Vanessa & Anthony: The TRUTH About Food Content Creation.

I always say that I get ghosted more now than when I was on Tinder. It's easier to find a date than some money. I I really loved creating photos at the time. And when videos started becoming a thing, I was very against it. I hated it. I was like, I'm not jumping on TikTok. We're the heroes of our own story. And so we forget that actually like we're not the heroes of anyone else's. Okay, let's break this down a little bit. How are you figuring out your price? Okay, you doing it based on the number of followers you have, the viewership, clicks, like how are you gauging this equation? If people are paid to make an ad about a business, is it okay to accept

their opinion as truth or is their opinion skewed because of the financial incentive that they got from making that video? That's a question that we break down with today's guests, Vanessa and Anthony, who are paid by restaurants to come in and make reviews about the restaurants that they're dining in. and it's an interesting concept to understand whether or not that is a true review or not. They've got an interesting take on this. Jump in today's episode and find out. All right, guys. Welcome to the podcast. Great to have you here. Yeah, thanks for having us. No, thanks for coming on. Honestly, it's my pleasure. Um, I'm going to jump in straight into this. I want to find out where this journey started cuz I have

no clue how it started. I've just seen all the content since as you guys started to have a lot more success recently and which is pretty exciting. And first of all, congratulations actually on the success lately cuz like the last time I heard about you guys, you're a lot smaller channel than you are now and you've grown pretty rapidly. So, congrats on that guys. That's awesome. But tell me where did it start? Cuz I don't know the origin story of this channel and how you guys got here. Right. Um it was it was very random. Uh I had an injury back in 2018 2019 um from the gym and I had two tears on my lumbar discs. Fun. Um, so I was very much bedridden

for like at least 6 months and I was bored. Yeah. Yep. Literally bored and um Anthony just suggested me, oh you should um just uh post something on social media or some find something that you can do without moving yourself. Um so I started posting food photos on Instagram back then back when Instagram was still like all about photos. Um yeah, it just started from there. I didn't did not take it seriously to start off with. I was just having fun with it. Um and then I started meeting a lot of people from Instagram like other creators. Um some of them are really really good friends of mine still. And so I think I really liked that point. Um yeah. So when when was this

again? So what date were we in or year? uh 2019 or 2018. So somewhere around there. Okay. So we go for a little while now. Yeah. And when was it that So that was you. When was it that Anthony you came into the picture and started doing more? Oh. So I've been there the whole time. So like um when she was like bedridden and stuff, she had like a lot of photos and stuff cuz she liked taking photos of food anyway. And so, um, because I noticed that like she's like quite down and everything, I was like, "Oh, just maybe do something with your time just while while you're like lying down and stuff, you can just like send some of the photos and stuff

like that you've already taken." And so, she was doing that for a while. And then um was like her. He's he's always been on the page. He's always was a couple's page, but I think in the beginning it was more like I didn't want to show my face. I was like, "You do the you just do the the modeling." Um, so yeah, and then I started showing my face, too. And yeah. And when when did you first realize that, oh, this is getting some traction? Like when did that start to happen? Um, I think when video started becoming a thing. Yeah. So when photos was such a thing, I was I was very into it and I learned like photography. He bought my first camera

for my birthday and um straight up just like learned everything on YouTube and 100%. Yep. Yep. Always. And um yeah, I think I I really loved creating photos at the time. And when videos started becoming a thing, I was very against it. I hated it. I was like, I'm not jumping on TikTok. Like, what even is this? Um yeah, I I was very against like changing my content to video. I didn't want to learn how to edit videos. I was like, I work so hard to make good photos. I cannot let this happen. But um algorithm always wins. So I have to I had to salute to algorithm. And I started learning to make videos and I think our very first um viral video was

Karen Steiner. Oh, okay. That was so fun. And I as soon as it came to New Zealand, I was like, I need to go. This is so cool. Yeah. Um, and then that video happened to go viral and I was like, "Oh, is this what going viral feels like?" Maybe I like video. Yeah. Yeah. I love videos. That's so funny. Yeah. And when So, what year was that? That's like 21 22. When was the Kieran's Diner? I think 22. Yeah. End of 2022. Got it. And then yeah, I remember 2023 being a very big shift in our content and um we became really really busy. Um yeah, I think the since 2023 it was Yeah. Okay. So that was like a good fouryear period of

just like photos and everything and growing until that like kind of the moment where the vi first big viral moment happened. What was prior to like up until that point sort of like from a follower account perspective, where were you sitting around that point in time? I think we weren't even at 10K. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Photos were very slow. You just go so slow with photos. Yeah. So, how was that like before that? Okay. Let's use the end of 2022 as a marking point for the for the transition into where you are now. But like that four years is a long period of time to continue with something as much as you did. Like what was that like? Why were you pushing it so hard?

I'm assuming that like some of your like you weren't bedridden anymore by that stage. Yeah. Um I think the main thing was when I was bedridden. Um I was I had no social life and I wasn't working cuz I had just graduated. Um, so I really needed something to make friends and I needed things to get to know, you know, the the the real world really. Yeah. And I was quite like out of touch with like what people do when they're social and like cuz 6 months is a long time and I hadn't seen my friends at that time and I just enjoyed Instagram to help me to meet new people and um yeah like just really learn well relearn how to socialize again cuz

I was like I I've become like such an introverted person after that period of time. I was like when I was putting these um food food content creator gatherings, I was I had no idea what to say. I was like, "Oh, like I was nervous the whole time." I was like, "What do I say?" Like people are having conversations on our table and I'm just like, "Uh-huh." Yeah. Cool. I know what you guys talking about. Yeah. Like that I think that kept me going. Got it. Um community. Community 100%. Yeah. just knowing there are other people out there who has the same hobby as me and who loves food and um yeah we just we we were just all learning about social media all together.

