Eric Wei

He exposed him, I remember.

And so like, there's also Jake Paul also has a VC fund now.

Especially online. It's amplified.

This is not me trying to proselytize. This is me sharing what's worked for me. But of course, people see it and they're triggered because this conflicts with their worldview. My content is a documentary, not a sermon. When you think about the different axes of control, the different models you've said, what's interesting is I've seen a lot of creators stay on the media emperor side.

I've seen a good number of creators make money via their own products. Like obviously there's festivals. The middle area, what you've done, it's actually very, very rare.

You have the audience now, Alex. Is he saying put up or shut up?

Here's your question. When you look at, say, like what Jimmy, Mr. Beast has built. Yeah, perfect. I was going to come back to that. Yes. Okay. Is that a business you'd want to invest in yourself?

It was Congo brands is another company that previously had worked with other creators to do other drinks as well.

Right.

Yeah, he's hired his own team and everything.

Yeah.

He's talked about how stressful it is.

So that makes me think of two things. The first thing is, for yourself, what are the elements of business that you're most willing, like, sure, I could learn this, but do I want to spend time on this?

You're doing the calls. You're consolidating. Yep, 100%.

It's fascinating too, because what you've built, it's a private equity firm in a way, but most private equity firms add value by cutting and slashing operations. In a way, you're adding value because one, here's the business processes to run. The influence you've now built about talking about facial systems, now you've been able to

You're picking these products that have, to your earlier point, extremely high retention. People need it. It's just people don't historically like it. And acquisition is really hard. And you're coming in and saying, well, I could help with the acquisition side. Oh, but people still don't really like it.

And there's like limitations in my ability to prove that right now because some of these things are regulated.

I don't think the answer is yes. You mentioned that it's something like 20, 30% of the businesses coming to you, they make content in some way. Yeah. Do you think that those businesses, because a lot of people talk about creator, creator content, are they better than those that don't grow and have content as part of their workflow?

It's fascinating because, well, two questions immediately come to mind. The first is, on key manners, this is what you and Layla have. Are you thinking about bringing a roster of folks to slowly took for the faces of even the condensate of your business?

Makes sense. Yeah, the second question I had related to that was, when I look at creators in the space who've successfully executed on this, it's actually very minimal. Yeah, I can tell you one who I look at. Who?

That's right, he's brought in George, he's brought in other people under him.

It's you're maintaining or some creators who are OG on YouTube, now they shift to a podcast.

It's a really interesting point because you mentioned that a lot of creators start with one thing and then they eventually burn out and build a scalability. Like Graham Stephan's a good mutual friend of ours. And Graham has openly talked about how he is getting really tired on his main channel.

Yeah, I've noticed Graham every year talks about and even when I met him, he was doing like three videos a week and you just run out of topics. And to your point, you just become a news reactor. And that's not something he enjoys as much as doing. And in a way, he's found a lot of success now with his podcast channel. But for a while, like he spun up a coffee business.

And he's also talked about how the coffee business didn't work. Yeah. And so I think it's interesting because on the one hand, everybody's like, well, acquisition is one of the most important things to a business. If you're a creator, you're going to succeed. On the other hand, hey, Graham did the coffee business, didn't necessarily work.

Emma Chamberlain's talked about how Chamberlain Coffee Line also doesn't apparently make money. There are many creators who go to the business path, and it seems like, well, maybe that was not the right play.

Yeah, monopolize it.

You might remember 2021, everyone is really excited about the creator economy. Everyone knows it's going to be the biggest thing in the world. One, because COVID, everyone's at home, they're watching online videos. And two, because TikTok, short forms going on the scene, everyone's getting millions of followers. And then 2022, 2023, there actually was a bust.

where a lot of people were like, oh, creator economy is not going to be a thing. And it's because people weren't able to monetize. They have all these short form followers. They didn't really see what you do.

Oh.

What are you thinking?

Does it matter how rich or powerful you are? I'm the bartender.

There's a tension in what you said. You became the face for faceless systems. Your premise was, I have these processes that work, 100 million offers, 100 million leads. You don't need Alex Ramosi to literally be doing this for you.

So I have no proof that- She actually did partner with a credit card company, by the way.

Athletic Greens. Yeah.

The value to be other than you've reached a million people or whatever.

It's to empower you to do it. As you said- The business model of the creator is very different. Colin Samir talked about how there's an inverted pyramid where the creator is almost the chokehold, the gate point for everything because you need Taylor Swift to be there. Now you are an influencer. And so it's funny because you're like, well, I'm going to help you do a system where you don't need me.

See, what's fascinating, you described the primary function of short form to drive to long form. Because you go to a broader point, you're saying that people had followers, but they didn't have influence.

Because influence comes from the four things you just described.

Likeness, credibility, power, status. Yeah. Initially, what was going through my mind was, yes, 2020, 2023 saw a bust because a lot of investors confused influence with followers.

Because there were more followers brought to you because it's a short form.

