Viral Video Secrets: 3 Steps to 1B Views | Hilary Billings DSH #876

Do you follow dog accounts?

I actually don't.

I think that just speaks to the power of interest, not familiarity.

But it's so great to see the algorithm and how it plays.

Where can we draw the line, right?

The algorithm's constantly looking, so I'm be sure that your content or algorithm is also saying, okay, he likes dog content.

Right.

I think the algorithm is constantly trying to find the limits as to what we want to watch and sit through.

You gotta be really careful about your watch time.

I know, right?

All right, guys, fellow Vegas local here today, Hillary Billings, the queen of content.

Come on, the queen of content like that.

Yeah, billion views will get you that title, I'd say.

Oh, thank you so much.

I appreciate that.

Yeah, not a lot of people get to a million, let alone a billion.

It's been a fun journey, that's for sure.

Yeah.

How long have you been posting content and getting views?

You know, it's been a funny journey.

I actually started over COVID.

So before that, I was an on-camera host, a journalist.

I worked as a celebrity interviewer for USA Today.

I did a lot of behind-the-scenes award shows, red carpets, interviewing everyone from Ringo Star to Dolly Parton and Mark Cuban.

Wow.

And then I was a personal brand strategist for a while and helping everyone from Victoria's secret models to billionaires figure out how to tap into their messaging and monetize the reputation.

And then COVID hit and every single revenue stream dried up.

And so I was approached by an acquaintance of mine who happened to run the largest network of Facebook watch pages.

And at the time, you probably remember, you couldn't monetize unless you had access to a publisher.

So he asked me and my partner at the time if we'd be interested in making content.

It's like, well, yeah, sure.

We have background in making all sorts of content.

Before being a journalist, I was an international travel blogger, had readers in 120 countries.

We can make sub-three-minute videos and just kick it off.

And then it turns out we were terrible at it.

And we spent about nine months just banging our heads against a wall trying to make content work.

It was so frustrating.

And we were trying everything.

And it's like you see other people having massive success and getting the views and making the money and even when we copied them we couldn't get people to listen it was like nobody cared right so we finally had to uh to have this moment of what if everything we thought about content how content went together what was wrong what if instead of views being accidental someone just picking up their phone and being able to to film something and have it go viral what if it was actually very intentional so we uh we took a weekend watched thousands of viral videos.

I do not recommend that anyone do that for their mental health.

And we started to see, it was almost like, oh, what's that movie?

John Nash and A Beautiful Mind, where the numbers and patterns start to emerge.

We were documenting everything.

What happens at second one?

What happens at second three?

What are they wearing?

What are they saying?

What does the hand gestures look like?

And it started to become really clear that certain things needed to happen to move through a video in order for it to be successful.

So we took those learnings, we applied it to our next video.

That next video did 5 million views.

Wow.

The video after that did 10 million views.

And it's not to say that everything that we touched turned to gold, but we live in Vegas.

So what I like to attribute it to, or the analogy I like to use, is I can tell you what the best odds are for which game you can want to play, which slot machine.

I can tell you which ones not to play.

I can tell you which ones are not going to do anything for you.

And I can tell you that...

A little old lady has been sitting at that machine all day and she just got up and that's the one that I would go and hit.

So one in every four of our videos did over a million views.

One in every 10 did over 10 million.

We went from no views in the first nine months to over a billion organic views the following 12 months.

Incredible.

And that was on Facebook?

That was through Facebook, TikTok, Instagram.

We kind of played the gamut across different platforms.

Nice.

Yeah, it's interesting because just because you're a celebrity doesn't mean you'll get views.

A hundred percent.

Well, and even with that is being not a celebrity, right?

How does somebody who doesn't have a following that isn't well known, how do you break through and create that kind of content?

And I'd be be curious if this is one year experience as well, but I think that one of the cool things that TikTok did is they helped to democratize distribution of views, right?

It no longer was about you needed a million followers in order to make that happen.

It was about interest.

People follow or people watch content based upon interest, not familiarity.

I mean, you can scroll through Instagram and look at five to six different posts that you don't even follow.

You don't even know the people whose content you're being served.

But because you like that type of content or you're watching those types of videos, that's what's ending up in your algorithm.

And so that's where I think, especially with entrepreneurs and businesses, people can win now more so than they could even five years ago in the content industry.

Yeah, it was way harder to break through then.

You kind of needed a following.

Yeah.

And it's interesting because I feel like people tend to demonize the algorithm and be like, oh, it hates me.

I'm shadow banned, and there's all this language that gets used.

But, you know, we, I think at our peak, maybe, well, you know, my TikTok blew up from This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp.

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0,000 to 400,000 followers in 40 days when I started TikTok, but for a long time, especially on Facebook, we were operating with 10 to 30,000 followers.

Like we were batting way outside our average just because we were engineering the content in a particular way.

And it's been really fun now as the CEO and co-founder of Attentioners to help personal brands and entrepreneurs and to teach them how to do this, right?

Because I think we were talking about the dark side of between Henderson and Summerlin.

I think it's also kind of that way with content creation sometimes, for at least for me, of

how do we get in front of these service-based entrepreneurs?

How do we get them in front of their audiences?

How do we get the messages that need to be heard out into the world?

And I think they probably struggle more than anyone because this isn't their full-time job.

