The real reason we're against fame

An exact transcript of the audio with precise timestamps and speaker tags is provided below.

Let's talk about porn and the most famous I've ever been.

Welcome back to Useful Not Famous. This is the show where we teach you how being useful helps build your brand and your business. Welcome to the Useful Not Famous cult.

I'm Amara.

I love how you squinched your eyes at me. I'm Jeff Sarris. You're not doing your last name now.

What's going on?

I just want to be known as Amara.

Okay, good.

Like Sade.

Sade?

Madonna.

Amara.

It means a bitter in Italian.

Yeah, and someone just brought it up for another area, too, but anyway.

Oh, yeah. It's supernatural.

That's what it was, yeah.

Yeah, it was in Arabic, which I was like, oh, I've never heard that one before.

Okay, so this episode, we're going to just put 15 minutes on the clock. We are doing one long, long We're doing one segment. This is our freeform today because this is our second episode of the day.

We don't normally batch, but we're giving it a whirl.

Yes.

So, we're talking about porn.

Yes, so why are we I also hope this doesn't get banned by YouTube in the first few minutes.

Oh, if it does, it does, but

So, tell me why are we talking about porn?

So, we're mostly talking about the most famous I've ever been and the most famous you've ever been. So, my story starts with porn, but food porn, not porn. Just to not bury the lead.

So, I had a platform called Paleo Porn. I 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 opportun- we had 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 have a stage there and different things like that. There was 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.

And I was Like, it was one of those things, it's like, 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. Like, where are you from?" and like she's like, "I'm actually here because of you. Like I came to this restaurant because of you." Now this is years ago, this is what?

2014, 2015. Like, I've been doing all this stuff for a while. We started Paleo Porn in 2009.

And what just happened a few months ago at a conference?

Well, yeah, just at RevB in Houston, we were just talking, we were having dinner.

San Antonio.

San Antonio, yeah. But we were having dinner with a bunch of gluten-free 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 remembered of There were what? 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.

Yeah, which is very exciting, like to even have it happen to this day, so.

-. 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 to do it? I'll throw one more piece of like 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.

Like 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. Like I feel this is very self-aggrandizing, but there's a reason, because we got We had all this opportunity, but this opportunity turned into literal $0.

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." There wasn't the strategy didn't was never there to build a business out of it. I had my business, I had SPYR.

Like 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.

Yes, I was not involved.

Well, yeah, this is before we met. But, also, you have your own, not porn, story about the most famous As far as you know. But the most famous you've been.

And I like yours because there's a contrast, there's a dichotomy. So, like we're very We are so adamant that usefulness is everything because fame inherently is not valuable unless that fame is useful to someone else. That's the only way.

So, why do we Why don't we take out the middleman of fame and stop focusing there and focus on being useful to the people who we can be useful to?

Yes, so my story's a little different. This took place during COVID times, if you remember. And we were just locked in the house, like we didn't go out.

And 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, fuck it, 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 like 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've degrees in art history.

Like, I love art history, that is my thing. Any type of history, I'm a big fucking nerd. So, I was like, okay, I should share what I know, because I find everything endlessly fascinating, I guarantee at least like two people out there might find this interesting.

So, I put up my first video and that 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, it 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!

'Cause I was like, "I don't want to be famous!"

And then what did I What did I say?

You're like You're just like, "Oh, this It won't" I don't even remember what you said.

Well, no, I was just like, "Don't worry about that. That's nothing." But also that created your 60-Second Art History, that became a thing that you started doing.

Yes, so then I started with that one video, and then everyone Like it blew up like crazy. I got like 10,000 followers over just a few different 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.

So, I don't know, it was just very fun. And then, also, at the time I was teaching art history, too, at a university.

No.

Oh wait, no. Oh, my god. Fuck!

You're burying You're not burying the lead, you're jumping way far in the story. I fucked up.

So, no, it is all good, but so you posted about around like seven one-minute videos.

So, okay. Fuck. I, yeah, 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 were 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 Like 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 and I jumped the gun on my little story, but I had absolutely nobody watching me on Facebook except for the one right person who I forgot I was connected to that saw

Yeah, the ROI is immensely- like, 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 like it's exactly inverted. And that's why we are so big on everyone posting everywhere. It's why, like, I've been working on a tool to make it easier to post everywhere because you want to re- you need to reach people when they need to be reached, where, and how.

