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Oh my gosh, you have a video that got 50,000,000 views, brands are calling, you're about to be rich, right? Wrong. Welcome to the Muthership Creator Strategy. I'm here to talk about the reality of virality. Didn't even know it was gonna rhyme, but I'm excited that it happened.
Helen:I wanna discuss why viral videos have this mystique of making people rich quick. And I'm gonna admit that I was one of them because when I was first on TikTok back in 2020, I thought, oh my gosh. When I have a million followers, we're gonna be rich. We're gonna buy a big house. I mean, I don't know what I was thinking at the time.
Helen:I don't know how it was supposed to happen. But there is an illusion that when you have millions of followers, you immediately have millions of dollars. And the reality is that viral attention does not equal sustainable income. And no matter what you're listening to of people who say, I quit my day job, and now I'm a full time content creator, it is work. We see highlight reels.
Helen:We see people talking about how they're quitting their day how they quit their their corporate job, and now they're full time content creators. And it's just like that whole MLM get rich scheme of like, you can make money from thousands of dollars a month at home if you buy my course. And guess how they're making thousands of dollars at home? They're selling you a course based on the fact that they're telling you that you're gonna teach they're gonna teach you how to sell a course. So I've talked about that before.
Helen:So but anyway, let's just move on to the topic, which is moments are fast and viral moments are fast, but the money and the sustainable money coming from them is slow and a lot of times nonexistent. So I'm gonna first just call out a few creators who have been viral, and these are well known creators. Do you remember back in 2020, there was a gentleman who rode on a skateboard to a Fleetwood Mac song drinking an ocean spray out of the out of, you know, just a whole big a liter of ocean spray right out of the liter? And he went crazy viral. And you might have to think to yourself, wow, that is like everybody knows that guy, the ocean spray guy.
Helen:Where is he now? Well, in his case, he actually is still working. He's doing he does acting roles and things like that. But for him, the money wasn't the point necessarily. It was really staying relevant and turning it into something, and in his case, maybe an acting career.
Helen:Now I didn't do a deep dive on him because I really just wanna give you, a sprinkle of viral creators and what they're doing now, and just to give you examples. So you remember Jules Lebron, demure, she's very demure, and she had a whole thing where makeup brands wanted her. It was such crazy instant virality for her, And she was at the time getting offered 45,000 to 85,000 per video. But do you know how short that window is? It is so short because really, who cares now?
Helen:No one's talking about demure now. It was a short, short trend. Even though it was a crazy viral trend, and you would think, oh, the woman never has to work again. She's got this great apartment now, I think in the city or wherever she was living. It doesn't equate to a sustainable job for life.
Helen:So she actually went through, I mean, I don't wanna even get into any of the details because you can Google it for yourself, but she's now focused on recovery from substance abuse, and she didn't really cash in for the long term. For her, it was fast money and then it turned into fast consequences to some degree. And I don't know her personally, so I'm just speaking from the research that I did just to give you an idea of what happens. Like you think somebody like the Tube Girl, I remember her well because she was the first one who did the back camera whipping it around and she was on the subway and her hair was blowing. And she was a quick viral sensation and they, the term Tube Girl was named after her.
Helen:Anyway, she ended up turning her viral moment into a music career, so she pivoted. She did a lot of modeling. She had some modeling gigs, some runway shows, and some brand deals, but she managed to then turn it into a music business and built some income streams from it instead of chasing one viral moment. So that's an example of somebody who played it smart and had even if she didn't have a plan, she was already a vibe in terms of modeling, so then she was already a talented musician. So she was able to kind of take her viral moment and help her self become more known.
Helen:Even though, I don't know, I don't even listen to her music, so maybe her name is Sabrina Bassoon, b a h s o o n, if you want to go and look and see what she's up to. Then we have like the crazy, crazy sensations like Charli D'Amelio and Addison Rae, and they were so early in the viral universe that they're almost like icons. They're almost like hitting the lottery type creators. Like they went viral and it stayed they just became a personality for being viral. So I'm gonna take them as exceptions to the rule and think about some of the viral things that you've seen recently or people I'm gonna give you another example, and a lot of people might not even know this one.
