Byron Dempsey: 0:00

that video that she was my biggest video, in terms of podcasts conversion. That put me in the top charts, literally number one in education and number one in business in Australia, and number seven in entrepreneurship, in America I'd I had these people in America, like reaching out to me.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 0:12

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the BizTok show. In the studio today. I have. Byron Dempsey. Who's the host of the Driven Young Podcast. He also has 200,000 followers over our TikTok, his story is really cool. With his success on TikTok has helped him drive his podcast to be one of the top charted podcasts and has over a hundred thousand downloads, we're going to dive into that right now Byron. Welcome to the show,

 

Byron Dempsey: 0:39

Kyle, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 0:41

I appreciate you taking the time to jump on with me. I wanted to talk about what led you into your podcast in the first place?

 

Byron Dempsey: 0:51

I have been making videos since I was about 11 years old, making lots of battles and gun battles when I was a kid and stuff. And that slowly turned into something I did in high school. I made music videos for my music teachers, and I did lots of stuff like this. I started filming dance concerts as a part-time job. I was a part of the film crew on the dance concerts. And so I was into that whole world of video and I quickly realized in year 12, which is our final year of high school that I didn't need to go to college or university we say here. I didn't need that to do films. So I was like, I'm just going to go start making videos. About six months after high school, I landed the job with this guy called Glen Carlson. Who's got a global business called Key Person of Influence, quite a famous book as well, Business Book. That's a business accelerator program. I was basically following him around, filming him, creating social media content for him. And within two or three months with him, because I was just falling around. I was attending all of his events for free. I was doing all of this cool stuff. I learnt so much from him. I was like, wow, why don't we let any of this in school? Once I had that thought that kind of kept evolving, I started speaking about, I spoke to my dad about it, and then I kinda went, you know what? This is something that I'm quite passionate about. I think we should be learning more important skills at school that a bit more relevant. I went to a podcasting conference called We Are Podcasts, which had some of the massive podcasts as I met, like Jordan Harbinger, Pat Flynn, bunch of other people. And I spent some time with them and that has really unlocked my mind to the power of podcasting. This was 2018, it wasn't that long ago, but also podcasting has become very normalized since then. It was still quite odd to have a podcast in 2018. Only business owners had it, not a 20 year old kid. Then I realized, wow, if I use my video skills, I can combine them both and I can film in the podcast. And that gives me unlimited content to start growing my brand and building my personal brand. So that's what I did. I started the podcast. I've been filming every episode with two cameras, three cameras sometimes. Then in August last year, as COVID hit, I lost most of my clients, my other business. So the podcast is a side hustle for a long time as everyone's podcast is right. Lost a lot other clients, my video marketing business, almost all of them. I was down to one client and in Australia. We've got a single job keeper, which is like the stimulus package. So we've got some money coming in and stuff like I had some free time. I had some money coming in. Maybe I'll start putting out some content on TikTok. Then that really blew up, not instantly, but over time that blew up and that's become my main channel now. And pretty much all of my listeners come through TikTok.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 2:58

That's so cool. You decided to do this podcast thing, which was really dope, like you said it has evolved a ton. My podcast is only a few months old. I started it during quarantine, there's tons of podcasts that have been started up during COVID. Right. We'll see how many of them last, once things open back up, but yeah. It's really cool that you were able to take it into the video aspect, why I'm doing video as well. There's so much more opportunity with it. I love how you said, you wanted to take it to TikTok. That's interesting because a lot of people would not think that. What was your thoughts there? what drove you to try making content on that platform versus others?

 

Byron Dempsey: 3:35

The first six months of my podcasts, I wasn't using TikTok and I just posted on Instagram and Facebook and stuff. I was using square videos with titles and subtitles and they got basically no traction. Basically nothing. It was discouraging, but I wasn't letting it get to me because I was like, I'm just going to focus on this without worrying about listens and stuff. It was annoying cause I'd been on TikTok for a while. And I had experimented with the platform on my personal account, just doing weird videos here and there. Like with my dog, with my sister, we created this video with a puzzle thing and they went viral. I went to 10,000 followers without even trying . So it was annoying because it's almost like identified how good the platform was, but I didn't take advantage of it until six months later. It just wasn't the business platform at that point. This is only like seven months ago and it's changed so much since then. It just was not podcasts, education, there were people doing it, but there was no one doing podcasting stuff. As an example, when I started researching it, I tried to find as many podcasting accounts as I could, I found like three or four and none of them were doing that great. They max had 20, 30,000 followers. I was like, okay, I'll just start posting it. Cause I had already been filming it. I was like, I've got this time, I'll go back and post them. And then Or the 15th or 16th clip, went mega viral is still my most viral video today. I think it's on like 7 million views.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 4:41

Wow.

 

Byron Dempsey: 4:42

But it got about 10 million views all up because what I did was with a podcast, I posted a 50 second clip and then people went part twos in the comments I to part two and part three part four ended up doing like 12 part series. And so everyone's going through this 12 part series. That really gave me a lot of growth, I've been posting ever

since.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 4:59

That's so cool. A lot of people that are listening right now are thinking, wow, how can I bring my business to TikTok? I love that you took the opportunity to try it out. That's what I always tell people right now. What do you have to lose? Try it out, testings out because I'm sure. In the beginning, even with your podcasting, I went through actually in scroll to the bottom of your account. And you tried little things, and then you finally saw doing your traditional podcast and showing those clips is what really worked well for your channel.

