Created Economy 11: Heather Ramirez / Youtube Coach / Creator

Deep Dive
A conversation with Heather Ramirez, Youtube creator and coach.  We take a look at creator economics and her definition of the Passion Economy.

Hosts

• Gregarious Narain (@gregarious)
• Ken Yeung (@thekenyeung)

Guest

• Heather Ramirez (@hetjustcreate)

Transcript

Gregarious Narain  2:00
That's enough of that. Let's get some folks in here real quick.

Heather Ramirez  2:07
Hi.

Gregarious Narain  2:08
Oh, that's finally worked. All right. All right. So welcome back everybody to The Created Economy. It's our weekly interview series where we interview voices and players from the crater economy at large, discussing key topics impacting the growth of the creator economy and all the people who are involved in it as well. We do go live on Wednesdays at 2pm pacific time and you can find out more over a created.show, it's the official show page, you can find all our future episodes, programming, etc. By the way we do stream on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, LinkedIn, hold on I got to check, Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces. So we're live in all those places so choose your poison and join us wherever you may like. We also do post the show notes, longer form content over at CreatedEconomy.com is the official...what? Official site for the show. So welcome back. And so let's get right into it. We've got a lot going on...this...I've been waiting for this conversation for far too long. Like, Heather and I have become like pen pals at this point, because I just sent her crap like, "Hey, have you read this yet? Have you read this yet?"

Heather Ramirez  3:17
Yeah, no, I'm so excited for this.

Gregarious Narain  3:21
So this week, we're here with our friend Heather Ramirez, which, interestingly enough, I found and met originally in the Discord, the Means of Creation Discord. The really funny thing, though, is that I'm a huge fan of her husband's content, actually. And so I like just randomly one day like, I don't know if you've asked if you ask Tom, but I actually sent him an email just to say thanks again.

Heather Ramirez  3:48
I did.

Gregarious Narain  3:48
Okay.

Heather Ramirez  3:49
He's watching you right now.

Gregarious Narain  3:52
Like, I would just like fanboying anyway, because I just love the stuff he's putting out. I just wanted to say, "Hey, I want to say hi, and thank you for all your stuff. Even your funny... not so funny dad puns."

Heather Ramirez  4:01
Yeah, right?

Gregarious Narain  4:04
So I was like, all right, and just randomly we started chatting. And I was like, wait a minute, that and then I realized made that connection. And I was like, Oh, well, this would be great. Turns out though, that the reason Heather and I connected was because she left a comment about sort of like creator monetization and creator economics. And some of these other things that were going on there is that we share a passion for sort of like this universe. And so we wanted to get a chance to chat. I know you were you're working on this with your clients. And so we wanted to have a you know, to deep dive because you are a YouTube coach. And here, what I want to do is, let's give you a chance first to just introduce yourself and then we got some questions.

Heather Ramirez  4:42
Sure. So my name is Heather Ramirez, I actually have two YouTube channels. So I've been creating on YouTube since 2016. And basically found myself in a position where people were asking me how they can use YouTube to share their own story. So I just, it just kind of happened that I become a YouTube coach and I'm just super passionate about helping people share their stories and build their brands on YouTube. And now that's what I do. So yeah.

Gregarious Narain  5:08
I just laughing at a Tom...

Ken Yeung  5:10
We have this great comment here from...

Heather Ramirez  5:15
Yeah, there's a lot to unpack. But backstory if you don't know who I am or Tom Buck, we actually met on YouTube. So yeah, he he found on my videos. So I'm, I'm a huge fan of YouTube, if that is not evident, and I...

Gregarious Narain  5:32
So you're saying I was just like two years late, I could have been married to him?

Heather Ramirez  5:37
The algorithm like totally works, I have so much like admiration for this platform.

Ken Yeung  5:44
Be very careful. I'm worried that, you know, Tom is gonna just bust through that door and just hijack the entire conversation. Like, oh, hey, Greg, how's it going? We'll get Tom on another show. And you guys can talk about it.

Gregarious Narain  6:00
We have to get Tom, yeah, that will be amazing. That'd be a pleasure in general.

Gregarious Narain  6:07
So Heather, you had mentioned... let's, let's we have some questions, or Ken and I have a lot of questions actually...

Heather Ramirez  6:13
Yeah.

Gregarious Narain  6:15
We put all the hard...so the way we do this, we start easy. And then we get to really hard ones. Let's do it.

Ken Yeung  6:21
Without any commercial breaks, or, or any hijinks. So you know, this is not an NBC TV game show.

Heather Ramirez  6:26
I will say I will preface this conversation by saying, I'm so excited to talk to you guys. Because I feel like you two, are the first people that I've been able, that I'm actually talking to that understand creator economy, passion economy, stuff like that. Usually, I'm the one that's like, Okay, guys, here's like different ways that you can monetize on YouTube. But you guys, you've been in this space longer than I have. I'm just discovering startups, and like tech, like, all of this stuff, so I'm just I'm really excited to get into it.

Gregarious Narain  6:55
I was sure you were gonna say that the reason you want to be on the show is because you were huge fans of the Muppets and you wanted to be with the two old guys.

Ken Yeung  7:05
Wait, which Muppet am I? Which of the old guys am I?

Gregarious Narain  7:08
You're the one on the right.

Ken Yeung  7:10
I'm the one on the right? Okay. All right. Yeah. I thought I was the one on the left because he's a little shorter.

Gregarious Narain  7:15
Wait, wait, wait, I don't know about that. All right. But this actually first question was from you. And actually, Heather just touched on those two terms. And by the way, we do appreciate that. I wouldn't say we know more. But we certainly make made more mistakes.

Gregarious Narain  7:26
So

Ken Yeung  7:27
well.

Ken Yeung  7:27
And we all come in at from different angles, different perspectives, right? I mean, you you come in from a YouTube... like we know startups, but we don't know everything about the creator and the passion space. So this helps us to learn more. And it's it's great that you brought up, you know, the creator economy versus the passion economy, I actually came across a livestream he did with Tom, I think was last week, where you're trying to explain that. And I've heard about the passion economy. And in tech, there's a lot of these buzzwords where everyone likes to label these type of things. When you look at, you know, there's an article this week from Li Jin, the venture capitalist is talking about passion, which we will get to in a little bit, but I want to kind of, you know, really just scratch the surface.

Heather Ramirez  8:12
Yeah.

Ken Yeung  8:13
Because she was talking about the passion economy. And I'm thinking like, Okay, are we talking about the same thing? Because we talked about the creator economy here, at least, that's my understanding of what you know, people are doing on YouTube, Instagram, Snap, and everything like that. But then there's others, like yourself, that's talking about the passion economy. And then I'm thinking it's like, if you could draw some sort of a Venn diagram of these type of things you can kind of see where things overlap. For those that are listening and those that are going to be watching this later on. Could you define what the passion economy is?

