Girl Meets Influencer... w/ special guest Cheo

Social media star Cheo and Kalie go deep into what it takes to be a successful social media influencer.  From the money highs, to the lows of dealing with deep fakes, getting swatted and abused by online trolls… As a former member, and house chef, of famed YouTube gamer collective FaZe Clan, Cheo has seen it all.  Listen in to hear just what it means when you lose control of your name, image, likeness - known as NIL in the sports and entertainment industry - and some winning ideas for our leaders to help keep both ourselves and the next generation safer in this digital first world.

Follow Cheo on Instagram: @ayoo_cheo and YouTube: @ayoocheo

Connect with me on Instagram @KalieNitzsche - I’d love to hear what you think of this episode so please tell me in the comments.

Check out the new video version of this podcast on YouTube @JustLookinOutPodcast.  Please like, share & follow!

Want to be a guest or know someone who would be great? Apply at: https://forms.gle/pewSJshc9YLgbSA87

To find out more about my online presence monitoring solution Fuzzy Watchdog, go to Fuzzywatchdog.com.

Disclaimer: The Just Lookin’ Out Podcast and content posted by SaferHer Studios LLC and Kalie Nitzsche is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or related sites or social media is at the user’s own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions.

Transcript

Kalie Nitzsche 0:00

So 10 years you've been in the online space, growing your presence and your popularity. If you had to ballpark how much money you've lost towards online fraud, impersonation, the YouTube channel, all the nonsense that you've encountered, what do you think that that number is? I

Cheo 0:19

would say probably a couple hundred thousand.

Kalie Nitzsche 0:31

Hey it's your girl Kalie Nitzsche and I'm so happy to be back with season two of the Just Looking Out podcast. In season one we talked a lot about me and my insane experience with romantic deception after being catastrophically duped by a guy that I met on the dating apps. It was so important to me to share the juicy and heartbreaking details with you and the journey I took to self-heal and now live my very best life. Y'all the positive feedback and support have been beyond. I feel so blessed to have this community and have loved getting all of your comments and DMs to my socials. With all the messages that poured in over the course of season one, I soon realized online scams and fraud are happening to so many of us, spanning so many different kinds of deceptions, not just related to dating apps like mine. So in season two, you can expect to hear a wide range of stories from awesome guests, including their personal experiences getting duped, impersonated or scammed online. I hope these stories will spread awareness around the frequency and complexity of online deception and help us move forward in this modern digital world so we can stay safer, healthier, and happier. Ayo, Cheo, welcome to Just Looking Out. Thank you so much for being on today's episode.

Cheo 1:48

Yes, thank you for having me.

Kalie Nitzsche 1:50

Absolutely, super excited and pumped for this conversation and I just kind of want to jump right into it.

Cheo 1:55

Yes, let's jump in.

Kalie Nitzsche 1:57

Okay, cool. So Cheo, for everyone listening, can you tell us about your background and how you became a part of this influencer world.

Cheo 2:07

Yes. So my name is Jose de los Santos, but most people know me as Cheo. I'm from a town called Haverhill, Massachusetts, which is just a town that's 35 minutes north of Boston. I got into intro to the influencer world by a group called FaZe Clan. FaZe Clan is a gaming organization at the time was just a group of kids that were just playing to have fun. And it turned out to be a huge organization. My brother was originally a part of the group Faith Clan and I jumped in trying to be like a father figure because I would see, I would go and visit them all the time and see how chaotic it was at the house where they like, because it was just literally a bunch of group of kids. It was seven kids from the age of 16 to 21 at the time. And they were living life freely and amazing, but a little too chaotic. So when I would come over, I would like pretty much be the dad of the house, and I just came up with an idea of helping them become more structured and consistent with their content. And by doing that, it was cooking them breakfast, lunch, and dinner, became the chef of the house, and then eventually helped managing the house with their scheduling for content whatsoever. And it changed my life forever. Literally, I went from, I want to say, like, 2,500 followers on Instagram to gaining, like... $2,000 to $5,000 a week just from joining the group because they would obviously put me in their videos and then shout me out all the time. And yeah, that's how I grew my platform was with the guys from Faze Clan.

Kalie Nitzsche 3:42

So you were Papa Cheo in the Faze mansion, if you will, cooking food, very vegan focused, if I had that correctly. No,

Cheo 3:54

to be honest, I just turned, I became vegan five years ago. So it was prior to FaZe house. But I would definitely make them homestyle. I would make them feel like they were at home when I would cook for them. I wouldn't do anything too extravagant, but I would cook them healthier meals or just meals that were good for that just made them feel like they were back home. So their favorite meals.