Yeah. And what happened and then how did that like so that was when you first uh were started off but then like lockdown must have happened in the middle of that. Yep. So how was that for you specifically but both of you as a couple trying to do this thing which now you don't you can't get out again. you back to you're not bedridden now but you're house ridden almost. Yeah. Yeah. Um yeah lockdown was was also very interesting. We started cooking a lot. So everyone was sharing their sourdough recipes and yeah there was just everyone was just cooking right. So we just jumped in and we enjoyed our cooking sessions at home. And yeah, I think lockdown also helped me to have a lot

more time to learn about like how to make videos and how to like take photos and yeah, it was a it was a learning process. Yeah. Yeah. there's so for that time that you're doing that four years you hadn't really like got any sort of virality and you know like where a lot of people at the viral the viral moments is where people start to go they get a lot of attention and people do stuff so there's like opportunities that sort of come from it but over that four year period you're saying that community was a big part for you that without that community a lot of other parts of your life would have suffered as well what happened like how did you guys like

was this just a part-time thing you both had other jobs like how did What how was that life like? What did you what do you do outside of making making content? Um I was working full-time um in marketing cuz that's what I did marketing background in my Yeah. And um I did uh marketing for this startup company. Um yeah. So that was my main thing especially during lockdown. Um yeah and then he was working from home. Work from home. So yeah. Oh, so you worked from home as well and you still work from home like that was you had a work from home job? Uh, no. So, um, it was a shift. Yeah. Over that period to work from home cuz like no one can

go in the office obviously cuz with co and everything. Yeah. What like like what industry do you come from? Like what's your background? Um, so my main job is in aviation. Okay. Maintenance. So Okay. So a completely different field. Completely different. Yeah. And how do you feel about this world that you kind of like want you do Vanessa to get into being thrust straight into it from the beginning? Like what was that like for you? I I feel like I've been quite supportive of the whole thing. Like she's happy when she's doing it. She loves like what she does and so that makes me happy too. Yeah. Wouldn't would not have done it without him. He's the most supportive person I know. And yeah, would

not have done it without him. That's so good. And it's so nice to like I think it's one of those things like building content, building business, whatever that like if you don't have that support structure around you. You've now got your partner but also community like it makes it real hard, right? Yeah. Makes it super hard to do. And I've seen lots of people who have tried to build both business and or content creation as a creator who have suffered because they had no one around them to do it. It's a pretty lonely place otherwise. Yeah. A lot of creators we talk to always suffer if like I've got no one in my world. I can barely leave. Like some of the biggest creators we've

interviewed have talked about not being able to leave their home. Oh. Because of like the just how much how intense it is for them when they leave home and the like sort of everyone wanting to know their business, you know, which is like quite tough because they don't really have that sort of support structure around them. They do, but not not enough of it. Yeah. Is probably what I'm talking about. Yeah. Okay. Fast forward end of 2022. You had a video go viral. Um and like tell me about like 2023. Tell me about like what what changed for you guys in 2023 around what you did or did anything change? Um everything changed. Yeah. Um we were very very busy with you know just creating

more and more content like just trying to um since my algorithm changed and I was just trying to you know keep this trend going for my algorithm just keep trying to create more viral videos. Um yeah, so we just uh we became very busy. Yeah. When you say that, when you say you became really busy, like what does that mean? Like because like think about it from people watching from the outside, it's like, hey, you like going out and eating at restaurants and making videos about it. Like how busy can it be? We all go to eat. You know what I mean? So like for you, like what does busy mean? Um it's more like whatever that is happening in Oakuckland or even like in

other cities in New Zealand, we are going um like it doesn't matter if we were invited or we weren't invited. We want to, you know, show our followers the latest or the newest things to do and the newest place to go. Um, so he sometimes say that, oh, you just you put this on yourself because I do I find stuff and I'm like, I need to go. I need to film that. That's that's good content. I um I'm there. And so that's when we become busy as in like we are always finding new places and we kind of crowd our days with a lot of filming and then then it comes a lot of editing um which obviously I'm sure you know it takes a

long time and um yeah so that that's how many like from a perspective of content going live like how how often do you guys post like what is the cadence that you're trying to do It used to be in 2023 it used to be three times a week. Um now it's it's pretty much every day. Yeah. Yeah. At least once a day. Yeah. Some a video every day. A video every day. And I think in December it was um twice a day, every single day. So like 14 videos a week. Um yeah, I was I was dying. Yeah, I was um I had no idea what I was doing every day. I was just like editing, filming, editing, filming. Love it. Was that is that

does that coincide with the sort of like bump in followers and stuff that you got you've had recently? Was that is that or did that did the bump up in followers happened start happening prior to that and that accelerated it? Or was there some your additional content you're putting out, the increase in volume, did they have a significant impact in followers and viewership? I think um pretty much every time when we have something go viral um I can see the increase in following and um yeah like I think the the the volume also helps with the following. Were you getting more viral videos because you're doing more like volume? I definitely think the consistency helps. Yeah. Yeah. The when I'm not consistent I can see

