Influencer Marketing: Focus on one thing (podcast episode #139)

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As an entrepreneur, as a marketer, the world is conspiring to grab your attention and distract you.

For example, when I started in this career, there were really only a few channels you could go to. Newspaper. TV. Radio. Direct. Maybe outdoors.

Now, that number has exploded.

Just one example of how many things you could possibly do with your business and your campaigns and your budget and your time.

But to find success, my next guest says – focus on one thing.

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Gidon Rotteveel, co-founder, Delka Talents. Gidon manages a team of 25.

Hear the full episode using this embedded player or by clicking through to your preferred audio streaming service using the links below it.

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Lessons from the things he made

You always have to separate work from your personal life

Business comes with ups and downs, and if your happiness depends on how your business is performing, it will be difficult to stay happy. For example, Rotteveel’s best friend is his co-founder. One time, Rotteveel lost a big deal for them with a client, but it’s part of the journey. His co-founder never took it personally, and they were able to laugh about it later.

Great things take time to grow

You can’t close a deal every day of the year, and working 10-plus hours a day isn’t always necessary. What’s most important is being prepared for the right sales calls. For instance, Rotteveel once did five sales calls a day and only closed one of them. Now, he does two calls a day, but he closes both clients most of the time.

He chose to grow his business with many creators. Rotteveel noted that he has seen other agencies – such as the previous agency that managed Mr. Beast, for example – suffer major losses by focusing on just one big creator.

Speaking of growth, he looks at his current business as only his first business, and a launching pad for future businesses, inspired by Richard Branson’s ability to start in one area, build a brand, and grow into other businesses.

Focus on one thing

Looking back, Rotteveel never thought about only focusing on brand deals, even though that’s what they knew best. He was always thinking about missed opportunities with merchandise and other projects.

Later in his career, Rotteveel realized they were doing well because other agencies were wasting too much time and therefore losing money for their creators on these extras. That’s why creators came to them in the first place.

You don’t need 100 employees

You need employees who love what they’re doing. For some reason, even when Rotteveel tells his team not to work on the weekend, they still do because they feel involved in the company. They feel like they’re part of something bigger. The success of Delka Talents is the talents that work within the company. Talents managing talents, basically.

And Rotteveel has been able to recruit that talent by tapping into people who are passionate about the industry, for example, leveraging song promotions his company did with Justin Bieber to attract the right employees who are passionate about working on these kinds of campaigns.

Lessons from the people he made it with

Entrepreneurship does not have an age

via Thomas Petrou

Petrou started the biggest house for influencers, called the Hype House – which had influencers like Charli D’Amelio and Alex Warren – while Rotteveel was managing him. He was 21 at the time. Rotteveel understood that entrepreneurship does not have an age.

Influencers come and go

via Cameron Dallas

Dallas was the biggest influencer next to Logan Paul and Jake Paul, with over 20 million followers on Instagram. He was basically a celebrity. Rotteveel would never have expected that five years later, Dallas would not be famous anymore at all. That showed him how the influencer marketing industry is literally a hype. Influencers come and go.

When asked how brands should create campaigns when influencers are so ephemeral, Rotteveel recommended collabs and told the story of Delka Talents #WixForTheWin campaign that paired up Manchester City soccer plays Erling Haaland and Phil Foden with creators How Ridiculous.

Don’t let small setbacks in the business distract you from your insane vision

via James Lin

The founder of Crunchyroll taught Rotteveel a lot about how to turn your passion into income. He was basically Rotteveel’s mentor and taught him to have an insane vision and not to let small setbacks in the business distract him from that vision. He told Rotteveel that influencers would be the next big thing for years, so he should focus on it and scale the company.

Discussed in this episode

Adaptive Leadership: It’s never too late to reinvent yourself (podcast episode #90)

Female Entrepreneurship and Marketing: Having built a big community doesn't mean you will be able to monetize it (podcast episode #71)

Best Practices Are Pooled Ignorance: 4 quick marketing case studies of brands that found success by taking a different approach

Customer-First Marketing: Every click is a wish (podcast episode #85)

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Transcript

Not ready for a listen yet? Interested in searching the conversation? No problem. Below is a rough transcript of our discussion.

Gidon Rotteveel: And that was always my bitch. Okay, amazing. So you work with CAA. Do you work with the founder? No. Okay. So you work with an employee? Yes. So that employee works from 9 to 5? Yes. So if you have a campaign coming up in the in the weekend. Are they providing you with, you know, with with help? No, I will I will work 24 hours for you.

I work with the exact same brands. Well, I told them I work with the exact same brands, but in my head, one, I will work with the exact same brands as those. Right now I do. Even to a component that, you know, we work with Google, we work with the main companies out there. We are not the biggest agency out there when it comes to employees, but we are when it comes to the creators and the brand.

Brands.

Intro: Welcome to how I made it in marketing. From marketing Sherpa, we scour pitches from hundreds of creative leaders and uncover specific examples, not just trending ideas or buzzword laden schmaltz. Real world examples to help you transform yourself as a marketer. Now here's your host. The senior Director of Content and Marketing at Marketing Sherpa, Daniel Burstein. To tell you about today's guest.

Daniel Burstein: As an entrepreneur, as a marketer, the world is conspiring to grab your attention and distract you. For example, when I started in this career, there really only a few channels you could go to. There's newspaper, TV, radio, direct, maybe outdoors. Now numbers exploded. Just one example of how many things you could possibly do with your business, in your campaigns and your budget and your time.

But define success. My next guest says focus on one thing. Here to share the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson filled stories, is Gordon Woodville, co-founder of Delta Talents. Thanks for joining me, Don.

