Digital Social Hour - The Uber for Creatives: Why Beige is a Game Changer | Kawser Khan DSH #788

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Step into the world of creativity with Beige, the ultimate Uber for Creatives! 🚀 In this captivating episode of the Digital Social Hour, Sean Kelly dives deep with special guest Kawser Khan, unveiling why Beige is revolutionizing the videography and photography marketplace. With over 2,000 vetted professionals ready to capture your moments across all 50 states, Beige makes hiring easy and efficient, much like booking a ride on Uber! 📸✨ Tune in now to discover how Beige is bridging the gap in content creation, leveraging AI, and expanding nationwide. From corporate events to intimate celebrations, Beige covers it all, ensuring your memories are captured perfectly. 🎥 Don't miss out on this engaging conversation packed with valuable insights. Whether you're a content creator or just curious about the future of media, this episode is for you! Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀 Join the conversation and be part of this creative revolution! CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:30 - What is Beige 02:25 - Filming Funerals 05:46 - Getting Married Young 06:38 - Starting Beige Brand 07:50 - Expanding to Chicago and New York 12:38 - Other Creative Pursuits 13:22 - Upcoming Events and Activities 15:08 - App Release Update 18:12 - Lessons from Failures 19:04 - Ethically Sourced Clothing Importance 21:08 - Closing Thoughts and Reflections APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] GUEST: Kawser Khan https://www.instagram.com/ceokawser SPONSORS: Beige is the leading videography & photography marketplace for all your content needs. Book your next shoot now at https://www.beigevideo.com/contact and mention Digital Social for 10% off your first shoot. Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kick off an exciting football season with BetMGM, an official sportsbook partner of the National Football League. Yard after yard, down after down, the sportsbook, born in Vegas, gives you the chance to take action to the end zone and celebrate every highlight reel play. And as an official sportsbook partner of the NFL, BetMGM is the best place to fuel your football fandom on every game day. With a variety of exciting features, BetMGM offers you plenty of seamless ways to jump straight onto the gridiron and to embrace peak sports action. Ready for another season of gridiron glory? What are you waiting for? Get off the bench, into the huddle, and head for the end zone all season long.

Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older. Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? For free assistance, call the Connex Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Age is gearing up to be the world's biggest videography and photography marketplace.

You can kind of think of us as like Uber, but for videographers and photographers, we enable users to book videography and photography shoots all throughout the country. And you basically provide people with videographers. Yeah. 2000 videographers and photographers that are vetted and certified through us, all independent contractors. And then we just connect them with anybody that needs content all right guys got a friend of mine kouser khan here today what's up my man what's going on bro

thanks for having me yeah so kouser does all the videos for my networking events and you crush it man thank you and that's your company beige yeahige. Yeah. Repping it as always. I already know. Yeah, so tell everyone what Beige is about. Yeah, absolutely, man. So Beige is gearing up to be the world's biggest videography and photography marketplace. So you can kind of think of us as like Uber, but for videographers and photographers, we enable users to book videography and photography shoots all throughout the country. Right now, we're in all 50 states getting ready to launch our mobile app marketplace so nice yeah and you basically provide people with videographers yeah exactly that's the whole premise of the app the whole

premise right so we got about 2 000 videographers and photographers that are vetted and certified through us all independent contractors and then we just connect them with anybody that needs content. It's a smart idea because right now hiring a videographer seems old school. Yeah. You got to find their site, call them. You know a guy, you know what I mean? It's not really like centralized, right? So found a gap and been crushing it with that. Yeah. It'd be cool to just go on an app, see their reviews and then they're local. So you could just pay two clicks and hire them. Exactly. So our goal is to make it as easy as possible to book a videographer, right? And just like we do for your events.

And so, yeah. Yeah, and that's how we met too at an event backstage. Yeah, yeah. You were doing videographer for Natasha. For Natasha, yeah, for Natasha. How did you find her? So she actually found us. So she found us, yeah, just I guess through Google and reached out.

