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Brewing Awesome Online Content with Aditi Rajvanshi · We Built This Brand

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  If there is one goal that we globally need to just
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  get behind is high quality, free public education.
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  Welcome to We Built This Brand, the podcast where we talk to the
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  creators and collaborators behind brands and provide you with
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  practical insights that you can use in growing your own business.
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  Now, today I'm talking with Aditi Rajvanshi, the head of
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  strategy at Portal-A, an award winning social content company.
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  She's had quite the career journey, working with YouTube in
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  India and eventually making it here to the United States.
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  On top of working with Portal-A, she runs a freelance digital video consulting
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  business named Brewing Awesome, which has worked with brands like Sesame Street.
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  This episode was a wide ranging conversation, and to be quite
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  honest, it's one of my favorites who I've done all year.
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  So, without further ado, here's my interview with Aditi Rajvanshi.
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  Today, I'm joined by Aditi Rajvanshi,
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  and we're excited to be talking to her about her time at
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  Portal-A and some of the awesome things that she has done,
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  not only there, but with YouTube and helping content creators
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  get their start, grow their online brand presences, and.
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  Everything that she's done.
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  So I'm really excited to talk to you today.
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  Thank you for coming on the show.
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  Thank you for having me, Chris.
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  And you nailed that.
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  I appreciate the opportunity.
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  I'm looking forward to this conversation.
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  Absolutely.
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  So I always like to start by just getting to learn
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  a little bit more about you and your background.
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  So I did some digging, looked on LinkedIn and noticed that you,
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  it looks like you got your start actually originally in India.
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  So we'd love to talk about your origin story.
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  How did you get, how'd you get to the United States?
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  What, what's been your journey?
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  I love a good origin story.
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  So let's go back to the lore of me.
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  Well, I'm born and brought up in India.
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  My lovely parents and my sibling make my core family.
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  While I was studying in India and I did my college out of there,
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  I started exploring what are the different directions I want
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  to do is sort of go in and by any stretch of the imagination,
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  this space that I currently am in wasn't on my radar back then.
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  So part of sort of, I guess, the story is that it's a story of serendipity.
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  It's a story of sort of serendipitous things falling.
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  In, in place in some ways and the opportunities I've had, I mean,
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  I've been, I've been grateful for the opportunities that I've had.
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  So I started off with, like I said, born and brought up in India, studied there.
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  My family's there.
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  I met my partner and husband there.
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  And it's been a journey of sort of figuring out what are
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  the different ways in which I can exist in this, in this.
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  pretty global world today where I can live in New York and still feel
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  really closely connected to my family in India, in other parts of the world.
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  When I was in college, I was studying literature.
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  As a literature student, you sort of start thinking about building perspective.
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  It's part of the ask as a literature student to bring critical
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  thinking, to bring analytical thinking, to bring a way of seeing
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  our world through your own lens, and to be able to articulate that.
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  And that, in many ways, continues to be a core foundation for who I am today.
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  Who I hope to be in the future.
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  When I wrapped up college at that point, I was trying to figure
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  out what comes next, and almost out of nowhere, Google happened.
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  Google was my first job out of college.
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  And as you can imagine, I was completely wide eyed and
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  wondrous about everything that Google brought as an opportunity
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  and without even necessarily thinking much about it.
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  So.
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  When I sort of started off at Google at that point in time, unlike a
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  lot of the other people that I was working with, it wasn't my dream job.
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  It wasn't the dream company that I wanted to be at.
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  It was sort of this thing that I experimentally
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  landed in and wanted to give it a shot.
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  And I think in some ways, because that's where I started, I came
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  from a place of curiosity about what are the different things that
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  are happening at Google and through my eight years at Google and
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  YouTube, one of the things that remained true was this ability to
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  do a variety of roles across a variety of teams and being really
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  able to sort of go behind the scenes on how some of the worlds work.
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  Biggest products are built and marketed and brought
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  to life, how brands like YouTube are born and built.
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  And that is another sort of like fundamental cornerstone in how I think about
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  longevity, how I think about what it takes to build a brand in this world.
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  My work at Google and YouTube is also the wild, wild west era of YouTube.
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  So this is sort of the time when we were still discussing cat videos and
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  all the memes of the world and a trip to the dentist and Charlie at the zoo.
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  Like this is very much OG YouTube territory and sort of
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  really figuring out what this platform is going to be
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  because I was coming from the Google ads world into YouTube.
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  I think I was able to think a little bit about the
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  business perspective, think a little bit more about.
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  What brands and advertisers would see when they see a platform like YouTube and
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  also be able to think about what users would get when they get into YouTube.
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  So it was an interesting way of getting into this world of the creator
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  economy that I have since inhabited for many, many years and now call home.
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  My journey through Google and YouTube was powerful.
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  It is my learning ground.
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  It's where I, I think of that as my alma mater in every which way, the
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  place where I learned, and I still continue to sort of look back at that
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  time very fondly and very gratefully for the opportunities that I got.
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  One of the reasons why I think I have this fundamental
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  belief in the creator economy today is that I saw the
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  work ethic that creators brought to the table at YouTube.
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  From the word go, there was, we weren't necessarily talking about
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  building businesses, but we were absolutely talking about people
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  with an entrepreneurial spirit, really bringing that energy to
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  the table and really sort of thinking about, "Hey, how would
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  I turn what is my passion project into something long term?"
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  And because that was such a big part of the conversation to have that
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  conversation day in and day out with hundreds and thousands of creators over my
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  six years at YouTube specifically really shaped my worldview around creators.
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  So when I think about creators, I almost never use the word influencers.
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  And when I use the word influencers, I almost never mean creators.
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  And I think that's a distinction that is sort of foundational to me.
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  It's something that I learned in that moment, in that experience,
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  and it continues to sort of think about how I think about those
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  two, those two words and I, how I think about those two brands.
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  Yeah.
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  And from there, I think I'd hit a point at Google and
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  YouTube I had hit my ceiling within the roles that I was in.
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  It was this feeling of knowing that I, when I started at YouTube, we
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  were a startup, but by the time I left YouTube, we were a giant business.
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  Which was running like a giant machine, and once you hit that point,
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  you know that you have to sort of take a few calls for yourself, figure
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  out whether this is the most gratifying sort of journey for you anymore.
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  And I knew in my truth that it wasn't any more of that for me.
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  And that's how I started exploring what I do next.
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  And in many ways, that's the genesis for
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  Brewing Awesome, which is my personal brand.
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  Brewing Awesome is a digital video consulting business I started with that
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  core sort of idea in mind that there are always going to be hundreds and
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  thousands of creators, especially small to medium creators and small to medium
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  brands, that will not get the support, the guidance, the advice, the, the
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  handholding that top creators and brands do by any of the platforms that exist.
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  And that became sort of my priority and focus area to work with
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  small to medium businesses, small to medium creators who are
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  trying to figure out how to navigate this world of digital video.
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  And that's where Brewing Awesome happened.
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  Um, I've been very fortunate to work with the likes of Sesame Workshop,
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  DotDash Meredith, hundreds and thousands of creators through that work.
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  And that's what got me to Port L.
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  A., where I currently am.
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  And I run the strategy team at.
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  So it's a long story.
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  It's an origin story getting you all the way up to here.
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  Happy to go back into any of those phases.
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  We're going to look at it all.
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  I think it's really cool.
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  You know, that you were able to make it to, to get into YouTube, like at a
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  time where I think you were like one of the early partner managers there.
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  So that's a unique experience.
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  And I'm sure you brought that business side to the
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  table when you're managing those relationships.
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  It also looked like, you know, you're over India at
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  that time, which to me is a really new perspective.
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  Like I, as an, as an American is based in the U.S, like, I know what
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  was trending and in America at the time you were in those roles, but
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  in India, I'm sure it was like, it probably felt like a different
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  company or at least different content that was being created.
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  So I'm really curious to know, like, what, what are
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  the differences that you've seen between the two sides?
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  Like, what may you not know about like India's media creation versus America's?
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  Oh my God, that's such a good question.
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  And I'm glad we're going to go back to that.
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  So India and the U.S.
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  have had completely opposite creator economy trajectories.
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  Today, we're at a point where it sort of feels more global, where
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  the idea of what it means to be a creator is more global in general,
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  more well known, but that was not the case 10 years ago at all.
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  When we first started exploring launching The YouTube
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  Partner Program in India back in 2010, this was a novel idea.
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  We didn't know who would be our creator class.
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  We didn't know who we were looking at for monetization, right?
