In Search Of Excellence - Ian Boggs: How I Created Viral Videos with 30 Billion Views | E91

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

Welcome to another episode of In Search of Excellence! My guest today is an incredible young man, Ian Boggs. Ian is one of the most successful influencers of all time. He has more than 30 million followers on YouTube, TikTok, Snap, and Instagram. His videos have been viewed more than 30 billion times.Tune in to hear Ian talking about his childhood, education, and his journey from dreaming about being a doctor to becoming one of the most successful influencers online. Find out how he started doing what he loved, how his videos went viral, and how he gained millions of followers on social media. He also shares how he dealt with hateful comments and how he earns money as a social media creator.Time stamps:01:27 Ian’s backgroundAn American father who grew up in Kenya and a Japanese motherThat helped him build his audience all around the world02:48 Creating his first contentHis mother loved photography and had a cameraIan created content with Legos04:46 What was Ian like as a kid?Introverted and super creativeLearned that nothing comes for freeMade money mowing lawns07:53 The education and the shift in mindsetAP classes in ItalyCheating on testStudying to be a doctor at UCIDecide to go a different routeSwitched to Media Studies14:53 Cutting his own hair for a videoMaking fun of alpha malesStarted doing haircuts for $15Passionate about photography and videographyStarted earning money19:28 Becoming a social media creatorA dream of becoming a social media creatorA video went viralDid live of himself sleepingParents supported his dream25:44 Hitting a million followersA million followers on Tik TokHad a lot of anxietyWasn’t happy about the content he was posting27:24 Making the content he lovedGoing to California, starving, and working hardHis father cut him off financiallyHe decided to make the content he was happy about30:30 Hateful commentsHe made some cringy contentBad comments gave him anxietyLearned to deal with itEngaging with comments on social media34:45 Buying followersBought followers are usually botsFake followers are harmfulBuying followers is a scammy business38:27 How to make money on social media?Merch – selling different productsEarning with AdSense on YouTube explainedBrand deals - Marvel, Netflix, and Old SpiceSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

What really lit a fire into my ass was that my dad called me one day and he was like, Ian, you're out there on your own now. I'm doing this for you. I'm gonna cut you off financially because I think that's gonna be the best thing for you. I'm tearing up a little bit right now because I'm like, man, that really, really, really helped me. It didn't make me think like, oh damn, my life is over. It made me think in a way where it was like if i don't get my shit together i will literally go broke and so i thought about what really made me happy what i really wanted to do in life and that was make stories and share them to people that would love them across the world that day i made a video just for that it was like my own anime story idea it was the first video that got a million likes

i think 10 million views that i was really happy about welcome to in search of excellence where we meet entrepreneurs ceos entertainers athletes motivational speakers and trailblazers of excellence with incredible stories from all walks of life. Ian Boggs is one of the most successful influencers of all time. He has more than 30 million followers on YouTube, TikTok, Snap, and Instagram, and his videos have been viewed more than 30 billion times. Ian, welcome to In Search of Excellence. I appreciate you being here. Thank you for having me here. Let's get into it. Your dad was born in Arizona and worked in the military in a high-tech job and you moved around a lot as a kid. You were born in Japan and moved to Hawaii, Italy after that, which is essentially where you grew up. Your mom was a stay-at-home mom. How did your parents influence your future and how did it

impact your success? Well, one important factor was that my dad also, he was born in Arizona, but he grew up in Africa, in Kenya. And so I think having him, having grown up with a rough childhood and my mom kind of having been growing up in Japan, those two influences really worked. I grew up with two different cultures in my life, like a white father who grew up in Kenya and a Japanese mother from Japan. And it's very different. So for me, growing up with my father in the military, active duty still, growing up in Japan, Hawaii, Italy, really influenced me to see how big the world is. And I think in a way it catered to my content because I understand how people from all around the world work. And social media is an Internet thing, not like a U.S. thing. So it's like I make when I make content, I come in with a mindset that I'm making content for the entire world, not just for the U.S. or whatever.

