If you want go check out the individual creator's profile, do that before we approve the sample. She goes, where do I do that? Why are you asking? Why are you even trying to be involved in this process if you don't know where to find that? And I just think that is marketing teams at scale right now. It's this, you know, plague of like, just dinosaurs. Right? I mean, it's. How are you a creative strategist if you're not going viral? How are you a media buyer if you haven't spent your own dollars?
- [34:38]
B
It's a very obvious tell. Even, like, if someone asks you how many followers someone have, like, that is so irrelevant now. Yeah, Like, I even have, like, the ego. I'd say if I see someone who can make good content, like, they know how to do hooks, they know how to learn psychology, they know how to tell story, they know pacing.
- [34:52]
A
Right.
- [34:53]
B
I could tell them just the right content to make on the right topic right now in the market, and that would get them 10 times more views than they're getting on any of their other content. And you can kind of identify that.
- [35:02]
A
And so, you know what's interesting with, with, with you guys? Because we did our brand deal and I've done a few since, and they're all making me submit these concept docs, and they're like, will you submit your concepts by end of day Wednesday? And I'm like, what are you doing? Give me a deadline. Like, do you want me to make a good video or not? Like, I'm going to go try and make a good bit. And that is hard for a lot of people to, you know, release control of, I think, because there's not trust that someone's going to be able to do something on brand. But ultimately that is in the selection process. Right. That is not something that happens after you selected the creator. The minute you start telling a creator specifically what to do, I think you're cooked.
- [35:43]
B
I think the creative energy just gets sucked out. Like, they are the pro. You're working with that person because.
- [35:47]
A
And the motivation.
- [35:48]
B
Exactly. Because you know what I mean?
- [35:49]
A
You're not truthfully expressing yourself or your true opinion on something. And so you're like, all right, whatever. Like, I'm just gonna mail in this, like, you know, professional thing.
- [35:56]
B
Yeah. The main thing I say is like this is the objective. Like we're trying to grow content rewards. This is a cool topic that you could make content on, but make whatever you want. We're excited. We don't really do contracts. We don't really do like any sort of like approval process. It's just like we want video videos on this. Are you down? We think you make great content. Sick. Make your version of it.
- [36:14]
A
Yeah. And, and I mean you're obviously dealing with, you're dealing with a very young group. You just said the average age of your market team is 21 and a half which is not an old enough to graduate college. So I, I often joke I don't want to hire marketers that are off of their parents insurance because that's 26 and so. And the most success I've had with hiring new marketers was one was a TikTok creator herself and she's now my head of operations, does an amazing job and she understood how to manage creators. She was like in corporate America and then proceeded to, you know, she was making TikToks for fun slash just like side income. That's, I'm pretty bullish on that. Right. And then the other guy, he was a creator himself so you know, he had a hundred thousand followers, a lot of faceless stuff. The minute I saw the faceless thing I was like oh, oh, you get.
- [37:05]
B
Like the Internet, there's skill.
- [37:06]
A
Yeah. Like that is like pure play. Like because you know, I mean tam, right. TAM is the biggest thing that everyone doesn't understand is like what is the total addressable market of your idea. And if you're someone who creates theme page content, which was motivational in his case, it's like you're just going after a massive tam. Like it's such a big market. If you crack the right thing, it'll, it'll hit. And so that shows that he had the taste to ability like to be able to crack it. Right. He could copyright properly. And so that was the social proof. And so many people are trying to hire for a marketing team not understanding that it's not marketing anymore.
- [37:47]
B
It's content and it's interest based content.
- [37:49]
A
Like marketing is borderline data is like field. It's actually like all of your content operations in my opinion because back in.
- [37:57]
B
The day you could force consumption like you could do get on a magazine, you had to watch a commercial, you had to listen to a radio ad. There was no option. Now everything's one swipe away and it's all interest based. And so you have to Understand hooks. You have to understand retention. And you have to make a better piece of content than the other person in your category. So that person watches it for at least 10 seconds. And if you don't get that, it doesn't get views. So these people think that they can especially like traditional production teams, they think they can make this beautiful piece of Art, the 62nd $500,000 piece of content. No one will watch it because your first five seconds is boring as fuck. And I swipe on TikTok.
- [38:30]
A
Yeah. Just a slow zoom into a dark field and you're like, what am I waiting on?
- [38:35]
B
It's like, first sentence. I'm going to show you how to make $10,000 right now. And you have to have, like, urgency.
- [38:40]
A
Totally. It's something we were talking about before the show started is. Is the flow of dollars, right? We are at the very beginning of a $70 billion shift in how marketing is done. It used to be these big productions. You'd spend all your budget on a big super bowl commercial to get what, maybe 100 million impressions? 40 million people watching it at a single time, not, you know, talking to someone else at a Super bowl party. Like, whatever that is, bro, if you want to get 40 million views, it doesn't cost you $500,000 anymore. Like, it might cost you $5,000, it might cost you $10,000. In a bad scenario, if you run the right campaign or if you just create it yourself. Right. I mean, that Roy kid from Cluly, it's like, dude, his personal videos went maybe similar to a Super bowl ad.