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  Like the point of the YouTube Partner Program was that it allowed
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  for creators and sort of content based companies, media companies
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  to build YouTube audiences, to build YouTube as a revenue stream.
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  That was the core idea of the YouTube Partner Program.
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  It had already launched in the U.S., and the U.S.
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  story started with creators like you and I sitting in our
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  houses right now and figuring out how we were going to do this.
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  People recording from their bedrooms, the quintessential YouTube vlog era.
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  That's what the YouTube U.S.
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  story was.
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  In India, when we started looking at it, we knew that we first
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  needed to bring content to this platform for users to follow.
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  So we didn't have the sort of the leeway or the runway to actually
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  start from a place of let it organically sort of get to a place
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  where creators come up to the platform and sort of find their way in.
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  We were operating on this core idea that to get Indian audiences
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  to even build a class of Indian creators, we first need to
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  show that that entire group of people that there is content
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  on this platform, there's value to be delivered by YouTube.
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  So the first set of partnership deals that we cracked and the first set of
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  sort of partnerships that we pursued were all traditional media partnerships.
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  We worked with movie houses, cricket, of course, is
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  India is the largest cricketing nation of the world.
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  We are a cricket obsessed country.
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  I always say this, that think about how a lot
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  of the people in the US Feel about baseball.
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  That is how, and then maybe like 10x it, that's how we feel about cricket.
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  It's a little nutty out there.
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  I'll be honest.
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  And I'm a cricket fan.
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  So I feel like I can say that.
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  And that's sort of the place where we started.
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  We started off by actually bringing in the cricketing board of India, bringing
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  in some of the top movie houses, the largest music channel in the world.
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  T Series were one of the first set of
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  partnerships that I had the chance to work on.
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  So in, like I said, it's a completely opposite sort of like origin
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  story and evolution where we started with traditional media houses
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  in India and then built the creator class slowly and gradually.
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  I literally can put myself back in the first session, the first
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  rooms that I was in, and I kind of am getting goosebumps just
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  thinking about it because it was so incredible the first time we
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  thought we were going to bring in individual creators into a room.
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  There were 33 people who showed up in a small room in Mumbai, and
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  we did our first conversation around what it meant to be a creator.
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  And the examples that I used in that deck still like stay with me.
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  It's Vlogbrothers, Hank and John Green, old school stuff.
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  It's Grace Helbig, Philly D, Epic Rap Battles.
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  Chris, if you haven't watched anything from
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  Epic Rap Battles, cannot recommend that enough.
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  I'm going to send that to you.
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  But it is old school YouTube, the part that I still love so deeply.
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  And I distinctly remember that conversation because it was an afternoon spent
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  with these 30 odd people talking about the power of the platform and talking
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  about the power of community, really, of, of this being a place to circumvent
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  the traditional, you need to go somehow open doors that are hard to open route.
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  And it was such a inspiring moment to just be
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  in that room, to even run that conversation.
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  And then not just that, like run many such conversations until we had rooms
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  filled with hundreds and hundreds of creators and new potential creators.
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  I'm excited to figure this game out.
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  So the U.S.
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  story, in contrast, and it was sort of happening
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  in parallel at that time, was this, the U.S.
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  market started with core creators sort of happening organically, figuring
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  out the form, building communities, like, we all remember that era.
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  And then from there, Big media houses like the Warner Brothers of the
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  world and the Sonys of the world were like, oh, there is something here.
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  Disney suddenly woke up one morning and said,
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  I actually think we should be on YouTube.
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  So the story was so different.
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  And I always think it's an interesting sort of
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  way to think about where those markets were.
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  Today, of course, if you look at The top 100 channels
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  in India and the top 100 channels in the U.S.
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  It is actually a pretty good split between what we would have traditionally
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  called individual creators and more sort of like media houses.
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  It's actually a pretty good split.
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  And I think that's where the evening out of who's a media company today.
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  Has happened.
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  Like, nobody can argue that Mr.
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  Beast is not a media company today.
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  Or no one can argue that Mythical Entertainment, run by,
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  started by Rhett and Link, is not a media company today.
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  There are as much media companies as the Disneys of the world, and I think
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  there is something really powerful about where we currently are in that world.
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  That is really fascinating because I remember the early days of YouTube
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  and always thinking about YouTube as a place where you went for dumb videos
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  of people getting hurt, or I don't know, what sticks out in my head right
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  now is a penguin like falling into water, you know, things like that.
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  The other penguin like patting it on the back and throwing it in
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  and just silly things like that is what I remember YouTube for.
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  And then the early days of the vloggers.
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  I don't know if, oh gosh, what was that one girl who
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  did like It turned out to be all fake and staged?
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  Lonely Girl!
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  That's it, yes.
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  And like the, the, the effect that that had
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  on people thinking, "Oh, it wasn't real."
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  And then as someone into that early content, then seeing the brands come on, it
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  felt like they were invading our space, you know, the advertising got in here.
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  They're invading our space.
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  Same thing happened with Facebook and social
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  media, you know, in the 2010s and such.
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  But yeah, to hear it came from a different
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  perspective in India is really interesting.
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  I think it makes, in my mind, it makes sense without, admittedly
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  an uneducated background, but like I could see how like the brands
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  would have to do more to bring it in there because that maybe that
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  startup culture that's in America that makes people want to go out
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  and get the latest app or the latest thing wasn't really there.
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  The iPhone wasn't as popular there.
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  Smartphones, I don't know when they got adopted in India, but I'm sure
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  that YouTube's been on the iPhone since pretty much its inception.
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  So.
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  It's a much different dynamic and I could see how that
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  would take people warming up to it in a different way.
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  The way you see a lot of brand takeovers or not takeovers, but
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  a lot of brands get into things like, you know, say podcasting
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  or other things where like, well, we're going to invest in
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  podcasting now, which we'll get into a little bit later.
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  But because that brings us full circle back to
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  YouTube, but, but that's, That's really cool.
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  So you, you made it to the U.S., you started Brewing Awesome.
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  That must have been quite the adventure doing that on
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  your own versus having a company backing you up to do it.
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  How did you, how did you get started?
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  And what would you say was your, what I call the moment of validation
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  with that start that business of like, "Okay, this is real.
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  People are like, I'm impacting people.
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  They're growing and I've got a business I can, you know, continue to grow with."
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  I feel I was listening to an earlier episode of your podcast with
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  Mal Alder, yeah, and Mal said something that just stayed with me
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  that afternoon when I heard it, that entrepreneurship is one of the
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  most rewarding, but also one of the most isolating things to pursue.
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  And you know how it is when you're sort of like listening to a podcast.
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  Sometimes you tune out what you're listening to a
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  little bit because you're trying to do something else.
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  The
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  cool listening experience.
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  And then, and I realized that it was that, that comment
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  that brought me back into the conversation suddenly
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  and I was, was paying attention in a different way.
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  And it really resonated.
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  It was a moment where I was like, I related that a lot because
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  starting off Brewing Awesome was an isolating experience for me.
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  And I distinctly remember the first two years of simply
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  just doing the work without necessarily seeing the results
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  or necessarily seeing the results that I'd hoped for.
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  And, and mind you, the results that I'd hoped for were
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  not anything completely out of the world of possibility.
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  I would say that they were likely outcomes, but there is a
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  combination of timing of what opportunities come your way and
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  how you pursue them, and I'm really grateful that I continued.
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  I'm really grateful that through that two year period, every
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  time I had the opportunity to take on a more Like a safer road.
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  I didn't necessarily choose that.
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  There were moments in the, in that initial window where I wasn't sure if I was
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  going to even figure out what I'm worth and what I should be paid for my time.
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  There were real conversations that my husband and I had during that window
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  of you're going to have to hold the fort down while I figure out how this
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  startup goes and where we go with it, and I'm forever thankful for the
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  choice I made in my partner, not just for that reason, but for a lot.
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  And I think the, the moment of validation was, was not necessarily
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  a single moment, but it was definitely a period of over six
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  months where consistently work sort of started coming my way.
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  That was the kind of work that I wanted to pursue.
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  It was also around the same time that I got my first client come back to
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  me and say, I want to extend the retainer, or I want to actually get you
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  on a retainer to begin with outside of a short term project, something that
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  I knew very early on with doing awesome was that I wasn't going to do the
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  whole hourly gig or turn this into only doing short term consulting work.
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  I know having worked with creators and having worked in
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  the space of audience development for as long as I have,
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  that there is really nothing to be done over two weeks.