Gidon Rotteveel: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Daniel Burstein: So I want to jump into your lessons and stories about the audience first to understand who I'm talking to. Don's background, he's been a sales coach and team captain at the sales union ahead of education of Timi Group. But for the past five years, he's been at Delta Talent, which he co-founded. Delta talent is a multi-million dollar agency and Gordon manages a team of 25.

So give us a sense you're doing what is your day like as a co-founder,

Gidon Rotteveel: That's a good question. I always say that my lifestyle is I wanted to start a business that can afford me a certain lifestyle, and my lifestyle is really being independent from any place. So I travel a lot. I try to spend like two months at every place making sure that the time zone is right, because we work with a lot of clients in China and the US.

There's never a perfect time zone, but I wake up early, I go to the gym, and depending on the time zone I'm in, if it's closer to the year to the US, the time zone, then I'm actually working from the beginning and then going to the in the evening to the gym. But if I'm in a timezone such as a European time zone, I'm mostly working out in the morning.

So that's how I start the day. A little bit of meditation, 10 to 15 minutes seeing of my of my family who called me because I spend so much time away from my family. So it's important. I'm a family guy, and then I start working for 2 or 3 hours. That's it. Two, three hours, but really, really focused.

And then I'm going for a walk for like an hour and then back to work. And I'm always speaking. Yeah, I'm always making sure I have some time that I also work from coffee shops, because I'm not a guy that can spend all time in house working. I always need to meet new people as well. It's part of the lifestyle.

I love meeting new people, I love socializing, I love seeing other entrepreneurs working from coffee shops. So that's what I like to do. Looking at it and talking to other people as well, asking what they do.

Daniel Burstein: Well, let's let's talk a bit about your lifestyle because your first lesson was you always have to separate work from your personal life. So what does that mean? How did you learn that?

Gidon Rotteveel: Well, business is ups and downs. Like one day I wake up, I think I'm going to become a billionaire. The other day I'm like, this is it. The business is done. So especially because I work with my best friend that I know since ten years old, that's my co-founder. It's, you know, your relationship always needs to be, you know, at the same space, like it needs to be aligned.

But when it comes to business, it's such ups and downs. You can lose a client, you can lose a creator. You can win a creator. You can win a client. It's really important to detach. The business world from your personal world. Because especially when it comes to happiness, you're going to be dependent on something to be happy.

That's that's not happiness by definition. So it's really important to, to separate it in any way possible. Even if I wouldn't do business with my best friend, I should have separated it. And it's stuff, especially in the US, where everything is business. Yeah. What do you do? Is one of the first questions that you're asked. It's a it's a it's a dangerous question.

I'm from the Netherlands, from a small town. People don't care what you're doing, which is also an extreme form. Right. But I think the balance, the motivation, the ambition that I have together, that I'm coming from a country, that business is not that important, really help me with that mentality.

Daniel Burstein: Okay. Well let's dive into this because are there any changes you've had to make in your personal life to work with creative people? Because, for example, when I interviewed Carlos Cantu, the CMO of Free Pick, on how I made it marketing, one of his lessons was embrace discomfort to harness creativity. And he told a story to me of a leader he worked with that said, if he was going to aim to work with truly creative people, that could drive meaningful motive.

You know, innovations is going to have to be willing to hire people. That would make him uncomfortable. So I've heard you described on other podcast as like Ari Gold of Entourage, and Ari Gold is based on the super agent Ari Emmanuel and the whole show. Entourage is based on Ari, man, and he's trying to balance his family, and he's got these very creative people he works with, like these big actors and actresses who are, you know, creative people are known to be a little eccentric.

And so I wonder for you, you work, we all, as markers have to work with creative people. You're kind of in a special area. If you want to just briefly explain how you have to work with creative people as an agent, how do you balance that?

Gidon Rotteveel: That's such a good question. I think I'm in the most interesting market when it comes to that as possible, because I work with certain actors. Once you had actors, now to influencers change the whole scene, but at least an actor is there for a couple of years. They call influencers for a reason. Also. Hi, I manage the, one of the first influencer marketing houses called the hype House.

Why is it called the Hype House? Because it's a hype. It doesn't last for long. So you have to understand that, Danielle, I can manage a creator for six months and they're gone. I can manage to create it for one year and they're gone. So it's a really quick industry and it's really my job to understand who are those creators that are there for the long term, for the long run.

And in my industry, long run is 3 to 4 years. So I had to change everything like I came from from a stable family that had like a normal, average job to something that every few days I need to change my whole business. And that's how you win. You want, you know, how many agencies have come and have gone as well.

So it's really most of my employees are looking for new prospects, new creators. But I think clients, because the right creatives attract the right clients. So yeah, it's it's working with creative people. They love talking about their vision, what they're doing. And that's something awesome. I love working with passionate people. And I can tell you one thing, I'm working in one of the most passionate people because as an actor, you just have to be the actor.

But as an influencer, as a content creator, you need to be the videographer. You need to be the main actor. You need to be the script writer. So there's so many things that comes towards being a content creator and having a passion that it's. I think it's one of the hardest industry to be in. That's why it's so tough to be there in the long run as well.

Daniel Burstein: Well, let's talk about that long run because you said great things take time to grow. So how do you do in this lesson from relationships?

Gidon Rotteveel: Female side to be honest.

Daniel Burstein: Because yeah, well that's what marketing is. It's really it's relationships that make sense. Yeah.

Gidon Rotteveel: And especially business people, they think the more time and effort I put in something, the more it grows. And it's not always true and not not even on the business side, because with some clients, for example, one of the biggest clients I work with is ByteDance, the company behind TikTok. And they actually came to me. And the more I enforce a client to work with me, the less successful it will be.

