Sponsored by RockWater

Whew!

I’ve had so much hotel coffee and small talk in the past few weeks that my throat is burning for two reasons.

In the past three weeks I’ve had four successful conventions, and this week alone, I have appearances at five more (!!!)

BTW, if you’re going to LA Tech Week, YFCon, CreatorIQ Connect, Uscreen Connect, and TwitchCon, hit me up!

And after two decades of creator conventions, I’m pretty confident that I know how to optimize my time.

Part of that is winning a Good Good Golf shirt on my second chip outside the convention center. Proof: (thanks to Brian Foster for shooting this moment!)

I’ll give you my top 5 hot tips below. And when I’ve shared these with other people, they’ve all mentioned to me how it helped double their impact at these sometimes-confusing conventions.

Also in this edition:

🤖 Sora 2 is Marketing Gold and Reputation-Crushing

👖 The Gap Goes All-In on Creators

🐣 Fandy Has a Twitch Baby

📹 Steven Bartlett Launches a Video Podcast Company

💪🏼 Jobs from TikTok, Suno, and Snap Inc.

🎭 …and a dank meme from yours truly!

Let’s get into it.

NEWS:

Conventions Suck If You Don’t Plan Ahead

TLDR:

• Most people’s convention strategy involves a post saying, “Who’s gonna be there?!” and that’s not good.

• There are always hotspots for business at every convention, or you can make one.

• Scale your impact while minimizing your time.

Conventions are great for three reasons: to learn, to network, and to team-build.

And that’s it.

Besides that it’s expensive, time-consuming, and will make half of your team sick.

I’ve found a framework that works for me in my 20 years of ‘new media/creator economy’ conventions that I highly recommend you follow.

FIND OUT WHERE THE ‘REAL’ CONVENTION IS

Insiders love exclusive places, like that guy in your LA office who always wants to have dinner at Grandmaster Recordings.

Conventions are the same.

The actual convention center is always to loud, crowded, and distracting to get real business done.

So there’s always a second location that acts as the ‘insiders location’.

At VidCon it’s the Hilton bar and Marriott poolside.

At VidSummit it’s the Westin lobby.

For the LA Convention Center it’s the lobby of the J.W. Marriott.

Always find out where the ‘real’ convention is from conference insiders.

KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO DO, OR DON’T GO

You don’t have to go to every convention.

They’re crowded. You’re great, but you won’t be missed.

If you have something specific you need to do, by all means! Go and do that thing!

For example, I went to VidSummit this year because Stealth Talent just launched and I needed to tell the story to all of my previous partners en masse to save a lot of time and get business deals going.

And I take the next step: I ladder up my goals to revenue to make sure my trip was ROI positive.

Happy to say, this VidSummit we doubled our goal!

CONTACT NEW CONNECTIONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA IMMEDIATELY

As soon as you meet someone, before you start talking to anyone else, even if you have to lie and excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, connect on LinkedIn/Instagram/wherever with the person and send a DM about next steps.

I’m shocked how few people do this.

If there are no next steps, just remind them what the connection was about so if you want to talk to them in a year, there’s a message history.

Don’t be someone who gives good meeting then ghosts.

It’s a waste of everyone’s time.

DON’T MEET WITH EVERYONE AND MANAGE CONVO TIME

Seriously. Don’t.

I tell everyone that I’m going to a convention and ask them to reach out too, but there’s another strategy there.

I want people to pitch me ways to work together and those messages cause great inbound.

At the actual convention, I focus on people who require face-to-face meetings to see demos, shmooze with those who could move my business forward the fastest, continue growing relationships with people who help me get to the next level, and stalk out people who I know are attending but haven’t been able to get to a meeting.

If it’s a meeting with someone I can see in LA, just a ‘catch up’, or someone who just wants to say ‘hey’, I won’t be rude and I’ll try to give them some time, but I’ll manage the length of that convo to a quick ‘hello’.

Conventions are expensive for companies. You have to treat your time as valuable.

DON’T GET SICK

This is the most important one. I’m dead serious.