Gregarious Narain  8:48
From your point of view, right? And then you have answers but how do you frame it?

Ken Yeung  8:52
Yeah, how do you frame it and then how does what constitutes a creator economy?

Heather Ramirez  8:57
So a lot to unpack here. This is still like a thesis that I'm exploring, but basically, you know, I came into YouTube the way that I think most people come into YouTube, which is you are a YouTube creator, you create videos, you try to amass as many subscribers and views as possible, and you monetize off of sponsorships, YouTube ads, or affiliates, which I think is the the most common model to like YouTube success. And so we're always chasing after like Silver Play button, Gold Play Button. Obviously, YouTube has their different awards to encourage creators to keep creating content on their platform.

Heather Ramirez  9:31
The thing is that I always felt like I was not good enough because I just have over 10,000 subscribers on one of my channels. So like, and I'm a YouTube coach. And so I always felt like "Oh, am I like good enough to be a YouTube coach?" Because the thing that like is celebrated is like all these Subscribe, like trying to get these crazy numbers. And basically when I heard Li Jin and Adam Davidson, like independently talk about the passion economy, I just kind of like took it both in and I was like, "wait, this is totally what I'm doing. And I'm already making a living doing what I love without having like the typical YouTube success." And so I just saw, it's like, it was just like I saw everything through this lens of "Wait, I don't have to, instead of YouTubing, the end goal, YouTube can be like a means to an end, right?" So the way that I would define the passion economy, especially in the context of a YouTube creator, is that instead of amassing these crazy, crazy hundreds of 1,000s, millions, you know, numbers, instead you build a community, and you offer a transformational service or product to that community so that you're monetizing directly from the audience, you would have to make your money off of another platform like, you know, create an online course, offer group coaching program, or build a community on something like Mighty Networks or something like that. So that's how I would define it.

Ken Yeung  10:54
So what separates the passion economy from others in the space it well, other terms is the notion of a community?

Heather Ramirez  11:04
Yeah, so you know, one of the things that's talked about a lot in this space is like the 1,000, true fans, 100 true fans, so that's how I approach it is like you can get 100 community members, right? So instead of just following, and just subscribing, and just watching, you can build a really tight knit engaged community where people are, you're almost like creating the platform for people to unite around the common passion, right? Or the common goal that you create content about. And then if you have 100 people who are also invested in that thing, you could charge like $1,000, over the period of 12 months and make a living. Right. So now that is relatively new in the YouTube space. Because you know, I think even when we think of how, you know, you would monetize on YouTube, basically, it was coming from like, okay, a company signed your check YouTube would sign your check, a sponsor return your check. And then we have these things like tipping, and super chats and memberships. But it's still these like low ticket items, so that if you were trying to build a whole business off of your YouTube channel, you still need like crazy amounts of numbers and subscribers in order to see any  longevity or sustainability.

Heather Ramirez  12:26
And so, you know, for me, I just feel like it's so much easier, especially for YouTube creators who aren't necessarily going to have mass appeal, like 100%, I consider myself... it'd be great to get Silver Play Button. But I don't need it, right. Like I couldn't even tell you what my YouTube numbers are because I just don't check it. My business does not depend on like, always growing on YouTube. That's not to say that, like, you know, I'm still creating content regularly. I'm still very passionate about it. But I think because I depend on it less than your typical YouTube creator, I have other ways to monetize, and I'm not as dependent on the YouTube growth. Does that make sense?

Gregarious Narain  13:13
No, totally. And so Heather, actually, I think the first time we met, we started chatting, I sent you this diagram. And I think this is what you sort of say, "Whoa, I'd love to chat about this." And I believe like, number one, I think Anthony had a great comment. By the way, Anthony and I went to the same Junior High however, we didn't know that.

Ken Yeung  13:31
I thought it was the same high school?

Gregarious Narain  13:34
We same junior high and high school, we grew up like five minutes, like probably 10 minutes walking distance to each other. But the interesting thing was that Ken is the one who actually introduced us. Random, oh, we're so small, short story. Anthony is an amazing photographer as well. So go buy his prints.

Gregarious Narain  13:48
But, um, Heather, I think the thing that we were talking about, and the thing you're describing to me, is ultimately, you know, I've been in this space for about 10 or 11 years or so. And, you know, I think the interesting thing is that I think about it from generations, right?

Heather Ramirez  14:05
Yeah.

Gregarious Narain  14:06
And so that first you're what you're describing to me is what I call the gen three sort of creator, right? And I use Joe Pulizzi's term, which I love, is the content entrepreneur. And I believe this is a person who is trying to monetize from the beginning. Right? As opposed to like waiting until you achieve, like, sort of some massive scale, right?

Heather Ramirez  14:26
And then it's like, what do we do with this?

Gregarious Narain  14:28
That's right. And you're right, like in into Anthony's point, it just may not, it may be really, like impossible. So there's two parts to this: One, it may be really hard to get to 100,000, a million subs anymore on YouTube, or certainly like years and years of time, right, as opposed to previously where maybe that was like a year, right? Yeah. Obviously, there's always like these exceptions to the rule...

Heather Ramirez  14:52
Always

Gregarious Narain  14:52
...but no one should count that as the norm. Right. And then the second part is, is it worth getting to that point, right like Would a million subs actually make a million dollars a year? I don't think so anymore actually, right? Like, there's a lot of factors that go into this sort of equation that it seems that you may not get there. So I actually really appreciate where you're starting from, which is, you know, you can monetize early by offering and creating value, right, for a small handful of people or maybe a small community of people. As opposed to waiting until you have a massive audience and then figuring out how to extract value from that.

Heather Ramirez  15:33
Yeah, I just don't think it's practical to go into it thinking that you're going to get... so you know, because like, even for me, that I started YouTube, like peek Casey Neistat, Gary Vee, 2016, daily vlogs, like, the whole thing, you know, I, it was that...that was when I entered, and I played that game of, I'm going to upload a video, you know, once a day, if not twice a day, and just like, crunch out the content. And like, you know, obviously, the culture has evolved. And we know that that's not sustainable or practical, but even someone who is that dedicated, just realistically, you can put in that much work and still never get there, right? Cuz there's just so many things, not in your control. To me, it's just more practical to like, let's just, if the end goal is to like, use all these tools to make a living around the thing that you're passionate about, it's never been easier. But you could do that now, because of these tools. You could do that now because of YouTube. And I think that that's a lot more fulfilling than like the Silver Play Button.

