Digital Social Hour - The Dark Side of Influencer Marketing Revealed! | Zach Benson DSH #575

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's more customers in the door, more eyeballs, more traffic. We always put together like an influencer campaign and basically get a bunch of destination influencers to come out, collaborate with the brand, get paid. So basically they put their products in the influencers hands. Yeah. And then everybody wins. Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe. It helps a lot with the algorithm.

Starting point is 00:00:30 It helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team. Truly means a lot. Thank you guys for supporting. And here's the episode. Guys, we got a friend of mine that I've had for a very long time. One of the best in the travel hacking space

Starting point is 00:00:43 and a former break dancer zach benson thanks for coming on man hey thanks for having me excited to be here absolutely you flew from south korea dude yeah just arrived last night it's like 20 hours holy crap yeah but you probably hacked your way into first class yeah always always yeah like i think 100 bucks that's it yeah damn you're a beast man and you travel 200 nights a year? About 200 nights a year in hotels. That is crazy. And you've done that for 10 years, right? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:01:08 Dude. And you're still not out of places to visit? I've been to 106 countries now. So a lot of the, I like to go back to the same countries and like dig deep and really get to know the culture and the people. So yeah, but hopefully some more as well. Yeah. 200 nations.

Starting point is 00:01:24 Give me top five favorite and give me some least favorites also, country-wise. Yeah, Maldives, Dubai, Switzerland, New Zealand, Mexico, because I speak Spanish. Okay. You know, I don't really like, I think, kind of like the islands, like Bahamas. Overrated, right? Yeah, stuff like that. I'm more like outdoorsy and that sort of thing. Yeah, I feel like the islands, it Bahamas. Overrated, right? Yeah, stuff like that. I'm more like outdoorsy and that sort of thing. Yeah, I feel like the islands, it's good for maybe a couple days.

Starting point is 00:01:49 But to stay for weeks, it's like island fever. They call it island fever, right? Right, yeah, exactly. You get bored. I mean, Maldives is fun, don't get me wrong. Like I stayed at the Suniva Jani. It's like $50,000 a night. Four bedroom villa, super slide, retractable roof, the click of a button.

Starting point is 00:02:04 I mean mean that was fun stayed next to like will smith and some princes from saudi arabia crazy that was cool you got to meet will yeah i mean he was my neighbor so i said hey and then went down the slide in the morning this is how i wake up in the morning that is not sick what about food wise which countries had really good food food wise i mean i I mean, I'm really, you know, I'm Korean. I was born there. So I love Korean food, Mexican food, Japanese. Like those are my top three.

Starting point is 00:02:33 But dude, so many good foods all over the world. Yeah, I feel that. And walk me through how this all started, right? Because you are pulling this off for free or super cheap. So how can people get more interested in that type of business? Yeah, so before traveling and all that stuff, I was a breakdancer. So I did that for many years. And that's when I caught the travel bug.

Starting point is 00:02:56 And when I was a breakdancer, I mean, I didn't have as much money as I did now. So I couldn't afford to pay for those hotels. So I figured out a way to travel hack it. And I got the studios to pay for those hotels um so i figured out a way to like travel hack it and i got the studios to pay for it and then i grew my instagram following and i started negotiating deals with hotels and tourism boards to get me to fly out so essentially i mean that's still like what we do today i mean we have a huge network on on social media and a lot of hotel pages yeah you know travel pages and so basically in exchange for posts i mean we get free a lot of hotel pages and travel pages. And so basically in exchange for posts,

Starting point is 00:03:28 we get free flights on private jets and stay at hotels that are $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a night in exchange for promotion on our pages. So that's how it works. And it's a win-win because you're bringing them potential clients. They're getting exposure. They're getting eyeballs. Yeah, that's what they want, right? It's just more customers in the door, more eyeballs, more traffic, more content.

