Lukas Pakter: The Trybe Creator Growth Playbook

Lukas is the co-founder of Trybe, the platform powering the creator sales forces behind the fastest-scaling DTC brands right now. He's uploading over 5,500 ads a month and turning everyday creators into a sales force that outsells traditional UGC, influencers, and agencies combined.

In this episode he gives the unfiltered playbook:

- Why you don't find great creators, you train them
- How to structure retainers and commissions so creators actually work harder (and the one ratio most brands get wrong)
- How he ran 3,500 ads a month by himself in two hours a day
- How to protect your ad account while testing thousands of videos
- Why creator retention, not recruitment, is the real moat

If TikTok Shop or Meta is anywhere on your roadmap, this is the one to watch.

Lukas: https://www.instagram.com/lukaspakter/
Trybe: https://jointrybe.com/
Elevator Goods: https://www.instagram.com/elevatorgoods/
Host (Monish Sabnani): https://www.instagram.com/msabnani93/

Timestamps:
00:00 The Creator Sales Force Playbook
01:13 Trybe: TikTok Shop for Meta
09:08 Is Your Brand Ready?
13:15 You Train Great Creators
19:51 The Creator Retainer Framework
24:50 Shift UGC From “I” to “You”
31:54 Why 5,500 Ads a Month Works
34:17 Build the Team From Your Creators
38:30 Why Waiting Will Cost You
42:14 Why 1,000 Ads Still Failed
45:55 From $0 to $79K a Month
51:08 Founder-Led Creator Retention
58:31 How to Test 40,000 Ads on Meta

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I really believe that brands that are not using Tribe and not building programs like this will 100% lose to businesses that are. Most brands think that you find great creators. I think that you train great creators. The founder involvement is the most important thing. People always ask me, who can I hire? What's the best position to hire to run this? I'm like, yo, you should hop on the call.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

If you're in the industry of e-commerce, you've probably heard of the Hudson method behind what scale comfort or Tribe. Tribe is without a doubt the most interesting program available in e-commerce right now. Turning creators at scale into a sales force for your brand. Today we're sitting down with Lucas, one of the co-founders of Tribe, and hearing it exactly from his POV of what to do, how to scale Tribe, and why it matters. This is something I've personally been building, and I cannot wait to dig in with Lucas myself. All right. Hey Lucas, great to meet you. Likewise, man, good to be here. You know, we were just chatting offline, but we're actually big users of Tribe ourselves. And so honestly, I mean, one of the best parts about the podcast is I I just talk to the people that I actually want to talk to. You know, like if it wasn't for this, I would have probably hit you up anyways because I wanted to learn more about the platform and what you're up to.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

It's good, dude. I think uh I don't know if you know this, but I used to have a podcast, and that was the exact same reason. I was like this young kid with a failing clothing brand. I was like, I want to talk to smart people that I can learn from, and it's not very effective if you just say, hey, what's up, man? You got you know 60 minutes to talk on the phone. So it's genuinely the best uh networking tool, if you want to call it that.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Yeah, it's literally the conversations that I feel like I was having anyways, just you know, recorded now. Yeah. But yeah, let's kick off, man. I'm super excited to talk. Tribe is is certainly all the the you know, all the rage right now in in e-com. And we'll get into the whole thing. I've you know, I sent you a bunch of thoughts in advance, but first things first, kind of context would be great to hear, you know, what is Tribe from Lucas's POV? What are you guys up to?

SPEAKER_00 1:52

There's so many ways to explain it. Like there's there's what it currently is, and then there's what we want to build it into. But I think like in a nutshell, Tribe is TikTok shop for UGC. It's the easiest way to explain it. So platform, tons of creators, tons of brands. It's a marketplace. You know, instead of TikTok shop where the creators are affiliates on Tribe, they're submitting ads to brands to be run as ads on platforms like Meta. And same as TikTok shop, creators get a percentage of the revenue it generates them. But really, like what our goal is long term is we want to build Salesforce for D2C or Uber for ads. Like the vision for it is uh, you know, a 32-year-old single mother of two could become a millionaire selling like baby products, right? Because other single mothers, they want to see someone just like them talking about how that product has made their life better and added value to their life, right? They don't want to see like the celebrities anymore. And so we saw what TikTok shop did, which is genius. I think TikTok shop is, in my opinion, the second greatest invention over the last decade. I think like ChatGBT and the equivalents are all, you know, genius. But I think TikTok shop, like what it did for society, it it gave everyday people the chance to be entrepreneurs with zero risk, like sell other people's stuff and make unlimited money, changed small businesses, changed big businesses. And we were kind of looking at that and we're like, why only make that accessible for e-com? Why limit that to just one channel? So the goal with Tribe, and we have new integrations coming soon, is like not just Meta, but TikTok, Snapchat, Apple, and Google, YouTube, maybe X one day. So yeah, we're super excited. It's been really fun.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

So give me a before and after. You know, before Tribe, you were paying creators upfront manually, sort of like arbitrary fees, trying to figure out what was working, what was driving. What's the after? And when did you realize that this was like a problem worth actually putting a ton of innovation into, not just fixing, but like genuinely holistically creating a platform around?

