My First Million: 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. Well, you said 20 is 40

But yeah, we did about 40 million dollars and then you know this year. We're on track to do 30%

35% growth. Yeah, it's it's crazy

So we are here in the

Shed yeah, the shed 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 about it

Shed like this. Well, you got here five minutes later than we did it was it was like a hundred degrees in here, right?

I was like, this is gonna be a sweaty podcast

And this is a you guys are different than I'll say our normal guests which are almost always like kind of a

Business like tech software type of entrepreneur

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 was like, oh, she's never listened to one episode of this podcast. No way. We've done maybe 400 episodes

She's not a podcast person in general like she doesn't listen to anyone's podcast. Yeah

But you would think maybe she'll listen to my question. We got a little big wow

There's just not a lot of like time to like do things like that. Yeah, good, but I think she'll listen to this one

so I'm excited because she's a fan of yours and

As a week and we hung out at dinner last night got to know each other a little bit

So I'm excited. Maybe we'll do like you guys give I'd be like a 60-second intro

Yeah, who you guys are what why I introduce yourselves to the audience there

I'll go first

So my name is Danny Austin and I started creating content online about 10 years ago

I was actually living in Austin. I was at the University of Texas sophomore like just making videos on YouTube in my in my dorm room

You know kind of just grew from there really fast

Then got an Instagram all the other platforms. We now run Divi, which is a scalp care hair care product brand

And we do that together we have 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 fast or affordable fashion

Yeah, we kind of 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 scene before we got married and then

You know, I was telling you last night. This just became a lifestyle and it was all-consuming

And so she would be in like Turks and Caicos and I would be in a boardroom and I'd be like

Oh my gosh, like what am I doing in my life?

And so around 2018 we took the leap to work together jumped into kind of like the influencer space

Which we it didn't have a name before that

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

Our industry, you know, the label, you know, it's fine. Like I'm glad that I did it. Wait, that's so not true

Like what are you doing? He's like, oh

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 tech scene it was like, oh, what startup are you part of?

Do you all have funding? You know what your title one employee number were you?

And so I was still kind of caught up in that mindset and then you know

We jumped in together. It was like I remember the first article that came out was by a writer named Taylor Lorenz

And she wrote an article about what is the I got a history with Taylor Lorenz, too. Yeah, really? Yeah

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 brand started really investing in that space. We should also say how this came about. Yeah, you listen to the pod

Yes, and he's a huge fan. I'm a huge

And so we I didn't know that I didn't know yeah at that time, but I did an episode where I was talking about

Creator businesses. Yes, so content creators who have now a little spun-off businesses that are doing really well that are not called

Mr. Beast, it's like, okay, everybody knows Mr. Beast

Yeah, so who are the well?

What are the other cool cool examples?

And we did like maybe five six seven examples and then Danny with with Divi was one of them

And so I guess you heard yeah, 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 episode and creator led businesses and I think I like told you told me

I like I'm gonna be so cool if they imagine you guys on Twitter and you know, like I was like, oh man

Like that'd be cool if they recognized Divi, but we're in a niche, right?

That is totally not your niche

Like, you know, you had you had no idea who Danny was I last night Danny was like watching the first couple episodes as y'all

Spodcast I was like, no, this is Sean. He's cool. Um, and

Yeah, I was on a plane a couple days later listening to that episode and then it was like, oh have you ever heard of Danny Austin?

You asked that to Sam and Sam was like no

That was funny and then it was like yeah, you talked about Divi and I really appreciate that

So I sent a DM and I was like, hey man, we'd love to come and share a story

It's very different than most of the business of 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 know if he told you

I

Did order it and and it was just kind of like a spur of the moment thing

There was a couple things that were funny about trying to impress us

No, I was not trying to impress you. This is funny though

Like so Matthew booked the dinner and it was a so Sam Ellinger used to play football at UT Austin

That's one of Matthew's really good friends Matthew works for for Danny and I and I go

Hey, find a cool restaurant in Austin that you know, we can talk these people he books this like upstairs room

There's like a chandelier. It's a table for 16 and then five of us and they walk in I go Matthew

This is such a power move and then on top of that, you know that I'm like, you know

We're all talking so I don't know what to order and then he's like you should try the alligator

I was like, okay

I'll take the alligator and they were like and then he brought it home and woke me up and he was like

You gotta try this alligator

It really tastes like chicken you should just try it

Okay, you didn't try the alligator. Yeah, that was a crazy move. I gotta give you credit

I will never enjoy it. I'll never forget it. So yeah, I guess that's maybe a lesson to be learned

Yeah, they go to a dinner with somebody for the first time ordered the weirdest thing on the menu. They never forget it

That's awesome. So you guys you started doing this back in 2012

Right around 2012 you're in college at the time

What was because you know, Instagram had been out

YouTube had been out for maybe five years by that point

But it sounds like when 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 have a tiny following back then like how did it and what was early years like?

