Scaling Influencer Marketing with 

Jake Hay

[00:00:00] Jake: just because you have 10 million followers doesn’t mean you made a good piece of content. 

[00:00:03] Courtney: Hi, I’m Courtney and welcome to How They Scaled It, where scaling is done with both sides of the brain. On this show, we sit down with growth stage businesses and speak with founders and industry leaders from e com and the SaaS sectors.

[00:00:17] Courtney: We showcase their journeys, unpacking pivotal moments, marketing strategies, and key decisions that shaped their success. That’s why today I brought on J. K. Jake is a partner at Pop Shorts, a leading influencer marketing agency. He also holds the of co president at the American Advertising Federation, Austin Chapter.

[00:00:37] Courtney: And recognized in the Forbes 30 under 30 list in Austin, Jake and his team have propelled Pop Shorts to receive more than 50 industry awards and deliver billions of views on social media. I want Jake to help us understand how brands should be looking at influencer marketing and how he scaled this business in a pretty volatile industry.

[00:00:56] Courtney: Jake, it is great to see you and welcome to How They Scaled It.

[00:01:00] Jake: Happy to be here. I have to tell you, you have a great podcast voice. I’m ready for you to tell me some true crime drama that I’ve never heard like off the cuff. So

[00:01:06] Courtney: Thank you so much. That’s very kind. I You, I’ve talked to you a lot about kind of the inception of pop shorts, where it started and you work with a lot of influencers and, um, there’s a lot to be said there, but what are some unique challenges that you faced in the early stages of pop shorts?

[00:01:22] Courtney: Cause you kind of started really at the beginning of influencers. Um, can you tell us about some of those challenges?

[00:01:28] Jake: Yeah. There’s a lot of challenges. First of all, I think you have to understand that we are creating an industry every day. And so now you talk to somebody in media and like, yeah, influencer marketing is probably a part of their approach. You talk to a consumer who’s on social media and like influencers are part of their every day.

[00:01:44] Jake: Like they see it and kids probably don’t know a world without influencers. Like that’s not a world that exists to them. Um, but for us, like influencers weren’t a thing. I mean, Instagram didn’t even have video content, right? So you had to think like this was mostly vine. Um, and so two, a couple of things were happening.

[00:02:00] Jake: One is you have to come to the brands. It wasn’t a sales process, it was an education process. Why? This matters. And so when you got budget, most of it was like incremental. Like, oh, we’ll test 10 grand. And you’re like, thanks, but can’t scale a business off this, um, So part of it was educating large brands about why this matters and potentially doing it a little before it did matter, right? So like influencers didn’t have the same impact as do now. Paid media features weren’t as robust as they are now. The bigger problem though, I think kind of give you a look under the hood was actually financing.

[00:02:30] Courtney: Mm

[00:02:31] Jake: So in many ways, like we act like a bank, right? So if you have a campaign, you come to us, let’s say it’s 500, 000. Um, and we have creator costs that are up front when we assign a creator campaign, we’re paying them that day. Um, we don’t get paid for net 30 net 60 net 90 for anybody watching who doesn’t know what like a net 30 is.

[00:02:51] Jake: That means from the day the campaign ends, the client has 30 days to pay us. And so oftentimes you go to a brand and you’re running their influence marketing campaigns, you have 500, 000 in creator costs. You now need 500, 000 to pay these creators that you’re not getting back for six, days. So for us factoring money and figuring out how to scale a business that had to constantly be more money out than in a short term basis was incredibly difficult.

[00:03:15] Jake: I think we, we figured it out, we factored and, but now we’re losing 2 percent on every deal because we’re factoring all the money. And, and so in the genesis of this all, that was a complication for us.

[00:03:25] Courtney: Yeah, no, that’s something that I wouldn’t even think about because I’m like, okay, it must have been really hard just educating the clients, but also just figuring out how the money works, which is ultimately, I think what most business owners run into is that they can figure out the actual doing of the thing, but it’s always like the money on the back end that like screws everything up.

[00:03:44] Jake: it’s still an issue. You gotta think the bigger the campaigns you run. The more money it costs to pay creators. And sometimes the longer net terms, a big brand is going to want the bigger, the brand they’re like, Oh, actually to work with us in that 90. And you’re like, that’s super unhelpful.

[00:03:56] Courtney: Yeah, yeah, right. But they have all the power to ask for that because they’re, you know, paying you quite a bit, I’m sure.

[00:04:03] Jake: Generally it’s a net 30 basis. And, and, you know, our business has been around for almost 12 years. So obviously we’re, we’re past those hurdles for the most part. But if somebody came to me and wanted a 10 million influencer marketing campaign, I’d have a couple, a couple of things to figure out.

[00:04:13] Courtney: Well, I hope that happens soon. Those are good problems to figure out.

[00:04:17] Courtney: And you’ve, I mean, you’ve worked with like really incredible brands, top tier brands like Disney and Netflix. But when you think about those earlier clients that you said you had to do a lot of education with, how were you able to have them take a chance on something like influencer marketing?

[00:04:32] Courtney: Is there any kind of like specific pitch that you, um, use that was kind of like a turning point for pop shorts? Mm

[00:04:39] Jake: it’s also important to note like our, our first brands we worked with were tier one entertainment clients. Um, we used to, we launched and ran the social channels for NBC’s the voice. We launched the Snapchat channel for LA Kings, like stuff like that was, was really what we were doing at the time. And I think.

[00:04:55] Jake: The nature of educating them on the importance was a lot easier because entertainment companies understand the value of entertainment. They understand the value of content. And so going to them saying, Hey, we need content on these new channels. They’re like, yeah, that makes sense to us. So educating them was a lot easier than it was like a retail company.