You know, like as a content creator, how many pieces of content are you putting out a day?

At least three.

At least three.

And then you're dropping multiple podcast episodes every day as well.

Two to three, yeah.

And like, and how many people are on your team?

A lot over 10 now.

It's a yeah and like it's a beautiful machine that you've created but the average business person entrepreneur they're either soloing it trying to figure it out on their own or they have a intern right or maybe someone in their 20s who knows how to use TikTok that they're trying to figure out how to break in and crack the algorithm to get to their clients.

And really at the end of the day, the views are just a conduit to get what they really want, which is the customer.

And so how do we help them make content that their audience is going to care about, that they won't cringe at, that's going to lead to the outcome that everyone wants?

So, that's been really fun to be able to be focused on that and helping our clients 250x their views.

That's insane.

250x?

Holy crap.

Yeah, because you don't believe videos go viral on accident.

I do not.

I think that there's a lot of engineering that happens in content.

And I personally believe, and what we've seen to be true, is that every single viral video has three particular components.

And content that you've loved that probably didn't go viral or didn't do as well as you wanted to it's probably because it was missing one of these components and if you had a piece of content that just magically went viral or accidentally and you don't know why it's probably because it had these three things and it breaks down as the following so it's it grabs attention it sparks an emotion and it creates a curiosity gap so With grabbing attention, pretty straightforward, right?

You have zero to two seconds to make an impact.

Someone is deciding in two seconds if they're going to give you another two seconds.

And so you have to earn it.

And when we were full-time creators, we'd spend more time talking about the first three seconds than any other part of the video.

How are we going to get them to stop the scroll?

What kind of visual metaphors are we going to use?

What kind of bold statements are we going to use at the top of the video and allow that to then service the rest of the content?

Because I think of it back to advice that I would give my personal brand strategy clients, which is you can write the best book, you could have the most amazing speech, but if the title isn't right, no one's going to pick it up off the shelf, no one's going to buy it.

So all that work is wasted if you don't get that opener right.

And so how do we help them to create the opener, grab the attention?

So that's the first piece is you have to be thinking about the open, probably even more so than the end.

We'd have videos do 20, 50, 100 million views.

99% of the people aren't going to get to the end of the content.

So I think a lot of...

content creators, a lot of business people think, let's set it up like a movie.

Let's save the best for last.

It's going to be a really cool plot twist.

But if you do that, then you're actually missing out on the majority of the audience that's going to to be able to watch it so we got to grab attention

Then we have to spark an emotion.

So studies and research show that depending upon the emotion that you're emoting from your viewer is then going to predict or determine what type of behavior they're going to take.

Are they going to comment?

Are they going to share?

Are they going to like it or engage on it?

And you know what I like to say is when people get emotional, they get promotional.

So that is how you are able to propagate ideas and allow something to really catch on fire and catch on fast.

Right.

Is by anchoring in on an emotion that you want your viewer to see.

And it's very interesting how, again, different emotions trigger different behaviors

within your viewer.

So if you're not doing that, that's probably why you're not seeing engagement or why you're not seeing shares.

And the final piece, which I think is the one that most people don't talk about, is how do you create a curiosity gap?

How do you leave something out purposefully on the beginning of the video that also tells them what they're gonna get if they watch the end of the video?

And that's how we lengthen the watch time.

So we were talking about before we started bold statements, right?

And so you had brought up another interview of like, what was the Dave Asprey?

Yeah.

Coffee mold.

Coffee has mold.

Yeah.

Right.

So it's like, okay, well, maybe I didn't know that.

So then now I need to watch the rest of the video to understand that.

Or maybe the

curiosity gap, if I was to set that up, might be you'll never guess what's what's in coffee like or this toxic thing is in this toxic chemicals in coffee

you you don't want to drink coffee that has this right so how are we setting up the piece of content so that people are waiting for you to fill that gap to give them this payoff to answer this question and it also allows you to then create more trust with your viewer right because you're giving them great information it's something they they know that they want to watch because you've clearly set the tone and that's that's how you get people to watch to the end of the video I definitely agree, especially with the emotion part.

My most viral videos are usually debates, people debating in the comments.

So I would imagine that the emotion that they're experiencing is a lot of anger.

Like the creator is bringing that out in them with a bold statement or something like that.

Yeah, anger because maybe something they said wasn't factual or something.

Or it's political.

Political stuff is hot right now.

Oh, I'm sure.

Well, as we're heading into

the election season here, it's only going to probably become more and more exasperated.

I can't get rid of it on my Twitter feed.

Oh, I bet.

I remember the assassination attempt.

That day I was like, I'm not even going to post today.

Yeah, it's not worth it.

Alex and I'll get involved.

People are only going to talk about this.

Totally.

Nothing else.

Well, and that's an interesting point to content too, right?

Is that, you know, you might have a really great video, but depending upon what else happens that day in the news, in politics, Taylor Swift does something amazing, right?

She wears some cool dress.

Then all the attention is going to be on that versus like you could post a subpar piece of content on another day and the content isn't as strong and that one then is able to propagate and grow more.

So there's a lot of things that are outside of our control.

So I'm always looking at what can I control with content?

How can I win my game and what are the metrics that I'm going to look at to mean success for me?

Because sometimes it's not views, right?