a shift in the algorithm. M um yeah so I am assuming it's the consistency that's happened. Yeah I I mean I see it a lot too like people who are very consistent and post regularly and they have a volume approach as they get better and better at making their content as well. It's you do see the sharp rise in followership that comes from it as well. You know, like we have um we've had Louis Davis on here before and you know, he's like he's a machine. Like he pumps out four minimum four videos a day every single day and you know, like I mean this is his full-time gig as well. Yeah. And his wife does similar levels, but you know, he's he's like a

few million followers now and it's going crazy. He's been doing it for a long time. him and I both talked to the same thing that like volume is a is a hack actually like to get more followers and viewership if and it also teaches if you're the one doing it it teaches you so much because you're having to edit and film and what's working and what's not and you're able to like then tweak your content to be better and better every time. Yeah. So we actually see like a lot of people who are growing fast and actually like it's quite interesting to hear because we so I'd heard of you guys a while back and we'd seen it and some of the team had met

you. I think Mel had met you once before or something as well. Yeah. And so we knew where you were and then like when Mel said, "Yeah, you're coming on." She's like, "Look where they are now." Like where you guys are hitting and like so it's quite a a large increase right over the last sort of year and year I suppose and a bit and I sort of is interesting to hear you say, "Yeah, you've doubled down on your quantity." Because you usually see a little correlation like if you're good at making content then the more you put out the more people want to watch it. Yeah. Like it's as simple as that. kind of thing. Um, tell me then you've you had that change.

You had more and more people follow you. I think what combined now there's likeund and something thousand on across both platforms, Tik Tok and Instagram. Yeah. Instagram obviously being your biggest, right? Yeah. Is that correct? Yeah. Um, from a career perspective, like a monetary perspective, like how's that looking now from the profile? Like are you able to like earn some money using it or is it still just a passion project? like where is it sitting now from a so where it started was like we're going to place again like $50 off the bill kind of thing when she was still taking which is awesome so excited that was like our first like collab and we we literally dressed up and dressed up got suit on

we can pay $50 less that's so good I love that yeah um yeah I think now it's it's pretty much almost my full-time thing Um, obviously he's still just helping out and um, yeah, I I actually became a freelance photographer for restaurants because hospital is what I know best. Um, I worked in hospitals when I was in uni as well. Um but now I have stopped taking like new clients for photography particularly because I've got so busy with content and I just cannot really take more. So I think this is almost full-time. Yeah. So, how is that like and you don't have to break down in specifics around money, but like how is that income coming through? Like are restaurants and stuff paying you to

to come and make this content or is it that you're getting sponsorships for some stuff that enables you to go make the content that you're making or are you getting paid by the venues? Um, I do get paid by restaurants. Um, we do also go to places where we just simply want to try. Um and I think being able to create viral content is enabling like brand deals with bigger corporates. Got it. Um and usually those are the main ones. Those are your main revenue sources. Yeah. Pays better. Um because restaurants they are not able to pay a lot and we don't really charge restaurants a lot. um we just charge a small amount and we um hopefully we can get brand deals that pays

better. What are um like when you think of the brand deals is this like like products and stuff rather than places to eat? So they're like an adjacent like brands that are adjacent to dining um that you sort of working with. What sort of brands are you able to say some of the brands that you work with or I do work with KFC. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. So So like the bigger eeries. Yeah. Got it. Got it. Okay, cool. And so moving forward from a monetization perspective and as a business, how do you see that evolving and growing as you grow as a channel? Like what's the goals? Um I think right now I just really want to reach 100k on Instagram. Um got

to have some milestones. Yeah. Yeah. Um but what about like from a like a business perspective? Like it's obviously your full-time gig now and you guys are spending a lot of time on it. So obviously um from a revenue perspective like where do you see this going? Like how far are you going to take it? Um I would definitely want to branch it out to other streams of income not just relying on you know content and restaurants and brand deals. Um and I am trying out with YouTube. Oh yeah, cool. So hopefully I can edit some YouTube videos. I still have like uh clips from last year that I haven't really edited. Got it. Um so yeah, hopefully so like make a YouTube channel that

you're earning like AdSense and stuff like that from YouTube. Yeah. Got it. Because obviously in New Zealand we don't get paid by views. So um just want to have platform that actually pays. Yeah. Yeah. From like a I mean you don't have to give me specifics, but from like a revenue perspective at the moment you say that this is now your full-time gig. Is this are you earning similar numbers to what you were in employment or is it like um or are you currently in the mode of I'm building to be able to replace that or have you already kind of replaced your salary for where you were? Um I would say I currently I'm able to earn what a full-time job caning. So it

well done. Thank you. Um that's awesome. It it can support us. Um, yeah, but I to be honest, I'm not sure where social media is going. I'm still learning. I'm not like the biggest cradle. I don't I don't have millions of followers. So, I definitely am still in the learning space of where social media is going and what we can do in the future and what we can get from it in the future. Okay. Yeah. And and Anthony, from your perspective, like it kind of almost seems like you've been carried along for this ride that you started like you put the gas in and then she pushed the pedal down, but like for you, what where do you see it going? And what is it

