Ian Boggs: How I Created Viral Videos with 30 Billion Views | E91
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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 it'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 then 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 like 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, 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, 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 I'm glad you remember that. 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

And I remember like, I loved 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 would smell 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 yeah, when I was a kid, I didn't have the budget to like, or

Or 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 camcorder and put it 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 two-inch screen? See that I created something that can be eternalized in this like...

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 as I was like five years old and

or eight i don't know how exactly it was but yeah around then so you've had a creative pension 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 come home from elementary school and 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, I would submit to art contests and win a lot of them. Art has always had a creative mindset. And my parents would always 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. And I think me having grown up like mowing people's lawns, my dad teaching me that nothing ever comes for free. Even though he wasn't like crazy rich or anything, he would allow us to have allowances like for a month or so. And it taught me that growing up, like nothing ever comes for free.

And then when I went to college, I was 17. 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, but he wanted me to know like nothing comes for free. So at least pay me a hundred bucks for this car and I'm glad he did.

So you mowed lawns. Did you knock on your neighbor's lawns door to door or how did you get the business? Do you remember how much you got paid for the lawns? Yeah, I remember like one day I made like $300 and I was so happy. For mowing a lawn? Not just for mowing a lawn, but like this one guy, he lived across from us as a kid, 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 saw that happening and came over and asked us, "Hey, could Ian mow my lawn for..." I think it was five or eight bucks per lawn mow. But then there was one day where he wanted me to spray down the windows.

in the backyard, like their dog poop, like so many things. And then 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 it 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 then at that point I was like, oh yeah, you're right. I shouldn't share like the

the amount of money I make and all that kind of stuff. Be humble about it. - Yeah. - I think humble's 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. You were a poor student for a while, 2.9 GPA. 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, still going from a 2.9 to 3.7 was pretty cool. So in Hawaii, I

Education is not like the number one factor. For me, it was like sports because I got into sports in middle school, swimming and track in particular and surfing too. And so growing up, I was like, school, school. Like I would rather just like 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, "Oh, 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 like becoming my friends through the swim team and all that and I saw them study hard and like that that was a cool thing to do at the 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 I almost went to Berkeley, got waitlisted 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.

Yeah. 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...

I got caught cheating on a test or attempting to cheat on a test. That's not good. It was 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 this, this whole entire, uh,

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 gonna 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 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 study up on all that stuff and

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. 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

that's really gonna 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. 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. Yeah, 28,000 views. Yeah, at that time it was 28,000 views. Good job, nice. And for me now like viral is like a hundred million views and all that but it's a different world and I remember like 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. 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. It 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 Menlo College and there's someone in his dorm who cuts hair. I think he charges 35 bucks. There's shit all over the place. I bet. Cleaning up. What was that experience like? What made you want to do it? And you also had another business as well in college that paid off your loan. So let's talk about those as well. I'm really...

I'm all about like creative businesses, especially now where the internet exists and social media, it's more popular than ever. 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 didn't do this haircut by my own, but this was Dane Cuts, shout out to Dane Cuts.

Shout out. Yeah. It's a... 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 Kaplan 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 I gave myself a fade.

Tagged Dane Cutts and was like hire me haha lol cuz I was still a broke college student and then they Responded back with like we'll take you to do it. I thought they're being serious I was like, I really need a job Can I do this and they're like wait you kind of need like training first and all that I was like, okay but after that like all my friends are hitting me up for a haircut and I was like I'm not sure like I'm I just started doing this but I'll charge 15 bucks for a haircut just cuz I

I still don't know what I'm doing. They're like sure whatever. Came in like gave them 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

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. Not from the college. I was just better than the college hire photographers. And so...

Grounded on that, did like a hundred graduation shoots in one or two months I think. - That's a lot of dough. - Yeah, it was really good. I remember like my first 5,000 bucks I made, I called my dad and I was like,

"I made 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 a thousand dollars. And at that time, that was like the most that I had made from photography. And I was like, four hours of shooting, a 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 insane. And so, yeah.

I can go into social media with this because 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, you'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 who's gonna be willing to like like Jimmy just made a video where he spent seven days underground like who's gonna be willing to do that like who's gonna 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. That's why 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? And this was like my senior year of college right before graduating. My last quarter of college was when the pandemic hit. Ah.

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 started 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 TikTok

10 times a day, 10 videos a day and just like try to go viral. Something has to go viral, I post 10 videos a day. And on my fourth day, I had a video go super viral 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 a thousand followers, that's pretty good. And I remember like when you get a thousand followers, you can go live. And so...

