Abhishek: Today we have Ruben with us, a fellow co-founder and founder of Creator Insights. Let us hear a story of Creator Insights. How are you Ruben? How are you doing? Reuben Mark: I'm doing great, Abhishek. Thank you for having me on the podcast. So, a little bit about me. I have little to no experience with the business side of things. I am almost entirely into the content marketing side of things. So I main I like I want to set expectations before we begin, which is like I've seen the other ⁓ founders you've had on the podcast, and some of these guys are like really impressive. They know their knowledge base is quite large and Abhishek: Pleasure. Yeah. Reuben Mark: I I'll realistically tell you I don't have that knowledge base about the business side of things, but I do think I have something that I can offer when it comes to the content side of things. So I'm excited to see what we can discuss about in that regard. Now, when it comes to our story with Creator Insights, so me, I was an intern when I started for Creator Insights. It was just the founder, Sushant. So he handles the technical side of things. He was a chemical engineer. Then he became a software engineer. Abhishek: Right. Right. ⁓ Hmm. Mmm. Reuben Mark: Now he's an entrepreneur. So like his journey has been crazy. So Creator Sites, the tool itself is the vision for us was to make everything, first of all, easy to do, accessible, and cheap. Because the Indian consumers' mentality is that they want everything to be quick and cheap. So Abhishek: Mmm. Mmm. Okay. Reuben Mark: That was our goal. We wanted to bring everything under one umbrella. So even if you look at Creator Insights now, all of the features that we provide, it's not something innovative, it's not something groundbreaking. We haven't created anything new. What we've done is we've taken the best things that exist already, we've brought it under one subscription. So for example, ⁓ let's say you have a scripting tool. I I don't know if you've heard of this tool called Poppy AI. Abhishek: Yeah, yeah, I've heard. Reuben Mark: Yes, so Pop AI, we have almost the exact same service, but rather than let's say Pop AI is if I'm not wrong, their subscription is somewhere around thirty to forty dollars. So that would be if you do the math, how much? That comes up to I'm I'm terrible at math, first of all. That comes up to yeah, not forty, like around forty. No, forty dollars will come up to around four thousand, yeah. So that becomes expensive in one three. ⁓ no, no, it's forty, yeah. Abhishek: Ok. 40,000? Yeah, 40,000. 40,000. Yeah, it's close to 4000 rupees. Yeah, close to 4000. Yeah, I heard it for $400. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. Reuben Mark: Then let's say most of them will have some sort of a chat GPT subscription or something like that. That comes up to let's say whatever amount that is. And before we used to like provide influencer marketing services as well, which is basically we would provide a database of creators. But that is something we've pivoted away from now because we couldn't, you know, we couldn't provide that degree of accuracy to customers. So for us at the end of the day, we try to push for quality and Abhishek: Thanks. Reuben Mark: So, with that kept in mind, we decided let's not go ahead with that. So, right now we have completely shifted into content distribution. So, the creators workflow, we want to handle every part of it on creator insights, which is ideation, finding content, then we go to scripting, we have that as well. Then we go to ⁓ posting. Now we cannot ⁓ realistic I'll tell you if you watched all of these ⁓ reels and all these creators are like Claude killed. Video editors, Claude killed this, Claude killed that. Nonsense, nothing. Claude has not killed anything. Claude has right now because I've looked at these things and I'm like, ⁓ for me, video editing, all of these things are ⁓ integral part of my workflow. So I I've watched all of these tutorials at length, and Claude has not taken over a video editor's job, Claude has not taken over a motion designer's job, all of that is right there, nothing has changed. All it does is Abhishek: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I you Reuben Mark: Basically, it's the same amount of work, but rather than sitting in ⁓ let's say blender, sitting in ⁓ After Effects or sitting in DaVinci and doing it yourself, you're just spending the same amount of time putting in a prompt onto ⁓ Claude. So these things, so we didn't really go into touching the video production side of things. We more so went into the other, like the management side of things. So ⁓ we our hero feature at the moment is multi-posting. What you can do is Abhishek: Hmm. Reuben Mark: This also not a this is not a unique feature. It exists. If you know Food Suite, they provide the same thing. So you put your video on. Abhishek: and there is something called as buffer as well it helps you to cross hosting Reuben Mark: Yes, yes, yes. Buffer also does something similar. So you put your content onto Creator Insights, and we have around, if I remember correctly, we have 14 platforms that you can ⁓ post to. So rather than individually posting on all of your different handles, you pull it onto Creator Insights, you give a prompt about like what kind of ⁓ content, what kind of title you're looking for, what kind of description you're looking for, and then you hit adapt to platforms. And creator insights will do it for you. It'll it'll create all of the different ⁓ Captions, titles, everything. And you just at the click of a button, you can either post it immediately on the spot, or what you can do is you can schedule it for a later date. So this for anybody getting into personal branding, the number one thing you look at hormones, you look at anyone, they'll tell you volume and visibility. Increase your visibility across as many platforms as you can. Yes, and whatever hits, hits. So rather than sitting on each and every platform posting, all you gotta do is just put it on to create creator insights and then hit send. Abhishek: platforms. Reuben Mark: Done. All your work is done for you. Abhishek: So you are completely ⁓ my voice is audible to you right? Is it clear? Yeah, okay. So it is kind of a SaaS tool to help a business owner to create a personal brand, right? Reuben Mark: Yes it is. Absolutely, yes. Mm-hmm. Hmm, I wouldn't that that sounds a little restrictive. It's not dis it's not ⁓ something only for business owners. We primarily target creators, like anybody that wants to get into content creation, they are our they come under our ⁓ TAM. So agencies are one possible use case. There is one possible audience within agencies that we can provide to. But again, agencies, what I've noticed is when we've we've done several demos, we've done several outreach calls and all that, these guys are not really willing to learn something new. They have whatever they know and they they don't want to change their ways. So getting to like convincing them to learn something new, it's it's difficult. And it's like, why am I doing your job for you? So we we've decided not to go to that extent. But Abhishek: Mm. Thank you. Reuben Mark: ⁓ if you look at most creators