The Money Mondays - Why Most Influencers Fail (And How Kellan Ness Blew Up Instead)🔥EP126

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

Most influencers never break past 50K. Kellan Ness didn’t just break through—he built a massive audience across TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram with no backup plan. In this episode of Money Mondays, Kellan shares exactly how he grew to over 9 million followers, landed major brand deals, and built one of the top influencer agencies. We get into what creators are doing wrong, how to monetize the right way, and why authenticity always wins.If you're serious about growing your influence and income, this episode is for you.---Who is Kellan Ness? 👇Kellan Ness is a digital creator, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Creators Inc., one of the world’s largest talent agencies for influencers. He built a following of over 9 million across platforms and now mentors creators on how to scale their brand and income with real, proven strategies.---Like this episode? Watch more like it 👇Making Money Online? Here’s What No One Tells You | Dion Pouncil & Brandon Bowsky: https://youtu.be/F3xUCSONZaEHow Celebs Lose Millions by Saying “No” | Ryan Schinman & DJ Irie: https://youtu.be/tewnDbAgohMWhy Your HOBBY Could Be the Secret to Making a Fortune w/ Josh Luber & Noah Neiman: https://youtu.be/WF2k8olReBUJoey Carson's Secret to Influencers Signing MILLION Dollar Contracts: https://youtu.be/lw3wpy-gv2wWatch ALL Full Episodes Here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6k---The Money Mondays is a business podcast here to teach you how to make money, invest money, and donate money by showcasing some of the world's most successful people and how they do the same. Hosted by serial entrepreneur Dan Fleyshman, the youngest founder of a publicly traded company in history, this money podcast gives you an exclusive behind the scenes look at how the wealthiest celebrities, entrepreneurs, athletes and influencers make, invest and donate money.If you want to learn more business and investing while you work to improve your financial life, you're in the right place! Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneymondays?sub_confirmation=1Dan Fleyshman,The Money MondaysLearn more here: https://themoneymondays.comWatch all the podcast episodes: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6kLet’s Connect...Website: https://themoneymondays.comPodcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-money-mondays/id1663564091Twitter: https://twitter.com/themoneymondaysLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-money-mondays/about/TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@themoneymondaysFB: https://www.facebook.com/The-Money-Mondays-110233585203220/

For me, I grew my first following to 7.2 million followers with my ex on TikTok. We grew to about 1.5 million on YouTube. I got about 700000 on Instagram. And I am partnering one of the world's largest talent agencies for creators called Creators Inc. Context and consistency. I think those are the two most important things when it comes to making content relatable and raw content.

I think that is very important as well, too. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays. Typically, we film these inside of an RV motorhome, but we're in Miami. I want to knock out six podcasts back to back to back to back. So we're here at the MOVE studio in Miami and we have a very special guest. He is deep into influencer game, marketing game, and all things social media. So we're going to dive in and cover three core topics, how to make money and invest money, how to give it away to charity.

But first we're going to have you do a quick two minute bio, so we can get straight to the money. Okay. What's up everybody? My name is Kellen Ness. I am a social media influencer and I've been doing this man since really the pandemic. I made a decision. I had no plan B and stuck with plan A and it panned out pretty well for me. I grew my first following to 7.2 million followers with my ex on TikTok. We grew to about 1.5 million on YouTube.

I got about 700,000 on Instagram. And I am partnering one of the world's largest talent agencies for creators called Creators Inc. And yeah, I lived in Scottsdale for the last three years and I just moved to Miami here in January. So, yeah. So what do you think makes people stand out? There are tens of millions of people that are trying to be influencers

But very few get past the 50,000 100,000 follower mark. How did you get to 7 million? Context and consistency. I think those are the two most important things when it comes to making content Relatable raw and Relatable, raw, and yeah, just relatable and raw content. I think that is very important as well too. So someone out there wants to start to actually make money, right, they got their first 50,000 followers, they got some action going, they got a couple viral videos,

but now they actually want to approach a brand. How would you say to actually go approach a brand and go get the first 500 bucks, 1000 bucks, two grand, et cetera. For me, I always look at it as like when you're ready, brands will approach you. But if you want to take a proactive approach, you could always use, there's so many different ways to make money online, especially on TikTok. Once you hit 1000 followers, you can go live on TikTok and you could battle people and make money that way.