Kalie Nitzsche 4:17

I love that. Okay, so you, you know, you didn't have much social media presence before going into the house. And then all of a sudden, you're becoming very popular online. Take us back to the moment when you realized, Oh, my God, I'm blowing up online, things will be different from here on out.

Cheo 4:34

It happened like right away. So the first, the first day I started officially started working with them phase adapts, put me on his video intro and saying I was the new chef of the house. And that moment I just started getting instant notifications. I had to turn my notifications off because it was killing my battery. It was, it was kind of crazy. Um, and literally everywhere I would go from back home and we were living in New York at the time. It wasn't the mansion. It was the face house in New York. It was a smaller, it was a four bedroom house, but it was just, it was a very homely house, a neighborhood, quiet neighborhood that they kind of didn't make it quiet anymore. The neighbors hated us, but fans would come to the house every day, eight to 10 hours a day, knocking on the door. They would

Kalie Nitzsche 5:24

just show up?

Cheo 5:25

They would just show up. The people, fans created a, a Google meat day. So whatever they would search for the house, they would say we had visiting hours, we had a club, Chea would cook for this time for you. So people would come to the house and just ask the most ridiculous stuff. Even families, their parents would drive them six, seven hours to the house to see us and get autographs. And to the guys, it's like, this is our home. We kind of want to keep it a little private, but... Obviously it didn't work out. Okay. So

Kalie Nitzsche 6:03

you're like very much telling everybody where you live. They're stopping by. Tell me about the single craziest thing that you saw while you were at the FaZe house.

Cheo 6:14

So I was always putting out fires at the house, but the biggest fire I was putting out was raids. Police would raid the house pretty frequently. I think we might've set the record for the state of New York for police raids in a month because they were coming so often that they they took my number down to call me whenever they would come and so it could just be an easier process because they would come in when they first started coming it was guns blazing and it's kind of a scary moment you know we're with just a bunch of kids and you know I'm the oldest in the house and for this to happen like I'm just like straight panic you know so I want to say that was probably the craziest moments where like in the beginning is the police raids because we don't know what they're there for so we would have fans or you You could say little trolls calling in raids towards the house where they would say the FaZe guys were either kidnapping somebody, holding somebody hostage, or just doing something really insane for the police to come and swat the house. And I was the one that was putting out the fires. And I don't know how to control that situation because we're not troublemakers. They're just kids just recording their videos and having fun. Sure. doing anything bad so it was scary it was a scary moment

Kalie Nitzsche 7:35

so because you were kind of revered as like the calm mature one of the house the police would reach out to you and just get a pulse check on the severity of why something was being called in

Cheo 7:45

yes because the kids were the guys were terrible with responding to the house like literally one one of them was asleep the whole time and the cops were like almost kicked in his door luckily he picked it up he opened the door at the end but it was it was scary because we're trying to tell him he's sleeping. He's a heavy sleeper. He's not going to wake up for anything. And they're kicking. They were literally starting to kick the door. And I was like, oh my God. And then he opened up and they literally freaked out and just pulled them out. And at the end, they realized we weren't holding anybody captive or anything. So they realized just to contact me and just let me know we're going to go through a process.

Kalie Nitzsche 8:26

Okay. So that was about, could we say a decade ago?

Cheo 8:30

Yes, 2016. So

Kalie Nitzsche 8:34

since then, you've really become very popular and notable in the influencer world. And I just kind of want to talk about the various channels that you're on and the kinds of content people can expect to find where you are, whether it's TikTok or Facebook. Talk to me about the platforms.

Cheo 8:50

So my main platforms have been Instagram. I did start a YouTube channel, not as consistent as I wanted to be on it, but my main channel was Instagram. where I would post the majority of my food content. I jumped into a lifestyle. Right now, I am currently preparing for a run from Los Angeles to Vegas. Okay, I just want to pause.

Kalie Nitzsche 9:15

Say those two cities again because I saw this on Insta and thought it was absolutely wild. You are going to run from the city of Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Nevada. Is that correct?

Cheo 9:26

Yes, sounds crazy. It's about 300 miles. I'm not running I'm running it completely by myself. I do have a team. It's going to be a team of six, three guys, three girls. So the amount of miles I'm going to do is still ridiculous. It's about 40 to 60 miles, depending on workload, depending if somebody gets hurt. There's a whole bunch of challenges that are going to be a part of this race. And why are we doing this? Running has been, I want to say, a big part of... an outlet for me for like dealing with stress and depression and I realized it more and more as like I would go through my waves. Running has always been a good turning point for me to get back into my positive space and it was funny because this race particularly was brought up to me and we joked about doing it and then all of a sudden I got invited so I was like crap I actually I gotta do it now and so it's a it's more of a bucket list challenge for me. I'm mentally and physically to see how far I can push myself. And the journey is just going to be life-changing for me. So I'm just, I'm up for it.

