Keep a small team of 10-12 part-time creators, led by a proven one

Joseph ChoiI want to get into that that part, like the creator sourcing. How How do you guys approach creator recruiting and training and coaching and management?

Zack HargettYeah, I think one of the interesting things about our creator team is that, very early on, Brett and I were on board with, we wanted to build, you know, the equivalent of the Navy SEALs, not the Navy, and so we've always kept the content team quite small. At least before the acquisition, the content team at its biggest was maybe 10 or 12 content creators, all part-time, all contractors, all with a lot of freedom and flexibility in terms of the content that they're creating on Coconote's behalf.

Zack HargettAlison ended up joining as a larger member of the team, and she was kind of a leading a team of contractors as well, and so that was very helpful. Alison ended up doing hundreds of millions of views with us, and so I think one of the things that we did well in hindsight is to make sure that whoever's leading your content team has the respect and kind of admiration of the team overall. And I think that comes down to, you know, having produced content that has gotten millions or hundreds of millions of views in that case.

Joseph ChoiGotcha. So did she have a bunch of views or followers on her own content before you guys hired her?

Zack Hargett… don't show up to win, then there's not a lot that, you know, anyone in my opinion can do to spark that. So, wanting to win means you engage in the Slack channel, right, you engage with other people that you're working with, you show up, you show up on time, you show up with your camera on. There are a lot of just small details that you want to get right there. And that truly is like the baseline, I would say. Do you care, and do you want to win?

Zack HargettThe level on top of that is, can you heavily use other content for inspiration? So, if I show you a video, do you understand the level of detail that went into that video, that viral video? Could I start to show you videos, and hide the view count and the likes and everything, and you start to identify whether or not you think that video went viral, and why? So, like really paying attention to other people's content and understanding the inputs to that.

Zack HargettAnd then the third level, the highest part of the pyramid in in my belief, is, can you create your own? Can you create your own videos, your own scripts, your own trends? Like the top top creators are trendsetters, right? They're not just copying what other people do.

Joseph Choi… that stuck out to me was the uh just watching videos and estimating is it Was this a viral video or not, without seeing the view count. Um is that something where you actually just give people a few videos each day, and then just quiz them until they like get better at it, or are you just having them dive right into making the videos, and then kind of like quizzing them on the side? Is there like sort of a curriculum that you put people through?

Zack HargettThat's a good idea. Maybe we should do that. We could use some Quizlet flashcards, maybe, to do something like that. So, no, we don't we don't quiz anyone. We interview every person. At this point, I interview every person, every creator that we work with, which is nice and very fulfilling. You know, usually that decision's made within 15 or 30 minutes whether or not we're going to work with each other. And then we have content coaches, so we have a great team of content coaches that work more closely with the creators themselves.

Joseph ChoiYeah, what was the ratio of of coaches to creators?