So the backstory is my brother Landon 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 Zonday's like chocolate rain song

Anyway, so that popped off

So my brother started to like kind of acquire this audience and he told me about the space

But I thought it was so weird like I'd walk by his bedroom and he'd be like talking to all of his imaginary friends and I just was

I was like, come on Landon like you got to make some real friends and so

But he ended up putting me in like a sibling tag because tags were really popular on YouTube back then, you know

Like the chubby 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 where'd she get 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, I was just like, you know, let's give this thing a shot

So my brother filmed and edited my first video. It was all like just affordable near-zeeve outfits

And it popped off and within like three months

I had a hundred thousand followers and I just started kind of posting

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 clouds were like, yeah

Oh, yeah, clouds were everything they actually had just opened YouTube space and Playa Vista in Los Angeles as well

And they had this thing called the creator program where they only a lot of think like 10 or 11 of us in and

creators of all sizes and we were for it 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 their, you know, a red camera. They had

Studios they had, you know, editing bays 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 and just collab make YouTube videos learn about how to edit and everything and you're like 21 at the time

Yeah, I'm 21. I was 20 actually was 1920. I couldn't drink

What are you doing when you're working for your manager? Well, just by day you're like, so that's how these and stuff are

Yeah, 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 about like the back end of the business

Because at that time you weren't the star but you were like

Exactly, yes, and then like also being around all these creators

I would meet some 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 kind of take all of that back to Austin and there really weren't a lot of you know

YouTubers in Austin which also kind of helped me because I felt like I was one of the only ones and so

When I was I did start kind of like pitching myself to brands because like I also signed with my manager

But she was you know managing girls that had over a million followers. I had maybe 150,000 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 deals 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 other 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

So I realized at that time was like I'm not big enough for them to care

Right, so I need to get out of this contract and just kind of manage manage myself and build my own team and like have 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

from that but

Yeah, it's just kind of crazy how it's evolved and so how even when you were so happy is the audience now

So now on Instagram like told total on all of our platforms

We have probably over 2 million 2.5 million is Instagram now 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 a lot more authentic. Yeah, like all of my day. And so you

You've done that now you also launched Divi. Yeah, it's because that's kind of how we

Initially found you guys. I read this thread. I read the Twitter thread somebody else. Somebody else I've written about this and

They named five or six creators. I never heard of that had business are really big

It was like Divi

It's a you know, this sort of like hair care product whatever and it was doing 40 million or something revenue

I don't remember what the exact numbers were but I remember 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 mr

Beast and whatever like especially in the tech world. We kind of hear the same

We're not like as deep in so you only hear this hear the same, you know, three or four examples every single time

So how did that come about? How'd you when do you decide to instead of posting for other people like?

Let's create our own brand and how'd you pick the product? How did you like how'd you have the confidence to go for it?

Yeah, so, um

There was definitely an era on instagram where everything was perfect

You know, it's like back in the day of like posting the perfect selfie or the perfect like latte art whatever it was

Um, 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 me being so stressed out because i'm

At ut i'm flying to la every weekend. I'm posting on these videos

I have like neutrogena is like where is the brand deal and I have like four exams the next day

So i'm stressed out all the time start pulling 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 when we get married

I think like a year in I look in the mirror and i'm like, I literally have no more hair

I was like I didn't even want to leave the house anymore. So

Jordan, this is a dump. I mean, are we talking a couple strands of hair? What are we talking about?

I mean like bald spots like patches like patches of hair and it was stress-driven stress driven and then hair extensions

So that's probably like more traction alopecia

So what happens when you put hair extensions 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 it. Like, why don't you just get a wig?

All the Kardashians wear wigs. What's wrong? What's wrong with that?