Kalie Nitzsche 10:39

I love that. I'll be cheering for you likely with like a cooler of water. And if you need a Gatorade, I'll throw you one.

Cheo 10:45

I'm going to need a lot. I'm going to need a cold bath on an RV.

Kalie Nitzsche 10:49

Yes, you are. I want to double click into something that you just mentioned though. The, you know, running as your outlet for stress and times that you might feel emotionally or mentally down. Do you have those kinds of feelings ever and you attribute them to what you're doing online or social media in particular?

Cheo 11:07

Yes, because dealing with this space and like, especially when I was with the guys, we dealt with extreme highs and extreme lows. There was no middle. So you had to be able to balance it yourself. And sometimes it's not easy. Oh, most of the time it wasn't easy at all. So I would definitely use running as my like morning outlet to start my day to be able to control my anxiety that I would have just trying to balance hoarding cats basically in a sense and yeah I think I think as I after I left phase and I went through certain emotional challenges of just change because I went from a huge organization to trying to build a brand by myself and it's not easy at all you know you go through these these phases of like am I doing everything right or we're doing everything wrong why am I not getting the engagement that I felt like I I could get all those little things play a part in your head and you gotta realize it's not that it shouldn't be that serious you should be having fun doing this stuff and when it gets to this part where you're overwhelmed about everything you're doing it's it becomes work and I don't want it to feel work like we're to me. I would always try to find these outlets to distract me from making this influencer world become something that's stressful to me and I don't want that because I've had a lot of fun. Being an influencer or a content creator has changed my life. I grew up structured where you had to go to college or make sure your 9 to 5 is a great job to build security and the influence the world is the complete opposite you don't know if it's gonna be successful for the next 20 years or it can end tomorrow you know so it's sure something

Kalie Nitzsche 13:10

yeah I mean I can relate a little bit I you know I did the nine to five went to college got my MBA and I had structure and stability for so long and it wasn't until this past March that I decided to pursue going out on my own and the loneliness that really nobody talks about that you feel because you do feel a little isolated, like, hey, I'm kind of doing this on my own, even though you might have a great team surrounding you. At the end of the day, it's make or break for you personally. So why is it when you think about your online presence and how important that is to your household income? Obviously, that's what's your main revenue driver. Why is control of your name, image and likeness so important when you're an influencer or maybe even a professional athlete?

Cheo 13:56

It's very important because it's your brand, right? It's your likeness and people people can use it to leverage for themselves. And to be honest, you know, that's dangerous because if someone, someone, if someone takes your images and they're using it for their own purpose, it might not be the best for you because it could affect potential brands, big brands at that, that, you know, say if you have a million followers, right? We're going to potentially get that one day, right? For the both of us.

Kalie Nitzsche 14:25

Yeah. Manifest, right?

Cheo 14:26

Manifest it. Love it. But say someone hacks your phone and steals something that is private to you right and they post it on social media that right there can ruin $100,000 $200,000 brand deal with a big brand that you dreamt of working with because they saw something and if you're like family friendly and whatnot and you're posting something that's not well someone that posted something that's not it could definitely damage your image and likeness and ruin potential brands that you want to work with and that's that's a nightmare because i've seen it happen with with the guys and that affected the whole group it affected all of us and walk

Kalie Nitzsche 15:12

me through that

Cheo 15:14

um so we got one of the guys got hacked his snapchat got hacked and it showed us hitting a bong and it was it was it was literally it wasn't me it was one of it was them that was hitting the bong and it obviously they were old enough at the time to do it but their their fan base was young so all these kids saw it and were just like traumatized and we had to do damage control and try to get it taken down and it's a process trying to do all that stuff sometimes and if you don't know how to do it it's a nightmare you know all you can do how do you take something down to be honest

Kalie Nitzsche 15:59

okay the guy had the long video, how long did it take for it to get taken down and what did he have to do?

Cheo 16:04

Well, luckily he was able to re like he found out who it was and he reached out to him and it was just a fan that wanted engagement with him and he took it down. But he, he was lucky, you know, some other people got to go through, I want to say legal, like we'll get through, go through lawyers. I don't know. To be honest, I don't really know how everything can be for damage control. because for me whoever's used my likeness I reached out if they do it if they take that take it down or if they no longer post I win you know and our fan base was pretty toxic in the moment so they would if they if I announced that someone is copying like using my likeness they would definitely reach out to that person and it's not healthy I mean obviously they would be pretty toxic towards them to either take it down or say that you're fake or whatnot. I don't want that energy towards anybody, regardless if they're using my likeness or not. But I try my best to just communicate with that person who's ever using my page and just... How

Kalie Nitzsche 17:14

many times has this happened?

