Vidpros Insiders
Vidpros Insiders take you behind the scenes of the creator economy.
In this podcast, we interview influencers, content strategists, social media managers, talent managers, and industry operators to give you an inside look at how the digital world really works. From growing an audience and building a personal brand to managing creators and scaling content teams, we break down the strategies, systems, and stories driving today’s content industry.
If you’re a creator, entrepreneur, or just curious about what happens behind viral videos, Vidpros Insider gives you the real conversations shaping the space.
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Vidpros Insiders
The Virality Formula | Austin Armstrong Shares His Blueprint for Success
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Meet Austin Armstrong, AI entrepreneur, digital marketer, content creator, and CEO of Syllaby, an AI platform designed to simplify video creation.
In this episode, Austin shares how he built an audience through useful, searchable content, turned his experience in digital marketing into scalable businesses, and uses AI to make content production faster and more accessible.
We discuss short-form video, TikTok and YouTube growth, creating content people are actively searching for, and why consistency matters more than waiting for the perfect idea.
Austin also explains how Syllaby helps creators and businesses research topics, write scripts, produce videos, and streamline their publishing process. We also get into entrepreneurship, investing through Bullhouse Ventures, and where Austin sees the biggest opportunities in AI and content creation.
Whether you’re a creator, marketer, founder, or business owner, this episode offers practical insights into building an audience, using AI effectively, and turning content into a real business.
Learn more about Austin:
Website:
https://www.austinarmstrong.ai
Syllaby:
https://www.syllaby.io
Bullhouse Ventures:
https://www.bullhouseventures.com
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https://www.instagram.com/socialtypro
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https://www.tiktok.com/@usefulaiwebsites
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https://www.youtube.com/socialtypro
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinarmstrong90
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Today we're joined by Austin Armstrong, founder of Syllabi and Alter of Virality. We talked about AI, going viral, building a personal brand, and why content only matters if it grows your business. Let's get into it.
SPEAKER_01My name is Austin Armstrong. I'm just a nerd who stumbled into social media marketing 21 years ago and I've been doing it ever since. On my space 21 years ago, had hundreds of thousands of followers, was able to monetize it lots of ways. Fast forward to about 12 years ago when I moved out to California. I got started in the video marketing space and agencies, and I did the whole agency thing for a while. And then fast forward to about four years ago, I got really fascinated by AI, and I became a software founder. And that's what I've been doing the last four years. I launched an AI software tool called Syllabi. And I've just been growing my personal brand on social media. I just published my first book called Virality on on social media and AI and marketing. And I'm I'm doing all the things and uh just loving life, man.
SPEAKER_02No, that's awesome, but uh to me it's like that's crazy. That's a lot of things. So, how do all of those pieces connect to you? Because Syllabi, a software company, and then a book, and now Bohous, and how do you um how can you do it all and how do you connect it?
SPEAKER_01Hmm that's a great question. So many hands create light work, as the saying goes. I have never been nor ever want to be a solopreneur. I think you are crazy if you want to do that. I have to have great team members and business partners to stay in my zone of genius. The the core thread between all of them, everything I do is essentially marketing related. I am a very good marketer. It's all I want to do. So I bring on team members and uh business partners and whatnot that can do the other more technical stuff or business backend stuff so that I can just stay in my zone of expertise. Um, syllabi for I just kind of highlight most of these things really quickly. Uh, when I started my marketing agency, it really focused on video marketing on social media for businesses, how to grow your social media following with video organically on social media. I got burned out in the agency space, like crazy burn out, burnout. But I still loved what I did and what wanted to help people. And so I just got to a point where I was like, all of this that I'm doing can pretty much be automated with software, and AI is coming, and I think AI will be able to help with that. And that's what Syllabi does. Syllabi essentially automates everything in video marketing that I was doing at my agency. And I just got very good at selling software on social media as well. Um, my book is about everything that I've learned uh about marketing and social media marketing and now AI uh and selling online, uh, compiled into a 300-page book. It's it's called Virality because I wanted to say I wrote the book on virality uh because I've I've pretty much got that that figured out. And then uh Bullhouse is the newest thing. It's a a brick and mortar uh in-person location. Um this is kind of a little bit different, but they're there's still a main thread throughout. But this is a startup incubator, essentially. So it's a physical space uh where I and my wife uh invest in local startups here in uh the Triangle in North Carolina, Durham uh and Raleigh uh area. We invest in the in companies, uh, we give them a free co-working space, we give them a free access to our video production and podcast room, uh, we give them mentorship. And for some companies, uh in particularly the Martech space, because I'm very good at marketing and I have millions of followers on social media, I am able to take the companies that I invest in and help them market through my audience on social media. I also own a uh a physical conference called AI Marketing World, just another thing. Uh, so I can actually put these companies that I invest in on stage as well. But that's the the long-winded answer for you just gotta surround yourself with great people and have great uh business partners and team members that make it easy so that I can stay in my zone of genius.