that are beginning their content journey, they're hungry to learn because this is something passionate, like this is a passion ⁓ project for them. So they're really dedicated to learn to grow. So these people have no shortage of time, they have no shortage of energy and willingness to learn how to use AI tools. So that the goal was with my personal brand, I will drive traffic towards the company as well. So we teach, and at the same time, when people build a connection with us, when they see Abhishek: Yeah. Okay. Reuben Mark: That okay, Ruben is someone I can trust in terms of what I have to do to learn how to do content, content strategy, ⁓ editing, whatever it is, I can trust him. So if he's telling me Creative Insight is really going to help me with my workflow, then it's something that is worth exploring. So that is the strategy that we're going for, and that's the strategy I've noticed almost all of the major creators, almost all of the major brands. If you look at Hormosy, You look at Leila Hormozi, his wife, you look at ⁓ Raj Shamani, you look at Veb of Society, you look at ⁓ who else is that, Gary Wee. All of these guys, they've stopped posting content on their company pages. Rather, what they've done is they've created a personal brand, and that is what is driving traffic entirely to their ⁓ companies. So that's the same strategy we have. Abhishek: yeah okay okay ⁓ but when you say I know in terms of ⁓ production quality or like creativity let's right now you are having the best video light than me okay when we consider this as a USB in your visibility Reuben Mark: Mm-hmm. Abhishek: How are you trying to indulge this in creator insights? Does that help you to also be that specific in your lighting and all of that? Reuben Mark: Mm, I I didn't I didn't get you. Could you clarify? Abhishek: So basically let's say if creator insights is a chatbot or is it okay okay. Reuben Mark: No, it's not a chatbot. It's a SAS platform. AI chat is one of the features out of four or five different use cases that you can use it for. Abhishek: Okay, okay. So when it comes to video production, what is ⁓ what is it going to help us like what exactly does it help? Reuben Mark: ⁓ with video production, Creator Insights cannot help you because AI cannot I I mean, we can implement it, but it it's super, super expensive to implement AI, seeing your video and seeing your analyzing your content. And even then AI is not there yet where it can, you know, really give you Abhishek: I a full pledged output. Reuben Mark: Of yeah, it can't give you really good quality advice about as compared to someone who's ⁓ let's say a production production assistant or a director, they can see your they can see your room, they can see the light setup you have, and they can give you really, really good advice. Okay, if you use this corner, if you stay this far from the wall, you'll get a really good shot. So ⁓ they will have a lot better in that regard, humans are still better. AI is not there yet, it's going to get there. But right now it's not there. And even if you do want to implement it, it's super expensive. So we don't touch the production side of things at all. It's only ideation, scripting, and posting, managing content. Abhishek: Right, so when is that particular time that and your co-founder wanted to start this and what is the particular reason made you to get into this particular problem? Reuben Mark: So ⁓ that's a good question. He was ⁓ Sushanth was already doing this. He he's been running Creator Insights for the past I think four years or something like that. So he has iterated multiple times. He has done a lot of different like he's pivoted with many, many things because that's the any founder's ⁓ journey is like that only. You start with something and where you end up is completely different. So yeah, we are currently at like our fifth or sixth iteration of Abhishek: Obviously, yeah. Makes sense. Reuben Mark: what it was and what we are now. So yeah, we wanted to be able to provide, like I said, we wanted to be able to provide a suite where creators can do everything of their workflow apart from video production, of course. They want we want them to be able to do everything onto ⁓ on one platform itself. Abhishek: Mm. Okay, okay. And ⁓ you know, ⁓ I can see that you are trying to build your personal brand by yourself. know, ⁓ tell me what have you learned building the first thousand followers on your ⁓ page. And see, that is a very big see the first thousand is the whole biggest thing. The next flows. It's like people say the first million dollars is the toughest part and the rest flows. So tell me that because I am currently at my 800 and I am yet to cross my 1000 mark. Tell me your journey of crossing that 1000 mark. Reuben Mark: Yeah, yeah. Right, right. I crossed thousand followers with just one reel. Only one reel that went viral took me cross two thousand five hundred followers. And most people they only see like I I'll tell you one thing about marketing, the entire marketing sector is it ends up creating a ⁓ sort of an illusion of of success, which doesn't exist. Where you know nobody, there's no creator who's out there who's going to ⁓ when they talk about their proof of work. Abhishek: Mmm. Reuben Mark: They will only show you how many videos went million plus, how many went hundred thousand plus. Out of a creator's, let's say a hundred videos, one video goes viral. So people look at these people, and you look at these big creators, let's say you look at ⁓ Juniu, you look at Alex Ormozy, these guys post thousands, thousands of videos in a day. Not in a day, like in a month. ⁓ if you look at Alex Ormozy's ⁓ content plan, he he suggested a strategy where he Abhishek: Mmm. Reuben Mark: ends up posting around ⁓ one thousand five hundred pieces of content across all of his ⁓ platforms. So they go more toward Abhishek: What is the timeline? Is it like a week or a month or like how many? Reuben Mark: No, I think it's a month. It's a month. So in a week they do somewhere around 300 ⁓ pieces of content. So in a month they do around a thousand to thousand five hundred pieces of content. And we as creators, we look at these big, big, big, big, big guys and we are like, okay, we have to reach that level now. Which is not the case at all. You have to start at level one. When you're at level one, you will have a certain like your skill set is here at level one. Your Abhishek: Yeah. Yeah. Reuben Mark: Equipment is at level one, your ⁓ your connections are at level one. You don't have what it takes to immediately start producing content like the best of the best in the field out there. So, first step is be willing to embarrass yourself. You cannot get anywhere unless you make mistakes, you cannot get anywhere unless you embarrass yourself. Every embarrassment gets you one step closer to being honored. Abhishek: Thank you. Reuben Mark: One step closer to getting respect. So you look at me, I posted around for a month consistently. I posted nothing. I was getting a thousand views, two thousand views, three thousand views. And one video took me across ⁓ 2K. So then once you see what is working, what you want to do is there's a bunch of strategies that I want to discuss later as