And that in the long run kind of, I guess guess helped me get those billions of views and hopefully a billion followers someday we'll see were your parents into photography at all or how did you end up getting a camera when you were five years old and tell us about the legos you had oh yeah so I actually haven't started sharing the story until recently but um I'm glad you remember that um my mom loved photography and my dad bought her like the super expensive, super nice camera set, which eventually kind of became mine

because I just use it more. And I remember like, I love Legos as a kid, like a little kid, like as a five-year-old probably. And I would grab these Legos and just like make videos out of them. But I would also like kind of burn them sometimes. Burn them with a lighter? Yeah, like a lighter or whatever. Wouldn't the plastic smoke and smell bad? Yeah, it smelled so bad. But for some reason, it was like, I didn't have the budget to make special effects. And I didn't know how to do that. So my only way

to like make cool videos was, I'm not putting this together. Like now I know how to make better fire than like sometimes even Marvel does in their videos and just in my computer in my home. But, um, yeah, when I was a kid, I didn't have the budget to like, or know how to know how to make these cool videos and ideas that I had. So I would make videos of burning Legos with reason, like he got shot by a firepower or something like that. All right. But you're five to eight years old. You're shooting these videos. Where are you putting them? There was no YouTube back then. And it was just to put on a little cam quarter and put on the TV and watch it on the TV. Or not even watch it on TV, just watch it on the camera. Like a little, a little two inch screen. See that I created something that can be

eternalized in this, like, in this form of content. And I guess I didn't really know that, like, as a kid. But now I'm, like, looking back, like, wow, I've been doing this since I was, like, five years old or eight. I don't know how exactly I was, but, yeah, around then. So you've had a creative penchant since you were a kid. Tell us also how you were business-minded as a kid and walk us through five years old to 15 years old. What were you like as a kid? Were you social, going out, popular? Yeah, I was really introverted as a kid.

I like I didn't start doing sports until I was like, I think middle school or so. But before that, I would like come home from elementary school and like play Roblox all the time. And I was just really always super creative. and my parents always pushed me to do that so when it came to things like drawing like I would submit to art contests and win a lot of them um I I just art has always had a creative mindset and my parents would always like enforce that in me and so when it came to business my dad always told me a saying where it was kind of like always do what makes you happy but make sure you're financially secure as well like make sure you're still making money um and I think me having grown up like mowing people's lawns my dad teaching me that nothing ever comes for free um even though he wasn't like crazy rich or anything he would allow us to have allowances

like for a month or so um and it taught me that growing up like nothing ever comes for free um and then when I went to college I was 17 and I didn't have a chance to get my driver's license because I was growing up around the world. But even though I had no like real money, my dad kind of like sold me his like hand-me-down car that he still had in San Diego for like a hundred bucks because it's just like he would have given it to me for free free but he wanted me to know like nothing comes for free so at least pay me 100 bucks for this car and i'm glad he did yeah so you mowed lawns did you knock on your neighbor's lawns door to door or how did you get the business no remember do you remember how much you got paid for the lawn yeah i remember i remember like i remember

like one day i made like 300 and i was so happy but yeah and I'm not just from mowing a lawn but like this one guy he lived across from us as a kid as when I was a kid and he saw me mowing my own lawn I think my dad paid me like five bucks for like a lawn mow and then the neighbor right across from us like saw that happening and came over and like asked us like hey could Ian mow my lawn for I think it was I think it was five or eight bucks for like lawn mow but then there was one day where he wanted me to like spray down the windows like um in the backyard like their dog poop like so many things and then uh it just like he I think because he was moving away too and he wanted to gift me something he gave me $300 and I remember like posting about on Facebook

like I just made $300 like in one day and I was so excited my mom was like you should never post about how much you make and at that point I was like oh yeah you're right I shouldn't share like the amount of money I make all kind of stuff be humble about it yeah I think Humble's a very important part of our And I was like, oh, yeah, you're right. I shouldn't share the amount of money I make and all that kind of stuff. Be humble about it. Yeah. I think humble is a very important part of our success. We're gonna talk about that a little later in the show.

You moved around a lot as a kid, country to country. You speak multiple languages. Education, I think, is one of the most important ingredients of our success. I think it's the biggest investment we can make on ourselves. Yeah. You're a poor student for a while, 2.9 GPA.

Yeah. And then something happened when you moved. How did you go from 2.9 GPA to 4.0 GPA taking AP classes? Yeah, well, I couldn't get it quite to 4.0. It was 3.7, but then again- That's terrible. Yeah, still going from a 2.93 was pretty cool so like in Hawaii um education is not like the number one factor for me it was like sports because I got into sports in middle school uh swimming and track in particular and surfing too and so um

growing up I was like uh school school like. I would rather just focus on my creative stuff and being a good athlete and working out. And then something happened where my dad got stationed in Italy. So, of course, we moved with him. And on these military bases, people come from all over the world, all over the country. And so on the military base I was living in in Italy, that was the first time I heard about AP classes and, like, that you need good grades to go to college and get a good job. And I was like, what? That's crazy. And then I was in school, and all these, like, East Coast kids who obviously, like, know about the Ivy Leagues and all that kind of stuff, were becoming my friends through the swim team and all that.