Helen:But I feel like, wow, this girl is very, very viral now. And she was the one at the Met Gala with the red shoes, with the red flats. She was running around Boston. If you don't know about the red flats girl, that's what she was known as very briefly. But again, huge viral moment.
Helen:Everybody knows her. Maybe she's turning it into better job offers. I don't really know. She already has a job and then maybe this elevated her or made her more wanted in the job world. But it's not I don't believe she suddenly got offered like tons of brand deals.
Helen:I know what happens is the brands show up in the comments and everybody thinks, oh my god, they're so lucky. They're getting all this brand attention. Brands want what's hot today. They don't care what happened yesterday. So it yes.
Helen:Did they care about the red flats girl for maybe forty eight hours? And do some of these creators have a longer stretch than forty eight hours? Like the demure, maybe she was a few weeks. It's still so short in the big scheme of things. So if you're not prepared when you have a viral video as to how you're gonna convert it into monetization, this it's it's useless.
Helen:I had a house guest this weekend, and he was telling me that his grandmother was turned 100 and had and her, his sister or something put a video up and it went crazy viral to, like, the tune of 8,000,000 views or something or maybe more now. They have no plan. They're not, like, rich now because they had a video with 8,000,000 views. They don't even know what to do next. They don't they're not even content creators.
Helen:It was a funny thing where the grandmother said something, and they posted it, and it went viral. But they're not monetizing from it, so it's not the answer. It's just a sad thing because viral moments are like little novelties that happen, and then we move on from them. I could think of so many of them. They get boring so fast.
Helen:Even the ones that are fun. Like, love the Jon Hamm trend. But even that one, how many of those can you see after a while? It's like, there was jokes. People used to make, a lot of funny videos about like this is what my for you page looks like, and it's like every one of them was a John Ham trend or something.
Helen:People just get tired of it. So it's so crazy with trends because it's so immediate, so fast and feverish, and then it's gone. It's not like how it used to be with trends where Birkenstocks were trending, and then it takes a while and then it's a tipping point and then everyone's buying Birkenstocks. And that fashion trend stays for a while. So Birkenstocks capitalizes on that and they make more styles or whatever.
Helen:But again, they're a brand, they have a team behind them so they can do that. They can pivot, they can build. Even that, okay, once Birkenstock's are out and the next hot thing comes up, we're on to the next thing. No one's really paying much attention to it. So it really is like if you just think about it in that way of real life and real life trends, it's the same thing.
Helen:It's so short lived. So your my advice then, because there has to be an answer to this, and I will take myself as an example. When I first went viral back in 2020 and 2021, I didn't even have a plan. I did at some point make a TikTok course and I managed to sell it to the tune of $10,000 worth of sales. I will be honest with you.
Helen:I sold and it was something like a $15 course. So I sold a lot of them. So yes, did I capitalize on that? But did I at that point turn it into a sustainable business? No, I did not.
Helen:I had the course. I didn't have time to even deal with it. I was doing production in my day job. I just didn't have time to focus on, okay, now I'm gonna build a whole platform. The timing wasn't right for me.
Helen:And then, you know, production started to get busy and I couldn't really I couldn't really do it. What I learned just from being on social media for a long enough time is that people wanted to work with me. I ended up having a sustainable, loyal audience that stayed with my videos over time. So mine was not like one okay great, was a stop motion video, was a big, you know, 8,000,000 views or something on it, was exciting. But you would think, okay, then they're all gone these people, but they're not necessarily.
Helen:When you're sharing expertise and a skill, have a better opportunity for keeping people interested, keeping them engaged, and keeping them around. And so in my case, it took me longer to get to a place where I could build the sustainable business out of it. I needed to figure out a strategy, make a plan, have the time, figure out how to build it. And I had the luxury of having another job so I could take my time to do it and and let it become something. So a lot of times if you're offering a type of expertise, you can build almost like build a skill, build a new skill.
