How I Scaled My Business with Instagram DMs | Josh Ordonez DSH #549

Deficit and more plates, more dates is an expert in health.

So he just is dropping nuggets after nuggets after nuggets.

And

that is what the audience wants.

They don't care about, you know, how, like, like how their day was.

They don't care.

Yeah.

They want to know what's in it for them.

And if you could give them what's in it for them, regardless of if you're famous or not, you'll break through the algorithm.

Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe.

It helps a lot with the algorithm.

It helps us get bigger and better guests, and it helps us grow the team.

Truly means a lot.

Thank you guys for supporting.

And here's the episode.

All right, guys.

Josh Ordonia is here today.

Man, I had you saved in my phone as Josh Empathy Wines for a while.

That's how we met.

I have yours as a Sean Jersey champ.

Classic, dude.

Yeah, we met like five years ago.

You were working for Gary at the time, right?

Yep, Gary Vee.

Yep.

And you got that job through Instagram DMs.

Correct.

Cold Cold Instagram DM.

Shoot your shot, man.

These days, I feel like that's more and more common, too.

Yeah, honestly, too.

And like, if you could pay for verification, Instagram has like a filter that you could filter through like top like relevants, like in clout, too.

Like literally on your message requests, they have a filter that you could filter through like top followers and verified and all that stuff.

So it's like there's ways to you know appear at the top nowadays too.

Yeah.

Back then it was just you just hope that they looked at their DMs when you sent it.

Spray and pray.

Cause they had had no idea who was messaging them.

But honestly, like back then, people weren't doing it that much.

People literally, like, I remember there was a time like Gary was telling an intern, like, like, DM people you want to work for.

And the intern's response was, like, but people don't check their DMs.

And it's like, bro, like, that doesn't matter.

Like, so you're just going to write yourself off.

You're not going to try before you even send the DM, you know?

Absolutely.

But yeah, man, seeing your journey has been incredible.

You know, working for other people, just learning a lot and then going out and starting your own business, social media money.

Yep.

I mean, dude, you really pulled it off.

So hats off to you.

Appreciate it, man.

I'm glad to be here.

Yeah.

So when did you start social media money?

Yeah.

So really, the journey really did start with like Gary Vee and all that stuff before that.

Like, so when I was in college, I pretty much was in school for marketing and I wanted to get experience.

So I was like, what's like the lowest hanging fruit that like I could do marketing now?

Like you don't have to like graduate and then get experience.

And I figured that social media marketing was like the best thing for that.

So I would DM people that I wanted to work with.

So that ended up getting getting me internships with Lonzo and Lomelo Ball,

a couple campaigns with some NBA teams, and then with Gary Vee.

And by the time I graduated, I had so many people like in my network know me as a social media marketing guy.

So I had to figure out an angle within social media that I could scale.

Right.

Because at the time I was doing influencer marketing, ads, paid ads, organic photos, editing, all this stuff.

And I was like, all right, which one do I like the most?

And which one could I scale?

So that ended up being why I I decided social media marketing, or sorry, short form, right?

Short form content.

And like one day, I literally like had all these clients doing organic paid influencer marketing, all that stuff.

And I fired all of them and I stuck with just short form marketing.

And then we just scaled out.

Wow.

And what year was that?

2021.

So I made the decision to go full short form content before YouTube Shorts existed, before Instagram was reels.

It was like just photos for the most part.

And there was like reels like every so often.

but Instagram was like a purely photo platform.

And I just saw the opportunity where creators, like big creators, like weren't even posting TikToks.

Like our first short form client was Graham Stefan.

And at the time, Graham didn't believe in short form content at all.

And I was like, bro, like, trust me, you need to do this.

I'll do it for free.

So we did it for free for like,

I think three months, to be honest.

It was a pretty long time for free.

And my thesis was, if I could convince Graham Stefan to post short form, then I could convince Andre Jick and then meet Kevin.

And that's like a 10K a month thing right there.

Snowball effect.

Exactly.

So what ended up happening was I did convince Graham Stefan to post TikToks, but then we ended up convincing this whole other universe of clients like Steve-O, Mike Malak, you know, Noah Kagan, all these people

instead of my original plan.

But it ended up working out way better than I could have ever imagined.

Yeah, everything happens for a reason, man.

So you had that foresight because back then people were making fun of TikTok.

Yeah, I know.

Dude, you should see what I felt at that time.