And I saw them study hard, and that was a cool thing to do at this school. And so ever since I moved from Hawaii to Italy, I started taking every AP class I could, studying really hard, got a 4.0 or above every single year, and went from a 2.9 to a 3.7, I believe when I graduated. So almost went to Berkeley, got wait-listed there, instead went to UCI and I'm so glad I did because it was the epicenter of like LA, San Diego

and all the places I love in California. Right, so University of California at Irvine, for those people who don't know it or not from California. And you were studying biology, studying to be a doctor, which is very different from what you're doing. Did your parents say, I want my son to be a doctor like a lot of parents? Or what made you go from being a doctor,

want to be a doctor to shifting to an entirely new career? Why did you stop? So when I was in college, well, we'll go back to my senior year of high school first. So I got caught cheating on a test or attempting to cheat on a test. That's not good. It's not good at all. And I was on track to be a student body president. And then I lost that. And I got so depressed. And I was like, man, like this little, this little stupid, like thing that I did lost me like this whole entire, like me like this whole entire like this

this whole entire great thing I was gonna have that was gonna get me into all these colleges did I do whatever but I'm actually thankful that happened because ever since that happened I didn't cheat like once and I was like man like this just the truth is like everyone in high school cheats at least once on the test or a paper or whatever and It's not anything be ashamed of it's a human thing But it taught me that like if you really want to be smart and really know your stuff then then don't cheat like really work on your stuff and your craft So after that I was like what's the most like respectful

career and most like earning career that I can go into that's going to be financially stable? And that was becoming a doctor. And I had grown up going to Africa a lot, like visiting family there and all that and seeing the poverty there. And so I wanted to really help out and become not a doctor just for the money, but also join Doctors Without Borders. So I would go to the library when I got suspended for cheating and all that and then um just study up on a lot of stuff and um this is like I'm drifting off right now but I ran into this substitute teacher who really helped me out in school and she was telling me that like her son got suspended from school for something really

small too and that's something to be ashamed of or whatever and like that helped me so much so i think it's like really helpful when adults are understanding the kids because that helps them in their career later on um so going back to my story went into all these applications for college to become a doctor. Did my first year as bio in Irvine. Love the practicals, love the science of it. I love biology as a science, but I could not sit down and read a science book for a whole day for the life of me. And I would always like just drift off a little bit in lectures. So I came to realization that like the thing that I love doing the most is making videos. It's what I've been doing since I was a kid. I love acting, love scripting, love writing, love doing all these things. The chances of me being a successful

doctor, making millions or whatever, is probably like one out of a million, two million, hundred million, whatever. The chances of me becoming a successful director or a creative person is honestly probably around the same chance, same if not harder. So why not go for the harder route that's really going to make me happy that may even help more people around the world with social media and so that summer after my first year i started posting a lot more videos um i saved up some money and bought a camera and i think the first video i posted where i was just doing something that i thought was funny and cool cutting my own hair and making fun of alpha males on social media, went viral. 28,000 views.

28,000 views, yeah. At that time it was 28,000 views. Good job, nice. And for me, now viral is like 100 million views and all that, but it's a different world. And I remember that happened and I was like, wow, it is possible to naturally, organically go viral and make people laugh or enjoy a piece of content online.

So ever since then, I just kept posting videos, stuff started doing well, and switched my major from bio to film and media studies and really worked on film and worked for other photographers and videographers and just honed on my craft. Yeah, so that, I suppose, the shift in mindset of like, you only get this one chance in life to chase what's really gonna make you happy

made me work even harder for what I wanted to do. And I just haven't stopped doing that since. You're very business minded. And we've talked about that a little bit already, but I want to go back to cutting hair in your dorm. My son goes to mental college and there's someone in his dorm who cuts hair. I think he turns, you know 35 bucks there's shit all over the place i bet clean cleaning up what was that experience like what made you want to do it and and you also had another business as well in in college yeah yeah paid off your loan so let's talk about those as well i'm really um i'm all about like creative businesses especially now where the internet exists and social media it's more popular than ever um when i had that video of me like cutting my hair go viral