SPEAKER_02You know what is so interesting. I've been talking to a lot of founders here, and now it's almost like everyone wants to be an AI founder and be a solo entrepreneur. And I think it's interesting that you sit in at the intersection of it, because at the same time that you feel like AI is so important, you still feel like you need your team, and your team makes a huge difference for you. So, do you have anything to say when it comes to people that are scared of AI and thinking AI are taking our jobs and and do you do you think people can actually do it as I I know you mentioned people cannot be solo entrepreneurs, you don't think that's the real path. But do you think it's been working for some people now?
SPEAKER_01Sure, and everybody's different. You know, there are some control freak people out there that want to do everything themselves. And power to you if if that's you. I recognize my weaknesses, I'm not good at everything, nor do I want to control everything, to be honest. I know what I am very good at, and I want to free up as much of my time as possible so that I can focus my efforts on what I am doing best. Now, if you're you know anti-AI, you're it um uh it's it's taking jobs, it is. But you know, I was just on an interview earlier today, and it's fascinating the time frame that we're in because AI is exploding in every industry, but we're still pretty early, if you think about it. It's just the next main shift. You know, anytime that there's a huge societal shift in technology, there's resistance up front, and then it becomes the new norm. Look at um, you know, when the printing press came out, scribes were like, wow, this is gonna take my job. You know, my job is to look at this old manuscript and write it down in this other language into this other manuscript. And the printing press came out and dang it, now I'm out of a job. No, the scribes adopted the printing press so that they could do their job more effectively. When the automobile industry came out, horse sellers, horse dealers were like, this'll never be the thing, you know, and they they fought the automobile industries, uh, but it's a it's such a uh a better, faster way of of uh transportation. Same thing with the internet. Everyone's like, this is a fad, this is but you know, and and and they feared the internet, but now it's adopted uh by pretty much every business imaginable. Uh you could take this a million different ways in a million different industries. It's just the new thing. Jobs will be taken, new jobs will be created. I think the entry level is really the um the thing that should be worried. Um niche or specific expertise in everything, art, uh, music, uh, skill sets, uh business, anything that you are an expert in, AI will just enhance you largely. It's not gonna fully replace expertise. It's the expert that knows how to use the tool effectively. So if you're a new college student trying to enter the workforce, it's gonna be very tough for you if you are not AI enabled. You need to be AI enabled, you need to be practicing and using a lot of these things. Um, you know, that's that's kind of my my long-winded rant there. I you have to be embracing this stuff. There's always gonna be a sector um, you know, that that just does never want to use AI, and cool, they will find that small subset of people that they hate AI and their customers hate AI and they just want to complain uh together. Um and then meanwhile, over here, the rest of the world is gonna continue to progress.
