Not everybody wants to be looked at, but everybody wants to be seen—and that fear shows up fast online, especially when friends and family might judge us.

In this episode we also discover that we fall into a new category: “all bite, no bark”—doing real work without talking about it—and why success often needs both strong work and smart marketing.

Finally, we dive into the “Iron Law of Stardom” and show how fame doesn’t mean you’ll make more money.

Jeff Sarris: Not everybody wants to be looked at, but everybody wants to be seen.

Amara Andrew: Welcome back to Useful Not Famous. This is a show where we explore topics we find the most interesting and strive to be the most useful people, you know. I’m Amara Andrew.

Jeff Sarris: I’m Jeff Sarris,

Amara Andrew: and this week I have a last name.

Jeff Sarris: Good job. Thank you.

And I like how you turned to the camera. You did. I, I know. Whoop.

Amara Andrew: I’m trying a little sassy bit.

Jeff Sarris: Sassy bit.

Amara Andrew: I not even feeling sassy. I just, I felt like it would have dramatic effect.

Jeff Sarris: So not everybody wants to be looked out. Everybody wants to be seen. That’s from The Art of Asking. It’s from Amanda Palmer.

It’s a very good book, but

Amara Andrew: it’s very insightful.

Jeff Sarris: It feels sort of. Trippy.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: We don’t always wanna be looked at, we wanna be seen.

Amara Andrew: I feel like that’s the main thing we struggle with with people, or not even struggle with, but we hear from people sort of in a way is, well I wanna be on social media but I don’t wanna be on social media.

And not even like the act of like scrolling or anything, but purely being seen like that is, it is scary ’cause it’s like, wow, people actually like saw me. Who are either immediately my area or it’s like friends and family is kind of the thing that most people are sort of stressed out about. It’s like, my friends and family are gonna see this video and I know they’re gonna give me shit for it.

Like it is. It is hard ’cause you have to sort of. I’m just going on eight different tangents, but essentially like as humans, we wanna fit in as much as possible. It is that like biological function of if you get thrown out of your community or your tribe, you’re on your own or you need to find another tribe, but probably not gonna accept you.

And that’s just biologically seated in our brains is the want to belong and be part of something. So it’s even more magnified I feel with social media.

Jeff Sarris: And to be seen was great. We wanna be known. We want people to know we’re there, but we don’t like to be looked at. Yeah. We don’t wanna be seen. We don’t wanna be looked at and judged.

Amara Andrew: Yeah. Coming.

Jeff Sarris: That’s what we’re afraid of. But somehow being seen feels like you see me, like you see me. And you see me

Amara Andrew: uhhuh

Jeff Sarris: and me like being seen as somehow different than being looked at.

Amara Andrew: It’s really funny ’cause actually in school, like grad school and undergrad in art history, which is what I studied, we do talk about very heavily the difference between looking and seeing.

’cause looking is sort of the. Passive experience. So it’s like, well, yeah, you’re looking at something but you’re not really like, actively engaged in it. Where to see and like to be seen and to like see something. You’re looking for something, whatever that is. And it’s much more engaged and it actually is, uh, like as a woman, it could actually be a little intimidating and a little scary.

Jeff Sarris: Well, we wanna be seen for who we are.

Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Sarris: But we don’t wanna be looked at. For critique and judgment. Exactly. And negativity and all these things that’ll hold us back from doing the things. I mean, maybe John Cena had it right.

Amara Andrew: You can’t see me or you can’t look at me. He was onto something that Cena, cna.

Cna, Simi, ena. I dunno. Anyway, that is a very interesting quote. I feel like, actually, when was that written, do you know? Oh, like approximate, like 2010s,

Jeff Sarris: 20 10, 11, 12.

Amara Andrew: Isn’t that interesting? Because it’s so insightful and it’s, it feels like it’s so ahead of its time. Especially now.

Jeff Sarris: Well, especially for her because she is an artist, musician, all these things.

And she, she

Amara Andrew: was dressed in dolls, right?

Jeff Sarris: Yeah.

Amara Andrew: Okay. I love dressed in dolls

Jeff Sarris: and she would do, um, oh, what did she call it? The, the bride. That was her thing. So she was like a street performer who would be a statue there posed and her character was the bride and it was, it sort of going back to all of this, the butch is called the art of asking and it’s all about how she built her entire career on asking, asking for help, asking for the things that she wanted outta life and sort of how it all ties together.

Mm-hmm. I dunno, that’s a really interesting, but it’s been a long time since I read it. But if anyone’s curious where we, how we get these quotes, these are quotes from everything we’ve read ever that come up and we’re like, oh, it’ll be a great top topic to talk about. And we use Read Wise, which is a phenomenal app.

We have a link in the description, I think, or somewhere it should be in the description of the podcast, like course somewhere

Amara Andrew: you go find

Jeff Sarris: it. It should be in the, in the description of the podcast and it’s uh, it’s

Amara Andrew: actually tattooed in my belly button. Good luck finding it. But

Jeff Sarris: yeah, we love read Wise, and if you wanna check it out, there’s a link where you get like a discount.

