Bryan McAnulty [00:00:00]:

Do you think you need millions of followers to land brand deals? Think again. Elijah Casabo is living proof that creators can turn content into real income without having a massive audience. While still in college, Elijah bootstrapped up his company Vedovo and grew it to serve over 100 brands. With a network of thousands of creators. Vedovo is a platform that helps brands connect with influential creators to grow user generated content. Today it's on track for a 1 million run rate. And Elijah has seen firsthand what makes brands choose one creator over another. In this episode, we're sharing the secrets for for UGC that actually converts how to land more brand deals and what brands really care about when they're looking for creators.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:39]:

If you're ready to turn your content into a business, then stick around because Elijah is here to share exactly what's working right now.

Elijah Khasabo [00:00:45]:

You're able to tell Brad, hey, I have five ads that did this. Gave the brand extra. XGTR, reduced CPC by 40% as a brand, why would I not want to at least have a conversation? So use the leverage of your past results to to negotiate bigger deals and longer contracts.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:02]:

Welcome to the Creator's Adventure where we interview creators from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. Hey everyone, I'm Brian McMulty, the founder of Heights platform. Let's get into it. Hey Elijah, welcome to the show.

Elijah Khasabo [00:01:21]:

Awesome. Excited to be here.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:23]:

What would you say is the biggest thing that either you did or you are doing that has helped you to achieve the freedom to do what you enjoy?

Elijah Khasabo [00:01:30]:

It's a great question. I would have to say learning how to say no. I think that's one of the hardest things to do as an entrepreneur. Cause I know in the beginning stages, at least for me, I was accepting every single deal possible. And I think I was put in a position where I had to say yes to everything. Projects, partnerships, opportunities. Because I was scared to miss out. We needed the social proof.

Elijah Khasabo [00:01:54]:

We just needed proof of like having a concept of what we're doing. But what I realized is that it kept me busy, not free. And once I started being a little bit more intentional with what I worked on, you know, things that align more of my long term vision, I feel like every creator should also have the perspective of this. It, you know, allowed me to buy back my time and I think time is the most important thing, especially in our industry. So I would have to go by learning how to say no. G gives you a lot more freedom to actually also enjoy life. So you're not, you're not constantly scrambling. But that's.

Elijah Khasabo [00:02:26]:

That's kind of how I would, you know, answer that question right there.

Bryan McAnulty [00:02:29]:

Yeah, that's super important. I think that's something that every creator kind of goes through especially.

Elijah Khasabo [00:02:35]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:02:36]:

Like you yourself are. It's kind of like a service business.

Elijah Khasabo [00:02:39]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:02:39]:

And I remember I started the same way I started out as a service business of like, graphic and web design.

Elijah Khasabo [00:02:45]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:02:46]:

And yeah, I try to take on everything. Like somebody approaches me, some kind of partnership. Okay, yeah, let's do it. And you start to realize that there's a lot of these things that take up your time. And it's not necessarily either what you should be doing as the best thing for your time, what you want to be doing or even worth doing at all. And so, yeah, then. Then you learn how to shift the other way. But, yeah, that's definitely a really important thing.

Elijah Khasabo [00:03:12]:

Quick story. I never forget I took on a project, I think when I first started my. When I had an agency, this, prior to Bonovo, and I took on this client project, I was like, I don't think I can do it, but I need the cash right now. Ended up doing it. Had to refund the guy because they just went completely south because my creators went ghost. Everything was just going missing. He was emailing me at 2am like, what's going on? So sometimes it saves you from situations like that too. But I don't regret any of it at the time because I learned a lot.

Elijah Khasabo [00:03:40]:

Right now. It's like I'm saying, no, it's, you know, I have reason to back every, you know, every time I do. So, yes, it can. It can save you from a lot. I will say.

Bryan McAnulty [00:03:49]:

Yeah, that's true. I think it's a. It is like an important process to go through and learn what you maybe should have said no to first.

Elijah Khasabo [00:03:56]:

Yeah, exactly.

Bryan McAnulty [00:03:57]:

As long as you don't get stuck too long in that period where you're accepting everything and don't learn how to say no.

Elijah Khasabo [00:04:03]:

Exactly. I agree.

Bryan McAnulty [00:04:04]:

So you founded your business while you were still in college. How did you get the idea for Vedovo and for those who are listening and not familiar with it, can you briefly describe what it does and how it helps creators?

