From Small-Town Texas to Viral Video Success

Building a real creative career changes your life, and it usually looks a lot less glamorous than people think. We sit down with Brannon Watson to trace the actual path: making early short-form videos during day jobs, listening to audience feedback, and learning what “traction” really means when comments start asking for more and the numbers begin to stack. If you care about social media growth, Instagram strategy, and the mindset behind sustainable content creation, this conversation hits the honest parts. 

We talk about the turning points that helped Brannon level up, including partnering with a professional cinematographer, upgrading production quality, and moving from “posting when I feel like it” to creating with intention. We also unpack how brand deals happen when you prove you can deliver consistently, and why relationships and reputation matter as much as raw views in the creator economy. His stories about WorldStar momentum and collaborating with other comedians and creators highlight how proximity, community, and repetition can accelerate your learning curve. 

Then we get practical about staying grounded. Brannon shares how he thinks about trust, discernment, and avoiding people who only bring negativity. He also offers a simple reframe for creators who obsess over numbers: not every piece of content is a home run, but singles and doubles still move the game forward. If you’ve been comparing your timeline to someone else’s, this will help you reset and refocus. 

Transcript

Welcome And Big Picture

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Who's Your Mama, a podcast focusing on tomorrow's future, which are our kids, educators, teachers, parents, all-encompassing with the goal of understanding that our brain is a muscle that we can exercise to control the speed in the direction that we want. Let's go, y'all. The time is now. Brandon Watson, welcome to Who's Your Mama?

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

So let's go.

From Texas Roots To LA

SPEAKER_01 0:36

One of the things that you and I have in common is we both uh came from Texas and are now in LA. You came from Corsicana, Texas. I know it's a small town. And I don't want to speak too much because I want us to take you through our journey that I know will resonate with a lot of people. I feel like you are the OG of IG in terms of content creators, which started back in 2013 and then have continued down different paths, but that was that area. So take us down that journey with you.

The First Videos And Early Virality

SPEAKER_00 1:17

All right. So um, yeah, roughly around 2013, I started making videos. Now I was working at like a CVS, so I was doing videos like in between time. And the first video I did on there, I think, or one of the first videos, uh, an elderly person left their glasses and it was a big bifocals, and I put them on and I put a picture up, and a few people commented, and then I made like a 15-second video because that's all they had back then. It was real short. So I put a 15-second video up and it got some good traction. Uh, and then I would just make videos every once in a while. And then when I started to see the comments, and people was like, Well, when are you doing another one? or do that one again, or when you're gonna make a different character, and they started making these requests. I was like, Okay, cool. I guess they're liking it, so I should just continue to do it. And then I put a video out, it was kind of controversial. It was uh on Facebook and it went crazy. Um, and that was the first time I had it saw a video hit a million views. Um, and I think it ended up getting like about three million. It's it's so far down the archives now. I don't even know how many views it has, but that was my first time um going viral with a video. Um so that day my Facebook notifications were just going crazy. Um, and then soon after, like I said, I was still working uh different jobs. And in 2015 is when it kind of got it kind of got hot. Um Instagram had started letting us do longer videos, so I started focusing more on Instagram. Um and I was working at a law firm. Um, and I would get off work at six or five o'clock in the evening, and as soon as I get home, I would make a video and then post the video in that same night, shoot it, edit it, and post it in that same night at like seven o'clock, six o'clock, seven o'clock.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Because that's a very yin and yang of what you were doing. I'll just call it, you know, mood lighting versus the daytime, paying the bills and things like that. Was the creative side always inside of you?