SPEAKER_02One thing that I think it's really interesting that is that you were talking about how every single form of technology that we have now, at some point, it was controversial. So for you, I know you've been creating content for a while now. Were you hesitating in the beginning? Did you um what I'm trying to say is um did you always see the internet as the business itself, or at first did you think of it as a place to market your business?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, when I first got started on social media, I didn't have a business. I was a 14-year-old kid that jumped on MySpace and saw it as a way to get recognition and and uh and just grow followers, and I was able to monetize that uh in some ways, um uh, which was great as a 14, 15, 16-year-old that was making money from a thing that my parents thought was illegal, and some of it might have been, to be honest. But uh unfortunately, I I never had anyone in my life at that point because it was so early. This mind you, I'm 35 now, so this was 21 years ago. There was nobody in my life that was like, use this for business. This is your path. Don't go to college, Austin. Continue doing social media. Nobody, that wasn't an option. Nobody's nobody said that that was a thing because I don't think anybody knew that it was a thing that that early on. But the world has has completely changed. This is a new way. You know, even just a like 10 years ago, parents were like, kids stop playing video games. This is there's this is not a path. This is a career now. You can make more money than their parents that went to a four-year degree college and and became a doctor in some cases. You can make more money live streaming on Twitch and winning video game tournaments than doctors. Okay, there's a there's a path for everything. I'm I've always been an early adopter, just kind of circling back to your question. I've always been an early adopter. I I try to embrace change. I am a very risk-tolerant person. Sometimes when I um uh adopt an early technology or uh a new trend, it falls flat and it fails. And there's a lesson to be learned uh along the way. But there has not been something yet that I have been fearful of that I didn't didn't embrace. If I see it as a big opportunity, I'm gonna test it out and see see what's going on in that space.
SPEAKER_02Would you say you were always entrepreneurial in a way, or did content and marketing pull you into that world?
SPEAKER_01No, I I definitely was always entrepreneurial, um, as far as I can uh uh scroll back. And that's an interesting thing too, because I think like anyone can become an entrepreneur by definition. You can buy a business, you can be given a business by your parents, right? But it doesn't necessarily make you entrepreneurial. And I think that being entrepreneurial is something that some people are born with, and it doesn't come from my family, uh, because I'm a first generation entrepreneur from like four generations back. My parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, I don't know where the heck that came from. But I was um I was selling pixie sticks and sodas at school in elementary school. I would go to the dollar store and buy a pack of a hundred, actually, I would get my mom to buy me a pack of a hundred pixie sticks for one dollar and I'd sell them for a quarter each uh at school and make a big a big profit. You know, where does that come from? How do you learn how to do that? I don't I don't know where that comes from. Um even playing video games when I was like 10 years old. I used to play like Maple Story, which is a nerdy uh Japanese side-scroller MMO game. And I sold uh things in the game. I had a shop and I sold a service to help level other people up. So I've always had entrepreneurial tendencies, whether it's in a video game that I'm playing or selling to other students in my in my class, to, you know, I had a software tool when I was 15 years old with uh on MySpace that helped other people um grow their following on MySpace. I don't know where it comes from, but yeah, absolutely always been entrepreneurial.
SPEAKER_02Were you making money on MySpace? Oh yeah, a lot. A lot of money. Really? Because I I to be honest, I I didn't know people were able to make money on MySpace back in the days.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, so quite a few different ways. I'll I'll break it down because it um I I remember well, I'm I'm like so nostalgic about those days. So I I just mentioned this. I had a soft uh um uh a brilliant friend, uh his name's Tim. He built a software tool that helped other people um get followers on MySpace. So do you remember MySpace at all or no?
SPEAKER_02No, to be honest.
SPEAKER_01Okay, no problem. So, like the the main feed on anything, the the feed was in a message board area on MySpace. All your posts were were in there. And what this software did is you could pay a monthly subscription or you could pay to be at the top of this list for a while. Uh, but you shared this uh list of all of these profiles to follow into the message board area, and then it just had this like network effect where everybody would share it, share it, share it, and it drove traffic back, and then we monetized it that way. I also got paid by local bands and t-shirt companies to promote them to my followers on there, so they would pay me a couple hundred bucks for a blast or anything like that. Early email marketers would pay us. Now, this is the kind of sketchy illegal part. They were like, I don't care how you get emails, here's some ways to do it. Just get us emails. And so we would be like, click this image to get Photoshop for for free, just enter your email address. And every email that we got somebody to put in there, they would pay us a dollar or two, uh, two dollars per email because those emails were worth worth a lot of money in the early 2000s. Um, so that's how we made a lot of money. And then I also sold HTML profile codes because you could customize your Facebook uh or your uh MySpace profiles uh back in the day. So we had websites where um some of them were free, but there were premium ones that we customized, and you could pay like five, 10 bucks uh for those premium profile customization, HTML codes, and it would you pay and you unlock. So um I was making a lot of money as a 14-15 year old, and I spent it all on weed.
SPEAKER_02Funny thing is, I don't think it was illegal, to be honest, because I don't I don't know if the internet was that regulated back in the city.