Elijah Khasabo [00:04:15]:

Yes. So Vedovo is a UGC and influencer platform that connects essentially the brand with a creator or influencer. Our goal is to build a software to make that obviously easy. Right. The approach that actually makes us a lot different than your traditional UGC platform was our actual. Because at the end of the day, every platform has these same objectives. We want to make sure you get content for your ad creative, your organic social or your retail media, whatever it is, email. But the one thing I noticed was most of our competitors, they all raised money, right? When you raise money, you obviously have to follow these investor KPIs and indirectly.

Elijah Khasabo [00:04:53]:

Well, not indirectly directly. Those investor KPIs obviously always lead back to revenue and what leads to revenue? Brand acquisition. So we knew like, okay, if we don't have investors that are always checking in on us, why don't we take the opposite approach and just focus on how can we, you know, do creator acquisition at a better scale. Right, because now we can focus on getting top tier talent that brands want to work with. So I don't know if you've heard of us, if you're a creator or not, but most of our brands actually find us through other creators, like whether it's on Reddit, whether It's on Twitter, TikTok, because creators are posting about their experience with us. And I think what it's doing to the brand is like, well, if a creator's having a good experience, why can't I? Right? So we do things a little bit different at least about our approach. We get around 100 creators per day organically, so that's been awesome. But yeah, we're just a UGC influencer platform so far.

Elijah Khasabo [00:05:39]:

If you're a creator, definitely, definitely sign up. But how I got started, it's a funny story. I actually was against UGC at first. I come from the affiliate world. In high school, I had a stock and crypto server and I grew 30,000 people all through affiliate marketing. Right? Fast forward to when I was doing E commerce and I was drop shipping. I was still doing affiliate. I was only paying creators based off what you earned.

Elijah Khasabo [00:06:02]:

Me, I'll never forget a creator approached me one day and they're like, hey, it's $50 perfect, right? But he's like, no, but I need the money up front. And. And I was like, no, I'm not going to do that. Like where, like there's a risk for me. I can't do that. He's like, no, no, no, it's this whole new thing. It's ugc. I don't think he used the term UGC at the time, but I think he used a similar term to it.

Elijah Khasabo [00:06:21]:

And I actually started doing more research on it and I was like, I ended up losing a battle. Okay, whatever, it's $50, I'll pay for it. Which is very hard to get a $50 video nowadays the video got me 15 million organic views. It was like 14.5, 15 ish million organic. So in my head I'm like man, forget drop ship, I should probably go sell videos to other drop. That's literally what I did. I became a freelancer and I would join like all these dropshipping community discourse and try to be like that UGC guy, like hey, come get me for your cheap content. I was selling videos anywhere from like 20 to $50 at the time.

Elijah Khasabo [00:06:54]:

Then from there started an agency and then through that agency I ended up starting with because my co founder was actually a customer of mine within the agency and he loved the way that like I was running things and he was very impressed and he was like hey like I can you know build this tech, I could build a platform, like blah blah blah. And I started to realize that the AGENC probably wasn't gonna be scalable, at least the way I was running it then I maybe would have figured it out. But I went in with them and we've been building ever since we decided to bootstrap. It's definitely been a grind but yeah, we've learned a lot from it. So it all sparked from me not even wanting it at first but seeing the importance and seeing there was a gap like brands do need video, video does work right. And I just was like I gotta hop into this and I fell in love with it ever since. So I've always been in the video world cause I knew the importance of it when I ran my discord but now it's like okay, I know the metrics that are t tied to it, the organic, whether it's organic, paid retail, email, sms, whatever, wherever the video is going, I know the metrics are tied back to it now. And I've always loved the importance of it.

Elijah Khasabo [00:07:55]:

So that's kind of how I got into it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:07:58]:

Awesome. I love that you mentioned that you're a bootstrap company too and I know that, but we are here too at heights platform and I think it's really important that that point you mentioned I think is actually super valuable that you looked at. Okay, well these are what all the venture backed companies are doing. Yeah, how can we not do that? How what can we do? That's the thing that they can't do. And I feel like for myself personally it took me a little bit too long to realize that. But for the creators out there, like especially like if you're a course creator, coach, this kind of thing, trying to build a community, don't Try to be like some big venture like funded company, like lean into the things that you can do that they can't do.