people didn't realize that was my first time ever cutting hair and i'm a perfectionist so it took me three hours to like cut my own hair you cut your own hair did you use a mirror so you can see what you're doing yeah i don't i didn't do this haircut by my own but um this was dane cuts shout out to dane cuts um shout out yeah it's uh how do i explain this are you looking for your next great gift to surprise a friend colleague or loved one bliss beaches makes the perfect gift this best-selling bright and beautiful coffee table book by randall caplan features stunning drone photography from exotic beach locations around the world. It's the perfect housewarming gift, a great addition to any home or office, and a fun and creative alternative to bringing a bottle of wine to somebody's house for dinner. Bliss Beaches is available for purchase on Amazon, where it has glowing reviews and a

five-star rating. Get your next amazing gift and order a copy of Bliss Beaches by clicking the link in our show notes. They were actually barbers I went to when I was in college. So I loved their work. So I was making a joke of like, I was trying to make fun of alpha males that were the thing on social media back then and do a parody, but cut my own hair and make it look cool in the same way so he gave himself a fade and tagged Dane Cutts and was like hire me haha lol because I was still a broke college student and then they responded back with like we'll take you I thought they're being serious I was like I really need a job can I do this and they're like well you kind of need

like training first and all that I was like okay but after that like all my friends started hitting me up for a haircut and i was like i'm not sure like i'm i'm i just started doing this but i'll charge 15 bucks for a haircut just because i still don't know what i'm doing they're like sure whatever came in like gave him just like a three on the sides like whatever like it's really basic really and um i not to discount the work of other barbers but like for what they wanted it was pretty basic so I just did that and they were happy with it and I was like what the hell I can make money doing this right now like I just picked up this skill like in three hours and now I'm making money off of it but when it came to um I wasn't that passionate about cutting hair. What I was passionate about was making stories

and making videos out of them. And at that time, my way of doing that was photography and videography. So I learned the business of it, like putting myself out there on Craigslist, on Facebook Marketplace, all these things. And eventually like becoming the graduation photographer of my college

um not from the college i was just better than the college hire photographers and so uh grounded on that did like a hundred graduation shoots in one or two months i think it's a lot of dough yeah it was it was really good i remember like my first five thousand bucks i made i called my dad and i was like dad i made five thousand 5,000 bucks. Let's go. And he was like, I'm really happy for you, son. Save that money up. And I was like, okay. My dad did help me a lot with paying for college because military help with that. And then another part of it, my dad actually helped me out of pocket, but the remaining funds of it, I was able to pay off by doing my photography. And through doing that, through just talking to people at weddings that I shot for, which was also good though, I got hired to do like these fashion shoots that was like, I think it was like four hours of shooting for $1,000.

And at that time, that was like the most that I had made from photography. And I was like, four hours of shooting, $1,000, what? That's crazy. Did that and I was like four hours of shooting thousand bucks what that's crazy did that and I was like this is insane like the amount of money you can make from just grinding on your creative aspects is is insane and so um I can go into social media with this because it's then it gets like a crazy more amount of money but it's like it's not about the money it's more about like I was doing what made me happy and I worked hard for it. I think that's why the money came. Right. Yeah. Now let's talk about creating content in general from a 30,000 foot view. There's a lot of people watching and listening who don't know who you are, haven't heard of you,

haven't been following you on social media, but they've read about a lot of social media influencers making tons of money. They read Forbes. They're now ranked the top earning influencers. There's a guy named Jimmy Donaldson who goes by the name Mr. Beast on social media, who reportedly made $47 million last year. And these people, sometimes they can't understand how influencers make this much money. And they say to themselves, this looks simple and easy. All you need is a camera and a tripod.

You get one of those selfie sticks. And then you say a bunch of silly things. Can't anybody do this? And why not? Well, the thing is like anyone can do it, but who's going to be willing to like, like Jimmy just made a video where he spent seven days underground., who's going to be willing to like, like Jimmy just made a video where he spent seven days underground. Like who's going to be willing to do that? Like who's going to be willing to sacrifice the time it takes to do this? Because, because Jimmy spent like a whole week underground. Not everyone's willing to do that. For me, it's like when I was first really starting out on social media I here's what happened so I wanted it so bad the pandemic came I was making good money from photography my own businesses I was on set to I was on track to work for National Geographic like my grandpa worked for National Geographic so my dad grew up in Africa had the connections I was doing travel

photography I was doing really well on social media for a photographer. Right in college or in summers? This was like my senior year of college right before graduating. My last quarter of college was when the pandemic hit. But that dream of becoming a social media content creator was always in my mind, because I grew up with YouTube. And when Vine came out, I wanted to be big on

Vine, but I was so young, I probably wasn't funny enough for the older audiences on there. And so when TikTok started going viral, my friends are going viral on it. I wanted it so bad. I remember the week of spring break. That was when the pandemic hit. And I was like, well, all my travel plans are gone. I can't do as much photography as I wanted to do. I will not make money unless I do something now. So honed in on what I'm passionate about and what I can make money from. And that was TikTok, social media. So I had 300 followers when I first started posting on TikTok, grinding.

