Dani Austin & Jordan Ramirez: How They Got To $40 Million+ A Year As Influencers

yeah i mean like our first like full year i think you already shared it like you said twenty was forty but yeah we did about forty million dollars and then you know this year we're on track to do thirty percent thirty five percent growth yeah it's it's crazy yeah i feel like i could rule the world i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days on so we are in the or we all good yeah the sheds yeah like this studio like i'm looking at the video it looks legit yeah people don't know what looks like from the outside this is definitely like a sketchy like i've seen a netflix documentary you're about a shed like this well you got here five minutes later than we did it was was like a hundred degrees in here i was like this is gonna be a sweaty podcast and this is a d you guys are different than i was say our normal guests which are almost always like kinda business like tech software type of entrepreneur it y'all are entrepreneurs in a different way and your instagram famous so that's cool that's amazing you tagged me in a story yesterday and i gotta say my wife has never looked at me that way before she she was like oh because she's never listened to one episode of podcast podcasts i what work we've done many four hundred episodes she's not a podcast person in general like show to anyone's podcast yeah but you would think maybe she'll listen to i guess we got kid there's just gotten a lot of like ten time to like do things like that yeah i get it i think she lives to this one so i'm excited because she's a fan of yours and as a and we have got at dinner last night got to know each other a little bit so i'm excited maybe we'll do like you guys give like like a sixty second intro who you guys our what why i introduced yourself to the audience here sure i'll go first yeah so my name is danny austin and i started creating content online about ten years ago i was actually living in austin that was at the university of texas sophomore like just making videos on youtube in my in my dorm room you know kinda just grew from there really fast they got on instagram all the other platforms we now run d which is a scalp care hair care product brand and we do that together we've a lot of fun doing that honestly online we just share anything about our lives from like be having two kids under two to you know faster affordable fashion yeah yeah we kinda been doing that together for you know five years so she's been online for ten years you know we met we didn't work together until we got married i was in like austin tech seen before we got married and then you know was telling you last night this just became a lifestyle and it was all consuming and so she would be being like turks and c and i would be in a boardroom and i'd be like oh my gosh like what what am i doing in my life and so around twenty eighteen we took the lead to work together jumped into kind of like the influencer space which we it didn't have a name before that but it was just like we created content and then i think the media started covering it a lot more and then they labeled me an instagram husband and then they labeled our our industry you know the feels not label he and was fine like i'm i'm glad that i did it wait that's so not true first you get handed yeah it's true it was he was that party they be like what are you doing and he's like you never knew well when you're coming out of college like you know so much of your identity is wrapped up in your title especially being here in austin texas like you know in the texting it was like what startup are you part of do you have funding you what's your title what employee number were you and so i was still kinda caught up in that mindset and then you know we jumped in together it was like i i remember the first article that came out was by a writer named taylor la rin and she wrote an article about what is the i gotta straight with the taylor of rents too yeah really yeah she got the dude it's crazy a lot of people have a history with her now but you know she so she she wrote that article and she quoted me in it and then i was like labeled the instagram husband but yeah and so we we did the influencer industry for five years together and just honestly created content together and then covid hit and and brand started really investing in that space we should also say how this came about yeah you listen to the pod yes and you he's a huge fan i'm a huge huge fan and so we i i didn't know that i didn't know who were at that time but i did an episode where i was talking about creator businesses yes so content creators who have now little spun off businesses that are doing really well that are not called mister beast like okay everybody knows mister beast yeah who who oh what are the other cool cool examples and we did like maybe five six seven examples and then danny with with d was one of them and so i guess you heard that yeah well so like a couple nights before i think i saw a tweet that you were doing and you were like we're doing son creator led businesses and i i think i like told you i like that'd be so cool they might like all you guys on twitter and you know like i i was like oh man like that'd be cool if they recognize d but we're in a a a niche right that is totally not your niche like know you had you had no idea who danny was i last night danny was like watching the first couple episodes is y'all podcast i was like no this is sean it was cool and yeah i i was on a plane a couple days later listening to that episode and then it i was like oh you ever heard of danny austin you just asked that sam and sam was like no that i was funny and then it was like yeah you talked about d and i really appreciate that's why i sent dm and i was like hey man love to come and share a story it's very different than most of the business that y'all cover but and let's play a little game we went to dinner last night chinese restaurant we ordered food let's see how well you know your husband i don't i don't know if you told you they're sorry a alligator yeah we brought out chicken the busy ordered wait so you ordered alligator hi i did order it and it was just kind of like a spur the moment think there was a couple of things that were funny about was trying to impress us no i i was not trying to impress you this is funny though like so matthew booked the dinner yeah and it was so sam el play football at ut austin that's one of matthew's really good friends man matthew works for for danny and i and i go hey find a cool restaurant into in austin that you know we can talk to these people he booked this like upstairs room there's like a chan it's a table for sixteen five of us of us and they walk in i go matthew this is such a power move and then on top of that you know the i'm like you know we're we're all talking so i don't know what to order and then he's like you should try to alligator was like okay i'll take the alligator and they were like and then brought at home and woke me up and he was like you gotta try this alligator that sorry it really tastes like chicken just try okay you didn't try the out here yeah that was a crazy move i gotta be credit i will never enjoy it i'd never forget it so yeah i guess that's maybe a lesson to be learned yeah they go dinner with somebody for the first time what the weirdest thing on the navy they never forget it that's awesome so you guys you started doing this back in at twenty twelve right till around twenty twelve you're in college at the time what was because you know yesterday instagram had been out youtube had been out for maybe five years by that point mh but it sounds like you're talking about it it was very early days back then what was what was working back then how did like what would you from tiny following back then like how did it and what was early years like so the backstory is my brother lana austin he's actually a musician and he started on youtube he just started posting covers of different songs he had one video blow up because people thought that he was john mayer yeah it was actually covering tay like chocolate rain songs anyway so that popped off so my brother started to like kind of acquire this audience and he told me about space but i thought it was so weird like i'd walk by his bedroom and he'd be like talking all of his imaginary friends and i just was i was like come on lane and like you gotta make some real friends and so but he ended up putting me in like a sibling tag the his tags were really popular on youtube back then you know like the chu bunny challenge or whatever tag so he put me in a video and you know in all the comments it's like your sister should start a channel or she should share how she did her makeup or she at her top and so my brother actually