that you hope? Is this just like as long as it keeps Vanessa happy, I'm happy, or like where do you see it going? Kind of like that. Um, and like pretty much everything she makes from this is like hers. It's like her kind of baby. She's doing it. So yeah, I've got my own thing, but I also help her like in my free time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, as long as like you just like supportive partner, do the piece. Yeah. Put it be have the camera shoved in your face and do the things that you got to do and you get some nice food along the way. Yeah. And when she um has any like uh doubts and stuff, then she'll come to me. We'll

talk about it and Yeah. Yeah. So, it's kind like there's that side of it that Yeah. emotional support as well. Yeah. It's a big thing in content creation, right? Because like content creators, they you become a slave to algorithm and it's like not a great thing for mental health. No. Like, hell no. It's really not cuz you're chasing numbers at this point. Why did this video not do the same as that video? Is that something that it's quite hard for you to like to cope with? Um, well, not necessarily cope with is maybe an extreme word, but is it quite a challenge for you? Yeah, I would say so. Yeah. Um, and I think with the content creation space is like FOMO is a very

big thing. Um, for example, you'd see like this PR event happening and then you'd be like, "Why am I not invited?" And then, uh, I'd have like situations where I was invited to I was on the PR list of this brand and now I wasn't and I'm like, "Oh my god, what did I do? What's wrong with my algorithm?" Um, yeah. So FOMO is a thing that I've learned throughout the last couple years to, you know, sort of adjust myself to know that it's not your content or your or your page in particular is like it's just whatever the marketing direction they are taking. Yeah. You it could be just that you're just not the your audience is just not the audience that they are

trying to target. Yeah. Um, yeah. I think that's that's that's you know what's actually real interesting about that as you say that to me, I'm thinking to myself like so many of these companies I know and work with and we do a lot with them and this might sound a bit annoying to anyone listening, but like to be honest, I think it's just like the person doing it just as busy doing their job and they're probably 24 and they didn't even they the worst the worst part is they probably didn't even realize that left you off, you know? Like I think that's something that like I've talked to other creators about it before is that we forget that the people like brand talent managers in

some of the like um talent agencies or like in the brand managers in big corporates and stuff like they're in their mid to early 20s or late 20s they're like new in their roles. It's not to say that like people at that age aren't good at their jobs but they're still like getting experience and new and there's lots going on and they're overwhelmed. Sometimes they're just like been given 20 minutes to do a 4-hour job. Yeah. And they forget that like they just forget stuff. Yeah. Or they do it like our team does it all the time like where they just like make mistakes because they're just not used to doing. They haven't got the experience to do it. But like what we forget is

the ramifications of how the people feel that are on the other side of that equation. Like you saying, why did I get lifted off this PR? And this person's like, oh yeah, you can come on. I just forgot. you want it, you know, like and but we think like cuz you we're the heroes of our own story and so we forget that actually like we're not the heroes of anyone else's. They don't people don't give a [ __ ] They don't care. Like people don't care about us. They they don't they only care about themselves at the time. And so that's an interesting thing to think about when you when when you turn it around like that where you can go they forgot me by accident. It

wasn't them doing on purpose and whatever. So, like more often than not, you just like pick up the phone, call them, be like, "Hey, was I left off this for any particular reason?" And you know what the best thing about that is is that like most Kiwis hate confrontation. Oh, so they'll just be like, "Oh, I'm so sorry. I'll put you on right now." You know what I mean? Accountability. Yeah. Yeah. People just like hate hate confrontation in New Zealand. Like New Zealanders are real they like to stay away from confrontation. Yeah. So like being able to just like pick up the phone or send an email and just be like, "Oh, hey guys. It seems like you miss me on this list." Like what

time should I be turning up? That's a that's a good that's a good way to say confidence goes a long way. Yeah, confidence goes a long way. You know, like it's not probably something that you've done. No, I have not. I don't have the I don't have the gut to do that. But that's that's a good that's a good but I mean even so like it's probably nothing you've done personally to make them leave you off. Yeah. Yeah. They've just forgotten or they just missed it or cuz you know there are so many influencers. Yeah. And they have so much to do every day as well. Yeah. Exactly right. Yeah. I've actually had a brand tell me that, "Oh my god, I can't believe that

you weren't invited to this. Do you want to come?" And I'm like, "Okay, cool." And then I was there. So, yeah. The problem people just forgetting. So, actually, my advice would be if you ever find yourself not included in something, just like find the people and call them or send them an email and be like, "Oh, you must have forgot me. It's quite brazen. But actually, you know what? Like I guarantee like it's they'll they'll go, "Yeah, sure. Fine." Unless, of course, they've got a quota that they had to fill and there was some specific things. Of course, there's going to be those instances. But, you know, it's like the um it's the squeaky wheel saying, you know, like the squeaky girl gets the oil

kind of thing. So, like the more often you say the more often they'll come as long as you're good about it and you're not a dick. Yeah. You know, as long as you're like, "Oh, just checking if I can come to this thing." Yeah. Um I I realize that if you want something in life and you don't ask for it, then you're not you're probably not going to get it. You know what I mean? Like don't wait for people to come. Yeah. Ask you just go after it. Um okay, there's Stan's little philosophical chat for the for this for the episode. Good tip. Um that is a good tip. Trust me, you'll get so much more. Tell me how you do go about getting brand