It was spring break and I decided that I'll make a YouTube video called how to go viral on TikTok. And I decided to post 10 times a day, um, 10 videos a day and just like try to, try to go viral. Like something has to go viral. I post 10 videos a day. And on my fourth day, I had a video that goes super. And I was like, what? That's crazy. After 40 videos of posting, like something went viral. What does that mean? Give us a sense of how many.

It was like 100K views. Okay. And for a count with like 1,000 followers, that's pretty good. And I remember like when you get 1,000 followers, you can go live. And so I remember like I wanted it so bad. I would like put the live facing me as i sleep every single night and i'd wake up to seeing how many like people were watching me and stuff so there's nothing going on you're sleeping i'm just sleeping in the dark with lights on

with in the dark just like i'm like okay good night good night guys like i was so like i was so responsive to my followers i wanted my followers to feel like they know me like as a friend and I still kind of try to still do that um so I would go to sleep I would have the live on me all night wake up and I remember like when I woke up to like a hundred people watching me because that's a lot for someone with a thousand followers I was like something had to have gone viral something did and it did. And it was just like a comedy video, like something I was really proud of. But it's often the ones you don't expect to go super viral that are the ones that do.

So I kept honing in on that. A month goes by, I hit 100K. Another month goes by, I hit another 100K. Keep going. At 300K, I'm almost about to graduate. I got to call my parents, and I'm like, Dad graduate I gotta call my parents and I'm like dad like I took the aptitude test for the military as like a backup if I can go in I pass everything with flying colors um I can go back to photography I can go back to school whatever but I think I only had this one

chance in life to like really make this happen and um I was crying on the phone and my dad was like ian if it's gonna make you happy do it if you can make money from it do it i'll i believe in you my mom was saying the same thing too so important so for four most important words of the english language i think are i believe in you and i it's something something incredible that parents can tell their kids there's nothing like it yeah it's so's, it's so like backwards to what most of society kind of like tells everyone. But from what I've heard from like even my friends that have grown exponentially, their parents were the same way, like supported, supported them in what they wanted to do, but were realistic about expectations and goals.

So like, yeah, you can go and pursue art, but if you don't think about business, of course you'll be a starving artist. Like you have to really like think about what's going to make you money. Otherwise you can't have the security to be as creative as you possibly can. And I think that's really important. Well, I follow this two for one rule that my friend told me. She's also a big creator and and it's the two-for-one rule where for every two pieces of content you make that you know is gonna do well on social media or whatever platforms you post on, post one thing for yourself and whether that's like a creative thing or another direction, just do it for

yourself and eventually those two things will kind of level out and um i like that because it allows me to make money and still think about business while also pursuing the things that truly truly make me happy inside and show my creative side aside from just what I know is gonna go viral. So when you reached a million followers, you thought about quitting, you had a lot of anxiety. Take us through the 100,000 views here and there, and how long did it take you to get to a million, and why did you think about quitting?

And I think it was your dad who said, don't quit. Yeah, yeah, so my dad told me, Ian, get your head out of your ass that's basically what he said um it's like you make you make money from this you have a million followers what the hell are you thinking and um and at that time like a million was a lot on tiktok now there's like a hundred influencers with a million followers on on tiktok but at that time like i was one of the i guess forerunners of like doing TikTok and having a thing on there. And that back then, my thing was like comedy, anime and teaching Japanese in a funny way.

So when I hit a million, I had a lot of anxiety because this is on TikTok, because I had had videos that got a million views before. I got a million likes before, but people who follow me, it had never been a million before. And I was like, man, do I really deserve this? I know I worked really hard for it, but that's a lot of people watching me. I don't know if I can do this. I was just carrying in my head about,

do I really wanna do this forever? Because the truth is I wasn't happy about the content I was posting. It was just a way, it was a means to an end of, yes, I like making videos, but I don't want to be a Japanese teacher. Like, I don't want to like, not that that's a bad job, but I don't want to like do that for the rest of my life. I want to act, I want to make videos. I want to make movies. And it's funny because at that time, I had gone back to live with my parents for a bit to just save money and pursue this content thing in Colorado. Colorado is beautiful, but it doesn't have as many entrepreneurial people as California does. And that's where I was thriving. So came time for me to be by my parents' house

after being there for five months after graduating. Went back to LA. Had enough saved up to be good for a year. What amount was that? $20,000. Okay. Yeah, so it was all right. I could survive.