So I really understood that the right clients, they take time, but they will come to you. And the same thing is with with girls. If you want to have the the top, the top, boom. And now there there's like 10 or 20 guys after her. So if you're not the guy that's going after, you probably get there because you're more, hey, this guy also has options.

You must be really interested, right? Because all the guys that are going after, right? They want to quickly, they probably won't be with her because she wants the person that's, you know, harder to get in that sense and less available because less available means most likely this guy's more interesting, has more on this plate. And that's the same thing that I learned with business.

So I always try to understand how can a client come to me. And that takes time. So rather than working with 5050 clients and creators at the same time, I understood, okay, why don't I work with ten of the best clients then the best of the best creators? The creators will come to you word of mouth. Because if you work with smaller creators and you grow to bigger creators, they will talk to each other.

And the same thing happens with clients. From working with ByteDance, I was able to work with Tencent, able to work with Anker, able to work with demo, who are some of the largest, companies from China. So it takes time. And I learned that the hard way, right. Especially when I started my business when I was 20. I got my success in my business when I was 23.

So my mentality was like, quick, quick, quick, quick, but it doesn't work like that.

Daniel Burstein: All right. So I like what you're saying and playing hard to get, but give us a sense, give us a specific tactic or two. You do use to attract people. Right. Because what you say is great. A lot of times we we don't have enough patience. We see that marketing. We like to use performance marketing. We like to see instant results.

So we're going to change the campaign. There are other tactics like inbound marketing, content marketing that pull people in, but they do take longer. They can take years to to start popping in. SEO, one of the things you mentioned is you went from ten hour days and five calls a day, five sales calls a day, and only closing 1 to 2 calls a day and closing both clients.

Most of the time that's great, but I imagine it's not doing just doing less sales calls. That is what did or just being patient. So what's a tactic or two that attracted the companies to you?

Gidon Rotteveel: Well, I learned I learned a quote from Richard Branson. He said, if you think you can do it but you don't know how to do it yet, say yes. And that's how it basically started my agency. I didn't know if I would start with the client side, get the brands first or the creatives first, and then I understood by managing small creators that a small deal, let's say word of $1,000, is not less work than a big deal of $1 million.

Now it's actually easier, easier to close a big deal, which most people think right now, given what are you talking about? I will explain. Closing a small creator is more difficult to me. Why? Because they have a small mindset. They're small for certain reason. Unless they are just starting, they have the potential to grow a lot. But they're small for a reason.

And I learned that the bigger creators take bigger risks. So for me, I, I understood after a few months in, why don't I reach out to the biggest creator out there, the biggest creators out there? I thought that I'm already at a position that I can provide for them, and I believed in myself. I could do it. And then I understood.

Wait, the bigger creators actually easier to close and the bigger clients such as by then it is easier to close in a small company with a small marketing budget, because the small company needs to put that small marketing budget really specific. So they need to get an ROI specific ROI on it. So I really understood if I can get away to get to the biggest creators, the biggest clients, and everything I do in business needs to be on their highest skill, then I kind of win a lot of time, and I can focus more on the revenue of my business and keeping the retention of smaller companies.

So you have a lot of those people on LinkedIn reaching out to me and to a lot of agencies, hey, I can help you with, ROI or getting new clients for your for your client or for your agent never works. LinkedIn never works on getting clients and had to learn it the hard way in most cases. So you have all those salespeople sending LinkedIn messages to marketing people, to agencies, to clients, but they close, what, 2 to $3000 or maybe $10,000 a month?

Now, if you want to get the big clients, they're most likely not to LinkedIn. They most likely need to find a way for them to come to you. And I found the funnel for my agency, for the clients to come to me, and it changed my entire business.

Daniel Burstein: So I can, first of all, hear you on all that friggin Lincoln spam I get all the time, but I can hear our listeners think in their head like a dog. And of course I want to go after big clients. But big clients are hard because everybody wants to have them. Everyone's going after the big influencers. Everyone's going after the big company.

So what you talk about a funnel and you talk about setting up. I don't want to ask you to give away all your secrets. That would be unfair, right? But give the audience a specific what is something you have done to to attract, some of these big names to you?

Gidon Rotteveel: Definitely. And by the way, Danielle, when I was, in at the university, I went to a private university. There came a lot of business people, and they talked about their success. And I always went home and I was like, but they talk about their success. And they had this grandfather. They had this friend that started this company.

They were lucky. And I was trying to do the exact same thing as them, and it never worked. So one thing that I never liked about going to this conference is people talking about themselves, people talking about them, success, their success. The only thing that I learned from them is that you need to find something that you love doing, and it's really important because you will spend a lot of times and hours on it.

I found my passion early on. I love YouTube, I saw people creating content for them from their bedroom and earning money of it. This was my place. So for everyone listening to this, do this podcast, first of all understand what do you love doing? And you have to understand what does it mean? Big funnels, like what does it mean to work with the the highest income people in your industry?

An example if you're watching, if you're dealing with jewelry, you need to find and you want to be in that part, social media is a really big component of it. So you need to make sure to be in every niche. But in my area, I will tell you what it is in my area. I had to find a way that created that.

I would compete with the biggest agencies out there, including CAA and WME. But you have to understand. And yeah, I was living in Israel. I didn't have any client, any creator, any experience. I don't come from a rich family. I do everything by myself. And I already had a loan that I took in order to go to college for $40,000.

I had no money, so I didn't. I couldn't get an investment and everyone right now wants to have an investment. I don't believe in it unless you're in tech. But you have to understand, first of all, the industry I am, I'm in. I'm a middleman. I'm an agency. You don't acquire any money. I love the agency model. I love it if you are a real estate broker or if you're working with social media.