well. So if you have any other questions, we can ⁓ go ahead with that. And later I'll share some insights about. Abhishek: Yeah. Reuben Mark: How to do content strategy. If we have any beginners or Abhishek: My follow up question was that, how as a founder myself or like a fellow founder who is watching this particular episode wants to create content, ⁓ what is your content strategy to him? How he should start? How he should follow? What is the roadmap that he should have to build that personal brand? Reuben Mark: Hmm. Okay. This is this is I'm so excited to talk about this because it's like nobody talks about this ⁓ in in my space. I've seen like in reality. Abhishek: You know what Ruben, I've been building it by myself and there is nothing as such which has been talked about this anywhere. There is no cause for it. Reuben Mark: Mm-hmm. Abhishek: how to create content. is someone's you know, creative talent that they put it in their working on it. So I think there would, I think people have recently started that personal branding courses and all of that, but it is very, I think it differs person to person. It is more of a personal choice on how you have, you want to, on what you have to, you want to talk and how we want to present yourself. Accordingly, you have to curate and build a brand. Reuben Mark: Yeah. Mm. Abhishek: See end of the day you can't fake it. You can't fake it. That is there. So you have to tell me. Yeah you have to tell me because you being in this space. Reuben Mark: Right. Yes. So when it comes to yeah. Yeah. Right. So when it comes to content strategy, right? People you'll hear from the top creators to build a personal brand. Be unique, be unique, you know, ⁓ be yourself. Nothing. Don't be yourself. Don't be unique. That is for them. They are at that place where they can say anything. Abhishek: Right. Reuben Mark: And people will still follow them. You are not there. You don't have the reliability. You don't have the credibility. You don't have the proof of work. Tomorrow, if Alex Hor Hormozy comes and tells me do this, do that, I will listen to him. He's built a brand. He can tell me anything. But me, I am nobody. Nobody is inclined to listen to me. So at the beginning stage, copy. Copy, copy, copy, copy, copy, copy as much as you can. So the strategy that I use is find first of all, you need to know what niche you're going to be a creator in. Abhishek: Yeah. Right. Reuben Mark: If you don't have a fixed niche about what I'm going to talk about, if in my page right now it's very obvious I've curated and it curated it in such a way that it is it revolves entirely around branding and content strategy. If I start posting about fitness tomorrow, if I start posting about let's say cars day after tomorrow, if I start posting about makeup, if I start posting about all of these different things, if I start posting about food, my brand is going to get destroyed because. Abhishek: Mm. Mm. Reuben Mark: When before you even create that Instagram account, you need to know why I am creating an Instagram account? Why am I deciding to post content? There are multiple reasons. Now, one is obvious the most basic one, which is I want to express myself. If you're an artist, if you want to just, you know, just for fun, I want to do it, go ahead. If that is your intention of why you want to create social media, absolutely be unique. The best way for you to grow is to be unique. And your intention is not to grow. Abhishek: Yeah. Reuben Mark: When you want to just express yourself. So just be unique. Then there are other people who just want to get famous and do brand deals. So if that is your goal, then your entire purpose is views. I want views and I want reach. Your approach to getting views is going to be entirely different. If I wanted views, I am going to do every trend, every trend that comes on my feed, I am going to copy it that day. So that is if I want to be someone who wants to get famous and do brand deals. Abhishek: Mm. attention. Okay. Reuben Mark: Now, for me as an entrepreneur, my goal is to drive sales. So you have to cater your profile in a completely different way when your intention is to use your content to sell something. So when you want to sell something, you have to be a lot more careful and a lot more intentional about how you post. Because ⁓ have you ever done cold calling before? Have you ever done you know. Abhishek: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Reuben Mark: You pick the call and people are like they'll start yelling at you, they'll start shouting at you, Where did I get you? Where did you get my number? This and that and all this kind of stuff. People don't like being sold to. People don't like salespeople. So you have to do everything in your power not to be a salesperson. My entire profile is not me selling creator insights, it is me providing something to the customer. I want the I want my viewers to fall in love with me. When they fall in love with me, Abhishek: Right. Reuben Mark: If I tell them they have to buy this or that, this is a good recommendation, they are going to buy it. Let's say your sister or your mother or your brother or your father or your cousins, they, you know, let's say they purchased a new product and they loved it. They are gonna come and tell you, okay, you should do this, you should do that. You have not you should buy this product. You have not done even an ounce of research into the product. You have not sat and okay, so what can this tool do for me? What can this feature do for me? You're not thinking that way, but you love that person, so you will trust them. Abhishek: Bye. Reuben Mark: And you will buy that product. So that is the goal with selling on social media. If your intention is to sell on social media, you have to get your audience's trust. So that comes under that you achieve that by doing this. You create a content funnel. This is called the consumer journey. Every consumer goes through a process before they sell. So if I see a McDonald's on the road. I am immediately I'm not gonna go and buy it. If I do go and buy it, there's going to be McDonald's has done enough marketing beforehand to fit it in my brain that if I see McDonald's, okay, I wanna go and eat McDonald's. Before I even step out of my house and before I even go and see that McDonald's, I will have seen some sort of an ad. I will have seen some sort of a ⁓ product placement on let's say my favorite ⁓ you know Kai Sinat. Abhishek: Yeah, yeah, I know. Reuben Mark: Yeah, let's say a streamer, someone I watch, someone I watch for entertainment, I'm seeing he's eating McDonald's on his live stream, and he's like, ⁓ this is so good, this is so crazy. I love Kaisenat. And if he's eating something, I'm gonna make okay, I wanna eat that. You see your favorite K-pop stars, you see these BTS people, they'll produce they'll do they post something on their social media. Even if in the background there is some product, people will go and start buying that. You look at what ⁓ Cristiano Ronaldo did, you remember a couple of years back on a press review, he took a bottle of coke, he put it away. Abhishek: He is like... Reuben Mark: And you put a bottle of water, what happened to the stock? Billions