[00:05:11] Jake: And so that’s where we got our foothold in entertainment. And to this day, entertainment is our largest vertical movies, TV streaming. So certainly that is kind of the basis of how we started and where we are. But then you think about like the evolution. And communicating that part, maybe, you know, maybe not 2013, maybe more 2016.

[00:05:29] Jake: Um, it’s difficult and I think it’s still difficult because the only thing anyone wanted to say was what’s the ROI. Now we do have metrics and tactics to actually prove out ROI, but at the time we really didn’t, it was uncharted territory. Um, no one needs to convince you the value of an influencer now and you know, content can make a paid performance optimized, but at the time you certainly did.

[00:05:49] Jake: And so as far as how we educated them, it was honestly a repetition practice, you know, telling them over and over and over and every campaign you make a new case study and you send it to them and say, Hey, look, I promise it’s working. And you do that and you do that until they take a chance. And once they try it, I mean, I don’t know many brands that get into influence marketing, get out.

[00:06:07] Courtney: Yeah. No, that’s a really good point. I think also understanding who is the softest customer for you to go after first. So, going like, okay, we’re going to go with entertainment first because we know that there’s going to be less education. They’re going to understand it.

[00:06:21] Courtney: They’re going to see the value and they’re going to probably have slightly larger budgets to start with and then start building case studies off of that. So it’s a lot easier for you to go to talk to these people who are a need a little bit more education. Um, and I also love just repetition. We run into that all the time with clients where our story never changes.

[00:06:38] Courtney: Like, you know, these are the platforms we think you should be on. This is why. obviously it’s a very different place than it was in 2013, like you’d said.

[00:06:46] Courtney: Uh, how have you been adapting your strategies at PopShorts to kind of stay ahead of the curve? And are there any trends that really surprised you? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:06:58] Jake: I talk to folks in the space and I’m like, Oh, how nice it is for somebody , if you’re an accountant, right? And you take a year off and you go travel and you come back, the chances are your job is probably pretty similar as when you left. Maybe there’s a new tax code you need to be up on, but it won’t take too long to figure it out.

[00:07:13] Jake: If I left my job for a year and I came back, Nothing would be the same. Best practices would be the same. The creators who are, you know, trending and hot right now wouldn’t be the same. Um, platform features wouldn’t be the same. You know, the, the type of paid media tactics we use and employ would be different.

[00:07:29] Jake: So as far as, you know, how do you stay on top of an industry that’s always evolving, you have to be there. You have to be present. You’d be doing it every day. That’s part of the problem with. Educating, you know, let’s say colleges, um, teaching about social media. By the time it’s written in a book, it’s not necessarily relevant anymore.

[00:07:46] Jake: So you can teach sort of high level overviews, but as far as best practices. The only way to be a part of it is to be a part of it. I think through the years we’ve seen platforms come and go again. We started on Vine. Vine’s no longer around, but we still are. Um, right now we’re, you know, we’re TikTok strategic agency partner.

[00:08:04] Jake: We teach TikTok alpha features. We get paid media breaks, um, for, for pricing. So TikTok is our probably number one platform right now. But if something were to happen to TikTok, we’d still be around. So remaining platform agnostic is incredibly important as well. And making sure you’re abreast of like, not just the big, you know, the big three or whatever, but also what’s next.

[00:08:24] Courtney: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it’s not, um, not a company you could put on autopilot And we’ve seen this, like all these, you know, big platforms will come up, be huge and then fall and come up and be huge and then fall. And even like places like Facebook and Instagram, which have been around for a long time and are kind of like the industry standard.

[00:08:43] Courtney: Those still like within those platforms, things are constantly changing. So, even if you go on a two week vacation, I’m sure you come back and you’re like, wait, so much has changed.

[00:08:52] Jake: I just came back from a two week vacation. The first one I’ve taken a long time and I think the scariest part about it. I was like, Oh, no, I’m not ready for this.

[00:09:00] Courtney: Are you working things like AI, AR, VR, like any of that stuff into your campaigns?

[00:09:05] Courtney: Like, how has that affected your work?

[00:09:08] Jake: Absolutely. I think let’s break that up because AI and AR VR is completely separate conversations. Um, as far as AR VR features, like that’s been a part of, of our campaign tactics for years now. I mean, you look at like the most effective filters on snap are usually kind of AR filters. In fact, we run for lottery clients.

[00:09:26] Jake: We run a lot of AR filters because that audience is super receptive to them. So we really like air filters, especially on snap. Um, our AR filters are snap reps. So there’s some of the highest performing filters that ever seen across any industry. And again, that’s a psychographic alignment with, you know, a content style.

[00:09:42] Jake: So. That’s not going to be true for everybody. But in this case, yes, I think AR has been around for a little bit on social. It’s going to stay, it’s going to grow. Um, you know, everybody who’s ever used a filter is used at some extent, right? Going back to like the dog face, what it used to make everyone like, Oh my God, I look like I have a dog nose.

[00:09:58] Jake: That was the start, but like, that’s still something that, that reaches audiences and, and drives impact somewhat ironically. Um, so AR yes, huge, big part of our campaigns drives really good efficiencies and, and, and cost per click and other things. Um, You get a lot of UGC from, from AR filters. AI is a separate conversation.

[00:10:18] Courtney: Yeah.

[00:10:18] Jake: AI is really uncharted territory, not just for us, but for anybody. So when we think about AI and what matters, right, how it’s going to affect social from the influencer marketing perspective, I think what people are really talking about right now is AI creators, a robot that speaks to audiences that’s going to exist.