But nothing else. The initial premise I was operating was in 2025, which now I'm rethinking was, oh, but now people have figured out how to use short form to upsell to products and services, whether on school or these other 15 different monetization methods where the short form units are just becoming really marketing creatives. And where school is the best one. I mean, it is the best one.

Well said. Well said. The premise for me was, oh, now short form, it's actually just marketing like they're just like commercials. Yeah. And so the monetization is coming back. The short form is not really successful in growing your influence, but it is successful just from a distribution POV.

Foot up or shut up. When I met you three years ago, you had just started on your creator journey. Since then, millions of followers.

Do you think more businesses should be trying to follow content creator-led models? Like we've talked a lot about, hey, there's five different ways these businesses make money. Here are some of the challenges they have. Should the other, you know, 60% of entrepreneurs coming to you be thinking about, oh, I should be incorporating content more into what I do?

But now people follow you for that. I think once upon a time, there's a conception of a creator as like the Casey Neistat auteur. Like, oh, hey, I make money to make content. Where I've started is on YouTube. And the advertising, the brand deals is what supports me. I think now you're seeing creators becoming entrepreneurs and content is just becoming how they market themselves.

When you think about what you're investing for acquisition.com or now for ACQ Ventures, it sounds like traditionally it started from let me bring you better business processes. With school, it actually shifted a bit to I can just bring you tremendous distribution via my own content. What types of companies were you leaning more toward investing?

Once you help with the processes or ones where you think the content distribution actually is what matters? So I'll say that it's both.

Would you invest in content creators?

Sometimes you're incubating them.

Yeah.

Makes sense because for you, you're either, obviously you're bringing capital, money. Right. But you're also either bringing your image and likeness, which is distribution. Right. Or you're bringing the operational expertise. Right. You're working with these businesses that are less savvy on the distribution side, clearly something of value. Yeah. You're working with these creators.

Well, you have distributions. You don't necessarily need theirs. And they don't have the operations side, which means you have to spend tons of time building. Tons.

When I was chatting with Michael earlier today, he did say you've been shifting more to investing.

Yeah, ACQ Ventures. And from my understanding, that's much earlier stage. What prompted that actually?

is its venture, you need to have really, really potential big exit outcomes.

Yes. For creators who want to fall in your footsteps, do you think you'd advise them to double down on the creative distribution side of what they do or to try and get better at the building business piece of what you do?

Yeah. It's your job to put out money.

Yeah.

When you started to make content before your previous businesses, you hadn't really gone hard on content marketing. And so was the motivation because you saw this as good lead generation for acquisition.com or was it more, hey, it's time for me to share what I've learned?

Totally.

You mentioned in the beginning, you weren't even sure you wanted to do it. Do you enjoy having over a million followers now in that piece of accomplished?

There's no control Z. Alex, thanks so much for making time. That's a wrap. 100%.

In 2024, you started working with school. Yeah. And so I think it's an interesting question using yourself as a case study. Number one, the product that you're associating with, it's not one that you like built it all nuts and bolts yourself. No. It was very much, here's an existing company. but I can grow it.

And so it kind of comes down for creators to question of, hey, like, do you really want to lean into being an entrepreneur and do it yourself? Or do you just want to do a brand deal?

No one knows better than you do.

It's the brand value.

Now you've got me on board.

The point of short form is one thing, which is to drive them to long form. Would you invest in content creators? Alex Hormozy might be the first creator billionaire, and he's built his business really differently from other YouTubers who might follow like MrBeast.

Today, Alex shares why most creators aren't a broken business model, the five ways to make money from content, and how to turn your social media into a real business. If you're a creator wanting to grow, listen to this pod for 21 secrets from Hormozy on how he did it. When I met you three years ago, you had just started on your creator journey.

Interesting. So for your POV, if you've successfully built the media side of your business, like that's a win. But the upside, according to your degrees of control, it's very limited. And as you mentioned, I was trying to think of people who I think have built these successful media empires. So there have been many who failed like BuzzFeed. That's a great example. Many, many have failed.

We're going to reinvent the game. It's like, well, you're just doing a newspaper state. I'll be on a new medium, the internet. There are some creators who have succeeded in building- Or tabloids. Yeah, exactly, tabloids, right? Yeah, daily mail. And there are some creators who've gone, they've taken steps in this direction where they've almost scaled their content.

So one that comes to mind, Linus Tech Tips is a very good example, where Linus Tech Tips started with just Linus, and over the time, he's brought in other creators to be on his channel instead of himself. And then you also have creators like, I think MKBHD is a great example too. MKBHD, I still think of as primarily as a media business. He doesn't do that much with products.

And well, he actually tried one, a wallpaper app that got a lot of backlash, which I, you know, if I were MKBG, I feel like I would be like, yeah, I know. You know what? I'll just stay and do content over here because whenever I sort of go over there, people get mad at me. Now, it sounds like you're saying, though, from your POV.

Since then, millions of followers, over 250 million are writing for portfolio companies.

Of course, I'm thinking of liver king because the whole premise was his gains came from his diet, not from other things. A hundred percent. If you've been honest, I think it would be fine. I think, yeah.

Yeah, fine. Maybe not fine.

It's the interaction between the two.