lost. So before you even before the customer decides to buy, there is a journey. Abhishek: the stock vendor. You know why do you want to go till there if you take Indian movies they try to put a brand somewhere else in the corner and the sales happen. It's as simple as that. Reuben Mark: Exactly. Exactly. So there's like a huge consumer psychology. There's a there's an entire field of study where people do research about this. And so if your goal is to sell, what I follow is the conversion funnel. We it's it there is one version of this which is very popular, which is known as the AIDA funnel. Attention, ⁓ sorry, awareness, interest, ⁓ desire and action. So this is something similar. Abhishek: small thing to add before you get into this in detail Ruben you know as myself I am building a personal brand okay two things here I ⁓ Initially I wanted to build a very ICP related content where it has to reach my target audience like D2C brand owners or like marketeers who can use my product or my expertise in their business. But then being very target related in social media doesn't work. You you have to have a broader audience then Reuben Mark: Mm-hmm. Abhishek: you know you will have your if let's say there is a funnel a broader funnel where everybody is in there aspiring founder or like a student or you know someone who wants to you know get into creator or something like that that is the broad funnel and below that you will have RICP where you know actual founder actual marketer you know and there is another the next would be your interest audience right Reuben Mark: Mm-hmm. Abhishek: So I am very much confused that should I be very wide of attracting a lot of audience to me? You know and then you know start educating them I mean maybe out of that I'll get my target audience rather than directly targeting at a very niche audience then try to find out you know a filtered audience out of it Reuben Mark: Mm. Abhishek: you know you got my point there is this two way because it is very tough for me to just directly get it to my ⁓ target user so how do you think that we can handle this because I think every business owner and yourself also might have faced this problem Reuben Mark: Understood exactly. So, with this specific problem that you mentioned, it entirely revolves around. So, again, now I told you about ⁓ before you start Instagram, the considerations. Why are you starting an Instagram? Even one step before that, you're supposed to consider should I even be on Instagram? So, like you mentioned, your ICP is are you going to be able to reach your ICP on Instagram? If no, then don't do Instagram at all. The reason I am on Instagram is because my entire ICP is on Instagram. So now for you, your ideal customer profile might be a person, a founder, an agency owner. These business owners, people who are working super, super hard. These people don't have time to be on Instagram. They're not scrolling Instagram. So you might have to reconsider: should I even be posting on Instagram? Where will if I want my content to be in front of these guys, where do I have to go? So Abhishek: Mmm. Thanks. Reuben Mark: Depending on what your product is and who your ICP is, there might even be a circumstance where you have to be like, I don't even have to do social media marketing. You look at Bugatti, you look at Bentley, these guys don't do social media marketing. They have an account, they just post once in a blue moon. They post, they they're not out there because we me, I am never buying a Bugatti. I cannot afford it. So I am not their ideal customer. These people, you'll find them in all the where. Abhishek: Mm. Right. Reuben Mark: These country clubs, you will find them in ⁓ car exposed where people who can actually buy their product are actu meeting. So you will have to reconsider any any founder or any ⁓ creator or anybody that's trying to sell that wants to do marketing, they have to realize where my customer live? If I if my customer is on LinkedIn and I am posting all of my content on Instagram, my customer is never gonna see my content and I'm never gonna make sales. Abhishek: Mm. Reuben Mark: So for you now, founders are very active on LinkedIn. So you might be more you might do your marketing way more on ⁓ LinkedIn rather than Instagram. So it depends entirely on who your ICP is, what you're trying to sell, and what is the best medium to reach that ICP. So if Instagram is not your ICP, don't do Instagram. Instagram you can just keep it as like a reliability thing. So like any any any founder will have you need to have digital footprint, you need to have Abhishek: link there Yeah. Reuben Mark: ⁓ recency. So if your Instagram has some posts which suggest that okay, this company is active, this company is alive, then that person will be like, okay, I can trust this company. But your main outreach should be through LinkedIn if your ⁓ ideal customers are on LinkedIn. Abhishek: Yeah. make sense but then ⁓ it comes down to again cross-platform you know being active everywhere because we never know where a customer actually lies and do think that we have to be very precise according to each platform and create content around it or it's just trial and error we never know there is a particular strategy for each of these. Reuben Mark: Pronto. So it depends on your organizational scale. So me as I'm it's my organization, Creator Insights has two people, me and Sushan. That's all. So we cannot afford to sit and hyper specify my content towards YouTube, towards Instagram, towards LinkedIn. It is absolutely important. You should do it, but you should also look at your time is a resource, your energy is a resource, your money is a resource. ⁓ so for me right now, I cannot afford to Abhishek: Right. ⁓ Okay. Reuben Mark: Specify my content to each platform. So I'll just copy paste, post everything on the same thing. Once you have an organizational size where you can afford to onboard a marketing team or you can afford to onboard a marketing agency, then tell these guys, I want you to post like how you edit a video for Instagram is not how you edit a video for YouTube. How you edit a video for YouTube is not how you do it for TikTok. So it depends on where you are in your business journey. If you have the ability. Abhishek: you Reuben Mark: the manpower, the time, money to do that, absolutely do it. You should hyper specify because you can pull out more benefit from each platform. But as a solo founder, as a as like someone who's beginning in this space, don't. You cannot afford you, it'll waste your time, it'll waste your energy. Don't do it. Just do pick on your primary platform and same thing, just repurpose it generically for all the other platforms. Abhishek: you Make sense, make sense. another, I think you might have seen this, another trend which everybody's following is that building in public. What something about that advice you think is overrated. Reuben Mark: Yeah. I can't really like I'm not the best person to comment on this because even my page is all about building in public. So it depends on the audience taste at the end of the day, which is if your entire niche, if if your entire content strategy is around building in public, then you're going to fail, that's