Gregarious Narain  16:37
So here's the question, related one of my questions I sort of had, I guess, was just so you're YouTube coach or you coach YouTubers, right? What does that entail exactly like, who were the kinds of people who should come to you, right? And is there like sort of a philosophy or framework that you sort of use to try to, like, get people to where they want to be?

Heather Ramirez  16:57
Right. So I believe that when it comes to YouTube, there are just the basic rules, to you know, obviously, you have to have a catchy title, you should customize your thumbnails like there are things that just like, if we're on YouTube, we need to like kind of speak the language. But other than that, I feel like, to your point, like you said earlier, there's always gonna be exceptions to the rules. Because there's so many people on YouTube, as soon as you say, like, Oh, you should put your YouTube Shorts on a second channel, and don't put it on your main channel, someone else has put it on their main channel and has seen success. So like, I just don't think that there is like one way to do it. And so I take the approach of like, you know, how do we translate your unique story into the medium that is a YouTube video? And how do we, you know, do all the right things, optimize them, keywords, and tags, and all those things, to make sure that you have the highest discovery potential for your content, but then really, I just think it comes down so much to the creator, and then the creator's community, and like, how, you know,  what story they want to tell, there's just so many ways to go about it. So it's really more of like asking questions, and really providing support, because I think that's another piece that's missing. So say, like, you come into YouTube, and you don't know anyone else in real life who's doing YouTube. So there's nobody ask. YouTube isn't gonna, you know, give you any help. And if you have any questions about YouTube, what do you do, you go to YouTube, and you watch tutorials that are all telling you things on how to maximize your views and subscribers. And here's what happens when you start creating content, probably you get a video where, oh, it's starting to pop off, and YouTube is giving you all these green arrows and things were looking good, hey, maybe they start sending you a check. But a lot of the times what I have found personally, and a lot of people that I've worked with, the videos that start to take off aren't necessarily like, in line with your end goal.

Heather Ramirez  18:57
So I'll use myself an example, I made a video about Postmates because six months into my entrepreneurial journey, I ran out of money, but I happened to be in the same co-working space as like a Postmates community person back in the day. And he was like, Hey, this is a great way to kind of, or a great opportunity to, you know, hold you over as you're building your whole, like, entrepreneurial journey thing. And I was like, great. This is when Postmates like, I didn't know what Postmates was, I just knew it was like, Okay, I can't do Uber because I have a two-door Camaro, but I could do this, and I can you know, make money instantly on my schedule. Like this is totally gonna work for me. I made a video about how to, you know, 10 tips on being a Postmate. And that to this day is my most successful video. I got to a point where I unlisted it because it was just it was bringing in the wrong people. I never gotten so many comments about like, I was super aware that I was a female creator after that video was out. And like I made that video because on my vlog, I was documenting, like, here's like how dedicated I am to my thing where I'm going to do what I have to do to keep, like progressing with my mission. And this is a part of that story. But the way that people were finding me were like, I want to be, I want to make money as a Postmate, like, I want to do this full time. And so it's just bringing in the wrong audience and stuff like that.

Heather Ramirez  20:22
So long story long. You know, I think that there is a lot of you get a video that pops off, and you think like, okay, I mean, obviously, the thing to do would be to lean into that, but sometimes that's not like, I'm not playing, you're not my boss YouTube, right? Like, I know, you're telling me like, the feedback that you are giving me is that this is what I need to do. But that's not what I want to do. And I think that support to tell you like, what do you actually want to do and to kind of remind you, you know, what is your end goal and not YouTube's goal  is where I play a part, right?

Gregarious Narain  20:57
Yeah, it's, it's pretty classic from the sort of startup entrepreneurial world is that there are lots of lead sources, but not all leads are good, right? Like, there can be trash, trash leads, you know, not everything is a qualified lead. And so if you're building an audience or following people from like a sugar high of one kind or another, that's not to say, getting you to the place that you want to get to. Actually, Anthony had a quick question here for you as well. Are YouTube Shorts changing sort of the advice that you give to creators?

Heather Ramirez  21:29
Um, you know, here, I'll be totally honest with you. I have. I don't, I don't know what to say about YouTube Shorts. I haven't seen enough data. Or I guess I should say, I've seen data that supports like, multiple strategies. So I don't know how I feel about it yet. I think it's too early. I know they have their, you know, their Shorts fund and stuff like that. But...

Gregarious Narain  21:52
If you're using Shorts, put out put a comment, let us know what you think. Yeah. We'd love to hear as well. Yeah, well, Colin & Samir said we should use Shorts, so they know everything.

Ken Yeung  22:05
But here's a interesting question for you, Heather, in terms of as we're talking about with Shorts, you've just celebrated five years of your YouTube channel. And as a coach, and I kind of want to still get that thick. I'm still a little fixated in terms of the difference between a passion economy and creator economy. How are you...

Gregarious Narain  22:28
It takes a while for Ken to get things.

Ken Yeung  22:29
This is very true. I'm a little bit slow. It's the kombucha I drink. You know, it says it's not alcoholic, but you never know.

Heather Ramirez  22:36
Oh, like, that's why...I get like a headache. Anyway, sorry.

Ken Yeung  22:42
But what is your advice to those that think? Oh, I need to be on everything. Right? We talked to we had a Nicholena Moon earlier on the show. And I asked her, What is what would entice you to jump on to different a different platform, right? Like, say, moving from YouTube to, you know, Snap, or, you know, Instagram or whatever, or the newest startup that comes onto the scene? And she said, well, it wouldn't really be any of the bells and whistles, it's more about how does that platform help me grow my audience? Now her perspective is probably is probably different from yours. In terms of she's more on the creative side, and you're on the more on the passion side. But for those that are that you advise, they're like, why do I need to go onto YouTube? Should I be on just YouTube? Is it okay for me to be on YouTube? Or should I be on TikTok? Should I be on Instagram? Should I be cross promoting? You know, what about all these I basically all these platforms are now bribing me to create content for them. And then we can talk about the mental health implications of, you know, constantly be forced to create later on. But I mean, let's start with with that...

Heather Ramirez  24:00
Okay, so, first of all, I still believe this. And you could say that I'm biased, but I honestly believe that YouTube is the best platform to create a community on, and I don't think anybody comes close. Building an audience, maybe TikTok, maybe other platforms are, you know, more effective at building an audience. But in terms of community, it doesn't even come close, at all. And three reasons for that. One is the quality of the content that you watch on YouTube is still very, you know, it's that personal. I'm not going to connect with a 15 second TikTok like with that creator, in fact, like, I've heard many I've never downloaded it. So maybe I'm assuming here. Yeah, but like the people that have used it, they're like, Oh, yeah, this is entertaining content, but I have no idea who these creators are

Gregarious Narain  24:51
Best place on the internet, get out of here.