And then we ended up doing like 30, 30, 40 episodes for her. Holy crap. For her Law of Attraction. And then she travels a lot, too. So we were just filming all her stuff. Oh, you filmed her pod? Yeah. Nice.

That's a top five show, dude. Yeah, yeah. She's been killing it. Yeah, she's in my category. We're always battling for that top three spot. Nice. Yeah, shout out to Natasha, man. Yeah, shout out to Natasha.

She's pregnant right now. Yeah, yeah, she is. Congrats. Congratsats to her what other events do you film man we do just about any use case you can imagine right i mean we've done like big corporate events for like chase amazon dhl birthday parties networking events podcasts music videos weddings funerals. I mean, just about any- People film funerals? Yeah. Since the pandemic, bro. I've never heard that. Yeah. Since 2020, we've done like a few hundred funerals. What? It's crazy. Yeah.

I didn't know that was a thing. Yeah. Because I've been to a few and I don't remember seeing like video cameras there. Yeah. Yeah. People like to live stream it. We do these highlight videos with like video clips of- You do a highlight video at the funeral? Yeah. The people, you know, while they were alive. No way. highlight video at the funeral? Yeah, the people, you know, while they were alive. No way. Yeah. That's crazy to me, dude. Yeah. Weddings, I understand because you want to relive that moment, but funeral, I feel like one and done for me. Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. But if you're making money off it. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

And so, I mean, really, I wanted to push the volume game and we did just that. I mean, we've done a little over 2,000 shoots now over the past couple years. Yeah, this year we're about to break 3 million in sales. Incredible. And shoots. And this is, mind you, with just being on a landing page, right? No app.

App is not out yet. No ads, too. Yeah, very little ads. So, yeah, man, been scaling up. That's cool because you're just making the pain points so easy. Yeah, yeah, 100%, right? It's like you're in Miami. You want to shoot a podcast.

You're not going to go on Instagram, DM a bunch of people, right? Or text 20 people. You want to be reliably to have somebody. No, and that's so relatable because I film in other cities and it's always a process. Finding a studio, videographer,

making sure everything's my way. It takes hours every time. Yeah, 100%, bro. And so that's what beige's goal is right to just really help people book content anywhere anytime and content is so important these days dude because ads are so expensive organic content's like huge like you almost need that in your repertoire these days bro organic is where it's at yeah look at podcasts literally dominating that's probably the one vertical you're going to focus on too, right?

Yeah. It's going to be one of the biggest ones. Yeah, because they film consistently. You could be there for them whether it's weekly or daily. 100%. Exactly, bro. So I'm excited, man. I'm excited. I just keep growing it.

It's been an amazing journey so far. And you're using AI with the company too? Yeah, yeah. So we're starting to invest in some generative AI tools. So the way the app works is it's a simple layout just like uber or doordash you can choose whether you want video or photo and then pretty much our match making out kick off an exciting football season with bet mgm an official sportsbook partner of the national football league yard after yard down after down the sportsbook born in vegas gives you the chance to take action to the end zone and We'll be right back. offers you plenty of seamless ways to jump straight onto the gridiron and to embrace peak sports action. Ready for another season of gridiron glory? What are you waiting for?

Get off the bench, into the huddle, and head for the end zone all season long. Visit betmgm.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older. Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? For free assistance assistance call the connex ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600 bet mgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with i gaming ontario algorithm will connect you with a videographer or photographer locally yeah that's instantly give you an instant price based on our pricing algorithm from the several thousand shoots we've done and then you'll just pretty much be able better book your videographer then and there that's huge yeah because we're we're getting married next year and i know we'll talk about your wedding too but um

yeah when we were vetting the photographers videographers a lot of their styles are so different yeah it's kind of like while you're on the phone with them you have to see their style and it's like kind of inefficient you know yeah exactly it's it's veryic right now, this media industry. Cause then if you don't like it, you're on an hour call with them stuck. Yeah. A hundred percent. So it's like, how do we aggregate all of that data and the most seamless user experience through base? Yeah. And you've done a ton of weddings too, right? Yeah. Yeah. We've done over a thousand weddings. Holy crap. Yeah. That's insane. I mean, there's always a wedding every day, right? Yeah. People are getting married, you know, hopefully once, you know.