Starting point is 00:03:52 And so we always put together like an influencer campaign and basically get a bunch of destination influencers to come out, collaborate with the brand, get paid. So basically they put their products in the influencers hands yeah and then everybody wins right like free trips free uh airfare free hotel food board for the influencers free placement for the the sponsor the the brand and so that's what we've been doing dude sign me up on the next one i mean yeah i want to start traveling more because i've been to like maybe 15 20 countries but i want to go to 100 it's a goal of mine yeah dude i just did uh antarctica like two years ago that's sick with uh like jimmy buffett like so yeah rest in peace i mean wow cheeseburger in paradise legendary hoodie is swag um but he went with all of his crew and what was that like

Starting point is 00:04:46 that was it was crazy man it was a bunch of like 50 60 70 year olds um parrot heads what he calls them just partying drinking having fun in antarctica yeah um did a polar plunge jumped in the water that was cool damn that sounds cold how long did you last in the water i was like 30 seconds in and out there were penguins there yeah penguins beautiful some of the most beautiful clear like water and um snow i've ever seen so cool i love seeing not uh animals in their natural element yeah like zoos are okay like i'll go to zoos but when i see animals in their natural habitat it feels really peaceful you know what i mean? Yeah, for sure.

Starting point is 00:05:25 It feels like you're in touch with nature. I'm really big into nature, actually, because I feel like people our age are so addicted to their tech, their phones and computers and video games that they don't get out in nature anymore. It's nice to unplug and just simply be present in the moment and, yeah, just simply be and see how animals like just live life man absolutely you got any pets uh no i used to have cats and stuff but yeah yeah yeah travel too much now so it's kind of hard yeah i don't even know how you're dating with your travel lifestyle do you bring her everywhere uh well not not everywhere but when we when she has vacation we try to travel together yeah i spend a lot of time now in korea so nice yeah i thought you just lived in the states did you move to korea yeah i actually moved two years ago oh so i still come come back and forth and

Starting point is 00:06:17 still travel a lot you know so like around 200 nights a year in hotels um but yeah korea is like i guess my main base now so you like it more in korea than the u.s dude yeah like food delivery service like i mean just like the food it's another level out there and i gotta try i go to uh korean barbecue out here but that's probably nothing compared to that kind of week it's weak here man it's weak it's another level out there right it's like i mean even like the sushi and and the a5 and waigoo and all that stuff like kobe beef and the kansai region japan yeah it's totally different yeah the sushi is pretty weak in vegas because we don't have any water near us yeah we're in a desert you can get some good stuff if you pay a lot yeah if you go to like Mizumi on the Strip or something.

Starting point is 00:07:06 But just for, yeah, price, quality, better over there. Yeah, filled up. You also get a lot of free press. I want to talk about that because people think you need to pay to get it. So how are you able to pull it off for free? You know, it's always like creating a win-win, right? Figuring out what people's biggest challenges are, what they need, what they really, really want, and figuring out what people's biggest challenges are what they need what they really

Starting point is 00:07:25 really want and figuring out a way to get them that so a lot of the times like um how i've gotten some of my free press and forbes articles like in the past was like we did an exchange like a barter because you know i think all entrepreneurs are smart with their time and money and yeah of course we can pay for things and i'm happy to pay um but when you can think of a creative win-win where it's like hey i can help you with this you can help me with that um that's kind of how i've gotten a lot of my my press and my foot in the door yeah with a lot of these big celebrities and getting them as clients because a lot of people they've been burned, screwed over. They've had bad experiences.

Starting point is 00:08:08 So I'm like, hey, well, let me try this. Let me do it for free. If you like it, pay me. Love it. Good old bartering, man. It's a lost art, but it's something I do. I try to do all the time. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:08:20 I see you doing it in Vegas sometimes too. Yeah. Working and collaborating with different restaurants. Restaurants, sometimes hotels um sometimes studios if i want to if i'm in la and i need a studio you know what i mean yeah and i think a lot of people are wondering like okay like yeah sean zach you guys have you know millions of followers like all these pages and stuff like how can you do it how can i do it so before like all of my like millions of followers and stuff and big pages like i basically created a network so i reached out to a bunch of travel pages and foodie pages and i was like hey how much do you charge for a post and they're like 25 bucks you know story

Starting point is 00:09:00 post or 50 bucks for a timeline made feed post yeah and so i started yeah create a spreadsheet of all these different accounts and then i reached out to hotels and even though i didn't have a million followers i was like collectively me and my friends but have like five million followers so smart so in exchange for you know five nights in your best available suite breakfast lunch and dinner would be nice you know alcohol alcoholic beverages would be nice yeah we can do posts and um you know on these pages that's so smart so that's kind of how i did it um paid like a couple hundred bucks for like a hundred thousand dollar trip to the maldives when i didn't have a lot of followers and 100x or what a thousand x roi on that? Back then, yeah.