You’ll see our little faces at the top when you click it and everything. But anyway, that’s where that comes from and I think it’s very. Interesting. But also we thought of something for us this week. ’cause you always hear, um, all bark no bite.

Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Sarris: And we realized we’re all bite, no bark

Amara Andrew: Uhhuh. That was really funny.

It was like our morning where we just sit and read and then we just talk about basically do a podcast, but we don’t record it. But yeah, we realized that because I forget. Which book I was reading, but one of the books, it was the way that they phrased something and I thought that was so interesting. And then I was like, well, we’re the exact opposite because like if you haven’t heard the quote or you don’t necessarily know what it means, all bark, no bite means you’re yapping and you’re like, all talk.

But

Jeff Sarris: I just feel like anyone who listens, like why are they laughing? So I don’t know why. That’s just funny. It’s like all you. Going around yapping. Yapping. It just feels like a thing, like a very,

Amara Andrew: you know what you do? You just yapp and yapping.

Jeff Sarris: It feels like, like a 1950s like guy talking to a guy, friends. So like that, I don’t know why I just said his hands

Amara Andrew: are just yapping.

I dunno why. So even like we were in like the east coast this week, we’re in the west coast

Jeff Sarris: this week, but, but anyway.

Amara Andrew: Yeah. So bark is just. You’re all talk, like you’re puffing yourself up and you’re talking about, oh, I’m this and I’m that, and I do this and I do that.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. I’m

Amara Andrew: great and yeah, or like I am the head of a company, like feeling like you need to talk about all of your accomplishments and all of your achievements that you perceive you have.

Because you have nothing to back it up and because you have no, uh, no bite, like nothing to show for it.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. Which is a classic sort of idiom or phrase or whatever. It’s, what did you call me? And then we realized we’re the exact opposite. ’cause we don’t talk about anything we do.

Amara Andrew: No,

Jeff Sarris: we have no bark.

Amara Andrew: Only

Jeff Sarris: on this all bite on

Amara Andrew: this podcast like that.

That’s it. Even though we should talk about ourselves a lot more on social media, which is something I’ve sort of been dabbling in, but it is hard because I’d rather just work on all the things instead of just talking about it. And it’s, uh, it’s sort of like an overinflation of the self where it’s trying to make yourself seem more important or like you’re doing a lot more than maybe you actually are.

So the opposite. We were discussing is we’re all bite, no bark, so we’re constantly working on everything, but almost maybe to a detriment, maybe not. It’s, it’s all perspective. We don’t promote it. So it’s like we’re working on all these really cool things and ideas that I’m so excited for, but we don’t talk about it at all, which is a problem because you do need like, uh.

It’s not even sales, but that would be more just marketing. Marketing. Yeah. Um,

Jeff Sarris: what’s that thing we do again? Oh yeah,

Amara Andrew: I know. What’s a, somethings video something. What’s

Jeff Sarris: the thing we do for everyone else that shop us?

Amara Andrew: Yeah. Marketing, attention. Marketing. All the things. All the things we should be doing for ourselves.

Um, but yeah, it’s just, it is, it’s just such an interesting thing because it feels like the most successful people. Are that where like some of the wealthiest people in the country, you wouldn’t even know their names. Like they’re two billionaires or three billionaires that you actually know their names.

Where all of the other billionaires in the world, you have no idea who they are. And the three are just because they’ve started building personal brands. Um, but then they’re not going around like, I’m a CEO, I do this, I do that. It’s very much like, well no, I’m just working like. That’s a whole other bag of hammers.

I shouldn’t have even brought that up, but just people who, and not that money is necessarily the metric for success, but people of various different income, uh, levels or economic profiles. I don’t even know what words I’m looking for. I’m like, where are the words? Digging, trying to find them. But people at various different economic points or income levels.

They’re not talking about, oh, I’m doing this or I’m doing that. It’s just purely focusing on the business and how do you make it better? And I think that’s the most important thing. Focusing on your bite versus your bark.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. I think there’s a balance, so like in Elon, because you do

Amara Andrew: need bark

Jeff Sarris: and Elon is getting, uh, building a civilization on the moon, that’s sort of a new thing where it’s like, okay, Mars is windows to get literal.

Like you can only launch. In these very certain times because of the rotation of the earth, rotation of Mars, all the gravity, everything that goes into getting there, you can get to the moon all the time. So it’s easier, it’ll be a shorter path to create a colony on the moon. So like Elon has talked about, like that is sort of step one is to do that.

So that is the bark. But the bite is still happening. That’s the bark isn’t the end of the line.

Amara Andrew: And it almost feels like with that, with the bark, he needs to win us over in order to not have it seem like he’s some crazy

Jeff Sarris: Dr. Evil.

Amara Andrew: Yeah. ’cause like, could you imagine if we had never heard from him and kind of know who he is?