deals. Is it all agency? Is it all talent management that helps you with it? Are you doing a lot of it yourself? Like how is this the how is this income growing? Um, I'm doing everything. I'm doing everything by myself. Do you guys have an agent? No. So, just you amazing. Love it. All the negotiation, all the admin. Um, how do you know you're getting paid enough? Like, how did you figure that out? I don't. Okay. I really don't. That's why we're here. We're here to get on my side. Okay. Yeah, let's do it. Let's bring it down. How did you figure that out? I think talking to some other traders and then the my main thing is just trying to gauge the demand. Um,

especially with small businesses, I think with bigger brand deals, it's easier to kind of know like how much to charge because you can judge like their marketing budget and like you can look at their past campaigns and who they worked with. But with smaller businesses, um, it's I'm pretty much just judging by demand and or just however much the business can even afford for me to help them. How many nos you get? How many? Yeah. How many times I get ghosted? I always say that um I get ghosted more now than when I was on Tinder. That is the best. I Yeah, I don't even remember. I don't actually remember how many people ghost me every day. It's easier to find a date than some

money. Yeah. Um Okay, let's break this down a little bit. How are you? How are you figuring out your price? like are you doing it based on the number of followers you have, the viewership, clicks, like how are you gauging this equation? Where does it come from? Um, yeah, pretty much just uh, as I said, like how many times I get ghosted? How many times people like, oh, so you're just pulling a number out? Are you just going, "Ah, it's $1,000." And then just seeing what happens. Like where where's the calculation come to making that number in the first place? More for the business. So for the small business, it's a little bit lower. Um, because they can't afford that. Yeah. Yeah. But but but

but like I'm going to keep pressing because I I know because like you guys said you wanted some help. So this is like I just want to I don't need to know exact numbers but I kind of want to understand your thinking around it, right? Like like you say, yeah, a little bit lower for the small business, but a little bit lower could be like for one business could be from 10 grand down to 5 grand. For another business it could be from a,000 down to 500. And for another business it could be down from a million down to half a million, you know? So like when you think about it, when you're going, okay, so I'm like Oso in the corner here, right? OSO

wants to do a deal for you. Small business, only been open again for another last eight months or something. How would you start to price that? They want to make one video with you. How do you start to price it? What's the process? Um, that's a good question. Um I do I did talk to other creators that's in a similar space as me and I sort of judged by their rate in the end and and my and I do ask people like business owners like oh do you think this is too much or do you think I am do you think this is worth it and we do get a lot of feedbacks from businesses where how much money they have made after we posted

about them. Um, so then that helps me to gauge like how much it is worth it for business to pay this cuz this is an expense for them. Um, yeah, we've even had business that tell us that they had like 10 grand increase in revenue in one week. Amazing. Yeah. So, do you ever ask the business how much their budget is? I do. Yeah. And what do what's the common responses that you get from them? The most common response is $100. Yeah. Free food. Free food. Oh, free food. Yeah. A lot. Yeah. A lot. We get a lot of um free food. Like it it I don't even always have to charge a fee. If I think they are a good business, good content, people

will love to watch them. Then I would just go like I would just go. I I I pay for it. I don't I don't mind paying for, you know, a good experience. Yeah. A good experience. Um Yeah. It's it's Yeah. No, no. It's a real interesting thing, right? Because like um that I I assume that's the answers that you would have got like 100 bucks some free food or pretty low ball because they don't understand the cost and what it looks like. A lot of businesses that don't understand. Yeah, they don't understand. And and hospital businesses in general globally like aren't great margin businesses. Like especially if you only own one or two businesses as a hospitality owner, like your margins are low. Like you're

barely making much money at all. Um, typically the restaurants who are making good money are either um very very small businesses that are like owner operated like like and they've been around for ages like a fish and chip store. Fish and chip stores make heaps of money. Well, I shouldn't say heaps of money, relatively. Yeah. Compared to um other other businesses they do, but like a small restaurant, they make [ __ ] all like actually as a percentage of revenue is really low. And so I would assume that they just don't have the one the money but two also the understanding of what it is. A lot of like hospital owners because that's my background right like I I spent 12 13 years running hotels and restaurants

and bars and everything and like they just the one of the reasons I was quite successful is because I understood that marketing was important when so many people didn't in the hospital world. They just thought no but my doors are open like we've we got we're on the street like people can obviously see that we're here. That was like the response that they would have and I was like, "Well, of course that's not enough." Like, "You [ __ ] idiot." Like, of course. But of course, it was like so hard to get like to spend money. And actually, the owners of the hotels and the restaurants that I ran, they were real. It's like pulling teeth trying to get money out of them to put into marketing.

They're just like, "Why would we do that? Like, put up a new offer, do a deal." I'm like, "Yeah, but then how do I put the deal out? Like, who's going to listen to my deal if I've got a deal because there isn't any." Yeah. So, I I assume that that's probably the thing that you're getting to. I actually the way I look at it is I would um oh actually before I say the way I'd look at it, how do you feel about the idea that if you're getting paid for a review or you're getting the free food that you can be honest? Like can you do you feel like you can be honest when a restaurant saying to you, "Here's $500 to make

this video for our restaurant." How honest can you be in your mind about making a review or your experience? Um I think right now where we are um restaurant owners do respect our advice like they always ask us oh what to improve like is there anything wrong and we do always make sure to give feedback if there is anything that is not good. We do give feedback and I personally I think food is very subjective obviously and there if a restaurant for example if their fish and chips is not good they could be making good coffee they could have good hot chocolate and there's always something good that could bring some people in and there's always something that someone is going to find not good