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  So unless someone is willing to invest two to three months, And actually
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  like put a roadmap and say, okay, this is, this is what I'm looking at.
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  I understand that audience building, community
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  building is not going to happen overnight.
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  I understand that it takes time and effort and resources, and someone
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  shows that commitment, I knew that I wasn't going to work with them, and
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  I think that ultimately benefited my trajectory through Growing Awesome.
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  And even now with my work at Portal-A, where I see the same
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  mentality sort of come through, I have never been one of flash
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  in the pan advertising or flash in the pan moments of doing
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  something massive today and then not having any follow through.
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  That's never been my approach and I think it has served me well.
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  And sort of in many ways that became the moment of validation, like
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  you said, was not, was slow, was not necessarily a single moment,
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  but it was definitely something that happened over the six month
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  period where I knew that there was finally proof in the pudding,
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  like I was doing something, I was building something that had legs.
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  And starting sort of 2019, going all the way through to 2022,
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  those were incredibly fulfilling, Brewing Awesome years for me.
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  I worked with Sesame for almost the entirety of that window.
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  And-
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  By the way, that's really cool.
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  I have two young kids, so I just love, and
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  growing up with Sesame Street, I just, yeah.
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  There's such a good group of people.
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  I mean, I've, I've seen how underfunded they are for the amount of work
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  that they do globally and the amount of good work that they're doing.
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  I got a chance to work with their teams across India, across Asia
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  Pacific, and actually got to see a lot about their Middle East operations.
• 23:03
  For example, the work that they've been doing through the refugee crisis, the
• 23:07
  work that they've been doing across the globe, actually, on the refugee crisis.
• 23:10
  It's, it's phenomenal.
• 23:11
  Incredible work done by some really, really kind and generous human beings,
• 23:17
  and I always throughout my window and I still believe in their mission so much.
• 23:22
  We need to fund public education to be as high caliber as possible.
• 23:27
  Like if there is one goal that we globally need to
• 23:31
  just get behind is high quality, free public education.
• 23:38
  I agree with that on so many levels.
• 23:40
  So many levels.
• 23:41
  My wife's a public educator.
• 23:43
  I mean, so she's, she's already there and I can definitely.
• 23:47
  Say, you know, like seeing what, what Sesame has taught my
• 23:50
  kids and how they have learned from the content that's been
• 23:54
  created, even the books and the things that we read as kids.
• 23:56
  Like my son had, we have a Sesame Street book from the 90s that has like
• 24:01
  all these twiddlebugs on it at the end of the book, and they go to 100.
• 24:05
  For a while, my son was obsessed with, because he
• 24:07
  could read numbers, reading all the way to a hundred.
• 24:10
  He'd be like, "Daddy, let me read this one."
• 24:13
  I'd just sit there as he would read to a hundred, but that's, that's
• 24:17
  like a small example of what they do and how they impact people.
• 24:21
  And yeah, that's really cool that you get those opportunities.
• 24:24
  It's always really rewarding when you're an entrepreneur to do things like that.
• 24:27
  That feels like to me, a lot of validation when you have that moment
• 24:31
  of like, "Oh my gosh, what I'm doing is having an impact on people."
• 24:34
  That to me is when I feel the most validated.
• 24:36
  So that's, that's really cool that you've had those opportunities.
• 24:40
  Where, where did the name, by the way, where
• 24:42
  did the name Brewing Awesome come from?
• 24:44
  I swear, I wish that we had timed this and I had my coffee mug sitting
• 24:48
  next to me right now, because that's where the name comes from.
• 24:51
  It was over a weekend of ideation.
• 24:54
  There were giant post its everywhere on a wall with like names being thrown.
• 25:00
  And I think brewing the idea of my obsession with coffee was
• 25:05
  one whole category of names, and that's where it came from.
• 25:09
  So, I mean, talk about brand building.
• 25:11
  We, we, I really attached my personal brand to the name.
• 25:17
  That is awesome.
• 25:19
  Yeah.
• 25:19
  I'm a big coffee fan myself.
• 25:21
  So definitely, definitely love that.
• 25:23
  I was curious cause like I, my origin story is around craft beer podcast.
• 25:28
  We were, we got won some awards for it and things like that.
• 25:31
  And we pretty much documented our local craft beer scene coming up.
• 25:35
  So when I see brewing, I think craft beer, and I was hoping you
• 25:38
  would have a craft beer connection, but coffee's just as good.
• 25:41
  Coffee's just as good.
• 25:43
  I've never refused a good pint.
• 25:45
  So if you're offering me beer, we're absolutely jamming on that.
• 25:50
  But like, this is amazing.
• 25:51
  I love that.
• 25:52
  That's what got you into podcasting is like that.
• 25:55
  The first time you thought about podcasting?
• 25:59
  Oh, no.
• 26:00
  I thought about podcasting way back in 2006, 2005, right?
• 26:05
  When it was first starting, a friend of mine was getting into podcasting and she
• 26:11
  said, "Hey, there's this guy I follow on this podcast called Letter to America.
• 26:17
  And it's this podcast of an ex-patriot living in Ireland," and she
• 26:23
  wanted me to check it out and listen to it, and I got obsessed with it.
• 26:28
  I loved it.
• 26:29
  Going back to the Lonely Girl thing, like I was actually kind of pre-,
• 26:33
  I don't know if that was around that time or if that was a little after.
• 26:36
  I'll have to look back at the timing, but they did this episode
• 26:39
  they called the Giants Causeway where they went to visit the Giants
• 26:42
  Causeway and at the end of the episode they, they wrapped it.
• 26:46
  And they were like, all right, we're done.
• 26:47
  And you could tell they were in a studio.
• 26:48
  They were never out there, and it just messed with my head.
• 26:52
  And I was like, wait, has this been the whole show?
• 26:54
  I don't know.
• 26:55
  I really didn't.
• 26:56
  And so, but they, yeah, the, the guy who ran it was a BBC producer and all that.
• 27:00
  And so in 2006 he moved back to the United
• 27:03
  States, and I live in Knoxville, Tennessee.
• 27:05
  He was in Nashville.
• 27:06
  And he was like, "I still want to continue the show.
• 27:09
  I'm looking for things to do."
• 27:11
  So as a college student, I pitched him on, "Hey, come down here.
• 27:14
  And this is what we'll do as a podcast."
• 27:16
  And he, he loved it.
• 27:18
  And so he did it.
• 27:18
  And so in 2006, I was a guest on a podcast and he had just a handheld
• 27:23
  recorder and we ran around Chattanooga, Tennessee, where I was at the time.
• 27:27
  And we went around all these places and did this whole
• 27:30
  podcast episode, and I was just like, this is amazing.
• 27:34
  And that's where I got hooked.
• 27:35
  I was like, "you can just, it's just this little recorder.
• 27:37
  You can do this?"
• 27:38
  And so I learned from that.
• 27:40
  And then over time, as I had opportunities to implement it
• 27:43
  into my career or life, I did until finally I got to the point
• 27:46
  where there was an opportunity for me and one of my buddies to
• 27:49
  start a craft beer podcast and it just kind of grew from there.
• 27:53
  But yeah, that's, that's my.
• 27:54
  A little bit of an origin story with that.
• 27:57
  Oh, wow.
• 27:57
  This is really cool.
• 27:59
  I feel like I have follow up questions for
• 28:01
  you, but I don't know if I should go there.
• 28:04
  I mean, I mean, we, we definitely, we
• 28:06
  definitely can and we can cut it out later.
• 28:08
  No,
• 28:08
  I mean, I'd love to keep it if you don't mind.
• 28:11
  Oh no, fine.
• 28:12
  Yeah, feel free.
• 28:13
  Oh, okay.
• 28:14
  So 2005, 2006 sounds like, like, like that's the first era of
• 28:19
  podcasting before we had sort of like that lull happened and then the
• 28:25
  massive explosion that we, I think we're continuing to see, right?
• 28:28
  Were you thinking of this sort of like as
• 28:30
  a side hustle, as a creative exploration?
• 28:34
  Where were you at in 2005, 2006?
• 28:36
  Oh gosh, I just thought it was a cool thing.
• 28:39
  I was, I was more of a participant and a listener.
• 28:41
  I was studying marketing at the time in college.
• 28:43
  I dual majored marketing and entrepreneurship.
• 28:45
  So like, it was definitely up my alley and we
• 28:49
  didn't know where social media marketing would go.
• 28:51
  Like we didn't even know if it would be a thing for us.
• 28:53
  Facebook had just started in 2004.
• 28:56
  I had an iPod.
