Marketing Happy Hour - The 2026 Creator Playbook: UGC Strategy, Relationships & What's Actually Working Right Now | Elijah Khasabo of Vidovo

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

In this episode, we sit down with Elijah Khasabo, co-founder of Vidovo — a UGC and influencer platform connecting brands with creators — who started his entrepreneurial journey at 17, built a Discord community of 30,000 organically, and is now weeks away from graduating college while running a bootstrapped platform with 300+ brand clients and 25,000+ creators. Elijah breaks down why the creator economy has become a volume game, why creative briefs make or break campaign performance, and what brands consistently get wrong when managing creator relationships. He also shares his honest take on AI-generated content (spoiler: consumers are already calling it out), what inspires his strategy approach, and the two pieces of advice he'd give any entrepreneur just getting started.Key Takeaways:// The creator economy is now a volume game. Consumer touchpoints have grown from 8–12 to an estimated 21–24+. Brands that are winning understand that performance marketing requires testing multiple hooks, angles, and creators across platforms — not just finding one or two winning ads.// The brief is the most important variable. A strong brief with creative freedom will outperform a rigid script every time. Give creators guidelines (do's and don'ts), not a teleprompter — and let them deliver in their own voice.// Creators are businesses now. The best creators understand performance, rate cards, and why ads work. Elijah hired his top-performing creator as his head of strategy — proof that lived creator experience translates directly into better briefs.// Don't make it transactional. Brands that lead with communication — getting to know creators before the collab happens — consistently build longer-term partnerships and better-performing content. Pay fairly (Elijah recommends $200–$500 for quality UGC), and don't skip the relationship-building step.// AI content gets views, but real creators convert. Brands that tested AI content are coming back to real creators because consumers notice and call it out. Use AI for strategy and briefing — not for the content itself.Connect with Elijah: LinkedIn____Join the MHH Collective! The MHH Collective is a community for marketers and business owners to connect, ask real questions, and grow their careers together. Join for access to live Q&As with industry experts, a private Slack community, and ongoing resources: https://www.marketinghappyhr.com/mhh-collectiveSay hi! DM us on Instagram and let us know what content you want to hear on the show - We can't wait to hear from you! Please also consider rating the show and leaving a review, as that helps us tremendously as we move forward in this Marketing Happy Hour journey and create more content for all of you. ⁠Join the MHH Collective: ⁠Join now⁠Get the latest marketing trends, open jobs and MHH updates, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our email list!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow MHH on Social: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour, a weekly podcast helping marketing professionals and entrepreneurs build better strategies and hit career goals. I'm Cassie and I'm Allie. We're marketers and your host through these unfiltered convos with your peers and experts in the space. Let's dive in. Grab your favorite drink and let's get to this week's episode. Today we are honored to have Elijah Kasavo, one of our MHS collective members, just very grateful to have Elijah part of our community. and just in the marketing space in general, a co-founder of Vidova, which we'll learn more about today,

and just Elijah's experience as a student building a business and what that process has been like and just super excited to dive in. Elijah, welcome to the show. Thank you guys for having me. Absolutely. Okay, so of course, before we kick off, just really quickly have to know

what's been in your glass lately. I got to mention you were just at Expo West, so I'm curious if anything came up there or just in general that you're enjoying i'm honestly pretty boring except when i'm at college right and i'd imagine you guys know what that means but i'm just a water person like i just operate off water and sleep i've never been like a caffeine guy um if i yeah it's very rare if i have like an energy drink i will never drink coffee at least for right now but yeah water is my go too so i'm really honestly jealous like i i i wish i could get i'm sure we could get to that point but it would be hard

you know i don't imagine going from caffeine to water um my phoneer's always like one day you're going like coffee i'm like no i just don't i don't like it yeah it looks good too like coffee looks amazing to me but like i'll sip and be like oh i don't know that's so funny i i totally understand i was at that i didn't start drinking coffee probably until like late college or pass that. So I totally, totally get it. That's all good. And water's great. I waited. Yeah. I knew I would be like addicted to it. So I waited until the last a second. And now here we are. So don't start drinking coffee, Elish. Yeah. Yeah. I'll stick with the water. We'll see. Yes. Stick with the water. Um, okay. So if you don't

