Let’s talk about porn and the most famous I’ve ever been.
My story starts with porn. It’s just food porn, not porn porn.
The Paleo Porn Story: Fame Without Profit
So I had a platform called Paleo Porn. It was started in 2009. It was all recipes. It was all about the Paleo Diet. It was everything about living a healthy life through diet and exercise and everything.
At its peak, we had about 3/4 of a million readers yearly. So the platform had a lot of reach. We had people and the opportunity to do things such as go and speak places and go to Paleo fx, a conference in Austin, Texas that had maybe 10,000 people at it and actually speak on a stage there.
The Recognition Moment
There was a time that just sticks in my mind where in Chicago here—because we would do gluten-free restaurant reviews and things like that—I remember being at a restaurant and someone walked up very excited and asked if I was Jeff from Paleo Porn.
It was one of those things—it’s still very, very tiny in terms of fame. It’s nothing, but it was a thing. It was a moment where I was just like “oh yeah, of course.” She’s like “I’m actually here because of you. I came to this restaurant because of you.”
Now, this is years ago. This is 2014-2015.
And what just happened a few months ago at a conference?
Just at REVB in San Antonio, we were having dinner with a bunch of people and just something came up and I was like “Oh, yeah, blah blah blah, Paleo porn.” And the person directly next to me—her eyes just lit up and she was so excited because she was one of those readers.
There were nine people at this table and the one sitting right next to me, who we’ve met before and we’ve talked to, but she was one of the people in the Paleo Porn community. Which is very exciting—to even have it happen to this day.
The Brutal Reality Check
But now here’s the thing. So why is this Useful Not Famous? Why are we talking about fame?
Because do you want to know how much money I made from a platform with 3/4 of a million yearly readers? Like a large community, a lot of reach and access due to it.
I’ll throw one more piece of opportunity out there. Mark Sisson started the Primal Blueprint. You might know Primal Kitchen mayo and things like that. He ended up selling to Kraft for $100 million. He invited us to his house when he launched Primal Kitchen.
I was at the event with maybe 30 people in Malibu overlooking the ocean. It was like a beautiful house that he had. But he invited people in the space who meant something. I feel this is very self-aggrandizing, but there’s a reason.
Because we had all this opportunity, but this opportunity turned into literal zero. No money, no revenue.
There wasn’t a business model attached to it because although the platform was really fun to make and create, there wasn’t a usefulness beyond “here’s some recipes.” The strategy was never there to build a business out of it.
I had my business. I had SPYR. This was just a fun side project, and the side project turned into a little bit of fame and things that were fun, but there wasn’t anything about the platform useful enough to have someone hand over money.
The Art History Success Story: Usefulness Over Views
My story is a little different. This took place during COVID times, if you remember, and we were just locked in the house. I was like “okay, I’ve never really been fond of social media, but I’d heard about TikTok forever and I was like ‘okay, I should just see what this stupid app is about.’”
I immediately fell in love. It was the most fun. And then I was like “Oh, people are making actually educational content on here. I should totally do that.”
So I have my background in art history and history specifically. I’ve taught, worked in universities. I have degrees in art history. I love art history. That is my thing. Any type of history, I’m a big nerd.
So I was like “Okay, I should share what I know because I find everything endlessly fascinating. I guarantee at least two people out there might find this interesting.”
The Viral Moment
So I put out my first video—well, our first video was a skit if you remember actually. So there were a couple that were skits, but my first art history content was like the third video I did.
That was just such a nothing thing. I just put it together in like two seconds. It was something I wrote my thesis on for grad school that immediately got like 200,000 views overnight.
And I panicked because I was like “I don’t want to be famous.” That created your 60-second art history. That became a thing that you started doing.
So then I started with that one video and then everyone—it blew up like crazy. I got like 10,000 followers over just a few days, and then I just kept putting these videos out because I enjoyed them and then people were following me and they enjoyed them too.
The Facebook Surprise
I posted a few on TikTok and then we’re so big on posting everywhere on all the different platforms. So it was like “okay, we should post to like Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, blah blah blah.” And I was like “nobody’s going to see these. Nobody’s going to care.”
On Facebook specifically, I got maybe like seven views on the first one, five on the next one. Like all the videos that I posted, which are maybe about three or four, 25 views total, guaranteed. Like it was such a flop compared to TikTok where TikTok I got the dopamine rush.
Facebook though ended up being one of the best things—posting to Facebook ended up being one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life.
Because little did I know, one of those 25 views was a professor at a university who was like “Hey, I’ve been watching your stuff. Do you want to teach?”
And my first reaction was “Hell no, I can’t teach the youth.” But then obviously eventually I accepted.
The Six-Figure Lesson
I had absolutely nobody watching me on Facebook except for the one right person who I forgot I was connected to that saw the videos, and I made six figures on a platform where I had no views. On TikTok I made absolutely no money.
So that’s the benefit—she was looking for somebody to teach a course. I was there. I was useful. I was like “Hey, I know things. I can maybe educate the youth.”