• 28:57
  That's how I was able to listen to podcasts, right?
• 29:00
  And so like all those things kind of added up until I think I
• 29:03
  was actually using like iPod or something like that back in the
• 29:06
  day to actually get them onto my iPod before that was a thing.
• 29:09
  And then Apple integrated it and it was like, Oh wow, I can just subscribe here.
• 29:13
  This is awesome.
• 29:14
  But yeah, I was mostly a consumer early on in the early
• 29:17
  days and then just got to be a guest really early.
• 29:19
  And Yeah, just as I guess my OG cred, if you will.
• 29:25
  Oh, I love that.
• 29:27
  Do you still run the craft beer podcast?
• 29:31
  Both of us had children, so we, it's, it's a little hard
• 29:35
  to get out these days and do the show the way we want to.
• 29:38
  We did record a couple episodes last year that never went out just
• 29:42
  because of timing and a bunch of internal logistics with my business.
• 29:47
  That's the problem when you turn your passion into a
• 29:48
  business is it becomes work and you got to pay the bills.
• 29:52
  So I had to, had to go with that, but yeah, we, we still have it up.
• 29:56
  People can still go listen to our Humble Beer
• 29:57
  Podcast, wherever great podcasts are distributed.
• 30:01
  But yeah, that's the early days, early days.
• 30:04
  Yeah.
• 30:04
  That's, that's before I knew everything I was doing, but it was a lot of fun.
• 30:10
  Do you see yourself bringing a lot of that
• 30:12
  to your podcast, to this podcast as well?
• 30:15
  Like do you have any warnings and your stuff from there?
• 30:18
  Yeah, for sure.
• 30:19
  For sure.
• 30:19
  Learning, learning how to interview, learning to do all that.
• 30:22
  I mean, that's where Humble Beer was really helpful for me and
• 30:25
  starting where I'm at is it helped me learn how to interview
• 30:28
  people, set up gear, produce, record, edit, do all that.
• 30:32
  And that part of that, that's something I don't think I'll ever, ever lose.
• 30:36
  And this keeps me fresh, if you will.
• 30:39
  So I love doing this podcast and being able to interview folks.
• 30:41
  So it's a lot of fun.
• 30:44
  Hey, yeah, I love that.
• 30:46
  Uh, yeah.
• 30:48
  All right, so back to it.
• 30:50
  Where are we heading next?
• 30:52
  So you mentioned flash in the pan versus dedication.
• 30:56
  I would like to take a minute and talk about that because I do
• 30:58
  think with content, that is one thing that you see, especially
• 31:02
  with brands, businesses, they see something new and shiny and
• 31:06
  they want to go do it and they follow it because it's a trend.
• 31:10
  They don't understand that there's a dedicated pathway to it.
• 31:14
  Tying in my podcast experience.
• 31:16
  Like we've seen that over the five years we've been in
• 31:19
  business producing for clients, the ones that are actually
• 31:23
  engaged and dedicated are the ones that stick with it.
• 31:25
  And they can be great longterm customers, but there's always
• 31:28
  those folks out there that want it to go viral or get big
• 31:31
  really fast and without celebrity, that's really hard to do.
• 31:35
  So what do you see as like the key determining factor of knowing
• 31:40
  that someone's a flash in a pan versus dedicated to the project?
• 31:44
  I often think about Red Bull as an example
• 31:46
  of a brand that has They've got wings.
• 31:50
  They've been around.
• 31:52
  One of the sort of the biggest YouTube and brand activations, like in the early
• 31:58
  years of brands sort of doing something was the YouTube Red Bull Space Jump.
• 32:04
  It happened in 2012, if I'm not wrong, it could have
• 32:08
  been earlier, which would be pretty wild if it was.
• 32:12
  And one of the things that I remember from that moment, and I think it's sort of
• 32:16
  like has stayed with me over the years, is this idea that there is a difference
• 32:20
  between "flash in the pan" and "tent pole," or "flash in the pen" versus doing
• 32:26
  something that is going to give you a massive sort of bump in visibility.
• 32:33
  Massive sort of bump in mindshare in the moment.
• 32:38
  And the distinction to me is what happens after, or the core
• 32:42
  determining factor for me is when someone is talking about an
• 32:46
  isolated moment that they're looking to create, but have no.
• 32:51
  Interest in or no idea of what it takes to build into that moment.
• 32:57
  And then what it will take to follow up from that moment.
• 33:02
  Anytime I've worked with a brand, whether it's Brewing Awesome
• 33:06
  or even now with Portal-A, one of the things that we're
• 33:08
  always talking to brands about is long term relationships.
• 33:12
  Whether you're working with creators, whether you're working with, uh, with
• 33:16
  us as makers at Portal-A, we always talk about, here's the value that you
• 33:21
  get by working with us long term versus doing something that'll be done today
• 33:27
  and be out in the world and be forgotten before it could even make a blip.
• 33:31
  The economy that we're in is and Attention Economy.
• 33:35
  And if all you're looking to do is to grab someone's
• 33:38
  attention, then you have played into the algorithm.
• 33:42
  You've not necessarily done something to outlast the algorithm,
• 33:47
  and that's the perspective that I think more and more brands and
• 33:52
  people who are in our shoes, who are in the creative space, but
• 33:55
  can think brands, can think business, should be talking about.
• 34:00
  I love that.
• 34:00
  Yeah.
• 34:01
  The outlasting, the algorithm, I think is a key point.
• 34:04
  And that's what we've seen with our creators too.
• 34:06
  It's like the folks, the folks that are there because they're dedicated
• 34:09
  to a topic and a subject, they might hit viral because they have something
• 34:13
  that's relevant to the moment, but they're not attention seeking as much
• 34:17
  as they are just consistently creating the right thing day in, day out.
• 34:20
  I love that.
• 34:21
  That's awesome.
• 34:21
  Cool.
• 34:22
  So tell me, tell me about getting to Portal-A.
• 34:24
  So we've done, we've talked about Brewing Awesome, talked about your background.
• 34:28
  Now you're at Portal-A.
• 34:29
  What, tell me what Portal-A is.
• 34:32
  We are a creative company.
• 34:33
  We are a company that makes world class content in every space that we do.
• 34:40
  Our goal is to make breakthrough content, and by breakthrough, we mean
• 34:45
  content that breaks through the noise, the clutter, the busy spaces
• 34:49
  that we're operating in as people who operate in the space of content.
• 34:54
  Portal-A started 13 years ago, so they've been around the block.
• 34:58
  They have seen the creator economy evolution.
• 35:01
  They have seen the content marketing evolution.
• 35:04
  They have I've seen how brands have gone from being disbelievers
• 35:08
  or of being completely sort of, you know, dismissive of the
• 35:13
  value that creators and influencers bring to the table to a
• 35:17
  place where they think of creators as partners on the table.
• 35:23
  So Portal-A has been not, not a bystander too, but very
• 35:28
  much instrumental to this evolution, very much part of
• 35:32
  driving this evolution and driving innovation in this space.
• 35:37
  Something that drew me to the Portal-A team early on was knowing that
• 35:42
  this is the team that takes a ton of pride in the work that we do.
• 35:46
  My journey into Portal-A started with.
• 35:48
  Brewing Awesome.
• 35:49
  I was brought in as a consultant on a project that Portal-A was doing
• 35:55
  with Google and the one of the founders of Portal-A is Zach Bloom.
• 36:01
  There are three founders by the way, Zach Bloom, Kai Hassan and Nate, and
• 36:06
  between Kai, Zach and Nate, I think they figured out two things early on that
• 36:11
  I, I still think are true to their success and recipes for their longevity.
• 36:17
  One, they figured out that every one of them is a maker, that
• 36:22
  every one of them is a creator in their own right, and that
• 36:25
  every person who walks into the doors at Portal-A is a creative.
• 36:30
  I think that core fundamental belief that we all are makers and that spirit
• 36:36
  of making stuff together has been maybe one of the core reasons for their
• 36:43
  longevity, one of the core reasons for figuring out how to do this long term.
• 36:47
  And the other thing is that they either intentionally, or otherwise,
• 36:52
  figured out that entrepreneurship can be a really lonely journey.
• 36:56
  So we should do it with people we like and friends, and that's how I feel.
• 37:01
  That's their superpower in many ways that they started off together.
• 37:06
  Three childhood friends building the company of their dreams
• 37:09
  together, it is the kind of story that you'd like to read.
• 37:12
  And it is the vibe that continues in the company even today.
• 37:16
  It's sort of very much a community where it's very much a space where
• 37:21
  you feel like you can build relationships and build friendships.
