We went on the Lights Out tour.
We were all making the craziest amount of money we had ever seen in our lives, we would go live on
TikTok for five minutes and make $3,000.
We were making almost a thousand dollars a minute on live stream.
It was the craziest thing I had ever seen.
Hi, I'm Josh Richards.
I'm 19 years old and I am an entrepreneur and social media influencer.
When I first started my social media, I instantly set the goal to hit 10,000 followers by the end of
the summer and I would study the For You Page and watch videos for hours just trying to
figure out the difference between a viral video and a average video.
So that's when I first found out about doing these tutorial type videos, because it would
cause the person to save the video because they want to watch it later, learn how to do that
tutorial. And then also they would comment for either clarification, a part two, or the next tip
they wanted to learn. I was able to post my first tutorial video, which received 70 million views.
All right. What type of chips do you like?
I like Takis.
I believe right now across all platforms, I have just over 35 million
followers. I was monetizing
my account from the very beginning.
The reason why I was so focused on the live stream was the fact that that's where you monetize on
Musical.ly. Your fans would come in and they would actually donate to the live by gifting system.
I would go live from ten p.m.
to two a.m. every single night.
That was my schedule. No matter what, I'm live for four hours straight and at the start I was making
like a hundred dollars, two hundred dollars a night.
There were a lot of nights where I wasn't going to party or there was a hockey game that
everyone was going to watch and I couldn't go attendit just because I knew I had something bigger
in my journey, right.
And so that's just what I stayed focusing on.
I would say I was 16, 17, I was at my bank and I was taking out cash and I had
about fifteen, sixteen thousand dollars Canadian in my bank account, like, that's that's what I was
worth. I remember taking out the cash and having the receipt and my friend looking over at the
receipt or like grabbing it from me, just kind of joking around with me to see how much money I had.
And they were absolutely mind blown.
To me, it almost had just become another analytical thing, like my follower growth, where I was just
like I wanted to go up and up and I didn't even take a second to step back and like, see how much
money I actually had made or how well I was doing.
I'm young, right? I'm dumb.
I've made mistakes.
I've caught myself spending more money than I should have.
And we were going to these like Burberry or Louis Vuitton, Gucci.
And we were buying these clothes and these shoes.
And there was just one day I remember putting on a Louis Vuitton sweater and
looking at myself in the mirror.
And I just kind of was like, you look like such a douche, Josh.
You look like an absolute fool.
Like this isn't even you.
One thing that we get taught is save your money, right, don't spend it, keep it in your bank
account, but that isn't actually the best thing you can do.
Of course, it's better than going out and buying Louis Vuitton and cars and et cetera.
But, put it into an account giving you some percent back.
I'm
chief strategy officer over at Triller.
Acquired part of Ellen's Unhide Company, own a dog food company with Snoop Dogg called Dog for Dog,
invested in BREAKr, have invested now over 18 companies and
working on a podcast with Barstool called BFFs.
And just to continue going on all my social media platforms as well.
The
biggest worry for social media creator is how long is my career going to last or how do I make
sure I extend this for another month, another month, another year, another four years, five
years? How can we create longevity and not just not just in content or not just in
entertainment, but in the entrepreneurial space as well?
I mean, when we see we're creating these trends, like shotgunning energy drinks from doing it
in our YouTube videos, why would we continuously give that free brand space or ad space to Red Bull
when Bryce and I can go and found energy drink company like we did with Ani Energy?
Just keeping ourselves in the media and in your face is is how you're going to stay
relevant.