Cheo 17:17

For me, the biggest one that happened is someone created a YouTube page. And at that time, I was just starting with Faze. It was probably my first year in And I promised the guys I wasn't going to start a YouTube page because I wanted my work to focus on them and help them grow their page and the team. And I couldn't do all that and run a page with having to cook for them and manage the house and help them with their pages. So I just told them, I was like, guys, I promise I'm not going to create a page right now and just work on you guys. And then all of a sudden, as I'm just growing with them people were hitting me up saying hey I'm not getting any notifications about your giveaway how do I win and I'm like what giveaway is this and I'm like I didn't respond I'm like because literally I didn't want like I'm not responding to them but I just see I just started seeing messages and I'm like what is going on I was like you know what let me let me see let me see what to talk about I reached out to one of the fans I was asking me about the getaway the giveaway and he sent me the page and it said FaZe Chao And he has all these things of me. And there was four videos that he uploaded. He had 20,000 subscribers. And each video went from 9,000 to 40,000 views. And I'm just like, no way this is actually really happening. He's literally just stealing videos from the guys and something that I would post. And then he was doing fake giveaways. And then that's when I was like, okay, I don't want this happening. The pages, I really don't. I try not to even bother with the pages, but if you're giving giveaways and doing all this other stuff where it's affecting the fans and then it's making me look like I'm this person that's doing all this stuff and not, I don't like that. I try my best to give a great example as a human being as possible, so I didn't appreciate that. So I reached out to him, and he kept the page, but he no longer posts, so I left it at that. that was the biggest I want to say fake page made of me ever but there's plenty of small pages people would create and even of my daughter which is kind of crazy but it's hard to it really is hard to control this type of stuff on the internet and I don't know how to stop it to be honest because there's securities but then I think if we I don't know I really don't know it's really challenging to figure out how to be able to control your likeness and your face in social media because anybody can it's so big the space is so big how do you how do you control it I don't know I don't know

Kalie Nitzsche 20:27

yeah you said something earlier that really struck me you said if you're able to get a fake profile or fake post taken down, that that's a win, right? That's where we've become in terms of, like, we just accept that this is happening all the time and this is the norm. I guess, what do you do? And I really want to get to your daughter, so we're going to, I want to talk to you at the parent angle, but for your brand and, you know, your adult brand, how do you protect that now? What are you doing?

Cheo 20:54

For me and my brand now, I feel I don't I really don't have any people making profiles of me which I'm glad but if someone were to do I feel like I don't post anything really to make myself like look bad so they don't first they don't have that on me but if they do create a page I literally if all I can do is just ask nicely unless I want to spend money on a lawyer to go through the whole process I guess that's what I would have to do to take things down but I don't know I feel I feel like I just try to give a great image bring a great image to the influencer space where I just have people that if they do create a page of me it's like more of a fan base type of situation and that's fine rather than someone trying to create something to profit off of but you know that happens all the times even with brands they would use your likeness in a way to profit without you knowing and

Kalie Nitzsche 22:08

how are they doing that

Cheo 22:11

I mean you can they can do it easily by if you say you're using their product right you hold their product and you post a story they're able if you if if you don't really know like the laws of things like they can either post it and that's free marketing for them you If they posted on their page, especially like a big brand, they would pay thousands of dollars for that post. But they got it for free, taking it from something that you posted on the story or whatnot. And that's using your likeness, right? Totally. A lot of people lose out on those opportunities because you just don't know. And if you don't ask them to take it down or give them a rate, like, hey, you can keep the page. the picture up but I would like a rate and then give it to them and see where it goes they'll either take it down or they'll pay you

Kalie Nitzsche 23:08

so 10 years you've been in the online space growing your presence and your popularity if you had to ballpark how much money you've lost towards online fraud impersonation the YouTube channel all the nonsense that you've encountered what do you think that that number is

Cheo 23:26

um I would say probably a couple hundred thousand. A

Kalie Nitzsche 23:36

couple hundred thousand dollars?