Like he has built a, per a, a personal brand, so it is like, oh, okay, I guess we can like trust this guy that he isn’t Yeah. Gonna fucking ship us off to the moon. And then it’s like. Bye. Never gonna see us again. Um, so he has worked really diligently on that. Jeff Bezos kind of has a personal brand. I guess Mark Zuckerberg is like definitely working hard on building.

That

Jeff Sarris: had been last year, he’d making his appearances on shows.

Amara Andrew: Yeah. It feels like he

Jeff Sarris: kind of stopped cut his hair, did stuff different.

Amara Andrew: Yeah,

Jeff Sarris: I think there was a window time didn’t look like

Amara Andrew: such a nerd.

Jeff Sarris: I feel like it was to be like. He can’t be seen as exactly what he was seen as.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: Looked at versus seen.

He was looked at as this sort of crazy eccentric,

Amara Andrew: well, he felt

Jeff Sarris: really unrelatable billionaire.

Amara Andrew: Exactly. That’s what I was gonna say. It is just like a little odd, but not like good. Odd. We’re like, Elon is pretty odd, but it’s. Charming. Odd.

Jeff Sarris: Well, and again, everyone has their political things. This is completely apolitical.

Oh yeah. We’re only talking about business. Just

Amara Andrew: personality.

Jeff Sarris: Yes. Yeah. And like the engineer Elon and all the crazy things that he does.

Amara Andrew: Yeah. It’s very impressive.

Jeff Sarris: Uhhuh,

Amara Andrew: especially from a business perspective,

Jeff Sarris: and the balance between the two is hard.

Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Sarris: Because we go so heavy. Again, this is useful, not famous.

We want to be as useful as possible because that’s how we found. That the more useful you are, the more successful you become, the more famous you are, maybe you can turn that into success, like monetary success, but most people who go after fame never turn it into anything other than more eyeballs. Yeah.

And more attention. Mm-hmm. And attention can be valuable if you. Know how to make that attention valuable to an advertiser, to a business, to whatever it is. But going in fame first never works because your end goal has zero value, zero usefulness to anyone with money. Yeah. So it’s a, that sort of what we’re talking about regularly because we might have a few new listeners now ’cause it’s people are starting to share the show and talk about it a little bit more, which is really fun.

But just. To give context for why we call it useful, not famous, and why it is so key to who we are and the people we’ve worked with who’ve been at, uh, many different levels of fame. Some quite known, but then you learn, okay, what’s the extent that the fame is valuable? And yeah, we can all be useful. It doesn’t matter if anyone knows who you are.

You can be useful and become successful.

Amara Andrew: Well, and like we’ve talked about in previous episodes, you typically have a three-year window with fame unless you choose,

Jeff Sarris: it’s called the Iron Law of Stardom.

Amara Andrew: I was just gonna say that.

Jeff Sarris: Oh, I’m sorry.

Amara Andrew: No, that’s fine. Thank you though. My little, my little supplement.

But basically you have a three-year window where like you start and then by year three you do kind of just. Fade unless you choose to reinvent yourself or just keep iterating. Like Taylor Swift has done that. Like, I don’t know much about her, but we watched that one documentary and I’m like, I know a lot now.

Uh, but she’s done that. Like Gaga has done that a lot. Like anybody who’s been around for longer than that three year window, they’ve, unless they’re like a movie star actress, celebrity, whatever, like that’s a different thing. But like specifically actually thinking about like music, ’cause that feels like such a different animal.

They’ve had to reinvent themselves. That’s why like, uh, I think Beyonce went country for an album or something, or like Post Malone, he went from rap to in like hip hop to now. Super country. So just constantly reinventing yourself to fit and like survive. So I forgot where I was going with this.

Jeff Sarris: Well, and this is related to fame, like you have your window, like if you get to a level of fame, there tends to be this iron law of stardom, which it’s been studied and it was written about in the nineties, and now we see it even more because everything has accelerated to breakneck speeds.

Mm-hmm. So, so many people can get famous, but it’s. You’d be hard pressed to find someone whose fame lasts more than three years. Unless they reinvent themselves like you’re saying.

Amara Andrew: Yeah,

Jeff Sarris: and that is the key, I think with actors. He said music is easier, but I think actors too, because you think about it, how many actors even matter that.

Do we care about?

Amara Andrew: And that’s what I mean, like it’s easier to see. So yeah, music isn’t easier at all. Music is easier to see the three year chunks or even like shorter than that.

Jeff Sarris: But I think the actors too, when we really think about it. ’cause as soon as you take out a George Clooney, Brad Pitt, uh, Julia Roberts, like there’s only a few actors who’ve made it for decades.

But then it’s like, okay, there’s what Timothy Schlamme. He’s in his window. Mm-hmm. I don’t know when he started, but it was less than three years ago, and it feels like he might be dying off. There’s Sidney Sweeney. When did she start and become famous? Within the last couple years.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: She’s gonna have her fall off.