So he takes me to a wig shop in Dallas like the first place he googles we walk in it's like a halloween store

Like the most expensive wig is like quite cold. $40

Dry neon yellow. I'm like, I don't know. It's gonna work. They're like plastic wigs

They're like the most expensive one is like 15 bucks

So I leave there like so defeated. I'm like, I'm always gonna be bald, you know

So we actually um learn about this like wig shop in Los Angeles called the wig shop actually

Yeah, uh from Jeffrey star. I was gonna say Jeffrey star is another youtuber. Anyway, long story short

We fly out there find my first wig. I'm in wigs for a year and actually when I first got my first big

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-in-law and my brother and we didn't tell them the entire time they go. Oh nice haircut. Yeah

I mean these things can look so real now. Yeah, it's it's insane. So about a month into wearing it

I just felt like a fraud. Oh, it's like I gotta tell people

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

Shared that I was wearing wigs and it kind of just opened up this door of like all these females that are kind of

Going through the same thing like this like hidden epidemic of hair loss

um, so all the time after uh, after we had our first baby

I think there's like a known kind of like postpartum. Oh, yeah, like issue with with a hair loss

And so she was talking about it all the time and I was like, I was like, what do you mean?

Like it's nothing don't worry about it. She's like, no, look at this and these like baby hair whatever

And it really bothered her and I didn't even think really even to try like what what would a solution look like so

Yeah, I mean I felt that it can be very emotional like especially for females

Because there just weren't a lot of people talking about it. So, um

Long story short, I took the year and wore wigs and I was like, you know, I'm just gonna focus on my scalp health

I'm gonna focus on my wellness

Um, and really like give this thing like a hundred percent

So meanwhile, there was actually this trend

Um, or I guess a hack online where a lot of women were using monostat

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 properties

Tell song Danny you gotta tell

No, you shouldn't know about it. Is there a good thing there? I don't know a little about this baby

This is good clickbait tell us

So all the guys on the podcast are like what

By the way, we will explain because there's we always joke that we have four female listeners

Hopefully that'll change after this episode

We're all like dying inside

So monostat is what people what females use for yeast infections. Okay, gotcha

And so a lot of women were using this on their scalp though

And it's 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 um dry shampoo

And so they're putting all of this dry shampoo all this product that's just like sitting on your scalp

Blocking your follicle and so your hair doesn't really have like a fair chance of growing

So when they're using monostat, you know, it's kind of like detoxifying. 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 I they don't teach you anything

I learned photosynthesis for like seven years

Don't teach anything about the human body

She can hang with the chemist

She can hang she's like, okay. I remember that I kind of I kind of get it

But it's amazing how much you learn when you really need to learn versus like my major

Now I wish I really would have paid attention because I think it really would have benefited me a bit

Bit of known

Anyway, so um, so, you know, I'm like a little chemist in my in my bathroom

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 order this and then mix it this way and and then people started asking

They're like, hey, can you just like ship it to me?

Right and so I go to jordan like I really think this could be a thing a lot of people

When was this like a couple years ago or this was a

29

Uh, no, they probably yeah 2019 2019. Um, and so that's kind of like where the idea originated from and it was totally clean

So it's something that people could use every day and not feel like it's going to be harmful

So we had a lot of like eucalyptus

natural ingredients pohobo 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 scalp serum and to be honest I did not think that it would pop off at all

I really was just like I want to serve my audit. I've been very like service driven with all of my content

I'm like, I just really want to 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

We're down the street or their mom or their husband and people started taking like before and after pictures

We never asked for before and after pictures, but I feel like that's kind of what made it blow up

Right, it's the best marketing there is right before and after

Yes, people started sending in there before and afters 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 15 before and afters even to this day

Yeah, so were there not scalp serums before that or they were but they just weren't you know

I think it was just such a new like a niche like

You know putting something on your scalp like a skincare routine like creating that scalp routine was very new

People weren't really thinking about it. So I'm sure that there were scalp serums 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 Divi first because we were also one of the only like clean scalp serums out there. Gotcha. So the business launches win

2020 2020 2021 October 2021. So we're not even two full years

in

And it's 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. Well, you said 20 was 40

But uh, yeah, we did about 40 million dollars and then um, you know this year we're on track to

Do 30 percent 35 growth. Yeah, um, 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 does the business grow?

I mean that probably exceeded your expectations. I mean that would exceed anyone's expectations

Yeah, I always say like when we launched the product

We thought that we were launching it for like 10 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 Divi

Um, it's all Danny's audience that's buying it and you know, she's only made up about 15 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 of the skinification of the scalp is like what the beauty gurus call it and so

I missed that whole era. Yeah, you missed the air. Well, it's here. It's now. I don't have a skin care routine either

So I had to catch up. I do starboard skin move the scalp. I gave you two boxes. Yeah, I know you're you're in it now

Um, and so yeah, it's it's just been wild. I mean we we never expected and so did you guys look at like other creator led businesses?