SPEAKER_01That's fair. That's fair. Yeah, we just straight up lied. We yeah, I I'm not saying it's moral or ethical, but uh, you know, they they came these these these slimy marketers threw money at us kids and were like, sure.
SPEAKER_02Is there anything that you learned back in the days when it comes to business that you still apply today, or anything that you thought you were doing right, and now you're like, hey, I I changed everything, I rebranded.
SPEAKER_01There's a lot of synergies to what I was doing on MySpace that I still do today, which is kind of crazy to think about. Another quick example is like how we grew our followings back on there was we would enter into these AOL instant messenger uh group chats, AIM, and we would one by one go down the list, and this was like this is really bad marketing advice, but it was basically just follow for follow because we were just like collecting everything. But everybody in those AIM group chats would uh they would share their like profile and their HTML code or whatever, and all of us in there, and all of us had tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of followers, would copy that code and paste it in that the feed, the message board area. And so it would reach all of our uh our followers uh at the same time, and it said follow Austin, for instance. So I would get a huge sl like slew of new people that followed me, and then we just went down that list and went down that list. I do the same thing today, but in my niche. And so I have uh uh a collaboration group, particularly on Facebook, but we also do this on uh Instagram as well, uh, um, of AI content creators in my space. And every day I'll share one of my posts in there. They all share my posts to their audience, and vice versa. I will share all of their posts to my audience. Now, the the lessons that we've learned through, you know, over 20 years is you want to do this niche specific. Um, everybody grows together. Uh, we're all in the AI space. So uh the interest of their followers or the interest of my followers, they're gonna click on our offers. We do collaborations for launching software tools or launching offers. Uh, we've won affiliate marketing competitions together because we support one another. Uh, but you know, these are just some of the similarities uh between, you know, like there was no direction or strategy uh back in the day. So just like, you know, understanding now who is your ICP, understanding your ideal client persona, ideal client uh uh customer profile, whatever you want to label it as. Who is that specific person? What is their age range? What are their hobbies? What are their interests? What are their pain points? All of these things, what is the messaging that resonates with them? Where do they hang out online? Where do they spend their time? And then crafting really good marketing messaging for those people and showing up consistently, you know, just adapting these strategies to be more intentional and specific. But there really are a lot of synergies to what worked 20 years ago, which is kind of crazy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. One thing that I also think is really interesting about you is that instead of just staying behind the scenes as a marketer or founder, you actually decide to be the face of your content. And why did you make that decision? And do you think that's something that a lot of founders are missing right now?
SPEAKER_01Uh a little bit of healthy narcissism, I think, is the real answer, but I think everybody should have a personal brand. I am also very extroverted as well. I'm not it like I'm your extroverts, extrovert. Um, I think it's hard for some people to show up in front of the camera, uh, the camera, because they don't want the attention. They are perhaps self-conscious about something internally or externally. Uh, they don't want to deal with trolls in the comments online, they don't want to deal with the judgment of their friends or family or coworkers that see their content online. All of these are honestly valid reasons. But I also think on the counter argument of that is like anybody that's going to tease or make fun of you for putting yourself out there and trying to make a difference, have empathy for them because they're coming from a place of personal insecurity. If I am creating content trying to grow my business, trying to change my family's life to make to make money and create content that makes impact and helps people or entertains people. If I get a comment from Aunt Carol over here or username 5369 Anonymous Troll on social media, and they're like, you're an idiot. I'm sorry, you're not doing anything. Why should I even listen to your opinion? You know, I'm sorry that your family, if that's one, you're not doing anything yourself. Why are you critiquing me? I have empathy for you because you're just mad that you didn't take the action. Or, you know, Russian troll bot, uh, that you know, half the time these social media comments are not even real people anyway. So just have that empathy uh for them. Anyone that if you've got a zit on your forehead and uh you you put out a really good video and then somebody runs to the comments and points out the zit, you You know, screw you. You're you're coming from a place of personal insecurity. I'm still helping people, and I'm leveraging you to help my video reach more more people anyway, because engagement is engagement, and that's what these platforms care about.