You're eating rice and noodles and Kraft macaroni and cheese. Yeah, I was surviving. I was literally, like, going, like, day to day, like, rent to rent. I was surviving. I was cooking all my... I. I was, I was surviving. I was cooking all my, I had visible abs because I was starving. Like literally it was, it was crazy. Like I was like, I wasn't starving. I was just, I was just really like grinding my, my ass off. And, um, so that lit a, okay. What, what really lit a fire into my ass was, can I sit around here? Is that fine?

Yeah. Was that my dad called me one day and he was like, Ian, you're out there on your own now. I'm doing this for you. I'm going to cut you off financially because I think that's going to be the best thing for you. And he did that. And I knew that it would be

because it would force me to like really work hard. I'm tearing up a little bit right now because I'm like, man, that really, really, really helped me. It didn't make me think like, oh, damn, my life is over. It made me think in a way where it was like, if I don't get my shit together, I will literally go broke. And so I thought about what really made me happy, what I really wanted to do in life. And that was make stories and share them to people that would love them across the world. And that day, I made a video just for that.

It was like my own anime story idea. Put some cool B-roll on it, filmed it with my camera that not many people were doing on social media. Had some good lighting on it. Posted it. It was the first video that got a million likes, I think 10 million views, that I was really happy about. Like I was genuinely happy about it.

It was a completely original idea. Like people loved it. And then I just kept doing videos like that for the rest, for I think like a good six months every single day, one or two videos just like it. And then I went from 3 million to 10 million in just six months. And then that of course grew my Instagram, my TikTok. So my TikTok went from like, no, my YouTube went from like 13K to I think 3 million in six months. And then the year after 3 million to 10 million now it's at 15 million TikTok's at almost 15 million um Instagram's at 1.7 and it's just like the numbers don't matter but they're a good

source of knowing how much people like your content and if what you're doing makes you happy and people are happy watching it and so that's what I look for in the numbers. I'm like, okay, it's grown and I'm also happy. So that's cool. Let's go back to something you said, because I think it's something most people wouldn't think about. You said you had a lot of anxiety when there were a million users. Why were you afraid that you were influencing a huge number of people and may not be doing

the right thing by that? I think it was also the hate too, like the hate comments. Okay. Like I made some cringy videos for sure. This episode of In Search of Excellence is brought to you by Sandy.com. S-A-N-D-E-E.com. We're a Yelp for beaches and have created the world's most comprehensive beach resource by cataloging more than 100 categories of information for every beach in the world, more than 100,000 beaches in 212 countries. Sandy.com provides beach

goers around the world with detailed, comprehensive, and easy-to-use information to help them plan their perfect beach getaway at home and abroad, and to make sure you're never disappointed by a beach visit again. Plan the perfect beach trip today by visiting sandy.com. That's www.sandee.com. The link is in our show notes. Stay sandy, my friends. People say like, don't call your own content cringy. But if you know some of your content is cringy, like screw it, like call yourself cringy, like embrace your cringe. And so, posted some cringy videos, like of course some comments were like, wow, what's this, do do do do do,

like who is this guy, all this kind of stuff, and I was like, man, like I don't want a million people saying that to me, but I had to realize like, no, the millions of people are the people who like you. They wouldn't hit follow once they liked what you do. And if anything, people commenting stuff like that, like you even more than people who genuinely like you because they're supporting you in a way that like is stronger than love. Like hate, I think is sometimes or oftentimes stronger than love.

And so the fact that like they're hating on your stuff, it's a result of what's inside of them, not what's inside of you because you're the one putting yourself out there you should own that and so for me like once I made that shift I was like oh my god like I can like the world is your oyster like just do what you love and be the best at it and work harder than anyone else in the world will at it. You still have the haters now? You probably have a lot more haters. Yeah.

And does it bug you? I mean, do you go to bed thinking about, oh, it's terrible? I look at the first five minutes of comments, and then I'll go back to it probably the day after or even a month after because I think it can be unhealthy to check comments a lot. People will think what they think about your content regardless and they'll comment whatever they want to comment and that's just a matter of them and what they feel.