about the best place even um so I think it's it's important to be honest about what's good and what helps the business and obviously if something is not good we will tell them. Yeah. And do you tell the in your content as well or do you just try to lean into the parts that are good still? Like do you only sort of review the good bits and sort of only give the feedback to the owner or I do mention the the not so good parts here and there. Um most of the places we've been are actually quite good. Um I think it's it's We we also had um paid stuff that we've done before where we like now we're not posting this. Yeah. If it

gets really bad, we like no this is not okay and we won't post this. We had we actually had multiple places that we we were like sorry like I don't want your money don't like I can't post this. This is not okay to put on my page. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. So, it's like, I'll take your money to post a good review, but if you're bad, I'm just not going to take your money and not put a video up because I I don't you don't want to necessarily go out and slander people talking about bad, but you also won't you're not just going to do a positive review because you've been paid. Yeah, that's an interesting thing, right? It's just kind of hard line to

to balance actually because like in today's world like as soon as you're paid there's that stigma that some people have that well you've been paid to say something good about a place and I think like it kind of leads me into this line of question that I wanted to understand is like how did you guys because I think you've done it really well. How do you think you managed to build a community of people who trust you even though they probably know that you're getting paid by people? Like how did you how do you think about that? Is that something you think about or is it just saying something that happen quite naturally? It's a bit natural, but then like so there's a lot of

flack that comes from if you um post something that's bad about some places we've had everyone actually people would rather you not say the bad stuff. I think people are Yeah. Some people are protective of their favorite places. Even though like it's really weird because like everybody knows food is subjective and people have different taste. But when I say somewhere is not good, people actually come for me and they actually go into our DMs. Like we had DMs where people are straight up just attacking us as a person because of food. That is so funny. I mean, not for you, but to hear it. That's funny. Yeah. Um crazy. Yeah. Like I I think we just we actually just share our genuine feelings about the

food, what we actually enjoyed, what we didn't enjoy, and I think people can tell through content that if you are being honest or not. Um yeah, but we do know that the hospital industry can be very much a struggle. Um so I do tend to not really just go hard and like attack this place if I didn't enjoy. Even for like reviews that I posted that isn't so good, I still was very like I was very neutral about it. I was like, "Oh, we didn't really enjoy the the the food." But then the coffee was good and so I think maybe it was a bad day. Um yeah, people still went hard on us. That's interesting to hear because I haven't actually heard that side

of the story of like when you do do a negative one, how the public can still come at you for that. Um I've only really heard it the other way when people have done positive reviews knowing that they're being paid that people have come at and go and like oh these guys are full of [ __ ] because they just get paid to say good things. So that's an interesting take actually. I haven't seen that. So um but I guess where I wanted to go with that is the way I think of pricing when it comes to this world is that these small businesses um they are the worst one to price and they almost never have the right amount of money. And so I kind of

look at it as I I would typically say to small business how much money have you got? Cool. I'm okay to do it for that or you know what keep your money give it to me free or whatever. using that is I'm using that more from a this is how I'm going to make better and more content so that you can go after the bigger guys. And the problem with like when you try to go after both of them is that the world's actually real small and Oakland's tiny and everyone knows. And so for instance, let's say you're going to do go do work with a big corporate eery, you know, like the KFC's of the world, McDonald's or whatever. There are people who work

there who probably know the owners of the local restaurants here. And so they all start to talk. And when they all start to find out like, "Oh yeah, I was working with Vanessa and Anthony. They charged me 500 bucks for this video." the big agent the big guys hear that and they go and like you start to get a pricing around you in the marketplace. M so I like we even as a as an agency ourselves if we want to work with a small business we almost just be like just come in and I'll help you like I'll just do it for free like this is a charity case almost you know what I mean because yeah yeah pretty much like let's come in like

we'll give you whatever resources you need or do whatever it is because actually I don't want to diminish what we charge the the real clients that we like to work with I shouldn't say like to that's probably the wrong thing the clients that our agency sort of um is our ideal client. And so it's an interesting thing because you're trying to do it as a full-time profession. And so it's like, okay, how do I juggle this the right way like better I think sometimes the better thing to do is realize that the small guys are not at all where like you almost have to let go understanding like these guys are never going to get me to where I need to be. I'm never going

to be able to get two grand a video of these guys. You know, there might be occasional restaurant who can, but actually on average, they're never going to be the guys who can help me do the thing I need to do. And in fact, I but I need them to make the content. So then what are the other brands I can go after? What are also all the adjacent brands that you can do? Like not just um other eeries, but like what are the other things around you that can help do that? When you think about that, like when you think about the small companies that you work with, what percentage do you think at the moment is that of your revenue? Good question. I

don't think I've ever really calculated that. Do you think it's a big portion of it or a minority of your revenue given the size of some of these other contracts? You probably do. Maybe close to half and half. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Because you're doing so many or just because you are being able to get quite a large number out of these people. is volume definitely the quantity. Yeah. And so it's almost just paying for the experience itself. Is it quite a low level? Like it's just if you're just making a video as a videographer, are you charging as much as that would be? No. No. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just really enough to just whatever the person can kind of afford, right? Yeah. So in

that case, like as a like and this is for like people watching too, and I've said this before, like I wouldn't worry about that as a revenue source. Like take it fine, take what you can and get what you can, but actually like don't really worry too much about trying to increase those pricing because like it's just so much work for so little return. Just be like what can you pay? Okay, cool. Done. Like we're going to come because we get the experience anyway. You paid me 200 bucks or whatever it is. Fine. It's the big guys that you're doing, right? Tell me how you price that. Like how do you think about like okay again you don't have to give me numbers because I