[00:10:35] Jake: Is it going to be the most successful form of content? Absolutely not. Gen Z’s already been very outspoken about the distrust they have with AI bots and, and, you know, creators and so on and so forth. So easy, cheap content. Yes. Top performing going to take off, you know, Mr. Beast off YouTube. Definitely not in my opinion.

[00:10:53] Jake: Um, maybe 30 years from now, this will not age well, but we’ll see. Um, I think where AI comes into the media mix that people aren’t really thinking about yet. It’s things like audience segmentation. How are we talking about audiences and talking to audiences and how can AI develop that? So for example, there’s the classic example of, you know, the Prince of England and Ozzy Osbourne, and they’re the same, they’re white males at the same age, but then you break them down.

[00:11:17] Jake: They couldn’t be more different. And so let’s take a random brand Weber grills, for example. Yeah, they’re reaching dads, but they’re reaching Fisher dads. They’re reaching barbecue dads, they’re reaching dads with, uh, only girls, you know, girl dads, they’re reaching, there’s so many different ways to talk to different types of dads.

[00:11:33] Jake: What AI can help us do is identify these different segments, create audiences for our paid targeting tactics, come up with individual creative prompts for unique pieces of creative to reach each audience, and then even content optimization, right? So maybe you do just film, you know, One long form content.

[00:11:51] Jake: Maybe it’s just the AI edits it in certain ways and make specific cuts that are more targeted to certain segments. So I think AI through audience segmenting paid targeting approach and creative ideation, stuff like that is it’s now, uh, the next year or two, we’re going to see a lot of it. And that’s the part of AI and marketing.

[00:12:08] Jake: That’s probably not being spoken about enough,

[00:12:10] Courtney: Yeah, no, that’s that’s such a good point. It really is kind of like AI is so powerful on the back end. It’s just not show ready. Like when you like we use AI a lot in our business and we we’ve played a lot with like the creative side of it and it takes a long time for us to get there. to be something that can be, you know, client facing or customer facing, but we use it a lot on research.

[00:12:32] Courtney: So we’ll pull together a ton of data and feed it into AI, and it’ll split out, like, here are your avatars, and here are your angles, and all of that has to be checked, you know, by a human. But I think that you’re right in that AI can be so powerful, it’s just not ready for the general public to be, like, consuming in a powerful way, at least.

[00:12:52] Courtney: So,

[00:12:53] Jake: but it moves so fast a year from now, I don’t think that’s going to be our tune. And three years from now, You know, it really won’t Yeah, which is good. I mean, like that, hopefully that saves everyone money. Um, but yeah, I mean, I hope that in a year we’ll have to take this podcast down because it’s not relevant anymore.

[00:13:11] Jake: Maybe. And I’ll tell you what people talk about a lot, like, Oh, as you take my jobs or AI is going to devalue me in the workplace and things like that. Um, the biggest combatant to that is relationships. What I can never do is take away human relationships, that one to one connection and value that you drive, working with people and creating networking, these types of things.

[00:13:29] Jake: So if you’re worried that AI is potentially going to knock off, Your value in the workplace. You need to drive more value with the other humans around you.

[00:13:37] Courtney: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, like you said, it’s all about human connection. It’s like the nuance of human interaction and behavior. That’s really hard for AI to grasp. And that’s something that can’t be replaced, um, in my opinion, but I know that within our business, at least we think about AI really as a tool, not a replacement by any means.

[00:13:57] Courtney: And it actually gives us more opportunities to do more with people and build more relationships, which I think is overall a positive thing. We will see. Um, when we are talking about kind of these strategies within influencer campaigns, can you talk a little bit about micro and macro influencers? I know you’ve talked a lot about how you blend the two together, um, to make sure that you’re getting like the right reach, but have you ever had a situation where a micro influencer actually outperformed a macro influencer in some kind of unexpected way?

[00:14:32] Jake: So you have to break down like what’s valuable about a macro influencer versus a micro influencer. Can a micro influencer outperform a macro influencer? The short answer is yes, but not really. So can a micro influencer outperform a macro influencer in terms of paid media performance?

[00:14:48] Jake: Yes, it’s completely possible that just because you have 10 million followers doesn’t mean you made a good piece of content. And now you put that piece of content through, you know, the meta ad formats and it’s not performing. You take a UGC piece of content, so not even micro, UGC means no followers, right?

[00:15:03] Jake: It’s just a piece of content that could technically outperform a macro influencer’s piece of content if it’s a bad piece of content versus a good piece of content. At the day, good content is good content. 

[00:15:11] Jake: Now, can a micro influencer outperform a macro influencer in terms of, the key word here is influence.

[00:15:18] Jake: And the answer is no, not really. We can’t fully quantify somebody’s influence. We can try. We can take metrics and say, hey, this person’s a celebrity, they’ve been in this show, this is the general user sentiment, you know, recent follower growth and engagement. We can do these things to try and identify someone’s influence, but really someone’s influence is within that community.

[00:15:35] Jake: And it’s up for that community to decide whether, you know, they’re really taking action against what someone’s saying. Thank you. So, If you have someone, 10, 000 followers spread out kind of general audience. And they’re promoting, let’s say a shampoo, good piece of content performs well on paid. That’s great.

[00:15:47] Jake: You know, maybe you did some good click through rates. If you have someone that’s a mega influencer, you know, Kylie Jenner’s promoting a shampoo. People are inherently going to buy that just because she used it regardless of the content was good or not. So yes, a micro influencer cannot perform a macro influencer in terms of paid media efficiencies, how good the content is, et cetera, but you can never replace influence and influencer marketing.