I love the broker concept. So how does it work? For my eyes, I had to understand how I could get the biggest creators that are currently with CAA and WME. How did I do that? Content creators go so fast. It is a new market. There are not actors. Well, if you're good enough as an influencer, you might become an actor.

So how could I direct them to my agency? Simple. Simple. Non exclusivity. Although Sears and WME, they wanted to have the creators and creators felt like they were an employee of the big company, I told them listen, just make sure that you're with my agency, you're non-exclusive, you can still work with CAA, so if you still going to get deals from them, I don't need any commission on their side, but you need to also be part of my agency.

So if the clients go to your social media channels, you also have they also have to understand that we are working together. And then if I provide you with deals then we become exclusive. So if I'm actually able to provide you with long term partnerships, let me first show the effort and time they can do for you. And if that works well then you're with me.

And they're like, wait, how long does it take? Like, let's give it two months. During those two months, I worked my ass off to get clients, and luckily enough for me, I was also at the right time, at the right place, and I tried a lot of things out before, and I wasn't at the right place where at the right time, I was a great product.

Luckily for me, one client responded, I made my first brand new and that creator ass. Listen now I made a brand new for you. You made some money. Even if it was 4050 k more on a six month basis. It's an extra income on top of the current agency that you're working with. Well, at some point I was at a place that I could get and provide the same brand deals in the other agencies, and that was the smaller agency managing the bigger creators.

But the bigger creators felt more part of my company because now they were dealing with the founder and not with an employee. And that was always my bitch. Okay, amazing. So you work with CAA, do you work with the founder? No. Okay. So you work with an employee? Yes. So that employee works from 9 to 5? Yes. So if you have a campaign coming up in the in the weekend, are they're providing you with, you know, with with help.

No I will I will work 24 hours for you. I work with the exact same brands. Well, I told them I work with the exact same brands, but in my head, what? I will work with the exact same brands as those right now. I do even do a component that, you know, we work with Google, we work with the main companies out there.

We are not the biggest agency out there when it comes to employees, but we are when it comes to the creators and the brand deals. And I've seen a lot of big, big agencies gone as well or lose power, such as the previous agency that managed Mr. Beast, for example, because again, we didn't focus on one big creator.

We focus on multiple creators, and that's how we grew.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah, I love what you do. And just so that everyone doesn't miss a marketing lesson, that one thing you did is you reduced the cost for them to say yes. Right. And that cost could been friction, could have been anxiety. But by saying we're going to go an you remove that reason, say no, you remove that cost.

Gidon Rotteveel: Exactly. I had to find a way. If I was a creator, I was and I was that age. Right. Because I was exactly the age of the creator. What do I want? I want to work with someone that I look up to that's my same age, understand the industry, understands on how to work with brands and these part of my company, part of my influencer site.

So I told the creator, I'm just part of you. I'm like, literally, you part of your channel. But the only thing I do is reaching out for brands to your channel. And that's what I did, and I loved it. So I became their personal manager. Although I was an agency.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. So this environment you work in, an environment we all work and especially what you work with influencer, your top, how fast moving it is. It seems like there's an overwhelming amount of things you could do. And you said one of the lessons you learned is focus on one thing. How'd you learn that?

Gidon Rotteveel: Well, I saw other agencies focusing on merchandise, getting investments from $20 million, focusing on emerging size part. But every creator once up front, money, merchandise takes a lot of time and effort. Most creators don't have enough loyal audience in order to sell it to every creator. What's an upfront fixed brand deal? So let's say Coca Cola comes to me and I want to work with a creator who is an X amount of money.

They get. That's what I did and I just paid the creators for brand deals, so I didn't tell them, let's start now. Merchandise company for clothing brand for you. Because even if you have millions of views right now on social media, that doesn't mean that you sell. And why not getting fixed paid brands first rather than me investing in a brand?

Not not sure if it's going to do well, not based on any information of previous products I sold with them. So at least if I can get them a price, a fixed price for a brand new. They're a happy we can test the product out. We can understand what sells. And if you want to start a company together for a product, their personal product, and we mean at least understand with experience through fixed payments what works or not and create is loved it.

I didn't came up with the sales pitch of I can give you a CPM or a price on every view that you get. No, I give you fixed price with legit clients. That's it. So they love it.

Daniel Burstein: So this is great. So you have two customers and you've talked a lot about your influencer customer which is great. What about your brand customer. How did you get inside their head. So as you said, you had this kind of secret superpower that you were the same age as the creators, the new influencers, you're trying to work with.

You like the same things, but talking about major brands Coca Cola, Google, whatever, they can be very different from you. So how did you get can you give us an example of something you did to get inside the brand head to ultimately sell those deals, to get the influencers?

Gidon Rotteveel: One of the first big deals that we did was for a company called Cap Cut, which is an editing, to buy TikTok. And, I was sitting with the whole marketing team, and I'm at that age quite young. And, one thing I understood always is to ask what they want better than to talk about what I want.

And the problem with a lot of content creators is they are really good in creating content. But being a good content creator doesn't mean that you're a good businessman. Let me explain that you know how to get views doesn't mean that you know how to get conversion. And I always explained it to the client, and I did because I understood the business side behind YouTube and TikTok.

So I always start with the client on a professional level. And then they told me, you know, you're quite young. I've created I could work with, why would I work with you? And I said, if you work with to CAA and you work with the founder directly, work with them. If you don't work with me, if the and if the employee knows everything about the content creator from their side, every brand new they worked with, every return they made on previous deals, work with them.

If you if they don't work with me, they said, I like it. Let's do first campaign. I did a first campaign. They spent some money. But but instead of me doing one campaign, I gave him two campaigns. So they were like, wait, why does this guy give me? So I invested all the money back for the first campaign, and I did it for the second campaign, his vanitas campaign as well.