And you got married young. Man, I did. I got married at 23. Holy crap. Yeah. Was that by plan? Yeah. So I met my wife.

I was on this whole 20 cities, 20 weeks campaign, expanding beige, pulled up to Houston. I didn't know anyone else besides her brother. And then I was like, hey, man, I'm in your city. Look and expand. We really hit it off. And then he introduced me to her um coincidentally she was going to Princeton while I had my apartment in Brooklyn wow so but she happened to be in Houston during that time and then we just started dating and then there a week later I flew back into Houston to make things official and then a year later we got married holy crap crap. Within a year. Yeah.

That's quick, man. How'd the brother feel about it? He was really happy. Oh yeah. Yeah. He's the one that really shipped it. And,

um, you know, he didn't know we were going to end up being married, but, uh, we did, man. Yeah. It's,

we've been married almost two years now. Holy crap. 20 cities in 20 days, 20 cities in 20 weeks. Oh, 20 weeks. Yeah. Yeah.

He spent a week in each city. Yeah. Holy crap. About a week in each city. Yeah. And crap. About a week in each city, yeah. And literally all I did was I rented out studios like this. I brought like snacks, coffee, whatever. And then I just brought all the videographers and photographers that I knew and told them my vision for Beige. Wow.

Like, hey, we're not that big yet, but here's a vision. We want to build an Uber for video and for photo. And they were like, all right, I'm in, sign me up. That's pretty cool. And then I started landing jobs and then connecting them. That's a really cool marketing, guerrilla marketing strategy. I always like hearing how people start because money is usually tough when you're starting off.

Oh, 100%. I had like 300 bucks when I started and spent it on another existing marketplace. That's now one of our competitors called Thumbtack. And that's when we got our first customers. And then we just never looked back. Oh, so there's an existing marketplace? So Thumbtack, yeah.

Thumbtack focuses on general services, though. So they focus on like you can hire a plumber, you can hire a cleaner, you can hire a wedding videographer. But it's so fragmented that there was no specialization. That makes sense. Yeah. Which cities out of those 20 really took off? Man, it was Chicago for us. Yeah. Chicago and then New York too. Um, but New York was harder to break into. It actually made me move to Brooklyn to expand because New Yorkers are very face-to-face and like for them to get behind something they're pretty gritty yeah very direct people very direct right so but yeah Chicago and New York man they

did really well for bass so you're willing to just drop everything and move yeah literally that's what I did man I signed my lease like on a spontaneous trip I was out there uh overseeing a music video we had and then I was like like, all right, I'm going to get an apartment. Wow. Signed the lease. What was your wife like? What the hell? So this was right before we met. Yeah. Oh, okay. This was right before we met.

And so, you know, she ended up having fun in Brooklyn. Nice. Yeah. I like having two spots on different coasts, actually. Yeah, yeah. Do you currently have multiple spots? Well, my mom lives in PA, so. But we just got a house here,

and my goal eventually is to have a second house on the East Coast because I like being able to just travel back and forth, experience both cultures. Because New York is fast paced and I need to be around that at least once or twice a year. Bro, it's so good for you, the environment. You were just there, right? Yeah. And it's easy to get kind of comfortable on the West Coast. It's much slower lifestyle. But when I go to New York, dude, the energy is contagious i'm like damn i need to grind i mean you're literally around billions of dollars right yeah being transacted every day so it's inspired and everyone's just on a mission like you just people

watch there i love people watching and it just seems more energized and yeah yeah yeah i love it especially cali cali's slow bro it's so slow yeah other than like la and maybe a couple other cities but even la has slow people there too. Yeah. It's more chill. Yeah. That's where you're at, right?

