Founder's Story - Each Built a Following of Millions While Enjoying Being a Couple | Ep. 2 with Zowie Palliaer and Bisayang Hilaw

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

Episode 2 of Inspired by her kate speaks with Zowie Palliaer and Bisayang Hilaw about their story of becoming influencers who have been seen millions of times. They will tell you how they built their following, what equipment they used and tips on how...  Please visit Pix11 or Fox5 San Diego for more details. Our Sponsors:* Check out PrizePicks and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: www.prizepicks.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to Inspired by Her, the podcast that will give you the inspiration, motivation and tips for success from some of the top executives, CEOs and influencers from around the globe. With your host, serial entrepreneur and named one of the most influential Filipina in the world, Kate Hancock. And so today I'm so excited to introduce to you my guest. First, this episode is about, have you ever wondered about what it takes to become an influencer? Well, that's exactly what we're going to learn today. So I have my amazing guest who I just started to become really good friends, Zoe and Chloealoj. Can you tell us about having us Kate? Yeah so I'm so excited I know you guys are stuck in the magete right now. Okay so tell us how did you get started? What's the story behind Zoe and Miss Ayaan Hilal?

I mean it dates back a year before Zoe. Because Carson was traveling by himself for about a year and vlogging. So maybe he wants to start with that and then I'll jump in a year later. Well, where do I start when like i started my channel yeah so what was the story i bring me back to your first post was that a plan what is that like did you get traction so a few months before i started i did a solo backpacking trip around Southeast Asia. So I didn't, I wasn't recording. I had a GoPro just for fun. But I ended up in Shargao and that's when someone told me that I should start vlogging. And I had no idea what vlogging was. But he gave me the idea. So I went home and like researched it. And I was working at a call center

at that time. So I did not want to do that anymore. so I was like alright send it and I bought a camera and then I flew back to the Philippines and I started making videos for a whole year before I met Zoe so I had no idea what I was doing but I was just recording like my adventures in the Philippines kind of just jumping off waterfalls pretty much what we're still recording now yeah nothing, nothing's really changed, but now Zoe's here. Yeah, so I started off in marketing in Brisbane, Australia, and I liked my job, but kind of it was getting a bit stale for me, so my contract was coming to an end, and I figured I would spend three months in the Philippines, and it was, my plan was to rediscover like my roots um and you know kind of find home and then I met him

um Carson and decided you know I might stick it out for a bit longer than three months so I said you know I joined the vlogs we had so much fun and then I noticed you know my channels my Instagram to start with absolutely skyrocketed so that happened very quickly and then I thought you know maybe I can make something out of this so like just the other day we were looking at what's that website social blade and you can like type in an influencer on Instagram and see all their statistics like we ourselves and just to see our growth was like crazy this time last year so it's it's interesting to see how far we've come in such a short time but really it's just the consistency and then being part of a market that's so involved in social media which the

philippines is yeah i was looking at your your engagements is so amazing your every post i think what makes you guys different is you really spend the time to respond to your audience i think i've never seen like you guys really take time and respond to their your your audience comment and so I think that's important yeah I mean it works to build a community so like you're not just a like this idol that no one can kind of reach like we're people and so we have such a strong community where they're like a youtuber versus an artista yeah because like they people aren't shy to approach us on the streets and stuff because they're not like intimidating like an artista right because they feel like they have that connection already like we're just friends watching the vlogs which is cool i mean we're not artistas so yeah yeah yeah I've seen people in action as they you know you

guys were you mentioned in one story you guys were driving around with a motorcycle with a helmet and still people or something okay so um what would be your advice for anyone who's just about to start their own channel I think everyone is bored right now and they wanted to break into that business what would be your advice um first thing I would just say is start like just like I did I didn't know blogging really was but I just started like my first video didn't even have like background music or anything it was just raw like I just started uploading and and you learn as you go so you can't don't wait until you like you know what you're doing to start because that's part of the process is you learn

as you start posting a lot and definitely pick a niche that you really enjoy because if it's not something you enjoy you're not going to last because the thing with like youtube or instagram or any of that it's a long you're in for the long run like don't expect to become insta famous or becomes like a big profile in just like a few months you have to like commit a few years yeah so you got to enjoy what you're doing okay so you mentioned it's about a year before you get traction is that what happened yeah it all depends on luck and hard work and there's a lot of factors yeah like but it's definitely a marathon not a sprint i mean i think now's a really great time as well because people are so active on social

media because they're so bored so if you have something to contribute to you know break that boredom cycle then you know you're lucky like you're likely to get traction right now now where did you learn are you like do you guys know already how to edit videos or is there a website that you guys went to how to learn how to edit videos or things like that YouTube University okay you learn everything on YouTube like they I kind of like knew the basics I don't know how like at the beginning but every little thing when you get caught up and you just go to youtube and search like it definitely took me a lot longer to edit at the starting like seven plus hours for one video and now it's like three hours so you learn