Starting point is 00:09:46 And then when you're there, you meet people. Oh, yeah. The networking. I mean, because you're only staying at five-star spots, so you're meeting people in the lobby, at the gym. Not everyone can afford staying at $3,000 or $50,000 a night hotel. Yeah. When you meet people there, it's really interesting.

Starting point is 00:10:03 It's huge. I actually don't cheap out on hotels anymore because i used to just cheap out get three stars maybe four star hotels yeah and now i only get four or five just because like the networking yeah so many people you can meet in the lobby and you know we're at the restaurants bar yeah lounge yeah it just looks better especially if you're scheduling meetings if you're in a good hotel lobby. Yeah, it's always more professional. Yeah, and there's some cheap ones in Vegas, dude. I remember the first time I came here, I stayed at the Luxor.

Starting point is 00:10:30 I was broke, though. It was for 10X Growth Con. Okay. Yeah, so it was like 20 bucks a night. And it was ratchet, dude. But you got to start somewhere. They have all these deals in Vegas because they want to get people to gamble. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:10:44 Do you gamble? Not really. I used to play roulette, but not much. You don't have the back rat? All those Asians play back rat. Oh, man. I'm too white. I grew up in this place called Iowa.

Starting point is 00:10:56 Can't really do it over there. But, yeah, I mean, some people, yeah, they can do it well. What was that like growing up in Iowa? I don't meet too many people from there. Bro, like, yeah, so I was born in Korea, adopted, grew up in Iowa. Yeah, a lot of white people, man. You know, it was too small for me. But, you know, looking back, I think it was actually good for me.

Starting point is 00:11:19 It's what I needed growing up. Because I think I would have totally been a totally different person if i grew up in some like big city like new york or la really um it's just yeah the types of people you surround yourself with were yeah yeah midwest people pretty chill friendly they're like just so lax it's it's like uh west coast mentality right they don't care about work too much they just get by and have fun with just hanging out with friends and family. Yeah, man. So it's always going to be home.

Starting point is 00:11:51 But then I was like, yeah, it's too small. Got to get out, travel the world. Is that when you got into breakdancing? Was it in Iowa? Yeah. Kid I went to school with gave me a DVD, How to Breakdance by Mike Garcia. Fell in love with it. Started practicing and

Starting point is 00:12:05 working and working and made a dance crew and started competing battling all over the midwest chicago big cities new york and then i was on so you think you can dance like i participated as like round four finalist legendary that was cool did you win top 100 wow um made it pretty far i didn't win okay top 100 is really good because there was out of five cities thousands of people tens of thousands probably right so how do they judge those competitions so first so the rounds the first two rounds you don't really see on tv you just see people do their solo yeah like practice piece with their music um but the first two rounds are totally freestyle rounds

Starting point is 00:12:45 where they play a random piece of music a song and they're like just dance dance for your life and so you have to basically dance for like a minute wow and that's a lot of pressure yeah and then you have to stand out from the thousands of people that are auditioning with you to show you have to show them something original and something they've never seen before to make it and so i did this like i like animal so i did this frog hop yeah like frog impersonation and that's how i entered like on the floor and they thought it was pretty cool that's dope yeah remember the worm growing up yeah dude i used to do that one i had the skinny body to do that one dang that was a classic could you uh hang off the side of the street pole uh i actually couldn't do that but i could

Starting point is 00:13:33 balance on like one arm okay um on a like parking meter damn yeah that's impressive yeah so i had more like uh yeah the core strength that way wow but i was more of a style head so i could do some poses and freezes but a lot of it was like footwork okay and um intricate like footwork and movements and steps how crazy was the money in breakdancing in the peak i made a thousand dollars an hour at my peak taught three age groups, five to eight, nine to 12, 13 plus. Yeah. Two hours each.