So I got higher returns in every other agency because I had to go all in with this client, and that's what I did for the major clients. And then on a long term partnership, I was able to take my return on it. But that's how I did. I reinvested everything in it. I had nothing to lose anyway. I only had to pay my student loan back.

And really important that I want to share. I'm currently 28 years old, and the main mistake most people make is they want to get a girlfriend as soon as possible. They want to start a family as soon as possible. This is the time where you can take risks. This is the time that you can be selfish. This is the time that you can think about yourself.

Use the time. If you are in your 20s or early 30s, this is the time to do it. Enjoy it. Because there is this quote as well from a guy that says, when I was in my 20s, I wanted to be a millionaire, and when I was in my 30s, I wanted to be in my 20s. I wanted both, and I got both.

But I tell you one thing, I only got it. But I love what I'm doing every day. I'm not a workaholic. I love literally what I'm doing. And if I don't love what I'm doing, I'm stopping and I will lose money. But for me, the most important thing is the journey. It and it's really it's. And I think that's what able that was.

That was the reason why I was able to grow so quickly. Because I really understand what I want and focus on the right energy. And I made my mistakes by focusing on the wrong creators or even big creators. But I knew there was no future. But you learn, you learn, and you learn quick as well. But again, things take time to grow and and I'm still in this growth phase.

I feel still that I just began, even if it was five, six years ago.

Daniel Burstein: But let's talk about it because you haven't, just because we talked about you're a young guy, just a college loan on your own. You take these risks. We talked earlier to you've got a team of 25 now. So you said one of your lessons is you don't need 100 employees, but you have grown as a company. So what do you mean by that?

You don't need 100 employees.

Gidon Rotteveel: So it's it's ready to it's better to have really passionate people. Let me explain. So if you look at our competitors, there are 150, 200 employees. What I did I love to travel remote as I just I love to work for mode. So what I did, I used to go a lot to coffee shops and I saw people working there, let's say from from Mexico somewhere.

And I would talk with the people, what are they doing? Oh, you work in finance. Great. Or I just graduated and I like to talk with people that just graduated. I gave them an internship for six months. They had to be passionate about YouTube by asking some questions. If they know knew about creators, they did. I work with it.

Really. I work in a niche where a lot of people love to work with. Like it's it's attractive. You work with influencers with with social media artists. You work I work with, you know, we did some campaigns for Justin Bieber. When it comes to some promotions, it's an amazing you work with passionate people, so why not using that need that, that pitch rather than paying them a fixed salary.

So everyone that works in my company did a 4 to 6 months internship. No matter, no matter the experience that you have, and 99% of the people will declined it. But the people that will accept it are people that are passionate about it. So all of our employees, what they do, I give them high commission, a lower fixed salary, and they work on performance and they love it.

And that's not for everyone. But those are the people that I need. I don't want to micromanage. I don't want to come to the office and throw 100 people. What to do now? I don't want to have those fixed costs either. So my fixed costs are compared comparable quite low. We work with high commissions and I work with people who actually love what they're doing.

And of course there's some people that maybe do it for the money, but most of them don't. And that's where I was able to grow so quickly.

Daniel Burstein: So you found this, you know, this natural intuition to find a unique value proposition. That was a great example with recruiting employees. You mentioned before that value proposition was work with the founder, don't work with CIA, work with you. Don't work with me. You grow. Now, as we talked about, you've got these employees now. You've got about 25 people.

Have you had to pivot that value prop from work with the founder now, now.

Gidon Rotteveel: So I understood always. Funny enough that when it comes to people, not a lot of people like to give compliments, but a lot of people talk about other people. They always like to talk about myself, what I'm doing right now in the podcast, by the way, that yes, I think listening. But, I always and I'm always trying to understand what does the other person want for some people is money.

For another one, it's for everything around the world and for another person it's working with the specific influencer. So you always have to understand what do they want in the moment. You understand what they want, they give you what you want. So even when I was able to meet one of the ex that I got invited for in Colombia, it was I knew who he was.

But it was not about me. I knew I wouldn't get invited to talk and his, foundation in Colombia, if I talked about me. Understood. I had to ask question about him because everyone wants to impress themself when they have that opportunity, but they never really talk about their children, their family. People always ask them about their work.

But if you ask them, man, you're a great president. But for example, right? But men, family wise, you did it so well. How did you do that? So I like to look up to people that are not only good businesspeople, but everything what they do being a good son, being a good husband, being a good father. That's the people I look up to.

Those are the people that I work with as partners. And every one of my employees. I ask the right question. So instead of asking like, oh, what do you want to do? I'll say it's like, hey, as your family and a lot of people say, no, you can't do that. You cannot add the family side with the business side.

Now you do, because family has a lot of influence on the person's work attitude as well. And, you know, like I'm seeing it like kind of a family in a certain way. Like if I work with people and you work nine hours of the day with this person, this is most of your day, how can you not understand how this person life is doing?

Daniel Burstein: Yeah, I will say to everyone, listen to doing credit. You know, we do a lot of prep work for how I made it. Marketing 95. We're talking a lot about, you know, the guest career and all the lessons they learn and that stuff. 95% of the guests never ask about me, which is fine. But Cardone did we.

We went. I think I talked about myself as about as much as you talk about him, but, let's talk about let's brag about some other people. Now, we did not just talk about you. That's what you do. In the second half of the episode, we talk about people you collaborated with. But first I should mention that how I Made It in Marketing podcast is underwritten by MC labs.

I, the parent company of Marketing Sherpa. You can get conversion focused training from the lab that helped pioneer the conversion industry in our AI Guild and a community to collaborate with. Grab your free three month scholarship to the AI Guild that joint Tech Labs ai.com. That's joint Mech Labs ai.com. Get artificial intelligence working for you. All right, let's talk about some other people.