To me, it's more about now like what do I love doing that of course will still financially provide me and make my followers happy but also like make me happy. And as long as those three things are met, I could care less about what anyone has to say about my content, good or bad. Yeah. There's so much now about people having teams

and their social media teams do all the commenting. So it's not really you, it's somebody else. Do you have people who work for you who do all the comments or how do comments? Yeah, the comments, that's me. That's me still. But how do you have time to engage with 30 million followers on multiple platforms? That would take you 10 hours a day to comment on the comments. Yeah, true. Yeah. If I were to want to go in and look at all the comments, yeah, it would take forever. Nobody has time for that. But then again, a month later, I'll come back to the and say like, oh this video did really well let me see what's happening down here. Of course some of the comments are good, some of the comments can be like

what is this and then like it is what it is, but um yeah, I'll try to like respond to like the comments that I like that come in within the first like five minutes of a video being posted and show some love because obviously I wouldn't be here without my followers and that's why I always thank them I think I think more content creators and influencers should thank their followers because it's it's a two-way road like you can't have one without the other and so um yeah I genuinely think more influencers and content creators should thank their followers more. So, I've got a podcast.

I have a YouTube channel. I'm late to the game on my podcast. Three years coming up. And again, I appreciate you being here. You're the youngest guest I've ever had. Oh, let's go. So, I'm pumped about that. And obviously, I want to grow mine.

And I want to be one of the top 10 podcasters. I've had some amazing guests like you. I'm a little late in the game, but I get approached every day. I mean, I have 30,000 followers on LinkedIn, maybe more right now. They see I have a podcast. They see my guests because we post the guests. I get approached every day. Let me help you with your social media. We've met with probably 10 people, my team and I, people who will refer to us and people who use and they will charge for the followers. They will charge for the likes and they have, and it's, I mean, from what I understand, and I've talked to my friends in the podcast business, some of them in the influencer business, people buy followers. People spend tens of of dollars a month. I get business plans where you say, all right, we'll get you 100,000 followers.

You can then get people to sponsor, advertise, and they actually show the graph where if you invest $100,000, here's what you're going to start to get. And we said no to all that. I'm never going to do that. Organic. What do you think about that whole industry? And do you know Instagrammers who started out doing that? Do you need to do that to be successful when you start out? No, it just, it doesn't make sense as someone who like literally, like when I was in, I think when I was younger, I didn't know about this stuff. And I was like,

starting to make money from like a part-time job. And so I was like, Oh, maybe it would help my business. So I like, I think I bought like a hundred or a thousand followers. Like this is like way back before I was even doing this full time. This is like, I think I was like, oh, maybe it would help my business. So I think I bought like 100 or 1,000 followers. This is like way back before I was even doing this full time. I think I was like 18 or something. And I bought like a couple hundred, maybe 1,000 maybe. And then like got the free, like the likes app. You like someone's photo, they give you a like back or something like that.

Right. They don't like that anymore, by the way. Instagram hates that. Oh, yeah, it will not. Yeah, they don't let you do it anymore. Yeah, I'm glad they like that. Right. They don't like that anymore, by the way. Instagram hates that. Oh, yeah. It will not. Yeah. They don't let you do it anymore. Yeah, I'm glad they do that. And same with the followers thing.

Instagram will delete those followers. I'm pretty sure any followers I bought, those accounts are deleted. They're just bots. And this was way back before I even knew

how to do social media. And the reason why I don't like those things and I told my friends never to ever, ever, ever buy followers or anything is because it's not going to be real. Like, would you buy a fake apple and eat it? No, you would never do that because that would kill you and or get you sick. And like, same thing with buying the fake stuff. Like, buy some fake followers. What's that going to do? Your likes aren't going to go up because they're fake.

Oh, no, you can buy the likes too. Oh, you can do that? We met with like consultants and it's a whole thing. And yeah, we can't get caught. We use VPNs. We have all these accounts. I said, it sounds sketchy. Oh, no, everybody does it.

Everybody does it. Literally saying you can't get caught is just like blatantly saying we're lying here. Like it's so, yeah. I know everyone gets those emails because I still get those emails. Like it's your, if your email's on your platform and you have a platform,

like people are going to try to sell whatever they can. And I see those and I'm like, what are you guys doing, man? Like, don't, don't do this. It's just, it's a scammy business. It's a, it's a, it's a scam business. It's what it is. So I, I don't do that.