Once you hit 5,000 followers, you can start making money on TikTok shop. Once you hit a hundred thousand followers, you can start making money on the TikTok creator program. For Instagram and all these other platforms, you can make UGC content, which is pretty cool, which is brands just hire you to make content for the brand and you don't even have to post it. So there's there's a million

different ways to make money online. Also another way is to depending on like what niche you're in create a stand store this is really good game right here and sell whatever you're an expert in. Mentorship, sell digital products work really well for me. And yeah, you could start making money tomorrow as long as you know what you're talking about. So if a brand comes to you, whether it's Coca-Cola, Netflix, a physical product, a mobile app,

how do you decide what to charge now that you're getting millions and millions of followers when they come to you and they don't know what the budget is to pay you? How do you just talk through that? Someone's trying to figure out what they should be charging. Well, I think I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread, so I'm gonna just throw a huge number out there

and let them come back and whatever, just we'll go back and forth. And what about when you first had your first couple hundred thousand followers? I wasn't really focused on, I was fortunate enough to have a little bit of money saved when I was doing this. So I just wanted to build the brand first. I don't know if this was the right approach or the wrong approach, but I wasn't really

worried about the money. I was more worried about building a loyal fan base and connecting with my followers. I think that was really important and I think that's kind of what got me to where I'm at today. What do you think that most influencers are doing wrong on their social media content? Making content with zero context, not letting people in, not letting people get to know you

and then not building rapport, just posting and getting offline. Like if you really wanna do this, you have to be all the way in. Are there influencers or types of content? Do you think stand out the most? Like, is it makeup content or funny content or sexy content or workout content? Is there anything that's like a category you see that's crushing it? I think creators that just aren't scared to post,

I don't think there's a specific niche. A niche that does really well though is the couples content. I think that does extremely well. I think it's the fastest way to grow. People gravitate towards that because everyone wants love, right? So when they see a couple having fun

and it's raw, relatable, it's easy to digest. I think that does extremely well. Many years ago, I used to do the Instagram boyfriend content. That was my hashtag. It was so fun. Yeah, it's fun, right? You get to just wake up, make content with your partner, make money, and just have a good time doing it.

It was really fun for me. I really want to get back to that. I just haven't, I'm looking for the right person. The right girl. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so there's a lot of platforms that are out there. There's hundreds of social media platforms, but there's seven major ones.

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, threads, and YouTube. Are there any platforms that you're like, that's the one that I want to put the most energy into or are you trying to mix it up across all the platforms? I really love TikTok and Instagram. I feel like the real money is on TikTok, especially if you're selling a course or selling mentorship.

The easiest way to connect with your fans is I think TikTok. Just because you could post as much as you want on there and the algorithm like, I don't know, it's just going to favorite that. And then going live is really cool because it's, how do I put this? You can get new fans by going live. You know, it's an easy way to be found on TikTok. Yeah, I really like that. How often do you go live?

I go live probably about three, four times a week for about two hours. It's a lot. Hour, you know, I just go on there and I talk shit and have fun. And I do this thing where I go and I just like bring in random girls and I riz them up and just be funny and just

My fans call it speed dating. So interesting. Yeah, it's fun So when you're thinking about going live, are you going live on multiple platforms? Like are you on one phone for tick-tock and one phone for Instagram or you're doing one platform at a time? I got 80 D man. I wouldn't be able to I wouldn't be able to do that. I got to focus on one thing it's like if someone's if I'm texting and you're trying to talk to me just You're wasting your breath. Right? So that. I gotta focus on one thing. It's like if someone's, if I'm texting and you're trying to talk to me, just you're wasting your breath. So I gotta focus on that one thing.

So as you start to build up your social media following, you start to build up your content, when do you decide if it's like, maybe I should have my own product, maybe I should have my own brand, maybe I should have my own course versus taking money from other brands? I think everyone should do that.