• 37:25
  We are not a family.
• 37:26
  We are not.
• 37:27
  We do not do the family cult conversation.
• 37:32
  We're none of those.
• 37:33
  We're very much a community, and we're proud
• 37:37
  of the space that we've built together.
• 37:39
  And sort of like that, that's my story into starting at Portal-A.
• 37:43
  When I met Zach and he brought me into this role,
• 37:46
  he said, it's a four to six week consulting project.
• 37:50
  Here's the detail, blah, blah, blah.
• 37:53
  And I think the second week he pinged me and said, I
• 37:56
  was at a conference in Austin and he pings and says,
• 38:00
  "do you have five minutes for a quick, quick call?"
• 38:02
  And I was like, sure.
• 38:04
  I thought that when you're in a, in a freelance consulting business
• 38:07
  space, you always assume a quick call is not, not good news necessarily.
• 38:13
  So my brain thought, "oh, okay, maybe I could take on another project soon."
• 38:18
  And instead he said, "we haven't really run a full
• 38:23
  fledged strategy department in a long, long time.
• 38:28
  We haven't really had one before.
• 38:30
  Would you be willing to come and start and run our strategy function?"
• 38:34
  And at that point, my immediate sort of thinking was, okay, hold on a sec.
• 38:39
  Are we moving too fast?
• 38:41
  Like it was like a bit of a, is it too soon to sort of call that?
• 38:45
  But over the next couple of weeks, we spoke a lot, and I knew
• 38:50
  having started working with this team that I really, really
• 38:53
  enjoyed working with them and really enjoyed just being on a team.
• 38:57
  Again, it had been many years since I had been working sort of independently.
• 39:01
  And I often brought in other freelancers and contract workers with me that
• 39:05
  we'd sort of like make like a small interim team around, but it's completely
• 39:10
  different when you work in a space surrounded by people who have a shared
• 39:15
  philosophy, who believe in a shared mission, and I'd really been missing
• 39:21
  that is the part that I realized pretty early on in that, in that stint.
• 39:25
  And then it was just a, it was just a function of figuring out
• 39:29
  what the right starting moment could look like, what the roles and
• 39:32
  responsibilities could look like, but it felt like a really natural
• 39:37
  fit for my skillset and for what the needs of the company were.
• 39:43
  Yeah.
• 39:44
  Any business that is in the business of creating content, eventually
• 39:49
  you get to this point where it's like, we're not going to grow if
• 39:52
  we don't have something strategic behind what we're doing because
• 39:56
  clients aren't going to understand the value for what we do.
• 39:59
  And they're not going to think about it in terms of
• 40:01
  strategic objectives or things we're going to reach.
• 40:04
  So, I think that that's really cool that they
• 40:07
  realized they needed that and brought you on.
• 40:10
  I mean, you, from this very brief conversation,
• 40:13
  I'm sure you're a great asset for them.
• 40:14
  So that's really, that's really cool.
• 40:17
  So Portal-A.
• 40:18
  You, you're there, you're doing strategy.
• 40:20
  What's your approach to doing strategy for your clients?
• 40:23
  I mean, obviously you probably can't give away the
• 40:25
  secret sauce, but how do you approach consultation?
• 40:29
  What are the things you think about?
• 40:31
  I want to clarify one piece that I think strategy and
• 40:36
  creative have always been sort of core to how Portal-A has
• 40:40
  approached their work, even before I was at the company.
• 40:43
  And I think that is one of the reasons that they knew
• 40:47
  that they needed a full-fledged strategy function.
• 40:50
  That they needed to sort of like really develop and build
• 40:54
  into that skill set even more, into that strength even more.
• 40:57
  So, that was part of what they were doing already.
• 41:01
  They were, they knew from the get-go that they wanted creative and
• 41:06
  strategy to sort of sit close even within the company as they think
• 41:11
  about those two functions and, and be able to inform each other.
• 41:15
  For creative to take strategies, viewpoint on building an
• 41:19
  approach for strategy to consider what the creative opportunity
• 41:23
  and possibilities are when recommending that approach.
• 41:26
  And that sort of symbiotic relationship between creative and strategy
• 41:30
  is something that I have, and my creative partner, Lex Halaby, we
• 41:37
  have been working on building and really developing that creative
• 41:41
  partnership, that partnership that says we are sort of going hand-in-hand
• 41:47
  and working towards this outcome of making breakthrough content.
• 41:51
  Something that we say a lot is we make content, not ads.
• 41:55
  It is core to how we think about every
• 41:59
  single project, every single consultation.
• 42:01
  So one of our litmus tests when we even start reviewing a
• 42:05
  brief or start reviewing a new client ask is, are they asking
• 42:10
  us to make content or are they interested in making ads?
• 42:14
  Because one we do, one we don't.
• 42:16
  And.
• 42:17
  Sometimes we've been successful in navigating a conversation where we may
• 42:22
  have started with ads as the priority, but have figured out with the client
• 42:27
  that actually let us do what we do best, which is to make award winning,
• 42:33
  high quality content that resonates with audiences, and it will deliver the
• 42:38
  value that you need more than sometimes the more hardworking ad content does.
• 42:44
  We've been successful in that conversation.
• 42:46
  We've been successful in, sort of, moving the conversation
• 42:48
  over to the side that we believe in, and at times we're not.
• 42:53
  So one of our first sort of litmus tests, like I
• 42:55
  said, is to figure out, we make content, not ads.
• 42:58
  Is this an opportunity that allows us to do what we do best?
• 43:04
  And then we think about, is this an opportunity that we can turn
• 43:07
  into something that'll make, make breakthrough content with,
• 43:10
  that we can make something with that, one, we are really, really
• 43:13
  proud of, but two, truly resonates with the target audience.
• 43:18
  Once we sort of go through those two moments, then it's all about answering
• 43:23
  the what, the why, the how, the when, the who, all of those questions.
• 43:28
  To me, that's what the role of strategy is, to really answer those questions.
• 43:33
  That's who, that's who a strategist is.
• 43:36
  I don't think a strategist is the person who just does the
• 43:38
  data analysis or just does the, can I understand numbers?
• 43:42
  Well, yes, you should understand numbers.
• 43:44
  Well, if you're in the flow, but I would say a lot of people should understand
• 43:48
  numbers and I would say a lot of people should be able to think strategically.
• 43:51
  So I don't think those two skill sets are not complementary with each other.
• 43:57
  So my, the way I think about any new brief, or I think about a new sort of
• 44:01
  project kickoff, is really answering those fundamental questions, and once
• 44:06
  we've answered those questions, thinking about what success looks like.
• 44:10
  Can we internally at Portal-A and then with the
• 44:13
  client really define what success looks like?
• 44:16
  And that to me is one of the meatiest conversations to have up top, because
• 44:20
  in that moment is where you really start getting down to brass tacks.
• 44:24
  You really start getting down to here's what's truly important.
• 44:28
  We may have said X, Y, and Z in the brief, but when it actually
• 44:32
  comes down to it, here's what really matters to us as a brand today.
• 44:37
  And that's the moment where so often we have a chance to change minds, to
• 44:42
  sort of help a brand think about, I understand that here are your goals for
• 44:47
  this month and this quarter, but here is what we could do that would help
• 44:52
  you set up something for the next six months, twelve months, several years.
• 44:57
  And one of the reasons why we consistently
• 45:01
  work with brands on long form content is this.
• 45:06
  YouTube is a space where we operate out of a place of core expertise
• 45:11
  and a lot of love for making long-form storytelling driven content.
• 45:17
  And so every time we have the opportunity to work with a brand
• 45:21
  and say, "Hey, we can tell your brand story in a way that is
• 45:26
  entertainment, that is fun and games, but it's also impactful
• 45:31
  and meaningful and can really take your brand story forward."
• 45:38
  I mean, what is branding, but storytelling that that's what you're doing.
• 45:42
  What else is branding, but to tell your story in a way that you want to tell it.
• 45:48
  And to us, that's the opportunity with long form.
• 45:51
  And that's one of the reasons why some of our longest
• 45:54
  running clients that we've been working with for years,
• 45:57
  Google and YouTube are some of our longest running clients.
• 46:00
  Target is.
• 46:02
  Lenovo is.
• 46:03
  For all of them, we have consistently made long-form,
• 46:07
  storytelling driven, serialized content that we are very proud
• 46:12
  of and continues to have real fandoms around, like continues
• 46:17
  to build real IP around for these brands that we work with.