SPEAKER_00 3:44

So, yeah, I'll give some background. You know, I have a clothing brand, very tough industry for a lot of reasons, right? Super saturated. This is not the best margins. Yeah, yeah. This is I'm I'm wearing like one of the products right now, uh, men's activewear brand. And uh, you know, typically in clothing, you have to have like a 70% gross margin to even make money. We have like a 60% gross margin right now, which if you told like the average clothing brand owner, they'd be like, How the fuck are you guys even making money? Like, that doesn't even make sense. The numbers don't add up. You have to have a cost per acquisition so low that you can actually afford to sell the product for cheaper, right? So, you know, we tried every marketing method there was. We tried like the affiliate codes and links like Gymshark and Young LA, didn't work. We tried traditional UGC, you know, pay $500 for an ad, didn't work. We tried sponsoring in-person events, didn't work. Like nothing worked. Influencer marketing didn't work. Everything was too costly. There was no guarantees of a result, and it was already too saturated. Like even with codes, for example, it's like, I really believe like there's only you have like a couple years to take advantage of the best trend. You know, Gymshark, I think, really like revolutionized the affiliate code model. By the time other brands wanted to use that five years later, it doesn't work anymore. So then we got on TikTok shop because uh we had to. I didn't like the idea of TikTok shop. Our business was like burning money, unprofitable. And my co-founder was like, dude, let's just try TikTok shop. I said, No, it's cheap platform, looks bad, but we had to do it. We had no other option. So it was out of desperation. And we started to see some success on TikTok. And then I got connected to, I don't know if you're familiar with Comfort, but founder of Comfort is my mentor. I met this guy before anyone knew who he was, before like the Hudson method was a thing. And, you know, to make a long story short, he was like, I like you, dude. You're me five years ago. Give me 10% of your company and I'll teach you some things. And I asked 50 people, I tell this story a lot. I asked 50 people, they all said, You're an idiot. This is the worst deal I've ever heard. So I was like, all right, bet, let's do it. And he pretty much taught me the Hudson method of like using TikTok as a way to find high potential creators, but really where the money is, is taking their top content over to Meta. And so we were doing this manually at first, kind of like you just mentioned. We were still doing this same system where we would pay them a percentage of the ad revenue they made. But even with like, you know, think about it. If you had like three, four hundred ads per month, every week I wanted to pay my creators. I wanted them to be able to spend that money, I wanted them to be able to get incentivized. So every week, my whole team would have to go and add up the sales per creator for not just like 300 videos, but like the 1500 to 2000 that were in the ad account and manually, you know, pay out like 50 creators or whatever it was back then. And it would take insane, right? And ineffective because meta's attribution sucks. Meta tells you you made money when you didn't. It overattributes like crazy. So that's really where the idea came from. It was like, why don't we just build it simple at first to see if it would help? My my number one goal is always how do I help my creators make money? Because if they're making a dollar, I make 10, right? So I'm never prioritizing business revenue. I'm always prioritizing like how do I give my creators the most information, the best products, the best training, the best tech so that they can make money. And then my business will just be cooking as a result. So the first version of Tribe was like, you know, I hit up the smartest people I knew and uh told them about this. I I felt like when I had the idea, I ran and grabbed like nine pieces of paper and I started sketching out what the first version of it would look like. And I felt like my life had purpose, honestly. Like the second I had the idea, I was like, this is gonna change everything. And I brought it to my first two co-founders and uh I got them to pretty much like drop everything they were working on and go all in on it. And then it yeah, it took off from there.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

You went from selling, you know, a product via your brand to and you still do that obviously, but sort of moving into picks and shovels, which to me is like the best of the best. You're creating the tools that the brand owners are using, it's sort of like you know what Shopify did. And by the way, we'll get into what I really want to talk about, which is the tribe playbook. But we have just for context, we've got sort of like an e-commerce members club out here in Hong Kong. We've got about 20 e-com founders, and I swear to God, there's not one day where the word tribe doesn't come up. So you've really hit nerve. That's great. I really mean that by the way. Like obviously, you know, the Hudson method is pervasive, but tribe is sort of like synonymous with it. So you're doing you're doing the right thing.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

I'll hit you guys up next time I'm out there. I was out there about a year and a half ago when I visited my manufacturer back in like April of last year. Sick city, dude. Like a combination of New York and San Francisco and LA at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Yep, that's well said. So today I want to talk about the tribe playbook from from your POV. Sort of like what is the playbook, you know, and just kind of giving the step by step to either people who are ready on your platform or people who are hearing about it for the first time. So let's just kind of run through it. The first is how do you know if your brand is ready? You know, let's say you're an e-com founder before your company starts sending out hundreds and hundreds of samples. How do you know whether or not your brand or product is actually suited to creator-led growth?

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Okay, so here's the thing. So I don't think you should send out hundreds and hundreds of products. I'm even gonna I'm pretty much gonna give you guys like my strategy, the way I use it for my brand, because I think a lot of people, they use it the wrong way. In order for your brand to be ready, you have to be doing, I would say, like at least a couple hundred thousand a month. Like I would say like two hundred thousand or maybe at least, at least six figures a month. Because you have to think backwards, right? Sales generally. I would say in in in meta revenue. And I can also give like some background on like how I think the best way to get there is as a startup as well. But like I really don't think you're gonna see much success on Tribe until you're doing at least six figures a month because there's just not enough money to go around to potential creators. And if they're not making money, then it, you know, it doesn't work, right? So if you're a startup with no funding and it's your first business, I would recommend you try and just obsess over creative. You study the best videos, you become an expert yourself, you make videos as a founder for your brand to get it off the ground. You make the first 300 creatives to figure out what styles are effective. And then once you have a little bit of momentum, once you have some products sold and you have some proof of concept, then when you actually go out and find creators, you can actually teach them how to make great videos. If you have a lot of funding or if you have like previous success and you have a great idea for a product, then you can maybe skip that part and just like start spamming on ads in order to find the winning angles. But yeah, you have to be at a point where the creators can actually make money for the work they're doing. And I was actually not at that point in the beginning, which made it so hard to get off the ground. But yeah, does that does that answer that first question?

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Of course. Yeah, I mean, there's a there's a there's a baseline scale. Otherwise, the percentage of ad spend fees just aren't enough to make anyone excited, ultimately, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, and again, just asking the general questions, but do you think that there is a certain category that works particularly well or doesn't work at all or not necessarily?

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Dude, I think any I think any business that could benefit from a customer perspective talking about the product or service can succeed on Tribe. Like there's a peptide company. It's funny because like very little of their revenue is directly attributed to Tribe, but he texts me and says, like, my entire pitch deck is tribe. So this guy, he was like a pre uh previous VC guy, started a peptide company because of the craze, raised a million dollars at a 10 million valuation. Then he over six months screw the business to a hundred million dollar valuation. They're at like 8 million ARR. So they just raised it like a 10 to 12x valuation at 100 million now. And all they do is tribe for the business. Restaurants one day will use tribe, to be honest. Like a lot of restaurateurs are not the greatest businessmen and they kind of just like have a passion for food and service. But like the restaurant owners that I think are willing to adopt a new marketing methods and practices, like they will take advantage of this as well. Think about it. Like you could have like some nice, you know, cute young girl or nice friendly guy like make a cool video of your restaurant. Of course. And you could offer them a percentage a percentage of the spend or a flat amount for the video. It's up to them. And that would drive tons of new customers. Like, people don't how do you find restaurants these days like TikTok, right? Or apps.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Literally.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Yeah. I think e-comm is just usually at the forefront of most like newer marketing principles, though, for sure. So it's mainly e-com brands on Tribe, without a doubt. And then like some SaaS, some apps as well.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

You've shared that a relatively small group of creators typically generate the most results for your brand, sort of like the 2080 rule. And so I'm curious, how do you go about selecting those creators? How do you identify the ones who deserve like that extra attention or extra budget, the access to the founder?