made my channel for me and i didn't touch it we went home over winter break and we were so bored because you know all of our friends are in austin now and everyone's in college and you know was just like you know i let's give this thing a shot so my brother filmed and edited my first video it was all like just affordable near eve outfits and it popped off and within like three months i had a hundred thousand followers and i just started kinda of posting so like consistently i knew of like a handful of girls out in los angeles that were doing this like full time and they actually had managers and there were agencies that were just dedicated like specifically to youtube which was like a totally different world so within three months i signed with a manager and then every summer from then on out i would just fly out to la and do clouds because the clouds were like yeah oh yeah clouds were everything they actually had just opened youtube space in playa vista in los angeles as well and they had this thing called the creator program where they only a lot of think like ten or eleven of us in and creators of all sizes and we were four you had to collab with two other creators in the program in order to be able to use youtube space so like when you got to youtube space i mean they had everything from like the you know red camera they had studios they had you know editing days editing suites they had all these classes you could take so i would go and work for my manager from like you know nine to five and then from five to like nine i would go to youtube space in just club make youtube videos learn about how to edit and everything and you're like twenty one at the twenty one dot twenty actually it was nineteen twenty i couldn't afford to go doing when you're working for your manager just by day you're like so that's high least stuff no i mean i was like in on like all of the negotiations like a lot of the creators were moving out to la and the brands would come to the office and you know meet all the creators and i honestly learned everything like the back end of the business because that that's all you weren't the star but you were like exactly yeah and then like also being around all these creators i would meet someone of like the girls that i loved and then get their number and then we would collab and everyone was very it was just very collaborative everybody's helping each other out so it was awesome and but then i was able to kinda take all of that back to austin and there really weren't a lot of you know youtubers in austin which also kinda helped me because i felt like i was one of the only ones and so when i was i did start kinda like pitching myself to brands because like i also signed with my manager but she was you know managing girls that i had over a million followers i had maybe a hundred fifty thousand at the time and so i started pitching myself to all these like startups in austin and what i found was what was happening was i was getting these brand or these partnerships i would you know get to know them pull them in and then forward them to my manager and then i would look on youtube and like all the girls that were signed with her would be working with these brands and i wasn't so i was basically just like funneling these brands to my manager yourself i realized at that time i was like i'm not big enough for them to care right so i need to get out of this contract and just kinda manage manage myself and build my own team and like how people that actually care about what i'm doing so as soon as i could i got out of that contract and ever since then we've always kind of had like an in house team which we've learned a lot oh my gosh but but yeah it's just kinda crazy how it's evolved and so how even when you were so how is the audience snap so now on instagram like total total on all our platforms we have probably over two million yeah two point five million what is instagram main one is instagram which is like the perfect platform for us most of our content is on instagram stories and the reason we like that is because it's kind of like reality tv where i wake up with my audience like like literally when i wake up in the morning i get on stories and i carry them throughout the entire day and so it's just like the closest i feel like people really feel like they're in our homes you know it's it's very stripped down yeah yeah it's it will have more authentic gonna like follow all of my day and so you you've done that now you also launched d yeah and it's because that's kinda how we when we initially found you guys i i read this thread i read the twitter that somebody else somebody else had written about this and they named five or six creators i never heard of that had business are really big it was like d it's a you know this sort of like hair care product whatever and it was doing forty million or something record i i don't remember what the exact numbers were i've ever being like wow that's like really significant and so cool i had never really like i never heard of that you hear the same three or four examples all the time when it comes to like like logan paul and prime and whatever like especially in the tech world we kinda hear the same we're not like as deep bim so you only hear this hear the same you know three four examples every single time so how did that come about how'd you yeah when you decide to instead of posting for other people like let's create our own brand and how'd do you pick the product how did you like had you had the confidence to go for it yeah so there was definitely an era on in instagram where everything was perfect you know he's like back in the day of like posting the perfect selfie or the perfect like latte art whatever it was and so i definitely played that game and it gets very exhausting after a while i started actually losing my hair when i was in college whenever i was at ut first it started with like just needing so stressed out because i'm at ut i'm flying to la every weekend i'm posting on these videos i have like ne gina like where's is the brand deal and i have like four exams in the next day so i'm stressed out all the time start my hair then i get hair extensions to try to like cover that up that makes it worse then i bleach my hair that makes it worse we get married i think like a year i look in the mirror and i'm like i literally have no more hair i was like i didn't even wanna leave the house anymore so jordan this is a demo i mean i was talking yeah couple strands of what are we talking i mean like bald spots like patches like patches of hair stress driven stress driven and then hair extensions so that's probably like more traction alopecia so what happens when you put hair in like your hair can't withstand that weight and instead of just losing hair where the hair extension is with traction alopecia you actually lose hair like around that whole surrounding area so it was like multiple bald spots like all over so jordan of course my husband he's like wait i don't get like why don't you just get a wig all the kardashians wear wig what's what's wrong with that so he takes me to a wake shop in dallas like the first place he google's we walk in it's like a halloween store like the most expensive wig is like probably called sw dollars yeah if that's bright me on yellow i'm like i don't know if it's gonna work you're like handful plastic wig they're like most expensive one is like fifteen bucks so i leave there like so defeated i'm like i'm always gonna be bold you know so we actually learn about this like wig shop in los angeles called wig shop actually yeah from jeff star i gonna say jeff jeff star is another youtuber anyway long story short we fly out there find my first wig i'm in wig for a year and actually when i first go my first week i didn't tell anybody because i was so embarrassed i was like we actually took a trip to chicago with my parents and my sister law and my brother and we didn't tell them the entire time they go oh nice haircut you like i mean these things can look so real real it's insane so about a month into wearing it i just felt like a fraud oh it's like i gotta tell people sis i feel like i'm probably not the only female going through something like this i think that like people will appreciate it and hopefully they'll be cool with it so i share that i was wearing wig and it kinda just opened up this store of like all these females that are kind of going through the same thing like this like hidden epidemic of hair loss so if all the time after after we had a first baby i think there's like a known kinda like postpartum oh yeah like issue with with hair losses so she was talking about it all the time and i was like i was what you mean like i said don't worry about it she's like no look at this and he's like baby hair whatever and it