• 46:22
  It's good that you're, you have that dedication.
• 46:25
  You have those people that are those brands that
• 46:27
  are dedicated to creating that long form content.
• 46:30
  So I guess I'm, I'm really curious to know this, like it's
• 46:33
  probably real nitty gritty, but like you said, you don't do ads.
• 46:36
  So when you're producing this content, does any of what you do turn
• 46:40
  into something that would be part of a paid ad series or campaign?
• 46:44
  Or is it primarily, You just, that's, that's just part
• 46:47
  of the secret sauce I would imagine to push things out.
• 46:50
  But your main focus is on just creating that content.
• 46:54
  Yeah, I mean, uh, that's a great question.
• 46:56
  And when we say we make content, not ads, we're not thinking
• 47:00
  necessarily about distribution channels alone, right?
• 47:03
  The way to, the way, to sort of think about this, and maybe that'll
• 47:07
  help as a distinction is that the core content that we're making is
• 47:12
  not just going to be doing one thing, which is to tell you, go check
• 47:17
  out this product at this price point and sort of deliver just that.
• 47:21
  And here's like a, uh, 20 percent discount code.
• 47:26
  We're not in the business of that messaging.
• 47:29
  We are talking about making content that inherently has value for
• 47:34
  the viewer, that intrinsically either delivers entertainment or
• 47:40
  education or inspiration, some value to the viewer by itself that
• 47:45
  is not tied to a particular product or a particular brand offering.
• 47:51
  That's our core when we think about content,
• 47:53
  that there is intrinsic value for the viewer.
• 47:56
  Whether you go ahead and take action after watching
• 47:59
  that video is a secondary piece of the puzzle.
• 48:02
  So that's our core.
• 48:03
  The first sort of like way to think about content, not ads.
• 48:06
  And the other thing is we have separated distribution strategies,
• 48:12
  promotion strategies from how we think about content in some ways.
• 48:16
  We first sort of figure out, okay, There are many
• 48:21
  ways to get to the goals that we're looking at.
• 48:24
  That doesn't necessarily mean that we need to
• 48:27
  compromise on the core content that we're making.
• 48:30
  We will, we believe that we can make really, really smart
• 48:33
  content that can then get distributed through organic and paid
• 48:37
  channels that can then live inside of a newsletter or an owned
• 48:43
  and operated website that can live across all of those spaces.
• 48:47
  But that content itself will offer value to the viewer.
• 48:52
  And I think that distinction sort of is a really freeing distinction
• 48:55
  for us because it allows us to explore creative for creative's sake
• 49:02
  before we have to sort of think about any of the other parameters,
• 49:06
  and that also makes our distribution strategies really well rounded
• 49:10
  because what we can do is, once we figure out, here's the objective,
• 49:15
  here's the story that we're looking to tell, here's the kind
• 49:18
  of creators that we're going to work with, here's how we
• 49:21
  think we're going to actually produce this piece of content.
• 49:24
  Now that we have all of this information in place, what are the
• 49:27
  best ways to get this in front of the people that need to see it?
• 49:31
  Whether that is through social promotion, whether that is through
• 49:36
  collab, sort of reel with a creator's Instagram, or whether that is
• 49:41
  through, Boosting it on IG, both of those opportunities are on the table.
• 49:46
  And I don't think that it is about one versus the other.
• 49:50
  In fact, in most of our distribution strategies, we try
• 49:53
  and do a complementary system where we sort of think
• 49:56
  about, here's the value that organic viewership will bring.
• 50:00
  And here's the value that paid viewership will bring.
• 50:03
  And ultimately, it goes down to something that I said
• 50:06
  earlier, which is around defining success, right?
• 50:08
  What does success look like?
• 50:10
  If success is scale to a brand, then we need to think about
• 50:15
  how, how will we deliver scale through organic channels alone?
• 50:19
  And then how will we deliver scale through organic plus paid channels?
• 50:24
  But if a brand's outcome or the brand's goals are what success looks
• 50:27
  like to them is around engagement, around really high retention metrics.
• 50:33
  Then we know that organic is the way to go, and we're not
• 50:37
  going to be proposing paid in that distribution strategy.
• 50:40
  So it really is a function of starting off from defining that what success
• 50:45
  looks like and then really taking that into all the different sort of
• 50:50
  avenues from production to distribution to creative to talent selection.
• 50:55
  So that when we're, when we are thinking about all of those
• 50:58
  decisions that we're making, it's tying back to that goal.
• 51:01
  So let's talk a little more meta now.
• 51:04
  What is, what is top of mind for the content creation industry right now?
• 51:10
  What are you, what are you thinking about as you look towards
• 51:12
  the end of the year, into 2025, what are those things?
• 51:16
  I mean, I'm coming fresh off of VidCon, which is the
• 51:21
  annual digital video creator conference that happens
• 51:24
  in Anaheim every year, been happening for 13 years.
• 51:28
  I think I may have been to about 10 of those.
• 51:32
  So been to, uh, yeah, I'm a, I'm a frequent VidCon attendee.
• 51:35
  One of the things that I always look forward to with VidCon,
• 51:39
  it happens every year in June.
• 51:40
  One of the things that I often look forward to is sort of this "eyes
• 51:45
  on the future" conversation, really thinking about what the next year
• 51:51
  with the next set of trends are and what's fun for someone who's been in
• 51:56
  the space for a while like me to evaluate in that moment is how so much
• 52:02
  is changing constantly because we're in where the clear economy is a
• 52:05
  space of change and constant evolution and yet so much remains the same.
• 52:11
  We are still talking Lonely Girl, like we're 15 years
• 52:15
  in and we're so we literally just connected on that.
• 52:18
  And I think it's a, it's an interesting reminder of how much is changing and
• 52:23
  how rapidly the space is evolving but also how there are core fundamental
• 52:29
  truths that continue to be relevant and will continue to be relevant.
• 52:33
  One of the conversations as you can imagine this year was around the perils and
• 52:38
  possibilities with AI, and that is top of mind for a lot of people in the space.
• 52:45
  Not as much for me, and not as much for Portal-A.
• 52:49
  We are a human first company.
• 52:53
  No, it's just, it's, it's a strange time to be, you know, saying how
• 52:59
  you're thinking about your creative process, but I think we're at a,
• 53:03
  we're at an inflection point on this around businesses that, that.
• 53:10
  So basically companies are in the business of content solutions.
• 53:14
  I think there's an interesting moment that we're in there.
• 53:17
  There's a lot of conversation happening around scaling content making,
• 53:23
  around how do you simplify different elements of making content today.
• 53:29
  How do you work with a lot of creators?
• 53:31
  How do you translate and dub content at scale?
• 53:36
  And for a lot of those conversations, AI is a huge piece of the puzzle.
• 53:41
  Trying to figure out how we could do translations better with AI.
• 53:45
  How we can do data analysis better with AI.
• 53:48
  How we can do trend analysis better with AI.
• 53:52
  How can we do projections for performance better with AI.
• 53:55
  So there is a huge sort of space that, that has opened up, that
• 53:59
  has, that has sort of really become a high growth area within
• 54:03
  the creator ecosystem, which is around this space of figuring out
• 54:07
  how AI solutions can help support the process of making content.
• 54:13
  I think the second parallel sort of like stream that that's
• 54:16
  big right now is over the last three to four years, short form
• 54:21
  content has become the thing that all the hype is built around.
• 54:25
  It is, if a brand is not on TikTok, then is the brand even relevant today?
• 54:30
  If a brand is not doing X, Y, and Z on IG Reels, then does that even count?
• 54:36
  And it is an interesting moment that we're in where I finally
• 54:39
  feel like there is a little bit more of a balanced approach that
• 54:44
  I heard a lot more marketers talk about this year at VidCon.
• 54:48
  And we at Portal-A are seeing that happen across all our projects where
• 54:53
  we're realizing that it is no longer a function of, or in fact, it
• 54:57
  has never really been a function of operating on one or the other or
• 55:02
  operating only to sort of like chase the hype of a particular platform.
• 55:07
  It has always been, and it's very clear, the writing is very clear on the
• 55:11
  wall, that it is about diversifying how and where you meet your audiences.
• 55:17
  And that is going to be key to longevity, to thinking about your
• 55:23
  dependence on a single platform or a single distribution approach
• 55:26
  for a creator or for a brand is simply not something that can,
• 55:32
  that, that can build a foundation for long, long term success.
• 55:36
  And that vision is so interesting, right?