Like who was an inspiration that you're like, oh, you know, if we do this well, this could be like, you know

whatever

Skims or this could be like the

Yeah, Kylie's 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

It's like how they all support each other. It's like an ecosystem like you're using, you know

Kylie's makeup and then you're wearing him skims 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

Um, so it was totally different. Yeah, it was very very different. Were you tempted to do that too or a hundred percent?

Jordan was like, please don't

Our turns are insane. My parents my dad actually has a show about the uh, Dallas world's trade center in Dallas

so he um, you know

Sells wholesale talk, you know Nordstrom all these boutiques. My dad always told 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

Um, but one thing I knew that I wanted if I ever did launch a business

I wanted to have something that could be on subscription and so a lot of my ideas were mainly tech at first

Um, I never really thought like what like what would it have?

You know some service that you could get I had I honestly didn't have like a

Like you had this like 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 through a different platform than instagram and and and we tried it

We called it. What did you call it the sassy club at the time?

And it was like we used this uh

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 was like we'd do meetups and stuff like that and that was just really hard

It was kind of like a bumble. Right. Yeah, it was kind of like a bumble

And so we tried that, you know, it was pretty difficult and then it was it was difficult to manage like the

in-face

Yeah, let me ask you a question

I just hired a guy paying a guy $5,000 to do a couple of like one-on-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 this but I'm putting it out there

In the spirit of authenticity. So I paid this guy. Why did I pay this guy? Well, this podcast itself has gotten pretty popular

but uh

I've always had this problem which was just like

um

You see some people and their brand is so clear

It's like, uh, there's this guy who this guy named pomp and pomp is all about bitcoin

He's the bitcoin guy. Yeah, like, you know, I'm about you know, because of bitcoin. He talks about bitcoin everything

He loves, you know, every fourth word needs to be bitcoin. Yep. And then you have like, um, tim ferris

Who's uh, you know, the four hour work week guy or the four hour body four hour chef. He's the four hour guy

He's all about kind of life hacking your way there

And so you you go down the list and a lot of people who have built good online followings

They have a clear kind of like they're the blank guy or they're the blank gal whatever like that that's what they're known for

And for me, I've always been like, well, I don't know

The business business guy. Yeah, that doesn't sound very like specific or focused

And I was like, oh, I've gotten pretty far without that

But maybe I maybe somebody can help me kind of sharpen this. So this guy who I hired he works with like

You know, like Jay Shetty and like, um, a bunch of people who are like that like, uh

The guy who did quest quest bar thing to calm whatever bill you

um

And he's like, yeah, you know like Jay Shetty his story is

He was like kind of like in and out of trouble then decided to go be a monk

And 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 I was 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 to the world or whatever

I I butchered that but something like that

Yeah, he is consistent man. Right. He's doing it every day. I just knew of us like the blue-eyed Indian guy

Or like, you know, that's what stood out to me like the guys

Yeah

But I was like, okay

I see I see the value in if you really like sharpen this like whatever your brand is all about

But then I've met people who are maybe like you who?

um

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 kind of happened organically and naturally for you. So I'm I have two questions for you one

Do you think you have like a focus like that like the blank?

Yeah, you are the you know, just like the big point guy. Do you have like a thing that's like our brand is is about

This word or these three words or whatever. Do you have something like that?

um

So when I started going through my hair loss

I think it was the first time that I kind of felt like I had that thing

Like I was kind of like the wig influencer for a while and then kind of like the hair loss influencer

I mean as cliche 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

um

But like I would say it it took like 10 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 I'm like, okay, who am I like what do

What's my 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-fil-A you think of this one person or when you think of like this one brand you think of it

Dude, that should have been mine Chick-fil-A

Genius

Yeah, and it's like and so I do try to find those things that like okay when in Dallas when people go here

Like are they gonna what brands are they thinking of when they think of Danny?

You know, but it's it's challenging because also like I'm very you know one day. I want to be doing this one day

I like to like kind of shift and be on my toes

And so what do you think people get wrong when they try to build a 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 unrelatable

I think like one of the 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 and we're like man

That was bad. We should have done that like there was an example a small example

But I was uh cutting up like fruit for my daughter still is lunch and I'm cutting the grapes wrong

You know like where they can shut up choke on grapes and like had no idea

Like my mom never cut my grapes so like I didn't know is anything wrong

But you know like the dm's start flooding and the facebook groups are popping off

Then he's like cutting the grapes wrong

Like 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

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 think you cut them wrong the second time too. I did I did I did um

But yeah, so I just feel like I have a lot of girlfriends like in 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 uh

Key thing like we had the comedian hussin menage. I don't know if you know him

Yeah, it was on netflix or something. He came on and um

And I was asking him something about because we do this like we're doing these live podcasts now sometimes

So we're doing one the saturday here in austin

And so I had asked him I was like, hey, I'm going on stage kind of like stand-up comedy

There's gonna be whatever like thousand people in the audience

How do I you know any what would you say like first five minutes? How can I set a good tone here?