Yeah. So I'm in between LA and Houston. So I have two spots. Recently copped a house in Houston. Nice. Also have a house in LA. So I go back and forth a lot now, but same thing, dude. I would love to have a bi-coastal presence.

How's Houston? I've never been there. Yeah. You got to definitely visit. I was telling Spencer, I want to line up some interviews for you there but houston's cool man it's uh it's a lot of old money there a lot of opportunities um but a lot of people from cali moving there too oh yeah yeah i got like no state tax yeah no state taxes saving a lot on state taxes you can buy a house for like half a million and then just save a lot that's cheap yeah we're doing a texas tour we got

austin planned and i want to do Dallas, and maybe Houston if there's guests there. You should. I'll line it up. Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Who's out there? Bro, we got a bunch of heavy hitters out there.

I got, so I could probably get J Prince. I've heard of him. Yeah, so he basically helped Drake start OVO. Holy crap. Yeah. Why is he in Houston? Seems random. Yeah, Drake has a lot of

he has a lot of roots down in Houston. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. So I'll make some intros. Got him. I got my friend V. He's like friends with like LeBron. He used to be like, he has like a lot of contacts in the NBA. Nice. A lot of different people. Rockets players.

The Fertittas might be out there too. Yeah, Fertitta. Yeah, Tillman Fertitta is out there, too. Yeah, they own a lot of casinos out here, I believe. Oh, wow. So those are dream guests, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'll look into Houston then, man. How far is it from Dallas and Austin?

From Austin, it's like about a two-hour drive. Oh, so I might as well just stop after Austin, then. Yeah, yeah, it's literally like a triangle, and then Dallas is like three, four hours. Yeah, that's what I'm doing with Nashville. We're going to hit Atlanta after, I think. Yeah, might as well, right? It's right there there that's the cool part about our jobs man we get to travel experience cultures and i can't wait to take this internationally one day too that's sort of the next step 100 bro you got to take this to dubai dubai for sure there's so many good guests out

there oh yeah and uk london would be a good one maybe even australia europe would be solid too yeah yeah certain countries in europe would be would crush i think yeah for sure yeah and maybe mexico man i'm practicing spanish okay that's dope yeah so my childhood best friend uh shah he's been religiously practicing spanish for the past year and dude he's pretty good now yeah what app did he use so he used uh duolingo in the beginning but then there's this other app called tandemandem that he used, and he's literally a celebrity on Tandem. It's kind of like Clubhouse, but you get to engage in voice chats with people. See, that's more useful because I was on Duolingo.

I had a 2-1 or something streak, and I felt like it was too slow for me. Yeah, it's too one-dimensional, right? You don't get to talk. No. So it's called Tandem? It's called Tandem, yeah. You should check it out. I'm going to get that tonight, dude, because I've been slacking on it.

Spanish is important. Yeah, for sure. And I want to be the first bilingual podcaster. That would be huge. Doing podcasts in Spanish? Yeah, no, that's the vision for sure. Latin America is crazy, bitch. That's a huge market, dude.

And they're passionate fans. Look at all those music artists. Holy shit, you get one of them on 10 million views like whenever they come to vegas sold out in the uh football arena bad bunny i don't even know the name maluma all those guys yeah yeah i don't listen to music but i know they're big yeah yeah for sure for sure what do you spend uh your time on other than this man other than this um yeah like i mean i realize i'm a big family guy, so I spend a lot of time with family. I'm somewhat into crypto, and then starting to get more into real estate too.

Okay. Just trying to diversify a little bit. Yeah. What do you got in crypto? Mainly Bitcoin and Ethereum. Yeah. Play it safe. Yeah, yeah. None of the altcoins. I'm kind of riskverse yeah i was like one of those guys that threw like 30 g's at doge back then yeah yeah i ended up pulling out like six seven i was like yeah it's dumb at the top probably like 50 cents yeah i got in pretty pretty high yeah damn yeah those mean points are you either make a lot or lose a lot there's literally no in between right right exactly so i stay out of them too uh dude any events events coming up or? Yeah, man. So we've done several networking events, right? We did the one with Damon John at Ahern. Yeah.