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Definitely, always. Um, I've always been a creative. I've been the class clown since I could remember um used to always get in trouble for talking in class. I would even get in trouble if somebody was laughing and it wasn't my fault. The teacher was like, Oh, I can relate to that.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

And my sister who will watch this, we have a running joke within my family. She can say something, and my mom will go, Michelle. So it was even if it wasn't me. So, you know, it was like, wasn't me. But but you knew that was in you. So there are different motivations, I think, why people and specifically social media utilize it, but it sounds like that became a foundation and a jumping platform for you to then decide to go beyond what you were doing during your paying job and explore other areas. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Correct. So when my Instagram started to get uh popular, I had under 20,000 um followers at the time, maybe right around like 10,000. And but my videos were hitting like two, three half a million um views and things like that, and I was growing very quickly. And it wasn't just like one video, it was several videos over the course of time that was hitting, you know, in the six figures, and I started to gain a lot of attention.

Upgrading Quality And Landing Brand Deals

SPEAKER_00 4:48

And uh a friend of mine, who's a very good friend of mine now, a guy named Chill, Isaac Yaman, uh Yeoman, he's a cinematographer and a DP and a creative himself. So he reached out and was like, Hey man, I shoot professionally, I see what you're doing. I don't know how you're hitting those numbers, but let me try to partner with you and shoot some better quality content because all of my stuff was on the phone. So he's like, Let me shoot some better quality content. So we got together. Um, he started managing me soon after that. I started getting some brand deals. Uh, there was a store in the in Houston um mall called Frosttown. I was a brand ambassador for that store in the mall. Uh, they would give me free outfits and money, and I would make videos every month with their clothing line in and things like that. And then I started to get more brand deals and things like that start to come in.

WorldStar Momentum And LA Collaborations

SPEAKER_00 5:40

So by this time, it's like 2015, um, 15, 16, I started going viral on uh world star hip hop. So those videos, and by this time I was at the law firm. Um, and one day I posted, and I wasn't supposed to have my phone on the floor, but I did anyway. So it was tucked like under me, and I'm working on a computer, and my friend texted me, he was like, It's crazy, you on World Star right now. I'm like, What? I thought he was joking, so I checked my phone, and sure enough, I had like hundreds of notifications. That day alone, I gained like 3,000 subscribers or followers on Instagram, and those things kept happening, and then WorldStar, they kept posting me and posting me, and then I met another guy, um, my guy Kerry. He was in Houston as well, but he had been back and forth to LA. So by this time, me and him linked up and we started shooting videos together. He was like, Hey man, I got some friends in LA, like they would love you because every time me and him filmed, he cracked. And as a as a comedian or as a funny guy, if I'm doing a video, or I mean, it was a secret, but if I'm doing a video with you and you're funny as well, my goal subconsciously is to try to make you crack. Like, I gotta make you break character and make you laugh. So

Humor Craft And Building Trust

SPEAKER_00 7:00

as I was doing that, he was like, Is that because of authenticity?

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Because you and I talked about I think that music and humor is therapy for the soul, as long as it's not mean spirited. And yeah, and that's that's a very universal bond, a lot of times, uh, and healthy, literally. And um, how how did you make somebody crack and make them feel safe to do so?

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Well, very quickly, being from the south, how we kind of male or female, like I'm gonna talk about you. So if you can take that when we kind of first meet and we kind of have those exchanges, I may talk about your shoes, and you may talk about me, and we can have that exchange, and we still cool, we laughing about it. We know it's just joking.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Healthy banter building a rapport.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Yeah, we just building a rapport, then after that, oh it's gold. So when the cameras are rolling, we may do something and I may say one thing, and then if that makes them laugh, okay, cool. On the next take, I'm gonna say something completely different because you're gonna be expecting me to say this, but when I say something else, you're gonna be like, Man, why did he say that? So that just just having fun with it, and we built a good relationship. And I ended up coming out to California, and I would come, I would take off like on a on a Friday because we didn't work weekends, thankfully. I would take off on a Friday and leave like Thursday evening. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, come back Monday. I would do that a few times, and when I came to LA, I would link up with with him and his friends that he knew, and to this day, they're some of the biggest creators and actors, comedians in the world right now. So I had a relationship and I've built a relationship with all those guys, and then you know, going back and forth, being in each other's videos and bouncing around and just shooting and shooting and shooting, it just it just and the consistency, it just became better