mind, introduce us to yourself, but also Vadovo. How did you get started building the brand you know what was what's the whole story there yeah absolutely so as said i'm elijah casabbo one of the co-barns vadovo i started my entrepreneurship ventures in high school i was like pretty bored during covid i wanted to learn how to make money on the side and i got to stocks and crypto and then from there i'm like okay how can i build like a business out of this so i built a discord community where i would honestly just help like stock traders um ethically by the way learn how to trade or why we're processing our trades And it was just like 15 of my friends at first. And then I'm like, okay, how can I monetize this and grow this?

And one day, just hopped on TikTok, started making videos. And I started getting other people to make videos of us. And we grew the community to 30,000 people all organically. So like, imagine like a 17-year-old kid in high school. Like, you're like, holy shit. Like, you can really make money through online. So ever since then, I was like, I want to pursue entrepreneurship. But I was like so sold on, like, having that, like, as my passion.

And I didn't really want to go to college anymore because that's like junior year of high schools when you're like stinking about college, thinking about where you want to go, starting to apply. And I was like, no, I don't want to do that anymore. So I continued to build this Discord server. And at the time, I got 17, it was making some pretty good money. I think like around like $10,000 a month. So it was a lot of money. I just went out and bought a bunch of clothes. It's all gone now, all the money I had from that.

But I wasn't the smartest kid. I was like, but what it did teach me was like I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So I decided to not pursue college right away. My parents weren't super happy about that. So I was like, shoot, I'm like screwed. I'm going to go try getting a job. And that didn't work out either because no one wanted anybody with no experience. So I ended up almost getting a door-to-door sales gig.

And this is after like, I would say 30 interviews and maybe like I applied over like so many jobs. I don't even know. I probably even boasting about the 30. It's probably like 20, right? And I'll never forget on this last interview. the guy was like, I told him about my Discord server. Like, hey, if you're able to do this, like, why do you want this gig, right? Because it was a door-to-door sales shop.

Like, it was, those are the easier ones to get out of college, I would say, or out of high school. And I thought about him, like, damn, he's right. Like, I feel like that was like my calling to just go back into entrepreneurship. And that's exactly what I did. So I emailed him the next day. I'm like, hey, I'm not going to take the job. And I started building, I tried building two more Discord servers, those flopped. And I'm like, okay, maybe I just got lucky.

So I don't know what's going on. Then I went to work. with a friend for free. I found someone on Instagram. It wasn't a friend. I was a friend now. And I was like, hey, I'd love to work for you. Like, I have this experience. I built Discord. I could build it for you. I see you have a community. And I just worked for free. Right. I made probably like a hundred bucks in three months. But what it taught me was to work how to work with other people, how to like run systems, like how to do operations, how to be due to back end stuff. And I was just like, I want to get back into entrepreneurship. So I ended up telling him like, hey, like, we should start like a UDCA.

agency, right? And the reason this is because on the side I was also doing like e-commerce. I was drop shipping. And one of the videos that I bought, which was a UGC video, blew up to 15 million views. So in my head, I'm like, why would I not just go sell UGC to other people instead of trying to sell this product that no one's buying anyways, right? So I tried pitching to her like, hey, like you can be the face of it. I'll do the back end stuff. And we were going to go in together and then it ended up just being me. Like I got ghosted. So it's like, all right, whatever. Right, but it happens. And then I'm like sitting here with like 15 influencers that I all DM that all wanted to join because of her.

Like she was an influencer herself. And I was like, hey guys, like she's not with us anymore. Funny up, we're friends now. Like we talk about this. But I'll just be running this on my own. Like if you don't want to be with, be with, you know, run this with me. That's totally okay. Three people left for like a week, which is okay.