as you go it takes forever at the beginning yeah how did you deal with a philippine um signal yeah how did you get into that route? I always told myself that the Philippines is like the best place to blog, but the worst place because it's the worst uploading speed ever. But after a year, my friend Brian from the Aukern family, he taught me a little trick. He told me that if you upload using your phone app, like the YouTube app on your phone, then it's like a million times faster. And now I upload in like 15 minutes

versus it took me like nine hours before. Yeah. And that doesn't mean like hotspotting from your phone to your computer. A lot of YouTubers are like, yeah, we use our phone. Like, no, you hotspot. It's still slow and it chews through your load.

So like actually upload on the YouTube app on your phone. Yeah. Yeah. So I have a question. so which platform work for you is it is it Facebook or do you post it live or do you curate it in different platforms so tell me how do you guys work for our YouTube videos they're also like on Facebook the day after. So we post on YouTube first to kind of get the traction there. And then the next day or whenever, we'll post on Facebook because there's still such a huge community.

How many followers do you have on Facebook? Over a million. Yeah, so there's a million people on facebook who care about it um but facebook is still kind of figuring out monetization so they're new to the monetization game so it's a little bit there's some quotes that they need to figure out um so you know it doesn't always make as much money as youtube that's why the youtube is the focus um and then so then we also cross promote on our Instagram because we have, you know, another audience on there. So we share in our stories, you know, swipe up to see the latest blog. Yeah. Kind of having it across all platforms to get the audience.

What is your day like? Okay. So you went and shoot for how many hours did you shoot i mean it just depends like what we're doing i mean we we're travel vloggers so we go out in the morning um we go to a waterfall or whatever we're doing whatever adventure it is that day and we just start filming until pretty much the sun goes down because it happens very quickly in the philippines it's short days is that what it is do you find it when it's short they are like well the sun just goes down early the sun goes down at 5 30 versus in the states it's dark at 9 30 pm you know it's in summer so the days are longer in the states yeah okay okay so um do you guys plan your content for the year oh do you how do you do you schedule it no i'm the worst planner in the world i just go with

the flow i notice videos that i plan ahead do better like if i actually have a video in mind and i like execute it those videos get a lot more views but we kind of then fill the lulls between the planned videos with just our normal travel vlogs so the travel vlogs are consistency and then it's the the viral videos that we planned that you know yeah there's growth there wow okay so bring me back to the first year what was the best traction you've had when you started your YouTube, Carson? People we traveled together? No, when you were just starting. By myself?

Yes. Well, my second video I ever made is still one of my top view videos. It was a Kaga Asuka challenge where you dance budots, you know? So I had that video i did have in mind before i started vlogging because i wanted to just just do kind of fun videos and i thought of that one um so that one after a few it was kind of slow but then after a few months it got traction because youtube algorithm's weird they start sharing it a few months later you know so that one was like my first hundred thousand plus video

when I first began so I think that's how I started picking up subscribers and got like attention um and then from there just kind of a gradual like yeah nothing like super quick growth until um Zoe came along and we started to get some quick growth yeah andil was a huge month for us last year yeah when did i start i started backpacking in february mid-february with carson and then april a whole bunch of things kind of culminated and like we were just looking at our stats the other day and i my instagram grew like like 36 000 followers and wow that's amazing and it was organic like it yeah yeah within like two weeks three weeks you gained like 80 000 followers that's just amazing so do you feel like i guess it's working as a couple right yes love teams definitely work

in the Philippines like they they love love um so for a long time they weren't sure if we were dating so it was kind of like the there's a story are they are they not so that's why people were invested in finding out if we were and then once we were we became a love team and now you know they're interested in seeing us kind of develop so yeah well you guys have just watched your last video the uh getting to who knows best i was just laughing actually listening to you guys i won i lost the first time so we did it one month okay how how about the Scrabble? Who's winning? Me, every time.

If she gets pissed off because I wreck her at Scrabble. Yeah, because he plays with technique. I just try to put down the longest words that I know. She's like, I know these weird words you know. That's like, my technique's better. Yeah, I don't have technique. That's Corey's lowest. Yeah, but we have you to thank for Scrabble. Our first time ever playing was at

Vintanas Paraíso in Naha Sao. Oh wow okay well I'm glad you got some memories. Thank you but also if we break up it's your fault. I won't be responsible. I don't understand how she always wants to play because every time she gets mad. She gets so frustrated. And since day one of being Donna, it's been the same. Yeah. And now I'm playing with his mom on words with friends and I'm still losing. She hasn't figured it out yet. She just loves it. Wow. Wow. Well, so what's your plan? What's the feature of the love story of both of you? Is there any place that you guys are planning to visit after this quarantine? We were so close to going to Indonesia.