for sure. Because people don't come on Instagram, people don't come on YouTube to learn something. Abhishek: Yeah. Reuben Mark: They that's not their intention. Their intention is to do scroll. Just to get entertained, to block the because they have their job, they have their college, they have their work, they are tired and after that they come here again up by to sit and listen to one lecture. Abhishek: get entertained. Ruben I want to give you a very You know depth inside which I was figuring out tell me that it is right or wrong I mean, how do you feel about this? When you watch Instagram, there are few emotions that you get triggered that one is dopamine hit Second is get I mean you Reuben Mark: Yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Abhishek: One is feeling ⁓ happy like, know, when you see funny content, you laugh and you, you know, relate to it in some real time incident. And three is that emotional relation, like anything which talks about family, friends, or like anything about real life, you get connected. So there are very humanized emotions that you want to feel when you're watching the content, right? It can be any human con. Reuben Mark: Mm-hmm. Abhishek: mean emotion. If you create that emotion through your video and sell your brand, I feel you are fit that you know mark of selling your brand through social media. You understood. Maybe let's say you are selling your creator insights through your page. If you create content by giving one of these emotions to the viewer, I think you have hit the ball out of the park. What do you think about this? Reuben Mark: Mm-hmm. Absolutely right. So, ⁓ you know who Saad Kaja is? ⁓ you might know him as Saad Cells. He's this guy who codes. Yeah. So he also speaks about this. He speaks about the content, right? Most content on social media, that content that does well, it serves three purposes. One is it either educates, it either entertains, or it sparks an emotion. So Abhishek: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Reuben Mark: If you have any one of these things, like if my content is educational or if it's ⁓ entertaining or if it's ⁓ emotional, you will get around tens of thousands of views. If you have any two things, if my content is entertaining and educating, or if my content is entertaining and emotional, or if it's emotional and ⁓ educational, you will get hundreds of thousands of views. If your content is a mix of all three, you will get millions of views. So this is the this is the frameworks that These guys, the the best of the best people discuss your content should educate, entertain, and evoke some sort of emotion in the consumer. Because when it comes to purchasing, most people, the vast majority of people, they purchase out of emotion. When you when you can convince them, okay, I want to buy this, they buy it. Very few people are there out there who are like, Okay, I don't care about emotion. I only want on only like when you're buying, let's say, if you're buying technology, if you're buying a laptop. Abhishek: Mm. Mm. Yeah, yeah. Reuben Mark: That time people will be like, okay, let me see what the specs are, what the camera quality is, this and that. But when you're buying most other things, like for example, ⁓ let's say toothpaste, what do they do? They don't none, they don't talk about your ⁓ this thing at all. They don't talk about the qualities of the toothpaste, they don't talk about what features it has. Now you look at close up, what will they show? One guy and girl coming really close, about to kiss. They're evoking that emotion so that you will buy that. Okay, because if I have an insecurity in myself that I have bad breath. And I'm going to meet a girl that I like. I'm gonna be like, okay, this is gonna help me get a chance with her. So that emotion is evoked within me, and I purchase that. I didn't see whether it has fluoride, manganese, whatever chemicals are there. I didn't see anything of that. I only saw what emotion it ⁓ it evoked inside of me. So that you're absolutely right when you're talking about your content to evoke some sort of an emotion. Definitely, absolutely. Abhishek: Yeah. Yes, I think ⁓ everybody has to get better of doing that. That's it. End of the day. It's not a one time thing. Yeah, it's very difficult. Reuben Mark: Is it's difficult. It's it's it's difficult. Abhishek: And you know when you are trying to build a personal brand and you create a community by you yourself selling I mean let's say educating about your service or like product what if another brand comes in and asks you hey Ruben can you please help me you know promote my product is that something a founder creator has to consider because they also help you to generate revenue right Reuben Mark: Hmm. Well, who had to generate revenue? Abhishek: So and when the brand comes and ask you to promote they usually pay you that's what they do. Yeah it's like a paid promotion not just you know promoting. Is that something a founder creator should consider to as an income flow but another view as a Reuben Mark: ⁓ okay. Right, right, right. You mean ⁓ collabs? Yeah. Abhishek: As a consumer from my side, think that this guy is diluting his audience. What is your take on it? Reuben Mark: Yes. I have since my video went viral, I have had so many, no, I wouldn't say so many, at least 10 different brands and different agencies have approached me and they're like, Can you do a collaboration or can we can we do something together? And I've you know, see, I'll tell you, I'm a beginner creator. And if you see any beginner creator, they will they're they're so excited when they see like a brand deal. Someone wants my content, someone wants someone likes my work, and they're willing to pay me for that. So Abhishek: My face, yeah. Reuben Mark: Anybody will jump at the first brand deal they get, they'll jump on that. They'll be yes, yes, yes, yes, take all the content, take all the work that they can. But I had to swallow my excitement, I had to swallow my desire to ⁓ work with them, and I had to reject all of them because these brands were not in line with what I am trying to do, with what I am trying to sell. Because if I am trying to sell my ⁓ if I'm trying to sell creator insights and people are seeing some other company on my own page. It's going to create a clash. It's going to dilute your audience. Your audience is going to get confused. What is this guy selling? So I have had people also ask me, like, okay, I ⁓ I when I've told them, see, I ⁓ it's not aligning with my niche and what I want to talk about. So we let's not do this. They're like, No problem, you just give me the video. Like, we'll post it on our page. We won't ⁓ we won't ask for a collaboration, UGC, exactly. So even then you have to consider. Abhishek: All right. Mmm, UGC. Yeah. Reuben Mark: Do you have the time for this? Do you have the energy for this? Do you have the ⁓ can you afford to do this? Because as a beginner, as a as a beginner, your time is your greatest currency. More than money, time matters. So, time and energy, both of these things are your greatest currency. So, even there, I had to be like, okay, I have my own content to post. I have to maintain a daily posting schedule. And I have