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Creator Generation brings you behind the scenes of the creator economy, featuring top YouTubers and digital experts who share the strategies, lessons, and stories behind building successful channels, growing incredible businesses, and driving the world’s biggest online video successes.
Hey, I'm Fred. And I'm It. And this is Creator Generation
Music:Creator Generation of hype.
Fred:Welcome back to Creator Generation. In part one, Mario pulled back the curtain on what the biggest creative businesses actually look like from the inside. And spoiler, it wasn't as polished as we think. Now in part two, we're getting into the specifics. Revenue mix, what it takes to build the real business behind the content, and what Mario learned running operations at the very top of the creator economy.
Fred:Let's get back into it.
Fred:So when you stepped into some of the bigger creator businesses, let's say examples like the Stoke twins, I think people are always curious what the revenue mix looks like with those channels. Like, where are they earning their money from? Is it one source, two sources, three sources? What does a a revenue mix typically look like?
Mario:I'll be honest. In many cases, there's I I would say there's two variants with most with all of the channels that I work with. There's two variants. The first variant is the, I would call it the ninetyten. 90% is AdSense and 10% is sponsorships.
Mario:Now why is it only 10% sponsorships? They'll work with like a amateur agency that makes a lot of promises it doesn't deliver, or maybe brands are not willing, or the the deal size is not that big, or any of those kind of things. So that's one slice that most creators that I work with, they have that one. The other slice, I would say typically goes towards 30 to 40% is AdSense. And then the remaining 60 to 70% tends to be sponsorships.
Mario:Now that's for the majority of creators. I would say almost all creators that I have, they have those. Even though they're big creators, they could be further. Now there's a few, I mean, I've worked with creators before that one of them had an app, for example. Then the whole machine turns, by the way, because then it's like 10% or like 10% is AdSense.
Mario:Their sponsorships, they're taking way less sponsorships at that point. Like, let's say 5% of the sponsorships and the remaining 85% now becomes in app purchases or product and stuff. But that's typically when you do it like a SaaS product. Now this is also where you hear all these people say like, oh, you get the plushies and you get the t shirts. I can tell you I have not seen a single creator so far when they do generic merch where the merch takes up a significant chunk of their revenue.
Mario:There might be the oddball out there, but merch is terrible. I hate merch. Like how many people are looking for another t shirt? Many people aren't. Now once you go into more exclusive merch, that's when things start to change a little bit.
Mario:So let's say you got like a full mystery bag, goodie bag. That's when, you know, it starts to take a bigger chunk. Or for example, it's, I think Mark Rober does these, like, these boxes that you get every single month. And these are more like curiosity box. I think it's actually it might be something called curiosity.
Mario:Those, they do start to bring in significant revenue, and sometimes the cost isn't even that high. But those do take more time to build up and stuff. So there's different distributions. I would say that most creators are still at ninety, ten, where it's just the odd sponsorship and everything is that sense. Then some people have woken up and they start to realize like, hey, we can really we we really nail our sponsorship game, and then the majority takes our sponsorships.
Mario:Okay. Here's advice for sponsorships. Go above and beyond every single time, even if it feels like you're giving more than they paid for. Because what that does is you have the odd brand that is willing to do more, that's willing to sign for more, that really likes you. And repeat customers for sponsorships, that's where the money's at.
Mario:That brand that is now willing to pay $20,000 for a million views, they tomorrow, because just because they like it, they might pay you, like, 50,000. Or, hey. They they really like what you're doing. They want to customize. They go to a 100,000 or more.
Mario:I've seen this time and time again, and people forget about that. But, you know and the reason why I say that from slice two where it's mostly sponsorships to slice three where a lot of it comes from business and there's less sponsorships is because people realize like, hey. I can sell this million views for $20,000, or I can sell my own product. And then even with the profits from that one, that will generate, let's say, $40,000 guaranteed. And you have a brand deal every video at that point.
Fred:Yeah.
Mario:Plus you don't seem like the guy that promotes every brand and you're using all products. Now you're using just your own product, which you can support. That's also the reason why that that is, like, the ultimate step, I would say.
Fred:And, look, you mentioned before that the revenue mix isn't great with a lot of creators. You got brand deals. You got on platform revenue. We're finding obviously in an age of a lot of short form content where that is the most accessible sources of revenue to them, the on platform advertising. And then brand deals because brands are so comfortable now with with working with short form creators.
Fred:We call them, you know, very thin views. So a lot of short form creators are creating very thin viewership because they might be getting eyeballs, but, you know, if you're watching four or 500 videos in a session on a in a short form, how much do you actually absorb? So while brands can still find that valuable to have that impact or that that impression, it's hard to develop a more diversified revenue model. Realistically, for a creator to grow past a certain stage to become sustainable, is there a certain revenue mix they need in terms of at least a certain or minimum amount of revenue sources? Or is brand deals and ad revenue enough?
Mario:No. I think you can start at any stage really. I mean, you you just diversification is more a matter of time. Like how much time can you put into this one? The thing is, I guess, you don't need to Yeah, for brand deals, you could hire yourself an in house brand manager and he's gonna cost you a retainer of 4 or 5 ks per month and then the commission as well.
Mario:But you also have agencies that are like that just work on commission. You have that with every single thing, unless it's as well. Instead of like investing in product, find the white label and just say like, hey, you do all that kind of stuff. And I just put my label on it. And then I take a royalty fee.