Elijah Khasabo [00:08:39]:

Exactly.

Bryan McAnulty [00:08:40]:

And so like they don't like an easy example of that is like as a creator, like we're talking about the, the ugc, the brands want the UGC because they don't have that, that personal brand and that presence. And so you have that. So lean into that. Don't try to pretend that you're some big company with thousands of people. A lot of your value comes from being able to connect it to your audience directly.

Elijah Khasabo [00:09:02]:

Yeah, exactly. And I, I'm so for that. And it's like, you know, it was, it was a battle though because we obviously you don't make money acquiring creators and creators only. It's a very long term play. It was a risk because we haven't seen any other platforms do it. But I knew at the end of the day when I, when I just like when I got into ugc, if the content is going to be good, if it's going to have a higher chance of performing, I'm going to want to stay, I'm going to want to keep on doing it. And I think it's gone to shown on Vadova like especially this year, that brand, our retention is just so much higher now because brands are finding quality creators. Right? If we did the brand acquisition play, obviously you get the brands and you have to go hunt for creators.

Elijah Khasabo [00:09:40]:

Right? You're not really caring about quality at that point, just caring about getting the actual creator on the platform. Whereas us, it's like they're already there. So I'm just telling the brand like, hey, here's why I think we're a better software and here's why our approach is better. And brands hear that and they're like, I love this. Like that's what that's been our, the biggest reason to our high close rates, just literally our approach because like I said, we all have the same objective. But it's like what was your approach? And I think we had one of the best ones that kind of helped us ease out of there. And bootstrapping, it's not, it's not a fun, it's not fun but you learn a lot from it. You definitely learn a lot.

Elijah Khasabo [00:10:14]:

You know, I said this in interview the other day. You know, it's developed me into a different character. I've had to learn a lot, I've had to grow up fast. But I don't regret it one bit and I am very thankful that I Chose the bootstrapping route.

Bryan McAnulty [00:10:27]:

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, me as well. I wouldn't do it any other way. So we heard that you said that most creators don't realize how close they are to turning content into a business.

Elijah Khasabo [00:10:37]:

Yep.

Bryan McAnulty [00:10:38]:

What would you say is like the tipping point that moves from someone from like the casual UGC work to consistent full time income?

Elijah Khasabo [00:10:46]:

That's a great question. And I don't meet with newer creators as much as I used to. I wish I did, but my, obviously my time is so limited to what it used to be. But I'll never forget what the number one thing I used to always tell creators is just focus on relationship building. My first client ever in ugc when I was freelancing to the agency, I sold him a video for $15. He's been with us since, literally since then he came from the freelancing stages to the agency stages and he's now on Vedovo and he's, I've, you know, I've seen him spend north of $500 a video. Right. And it's just all because of relationship.

Elijah Khasabo [00:11:22]:

Like obviously at that time he didn't have the budget. Now he does, he's grown and the UGC has worked for him. And I, I think if most creators can focus on how can I develop a relationship with client A, with client B, with client C, more than like the money aspect of it. It will come, right. Because I could have charged that climb. What if I quote him fifty dollars or a hundred dollars at the time, which is very cheap now, but at that time maybe he would have said no and ran off. Like I was just so focused on just getting clients. And you could also make the argument that I was saying yes to everything.

Elijah Khasabo [00:11:50]:

Right. Would I say yes to that now? Probably not. Right. So that's kind of my, my approach on it, I think is focus on relationship building and I think it'll take you far. And if you can settle down and be okay, client A, client B, client C, how can I turn that individual into a recurring customer? For me, I mean it's a huge thing. Our top creators, all of them have relationships with all these brands. Even on our platform, we built it indirectly to develop relationships with the brands because we allow you to message the brand before any transaction is actually done. Right.

Elijah Khasabo [00:12:28]:

Because we know this, you know, the creator economy is so transactional. How can we put a balance? It's not gonna be 50 50, but how can we put like a relate. How can we throw a relationship into that mix of transactional? Right. So My biggest advice from, you know, from 0 to 10,000, 10,000 to 100,000, I feel like it's all relationships, it's all a game of connections. And I feel like the more you focus on that, the easier it is for you to achieve the, the next levels. I could obviously go more in depth in break down everything you need to do, but I truly think relationships is the best way to do it. Help build experience, diversify income, and they keep content fresh and then you can obviously just keep building from there.