Now, you mentioned Thomas a Petru, and you said from Thomas you learned that entrepreneurship does not have an age.

Gidon Rotteveel: He was the founder of the hype House that I then managed. And this is, literally this kid of 21 years old, that started one of the first most successful influencer houses with Charli D'Amelio. Alex Ryan, all the big, big people on it. They're also on Netflix right now. And I spent quite some time with him because, this guy, maybe at the time he was even 19, I think I was 23, 24.

And that guy took huge risks against starting an influencer house and and creating content there. It's it's it was genius at that time. It didn't work long long term. But that guy took a lot of risks. And then I understood. Wait. It just a certain mentality that you have that you need to have in order in order to start something you you don't necessarily have to go to college and a degree, depending on what you want to study in order to start a business.

I actually when I told my classmates that I wanted to start a company, they all thought I was crazy. I'm a little bit crazy, by the way, Danielle, but I thought they were crazy that I want to spend the 9 to 5 for someone else. But what I really understood is that I had to go to college because I felt I wasn't ready yet, with which the way I grew up as well, you know, not a religious, but a traditional Jewish family.

So for me, I was learning that education was important. Now I understand I could have done it as well without. I'm happy that I did it, but there's no age for entrepreneurship.

Daniel Burstein: So I like that in a degree. But. And how I made it work and what it's like to unpack things. Take a look at the other side. So do you have any specific examples of how experience has helped in your career? Because, for example, when I interviewed Cordelia Pflugerville, the marketing director at AEW and how I made it marketing, one of her lessons was working in various industries and for different brands and products.

From DTC to B2B makes you a better and more versatile marketer overall. And so I hear you there is no age for entrepreneurship. Mark Zuckerberg was 19. Even Evan Spiegel is 21. There's a long list. But earlier you talked about I made these mistakes. I need these mistakes. I learned these lessons. And so I got to think there's something from that experience that now you at 28 are maybe more effective than you at 21.

What what was something you learned from that experience?

Gidon Rotteveel: Well, the first thing is like, I'm, I am someone that needs to learn from experience. I need to learn from my mistakes. I'm a really stupid person person. So those are the personality type that I am. I learned accountant and finance in my, college degree, and I tell you, I didn't even know how to send an invoice when I had my first client.

So I think you don't learn that now for accounting. I have a whole team. That's my accountant from the company. Well, it's good to know certain few things, but because I'm such a stubborn person. There is entrepreneurs. There are entrepreneurs that need to work for a company first. And then when they learn that they they apply to their business.

So for me, that wouldn't work because I'm too impatient and I'm too risk risky to say, I made a lot of mistakes. I think I'm a lot more grown up right now than I was before. I think now twice before I say yes, part of the risks that I took, I wouldn't definitely not take again, not only on the business side and any side.

I was Mr.. Yes man, I'm still Mr.. Yes, man, but, less frequent. Way. So yeah, I learned a lot of things. That is more confidence. I think part of saying all the time, yes, is is not the greatest thing to do. So I think with experience comes confidence. Even more confidence. And with confidence comes less mistake.

Some of the mistakes that I made was focusing still on small creators because I didn't want to miss out on the small bills. And now and instead, let's really focus on the bigger deals, because then you grow quicker as well. I'm more trust. See, with other people, I allocate more work. So I have more freedom to to work on other projects.

And I'm trying multiple businesses out besides the agency. So, you know, in the moment you always also need to grow as a person. And for me to grow as a person is more important than to go out on the on the business side. So in order to to also take risk with other businesses, you really have to learn how a business works.

And it teach me a lot, it teach me a lot. I'll just experiences all the all the failures that I made as well, clients that I lost, creators that I lost as part of the business.

Daniel Burstein: How do you make sure you've got your finger on the pulse of what's new and next and upcoming now? Because you talk a lot about, okay, I want to work with the big girls. I don't want working the small deals, but I would think a key with a talent agent is always kind of finding that up and coming next talent before anyone else does, because in marketing we got to do the same thing, right?

We're like, should I invest in that new channel when vine came out? Right, should we invest in that or should we not? Is it not worth it? Right. I all this stuff that you do, I know you I know you're kind of looking for those homeruns and Grand Slams and that's great. But you do anything to try to find a new and the next and upcoming, either in a channel or in an individual.

Gidon Rotteveel: Really good channel. Really good question. I do this on a daily basis. I give you an example with a platform and I'll give you an example with a creator. So some clients are there for the long term, let's say Raid Shadow Legends. They're sponsoring creators years. Right. But then there are clients that are only sponsoring certain creators once a year or a few times, and then it's done.

When TikTok came out and when I worked with ByteDance, I did a lot of collaborations on TikTok. But then so many creators got so many views, like an average consumer of TikTok scores in one hour, true, 100 creators. So most of the brands that are sponsoring those creators, they don't get an ROI because the consumer doesn't even go to the link in bio.

They don't even come to their profile. They just see them on their own feet. You know, baad when it comes to YouTube, they're watching one YouTube creator at the time, long from its content and the tracking link is in their bio. So there's more. There's more, there's more likelihood that the brand will sell their products.

So then I had to go over from TikTok because I didn't see a future for the brands in TikTok, and the creators would go too quick. They would come and go too quick. So I took the brands to the YouTube platform. That was the first adaption that I made. Then TikTok didn't do so well anymore with brands. Well, what happened then?

YouTube introduced YouTube shorts. So now I had a new client. Instead of working only with TikTok, I had Google as a client as well. So now you work a lot with Google now. I had a new platform where there was more brand awareness for the creators, for the clients. The clients were happier. They saw more return. Now I had to understand, rather than focus on the creators that just get a lot of views, let me focus on creators that are a long time on YouTube.