really bothered her and i and i didn't even think really even to the like what what what a solution look like so yeah felt that it can be very emotional like especially for females yeah because there just weren't a lot of people talking about it so long story short i took the year in war wig and i was like you know i'm gonna focus on my scalp health i'm gonna focus on my wellness and really like give this thing like a hundred percent so meanwhile there was actually this trend or i guess a hack online where a lot of women were using mona to grow their hair back which is so strange but the reason that was working is because it has a lot of like anti fungal rock stack like you know how song danny you gotta tell it's no about or no no you shouldn't know about it but is there good thing there i don't a little lot this figure this is good clickbait tell us so all the guys on the podcast guys are really what by the way we will just explain but there's we always joke that we have four female listeners hopefully that'll change after this more female lesser we're all like dying and so like putting angry face right now so modest is what people what females use for yeast infection okay gotcha cool and so a lot of the women were using this on their scalp though and it's like helping their hair grow and people are taking before and after pictures and it's like insane so the reason that's working is because it has these anti fungal properties in it which nowadays you know they always tell you don't wash your hair it's not good for you so a lot of females are using dry shampoo yeah and so they're putting all of this dry shampoo all this product that's just like sitting on your scalp blocking your fo cool and so your hair doesn't really have like a fair chance of growing so when they're using mono you know it's kinda like detox diversifying it's getting rid of all that product build up and your hair is growing so the only thing with that is you shouldn't be using it long term it's just like has a lot of harmful things in it so my goal was to find a more natural way to essentially accomplish the same thing so i would like get into my bathroom and i studied bio at the university of texas i was going to so did they don't teach you anything the i learned photosynthesis this is for like seven years yeah that you about the human body exactly she can hang with the chemistry i hang that she can hang she's like okay i remember that i just kinda i kinda get it but amazing how much you learn when you really need to learn versus like my major now i wish i really would paid attention right because i think it really would benefited me but put known anyway so so you know i'm like a little chemist in my in my bathroom i'm i'm getting all these ingredients from online whole foods all over the place and just making my own scalp serums and i would you know share on youtube like this is how i make it this is where you ordered this and then mix it this way and and then people started asking like hey can you just like ship it to me right and so i go to jordan i'm like really think this could be a thing a lot of in the petri when was this slight couple years ago or this was a twenty ninth no probably yeah twenty nineteen twenty nineteen twenty nineteen and so that's kind of like where the idea originate from and it was totally clean so it's something that people could use every day and not feel like it's gonna be harmful so we had a lot of like eucalyptus natural use jojo oil but there were a lot of things i wanted to put in it that i just didn't have access to so long story short found partners found a great chemist and then came out with our first product which was a sk and to be honest i did not think that it would pop off at all i really was just like i wanna serve my audit i've been very like service driven with all of my content i'm like i just really wanna serve people because i feel like if i serve them they'll come back so that was really just like the heart behind it but what happened was a lot of people were buying it for like their day were down to street or their mom or their husband and people started taking like before and after pictures we never ask for before and after pictures but i feel like that's kind of what made it blow up right was the best there is right before and after yes people started sending in there before and after and like so then i would start sharing them you know left and right and i mean every day i'm probably tagged in like fifteen before and actors even to this day yeah so were they're not scalp syrup before that or there were but they just weren't you know i think it was just such a new like a niche like so you know putting something on your scalp like a care routine like creating that scalp routine was very new people weren't really thinking about it so i'm sure that there were scalp out there but i don't think people were educated about like how to use them or why they were important so our biggest thing is just like if you're taking care of your skin like you should be taking care of your scalp it's kind of like an extension of you know and so so i think once people kind of understood how to use it then they went to d first because you're also one be only like clean sc serums out there gotcha so the business launches win twenty twenty what is twenty twenty twenty one twenty twenty one october twenty twenty one so we're not even two full years in no and it's a exploded so i don't know how much you guys typically share do you guys share revenue stuff or not really yeah i mean like our first like full year i think you already shared it like said twenty was forty but yeah we did about forty million dollars and then you know this year we're on track to do thirty percent thirty five percent growth yeah it's it's crazy and that's mostly from kind of the power of your community or that's that plus a bunch of other marketing that you have to do or how how does the business grow i mean how that probably exceeded your expectations i mean that would exceed anyone's expectation expectations yeah i always say like when we launched the product we thought that we were launching it for like ten percent of danny's audience like we were like hey these people need to be served danny you know acquired this audience they want a resource and it just grew so far beyond that and a lot of people think that you know d is all danny's audience it's buying it and you know she's only made up about fifteen percent of the overall revenue and so it was just a product that i think took off and worked it was just right place right time it was like during the era the skin unification of the scalp is like what the beauty guru call it in salem i missed that whole era yeah you missed there well it's here it's now have a skin so i just i had to catch up i start with skid we i gave you two boxes yeah i know you're you're in it now and so yeah it's it's just been wild i mean we we never expected certainly did you guys look at like other crater led businesses like who was a inspiration that you're like oh you know if we do this well this could be like you know oh whatever yeah skim or this could be like the yeah kylie lip thing or whatever i mean we've always admired the kardashians in a business sense like how they've how they've like used their reality tv to grow all these businesses and like we one thing we love about them is like how they all support each other it's like a in an ecosystem like you're using you know kylie makeup and then you're wearing kim sci and so we always love that aspect of what they do but i mean in terms of like our inspiration to be honest everyone in our space was just launching clothing lines so it was totally different yeah it was very very different were you tempted to do that too or a hundred percent so i was like please don't yeah don't turns are insane my parents my dad actually has a showroom him at the dallas world's trade center in dallas so he you know sells wholesale all you know nordstrom all these boutiques my dad always told him me he's like the one thing i ask you is please don't get in the fashion industry it's just yeah it's it's a lot and so but one thing i knew that i wanted if i ever did launch a business that i wanted to have something that could be on subscription and so a lot of my ideas were mainly tech at first i never really thought it like what like what would it is you know some service you could get i had i honestly i didn't have like a a what like you we had this one yeah there was one time where she like wanted to launch her own app because she felt like you know she could build a better community like they're a different platform than in instagram and and and and we tried it we call it what did you call it sassy club the sassy club at the time but it was like we use this this third party