Bryan McAnulty [00:13:06]:

Yeah, no, I love that. I think that a lot of creators starting out, like in whatever way they're starting out, they get hung up on pricing. And this is one of the ways that they get hung up on pricing that they're thinking too, like short term, they're thinking, oh, how can I make this cheap product? And it's, it's difficult to make a cheap product. This is so much we could talk about with this. But in a sense, basically, if you look at the big brands out there, like a soda company or a clothing company, they're selling things that are relatively affordable. They're not selling $1,000 product or something, but the actual lifetime value of their customers is still massive. Because like, so yeah, it's like a couple dollars, but people keep buying it over and over and over for years. Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:13:49]:

And so you have to think of your potential customers not as like, okay, what is the one thing I'm going to sell them now, but what is that relationship over the long term? Because I've, I've had the same experiences and stories where like there's this client from way back and then they're just actually still with me. I have a story that when we were a web design business, yeah, we did like print design too. And we decided to do this one contest one day to do, we'll give like free business card printing to somebody. And this was in like 2010, I think the guy who won that free printing later, a few years later, we built a printing like E Commerce brand. The guy who won that not only would continue printing with us a few years later, but I think he still does today. Like all these years later, like 15 years later, he's still with us. And so that was another example because you mentioned like starting out with a really like affordable video and like that was something where we actually gave him the thing for free and we didn't even charge. But now he's a customer for 15 years later.

Bryan McAnulty [00:14:53]:

And yeah, so, so keeping that in mind. And I love the idea of trying to build that into the platform to kind of help creators along with that.

Elijah Khasabo [00:15:00]:

Yeah, exactly.

Bryan McAnulty [00:15:02]:

Let's say a creator want to go from like landing their first brand deal to like the point where this is like potentially a six figure income for them.

Elijah Khasabo [00:15:11]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:15:11]:

What would be like the steps that you would kind of map out for them?

Elijah Khasabo [00:15:17]:

Step one, obviously you know your foundation, what is your niche, what platforms are you native to? Are you, are you also an influencer? Are you just focused on UGC having a strong portfolio even if you don't have brand deals? I go around and just create content with, you know, remote, like just water, like create content with products inside your, your home and just build some type of starter profile from there. I will say the number one thing and I just spoke with this, my social team about an hour ago. We have over 10,000 creators and the creators who don't see a lot of deals are the ones who just don't have complete profiles and video examples. I mean if I'm a brand and I'm reviewing you and I can't see at least decently quality videos on your profile or a complete profile that looks like you know what you're doing, at least have interest in what you're doing, I'm probably not gonna wanna work with you. So laying out your found probably the first step I would put which kind of lays into social proof or creator proof I guess, which is just getting those small brand deals. Kind of like how I was working with that guy for $20. Right. Just developing relationships kind of spins back to what we were saying earlier.

Elijah Khasabo [00:16:28]:

Just develop relationships which I would tie into social proof there just having a system. I think, you know, if I was a creator, I feel like I would know exactly what to do, but I'm not. But it's like building out your own system. Like okay, how are you going to get brands? How are you going to acquire brands? Have a Twitter page. A lot of my top creators on vdoba, I found them through Twitter. I also found a lot of them through Facebook. Why? Because they're posting why Their bio is also SEO friendly. So get these key metrics and tie it into your profile which is from step one, having a foundation, everything set up.

Elijah Khasabo [00:17:02]:

Because there's a lot of brands just scrolling through Twitter, scrolling through Facebook, even TikTok and just searching for creators like you. So it's like if you are SEO friendly, if you're approachable, if you're easy to find, you're easy to contact, that's a great way to kind of help land Your first brand deal. Right. And like I said, I think Twitter is super, super underrated. And then leveraging that. So using the past results now from those first three to five brands and 10 brands and 15 brands and leveraging that into newer brand deals. There's creators, like I said, I used to pay $100 a video that we're now paying north of like 3, $400 a UGC video. Right.

Elijah Khasabo [00:17:37]:

And you have influencers who you'd pay a couple hundred, you're paying north of $1,000. Right. So it's like because they leverage their own deals, they leverage the performance of what happens. So yeah, laying back to that, make sure you can get analytics from the content that you've given to the brands. Because if you're able to tell a brand like, well, hey, I had five ads that did this and gave the brand X ROAS and XTR and reduced CPC by 40% as a brand, why would I not want to at least have a conversation with you? Right. So use the leverage of your past results to negotiate bigger deals and longer contracts and pitch bundles too. Like, you know, content pitch whitelisting. I think whitelisting is gonna be a huge thing over the next year and a half.