So I had this UGC agency. I would just sell to drop shippers and very small brands. And then my co-cocts. founder today was a client of that agency. And I'll never forget one day, he asked me, like, how old are you, by the way? I'm like, oh, I'm 19. He's like, you're 19 and you're doing this. I'm like, yeah, I'm just like trying to figure it out. And he's like, we should like work together, this and that. I was like, I don't know at first. And then he was like, listen, I could like build you like a working landing page in like two weeks, right? Because I had an idea of what I wanted

to do. And he had the same idea. He had it to me in two days, which is like pre-AI coding. That's really good. Like, it's super impressive. So we ended up partnering up. We named it Vadovo. And, you know, I never thought I'd be in software. If you told me five years ago, like, no way I'm getting into tech. And here I am today. But we've grown to work with over 300 brands. We've grown to over 25,000 creators organically,

and we're completely bootstrapped. And I've been doing this not really full-time. I'll be full-time in about a month and seven days when I graduate. So that'll be pretty exciting, right? But we've been doing pretty well, so I'm very happy. But that's how Vodobos came apart. And to those I don't know what Vadovo is. it's a UGC and influencer platform.

So our job is just to connect brands with creators. That's incredible. Thank you so much for that overview. I think a lot of our audience is going to find that really inspiring, that you were really just trying to support yourself and try something new and really take big risks, which I think, you know, often we hear, you know, sort of that hesitation of, is this something I really want to try and test and learn into? And I think you're a perfect example of taking a risk and it working out, right? You have the passion, you have the drive and the environment.

ambition and that shows. And so congratulations on Vadovo. That's incredible, incredible, incredible. Yeah, I was a big believer in a nothing to lose mentality. I mean, love it. I was 19 when we started Vadova. I don't have kids. I don't have bills.

So why not go at it? Absolutely. That's like what you know. And it's got me far. So I'm pretty happy. That's awesome. That's awesome. Thank you for sharing.

I want to dive into just to create our economy specifically because it is something that we talk about quite a lot on the show. but just also in general, you know, in our day-to-day jobs and things like that, it's ever-changing, it's constantly evolving. How do you see the creator economy evolving in the near term? It's a great question. I would say it's just sheer volume. Like the demand for creator content right now is it's so massive.

Like, it's so funny because when we first launched Vidovo, I would have to sell why UGC was important in the first place. Then I would have to sell why Vadova was the right partner to work with you on this approach anyways. Now it's like brands are coming to us and they know they need content. They know they need creators. They know it's a volume game because consumers are just getting so smart that like they just need to see your brand almost all the time, right? I think back when I started a touch point was probably like eight to 12.

I would probably say it's closer to like 21 to 24 touch points now. That's just my guess. I know I did like some research about six months ago. It's probably a little bit more than that. Right. And performance marketing runs on testing, right? Like you need variations. You need different hooks.

You need different angles. You need different creators saying different things in almost different, or saying the same thing in different ways. And you're testing this across multiple platforms. So it's becoming such a volume game. And the brands that are winning right now are the ones that understand that, like, it is a volume approach. Right. Like that's the massive shift versus like two years ago. It was more like you just need to get some, you know, a couple winning ads out there.

But I truly believe it's a big volume game that we're going to see over the next six to eight months is like brands just want to get as much content out there as possible. A second thing I would also know is that creators are starting to realize they're not just creators. Like these are their businesses. Like they're seeing themselves as an actual business. They're not just a person with a following or just content makers. Like they're legit businesses. So they need to know about their rate cards. They need to know what's work in the industry.

They need to know why this ad performs and why this ad doesn't perform. Our actual, our CS, the person who does our strategy and briefing right now, she was actually a creator before. I brought her on because she was the best career on our platform. and brands couldn't stop raving about her. So in my head, it's like, why would I go out and just, you know, go hire someone's been doing CS when I can just hire someone who is so good at creating content. And her ads always perform and just offer her a position. And she's like, yeah, I'll try it out.