app system and we drove a large part of our community to it and we tried to do like more the whole concept was like let's meet in real life with our audience and so it it's like we do meetups ups and stuff like that and that was just really hard it was kind of like a bum right yeah it was kinda like a bum so we tried that you know it it was pretty difficult and then it was it was difficult to manage like the in face right interactions yeah so let me ask you a question but i just hired a guy paid guy five thousand dollars to do a couple of like one zero one like workshops with me and it was all about this idea of personal branding which honestly a pretty lame phrase in general like i cringe that i even did all but i'm putting it out there in the spirit of authenticity so pay this guy why don't i pay this guy well this podcast itself has gotten pretty popular but i've always had this problem which was just like you see some people and their brand is so clear it's like this is guy who this guy named pop and pop is all about bitcoin he's the bitcoin guy yeah like you know i'm about know yeah because of bitcoin he talked about bitcoin everything he loves you know every fourth word needs to be bitcoin yep and then you have like tim ferris who's you know the four hour work guy for body four hour chef he's the four hour guy he's all about kinda life hacking your way there and so you you go on the list and a lot of people who have built good online following they have a clear kinda like they're the blank guy or they're the blank gal whatever like the that's what they're known for and for me hud always been like well don't know but the business business guy know this sound very like specific or focused and i was like oh i've got pretty far without that but maybe i maybe somebody could help me kinda sharpen so this guy who i hired he works with like really like jay s mh and like yeah a bunch of people who are like that like the guy who did quest quest bar think yeah calm whatever bill you mh and he's like yeah you know like jay s his story is he was like kind of like in and out of trouble than decided to go be a monk he was a monk and then he like i kicked out of the monastery because a monk came to him was like you know you like there's something bigger in store for you so he decided to make his life mission to bring ancient monk wisdom in a modern way it's world whatever i i butcher i butcher you that or something like that system man right he's bind it every day i just knew him i like the blue eyed of indian guy like you know that's what stood out to be like the guys in know amongst green eyed it yeah but i was like okay i see how i see the value and if you really like sharpen this like whatever your brand is all about you but then i've met people who are maybe like you who you probably never hired a consultant or like did a brand workshop or like sat down with a piece of paper and like try to architect it seems like it kinda happened organically and naturally for you so i i'm i have i have two questions for you one do you think you have like a focus like that like the blank yeah you you are the you know just like the big point guy like do you have like a thing that's like our brand is is about mh this word or these three words or whatever do you have something like that so when i started through my hair loss i think it was the first time that i kinda felt like i had that thing like i was kind of like the w influencer for a while and then kind of like the hair loss influencer i mean as cliche is as it sounds i feel like like i think our biggest thing is we've always just been very authentic and like goofy and we've kind of i feel like what we've done is figured out how to collide those worlds of like being professional but also getting you know taking your heels off getting back home just like and being real about what it's like having two kids like you're in heels changing diapers kids peeing all over you but like i would say it it took like ten years for people to kind of i've never had you know this persona or this video pop off and go viral and then everyone knows who i am like i've never had that moment it's just been like very gradual of but i but i totally feel what you're saying like i i still go through those times where like okay who am i like what identity like what do and i i do feel like there are some bloggers out there that are so good at like okay when you think of chick f a you think of this one person or when you think of like this one brand you think of that in a bit mind chick f a apologize listen you're genius yeah no gonna be old time yeah and it's like and so i do try to find those things that like okay when in dallas when people go like are they gonna what brands are they thinking of when they think of danny you know but it it's it's challenging because also like i'm very you know one day i wanna be doing this one day i like to kinda shift to be on my toes and what do you think people get wrong when they try to bill following not like the people who are just obviously bad but let's say people who have the potential work could be working out what do you think are the mistakes that those people make that like they're trying to be perfect all the time and it's so unrelated i think like one of biggest reasons that like people can relate is because we have made so many mistakes and we share them and like there's times when we get online we're like man that was bad we should have done that like there was example a small example but i was cutting up like fruit for my daughter still his lunch and i'm cutting the grapes wrong you know like where they can shut choke on grapes and like had no idea like my mom never cut my grapes so like i didn't know was anything wrong but you know like the dms start flooding and the facebook groups are popping off and he's like cutting the grapes are you trying you're yeah yeah you're done like if you're influencing all these moms to cut grapes wrong and i'm like oh my gosh i didn't know like so you know you get on you're like guys i'm so sorry like i made a mistake but let me like teach you the right way to to cut grapes instead of like deleting the content and being embarrassed about it and so it's like i you kinda wrong the second time too i did i did i did but yeah so i just feel like i have a lot of girlfriends like dallas that are you know trying to do something similar and they're trying so hard to just be perfect all the time and it's not you said the word relatable i think that's a key key thing like we had the comedian hassan mina i know if you have me yeah he was on netflix or something that he came on and be and i was asking something about because we do this like we're doing these live podcasts now sometimes so we're doing one this saturday here in austin mh and so i had asked i was hey i'm going on states kinda like stand up comedy it's gonna be whatever like thousand people the audience how do i you know any what what would you say like first five minutes how can i set a good tone here hey he goes he gave be two be a piece of it i see those first make it clear that you are there so he's like talk about the room talk about the person in the front row talk about you know the city that you're in and like what it's been like for to be there like just making it like yeah give them the fact that you're there and everybody will be present together when you do that and it goes the second thing is low status low status he goes yeah like people make this mistake a lot that they try to be high status they're like yes i want your approval so i'm gonna present a version of myself that is high status mh women actuality the way people relate to you and like you is doing something low status so making fun of yourself showing a weakness being vulnerable saying something that's makes you look bad not great or like embarrassing to you and so he's like you know comedy is actually a low status art form not like not high status which is what you you're like if go to conference you go on stage it's typically to be all high status stuff people trying to say things that show how important they are and how smart they are and their resume and all that basic that's not how people relate to you and so what you're saying kind of reminds me of that is like a doing things that are showing the the showing some of the flaws is almost not just because they're there but like it actually helps and it actually builds that i know i i i agree i mean i feel like the times that we connect with our audience the most is like in those goofy times when i'm running around with no pants on and i'm like we're like oh i relate same thing you know i think there's like a there's like a push back on like a list celebrities even towards influencers because it's like i don't understand like this is not