SPEAKER_02That's true. And I feel like caters, they're actually the biggest fans because they're actually the people that engage with the content. Because if I like something, I'm not always gonna be commenting and actually liking their pictures and everything. But if if people have something bad to say, they're gonna make sure to comment that. So they're actually engaging with your content and they're helping you if they understand a little bit about the algorithm. So it's very interesting, and it's always faceless, right? So that's another point. And and it's interesting that you mentioned that because that has always been an insecurity of mine. I'm not gonna lie. And then when I started doing this, I got super scared. And I feel like it's also a skill that you can develop with time because now I don't care anymore, even if I watch a video later on and I'm like, oh my god, my hair was so messy, or I didn't look my best, but I just don't care anymore. I just post it and whatever happens, happens. And I feel like each video is a new opportunity to grow, and I think that's really important. And one thing that I want to know bringing that topic is is there a specific video that you noticed that changed everything for you? The trajectory of your audience and your business.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, I want to uh highlight that last point too. Like, I troll the trolls, and uh, so like I will even purposely mess up my hair or put my glasses like this or or or do something stupid because I want you. I oh man, I I definitely rage bait. Um, but there's there's there's two videos in particular that I can point to that made drastic changes in in my online career. The first one was on TikTok. Uh, I was creating a bunch of just random content, business content, you know, uh all kinds of different stuff. Uh but when I did a video, my first viral video on TikTok was uh it was um about SEO, search engine optimization. It was in particular how to it was a tutorial of how to compress an image size uh so that it's it made your website load a little bit faster and how to add um geotags to the image. Like none of this, like that it doesn't even work, to be honest. But it was like a hacky uh thing, and that video did uh over a million views on on TikTok, and it it resulted in thousands of comments on that video, which I responded to every single one of those, and it turned my channel into an SEO channel. So I had my marketing agency at the time, and that one video ended up uh turning into a lot of paying clients uh for my business. And that's where my personal brand really started uh to kick off and grow. And you can pivot your personal brand a lot, but that one video really started the trajectory. Now, fast forward a couple years after that, I had a uh a video uh that exploded across every uh social media platform. Uh, these five websites feel illegal to know. It was a series of where I'm talking to myself in different outfits. That was the opening hook, and I'm kind of reacting to myself, like if they're illegal, then why would you tell me? Just kind of that stupid gimmick, and then sharing websites. That video did 12 million views on on TikTok, it did 22 million views on YouTube, it and it's a short by the way, it drove 300,000 YouTube subscribers, it did millions of views on Instagram, it did millions of views on Facebook. That one video generated me hundreds of thousands of followers across every single platform. It generated well over a hundred thousand dollars in uh brand revenue uh from brands that wanted to sponsor my my channel. It helped me create uh recurring series because when one video uh performs really well, you better double down. So I did a bunch of those videos and now I have over five million followers. Now that series doesn't really work well for me anymore. I've since pivoted and trying other content and whatnot, but those those two videos were very, very key key points that that changed the trajectory of my business and my status on social media.
SPEAKER_02How do you decide which are which ideas are worth making content about right now? Because especially when we're talking about AI, it's such a fast-moving topic that um isn't it scary that by the time you post a video it's already outdated?
SPEAKER_01I study a lot, that's a great question. So I study a lot of other creators in my niche. I'm always trying to remix things as as well. So can I take uh a topic in um in uh a format of delivery on social media that that has that is not saturated with that information to create something fresh and and something new? And that tends to be what goes viral. So I'll tell you just like this this week, for instance, um, I just bought a humanoid robot. Really silly. Um, but there's not a lot of humanoid robots on on social media, and so I do a tradition. You ever see uh uh Keith Lee, the food review guy? I tried it. He's got tens of millions of followers. Um he does this, you know. I I uh very deadpan, like uh I wanted to try the best uh sandw chicken sandwich in Nashville. I got it. Let's try it. I'm gonna eat it. And it like every time he says that, it like zooms in on his face. And so I took inspiration from the like unboxing and food review style, and I said, I bought a humanoid robot from China. Let's open it. And the let's open it zooms in on my face. So it's a it's a a format of content that works really well with a brand new topic that's interesting. And that video did well over a million views on on uh TikTok just this last week. It has hundreds of thousands of views uh on every other social media platform as well. And now I'm doubling down. So I'm this week I'm creating tons of new videos and answering questions, talking about humanoid robots. Um, and it's just it's just new, it's fresh, and all of these videos are performing uh really well for me. And so it's just testing an assumption, trying to remix it, testing until it either works or it doesn't work, and then when something works, just doubling down on it and continuing to do it until it doesn't work anymore.