Elijah Khasabo [00:18:21]:

It's starting to pick up. At least we've seen the last three to four months where brands want to run the ad through the creator's account. Doesn't matter what your following is, it just seems more real. Like I, you know, people would rather see a sponsored ad from an influencer or creator than from the brand account. Right. At least from what I know as of right now, it's performing better. So open to more. And then from that I think you're just scaling.

Elijah Khasabo [00:18:46]:

I don't know if I have another step at that. But just scale, lock in X amount of retainer partnerships. So maybe 2 to 3, 4 to 5 ish. Those retainer partnerships can pay anywhere from 2 to 5 grand per month. I noticed a lot of our top creators have retainer deals with their partners. They're just creating content on a consistent basis. And I feel like as a creator you can kind of calendar that out. So it's like, okay, cool.

Elijah Khasabo [00:19:08]:

I know I have to create X amount of content for X amount of brands on X amount of days within a month. Now I know for the other days I can go get those deals or that deals or search for that deal or get some more inbound. Right. So definitely lock in retainer partnerships and raise your one off projects to kind of amplify the chance. Not amplify the chance, but increase the chances of people wanting to do hop on your retainer plan. Right. And sometimes it like it comes back to relationships. Sometimes you don't have to raise your one out, your one off prices.

Elijah Khasabo [00:19:38]:

If you're like, hey, I see potential with this brand and I know I can get them on a retainer. If I get them like one or two good videos, just give them a discount. Right. Sometimes you have to take risk as a creator. I feel like most creators don't take risks. I think the really good ones know when to and know when not to. So like understand your icp, understand who you're talking to, like kind of lock that onto scale. After that I'd probably say diversify.

Elijah Khasabo [00:20:04]:

As a creator, you don't want to just be doing ugc. That's just my opinion. If I was a creator, I'd be focusing on a lot of performance models of getting into affiliate or maybe even lowering your UGC rate and doing performance bonus. So if ad performs, I get X percent or I get X bonus. Right. A lot of good creators are doing that where they're, you know, lowering the rates by maybe 30 to 50%, asking for at least a thousand dollar bonus if it performs. Because if a brand makes $100,000 off that video, $10,000 off that video, I mean I think there'd be more than a client to give you a thousand bucks and want to keep on working with you. So put in those bonuses for yourself.

Elijah Khasabo [00:20:39]:

Make sure it's in contract obviously. So affiliate's good if you're really good at creating content, maybe a workshop with creators, get more involved with platforms that you use a lot and try to get webinars done with them. Get your name out there. Digital products is also a lot of things I'm seeing. And then keep on getting more retainer brands. That's how I'd say you can scale to 100k. I don't know many UGC specifically creators doing 100k a month, but I know a lot of creators doing 100k a month. Where they are doing UGC, they're doing influencer, doing affiliate, they're doing TikTok shops.

Elijah Khasabo [00:21:12]:

So that goes back to step five or six. I don't know where I was at for diversifying. Right. I know it's a little messy. That's just kind of going off the top of my head.

Bryan McAnulty [00:21:19]:

No, super helpful. I think the, the point about like the long term and the retainers is, is really good because like for the, from the brand perspective, like we mostly do affiliates and stuff. We don't spend too much really on like paying creators or paying for ads or things being being a bootstrap company. But the times when like we've pitched somebody and said like, hey, do you want to be an affiliate with us or something and they just come back and say, oh, I'll just charge you, like just this is how much I'm going to charge for a video. We don't like to hear that because a lot of the times like we found the affiliates will like really invest long term and will continue to work with us. We'll understand the product, explain it. That can be true for UGC content and for, for charging a brand. But you have to like demonstrate that you, you care about it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:22:07]:

Because if the brand sees like, oh, you're just gonna charge this one off thing versus you show them like, hey, I want to work with you for three months or six months or whatever, but like, here's how it's gonna work, then they have this confidence that, okay, you're actually gonna understand our product and explain it well to the users versus somebody who just doesn't care and just makes one video and they're kind of over it. Yeah. And yeah, I think that can help you as a creator as well when you do it that way. Real quick, Brian here, you know me as the host for this podcast, but what you might not know is I'm also the founder of Heights Platform. It's an all in one platform that over 10,000 creators have used to build their online courses, communities and digital product businesses. We recently added some awesome updates to Heights AI to help you turn your idea into a viable business. I'd say I can build entire product offers, review your content and even coach you on how to grow. You can try it for free for 30 days Links in the description.