 

Byron Dempsey: 5:28

Yeah, for sure. To be honest, it's probably, if you saw the videos you're talking about probably like to camera ones where I was selfie honestly, I'm just lazy. That's a lot more work. The work to reward amount is so much lower for doing a podcast clips cause I can create them at scale versus doing like a selfie clip, which takes me 10, 20 minutes of editing. I should clarify to any listeners, my strategy. Is it part of the podcast is I filmed the podcast and I take30 second to 45 second snippets. And I just post those on TikTok. So one episode will get me at bare minimum 20 to 30 clips. The most I've gotten from one episode was like 70. That was a good episode, a long one. honestly it's overkill, but this strategy is really cool because it basically gives you unlimited content.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 6:06

A hundred percent. I think podcasting is great for all social media, because you have tons of content. You can turn it into videos. I watched your presentation and you said you can create videos for Facebook, LinkedIn ads stories, TikTok's. Turn it into blog posts . I think TikTok should be part of your marketing strategy. I think having a podcast should also be part of your strategy as well.

 

Byron Dempsey: 6:29

Yeah. I think I'm quite deep in the podcasting world and I've got a lot of connections in that world. I love podcasting. I've got multiple podcasts. I just a big fan of it as for that reason. However, I do think you should be starting a podcast for the right reason. For me, like I had a problem I wanted to solve, I mentioned to you in my story, I came across this problem. I didn't start the podcast like a year, maybe even two years later because I didn't know how to get my message out there. I just identified podcast is a great vehicle to get my message out there. whereas I think a lot of people, especially in COVID kind of went, Oh, I'm going to start a podcast because I'm bored or because, I think it'll look good for me whereas it should be, I want to meet cool people. I want to provide value to people. I want to get my message out there. The problem is that you're just doing it for the wrong reasons. As you mentioned, you probably wont last. I think 85% of podcasts don't make it past seven episodes because it really exciting to start a podcast it's super fun and sexy to come up with the artwork and all this stuff. But as soon as you've got to grind every single week, it's like, Ugh,

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 7:20

Totally. And if you don't have the re editing team it's a lot of work, to edit the podcast and then put it up. Then where are you going to share it to and break those things down? People don't come find you organically , you have to put in a lot of work for people to find them. There's also a lot of convincing because podcasting is becoming a lot more popular, but there's still tons of people that have never even listened to one before in their life.

 

Byron Dempsey: 7:41

It's very funny you say that because to preference, I didn't even say my podcast is called Driven Young, which is aimed at educating, inspiring the younger generation with practical life skills. We don't learn in school. So number one, I'm an educational podcast. You're always at a disadvantage. If you think education over entertainment, which is fine, because I am targeting young people. Majority of my audience aren't even on the podcasting platform yet. And so that is something I didn't realize going into it. I'm glad I didn't realize that otherwise it would have been too big of a task. I would have been too daunting, but I didn't even consider the fact that most 14, 15, 16, 17 year olds. Aren't even listening to podcasts. Not only do I have to get them to listen to my show, they often have to get them to convert to the platform and actually start listening. Honestly, the only way I know how to do that as through TikTok, I don't know another way where you can convert a young audience into long form content. because they're not on Facebook, they are on Instagram, but only a very small percentage of my followers go and listen to the show, which obviously is still thousands of people. But it's crazy. You need to provide so much value for them to actually shift over. I got a girl message me. She was like, Hey, I've been following you on TikTok for six months and I finally decided to listen to one of your podcasts and I love it. And it's just like, wow. The six months of watching my content before she actually went the platform.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 8:48

That's really cool that you say that too, because that is proof right there of why you shouldn't give up. There's so many people that come to platforms or decide they're going to have a strategy and they try it for 30 days and they're like, nothing happened. I'm quitting. It sometimes takes six months for somebody to believe in you enough to take that next step, to doing something that they're not used to to listen more. That was such great feedback and so rewarding. There's a video in particular, you did about your story of kind of who you are and how the podcasting game changed from TikTok. I have that video. I want to play it and then we can discuss it. This is more of Byron's story right here and it's a TikTok video, so it's very fitting. Here we go.

 

Byron Dempsey: 9:32

Three years ago, I graduated high school and after graduating high school, I quickly realized how badly it had prepared us for the real world. I didn't know anything about taxes, the economy, getting a loan, how to start a business and all that. So I decided to start a podcast called Driven Young, which exposed practical life skills we should have learnt in school. A podcast. I wish I had when I was younger. I launched it. And let's just say it didn't go too well. But for about eight months, I worked in a part-time 30 to 40 hours a week. And that is where you came in three months ago, I started posting clips on TikTok and it exploded. I've gained thousands of listens. There's another three and a half a million likes. Countless people have reached out to me about the show and how it has impacted them their lives. So thank you without TikTok and without you guys. I wouldn't be here today and I wouldn't meet these amazing people and learn about their stories. I believe the education system is failing our generation and no one seems to be doing anything about it. If this resonates with you, feel free to give me a follow and check out the Driven Young Podcast.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 10:22

That video right there, it was really dope. I love that you shared your story and that's another great point to TikTok a sharing your story, just like that does really phenomenally.