Like views are a great vanity metric and we got a lot of them, but especially for a lot of our clients at attentioniers, views isn't the end goal, right?

They're looking for revenue.

They're looking for clients.

They're looking to sell a product.

They've got a service.

So So

how do we translate the views that they are getting into money?

How do we translate that into trust and credibility to build a reputation?

100%.

I know a podcast that gets maybe a thousand views, but they're making millions a year.

See, it's so funny how

people will make a judgment based upon what they see online as to what's actually happening behind the curtain.

It's super fascinating.

No, even my show, because I'm nowhere near the top shows, but this show is bringing in millions a year and people probably wouldn't know that.

Right, right.

I mean, and you guys, again, with the flow of content, how everything works for you and your primary business models that's really fantastic.

Yeah.

So what type of content over the next few years are you looking at?

As far as what what do I see trending?

Yeah.

So there's a lot of data to support this, my answer on this.

The the first statistic that I'll share is that Goldman Sachs recently estimated that in the next three years, we are going to double the amount of money that is in the creator economy than has been in the past 17.

So yeah.

So the creator economy is going to massively, exponentially continue to grow.

So as far as where people are putting eyeballs, where money is going, it's definitely in digital.

Now Adobe released a study last year saying that 80% of the time that we're on our cell phones, so just think about how often you're on your phone, I mean we were texting.

Eight hours a day.

Right, yeah.

So 80% of the time that you are not texting or calling someone, you are watching short-form video.

And so I think about that like Prato's law.

So if 20% of your efforts is going to get you 80% of your results, if your consumer, if your client is spending 80% of their time in short-form video, that's where you're going to have the best chance to meet them.

You can do the email newsletters, you can do the campaigns, the blogs, the photo posts, what have you.

But if 80% of the time this is their focus, that's where I would put all of my energy.

And again, as we're just continuing to see with how platforms are competing with each other, how whether it's YouTube shorts, TikTok, LinkedIn,

Facebook, all of them, they're really focusing on short-form content.

Yeah, I saw LinkedIn even recently, right?

Yeah, yeah, sub-three-minute content.

Everyone's trying to get into the game of that.

And there's obviously a lot happening legally as well to try to move people out of the game.

And there's always going to be changes in the players.

But I think we're definitely not going to see short-form content going away.

And in fact, I see that as being the utmost skill set that you can either have on your team or you can learn yourself to grow your business.

And we see it right now.

The companies that are doing it well and have embraced that are seeing massive success i mean you're you're one of those people too yeah i'm doubling down on it i just hired another short form editor really yeah we're about to do four to six a day instead of three a day wow yeah that's amazing because i think it's there's so much potential and i have so much content content for days so do you do you think similarly then that short form is the the moving yeah

and that's why this podcast succeeded because if i only focused on long form i would have been irrelevant you know yeah i mean they get like 10k an episode but the short form is what brings in millions of views

So you're using then your short form as a feeder to the podcast?

Yeah.

Okay.

Feeder plus like just branding and podcasts with networking.

It's there's a lot of wins with podcasting.

Oh, I bet.

Yeah, it's it's a really I'd recommend most business owners try it on the side, honestly.

Did you launch the podcast and the short form in

concert with each other or did one come first?

No, in concert.

Okay.

Because I already had a decent following, so I knew I had to take advantage of that.

If I just launched a podcast, everyone has a podcast.

Like, you need to do something different.

You know what's interesting too, is that, you know, over COVID, there was such an explosion in the podcast market.

And since then, I think we've lost 200,000 or 300,000 podcasts, which makes sense.

People have gone back to work.

It was a short-term hobby.

But it's funny that there's not as much.

I think even right now, this statistic might be off, but last I looked, it was something like 700,000 podcasts versus...

20 million new videos are being posted to social media every single day.

Jeez.

We've consumed more content exists now in the past three months than in the entirety of human history.

Holy crap.

Right.

So just the sheer noise that is out there that you're fighting against as a creator, that business owners are fighting against to get views.

There's a lot.

Now granted, it's not all great content.

And a lot of it's crappy content in the sense of it's not quality, it's not engineered well, it doesn't bring value.

And then AI is only continuing to add more noise and then the amount of noise is adding quicker and quicker.

So all that to say, you know, I'm just a big believer and you can no longer expect attention.

You can no longer deserve views.

Just because you exist, you have to earn attention.

This is all about how do we earn it.

For sure.

And the game's constantly changing.

Yeah.

I study my algorithm two hours a day at least.

Do you?

Yeah.

So I'll watch my reels.

I'll watch TikTok.

Sometimes Facebook reels and YouTube Schwartz.

So when you're doing that, what are you looking for?

I'm looking at the engagement.

I'm looking at what people are commenting.

I'm looking at the topic.

I'm looking at the guests of who's speaking.

It's a good way to find guests, actually.

A lot of different things, but seeing like what topics are going viral mainly, I'd say.

Okay, so you're not even looking at your own content, you're looking at just what's in your algorithm being served to you.

Yeah, and I look at my own too, like which videos popped off the most, but that's quick.

Like I'm actually studying, I'm scrolling.

I'm a user in that mode and just observing.

I love that.

That's one of the, we run a virtual short form video boot camp where we go soup to nuts.