Bryan McAnulty [00:22:59]:

Now back to the podcast. Yeah, you mentioned a little bit already about like how a creator can stand out kind of from like making sure they complete the profile, things like that. So first, I think creators get hung up on like follower count, like what's actually important or what their brands actually care about when it comes to number of followers, like is, is there an amount that's actually too little or not? And maybe second, is there something that like brands care about that creators kind of seem to always miss that if they didn't miss it could help them stand out.

Elijah Khasabo [00:23:34]:

Yeah. So for a follower count, that's a tough question because it depends on what lens are you looking at it. If I'm a brand, I'm Personally looking to work with an influencer for their following. I mean, I, I don't really judge off a follower account. I actually judge off of community. And what I mean by that is I will go on your page, I'll read through your comments, I'll check your engagement, I'll look up your name and see if other people are talking about you. Like, what type of community do you have around you? Right? And if it looks like it's pretty engaging, I don't care if you have 3,000 or 20, 300,000, I will be more inclined to want to work with you. Right.

Elijah Khasabo [00:24:18]:

Like, there are creators out there who have 10,000 followers who will probably convert a lot better than creators have 70,000 followers. Right? So I go based off community. If, you know, if you're looking from a numbers perspective, obviously you probably want to shoot over 5,000 followers. Just in general, I think this is a good judgment. I would say 3,000 is probably the bare minimum I would shoot for, for, like any type of deal because there's at least a sign of, okay, that's an engaged audience or at least at the bare minimum. But like I said, I don't really go off of followers when it comes to the influencer stuff. I just go off of community. Right.

Elijah Khasabo [00:24:53]:

I've seen, I've worked with creators who have 50,000 followers who produce zero sales. I've also worked with creators who produce tons of sales with 10,000 followers. So it all comes down to how engaged is your community? Do your followers actually care about you? What are they saying in the comments? Is it just random gibberish or is it actually them asking questions or wanting to learn more about. About you or just being so engaged into the video or saying, I love this or I love that. The little things like that, I think are far more important than the actual numbers, at least from what I'm seeing today. And that's just my personal opinion, but I, I think if every brand looked at it like that, I mean, I feel like we'd see a lot more results on the, on the, on that end.

Bryan McAnulty [00:25:35]:

Yeah, yeah, it's a great point. And how about. The point of, how about the part of is there, like something that creators maybe miss that could actually help them stand out, that brands are looking for?

Elijah Khasabo [00:25:47]:

I, I kind of think it goes back to the profile thing. And I was ranting about this earlier today, so that's probably what's in my head is, you know, I feel like creators just, I feel like they have to look at stuff from the brand's Perspective. I don't know why they always just look at it from their perspective. You know, I think the number one thing in life this is business or non business related. Just be open to both sides. Be open to why does a person think like that? What can I learn from that person? What can I take away from that? I think the more open minded you are and the more curious you allow yourself to be, the better position you will be in because you'll be able to identify. Okay, if brand A is looking for content like that, that and that and they've worked with creators like that, that and that, why don't I tailor myself to be more like that individual that they're looking for. Right.

Elijah Khasabo [00:26:38]:

Or at least be. At least resonate a little bit more. I feel like most creators get very stuck up on them, them in themselves and that's it. And they just don't really want to go beyond that. But I think if more creators looked at it from a different perspective, look at the brand, look through the brand's lens, I feel like it'll put you in a lot better position than kind of not. And you'd be surprised. A lot of creators do this. I'm sure you know this too.

Elijah Khasabo [00:27:01]:

Right. It's just just be open minded. Right. So just, just be open to all things. But that's probably the best way I would answer that. And to spin back to the profile thing, just having a complete profile, being SEO friendly, I feel like that just gets you a lot more brand deals. And I stand on this. I'll stand to this day.