You were supposed to be going at the end of April yes we were definitely going we had like really strong plans to go definitely in May at the beginning of May for a Red Bull event and then we thought we'd leave at the end of April because it's Carson's birthday so let's go to Indonesia and have your birthday there and then I think we did what a lot of um millennials did at the beginning of the coronavirus thing um we saw cheap flights and we're like maybe we should so cheap like so cheap because um I saw flights from Maldives for like $200 and I was like really I was like oh my gosh this is this is it we have to go to the Maldives. And that's actually not our thing. So we looked at flights to Java. Wow.

So we'll spend some time in East Java and then go to Bali for the Red Bull event. But that has been way pushed back. So after all the quarantine, all that, and it's safe to travel again, hopefully Indonesia. Indonesia, okay. Indonesia, okay. Yeah, okay, so I just like Bali, we want to do East Java.

So, Zoe, I love how you transitioned from an influencer and working with a brand. I saw some of your commercials. So how did you, what made you decide to do that? So tell me that story. So my signal is not. Did I broke up? Sorry, it's just. Yeah, you're glitching a little bit.

Yeah, I think it's much better now yeah so i love how you transitioned from influencers in working to big brands how did you get into that is that something you planned or it just happened so you mean like how'd i get into like the commercial yes the commercial side yeah that was all part of our April story so in April I had a viral photo shoot it was my first ever photo shoot I've never modeled not even like as a kid or anything and I met this a swimsuit designer in Romblon in the Philippines. And she's like, like, makes her own swimsuits at home and wanted to start a brand. So I met her at, um, a fiesta and then she's like, Hey, like, do you want a model for me

tomorrow morning? I was going to do it myself, but like, can you do it? So I was like, sure. Why not? Like, you're really nice. And you're going to and you're gonna give me a swimsuit okay and then that photo shoot it took a little while like almost a month for it to really pick up on Facebook and out of nowhere pretty much

it just started getting shared and shared and it had like almost 100k shares that's why my Instagram started growing so much and there was nothing like raunchy about it I was really I was just in a swimsuit um but I became known as yellow bikini girl oh wow yeah and then because of that going so viral and it was all over the Philippines like a lot of people didn't know me from Busan, they knew me from Yellow Bikini Girl and then that's how my agency picked me up because they search on social media so they focus only on Filipino talent or at least Eurasian beauties so they found me through my social media and then we had discussions about what it meant to join a modeling agency and then before I knew it I was signed and I had my first commercial

before I actually signed my contract it was with AirAsia and it was pretty surreal like I hadn't even really signed with the agency yet and I was being flown to Macau for like an overseas shoot I was like this is crazy so yeah I'm really lucky being in the Philippines that social media is so valued here because that's how I was found and now that's how I continue to get big brand deals for commercials congratulations thank you so, so being a couple, I mean, do you, is there any, like, I have to share a story when Dan and I go to an event and they always assume that it was him who started. Is there sometimes your friction, how you get your feelings hurt? Cause you guys are both, or

do you guys are in the same, like maybe one will get attention than the other that it ever happened or no sometimes one of us will get approached for a grand deal and the other one even though I'm very similar audiences same amount of like like followers so we usually then try to like involve the other person. So if someone reaches out to me, unless it's like very niche to females, I'm not going to be like, hey, my boyfriend would really like to be involved

in this Maybelline campaign. Like that's not going to work. But if it's something that like he can be involved in, then I'll pitch him as like a package. So, you know, buy buy one get one free. So did you guys ever shoot a commercial with both of you? Did you guys ever work with a brand? Not in a commercial. We almost got picked for a tourism thing in the Philippines through my agency they needed a Australian backpacker that could speak Pasaya and he's not

Australian but he could look. He could speak Pasaya. And they he almost got it but they wanted him to cut his hair. Yeah, I wasn't trying to cut my hair. That's like, how long does it take you to get that long? Probably wanted a backpack or not, like a... Yeah, like a clean shaven guy. So yeah, we didn't end up getting that one because yeah, he needed short hair, but that's okay. So no, to this day, we haven't done a commercials together,

but we've done some collabs together like singologues and that was cool yeah we were on gma oh yeah we've been on a couple tv shows um we were on jessica toho okay and also gma yeah i wonder so that was that was also in april so that was another part of the April explosion. It seems like April is your lucky month. It is. Yeah, hopefully this year history repeats itself. I don't know how it's gonna be in quarantine, going viral again, yeah. So, I have a question of it. I know I've asked you this before, Carson. I mean, your Cebuano is way deeper than mine or Zoe or anyone's. It's so impressive or like we can't beat you, right? How did you get into that deep, deep Visaya? I don't know if that's true. Did you ask me questions?