Cheo 23:37

Off of opportunities and likeness used. Yeah. Because even, I could say even back when I was with the group, I was always in the videos and I didn't profit from the videos that I was in. So that's, that's a thing that would, I would say using my likeness, I didn't, I missed out on opportunities, but I just looked at it at me helping the group and it was work in a sense but officially it wasn't because technically all that stuff is outside of the practice of what I was doing but I was just doing it out of you know love for the team and the group and making sure that you know what we got done was happening so that's I would say that I could say that plays a big part of lost opportunity as far as money made for myself Well,

Kalie Nitzsche 24:33

let's focus on the positive. Can you talk to us? It's also positive. No, no, it's okay. I'm just more curious. You've lost money. That sucks. But also, this is your livelihood. Can you explain to us those that aren't influencers? I mean, I don't sell products, so I don't really know how that works. How are you able to profit off of your NIL today? And how are you doing that with different brands?

Cheo 25:02

So with each platform is different. There's so many ways to make money as an influencer now for YouTube, their video monetization is basically they go by how long people watch your videos and the ads you put into it. And that was the bread and butter for the, for the beginning of our, the group. Uh, so say you had a 10 minute video and you had a certain amount of ads in the video. So if I had three ads in a video, it would go. in the CPM which is like the views per per video so it'll be like a dollar per thousand views right if I had three ads in it if they watched it through the ads would double so go from a dollar two dollars to three dollars per ad and then per thousand views so that's that was how we were making the beginning stages of of income with as an influencer when it got when I got it into the Instagram space it was more brand deals so my engagement was high at the moment so they were able to my first brand deal my first brand deal was with Cup Noodles and it was an $8,000 deal to me and I was just like oh my god like what this is insane this is life changing to me because I would have never thought someone would pay me $8,000 to show up to an event and have a simple recipe to create I post one post. And that was the beginning of how I scaled things as well because you got to know your value as well. If you don't know your value, a lot of people, a lot of influencers get taken advantage of. And you got to learn that space too. There's a whole lot of things. But influencer space for Instagram, brand deals are big for me. And again, it's your engagement. If you have high engagement you get higher rates if you get lower engagements that's when they work things like gifting and they try to see how to build a relationship with them and if they see that you could still sell the brand with the engagement you have that's when you can get bigger brand deal payouts

Kalie Nitzsche 27:21

okay listeners did you hear that that's a better way for you to get bigger deals on on influencing strategies

Cheo 27:28

well yeah so like if you're trying to just build relationships with brands I think now it's a lot harder it's a lot harder to get brand deals now than the time I started getting brand deals because we were the beginning of all this stuff so companies were throwing higher rates at us because at the time businesses and us we didn't know how to scale it so like companies could just literally throw loads of money at you not knowing what they're doing or some of us would just not even know how much we could sell and it was different from back then now it's more scaled it's more measured out so it's harder to get those types of brand deals but if you're getting high engagement which meaning like you know build your build your community and i think that's the best part is having a community to support you because if the brands see that then you have the biggest chance to get the best brand deals you can get out there because it shows that you know they listen to you they they're inspired by you and for a business that's amazing So I think that's the best way is to build your community. And then from there, do a lot of research on your niche and how to scale it that way. And you can definitely push higher rates that can change your life with brand deals.

Kalie Nitzsche 28:49

Yeah. I love when you said that your community in particular, if they notice something, maybe that's being misused on your NIL or, you know, something that seems like it might not be you, they're going to stick on for you so it's really important to have like those people you can count on that are gonna if they if they see something they're gonna say something

Cheo 29:08

yes and it's a gift and a curse because if you become too brand this brand that the community will call you out as well and that doesn't look good so you got to be careful to kind of like keep it a little natural and i mean some people it doesn't matter they can they could just be a complete brand and that's how they present their stuff it's great for their aesthetic and you know it it works for them But it doesn't work for everybody. As you can see, a lot of the people that are huge right now, they don't go by aesthetic. They're just that personality, and it just gravitates everything that they do because they're having fun, and it works that way for them. Sure. But there's so many ways. When it comes to making money on social media now, right now the biggest platforms, I want to say, which are kind of crazy, is Facebook and Snapchat. They're the biggest platforms. of businesses right now that are just, as far as like monetizing off of your platform and like stories and posts, they have created a program. I think Facebook right now has a creative program that's paying people for three months to post and they help push your engagement. And that's amazing because it makes it, and you start from literally zero. If you don't have a Facebook page that's popular, it doesn't matter. They just want to, they just see if you had a platform before and you guys you can reuse your content from the other platform and post it on your Facebook page and yeah they monetize everything from your stories reels and regular posts and they push your page to get engagement and followers and I think that's amazing to help grow because especially in the US I don't think Facebook is is like the younger generation they don't use it at all so for this it's a great way to push back because I think everywhere else in the country in the world they use Facebook but here in the United States it's like so outdated and I think they're trying to figure out ways to build it again and the same with Snapchat. Snapchat's used everywhere around the world. Here it died out for a little bit but it's gaining back its momentum and creators getting paid on Snapchat it's ridiculous. The rates that they're making on there I'm not making it personally but I know a friends that are living the good life off of it. And hopefully one day I could join them. But it's amazing to see how the rates that they can make off of it. I've seen people make $70,000, $100,000 in a month off of Snapchat.