 

Byron Dempsey: 10:33

Yeah, that video that she was my biggest video, in terms of podcasts conversion. That put me in the top charts, literally number one in education and number one in business in Australia, and number seven in entrepreneurship, in America I'd I had these people in America, like reaching out to me. They keep track of the top charts and they were like this random podcasts entered it. And I was like, yeah, that's me. And that was because of the one video. I'm not exaggerating that one video did so much. It got like 600, 700,000 views, which is not my biggest video by a long shot, but the conversion rate on that was massive compared to a normal video. I'm actually thinking that reposting that video and updating it and just changing some of the stuff, because it was posted like three or four months ago. I'm probably going to repost the same, but I'll update it and actually re edited. It's actually on my, to do list for this week. That was a game-changing video.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 11:13

These podcasts, people that are checking out the charts are like, hold on. Who the hell is this guy? And that is exactly what's been happening in the music industry with TikTok, because there's so many of these underground artists that are emerging because of TikTok. So how cool is it that it works for podcasting as well? That clearly is proof that they're like, who the hell is this guy? you weren't like this giant business guy that decided to put a podcast together. Like Elon Musk or something, launching a podcast, you'd be able to see him transfer and become a top charter. That's the opportunity that is there were TikTok and just showing the conversion rate from that one video of telling your story, how big of an impact that was. That is what people want to see on TikTok is that storytelling. They want to see something that is going to inspire them. It really inspired me. Yeah. I realized, you know what? I don't have a video telling my story on what my podcast is all about. That's something I'm going to be working on this week is I'm going to be launching a video, very similar to what am I even doing? It's inspiring for anybody that's listening. You could do a video similar to that for anything you're in it, doesn't have to be podcasting it be about your business, your small business. Tell us a little bit of your story and where you came from that resonates with people because it makes it human. When I saw that video, I can listen to it and see it through my eyes because it's relatable. If that makes sense.

 

Byron Dempsey: 12:28

Relatable is the biggest thing I go for with my podcasts. I'm in Gen Z technically. The reason I wanted to start while I was still quite young is I want to relate to them. You could start this when you're 30, which obviously isn't old, but when you're 16, 30 is very old and you're probably older than annoying to them when you're 16, like speak a different language, especially TikTok a whole nother language. , and so that's a big thing I play on is reliability. I try be as relatable as possible. I try to keep it as simple as possible for my show, because I'm always hyper aware of who my target market is. And who's listening to the show.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 12:59

Relating to different things in different languages. Being on TikTok is helped me I'm in my thirties. It's totally true. my 15 year old daughter probably thinks I am old. I know my seven-year-old daughter definitely looks at us and thinking, wow, you guys are really old, but being on TikTok helped me understand the culture of gen Z and how I can talk to them how I can relate to that level as well. So now not only am good at targeting my own demographic and even older ones because of being able to see what my parents are going through, but also understanding the gen Z market. That's how you can really adapt your business because look, you're part of gen Z . You're a grown man. You're making decisions, your own business, your top podcast charter. I feel people look at gen Z sometimes as being way younger than they really are, and they're not focused on them. I don't know if you've you agree.

 

Byron Dempsey: 13:50

I think I could be millennial or Gen Z. There's a three-year window, which I fit in, which is either one. So I'm the older ends of gen Z, but yeah, absolutely. I think gen Z is starting to hit that age where it's like actually becoming adults and the new generations coming in, but we still associate gen Z with 12 year olds.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 14:04

exactly. I have two 15 year old and a 19 year old. And my 19 year old has friends that are having kids. So some of these gen Z kids are parents now. Wow. It's shocking to think, but it's, it's interesting. what types of videos do you feel work best on TikTok?

 

Byron Dempsey: 14:21

It depends on your niche. It depends on whatever field you're in. For me, educational content, it's very important. You have a title. All my videos have a title on it to hook them in. the title can make them break the video. I think you saw in my presentation, the example, I use out a video that hit, , 300 likes the first time. And then it went from 800 views to 800,000 views. The video is identical except the title was changed. The ability to be able to figure out what is a good title. And it doesn't have a clickbait. Right. I guess it is clickbait, but also it's , it's true. I think clickbait is when you claim something, that's not true. They're all relevant to the video. You're just trying to make them look more enticing. so that's really important. also making sure it doesn't look like an ad, it looks like, , organic, it fits on TikTok feeds. All my videos are the full phone length. I add TikTok music in the background. I add the TikTok font to make it look like it's in TikTok. It would be easier to do all that in premiere while I'm editing them all at once. It'd be easier to add music all at once, but I do it in TikTok because it makes it feel like it's part of the platform. Yes. When it comes to education, just to be short, sharp, sweet. And actually provide value. I think with my videos. They're all just the same thing. They're all for now that I don't do trends. Whenever people are like, I don't have to get on TikTok. I don't want to dance and stuff. I don't dance. I don't do any of that. I just do pure educational content. I don't do any trends. There's a lot of people who are in the business world and it works well for them. They'll like dance and point at different strategies you could use, like here's some business tools you use bang, bang, bang, and dance to that, which is great. But it's not my style. So you figure out your style and what you're comfortable doing. I think a lot of people want to achieve what I'm doing, because it's just doing a podcast. You don't have to do it, any TikTok stuff, any trend to get out of your comfort zone, you can just take the snippets, but it really depends. Like for example, right? If you're a photographer and you wanted to grow your photography brand and TikTok, you have to understand that your photos aren't what are going to make you big on TikTok. It's the buildup to the photo. Obviously you want to add your video on the photo or do a part two, which I'm not actually a fan of, but if you want to do, you could, but like, this is the people who would go up to like random strangers and they'll be like, I'm gonna take your portrait and they'll see all the behind the scenes of taking the photo or there'll be like doing a drone shot and you don't see the drone sharp. You see the drone moving. So you as a human really want to see the final product. You want to see the end photo. You want to see the drone shot. So if you can hold their attention 20 seconds and the 25th second, that's when you finally show it and you end the video on that, that's the real value. In fact, there's, you could have a really bad video, but because I've watched that whole time and the watch time is really good, the video might do well. It's just understanding the platform on Instagram. Your photo is also valuable. One TikTok. It's not your photo, it's the buildup and your storytelling ability.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 16:47