SPEAKER_00 12:14

It's a great question. I think the problem most brands have is they think that you find great creators. I think that you train great creators. If you're only looking for the best people, like if you have a business and you're like, I'm only gonna sample and reach out to creators with 50K plus GMB, they already have unlimited opportunity. They're already getting hit up by every brand. And there's always gonna be a brand with more money than you who can offer bigger retainers, who has more money to spend on the ads, so they'll make more money. So that's kind of a losing game, in my opinion. Like I really look at this as like building sales teams, right? Whether it's a company like Oracle or Salesforce or a door-to-door sales company. You know, you want to bring people in early in their journey. Maybe they have a little bit of experience, like maybe they've made like a couple grand with TikTok shop or UGC on Tribe and they're excited about this. Like they've just got like my girl, I just put my girlfriend on, you know, she's never made a UGC video in her life. I said, You're gonna be so good at this, but let's speed run your success. I want you to make 300 videos in 30 days, and I'll give you 10 grand on sponsoring her so she can buy something. And she's more, she's she's cried more in like the last three weeks than like the last year combined. Super stressful because these are like super well done scripted research videos, but she just started making money last week is $50, $70, $120, $200. She's making like $300 a day now. She's like 270 videos in. You know, she doesn't make content for my brand, but that's an example of like that's how I treat my own creators. I find people that have seen a little bit of the potential, they're really motivated. I will literally like hop on calls with them, I'll talk to them, I'll make sure they fit the ICP, the ideal creator profile, what I like to call it. So if you're selling like, you know, workout gear, it's gotta be the like a good-looking jack dude. We've tried it with like other people. It doesn't work, right? So you have to find the ideal creator, you have to find that they're actually motivated and then invest in them. And that's both training, actual, you know, text material, like creative briefs, example videos, in-person uh retreats, even weekly calls, one-on-one calls, like, you know, I charge $2,500 for like 30 minutes of consulting. I'll do a one-on-one call a couple times a week with any one of my creators. Because I and in that in it, it like, yes, I teach them how to make content and I'll break down their videos and show them what they're doing wrong and what they're doing right. But another part of it is just showing them that you care about them. Because then when they are successful, ultimately, you want them staying with you. It's you know, unlike a company like Salesforce or you know, door to door, there's unlimited opportunity for them once again, and it's only gonna get greater as they become more valuable. So if you spend money behind someone's ads, you're essentially investing in that creator. And if they leave you after six months, you've now funded your competition in a way. Because where are they gonna go? They're gonna go promote the products they're familiar with, right? So you have to build that loyalty, and it's a lot harder in the beginning to take people that aren't that great and teach them and show them and you know hold their hand and keep them motivated. But then you'll actually have that moat when your creators are successful. All my creators make like multiple six figures a year each off just my brand. They don't work for anybody else. Insane. Insane.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Yeah, it's actually a really interesting. I mean, people always talk about creator recruitment. I've very rarely heard about creator retention, almost like customer retention, but creator retention. So I've also heard a lot about using TikTok shop as a recruitment engine for creators itself. Like, how does that work?

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Great question. You know, people always ask me like, should I use TikTok or Tribe? Both. It's not a replacement, it's like 100% a supplement. I look at TikTok as the least risky way to find those potential good creators. We don't even accept people off of Tribe. There's a lot of great creators on Tribe, and I think we get like 400 like pending requests to work with us a day, but I don't even accept people off tribe. And it's not because they're not good creators on tribe, it's because I want to know that these creators are invested before I give them the opportunity. So what we do is whenever anyone wants to work in our group, I invite them to my Discord. I have a ton of free value in my Discord. So we do like multiple weekly calls. We have multiple seven-figure creators. I mean, literally, I'm not GMV, like commissions. They make a million dollars plus a year. And I pay them salary to host calls for free and just train the people in our group and offer so much we offer more paid value in our Discord for free than most paid Discords do. And we're building like goodwill with the goal of getting those people ready for tribe one day. And then usually maybe five to ten creators a month are what we actually accept and bring into the tribe group. And at that point, like you've been accepted into the the winners group. You get unlimited free samples. I'll give you a retainer. This is something that uh I've I'm really passionate about recently is retainers. I think retainers build loyalty and it's an investment in your creators. Whereas even like my mentor Hudson, like he does not like retainers. But you know, when you're that big, you get to pick and choose, right? So in the early days, you need to actually get the output. You need to get the input out of creators to hopefully see that output long term.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

This was actually my next question, to be honest with you. It's how to structure the incentives because obviously the percentage of ad spend is like the clear sort of like baseline model. But is there more percentage of GMV? More percentage of GMV. I guess what I'm asking is at what point in your opinion, I know someone, you know, like a Hudson might disagree, for example, but at what point in your opinion, does one structure the retainer? And what is that retainer? Again, let's assume that let's just put parameters in place, right? It's a crater that you've kind of trained, you've brought on, and on top of that, maybe you're doing six, seven figures a month, right? You're sort of early-ish stage. So at what point and what do those retainers look like? And again, I'm asking the context of like what makes it interesting for these craters.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