• 55:38
  Like that, that's the one that you're like, you almost feel is, So intuitive,
• 55:43
  like it feels really obvious and yet we're having this conversation because when
• 55:48
  a platform like TikTok happens, which completely takes up all attention and all
• 55:54
  mind share, it is hard to talk about a more balanced approach to that platform,
• 56:00
  or it is hard to talk about how do you balance it out with everything else
• 56:04
  that's part of your audience engagement, audience development, um, strategy.
• 56:10
  Now, I think we're finally seeing that hype settle down.
• 56:13
  Some of this is of course, coming from the fear of a TikTok ban,
• 56:17
  the fear of a potential bad scenario, but I think it's also because
• 56:22
  brands have realized that there is no, and creators have realized
• 56:26
  this by the way, before brands did, that there is no substitute
• 56:30
  for long form content when it comes to community building.
• 56:35
  What you are doing with a podcast is long form
• 56:38
  content, and that's how your community is being built.
• 56:42
  Imagine a world where all you did were 30 second snippets, like that, right?
• 56:49
  You see my eyes getting wide.
• 56:51
  I'm like, no, I, yeah, no.
• 56:55
  And I hear you.
• 56:57
  And, and I, and I think creators who've done both, who've done sort
• 57:00
  of the short form game only so far are beginning to figure out how
• 57:05
  to do long form and creators of long form over years and years have
• 57:10
  dabbled in short form and I figured out what the value is and where
• 57:14
  we are right now is a really good spot because we know whether you're
• 57:19
  thinking as a creator, as a brand, there's room for both in your
• 57:23
  audience building strategies and your community building strategies.
• 57:27
  And they both play distinct roles that are
• 57:30
  not necessarily replaceable by the other.
• 57:33
  And I think that is a really important
• 57:35
  conversation that we're in, that we're having.
• 57:38
  And the third one that I would I'd point out
• 57:40
  is sort of this idea of owning your audiences.
• 57:44
  It's again, something that we've seen through the, the
• 57:47
  website era, the blog era, the, the whole, the whole
• 57:51
  sort of like ownership era, and then platform happened.
• 57:54
  And we basically, both on the brand side and the creator side, we've
• 57:59
  sort of like, just given up on the idea of owning your own audience.
• 58:02
  It's all sort of platform dependent until the point that whether
• 58:07
  through the newsletter boom or through some of the podcast stuff that
• 58:12
  happened, or even through more recently creators figuring out that
• 58:17
  they could build alternative spaces that are more owned and curated
• 58:21
  by them, even if it is built on a platform like Discord or a platform
• 58:26
  like Patreon, there is This impetus to figure out how we can build
• 58:31
  closer, deeper, long term relationships within our community that'll
• 58:37
  actually be with your core audience, your super fans, your primaries.
• 58:43
  They are, this is the audience that's willing
• 58:45
  to pay for the content that they're getting.
• 58:47
  This is the audience that's willing to sort of engage with you
• 58:50
  in a way that's far deeper, and that, to me, is a really exciting
• 58:54
  opportunity because it sort of opens up the door to say the platforms
• 58:59
  are all doing a great job of helping you reach a wider audience.
• 59:04
  And then you do sort of this parallel stream of owning
• 59:08
  and building your superfans, your core communities, and
• 59:12
  that in tandem, then is a strategy for the long term.
• 59:17
  You literally just described something we have
• 59:19
  at HumblePod called the Listener Life Cycle.
• 59:22
  Okay.
• 59:23
  So thank you for that validation, again.
• 59:25
  It's always, it's always great to hear when people like align with what we've
• 59:28
  been producing and creating and trying to preach to our audience for a while.
• 59:32
  But yeah, it's, it's very much that exact same thing.
• 59:35
  And I think that's the battle we're fighting
• 59:36
  is like, you can't rely on one network.
• 59:39
  TikTok might follow fall tomorrow.
• 59:41
  X could break up because of Elon Musk's poor management of the service.
• 59:46
  Like anything could happen, and you'd be out an audience.
• 59:50
  The thing I try to point people to right now as a baseline, it's like,
• 59:52
  get email addresses, find a way to have that community and communicate.
• 59:56
  Because even in podcasting, like there have been some horror
• 59:59
  stories from Spotify where people are on Spotify for Podcasters.
• 1:00:03
  They put out their show and then Spotify's algorithm targets them for
• 1:00:07
  an illogical reason and deletes their entire show off the platform.
• 1:00:11
  And you just can't rely on content to be everything.
• 1:00:16
  You have to have an audience.
• 1:00:17
  You have to have those super fans.
• 1:00:18
  And they're also the ones that are going to help you grow the fastest too.
• 1:00:20
  I mean, social media is social.
• 1:00:22
  Word of mouth still matters.
• 1:00:24
  And especially for social content, you want to create those moments
• 1:00:27
  where people can engage with it, and by engaging that core audience
• 1:00:31
  first, I think that's where that's where you grow the best.
• 1:00:34
  And that's what we try to push our customers towards.
• 1:00:35
  So.
• 1:00:37
  Thank you for, for confirming, essentially.
• 1:00:41
  I'm happy to.
• 1:00:42
  I mean, and you, you experience this on the daily, like you are having
• 1:00:46
  these conversations, you're in, you're in these rooms where you're sort
• 1:00:49
  of trying to balance out platform dependence with audience ownership.
• 1:00:54
  And, and it is a balance.
• 1:00:55
  I don't, I don't think there is a one size fits all
• 1:00:58
  approach for every creator or every brand out there.
• 1:01:01
  But I think as long as every creator and brand is having that conversation.
• 1:01:06
  I feel we we're, we're landing at a place that feels more
• 1:01:10
  sustainable, more, more than anything else, honestly.
• 1:01:14
  Absolutely.
• 1:01:15
  Well, Addy, it's been awesome having this conversation.
• 1:01:19
  I wish we could talk for another hour.
• 1:01:20
  I may have you back for a part two at some point.
• 1:01:22
  This has been really fun.
• 1:01:23
  I always ask one question when we're wrapping up.
• 1:01:25
  I'm actually going to break this into two this time.
• 1:01:27
  I did not tell you we were going to do two, but
• 1:01:29
  I think you'll understand why here in a second.
• 1:01:31
  I always ask, you know, at the end of the conversation, since this
• 1:01:33
  is a branding podcast, what brand do you admire the most right now?
• 1:01:38
  There's a few different brands, honestly, that come to mind.
• 1:01:40
  I have been incredibly sort of just surprised by what
• 1:01:47
  Duolingo has managed to do over the last few years.
• 1:01:50
  It is a pretty rare scenario for a brand
• 1:01:55
  to build a human tone and not [be cringe.
• 1:02:01
  It is not an easy balance between to strike the right humor tone, to strike the
• 1:02:08
  right brand tone and still be sort of relatable and part of the conversation
• 1:02:14
  and not someone that's trying to insert themselves in the conversation.
• 1:02:20
  So to me, Duolingo has done a really good job in many ways of building
• 1:02:25
  a social brand around them that feels like it can occupy social spaces
• 1:02:30
  authentically, natively to those spaces without coming off with the
• 1:02:35
  whole, "we are a brand" approach of things, which is often the way I think
• 1:02:40
  a lot of brands approach social branding and social media in general.
• 1:02:45
  So to me, Duolingo is one that comes to mind.
• 1:02:48
  I'm also a huge fan of When We All Vote, Michelle
• 1:02:54
  Obama's voting registration drive organization.
• 1:02:57
  I think the, They do so much good sort of ground level work.
• 1:03:01
  Like they're really doing actual work of bringing communities together, of
• 1:03:08
  bringing people to register, to vote, to canvas, to do the door-to-door.
• 1:03:14
  It's the hard work.
• 1:03:15
  It's the, it's not the, it's not just the glamorous work.
• 1:03:19
  It's the hard work.
• 1:03:21
  And I think they've done a really good job of building a brand that sort
• 1:03:25
  of like does that kind of ground level work and sort of like goes up from
• 1:03:30
  there versus just thinking about the credibility and the, and the celebrity
• 1:03:36
  that someone like having a founder like Michelle Obama would bring to you.
• 1:03:41
  Um, so I think they've done a good job of,
• 1:03:43
  of sort of building a brand outside of that.
• 1:03:46
  Okay.
• 1:03:47
  Yeah, those are, I mean, Duolingo.
• 1:03:49
  Oh my gosh.
• 1:03:50
  They're, they're hilarious.
• 1:03:52
  Like they're, they do a really good job of like being very
• 1:03:55
  self-aware and knowing how to push boundaries and do weird things.