Elijah Khasabo [00:27:17]:

I'm always going through Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram. I'm just saving a bunch of videos in my free time and I put them into this folder of like okay, creators I'd want to reach out to if X happened. Right. And a lot of creators I feel like miss out on opportunities like that because they just, just don't have a complete profile set up or they're not SEO friendly. But yeah, that's kind of what I would say. Just make. Just be easy. I think that's the.

Elijah Khasabo [00:27:42]:

That that kind of bundles up both points into one.

Bryan McAnulty [00:27:45]:

Yeah. So you've built VOVO to like bridge this creators and, and brands together here.

Elijah Khasabo [00:27:53]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:27:53]:

How do you see the UGC space kind of evolving over the next two years and what should creators potentially start doing now to prepare?

Elijah Khasabo [00:28:02]:

Great question. You know, I think it's so funny because when I first got the industry, the type of content that you see produced then versus now so different. I feel like the industry we're in. It's just, it's so fast paced. It's always moving and there's always new things just hitting us left and right. Which is why I make the argument. I'll never forget my first conference ever. This was last year.

Elijah Khasabo [00:28:24]:

I think it was a social media director in her 30s or 40s and everyone in the audience was around that age. She said like she truly believes that the creator economy is built for Gen Z. Like this is their industry to learn and grow in and understand at a high pace level. Right. Fast paced level. And I truly believe that. So it's like the more so I'm always adapting. Like content that we're producing now for our agency, for our managed clients versus our self service clients is a lot different than the content we were producing six months ago.

Elijah Khasabo [00:28:54]:

Right now we're seeing a lot more retail content where they want the creator to actually go into the store. We're seeing a lot more white listing. I didn't see that six to eight months ago. Right. So it's always just changing. A year ago the content was very traditional UGC ad style. Now we're seeing brands that they just want testimonial style, they just want podcast style, they just want green screens again. Right.

Elijah Khasabo [00:29:14]:

That might be different next year. So it's always evolving. But one thing I, one thing I will say creators should learn how to use AI as an amplifier. I'm not for AI ugc, obviously. Right. But I do think if you can learn to use AI as a tool to amplify your needs, to amplify your business to work faster, I feel you'll be ahead of a lot of creators over the next one to two years. So that's kind of the biggest thing I would say that people can learn from and just be ready to adapt because things are always changing. Be active on social, always be watching other creators to other influencers, watch what brands are doing and I think it'll put you in a really good position.

Bryan McAnulty [00:29:56]:

Yeah, yeah, it sounds great. I'm also against UGC AI content.

Elijah Khasabo [00:30:00]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:30:01]:

But I also truly believe AI like leveraging it.

Elijah Khasabo [00:30:04]:

Right.

Bryan McAnulty [00:30:05]:

Can make such a massive difference. And I've got like on one hand I think people thought, oh, AI is going to come, it's going to make everything easier, we're all going to relax. On the other hand, I feel like more pressure because it's like there could be more that I'm doing with it. I could be utilizing it more. And so I feel like I've got to figure that out and See how I could be doing it. And the thing that, that I love or the way I love to like frame it is like a few years ago, everyone's talking about, oh, you should get a VA to. To help you scale and everything. And AI can be so much more powerful than that because once you have like one process with AI helping you, it's not like, okay, as we scale now I've got to hire another person to expand that note.

Bryan McAnulty [00:30:48]:

The AI just does more, it just keeps doing more. Exactly. So it's really powerful in that sense. I'm curious your thoughts about, like, if AI is a threat or not to UGC content and brand partnerships in the future and like, how creators should, should see themselves or should they worry, like, how's this gonna play out? Do you feel like in the next year or so,

Elijah Khasabo [00:31:14]:

if creators aren't evolving, it could be a threat? But then again, I'm obviously making the argument in favor of the creators, where I think we will continue to evolve. Right? And by threat, I mean more to the basic needs of content. Like we need this type of B roll footage or that type of B roll footage. AI might be at a point a year or two from now, even sooner that it could do that. Fairly easy, right? But I do believe it's an ally as of right now. I just don't think brands still need real human trust and reliability. Relatability, sorry, not reliability. And I don't think AI can do that at scale.