Already 7 to 8 years, right? They have a certain, relationship already with their audience, so it sells better. And that's what I did as well. And I'm always trying to find who's the new creator, who's the next Mr. Beast. But that's part of your job. Who is the next big client? Every time I have to look on YouTube, who is currently sponsoring, then I.

Then I have to find what is the new next live stream. Live stream platforms such as Twitch that maybe wants me to put their YouTube creators on their platform. Right? So I'm always what is the next fan fix? Which was started by one of my friends? What is the next Patreon? And you know, because you also miss a lot of opportunities.

So that's what I'm trying to do as well. What is the next big platform? So yeah, you always have to adapt.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. So speaking of that ephemeral nature, you said one of the things you learned was influencers come and go and you learn this from Cameron Dallas. You said, so how did you how did you learn this?

Gidon Rotteveel: Because Cameron Dallas was one of the biggest creators, including together with he started on vine and I used to manage him as well. Together with Logan Paul and Jake Paul. Look at Logan Paul and Jake Paul. There were literally maybe Cameron Dallas was one of the first influencers, 26 million followers. Now brands are not working anymore.

Most brands are not working. Anyone is channel, even though he has 26 million followers because it goes to quick the moment you're not adapting to the new social media channels, it's not. It's done. You're losing out on one year. It's done and that's what you see. Like he was one of the biggest creators. But now compare him to Logan Paul and Jake Paul.

Most people were known by his name. But you know, it's definitely not the same as those creators anymore. So I can go ahead.

Daniel Burstein: No, no, I'm sorry I interrupted you.

Gidon Rotteveel: If you don't stick to it and you lose momentum, it's done. You always need to be in a venue. Look at Jake Paul became a boxer. Look at Logan Paul. He became a part of WME. If you're not adapting, it's done. If you stick on YouTube and and nothing else is gone from there, it's you losing. That's what this business is.

Also, if you're not growing, you're declining. There's no stability. It's either growth or decline. One of them.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. And I hear especially here in the influencer side. But something in the for the brand marketers that are listening like do you have any examples of how to build long term success between a brand and influencers? Because yeah, I'll tell you. One case study I wrote real quick. I was with Vibe Israel and they're a nonprofit that's Israel's marketing and branding, essentially, and they launched an influencer campaign to get influencers.

But they said a real key thing of the campaign was, no, they weren't trying to like, showcase the place or anything like that. What they were really focused on was fostering long term connections and friendships between people. They were trying to build those relationships. That's what they wanted to do to get that long term. And then they got, you know, 10 million followers, less than a nickel person they reached and all that stuff.

So for you going on, you've talked a lot about this ephemeral and short term nature for a brand. How can they then take a long term successful campaign? Any examples of that of using influencers for a long term, successful campaign?

Gidon Rotteveel: Well, you talk about, Israel. So let's talk about an Israeli company called weeks.com. So weeks that com reached out to me because they are part of Manchester City. And Manchester City gives their partners an opportunity once a year to work a few hours with their football players. So all the big clients that Manchester City had the whole year, they think about the concept, what they're going to do.

So I thought, let's be smart. We're going to have the opportunity to be on social media. We accept comments promoting themselves to social media. Why don't we use one of the biggest YouTube creators that get a lot of yields and not only work with the football players, but adds another famous person in it? Because what? What is a football player?

Right now you have creators that are more famous on social media than a football players. That's insane. So why don't we merge both together? So what we did with Wix.com is we took Haaland, which is the Manchester City biggest players, and two other players, including Phil Foden, together with my creator called Harry Nicholas to collaborate on the campaign.

That campaign, the 200 million organic views. We didn't pay for organic views. How? Because the creator gets millions of views now they have Haaland and they get even more views. Manchester City Instagram page gets a lot of views because of the football creators, but now the famous YouTubers in it. In the videos it gets even more views. So what I want to say is like this example.

What is it you as a client, you have to understand how to work with something. Let's say your weeks have come. Your website builder. You need to work with creators that have their own website and sell their merchandise right? You have to understand your niche. If you are continuing to promote your app, you need to work with creators and make their own videos, right?

Edit their own videos. Understand your niche. Understand how long is the creator in that side. Don't only look at views, but you need to work with a creator. It's quite some time already in the industry because then they have a name and creative freedom. This is an opportunity for you as a brand to create a story. Everything is storytelling.

We know that as marketeers, you know everything is storytelling, but you as a brand have to understand that better than you. Coming up with a with a brief of what to do, come up with your talking points, what needs to be said. But let the creator decide what to do because the audience is buying your product because of the creator, not because of your product.

And that's what really clients have to understand. And the clients that understand, the brands that understand that those are the brands that get a positive ROI and results out of social media. Because just working with Mr. B sort of creator doesn't show, doesn't guarantee results. You have to understand who the creator is and what is their brand that they are showing to their audience, because that's the brand that your product will have.

It's not your brand values, it's the creative. You're working with, the communication brand value. So whatever their content is, is what your product is.

Daniel Burstein: Our brands coming along on the Creative Freedom Train, you know, because for a long time I've seen brands and agencies, brands told agencies what to do. They were agencies with the creators essentially right? Advertising agencies, the brand just told them what to do when influencers pretty new and brands still want a lot of control. But has that changed some now?

Has that period?

Gidon Rotteveel: Definitely, at least for me. And that's that's what I said at the beginning. Dani are like the bigger creators and the bigger brands that sponsor lot on YouTube. They know how to get results. So they understand creative freedom. And that's the ease that I have right now. Smaller brands wouldn't do that, and smaller brands can spend still a lot of money, but there is now a long term vision with them.