- [39:27]
B
Impressions, 100% for free.
- [39:28]
A
Like for. For a couple racks to pay an editor. Who knows?
- [39:31]
B
Like, I. This is like, not even like a sooner in the future. Like, if you are hiring a 200 to $300,000 production team instead of just using AI video, in 99% of cases, you are burning cash. It is not necessary. Like, unless you need like a really specific person or a really specific location. There's no reason to do that anymore. Like, it's not even. Again, it's not in the future. It's right now. Our AI video got 3 million views organically, and it took a week with one kid. And we've made multiple AI videos. We've made four now. All of them have over 500,000 views. All organic.
- [40:03]
A
Yeah.
- [40:03]
B
And those can be ads. Roy is really good with understanding his customer base. Like, he's very much in the Asian American, stem, Ivy League dropout startup world. And he's understands that culture so well. So he Knows how to make content to go to Y Combinator doing after party. Y Combinator, which is a jump position, like he just gets it. Same thing with us for the creator world. We understand the make money online world and those references and that storytelling of like, all of us felt like going to college and getting a job was like shoved down our throat by our parents. And we were constantly like doubting ourselves, like, but even though we felt like we're not learning a lot, we felt like this isn't right. We'd see kids make money on the Internet. We understood that feeling. And so we just pull a story out of that and can tell that. And it's just a no brainer for our audience specifically. So I think that's probably the most important thing is the storytelling and understanding your customer base, what they'll resonate with.
- [40:51]
A
The references piece is really underrated. So my co host Alex talks about, he's doing this for a lot of brands is world building, right? Is the concept of world building as a brand. And one of the key things about world building is like references, you know, like, if you're able to make someone feel like they're in GTA without getting a copyright, you know, lawsuit from gta, you've done a great job, you know, and it's like those little mini references are association. Like brand is ultimately a game of association. At the end of the day, it's like, what do people, you know, think you have your brand in the same category with? And so, you know, I do think more people need to at the beginning of their brand think about those references is like you just described it. You, you intimately know your target audience. So if you intimately know your target audience, what are those kind of like adjacent, you know, references? Like we, we have a listener, this guy, and he got absolutely smoked. We, we did a, we were reviewing listeners brands and the audio cut out. So hopefully this audio stays good because that was a tough, tough L. And we did a whole like how we'd grow for him. But a key part of it was like, so he's a golf brand and golf is very like polyester, like athletic wear now. And he's basically like, golf used to be swaggy. Like he used to like look like Ralph Lauren out there. And it's awesome. Like, it's really resonating with people. It's got like 30,000 followers now. Like his very simple message. And I was like, dude, you need to like, you know, drop these references in there. It's like, you know, best fits from like the 1973 U.S. open. Like, it doesn't matter that you're not talking about wood grain golf in that post, but you might get 5,000 likes and people now are exposed to you, they'll go down your funnel. So, like, how do you use references? Strategically is something I think a lot more people need to do.
- [42:41]
B
100. We had like the Ashton hall clip in there. We had Luke Belmar's. I studied clip. Like, yeah, to me it's like our team is like actually required to scroll for like an hour or two a day. Yeah, we are actually like, we'll make jokes about like, go scroll for an hour. And like they have PhDs in brain rot at this point.
- [42:55]
A
Yeah.
- [42:55]
B
And so like, that is the game.
- [42:57]
A
Yeah, that's good. That's. That's pretty funny. Well, dude, what, so if someone's still listening to this podcast at the end of it, like, what is the key ingredients for a successful campaign on wop? And then maybe after that I want to talk to the creator side and see like, okay, what are some of these key things that people can learn as a creator to launch something successful?
- [43:17]
B
So for content rewards, you're referencing. Yeah, yeah, I think that one very transparently contouring words is best used for mass short form. Ugc. And so if you're just a brand new company and you don't have any content, like, it's not going to be like, you have to understand the clippers and the creators need to be incentivized. Like, if you're not going to get views, you're not going to make money. If you post five times and don't get views, you're not going to come back. And so I think the number one thing is like, if you're just starting out and you want to start growing with UGC, pay like three creators, $500,000 a month retainer to post once a day and just work with them every single day. And like do research. Make a list of a hundred of the most popular videos in your niche. Just search the word on TikTok, find 100 videos, find those formats, find three creators that you know how to make good content. Pay them retainer, have them post every single day and work with them. And have them look at their retention graphs. Once I looked at their retention graphs. Once you're giving them more formats, you will find something that works better than the other ones. Whether it's a million views or 50,000 views, it'll work better. Once you have that format, then you can go make a content rewards campaign. On wap, then you can say these are the exact videos for our brand that are working. You can replicate them, set your budget if UGC$3 per thousand views around, if it's clipping around a dollar and then just start recruiting a ton of creators in. Do the same thing, look up for creators in your niche and just DM all of them. Invite them into your wap. Do giveaways, coach them, do live streams, talk about the content, make loom videos, giving them feedback on their content. Like it's one person on our team's entire job. But that one person got a 72 million views last month.