And then you have the little viral sensations like, uh, HK Tua.

Amara Andrew: Yeah. She

Jeff Sarris: didn’t even have three years.

Amara Andrew: No.

Jeff Sarris: Like she had months, but she, she tried to capitalize as much as she could. Mm-hmm. Um. Be, it’s like interesting to see and it’s, it’s consistent across the board. So are you going to put all the effort into becoming famous while also figuring out how am I gonna put this effort towards building a business, building something for.

Someone else to give me money.

Amara Andrew: Right?

Jeff Sarris: Because if you don’t do that going in, you can’t get your fame and then hope to figure it out in that window of time before your fame fizzles.

Amara Andrew: Well, yeah. It’s like when you have your peak fame or peak awareness, that’s which I know it’s hard because like. Starting a business is very difficult and it’s very time consuming, but if you have the resources when you would sort of have your peak fame, that’s the best time to start your business because then people, because I think Sydney Sweeney, that’s really funny.

Now that we’re talking about it. I think she is starting a business for, I think it’s like clothing for women. Shocker. It’s something for women, which I was like. No, you have to go after your male audience like, but then I guess it depends on what, which has the most longevity? Is she going for the female audience?

Then it’s like, look, you can be as. Popular is me with the guys or whatever. Versus I guess going after the guys. It was the soap that had her bath water in it or whatever it was, which is like a, a kitschy sort of thing. It’s like, it’s not a permanent business. That was just like a, an awareness sort of thing just to get people talking about her.

Um,

Jeff Sarris: once they get paid, gently lose weight. So what are you trying? Those are, those are the things that always sell. Yeah. And you can sort of distill every business down to either, it helps people get paid, get late or lose weight.

Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Sarris: All of them across the board, which is weird to say, but as you pull back it,

Amara Andrew: it’s 100%

Jeff Sarris: true.

It’s simplifies everything. I mean, what we do is marketing, which

Amara Andrew: is good. Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: So we help people get paid,

Amara Andrew: get laid, oh wait, whoops.

Jeff Sarris: But also. As they get attention, that does fold in

Amara Andrew: Uhhuh

Jeff Sarris: because like attention can bring a new audience of suitors potentially, and who knows, but really the get paid is why people pay us.

Amara Andrew: Yes,

Jeff Sarris: it’s brand marketing that then can be, uh, parlayed into more business and trust and proof. You brought up proof earlier, which is a very good word to sort of.

Amara Andrew: Yeah, that’s the year going into this. That’s the word for this year, I feel. ’cause with, I don’t know, just everything. I’ve sort of, I’m constantly analyzing and studying everything probably to a detriment, but I find everything fascinating.

Especially with AI and how prevalent it is now. There is an issue on TikTok where you’ll watch a video.

Jeff Sarris: Bless you.

Amara Andrew: Thank you. We do that all the time.

Jeff Sarris: I knew that here, so I keep going,

Amara Andrew: but there is an issue, bless me on TikTok or like any platform, but tiktoks just my platform of choice. Where you’ll see a video and be like, is this real or fake?

Because now it’s gotten before you could tell where it was like, oh, that’s like definitely fake because the arm is coming outta the forehead. Or like this, just, this doesn’t make any sense. Like it looks like a dream. Now though, it’s gotten so scary. Good where it actually looks so real where it’s like, I think this is ai, like reading through the comments, people are like.

I think it’s ai, but I actually can’t tell and I’m really scared. Um, so something we’ve been talking about since this morning was proof that’s gonna be huge moving forward and just thinking about how do you, how do people, how do businesses survive in the age of ai? Like. Humans aren’t going away, even though everybody thinks.

So just read more books and learn more about technology and all these big changes that have happened consistently. It, like it’s AI can exist, but you do need people there to sort of, uh, not be the facilitators. I had a better word earlier

Jeff Sarris: taste.

Amara Andrew: No, uh, like it is related to taste, but essentially like we still use it as a tool, so like it.

Could take over. But I still feel like we’re so far away from that. Like, it’s like with computers where people thought computers were gonna take the place of everybody. Now we just use that as a tool and it’s changed what jobs we have and how we function as in society. Um, but yeah. You brought up a good point where you’re like, well, yeah, humans are.

Um, which is sort of along the lines of proof. ’cause another thing that I was thinking of is like, well, having your personal brand, which I’m so exhausted hearing that stupid fucking phrase. Personal brand. Personal brand. ’cause so many people who talk about it have no idea what they’re talking about. And it’s so overdone now.

But like, being you on camera, like being yourself. Because we work with a lot of realtors in, uh, we do video marketing with them in small businesses. And at a lot of these real estate conferences, a lot of people are saying, oh, use, uh, whatever program it is, Hey, gen or something where you make an AI version of yourself is so creepy and so bad, and you can tell it’s not a real person like immediately, but people are trying to.