Elijah Khasabo [00:31:55]:

I just don't. Like I said, AI continues to shock me every single day, but I just don't see a world that could do that at scale. And just as I pointed out to you, I feel like the winning creators will be able to use AI as leverage, not as a competition factor. Whether that's scripting, faster editing, faster brainstorming, hooks, scaling, content production, all these things that can allow you to just work faster, more efficiently. I feel like AI will play a huge role in, but I just don't think it can replace a creator. I mean, if anything, AI UGC popping up this year made UGC more popular, right? People saw the results and it wasn't doing well even. There's a lot of VO3 ads, which I love, by the way. I love, like this, this whole concept of creation, but they don't really convert.

Elijah Khasabo [00:32:45]:

Like, people know it's AI, right? Do we get to a point where AI content looks so real that it doesn't look like AI? Maybe, right? And then maybe we'll get into a whole, you know, legal and regulation things. At that time, maybe people were, like, lying about it. Say, this wasn't generated by AI. Right. Like, I. I don't really know. But one thing I will say is that you can't be real human. You just can't.

Elijah Khasabo [00:33:06]:

I will never make a purchase decision. At least as of right now. I don't think I would make a purchase decision based off an AI ad. I. I honestly think it might end up hurting brands more, helping them. There has to be.

Bryan McAnulty [00:33:20]:

If the brand makes this AI UTC and they're trying to trick people into

Elijah Khasabo [00:33:23]:

thinking that it's like real testimonials, there's bad ethics by. Behind it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:33:27]:

Yeah, yeah, that. That's no good. But, yeah, the. The reason that the brands want to pay for the UGC in the first place is not just to show that there's a person talking about it, but it is because of what you said. Your audience and that engaged audience.

Elijah Khasabo [00:33:41]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:33:42]:

That they're following you. They care about what you have to say.

Elijah Khasabo [00:33:45]:

Correct. And like I said, people trust people. People resonate with others. And it's kind of like when I was pitching UGC in the beginning. You. You know, we have a lot of mom careers on our platform. I say this all the time, but a brand would. A mom would rather see another mom on their TikTok or on their Facebook than the Kim Kardashian.

Elijah Khasabo [00:34:07]:

Right. So I already had to deal with the UGC versus celebrity stuff. Now it's like UGC versus AI. Right. But now I'm not really having a lot of conversations about UC versus AI, because I think people kind of caught on, like, this isn't. It's not ready yet. But then, yeah, people just want to see other people that look like them. And I don't think a lot of us look like AI.

Elijah Khasabo [00:34:25]:

So I don't. I don't. I don't plan for that to work out.

Bryan McAnulty [00:34:29]:

Yeah. All right, well, I've got one more question for you, and that is that on the show, I'd like to have every guest ask a question to our audience. So if you could ask our audience anything, whether something you're curious about or kind of want to just get people thinking about, what would that be?

Elijah Khasabo [00:34:44]:

This is a tough one, but one of my favorite questions when in this industry is, like, when you see content, what makes you stop scrolling? I think as a creator, the more you think about that, the better you'll. You'll be a lot better psychologically when it comes to creating content and briefs and having some strategy behind it. Just think about, like, when you see content, what makes you stop scrolling? Right. Because we're all consumers at the end of the day, a majority of us scroll every single day. Right. And I feel like a lot of us forget about that, like, once our day is over. All right, let's go on TikTok, Instagram, reels, shorts, whatever it is. Or maybe it's long form YouTube, but what makes you engaged.

Elijah Khasabo [00:35:27]:

And I think the more you can think about that, the. It'll make you pretty unstoppable. I think I. I'm a little biased. I think it will, but that's. That's my question. Awesome.

Bryan McAnulty [00:35:38]:

And, Elijah, thanks so much for coming on the show. Before we get going, where else can people find you online?

Elijah Khasabo [00:35:43]:

Yeah, I am a LinkedIn guy, so you can find me there. Elijah Casabo. I am also on Twitter, very briefly, but not that well. And you can also find me on Instagram. I just booted it up. Or I'm gonna start booting it up. Elijah at Elijah Casabo. But yeah, mainly.

Elijah Khasabo [00:36:01]:

Mainly LinkedIn. That's where you can find me.

Bryan McAnulty [00:36:04]:

Awesome. Thanks so much. I'd like to take a moment to invite you to join our free community of over 5,000 [email protected]. if you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, check out The Heights Platform YouTube channel every Tuesday at 9am US Central. To get notified when new episodes release, join our [email protected] until then, keep learning and I'll see you in the next episode.