relevant to my life at all what the kardashians are doing in the private jets and all that stuff and like i think that that's where people feel at home you know is is in these kind of like relatable moments which just what i told ben you need to do i feel like you'll do so well on the podcast is like you're not trying to be this business guru expert you're just kind of talking about everyday people's business and your thought on it and you're kinda r and i think that you know i told sean i was like i think he just needs to do more he needs to get on instagram stories and need to get on youtube that was my advice to him you on his i went non private like you know my dad think guys i i'm now not private yeah when we dm was i was like was this guy do it yeah yeah i i didn't bother with instagram but but what is your your your fancy branding coach so you so what he was saying was so they did this they did a great exercise actually private i kinda wanna like package this thing up so more people can do this i think it's a it's a pretty useful thing but what he says is he was like you know you wanna figure out your signature stories first so he's like don't try to get to the endpoint of oh i'm known for x is like go look at yours the signature stories that made you you so like what were the moments of your life that kinda defined who you were times you either made a key decision in life or you which could have just been like no more like i'm not doing this ever again or know so some people have that they give up alcohol or something it's like that becomes their brand but it's like the signature story is the rock bottom story that they when literally they were so embarrassed at something that they did or felt and then they decided never again you or could be a signature story where you know they went from kind of being you know shy to actually give out there being more confident what what changed so you find your signature stories that kind of reveals what you're gonna be what you're gonna end up being known for what the the mental shortcut people will need to make when they're trying to think about who's that guy oh he's the guy who blah blah lot that's their that's their story the second thing he said was he was like you gotta figure out what you said something about like serving he's like basically people will come to your contact because they're they're trying to change the way they feel so you gotta know that you're not giving information you're giving a transformation of like you know emotion how how somebody feels so he's like what transformation do they get when they come to your content that you give them better and more consistently than anybody else if you do that you went mh and so you gotta figure out what is that chance like with the pod for example we talk about business ideas or like will show you an under the radar business you'd never heard of that's really interesting crushing it but like let me ask you i i bet bet you i bet your answer will match what i think it is which is why do you listen the pod what do you what do you feel when you when you listen to i think it's like education meets inspiration like i think i walk away being like oh cool new idea like i wanna you know i wanna learn more about that or i i feel like i can you know go do this in our business right and i that that's what you guys do really well whether it's like just sharing ideas or you know uncovering these things we've never heard of but it's done in a relatable manner whereas like i think that that's why it's inspiring is because you're not doing this in like this i'm up here you're down here type of way it's kind of like hey we're all here and we can all do it tangible it's more tangible it's very relatable like i think that there's very strong parallels between what i've seen in like danny's content in the way that she released her audience and what you guys are doing with your audience what we call it the grow next door we we don't wanna be a super supermodel we wanna be the girl next door you're still try to be hot but you're relatable hot like i up like i get there but yeah you are the go i love them how have people like do you what are your experience like in real life when you meet people who listen to the pot it's probably like how i what you feel is that they know you they're like like you don't but i really know like friends yeah like like an instagram like daily leave vlogging kinda like through an instagram story it's kinda of the same way it's like the same i don't you knew your kids and i what your house looks like i know like on my way here i to my wife i was like i was like i don't follow them on instagram i don't know their stories though do i know they're like oh their mom is like involved in it and they're they i got two kids like there's like all these little things that are mh known about your life the inside of your life and so i think like that's what you guys do on the podcast is different podcast is like such a long form conversation right una edited un scripting so you get to know someone's personality in we i usually do the pod with my buddy sam and sam like it's kinda like two friends hanging out kicking it mh and so you you hit the like the one we found was that the two transformations people get the two feelings that they get consistently is we're like their entrepreneurial friends it's almost like yeah they got to hang out with their two guy friends who are like super into business nerd out about business stuff it's like they kinda got to have the hangout without like going and having to friends and doing the hang out like themselves because it's like i was driving somewhere and i just listen right but i kinda got my hangout figs and the second is like motivation or like the inspiration like the juice yeah to be like i'm probably not gonna go do any of the things you mentioned on this podcast specifically but just hearing about stories of people doing interesting things made me you wanna go do more interesting things or made me what they're doing well make me wanna go crush it in my field too so once we realize that it's like okay that's very different than people come to me for this specific information or the specific help because it's like yeah there's some of that but it's not the main thing that gets people attached if i told i told bin this you know but i i said the biggest pit fall from here is you gotta stay humble and you gotta stay consistent because i think that what happens in this era and and you saw a lot with the early tiktok that blew up during covid is they moved in these big houses right you know and then they would sign with these managers and then they're all and all these commercials in the very thing that made them relatable and tangible during the was dancing alone in their bedroom dancing club in their bedrooms now they're in mansions and it just loses the same sentiment right and i think that that's a pit fall of anyone really in like the entertainment industry but like anyone who's built their brand off of authenticity is like losing that right so it'd be like you guys you know becoming jerks you know or douche sushi and then like no one wants to hang out and they're like oh well now they're just pom or the even like you have to protect yourself you know in our world we had to protect ourselves from the sponsored things of like oh they're just bought now you know like i don't trust them anymore you know i i i don't believe that they're saying this for just genuine reed it's not sam right you know kicking it and so you probably get this question a lot it's the same question we get a lot which is like if you were just starting out today what would you what would you do if you were twenty one now what would you where would you start we get that on the business side what would you say you're your answer to that is on the contents side would you yeah would you start on take tiktok would you go to instagram yeah like what type of content would you do because like you said one thing that was actually very very interesting to me your first video you said was like affordable new years here new year's eve how outfits that's kind of amazing because side that's a great like almost like title mh like it seems like from the beginning you had a good sense of like what content will work right yeah not everybody has that like i think most people would have tried something that's like no i would say with like any platform that i started on i mean i would probably start on tiktok now just because i feel like it's the easiest to go viral instagram is so tough but i do feel like youtube like kinda coming back a little bit yeah i heard blogging coming blogging long form but i honestly wish i wouldn't have started out with the trends like chasing the trends i really wish i would have liked