I literally felt like, like, I was in the future.

You know, I felt like, what are you guys thinking not on TikTok?

And to be honest, like, the reason I'm good at creating TikToks is because I had like a TikTok addiction.

Like, during right.

Like, I would, like, during,

you know, the lockdown, there's nothing to do.

I would just be scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.

And, um, so I knew the, like how much retention you need for these videos to like perform in the algorithm.

And

so like I knew like how to make potent content that sticks with the audience.

And so I just had so much conviction.

I was like, there's no way, even if TikTok gets banned, the

like mental addiction that people have to short form content will live forever.

Honestly, if TikTok got banned, that would almost be better for my business because China owns TikTok.

And then all the short-form attention would go to Instagram and would go to YouTube Shorts, which is like they're more kind of like

friendly for creators.

Yeah.

No, I'm glad you have that perspective because some people now the market's so saturated, right, with clips, clip guys, or whatever, but you're still standing out.

And I think it's because your edge of understanding consumer behavior.

Yeah, exactly.

There's people in like India for $3 an hour, you could get to clip, but their videos suck.

Yeah, well, to be honest, I think there's a lot of editors who are really great editors, but they don't understand the strategy behind the videos.

So there's these accounts that are posting like day one of recreating clips into like fancy edits.

Have you seen channels like that?

Yeah.

So those guys are great editors, and the only reason they're even in your algorithm is because they're getting clips, for example, like from my clients that are already millions of views and then making them fancy, right?

But the sauce is what's the...

video that gets the million views in the first place.

So my videos that get 10 million views plus, they would get 10 million views with zero editing.

Wow.

It is purely the cuts, the retention, and the storyline and the hook that gets it there.

And then the editing is kind of secondary to that.

The editing almost has nothing to do with the virality.

That's interesting because a lot of people focus on the editing, the subtitles, the B-roll or whatever they focus on, but they should be focusing on the content.

Absolutely.

They should be focusing on the hook.

And they should be focusing on the story progression.

They should be cutting out likes and ums and I think and I, you know what I mean?

They should be cutting all that stuff out and keeping it as potent as possible.

And people say, you know, like, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like, oh, I went to the store, you know.

They say that so much and people just leave it in the clips.

But, but you need to cut all that out.

Yeah.

I'm laughing because I just posted a clip with that in it with Noah Kagan, actually.

But yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

It's like a bad habit.

I'm always like, you know, you know, like.

Yeah.

So, so our team, like, not, we don't catch them every time, but like, even I just had like right now.

Sometimes we we cut out every like we cut out every I think people say I think all the time so it's like let's just say here's an example last year I think we made six hundred thousand dollars cut out I think wow cut out I think last year I made six hundred thousand dollars right and uh it just adds more dominance to the like psychology right if you say I think it's you sound unsure but like so even when our clients say I think we cut it out yeah I love that just just to give it more uh credibility more confidence when they're speaking.

Yeah, let's also establish your view count because you get more views than anyone I know.

So how many views are you getting right now on a monthly basis?

Bro, honestly, we don't do the math, but like,

let's just say Steve-O last month, just on shorts, 66 million views.

And that's one client.

And that's one client.

Ice Coffee Hour last month, just on shorts, 56 million views.

Oh, my God.

Our biggest month for Ice Coffee Hour is 80 million views.

Nelk Boys pulls 80 million views.

So what does that mean?

The Nelk Boys are pulling 80 million views because of their crazy audience.

Judd, who makes Eclipse, he's a fantastic editor, right?

Do you know Judd?

No.

He's the guy who makes Eclipse.

So for full send.

Got it.

Right.

But then Ice Coffee Hour and Graham Stefan is pulling the same views as a Nelk Boys on shorts.

What does that mean?

That means that the story is making up for the lack of

relevance, right?

So Nelk Boys is way more relevant than Graham Stefan, right?

But the stories and the hooks and the potency of like our clips gets us to that Nelk Boys level.

So I always say too, people think that you need to be famous for your videos to go viral.

All of the clips that went viral, you could change whoever was talking to a random person and it would still get millions of views because of the story.

Wow.

Yeah.