know how contracts work in this place but like a a a brand as big as KFC not KFC but as big as KFC comes to you. How do you start to think about it? They want a video from you for a particular campaign. How do you start to think about that pricing structure? Um do you just go ask in some like you know your um people you know other creators to get a gauge or do you just Yeah, I do. Yeah, I do ask other creators who probably have worked with the same brand before or who is more experienced in the industry. Um, and also it depends on like exclusivity and it's just the specifics of the timeline of what the contact is going to

look like. Yeah. Yeah. Do you charge for content production and like usage rights and like how do you like what are the different things you charge for? Yeah. content creation, usage rights, and exclusivity. Yeah. And do you um do you charge different things if it's on their content on their socials or on yours, or do you only make stuff for your socials that is um tagged in? Uh usually it's only stuff that we post on ours. Yeah. So, how do you get to that number? Like a lot of guessing. Yeah. And again, like based on nos and sales and Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes it's it's an agency that reach out to me and I I'd be like, "Hey, like what do you think they are

expecting?" And I would talk to the agency and be like, "Yeah, give me like a guide." Yeah. You know why that's a real bad piece of advice? Cuz agencies get given a budget to spend and whatever we don't spend is ours. Oh no. Not all agencies work quite like that, but it's kind of how it is, right? Like like a client will come to me, he's like, "We got 100 grand. We need to do this influence campaign." I'm like, "Cool. How many what do we need to do to what's the strategy?" Cool. What's this strategy? Okay, we need 20 people individually negotiate with each of them, pay it out. We have we get it paid based on the what's like essentially what's left like that.

We don't have another fee. Our fee comes out of that 100k. So if we're able to get all the people that they want and deliver all the things that from the client's perspective, they don't care if we only spend 40k of that retainer or that budget, right? I mean, that's not how it actually works. It's not that crazy difference. It's usually about 10 to 20% is what's left over for the agency. Yeah. Um but of course, like if we don't do a lot of that work, it's not really what we do. We're not really influencer, but sometimes we'll get those campaigns. But that's kind of how it works. It's kind of like I've got this campaign and they're trying to split it up among they're

trying to spend it the right way for what's right for the client. They are definitely got to do what's right for the client because they won't stay in business otherwise. But I say from the credits perspective, they're like, "Oh, I'll tell you exactly what I want to give you, you know, if that makes sense." Yeah. Well, I guess that's just the the downside of being an independent creator without a talent that talent manager that represents me. Yeah. It is a hard one to do though because like at which point do you do it because are they really going to make you that much more because they're going to start taking 20% of your talent fee and stuff. Is it really it? I actually think like

some of the like the biggest and best creators I known have always done it themselves. But to to just cuz I can see me when I ask you these questions you're like I don't really know how I'm going to do it or I just do it. Like I think there are some strategies that are interesting to look at when it comes to pricing. I think that the way there's not one way is right and they're different for every instance but typically you'd look at uh if it's going to be posted on your stuff like what is your average viewership because people might potentially pay u um a CPM like a cost per thousand views right so you look at ah on average we get 100,000

views and so therefore you know maybe they're willing to pay 20 or $30 CPM so you might get two grand if you're getting 100,000 views that's a hundred 20 times 100, right? So you might get like two grand for the video. Let's say that was the thing. So you're charging based on a cost per thousand views. That's one way to look at it. Other people might like in our newsletter that we have, which is similar like people pay us advertising to advertise in a newsletter. We pay it on cost per click, you know. So we say, okay, it's like $100 a click or something like that maybe. Who knows what the number is. Guarantee you 250 clicks. So therefore, you know, it might be 25K.

And it's our job just to keep running your ads until we get you 250 clicks, if that makes sense. So you could pay it on like a cost per click, which you can manage through your link in bio or whatever it might be. There are ways to do that. Typically with cost per click, you're charging a lot because that's like a pretty good thing. Like you think about how many people actually go to your link and buy and click through to stuff like it's quite a hard thing to do. So you're usually charging quite a bit. Yeah. There's obviously the affiliate style one where like you're getting a code and you're getting a percentage of revenue from that. Those ones I would do it if

I back ourselves to really get our audience into selling something because if you know you can get a thousand people over to buy something then yeah definitely take a percentage of sales because it's massive. Um or some people just do it purely based on the size of my following. Like they're like look my following is this big. you can speak to this audience and I get this percentage engagement rate. And so they'll do it like a some people might do like a um a fee per subscriber like uh it might be like 10 cents a subscriber or something like that with different random numbers. My best my best like uh thought process around that is to take what have you done in the past and

start to look at it as one of those calculations like how if I was to do this thing with KFC again what did I get as a CPM last time you know how many views did we get what would it have been if I take that fee and divide it by the viewership and that starts to give you some numbers that you can work with and then start to ask some of your friends as well like where are you guys working in on this and how are you guys figuring out that is just for the content production piece like just that's just to work out that. Yeah. And then typically there's like a like the usage rights. Um there's a a bunch of different ways