just like found something really unique and honed in on that because i feel like i was like trend chasing for so long and then i would have some video pop off but that was just because it was trendy and no one actually wanted to get to know me more bye so i wish i would've have just like kinda of been more unique which i think kinda just goes back to like what does danny actually wanna share like what is she really passionate about i would mix in a little bit of that like i as i was studying biology and kin i would you know mix in a little bit of like what i was learning in my classes but then the next video was a trend right you know and so that's the same thing that i feel like a lot of tiktok get caught up and you know they're just doing all these trendy videos and then they have a meetup and like no one comes because nobody really knows them and nobody actually like connects with them and then two like i think branding as characters within your content is so important like you said my mom's in a lot of content so i had this idea to call my mom what's her character so yeah her character is we call her tornado and that's the the reason we call our tornado is because she is a tornado when she walks in the room like right now if she was in this room she'd be dusting off your leaves she's over there should be fixing all the light bulbs my mom has so much energy and i didn't really know how to like communicate that to the audience right so my first sample was like we call her tornado and the second step is every time she comes over we're showing her up on a chair desk sting things off and like tornado doing tornado things pulling me out out of my comfort zone just like being a tornado and so and then you know jordan's jordan's character is like every single day he gets up at the same exact time he wears you know he gets dressed up every single time i'm running around the house just like chaos so we all have our certain characters and i didn't really learn how important that was up until like probably like three or four years ago how did you know that just sort of like because people are forgetting who we were and so i i had to like create a way where people like when they when they you know were missing like what did they associate our family with and like how how could they remember us throughout the day and so so like tornado was was if like was kind of huge for us i feel like that was not only like that but it was like very relatable because you know just even before we had kids like the content we were creating i'm like who it relates to this we're traveling all over the world taking outfit pictures right you know like this is not that this makes sense and honestly it was exhausting for us because it wasn't even like relatable for for us you know and so as soon as we kind of like settle down and we had kids and i was like okay we have to figure out a way to make our everyday life interest like so we bought her nice house and then we that house yeah don't room relatable house and there they'll sleep in the nice house no i honestly obviously i know people that do that like i know influencers that have second houses that literally just stay film yeah or milk class no or i know influencers that literally will like they'll take a chanel bag to dinner but they'll like switch it with like an amazon one before when they take the photo and it's like but no i feel like what's so like unique about us too is like that we kind of live our lives just the way were raised like with the same family values that we were raised with we're not shared to we're not scared to share that with our with our audience i mean i would say like everything you said a lot about like characters this is like who they are you know and it was just like how do we kind of like tell it from all these different angles and it just fit you know like every family is a story right i think that that's where a lot of the creativity see into what we did right and why it was hard to do what we did is we had to find what made our our family unique and almost produce it like a reality tv show and i think that i mean i don't wanna say that we were the first but i think that that's what we saw the medium of instagram stories has like a lot of i think influencers in like the twenty nineteen era when it came out we're like oh my gosh like how i gonna do this because they're not super personable and we you know with your youtube background we're were like oh man this is like our platform to shine and it was it was so fun what i'm pushing you to do is like show your wife show your kids like show the behind the scenes of like what is happening in sean's life beyond just this podcast like that's what i and it only even have to be family it could be like your producer or your assistant it or whoever it is like my my brother now has an assistant her name's katie and she shows up like three days a week and she is everyone like loves her around the content and now because they love her because she's a character they got and do these crazy things that they probably would have never done that so much more entertaining now because there's another character involved and so who's are you just like selfie with the camera do you have somebody who does your res guy elementary okay the this guy i mean just yeah it's we do have a content creator now that we actually just hired yeah it's with like reels because those are that's a different thing it's a whole another beast so you know he's been helping out a little bit but like we kinda just enjoy doing ourselves there's a lot to another woman who listens the pod rebecca z you she's like youtuber she's got like ten million subs on youtube mh and when i called her she was basically like yeah downstairs right now is like the camera crew they basically live in our house and she's like my dog has a channel that's got like three hundred thousand subs like we have our gaming channel we have our she has like kinda of kids like role play content or something like that yeah story kinda like yeah let's like treasure your chest in the back here and let's go and do it and so they not only each one not only a character each one got their own sub channels has their own following and then they have camera crew that was like stare all the time i was like man that's you know like stressful like just it's like a lot like it's like reality it's like you know famous people they have trouble when they go out because they're like keep getting stopped but almost like influencers have it in the house it's like i'd never get to just not yeah have you said the same thing yes oh my gosh it's it's hard and i love our team to death but you know it's it's hard when your job is to live your life you know your job is to to experience life to capture it in a very raw strip down way but you know when there's crews and there's teams it's it sometimes counterproductive to what you're trying to do it and and so you know the reason i think that the husband and wife dynamic works so well in our niche is because it it's just us hanging out you know and it's like it's the best content they're had a been in her life it was like falling around that wasn't her husband it's like it's all about the dynamics right and so like i you know it's funny i always advocate for like the best producer for a content creator is gonna be the husband in fact i think that the most successful couples in our niche have that husband wife dynamic where they're creating content together it is funny we have our so we do have a team and they come over like four days a week but they they meet in our upstairs play room and so they're not the ones actually filming the content but they're there it's as we have more kids it was like okay we're just gonna put this ball in here okay here's stella table in stella walk and speed play here there the amount of times that we've tried to you know get a workspace or get an office it just like doesn't work because they do have to be there because like it if we're going into an office every day that's not relatable anymore right and there's also like nothing i don't know it's truly one of the most like like technical nuances that's difficult about our tree is like how do we position our team where do we put them and then like danny can't you know you can't just say hey danny come to the office and do a try on haul all the clothes are in the the the closet right right but so it's always the trade off if okay do we have people in our house what do we do sure yeah we're still figuring out still fair enough and for the like instagram kinda like sponsored content or like brand deals tell me a little bit about those so how how those kinda like changed over time what what it what is like working to best or what works yeah what doesn't work anymore sure it doesn't work