Starting point is 00:14:08 Charged like $40 a head per person. Gave 10, like five to 10 to the studio. 10 student minimum. And normally there was like 30, 40 people sometimes. That's impressive, man. Because it really had a big run,

Starting point is 00:14:21 right, when you were growing up. I didn't really catch it. I think I was too young. Yeah i grew up around iowa so not a lot of people did it yeah so i started in my backyard wow all these mom and pop studios in iowa and nebraska and then spread out that's super cool pretty yeah pretty cool profitable and then from there you got into the the travel hacking stuff yeah travel hacking social media and is that still the main the main business right now that's that's what i'm doing is is mainly um yeah we have a growth agency sister gram so growing people's uh

Starting point is 00:14:57 social media accounts and yeah working with brands and that's how i met you man yeah do you remember how we met dude you i, I think, speaking at a big real estate conference with Tony Robbins and Grant Cardone. I was the small dog. And you were in the crowd, right? Yep. Dude, I'll tell the story because it's actually legendary and it's hilarious. So you were speaking at a Tony Robbins conference in New Jersey where I grew up.

Starting point is 00:15:22 Yes. And it was one of the side talks. I think it was like how to grow followers on Instagram. Yeah. So I'm like, oh, I'm interested in that. At the time, I had a good amount and I get to the room. It's packed. There's like 200 people. And you're like, all right, guys, raise your hand if you think you have the most followers here. Yes. And I'm like, yo, I'm down. I think I got a good amount. Yeah. And then, all right, put your hand down if it's under 10K. So like a few people put their hand down and then it gets to the point

Starting point is 00:15:49 where it's like, if you're under 100K, put your hand down. So now there's just me and one other guy. Yeah. And then it's just like, we go at it and I ended up having the most

Starting point is 00:15:58 and then you guys gave me a hundred bucks. Oh yeah. Yeah. So that's how we met. Yeah. Legendary. Dude, that was, that's crazy. so crazy looking back

Starting point is 00:16:06 at that the fact that you even were speaking there is impressive man yeah tony robbins event yeah tony robbins sylvester stallone was there gary v grant cardone um your network is great yeah man i mean you too like it's it's crazy like all the things you've done in the network that you've built the community man it's it's it. Yeah, I'd love to hear from you just networking tips on getting speaking gigs and just getting on people's good side as well. Yeah, I think I've made friends with a lot of event hosts and mastermind founders. Again, it's figuring out their biggest need and want

Starting point is 00:16:43 and helping them and and giving freely no strings attached i'm just like hey i'll help you with this or i can do this right connect the dots for them right and it's easy pretty easy for me or it cost me very little money a lot of the times um and i think a lot of people just love that being loved and respected yeah and so it's breath of fresh air they're like oh cool yeah instead of you asking for shit you're giving them stuff yeah and then they're like they remembered that and then they're like you know do you want to come and speak and yeah that's how i get a got a lot of my speaking gigs back in the day and also your service is really unique and really valuable right so you

Starting point is 00:17:20 can help people grow on instagram yeah you can help them save money on traveling right not many people can do either one of those things yes so i think people gravitate towards that yeah and now yeah it's all platforms like linkedin twitter i mean all those platforms like especially linkedin it's going crazy right really talk to me about that because i don't even use linkedin dude i mean yeah i mean now it's like we live in a tech like ai world and so a lot of people are like focused on linkedin a little bit more now and just organic semi-organic growth opportunities like you remember the instagram days yeah the engagement groups essentially it's the same thing linkedin engagement groups got it

Starting point is 00:17:56 but when you get a like from like let's say you know sean's account 10 million followers or so like or account that has a million followers or even a hundred thousand followers it hits different and so when you get a handful of those accounts to like and comment on your posts on LinkedIn after yeah shortly after you post it creates a viral effect wow and yeah I mean we're growing um people's like some people depends on the content but yeah a few thousand to five ten thousand followers a month holy crap yeah LinkedIn's

Starting point is 00:18:27 definitely slept on the one thing I will say is it gets a lot of spam in the messages it pisses me off so much I know man they need to fix that but other than that

Starting point is 00:18:35 it's definitely like I look at it when I go to work with someone like I look at their LinkedIn because it shows their work experience their bio

Starting point is 00:18:42 and mutual connections so it's pretty useful it's a yeah for sure it's different than like mutual connections. So it's pretty useful. It's different than showcasing your clips. It's more of a professional platform. It's good to tap into both. I think if you're dealing with a lot of older clients,

Starting point is 00:18:57 LinkedIn is a good platform to have. Consulting for equity deals and that sort of thing. Because the average person on LinkedIn is $100 yeah, 100K in salary at least. Really? Wow. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's probably a lot lower on Instagram. Yeah. A lot of just high schoolers and college kids on there, you know?