Mario:So it depends on what stage you're at. But if you're at the smaller stages, you're probably going to have to give up a lot of the luxury of you're going to have to give up that short term earnings or the long term earnings. Long story short, if you're alone and you cannot afford even an editor, that doesn't mean that you cannot diversify yet. There's affiliate deals, which is like a very Affiliate deals are a very simple one. Let's say you showcase a lot of products.
Mario:You're a person who does a lot of vlogging and you just bought a new lamp. Let's say in that video you're like, okay, I'm gonna do vlogging. And for this twenty seconds, I'm gonna say like, hey, I bought this new lamp. Looks really cool in my house. Also, by the way, I found this on Amazon.
Mario:I'll put a link in the description. Bam, you've got yourself your affiliate cost. Like at any stage, can think about expanding your revenue sources.
Fred:Yeah. So you're not, even if you're a small credit or a short form credit, you're not locked into just brand deals and ad revenue.
Mario:Absolutely, absolutely. If anything, there are certain stages that brand deals are terrible. I think if you're a micro creator, like a really, really meany one, I don't like brand deals. Your fair rate is like a 100 to $200. At that point, you're selling yourself for what?
Mario:A 100? I mean, you're not selling yourself, but you're associating yourself with a brand for $200. Not the biggest fan of that one. And also at the bigger stages also, brand deals become a problem because how many brands have $500,000 laying around? Nobody just has that laying around.
Mario:These guys are like, oh, you're doing something cool. Here's $500,000 No, these become like month long conversations and so much paperwork and all kind of stuff. So I would say at the smallest level and the absolute biggest level, brand deals already become a problem.
Fred:Look. Speaking of the biggest level, you've obviously worked with Beast. Working in that team, what did it show you is possible from a revenue point of view? I mean, he must have an extremely diversified range of revenue sources. But looking at that, did you ever go and look at something and go, wow.
Fred:That is really interesting or really innovative?
Mario:I always refer back to the story. But at some point, there was a night. Me, Jimmy, and one of his I believe this person is still there. One of his colleagues, let's call it like that. I'm keeping it vague because I don't want to put anybody on the spot.
Mario:We were sitting in the back of his house, and I saw the way that Jimmy talked about the chocolate industry. And to this day, that still resonates with me. And he was telling me about like, man, it's a tough business, but it's a billion dollar industry. And you got to think, many people now look at that and was like, oh yeah, you're all over the world. You have all this chocolate and all kind of stuff.
Mario:But they don't think about those early conversations of it's just a dream. Earlier we had this conversation about me being like, I want to be the best strategist. And that's just a dream. And I think if you're going to do something, just think in that direction. So for example, and now I have to be careful because I don't want to expose any strategies that we're currently working on.
Mario:But there's one creator I'm working with right now. And we looked at a very saturated market. So I'm gonna use a different market, but let's say gardening. And we think, oh, there's all these gardening tools already. There's all these machines, these tractors and stuff.
Mario:Now you look at that and you're like, man, that's already saturated market. I cannot do anything there. But you as a creator, people respect you more than the brand. Like you have no idea how much power your brand has if you respect it. And that is free advertising that you didn't have to pay a single dollar for.
Mario:You had to just pay for your content. So you have to then think in that market, what can we call it like doing damage? What kind of damage can I do here? In reality it's like what market share can I take? And you'd be surprised how big the market share is that you can often take even if you're not that massive of a creator.
Mario:There's people with a million subscribers who have a huge chunk of certain markets. Again, that comes back to the Jimmy thing. Like you have this creator that says, I'm gonna dominate the chocolate market. A market that was deemed impenetrable. And he still did it.
Mario:I mean, doesn't have the biggest market share, but he still has it, you know. And that's the I really advise everybody to go in into that mentality.
Fred:Interesting. Speaking of, you know, niche providing and building your own niche and using your star power or your fandom to to and your brand power to actually sell products, is there a particular type of revenue that creators leaving on the table? Is it products, for instance, like not enough creators doing products? Is there something you've looked at and go, oh, it's membership, it's products, it's, I don't know, some sort of services? Is there something that a lot of creators just leaving on the table they should be focusing on?
Mario:You actually mentioned the one. I think it's two things. I think it is product and services. No, actually it's product services and SaaS.
Fred:Can you just define that so everyone understands what that is?
Mario:So, yeah. So SaaS in this case, that's good that you tell me, is like an app. Like you have an app that you create or like a website that people can regularly interact with. Not a one off, but regularly interact with. For example, your fitness channel, meal plans, done.
Mario:If you're somebody giving advice about interior, well, quick picture, you can use AI, for example, and it's envisioning certain thing. You can insert products. You are a roofer, you know, an app that just shows all the roofing companies. Whatever it is, I think that's where there's a lot of opportunity. When it comes down to products, this is where it gets trickier because you need to understand your audience.
Mario:Products is not just a t shirt. No cares about the T shirt with their logo. As much as you think they do, I'll say this. I once had somebody who pulled in over 100,000,000 views per month. Videos would score over a million.
Mario:We did a T shirt sale. We sold two samples. We're not talking about 2,000. We're not talking about 200. We're talking about two.
Mario:You tell me. And that was somebody who thought they had a very strong audience. With product, it's typically either you really succeed or you absolutely flop and it was a waste of money. So you got to be clever with it and you really got to understand your audience. I think there's huge opportunity, but it's a very, very difficult market.
Mario:Also, people think about foods like, for example, gummies or chocolates and drinks and stuff. There it's a tough market to get into. Because you don't just have to get the taste right, but also your margins are so, so small.
Fred:And how do you then do you differentiate with products as a creator? How do you do something that has value to the audience?