Here's the process, how we've got all our views, like help you apply that to

your own business.

And that's one of the things that we have our attendees do is like, let's sit down, three minutes, put on your observer, your consumer hat and I want you to scroll through and just take note of what you stop at why did you stop on that video like you don't need to have a sample set of a population in order to be able to test and understand user behavior you'll learn a lot just from your own behavior oh so much yeah yeah so much but then you got to take action on it too totally yeah it's a it's a combination I think it's really easy for people to get paralyzed yeah super easy yeah what would be your recommendation to someone that's being paralyzed by just getting out there or craving

Just start filming, honestly.

Yeah, like I just go for it.

I waited so long to start this thing, like years.

Really?

I should have just started it.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Because when I started this show last year, I was pretty late to the podcast game.

People think this show's been around for a while, but I was super late.

Yeah, that's really fantastic and fascinating that within just a year.

A year and a half, yeah.

We started in January last year.

So 18 months, you've been able to build this catalog of content.

And just what a testament, right, to how just consistency and content.

and and i'm sure you've learned a lot i'm sure the content from the very beginning looks very different oh so bad it was on iphones yeah iphones uh my teeth were super yellow i didn't care how i looked yeah i've leveled up yeah it's awesome yeah

um there's a lot of gurus who push all this weird stuff like posting at certain times of day yeah using hashtags trendling audio does any of that matter

great question um so in my opinion you cannot out strategize bad creative and so when i say creative that means the video itself right If it's the video that's going to stop someone's scroll, it's the video that's going to get them to feel the emotion.

It's the video that's going to get them to build the trust with you.

That's going to allow them to learn something, to get the credibility.

It's the video that's going to then get them to go to your profile, to wanna learn more about you, see what else you got, it's the video that's then gonna allow you to move them into a funnel or get them to your website.

All those other things are just to me, in my opinion, the last 20%.

And I think that there's a lot of social media agencies out there that focus on it because those are the dials and levers that they know how to pull really well and they're good at it.

And sure, I think those things can help.

Over the course of being full-time content creators, we've had a lot of our content stolen.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

I remember I had one video that I posted that didn't do well on Facebook, and I was like, well, that sucks.

I thought I really was a great piece of content.

I was excited about it.

Someone ripped it, posted it on TikTok, it did 40 million views.

Holy crap.

They ended up getting like 40,000 followers out of it.

It made international international news.

None of it tied to me, right?

But we had copyright protection on it, so we were able to see.

And within a day, I had 20,000 rights management cases that came up on the single, of other people stealing it.

Now,

the interesting thing that I don't think a lot of people know is that the terms and conditions of each platform say that you cannot rip and repost someone else's content without their permission.

And if you do so, you're at risk of having your profile deleted, right?

Because you're stealing IP.

So we took all the content down, but I can tell you, having seen this happen time and time and time again, that those posts had no hashtags, they wouldn't even have a description, right?

There's no trending audio.

It's just they're reposting our video.

And, you know, we do a lot of deep data insights on the viralist videos, the viralist, that's not even a word, the most viral videos.

And what we see is that the best videos, the ones that are doing the 100 million views, it's all original audio.

Interesting.

Yeah.

And I will say on the trending audio front i'd be curious as to your thoughts on this because you do all original content

with trending audio to me it's a lot like being a day trader so you have to time it when it's on the way up and like hope that you're able to capture the views and you don't want to hit it when it's at its apex and you certainly don't want to hit it on the way down and to have the ability to make a determination of this is the audio that we want to use this is the the trending challenge that we're going to do like again that takes a lot of time so i think especially for business owners and entrepreneurs this isn't your full-time job.

That's a tough assignment to try to figure out, especially since a lot of the time it doesn't quite fit with their voice, their values, or their brand.

And so, you know, in my opinion, the only reason that I would do a trending audio is if I felt like I could add something new to the conversation with it.

So I could bring a different perspective.

And that's where we see people that are able to make...

extra views count on it even if that trend has already been worn out right plus with trends at some point people are going to get worn out by it it's very we and we would do a lot of this type of trending viral content yep where we would create these challenges and a lot of them you know put that out into the world and it would very easily lose its sparkle when it's lesser and we'd have to move on to the next thing so it's not a sustainable model for content for

me and then with that same token in mind if you are using a trending audio if you're following a trend you're by definition a follower.

And what I want to do, and I think what you want to do is we want to create thought leaders.

How do we be a thought leader on social media?

How do you be a thought leader in your industry?

It's not going to come from chasing a trend.

I agree.

Yeah, I think all that stuff's pretty relevant, like the font color, the font size, like trending audio, hashtags.

Like it could work on maybe one video, but not in the long run.

Totally.

Well, and I think as we've talked about, everything's constantly changing.

But what's not going to be changing in theory are your voice, your values, your brand, what you're here to say to the world, the message that you have.

And I think as you grow as a brand, those things can expand for sure but if people are coming to your content that's really what they're looking for and there's certain levers we can push to make the content look more interesting and go faster and and how to use colors and how to use transitions but at the end of the day it's how is the video engineered to be successful 100 now I have an interesting take on repurposing please sure

so a lot of people repurpose a show yeah I actually don't go after them Really?

Yeah, I don't claim the money.

Okay.

Because I think it's just in the long run good for the brand.