I once again I look at it just like a company like Oracle, right? Imagine if Oracle didn't give their people a salary. Like you might make 300, yeah, you might make 300k a year, 400k a year at Oracle, and maybe like 80% of that is commissions, but you still have a 40k salary. Yeah. It's actually a great sales. It takes a couple months. Like Oracle will go hire great salesmen. Very hard company to work for and to get accepted to. They look for great people. Once you get accepted, you get like a base salary. I don't know how much it is, probably 40, 60k a year, something like that. It probably takes a couple months to be ready to go out and start selling their tech, you know, product, whatever it is, right? It's the same thing with content. Even the best creators, like if I own like a fucking planter company, even if it was a great salesman, I can't just hand this to him. This is what most companies do. They say, here's 500 samples, and they they put this in everyone's hand and they say, Good luck. Well, here's a script, by the way, right? That's like your chance of success is zero. You have to tell people what's so special about this. You have to like, guys, these rocks are from Cyprus, and this plant is made out of like restructured bamboo from China, right? Like, whatever, right? You have to get your creators to understand the product. That way they can sell it the right way. And that takes time. And so, in my opinion, it's very unreasonable to expect that a creator is going to make you enough content to get good for free. Like, yes, the goal of the business model is they make you content for free. They only get paid if it works. And 90% of the time, that's like how it works, right? But you have to get them to that point. So when I bring new creators in, I usually tell them, and this is a good framework that anyone out there can copy. When I bring people in tribe, I usually set like a minimum. And my minimum for my group is much different than what anybody else would have. So let me like do it for them. So maybe maybe you say, like, hey, if you've been accepted into our tribe, you know, we have a 15 video a month minimum standard to stay in here, to get access to our top content, to get access to this opportunity when there's a lot of people that want to join. 15 videos per month is the minimum. By doing that, you're giving them a higher chance of success because meta released a staff the other day, one out of 25 ads on average becomes a winner, according to them. So it's probably even less for like a startup brand. So, what does that mean? Like as a creator, you probably have to make like 30 videos a month if you want one of them to make you money. So my minimum standard is actually like 60 a month, right? But maybe for another startup brand out there, or someone just getting into this, like maybe when you bring creators in, you say 30 videos a month is what you have to hit, one video a day to stay in this group. That way they have a decent chance of seeing a winner and getting that dopamine hit and the results, right? But then you say, but if you can do 60 videos a month, we'll give you like a 2K retainer or 3K retainer, maybe something like that. It's not a ton of money, it's not gonna change their life, but it'll at least cover their rent and their car payment. It's showing them that you're investing in them, and that's how you should explain it. Hey, I want to invest in you. I believe in you, I think you're gonna be a great creator for us long term, right? Sell them on the vision of your guys' relationship and their investment of their time into your business. Say, I understand you're gonna have to work hard. I understand it's gonna take, you know, a couple months for you to get really good at this and start making money, and be realistic with them about that. But I'm willing to invest in you. So I'll give you like a two or three K retainer. That way you can focus on my brand and not be spread thin across like 10 different companies. Because the main difference between Tride and TikTok is on TikTok, you're always chasing trending products. The top creators, they're always looking for the best new product, they're always on daily virals on Tride, the top, and this is based on the data, the top creators they own they make 90% of their money off like one or two brands. So it's about long-term partnerships versus like finding the next viral hit product.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Makes perfect sense. And no, honestly, thank you for explaining that. What you did it it it makes perfect sense. I guess I want to know a little bit more about the calls too, because a big thing is is the call with your creators, whether it's the group or the one on one. Could you walk me through a typical structure? You know, what is the group call like? What are you guys actually discussing? What are you walking through? through and then are the one-on-one calls, are they ad hoc? Are they structured? You know, are they quick hits or are you kind of shooting the shit going, hey, talking about the weather for 30 minutes and then talking a little bit because like, yes, I understand you're building relationships, but at the end of the day, I'm just kind of curious how you do it. Sort of slow, like talk to me about the calls.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Yeah, yeah. It's changed a little bit. You know, one of the people always just say like, why would I give creators a percentage of revenue when I could give them $200 per video? And it's because the goal long term is that they become so good at content on their own that they're making the best quality for you, right? In the early days when your creators are not good, you have to hold their hand. You have to like they will make a video that they think is good that's atrocious. And you watch this as a creative expert and you're like, this sucks. Like this will make me not want to purchase something. Like let me give an example. They might say that a lot of people automatically will go for the influencer method, right? If you see like a Livy Dunn or Joe Burrow or some influencer talking about like Viori or whatever brand they wear, this is how it sounds. Whenever I'm going to the gym, I like to wear this and I look for that. And I always make sure to pay attention to this. It's all about me, me, me, I, I, I, right, because they're an influencer, right? For a UGC video, for a UGC creator, you have no influence. No one knows who you are. No one cares. So your job is to add value to the person watching. Your job is to show this potential customer why this product has changed your life and added value to your life. So like a quick fix to the first example I gave is switch from I to you. If you guys wear this t-shirt, oh my God, you're gonna look so good, right? You're gonna feel so much more confident. And because of this fabric, because it's a cooling fabric and it's made of rayon instead of just polyester, you're not gonna overheat in it at the gym. It's it's you're shipping from I to you. So that's like an example of what I would have to do in the early early days. It was just like sales 101. You know, if you were knocking door to door you won't say this is how this product has changed my life you would say this is how it's changed your life. This is how it's gonna change your life and make you more money and make you more confident and prettier whatever, right? So the first couple months of my group was very like realistic consumer psychology sales 101 video editing hey bro like your microphone sucks bro like I would buy a lot of the creators their own microphones because they were broke. They're like I'm not gonna spend 110 bucks on a road mic like why would I do that? I have this $12 one that I got off TikTok shop. So I would buy it for them. All of my creators are like these six foot five diced jacked guys. Some of them were like ex-pro athletes ex-bachelor like they're all studs and I'm telling them like bro you should get a ring light and they're like dude I'm not getting a ring light and I'm like bro it's gonna make you so much more money bro please just trust me. So I would buy them I would buy them a ring light right and that would like just make their content better 1% better every single day. Eventually the creators were at the point where they were so good with their content that I didn't need to train them anymore. They were then better than me and they're making 20 30 40 50 $600 a month. So they are actually spending two days a week researching the top content. They're hiring their own editors like my creators have now become mini entrepreneurs for my brand and I could see a future in which one day like there's going to be a guy it's already happening with one guy in our group he's one of the top creators on TikTok as well I'm not gonna say his name but I could see a future in which a guy like him has an editor a script writer a director and a filmer behind him. And he's a seven figure a month creator and all he does is pull up on set. He's got a maybe a second apartment or a second office that's set up for backgrounds for specific video because we've also tested if you make a if I talk about clothes and just this background right here, it will be nowhere near as effective as like a really nice gym or an outdoor area with lots of colors like the data will prove that to you that colors and things that pop in the background you know we had one video with like a big American flag in the background and that video ripped and it's because right away, you know, it might piss off a lot of people but we're selling to like young, ambitious men, right? So if they see the American flag, they're like I like this guy. I trust him a little bit more. I'm more likely to hear him out and potentially buy from him. And so then I told the other guys like hey put an American flag in your background right so it's like little things like that that they start to learn because they're now entrepreneurs, they're creative directors themselves and they're making more money. And yeah just like I said at the beginning the sales force of the future I think one day there will be seven figure a month creators that are essentially like actors or like TV commercial type people and they have someone their entire job research, write amazing scripts director their job is to just make sure everything is perfect. Editor, right all that stuff. And they're just like their own little business.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