Mario:So here's what I do. Actually, this is a trick that I do. Sometimes I go to a local mini store, and I look at the products and I see, okay, what's the variety of products? What do they do differently from each other? And often they just taste.
Mario:Let's say you take chips. A lot of times you take, don't know if globally it's called chips, some people call it crisps, paprika, salt, there's that. You have all these kind of things. Yeah. And then you get your Pringles scan.
Mario:You know? But Pringles is unique from all the other ones. So Pringles is something. Right? They're unique already.
Mario:Now recently I walked into a store and what they had is like, you know that you have the dip and then you gotta put the chips in there? And then there was one box that had the dip and the chips all included. And it had this nice pocket that you could put the dip in and it almost felt like it was all prepared for you. I was like, I need. So by just designing how you utilize it, it was already unique.
Mario:So it increased the likelihood that somebody's going to buy it. Now I tasted it, it was poor quality. So now I'm like, hey, whatever can make a high quality ship that has the same design elements and then the support of a crater. That's fantastic. So that's something, for example, where I see opportunity.
Mario:But again, is it's really, really tough market. Because ever like a lot like it's companies with millions and millions of dollars are competing. The only thing that you have is exposure. So you need a good product that just people don't have the marketing for. This is also why it's also good.
Mario:And there's another thing is sometimes this is also an opportunity. You go to these local stores, not a big change, the local stores. And on the bottom of the shelf, see new product. These are often like a new company or like a distributor that is either trying a new product out. It's a small company that's at least their first product, but they don't instantly get the big shelf space.
Mario:This is how it typically works. So what you can then do is call them up and be like, hey. Look. You got the product. I got the eyes.
Mario:How about we collaborate? And that's how you can take significant percentages as well. It's it's a tactic I've done a few times now, and it it it works. They will listen. They will hop into a call with you, and you can get into negotiations fairly fast.
Mario:This is also this is very difficult, but you gotta understand pretty much how these stores decide who gets on what shelf and all those kind of things. Big brands often pay extra and all that kind of stuff. There's commission differences. So you gotta understand how that market works and then you can start figuring out what products might be worth for you to get into.
Fred:Interesting.
Mario:So I think, you know, I'm gonna give one example. Liquid Death. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of you have actually heard of that one. But for everybody not who doesn't know this, it's a water brand where they put water in something that looked like a beer can. And it was perfect.
Mario:You have all these generic plastic water bottles, and then you get this can that looks like it's like an energy drink or like a beer, but it's just water. And that caught the eye, and I I I know they did it very, very well for themselves. And they had really good water. Actually, honestly, their water was one of the best waters. And for anybody, by the way, this is actually good.
Mario:This is very important for this for this podcast. There are differences in water. Know? Very, very important in this conversation. There are water differences.
Mario:I can debate on that all day. Fair enough.
Fred:Look. Let's leave diversification for a minute. And I wanna talk a bit more about the mega creators, the big creators that you work with. I think a lot of people are particularly interested in how they run. I guess a lot of people don't understand what it takes to run a MrBeast or even, I guess, the Stokes twins or one of the big the big channels, mega creator businesses.
Fred:They're multifaceted. They have different elements to them. They have different divisions. But I'm keen to understand what goes into it. What do those companies look like?
Fred:Are they cohesive teams that all work together? Are they very disparate where teams are all over the place? How does that work? Give an example maybe with Beast, for example.
Mario:We're gonna take a smaller example. We're gonna take an I'll tell you the structure of how the content team looks like first, and then we can talk about what's going on. So you have two layers. You have the content and then the management, I would say. So let's start with the content.
Mario:The typical team, what it looks like is that you separate it into four big stages, preproduction, production, postproduction, analytics, and strategy. So preproduction is all of the what is this video going to be. This is where you bring in ideators, what a lot of people use, your script writer, your researchers, and then your director is involved. The director is somebody who oversees every single part of the process. It's kind of like in a movie.
Mario:So that, okay, they take care of it. You get a video outline. You get an idea. You get a thumbnail. You get a title.
Mario:The thumbnail designer sometimes just fits in this one. Sometimes it's later. But you have the packaging. You know what you're gonna make now. That typically is just one team.
Mario:Sometimes people separate. They have an A team and a B team to work on one video and then another video. This really depends on the size that you are. Then you go to the second step, which is production. In production, this is where you have your producers.
Mario:Your producers, your cameraman, like we make this come to life. We look for the right location. We make sure everything is set up and all kind of stuff, and we film the entire thing. Great. We've got all that figured out.
Mario:Producers, they typically are oversee they work directly closely with the director who now has all the context from preproduction. And then they also work together with management to make sure for budget approval approvals, etcetera. The video is filmed. Now it goes into post production. In post production, this is where you have a whole range of setups.
Mario:The most basic complicated setup is about four editors. After production, you go into post production. Now in post production, the footage that you get from production goes towards an editor. This starts with an assistant editor. And I'm gonna explain the setup that is a little bit more comprehensive than the usual setup.
Mario:You can simplify from here just having one editor, but in the bigger teams, that's how it works. The assistant editor now syncs the footage, turns into an assembly potentially, and just put it all in the timeline so that then the more experienced editors can work on it. Then it goes to what we call a second editor. The second editor is the one who puts it together, puts some music and really works on it in a way that it feels pretty decent. It feels like inexperienced creator would upload something like this.