That is really inspirational for people watching this, especially

because they assume just Graham Stefan's super famous and they can't get his views.

views right now the short form landscape is so competitive that you need to be creating content that is so it's either valuable it's entertaining it's inspirational um but most mostly like value and uh stories do the most so like for example like mickey talking about the gambling stuff here that's a story right people relate to it um but really like value so like ice coffee hour right now is crushing it even in long term long form views

because of

they do you know more plates more dates yeah so they interviewed more plates more dates and they didn't ask him a single question about so how did you get started

right right when they got on what's the best health advice for men if men are balding what's the best way to prevent hair loss uh how do i lose calories what's it what's a caloric deficit and more plates more dates is an expert in health right so he just is dropping nuggets after nuggets after nuggets and um

are you interested in coming on the digital social hour podcast as a guest well click the application link below in the description of this video we are always looking for cool stories cool entrepreneurs to talk to about business and life click the application link below and here's the episode guys that is what the audience wants they don't care about you know how like like how their day was they don't care yeah they want to know what's in it for them and if you could give them what's in it for them regardless if you're famous or not you'll break through the algorithm i love that yeah i try to limit that question like, what do you do for a living?

And, like, how's your day?

Because, yeah, you're right.

Audience doesn't care.

Well, what do you do for a living is actually a great question if they're like in the streets.

Right, right.

Street interviews.

Yeah, if they're in the streets.

Those go so viral.

Yeah, did you see the one we did with Noah Kagan of the oil founder?

Or sorry, the oil ship millionaire in New York City?

No.

Yeah, it was just like Noah Kagan asked him, like, so what do you do for a living?

And the guy...

owns like oil ships and he's a billionaire in new york and it got like 11 million views and it was a random guy on the street random guy on on the street got like 11 million views.

And

the people in the comments of the shorts

said, like, I know this guy.

So Noah, like, just filmed him once, didn't even get his name, and then left.

That's crazy.

And then the community, it went viral so much viral that like people knew who he was, commented saying, like, hey, I know that guy.

Like, and then Noah Kagan connected with.

their community and then Noah filmed a long-form interview with him from the shorts.

Yeah, so he didn't know him and then the community like helped him find him pretty much.

Power social media.

It's a really exciting time to be a creator right now, dude.

Because there's podcasts getting acquired.

There was one two days ago.

Oh, really?

Smartless.

Got acquired for $100 million.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, right now we're in talks with, do you know who Mia Malkova is?

Adult Austria actress.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

her podcast is like signed by like Bobby Lee's podcast network.

So like people see a podcast and they think, oh, it's just some chick just talking on camera, but they don't know the business thing behind it.

Yeah.

There's people signing creators um

i mean even even with our shorts like like

you know people we make like six to nine k a month just from our shorts revenue wow yeah so like uh the revenue that these clips produce it's that's pretty significant i mean especially too if you're kind of like have a regular job and you start posting short form content like daily you're making nine thousand dollars in a month like that's pretty insane that's really good and that's not even including sponsors no sponsors purely from the views of YouTube shorts.

Yeah.

And TikTok, on the other hand, too, is also paying now.

And Instagram also has monetization now, too.

I just got it two days ago.

Yeah.

So it's very selective.

Not every account gets it on Instagram, but the way to get it is you have to be posting daily.

You have to be getting good views.

And they'll invite you.

And

it doesn't pop up as a notification.

You have to go into the settings.

go to like the top right gear icon and then um

it's called like uh what's what's it called ads on reels or uh mine's on feed i think yeah ads on feed or something like that yeah and so basically look into the settings and you'll find it in there if you're if you're invited to be monetized i'm curious what their cpms will be i feel like youtube will always be highest but uh if instagrams are decent that's exciting because yeah instagrams will be low um tick tock is the highest right now oh really yeah have you heard of the creativity program beta yeah yeah are you on it i don't think so okay so i gotta look into it so tick tock creativity program beta um tick tock monetizes videos that are over 60 seconds.

Okay.

And we've been seeing CPMs of like 50 cents to like $2 CPMs.

Wow.

That's good for sure.

So essentially, like, the way we've averaged it out is like a million views against you, like a thousand bucks on TikTok.

Which you're pulling in easily.

So that's.

Yeah, but the videos have to be over 60 seconds.

That's the problem.

And I want to ask you about like optimal time length.

Have you seen that matter at all?

Yeah, so it's gone through fluctuations.

So

when Graham Stefan went to film with Mr.

Beast, Mr.

Beast told told Graham Stefan to tell me that the optimal time for a short is 30 seconds.

That's the optimal time.

Nowadays, though,

this was probably a year and a half ago.