So in terms of structure is it one group call a week and then ad hoc one on one I'm just trying to get to like the actual the way you physically structure it. And so like other I went off on a tangent there embody this.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Yeah so one call a week one call a week but then we have like three calls a week in the Discord there's no perfect number you could do five calls a week if the creators are willing to show up five days a week bro you should do a call every fucking day of the week like you should Monday through Friday every 5 to 6 p.m I'll be on and anyone that wants to join I will teach you how to make good content. Now keep in mind in order for me to have taught my creators how to make great content I had to become an expert as well. So like you know I was doing TikTok shop in the early days I was studying I was learning how to do this. Another great example is like Brock Mamouser. I'm pretty sure I'm saying his last name right he's the founder of Frostbuddy. I think they've gone from like zero to like 180 million in five or six years. This dude was making thousands of videos talking about his product back when it was a startup. And so then he had built up the skills to then teach to these new creators coming in. So whether that's the founder themselves or another creator that you hire to be your creator coach, super important that you're giving your creators the right coaching. And these is what I do is like once my creators become top creators, I haven't really talked about this before but yeah once my creators become top creators, I hire them to teach on new guys and bring on new guys.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

And I think you kind of touched on this a little bit but there's many schools of thought but quality versus quantity do you believe in high volume again you know you kind of said this earlier but maybe let's talk brands at bigger scale that can kind of just like spray a lot or do you still believe hey quality is everything find some a few winners and then pump those?

SPEAKER_00 28:31

It's both for sure without a doubt. Different depending on category budget product margin all of that obviously price point but the way I look at ad volume is every ad is an opportunity to share a unique customer experience with another customer. So if your TAM is a million people let's say just for easy numbers and you have a thousand ads, meta's gonna show those thousand ads to those million people over and over and over and it might work for a while but eventually it's gonna exhaust it's going to fatigue and people are going to get tired of seeing that ad and if anything they might actually not want to purchase from you because it's annoying and they're like okay I've seen this guy 50 five times right in the last month. But if you have thousands and thousands and thousands of ads every month, like we're uploading 5500 ads a month right now and my goal is to be at 10,000 ads a month by the end of the year you can't escape people come up to me and they'll be like bro I can't escape your ads bro yeah this dude like let me give you an example this dude DM'd my girlfriend he's like a friend of my girlfriend he DM'd her he said I can't get away from your boyfriend's ads. And what that told me is like oh you were stalking my page because you got infected by the algorithm and then you found out that I was owner of this company and it targeted you, right? But as soon as you have one touch point you can't get away. Every day you're seeing some new person good looking Chad dude talk about why they love this product and it makes you feel left out. So you have to buy it.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

So it's quality and quantity sometimes I feel like with Instagram ads I buy things just so the algorithm shuts up and then I know it unlocks another Pandora's box of pre-marketing but sometimes I'm just like oh my God I need to just buy this and get this one over with. Yeah. Maybe but I want to know I want to talk to you about the dream team of how you operate this. Again, let's assume that you're kind of doing this at scale you know maybe you're not at your level where you're uploading five, 10K ads, maybe you're not at zero. Let's say you're sort of like in the middle you're kind of deep with tribe what's a team who recruits the creators who's coaching them who's launching the meta ads like you don't have to get too in depth of like media buying but just like the the actual community community management assuming you do need to recruit people at certain point beyond just a founder.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

Yeah man I mean it's like I think I had a team of five doing this manually when we were at 400 ads a month we had 20 creators 400 ads ish a month let's call it an average of 20 videos per creator. The whole idea for Tribe is like can we create tech to systemize this and make it easier for everyone for the creators to submit videos for them to see how much money they're making for them to see what content is working for the payouts to be automatic. I had a person doing each one of these things and up until two months ago two or three months ago up until about 3000 ads a month it was literally just me. Yeah and it took two hours a day think about I used to oh I used to have 50 Google Drive folders and and the creator would have to text me hey there's a video on my folder every time they uploaded okay bet I go watch it. Okay hey change this please okay they delete it they re-upload okay I hit up my media buyer I had one media buyer I'd say hey you know upload this video there's a video in John's folder then I'd have to go track all those sales every week right horrible I mean it it sucked thinking back about it but that was just the way things were done. I even went to Hudson I was like yo how do you do this? Same thing bro so that's what the first version of Tribe was like let's systemize this let's get rid of people that we don't need and yeah up until you know I would say in March March we did 3500 ads and it was just me and I would host the weekly call I would do the one-on-ones I would review every video myself a little over a hundred videos a day but it was so easy because they just pop up on the screen I watch it I click yes or no on to the next one it's live on meta my media buyer he goes in twice a week exports it payouts automated tracking automated and yeah I mean I did it myself like you could and I have three companies too you need like one person on the back end for building the ads and putting it on meta and running them and then you need one person actually managing the creators the approvals it wasn't until two months ago when we started doing like 150 ads a day that I was like God this just doesn't make sense for me to be approving these. So I hired my top creator and I said how would you like to one day like run this group and he's super motive. He's a beast and he was like bro that's sick let's do it. So I hired him to like be the creator group manager now. And no one better by the way to do that either like people people talk about like oh you got to go hire a creative strategist that's gonna run you like 180K a year and fucking not know what they're doing. Like my headhunter brought me like 10 different people and they all sucked and they were like 200K a year. The best person to be a creative strategist and help you run your group is just one of your creators. Like I advise for this company I have some equity I it's a biking gear company. They've gone from 150K to 1.5 million a month in the last six months. Their top and first creator is this young 18 year old kid super passionate about the product and the company they told him hey do you want to manage our group he dropped out of college he asked his parents if he could take his college fund and invest that into the business to become a co-founder and he runs their entire group and he's crushing. He's like so good at it and so passionate too. So the best people to help you run these in my opinion are like people that you build yourself.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

All this is new right I would say try even the comfort playbook it's it's kind of become quote unquote like mass now to anyone in in the industry. But how early or late stage is this kind of movement to this creator sales force economy? Are we still in the first inning of it? Are we kind of in the middle? What's your POV? Obviously you're building this long term I know that but as far as adoption right like brands knowing what is tribe, brands joining the platform black brands taking it seriously not just I'm gonna join it and then three months later kind of give up but really saying hey no this is a top three company priority right now. Is that what's happening how early or kind of late stage are we?