Kalie Nitzsche 31:48

It's wild. Okay, I have a question. You mentioned Facebook. It's not really big in the US, but as an elder millennial, I'm a heavy Facebook user. Same.

Cheo 31:57

Growing up, I mean, it was everything. Yeah, that was like

Kalie Nitzsche 32:00

what we used. Yeah,

Cheo 32:01

it was the first platform that we shared everything. But I think it definitely died out when Instagram and all these other platforms came out and it wasn't used as much. But yeah, it's insane how much it's changed.

Kalie Nitzsche 32:18

Yeah, it's wild. And even to see all of the change that Zuckerberg has made with the platform, pouring millions of dollars into AI and what that means. And then we start to to think about, okay, you mentioned earlier that your brand is relatively just very good and you're super good guy and you post just nice human things. Do you worry about things like AI deep fakes and that stealing or impersonating you in a way that doesn't adequately reflect who you are?

Cheo 32:50

Yes, but at the same time, it's like, how much can I control? How much can I truly control? If I can control the... to have myself not deepfaked, that would mean I can't use the platform if I wanted to edit with something, right? Because like there, I want to say terms and conditions, right? If I want to use the platform, I got to say yes, or if I don't, I can't use it at all, you know? So it's like playing, it's, I don't know, it's tough. It's a question that's really hard for me because I've been thinking about it for a little bit, some time now. It's like, how can, how can, change this like how can we change the privacy or the I'm going to say our security to the point where if someone does use my face and how does it recognize you know in such a big space that it's my face and take it down like I don't know I don't know what's the process that it would take for that yes AI is amazing and but I don't think it could solve everything as far as like helping it security, like figure out, like identify that this is me and not somebody else.

Kalie Nitzsche 34:12

Sure. And it's crazy to me. Like you do encounter an example of, Hey, this person stole my picture and they're using it on their new profile. You know, I think about those things and I don't know if we've been able to really talk about it in depth, but essentially like I've spent some of the summer up in Washington DC talking with legislators around what it means to be able to quickly take things down. And when people falsely market themselves or say they are something that they're not, how do we address that from a law perspective? So curious, since you're so heavily in this space, if you could draft a bill or what would you like to see happen from a legislation perspective to hold the platforms accountable?

Cheo 34:57

that's tough I mean I definitely would say like if they can come up with some type of it's so hard it's so hard to figure out I mean I think if they had an idea of it they would have had it done but I mean the more security the more better I just feel like I don't know how they can either they have some type of identification scan, like, you know, uh, verifying certain ID, like your like official IDs, and then going through an AI process that would come up with a security to identify you. If you ever get popped up. I don't know. I just don't know if we're there yet. And am I, am I answering this right? Or

Kalie Nitzsche 35:50

you are, and I just want all the listeners to know, I did not pay Cheo to say that. So that is just, we're just going to leave it at that. Okay. I want to pivot here.

Cheo 35:59

Yes.

Kalie Nitzsche 35:59

Let's talk about our younger generations. You and I both have young children. Yours is a little bit older than mine, but I'm quickly behind you. Okay. And we have little girls. Yes. When we think about the Generation Zs and the Alphas, whose entire existence has pretty much been online. I don't know about you, but my daughter had an iPad in her hand at four months old and was swiping.

Cheo 36:24

Early. Right? They became better at technology. than us by the age of three

Kalie Nitzsche 36:30

a hundred percent like my mom my daughter's seven and she'll be like mom I can't believe you don't know how to do that and I'm like I literally am the CEO of a technology company you know what I mean so she thinks I'm just way behind the times but when we think about the younger generation what are some of the things that you as someone that's been so experienced and professional in this space for so long would want to warn or let that group that's entering adulthood know around just how to better protect themselves and their reputation

Cheo 37:06

I think it's like it's we can only parent them to a certain degree I feel like they're a lot smarter than us in this situation they've been in technology their whole life so these social platforms these are the leading kids of catfishing they love to create create profiles, just to be on platforms. It's not like they're doing anything to be in a bad way. They just love the platform and in order for them to use it, they have to be a certain age to interact or whatnot. Because I think like TikTok, you had to be a certain age to comment or like a certain thing or you can't upload. And my daughter, she's creative. She's in gymnastics. She loves to express her feelings through content as well.

Kalie Nitzsche 37:56

And how old is she?