Nowadays,

it's a little longer, so 30 to 45 is probably a sweet spot, even 30 to 60.

The real answer is if the entire video is valuable, then that's the length of the video that it should be.

Got it.

But like, I always say, don't think about the algorithm, think about the audience.

And if you solve the audience's needs, the algorithm will solve itself.

You know what I mean?

I like that.

And do you try to spark debate in the clips?

Yeah.

So we intentionally like mess up, you know?

Like, we intentionally like change things around.

Like, someone will say something sus,

like, kind of, yeah.

And we'll, we'll add, like, a pause edit.

Like, just like pause.

Like, real quick, super quick, pause.

And people will be like, bro, like, what the heck?

Or like with Steve-O the other day,

Steve-O was talking about he was filming with some rich Japanese dudes.

And what we did was included a Photoshop of a K-pop star, which is a Korean person, not a Japanese person.

So the comments were like, bro, like Steve-O said Japanese, but he showed a Korean person.

LOL, did anyone else catch this?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we intentionally do that stuff all the time.

I do that too, bro.

We had a viral clip, the guy drinking piss or whatever.

But he mentioned the doctor was from, I think, Puerto Rico.

We put a flag of Cuba.

Yep.

And just wanted to see what would happen.

People got pissed, bro.

It went viral because of that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Intentionally making mistakes is definitely some

psychological manipulation you could add into the clips to make it.

Yeah.

Because there's a lot of people that are just looking to be negative on social media.

So if they see one little mess up, they're going to comment on it.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Definitely.

All right.

You got, what, 15 clients now?

I believe so.

I think I'll ask.

I don't really count those things, to be honest.

But yeah, 15, I I believe.

Yeah.

And can you even scale?

Can you even handle more?

Are you kind of topped off?

We're absolutely scaling, brother.

Okay.

We actually absolutely have a scalable way to make high-quality clips at a consistently scalable.

Yeah.

Nice.

You could turn this into something big because the cash flow is great.

The clientele is huge.

I mean, this could be one of the biggest social media agencies in the world.

Dude, thanks, man.

I appreciate that.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, I guess, you know, Vayner Media started as just doing community management.

You know what community management is?

Is that just managing DMs and comments?

Literally, like, yeah, like just tweeting at people.

Right.

That's how they started.

And then they shifted and shifted and shifted.

Gary also said that he thinks that short form content is the final iteration of content in the sense of like, you know, when it was just tweets and then it was just photos and then it was long form video and now it's like shorts, right?

So Gary Vee went on the record to say that he thinks that short form is the final iteration before VR.

But the thing is, in VR,

all it's like VR is going to be in the short term is going to be your feed just in the headset.

So essentially, you're watching content like this right now, right?

You're just going to be watching it in your headset like this.

But the same exact videos that we're creating will be in here.

Wow.

Yeah.

So if anything, like our videos will just be even more valuable in the future.

Yeah.

I was big on VR a couple years ago.

I feel like it got kind of overhyped.

Yeah.

And I bought the Oculus.

I didn't like it.

Yeah, I still have never used an Oculus.

I kind of want to go the longest possible human to never put on an Oculus.

Yeah, dude.

I've never put one on.

It's so heavy.

It's uncomfortable.

And it's just the graphics are so bad.

They look like a 2000 PC, you know, the square box ones.

Yeah, yeah.

The graphics are like that.

Yeah, my friend wanted me to try it on.

He was like, oh, man, I feel all nauseous, bro.

Like, your turn.

I'm like, bro, I'm not going to put it on if you told me that.

Like, hell no.

Yeah.

Dude, it's interesting.

But I think maybe five, 10 years, let the technology progress and see what happens.

Yeah, we'll see.

We'll see.

But we're excited for it because

to us, like the videos are just going to be formatted in there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you see anything emerging in the short space?

You've been in it for three, four years now.

Do you see anything coming up?

Instagram, starting to pay, TikTok creativity program, beta is probably the like best thing for new creators right now.

How do you get in that?

You have to, I think you have to have like, there's some, there's some requirements you have to meet.

But if you post daily, you'll meet any requirement eventually.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I want to talk about the Mike Malac story about how you got him as a client.

I remember you posting that one.

That was a cool story, right?

Yeah.

So the way I got Mike Malak as a client was we were posting TikToks on our, you know, our company page, Social Media Money.

And one day, like, someone on my team texted me, like, hey, man, you know, Mike Malak DM'd you, right?