some other content to shoot for the website as well. So if I take this on. Abhishek: Hmm. Mm. Reuben Mark: For 1000 rupees, 2000 rupees, I will lose out on other things. So I had to again be like, no, let's not do this. So it depends on you. If you ⁓ if you if they want to collaboration, I'll directly tell you no, don't do it, because that will dilute your brand, that will that will work against you. Quick money will ruin you in the long run. if you have, if they ask for something like just make a UGC video for us, if you have the time, energy, effort, do it. Make some extra money. Entirely up to you. Abhishek: Right, makes sense. And yeah, my favorite part, know, let us ⁓ show the secrets all behind your lighting and the quality of, you know, the wish, yeah. Reuben Mark: Yeah. So yeah, I have been wished to have a good lighting setup. I've spent almost like ten K on this entire setup. So I Abhishek: This is just to give an awareness to the creator founders out there how lighting is very... and also guys Ruben is using an iPhone 11 which is not a premium camera and he still looks better. I'm shooting on my Mac camera don't be hard on me. So I don't have any lighting setup I'm on a raw setup out there. But yeah let's see how Ruben's setup is. Reuben Mark: Yeah. Yeah. So Yeah. So with lighting principles also there is a few things. One is a key light, which is your your main light which falls on you, it has to be somewhere around like a forty five degree angle. Then you have the fill light. So let me just turn it all off and show you. So this is what it would look like if let me even go ahead and turn off my other lights. Abhishek: you Yeah. Reuben Mark: So I turn off this. Abhishek: you Reuben Mark: So now I have no lights. Let me just put on my Runga lights. This is what your most creators think that just because I'm facing the ⁓ so you know most creators have this understanding that, ⁓ by the way, this is this is what a creator looks like from the top dressed well, from the bottom pajamas. So your content mark is like that. Abhishek: This is one, I mean I think this is the first time we are doing something on Wittlisport. Being very experimental in showing the raw thing. Reuben Mark: Yeah, dude, like if there is no need for me to dress up in a suit and wear the pant also if on the video only my body is seen. I'll wear a top only, no. So this is what people think that you know as long as the light is falling on my face, that's good enough. That is not good enough. There is so much that goes into lighting principle. So now I'll turn this all off and I'll show you. Abhishek: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. ⁓ Yeah. Reuben Mark: So now I have a blank canvas. First step first is you have to make your room as dark as possible. I've like closed all the curtains and everything. I've closed. So this is your key light. Your light that falls mainly on your face. Then this comes your fill light. So this adds like a nice ⁓ outline, it's my body. So now your subject is lit up. But the background looks really boring. So then what I'm gonna add is I'm gonna add what's called a practical light. So a practical light is whatever you have like Abhishek: Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Reuben Mark: If you have a lamp at home, if you have a tube light, anything like that. So I'm gonna this is like my entry to my house, the door. So there there's a light. I'm just gonna turn that. So it creates a little bit of like a nice wide. So that's my ⁓ that's my the same. What's it called? That's my ⁓ practical light. Now still the background doesn't look that great. So I'm gonna add some lights. Abhishek: Mm. Mm. Reuben Mark: Make number one. Abhishek: Mmm. Reuben Mark: Light number two. So the framing matters a lot. Now I'm the magic here. So I have got this is my fill light. I don't have I have I cannot, I don't I'm not able to afford a softbox yet, so I'm using a banyan as my diffuser. Then this is my this is my key light over here, and if you see Abhishek: Thank There you go, magic. you Okay. Reuben Mark: The mood light there is th there's this panel, it's like a rechargeable panel. And then there is a if you can see there's a lamp by my ⁓ I don't wanna show too much of my room because it's it's really dirty. So let me just keep this back. So yeah. Abhishek: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No worries. But yeah, mean, this is like, ⁓ I mean, I really love the way you explained everything. Reuben Mark: I love teaching. Teaching is like ⁓ something I really enjoy. So obviously I cannot immediately go on and talk about social media like I know everything. So my entire goal is I want to learn first and then teach people. So yeah, that's that's what I do. Abhishek: I mean, yeah. right i think yeah as you mentioned that lighting is the whole game however the however the bad your camera is if you are in the right place with the right you know lights on your face you look good Reuben Mark: Mm. Absolutely. Abhishek: let me try on my thing which angle is good I think yeah like this Reuben Mark: Ha ha. You will have to turn around, I I I'd say. You'd have to let mm let the light fall on your face. Yeah, you've got a lovely background. It's quite good. Yeah. I this is your office or something? Abhishek: this one this one is good but there's no you know yeah I mean is it kind it kind it is kind of a co-working space yeah I mean there's no I'm just holding my laptop so it's like this so I can't place it anywhere so this is the place only I can place it Reuben Mark: ⁓ okay, okay, lovely. Yeah, yeah, careful. Yeah. Abhishek: So yeah, that is pretty much about lighting guys. I think you might have got. Reuben Mark: Look, I'll tell you one more thing for most beginner creators out there is don't think that more equipment equals better quality and more equipment equals more views. You look at your own feed. As a creator, your primary like the best thing you can do in order to understand how content works is see what content you watch. If you in your own feed, if you're only watching people who have like super amazing setups and all. Abhishek: date. Reuben Mark: Then that's a different story. But the majority of people, I can guarantee it, most of the people you follow, the content you watch, they have very simple setups. They don't have this lighting setup that I have. They have a very literally, you can talk to the camera. This is something. So even lighting plays a different role when it comes to evoking that emotion that we spoke about. So the reason I chose to ⁓ get this light light setup is my entire purpose right now is to build reliability. Abhishek: Yeah. Mmm. Reuben Mark: So if I was sitting in my like, you know, we all have two different wardrobes, what we wear outside and what we wear at home. If I wear my t-shirt, which I wear at home, and I start teaching you about content, if I start teaching you about content strategy, will you listen to me? No. So I have to put on a nice, nice shirt. I have to, you know, create a setup where people are like, ⁓ this guy, it builds reliability. So if I want to connect with my audience, I'm not gonna use any of this. Abhishek: Right. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Reuben Mark: So even on my page, if you see, I don't rely only on this. I have content where I'm just using my room lights because I want to connect with my audience. If I am only speaking as an authority, people are not gonna connect with me. So your goal is to connect, educate, and ⁓ inspire. So this entire setup is only for when I want to build reliability. If I'm teaching something, so if you see on my page, I'm always teaching usually I'm teaching something or the other. Abhishek: Exactly. Reuben Mark: So when I'm teaching, I want the other person to think that okay, this guy knows something. So I'll build a setup which looks good. But if I'm connecting with someone, if I'm sharing my story, if I'm sharing my if I'm sharing a struggle that I'm going through, if I'm sharing something that you know is very personal to me, I'm not gonna use this setup at all because it can create an emotional disconnect between me and my viewer. So yeah, even lighting, don't think that more equipment equals to better views, more reach. Abhishek: Right. Exactly. Reuben Mark: more ⁓ sales it depends on what your purpose is and why you're doing it. Abhishek: I mean it is as simple as that you can't ⁓ wear a beach dress to a club. So it is how you present yourself on what stage you are in. So yeah it is as simple as that and also I've also watched a recent video of yours saying that you wanted to test something with the natural light and with no you know mic. What is that you're trying to figure out there? Reuben Mark: Exactly. Exactly. Yes, yes. Mm no I have tested it without so this is for me like ⁓ all content creation is experimentation. Everything. So Abhishek: Yeah. Reuben Mark: I let me let me ⁓ I cannot show you because my phone is here, but so you know my viral video, right? The one which went viral. I people think that's the only video that went viral. In my trial reels, I have posted that video three, four more times. And the second time I posted again, that also went viral. That got like hundred, hundred and no, that got around like 170k ⁓ the same video. I just added one text on top of that. So volume matters, like what you post Abhishek: Mmm. Hmm. the same video or it's a different Reuben Mark: It's experimentation in the sense that there is a general niche that works. There is a general format of content that people enjoy watching. And clone content is one of those formats. You look at the biggest creators, this clone content is it goes very viral. I don't know what the psychology behind it is. ⁓ if I had to explain it to you, I would say it's a pattern interrupt. So within sales, ⁓ if you know people discuss this topic called as pattern interrupts, which is Abhishek: Hmm. Mmm. Reuben Mark: I if you know it or sh if your viewers may not know it, I'll just explain it. Is that okay? Abhishek: Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Reuben Mark: So a pattern interrupt is basically you it's as the word says you interrupt the pattern. Now, if let's say tomorrow someone from Airtel calls you and they're like, please buy this plan of us, how are they gonna sign? Hello, good morning, sir. This is ⁓ Ruben calling from ⁓ Airtel. Uh-da. You are used to that pattern and you you build your brain, your neurons connect and they build a pathway that like this selling matlab, they sound like this. So whenever someone sounds like that, hello, na na na na na, you're like cut the call, don't even listen to them. Abhishek: Mm. Mm. Mm. Reuben Mark: But a pattern interrupt breaks that pattern. So if you call like, hey, what's up? and they're like, whoa. Not something I'm used to. And so that builds it breaks the pattern and it creates that curiosity. So when you in your day-to-day life, nobody is you don't see three people that look exactly the same. So that is a pattern interrupt where you you scroll and you're like, hey, I'm seeing three of the same person. So it's a pattern interrupt where people are like, ⁓ this is not something I see on a daily basis. So let me stay and you watch. Abhishek: You today. Thank you. Reuben Mark: After that three-second hook, if you manage to keep them, they are usually going to stay for the rest of the video, unless your video is like really, really bad. So in your content, also do that. See do experimentation. So that is what I would say. Like my my entire feed and what you talked about, right? What I did with my clone explanation. So I did a tutorial about how I did that clone video. But in that, I didn't I used my ⁓ front camera, I didn't use my mic. Abhishek: Hmm. Yeah. Mm. ⁓ Reuben Mark: I used my top lighting. So the video quality was relatively really bad. And that video flopped. It didn't, it didn't hit anything. So what I wanna do is I wanna basically remake the exact same video, but this time I wanna use good lights, I wanna use ⁓ good ⁓ camera quality, I wanna use my mic because audio quality also matters. Audio quality is very, very important. If your audio sounds bad, people are not gonna they're not gonna be interested in listening. So Abhishek: Mm. Mmm. Yeah. Yeah. Reuben Mark: That's what I just want to make like an experiment where I repost the same video with better quality to get an understanding of ⁓ you know does production value play a part in retain in retaining a person's ⁓ attention? Now, with any experimentation process, even in like scientifically, when you're doing any experiment, you have to make sure about something called a sample size. So if I do one Abhishek: Mmm. ⁓ Mm. Reuben Mark: Experiment, it's not enough. If I experiment, let's say let's say I'm experimenting on the harmful effects of ⁓ let's say coke. On I'll experiment on a rat. If I experiment on one rat, it's not enough. I have to experiment on 500, 2000, 3000, 10,000 rats, and that's how you build a good understanding of okay, this works or it doesn't work, because in every experimentation there is some degree of ⁓ uncertainty, volatility, chance. Abhishek: Mmm. Right. Reuben Mark: It might work, it might not work. So, even with my reels, one thing that goes viral, like something went viral yesterday. I try to post the same thing tomorrow, it might not go viral. I post it five more times, it might not go viral. But then the next 10 times I post it after that, every single time it goes viral. So sample sizing matters. People only see your main feed and they decide something. You don't know my trial reel section, how many reels I I post every day, nonsense, whatever comes to my mind, I post because. Abhishek: Mm. Mmm. Reuben Mark: Trial reel is for experimentation. Like the entire the whole feature is for experimentation. So that's what I do. I just post things, make a small change, do whatever thesis I have in my mind, like whatever hypothesis I have in my mind, I will try to ⁓ prove that. So all content creation is experimentation. Abhishek: Mm. Right, I mean I am also doing that I am posting a lot of content which my main audience doesn't even know what I doing there in Mitrails real sections. And yeah, I wanted a specific view from your side coming to D2C founders and D2C brands branding. Reuben Mark: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's it's all about experimentation. Abhishek: you know, consumer brands. Let's I