One 10th X their output instead of 10 x, which that’s another thing we’ve talked about.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. One 10th x, what they’re doing.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: Instead of 10 x saying what they’re creating, what they’re able to achieve.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: Which I think is actually good to sort of just refine it a little, because Josh had, when I talked to him on the phone recently asked about it because I said it, and then he was like, oh, I thought you were gonna say the opposite.

People are 10 xing. The amount of things they’re putting out when they should be one 10th Xing to make what they do better. Mm-hmm. It was like a different view on it, so I wanted to be sure one 10th, 10th x. What I’m doing is like someone texts me and then I just paste it in the chat and have chat respond.

That’s one 10th Xing.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: Now. I want to achieve so much. We wanna do so much with Maven and there’s so much opportunity. So we’re utilizing AI to 10 x our creative output and ability to do things 10 times better than we ever can do on our own. 10 times more efficiently, faster, efficiently. Yeah. Yeah.

Faster and better, and all of these things. Not coming down to the actual video side. The other thing, like building tools, building systems, all these things that we could do if we only had 10 employees. Mm-hmm. Well now we do

Amara Andrew: through

Jeff Sarris: ai.

Amara Andrew: That’s literally what we would keep saying is like, well, yeah, if we had people like us, because that sounds kind of arrogant, but trying to find people like us is actually really, really difficult.

People that we could depend on or who would be as invested and as motivated. ’cause nobody cares about your company like you do. Now we have that. So it’s like, oh, sky’s the limit. Hell yeah. Like all the things that would hold me back before are just basically time like one 10th the the time, but 10 x the good output, not just, well, I’m just gonna put a bunch of stuff out there.

It’s like, no, we have very specific ideas of what we wanna have out there. Now we can actually do it.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. And again, that’s our taste. Yes. Like our taste and directing of the creative output. I hate the phrase AI slop because you see people, I almost said

Amara Andrew: that.

Jeff Sarris: People say it on anything. If anything has an M dash people comment, AI slop.

I know, but guess what? I know a very, very good, very successful, very eloquent writer who is the one who I learned what an M dash is from. I didn’t even know that was a thing, but I, I learned it from this person. 12 years ago. So I use them for very specific purposes. Uhhuh AI isn’t the only thing that uses ’em, but everyone loves to throw around the negativity of ai slap conceptually.

I get it. Because even in Gmail now you hit reply and Gmail will give you an entire email reply

Amara Andrew: that’s so

Jeff Sarris: creepy. A random collection of ideas that it thinks you’ll wanna say, which for the work that we do is. Horrific because like I’ll reply to people with precise things about their business and improving it and improving the systems and this and that.

If I was just to let Google decide, sort of whole cloth what my recommendations are, now that makes no sense. It’s, it’s rounding off all the edges and going for the average, like the mean, but. We all know people who are doing this for every aspect of their life. So what are we, what are we doing? There’s the whole dead internet theory where the internet is moving towards no humans, where it’s only bots talking to bots.

That changes a lot of things when we get there, but then what does it mean sort of for us? So that’s what we’re always exploring. We’re always exploring these things.

Amara Andrew: Yeah. And so that is sort of what brought proof to my mind this morning. ’cause like I said, with the videos that I’ve seen on TikTok, where it’s like, is this real?

Is this not? You constantly have that. Or like, I’ve even seen people now like, uh, doing like talking head stuff on TikTok and I’m like. I don’t think this is a real person. Like there’s just that uncanny valley where you see it and it’s like, this is actually a little weird, but the proof that you are a real person now and you, uh, so we do like a lot of hyper-local marketing, like I said, because it’s realtors and small businesses, proof that you actually are in your area, that you are part of the community, proof that you’re a real person.

You’re not just. A sales person, like whatever, and that’s fine. You can do whatever, but

Jeff Sarris: well not a bot who’s trying to generate leads.

Amara Andrew: Yeah. So like I really feel like just proof that you’re a real person is gonna be extremely important and powerful right now, this year. Like I have no idea what the next years hold, but.

That’s why I like building your, uh, I hate saying personal brand. It feels so like tacky and like b but like building who you are, building up your presence now is like kind of, it, it feels like, like the, the gold rush of Instagram famous, like all that stuff. It feels like it’s really drying up now significantly.

And because now with ai. You can just make all the same things and ideas as everybody else. Like it’s like trending content. Like everybody does the same trends. That to me is like the equivalent of AI slop. ’cause it’s like, it’s not contributing or making anything. And it’s not creative. It’s purely, uh, this is another thing we talked about earlier, like systematizing your content.

It’s good to systematize it, but don’t systematize it in the wrong way.

Jeff Sarris: We should start human slop. As a thing because like that’s exactly it. One person makes a video that does well, and then if you go to TikTok and search for that video, you’ll see hundreds of that same video from different people.

Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Sarris: That’s human slob.

Amara Andrew: Who think they do it better and funnier and it’s not,

Jeff Sarris: I would even say,

Amara Andrew: or just do the

Jeff Sarris: same thing. They don’t think they’re literally copying it because that worked. I’ll do it.

Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Sarris: That worked. I’ll do it. That and, but you’re building nothing. It’s fame with zero substance for any way to turn that into money.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: Like TikTok will pay you a little bit for getting millions of views. You can’t build a business around that. No. There was a whole stat that we had last year. There was something like. The levels of influencers, and it was like a thousand to 10,000 followers earned about like $33 a month. Oh yeah. And I think it was, I, that was 10,000 to a hundred thousand had like $300 a month.

And a million plus on average made $6,000 a month. Yeah. And people think fame equates to lots of money. $6,000 a month is phenomenal. Like that’s a great salary. That’s a great job if you didn’t make that from being on the internet. Congratulations like for just being you, but good luck getting a million followers, a million to a hundred million followers who care enough that you can get that $6,000 a month in any reasonable amount of time.

Yeah, you’re not gonna do that in six months, 12 months, maybe you can get that many in five years, 10 years, and then you can be pulling in a good 70 grand a year from your social media just for being an influencer. But good luck. Maybe not your strategy. You can’t go in with that. Yeah. And somehow make it long enough because time in the market matters for becoming famous.

Amara Andrew: So I was gonna say, you can make it happen quicker now, but the problem is, which we’ve seen this with people we know who are like well-known creators, they burn themselves out. So it’s like, well, I’m gonna post a video a day forever. Like we know someone who’s posted a video a day on a platform of choice for like two years straight or three years straight, and they can’t stop because once they stop, they know they lose everything.

And they built up just this one social media platform. And that’s fine. But as soon as you get off that little hamster wheel, you’re kind of fucked. Like that’s, that’s the business. That’s the whole strategy is like, well, I’m just gonna post every single day on this one platform. You have to grow so much past that and figure out other ways to bring people into your business and other sort of fail safes because like, what if that platform gets banned?

Or what if your account gets hacked or deleted or whatever, blocked,

Jeff Sarris: or you do the wrong thing for the algorithm. And then it decides, you know, this is actually a spam account. I’m not going to show it anymore.

Amara Andrew: Could you imagine

Jeff Sarris: like that happens so easily?

Amara Andrew: Oh

Jeff Sarris: yeah. Because all of the platforms were a hundred percent reliant on the algorithm to serve our content.

’cause everything is interest based. Mm-hmm. Like you’re on TikTok, you like watches to shows, you watch videos. Like it doesn’t show you Johnny, who you followed a month ago. Unless they post a watch video, if, if all you engage with are watch videos, TikTok doesn’t care that you followed Johnny. Yeah. TikTok cares that Sally made this watch video and you might watch it.

Watch the watch, but, but that’s the thing that’s so difficult, like fully beholden to the algorithm. But then that’s where, again, that’s where the Maven and the machine concept we’ve talked about comes from. Mm-hmm. Where we’re like, you can build your social platform, but you need to capture people and you need them somewhere that you own that.

Amara Andrew: Right.

Jeff Sarris: Which there’s email marketing, there’s all these different things you can do, but that’s part of the ecosystem that you bring people into and then they’re. Yours as in like warm leads that you can nurture and build a relationship with. Mm-hmm. But social is only the original attention, and then you have to do something with that.

Amara Andrew: Yeah. That is a whole, whole bag of hammers.

Jeff Sarris: You’re in the bag of hammers kicked today

Amara Andrew: I just mentally went down another rabbit hole, but I was like, I’m not even gonna touch it.

Jeff Sarris: Bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny. We’re not doing cute. Doing all of our inside, uh, things sometimes come out inside

Amara Andrew: baseball. Be bull.

Mm-hmm.

We’re still here. I always find that so funny when I’m listening to a podcast and there’s just a really long pause and I’m like. Did a pause, Uhhuh. ’cause I’ve had that happen where I clicked some something on accident and I was like, okay. It’s been like 45 seconds. Uhhuh not actually 45 seconds, but

Jeff Sarris: yeah.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: Are we just fizzling out the end of this episode?

Amara Andrew: Yeah, we gotta bring it back. How do we bring it back? I mean,

Jeff Sarris: I

Amara Andrew: was gonna go

Jeff Sarris: on, you are 32 minutes.

Amara Andrew: I was gonna you a

Jeff Sarris: whole

Amara Andrew: mini rant.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. You had a thought and you didn’t wanna go down there, but should we just Yeah. Wrap and save it for next week? We were gonna be on.

Been on the road. Yes, we were. Didn’t record on the road, but we didn’t have a chance. We’re actually recording a little late. Today’s Sunday.

Amara Andrew: Sunday. Sunday, Sunday.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah.

Amara Andrew: We had a lovely little Valentine’s Day.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah, we did. And then it’s cute this week. Maybe we will record on the road. We’ll see. I’ll bring the mics this time.

We’ll see if there’s time.

Amara Andrew: I think we’re gonna have to, mm-hmm. ’cause

Jeff Sarris: yeah, just timing wise, but we’ll see.

Amara Andrew: Well, we’re definitely gonna record, if not this video, the next.