Like I had one guy tweet out a clip about when Sneeko came on, it got 18 million views.

Good for you.

Wow.

Yeah, but I think it's just good because people see the I bought these because of that, actually.

Super smart.

I think that was probably the biggest difference and the thing that I wish, because we would often use actors or we it would be the content as viral creators that we were doing was pranks, hacks, recipe videos, so it weren't always in the content.

I can totally see the benefit of your face being

everywhere else, right?

People, just more exposure for you.

So when you see people repurpose content, not necessarily yours, but because I have a lot of thoughts on this too.

I think a lot of people repurpose their content poorly, right?

If they are on a podcast interview, they're not setting it up.

But you do a very good job of this.

So, I'd be curious as to your thoughts on what makes a good repurposed video.

Yeah, you want to have your branding in it, whether it's a mic flag, background, whatever.

And then I have a watermark in the bottom right.

Smart.

So, just have your branding everywhere and ask them to tag you if they repost it.

That's nice.

Yeah.

When other people, when you look at other repurposed content, so not someone that's repurposed yours,

what do you think makes a so instead of using just the podcast when they're now turning it into a short-form video, what makes that a great short-form video?

Yeah, I've seen some reaction videos do well.

Okay.

But you need to have the personality.

Like you can't just be boring with it.

So I haven't tried those yet, but Brad Lee, who lives here, does a great job with those.

So yeah, I've seen that.

What have you seen work for that?

I have seen that it's really important that you have a very clear title.

And the title needs to, again, grab attention, create a curiosity gap, and is probably also going to spark an emotion even within itself.

Because if in a podcast conversation, you're not necessarily thinking about how I'm going to set this up for short form, right?

So you're thinking about in terms of I'm going to tell a story.

So maybe the story is like, well, once upon a time, I had this dog when I was seven.

And so if you're scrolling through and you don't know me, and I'm starting off the conversation or that video clip that way, you have no idea why you're going to watch this.

You don't know what's in it for you.

So I think it's important as the repurposer to say, okay, what's the title that I can throw on this?

It's going to let the viewer know what they can get out of this.

So why owning a dog changed my life or what I learned from my shih tzu, right?

So there's something like that that's going to really help to make it clear why they keep watching.

And I think a lot of personal brands, entrepreneurs, speakers, even with speaker reel footage, the same thing of how can we make it really clear, even with just a title or the description,

why they should watch.

I've seen some cringe speaker reel.

Yeah.

Speaker reels.

Yeah, people need to work on those, I think.

Definitely.

Yeah, there's a lot of people.

Dog videos are my weakness.

Are they?

Oh my gosh, I get one every four videos.

Really?

That's the one emotion that will invoke in me.

And what emotion does that bring out in you?

Sometimes they're sad.

Sometimes I get the ones where they're putting their dogs down and I'll be borderline tearing up.

Sometimes it's like new puppy videos and I'm excited.

Yeah.

But yeah, those get a ton of engagement, I notice.

The dog ones.

I mean, I think animal videos in general, you can't go wrong.

Yeah.

You can't go wrong.

Now, do you follow dog accounts?

I actually don't.

Interesting.

They just show up on my reels.

Yeah.

I think that just speaks to the power of interest, not familiarity.

Right.

Right.

I might, conversely, I watch a lot of raccoon videos.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

So it's like.

I haven't heard of that one.

Raccoons washing their hands, raccoons playing with bubbles, raccoons hugging dogs.

Like, you give me a raccoon doing anything, it's fine.

I'm here to watch it.

I'll send you the video.

But it's so great to see the algorithm and how it plays with, okay, she likes raccoons.

Does she like other black and white animals?

Or is it just raccoons?

Or does she like bears?

Or where can we draw the line, right?

The algorithm is constantly looking.

So be sure that some of your content or algorithm is also saying, okay, he likes dog content.

Does he like dogs with cats?

Does he just like dogs?

Will he watch a cat video?

Maybe he'll watch someone in a dog costume or he'll watch an adoption video.

We know we've got him on the sad one, so we're going to keep serving those videos.

Will he watch other sad animal videos, right?

It's just, I think the algorithm is constantly trying to find the limits as to what we will watch and sit through.

So you got to be really careful about your watch time.

Yeah, I know, right?

Do you feel like raccoons are misunderstood?

I think all animals in some level are misunderstood, especially ones where we've encroached upon their environments.

I was with my fiancé and we saw one and she freaked out.

I'm like, why are you scared of a raccoon?

I guess people think they're dirty or something.

I don't know.

Yeah, I could see that.

Do you have a pet raccoon?

I wish I did.

No.

I do not have a pet raccoon.

I don't think you can actually, there's only a few states where you can own them.

Really?

Is it weird that I actually know that?

Yeah, that is how it works.

That's your animal, though.

I rock with pandas.

Everyone's got their animal, you know.

I will say, I have

an entire friendship with one friend, and all we do is exchange raccoon boots.

It's our love language, Instagram.

I'll send her one.

She'll send me one.

We've just got this beautiful friendship.

That's funny.

It's a reals friendship.

Yeah.

You've had a lot of hats before this.

I want to go through some of these.

So, were you a lion tamer?

I was.

Holy crap.

Was that at the place in Henderson?

Yeah, the lion had a cat.