Mario:That's when a lead editor comes in and he does this final polish and he adds effects and he starts thinking about all of the voice lines as well and really starts adding those kind of things. And then together with Taiwan, he works with a VFX artist. And that VFX artist, they work on animations and the motion graphics to make sure that because lead editors, they're really good at music, for example, but then they might not be as good as motion graphics, so they'll hire an external person. So that's the post production team. Now in the post production team, sometimes you have something called a reviewer.
Mario:This is a strategist specifically with the expertise to leave notes on edits to make them even better. And then you go into the fourth stage, pretty much where you have the strategist. There's people like me, for example, come into play. You get your analysts, you get your researchers, you still have the director, but it's really focused on like, okay, how do we do? Then they're all overseen by what we call either a channel manager or another type of management role.
Mario:And this brings us to the management layer of stuff. This is where you have a lot of things. You have the creator who typically tends to run the company. They are accompanied typically by a right hand or sometimes what people call a head of content. Now that's where that's where the structure starts to go very, very complex sometimes because you'll have lawyers, you'll have accountants, you'll have CFOs.
Mario:Sometimes people do hire a CEO. You know, Dhar Mann is a famous example of somebody who has a CEO hired. You know, he has a CEO. I mean, I was a CEO at some point. So the structure and management, that's that really depends on the business.
Mario:You get your agents that you work with. But that's like in a in a nutshell, kind
Fred:of what the structure really looks Interesting. And obviously he's very involved. Is it hard to work with MrBeast and a MrBeast team?
Mario:When I was there, I liked it. There's times that I liked, times that I didn't like it. Let's put it like this. When it started growing bigger and everything became more systemized, it wasn't for me. But that's because I really like startup culture.
Mario:I'm a big fan of the person in preproduction also has a say in post. While I love the organization of things that I just explained, I myself love to really be involved in a lot of things. And when B started scaling and systemizing, I wasn't as involved anymore as I was before in all of these steps. And that's just it's just personally what I don't like. But I would say there's for certain people who like to if you like to work twenty four seven, the old structure works perfect at least.
Mario:If you're more like, hey. I have a family. Right now I have kids, so right now it would be better. And you wanna go to the office, do your thing, even if you're very passionate, and then actually come home at a reasonable time, then probably new structure is a lot better at that. You know?
Mario:You also have more way bigger HR stuff right now, And I know they they put a lot of effort and time into that one. So, you know, it's gonna be better if you if you want a safe workplace. But I I personally, I love the recklessness of of a workplace. It's just I don't know. It speaks to me.
Mario:And even though I have kids now, it really spoke to me back then.
Fred:Fair enough. You know, you touched on the fact that a lot of creators become the head of the business or the CEO of the business and not just the creator anymore. As, you know, Beast does, he basically runs not just the channel he runs. Beast, even with the CEO, he's still seen as a figurehead of it. I think it's a hard transition for a lot of creators as they see more success, as they scale, like you said, beyond just being an individual creator to having a team, to having a business, to having a media company.
Fred:You know, you've gone from someone who created something almost very intimate to someone who's now managing people who are creating sometimes on your behalf. That's a hard transition for a lot of creators, isn't it?
Mario:I would say so. I think most creators cannot do it. I mean, this is also where, for example, me and Stokes were on good terms. And I've always respected them and I always will respect them. But that's where we, for example, didn't fully see eye to eye is because once you hire a CEO, you're just giving out you're not just having somebody do some tasks for you.
Mario:You have assistants for that. You have managers for that. A CEO is when you're literally handing somebody the keys to your business. They are literally A CEO typically can choose who stays and who goes in your company. Who is good enough?
Mario:Who's not good enough? What's the direction? What are the moves that we're making? How are we changing things? That's a big thing to make.
Mario:And I think the reason why for a lot of creators that's very difficult is because they were the ones who grew to that success. And that's the reason why it's so hard is because when you've built all this, how are you supposed to trust the person to not destroy all that that has a person who has no context or often no experience growing a channel this big? Yeah. You know, because creators don't become CEO for other creators. They just stay creators.
Fred:And is it hard though to find CEOs that have that experience? But like you said, you're handing them over the keys to the business. Do they take over everything or do they just run the business side and the creators can still run the creative side?
Mario:So in the ultimate space, it's separate. Like, the CEOs run the business side and the creator runs the creative side. But it becomes a mess really. I mean, because the business side's often like, a sponsorship has certain requirements. That affects the content.
Mario:You have certain commitments right now, certain deadlines. And those deadlines also affect creative timelines and stuff. So they're they're gonna affect each other regardless. What a good CEO does, is a good CEO is not the one who is gonna try to change the content and stuff. A good CEO is like, hey.
Mario:Look. My job here is to make sure that the creator can stay talent and do what they're good at. Put them in their zone of genius and allow them all the space in the world to think while they don't have to worry about the annoying lawsuit that comes at them or the annoying brand that is being difficult or worried about budgeting or is this video gonna be too expensive or not? Like, don't have to worry about that anymore. They can it's it's freeing.
Mario:It should be freeing. And if it's not freeing, it's not either either one, there's not the right CEO. Two, there's just no mashing.
Fred:Yeah.
Mario:Right? So but CEO, I mean, this is for normal companies as well. CEO is is is one of the hardest hardest things to hire for.
Fred:Yeah. It's understandable, but it it is it is a little bit different for Creator, isn't it? Because they started something that never really started as a business. It started as a creative endeavor for many people. Their channels are that output of creativity and connection, And now they're saying to someone else, hey.
Fred:You look over the after the business part of it and sometimes even, you know, the structural part of it. And, you know, that takes a lot of trust. And I guess it's a fairly new job being a create a CEO for a creative company. That job didn't exist a few years ago. So it's probably a hard thing to find, isn't it?