I think it's the best way to do it. And if you don't have the capital to be able to invest in the products or anything, there's a bunch of white label companies like Printiful is a really cool one to work with. Also creating digital products. All you got to do is use chat, GBT type in, just get real specific and you can make courses, eBooks, all sorts, guides, all sorts of different types of shit and just, it's real easy and just throw it on a Stan store.

Stan store is really cool. Shout out to Stan, I work with them. And they have, have you ever heard of Manny Chat? So they have their own built-in Manny Chat and what that is is like, for example, you put a post up on Instagram and you say, hey, comment TikTok under this post, they use AI and AI will send them a message directly

through your Instagram. And then they capture all your leads and they store that on the platform and they have a retargeting programs through email. And that's all built into the platform, and it's super cheap. I just saw Steven, who has a very big podcast, just invested in the Stan store. Yeah, it's, I should, I would invest in the Stan store.

It's a great platform. Also WAP, WAP is cool too, shout out to the boys at WAP. They've taken pretty good care of me. They're always ahead of the curb, especially their clipping program right now. That is huge. Yeah, I've been sending them a lot of deals, a lot of people to do clipping through them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's huge, dude.

That's like the biggest hack right now to social media, especially you could be, if you got a good budget, you could be famous in 90 days. Right. Yeah. We ever worked with fan bases? Yeah. There's a lot of platforms that are out there. How do you decide which platforms to work with since there are so many social media

related platforms? I just think the ones that have like the most attention, TikTok and Instagram are my favorite. Facebook is a sleeper platform. There's good money to be made on Facebook. It's the largest platform of all of them by far. It's always going to be. Yeah, especially it's like our generation and all the boomers on there. They got a lot of money to spend.

So if you're selling anything, go to Facebook. Like, you know, I'm doing millions of views a month on my old couples page. That thing is still up and running and I turned it into my own page. And the amount of I'm doing like 20 million impressions a month on that page. Wow. Yeah. And it's just repurposing old content. Right.

Yeah, it's great. So talk to us about Creators Inc. Creators Inc. So I'm in the OnlyFans space and we are an OnlyFans talent agency. We've got about 400 clients right now, 800 employees, and we work with the top 0.01% of, half of the 0.01%

on the platform. What that means is people that are the highest paid on the platform, we work with about half of those people. So it's really cool. You know, we're giving creators direction and helping them monetize their socials in a very safe way. So if someone's out there and they are on OnlyFans, why not do it themselves? helping them monetize their socials in a very safe way. So if someone's out there and they are on OnlyFans, why not do it themselves?

Why go to an agency like Craters Inc? We have five years of data back behind everything that we're doing. Really, we're a data and analytics company, and we have a lot of data, like I said, back behind everything that we're doing. We host a lot of really cool events. Like we just did Miami Swim Week.

We had all of our girls walk. We do all the major fashion shows. For Art Basel we had 50 Cent, Ennely Chapa, Ray J, Scott Storch, Suki Hana all come perform for us while all of our clients got to walk the runway. We did New York Fashion Week in February. Rich the Kid and Suki Hana performed for us. We have a seven million dollar mansion in LA where we have a full staff. You're weighted on hand and foot. We also have a $100,000 recording studio in there. We have a sauna, cold punch, state of the art gym.

We have videographers, photographers. No one's doing it as big as us. So, you know, there's a lot of people that try, but we take the guesswork out of everything and we really help maximize the lifetime of every fan that comes through your, your net there. We're crushing it right now. I mean, only fans has taken over, you know, in the social media game, it's changed the way people work. It's changed the way that girls are making money.

There's obviously guys making money there as well, but now it's theoretically worth $8 billion is what some of the rumors are. What are your thoughts on how big it's gotten? And when billion is what some of the rumors are. What are your thoughts on how big it's gotten and when there has been plenty of other versions of OnlyFans for years, why do you think that's the one that took off? I really, it's a simple platform to use

and it's just a great way for people to make money. It's become super famous and it's just, it's damn near a household name now. For sure. So it's just easy recognizable There's a lot of people that tried to replicate it and nothing will ever be as big as it is for example you go say you want to see someone's only fans or Like you're scrolling and you want to you know, see that creator in a different light. You're gonna click that link tree. They maybe have

passes or fan base or whatever the hell these other platforms are called. And they're always going to click that OnlyFans because they know exactly where they're going to go and get there. So. So let's take off the make money side. Let's talk about the investing side. You get bombarded by deals right. Invest in my restaurant. Invest in my nightclub.