SPEAKER_00 34:16

Yeah it has to be a priority. I think it's naive to wait and assume that you're gonna have the same opportunity as you do right now. You know, just like affiliate codes, right? It's it's a little different because I think seeing experiences of customers will always be relevant, right? I think even 10 years from now, like people will still want to see a customer talking about the product and see like a first party POB of like how it adds value to a to your life, right? But it's only going to get harder as time goes on. It's only going to get harder to incentivize creators because there's going to be more opportunity. It's only going to get harder to get that early momentum right when I first launched Tribe I don't even do sales calls anymore but I pitched a hundred brands about like every single one of them smiling ear to ear oh my God this is amazing. I can't wait to use it I literally showed them how I did it for Oz 90% of them didn't even finish setting up their account. Which is so which is which is so similar to what it was like pitching creators in the early days. I did 800 one-on-one calls with creators every one of them this is awesome man I can't wait to do this send me some free stuff and I'm telling them you're gonna make so much money you're a stud I'm gonna teach you how to do this. 90% of them didn't make a single video or made like two or three and saw no results and quit right so it was so similar how the brands operated versus the creators even though they were like you know successful operators and and you know entrepreneurs. But there were a couple companies that were like no no this is the future we're gonna take this seriously SandCloud, GU, Final Boss, uh Built Basics like some of a lot of my competitors because they saw us growing and they're like fuck we can't get too behind on this built basics and cuts and now they're crushing. They're the biggest brands on Tribe. They're the first brands that you see as a creator when you go on and so you request to work with them. So that's the problem is in waiting is like the longer you wait, the further down on the list you're gonna be or at least the harder it's gonna be to catch up. And also CPAs like once again you know when Comfort first started this the idea that you could upload multiple thousands of ads in a month was like absurd and the CPAs were so low that like it just I mean that's how they grew so fast. These days I think I might be uploading more videos than Comfort these days but my CPA is probably pretty similar to theirs now just because it's become more adopted you know five years ago the standard was you know a hundred ads a month is great. Right now it's a thousand in a couple years it'll probably be five thousand so it will get harder and more competitive over time. That's why I'm like guys you have to lock in right now and take advantage of it. But who knows what'll happen in five years.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

What do you say to a brand that's mid sort of like deep in this they're they're doing everything right sort you know they're recruiting creators they're training them they're getting on the weekly calls they're talking they're pumping out the volume but when they upload the ads to meta CPA is not working in their favor, right? They can't get the numbers to work or CPA is rising. Is that just a a classic hey keep going persist through this keep pivoting pivoting pivoting are there brands that simply just can't get this to work or is your kind of mentality quality it's I think it's just quality because I ran this playbook and Hudson taught me it and I probably ran it for like six months before it started working and I was like fuck it's not working bro you know I'm really impatient honestly so I was like why isn't this working?

SPEAKER_00 37:35

And there just wasn't enough quality or quantity yet it was that simple and if your videos are good like they'll make money the creator will make money your business will make money you know there's a big brand I won't say who it was but I did a call with a big brand yesterday actually and they're like it's not working dude like you know we're we're getting a couple hundred ads a month or I think they're at like 12 like a thousand ads a month something like that and it's not working. Our CPA is super low you know our ROAS is 1.6 it needs to be at 2.5 I identified within 30 seconds what was wrong. I looked at one of their videos and by the way I won't say what language to give them away but it wasn't in English so I couldn't understand but I could I could tell right away on the video bro this feels like an ad. Like they had the brand logo right at the front the person was holding it up you could tell in their tonality they had the influencer tonality you know and so I was like dude this video sucks bro look at it your hook rate is nine percent I can't understand this video I can't understand what they're saying but I can understand the numbers this video this is your top video right now by the way it has a 9% hook rate my top video has a 46% hook rate. Your contest's not good enough. So that's that's problem number one. And in my opinion it was because their creators aren't making enough money their creators are only making two three thousand a month. So why would your creators work harder? Because they offer like 5% commission I think I was like you guys got to bump that to 10. They're like bro we're not even making money yet how could we bump the commission? I said dude your guys' ROAS is too low. You're spending too much too early so an example is like they're spending I'll just give random numbers they're spending a million a month they're getting a thousand creatives their ROAS is 1.5 their creators are making nowhere near enough at 5% commission. So I said reduce your ad spend by half go to 500k a month ad spend naturally your ROAS will rise that's just how it works offer 10% commission. Their dollar amount in total commission compared to what they were spending on ads was way off like I spend a quarter this should be good information for people I spend a quarter of my ad spend on creator commissions. It doesn't need to be like that. Some other brands might be an eighth, a sixth this brand was an 18th. Wow their total commissions were like 40K or something on a million dollars in ad spend so I'm like this setup is wrong. You should be prioritizing making your creators money their content's not good enough. Offer them a higher commission so they're more incentivized to work harder put 10 of them on retainers cut your ad spend budget in half take 50K put it towards retainers to get them to make enough content to number one get better but also give them a good chance of seeing at least one winning ad a month because they were all making like 10, 20 videos a month. And just by doing that I said just by doing that you will become more profitable and your creators will be more excited. So that's the other thing is you can't scale the ad spend too early. You want to be profitable you want to be at least breaking even so that's the playbook.

SPEAKER_01 40:23

I think you outlined it perfectly well. Did I miss anything? Is there anything that we didn't cover that you're that you would think is key or crux to the overall playbook?

SPEAKER_00 40:32

Yes, for sure. This is maybe the most important thing it's all about people at the end of the day, right? The best people in my own experience and same thing with Hudson it takes them the longest to figure it out. Like if you invited 10 creators into your group or let's say two if you invited two creators and one of them was like a star right away he made only a couple videos but they were really good quality they made a lot of money. And then you invited another guy who wasn't that good yet but he made way more quantity and he just wasn't making money most brands would kick that guy or disregard him or girl whatever and focus on the winner. I saw firsthand this this almost doesn't work. They're seeing early success they're gonna get lazy. So I had all these guys in my group and I you know they're all like good looking Chad dudes right and some of the guys were like such studs they had the craziest physiques they were so good looking that their body their physique was the hook. Like they had an eight pack and they would start the video shirtless and so they would make a ton of money. They made like six seven eight K a month off of like 10, 15 videos. And then there were other guys that weren't as much of a stud that had to work so much harder just to catch up. So while these stud guys were making 10 videos a month these other guys are making 60 and by the end of the year this guy's made 500 videos this guy's made 150 who's gonna be better right like think about it like like Kobe Bryant Michael Jordan Tom Brady they were not the star athlete at the beginning they had to outwork everybody. And so by the end of the year this guy who had made 600 videos is making 40k a month. This guy's still making $56K a month. And so the reason I say that is because I would lose money on retainers on a lot of people. Once again I gave every person that came into my group the opportunity for a retainer I said hey the the minimum is like it was 30 at the beginning make 30 videos a month but if you can make 90 I'll give you $3,000. Most brands if you lose money on that retainer right away and they don't break even like if they make you zero dollars in revenue they cut the retainer but I saw firsthand some like probably eight out of 10 of my top creators did not make a dollar for the first six months. So I was losing two $3,000 on every creator every month for half a year and they would hit me up dude this is super frustrating. I'm not making money I said bro just stick with it bro I'll support you your rent is paid I'll give you as many one-on-one calls as you want I see how hard you're working it'll take time it'll happen and then like one guy for example was one of the worst creators I've ever seen in my life I genuinely thought there was no hope for this guy. He was like an ex-college athlete but you're still paying him three thousand dollars you you're thinking you know six months later every month there might there might not be any hope but you're still you're still paying I I didn't I really didn't even think there was hope for the guy but I I just really appreciated and related to how hard he was working because it reminded me of like when I was in high school football I was the backup I worked harder than any kid on the team I showed up every morning there was no one there at the gym stayed after practice I felt like I never got the chance because I had a beef with my coach I felt like I never got the chance to prove myself I saw this guy as like the equivalent he was working harder than anybody never missed a call on Christmas he's texting me his they all have my phone over by the way he's texting me his videos on Christmas and I'm stepping out from family and you know saying bro this is ass like change this like I don't know what you were thinking here but like that doesn't make any sense at all. We have no data to support that that is effective. And after 11 months I think of him failing he finally like cracked it and he became one of the top creators in the group and he made like 78 or 79K last Month. And now he runs the group, by the way. He's he's the guy. Yeah, yeah. He's the guy that I brought on to like lead the group. And one day he'll probably take it over and and and you know have that authority over it. But so many people would have disregarded this guy and tossed him out the window. But I just I didn't even think I was gonna make money off of him. I was like, dude, his content was so bad. But I was like, dude, I really respect how hard you're working and I'm willing to take the risk.