Some of the key things that I want to touch base on are one, you said making the content look native to the app is so. Critical. I see a lot of people failing because they're like repurposing content from other sources and thinking it's going to work. When I'm scrolling and it doesn't feel like it's part of the app. It puts me off. I'm like skip. Exactly. Yeah. So like making your content native, where you're repurposing, technically your content. Right. But you're making it feel like it was belonging on there. I think that's really key to what you said. And another thing is, I'm a big believer for people who've listened to my podcast and know who I am. My number one thing is humanizing your brand. I think that's why TikTok has expanded into this evolution of people wanting to see more than just the final picture. Were all inundated by these things. Like we're always just shown the final product, but how can we relate to that as a human being, even a photographer, you see a beautiful picture and you're like, wow, that's really cool. But. To see the moment of how you captured it. what was the process that is more humanizing because we can see what that feels like the process, and then be able to see what that final image looks like. That's, what's so captivating. So businesses out there who have products and their Instagram pages only about showing that well, that's great. But what does that really mean? what's the story behind it? How can it fit in with being human. And that's what I love most about TikTok is people are doing such a great job with that, of turning their business into a real life human perspective and that's, what's driving it. Same with that video you could have just quickly showed an image of your podcasts but you talks about the story, why are you doing what you're doing? And that was what converted and that's the same with anybody out there that's using TikTok right now, if they do it in that right way, that's, what's going to work.

 

Byron Dempsey: 18:38

it's all about value. Authenticity and emotion. Right? You could figure out which one are you hitting? Most of my videos are more value. I have quite a few that are around emotion, cause we're a bit of emotional or something. You've just be authentic as well. I know everyone says that, but like not many people are authentic on Instagram, the sharing, the highlights of their life, which is totally fine because I get, you don't want to say the boring parts, but then Photoshopping and they're doing all this different staff . They might've had a fight with a boyfriend 10 minutes ago yet they've just posted a photo on the beach, looking all cute. On TikTok that doesn't really happen as much. It does happen, and that's why Gen Z love it because they're just burnt out from Instagram. They'd burnt out from all this bullshit stuff. TikTok does a lot more authentic. However, TikTok still slams you in the face with good-looking people, which make you feel crap. You've got to really. Customize your, for you page the mind, I didn't get much of that, but every now and then I'll get like a really attractive girl or a really attractive guy on my page. I'm fine. But I can imagine if you're like 15, 16, especially if you're like a young girl and everything, all these pretty girls are popping up on your page. I really feel for them. I think that's so tough whether they are consciously aware of it or it's subconsciously affecting them. They constantly comparing themselves and it's really, really sad and hard really hard. I think it's a big reason Gen Z have such high levels of mental health problems. Not that solely reason, but social media has definitely played a big role.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 19:51

Oh, big time. And I think Instagram is a really big factor that as well, like you said, with the whole \ filter picture, perfect life. I do agree on TikTok. You do get those people that are like, wow. And crazy enough. And I'm not going to diss on everybody cause it's not true for everybody. But sometimes you get those attractive people who are literally just like. Partying their lip or something in the camera. And then that video is 8 million views. And you're like what's the value I received?

 