Starting point is 00:19:15 Yeah. It's a different audience. Yeah. Which platform do you like the most right now? Yeah, I mean, of course, IG. Yeah. It's always been the bread and butter for me too yeah just for outreach at least yeah it's just as like a connection tool outreach and and that sort of

Starting point is 00:19:32 thing it's most valuable i think i think so too i think it's your resume these days yeah when someone wants to work for me i look i look at their ig i actually don't look at their resume i think it's useless because you could just lie on it true you know You know what I mean? But on your IG, I mean, yeah, you can highlight the certain wins and stuff, but you get a good feel for the person. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. What are you investing in right now? I mean, yeah, I mean, I've been investing in crypto, commercial real estate now, that sort of thing. Nice. That sort of thing. And then not investing so much in companies, but using my services and my network

Starting point is 00:20:07 to take equity and profit shares in companies. So doing a lot in the tech and the AI space now. Yeah, it seems like equity is like the nine-figure play. I feel like that's how people are getting to 100 mil plus, taking equity in different companies. Yeah, real estate equity, different companies yeah i just stay equity yeah for sure i just had cody sanchez on she's doing that noah kagan's doing that seems like a lot of people are going the equity route because you can scale quicker than just starting businesses

Starting point is 00:20:34 on your own yeah totally hormosi yeah he's doing that with his fund and you had i think like roland fraser yeah a bunch of people are the way he's doing it is insane though. He's spending no money and getting equity in companies. Yeah. Sign me up. Genius. Who are you consuming a lot of content from right now? I mean, all those guys, right?

Starting point is 00:20:55 And Justin Donald, Lifestyle Investor. That's a good one. Jeremy Miner. Yeah, dude. Jeremy's a beast. Yeah, sales is everything. So it's really learning how to communicate, tonality, understanding people, that sort of thing.

Starting point is 00:21:10 Lifelong skill that's going to help you wherever you go. For sure. Any upcoming trips planned? Yeah, well, I have another invitation to Antarctica. Okay. Might go. But yeah, probably go back to Asia for a bit. And then I'm doing this uh really cool experience

Starting point is 00:21:27 in monaco with like lewis hamilton and amg my friend um who i met in monaco a couple years ago she was married to the cfo of mercedes damn and it's got all the connects there so for f1 yeah so we're gonna throw a crazy uh party on on a yacht um with all those guys that's awesome yeah you don't even drink though right um sometimes no yeah i uh i think f1 is probably the best networking uh sporting event i've ever been to everyone's there dude dude especially monaco oh yeah monaco and abu dhabi and yeah all the countries out there dude. They just had one in Vegas. It was my first one I ever went to. I got a little taste of it, but I didn't even go to the paddock.

Starting point is 00:22:10 I messed up. If you're in the paddocks, bro, oh my gosh, the people you're meeting there. This is the paddock and then staying on the yacht. You'll make seven figures that week just from the people you meet. It's going to be crazy. It's so nuts, dude. You can offer the people you meet. It's going to be crazy. So nuts, dude.

Starting point is 00:22:25 And you can offer them a good service. And that's the key, right? People try to go to these events and they can't offer anything. But you have valuable service to offer. Yeah, yeah. So I think people need to develop that first, then go to the events. Yeah, definitely. You know, figuring out what you can do and offer to, yeah, really help people.

Starting point is 00:22:44 That's what it's all about. Yeah, helping people out, man. Well, anything you want to promote or close off with yeah i mean well yeah happy to connect with you guys you can follow me on instagram zach vacay that's my handle feel free to dm me if you need any travel tips or hacks assistagram company if you guys need any growth but yeah that's that's it, man. Boom. Yeah. Get in the video. Thanks for coming on, man. For sure. Yeah. Thanks for watching guys. Yeah. See you tomorrow guys. Peace.

Digital Social Hour - The Dark Side of Influencer Marketing Revealed! | Zach Benson DSH #575

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