I've been to that place.

So you would feed them?

Keith Evans.

So previously, I've had so many hats from Burn Survivor to Miss Nevada to international travel blogger to journalist,

everything.

You pick a hat, I'll wear it.

I'm so interested in just finding different things to do.

So when I was an international travel blogger, I traveled all over the world.

I had different exotic animal handling experiences.

And so at the time that the MGM was shutting down the exhibit, all those cats were owned by Keith Evans and the lion had a cat.

And so at the time, he now had 40 African lions.

And it's like, okay, well, we've got to be able to support them.

So he opened up the exhibit, the sanctuary, for the first time to the public.

And they wanted to do an exotic animal handling experience.

So they brought me in to consult on it and work with some of the younger lions.

The older lions were so used to their daily routine of they get bathed and they go in and do their job, they take a nap for five hours and come back and so it was it was really fun to be a part of that and I really give them so many props there's not many people that are advocates for ethical exotic animal handling and I know he's done a lot of work to try to push for specific laws within the community and the counties and nice to make it harder for people in Nevada and Las Vegas in general has very loose guidelines for exotic animal handling and so

yeah and I know going out there you can just probably see how happy the cats are super happy I fed fed them.

Oh, did you?

Yeah, it was cool.

So you went through the feedback.

It was through the cage.

I didn't go inside, but yeah, I probably would have died if I went in there.

And again, another thing that I love about how they take care of their animals is they're very specific of you do not go in the cage unless you work with the animals since they were a cub.

And the way that they handle the safety of the animals and the trainers is just really, really powerful.

So that was a really fun experience to be a part of.

And I just, yeah, I love getting, collecting these stories.

Yeah, I love that.

I fed the giraffe there, too.

Ozzy.

Ozzy.

Did you feed him out of your your mouth with

the lettuce in your mouth?

You could do that?

Yeah, you can put it between your teeth and then he'll bring his tongue down and wrap it around.

Whoa.

Pull it right out of your mouth.

Yeah, he was precise with it.

Like, as soon as I put it up, it was gone within a second.

And you know, it's funny.

I think a lot of people think that, I mean, giraffes live in herbs, but male giraffes are solitary creatures, actually.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, it's interesting, just interesting facts about animals.

Have you ever had an interest?

Like, what would you say is your weirdest job?

Weirdest job, dude.

So I never had a job.

Yeah, I'm complete opposite of you.

Say more.

Yeah, I was only my own boss my whole life.

Wow.

Yeah, I remember my mom tried to get me to work at Wegmans because we grew up in Jersey.

Yeah.

And that's a big grocery store out there.

And I just purposely failed to interview.

Like I said, the dumbest things I could think of.

Yeah.

So what did you want to do instead?

I don't know.

Like, I saw my dad be an entrepreneur.

Okay.

He was, he was selling books, and I kind of just wanted to do something like that.

Interesting.

I just found like a nine-to-five lifestyle never gave me a sense of fulfillment, I guess.

Yeah.

What was your first career then?

I started, I tried to book a concert, miserably failed.

As an event coordinator?

Yeah.

I tried to, I even paid the talent, lost all that money, and then paid the venue, sold four tickets.

Whoa.

Yeah, had to cancel it.

What did you learn through that experience?

I was in way over my head.

I thought I could just fill it up because the artist was a big name, but you need a lot of marketing.

Interesting.

Behind it.

Interesting.

I think that's kind of like anything, right?

Like, people think think if you just start posting on social media or you build a website, like people will come versus like here's there's a lot that has to go into creating the funnels to drive into that.

Yeah.

That's interesting.

Absolutely.

So you were Miss Nevada too?

I was.

That is crazy.

Yeah, it is crazy.

When was that?

Many, many years ago.

I actually crowned, I think you had Lisa Song Sutton on the podcast, so I crowned her.

And that was a wild time in my life.

I'd never done a pageant before.

I had never had any interest in pageantry.

And the only reason that I entered the pageant was because I was a burn survivor.

The summer prior, I was hit in the chest with a malfunctioning firework on the 4th of July.

Whoa.

I suffered second and third degree burns to my chest and my stomach.

I was at a friend's house.

It was complete fluke.

Holy crap.

The fuse went up.

Nothing happened.

Everyone got quiet.

Then the firework exploded, but not in a pretty way.

And the fuse, which was on fire, traveled through the air.

curved around, hit my sunglasses and went down my shirt.

Jeez.

And we went to like three ERs.

Everything was closed.

And I was, at the time I was a travel blogger.

I'd just gotten back from living with the Firewalker tribe in Fiji.

Whoa.

And I was like really still processing and acclimating from that experience.

And I had all these safaris and trips planned for the fall.

Everything had to stop.

Fun fact, the chest is the slowest healing part of the body.

I didn't know.

Doctors didn't know what my healing time is.

Because there's no, it's all like bone, right?

Yeah,

it's the type of skin.

Like your face heals the fastest, your chest heals the slowest.

It's really fascinating.

So they didn't know what I'd look like, or they didn't know if I'd heal normally.