He goes, um

He gave me two pieces of advice. He goes first make it clear that you are there

So he's like talk about the room talk about the person the front row talk about

You know the city that you're in and like what it's been like for you to be there like just make it like

Give them the fact that you're there

It and everybody will be present together when you do that and he goes the second thing is uh low status

You know 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

When in 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're like if you go into conference

You go on stage, uh

It's typically gonna 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 because 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 showing some of the flaws almost

Not just because they're there, but like it actually helps it actually builds that relatability

I know 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 like you're like, oh

I relate same thing, you know

I think there's like a there's like a pushback 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 and the private jets and all this 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 is what I told ben you need to do

I feel like y'all do this 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 thoughts on it

You're kind of riffing 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

You know on youtube that was my advice to him on instagram so I went non private like you know

When we DM'd him as private I was like, what's this guy doing? Yeah, yeah, I didn't bother with instagram

But but what did your your your fancy branding coach tell you?

So what he was saying was so they did this they did a great exercise actually

Um, I kind of want to 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 want to figure out

your signature stories

First so he's like don't try to get to the end point of oh, I'm known for x

He's like go look at yours the signature stories that made you you so like what were the moments of your life?

That kind of 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 uh, you 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

Or it could be a signature story where you know, they went from kind of being you know

shy to

Actually getting out there being more confident and what what changed so you find your signature stories that kind of reveals

What you're going to be what you're going to end up being known for

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 blah blah. That's that's their story

um

The second thing he said was he was like you got to figure out

What you said something about like serving he's like

Basically people will come to your content because they're trying to change the way they feel

So you got to know that you're not giving information

You're giving a transformation of like, you know emotion 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 win

And so you got to figure out what is that change so like with the pod for example

We talk about business ideas or like

We'll show you and under the radar business you never heard of that's really interesting crushing it

But like let me ask you I I bet I bet you I bet your answer will match what I think it is

Which is why do you listen to the pod? What do you what do you feel when you when you listen to it?

I think it's like education meets inspiration

Like I think I walk away being like, oh cool new idea

Like I want to you know

I want to learn more about that or I feel like I can you know go do this in our business, right?

And I think 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 and 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

It's more 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 and the way that she relates to her audience and what you guys are doing with your audience

Well, we call it the girl next door. We don't want to be a supermodel. We want to be the girl next door

You're still trying to be hot

Relatable hot

How have people like do you what are your experiences like in real life when you meet people who listen to the pod?

Uh, it's probably like what you feel which is that they know you they're like like

Yeah, like like an instagram like daily vlogging kind of like through an instagram story is kind of the same way

It's like the same. Yeah, I know you your kids. I know what your house looks like. I know like on my way here

I was asking my wife. I was like

I was like, I don't follow them on instagram. Like I don't know their stories

So I know they're like, oh

Their mom is like involved in it. Yes, they got two kids like there's like all these little things that are

Known about your life the inside of your life. And so I think like that's what you guys do on the podcast

A different podcast is like such a long form conversation. Right unedited unscripted

So you get to know someone's personality and

We I usually do the pod with my buddy sam and sam like it's kind of like two friends hanging out kicking it

And so you you get the like the big what 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 they got to hang out with their two guy friends

Who are like super into business nerding out about business stuff?

It's like they kind of got to have the hang out without like

Going and having the friends and doing the hang out like themselves because it's like I was driving somewhere

And I just listened right but I kind of got my hang out fix and the second is like

Motivation or like the inspiration like the juice to be like

I'm probably not going to go do any of the things you mentioned on this podcast specifically

but

Just hearing about stories of people doing interesting things made me want to go do more interesting things or made me

If they're doing well, it made me want to go crush it in my field too. So once we realize that it's like, oh, 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. I told I told ben this

You know, but I said the biggest pitfall from here

Is you got to stay humble and you got to stay consistent because I think that what happens in this era

And you saw it a lot with the early tick talkers 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 in all these commercials and the very thing that made them relatable and tangible during those times

Which was dancing alone in their bedrooms

Which was dancing alone in their bedrooms now they're in mansions and it just loses the same sentiment, right?