Byron Dempsey: 20:13

That's the thing, right? Yeah. For me, I don't know if this is sounding egotistical or anything, but I feel like I built up a good brand through just providing value and just building that like, look, it's easy to get 200,000 followers on TikTok. If you're good looking or you post some funny videos of your dog or cute or whatever, but for Watts, what's your end goal with this great. You've got followers. You've got people who are watching your content, lots of views, but do you have a business around it? Is there a purpose, are you trying to build your brand or whatever? I think there's people who have over a million followers and I know people have over a million followers that don't make any money from TikTok. Because the audience is very scattered. They're not really sure what they're actually doing. They might have just started TikTok and I just kinda blow up and here they are. but I worry, I really worry for people that happens too. I think going viral, if you don't have a plan in place going viral is one of the worst things that can happen to you. Long-term because you have that hit, you have that feeling of fame and you have that, all those views and stuff, and then it's eventually going to decline and you're gonna miss it. And you're gonna feel like quite insignificant and you might have to go back to a day job or whatever, but your ego is quite big now because you had this big hit. So I think we're going to see a lot of creators even creators with under 2 million followers. I don't think it's safe and TikTok. It's all about intentions. Even my friend, she started blowing up on TikTok and she's a midwife and she put out a video that was, I think, a documentary she came that came and filmed and she was in one of the clips in the documentary and she's re posted it and it got millions of views. And, she's grown to like 50,000 followers instantly. I messaged her. I was just like, you've got to prepare yourself when your account sauce to go down, because you've hit it instantly. You got very lucky. I wish you say it's unlucky. Cause she hasn't built up that resilience because now she's just going straight into having faith. For me. It was a bit better because , I mentioned it's six months with no views. My first 15 videos. I didn't really get much views. I got a few thousand views. I was a little bit more used to it, but for her, her second video, just hit instantly. And so it's like, Ooh, when your account goes down, I I was like, just keep putting out content. Don't worry about the views to keep putting out content. That's the way I try to look it up because I just think. You can't go in thinking you're gonna get lots of views. If you do get lots of views. Great. But it's not actually all good. There are always downsides to stuff like that.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 22:11

You hit that perfect on the money. I talked with giselle Ugarte. We talked about the exact same thing about, there's people that are wanting that instant success, but they don't understand what comes with that. My daughter has 2.1 million followers. And I can speak to it because I live with her. I see, I see her content constantly doing this. And when it's down. Mental health issues like crazy she's 19. And of course, you're you get those comments? Cause there's trolls out there. Like your account's dead. You're nobody. Now people say it.

Byron Dempsey: 22:45

The comments and TikTok are the most vicious comments on any platform. I think I just spoke about how great the platform is and how authentic it is. It's also horrible, growing a TikTok account as a grind, it's like a battle. As you mentioned, your account's going to get up and you're going to feel really great is going to go down, do I feel better when my account's going great. Yeah, sure. But I know it's going to go back down. Like it's kind of gone down a little bit now, just last week at a huge growth this morning. It's slowed down a little bit and I just try to stay steady. Just keep post along. Because, yeah, for some reason, why do people say your accounts said, why do they bully you? I think it's out of jealousy and I want to go look and it's just like, I dunno, I've never left a negative comment in my life. I don't understand who these people are. If I see something I don't like, I just scroll. I had my first big hate yesterday. Like someone made a full video about me. Yeah, it sucks. Cause it's like, all I'm trying to do is provide value and help people. I guess that's the reality of when you start to grow profile and TikTok

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 23:32

At 500 followers I had a whole hate account it's crazy how that happens, I just liked all the videos and I put, and these are awesome. That's what I wrote back. Yeah. He was like, and he made comments,

 

Byron Dempsey: 23:47

I guess for me, I don't know. Let's say this who's a big TikTok. I don't know. Addison Ray or something. Obviously she's gotten massive because she's very attractive and she's, I honestly, I'm not even sure she did some dances. She didn't put in, 50 million followers worth of work. she's just blown up. Totally. So I can understand why a lot of people jealous who say it's unfair. Cause yeah, it is unfair. To be honest, it is unfair and all this stuff. Totally understandable. I think she's a bad person. Of course not. She looks lovely. But, and so in my head I was just like, okay, I understand why people get annoyed with that sort of stuff. But for me, who's, putting educational content. I'm not doing anything based on my looks. It's all. Providing value. I'm starting slow. I'm not got millions of followers. I didn't think I'd get that much hate because of it. , but yeah, I still get people who disagree. That's the downside of doing the podcast. +Probably the one downside of doing this strategy is you throw people into the middle of your episode. And I don't have any precursor or understanding of what came before that or what comes after that clip. And so I just throw them in to a 32nd snippet, , and people often leave a comment and if you just watch the next 30 seconds of this episode, we discussed that. It's like, well, what about this? Yeah, we discussed that. It's like, I listened to the full episode. I understand, I don't expect everyone to go listen to the full episode. I think you just gotta understand. If you are trying to grow your brand around anything, you are going to get those negative comments. Another bad part of going instantly viral. You'd haven't built up the mental toughness to deal with those comments. Totally. I'm sure you would have said Phoenix with your daughter, especially at a young age like that. It can be brutal.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 25:05

It is true, but you know what? What's really interesting is I've made a video about what do views really look like? And I showed. A video with people. So I said, if you have 50 views, this is what it looks like with people in a room and it's insignificant, if we were in a room with 50 people, you almost feel a little bit overwhelmed. I tell people, look, stop looking at the views. Yes. He wants those viral videos. But for what? Because I've had a ton of success with reaching out and making great opportunities with people and being able to monetize with deals or getting clients with videos that have had 200 views because the right person was watching. So, you know what I mean? So you have to think about what is it that you're doing? Yes. You have 200,000 followers and Addison Ray has like 70 million followers now, but. What does that mean? Her followers might just like her because of her looks like you said where you have 200,000 people that are really condensed because they know exactly what your niche market is. They know what it is you do. And to me, that's more valuable than having 70 million followers of people that just follow you because you look great