And I was like, what?

So I go to the TikTok DM request and he DM'd us like a month ago.

We never even saw it.

And he just said, like, yo, bro, like, who makes these clips?

Like,

let's work together.

And thankfully, I had Mike's number because I met him at a party with like Riley Reed like a couple years ago.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a whole nother podcast.

Yeah, that's a whole different podcast.

Yeah, that's exclusive adults only podcasts.

No, no, no.

But, but, yeah, so I just texted him.

I was like, bro, like, you DM'd me.

Like, that's so funny.

And then, yeah, we close and we work with him now.

Nice.

That's useful.

Now you'll be able to get Logan, too.

We'll see.

We'll see, man.

If he likes the results.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know about Logan.

I don't think Logan is on his content game right now.

I think he's on his Prime and WWE game.

To be fair, he's making a ton of money off.

He's making a ton of money off.

And I can see why.

So why make content?

Yeah.

I used to watch Impulsive.

I watched the first probably 100 episodes, but now I feel like they barely released them.

Yeah, yeah, they've been taking breaks.

It's funny, like when we signed Mike Malik, all of a sudden he started like Impulsive started going on breaks.

Right.

And like, yeah.

But

yeah, so with Mike Malik, honestly, like the takeaway there is like post content because you never know who's going to cold DM you.

Yeah.

Like straight up, cold DM.

Like, he didn't even know of like that I owned the account, just DM'd me on TikTok.

That's the other takeaway, too, is check who DMs you on TikTok because people actually use TikTok DMs.

Really?

Yeah.

You could DM any account on TikTok.

But wow.

But like, I personally didn't know that people actually did that until I checked and I had like 130 requests and Mike Malik was one of them.

Wow.

I'm going to check mine tonight.

I only check IG DMs.

I feel like IG DMs are the best though, to be honest.

Yeah, IG DMs are the best.

One thing for people out there that are trying to pitch stuff is

Instagram has DMs They have DM requests and then they have hidden DMs.

You know about hidden DM requests?

Yeah, I don't look at those.

Yeah, so Instagram Selects certain words and if you use that word in the first DM it'll get to hidden DM request and it'll never see the light of day So some terms that I know of is short form agency If you type in, hey, I run a short form agency.

Yeah.

Let me help you out.

You're never going to see the light of day.

i get those every day bro yeah that's probably why they marked that one yeah exactly exactly you could turn it off too so you might have it off but but there's other terms too so the the best way to do cold dm is to dm an account that you haven't uh dm'd yet that you have access to send them your dm and if it shows up in their requests then you're good if it doesn't show up that means it's in the hidden request yeah and you know you you could then see what terms cause it to go to the hidden dm request and also from my point of view because i get a ton of dm DM requests people trying to sell me I don't like the long paragraph ones okay I don't even read them most of the time because just feels like you're copying and pasting it to be honest so like for me I like simple stuff I get a ton of guests on the show from DMs and I just keep it one maybe two sentences yeah is that what you do well look so we don't DM we don't do any cold DM anymore like thankfully like all of our leads now are referrals and people coming to us but the way I got with Gary Vee I might have told you a story before was I didn't DM Gary Vee I DM'd the co-owner of Empathy Wines and I found his name because like Gary was on a live stream and it was like, yeah, like the co-owner of my Empathy Wines, Nate.

Like I love that guy, blah, blah, blah, right?

So I just went to Gary Vee's following, typed in Nate, found the co-owner of Empathy Wines.

And the way I did it was I did some research on him.

I saw that he was a fan of basketball.

And so at the time, I just so happened to have a campaign with the Utah Jazz.

So what I did was I posted that campaign on my story and I ghost tagged Nate into that story so it would show up in his story mentions, right?

So basically, like this campaign, you know what a ghost tag is?

When you tag them, shrink it.

Oh, on IT story.

Yeah.

Yeah, I do that all the time.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

So I did that to Nate.

So it showed up.

And then when it showed up, I also like DM'd him saying, hey, man, if you want help with social media, like I just did this campaign with the Dod Jazz, I'd love to help with Empathy Wines.

Like, I know this is a big thing for Gary Vee, right?

And that was like, his response was, call me, sent me his number.

I called him.

I was literally in school.

I stepped out of class.