- [44:51]
A
Yeah. You know, put the work in. Yeah. Have that dog in you. It's kind of what, it's kind of what I deserve commit to actually seeing it through rather than like, you know, you mentioned at the beginning, it's not just a dump for you solution, it's a tool. And I think that's pretty critical to understand before you get on there.
- [45:08]
B
That's why the scale matters.
- [45:09]
A
You know, God forbid. That's not just everything worth it in life, right? Yeah, yeah.
- [45:13]
B
I mean the other side of this is you run, you make a bad piece of content, you run paid ads, you force people to watch it and it doesn't convert and then you just, you can't figure out why.
- [45:20]
A
Yeah, totally.
- [45:21]
B
This is the perfect way to find winning creative and then run those as ads.
- [45:24]
A
Yeah, I do think that's actually like one of the most key things that has I've seen in successful brands that work with Nibble versus like all these people that are like meta is not incremental anymore. I'm like okay, go broke. Like you start organic and then go to paid. You don't go like paid testing all the way. But so many brands don't want to change their DNA. You know, they don't want to introduce people that can even think of good organic concepts. They want like the social media manager to like you know, go do a trend and like for sure 0 like emotion or psychology in the video.
- [45:56]
B
Yeah, I'm very much like the Google 7114 rule as well. Like 7 hours of content, 11 different pieces of content, 4 different platforms. And so like even if I'm going to start doing paid ads, I'm still going to start, start with mass short form UGC and start getting word WAP in their head and then start posting really cool likeness based content on our main socials to get people like want to like have brand affinity. And then we'll introduce paid ads after We've tested, find winning content. There's more bottom of funnel to push them down. Yeah, like, we'll never just run cold ads out the gate by itself alone because you're not. You're going to blame the creative or you're going to blame the funnel, when in reality, like no one is at all. You can warm them up a little bit before they see an ad.
- [46:30]
A
Totally. And then the last thing I want to cover is just like, say you're a creator and you want to launch something on wap. Like what's kind of a framework for someone to understand what they should sell, slash, like, you know, just generally create the most successful launch.
- [46:44]
B
Yeah. At the end of the day, we're also a payment processor and we have two. What is a new announcement. We're doing 2.5% fees plus $0.30. So we will be the lowest payment processor on WAP. So no matter what your business is, you can just use us for payments and you'll save a lot of money. If you're actually trying to launch an actual WOP community and a wop Apple. The number one thing I think is most important is again, what I said earlier, like, where attention goes, money flows. And so positioning your product in, like, as much as you want to say, sell out or whatever it is, like, there's a hard reality that, like, there is interest in this topic and to get people's attention, they need to show interest and they're interested in AI, layer it in. And there probably is a new way to do AI. So I would be very conscious of the fact that there's market interest in AI right now. And then simultaneously I would create something, try to create something novel. So the reason Content reward. Content rewards worked so well on social media because it was novel, it was new. There was already interest in clipping, but no one had ever really productized it.
- [47:36]
A
Right.
- [47:36]
B
And so when you make content on a novel thing, it does extremely well. And so I would play in the dynamic of AI or AI video or whatever it is, and then I would make sure I would create an offer that was more novel. And to me, WAP apps are going to be extremely novel. You're going to be the first creator who can actually sell software with a course or community. And so my real advice is just, you're going to sell an outcome. People are not buying a course or a community. They are not buying the features within the course of their community. They want to learn one thing, how to get millions of views with AI video, target demographic.
- [48:09]
A
Yep.
- [48:10]
B
And so just make sure you're really focused on the outcome. Make sure you're making content that's actually new. I think the One thing of YouTube is I've always done something like I've always learned something, done it, got results, then make a video on it. And so I can show exactly the entire story end to end. And not just did a little bit of research and made a video. And so I think making a full, like, actually valuable video that doesn't exist. Like, if you can watch another YouTube video that you're about to make that's on the exact same topic and it says the exact same stuff, it's not going to work because people are not going to share it. People are not going to keep watching. They've seen it before. So you have to have net new information in your video content, and you have to make sure you're promising a clear outcome. That people and demographic always promise the outcome.
- [48:51]
A
Promise the transformation. Show them how to do it.
- [48:53]
B
Exactly.
- [48:54]
A
So that's. That's great stuff, dude. All right, so where can we find you? We got Brett Van malinowski.
- [48:59]
B
Nice.
- [48:59]
A
On YouTube, obviously, number one. And then, I mean WAP.com if you want to do any of you guys. 50,000 products.
- [49:06]
B
100%. Yeah. YouTube channel is probably the best content I have. Twitter, Instagram, but definitely Brett Malinowski on YouTube.
- [49:11]
A
Cool. Well, that was fun. I think our audience is going to get a lot of out of that.
- [49:14]
B
So I appreciate you. Yeah, you've been very fun to work with. Ye make very good content. And I've been a fan of the podcast. I think I saw your fourth podcast ever, so. Oh, no privilege to be on here.
- [49:22]
A
That's huge. Awesome, man.
- [49:23]
B
Thank you, dude.
- [49:24]
A
All right, well, we'll talk soon. Later, guys.