And I think that that's the pitfall 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 douchey and then like no one wants to hang out and they're like

Oh, well now they're just pompous or even like you have to protect yourself

You know in our world we have 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 don't believe that they're saying this for just genuine reasons. It's not sam and 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?

Right? If you were 21 now, what would you where would you start?

We get that on the business side. What would you say your your answer to that is on the content side?

Would you yeah, would you start on tiktok? Would you go to his room?

Like what type of content would you do?

Because like you had said one thing that was actually very very interesting to me your first video

You said was like affordable new year's year new year's eve outfits

That's kind of amazing because that's a great like almost like title

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

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's like kind of coming back a little bit

Yeah, I heard vlogging's coming vlogging a 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 like

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

Um, so I wish I would have just like kind of been more unique

Which I think kind of just goes back to like what does danie actually want to share like what is she really passionate about?

I would mix in a little bit of that like I since I was studying biology and kinesiology

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, you know

And so that's the same thing that I feel like a lot of tiktokers get caught up in you know

They're just doing all these trendy videos and then they have a meet-up and like no one comes because nobody really knows them

And nobody actually like connects with them

Um, and then too 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 reason we call her 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 over there. She'd 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

So my first step was like we call her tornado and the second step is every time she comes over

We're showing her up on a chair dusting things off and like doing tornado things 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 learn that you just sort of like because people started forgetting who we were and so I had to like

Create a way where people like when they when they, you know, we're missing it

Like what did they associate our family with and like how how could they remember us throughout the day?

And so, um, so like tornado was was if like was kind of huge for us

I feel like that was not 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 relates to this

We're traveling all over the world taking outfit pictures

You know, like this is not

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 settled down and we had kids and I was like, okay

We have to figure out a way to make our everyday life interesting. You're like, so we bought our nice house and then we

House

Go sleep in the nice house

Honestly, I know people that do that like I know influencers that have second houses that literally just filmed there

Our middle-class house

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

Um, 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 we 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

Yeah, 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?

And I think that that's where a lot of the creativity seeped 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 that I mean

I don't want to say that we were the first but I think that that's what we saw the medium of

Instagram stories as like a lot of I think influencers in like the 2019 era when it came out

We were like, oh my gosh like how am I going to do this because they're not

Super personable and we you know with your youtube background

We were like, oh man, this is like our platform to shine and it was it was so fun

So 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 think and it doesn't even have to be family

It could be like your producer or your assistant 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 in the content

And now because they love her and because she's a character

They go out and do these crazy things that they probably would have never done

That's just 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?

This guy, I mean, yeah, it's we do have a content creator now that we actually just hired

Yeah, so like reels because there that's a different that's a whole another beast

So, you know, he's been helping out a little bit, but like we kind of just enjoyed doing ourselves

There's a lot talk to another woman who this is the pot. It's rebecca zemirolo. You know, she's a youtuber

She's got like 10 million subs on youtube 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 300 000 subs like we have our gaming channel

We have our she does like kind of kids like role play content or something like that. Yeah story kind of like

Let's like treasure chest in the backyard. Let's go do whatever and so

They not only each one not only as a character each one got their own sub channels

Has their own following and then they have a camera crew that was like just there all the time

I was like, man, that's you know a lot stressful or 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, uh, I keep getting stopped

But almost like influencers have it in the house. It's like I never get to just not

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 stripped down way

But you know, when there's crews and there's teams, it's it's sometimes counterproductive to what you're trying to do

And so, you know, the reason I think that the husband and wife dynamic works so well in our niche is because it's just us hanging out

You know, and it's like it's the best content there

There is any had a been in her life that was like falling around that wasn't her husband

It's like it's all about the dynamic, right? And so like I you know, it's funny

I always advocate for like the best producer for a content creator is going to be the husband

In fact, I think that the most successful

Uh 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 playroom. And so they're not the ones actually filming the content, but they're there

Truly

More kids it was like, okay, we're just gonna put this ball pit in here

Okay, here's Stella's table and so Stella will walk in and just be playing either there

But 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 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 industry

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 closet, right?

But so it's always the trade-off of okay, do we have people in our house? What do we do?