The where and hows, I guess, are sort of the same, but you need to reach people in the moment- or, no, the how- I'm saying it all wrong. Like, I feel like I've said this a million times and now I'm just fluffing it up. But what you want to do with social media and why you don't care- 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, like this sentence I've said a lot and I've said it completely differently normally, but 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 my- the back of my head, and then, suddenly, it's like, "Oh, and right now I actually need this.

I'm- I'm a professor at this university and I need a teacher. This person clearly knows how to teach. I could put out a job ad, go through a bunch of applications, do all of these things, or this person's right here." Like, you were so useful to that person, not only filling the role, but filling her- checking a- a box on her task list that she reached out.

Exactly, and 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. But, essentially, just as a super rudimentary summarization, 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. So, 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.

The con- the traditional Bangladeshi name, Jim Bob.

Yeah, god! Read a book, why don't you?

I'm reading three.

So, you don't care if he watches your video because it has no meaning if he watches your video, or it's so much- like, that doesn't matter. But if Sally down the street watches your video and she's in need of a landscaper-

Oh, no. My camera.

Oh, no!

All right, you- you talk. I'll be right back.

Okay. But if Sally down the street, who's a landscaper, actually sees your video, then that is so much more valuable to you. 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 because she'll be like, "Oh…" It's so weird to just talk without you here.

I'm- I'm not here at all. Pretend I'm not here.

He's a- he's a ghost. But that- that kind of view is so much more important than having as many views as possible. And verifiably, I guess, just think of influencers that you see on all these different platforms.

Excuse me.

Burping in your microphone.

Oh, excuse me! I tried to move it away. They can make a small amount of money from the actual platform itself.

By far, YouTube is the best, I believe, just from what I've heard. You'll 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.

Well, even to say MrBeast, the most successful YouTuber by an eternity. Like, 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 have then he's leveraged his fame to sell and sell chocolate and sell Feastables or like Lunchables, but his version.

Exactly. So, that brings me to my next point. So, people that you would think that would be on the Forbes-

Okay, see you next- no, just kidding.

So, people you would think that would be on the Forbes Richest Women List, richest self-made women in America in that list, 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.

So, just for an idea, what's the numbers that revenue? Like, obviously, we're talking huge, huge numbers, unless it doesn't say it.

Oh, no, that's fine.

So, this is the richest- you just use your imagination. These are the richest people in the country, the richest women in the country.

Yeah, and I- I think Rihanna's around 2 point something billion right now because of her business, because of her brands, not music.

Exactly, same with Kim Kardashian, same with Taylor Swift. They have all started these additional businesses because being famous alone, you don't make- you need to have these businesses to have longevity.

And we only think about the- these ultra famous, too, because that's what we see.

Yes.

So, like, 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- you're not, unless you are, you're not trying to be Kim Kardashian.

You're not trying to be MrBeast. You're trying to be the person for your market, for your business.

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 had need- like, I hadn't heard of most of the businesses, only one of them.

Just because you said names you've never heard, I want to say, is it Floobie McFlooberson?

How'd you know?! That's number two!

I've never heard that first or last name before, so it must be it.

Betty Sue Floobie McFlooberson. The number one richest self-made woman in America is Diane Hendricks. You tell me who the fuck that is, and I will eat my own butt.

Like-

I assume Jimi Hendrix's daughter, of course, right?

So far from that, visually! She is worth $22.3 billion. She owns the most boring fucking business you could own.

She owns and chairs ABC Supply, one of the largest wholesale distribu- distributors- I'm- I'm British. She owns 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 don't have it written down, but I went through that list and the rest of the top 10 women had the same boring shit. It was like, this woman's in asphalt, this woman's in lumber, but it's all- it's all useful things.

We all need-

Hey girl, I like your asphalt. Sorry, just how you said asphalt.

If you need us for marketing, look us up! But it's the most boring stuff, but it's the most useful stuff. It's, 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. And then, too, Kim Kardashian, she started Skims, she started all these other things. Same with Rihanna, she started Fenty, Fenty Beauty.

Taylor Swift, I don't know. But-

Well, I think the music. I think hers is the anomaly where she actually is very wealthy from music, but her touring and like, there's such an amazing business there that-

Yeah.

-would take many episodes.

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, bullshit 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.

I like that. I think with that note, we should wrap right there. I think that's a really good bow put on the end of this episode.

Damn right. Good job. Quote me, bitch.

Quoth the raven.

Raven. See, we should have gone out in a blaze of glory. Now, we're just letting it like-

So, yeah. So, I think we'll wrap this week and we'll see you next week.

Bye!