• 1:04:00
  And they show up in places you would never expect them.
• 1:04:03
  I saw them, there's this Instagram channel, my wife and I follow.
• 1:04:06
  My kids love it.
• 1:04:07
  They called meetquack, and it's these animated ducks and Duolingo showed up.
• 1:04:11
  The character showed up and it was part of a sponsored
• 1:04:14
  ad deal that was also sponsoring some video game.
• 1:04:17
  And I was like, I don't know how this came together, but it's beautiful.
• 1:04:19
  It's amazing.
• 1:04:20
  It was just a really clever brand tie in that they did
• 1:04:23
  with these characters living their, these little duckies
• 1:04:26
  living their lives together as a couple, and it's amazing.
• 1:04:30
  It sounds like a perfect partnership, right?
• 1:04:32
  Like it doesn't even sound like weird or, or in any which way inauthentic.
• 1:04:38
  That sounds like a great partnership for Duolingo.
• 1:04:41
  Yeah.
• 1:04:41
  Yeah.
• 1:04:42
  The, the duck brought in the Duolingo owl to the house and he was
• 1:04:47
  learning Japanese and the, and the girlfriend is sitting over here
• 1:04:50
  dreaming about how they're going to go to Japan and tour Japan
• 1:04:53
  and all that and they end up going to an anime convention instead.
• 1:04:57
  Okay.
• 1:04:57
  I need to check this out.
• 1:04:58
  This sounds adorable.
• 1:05:00
  It is super adorable and our kids love it, which
• 1:05:03
  is a big reason why, why it comes up so often.
• 1:05:06
  So anyways, um, so second, second follow up here is just, we talked
• 1:05:11
  about brands, but since we've talked so much about YouTube today, I
• 1:05:13
  want to know what channel or what creator do you most admire right now?
• 1:05:18
  Well, there is only one right answer, and that answer is Hank Green.
• 1:05:24
  And the reason is, well, Hank is a multi-talented, multi-hyphenate, you
• 1:05:31
  know, all of that, but the part that, that I cannot, cannot sort of just
• 1:05:39
  get over when it comes to someone like Hank is he's been making content
• 1:05:43
  for 10 plus years at this time, maybe close to 15 years at this point.
• 1:05:47
  And he's one of the most prolific creators I have ever come across
• 1:05:53
  who consistently makes incredibly high quality stuff, and everything
• 1:05:59
  that you watch with Hank in it, you see their persona come through.
• 1:06:03
  You see who they are and their core values shine.
• 1:06:08
  That they are funny and goofy and weird and weirdly obsessed with science
• 1:06:14
  happens in every single piece of content that you're going to see them in.
• 1:06:18
  And then you're also going to see how deeply they think about the
• 1:06:22
  problems that are in front of us and how to make this world suck less
• 1:06:25
  for people and how to think about doing good with their platform.
• 1:06:30
  They In, in so many ways, Hank Green and, um, his brother, John, uh,
• 1:06:36
  again, also a huge fan, but like if I had to pick one, I'd say Hank.
• 1:06:41
  Hank is also really interesting because he's one of those few
• 1:06:44
  creators from the OG YouTube group in my opinion, who really
• 1:06:48
  managed to figure out how to make every new platform work.
• 1:06:53
  Their ability to experiment on TikTok, their ability
• 1:06:57
  to figure out how to build an audience on Twitter.
• 1:07:01
  I refuse to call it X.
• 1:07:04
  It's one of those weird hills to die on.
• 1:07:06
  But like, here we are.
• 1:07:08
  I'm with you most of the time.
• 1:07:09
  I actually don't know why I said X earlier.
• 1:07:11
  I was like, why did you say that?
• 1:07:12
  You always call it Twitter.
• 1:07:13
  But anyways,
• 1:07:14
  uh, Chris, it's, uh, it's, you know, it's the,
• 1:07:16
  it's the branding brain . It's coming Twitter.
• 1:07:19
  It's a terrible brand.
• 1:07:20
  You wouldn't talk about a case study in the worst branding decision of all time.
• 1:07:25
  Anyways, sorry.
• 1:07:26
  No, there's going to be a course around how not to brand and
• 1:07:29
  X is going to be like the, the poster child of that course.
• 1:07:33
  So I, I completely agree with you, but yeah, I mean the power with,
• 1:07:38
  I think the reason I'm completely in awe of what Hank's managed
• 1:07:42
  to do is they've managed to build a community on every platform
• 1:07:46
  they go, and it's very, very hard to build a community on TikTok.
• 1:07:50
  It's very hard to build a community on X that
• 1:07:53
  is not, or Twitter, that is not fully toxic.
• 1:07:56
  And they've managed to do an exceptional job.
• 1:07:58
  And I think it's because of who they are and the audience that they attract
• 1:08:03
  and then how they nurture that community to actually be warriors for good.
• 1:08:08
  Like they've managed to, the community that Hank and John
• 1:08:11
  run is called Nerdfighteria, and I am a proud Nerdfighter,
• 1:08:16
  and just, it's sort of like, is, it's a, it's a confluence
• 1:08:19
  of all the things that I aspire to be in my personal life.
• 1:08:23
  So yeah, Hank.
• 1:08:25
  Hank is the answer, Chris.
• 1:08:27
  He is a really cool creator.
• 1:08:29
  I've seen his work all over the place.
• 1:08:31
  I've admittedly haven't probably paid as much attention to him, but
• 1:08:35
  I definitely see him come up on my feeds, come up in my content,
• 1:08:39
  probably says something about me that he keeps coming up and showing up.
• 1:08:42
  So I should probably look into it more, but
• 1:08:44
  that's, that's a, that's definitely a good answer.
• 1:08:47
  Well, Aditi, thank you so much.
• 1:08:48
  This has been a great conversation today.
• 1:08:51
  As I said, I've loved it.
• 1:08:52
  Can't wait to hopefully have you back on at some point,
• 1:08:54
  but for today, where can people connect with you?
• 1:08:57
  Where can they find out more about Portal-A?
• 1:08:59
  You should check out Portal-A on Portal-A's website.
• 1:09:03
  Maybe I can send you the link and then it'll be in the show notes.
• 1:09:06
  And for me, I am on LinkedIn.
• 1:09:09
  I am on IG.
• 1:09:11
  I am on email, old school, stuff like that.
• 1:09:14
  I've said this before, I'm still, I've been on LinkedIn for maybe 15 years
• 1:09:18
  now, and I'm still trying to figure out how to make that platform work for me.
• 1:09:22
  So if you have any hot tips for me on LinkedIn, I'm here.
• 1:09:26
  I am listening, but yeah, I'm happy to connect with people on LinkedIn.
• 1:09:31
  Talk.
• 1:09:31
  Some of, some good friends have been found there.
• 1:09:34
  So yeah, that's where I'm found.
• 1:09:37
  You should also check out Portal-A on IG.
• 1:09:40
  Our IG has been interesting and we're trying to sort of get
• 1:09:44
  a little bit more into the game of making fun stuff on there.
• 1:09:48
  Nice.
• 1:09:48
  I noticed, side note, Colin, Samir commented.
• 1:09:51
  Name dropped Portal-A.
• 1:09:52
  I'm a big Colin and Samir fan, so that was, that was
• 1:09:56
  a cool thing as I was looking through your socials.
• 1:09:57
  We'll definitely have all that in the show notes.
• 1:10:00
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:10:01
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:10:01
  That was actually a really fun reference.
• 1:10:03
  It's from the interview that Colin and Samir did with the Try Guys.
• 1:10:07
  The Try Guys actually said that when they were thinking about
• 1:10:10
  sort of like, re-evaluating what "Try Guys 2" looks like.
• 1:10:15
  What their next iteration looks like.
• 1:10:16
  They wanted to do something similar to what Portal-A has done,
• 1:10:20
  which is to be sort of like a core content company and sort of
• 1:10:24
  like being able to work with brands, being able to work with
• 1:10:27
  creators, but not as mediators, as innovators in the space.
• 1:10:32
  And yeah, it's a.
• 1:10:34
  It's exactly who we are as a company.
• 1:10:38
  Awesome.
• 1:10:39
  Well, Addy, thank you so much for coming on.
• 1:10:41
  You, it was lovely talking, Chris.
• 1:10:44
  Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:10:45
  Looking forward to the next time.
• 1:10:48
  Thanks for checking out this episode of We Built This Brand.
• 1:10:51
  Don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe on your player of choice.
• 1:10:54
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• 1:10:59
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• 1:11:03
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