Yeah, we're still figuring out still figuring out

And for the like Instagram kind of like sponsored content or like brand deals

Tell me a little bit about those so how

How those kind of like changed over time what

What it what is like working the best or what works what doesn't work anymore or it doesn't work at all when people try it

Yeah, so I mean brand deal started out as you know, here's a product go make a youtube video

Include it for 20 seconds

Put the link in there

And like at first I was such a sellout because you know like you're I'm 20 years old

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 get by and so and then I think you get to a point where you're 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 then trying it and then then being like what the heck Danny

Why'd you recommend this so I really started to take like more responsibility and like wait

I am a resource like I got to serve these people 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

So kind of became like competitive with myself

Yeah, we kind of became like like a like a qvc always going to have the best deal

And so we tried to adopt that mentality in house, you know

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 if we put the brand at the top then the audience is like you don't actually like this product and everything kind of just crumbles

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 going to 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 100 on brand deals

But to also couple that with affiliates. So when I post, you know, lck

So when I share something that I like to know like to know it

Yes

So 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 lck 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 50 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 um, and then it got to a point where like, okay, we're getting brand deals. We got affiliates

Now let's go after those brands that have 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 free 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 not like that

But because we I had worn it for years and people had seen these, you know

These specific crop tops that I've been wearing for so long

It was like the most like

Generally authentic push and it like benefited the brand benefited us benefited the audience. Everyone's happy. And so

What's the juiciest brand to leave ever had where you were like, wow, they're gonna pay us that like that's a stupid

About a money or like, you know, we can make this book. You don't have to say the name of the brand or you could just describe

It

I know what you're gonna say. I think you say it Stanley. Yeah Stanley Stanley the cups

Giant water. Yeah. So fun fact. We were like the first. Why are those like so popular? We were the first to share them

Yeah, first bloggers

And I was like, this is the humongous. This is a giant giant cup. 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 listen because they really hit that like Utah Mormon market really well

Yeah, it's a great market. Um, and then they saw that that was working that the president is a guy named Terence

He's actually a phenomenal like marketer

He was the one who put post Malone and crocs and like kind of like reverse crocs trajectory to being like a cultural icon

And so he uh, I think had noticed Danny and was like, hey, you know, like I there's something about this mom market

That's working with Stanley. Um, you know flew us up there and uh, it was it was hard

They still haven't given us a code per se on the quencher. Have they not on the quencher

We have a code on every other product, but the quencher. Yeah, that's it's hard. But yeah, they um, they've been good

We have some special things coming out with them. We're excited. Yeah, we're excited amazing

So pain points, right? So like you talked about how divi 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 divi like

Have you felt any pain points that you're like, god, I wish I wish somebody just made this easier or made this hiring people

Wait, this is kind of random, but like content creation at weddings

Content creation at weddings. Yes. So I feel like now brides really want like tiktoks or reels or just like iphone photos

They don't want to 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 video walk around. That's a good idea

It's a great idea. That's 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

Then they post and like people are gonna pay for that because it's their

For one day a normal videographer. I think it's like 10 grand. Oh, yeah

And sometimes I don't even like I like the iphone

Because those are like like you said like my uh, sister-in-law just got married like a few months ago

She just now got like the first cut of the wedding video and then that doesn't look like what content looks like nowadays

Exactly. It looks like this like okay. It's like nice. Yeah, but it's like if you post this it's like, okay grandma

Like, you know, this is not like a brother had like five tiktoks and like six instagrams

That felt like the fun of the party, you know

I think the reason we've noticed that is because jordan films a lot of our content

And we've we've been to a lot of weddings where the next day the bride is like reshots me like

Hey, can you send me that reel that you posted or uh, your stories for the day and we're like, oh, they're already expired

Like they're they're done. You know, there's so many like content creators now that I feel like don't want to be 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 had more time

And that's cool because that could just be like local franchises

You could uh

In 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 and they go in and then they like cut it all up

And then they have it to you by midnight

Who did you said you said there's a bunch of content creators that don't want to be influencers

So who are they what are they doing? Yeah, I would say like we've seen this a lot with like divi

It's it's called ugc now. So it's like uh user-generated content. So there's like a whole yeah, there's like a whole economy now

Uh, they're not getting paid like as a brand deal to promote it on their own stories

It's like, you know, hey, we'll pay you

$2,000 for four videos with our brand a month. And so these brands will have

Ten ugc creators on standby on retainer, you know, and they use that content for ads

And so what is happening is like our like our ugc

Content at divi 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 to a handful of creators for this exact thing and it's like they don't have a following

Yeah, they're just like good at creating this content and uh, 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 I felt the hit even with my brand deals

Like we don't get a lot of those opportunities more because they used to come to me and they used to say