Cheo 37:57

11. 11,

Kalie Nitzsche 37:58

okay. So how is she doing this? What platforms is she on?

Cheo 38:03

Well, she's not on the platform right now, but she was on TikTok. I did. There was a moment. Uh-oh, something happened. Well, she's very artsy. There was an art page she wanted to create. She would paint on canvases, and a lot of people loved them. So she wanted to just have a little business going on. So she started selling canvases. canvases of art that she would draw oh my god i love that posting it was great she made eight dollars off of one picture at one time i was like

Kalie Nitzsche 38:35

her

Cheo 38:35

you're a better entrepreneur than i am at the moment she's trying to show you up oh she's and i would love that i would love for her to overcome whatever i accomplish so but in order for her to have these pages she would just create you know she had to lie basically first of all like because you got to put in a certain age and And she created her page. But then she started also posting about things she loved to do on gymnastics. And that's showing her. For me, showing just the art is great. But when you're starting to show yourself and things that can become a little bit more personal, it gets a little scary because you just don't know what's out there. We deal with pedophiles. We deal with just anything. And even the cyberbullying. And at such a young age, that can mentally, like, traumatize you, especially with the cyberbullying. Obviously, pedophiles is a scary situation, but what these kids are dealing with more are the cyberbullying between friends, the people that are socially, you know, communicating, even, what is it, Roblox, like, super toxic communities, and they're all in it, you know, all day. Because we don't notice it. We're just going about our day, and they're on it with their iPads, and dealing with, you know, comments, and then people friends that are you know like we've had our generation of bullying is completely different than the bullying that they're dealing with and I must say it's I feel like people are that are bullying on the internet feel like they're you know so much bigger than they are so the way they talk to people it makes them feel so low and that happened to my daughter at one point where she was getting bullied about something

Kalie Nitzsche 40:25

because of something that she she had posted or

Cheo 40:28

what was through that so somebody created a fake page on her one of her one of her friends created a fake page and there was a moment where they weren't they weren't friends anymore so that she posted something on tiktok against my daughter and was posting like mean girl

Kalie Nitzsche 40:46

style

Cheo 40:46

mean girl style and you guys oh i

Kalie Nitzsche 40:48

don't like that yes especially at that

Cheo 40:52

age especially at that age they're not 11 they're like 18 and it's so Yes. It's very brutal. talking trash about me even if I'm not presenting anything bad like people would hate regardless and you guys gotta let them let them talk if you're responding to them then they win if not to me it was just like if I don't respond to them I'm not gonna I'm not giving them the energy they want they want me to respond so I always told her that I'm like you can't respond to these type of negative situations and if these are people that you know I think you need to have a conversation with them and if it gets If it doesn't get any better, then that's when we bring the parents involved where I would notify the parents like, hey, there's something going on between the kids. Let's figure this out. Because I'm not going to go to someone's parents and say, hey, your daughter or your son is doing this and he needs to stop it because I don't know what's going on with him as well. He or she, they could be going through something and they're just taking it out on my daughter. So it's all about just communication and figuring it out together as a team between the parents. parents and the kids and making it a healthy atmosphere that way I can't besides that I don't know as far as information is how to control them between getting their images taken it's very hard especially when these kids are have iPads or just like technology that they can take pictures and videos anywhere without you knowing regardless if if if you're watching over their stuff or not they're gonna find a way like she's been banned on TikTok talk. Her brother's been banned on Twitch. I was like, I'm looking at these kids. I'm like, how do you get banned from all this stuff? You guys haven't even become of age yet. Especially with you as their dad. Like somebody that's like an OG in the space, right? It's crazy.

Kalie Nitzsche 43:14

Okay, so no parental judgment at all. But how did you find out about you said that she kind of went behind your back on like the art and then it turned into like more personal stuff. How did you find out that the profile was up? And then all Also, what led to both of you finding out about somebody stealing her likeness and creating that fake page?

Cheo 43:35

Her mother. Her mother goes through... Her mother would check frequently of the conversations she has with her friends. And the page, it was like, to me, it was just like, it's okay. As long as, again, it's like she's not posting anything inappropriate. If she was posting something of herself, it was to be, you know, of something that's most appropriate. Sure. And she's innocent and she just likes gymnastics and her friends and nail polish. She's just being creative and I just want her to keep that creativity. I don't want her to feel like she's doing something bad because of how our world works. How do we protect them? How do we protect them? How do we protect that? The answer is, again, I can't even protect it as an adult. So I'm just trying my best to figure out what are the securities that we can do to protect these kids but still give them a creative space that lets them flourish because these kids are super talented I mean I've seen some of these kids come up with stuff that's created better than us and I was just like man like how can we give them more access to do more creative stuff in a positive way without getting taken advantage of or just abused