 

Byron Dempsey: 26:16

and like Addison is obviously an extreme example. We could probably flip back. Yeah. It's someone who's got like a million polos or something. but yeah, I a hundred percent agree. I have a friend she's got 16,000 followers on Instagram. She gets 9,000 views per Instagram story. She's got 50% of her followers are watching your story, which is crazy. And so you can honestly, you give someone 200,000 followers who gets about the same amount of views and Instagram story. Yeah. Brands will see the 200,000 followers and go, Oh, I want to work with her. So I look, and there are benefits to having followers in terms of people respect you more like. Look, I hide it, but that's the world we're in, it's a currency. There is a subtle thing where it's like, Oh, he's got followers. He must know what he's talking about and that sort of stuff. but I still post content from, my early episodes where I didn't have a following at all. Yeah. That's the thing. You've just got to focus on yourself. We call it the audience, none concept, which is what would you do to an audience of zero people? so if you were to do something for an audience, Euro people, what would you do for your daughter? It might be, I would dance to an audience of zero people. Cause I just love dancing. Yeah. I think she's a dancer, right?

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 27:15

She is a dancer. Yeah.

 

Byron Dempsey: 27:16

Yeah. Dancer. I would, I would like to think that's an audience, a non concept to her. If you said, just go dance, on a stage with no one watching what'd you do that? Probably because she just loves dancing. So that's a great sign of something that she should pursue for me. Audience, none. I did have an audience. And then with the podcast, I was like, I want to put out this content because I'm that passionate. If I help one person, great, that'd be great way to network and meet cool people. There's so many benefits. There's so many benefits of podcasts. Even if you have zero listeners, so many benefits, we're here because of a podcast. And who knows where this relationship could go. I might never speak to you again after this, or maybe we'll connect you. My, send me someone I'll send you someone. But I like to think, it's been open now because of a podcast. There's so many benefits to doing it when it comes to TikTok. You've just got to start to be honest, get on the platform research. Not competitors, but people within your niche and just start, you start building that muscle, understand the good even they go viral, because if you go viral straight away, you're \ know, be able to tolerate it because it can be hard.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 28:10

Don't get too caught up on the views for one that algorithms are always shifting and changing. I always say focus on the content you enjoy. Like you said, pick content that you would talk for free no matter what. If you posting content, you really love and you'd look at it and you're like, I love this content. Then you're doing something right. You're going to reach the right people. If it grows slow, to me, I agree. I think that's even better because I've actually seen accounts that grown really fast and they've had to stop because they can't handle it. They couldn't, and people are depending on you. Whereas if you grow slow, you can build up and it gives you time to test things without all that. Yeah. No, you can.

 

Byron Dempsey: 28:46

If I say something stupid, I don't get canceled immediately because I don't have a huge following. I probably have said some stupid stuff on the podcast, three episodes, an hour long each or 50 minutes each, I'm sure I've said some stupid stuff before. Slow, steady, consistent growth or slow, steady growth is one of the most beautiful things when it comes to any of the staff. Now, look, obviously if you're going to like one follow a day, that's probably a little bit slow, but like the growth I'm at right now, I'm very happy with. When I repost his video, which is the one you showed earlier on that got me like 30,000 followers or something. I love that hit and stuff, but it's like slow, consistent, steady growth as beautiful. Because as you mentioned, you can predict it. You can maintain, you can split tests, you can find your feeding. So hopefully in that time, while you're finding your feet, you're still growing. Then we get to a point where you are big, you found your feet and you're not going to collapse under the pressure or under whatever's happening.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 29:32

Exactly. I do this as well. Sometimes I'll find an account that I love and I'm like, dang, cause it's easy to compare yourself as well. Oh yeah, you do it right. You're like, dang, they're doing so much better. Or I love what they're doing, but I found a little trick. Most creators on TikTok, especially they don't get rid of their old content. So scroll, even if it's two years old of content, scroll to the bottom and see where they first started, most likely it's not going to be that great. they have no idea what they're doing. They look lost and confused. It's because they've adapted. They've been on the app long enough to learn and learn from their mistakes and talk to more people. +But when people come to the app, they see these great videos and they think that they have to be at that level. You don't have to be perfect . Just start somewhere and try things out. This is the best opportunity to use TikTok is to test content. This is the first short form platform that has really taken off. There's others that are following reels YouTube shorts, snapchat just created their spotlight. Everyone's following in that footsteps because it's going to be the future. So why not start now on a platform? That's going to give you some great organic reach and be able to build an audience slowly and have great conversions when you do make those great videos that finally kick off. There's lots of awesome things. That TikTok is bringing as well. I wanted to ask, because you mentioned something when I was listening to thing, this is great advice for people who are like, where do I start? You said, creating a top 10 list. And I think that's tell me a little bit more about that.