[00:16:09] Courtney: Right. Right. And I suppose also with micro influencers, the goal is to get as like a lot more, you just get more saturation of the market rather than spending your entire budget on one macro influencers. Is there any other ways you kind of like look at micro versus macro when you’re kind of explaining to your clients?

[00:16:27] Jake: We, well, generally speaking, almost every client we’re going to recommend Transcribed I guess it’s not necessarily true, but for a lot of clients, we do recommend a hybrid approach, meaning how can we get some of that. Major tier one influence to represent your product campaign. And how can we then get micro influencers just to create more pieces of content for paid media optimization?

[00:16:45] Jake: So as far as how I approach, if you want like a one size fits all, I’m going to say do a little, all of it gets a macro mid tier micro. And then if you really just want to, you know, crush out more content for paid, then you can even add UGC on top of it, Um, I do think to some extent macro influencers can perform well in a vacuum.

[00:17:05] Jake: You can have a really good macro influencer who just does their post. Like that’s great. Micro influencers almost never perform well in a vacuum. You have to have volume of creators and volume of paid media. And so if you’re not willing to put in kind of the additional tactics and micro influencer plays, not the best play.

[00:17:20] Jake: Um, but also a macro influencer could be a waste of money if you’re not the right business to then create a funnel off of that. And, and, and. Maximize, you know, kind of the value.

[00:17:29] Courtney: Right, right. No, that, that totally makes sense. And so you kind of have mentioned that you have this influencer, like the influencers post or you get this content and then there’s a lot of paid elements. So would you say most of your clients are one, they’re using the influencers to get the content, get their word out there, but then they take that content and then they use it on paid media.

[00:17:52] Courtney: So either on meta or, um, TikTok or any of these other paid platforms?

[00:17:58] Jake: Yeah. I would say the relationship between organic and paid as it relates to influencer content has developed a lot in the last few years. Um, I recommend no less than 10 percent of your budget going to paid media on every single campaign, no matter what your KPIs are. Uh, I think that there’s a sweet spot around 30 percent split.

[00:18:15] Jake: So 70 percent influencer costs 30 to paid media to kind of get the most piece of content, most of your influencers, and then maximize efficiencies are paid. So that’s certainly, um, A dynamic evolving relationship. I think the hottest word right now in influencer marketing, in my opinion, is omni channel.

[00:18:32] Jake: So what I mean by that is how can influencer content, everyone talks omni channel, very fun buzzword that people say on stage and no one really knows how to make it actionable just because you said it doesn’t mean that. The secrets of the software there. Right. But I think influencer marketing, what matters right now is how is we’re, we’re an engine for very high level content, brand ambassadorship, high performing assets, how can that support things off social?

[00:18:56] Jake: How can these posts not live and die on Tik TOK? And so now we’re looking at partners. I had conversations last week, advertising week, New York partners who do programmatic almost exclusively are like, how can we get influencer content, support our programmatic buys and so on and so forth. So I do think influencer is evolving.

[00:19:13] Jake: In the media mix and the word paid media as it relates to influence their content is also evolving alongside of it.

[00:19:19] Courtney: Yeah, we, so from our experience, um, the organic content. So from influencers, UGC, that almost always is the best performing content on these different platforms. And so whenever we work with a client, we’re always like, oh, Before we start with them, we always look at, like, what kind of organic content you have access to that you can use in paid ads, because that’s another really important thing for listeners, is that 

[00:19:43] Jake: tok tok if you work with an you need to have certain usage rights 

[00:19:47] Courtney: in order to use them in ads, and 

[00:19:48] Jake: you should always get those rights, like, there’s no reason not to, 

[00:19:52] Courtney: if you’re having people make content for you, um, and that tends to be the best performing, um, Ads, and especially if you can get a lot of different like micro influencers to post and then you can mash up a nice video together, those types of ads tend to do the best at this moment, at the moment of recording here.

[00:20:09] Jake: Right. And I think what’s important to anything about like content licensing, you are correct in short to say you want licensing about content, the answer is yes, but it’s a little more dynamic than that. You also don’t want to pay for licensing. You’re not going to use. So sometimes a brand says, I want to own this content forever to be able to do whatever I want with it.

[00:20:28] Jake: The premium you pay for that is likely not going to be, you know, realized through your actual usage. You’re probably going to use it for 30, 60 days and then move on to new assets. Um, because you’re just going to get ad fatigue, right? So only license it for actually what you want. It’s cheaper to go back to an influencer and say, hey, I need 30 more days than it is to potentially negotiate for some sort of indefinite rights just all the way through.

[00:20:51] Courtney: Yeah, that’s a really good point because, like you said, this stuff is changing constantly, like this landscape is always changing and especially if they’re, the content they’re making is like any kind of trend based video, then it’s just not going to be fresh anymore in 60 or 90 days. So, um, Starting with a shorter time period is a really good tip there.

[00:21:14] Courtney: Um, you also said omni channel as far as like paid, organic, all of that, but it also seems like cross platform storytelling is really important. So you’ve mentioned Snap, TikTok, uh, Meta, like all these different platforms. How are you figuring out what the right media mix for each of your clients is, um, on a regular basis?

[00:21:35] Jake: It’s every client’s gonna be different. Um, no matter what, uh, I think one of the more efficient things you can do is a cross post. And so for those who aren’t familiar with the term cross post, what this means is maybe you have a creator that made a vertical video for TikTok and they take that video and they also post it to the reels, the same video.

[00:21:53] Jake: That’s a really good way to increase your reach cross channel. Uh, without paying for new content, not to say it’s the same price as one TikTok, they’re going to have some sort of increased fee, but it’s a lot less than, Hey, I need a completely new original for each platform. So thinking about how can you maximize your content by creating something that makes sense across multiple channels.