Yeah, I think my Wi-Fi hit so bad. So how did you learn that really deep Sibuano words? Like no one could ever compete with you. Your Sibuano is so deep um so i learned i learned my subwano serving as a missionary for the lds church um so part of our everyday studies was like an hour of language study and so that means like either reading like the bible or scriptures in subwano and those are already like super deep words right like even people i thought they didn't understand the bible words because they're so deep

um even the dictionary those are like really deep words so sometimes it's a disadvantage because like the locals don't even understand what the words mean even though that's like the pure sabuano you know and sabuano is kind of like developed over time or evolved even the english it's kind of a mix of english sometimes yeah so i guess that's where like deep words come from just like through the studies and trying to memorize words and having no idea you know it's like you're reading i don't know no but you can deep words and then speaking with the locals i mean that's how like you really learn a language is like immersing in in the culture speaking with the locals I mean that's how I'd like you really learn a language is like you're versing in in the culture and with the people so I wrote down words every day what people are speaking so I guess just words I

pick up some of them are deep wow that's really impressive it's like I love how you can just spit I think that makes you so special because you're a blonde as hell and you're S blonde as hell and your Cebuano is deep. He's definitely got a niche there. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that's, I'm sure that's, that's, you know, what sets you apart and it's a big part of why you have some loyal following in Mindanao and Visayas. Yeah if you look at our following it's so saturated in Cebuano speaking like our Tagalog followers there's not too many like our fan base or following base is very Cebuano. Yeah. So definitely the Cebuanos connect more even though Tagalogs can read our

subtitles they don't they're probably not connecting with us they're not getting the sense of humor and like the language i guess yeah yeah yeah that's definitely the thing that set me apart even my first year before zoe like before the love team like it was always the y guy speaking sablano you know so that's why even my first year i grew to 100k in 10 months and i don't think i would have been able to do that if I just spoke English. So it definitely helped me out. That's very true. So what is your highest views ever? Is that still 9 million, or what's the recent?

On Facebook, it's easier to get views on Facebook because you can share and stuff. That one's over 11 million on the taxi scams in Manila. So I kind of just show how many taxis drivers are on there and dishonest. And unfortunately, majority of them were, or maybe it was half. No, we got three honest. Yeah. Oh, yeah, you're right. Definitely wasn't half. Yeah, most of them were dishonest.

But that one is my most viral on facebook on youtube the highest one i think was like around three over three million views on i think that's when we sing oh my god okay and you can plan videos as well yeah see you can tell what thought into them and like they're a lot harder to execute because it's not just us jumping off waterfalls and doing what we do every day like we have to give up you know an entire day to like facilitate yeah ride taxis back and forth from all of asia to the casinos um or you know walk around the hall singing a song about chickens. Okay. So, um, what is, okay. So for anyone who's just about to plan on starting their own, right.

What is, what is the range startup cost? How much do you have to spend for a camera? What would you advise and what to, what for them to expect? Um, well, my first camera was a sony a6300 um it's a good camera and it's great for vlogging because it's very light that was around 700 but i think even that isn't necessary um her iphone 11 is great yeah if you've got an iphone even the 10 is fine i just had a broken camera on my 10 that's the only reason i upgraded um so yeah an iphone from about 10 up is great yeah we have we have friends in bohol and all they film is they're using their iphones and they have a ton

of subscribers like over 300 000 subscribers so yeah they just film on their phone i don't think you need a really nice camera it depends what you're doing if you're trying to make cinematics and like invest in a nice camera and then just editing software as well so I mean I know some people do like iMovie yeah okay even GoPro has an editing software but yeah I think some bloggers like becoming Filipino I think he mainly uses his gopro i think and then there's people who also edit on their phones yeah you can do it cheap like it's no excuse that you have to like save up to buy a nice camera yeah just start just start doing it and then as you

gain traction as you grow and then you can start investing in new equipment yeah upgrade as you go like now we're using you know better equipment but i mean we've seen a lot of you know benefits in our photography but and like the videos have remained mostly the same so who's the most creative of both of you who's the most creative I think it was Sigma. These things that I don't know how to write. So I guess I have that and like the captions for our like Instagram and whatever like for the most part I do them. She has all the words. I don't have any words. And like I like to express myself that way where I'm not one to really visually express. So

all the photos I post he takes them yeah so I guess I mean visually he's more creative I just have the words in here and I know how to express myself that way that's fun so you guys really are

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