Mario:It's extremely I mean, that's how I got into that role. It's like, was never a CEO. I mean, except for my own company, but it's it's not a massive company or anything like that. So I would compare this kind of similar to how musicians, they have managers. And the way that managers work in the music world, they make a lot of decisions for you.
Mario:So that's how I would see a CEO. It's kind of like a manager in the music business is what we call a CEO in the YouTube industry. But it's a lot of conversation. Think here's what I always say is like, you don't have to hire a CEO, but having a right hand, like, you don't even have to give them the hands of the business. Like, there's one creator called Food Crunch, and his brother became his COO, chief of operations.
Mario:So he takes care of all operational stuff while the creator could still take care of the bigger vision of the company. And that's also an amazing setup. But, yeah, having a right hand, even in my own company, I have a right hand. You know? He arranges things.
Mario:He goes to events. He he deals with he deals with bullshit that I don't wanna that I really don't wanna deal with. And, you know, he deals with that. And he loves to do that because he's like, for him, it's not he doesn't look at it like, oh, I have to do this this bullshit work. He's like, no.
Mario:If I do this one, that allows Mario to just, you know, do what he loves to do. And some people are really passionate about allowing you to do what you wanna do.
Fred:Yeah. That's really good. And have you seen any instances where it didn't work out and they had to reevaluate what they were doing?
Mario:I would say so. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you see MrBeast have gone through CEO swaps. Other big creators have gone through CEO swaps. Even, I mean, I came in at the Stokes.
Mario:Like, it like, we didn't fully match on the on on the vision. And also, like, I was a fractional CEO. That was I will say this was a big limitation. I was not willing to move all the way to LA. So as there was a ten hour difference.
Mario:You know? So we we tried to make it work, but it was like, if your CEO is ten hours away from where you are and running his own business and working with other people, I mean so clearly, there was differences there and and difficulties there and stuff. So it's very common. You see this actually even in big companies. People run through CEOs so much.
Mario:We hear about the apples and stuff that have CEOs for so long. But in many companies, CEOs come in, stay one to two years, and then they get replaced by another CEO. It's very, very common because it's just so difficult to find that CEO that exactly matches the vision, exactly has expertise, builds the culture. Like, there's so many things that need to be right. It's so difficult.
Mario:Not to scare people away, by the way. You know, it's it's like finding a partner for life. You know? Why like, it's it's like the force rates are so high. Why is that?
Mario:Because it's so difficult. Like, they need to be fun. They need to be loving. They need to be loving in the way that you want them to be loving. Like, it's the exact same thing going on here.
Fred:Obviously, staffing is important. Getting someone to run the business is important. The systems are important. But if, let's just say, a an established creator came to you tomorrow, let's say they have a million followers, and they're like, Mario, I've been doing this myself. I need help from a business point of view.
Fred:What is the first thing that you'd tell them?
Mario:Let's take a look at what you're currently doing, and I wanna understand how you run your operations right now. How do you think about your content? And let me not replace you with the things that you love to do. Often, this is also a problem. This is not just for business, but also people come in and they're like, Hey, I can take over the script writing.
Mario:But what if that's the reason why I'm passionate about content? Your number one thing as a person that gets approached is to figure out what is the thing that the person hates doing and why isn't that outsourced yet? That's the question. And then we look at affordability. Can they afford it?
Mario:And then once we understand those kinds of things, we can create like a plan. Like, okay, in three months, we give ourselves two months to kind of find this person and put that person in place. But initially it is not just like, oh, we're going get more people and it's going to solve the problems. Have one person, I took him on because he was a very controversial person. And I was like, okay, so he expounds in his team.
Mario:I was like, why is this team not running? It was a very, very small team. And turns out that the actual problem wasn't getting more people. It wasn't the right or wrong people. It was the way that this person was treating the people.
Mario:We could bring in the best of the best. Those people would leave within a month just because this person would be way too toxic towards them. So then it's like, okay, your personality, that's the issue. Let's first fix that one here. Let's first work on your attitude towards people, and only then we can start hiring people.
Mario:So the first step is always like observe what's currently going on and why is the situation the way it is. That's the most important. Situations always have a reason for what they are. Because yes, it's logical to hire, it's logical to expand, all that kind of stuff. But if it doesn't happen, there's a reason why.
Mario:In negotiation, there's this book called Never Split The Difference. I always recommend people that book. And they refer to something as the black swan. What's the information that might be obvious that you just don't know that you have to look for? What is the thing that the other person actually wants?
Mario:And sometimes that gives you the answers about understanding why are things the way they are.
Fred:I mean, look, we also you've talked a lot about working with people like MrBeast and you know, people see different parts of him on TV and on shows and on his channel. What do you think makes him so great? What do you think has driven the success he's had?
Mario:It's his ruthless push to get what he wants. And ruthless isn't, like, in a bad way. Ruthless is more that he won't stop. He he's absolutely obsessed with what he wants. And this is a commonality that you have with anybody who ever succeeds in anything.
Mario:They become extremely obsessed with that one thing. So for example, I'm extremely obsessed with retention. Jimmy's extremely obsessed with building the biggest content pieces, the most exciting stuff. You may be the most obsessed about helping people figure out the business side of things. But whatever you do, that's why people see like work life balance, they talk about that.
Mario:It's like, no, this becomes your life. You eat it, you sleep it. And yeah, I mean, it's I'll always say this. My birthday gift was a poster of a retention chart from my employees because they know I'm so obsessed with that. Here's the thing.