Heather Ramirez  24:55
And then, so that's, that's number one. I feel like the connection is just like I I can't tell you how many people have told me, I feel like I know you already because of your YouTube videos, right? And I think that that's unique to YouTube, too, is curation. So many times I'll see a tweet or a, you know, a post on Instagram that I'm like, Oh, I need to show this to Tom, and I'll try to pull up my phone. And I have no idea like where it is, I can't find it or whatever. On YouTube, there's playlists, I can make my own playlist. The Creator can make playlists, like, you know, there's a history that you can see all the videos that you watch before, there's likes, there's a lot of ways for you, and the creator to connect you with the content that you want to watch. If you have 1,000 posts on Instagram, there's no way that I'm going to see post number 237. Even if it's like the one post that I need to see right now. There's just no way to get to it. And that's like really frustrating to me.

Ken Yeung  25:56
Would you suggest though, that for us, like say we're we're primarily on YouTube, we would broadcast on YouTube, but we syndicate elsewhere, but should we be doing? Like, oh, let's go and do Instagram Live or, you know, while Greg's, you know, put after you puts his kid to sleep, and he's like, trying to put himself to sleep, you just search through TikTok, should he be doing those types of things? Or is it better to just to put all your eggs in one basket and just really focus and double down on what actually.

Heather Ramirez  26:29
So the other the other aspect to YouTube is that it's a search engine, first and foremost, right? So you can, and I think that's like, the best discoverability method is that you can go to the search bar and find exactly what you're looking for. And their algorithm, like I said, is pretty good. Now, I also recommend having a secondary platform to cultivate that community. Because oftentimes, like your hardcore fans, who want to go more, you know, beyond subscriber and commenter, they're gonna want to see the behind the scenes, they want to connect with you, they just want to see like more content or different content that's not on your main YouTube channel, which is where I think like a Twitter and Instagram, a TikTok or, you know, whatever secondary platform where it is mainly audience building, I would actually go there, because I think the audience building like features are a lot more engaging, right? They're like different, they allow you to get to know creator in a way that's different from what they put out on their YouTube channel. Does that make sense?

Ken Yeung  27:29
Yeah, definitely. Because there's always a worry about, like the shiny object, right? You're talking about how we know tech, it's like, oh, this latest thing that comes out? You know, there's, there's now a, early this week, there was a new app to replace Instagram called Glass. That's it, it's iOS only app. So it's like, do I need to jump onto that? Or do I need to jump on to, you know, the newest startup that comes out? You know, where do I want to really? I mean, at which point do you move from just like, doing creating content as part of their creator economy, to actually following what you really want to do is like, I just want to be able to, you know, tell people how to do how to how to make, you know, shoes, or whatever, right?

Heather Ramirez  28:14
Yeah, so like, I get that, I get the appeal of sticking strictly to the content, or the creator economy model. Because it's passive, right? Like, Tom knows that he can get, you know, he can pretty much like estimate, okay, this is how much money I'm going to make per video, or per month based on my upload schedule. So I get that, and the passion economy is not passive, at least the start, right? Because I know my people, like my community members, I know that my name, you know, we connect daily or always interacting. So, you know, I'm working, but I like that. So the thing with these other platforms, the shiny object syndrome is that a lot of what I'm seeing is the incentive of, Hey, you know, here's another way to monetize, but you still need. It's still like, Oh, yeah, you know, here's like a percentage, but you still in order to have it be anything substantial, you have to either come with an existing audience and bring them there or start all over again, on a brand new platform, which like, how is that's a tough game.

Gregarious Narain  29:22
So it to the point of having a community, not the point, really... I guess we're caught a path to monetization with the community is that because you have tighter relationships with a set of people that, you know, well, is to be able to bring or bridge two new things now. So it doesn't necessarily need to be that, you know, get them to join a new platform per se, but ultimately, you're trying to find ways to turn that into a lifestyle or turn it into a business, right? In some manner, I would hope.

Heather Ramirez  29:58
Right. So in order for you to be successful at the passion economy business model, you need to offer something transformational that's either a product or service. That's the thing, right? If you do the creatpr economy business model, your product is your videos or your content, and you just have to endlessly churn content over and over and over. And then you inevitably get to the point where YouTube is telling you make more of this, and then you're like, but that's not what I want to make. But that's the stuff that you know, it's you, you end up going there real fast.

Gregarious Narain  30:31
So, can I ask a question? In your mind, would you call this bottom one passion? Like instead of content entrepreneur, because it feels like the distinction you kind of make is that as a creator, your sort of job is content. But potentially, that this pathway is about passion.

Heather Ramirez  30:57
Yeah, so and like, the thing with passion is like, it's easier to make content, obviously, right? Like, I think with a passion hobby, it's hard, because oftentimes, you don't know what you're going to sell until the community exists. And you're like, oh, all these people have the same problem. Here's this, let me develop a solution to address that, you know, so, I think that's a, but I just think that that's an easier, it's an easier game to play because you have direct feedback from the people, whereas YouTube is like, literally a graph telling you, you know, numbers that just like, it's like, it's just like the worst boss ever.

Ken Yeung  31:39
In a weird way. in a weird way in like, in journalism parlance, it's like, I guess what, you're just what you've been describing. It's almost like for creators who are producing work based off of what YouTube is telling them they should be doing. It's like the creators are akin to being content farms, right? They're, they're, they're, they're feeding the beast, they're constantly just slaving away to, for you know, it's like a drug driving driving traffic, get going for likes and subscribes. And then, but for you, it's a little bit more of a for those in a passion economy is a little bit more, in a cliche way, like nirvana, right? It's like, okay, I am I rising above the nine to five hustle to, like, I know what my overall end goal, this strategy. I haven't lost sight of this thing that I really, really love talking about, or telling people about or showing off versus, you know, just like this tactical, Okay, I gotta, I gotta put up the Short, and, oh, I don't know what I'm talking about, oh, hey, you know, don't just cross the street. Let's do a YouTube short about that, or whatever. Right. So.

Heather Ramirez  32:46
And I think inevitably, there's, it's Oh, I think what we're seeing is that it's going to be hybrid, right. So inevitably, if you're doing passion economy business model, you're creating content all the way, you know, the whole time, your people are telling more people. And so it's, you know, eventually I think that if you're really good at what you do, you're gonna get into the 1000s at some point, but what I've also seen is really massive creators create online courses like high ticket online courses, because they want that one on one. So it's been really interesting to see that because I saw you know, Mark Rober, who's like, one of the biggest YouTube creators come out with an online course that's like, hey, let me teach you about like, STEM, which is, you know, different. So, so I think it's gonna be, I think, eventually everyone goes both. I would be curious as to what YouTube would think, because, you know, I think they would not be okay with Oh, you're, we're, we're just a tool now, in your, you know, I think Li touches on this in her article. But like, I wouldn't be able to do what I do without YouTube. But 100% I have total ownership of my book of business. I get to decide when I talk to them, I get to decide how much I charge how much I make. It's all on my schedule. And that to me is just it's just like so much more. To me, that's success. Like that's the thing to strive for.