We'll pay you X amount

But now I guess words too expensive or something because we never hear of it here for them anymore

Well, it's kind of shifted to like that's interesting part about like how the influencer industry shift is it's it always kind of goes in 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 that's how it goes viral on tiktok. See how it goes viral on tiktok

So where does divi 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

8% 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

Um, I don't know dany's always been big on like not taking investors. So we didn't do that at the front end

Um, and so we're kind of like we own our own destiny at this point

Um, I think that we're very passionate about the mission of divi 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 dany 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, why is it called divi? What's the name? Yeah, you answer this

I always forget it's just like divvying up attention to like each area of your life

Like overall better lifestyle and overall wellness

But one of those things where it just sounds cool then later you're like, what's the meaning or you're like

I always

It was just so hard to trade

She gets mad when I say this when I was like, yes the third name all the others

It was like the 30th name

Um, it's a good name. Yeah, it's good now. I like I love it now

And uh, so you're going 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 trying to figure out next?

I would say like

You know last year was very difficult. Uh, just because like it was kind of dany and I running everything

We've now like you said hired like this suite of vp's

But to the next biggest challenge for us is like we're kind of setting the stage for in 2024 to go international

Um, which some companies have done really well and other companies have really botched

Yeah, um, and it's been just like a a money pit

And so that's probably the next frontier for us and you know, we would like to do it without having to raise additional capital

We've done everything thus far ourselves. Um, which is very unique. I mean the best part is

Like our audience is kind of 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 or what we've launched

We only have four skews 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 skews in the pop pipeline

So it's we only have four skews. We have a lot product developments been the hardest thing to learn for us for sure

And so there's like that company like seed beauty that was doing stuff for

Forgot who Kylie or something like that. It's like it's like these companies that are behind the influence or brands like

I know like the prime drink or whatever. There's like these 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 pretty much it

Formulation how'd you do that? You went to like a formulation house or whatever?

Yeah, like manufacturers usually have chemists in house and so we we found one

And it they developed our serum and luckily we just picked one, right? That's a very hard world to navigate to 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?

And so picking the good ones has been hard. But yeah, other than that, I mean we have two in-house chemists now

Yeah, we have two in-house chemists. 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 slapped your name on this because we're able to listen to our audience develop the products that we know that they want

And uh, but yeah, it's more challenging for sure

I didn't see him at all last year. Yeah, I was like, I'm like, I have a life now. I play paintball now. So like I'm good now

But paintball round yet. I've played paintball now

No, and it's also the first time now we have like our four vp's when we walk into a room and we're like

Hey, we have an idea. Can we do this? You know, it's the political process of how we get things done

And now there's process everywhere whereas 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 it's cool, but it comes

Yeah, I have to be careful Jordan 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 they don't like something

Like we've been working on this product for a much. It's like, yeah, I don't really like it. You know, it's like, wait, wait, wait

Just don't say it

Just crushing hopes of dreams. I'm sorry

You think you'll be doing content in like five years 10 years 100%

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 it's honestly like so I I think it like

Our relationship. I feel like is always really healthy

Whatever we're like creative together and creating things together and I think we love doing that

Um, Instagram therapy basically. Yeah pretty much. I mean you guys

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 five

Like I mean we yeah, it's it's it makes our relationship stronger and and we was something like a larger goal and you know

Um, 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

Um, and that's what's so great about working with Jordan is like if we ever didn't want to share our kids or go down that path like

Him and I can just take over again. Um, and then also having divvy. We don't have to rely on on sharing the entire family

Um, but no, I think it's something that we'll probably always be doing. Yeah, we're so well on instagram

Yeah, so people can find us on instagram under danie austin

Um, and then divvy divvy official.com. Um, and then instagram divvy official. Yep

Easy about you. Where's your instagram? Oh, I don't you don't even have one. I don't have one

There's you got a spin-off character, man. Like

It's so much effort that I I couldn't I couldn't it would

It would cause conflict in our marriage to try and do both like it was yeah, I'm a great supporting actor

That's amazing. If people want to come work for you, how would they mind you?

Yeah, yeah, if you want if you yeah, if uh, if you guys want to come work for divvy email. Hello at divvyofficial.com and it'll get to me

Yeah, awesome. Well, thanks for doing this. I know this is definitely you were probably like, what the heck is this podcast?

Who are these guys? But uh, you know, I appreciate you coming on. It's fun. It's fun. Thanks for having us

Right on

I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to

I put my all in it like no days on for the road. Let's travel never looking back

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.