Mario:If you're not an obsessive person, does that mean you're gonna fail? No. It just start exposing yourself more. Because once start looking at something magical. There's a strict by the way, it's a little bit of self manipulation.
Mario:But if you every single day wake up, I love retention charts. Next day, I love retention charts. After day 10, you're going to love retention charts. It pushes you to push your mindset towards that one. And here's the other thing.
Mario:Okay, actually, one trick. A lot of people are like, yeah, but I struggle with motivation. It's even that I had. The reason why is because you may not be the person who's ambitious because I wanna achieve this, I wanna achieve this. One of the things is I wanna really be a very influential strategist who's done a lot more than just like a few tactics, right?
Mario:I can be like, I wanna be that. That doesn't inspire me to get out of bed in the morning. But if I tell myself every day, this is just what works for me. If I don't get out of bed and do this tomorrow, like today, sorry. If I don't get out of bed and I work on retention today, I will never achieve what I wanna achieve.
Mario:So it's more like a fear based motivation. And yeah, it comes with some stress, but it works really well for me to get me going. And a lot of high performance, they don't do all the work because they're ambitious and they wanna achieve something. It's because they're afraid that they won't achieve it.
Fred:And do you ever get a creator that has potential, and after talking to them, you just say, yeah. I can see you have potential, but I don't really think you're going go anywhere. Do you ever think that in the back of your mind? It's like there's something that is actually holding them back?
Mario:Typically, if you're a person that likes to believe in people, but yes, a lot of times I can tell from the first conversation I have somebody, I can just already tell they're not going to make And it's a very hard thing to say, but the reason why is typically because of the mindset that they're in. And here's what it is, is that that mindset is typically, they're more focused on making things feel good and preserving their ego and not willing to change. Those are the things that hold somebody back. And there are certain people that you know no matter how much you'll talk to them, they care more about their ego and the preservation of their beliefs than they care about the actual goal. And they say they care about the goal, but I always am like this.
Mario:Everything in life is a matter of values. And whatever you value most is always gonna take priority. You can say that you value something else more, but if you're being tested, that's when we can see what you truly value. And sometimes that's not aligned with your goals. So the only times that I do see that change is if a traumatic event happens to those people.
Mario:So let's say, for example, and it's gonna sound a little grim, but let's say that person lost a loved one close to them, and that loved one was the one who always supported them in that mission. And now they're like, man, I really wanna make them proud. I have to make this happen. So now they're like, you know what? I'm gonna let go of that ego because that ego isn't important anymore.
Mario:So their value the traumatic traumatic events are really good at doing this. They change people's value chains. And that's the that's the only hope that I have for those people. But then yeah. And sometimes you can induce a traumatic event, and that's what I sometimes try to do is which which sounds aggressive, but when I'm with those creators, I've I've done this, I think, a handful of times.
Mario:I sit there and I tell them, look. With everything you're doing, you're gonna absolutely fail. There's no hope for you with what you're doing right now, and you're never gonna achieve your goal ever. The like, now you could try to prove me wrong, but I know how you are as a person. So how about you and I'm I'm gonna use very aggressive language.
Mario:You could choose either you wake the fuck up and you get your goal or you or you stop with this stuff because it's not gonna happen. Because what you're trying to do is you're trying to create such a such a very vivid emotional experience that it almost serves as a traumatic event so that now their value chain might do this one, and they might actually achieve their goal. And they'll like, obviously, I'm not doing it to hurt them or create, like, a long term traumatic event, but I'm trying to cause change or significant change so they don't go into the iceberg they're heading towards regardless. This ain't a titanic. You know, we don't want them to sink.
Mario:We want them to succeed and sometimes that requires a heavy push.
Fred:So the converse of that is, do you ever meet a creator, even a small one, who you look at and go, this person is gonna succeed?
Mario:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. And that there's no better feeling than that one.
Mario:Sometimes, yeah, I got this I have these people like, I may have mentioned this, but there was these guys. They I mean, okay. Small creator. Okay. So sometimes people always score, like, a 100,000 views or even a million views.
Mario:They're still small relative to the big ones. But sometimes you have someone, and you're like, they're just a gem. Like, they've got the perfect personality. They've got the perfect attitude. They just don't have the knowledge yet.
Mario:They don't understand the direction yet. And that's actually, I would say that scenario happens very often. There's so many people with so much potential, but they're just lacking the knowledge. That's all they're lacking. They're lacking the understanding.
Mario:They haven't been exposed to the industry enough. Or maybe they're something that they thought they should be doing. In reality, they should have been doing what they thought in the first place. Or they've been misguided. They've had the scenario where strategists come in and they tell this person, Do this, do this.
Mario:And it's like, the strategist was just trying to keep you paying them for strategy calls. They weren't actually trying to help you. So those people, they were just misguided and they believed in people, but they never got the right advice. Now you're like, hey, just don't listen to half of that stuff. Just do what you're doing and let's optimize from there.
Mario:And, yeah, they become sometimes the biggest creators.
Fred:How do you know where to go to get good advice? I mean, there's a lot of advice on YouTube and other social video platforms and there's a lot of differing opinions. What do you know is right? What do you know is wrong?
Mario:I ask myself that question every single day. I got into this industry having a lot of false beliefs because I've been told, I listen to a lot of people who are deemed to be experts. I would say it's not to just rely on both creators and experts to get your knowledge. You have to go to do your own analysis, learn about correlations and do correlation analysis. Go into research papers, look at that one.