Kalie Nitzsche 44:46

yeah I know I hear you I struggle with how much to put my daughter on the internet because on one facet I look through my phone and she is literally doing videos like crib style walk around showing everybody our house. And I'll be like, who are you talking to? And she's like, my followers. And I'm like, I'm your only follower. This is, this is my phone. Like, you know, and she just, she hears it. Yeah. And it's good. And she's funny. And I'm like, I would watch this. This kid's cute. But at the same time, I struggle with like, where's the line to allow her to have that outlet, but then also be able to like police her as her parent. Because to your point, like it is such a open space of non-government. Yes. All right, so I have a question for

Cheo 45:31

you. There's a lot of that. Yes.

Kalie Nitzsche 45:35

There's a lot of that. I am allowing you to be president of the United States tomorrow, okay? So much pressure. You can execute one bill around protecting kids online. What would that bill look like?

Cheo 45:51

For me, if I was president, I would definitely pass a bill that would protect kids. protects the children if there's anything malicious going towards them to immediately shut it down and go for review and basic consequences from there and just protect our children at all costs. Whether if it's something that we, you know, I just don't want, I'd rather get it taken down right away to protect us.

Kalie Nitzsche 46:19

No, I hear you. Get it taken down and then there's like a waiting period where they're reviewing it or something, but

Cheo 46:24

at least it's off. But just at least it's off. I love that. Or even it catches, before we even report it, if we can catch to see what's being malicious where there's actions of words or just showing anything inappropriately, it would automatically shut down. Because they have the technology for all that stuff. It just needs to be heightened a little bit more where it catches it right away. And with AI now, I believe it definitely can build a system that would be able to take it down immediately. I

Kalie Nitzsche 47:26

love that answer. Ladies and gentlemen, Cheo for President 2028 coming at you. All right, I've got one more question, and this one's a little bit lighter to end it on a fun note.

Cheo 47:37

Your questions have been amazing. It's making me think a lot more, and I'm definitely going to be doing a lot more research of what I can do because of this podcast. It definitely inspires me to dive deeper into protecting ourselves and our kids.

Kalie Nitzsche 47:51

I hope that we just got that perfectly recorded because that is exactly the intent of what I'm doing. So thank you. But last question, a little bit lighter, a little bit funner.

Cheo 48:00

Yes.

Kalie Nitzsche 48:02

You've been doing this a while. You're OG in the space. I'm sure you have encountered many characters over the years on various platforms and channels. What is the funniest comment or DM you have ever received?

Cheo 48:18

The funniest comment or DM I've ever received. Well, I used to get this comment all the time on my post. It was, Cheo, make me a sandwich. And every time I would post something, it would literally be, Cheo, make me a sandwich. Wait, was it

Kalie Nitzsche 48:36

the same person doing it? Or was it everybody would just do it? It would just be everybody doing it. Cheo, make me a sandwich.

Cheo 48:44

Cheo, make me a sandwich.

Kalie Nitzsche 48:46

Okay, I love it. What kind of sandwich can you make me? What's your go-to?

Cheo 48:51

I can make you anything, really. It doesn't have to be a sandwich. I love cooking in general, so So I would cook a full meal. I'd cook a bolognese, garlic bread, you name it.

Kalie Nitzsche 49:03

All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, you heard it. President of 2028, Cheo. Thank you so much for your time. This has been so incredible. Okay, Cheo, how can they find you online?

Cheo 49:13

Yes, you can find me online on Instagram at Ayo underscore Cheo, A-Y-O-O underscore C-H-E-O. And that is my main platform that I'm using right now. And you guys can join me in my journey for my run from LA to Vegas. I'm going to be posting pretty daily. Actually, I'm going to go for a run right after this.

Kalie Nitzsche 49:35

We are rooting for you. Ayoo Cheo!

Cheo 49:39

Bye guys.

Kalie Nitzsche 49:40

Well, I hope you all enjoyed this episode. It was so interesting to discover so much more about Cheo and what it's like being an influencer and all the joys and challenges that come with his career path. And I love to hear your comments. Follow me on Instagram @ KalieNitzsche and let me know what you thought of today's episode. Did you know that you can listen and watch Just Looking Out? We just launched our YouTube channel @JustLookinOutPodcast . And don't worry if you didn't get all of that. You can find all this info in the episode description as well as a link to apply to be a guest. The Just Looking Out podcast and content posted by Safe Her Studios LLC and Kaylee Nitzsche is presented solely for general information, educational, and entertainment purposes. The use of information on this podcast Thank you.