Invest in my clothing brand. Invest in my energy drink. Invest in my record label when you're surrounded by so many people because you go to so many events and you throw so many events how do you decide what you actually want to put money into um i think it's the person i invest in people i don't invest in businesses interesting so you know i look at their results in what they've done. You know, actions are always, and you know, women lie, men lie, but numbers don't lie.

So always going to check the books and see what's going on there. And also, like I said, I invest in people. You know, characters are a big thing to me. And that's really how I look at things. So a lot of the influencers that you work with and a lot of the girls and OnlyFans that you work with are making a lot of money. Just a year ago or two years ago, four years ago,

before they started, they may not have had much money if at all. What would you say to these girls and influencers that all of a sudden are starting to make 50 grand, 100 grand, $200,000 about how to protect their money. How to protect their money? Come to Creators, Inc.

And we have a whole financial team that will help you do that. That's what I'd tell them. But yeah, like you said, a lot of these people have never had money before. So they go get the bag. They go get the car. And they blow through that money quick. So at Creators, Inc., what we do is we really teach them

how to secure their money. We help them with taxes. We have financial people that help them set up, you know, Schwab accounts and all these different things to help, you know, manage and protect their money. That's great. Yeah. We've seen it happen with athletes and rappers

and then we hear all the stigmas and stories over the years and most of the time it's because of the people around them or their lack of access to information. And so I'm seeing that now with so many influencers being so young and all of a sudden making these crazy numbers from social media or from OnlyFans or for certain platforms. My fear has always been I just don't want them to go through what I've seen so many people go through which is they make hundreds of thousands or maybe make millions and then they light it on fire with these big overheads.

So what about your brand size? All these brands come to you left and right and you've got all these different options. How do you choose what brands you're willing to put your likeness on that you're going to make content for? Man, for me, really, it's like the things that I believe in. Like, for example, when I first started, I had McDonald's come to me and pay me $20,000. I wouldn't take another brand deal from McDonald's just because I don't believe in their product.

You know, I have to really, if I'm gonna push something on someone like alcohol companies or tobacco companies that come to me, or even weed companies that come to me, you know, I don't drink, I don't smoke, so it just, I look like a complete fool working with some of these companies and pushing things that would harm someone. Uh, I just wouldn't put my name or brand behind that anymore.

So I, it's all comes down to integrity and what I believe in. So that's how I choose the brands that I'd want to work with. Do you think that someone can live in a random city and still become a big influencer, or do you think they have to be in like Miami, LA, New York type cities? No, not at all. People like to see people start at the bottom.

It's when these people get all big and they get all flashy is when it becomes like unrelatable and then they wonder why their fan base starts to, you know, talk shit in their comments and, oh, the old so-and-so we miss blah blah blah You know I'm saying so people like things that they could relate to How often would you say an influencer should be considering posting today? Man, I think you should be posting all day Just depends on like what platform I think tick-tock

Anywhere from one to three at least once one to three, at least once a day. For sure. At least once a day. Stories, I would post 10 to 15 stories a day. Yeah, just to get people familiar with you. And that's what people love about me. They come, they know when they come watch my story, they're going to, you know, have fun watching. Yeah, they're going to have fun watching my story. It's like, they're going to get some value or they're going to laugh or see behind the scenes. You just see behind the scenes of my world. You know, I fun watching this. Yeah, they're going to have fun watching my story. It's like they're going to get some value or they're going to laugh or behind the scenes, just see behind the scenes of my world. You know, I show a lot of my life. A lot of people don't like to do that, but I let a lot of people in.

I'm not scared to show the true me and who I am. And that's why a lot of people like me because I really show who I am. And what you see online is what you get in person. Let's do a rapid fire on the seven platforms that are the major platforms. Let's start off with number one, Instagram. What are your thoughts today? Instagram, amazing platform is reels right now. Best way to grow. Love those. Instagram stories are my favorite. Yeah. And yeah, that's pretty much.