[00:22:12] Jake: Now, not everything does make sense across multiple channels, right? A YouTube video living on, on Instagram is, is, is just not the same thing. So, uh, you have to kind of think about who your target audience is first always, and then think about that’s cause that’s where they live and then think about your objectives.

[00:22:26] Jake: And that’s going to decide what kind of content you can make. I think we’re seeing a world in which everybody’s kind of playing vertical video right now. And so cross posting vertical video becomes very easy. In fact, if you’re watching this video now, you might be seeing it on multiple channels for both of us who knows, um, that’s the nature of the beast.

[00:22:42] Jake: again, it’s audience based and then it’s objective based. And then you work with experts who understand the best time in place to get that done.

[00:22:49] Courtney: Yeah, yeah, and do you, um, measure your results differently based on what platform they’re on? Yeah. 

[00:22:59] Jake: Uh, so for us, when you, when you do a campaign with pop shorts, and I don’t necessarily usually talk about our business too much on podcasts, but it’s relevant to the question. We do a campaign with pop shorts. If you’re doing a top of funnel metric, uh, CPM CPV, you know, awareness metrics, we’re able to guarantee those metrics, um, on every campaign.

[00:23:16] Jake: So we say, Hey, we’re going to deliver you 10 million views. And we guarantee that amount. If you work with us for more bottom of funnel metrics, you’re like, Hey, we went acquisitions, clicks, installs. Um, it’s really hard for us to guarantee those metrics because some of that stuff’s out of our control.

[00:23:30] Jake: What if your product sucks? You know, it’s like, it’s really hard for me to then put my money forward. Uh, when I don’t have control over your product or service. So, uh, what we do in those cases is we optimize and we do transparent reporting. We say, Hey, this is what’s working. This was not, this is how we can optimize your content to get as low as possible.

[00:23:46] Jake: Generally speaking, influencer content when compared to branded content is about a 60 percent performance increase. So if you’re thinking about, does it make sense to work with influencer? It depends on your ad spend. If you’re spending enough in paid media, um, Then 60 percent increase in efficiency is going to go a long ways.

[00:24:04] Jake: If you’re only spending a couple of grand in paid media, maybe paying for the influencer premium might not make sense. But I do think that that, you know, 25 K plus paid media spend influencer content ends up paying for itself oftentimes.

[00:24:15] Courtney: no, that’s, that’s really interesting. And I love having kind of like numbers, like levels at which you say, okay, it is worth it. It’s not worth it. So I think sometimes brands struggle with it, especially smaller brands who are just trying to figure out what to do with a very limited marketing budget. And in those cases, maybe starting with paid, um, like a small page.

[00:24:34] Courtney: Effort on meta would be a better use of their funds than going with influencer. And then once they build up to the right level, then maybe they’re ready for influencer marketing or you know, vice versa. So, um, those are really helpful tips.

[00:24:47] Jake: Totally. And I think that’s where right left agency does a great job too, is like, you know, helping these really 10 grand a month, 15 grand a month, whatever. Like, you know, I can’t service those clients. And oftentimes I would say, Hey, you should talk to Courtney because She’s kind of a genius to helping you maximize your funds at this level.

[00:25:03] Courtney: Thank you. You kind of alluded to this earlier, kind of real influencer or real influence versus follower account. Um. Can you talk about how you identify real influence early on in a campaign? Yeah,

[00:25:20] Jake: because there’s a lot of variables, not because I don’t know the answer. Um, so the answer is really long winded and all over the place. Right. Um, one of the things that determines value. So let’s look at it this way. How do we determine the cost of a creator?

[00:25:32] Jake: The value we’re willing to pay for a creator. Um, part of it is influence or, or celebrity. Let’s call it celebrity. Uh, if somebody is on TV, we understand that person’s going to drive a premium. Some clients want to pay that premium a lot. Don’t that’s fine. Um, one of the things that’s going to drive premium for influencer costs as well is brand safety.

[00:25:50] Jake: So a lot of creators don’t realize this, but if you’re incredibly brand safe, you create family based content, no curse words, not only out of your mouth, But in the music you use, the music you choose decides a lot. People don’t realize we eliminate a lot of creators from consideration because they’ve had explicit music in their content, right?

[00:26:05] Jake: So now you’re driving a premium because you can work with the Disney’s of the world or whomever it might be, uh, blue chip clients, chase, whatever. Um, You start to use explicit music. You start to say explicit things. Maybe you have alcohol in your content. Maybe you’re, you know, wearing less clothes than you might otherwise in your content.

[00:26:23] Jake: These things are all going to drive down your costs of content because they limit the amount of brands that’d be interested in working with you. Um, so there’s, there’s less demand, frankly. Um, there’s other things too, which is like, you know, I know this is silly, but during Hispanic heritage month, Hispanic creators can charge more because more brands are interested.

[00:26:39] Jake: Now, I actually just recently went out and said this. Um, during a pitch, which is, you know, 40 percent of the U S population is a minority. That’s not very minor, right? So the idea that we only talk to LGBTQ plus during pride or only talk to Hispanic heritage, um, creators during Hispanic heritage month, this is silly.

[00:26:58] Jake: These people need to be a part of every campaign. These populations are represented in our day to day life, and they have to represent in your campaigns too. So another thing you think about is like when you’re approaching a campaign is how are we maintaining diversity? In a way that reflects true audience makeup.

[00:27:11] Jake: If your audience is all over the place, then the creators you use should be to

[00:27:16] Courtney: no, that’s a that’s an excellent point. I And I also think that the For influencers out there to be really aware of what you’re putting out there and how like even past videos that you’ve made That maybe you’ve evolved since then like that could still affect, you know your price point now Um, so being really thoughtful about that.