Gregarious Narain  34:15
Since you brought up the that abomination of a post.

Heather Ramirez  34:20
Oh my god, I'm so excited about this. Let's go.

Ken Yeung  34:22
Well, we'll be talking about this for next 30 minutes.

Gregarious Narain  34:27
Just about so. I think Li Jin post is like just sensationalist junk. Right? Um, and if you haven't ready yet, feel free to read it if you want to waste you know, 20 minutes of your time.

Ken Yeung  34:45
I'll put it in the chat.

Gregarious Narain  34:46
Yeah. Ken will share a link to it. The reason I say this is largely because there is no crisis. Right? Um, so you know, Heather and I were exchanging some notes earlier about this. And actually, I think you just articulated why I think there is no crisis. There may be a crisis for influence. Oh, by the way, as you distinguish between creator and passion, I probably distinguish, I probably label that influencer versus creator. And just in my framing, because I think influencers do, you know, kind of to Tom's thing, they work the content form, they're just like, what's the kind of post that gets the most views that drives me to the right place, right? You know, and gets me the kind of traction and attention and engagement that I need to basically sell to marketers and brands that basically, the, the problem I have with Li's posts is ultimately that she's making it sound like you are not in control of your own self, like they're, YouTube can recommend what you should post about, but they certainly can't make you make it right. Like, it's not a gig economy. They don't post gigs for people to actually like, fulfill, right? Like they show you analytics about the content, right? And now, you may feel highly compelled to continue to double click on the types of content that are there. However, the reality is you always are still in charge, right? Like they don't edit you. They don't get to approve it. Because they don't like the nature of it. They could take words out, I get it, there are different terms of service very different than the brand turning around and saying like, you know, you weren't excited enough in this post, can you redo it, right? Like they don't get to do that to you, right? Like you're not actually fulfilling gigs. PS what's wrong with doing gigs, right? Like, every like grown up business person, independent consultant, expert, entrepreneur, sells services, I don't find it such a disparaging sort of point of view, that we do fulfill work for people who have a demand for our skills or expertise, aka the brands that pay 70% of the creator, you know, fill 70% of creator pockets today, except on YouTube, by the way. So Heather, tell me why you agree with who he is, or why you think there's a crisis, because the thing I pointed out today, in a tweet was just that what she's complaining about is literally what the last $2 billion invested in creator economy technologies is literally servicing. And it feels like what they're complaining about is that it hasn't all happened immediately, right? But if we look at the timeframe, we have a ton of new dollars going into help build tools for creators to build standalone pathways, right? And we see rapid reaction from the platforms to finally show up and be like, okay, there's some creators here, we should share some of the pie. Up until now Instagram and paid a not a penny to any creator. And suddenly there's money available. I get it. It's a pittance. But it's still better than the zero it was before. Right? So yeah, I have such a hard reaction to that post.

Heather Ramirez  37:55
So I don't think that there's a crisis. And I think that was an interesting title to pick because I honestly forgot that that was I forgot that that was the like, approach she was saying, because I it. Like, I just, I forgot what the title was, I was just reading it. And I didn't get the vibe that it was a you know that she was painting the picture of a crisis, but more of like, I can see how this is something to pay attention to. So I agree with her in the fact that creators don't have control. Does that mean that YouTube is is like a gig thing? No, you're right, like you don't have to. YouTube isn't forcing you to make videos, YouTube isn't forcing you to make those kinds of videos, you know, it'll show you the green arrows, but that's still your choice on whether you decide, you know, you can make something else right,

Gregarious Narain  38:49
You also don't earn a residual on the groceries you dropped off from Postmates, right? But you do get one of the videos that you leave out there.

Heather Ramirez  38:56
Yeah, I think that what she was, you know, my impression was that creators don't have a lot of control. Like, okay, for example, we have a friend who has, you know, 100,000 plus subscribers, and his channel was hacked. He's had 100,000 subscribers for years, okay, his whole business, his whole lifestyle is around this YouTube channel and overnight, bam, it's gone. What do you do? Do you talk to YouTube? Well, he's lucky because he's, you know, he's verified. He's 100,000 plus, but what about those of us that aren't? And even him having a representative to talk to you about YouTube? It was took forever to get the channel back on. And now that it is back up, he's noticed that he has this ceiling that he's just hasn't been able to break ever since his channel got hacked. So I don't I don't know what that is. I'm sure YouTube will say like, oh, everything's fine on our end or whatever. So in that case, you know, it's hard when gig economies, you know, these companies will say like, here's what you're making today, you know, like, here's, here's the rate that you're gonna pay, and we don't we don't know why or where that that comes from the same with YouTube, it's like, well, we're just gonna take this, or we're gonna add this or, you know, and there's no one to talk to, there's no you cannot contribute any input on, you know how things go. Because the input that is given from any creators is all the guys at the top, you know, like, Mr. Beast, and we're complete, we're not operating the same way.

Gregarious Narain  40:32
So let me counter. And I hear you, by the way, I understand I understand all the points you're making, except I guess I have a very different frame, on the points you're making. Right? alternative view. And I know you agree with this view, by the way. My alternative view is that, that's a marketing channel. Right? And that's a technology layer. And everyone who builds on a marketing channel, use them. Leverages a marketing job. Anyone who builds on a technology stack has inherent risk, everyone, right? That that marketing channel may dry up, that that marketing channel may become ineffective, that marketing channel may become corrosive, right, that that technology stack may be invalidated, may prove useless, right, may change its API and suddenly be not viable.

Gregarious Narain  41:25
Let me give an example. My last company Chute, we raised $20 million, right? We were built on top of the Instagram platform, right? Literally, I had the most cheese of authenticated users on Instagram platform like of everyone out there, right? Like we process a billion photos a day. Guess what, when Instagram decided to have their partner program. But they decided that the way you became a partner was that it was based on how many ads you sold, not by how many users were connected, or any of these other criteria. Do you know what happened in the market? We got devoured by all the other people who were ad first companies, right? Who could go out and say, well, they're not partners, even though we were a partner. I had built a business, I had millions of dollars a year in revenue on top of it, that's not different. So I have no sympathy today for the view that we are given enough or that there's risk. Risk is what's associated with being an entrepreneur. And so that's what I mean is, if this is your hobby, I get it, you know, fine. But the second you put that hat on, and you turn it backwards, and you're going to be a business now, then all of those things are real valid risks that you have to factor in to your time on any platform. It's also why everybody should be building their own standalone access. Their own list, right? Yeah. This for years, I've been working on Zealous for three years. The first version is Ellis was a CRM. And you know what happened when I would tell like a creator, we're building a CRM for you, they would throw up on me

Ken Yeung  43:02
That's very graphic. Thank you.