On TikTok though, it was all the fame, but nobody was there looking for someone. Nobody was there looking for someone to be useful. Instead, I was just regurgitating info on there for entertainment value, which is fine, but inherently nobody was there looking for someone.
So going the more useful route with less views, you don’t get the immediate dopamine rush. However, it ended up being extremely valuable.
Why Posting Everywhere Matters
The ROI is immensely—it’s not even in the same ballpark on both ways. It’s a scale. The scale of views is way up here on TikTok and then all the way down on Facebook, but then when you talk money, it’s exactly inverted.
And that’s why we’re so big on everyone posting everywhere. It’s why I’ve been working on a tool to make it easier to post everywhere because you need to reach people when they need to be reached, where and how.
What you want to do with social media and why we don’t care if videos don’t get a lot of views—we want you to reach the right people. We want you to reach the right person when they need to be reached, where they want to be reached, and how they want to be reached.
So you might say the same thing over and over and over again, but this time you said it just that way that scratched the back of their head. And then suddenly it’s like “Oh, and right now, actually, I need this. I’m a professor at this university and I need a teacher. This person clearly knows how to teach.”
You were so useful to that person—not only filling the role, but filling her checking a box on her task list that she reached out.
Brand Closers and Local Focus
Just like we talked about last week with our episode on Brand Closers, which if you haven’t listened, you definitely need to, especially if you’re a service-based business—that is a way to let people know who you are and what they can expect from your content.
So the more you’re repeating it, the more those people are hearing it. And especially if you’re targeting the right people for you.
Specifically, we work with small businesses and realtors. So you need people in your immediate local area. That’s basically all you care about. You don’t care if Jim Bob in Bangladesh sees your video because that doesn’t matter to you.
You don’t care if he watches your video because it has no meaning. But if Sally down the street watches your video and she’s in need of a landscaper, and if your video only has 50 views, but one of them is Sally, that’s incredibly useful to you because then she more than likely will be a customer for you.
That kind of view is so much more important than having as many views as possible.
The Richest Women Aren’t Who You Think
Think of influencers that you see on all these different platforms. They can make a small amount of money from the actual platform itself. By far, YouTube is the best, I believe. You will make a small amount of money on that platform, and that’s why so many influencers and celebrities make businesses on the side.
They start these new things. Like there’s an influencer I follow—she just started a canned margarita company. Even to say Mr. Beast, the most successful YouTuber by an eternity. He doesn’t even just do English. He does every single language and destroys all those markets. He gets the most views combined out of anyone.
He has his own businesses on the side that he’s leveraged his fame to sell—chocolate and Feastables or like Lunchables, but his version.
The Forbes List Surprise
People you would think that would be on the Forbes richest women list—richest self-made women in America—you would think celebrities. So you’d think Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, but they’re so far down the list. It was shocking.
Like for example, Kim Kardashian was at 21. Rihanna’s at 22 and Taylor Swift is at 34.
I think Rihanna is around $2 billion right now because of her business, because of her brands, not music. Same with Kim Kardashian. Same with Taylor Swift. They have all started these additional businesses because being famous alone—you need to have these businesses to have longevity.
And we only think about these ultra famous too because that’s what we see. Of course they do make a lot of money because they’ve leveraged to be useful to certain things. But think about where you’re going to be. You’re not going to be—unless you are—you’re not trying to be Kim Kardashian. You’re not trying to be Mr. Beast.
You’re trying to be the person for your market, for your business.
The Boring Billionaires
Which brings me to the top 10 of this list. They are names you have never heard of in your entire life. You may or may not have heard of the businesses. I hadn’t even heard of most of the businesses.
The number one richest self-made woman in America is Diane Hendricks. You tell me who that is and I will eat my own butt.
She is worth $22.3 billion. She owns the most boring business you could own. She owns and chairs ABC Supply, one of the largest wholesale distributors of roofing, siding, and windows in the United States.
You tell me a more boring profession. Same with the rest of the women on the list. I went through that list and the rest of the top 10 women had the same boring stuff. It was like “This woman’s in asphalt. This woman’s in lumber.”
But it’s all useful things we all need. It’s the most boring stuff, but it’s the most useful stuff. We all need roofs. We all need siding. We all need windows.
It’s all the stuff that you absolutely need that is the most financially abundant.
The Ultimate Lesson
Kim Kardashian started Skims. She started all these other things. Same with Rihanna—she started Fenty, Fenty Beauty. Taylor Swift, I think hers is the anomaly where she actually is very wealthy from music, but her touring—there’s such an amazing business there.
But providing actual useful things that people need or want is always a great business decision.
So don’t focus on being famous. Don’t get caught up in the views. Don’t get caught up in all of that, frankly, vanity metrics.
Focus on being so useful that people can’t ignore you and they need you. Like it would be like living without oxygen if they didn’t have you in their life.
So just try to be that for people and you will always be successful.