[00:27:34] Courtney: I think that’s true for brands too. It’s just being really thoughtful about What are you putting out there as, you know, your brand personality?

[00:27:40] Jake: There’s been so many times where I’m like, Oh, I wish I could just contact this person, have them delete this one video that’s holding them back. But obviously that’s, you know, not in the best interest of the brand. And my job is to represent the brands, not the creators. Uh, but there’s many times. So yeah, if you’re like, Oh, I should go back and delete some stuff.

[00:27:53] Jake: Go back and do 

[00:27:54] Jake: it. Erase it.

[00:27:55] Courtney: Nothing’s stopping you. Like, don’t wait till it’s too late. Just because everyone’s dumb when they were younger. Like everyone’s getting smarter every video they make.

[00:28:03] Jake: And what we’re going to find is like a lot of these, especially like, you know, maybe someone who’s in middle school, high school now, that’s going to be a creator later in life. Um, they’re living online. It’s something I didn’t have to deal with as much. I mean, I’m not saying I grew up in a, you know, I didn’t even have a cell phone.

[00:28:16] Jake: Of course I had stuff, but, not everything I did was immediately posted to the internet. And so we used to be able to get away with a lot more dumb stuff. Whereas kids now are creating this digital footprint, this digital archive of everything dumb they’ve ever done. And it’s just, you know, be thoughtful of these things.

[00:28:31] Jake: If, if you’re maybe not now, Oh, I don’t care right now. You might in 

[00:28:34] Jake: five years and that digital footprint might follow you.

[00:28:37] Courtney: Yeah, and I mean it’s it’s either society is going to get a lot more lenient about what we tolerate Or everyone’s going to be deleting half of everything they posted

[00:28:45] Jake: My guess is the latter, but who knows?

[00:28:46] Courtney: Yeah Um, well getting kind of into pop shorts, I know that you don’t talk about pop shorts usually but i’m I think that what you guys have is so impressive um, and the fact that you got in on influencer marketing when it was such a young industry is You Is again, very impressive.

[00:29:02] Courtney: So I do want to hear a little bit about, um, kind of your story. I know that you worked in PR at a very young age. Did you get any mentorship or leadership advice that has really stayed with you throughout your journey?

[00:29:13] Jake: Yeah, my story is a funny one. So I grew up in a town where it’s kind of, everyone was perfect. We had national championship cheerleaders, state championship football, state championship basketball, the jazz band was national champions. Even the artists had their pictures hung in the white house for Obama.

[00:29:28] Jake: Right. So like everybody who was doing anything was just incredible. And I didn’t have any of those skills. So I, I had a very young age. I got into, you know, maybe freshman year. I got into competitive public speaking, which wasn’t the sexiest thing I could probably do, but it was kind of the beginning of my career in a lot of ways.

[00:29:45] Jake: So I joined the communication industry at about 14 years old. Uh, from that perspective, at about 16, I took my first internship. My mom was like, you’re not doing anything. You come home from school and that’s it. Cause I wasn’t playing music. I wasn’t playing sports. Um, so she had me take an internship and there was a gentleman, Stephen Nichols, who, um, was my first career mentor.

[00:30:07] Jake: Uh, and he, it was, it was great. It was a great experience to kind of see what it means to treat your life more seriously, right? High school is not very serious. You’re carefree. And I was carefree to an extent, but I also now work for the superintendent. And so I had to be thoughtful about how I portrayed myself on campus and to the staff and to my teachers who are now in a roundabout way, my colleagues, because I run, Part of the PR department for the superintendent, uh, of the district.

[00:30:34] Jake: And so by the time I graduated college at 20 years old, I had three college degrees, four internships. And no job offers.

[00:30:42] Jake: so I, I could not have tried harder to, you know, I’ve been in the business, so to say, since I was, you know, 14 years old doing communication strategy and speeches and all this stuff.

[00:30:51] Jake: And, uh, nobody wanted to bring me in. That was the market then. That’s probably the market now. Uh, that’s my guess is it’s always tough coming out of college. So I just said, well, if you guys aren’t going to give me a job, you’re gonna have to compete with me. And that’s when things, you know, I kind of tried to start my own consultancy.

[00:31:07] Jake: I got two clients, very small. Um, but one of them turned into one of them was pop shorts and that turned into where I’m at now, uh, within, within the agency. So, uh, yeah, I think my, my story is my own and everyone’s is going to be, I’ve been doing this dang thing for as long as I can remember. And even in childhood, quite literally, um, and even still, I didn’t get the opportunities that I thought would be awarded to me.

[00:31:32] Jake: Um, and so I had to go out and make them 

[00:31:34] Jake: and that’s kind of where I am now. 

[00:31:35] Courtney: I it’s, it’s very interesting because I, I feel like a lot of times what people complain about in the job market is that you need all this experience for an entry level job. And you can’t get the entry level job because you don’t have the experience, but you had the experience and you had all these college degrees and you still couldn’t get the job.

[00:31:50] Courtney: So I, I’ve, and this is true for right, left to do where it’s like, Well, I don’t love the opportunities that are out there right now. So let’s just create our own and like do our own thing. And, um, that doesn’t work for everybody, but, um, I’m certainly glad that it worked out for you. And it’s so interesting that pop shorts was one of your first clients and then you, now you’re a partner and you’ve really built it to be something amazing.

[00:32:12] Jake: A lot of entrepreneurs are born out of necessity. I think, you know, if you had the big corporate job offered you right away, you might not have been as hungry to go out and, and, and make your plate.