Gregarious Narain  43:04
You want to know why? because they didn't want to deal with the business stuff. Right? Yeah, we acknowledge these things were there. We were warning them three years ago. Right? Right, that this is what you have to do. Because if you were a business, this is what you would do. Right? So these risks, they don't bother me in any way. These are natural risks. And like I said, we're coddling creators too much by telling them they're at risk when the reality is, you chose a pathway that has inherent risk in it not that the platform is doing it to you. Right, you chose the platform to create it.

Heather Ramirez  43:42
Yeah. That I agree with you. Because to me, I akin it to like, if you can't complain about the rules of Monopoly, if you're playing Monopoly, that's what my guest just said, on my podcast yesterday.

Ken Yeung  43:57
Unless you cheat. Unless you cheat. Yeah. I don't say I do. But you know,

Heather Ramirez  44:01
So that's why I'm advocating for like, the pieces look the same, but we're playing a different game. YouTube is a part is a piece in that game.

Gregarious Narain  44:11
I agree. And so that's why I thought it was interesting that you so by her is largely the word crisis, because I think it's just being alarmist. And the reaction that I've seen, by the way from some people is platform hate which I get all the reasons you could not like a platform. But also as a founder building new style platforms actually way lined up with the tools that she's outlining. She's also making us take the barbs like we're suddenly doing the same bad things. I'm like, we've been trying to get creators to think and act like business people at the same time as they are creative people. For ages all of us every founder out there every founder watching right now right is likely trying to do the same everyone like you who's coaching and helping to understand how to turn this, their passion into action. lifestyle or business? What are we telling them? We're telling them to adopt good strong practices. Yep. Leave you and mitigate your risk.

Heather Ramirez  45:09
That I agree with you.

Gregarious Narain  45:11
So, you get free distribution, free hosting, free discovery...

Heather Ramirez  45:15
I'll never complain about that. Yeah.

Heather Ramirez  45:18
And by the way, they keep half, like Twitch takes 70%, or 50? Sorry, Twitch takes 50%. Right? But even so it's the customer acquisition cost, like what would it cost you to stand up a server? Host your own videos? Right? When people to your to your site, right?

Heather Ramirez  45:36
You'll never get the discoverability that you get on YouTube?

Ken Yeung  45:39
Yeah. but just like you own your data, you own your content...

Gregarious Narain  45:44
It's not like she doesn't own her content, just because it's on YouTube. Maybe she may not have the distribution channel later. But she still owns it.

Ken Yeung  45:54
Well, no, but let's define own, right? I mean, there's like, yes, you own in terms of like, you might have the original files stored on your local machine, right. But there's nothing to say. I mean, this is the thing that, Greg, our friend, Chris Saad has been talking about for years, data portability, right? Where you are, oh, you put all your eggs into YouTube or Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, whatever. And say they go, you know, they change everything, right? I think here's the thing, like, as you're talking, it kind of reminds me of the Geocities days, right. And we many of us had like a Geocities website, that was a super, super easiest way to set up a, your digital presence like, Whoo. And then all of a sudden, it vanishes, right, it shuts down. And you're like, how do I you know, if you didn't know how to FTP or whatever, how do you extract all that information, all that data and, you know, move it to some other server, right? There was probably no real way to do that at the time. Now there is. So this is the kind of thing where you post everything onto YouTube. But then you lose all that. Right? And what happens after that, like because, you know, Heather, God forbid, YouTube's like, you know what? We're gonna we're gonna screw everybody over change and change all up. Then you're like, Okay, you have your stuff. Actually, case in point, right? YouTube just rolled out a policy where they say all your private, your I'm sorry, your unlisted videos are going to be private because of some security issue. Right? And Tom, yeah, you got to do your AIM, hit me up on ICQ, by the way

Gregarious Narain  47:41
That was for the outsiders, come on, the insiders had ICQ.

Ken Yeung  47:44
I'm on ICQ. I had IRC when I was when I was in college, too. But no, but getting back to my point, YouTube, relative poly chains were like, we're gonna make all these unlisted unlisted videos private by default. And in order for you to get it to be, you know, public or whatever, you're going to have to re upload it. And by re uploading it, you lose whatever traction you had before. Right? And for

Gregarious Narain  48:07
You don't care about those views, so what's your problem?

Ken Yeung  48:11
No, but continous though. I mean, it's, it's, I think it's from like, people want to be able to have that historical archive as well. And it's like, you can upload re upload again. And maybe that might game the algorithm. So that aims to like, Oh, this video I posted of this Uber protest is now you know, getting traction again, and therefore, but then you lose your... your views start at zero, you're like, start at zero, you know, so how do you then in order to gain that monetization you got to get to a certain point on onto YouTube? I'd imagine. So you're basically playing? You know, Greg, you've talked about this already. It's like you're at the whim of these platforms, right, in terms of so you're not really owning anything, but you're on their platforms.

Gregarious Narain  48:55
So I guess I still don't agree with this though. Right? Because, like, the reality is, you're at the whim of anything, right? Like if the weather shuts down, you can't move your truck. So here's your internet, right, like, pandemic is like stop, I guess I don't want victimology sort of breaks into this, right. Like, reality is you could download your data if you didn't do it, you're a jerk. Right? Because if you think you needed it, and you didn't bet download it. That's your problem, right? You got paid on every view that they already pushed out. If they decide they don't want to serve it anymore. That's their prerogative, right? If you don't have another place to put it, that's your problem. Right? Any company, right, that starts up. If you only have one client, you're in the riskiest spot that you could be right. So if YouTube is your one client that pays all of your dollars to you, and you haven't diversified in any way, you're asking for it. In general, you're asking for it, right? Like, that's true in B2B. That's true. And B2C is true in all the ecosystem and all the business scenarios that exists So I guess my point is like, not that I disagree, like data portability is there, YouTube API is amazing, right? You really worried about your data, hire an engineer, code all your data out of it, there's nothing that you would lose, right? You get all data. By the way, old metadata is not nearly as useful as real time online active metadata that you can apply. The reason that metadata is really valuable is because YouTube can use it in real time to serve better ads for higher prices. You as the creator without the distribution, without the audience, right? Like, you can't really take advantage of that to begin with.

Ken Yeung  50:37
Greg, you got some fans up in here. I mean, it's like we gotta, you gotta just do let's do a whole show with you just ranting about this, because it's like, yeah...