And now she's been one of our best strategists. She's been doing such a great job. And I just love to see the proof in the pudding of those that understand it. It's more than just content creation. It's like a business. So I see evolving in two ways. Like creators understand the importance of themselves. and establish themselves as businesses and also brands understanding it's like a huge volume play.

Right. So I'm excited to see how that plays out this year. Totally, totally. That's a great call. And I think a big chunk of that too is just giving those creators the freedom, the creative freedom to be able to produce content that performs. So how important is that creative freedom and then how are you aligning with the teams to make sure that that freedom has kind of space and room to grow and breathe? You know, I would make the argument is probably the most important variable, and variable in the whole process is the creative freedom, right, which comes back to briefing. You could have such a great creator and it could be such a bad brief and the video just will not

perform. You could have such a, I don't want to say the word bad, but a decent creator, inexperienced creator with such an amazing brief and the ad will perform a lot better. I've seen it with my own eyes for since I've been in this industry. Giving creators freedom is so important because one thing that bothers me so much of my I'm like brands, you can't forget, like they are a creator. Create is literally in the name, right? Like, let them have freedom.

Just give them a brief with guidelines, right? You don't want to give them like a teleprompter. Tell them like, do's and don'ts. Or maybe just give them don'ts. Or tell them like, this is what's working. This is what's not working. Like, let the creator do more than just do the content itself. And like one thing we're big on when we brief is giving them that freedom.

Like even when we do scripts, like, well, brands will be like, hey, we want these to be very conversion focused. So we have to do a script. we'll build the script out, but you don't have to do it word for word. Like, we want to create to sound native to themselves. So just follow the script and make sure you're following the outline of what we're approaching in this video concept. And from there, you could just, you know, build it in your own voice. And that almost always works, right?

And then from there, you find winners. And once you find winners, you double down on those winners, right? But I really do think, like, especially nowadays, like with people like us always scrolling on TikTok, Instagram, like we can tell an ad when it's an ad, especially as marketers, right? So it's like, it just has to sound genuine. It just has to be organic. And the only way you can do that is by letting the creator be themselves, right? And you just don't want, like, to give teleprompter vibes.

Like, it's just not a good ad. So that's what I would say. So always give a strong brief and, you know, set those expectations early. And I feel like, you know, the video should come out pretty good. Before we get back to the episode, we wanted to take a moment to tell you about our latest offering for marketing professionals. We get asked all the time where marketers can actually connect outside the podcast. So we built it, the MHH collective. Monthly live sessions with us and industry experts, real career conversations in a slack space that's actually helpful and not noisy.

If you want to learn with people, not just listen. We'd love to have you. If you want to join us, you can find the link in the show notes below. I couldn't agree more. I think the other portion that is so important is trust and just relationship building. between a brand and a creator, how can brands work to build better long-term relationships with creators? How are you seeing brands kind of approach that? Now, I know a long time ago, there was this notion that, oh, I would just hire this influencer to do a one-off campaign and a one-off

post. Obviously, we've moved away from that. But now how are you looking at relationships between the two and how can brands strengthen their relationship with creators overall? That's a great question. I mean, I would say first, you'd, I definitely want to make sure you're paying them fairly. The creators are getting a lot smarter. I used to, like, back in 2022, you could get away with like a $20 video. Like $100, like, it was like expensive back then for UGC. Whereas now it's like that's criminal, right?

Like I'm seeing videos go for minimum like a $200, right? So as high as like $1,000. I'm typically recommending brands spend around $200 to $500 per UGC asset and you'll typically find a good creator in that range. But pay fairly is number one. Two is the communication aspect. This is something that we discovered very early on at Fidovo. We notice that most of our competitors that you have to transact the collaboration first

and then you can get into communicating with the creator. Whereas ours is like, no, let's just let you talk to them first. You want to find out more details. You want to find out the products of fit. You want to find out what their rates are. Just learn more about them because at least we're building an acquaintance of a relationship before any collaboration is actually done. So being able to communicate with the creator and learn more about them

and not have it be so transactional. I think that's the true answer. Making sure it's not so transactional will allow you to build like a long-term partnership. The creators on our platforms, there's lots of brands who reuse the same creators

because we don't allow for that transactional approach. We allow for that communicative approach, right? So it's like being open to chatting early, learning more about each other, hopping on calls, asking the right questions, developing some type of relationship almost always leads to a long-term partnership. And again, I think this is like, it's kind of knowledge.