Helen:For me, it's community building, And that's where you build credibility and clout. So the credibility for me comes from my day job. But building a community now has been a lesson and a learning for me, and it's been so much fun. It's like I have renewed interest in something new and exciting and I'm building a business in a different way. So it's keeping me really interested, really engaged, and it's easy to make content about it because I love it.
Helen:So you've gotta find what's your monetization thing. If you're a fitness guru, are you going to now build community with your fitness folks? Are you going to start building email lists, give away some free PDF guides to health and wellness? Get an email list group together and then figure out how your email what you can sell to your email people. I'm gonna give a shout out to someone I'm gonna see this afternoon, pancakes and push ups on TikTok, and she is her name is Sloane.
Helen:She had a fitness app and she has a whole business built from her fitness life. Now she has a product called H2 Pro, which is protein water. And when I tell you, I keep seeing these protein powders coming on my feed constantly. So to me, that is an attractive win because I don't like these flavored protein waters where they have all of these other chemicals in them to give them a flavor to make it taste like lemonade. Like I'm questioning the whole thing.
Helen:I was looking at the ingredients after she sent me her product. I was looking at the ingredients on the thing that I'm drinking now. So when I get to know her product later, I'm gonna see what that's about, and I'm very excited about it for myself. But think about it, that's something that she has built, not overnight. She's in the fitness space, she stayed with the fitness app, she was going hard on getting her clients, and then evolved it into what do my clients need?
Helen:They're not getting enough protein. How can I help them get more protein? I'll come up with a product that helps them get more protein. So if you're if you're savvy on the business side of things or just even a good thinker, you can have people who can help you do it. But you really, really wanna wrap your head around that.
Helen:That fact that your follower account doesn't equal the dollar signs. It's your loyal community that will eventually support your business. The business has to be your brainchild. So you're gonna treat that viral moment as a door, as an opportunity window, and you're gonna figure out how you would capitalize on it. So I would urge you, this would be a little exercise for you at the end of the podcast, is is to imagine that in one week you have a viral video.
Helen:What will you do? What can you do? Not even will you. What can you do to turn that viral moment into a sustainable income? Think of all the things.
Helen:Is it digital products? Is it selling your expert is it is it really going after a specific brand? Like, what is it? But remember again, brands want viral moments now. They're not gonna be interested in your viral moment from a month ago.
Helen:It's only good at the moment. So that to me is almost the last thing that I'd recommend. You can use it as a door to getting other brands, but that's work. That means building a media kit. That means making more videos, content.
Helen:That means constantly selling yourself and promoting yourself. Everything comes with work. None of it is like a passive passive income. Oh, my favorite my least favorite two words because there is no such thing. Nothing is passive income.
Helen:We work for it. So, basically, going viral in the way of the Charlie D'Amelio changing your life type of thing is a lottery ticket win, and that's how many people do you know that have won the lottery? It looks like, wow. Everybody's going viral. No.
Helen:Not everybody is making money from going viral. Not everyone is turning it into a millionaire lifestyle. And so it's just like the winning the winning of the lottery, you might as well just go buy lottery tickets. You basically have the same odds. So I'm not here to say that's gonna be your answer.
Helen:I'm here to tell you that the creators that are actually making money saw the potential before they went viral. They knew what they had to offer before they go they went viral. Because if you're chasing viral as a business plan, you're not gonna make it. It's not a plan. Getting a viral video, I wanna go viral when I see that in the people that book me for the audits, I wanna go viral.
Helen:And then what? That's what I really wanna say. And then what? You have a viral video, it's got 8,000,000 views. Okay?
Helen:Now what? So what I really want you to do is think about what I said. If you were to go viral tomorrow, how are you turning it into a monetization opportunity? And this is the positive side. I'm not going to be a Debbie Downer because if you have a viral video, you have an opportunity.
Helen:Even if you don't have a viral video, you have an opportunity. If you have a loyal community, it equals opportunity probably better than a viral video. So think towards that, build towards that, and start making a plan. Okay. I'll see you next week.