at all when people try it yeah so i mean brandon will started out as you know here's a product go make a youtube video include it for twenty seconds put the link in there and like at first i was such a sellout out because you know like you're i'm twenty years old and i'm like i'm just trying to pay my rent like i'll do i'll do anything that i can do to just like goodbye and so and then i think you get to a point where like wait like people really trust me like this is like some responsibility so i kind of like took this approach where i pictured myself like you know shopping with them and then purchasing something than trying it and then then being like what the heck danny why did you recommend this so i really started to take like more responsibility and like wait i am a resource like i gotta serve these people and not only that i have to find the best deals not only that like i need to go after these brands and beg them for better promo codes that like they can't get anywhere else to kinda became like competitive with myself yeah we kinda became like like a like a q always gonna have the best deal and so we try to adopt that mentality in house you know we i always describe it as like a like a like a triangle like at the top is the audience and like as long as we're prioritizing them first everyone's happy at the bottom left is like our business which we have to take care of we run a team and then on the right is like the brand we're serving and we found that every time we try and flip the triangle a different way so we put the brand at the top then the audience is like you don't actually like this product and everything kinda just crumble and the the i would say like this year in particular covid especially it was like there was just this like craze for promo codes like because what the shopping was happening so much through instagram that we found our edge to be like hey let's get the best deal that you're not gonna find anywhere else you know in the country and it kind of i mean yeah but i think what works a lot for us is to not just go a hundred percent on brand deals but to also couple that with affiliates so when i post you know lt k so when i share something that i like to know right like to know it yes so i'd like to know is basically a platform where you know anything i swipe up to you can make commission off of it but the best thing about lt k is i can share things that i genuinely bought like this top right now i got from target i purchased it i get to go tell people okay it kind of fits a little tight in the shoulders so maybe go a size up you know here's the link make sure you order it in white because that's about to sell out whatever it is and so that's like super authentic super real people know that you're making commission off of it they don't care because you're just providing them like a lot of value so that's like fifty percent of how we monetize and then the other half is you know through brand deals where i feel like if you have a really strong affiliate base like you can get really picky with the brands that you're you're choosing so we got super picky like the past couple years and and then it got to a point where we're like okay we're getting brand deals we gotta affiliates it's now let's go after those brands that have i've never given promo codes or never given deals let's fly out there and like me with them in person and like beg them for promo codes so one of those examples was free people you know girls love free people been wearing people for years they never do promo codes they rarely do they'll go on sale but never do like a discount code so we begged them forever to get a code finally got a code you know within the first hour we push seven figures because people are like and all only that but because we i had worn it for years and people had seen these you know specific crop tops that i've been wearing for so long it was like the most like jen authentic push and it like benefited the brand benefited us benefited the audience ever everyone's happy and so what's the j brand you've ever had where you were like wow they're gonna pay us that like that's a stupid amount of money or like you know we we can make this way you don't have say the name of the brand or you could just describe what is it i know you're gonna say i think you say it stanley yeah stanley stanley the cuts like yeah so fun fact we were like the worst why are those like so popular we were the first to share them yeah first black yeah i was like this is humongous yes this is a giant giant it it's it's a great product you know they are owned by pe and so we flew up to seattle and we were like guys listening because they really hit that like utah mormon market really well like that mark yeah it's a great market and then they saw that that was working that the president is a guy named terrence he's actually a phenomenal like marketer he was the one who put post malone and cro and like kind of like reverse cro trajectory to being like a a cultural icon and so he i think had noticed danny was like hey you know like i there's something about this mom market that's working with stanley you know flew us up there and it was it was hard they still haven't given us a a code per s on the quench or have they not on the quench we have a the code on every other product but the quench yeah that's it's hard but yeah they they've been good they've been all us yeah the bs special things coming out with them we're excited yeah we're excited amazing so pain points right so like you talked about d was born out of a pain point that you had yeah i'm curious as you guys are trying to run this kind of influencer business plus d like have you felt any pain points that you're like god i wish i where somebody just made this easier or made this hiring people you see yeah wait this is gonna ring random it but like content creation at weddings content creation at weddings that's so i feel like now bride really want like tiktok or reels or just like iphone photos they don't wanna like hire this photographer and wait you know two months before they get their photos back so at my wedding i just hired someone to like take an iphone and like take iphone walk a good idea a great idea a great idea take photos and i just paid them like hourly but i feel like you could get like a pretty good team that like you know they take all this the nice thing is to you get your content the day after the wedding because like the biggest bummer is you go to your honeymoon you don't have any pictures post yeah then they post and like people are gonna pay for that because it's their through one day the a normal videographer i think is like ten grand oh yeah like and sometimes because i don't even like i like the iphone the video those are like like you said like my sister loves got married like few months ago and she just now got like the first cut of the what video and then that doesn't look like what concept looks like nowadays exactly it looks like this like like hey you're working thing it's like nice yeah but it's like if you're posted this it's like okay grandma like you know what and this is not like and brother had like five tiktok and like six instagram that like felt like the fun of the party you know i think the reason we've noticed as because jordan film's a lot of our content and we've we've been to a lot of weddings where the next day the bride is like reached out to like hey can you send me the real that you posted or your stories for the today and we're like oh they already expired like they're they're on you know so so many like content creators now that i feel like don't want to beat influencers they're just like content creators like they'll just create content for other people i think someone's gonna that's always been a great idea you had thank you i more time i like like that with a lot that's cool because that could just be like local franchises right like you could you train someone theory you could just start that business and then be like i'm looking for an operator in nashville we need an operator in florida yeah who's gonna be able to do these like dispatch content creators they go in in and then they like cut it all up and then they have it to you by midnight yeah who did you you said there's a bunch of content creators that don't wanna be influenced so who are they what are they what are they doing yeah i would say like we've seen this a lot with like d it's it's called u now so it's like user generated content so there's like a roles yeah there's like a whole economy now of they're not getting paid like as a brand deal to promote on their own stories it's like you know hey we'll pay you two thousand dollars for four videos with our brand a month and so these brands will have ten u g creators on standby on retainer you know and they