A check spot in here in Vegas. Limitless event, Utah and then the LA one with Dan. I feel like those events were just so transformational, right? The people that we brought together and whatnot. But yeah, man. I mean, right now, probably looking to go to a PBD's event. Oh, the vault. The vault, yeah.

So that's probably going to be on the list. But other than that, just keep grinding away, building the business. PBD's been crushing, dude. He's been crushing. Yeah, that event's been on my calendar the past two years. Wow, are you going to go? I think so, yeah.

Because I wanted to go to the first one, and then I wanted to go to the last one, but I was just filming those days. Yeah, let's pull up together. Yeah'm free though so shout out to pbd man that's one of the shows i studied when i started wow you modeled it perfectly yeah i mean he's crushing it and now he's diving into politics and just getting 10x the views yeah it's brilliant man yeah he's nine figure company already i think yeah he's been crushing it man and i feel I feel like you're on your way, man. Congrats on what you've done. Yeah, and then we got event September during UFC at the Sphere.

That's going to be big. Our last one was fun, dude. I mean, it wasn't huge quantity-wise, but the people there were incredible. Dude, it was a dope-ass venue. I really liked the mountains surrounding us. Yeah, it was beautiful. Muscles, helicopter. Pulled up in the chopper, dude. That was us. Yeah, it was beautiful. Muscles, helicopter. Pulled up in a chopper, dude. That was dope. Justin Waller was there. BJ Baldwin. There were some really heavy hitters there, man. Yeah, it was dope, man. Yeah, it's important for people

watching this to go to networking events, conferences. That's how we met. That's how you meet a lot of people. 100%. Your network is your net worth, right? As cliche as it sounds. I feel like there's just so many people that undervalue that, you know, but I think it's important to put yourself out there. Absolutely. So is the app out yet or is it coming out? So the app is coming out next year. We're in the final stages of beta testing.

I really see it as like perfection, but there's no such thing as perfection. So I'm like, I got to just get the app out, get it in the hands of users. But yeah, right now people can book a shoot in all 50 states through our landing page, beigevideo.com. Nice. And is this your first business or did you have success before this? So man, I had a few other businesses in the past. I opened a small Indian restaurant in LA. Yeah. Scaled it up. My parents helped me. It was good, man. I scaled it up,

ended up selling it for six figures during the pandemic. Wow. Sold a restaurant? Yeah. I didn't know you could do that. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, ended up selling it to a family friend. That was pretty cool. I got to try your Indian food, man.

I love Indian food. Oh, do you? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking about doing another one in Houston soon. Okay. What's your signature dish? Dude, I would say butter chicken, hands down.

Ooh, can't go wrong with that. Yeah. Garlic naan with butter chicken. Oh, I love naan, dude. But I'm picky with naan because sometimes it's too thick. Gotcha. I like mine crispy. Yeah.

The crispy is really good. Yeah. You don't want to leave it in there for too long. Yeah. Otherwise, yeah. Yeah, man. I had a social fitness app too. That ended up failing.

But it taught me a lot just about the fitness industry. We did some stuff with the Lakers and hosted different fitness events throughout LA. It was like kind of like Tinder, but for fitness in a way. Yeah. So you would match with a trainer? So you'd match with other people playing a sport. Oh, got it. Right. So for example, let's say you're in a pickup basketball, you pull it up to Miami, you're looking to play a pickup basketball game. You could go on that app and then be matched. Wow. Why did that fail? Because I would use that. Yeah. So we just ran out of money, man. And, you know, if you look at the demographic that's raising funding in this current environment,

it's really, you're either Ivy League educated or, you know, your founders are other unicorns. How they exit, yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, you're quite frankly, you're white. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, having other co-founders that

are of color made it really difficult to raise funds yeah that's surprising yeah but i could see it i mean did you see james o'keefe expose disney recently yeah i heard of it yeah so that that stuff's definitely around i mean race is definitely around it's just not talked about i feel like yeah i mean and so much racism is like institutional nowadays right it's like it's generational too yeah it's generational and it's like a lot of it is just projection of one's own insecurities but i think we got to look beyond that and and just yeah that's that we can't that's a shame but i can relate because i've raised money too and after my first exit it was so easy to raise money you know what i mean mean? But that first time, it was really hard, like super hard. 100%.