SPEAKER_01 44:24

Insane story. Yeah, I mean, 11 months, you're paying him 3K. I mean, you basically 30, 40k out the door before you saw any ROI, you stuck with it. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 44:32

But he had like one video on Black Friday that made like 280 grand, by the way. So think about that. It paid itself off on like one video.

SPEAKER_01 44:39

Yeah, insane. So people. I mean, at the at the end of the day, yeah, of course. That's the that's the secret sauce. I feel like the secret sauce is basically, I mean, we've kind of covered a lot, but ultimately it's the founder's involvement, it's patience, it's extreme attention to detail in the content, in the quality, and then really building a community, a tribe, obviously, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

A tribe. That's why we call that's why we called it a tribe when you were thinking of the name for this. It's like, oh wait, businesses build their tribe of like their advocates, their supporters, their customers. And then you you hit on one thing there that I forgot to mention. The founder involvement is the most important thing that a founder can do. Just showing up because that's like the creators have to feel like their time is invested in a good opportunity. People always ask me, who can I hire? What's the best position to hire to run this? I'm like, yo, you should hop on the calls. Like, I gotta shout out Joey Swole. He has a condiment, like a barbecue sauce and other sauce company. He just hopped on Tribe a couple weeks ago. This dude's been like calling me at like one in the morning, sending me voice outside at one in the morning, like, you changed my life. Like, my business is gone. Like, my business is 10x, apparently, is what he said in the past couple months from Tribe. And I kept telling him, like, bro, it's because of you, because you are the cool personality. You are the biggest advantage you have is because you can use your platform as leverage to find people and bring them in. And they're gonna be excited to show up on the calls just to get to talk to you and meet you. And I think that was one of my advantages as well, is I had a personal brand, and most of our top creators either knew who I was or watched my content. And so, like one guy who makes 60k a month in our group, he sent me a four-minute voice note the other day. He's like, dude, I just want to let you know I work so he works eight hours a day on Haas content. He said, I do this. Yes, I want to make money, but he said, I do this because I want to help you accomplish your dream. Like he literally, this is the guy that works for me. He's he told me that. He's like, I see how hard you work. It inspires me, and I want to help you make this thing massive. And yes, he also wants to make money in crush as well. But he's like, I just really I want to let you know that. And I was like, dude, I was like, dude, that's so sick. He fucking wrote me a letter. I I did a whole trip with all my creators, and on the plane, he wrote me a letter and like made this fucking paste on the front. But uh he was like, Yeah, you changed my life, bro. So it's like, yeah, you have to invest in your creators. If you can do in-person trips, build a friend group that way when other brands in your category try and poach them, they're not just leaving to go to another opportunity where there's more money, they're leaving their friends. How often that's how you get that loyalty long term.

SPEAKER_01 47:14

How often do you do the trip? Because I've heard all about this too, right? Like get to the scale, and all of a sudden you're meeting in Miami, everyone's getting iPhones and the whole thing, like you're getting a trip to Vegas. Like, how often do you actually do the trips?

SPEAKER_00 47:25

We only have done one so far. And honestly, like it was the last thing I wanted to do. I was so busy. Yeah, I was like, fuck, I have to go like show face and like you know, I have to like show up and I have a great attitude. I was so busy and and so much going on, but I was like, this is so important. And yeah, for you know, the whole weekend I tried to not be on my phone much. I even did a little work at the Airbnb. I got them like this massive Scarface Airbnb. I flew everyone out, or the top creators, sorry, I flew like the top seven guys out. And I just wanted them to hang out with each other. And I think that I probably spent 30k on that trip. I think that bought so much loyalty long term. I don't think those guys will ever leave. Yeah. So I think it's really important, honestly, at least for your top creators.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

Do you still this is just tangential, kind of random, but I'm honestly curious. You've obviously cracked your own system, right? But do you still rely on other forms of creative, whether that be hiring actors for certain scripts or hooks and whatnot, or are you really like is your meta creative just pretty much tribe content?

SPEAKER_00 48:23

It's all tribe. It's like maybe, you know, if we if we do 5,500 tribe ads, there's like maybe a hundred statics that a guy makes for me. Yeah. We're exploring more branding focused stuff. Like we're really good at marketing, but I actually think our branding is lacking a little bit. So like I just poached like the number two creative director from Aloe, and she's amazing. We're trying to, you know, think about like what big names could we get involved in the brand? Because that'll also bring your CPA down as well. If your brand is very well known and people just hear about it, by the time they see your ad, they're like, you're like soft launching them versus like a cold approach. So yeah, just try bads, but maybe it's not the best way. I'm always looking to like be proved wrong and meet someone who is like doing something different that's working really well, seeing how I can exchange value with them, teach each other how we can, you know, benefit. Like Bloom, for example, Bloom still does a fuck ton of influencer marketing. I do zero influencer marketing. Yeah. But they're close.