Too many people brag about how they’re going 24/7, meeting with the biggest stars, drinking with CMOs until 4am, and staying from the opening keynote to the closing party.

Then what happens?

They miss the next week because they get the ‘con flu’.

You’re touching grubby hands and eating garbage and sitting on recycled-air planes and touching railings that are touched by half of the industry.

Eat a vegetable, wash your hands a lot, get proper sleep, and don’t stay the whole time if you don’t have to (I usually get 80% of what I need from a con done in the first 24 hours).

I famously don’t go to the night parties often anymore. I find breakfasts more valuable, and I can’t do both.

SPONSORED BY ROCKWATER

How to prep your creator business for a sale.

RockWater advises owners in the creator economy on the sale of their business. We have the largest buyer network, and negotiate the best deals possible for our clients. We’re proud to be the industry’s top M&A advisor.

We recently advised Lionize, an influencer marketing platform, on their sale to gen.video. We’ve also advised Long Haul Mgmt (sold to Wasserman), Bottle Rocket Mgmt (sold to Night), Bounty (sold to gen.video), and have many more deals yet to be announced.

If you want a POV on your company’s valuation and readiness for a sale, reach out to to [email protected] to setup an intro call.FAME & FORTUNE

FAME & FORTUNE

What creators, brands, governments, and platforms are making waves this week in the name of fortune, fame, and fun?

🤖 Sora 2 had a big week, with the invite-only AI video generation app from OpenAI crushing the social media app charts. First-mover influencers like Jake Paul and xQc were rewarded with thousands of videos of them generated and shared with millions of views. But a lot of people had issues with trends in less-good-taste like Martin Luther King Jr. talking about Sora’s oppressive terms of service in his famous “I had a dream speech.” This will likely make those who cringe at the site of AI cringe even more, as it often feels like a playground for edgelords.

👖 Time for creators to fall into The Gap! The clothing brand that also owns Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta, has a new creator advocacy program that they tout has a deeper form of engagement than traditional affiliate programs. Big ups to Sydney Sweeney whose backlash to her ‘great genes’ campaign led The Gap’s ‘Better in Denim’ campaign to soar with over 8b impressions!

🐣 Popular Twitch streamer Fandy decided to live stream the birth of her child to 29,000 viewers, and Twitch’s CEO was in the chat. This, naturally, sparked a ton of controversy, with some saying she shouldn’t broadcast such a private moment and others celebrating how brave it was to show such a raw, emotional moment. C’mon everyone, she’s very popular on OnlyFans, so private moments online are kind of the brand.

📹 Steven Bartlett is yet again the CEO of a new company! Flightcast launched as a solution for video podcasts with a full suite of simplified tech for distribution on both audio platforms and video platforms like Spotify and YouTube, and creation tools like AI clipping. He built it along ex-MrBeast engineer Roxcodes (congrats Rox!).

JOB BOARD

Creator Manager - TikTok LIVE, TikTok

Did you know that TikTok LIVE creators are some of the most profitable creators on social media? I’m not talking about Shop. I’m talking about LIVE. Gifting is working wonders, and the platform is so full of perks that a lot of creators just need to get a few hours under their belt to be hooked for life. This role will provide access to loads of top talent leading the way in social engagement, and one that AI will have a problem taking over (right now…)

Sr. Manager of Creator Success, Suno

The AI audio platform is really, really good at creating music quickly and cheaply. And, often it’s tough for my non-musician ears to tell the difference between Suno music and studio-recorded human music. This role will give you front-row access to creators that are taking the leap into generative AI-focused creator careers, where you’ll see the good, the bad, and the ugly of how AI is treated in these spaces.

Manager, Global Business Marketing (Creator & Consumer), Snap Inc.

Snap creators are crushing it. But too few creators feel like they have a connection to the platform itself, likely because of its woefully underfunded creator-facing team (shout out to Brooke Berry who is doing some of the best scaled-yet-personal marketing for a major platform I’ve ever seen). When I read the description for this role, it sound insanely challenging but if you can get it right, you can literally move a multi-billion dollar market.