Jeff Sarris: We’ll figure it out. But yeah, I think we wrapped here. I don’t

Amara Andrew: like that we fizzled out at

Jeff Sarris: the end. I know.

Amara Andrew: Well, ’cause I was gonna say something, but then it’s just, it’s a negative thing.

I just like

Jeff Sarris: how do you make it a positive?

Amara Andrew: I know, that’s what I was trying to think. ’cause I was just like, no, like it shouldn’t just be complaining, but um, how do I make it a positive? Hmm.

Jeff Sarris: Well you think the all bark no bite. Yeah. And then we’re all bite, no bark that we’re not saying that you have to be all, all bite, but that is sort of expressing how that is a tough balance for us to strike because we are all bite.

We don’t talk about what we do like doing. This is the most, the closest we get to talking about anything that we do because we enjoy doing this. But

Amara Andrew: I think I got it.

Jeff Sarris: You got it? Okay, good. I gave you a little room, but I just wanted to say like. When you’re in the all bark zone, even if you know it, it’s not easy to get across.

We’re not just like, oh, just, we might be like, well do the work. Like, ’cause that’s the first most difficult step is to get started, but then the next most difficult is to keep going. Yes. So you can’t. Have all of your worth based on what you’re saying you’re gonna do. Right. Which is so common. Just everyone does that because it feels good.

As soon as you say, I’m going to film a documentary about this, everyone’s like, you do that. That’ll be awesome. That’s so cool. And then they’re like, how’s your documentary going? You’re like, oh, I’m still planning it. And then you’re like, how’s it going? It’s like, oh, you know, it’s, it’s taken a lot of work, but I’m gonna get there.

And it’s like, you get reinforced. You feel good, but you need to start it.

Amara Andrew: Yes.

Jeff Sarris: And I’ve seen that for decades working with people that who don’t start, there are lots of, lots of bark, no bite. Yeah.

Amara Andrew: Which is really hard. And it’s unfortunate because it’s like, I know you could make this thing and make it really well and like do it.

And then to just see it sort of fizzle out is kind of, I don’t know, it’s, it’s just like, I just wanna help, like we can do it uhhuh, like you got it. Like just. Little baby steps.

Jeff Sarris: Life is time management. And that makes it sound lame. It makes it sound, it makes it feel like we’re diminishing life. But life is a set amount of time on this planet.

Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Jeff Sarris: How do you manage that time?

Amara Andrew: Yes.

Jeff Sarris: If you wanna achieve certain things, you need to start, you need to choose how you’re using your time here to start the things you wanna achieve. Because every day that passes is one last day that you have.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: Just period.

Amara Andrew: And it’s true. And like sort of along the line lines of, uh.

I’ll bite, no bark. Making sure to not put all of your eggs in one baskets. Like I was saying, how one person had built up one channel. Great. Like that’s awesome. But it feels like now with the landscape changing and with ai, you do need to be sort of omnipresent now more than ever. How are people gonna find you and how do you stand out?

Which, that’s a whole, whole other bag of hammers, but that’s just figuring out how you can stand out and also not expecting. Um,

a lot of people are put on pedestals for having atypical results. Like that’s why. They are put on a pedestal is because they are the anomaly. They’re the ones that either did it the longest, did it the earliest, or did something totally outta left field that nobody else was doing, and they’re the ones that are put on a pedestal and it’s like, wow, like I should do this because look, Sally, Bob made a YouTube channel and it completely changed her business.

And it’s fine, but if it’s already done, it’s already done. It’s already over. And there’s just a lot of sort of misinformation out there about, well, no, just this one thing is gonna do everything for you and it’s gonna fix all your problems and you’re gonna live in a magical little castle. That is not how it happens at all.

And now with ai, especially like you can put out as much content as you want, and some people are. I don’t know how that’s working because it is sort of AI slop. Um, I, I was trying to figure out what would be the, the nice way to put this, but it is just, you just have to do a lot more things and do ’em better than everybody else.

So it’s like you really have to get the fuck to work. Like there is no other option. You just have to do the work like. We all want the magic pill of like, wow, if I just did this, like I’ll just take Ozempic and I’m gonna be so healthy. No, it’s a temporary bandaid on a permanent issue. It doesn’t last.

You’re gonna get fat again or you’re gonna have other problems. You

Jeff Sarris: have fatty,

Amara Andrew: I hate to tell you, but like it’s just like going on an Atkins diet. You are going to keep. Having these issues because you eat like shit because you have no self-control.

Jeff Sarris: That’s a good, uh, 2006 reference right there.

Amara Andrew: I know.

I’m like, what is like the, the keto diet where people are like, I feel so great. Then why do you keep having this problem? Why do you keep coming to this fork in the road of like, well, I’m gaining weight, or I’m not feeling good, or My business is suffering, like whatever it is, you need to look at the root cause of what it is and then address that.