Gregarious Narain  50:50
Hey, Ken. I just realized that we were so excited to get going today that we forgot to do like our deck like our slides.

Ken Yeung  50:56
Whatever. Really, you want to bore people with that, like we can, we will get to that at the end. Okay, like, I want to have this conversation.

Gregarious Narain  51:05
I'm trying to load it up now. Sorry.

Gregarious Narain  51:10
But so, Heather, with that it turns out we are in more agreement than disagreement, I think. Right?

Heather Ramirez  51:17
Yeah. Um, because I don't think it's a crisis. Like, I'll never look at it that way. And, you know, I've met my husband on YouTube, and I will never complain about YouTube. But I do think that it is worth advocating for a different path to success. That is not the influencer creator economy path. And I honestly, I think that I think this passion economy is easier. It's more practical, it's safer. You know, you own your audience, you have more control. I just think it's, it's the way to go. And that's why I'm, you know, singing it to the rooftop, but I wanted to, you know, the reason why I want to talk to you guys is because is the passion economy even a thing like is that, like, Adam Davidson, his definition?

Gregarious Narain  52:08
By the way, I just ordered it.

Heather Ramirez  52:10
Okay, so his definition was like, not digital. So it's like, you know, there's a, you know, there's a ex convict who had to work out in prison, and then like, now has a whole like, let's take work out in prison, no equipment, turn that into, like, the new CrossFit, whatever. So you know, that's his passion economy. There's no YouTube, there's no, you know, he did grow his audience like off of Instagram, stuff like that. But that's not what Adam Davidson highlights, it's very much like, here's your passion. There's a very specific, like, only you can do that. Right? Only that person with that experience and where that person is coming from can offer that service or product. Legion is very much like startup, you know, tech, but I was like, okay, who's who's applying it to the to the YouTube world where there's gonna be people who are, you know, still starting YouTube today, tomorrow isn't next year. And I think it's just a hard game, to glamorize. You know, hey, yeah, you can make you know, you can get 100,000 subscribers now, you can put on all this work and never get there. But that doesn't mean that you can't make like, turn this into a business and like be really fulfilled and find a lot of meeting.

Ken Yeung  53:24
I mean, Greg, you obviously have, you will have a different take on this. I think, for me, having been a journalist and kind of really always looking at what's happening in the world of tech. The word passion economy isn't really thrown around a lot. Like in terms of the mainstream, right. There are a lot of the reporters that I see that cover the internet culture space, they don't talk about it. They've not mentioned the word, passion economy, they do talk about the creator economy, there are those that say the Creator, use the word, greater economy with a little bit of a, of a, some negativity, like...

Heather Ramirez  54:05
A bad taste in their mouth?

Ken Yeung  54:06
Yeah, it's like, let me ... But I mean, I think but it's a legitimate thing. And you look at a lot of the venture capital investments, and a lot of the startups that are coming up, there's, there's certainly intrigue into this space. Right. And I believe that in terms of the passion economy, that's actually a way to go because there's a lot of turmoil right now in this creator economy space, the influencer space. And as I was talking about in the beginning of the show, it's like, it's almost like you can create this Venn diagram, right, you have like, right, but it's like all subsets of subset of subset right. You know, so, I think early on, it was the influencers, the social media influencers, then above that containing that is the or the creator economy, right, where you could still be an influencer. But you can, but you're actually building something. You're actually Trying, you're getting to the point of having a business, right? But at some point, you're still churning stuff out, you're feeding them feeding the beast, right? And therefore, we have these issues of mental mental health where people are getting readers are getting burnt out. Right. But then you take what you're doing, what your focus is on this passion economy. And I think that is more the umbrella of the, of the influencers and the creator economy. Where that is taking it as a whole ethereal level where you're like, Okay, let's set what is what is my actual goal? What do I want to actually be at peace at? And it's not Oh, these that, oh my god, there's this new app. I gotta try this out. I gotta be on here. I gotta be on here and constantly turn and generate the, oh, I have 4 million people on on TikTok, or I have, you know, like, should I be upset that I have 1000 followers on clubhouse right for like, well, while Greg has probably 8,000 or so I'm like, Oh, my God, like, what the hell? Why? I'm not as important because, you know, why are people paying attention me because I'm a journalist, blah, blah, blah, like, forget all that. It's more like, focus on what's really important. And I think that's people should be talking more about this higher level, but I don't think the words passion economy are not necessarily...

Heather Ramirez  56:15
And like, Look, I don't even know if that's the word. You know. And like, that's why I'm excited to now be connected to you guys. Because, you know, I consider you two to be more in. I don't know, like the bridge to this world that I'm just discovering. I just that I heard about passion economy, I understand how it's different. I'm translating it into the world of YouTube. And then my husband and I actually decided to add the word business model. Because when I started to talk about the passion economy in the world of YouTube. They were like, Yeah, but we're creators, and we're passionate, too. So what do you mean, we're not doing the same thing? And then, and then I was like, Okay, I need this is not there's too much like these, we're using the same words to refer to the same thing. Even YouTube calls your audience a community, like no, that's not. That's not the same thing. So yeah, I love this. Like, I think that, you know, eventually this is the way to go. Just because I think it's a, I think it's a unfortunate situation that a lot of people find themselves in when they are, do you know, how enthusiastic and how magical the moment it is, when someone finally decides to give themselves a chance to pick up a camera put themselves out there and feel like they have a voice. And then that gets torn down when the goalposts are constantly moving. It's like you hit 1000 subscribers, and all of a sudden, that's not good enough anymore, and you keep having to just keep having to go. And finally, I was like, you know, what, what if I already crossed the finish line? Yeah. And I'm having I, it's like, so much more empowering and fulfilling? And I feel like I can do this forever. Yeah, that is a very different game, and a very different approach from like, you know, oh, my God, like even Tom, you he just made the switch from full time teacher to full time creator. And that he was nominee for California State Teacher of the Year, a very good, lots of accolades with his career, okay, he definitely was going to retire as a teacher, but YouTube started to like, you know, take off and start paying more than his teacher salary. But even he, because he, you know, most of his checks are coming from companies. If the YouTube channel isn't doing good, it sucks, you know, and I hate seeing him get discouraged with the content that he's like, so passionate about creating feel like it's not good enough, because YouTube says your numbers are going down. You know, like, that's frustrating, but, but that's why I think this is why I'm so excited about the passion economy. And if you guys ever hear another term, like a better term, or you know, let me know, because I wrote,