Daniel Burstein: That is very ironic because in other thing, traditionally in marketing, in business, smaller brands were the challenger brands, right? Pepsi would do something Coke couldn't do because they had to get attention. So that's very ironic and good to hear for the big brands.

Gidon Rotteveel: And that's not at all the case right now. When I work with Coca Cola, there's less creative freedom than I work with. You know, it's it's funny because there's a few big traditional brands, right, that are like that. But the new big brands on social media, right, such as the Googles, such as the, the cap culture, the ByteDance, the LG, Samsung that we work with a lot, they do give creative freedom.

But when it comes to traditional big brands, it's less definitely.

Daniel Burstein: All right. One more lesson here. You said don't let small setbacks in the business distract you from your insane vision. And you, sir, you learned this from James Linton. So how do you learn this from James?

Gidon Rotteveel: So he has a company called Crunchyroll. It's one of the biggest any may live streaming platforms which you can have, which you can see anywhere. It's, it's basically when you open your Apple TV, you see it. Well, I learned a lot from him because I started an online community for Forbes, 30 under 30 with him. And he was, he's a little bit older.

He's in this and 40s. I'm not sure exactly how how old he is now, but it's not only it's about the experience, but you said. And while you sold his company to Sony for, what is it, one point something billion dollars with its co-founders and every small set that would really, you know, it would hurt because it's it's my baby.

And then he said, man, if you are going to be, you know, such a big businessman, why would you care about the small setbacks if we have that billion dollar vision, why would you care about losing that $200,000? Which was a lot for me, you know, and it still is, and it should be. But if you have that big vision right, then you need to get there.

For example, Richard Branson with his with is yeah, also like a competitive Coca-Cola. I can not imagine how much money I would lose there. But I look at him right now with his cruise ships, with his airlines. It's unbelievable. And this is what I think as well. It started with an easy this is my first business, but I'm not.

This is not what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. I love the entertainment world and I want to go grow bigger. We just recently, me and my co-founder got into the production of of movies. So I helping to raise money as well for, for music, for movies. It's amazing. Like you need to have a big mindset, not only social media and that's what I love about about this guy because he teach me like, you know, you aim for aim for the moon, you know, and I am.

Daniel Burstein: So I love that when we see it over and over, a business is sometimes a small setback, fuel something bigger. So I want to give you examples of how you're able to turn those setbacks into a win eventually. Because when I interviewed Gary Stein, the CMO of virtual, and how I made it marketing, one of his lessons was always ask, what can we do with this?

Right? It's always that mindset is there's value in everything. There's value when we get a win, there's value when we get a loss, we see that may be testing the one wonder. I've never been able to take one of those small setbacks or maybe you didn't win that time, but there's some intelligence that you learn there and turn it into something else.

Gidon Rotteveel: Well, the beautiful thing is, is I think you always win, but you need to look at more in the long term. There you go. Not nothing is short term. And then you understand that while you as a as a person, as a business person, you lose using your windows. I just lost the $100,000 plus, brand deal. And then the first thing is like, man, then because your mindset is already I already had that.

You never had that. You don't own anything. You learn that the more that the happier you are is understanding the mindset that everything that you have in this life, maybe it said what I'm going to say, but it's actually positive. Everything in this life is temporary. The house that you think you own is temporary. When you die, it's not your house, but who is from who's the house right now?

That car that you bought, even that Ferrari, is temporary. Everything is temporary. So be happy with what you have right now. Right? So if I lose that deal, the vision is don't stick. Don't be in the best, live in the future or live in the present or in the future. That brand does it already have it already. You already lost it.

Move on, move on. So what did learn? What it teach me is that now I lose $100,000 brand deal. But I'm going to go at a level where I will lose $1 million brand new, and then I will go to a level where where I will lose a $10 million revenue. Well, money, you know, it comes and goes.

It's the way it is. It's the industry. So it prepares me to to lose the higher big brands. And then I was I left and as I lost a hundred thousand opportunity, what I do is validate.

Daniel Burstein: I like that attitude. All right. If you had to break it down, get on. What are the key qualities of an effective marketer?

Gidon Rotteveel: Confidence. You need to be confident enough in yourself to believe in what you're doing. Believe in yourself because so many people will tell you that you're wrong. But as a marketing guy, you need to be innovative. You need to think different. You need to listen to other people as well, especially when you have a team. So even though you need to be confident about your own opinion, listen to other people.

You need to have a vision. Super important vision is the thing that leads to marketing. Goals. And then you need to be extremely creative as well. I wouldn't say I'm an artist as well. I think where I where if I would lack the point, maybe it's creativity, but then at the end of the day, I just go for a walk and something creative comes on.

I will always say I'm the engine of the car, my co-founder and then my team. They are the steering wheel. They will go to the right direction. So I will come with a new brand, I will come with a new concept and they will put it into the details. So you have to understand that you don't have to be good in everything.

As a market theory, you need to be good in one particular thing. For me, being the engine, starting it off. And then you have a team or a co-founder or potentially someone else is can help you. But if you are starting, you need to be everything. Don't understand me? Wrong, right? Then I need to be just confident enough that your your marketing, perception is good enough.

Which it is. Like you wouldn't be there.

Daniel Burstein: And that's how I will. Thank you so much for sharing all your lessons and stories with us. Good to.

Gidon Rotteveel: Know. Thank you so much for having me on amazing podcast.

Daniel Burstein: Great. And thanks to everyone for listening.

Outro: Thank you for joining us for how I made it and marketing with Daniel Burstein. Now that you've got an inspiration for transforming yourself as a marketer, get some ideas for your next marketing campaign. From Marketing Sherpas extensive library of free case studies at Marketing sherpa.com. That's marketing rpa.com and.