use that content for ads and so what is happening is like our like our u content d is performing the best over any type of like branded asset and so it makes it sort of feel like a lot of people are using the brand in in an organic ways and they they are but it's a whole other new class and i was like oh my gosh people are doing that like that's insane yeah we pay for our brand we pay like between one and two thousand dollars too a handful of creators for this exact thing and it's like they don't have a following yeah they're just like class good at creating this content and they're like wow you know i get free product and i get paid to do this like this is amazing and i don't even need to be famous like yeah i felt the hit even with my brand deals like we don't get a lot of those opportunities more because used to come to me and they used to say we'll pay you month but now i guess words too expensive or something which we never hear if here for them anymore well what's kind of shifted to like that's interesting part about like how the influencer industry shipped is it's it always kinda goes and waves right but it's like moving from like back to mass marketing where it's like as many people as possible are using and talking about your product at the same time and so and how it goes viral on tiktok see how it goes viral tiktok it's so where does d go from here so you guys are at this level now you are you guys you have like a retail distribution too right yeah so last year we did about eight percent of our revenue from retail but we are scaling in ulta so we're hoping to be in all doors of ulta by the end of this year i don't know danny always been big on like not taking investors so we didn't do that at the front end and so we're kind of like we own our own destiny at this point i think that we're very passionate about the mission of d like it's hard to create an influencer brand that people don't think you just slapped your name on it right so we really wanted to create a product that is more and bigger than danny and so the products have to be really good and so we're really focused right now on innovation we're trying to patent some of our technologies by the way otherwise is it called d what's the name yeah you answer it i was forget so do it's just like d up attention to like each area of your life like overall better lifestyle and overall wellness but is so one of those things were just sounds cool then later you're like what's the meeting or you're like i always should wanna know yeah it's was just so hard to trademark my was like gets fab when i say this was like yes the third name all the other songs are trading oh it was like the t name like it's a good name it's yeah now i like i love it now but and so you're go into retail you hired up a bunch of people you said yeah what else is like what's the next unanswered question for you guys what are you try to figure out next yeah i would say like you know last year was very difficult just because like it was kind of danny and i running everything we've now like you said hired like the suite of vps what's to the next biggest challenge for us is like we're kind of setting the stage for in twenty twenty four to go international which some companies have done really well and other companies have really botched yeah and it's been just like a a money and so that's probably the next frontier for us and for you know we would like to do it without having to raise additional capital we've done everything thus far ourselves which is very you know i mean the best part is like our audience is kinda built in so when we launch something people tell me that day if they like it or not or that day what they want more of and so you know our sequence are what we've launched we only have four skus right now has just been like listening to our audience and that's the biggest one of the biggest things is can you sell international and so so we're definitely working on that and then just like a lot of other skus in the pop right pipeline since we only have four skus we have a lot of development been the hardest thing to learn for us for sure oh sorry and so there's like that company like seed beauty that was doing stuff for for forgot kylie or something something like that was like yeah there's like these companies that are behind and influencer brands like i know like the prime drink or whatever there's like guys behind it that's totally they have their own company they do like multiple brands out of that did you guys work with somebody like that or did you do your own sourcing and manufacturing we found a manufacturer and that's brands pretty much it you know we formulation how how'd you do you went like a formulation house or whatever the same yeah like manufacturers usually have chemists in house and so we we found one and it it they developed our serum and luckily we just picked one right that's a very hard world to navigate too i've learned i think we totally got lucky with our manufacturer on the first one because there's a lot of bad manufacturers out there and you don't know until six months later right right so picking the good ones has been hard but yeah other than that i mean we have too in house chemistry snow yeah yeah we have two in house chemists we we again with the influencer business like danny learned so much from having a manager we've always just tried to be entrepreneurs in house and bring in house which is usually longer you make more mistakes it's harder but i mean i think that we like where we're at where we didn't have a cody or someone come in and say just slap your name on this because we're able to listen to our audience develop the products that we know that they want and but yeah it's more challenging for drew i didn't see him at all last year yeah i was really i'm like i a life now i play paint ball now so like i'm good now but k ball around it i like available now so yeah and it's also the first time now we have like our four vps when we walk into a room and we're like hey we have an idea can we do this really the political process of how we get things done and and now there's process everywhere everywhere it's like you know if we have an idea today and the content side we're like okay let's make it happen you know and it's just it's becoming a real company which is is cool but it comes to yeah i to be careful we're tells me when we walk into the office he's like you can't just walk into the office and tell them what you want or don't like we've been wearing on this product for a just yeah i really like it you know it's like wait just don't say just crushing hopes to dream sorry you need think you'll be doing content like five years ten years hundred percent this i'm obsessed i'm obsessed with my job like i love creating content yeah yeah i don't even think of it as a job but it's yeah it's honestly like so i i think it like our relationship i feel like is always really healthy whatever where we're like creative together and creating things together and i think we love doing that instagram therapy basically yeah pretty much i you guys wasted well if you work with your wife like you i feel like you have to work through so much more conflict than if you have nine to fives like i mean we yeah it's it's it makes our relationship stronger and you know and we was something like a a larger goal and then you know but we'll see like how it evolves with involving our family like our kids that's something i still haven't really figured out and that's what's so great about working with jordan is like if we ever didn't wanna share kids or go down that path like him and i can just take over again right and then also having d we don't have to rely on on sharing the entire family but no i think it's something that we'll probably always be doing yeah we're well on instagram yeah so if people can find us on instagram under danny austin and then d d official dot com yep and then instagram d official yep you what about you where's your instagram oh i don't you know what you have one i don't have one there's you gotta spin off karen instagram like it's so much effort that i i i couldn't i couldn't it would would they would cause conflict in our marriage to try and do both like it would yeah i'm a great supporting actor that's why amazing if people wanna come work for you how would they mind you yeah yeah if you want through yeah if if you guys wanna come work for d email hello at d official dot com and it'll get to me yeah awesome well thanks for doing this i know this is definitely you're probably like what back heck is this podcast who are these guys but i appreciate you coming on this sponge is fun these are minutes yeah i feel like i could rule to work i know why i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days all on a goal travel never looking back