Mario:But if to you get good at figuring out what's right and wrong, you have to go do the analysis yourself because that way you're not influenced by other people's agenda. Because you have one agenda. It's to figure out what's right and what's like what is actually true true given or the data that you have. And once you do that, you have a base framework to work from. And now all the other truths, stack them up in there.
Mario:And when you hear everybody saying one thing, you ask why are they saying that one? And when somebody is saying something completely controversial, you don't go against that. Instead, you're like, wait, why is this person so controversial? Why are they so tough on their opinion? Now, there's also one trick is that there's so many opinions out there.
Mario:Figure out who is actually smart. This is the hardest one. But there's a bunch of really stupid people with big voices, and there's a bunch of smart people. And sometimes smart people really disagree with each other. That's the part where it gets interesting, because both of them are right, given the data that they have.
Mario:And that's where you can start doing your own analysis, see why does this person say that? Why does that person say that? And a lot of times what people do is they see two smart people arguing and they're like, I like this person more, therefore this person might be more correct. Or this person is more well versed, therefore he's more correct. Certain people, they will say something controversial, look into it, think about it, and then form your own opinion.
Mario:Right? That's kind of the gist. But yeah, there's no standardized education system. Good thing is that with my company, I'm trying to work on it. But when people are like, oh, when is it ready?
Mario:Like, yeah, we're probably two, three years out. You know? Because it's so it's a complex sphere. You know? We're I mean, I've talked about it with you as well.
Mario:It's like, for the last six years, we've been learning, learning, and we still learn every single day. So we're not ready for a full education system yet even in this industry. So it's gonna take a long while, but for now, do your own analysis. You know? Listen to everybody even if it's a controversial opinion and, make your own judgment.
Fred:Are there some strategists that you recommend people follow or listen to as part of that mix even if they have different opinions apart from yourself?
Mario:Hey. I'll take that. I like Marcus Jones. I like him. He's not like he doesn't work with a lot of the big, big creators, but especially with the newer creators.
Mario:I I I really respect him a lot. I think, you know, Putty, for example, for if if you're trying to get a general decent understanding, Putty is also spreading a lot of good ideas.
Fred:Putty Galloway.
Mario:Yeah. Putty Galloway. I know for a lot of people, especially if you're if you're more like a not an entertainment, more like a business person or like, I know there's a lot of people who respect Daryl Eves, they get a lot of their initial ideas from Daryl Eves. I always say like this, like, since you talked about this, I think Daryl Eves is a good entry point. Right?
Mario:It's like you're you're you're trying to get into it. You're trying to build your initial understanding. I I think he has some good things. Now you do move on from him at some point once you go into more advanced, and I think that's where party starts to be the first more advanced stuff. And then, you know, I'm I'm more about the really the specialization, the expertise.
Mario:For me, it's like you either one, you're a big creator, and that's when you get into my stuff, or you really just wanna know deep, deep, deep stuff and you you're just naturally a person who's very curious. But if you're trying to make it very tangible, very simple, I'm I'm not always the best person for that. Now I'm gonna make it overly complex, but that's because I really love to I love every single detail. So you have these type of stages. Now there's a lot of other people as well.
Mario:I mean, you've been you've been helping a lot of people as well, which I also like, and I I really respect what you're doing. That's also why every single time you can just ask me any any time to talk to you, and I'll I'll glad you jump on. Marcus Jones, he reveals a lot of information. And there's a there's a bunch of people. But no matter who you're listening to, even if it's me, you gotta be critical.
Mario:You gotta be critical and never take something for face value. Just assume like, hey, yeah, sure. I've worked with a bunch of big creators. Probably what I'm saying, there's some truth behind it. But assume that even I'm still always thinking about nuance and there are times that we change opinion because a new piece of data came in and we never know.
Mario:It's like real science as well and with doctors as well. Right? Doctors, sometimes they change their perspective of things because new research emerged or new data came in order or things changed and stuff. So never take any information as timeless. It's never gonna end.
Mario:And it's absolutely true.
Fred:I think that's a it's a big key. Right? And it's a very important aspect because people like to understand something. They like to get a good source of information, and they like to depend on that information. And in an age where the platforms are always changing and it's a very dynamic environment, that information changes.
Fred:And it's an understandable source of frustration, isn't it? Because what might be right today is not gonna be right tomorrow.
Mario:Yeah. Attention spans is one of the best examples. Attention spans, the thing is I've said that, hey. So attention spans aren't shortening. What's happening is that because people are scrolling so much, their brain is being trained to make a foster judgment.
Mario:But that also changes. Five years ago, that judgment was slower than it is today. So even the time that you have to make changes and stuff, it does change slightly over time. There's there's there's a lot there. So, yeah, long story short, it's it's like, don't assume that knowledge is rigid and it's like there's truth and and non truth.
Mario:No, it's on a spectrum. It's like there's levels of truth to the game. As long as you always accept you're making the best decision for yourself given the best possible truths that you could find, that's the only thing you can do as a human. And then over time, you do that and you're always trying to stay up to date as much as possible and you're accepting that knowledge isn't rigid, you're going to go very, very far. Not just in content, but also in life.
Fred:Amazing. Well look we are running out of time but I wanted to ask you this last question. A lot of creators are starting to think like founders are starting to think like you know not just creators but business owners or people who are running something that is more than just a channel. If they are at that point where they are emerging, they have that aspirational aspect to do something bigger and better, what should they focus on first that's not content?
Mario:I think it's just it's time. There's the idea of like how can you save yourself time by removing the things you're not the best at and removing all distractions. So for example, at some point, I was trying to start a brand agency. We I mean, literally within two weeks, we had a million dollar deal on the table. It was great.