to do it. It can be a percentage of the spend that they're going to spend on your content. Like if they're going to put 10 grand promoting this video, you might take 20% of that fee kind of thing. That's one way they can do it. The other way they can do it is um a ted system where it's like if you spend between zero and five grand on our video, then I want um I want a 50% of my content fee added on top. So I get an additional 50%. If you spend 5 to 10k, I want 100% added on top as usage, right? And so there's different ways that you can do it on that. Um and then and and so by having these

sort of formulas, which you can find all online, it's all online. CH GBT will tell you it'll figure it out. The reason why that's a better way to do it is you start understanding like what does my audience do? And my audience really good at clicking through like you're talking about um restaurants saying I can get 10K worth of extra business this week. That's massive for a restaurant in Oakland. That's huge. So if you start saying actually when we go somewhere we get a big influx of people coming to go with us. You could do it on like a guys, if you go in and say you came from here, I get a percentage of every sale or they they pay you performance-based. So if

you're real confident on that, how do we do this, right? How do we go through and get that way? So you typically want to find out all the different ways to charge and then do it what's best on your audience. Yeah. So like for us on our newsletter there are you can do a CPM but actually we're way better at doing a cost per click because we our audience is very good with us and if we tell them this is something we believe in they'll they'll go for it and we only then partner with people we actually believe in. Does that make sense? Yeah. So it's not like a hard and fast rule but it is interesting to talk about and I think that a

lot of creators don't talk about the money side of things enough. Yeah. And so then they don't actually know if they're getting earning enough. Yeah. But also, I think more importantly, it takes the anxiety away of the charging. Mh. Because otherwise, you're constantly going, "Am I getting am I leaving money on the table or whatever?" And then it takes away from your desire and your confidence in making content. Yeah. I think that's actually the bigger cost to you. Yeah. Than it is, are we making enough money? Um, my biggest advice is just like, [ __ ] just keep growing your channel. The bigger you get, the the numbers that get thrown at you are just huge. Have you got plans? What's the plans? We're about to wrap

up because I realize that it's already 55 2 and this has gone pretty fast and I've just yapped on for the last 15 minutes about money. What's the goals? What do you hope to achieve with this over the next 1, 2, 3 years, 5 years? Um I don't know. Um I mean like first I want to get to 100K. Yeah. Um and grow YouTube. Yeah. Um, hopefully build something that can be another stream of income. Um, yeah, that's that's what I'm thinking at the moment. Have you got any ideas around that other stream of income outside of YouTube? I have quite a few. Oh, yeah. But you don't want to give them away? Nah, fair enough. I'm not sure. You don't need to talk about

them, but you've got other things that are outside of content to make money on or like using your brand to sell other things. Is that kind of what you're thinking? Yeah, could be. Could be that. Yeah. Or just even build my own business or something. Okay, cool. Kind of do like a Albert Joe take his brand from eat lip food and start opening restaurants. I don't know. I feel like it's very challenging, but I don't know. It's a very challenging stuff. Yeah. Um, that episode went way faster than I thought it was when I looked down at my watch. Maybe because I started yapping on about money and I get excited whenever I y about money. Um, tell me because um, my wife always wants

me to take her out for dinner. Where should I go? Where's the Where's the place? Where's the place I should go right now? We get asked this all the time. What's the best place? Not the best place. No, the place I need to take my wife to impress her. Not the best place, cuz that's not always the same thing. I want to impress my wife. I have one, but they're closed. That's not going to work, is it? That's not going to work. But it's actually like one of the best dining experience I've ever had. It was The Grove. Oh, yeah. But they closed in March. Yeah. What else? This is really sad. Is there another one? Um, this is the hardest question ever. Where's the

last place that you guys went as a couple that you're like, "This is a really special place." as a couple from like a intimate couple's night or has it just become such a job now that you just we try we try to but then a lot of time it turns into content. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz it's like why would you go to a place and then not make content if you can, you know? So yeah. Um this is really hard. Well, one of our alltime favorite is Drew Voice steakhouse. Everybody knows. Um think this is great. You know what though? I'm a I don't I haven't been to one in Oakland, but in Queensland at least. I'm a much bigger fan of Botswana. Is that a

hotel or is that just okay? I like Botswana. Yeah, I'm a much bigger fan of Botswana. Voice. I think like Jo Voice is like one of those. So, I worked in hotels for a long time and like you have these hotels that had their heyday and then they just like they're trying to live off of that heyday for so long, but they're just like little things they miss. And I think that that with like it's just like little bits that they haven't quite hang on hung on to that have like lost the shine. Whereas I think I feel like Botswana Yeah, Botswana is more of a corporate these days anyway with how big their company is now with all the brands that they have, but

like they just seem to have the little touches that hit home a little better. I don't know if the steak's any better. I think they're probably both fantastic. Um anyway, that's all I'll take. Sorry, Jos. Hey guys, it's been awesome. I'm sorry that I hopped on about money for so long, but I think it's a really interesting conversation. Um, and I think if you guys ever want any chats about it, come in and have more conversations. Always happy to give you more information if it's bit more specific off camera where you don't have to tell people the specifics and stuff. But more so than anything, just like congrats over the growth of the last little bit cuz food content is not easy. It's [ __ ] hard.

It's hard to make a mark for yourself. It's hard to grow at all because there's so much competition and at the beginning it costs lots. Yep. Mhm. Cuz you got to go out and just grind and pay. Like that's what people don't realize. Like you just got to go spend this money and as you said getting $50 off of your bill is amazing at so congrats. Well done. Thank you. All right. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having us. Fun. Yeah. Cheese.