And I was was like hey man he's like hey dude love what you're doing when can you fly to new york to help us out with social media or social media wow yeah so that was the way i i the like there's very creative ways to do the dm stuff i think the lowest hanging fruit really is the ghost tag uh instagram story method yeah put something on your story that is of value to them that they could see and don't just like Be like, hey, man, check your DM and post that on your story.

No, post something that is like relative or relevant to your audience, but also is of value to that person you're trying to get in contact with.

Ghost tag method is deadly, bro.

There's so many ways you could use it.

I use it for my networking events, and it'll get me like an extra couple hundred people at the event.

Bro, anytime I ghost tag someone famous, they see it.

Right.

They see it.

Like, people check that probably more than anything.

Yeah, because

they want to see like who tagged them in the story.

And

honestly, creators and influencers, their biggest currency is views and

what their social perception is.

So if someone's posting on their story about about them, they need to see what they said.

Right.

Because they're posting to the public.

So, it's almost like a damage control.

Like, oh, are they like, like, talking crap about me?

Like, are they spreading a controversy?

You know?

Yeah.

So, that's how you could pitch them.

You know?

Yeah.

You mentioned the ball family earlier.

What was it like talking with LeVar Ball?

Is he crazy or what?

Yeah.

I mean, at that time, he was peak LeVar.

This was like, he was going on ESPN like every week.

The dude is awesome.

I mean, he's the same way on camera as he is off camera, to be honest.

But yeah, I mean, unfortunately, he had a bad business partner,

allegedly, it's a guy named Alan Foster.

Have you heard of him?

I heard him, he stole money or something.

Allegedly, he stole

a million dollars.

He's like on the run from the FBI.

Yeah, he doesn't have like a primary residence.

He just is

traveling internationally.

Yeah, he's like a wanted man.

Dude, people scam for like a mill and they think it'll last their whole lives these days, but a mill won't.

Yeah, yeah, and then he does like crypto pumps and stuff.

Oh, he's, yeah, he can never come back to the country.

Yeah, he's cooked.

But, but, I mean, yeah, like the JBA, the league that was around LaMello and

Jell-O Ball, that was a good time, man.

It was, it was a great league.

A lot of, you know, cool networking.

And I got to meet like little Yachty and like all these like celebs who are coming to the game.

So that was a great time.

Yeah, for sure.

Are you still out in OC?

Yeah.

Orange County.

When are you moving to Vegas, man?

I don't know, man.

This is a pretty cool city for the creator economy.

There's a lot of creator friends here.

You should come to WeWork, too.

I don't know if you have like a.

They're still open.

Yeah, so WeWork is bankrupt, but they're still open.

What?

Yeah.

I thought they went bankrupt like five years ago and closed everything.

No, they went bankrupt like a week ago.

Oh, it was only a week ago?

Or like a month ago.

And their stock is like 20 cents a share, but they're still in business.

And honestly, like the WeWork here, it's like lively.

Like there's a lot of people there in the creator economy.

Interesting.

Is that the one in town square?

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Check that out.

But who's paying for the rent if they're bankrupt?

I don't know.

Wow.

But I really don't want them to go bankrupt because it's a really cool.

Have you been to WeWork?

No.

It's cool, bro.

Like coffee,

vibes.

I personally can't work just in my room.

I need like some sort of

liveliness to get the creative juices going.

So WeWork is a vibe.

I will say I agree with that.

Separating the bedroom and the office was a crucial move for me, dude, because you could get depressed, honestly.

i like i literally would have to be pointing at the wall in my room just like just just me and the wall like nah i need like some open space you know what i mean yeah absolutely uh one of your clients i see every single day caleb hammer man that dude's blowing up caleb okay so right now caleb hammer is competing to get to a million subscribers before iced coffee hour

and what's funny is i'm running the shorts for both of them yeah so like like i was at graham steffin's the other day and like we were jokingly like just looking at the numbers like caleb hammer is ahead of ice coffee hour And like Graham's like, bro, like, can you like chill on the shorts?

Like,

can you make them like less good?

Or like, can you like maybe put a call to action on Caleb's channel to go subscribe to Iced Coffee Hour's channel?

But yeah, honestly, at this rate, I think

they're each like

maybe 50K subs away from a million subscribers.

Who do you got?

I think I got Iced Coffee Hour.

But Caleb's momentum is crazy right now.

Yeah.

I think his stuff hits because it's so relatable.