I think every branch that have a approach. I can go on and on, let's the list of USBs of like, you know, do this, do that, do that. But like the truth is, like, it's all about, like, developing some type of relationship. And then from there, you can build some long-term thing. That's what we do with our creators. I mean, I still work with our creators from day one of the platform. I still, I could just shoot them a text. Like, hey, what do you think about this brand?

Here's a deal size. And they're like, yep, let's do it. Right. So it's like having that relationship and focusing on that and not keeping it too. two transactional, even though at the end of the day I know it's business and I get it, I think plays like a big factor. And I think it'll make your life easier. And then from there, you could obviously build out a roster.

And from a roster, you build out a system and you just keep reusing the same creators, you know, and you just don't want your creators to fly blind, I would say, right? So kind of like make sure there's a system in play too. Like don't just like, it's not always relationship based or has to be a system too. So that's kind of what I would say. and I think that's what's working for our brands. Yeah, that's great. Well, you already kind of answered this next question a little bit of just a don't for brands

is don't be transactional, right? Is there anything else that as we head into the future here that you're noticing that some brands are doing that you would say like, hey, when it comes to entering into a relationship with a creator, managing a campaign, et cetera, these are some things that you should not be doing in that partnership. Yeah, I mean, I would say, yeah, one, definitely don't be super transactional. Two, it goes back to the briefing too. Don't let the creator feel like they have no sin what's actually going on.

I think that's my biggest pet peeve especially, especially when it's an influencer club, not even UGC. It's like, dude, you're like having them posted on their channel and you're not letting them do what they want to do. Right, like look into their page, look into what's working. a big don't I don't know if this will really answer your question but wouldn't I always tell brands when they're going to be working with creators read their comments

like read what people say about them like do they actually have a community don't just collab with them because you see the following number or you see the engagement rate right like read their comments are people engaged are they asking the right questions

or they calling them out like those play a big factor into the actual collab I've always noticed the creation the best engagement on comments and like you know the most love shown, always perform better because their audience obviously trusts them. So reading into like, you know, the right collab is always good.

My gosh, I can go on and on. But like that's kind of what I think that's the most important one is like you're valuing to create at the right pace by reading into them correctly. Yeah. No, that's good. And then my next question, I'm going to kind of pivot this next one here a little bit. I want to just ask you quickly about AI in the creator space. So where do you feel, how are you seeing AI used, I guess?

And like, where are you seeing the creator industry heading with the implementation of AI and some things that brands need to be aware of? I'll be honestly. When AI was first being talked about, I was a little spooked. I'll be honest. I was like, oh, this looks pretty good. And like, in my head, I'm like, this can only get better, right? And it is only getting better.

But weirdly enough, it's actually helped us more and actually brought us more business, right? So there's two ways, right? One scenario A, brand will come to us and be like, hey, we've tested this AI content. It's doing really well. Now we want to use real creators. Right.

So brands are using it from a testing perspective and they always want to pivot out of it because at the end of the day, they do want to use real people because you'll get called out by your consumers, right? Consumers are not going to like that. And it's clear as day. So it's helped us in that approach.

Scenario B would be like brand comes to us and they're like kind of what I'm picking off what I just said, hey, our consumers don't like this. They're calling it out. They don't like AI content. We don't want to do AI content. We don't want to be that brand that's known for doing AI content. So we want to use real creators and real creators only. Right.

So it's been good for us in both of those ways. I think the best way of both a creator and a brand can use it is when it comes to the actual strategy part. We like heavily encouraged like Claude Co-work for strategy and briefing. It is just so good at figuring out like what's working, what's not working. Why did that ad perform? Why did that ad not perform? It will literally watch your video and tell you why this one performed and why this one didn't perform and build a brief for you that should work. I kid, I was like shocked when I tried it out because I did this last month and I'm like, let me have it do a brief, right? So I think for the actual strategy and the briefing process.