 

Byron Dempsey: 30:59

That was my little, how to create a hundred TikTok ideas in 30 minutes. And it's practical. You create a top 10 list within your niche. So an example for me, top 10 things we should learn in school. So I sit down, what are the top 10 things I should learn in school? Number one, financial management, how do we manage our money or that sort of stuff? Number two, critical thinking. Number three. Basic economic understanding of the four relationships, number five, et cetera, et cetera. So you create that list. Now that's a video age. You can now put your phone top 10 things we shouldn't just go number one, we should learn financial literacy, blah, blah, blah. So that's 10 videos. Now, if you want to take it further, you can do those 10 videos now let's create 10 videos within each of those categories. So number one might be financial literacy. You might go. All right. Top 10 financials, mistakes. Young people make. So you'd be like top 10 financial mistakes, young people make number one, getting a car loan when you're young or number one, blah, blah. Top 10 simple economic hacks. Create top 10 lists within or those and they call them that top 10 list is number one. It's easy for you. Number two. It's good to have numbers in your title because they'll stay or something. Top three things you should underscore. People want to state or C all three. Yep. And this is a very easy way to get on the platform and start putting out content. It doesn't matter what business you have, what space you're in. Everyone can do a top 10 list. It is a great way to do it and highly recommend if you are on the fence or if you're looking to get on the platform.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 32:13

I think a lot of people overthink it. They're like, I don't know what to do. They get overwhelmed by seeing all this content and they don't know where to start. And that's such a great tool. It's funny. I've been doing this a long time. I know TikTok like the back of my hand yet. I still learn so many things every day from new people that are just out there. So one, I'm making a story about my podcast too. I'm going through and making a new top 10 list because I've made one in the past, but I'm going to sit down and really craft one, really hardcore and go through that. And the great thing about it is this is once you do break down and you have a hundred video content ideas, you're going to get a ton more because with that comes. Conversations around it. People are going to ask you questions. People are going to give you new ideas, and now you can reply to comment or somebody might do at you, or you can find videos within that and do it then back. The endless cycle happens once you kick it off like that and put enough content out. I love that feature on TikTok is that reply to comment features.

 

Byron Dempsey: 33:12

That's great. I don't use it enough, to be honest, I should do it more. I did want to say. I think everyone has self-doubt would TikTok. You might see a great point about how, when you see an account and you comparing yourself to their latest videos, if you actually scroll down and see the earlier videos, it's like, Oh, I should be really comparing myself to here because this is where I am. Don't compare your chapter one to their chapter nine. I think that's really important that people. Understand that as well, because like, for me, I mentioned I had a video go really viral early on. I had a lot of self doubt even when I was on like 50,000 followers and stuff, because or my first viral videos were all, not me. It was my guests. It was clips from the guests. And I was like, man, I hope people will actually recognize my name and recognize my brand. Am I actually building the brand? Is my TikTok at account, even that good. Am I just leveraging the guests? And I was, but then over time I've had heaps of our videos with me. Now people have to recognize me and over time. I've built that brand. but even when I was getting lots of views and stuff, I had so much self doubt It's like it wasn't humans. Like what excuse can I find to not be satisfied with this? And so for me, it was like, it's not me doing it. It's the guests that's providing the value. It's not me. People aren't going to recognize me. Now I get heaps of viral videos with, My guest , but with me in it as well. Just keep going. Yeah. Consistency is key.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 34:20

It really is. It's the truth. I think it's really important to be involved in your videos as well. I had a guest on my show who has a really awesome products, our products really, really cool. But she only shows it in her videos and people are like, wow, this is a really cool product, but they can't really follow there's no story there. So I told her, please get involved more that will help your account grow. People will find a face to it. Your guests constantly changed. If you were just to show the guests only, it would be hard to stick with it because it's just constantly changing. People are like, who am I. Relating to, there's all different kinds of personalities here, but when there's a constant, they're constant human being. That's when people can really, I feel like personally, the accounts that I follow always have somebody in it. That's a constant that I'm learning from

 

Byron Dempsey: 35:06

personal brand is the most valuable thing you can build. If you can start young and start building your personal brand, it's always going to be with you. Look at Tesla, why is Tesla worth so much? Because Elon Musk runs it and people believe in him as a visionary. They shouldn't be worth that much. Elon Musk just quit Tesla. The stock would plummet. Yeah. That's all because of personal brand. Right? Exactly. So it's such an important thing.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 35:28

Gary V he's done a great job with his personal brand. Virgin records, Richard Branson has been great being the face and personal branding himself. I made a post today about, your personal brand. Even if you don't have a business and you're a nine to five employee, you still have a personal brand. And yeah, so being out there and making content could land you to your next career at a place because somebody loves what you're doing. I think video is key even if it's your personal brand for yourself, and you'd love being a nine to five employee while you might land the next job because of how great you are on video. I think there's so much opportunities that people can have with TikTok in short form content.