And of course, like like as a female that leads you to a lot of questions about femininity and beauty and about six months into the healing process I was just so tired of feeling sorry for myself and I needed to do something to get out of my own self-pity and in my blog my travel blog I talked a lot about getting uncomfortable through travel or just finding something uncomfortable and finding a way to make it comfortable as a way to find self-growth so I wasn't going to be traveling so at the time nothing sounded more terrifying than being on stage in a bikini and having someone judge you based upon your appearance.

Yeah.

So I went in thinking this will be a great blog post.

I know nothing about pageantry.

And I was really surprised by the caliber of women, how smart everyone was, how they all wanted to use the platform and the microphone.

They all had a purpose and a reason.

And it was really beautiful to see.

And then I answered my on-stage question.

I thought it was like a total loss at that point.

What was the question?

Well, so here's the funny story is the first couple questions were total softballs.

It was like, oh, for the

top five girls, which was like, who's your favorite first lady and why?

Should we drug test athletes in high school?

I'm like, great.

They're going to ask me a favorite color.

Like, this is going to be so easy.

And then I think they asked me something about like invading Iraq.

What?

And I was like, I'm sorry.

Can you repeat the question?

I'm just like, I was trying to put it together.

And I swear, I think I used the word world peace in my answer.

Oh, like, I cannot.

It's classic.

Yeah, it's like, it is Gracie Lou Freebush this.

And I was really surprised when I I won.

And it was a beautiful, beautiful experience.

I ended up working with the Burn Foundation, the Burn Institute, Camp Beyond the Scars here out of Southern California, sorry, Southern Nevada.

Burn Institute and Camp Beyond the Scars is actually out of Southern California.

And they help children who are burn survivors to be able to feel like kids again, go to camp and not.

be gawked at, not looked at, funny, and just have a beautiful experience.

So the Southern Nevada Firefighters and their Burn Foundation sends children and firefighters every year to Burn Camp.

Only firefighters and burn unit nurses are camp counselors, which is beautiful.

And it was a phenomenal experience to be able to use that platform to say you don't have to be flawless to feel beautiful.

Right.

A year to the day that I was burned, I was competing in nationals and swimsuit preliminaries.

Crazy.

So you still had the burn on you when you were doing it?

Yeah, I mean, I was very lucky that the scarring was, I mean, it could have been a lot worse, right?

And I met a lot of burn survivors who had had it a lot worse.

I was very, very lucky.

Wow.

And but yes, I still had scars, and it was a really full circle moment to get back on stage and not allow that to be something that hindered me.

Beautiful.

What a story.

I will say, I think the most interesting thing about the year was that I would often get approached by people and say, you don't look like a Miss Nevada.

And I found that so confronting at first.

It's like, okay, I get it.

I'm not a maximum model.

But like, really, like, you first, you need to say this to me.

And, or they would try to give me some sort of question that they thought might throw me because I had that sash and crown on.

And then I'd give them a really coherent answer.

And they would, it was great because we were able to build rapport.

Yeah.

But I loved being able to tell people, like, great, I'm so glad that I'm able to break the stereotype over what you think a beauty queen is.

And I was very proud of the fact that the year after my reign, we tripled our number of entries.

We had lawyers, we had publicists, we had business owners.

Again, just really showcasing that smart women can use this as an opportunity to grow in their business and their life and to give back to their community.

I think I did like 300 or 400 appearances that year.

And I still have ties to all those community organizations today.

I'm still the the burn ambassador for the Seven About a Firefighters.

Nice.

Yeah, you and Lisa are both really bright and intelligent.

I'm glad you guys are changing that narrative because when you think of beauty pageant winners, like dumb blonde girl, that's like the typical thought.

Totally.

And I love being a part of that change.

And I think that's why, even with comments, hater comments on the internet, I use it as an opportunity if I'm in the mood to, right, to just like, oh, hey, let me show you how this can look different than your perception, right?

Or like, let me just ask questions.

And I think even through that, when you see that whatever someone is saying to you is just a reflection of their own view of the world and actually has nothing to do with you, life becomes a lot more manageable.

And so I think just being able to stay in your lane, like I know that I'm smart and I know Lisa's very smart and we're savvy businesswomen and we're ambitious and we're going to attract other women that see that.

And there's always going to be people that are going to think otherwise.

But it's really fun to be able to mix it up and showcase a different narrative.

Yeah.

Reminds me of Cody Sanchez, too.

Oh, yeah.

She's wonderful.

I just just saw her at the Sean Cannell event.

Oh nice.

Yeah, she's another, she's wonderful.

She had actually talked about on

stage how she just recently started wearing more makeup.

I don't want to butcher this, but how she recognized like certain things were important to reach different demographics.

And how do you leverage that?

Yeah, interesting.

She's super, super wonderful.

I want to hear more about these tribes.

So part of where I want to take this show, because I'm constantly being going ways to be different.

Love it.

Because you got to evolve as a podcast host, is I want to start going to tribes and like communities that never got their voice out and interview some of the members

for a podcast.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The firewalkers.

So they claim to be the originators of the practice of walking on hot coals.

So Tony Robbins learned fire walking from them.

And they're a really interesting community because you cannot get there.

They live on this island called Dakibenga.

So Benga is the main, or Suba, the main capital.

And so to order to get to Dakibenga, it's a three-hour boat ride.

Wow.

And it's fascinating because you can see the island from Suba and the boats go so slow.

It's really an interesting journey.

Are you seasick?

No, actually, I was very grateful for that.