And I didn't know if that was just experience raised or whatever, but it could have been both. Yeah. Absolutely, man. Yeah. So that ended up failing. We were out like a quarter million bucks. But that failure taught us a lot, right? And I think to me, it was like that's where I got the golden nuggets for beige, to be able to scale this.

We're starting to raise that like a $10 million valuation now, but that didn't happen overnight. We had to have failure after failure in order to do so. Then my other business was a clothing brand. It was called Noya Chipon. It's essentially like an ethically manufacturing-oriented clothing brand. Bangladesh is the second largest clothing producer in the world. So what I was able to do is find factories that would produce the clothes in a more ethical standard. And then I was essentially helping source, like, different basic garments.

Yeah, but then a lot of, like, my own people, a lot of Bangladeshis, started hating on me. What? For trying to change the game and do something different. Really? Yeah, they were saying, like, oh, but you're not making the clothes yourself. that she's started hating on me for trying to change the game and do something different. Really? Yeah. They were saying like, oh, but you're not making the clothes yourself. Or, you know, some of the clothes were made in China, which some of our prototypes were because we were trying to diversify and we didn't have the resources when you start out.

But I ended up raising money in a Kickstarter campaign that was successful. And then I was like, you know what? I'm just going to pivot to beige and do it full time. Wow. That's when it took off. I'm big on ethically sourced clothes though, for real. Yeah. Because I believe there's an energetic component when it's made in a sweatshop. Yeah. It brings down your energy. 100%. And you look at the fast fashion industry nowadays,

right? And it's like, it's really about volume. And I feel like you should aim for quality. 100%. Yeah. I'll pay double the price. I wear linen now. I wear like good quality material. Wow. What differences do you notice? So the human vibrates at an energy of 100. When you wear linen, it's 5,000. Wow. When you wear cotton, it's,

I think organic cotton is like 70 or something. And then regular cotton is 15. And then polyester is one. So anything below 100 is going to bring down your energy. So you to wear clothing that's above 100 that is fascinating yeah when i wear linen dude i feel amazing try it out yeah i definitely will yeah i bought some off amazon and uh game changer dude get rid of your polyester for sure because that's a vibration level of one wow a lot of men's boxers and like yoga pants for women or polyester wow that's crazy yeah not only that though when you sweat in it there's microplastics in it that get in your bloodstream

too so it's it's bad on two fronts spiritually and physically i think spiritual awareness is the greatest form of awareness yeah when i whenever i have on spiritual guests they're all in linen so that makes a lot of sense because i've been to Mecca because I'm Muslim. So I've been to Mecca several times. And when you go, you're supposed to wear this cloth. And it has to be like either cotton or linen. It's not really synthetic. And then in Islam, men are not allowed to wear silk for whatever reason.

That's interesting. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know that. I wonder what the reason is for that. For sure. Wow. Well, dude, it's been fun. Anything else you want to close off with our promote? Yeah, for sure, man. I would say like the biggest thing is the AI component, right? I feel like AI can never truly replace us, but we got to learn how to coexist with AI when it comes to content. And so, yeah, we're investing heavily in generative AI at Bayesian. Really excited for the launch, man.

Yeah, can't wait to see it, man. We'll eventually link it below when the app's out too. Maybe we'll do a part two. Yeah, definitely got to do a part two. Talk about the results. Thanks for coming on, man. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for watching, guys, as always.

We'll link Kod's socials below if you want to check them out. Otherwise, see you tomorrow.