Remember like I wanted so bad I would like put the live Facing me as I sleep every single night and I'll 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 Good night. Good night guys. Like I was so like I was so responsive 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 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 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. Month goes by, hit 100K. Another month goes by, hit another 100K. Keep going. At 300K, I'm almost about to graduate. I got to 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. 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. I was crying on the phone and my dad was like, Ian,

If it's going to make you happy, do it. If you can make money from it, do it. I believe in you. My mom was saying the same thing too.

So important. Four most important words of the English language, I think, are I believe in you. And it's something incredible that parents can tell their kids there's nothing like it. Yeah. 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 parents

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 gonna 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 it's the two-for-one rule where For every two pieces of content you make that you know is gonna do well social media or whatever platforms you post on post one thing for yourself and whether that's like a creative thing or a or another

direction just do it for yourself and eventually those two things will kind of level out and 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 this 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. He was like, you can make money from this. You have a million followers. What the hell are you thinking? And at that time, like a million was a lot on TikTok. Now there's like,

a hundred influencers with a million followers 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 in a million likes before but people who follow me and I've been a million before and I was like man like do I really deserve this like I know I worked really hard for it, but that's a lot of people watching me like I don't know if I can if I can do this I was just carrying into in my head about like do I really want to 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 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 move out of 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. I was literally going day to day, rent to rent. I was surviving. I was...

cooking on my i had visible abs because i was starving like literally it was crazy like i was like i wasn't starving i was just i was just really like grinding my my ass off um so that lit a okay what what really lit a fire into my ass was cancer on 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 gonna cut you off financially because I think that's gonna 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 and 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. 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, 'cause 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. I made some cringy videos for sure.

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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 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 I

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, but does that, and does it bug you? I mean, do you go to bed thinking about, oh, it's terrible? I like, I don't even, I look at the first like five minutes of comments and then I'll go back to it probably the day after or like even a month after because I think it's,

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. Oh, yeah. And your 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? 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. If I were to want to go in and look at all the comments, yeah, it would take...

Forever like nobody has time for that But then again like a month later, I'll come back to video and say oh this video did really well Let me see what's happening down here Of course some of the comments are good and the comments can be like what is this and then like it is what it is but um yeah, I'll try 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 more content creators and influencers should thank their followers because it's a two-way road. You can't have one without the other. And so, 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. Yeah. 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 yeah people buy followers people spend tens of thousand dollars a month i get business plans where you say all right we'll get you a hundred thousand 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 doesn't make sense. As someone who 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 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 18 or something and I like I bought like a couple hundred maybe a thousand 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 do that. And same with the followers thing. Like, Instagram will delete those followers. Like, I'm pretty sure any followers I bought, those accounts are deleted. They're just bots. And this was like 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 It's because it's not gonna be real like yeah, 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

You buy some fake followers, what's that gonna do? Your likes aren't gonna go up because they're fake. Oh no, you can buy the likes too. Oh, you can do that? We've 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. Um, 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, 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. Like, the biggest creators I know, myself included, make a lot and the most from AdSense. It's the most stable amount of content.

- 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. 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 view time on your videos.

And for 8-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 or something like that.

which I think makes sense because you gotta like it's an achievement like unlock man, like it's like a I've worked hard for this now we can trust this this profiles and I keep posting so we can trust to put ads on it as Google as a company This is it's also a two-way road like Google makes money. We make money. It's a 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 gonna have an ad play at the beginning, couple in the middle, and then one at the end of the video. And each of these ads has a certain amount of money attached to it. I won't disclose that because everyone's is different. - Okay, give us a sense of the average.

I want to say, I don't know. It's just so everywhere. You can look it up online, but it's like, it's... Well, take a guess. I mean, take yours and divide by...

Some big number. I don't feel comfortable sharing that. 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. 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 pay...

put in ad video like a ad roll in there and then put the money in there like add in some money and it's it's like like the drop shipping method of when 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 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, you're able to make money because 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 20 minutes? And then what's a short? - I say a long form video is, it's technically anything that's horizontal over like 30 seconds, I think. But 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, wherever you want to. And this mid-roll are people who are coming to you as sponsors directly and say, I want to be in your show? So they don't do that. Well, I mean, there are that. Those are brand deals. So I've done a couple of 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 uh do something with it like two good examples three good examples were like marvel netflix and old spice um

they're good to work with it's google as well i did a 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 i it's been great y'all have all been great um definitely 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 amount

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.