But you're not allowed to go to the tribe unless you're invited by the elders.

So it was a really special experience to go out there.

And

my first night there, they had a Kava ceremony.

So anytime...

you as a guest would go into a new village, they would hold a ceremony.

And essentially, the ceremony was for you to ask the village elders and the tribe to accept you there and to essentially put out a prayer to all of the spirits and ancestors to protect you and also welcome you in.

And it was such a beautiful experience.

And I remember sitting next to one of the teachers of the school, and they had the largest school on the island, and all of the children would come in by boat, stay there during the week, and then go home to the villages on the weekend.

And I remember asking him

what is one thing that you would love to have here in the school.

And he's like, well, we don't have

we don't have a computer or a printer.

So anytime I have to make tests, he has to take the three-hour boat ride to the mainland to type up a test and print it out.

He has a copy machine.

And then he will come back, take the three-hour boat ride back to make copies of his tests or his materials.

And yeah, it's just the things that we take for granted, right?

And being in the place that we have, their generators are only on for a couple hours each night.

But really beautiful, beautiful people, happy people,

and they just really understand a lot about the meaning of life, I think.

I love that.

Yeah, I think it's important to interview people like that and give them a platform.

What inspired you to want to do that?

I have a spiritual advisor.

Really?

Yeah.

Say more about that.

Yeah, she's just a former guest that I really bonded with and was going through some difficult times, so needed some guidance spiritually.

But she told me I need to start experiencing other cultures and getting their messages out and documenting it.

That's so cool.

So next year, I'm going to start traveling traveling internationally, going to tribes in like the jungle and all these, all these interesting

locations.

Yeah, absolutely.

Let's talk.

Yeah, it's going to be cool.

Any other travel that stood out to you from when you were a travel influencer?

Oh man, I mean, I think each trip had a spiritual or special significance.

I think I ate my way through Paris.

How could you not?

Australia was really beautiful.

I went diving in the Great Barrier Reef.

Wow.

What I loved most about travel, and still is one of the things that I love about it today, it's one of the easiest ways for me to get out of my microcosm thinking, right?

Especially if life starts to feel really narrow or small or I find myself getting lost in a very narrow perspective just by picking up and moving locations, right?

Or even getting a 30,000 foot view from a plane just puts a different mental perspective on things.

100%.

And what I love about traveling to places like Fiji is you get to feel really grateful for the life that you have and also see how other people live.

And it just opens your worldview and your perspective up in such a way that allows you to live really in gratitude.

And I love being able to connect with people from different backgrounds too.

Yeah.

It's the smile is one of the most universal languages I think that's out there.

100%.

I just had this guy on yesterday, Gurudev.

Oh, yeah.

Have you heard of him?

Yeah.

He brings people from all over the world into one conference.

I think that's powerful.

Yeah, he had a million people.

I just lost one.

I think there's just, there's so much power in bringing different perspectives and being able to hear it.

I mean, you do that really well on this show as well.

Oh, yeah, I try to.

And that's the problem with a lot of shows, actually.

They get so locked into into one category or one type of person,

one persona, and they don't talk to other people.

Totally.

You know?

And then they're in a bubble.

Have you had, what's been your most interesting conversation?

Memorable, would you say?

The ones that stood out to me are the spiritual ones, actually.

Yeah.

Which is a surprising answer coming from a business background.

But Matthias de Stefano, Robert Edward Grant, Billy Carson.

Yep.

Those three, I'd say.

Did you have a biggest takeaway that you've integrated into your life?

Each one, yeah.

Honestly, every episode, every guest, I pick up something and incorporate it in my life.

I'm sure.

Yeah, so that's a great thing with podcasting.

But like, I was honestly atheist before the show.

Really?

Yeah, no religion or anything, and it's totally shifted.

So what would you say you believe now, if you don't mind sharing?

Yeah, I don't tie myself to any religion, but definitely like a God or higher power of some sort.

And I do believe in past lives and reincarnation.

Have you

Have you remembered any of your own past lives?

Not really remembering them through images, but I've had past life therapy done on me.

Oh, wow.

And I've released some traumas.

That's cool.

Yeah.

Have you done stuff like that?

I haven't before, but it sounds really interesting.

Yeah, I can introduce you to some people out here.

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love how open you are.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah, that's a rare thing to have, you know?

Oh, thank you.

You know, again, I think it comes from

just when you have such a varied background and you see that there's not just one path to get anywhere.

I'm a big seeker of knowledge, and it sounds like you are too, right?

And so I think the more that you can be open and then filter through what what works for you, and I think that's how you really find and reach enlightenment, as it were.

Love it.

Hillary, any closing messages for the audience?

Yeah, you know, at attentioners, we just see personal brands and entrepreneurs all the time that are struggling with short-form content, struggling to get their message out to their audiences.

So one of the things that we've put together is a free viral video blueprint, which is composed of three areas where we see creators get stuck the most.

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And then we have our workflow template which is going to show you where you're getting stuck within the creation process.

So people can go to tensioners.com forward slash John and they can get copyrighted.

Boom.

We'll link below.

Thanks so much for coming on.

That was fun.

Oh my gosh, I'm so happy to be here.

Thanks for having me.

That was awesome.

Click the link below, guys.

See you tomorrow.