SPEAKER_02If you're a creator or a business owner trying to stay consistent online, editing can easily become a full-time job. That's why vidrills exist. VidBrills is a professional video editing service built specifically for creators. You've got a dedicated human editor who learns your style, pacing, and workflow over time. You upload the footage and your editor handles everything cuts, captions, sound, color, thumbnails, and short form clips. We also offer unlimited revisions within your editing hours. You can try vidcarils with a $100 try a week that includes 10 hours of editing. Go to vidcrolls.com to get started. Stop editing and start growing. What's so interesting is that you go from SEO to humanoid robots. So um if if there's a person that follows you because of your SEO content, how do you make them stay after you change the topics and change, let's say, to a different niche, perhaps? How do you make people trust you and be there for you regardless of what you're talking about in your videos?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, really, really great question. So they need to be it needs to be a natural pivot that that makes sense and over a slow period of time. So SEO is a niche within a niche of digital marketing. Digital marketing is the the broad avenue. Uh SEO is one aspect of it. I was the SEO guy for a while on on TikTok until I started to grow a large uh following on TikTok, and then I started to get questions and clients asking, well, I saw you grow your business on TikTok. How do I grow my business on TikTok? TikTok marketing is still under digital marketing. And so I started to slowly transition and pivot into that and creating content around how to grow your business on TikTok. And then I became the TikTok guy for a while. This whole process can take, you know, a year. It's really up to you. There's no like timeline, but if you want to pivot your personal brand, it's gotta be gradual. And so it continues. So the last probably three, four years, to be honest, has been AI for me. I've been the AI guy. I still very much am, still very much am. But humanoid robots have AI in them. And I my conference, AI marketing world, we've made uh robots as a part of the actual conference. So you can robots are a part of the show, you can come and like demo and test the robots uh and everything. And so that's how I'm kind of getting into this space is like it's still AI, it's still marketing, uh digital marketing with an AI focus, but now it's another, you know, segue from AI to AI in a thing, AI in a robot. And so, you know, if I was to just switch uh and do a 180 of like, you know, here's uh here's how to uh here's uh the how to set up a car wash, you know, and start talking about the mechanics of of of car washes, that would make no sense because that has nothing to do with AI or digital marketing whatsoever, um, or cars or or food. If I start talking about food content, it wouldn't resonate with my audience whatsoever. But as long as it's a natural progression or pivot, you should be fine. Otherwise, start a new page.
SPEAKER_02Now, talking about your book again and kind of linking both topics, what is the biggest misconception that people have about going viral? And do you think it's mostly just a combination of timing, packaging, and luck, or do you think there's a real strategy that you can go and make it work, regardless?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, virality is not luck. Um, virality is pattern recognition and really good execution performed consistently. That's all it is. You can um there are um repeatable processes to stack the odds in your favor. And I outlined uh you know all of this in this book. Like this book will 100% make you go viral if you actually just follow it. Like, money back guarantee. I'll I'll send you 20 bucks. If you actually go through the book, you actually do it and you execute on it, like give yourself 30, 60, 90 days, whatever it takes. Like, if you 100% go through it, I guarantee. I I guarantee you'll go viral.
SPEAKER_02Give us like one big mistake that creators make that is in the book, of course, without spoiling the book, but just give us something that could hint to what people can know more about.