I guess the most brand campaign request is for Instagram stories. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of everything. Yeah, I work with a lot of meme coins and stuff like that. And I just, I pay a lot of influencers to post on their story. That works well.

Twitter, for X. What do you think about Twitter? I don't really use Twitter, honestly. I think I should, but I don't like Twitter. I just never have, never really used it, so I don't really know about it, honestly. Twitter would be good for you because you're in the crypto world, and it is a very crypto-friendly and crypto-centric place, so it's a great platform for you to build up because they are there.

Yeah, all the crypto people are on Twitter. Yes. Like when I was doing like NFT projects and stuff like that, I lived in Discord and I lived on Twitter. Right. Yeah. Because you already have such a big audience, you could easily build up your Twitter,

but it's definitely works for you in particular. I like Twitter mostly because all of Silicon Valley is there. The whole tech space is there. Yeah. The whole tech space is there. The whole poker world is there. The niches that I like, they're there and they're interacting there the most. And most of those same characters post once every six months on Instagram. They barely ever post on Facebook. They tweet all day long. So that's something that I enjoy. What about Threads, the new platform? I used it for the first eight days it was cool.

And then I've, it's probably a great platform. It's probably a sleeper platform. I think not a lot of people take advantage of it, but I feel like the people that really use threads are probably thriving because I don't think a lot of people actually use it. It's the fastest growing social media platform in history, but it has the lowest engagement rate of any platform.

Like you're where you might've used to get 600 likes, you're getting four likes, not 400, four. It's the same page with the same amount of followers. They just don't have the same daily active users that they did before. Yeah, exactly. YouTube, what are your thoughts on YouTube? YouTube's great. I think it's a great way to post long form content.

YouTube shorts changed my life. I got two brand deals from YouTube For fifty thousand dollars each just to post on YouTube shorts. Whoa one one YouTube short I got half over half a billion views on and I got what I got five hundred thousand Subscribers just from one YouTube short. Wow. One. That's it.

I got to go. I got 500,000 followers off one short. Wow. Yeah. That's great. And I made 80,000 off that one YouTube short. Wow. We did Instagram.

We did Twitter. What about the Facebook? Facebook's cool, great platform. Like I said, that's a sleeper platform too that most people don't really use, but it's a great way to build brand and there's a lot of money to be spent on Facebook. Do you ever use LinkedIn?

LinkedIn, I used to sell credit card mailers. You ever get one of those, like, hey, you're pre-qualified for a car. I used to sell those before I did any of this. I ran a sales team and LinkedIn was a great way for me to be able to connect with CEOs and stuff like that. I worked with a lot of car dealerships and that was the fastest way for me to be able to connect

with high level people. Are there other platforms that you think have a chance like Rumble or any of these other platforms? Is there a very any reason to post anywhere else? Um, favorited. If you live stream on Tik TOK favorited is a great place to connect with fans and be able to make money. I have a friend, he goes on for two hours, makes $5,000 every time that he

live streams. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah It's interesting. Yeah, so Livestreaming is finally getting to America. It's been going on in Asia forever Livestreaming has been live shopping has been so normal there For to buy things it's finally taken off here in America this last year and it's still I think I'm scratching the surface Year and a half ago. Tick tock shop was at 1.5 billion revenue Then last year went to 15 billion revenue.

So 1,000% increase, and that number's gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger. What are your thoughts about live shopping and getting into that space? I think it's freaking amazing. I feel like if you're not doing that, you're missing out. Especially like for all the stay at home moms and you're looking for an extra way to make money,

learn TikTok Shop and get on their ASAP. Make a hundred, 200 bucks a day. Yeah, yeah, it's insane. I got a lot of friends that make, you know, six figures a month on TikTok Shop. You know, if you got a brand, it's the easiest way. All it takes is one video to change your life. One video.

That's it. Okay. On the charity side, why do you think it's important to have some type of charity component for your personal brand? You know, I... Something that, yeah, something in the Bible said, I just really started getting back into church and they're

real big into giving back to the church. So I heavily believe that when you make money that you... The whole point of money is a tool and it's meant to be used to do good. And the more that you give back, the more it's going to come back to you. So I've done a lot of stuff with ocean conservation. When I did my NFT project, we donated over $400,000 to ocean conservation.