mean, I think you are more talking on a perspective of a SaaS founder because you yourself and myself we are SaaS founders, but I'm also creating the page or the community towards D2C founders. When you talk about consumer brands creating content or like consumer brand founders creating content, is there something, you know, ⁓ a mistake which they're doing or a fix that they can do to reach their target audience? Reuben Mark: Yeah, know who you're selling to. ⁓ So ⁓ just give you one second. Abhishek: Yeah. Reuben Mark: Yeah, okay, I think my video is gone, right? ⁓ yeah, you can see now. Yeah, so it depends on who you're selling to. So ⁓ again this goes really, really into Abhishek: No, not yours. Let's take a clothing brand. Let's take someone who is building a girl who is building, because I've been talking to a founder who is building a clothing brand, which she is more kind of doing it embedded ⁓ in her clothing, in skirts and like tops. So, know, something for her and I'd like something to her. Reuben Mark: ⁓ I mean I I'd be able to give the advice if I knew what strategy she's currently implementing, but I'll just give like some ⁓ umbrella advice which can apply to most people, which is know what your product is, know who you're selling to, know where that person is from, and know how to approach that person. So now when you look at what I've understood about sales, is even geography matters. If you're selling to an Indian, you have to be completely different compared to how you're selling to a Abhishek: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Reuben Mark: ⁓ Arab or how you're selling to an American completely different strategies. Then again also you have to think about who you're selling to. Are you selling to a man? Are you selling to a woman? Are you selling to a child? Are you selling to a young person? Are you selling to an old person? Are you selling to a working professional? So your approach will change depending on what who you're selling to. So in most if you go and go to Coursera and look into any ⁓ marketing course one of the first things they'll teach you is how to create your ICP Abhishek: Yeah. Mmm. Reuben Mark: And how to create a consumer journey. So how you have to think in your mind how and what would I have to say in order for my customer to buy from me. So now let's say this this lady that you mentioned, she's doing a crook cloth clothing brand. ⁓ if it is something like ⁓ if she's selling pajamas and not pajamas in the sense like ⁓ loungewear, my approach would be very different. But if she's selling something like you know, Abhishek: Mm. Mmm. Reuben Mark: wedding ⁓ gowns my approach will be completely different if she's selling suits my approach will be completely different so it depends on what is she selling so if I was selling like you know summerware my entire approach would be talk about how good it looks talk about how comfortable it is talk about how cheap it is if I was selling to let's say if I was selling to a ⁓ if I was selling a wedding dress I would talk about how Abhishek: Hmm. Reuben Mark: ⁓ I I would again when it comes to wedding dress, it's not about the features, it's not about education, it's entirely about emotion. Entirely emotion because a wedding is a very emotional thing. So you want to create your content in such a way that that person that person is emotionally so attracted to this that yes, I will be able to achieve my dream wedding if I buy this dress. So that same mentality cannot apply to summerware because. Abhishek: Elegant price you Reuben Mark: Nobody is thinking about ⁓ I'm going to be so royal in my house. Everyone knows it's hot in your house, you're sweating like anything. You want something comfortable, you want something breathable, you want something cheap. So your approach is entirely different based on what you're selling, who you're selling to, what age group they are, what gender they are, what location they are from. So I would give if I had to give advice to this person, I would ask, I would ask them to analyze what their product is, who their ICP is, and create a customer journey as to like how they would sell to this Abhishek: Right. Yes. Makes pretty much sense. I think we have, you know, crossed our limit. It's been like, what, 60 minutes? Yeah. I mean, this is... Let's do a part two soon then. Let's do a part two soon. Yeah. I mean, it was really, really great, you know, talking to you, man, the insights are like, the value... Reuben Mark: It's almost an hour, no? Yeah. I am cool. If you want to talk, I'll talk bro. Definitely. I'm down. US one. Abhishek: I think the value we curated around creating content ⁓ in this conversation was I think it will really help someone who starting off ⁓ and with whatever you're doing, know, best of luck for that, best of luck for creative insights and ⁓ we'll definitely catch up soon in the near future. Yeah, same to you man, same to you. Yeah. Reuben Mark: Definitely, definitely. Absolutely. It was lovely speaking to you, Labishek. Like if I could leave your viewers with one last thing, I would tell them this that everything you do, keep God first. Don't neglect that one factor because you might do all the effort, but the profit comes from God. Do not neglect your time with God, do not neglect your faith. That is something that is drives me. Everything that I do is entirely dependent on my faith. Abhishek: Mmm. Reuben Mark: And my relationship with God. So I would say to your audience as well, if you are going through a difficult time, being a founder is not easy. Doing entrepreneurship is not easy. You're going to be alone, you're going to face a lot of struggles, you're going to face a lot of problems, and most of the time, you're not going to have someone to talk to. In that time, God is your only support. And be there with God, submit to Him, give Him your will, and He will make your path straight. That's all I would leave you guys with. Abhishek: Mm. I wanted to add something, a quote which always I ponder upon. I don't forget the exact words but, mean work as if it all depends on you, you know, but I'm not getting the quote. Reuben Mark: Mm-hmm. I know this book. Prepare as if it all depends on you, work as if it all depends on God. Abhishek: Exactly, yeah, yeah. I always lean onto the court. As you said, I am also a guy who... My wins are for the... My wins are the gods, but my losses are to me. I always... Because the losses are because of my mistakes and the wins are because of the god's wisdom. Reuben Mark: I love that. Beautiful. Anyway. Exactly. Absolutely. That's beautiful, man. Abhishek: Yeah, so I think every founder has to see, know, even if he's not someone who follows a faith when he becomes a founder, when he becomes a founder, he'll obviously... There is a movie scene which, you know, comes to my mind when I think you'll come to it, wait, you'll come to it. When someone says, I don't believe in God, wait for the time, you'll come to it. Reuben Mark: Most people Yeah. And Once become a founder, you will have you need God. You can't. It was great talking to you. Bye bye. Take care. Abhishek: Exactly. Thank you man. I'll see you soon. It was nice talking to you. Yeah. Have a great day. Bye. Bye guys.