Like everything outside the content creation, I think every creator and every branch should be using it to the best of their ability. But when it comes to the actual content aspect of it, I don't think consumers like it. I also do think platforms. And I think, I don't know if it was TikTok or YouTube, I could be wrong here.

I do believe platforms are going to start regulating it and going to start making it a lot stricter. Like, hey, you cannot, like this has to be shown it. It has to be shown it's AI, right? Because I don't think they want that happening on their platform, because I don't think consumers will like it. But what we're noticing with AI, to the pros of it, it gets a lot of engagement. Like, it gets a lot of views.

Is that converting, though? I don't know. At least when I've tested it out, I didn't really see that many conversions, right? But it does get views. It does catch people's eyes because it's so brand new. But there's also another interesting aspect, which I think a lot of people aren't thinking about gen alpha. They're growing up on AI, Gen Z. I mean, we grew up on TikTok and social media and stuff.

If they're growing up on AI and social media, maybe that's what they really like. Like we don't know. Maybe that's a great way to target them. That's still something I'm trying to figure out. Maybe they become the experts like Gen Z became the experts of social media. Again, I don't know, right? So it's just so fresh to me. I'd love to see how it continues to evolve.

Do I think of a wipe out the credit economy? Probably not, but I do believe it will advance it in many ways. And not just our industry, but so many other ones. That's a great point. And I think I would love to see the research when you do get that data from Gen Alpha. in terms of what they're responding to with AI because I think we're all trying to figure it out as it's happening, right?

It's happening in real time and we're all trying to figure it out in our own businesses and how it relates to the bottom line. And so really, really interesting POV there. I think pivoting a little bit away from the AI piece and going back into kind of the creativity that is involved in your role, what's inspiring you creatively right now?

I think what's inspiring right now is our strategy approach. Um, our, our CS is doing just such a great job. Um, because I'll be honest, when I used to do CS, like, I was just, I would just Google stuff and be like, why, like, it was very simple. But like, what's inspired me right now is seeing how other brands are winning and not just that, but seeing brands you just wouldn't expect to come and, you know, and use content creators. Like, for example, we had a healthcare brand reach out literally a couple days ago. Do you have doctors? Do you have nurses? Do you have people who are in pharma? And it's funny because, like, I'll be like, I don't.

know then I'll go check our platform and say we actually do like that's the stuff that it's so interesting that other industries and verticals are tapping into content and you can learn more about that and learn about okay what can work what cannot work let's try this let's not try that right so that's been pretty big for me uh i would say growing bedovo itself right like going from a scrappy startup to like a real company with revenue an actual team and we're still hiring enterprise as clients. That stuff is very exciting news to me. And we're just continuing to grow.

And as you grow, you just learn so much. Like, I've always been a big believer as a founder. Like, just be curious. Like, be open to people. Like, have every conversation you can. You never know what door would open. And, like, because being creative is, like, the best, like, asset you could have. Right.

Like, being open, being curious. Like, just, like, not having an ego. Just being willing to learn from anybody. even if it's like 1%, like even it's like the smallest thing from them, I always take that away. Like in my beginning days, but I'll tell this quick story. I was scared. I'd be throwing up until I'll be thrown until a floor. And I'm like, okay, I got to get leads.

I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I got to get leads. I'll never forget my first show. I went up to like all the salespeople. And I would ask him like, hey, how do you do this? And I took notes on everything I liked from every single person and just built it into my own approach. And I learned like it's really just a relationship game. Like it's really a game of connections. It's really just being yourself.

and that's how we've grown. So, like, I mean, I'm inspired by people around me, by our team, by our brands, people we've brought in, and I hope they care as much as I do, because I'm always caring and always willing to learn. Because when you're building something and you're not doing it alone, when your team is pushing you to be better and when you're pushing them to be better, there's just so much to learn. There's so much that inspires you to do things.