Mario:But I was like, my zone of genius is is being a strategist. So what am I doing there? That's the same as a creator. It's like, what I would focus on is that if you're trying to scale, what are the things that you're doing that you shouldn't be doing? And this is, by the way, both when it comes down to content as well as outside.
Mario:And I'm gonna go further here. So when it comes down to content, for example, maybe you're spending a lot of time watching a lot of other people's content to just get better at it. But you're not truly passionate about it. It's not the thing that you wanna be doing. You just do it because you need to do it.
Mario:Why not figure out a way to free that time so you can spend more time on the thing that you're good at and the thing that you enjoy. But then also, the thing is and this is a change of habits. I had a creator actually. They reached out to me and they're like, oh, Mario, do I have to do? I'm at 100 ks views per video.
Mario:I want to get to 200, 300 ks. A week before that, he called me while he was drunk. He was at the beach and he was like, he was fully drunk and he was celebrating and he was having a fun time. And I'm like, you need to look at your priorities first. Because while you could have been working on your next video, which I know you love doing, you decided to spend that time partying.
Mario:You gotta get your priorities straight. And that's like it's you know, we often think about optimizing the business, but the unoptimization isn't just the business. It's also your personal life. It's like, what is more important to you? And sometimes, and I've had a lot of people disagree on me, it is a matter of sacrifice.
Mario:If you want a, you gotta give a b. And in the business, that's easy because we feel like it's our job. It's the business stuff. We can we can give up that script writing to the script writer. We can give up the financial reports to the CFO.
Mario:But can you give up your three hours of playing your mobile game? Can you give up your one hour of TikTok? And you're going to be hard for yourself and be like, no, I'm going to give up that time. And now you have all this free time that you can work on the content and make more content. And a lot of times that fixes so much of the problem.
Mario:And I'll give you an insight in the biggest creators. On the outside, everybody looks like they've got it together. Everybody looks like they're working 20 fourseven. But once you look on the inside and I've spent I don't spend time just business wise with people. I also spend time playing games with people.
Mario:I also I'm a human. You know? I like to have fun. But I know, looking back, how much time was wasted because of those kind of things. And then that's just where you have to make the decision.
Mario:I would spend a lot of time on that one. Like, where like and by the way, it's so easy to go up with an excuse. Yeah. But I was spending time with my family. Okay, so five hours of your family, could that be two hours?
Mario:And yeah, it's fair. If you say like five hours is important to me, sure. But if that affects your business, then don't blame your business for it. That's a choice that you are making. You know?
Mario:So that's why it's like it's a it's a tough one. It's a very tough subject because, I mean, I have kids as well. Like to spend time with them too.
Fred:I've heard some very big look. I think that's a controversial take in many ways because people talk about balance and burnout and, you know, it's different for everyone. But I I have had talked to some big creators, and they've had said some similar things, right? Yeah. About what they've sacrificed, and their approach to stress, and management, and and how they do certain things.
Fred:And there's a certain type of mentality around it. And I've also heard other big creators do the opposite, say that they do have a balanced lifestyle and so forth. Do you think everyone has to sacrifice all those things in order to be successful or does it come down to that personal choice?
Mario:So here's what I think. I don't think that a lot of people know what they want. I had creators come up to me saying, hey, want 10,000,000 subscribers. And I'm like, is that all you want, or do you want to absolutely be number one? Then what I do is this is, by the way, this works really good.
Mario:I'm like, Okay, do you want 10,000,000 subscribers? Here's how that life looks like because I've worked with a lot of people with 10,000,000 subscribers. So now they can see, do I want this or not? Do you want a 100,000,000 subscribers? Of course.
Mario:All right. I'm gonna paint you. I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna tell you how that life looks like. Because that way you know what that looks like and what you're gonna have to do to get there.
Mario:And then they're like, ah, you know what? Actually, yeah, it's cool if we get there, but I don't wanna strive for that. It's like, okay, let's not build your business then to get to a 100,000,000 subscribers. Because the way you design your business for a 100,000,000 subscribers is different than the way you design your business for 10,000,000 subscribers. It's a way different than the way you design your business for a million subscribers.
Mario:Like, the designs look different. They're for a 100,000,000 is ruthless. Like, there's so much stuff that has to go away and so much stuff that has to be in there. For 10,000,000, you have more freedom. For 1,000,000, you have a lot of freedom.
Mario:And I'm talking in service to subscribers because it's the easiest one. But in a nutshell here, I mean, I was asked this question once as well. I told my coach, I worked with a life coach and I told him like, I wanna make a million dollars before I was 35. It's my goal. You know, I give myself eight years.
Mario:I wanna make million dollars so I can, like, buy myself a nice house and, you know, like, live live a life that I never was able to live, you know, because I I don't come from a rich family or something. And the first question, he was the only person ever asking me in my life. He said, why only a million dollars? Why not 10,000,000? And nobody ever asked me that question.
Mario:So I started thinking, that's when I realized what I actually want. It wasn't the money that I want. It's the impact that I want. I want to make sure that when I do something, that it truly affects people positively. So the way I measure things, the way I design my company has completely changed because of that realization.
Mario:And that's the same thing with creators.
Fred:Mario, unfortunately, we have run out of time.
Fred:But thank you so much for joining us, and thank you so much for so many great insights.
Mario:I I really thank you for having me. I I always love talking about these things.
Fred:And for all the listeners out there, thanks for tuning in. Appreciate your time. Stay tuned because we've got a lot more coming this season.
Music:Create a generation. Look on the mic.