SPEAKER_01They don't do any research uh ahead of time, they don't know who they're trying to reach online, they're just spraying and praying and and hoping for virality. Like if you just put up a random video on your channel and put hashtag FYP and pray to the gods uh that you're gonna go viral, but you have no niche focus, you have no monetization on the back end. What like who care? Who cares? The whole thesis of the book is don't be a content creator, be a business owner who creates content. That's the other misconception, is uh I'm not just trying to go viral for going viral. I'm not dancing on TikTok shaking my booty, I'm a business owner. So everything, everything that I do, like I teach you how to make money with viral content uh and develop multiple streams of of of income. You want to go viral in the right audience. Again, like if I just like have like if I have my robot start twerking, it might go viral, but that's not gonna bring me any of the right people that I want to reach. Yeah. But yeah, but like I want to get, I want like I want my robot to go viral for people that will buy conference tickets or people that uh own robot companies, so they pay me to and send me a robot so that I can put it in front of my channel and get paid uh paid that way. Like that's what I I care about. So like, you know, viral for the sake of viral, that's a huge misconception. Why do you want to go viral? You can make a shitload of money, pardon my language, uh, without going viral. So you have to like dissect who you want to reach, what are your back-end systems, and study a lot of great content and formulate it in a in a uh package uh that's gonna resonate and hold their attention.
SPEAKER_02And that's actually a great segue to the next question I had, which is do you think creators obsess too much over views and not enough over what those views are actually doing for their business?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Absolutely. Likes and uh and follows don't don't pay the bills. Um you have to monetize that uh on the back end. I can't go to the landlord um and be like, hey, uh you know, um uh I can't pay your rent this month, but my post got 10,000 likes, will you take that as as rent? No, of course, of course not, right? So you have to the and the other thing with virality as well is you have to make sure like if you have a business, you have to make sure that your business can handle virality, first of all. If you sell uh a candle that you make by hand and then you go viral on TikTok and it results in 10,000 candle purchases, can you fulfill that? I don't know. You you tell me. You you you might not even be ready for virality. So you've gotta be you've gotta have those systems uh and back-end systems in in place.
SPEAKER_02When did you realize that content could be a competitive advantage for a software company, for example?
SPEAKER_01Specifically for software, uh when I was when I was growing my uh following on TikTok. So what I had found is that the content that was performing best for me was top of the funnel. Uh like these five websites feel illegal to know. That type of content that I mentioned before that went went really viral. All of the websites that I share in there are software tools. Now, all of the tools that I mention are only applicable and useful for potential clients for me. They are service-based business owners or some some kind of business that would only have interest in those tools to help them grow their business. I want to bring them into my ecosystem so that I can sell my marketing services to them. But what I recognized is that this top of the funnel opens up affiliate marketing for software. And so I got really good at doing these videos talking about um software tools that were for uh productivity or marketing or whatever. And all of these tools have affiliate programs that when you can get somebody to sign up for them, uh they'll pay you 20, 30, 40, 50% recurring commissions for life, which is very powerful, which means you get somebody to sign up for a software one time, you get paid every single time, every month that they continue to say subscribed. And my content, this was this um developed a massive income stream for me. It's actually my number one income stream, is a software affiliate marketing. And um, and that's really when I realized how how powerful this is. And then I got to the point I'm like, I'm doing this for 20%, 30% commissions, I'm already burned out on my agency. Why don't I start a software company? I know I know how to sell software really well. I want to own 100% of the tool that I'm selling.
SPEAKER_02When you're actually diving into like different businesses, what is harder for you? Getting attention, earning trust, or converting that into a sustainable business?
SPEAKER_01I don't think any of them are hard if you really, to be honest, statistically converting into paid users is is the hardest part, but if you really know who you are are um starting that business for, uh and you know how to market to them, you're solving problems. It's a pretty easy and there's like a gap in the marketplace. It it's not a difficult sell. This is this is business. Um all business is is problem solving and knowing who you're solving problems for. And if you can create the best uh intuitive, affordable, or premium solution that solves a problem, you really won't have a difficult time converting them into paid users either.
SPEAKER_02What problem is Syllabi, for example, solving the most today?
SPEAKER_01The business owner that wants to grow their following and get more leads on social media, but doesn't have the time to create, schedule, edit, and publish videos themselves, Syllaby automates all of your video production time, saving you 70% of your time and budget.
SPEAKER_02What made you decide to build an end-to-end content system instead of just one focus tool?