But, yeah, in terms of creative, I mean, there's a lot. I don't do the strategy as much as I used to. I do miss it, right? but I also don't because there's a lot of work. But I would say, you know, reading into ads, seeing why that ad did well and why that didn't do well, is always so fun for me. For example, we'll manage a brand's process

and they'll do a pilot period with us. It'll be two months, let's just say 20 videos, 10 videos per month. In that pilot badge, our goals to find out how many winners can we get, why did those ads win? Why did the ads that lost that we thought were going to win, loss because obviously when we're making these briefs, we're making them with the intent that every ad should perform, but that's not the case. Like you're only going to get like 10% if you're lucky, right, like one or two ads, right? But learning and learning and learning. And then when we get

another client similar to that one, and we get someone similar in the same industry, like we just test all these approaches. My CS text me the other day, she's like, hey, I'm trying out this approach that we did with this brand that worked really well with this client that we just brought on because I think it's going to do, you know, X, Y, and C. Right. So it's like, it's just learnings and learnings is just very helpful. So there's a lot that's inspiring. I don't know if that answers your question. I tried, but that's-

Yeah, no, that was great. That was great. It sounds like just go out and do the thing and see what happens and keep trying and keep pushing forward. No idea is a bad idea, right? Until, you know, you test and learn from it. So I am curious to kind of on that front.

What is one piece of advice you'd give your younger self or past self when you first started or when you were getting started in your career period, however far back you want to look, but just curious what you'd say to that. This might be so basic, but it's like just don't give up, right? There was many days I did want to quit. I'd be lying if I said not. Like, there was so many days, like, I just want to throw the flag in. I can't do this anymore. But it's like having that nothing to lose mentality as an entrepreneur and knowing that there is light at the end of the tunnel. if you just keep being consistent and willing to learn and grow is the best thing ever.

If I quit, like, Vado would never be a thing, right? Even when, like, let's say, for example, if I quit when I got ghosted by my partner at the time, and I was like, you know, I'm not doing this, Vadova would never be a thing. But it's the willingness to keep on going, just be able to be gritty is probably one of the best traits any entrepreneur can have because it just opens so many doors. If I was to give myself advice on, like, you know, because obviously I did, that. I didn't quit, but I was to give to myself advice to me, you know, it's like not to also

underpriced myself. I think that was something I did. I would charge very cheap, but when I tell you, I was selling videos for $15, like, I would pay the credit sometimes that I had on my roster, like $30 or $40. Like, I was losing money on deals. But at the same time, like, I solved

value at the time because I just wanted to get experience. I wanted to learn. I wanted to build a portfolio. So at times it's good, but truly in the industry that's growing this fast, like do not underpriced yourself. But yeah, those are those are two things I would say as advice notes. I can speak for Cassie and I on this one. We are both very inspired by you. Your tenacity and grit and excitement around this industry is incredible and we're

so grateful to have you in the collective. And I think as we're wrapping up, just please share where everyone can follow along with you to see what you're up to, Vadovo and you personally as well. Yeah. You guys can find us at Vadovo.com. If you're looking for brand or, you know, creator content or influencer content. I'm also on LinkedIn, so just search of my name, Elijah Casabo. That's really it. Maybe Instagram, too, if you want to follow me there, but I don't post much. But, yeah, you'll always see me hang around Slack channel, so in the collective,

you'll see me. And, yeah, if you find me on the website or LinkedIn. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much, Elijah. This is, like Ali said, has been wonderful. We'll check in with you again on the podcast. Want to hear your updates in the creator industry, see what you're.

learning. So everyone listening, stay tuned for that. But thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate it. For having me, guys. This is fun. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Marketing Happy Hour. If you enjoyed it, make sure you're subscribed to the show and sign up for a weekly newsletter with insights and marketing resources. We also invite you to check out the MHHH collective, our community for marketers looking to connect, grow, and learn together. Check out the links in the show notes. We'll see you next time.