[00:32:21] Courtney: yeah. Yeah. I also think there’s like an attitude around like wanting to create your own thing and like wanting to. Be the boss and not have to answer to anybody else, um, or at least partner with people that you kind of have the same exact like mindset of, um, with the experience that you’ve had, how do you apply this in managing and like growing pop shorts and like the team, like how has that served you?

[00:32:46] Courtney: Yes.

[00:32:50] Jake: that does everything right. I think growing has been really hard for us. I think hiring specifically Is something where like we might not have always done the best job. Not that like we’ve hired bad people, but like, gosh, we haven’t really figured it out still, um, how a project based business, which is what we are can hire effectively without any guaranteed revenue to come next quarter, every campaign we fight for every RFP, we have to go fight again.

[00:33:14] Jake: And even clients we’ve had since 2013, we still have clients, or 2014, I guess. We still have clients from 2014 that are active with us. Um, but every RFP is still an opportunity to lose that business. So, um, hiring out in a way that’s smart, efficient, um, you know, God forbid we overhire and then we don’t have the business next where we thought we would, the business at a loss now.

[00:33:35] Jake: So this is the challenge. And to be honest, Courtney, I’m not sure I have the perfect answer. There’s probably people that are watching this right now that are like, Oh, I need to reach out to him. I can tell him fine. Reach out. Let me know. Uh, give me, give me a holler. But I think scaling a business that’s project based has its unique challenges.

[00:33:51] Jake: Um, I do think scaling revenue is simple. Make more money, get more deals, right? Scaling the infrastructure operations, administration, all these things to then support a business that has ups and downs, um, can be quite difficult.

[00:34:04] Courtney: Yeah, I, the people is always the hardest part. Um, it’s the thing that’s going to make your business sore, but it’s also going to be the thing that like holds you back and being able to like plan for labor is so hard with, like you said, this project based business. Um, with the, how big is your team right now?

[00:34:22] Jake: We’re under 20.

[00:34:23] Courtney: Okay. Wow. So that, I mean, that’s like a really nice, tight team. Um, and so it’s nice ’cause you probably still have like, connection to everybody and you’re still leading them. How has your leadership style like changed over the years? ’cause it’s, you know, you’ve been in business for over 10 years now.

[00:34:39] Jake: Yeah. Um, well, there’s, there’s a couple of things to that note about being a tight team. Yeah. It’s actually one of what I think is a core differentiator for us, which is when you’re talking to pop shorts on a thread, we have an active campaign with you, you know, decision makers on every single email.

[00:34:52] Courtney: Yeah.

[00:34:53] Jake: doesn’t need to get worked up the chain to figure it out. Like we can just be actionable that moment because somebody of decision making level value within the organization is immediately present in the conversation. So that’s part one. I think as far as how I’ve grown as a leader and a manager specifically, uh, the number one thing that’s helped me grow.

[00:35:13] Jake: It’s actually my work with college students. So I’ve run an internship program since 2016 with Cal State Fullerton. Uh, we’ve now taken on students from a number of universities, even here in Texas where I’m based now. Um, but the majority of, I think about 80 students have come to the program. Students and it’s such a joy because when they come into the program, I usually work with exclusively graduating seniors in their last semester.

[00:35:39] Jake: So this is like your last step before you go and get a job. And what I always tell them is C’s get degrees. We’ve all heard that term C’s in the workplace get you fired immediately. If you’re producing C level work for a month, like I can’t have you around anymore. It’s, it’s not. A plus in the workplace is the new C.

[00:35:57] Jake: C is average. A plus is average. You produce something with no mistakes. Fantastic. That’s what you’re getting paid to do. Right? And so now the only way you get the pat on the back, you get the A plus level reward is by going above and beyond thinking beyond what’s required of you to create more. So working with these students to build the best versions themselves and helping them get from a place where they’re comfortable making C work to where C work actually makes them uncomfortable to deliver and produce.

[00:36:21] Jake: Um, that’s taught me a wealth of not only just like leadership in the business, but like also like personally, you know, helping, helping these students grow has been massive for me. So during that time, I’ve learned about workflows, um, how to make things painfully simple. Um, it is important to start.

[00:36:40] Jake: Obviously things get complex as you become a subject matter expert, but now everybody starts out as subject matter expert and within a niche business like ours, almost nobody’s a subject matter expert truly in the operation side. So, um, you know, I think, um, it’s okay to make mistakes so long as you’re willing to do the work to fix them.

[00:36:57] Jake: Things like this, like they, they add up and a lot of it comes from working with students who aren’t quite ready to be in the workplace and getting the place where it is, and then you can translate that into working with anybody. Really.

[00:37:06] Courtney: Yeah, that must be so valuable for those students, like having a real world like business leader telling you why your work isn’t where it needs to be or kind of guiding you in that way. I think it’s probably invaluable for them, but it might also be helpful for you just to see like what that generation is, how they behave, what they’re doing, like what they’re, where they’re looking at things like how they communicate.

[00:37:31] Courtney: I feel like sometimes. The older I get, the more disconnected I am from the youth. And, um, having that insight is probably helpful too, because I mean, these are the next generation of consumers, you know?

[00:37:43] Jake: And there’s some absolute all stars that have come through the program, you know, folks that are certainly their careers going to eclipse mine. I mean, Uh, there’s a gal who’s doing pr for james cameron. There’s I have two separate Interns that are both like leads on different automotive accounts for media buying in, in, in LA.

[00:37:58] Jake: Um, you know, these are, these are future CMOs and head of comms. And I’m really proud of a lot of the folks that have come through. And it’s one of those things where I’ve never fired anybody because it’s not that type of program. Um, you know, everybody makes it through, um, one way or another. And I really love watching their careers kind of blossom afterwards.