 

Byron Dempsey: 36:08

A hundred percent. Absolutely. I think it's just, it's insane. The opportunity. My account really took a huge hit, around December. I literally couldn't break out of 170,000 followers, I couldn't break out of that 500, which is insane. I normally break out of that in a few hours usually. So I was like, what the hell is going on? I was going to a thousand followers a day. Two weeks ago. I think I lost followers some days. I was like, what the hell I know in my head, I was like, maybe take talks, just changed my account. Educational content is not as good. My videos just aren't as doing as much. And I was like, maybe it's died a bit. Then I had a bit of a wake up was like, no stop making excuses. And I started innovating and added some titles to all my videos and stuff, and now it's picked back up again. My excuse was always new people have joined the platform now there's no organic reach, but it's not true. There's still so much. Yeah. Kind of still so much. Exactly. No, that's cool. Hit 50,000 followers in three weeks. So , there's heaps of potential.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 36:55

I see new people launching all the time and I've seen some accounts that were a little bit stagnant and then we launch again. Because they didn't give up though. That's the key. They stayed consistent and they just were like, Hmm. What videos were working in the past? Let me try to tweak them a little bit. That leads me into my final question, what is your TikTok strategy

 

Byron Dempsey: 37:13

Film a whole podcast. The podcast is great because of your organic moments. Speaking to camera, you've got a planet and stuff. Whereas this podcast, the guests might say something, I'll be like, Oh, that's a great point. And we'll bounce ideas and we'll get into conversations. So you get these cool moments. I cut that up into little small snippets. 30 clips in episode I'll then put them on Google drive and then I'll post those clips to my TikTok. I don't do any trends . I don't use TikTok for TikTok. I just use it as a platform, as a distribution. I think an important thing, if you do want to go out there, it's TikTok has to be a vehicle. It can't be your number one platform. It can't be your only platform because Trump has got rid of it. There's two knows what's going to happen. So for me, TikTok as a vehicle to push people to my podcasts, podcasts, aren't going anywhere. There's multiple different platforms. They're definitely safe. There's only so much value. You can provide it in like a 30, 42nd clip. The people who reach out to me, I get dams all the time from fans of the show. The very rarely do they say, Hey, I love your videos and TikTok, blah, blah, blah. They normally go, Hey, I love your videos and TikTok, or I found you and TikTok. And now I listened to the podcast. So most of the people who reach out to me reach out because they listened to the long form content because that's where they got the real value. And TikTok is a great vehicle for me. Now, that being said, I probably have, tens of thousands of people who say, I love that podcast. That's a great podcast. We've never actually listened to it because I've just seen it through TikTok. Right. That's my strategy. Long form content strategy, take one piece of long form content. Cut it up into little small bites, leverage that. Why are you more time? Efficient might not be as effective, for every one video you can post, I can post 10 and one of those 10 will probably hit. So that's my strategy. Throw enough mud on the wall and one will stick.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 38:38

I have a client that I work with and his name is Misha Panchisak. He runs,Winni design seaters construction on TikTok, and he's at 1.8 million followers now, but his whole strategy in the beginning was I'm just going to post the heck out of things. I'm just going to try things and post them. And he still does that strategy. He posts 10 videos a day. He's been able to grow in his community is so strong just because he's just doing all sorts of stuff and having fun with it. I always tell people that TikTok is really cool in that way, where you can post more like on other socials. It's almost looked at as spammy. If you post more than one, but on TikTok, you can post more. It's not looked at as spammy, which is so cool. So you have the ability to just try that.

 

Byron Dempsey: 39:24

I actually want to experiment doing 10 videos a day. I have the content. It's just, there's so much drama creating drafts. Like that's a lot of work, but I do wanna experiment with it. I'm like, well, I know people, how will it go? So maybe that's something I need to try right now. I'm only posting probably two or three times a day, even though I have enough content to be posting way more, I've just outsource my video editing. as soon as TikTok relates to scheduling feature, I'm going to be all over that. Oh man. And I did it to release one on the desktop. I can't add music there. I can't add my titles there. So it's like dammit, but it's a good sign once I can schedule. Well, it's going to be huge for me. I think like right now I'm just, I'll forget, I'll be out all day and be like, I haven't posted a TikTok. Whereas this, I could do TikTok every two hours. Just bang, bang, bang, and just sit down for a day. Just schedule them all for a month or something. .+ Kyle Kaplanis: Oh, that'd be so nice. Exactly. You can take a little bit of a break. Yeah. Do you want to take a week off? Right. I often get distracted by that. I'll go post a TikTok and I'll jump on it and suddenly bang 20 minutes, I'm scrolling and I'm like, ah, it breaks my flow. I think that'd be really cool. I'm really keen for when to do that. I can't wait.

Kyle Kaplanis: 40:21

That's going to be a game changer for sure. For so many creators. Where can people find you Byron? How can they connect with you.

 

Byron Dempsey: 40:26

If you want to check on my TikTok account and says Byron Dempsey, so B Y R O N D M P S E Y. Same on all my other handles Byron underscore underscored to MC for Instagram. But if you just search my name, my podcast is called driven young podcast, or you've just driven young. And if you search that on Google anywhere, if you search my name, all the podcast, everything will pop up. If you want to message me Instagram, a way to go and actually messaged me on my personal account, I'd take eight hours to respond to my driven young account.

 

Kyle Kaplanis: 40:53

Everybody definitely go check, check out. Byron's driven young podcast. He's doing amazing things over there and you have to go follow him on TikTok to see how he's taking his podcasts and turning it into this amazing video empire there. If you're listening to it on the podcast, you'll be able to go to the show notes and find all the links to Byron's information, be able to follow him and be able to go subscribe to his show. Byron, I appreciate the time man. It's been awesome. There was a lot of value here, for people to learn from. So thank you,

 

Byron Dempsey: 41:20

dude I had a lot of fun. Thanks so much for having me on.