I know that for me and anyone else that I know and like anyone who's big, they do not do that. Like no one. Yeah. Yeah. It's, that's not a thing to do for sure. It's just not organic. Can you explain how the whole social media industry works

from a financial point of view? How you get paid, who pays you, do platforms be different, and how do you make money on this? Yeah, you can make money a numerous amount of ways on social media. If you've grown your platform and you've grown an organic platform that really likes you. One way is merch.

A secret for now. So we're going to keep that on the side. You guys can wonder what it is, but I'll just point to my eyes and you'll probably know. You shared it with me. It's very exciting, by the way. Yeah, yeah. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be awesome.

The other way is AdSense, obviously. The biggest creators I know, myself included, make a lot and the most from AdSense. It's the most stable amount of income. Okay, so most people don't know what that is. If you're not in the business, you have no idea. If you're in a corporate job, you have no idea. Yeah. So what are we talking about here? What is it?

How does it work? Who helps you with it? And what's the math? So on YouTube, you're able to make money off of your videos after you reach a certain following and a certain amount of like view time on your videos. And for eight minute videos, you can put in as many ads as you want to, but obviously you don't want to scare away your viewers with too many ads. But wait, so do people come to you when you have videos? Does Google say, okay, now we can make money? Or how do you know?

Do you reach out to people? You got to reach a certain threshold. What's a threshold? I think it's like 4,000 hours of watch time and then 10,000 followers, something like that, which I think makes sense because you got to like, it's an achievement, like unlockment. Like it's like a, I've worked hard for this. Now we can trust this profile is going to keep posting so we can trust to put ads on it as Google as a company. It's also a two way road.

Like Google makes money, we make money. It's a creator based economy, which I really like and I understand. So with the AdSense, whenever you click on a YouTube video and it's a viral video, most of the time it's going to have an ad play at the beginning, a couple in the middle, and then one at the end of the video. And each of these ads has like a certain amount of like money attached to it. I won't disclose that because I don't want to, everyone's is different. Okay. Give us a sense of the average.

I want to say, I don't know. It's just, it's just so everywhere. You can look it up online, but it's like, it's. Well, take it, take a guess. I mean, take yours and uh divide by some big number i don't feel comfortable sharing that okay yeah okay yeah so it's like you'll make a certain amount of money from your videos because each ad will have a certain amount of money attached to it and meaning meaning the company will pay google a certain amount of money to get a certain amount of views.

Exactly. So any kind of ad, like you could go into Google right now and put in ad video, like an ad roll in there. And then put the money in there, like add in some money. And it's like the dropshipping method of when people people do Facebook drop shipping and all that kind of stuff. Like they'll put in a certain amount of money to have the video go across a certain amount of videos or the ad and then that money gets dispersed towards Google and towards the creator of the video. So that's one of the most stable ways of making money because if you have a engaging audience that watches your videos and you get X amount of views per video, then you can make you can expect to make a certain amount each month because the views per month are usually around the same. You get a certain amount of money from each video. And now even with Shorts shorts you're able to make money uh because they

i think it's like for every four videos there's an ad playing so tell people what a short is as well so there's a long form video which is what is that is that four to twenty minutes and then what's a short i say along from videos it's technically anything that's horizontal over like 30 seconds i think but it I count it as like an eight minute video because with eight minute videos you can put mid-roll ads which are ads in the middle of the video which wherever you want to and there's mid-roll are people who are coming to you as sponsors directly and say I want to be in your show or they don't do that um well I mean there are that those are brand deals so I've done a couple brand deals where like a brand comes to us and then we

like my managers will go back and forth with a price range and like we'll negotiate and then we'll discuss on The video and like how to go about doing that and for me I always try to make it natural and make sure that I like the product before I before I Do something with it like two good example three good examples were Marvel, Netflix, and Old Spice. They were great to work with. It's Google as well. I did a show with them, an animated show where I was the voice actor for it, but also did some brand deals with them.

And we're currently doing one right now. And it's been great. Y'all have all been great. Definitely want to keep working with you. But they were great because they gave me a good amount of creative freedom. And my audience liked the products as well. And they already use them. We all already use Netflix.

We all already use YouTube and Google. A lot of guys use Old Spice. Girls too. And then Marvel. I just genuinely love Marvel. I want to act in Marvel someday. That's some of my goals. So those are brand deals and they get put into the video. But with AdSense, it's an ad from a company paying to have their ad, like a commercial, played before X amount of videos in X category. So for me, I'll probably have a Netflix show commercial played before one of my videos because it's around the same niche of my videos, storytelling and TV and film.

Thanks for listening to part one of my awesome conversation with Ian Boggs. Be sure to tune in next week to part two of my incredible interview with Ian.