SPEAKER_01 49:24

Yeah. Okay. I mean, I just want to ask one more time because like genuinely, is so that's the playbook. Did we miss anything? Is there an element that we haven't covered?

SPEAKER_00 49:31

I think that's it, man. It's really just like if you I believe um if you create a system where you can reward people and change their life for being creative and working hard, why would that ever break? As long as you have product to sell, as long as you're invested in helping them make money, it can't be beat, in my opinion. I think I so talking about like is now the right time to hop on tribe, I really believe that brands that are not using tribe and not building programs like this will 100% lose to businesses that are. The proof is in the pudding. The fact that fashion and accessories on tribe is the biggest category by a mile by a mile, it just proves it. It's because like my competitors saw fuck, like our CPAs are going up. This kid with this brand is able to sell his product for so cheap because his CPAs are so low. We need to start adopting this as well, or we're gonna die. And so all of my competitors are on tribe. They were trying to poach my creators and they're and I, you know, I let him by the way. Like, I built Tribe. I'm like, yeah, go for it. You guys can try and poach my people. You guys can compete with me. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty much the playbook. It's like find people that are worth investing in, invest the time, money, energy to get them good. Think of it in physical terms, think of it like a door-to-door sales team. We're just using technology. And so instead of knocking one door, yeah. Instead of knocking one door or calling one person, you're making a video that could hit millions.

SPEAKER_01 50:52

My last question that lets you go, and this is honestly just like I mentioned, we're on tribe. I'm selfishly, I'm experiencing this. We're we're growing into it. But how do you protect your ad account whilst testing so much content, right? And maybe there's not a firm answer to this, like a one size fits all, but something that we we're seeing is we upload tons of content. Obviously, we want to get spend so that each creator and each piece of content has a fair shot, but it's also hurting us, right? Like we're putting a time. I don't do that actually. Okay, so this is what I want to know.

SPEAKER_00 51:23

Yeah, it's a good question. So, number one, every creator is whitelisted. If you don't whitelist with your creators, you'll cap out your ad account. Like I've been capped. We probably have like 40,000 ads that have been uploaded total. And maybe like a thousand of them are on the actual Haas account, maybe a thousand or two thousand. Everyone is whitelisted. That also goes into like the effectiveness of the ad because people want to know that there's a real person behind it. So every creator is whitelisted. That way the videos don't hit your ad limit cap. Second part is we don't manually give anybody spend. You could do it in the beginning. I did it in the beginning to give creators a little motivation. I wanted them to make something. So I had like a maybe a minimum spend rule on their ad set to make them feel like they're getting somewhere. But at the same time, eventually I realized like, am I really even helping them that much if I'm forcing spend to their content? So we have like a very much a survival of the fittest type of setup. So we have a product campaign. We have ad sets for the creators below. We set the budget and the CAC target and the ROS target at the campaign level. So we just tell Meta, hey, like this cropped oversized tea, it's one of our new bestsellers. Based on the margin, based on the selling price, okay, I need to get a 2.4 X ROS on this, just making up a number. I tell Meta, you pick whatever videos within those ad sets that you deem are gonna get us the closest to this goal. And it's, you know, some creators don't get any spend. They don't make any money.

SPEAKER_01 52:47

That's what we've shifted to, too. And I guess my question is, what do you say to the creator? Because maybe they're not media buyers, right? They don't know the technicalities of Meta's platform, but they say, hey, what the hell? Why is my why is my ad grade of not getting spent? Do you then just go and explain, you know, the way Meta is.

SPEAKER_00 53:12

Let's look at his videos, let's look at yours. And you do a one-on-one call with them, or you do this on the group call. You say, hey guys, a lot of people have been asking me, why am I not getting spent? Why am I not getting spent? It's just like TikTok shop GMV Max, okay? I just give Meta the number that I need to hit in order to be profitable and not lose money. And Meta's algorithm, this is I I kind of actually explain it to them. So I tell them in a nutshell, the way Meta works is I give Meta a $1,000 budget for my product. What Meta will do, let's say there's a thousand videos, or let's say there's a hundred videos, sorry. What Meta will do is it'll give each one of those videos a dollar worth of spend and it'll show it to a hundred potential customers. Let's say eight out of those ten videos, out of those hundred customers, nobody clicked the link. At that point, it throws away those videos. But two of those videos, one got 12 clicks, one got five clicks. Okay, Meta has now deemed that these videos are worthy of more spend. Now it puts $10 into those two. And then so on and so on and so on. So I just tell them, hey, if your video is not getting spent, it's just not good enough, bro. Let's sit down, let's figure out why. Let's look at the hook rate, let's look at things. Makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

I mean, so the TLDR is kind of you do what you need to do to protect your ad account whilst also co-explaining the nuances of why and how it works. It makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 54:23

Yeah, and that's also why the retainers are there as well. It's to guarantee them, I know you're putting in time. Maybe you're not good enough to be making commissions yet, but you make your $2,000, $3,000, whatever. And it's so much more cost efficient, too. Rather than forcing thousands of dollars and spend into shitty ads to give the creators a good feeling, much better to just say, I'll give you a $4,000 retainer to make a hundred videos a month. Now you're incentivizing them to do extra practice to work so much harder so that they can be good enough one day to get that commission, right? And that was the problem with that first brand that I mentioned at the beginning. They're spending a million a month, they have no retainers, and their creators are making no money. Reduce your ad budget, put some of that money into the creators, incentivize them, everything will change.

SPEAKER_01 55:05

Yeah. That's another framing that I hadn't heard before, which is just percentage of ad spend going to creators should be one eighth, one sixth, one-fourth versus I think it should be under a tenth.

SPEAKER_00 55:16

I think genuinely, I think your creator should be making at least a tenth of what you're spending on ads if you want to have a very robust program.

SPEAKER_01 55:24

Yeah. Lucas, thanks so much. I mean, what you've created is brilliant. It's literally changed the literal landscape of e-commerce. I mean, you and Hudson both have like fundamentally changed e-commerce. I don't know if you call it e-com 3.0 or 4.0, whatever phase we're in, but I've been doing this for about 10 years. I've been in the industry 10 years, and this whole game and the creator sales force, like you said, is completely new and it's absolutely disruptive. So thank you for explaining it from your POV. Of course, man. I felt super valuable.

SPEAKER_00 55:55

I think there's a lot of like uh questions out there about how to use it the right way. So hopefully, you know, for everyone watching this, this was helpful and can give you guys the information you need to succeed. But yeah, if done the right way, it'll change every it'll change your life. It's like there's so many examples. So yeah, happy to help.