SPEAKER_01I wanted to automate what I was doing at my agency. So everything uh that I was doing at my agency was topic research, uh script outlining um, or writing the actual scripts for clients, coaching them how to be on camera, having an uh an internal video editing team, and then we actually manage their accounts. So we uh published uh and optimized uh their videos across social media, and um I just wanted to automate that entire process. Um, it's it's very streamlined for video. So we really are only focused on on one aspect, but it's it's video. So like, yes, we could just be video generation, or we could just be scheduling and publishing. Um, but the other pain points that we've often put out there is like to do everything that Syllabi does, you need to pay for five different software tools. You need to spend the time to learn um how to do keyword or topic research, and then how to generate scripts, and then how to create videos and how to edit videos, and then uh uh another tool to schedule and publish it out. Well, what if you could do all of that in one tool automatically for one subscription cost? And that's messaging that resonates with a lot of people and solves uh big pain points.
SPEAKER_02And when it comes to anyone who wants to use syllabi, what is um let's say um where do you think human judgment is too important when it comes to creating content?
SPEAKER_01Great question. So I don't care how you create videos, I just want you to create more videos. And syllabi is human in the loop as much or as little as you want. So you can go in there and find one topic idea and then generate a script, edit the script, or paste in your own script. Uh, or you can enter in your own topic and have Syllabi generate uh a script for you, or you can type in your own script. You can prompt the AI video generation however you want and edit it however you want. Or you can upload your own video that you record yourself and uh edit it however you want in our editor and add in B-roll or AI B roll if you want and then schedule and publish it out, or just upload your video and schedule and publish it out as uh you want, or download the AI video and then you manually publish it. So it's entirely customizable every single step of the way, or you can automate the entire process as well. It's entirely up to you, uh, up to the user how much you want to rely on on AI and the automation if you want to, you know, do just step one and step four, if you just want to do step one, you just want to do step two. Uh it doesn't matter where you're at, you have the f total freedom and and control inside Syllabi. And it was always uh created that way to have human in the loop with AI.
SPEAKER_02And it's amazing how much technology can help people now. Do you can you imagine what the creator economy will be like in three years from now if you were to guess?
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's it's crazy uh to think about that. I actually think there will probably be a big shift. I think there will be very AI uh adopted creators that have AI as a core part of their their content, whether it's the research, the scripting, the actual video itself, the editing. And then there's gonna be the the purists that they do everything themselves. They do the research themselves, they create content themselves, they publish it themselves, they they do everything. There's not a right or wrong uh way on on either side. I just think that this is gonna be a a huge uh shift um and and split that we're gonna see. But there will always be content creators. Um just as there's always been uh influencers as uh from from storytelling. That's all that's all it is. You know, storytelling around the fireplace. Uh, you know, you had the old the old wise sage that that told stories, or the the snake oil salesman, uh marketer that came into town and and shared something. Uh, you know, like to um to um uh plays and and and musicals, Shakespeare uh oriented days. These are creators. The format is just has just changed. So um content creators will always exist. The content cre the content uh creator economy is is only gonna get better, I think.
SPEAKER_02Now I have one final question that is if there's anyone watching this and they want to be where you are today, they want to follow your path, what advice would you give them?
SPEAKER_01Where should they start? Start with where you're at, post messy. Don't be a perfectionist, because perfectionism is procrastination. You're getting in your own way. Show up consistently, fail forward, never quit.
SPEAKER_02That's the best advice I've heard so far. Thank you so much for doing this. And if there's anything you'd like to promote right now, feel free. This is your moment.
SPEAKER_01No, for sure. Um, I hope my book Virality helps you. If you if you get a copy of it, uh you can make a really silly uh photo like this with the uh This is great marketing, by the way. Yeah. The the cover, but uh it's called virality with an exclamation point. Wherever you buy books, it's available on Amazon. Um, it's everything that I know about uh viral social media and helping you grow your business on the back end, leveraging social media and more recently AI. Um, if you want to connect with me, uh my website's AustinArmstrong.ai. I'm very active on every social media platform. But if you search for me, I'm the nerdy with glasses uh and tattoos, Austin Armstrong. I am not the Florida Gators defensive football coach, Austin Armstrong, nor am I the six foot-tall, uh curly-haired relationship uh vlogger Austin Armstrong out in LA. I am that business nerd right in the middle.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. I'll make sure to leave the right links in the description so people can check it out. And again, thank you so much for doing this.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Vitor.
SPEAKER_02Going viral is not luck. It is pattern recognition, strong execution, and knowing exactly who your content is for. Like and subscribe, and check out the rest of the VidPros Insiders podcast. I'll see you next time.