[00:38:15] Courtney: Yeah, no, that’s one thing I really appreciate about you is that you’re, you’re deeply involved in your community. So you are in all these different organizations and I feel like that helps a lot with just like your networking and developing relationships. But I think it gives you a really unique perspective on what people are interested in, what they need, um, which you don’t get from everybody.

[00:38:36] Courtney: So, um, yeah, I see that value. when you’re looking at influencer marketing for the next three to five years and pop shorts in general, where are you seeing opportunities? Like, what do you see the agency doing over the next couple years?

[00:38:52] Jake: Yeah, I think content will always be first for us. Understanding what’s performing really well on social has to be the forefront of what our business is based on. Um, I think you asked me a five year plan. I am one of those people who is so bullish on. AI that I couldn’t possibly begin to tell you what five years looks like from now.

[00:39:11] Jake: I can tell you we’ll be social first. We’ll always be, whether it be personally interacting or the messaging we create, always building communities on behalf of ourselves and brands. I can tell you we will be understanding what works and what doesn’t and passing those information along. But as far as what platform it’ll be, even like I couldn’t guess, you know, there’s a chance that, and I hope this is not true, but there’s a chance TikTok’s not around.

[00:39:31] Courtney: Right. 

[00:39:32] Jake: Um, that’s our number one platform right now. You know, we’ve been doing tick tock campaigns since it was musically quite literally. Um, so, you know, it’s fun to stay agile. It keeps me young, keeps me stressed out, keeps me going gray, but it’s, uh, it’s also fun. And as far as where we’ll be five years from now, I really couldn’t guess, but I know that the foundation of what we offer will be the same.

[00:39:53] Courtney: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, like, you know, you’ll be around. That’s, that’s like what matters. I think, um, when, especially in the digital marketing world, whenever someone says they have a five year plan, I’m like, I mean, that’s like a nice, I guess it’s nice to hear, but I’m not sure that that’s actually realistic.

[00:40:10] Courtney: Um, And I think it’s just kind of like one year at a time for sure. Um, but I also think that being like, I don’t know what we’re going to be doing in five years, but I know that we’re going to be bigger and better and we’re still going to be around, um, that, that totally like aligns with the way that I think about our business, at least. Um, amazing. Well, to kind of wrap up here, if. You could give one piece of advice to yourself when you were just starting with pop shorts or just starting your little PR agency. What would it be?

[00:40:43] Jake: To be honest, you know, one of the things that, uh, one of my business partners, Adam, their CEO, he said a couple of years ago, and it stuck with me is it’s just a social post. Yeah, it’s our career. It feels so important. So much bigger. And it could be your job. It could be your school. It could be whatever.

[00:40:57] Jake: But at the day, like, it’s It’s just a social post. Um, and so, you know, don’t take it too seriously. I think is, is what I’d tell myself is there’s been many times where I get so stressed out about the health of the business and, you know, I’m in charge of all of our revenue. So if we’re not performing where we need to and, and, you know, so on and so forth, I feel that pressure directly.

[00:41:16] Jake: Um, and I think reminding myself sometimes that it’s just a social post. And then there’s, there’s bigger things in life.

[00:41:22] Courtney: no, I love that and that is such good advice for my younger self too. It’s that I, I tend to get so focused on how this one decision that is being made will affect everything. And while yes, some decisions do affect a lot of things, it really doesn’t. It’s, it’s more about like the everything that’s going on, not just this one thing.

[00:41:44] Courtney: If one thing is going to ruin your business, then your business isn’t built very well. 

[00:41:48] Courtney: Like 

[00:41:48] Courtney: one social post should not be determining whether, you know, your business survives or not. Um, and I think especially business owners and founders, they get so caught up in the details, which is why they’re so good at their job because they’re paying attention to things.

[00:42:03] Courtney: But it’s so important to zoom out and breathe and realize that even if you make a mistake, you’re smart enough to fix it. Like, you’re smart enough to figure out how to get out of any situation you put yourself in.

[00:42:15] Jake: hug your family. Like even if your business completely imploded, like you’re like, there’s still other things that it’s just a social post,

[00:42:21] Jake: I tell myself all the time, it’s just a social post.

[00:42:24] Courtney: It’s just a social post. I love that. Amazing. Um, so where can people find you online?

[00:42:30] Jake: Um, I’m all over, uh, I think LinkedIn is probably number one platform for all things business related, but I’m on Instagram. I just launched a tech talk on YouTube. Um, I’ll be creating a lot more content, um, educating about these types of conversations, as well as maybe some more nuanced conversations within the world of media.

[00:42:46] Jake: Um, and of course, all things American Advertising Federation. So if you’re ever in the Austin area, give me a shout. I host about one event a month. Uh, within the community, uh, as well as some tent poles south by southwest, of course, um, and some others. So that’s where I’m at.

[00:42:59] Courtney: Amazing. Yeah. Go ahead and check out JK. He’s got some incredible insights and honestly just chatting with him. Um, if you ever get the opportunity, it’s going to be really valuable for your business. So, um, check them out and also visit popshorts. com to see the business, um, and everything that they’ve done.

[00:43:15] Courtney: Um, thank you so much for being on the show, Jake. I really appreciate it.

[00:43:18] Jake: Thanks for the invite. I had a great time.

[00:43:19] Courtney: Amazing. And thank you to everyone at home or on the go who is listening. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, please make sure to subscribe, share with a friend, leave us a review. And if there’s anything that you want to hear on the upcoming episode, just shoot us a note.

[00:43:32] Courtney: For more insights, you can follow us on LinkedIn, right left agency. And we will be back with more stories of success, innovation, and marketing strategies to help you grow. Thank you so much.