In Hawaii, we hosted 15 beach and reef cleanups. We cleaned up over 5,000 pounds of trash out of the ocean. We saved 38 turtles. We planted like a thousand eucalyptus trees on island, 4,000 vetiver plants. I took 10 people to Hawaii for eight days and hosted a huge beach and reef clean up out there. Gave away a Tesla. Yeah.

So I've done a lot. And the ocean is like a huge source of, you know, food for us and we got to keep it clean. So collaborations are some of the best ways to grow on social media when you can work of food for us and we gotta keep it clean. Collaborations are some of the best ways to grow on social media when you can work with other influencers or other content creators or if you just work a normal job and you've got 3,000 followers, posting with your friends and family

and other people you interact with is a great way to grow from 3,000 to 4,000, et cetera. What are your thoughts on collaboration if someone wants to work with other influencers? I think collabs are great. You know, collabs definitely, especially when you start, you know, you're posting all the time, it kind of edifies you when you start working with bigger people. It's just like a great way to cross pollinate and just get your name out there more.

I think it's really good. At some point, do you want children? I have one. Yeah, I have a child. He's three years old. His name is banks He's my best friend. I love it. Nothing that I love more in this world than being a father. I pride myself I'm being a great dad. That's one one thing. No one could ever tell me that I'm not as a great father and I get messages every day thanking me for being such an inspiration and just, you know, being a great dad, me and my son, we post a lot together.

Love that. And me personally, I believe that just everyone's, we all have the same purpose in life and it's to create the man or woman that we admire in all ways and give that person back to the world each and every single day and I think I do that with my content and I'm just you know I want to be an inspiration to other you know single single dad single mothers and just let them know that life isn't easy and that if they just work hard and

just need to be an example for the kids that, you know, the main thing in life is just to just be there for your children and love them. You know, there's so many kids out there that don't have that. So I just, it breaks my heart when people bring kids into this world and they abandon them or do anything like that. I wanna adopt the child eventually.

You know, there's just so many kids out there that just need love and it just disgusts me when I see other influencers with kids or just people that I know that prioritize their vices and going out and I see them out every weekend and their kids are constantly with a nanny or their grandparents and they're just out fucking off when they should be pouring that time into their children. There's only one question I ask on every single episode and I've never gotten the same answer

before. I have 124 episodes. So you build up from 7 million followers to 20 million, 50 million, 100 million followers and you build up hundreds of millions of dollars and you do all these companies but at some point you finally pass away. What percentage of your hundreds of millions of dollars do you leave to your son? I leave it all to him.

Yeah, all of it. I give him everything. Everything I do is for him. He's my best friend. I love him so much. And I give him the world. I love him so much and I give him the world. I love that. All right. So where can people check you out on social media? Is there any brands, products, creators, think all the things what's going on in

your world? Yeah. Yeah. You guys all fall. My name is the same on all platforms. It's just Kellen this and you know, if you are in the only fan space and you would like to work with me, just shoot me a DM. I also do mentoring to help you grow and build brand online. There's a link in my bio, it's to my Stan store. You could book a call with me. It's only 500 bucks for 30 minutes.

Or you could sign up for my monthly mentorship. I got a bunch of eBooks. I got a great eBook, it's called, Un-Fuck Your Parenting, to heal yourself from past trauma so that way you don't pass those on to your child. I Got a bunch of stuff Just go click that link in my bio and you'll see everything in there. Awesome All right, guys as you know

We cover three core topics how to make money how to invest money how to give away to charity because we grew up thinking it's Rude to talk about charity, which I think is ridiculous We have to have these discussions with our friends our family and our followers about money because it's part to talk about charity, which I think is ridiculous. We have to have these discussions with our friends, our family, and our followers about money because it's part of our real life. Loans, taxes, accounting, leases, rent, salary, all these things are part of our daily life. There's nothing evil about that.

It's a part of your world and you've got to be able to have discussions with your friends, family, and followers. So check us out on the moneymondays.com and we'll see you guys next Monday.