Yeah, it's it's relatable honestly honestly i i kind of think caleb is an industry plant by youtube how so

i think youtube like juices his content

i have heard that rumor that they favor creators yeah was that one girl that lives in vegas was it sniper wolf well she's been she's been creating for forever right but yeah yes exactly yeah people were saying they favored her and then like people tried to cancel her it was a whole thing but do you believe that they favor certain creators youtube i think so yeah i mean they're a business business.

So if something is generating revenue for them that works,

why not help it continue making YouTube revenue?

Yeah, I mean, from a business point of view, it makes total sense.

I think people get, on the creator side, maybe get a little jealous or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But also, like, let's not write off Caleb, he posts three long form episodes a week that are like two hours long.

Damn.

Yeah, three a week.

So the dude's hustling, grinding.

You know what I mean?

Dude, if I went on a show, I think it'd break the internet because I've lost tens of millions in the dumbest of ways.

Really?

It would actually actually break the internet.

Do you have current debt?

Yes.

Is it bad debt?

It's sizable debt and it's, well, Celsius went bankrupt.

Okay.

So I had a ton of money in there.

So I don't know if that's debt or whatever, but.

I don't know.

Like the people

he gets on are like $200,000 in credit card debt, student loan debt.

you know, he helps them out.

But, you know, maybe, yeah.

Like if your finances are good, he doesn't want you on the show.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

But if your finances are like bad, then he wants you on the show.

Oh, so you got to be like in debt in debt.

You got to be like in poverty.

Okay.

I thought it was just people that lost money in dumb ways.

Those are the clips I've seen at least.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I think like

they had like Jack on before from the iced coffee hour, and that was kind of just like, just for fun.

But like most of them are like, like people who've just been through like trauma in their life and are in like debt like a lot of bad credit card debt.

Right.

They just buy like the craziest car like people the car market takes advantage of low-income people.

Like this guy made like 40K a year and they got him like a $120,000 Ram car.

How do you even get a truck?

Bro, because they're trying to finesse.

They're trying to finesse him.

Yeah.

I mean, that's going to take him his whole life to pay off.

Yeah, his minimum car payment is like $1,200 a month and he only makes like $3K a month.

Oh my God.

Like almost half of his income goes to the freaking Ram truck.

Yeah.

And that's honestly probably how a lot of Americans are living, like paycheck to paycheck.

Yeah, that's probably why it is so relatable, the show.

Yeah, yeah, it's because it's because it's like, oh, like, yeah, it's relatable.

Yeah, absolutely.

What's the most views you've gotten on a single clip?

I believe it's 88 million views, and

that video generated like 110,000 subscribers on YouTube for Graham Steffens channel.

Was it the Brett Cooper one?

No, it was, it was, it was a, do you know who Judge Von de B is?

No, Judge Vondeby.

So she is a like divorce lawyer who like literally just like handles cases between like divorce uh stuff so like this girl I think if I remember correctly she like quit her job intentionally so she wouldn't pay child support

and like Graham just reacted to that video and it got 88 million views wow so reaction videos could be are those still hot right now are those kind of well the way to do a reaction video is you get a clip that is already viral and then you react to it

um

do you know like how brett cooper does it like she'll be looking at the camera and there's a clip playing like that yeah that's a pretty good way to do it.

The way we do it with the Graham is just the clip is just playing in full vertical,

just like as a regular clip.

So you're watching it.

Let's just say you're watching the Bobby Lee podcast.

You're watching it thinking it's the Bobby Lee podcast.

It looks like it's produced by the creator and then the reaction shows.

So it's like play the whole clip and then the show the reaction.

Yeah, that's how a lot of Twitch streamers make their content, reaction videos.

Yeah, exactly.

I got to look into that, maybe incorporate some of that.

But there's no copyright on those.

No, so the other thing we do too is we edit the clip originally again.

Got it.

So

the 88 million viewed one that I'm telling you about was an original example where it wasn't clip before.

We just created the clip ourselves.

But yeah, if you're going to react to a clip like that, re-edit the clip.

So go to the original asset and re-edit it, add your own captions, maybe your own,

you know, whatever, like add your own original,

you know, edits and then react to it.

Yeah.

that makes sense, dude.

It's been fun learning about your world, man.

Where can people find you and learn more about your company?

Yeah, so uh, you can find me on Instagram at Josh or Donez or social media money.

Just type in social media money and you'll find it.

Boom, link in the video.

Thanks for watching, guys.

As always, we will see you tomorrow.

Sir.