Gregarious Narain  58:58
Yeah, I guess let me let me put my last my final thought here, I guess relatively speaking, yeah. Creator economy, passion economy, they're kind of like re labelings of previous things, right. Like, the creator economy is traditionally what we used to call media businesses, right? They created media, they sold advertising around them, right. etc. What we're calling the passion economy, or I think the distinction that you're making, I think is a useful one. is really what I believe traditional entrepreneurship, was often about. It was a task. It was doing something usually that you love, and for some people just not working for someone else was enough love like that. It didn't matter what they were doing, right? I think the word passion is a little bit loaded. Because I feel I don't know that I need, I want to force everyone to believe that the only thing you can do is something you're truly truly passionate about. Yeah. Um, but I will say, I do think that like what we're calling passion economy is really like traditionally been like expertise. It's been entrepreneurship, it's been consulting, it's been a, it's taken many, many forms and shapes, right? Many, many, many people, you know, like, you will get all the small products that end up on a Shark Tank, it was someone who had a real problem, they were passionate about solving it, if you can't remember, right? Look at all the domain experts that thought leaders, the people who developing classes, not everyone could develop a class, by the way, for example, right? Like I always tell everyone, not everyone's got a book in them, not everyone's got a course in them. Right? It doesn't mean that you aren't valuable. It doesn't mean that you have a lot to offer the world.

Heather Ramirez  1:00:35
It's not for everybody.

Gregarious Narain  1:00:36
It's not for everybody. That manifestation of your knowledge, your expertise, your passion, like maybe isn't the right fit. So I do think like it's a highly privileged place is from my point of view, as an entrepreneur, has been entrepreneur my whole life, and had to struggle through all the normal things that entrepreneurs fight through. And I consider myself privileged to have had the opportunity to do the thing I love the most, all the time. Yeah. And so that's how I think about it, right? Like I like I like that you were distinguishing it I guess to some degree. I don't know if that like if that's in the vernacular, or that's the way maybe like everyone frames it yet. Legion originally called it the passion economy actually wait the earlier why I think she like her claim to fame early on was in the economy, the passion economy concept. But now we're in the creator economy. And maybe the creative economy is just more of the standard up or stood up sort of SMB stylized, framing, toolkit, etc. Around the infrastructure, scaffolding around helping people with passion, create businesses, easier and faster. Right. And longer. Maybe.

Ken Yeung  1:01:49
Greg, one thing I'll point out is like, as you're talking about, I worry that the phrase because I know we're early on, we're talking about passion, like just the just the word passion in the Webster's dictionary, that's one thing but I worry that that word is will be become oversaturated. Like influencer and creator. Very similar to how...

Gregarious Narain  1:02:10
It's already oversaturated. Everyone puts creator in front of everything. Now it's a special version of the something else right

Heather Ramirez  1:02:17
Just like content.

Ken Yeung  1:02:18
Yeah, exactly. But you look at like, what with when, what Aileen Lee came out with the term unicorn, right, and now everything that we're just overplayed, so

Gregarious Narain  1:02:27
Well, at least that's objectively a thing, right?

Ken Yeung  1:02:31
Fair point. Like, but I think I think if we talk about it in the truest sense of the word, like, Oh, what is this? What is a passion? Like, okay, we get it. But then when you move that when you when you transfer that too, to talk about, you know, this, although tech and, and this very Silicon Valley esque type of philosophy, like then it gets very like overplayed and then eyes start rolling. So you're like, oh forget it.

Gregarious Narain  1:02:56
Oh, forget it. Let's put it this way. I think the opportunity is real, that obviously, there's a lot of thing this is why do I do like Joe Pulizzi's term of content entrepreneur, because the one thing that it seems at least this generation, by the way, it's not like all passion is expressed as content. However, it feels like this toolkit, and business model and tool and services that are evolving tend to be around people who realize and recognize that by putting content into the world, it is a way to create the kinds of opportunities that they want, right? However, they frame themselves different. Not like they're not trying to be media businesses, or by trying to be content entrepreneurs. Right, right there. Like I kind of liked that term. I keep using it just because I think it feels kind of right. Maybe there's other layers in between it or finer strata there, right. But this has been awesome, by the way. So we are at time, so we are

Ken Yeung  1:03:46
Aww.

Gregarious Narain  1:03:52
Yeah,

Heather Ramirez  1:03:52
Great.

Gregarious Narain  1:03:53
Creator creates the rest of semantics. However, with the show is not over. This is your chance to come and ask Heather your own questions. And actually, you know, give me crap for you know, saying things.

Ken Yeung  1:04:04
Please, please do give him crap.

Gregarious Narain  1:04:06
We're about to switch over to After Dark which is our after show. But let me like let's see a little a little programming note here because we forgot to do this.

Ken Yeung  1:04:16
We're going to reverse reverse Benjamin Button here.

Gregarious Narain  1:04:18
By the way, feel free to give us a follow. We're on YouTube Creator Economy, Twitter, Creator Economy, Twitch, Flipboard everywhere, basically. Yeah. Oh, by the way, we're interviewing Heather. So next week is our good friend and dear friend, James Hicks. He will be here to talk to us about Hicks New Media and all the amazing things that he's doing as well. We do have two shows a week. There's a third one coming soon. We'll tell you about that shortly. This is obviously The Created Economy on Wednesdays at 2pm. Pacific time, but if you want the creator the latest creative economy news turned into creative briefs Friday morning at 8am. Pacific time, don't worry it's recorded. If you don't want to get up that early. You can always see it later.

Gregarious Narain  1:05:00
Wait, can I catch the recording later?

Gregarious Narain  1:05:02
You can catch you later also Ken. So as I mentioned, James Hicksx is coming up on August 25. Actually, we had a slight scheduling change. So Maarten from GÂRDEN is going to be here. September 1, we have Antonio back with Steven to talk about the black creator crew and September 8, our friend Jim Louderback  will be back to give us some exclusive something about VidCon. I promise,

Ken Yeung  1:05:22
We hope. We're pressuring him.

Gregarious Narain  1:05:26
If you would like to be a guest on the show, we would love to have you. You're always welcome to participate in real time, anytime. But always head over to creative economy.com you can apply fill in a form so we can get your info and you can be a guest for us. So give us a few minutes if you are ready. Ken, share a link out to create economy, create a show slash live because that's where the after show is going to be give you a chance to be in an interactive environment and ask us some questions. It's off the record so it won't be recorded or streamed. But you do get to get that have an interesting chat. And with that, we are about to close out. So I'll leave it here for a few seconds for everyone to have a chance to jump over to the new link. And we'll see you shortly. Bye Bye, everyone. Thank you. so much

Ken Yeung  1:06:10
Thanks so much.

Ken Yeung  1:07:12
Can you guys hear me? Okay. Are we like muted in the green room? We're in the green room, right? I don't know if we're still live. Oh, we're still broadcasting so.

Heather Ramirez  1:07:24
Yay. Okay, do I head over there too?