Discernment And Staying Consistent

SPEAKER_00 8:55

over time.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

So, how uh on that note, for people that are thinking about exploring either the same or somewhat same paths, I'm a firm believer that you you are a reflection of who you surround yourself with, and sometimes that means that we learn things the hard way, but we can grow from them. And you've had longevity in this. Uh, how what advice would you give based upon your experience of how to know when to trust people in this particular area? And how does that motivate you if you have ever maybe made a wrong assessment of somebody but kept motivated?

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Um hopefully your discernment is good, but try to stay around like-minded people. Um, people that always have something negative to say. Just stay away from them, man. You gotta be confident in you gotta be confident in yourself too, though. So you have to know what you bring to the table. Other people are trying to say, Well, well, I would have done it this way, I would have done it this way. A lot of people can say what they would have done if they were in your shoes, but they're not doing it. So and don't be afraid to miss. Uh, and and uh, I kind of keep an analogy as far as like baseball. Whenever you are doing something or putting out videos or putting out content, every hit ain't gonna be a home run. You may get a single, double, triple, may hit you a grand slam every once in a while, but all of those count though. All of those count. A single count, two doubles count. Like everything counts, so don't get discouraged. There was a point in time where I was doing very well, like, especially starting off when I had like about 20k. The videos that I would put out would all hit over six figures. So I was talking to a friend of mine one day, I was like, man, I'm gonna take this video down. It only hit 79,000 views in a day. And he was like, What? Like, no, you should I would throw a party if my video hits 10k. Like, just be consistent and just know that you may have some low days, you may have some high days, but there's no way you can lose if you if you just stay in it. So I would just say stay in the game and just keep being consistent. Your consistency will reward you over time.

Avoiding Comparison And Staying Grounded

SPEAKER_01 11:25

So, and and on that note, how do you stay true to who you are without comparing yourself? I mean, naturally we do, but to what extent is different? And because everything is so public, that's it'd be different in some other areas than I think as much as it is when all eyes are you on social media, you know, you you have an acting career, I know you write, things like that. How do you keep that core foundation grounded?

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Like I said, staying around like-minded people and people who will ground you or tell you if you're getting off track or you need to focus on X, Y, and Z. It is very hard not to compare yourself to other people and their success and their timeline. But you just got to understand that your timeline is your timeline, but you also have to just try to focus on the things that that you want to do because you can't grow as much as you need to grow if your attention is over here and it's over here on this other person, and your time is gonna come whenever your time is gonna come, especially if you're putting in the work, like you have no choice but to get there. You don't know when, but if you be intentional about it and be consistent, you're you're guaranteed that for that to happen sooner than later.

Closing Thoughts And Sendoff

SPEAKER_01 12:46

I completely agree. And as we're getting close to time, and and hopefully this won't be the last time you come on who's your mama. If you see the art tape behind me, it's a friend of mine and she does murals and all sorts of things. All I said to her was what I was trying to um capture at the foundation of Who's Your Mama, which was life is a journey, it doesn't have to be a roller coaster, so it will have some ups and downs, but we're the conductor in our own lives, and so you can control the gear shift. So sometimes you need to put it into neutral. You didn't get off on the wrong stop, you just got off on a different stop. And what is it that you need? Which is here, like you said, being true to who yourself and who you surround yourself with. So, again, I'm grateful for having the opportunity to connect with you again, like-minded people, and it doesn't always mean agreeing, but that's part of the growth. So, thank you so much, uh, Brandon. I look forward to seeing more to come with you. And uh, I really appreciate you taking the time. So, as we say at Who's Your Mama, let's go, y'all. The time is now.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Let's go, y'all. The time is now.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Thank you for tuning into Who's Your Mama? And I look forward to collaborating from a community standpoint for the next episodes.