Like there is no, there is no temporary fix. And that’s what people make money off of, is selling you a temporary fix, promising that that’s gonna solve everything for you. Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: That it’s permanent.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. The temporary fixes are temporary.

Amara Andrew: Exactly. They’re selling it as well. No, this is gonna solve all the problems you’ve had for 20 years, 30 years, 50 years.

No. If it already was going to help you and make you better, it already would’ve been found. It already would’ve existed. History has been around for a very long time. You’re supposed to laugh at that, but okay. I’ll just laugh on my own It, it would have already been a thing and whoever found it, started it, whatever, they would be billionaires, so.

I don’t know where the fuck to go with that. You, but nothing is easy and there is no simple fix. And the people that are selling you a simple fix are full of shit.

Jeff Sarris: Well, yeah. That’s their business.

Amara Andrew: Exactly.

Jeff Sarris: And so,

Amara Andrew: and I don’t fault them because if you can make money off of this, absolutely. Go for

Jeff Sarris: it. Well, and you said the anomalies are the ones that are put on pedestals?

Amara Andrew: Yes.

Jeff Sarris: Annie Duke. There’s a great book that I’m reading right now called Thinking in Bets and. She comes from the poker world and the entire, the entirety of poker, just like life is incomplete information, and I really like this phrasing, but she calls exactly what you just said, resulting, we look at Jane Doe.

Jane Doe did this thing. Great outcomes. The result means she made the right choice. I’m gonna do that. There were so many other variables and things that went into it, including certain pieces of luck. Like I believe we make our own luck. We’d make our own luck by taking enough at bats that our statistical success is just higher than everyone else.

’cause we did more, we didn’t just hope for one thing to work

Amara Andrew: did more and for longer.

Jeff Sarris: Exactly. And, but we look at Jane Doe. Who did this one thing, started a YouTube channel and is successful. But then what about the thing that she started in 2009 and it’s 2026. She started with this angle in 2014 that no one had done yet somehow.

How did she do that? Well, it makes sense why she’s successful 12 years after that change because she’s been doing this new thing that she redefined the entire market. It’s finally kicked in and she’s finally succeeding. But you can’t go back to 2009 and say this one thing because she started that 17 years ago, is what I need to do now.

And that’s what’s gonna work. Because again, it’s resulting you could have started at the same time, have different results, but it doesn’t mean your decisions were wrong. It just means the way that your little exploratory journey went isn’t, didn’t give you the outcomes that you were hoping it would. It doesn’t mean you were wrong, it just means you keep adjusting until you get there.

Amara Andrew: That was a perfect encapsulation of what I was trying to say, so that was really good. I’m glad you, uh, that you’re reading that book too and it’s like investing. It’s like, oh, well if I had invested in Bitcoin back in 2009 or that’s probably too early, but back in whatever year, I would’ve had $10 million right now.

Well, it could have shoulda would’ve. Focus on like try to find what that thing is right now that you can do and don’t expect immediate results in one year, two years, three years. And it’s really disheartening to hear that because it’s like, well, I want it now. Like I want that instant. I want the dopamine hit.

I want to have all the success and all the fame and all the money now. But it doesn’t work like that. Like at all. At all. So. Investing in it now means that cool, I’m one year closer to that, or I’m one week closer, or I’m one day closer to that. Like that is so important to remember. Just the little things that you’re doing right now, it doesn’t feel like a lot, but it will add up and it is compounding over time, just like an investment.

Jeff Sarris: And you’re gonna feel like you didn’t do enough.

Amara Andrew: Yes,

Jeff Sarris: always forever.

Amara Andrew: Story of our lives that you’re behind every day.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah.

Amara Andrew: Even today I am just like, I so much I still need to do

Jeff Sarris: because we wanna achieve more.

Amara Andrew: I, I wish I could clone us if I could. I 100% would. That would be weird. As long as it didn’t have a foot coming out of its head.

Jeff Sarris: That’d be obnoxious.

Amara Andrew: Oh my God.

Jeff Sarris: Two more of us.

Amara Andrew: I’d be like, ha, ha, ha.

Jeff Sarris: Bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny. It doesn’t do all of our stupid inside things.

Amara Andrew: I don’t get jealous, but I feel like I’d actually get jealous of my other clone if you were just like, hi. I’d be like, don’t talk to it. I am the real one.

Jeff Sarris: And then other you is like it.

Amara Andrew: Bitch. I know. And I’d be like, shut the fuck. Thanks.

Jeff Sarris: Okay. I think with that we’re up.

Amara Andrew: Yeah.

Jeff Sarris: If you, if you like the show, share it on social media ’cause that’s how we get new people. No, but it really is. It was super. Yeah. It’s nice. Yeah. Uh, it was shared last week by Ms. Tori.

Amara Andrew: Yeah. Our friend Tori.

Jeff Sarris: Yeah. If

Amara Andrew: you need a realtor in Utah, Tori Keech.

Jeff Sarris: Okay, we’ll wrap here. See you next. Sweet.

Amara Andrew: Bye.