01:18  Hey, welcome back to the show. And today I'm super stoked to have Christian with us. Christian, tell us who you are and what do you do?  

01:26 Todd, thank you very much for having me. So I'm Christian Brown, 26 years old. Um, and I'm the co founder and head of marketing at Glewee. And so with that comes quite literally 1 million and 1 responsibilities, uh, that I focus on all day long and I enjoy every single minute of it and love all the work that we're putting out. 

01:47 All right, literally 1 million. You said literally, so I got to know, do you like have like a click up list of like a million and then one tasks that you're doing or what, what do you got to go on here? 

01:56 Oh, absolutely. I mean like everything from all general marketing, SEO product, um, email, social, organic, earn paid. All sorts of media and strategy. Um, it'll all flow through me. So yes, um, organization is quintessential to actually getting all of this done. But I think that that is really just the true thesis of the startup.  

02:21 Love it. Well, being that you are a marketing company to be CMO of a marketing company. Means that you are likely involved in a lot of operational things of the company. Walk us through this. Like, what does your company do? What is Glewee? What problem are you guys trying to solve? Give us a, give us a brief backstory on what, where you're at. 

02:41 Absolutely. So Glewee is an end to end influencer marketing platform. So with that in mind, what we've done is we've created a true marketplace. With that comes two sides. We have our brands. So think brands, businesses, agencies on one side. On the other side, we have influencers. So content creators, influencers that specialize in creating content on Tik TOK on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, et cetera. Um, so with that, what we do is we've created our platform and it is a tool. And a tech engine essentially to power all ways that brands can not only find the right pre vetted influencers for their brand, but connect with them, chat and collaborate with them, sign contracts with them, and then execute the entirety of an influencer marketing campaign in multiple parts, all in our platform. And once the brand and creator have created these campaigns, they've launched content to social media, promoting the brand's products or services, everything down to the data. The sales, the ROI, it's all tracked in our platform for brands to see so that every brand, whether they're a startup or an SMB brand, all the way up to enterprise, they can do influencer marketing fast, easy, and affordable. 

03:49 Love it. Okay. That, that,  that sounded like you wrote that all out and read it, but I know you didn't like, this is something you say a lot, like that's a lot to pack in there. And, and there's a lot to this because a lot of people listening to this, they have either dabbled in social media, influencer marketing, or they know that they want to, and they don't know how to do it. And I'm guessing the most, the reason most people don't myself included  is that it's weird. It's like, How do you do the contracting? Like, how do I even find these people? How do I connect someone on DMS and just say, you know, if I hit a hundred people on DMS and say, Hey, would you be willing to talk about my business? They're going to be like, yeah, whatever. You've got 20 followers, right? I mean, like this is a big deal. So how do you, how did you kind of, uh, formulate that whole end to end strategy? And how does it help people like me? The old guys.  

04:42 Oh yeah. We can dive all the way in. So from a historical level, right? Talking backwards and we are about 17, 18, I was working through some online brands that I have started. Um, and primarily in the e com space and I was spending a lot of time working between Massachusetts where I grew up, New York, um, Chicago, where I went to school and Los Angeles, like bouncing around a lot, primarily with people that I had met online on social media 

05:07 As a 17 year old?

05:08 17, 18 is when it really started, then 18, 19, 20 is when like we were really like, really moving around. 

05:13 Okay, you just, you just glossed over that so quick that like, let's just let that sink in for a second. Okay, he's 17, 18, he's already traveling between Boston, New York and LA. Negotiating relationships with social media influencers. All right. All right. That's great.  05:29 Thank you. At that time, it wasn't really as like formal, right. As it sounds, it was more like all of our friends were really starting to take off online. And these were just friends of ours, whether we met them on Instagram, whether we met them in real life. And it was kind of, everyone is navigating this space accordingly. So,  I'm 26 now that we're talking. Yeah, eight years ago. And so this is like pre TikTok. Um, so this is just Instagram and YouTube were the primary socials. Twitter existed. Facebook was on its way out. And so at that time, people were really figuring out like, okay, as a younger person, how do I monetize my following? How do I get these big deals? And then how do I manage it? Um, and so that's where I met. One of my best friends, Dylan, um, and he had mentioned, he's like, you know, he was doing a lot of the management as well. And we're kind of looking at it and saying, all right, there's a lot of moving pieces to this, right? There's contract, right? Communications. There's the business acumen that goes into chatting with a representative at a brand that wants to pay you 20,000. Right? A lot of younger people that are specialized in creating content online. They may not have all of that in their toolkit. And so we looked at that and, you know, throughout the university experience, I spent a lot of time with  our group and really learning how to like navigate this space. And then, um, at the beginning of COVID, which was my, at the end of my senior year of college, Dylan,  Um, was in that group, he had messaged me and said, um, you know, I think that we should really start something in the tech space like this. And, you know, I was actually 22, he was 21. I said, well, we have a lot of time on our hands starting today, um, with the news that was going online. And then we started our platform. And so like the essence of the platform really is to take everything that is manual on both the brand and influencer side, really re identify it, um, and then create a technological solution. To simplify it at scale. Um, so like I mentioned, and even how you mentioned, right. Brands. Businesses looking for influencers. They don't know necessarily where to start. And they certainly didn't many years ago at this time, there weren't a lot of social media teams at big companies or influential marketing managers running big orgs, like this was a newly developing space. And so. We wanted to create a platform so simple that quite literally my grandmother understands it and knows how to use it. And now my grandmother actually knows everything about our company. Whereas for a while, it took a lot of learning. 

07:52 That's so awesome. But pause right there. Pause right there. Because I just want to, I just want to, uh, draw a parallel because this is so awesome. I love the way you're telling the story and I love your story because  flashback to 1999, that's when I graduated college. And, and that's when I was like,  You know, that's literally when the. com boom was happening. And it was like, companies were thinking, do I need a webpage or can I just, can I just ignore that for now? And, and you made this an initial, in your initial like description, there was like, this is pretty tiktok. And I was like, I just had this thought of like, this is pretty internet, you know? And it's like, there's literally these funny parallels, but I got to tell you, like back in that time too, it was like, how do I explain what I do? To my in laws, how do I explain what I do to my grandma? And, and I had these exact same conversations with business leaders of that time. And so I love your story because it's, it resonates really, really loud me with me. And I think that that's what, uh, You know, you and I have met now a couple of times, and I think that what resonates is that you're this young, aggressive CEO or CMO, a co founder of a business selling the new stage of tech, whereas I was in the same boat with a couple of partners. Launching some tech related businesses at the time, stressing about the Y2K problem. And you're now stressing about TikTok shutting down two days ago. And like, where do we go from here in case this happens again? You know what I mean? Like, this is so fun. So just keep on going. But I just had to draw that parallel. 

This is a, this is a very cool thing. And for those listening, uh, Christian is an example of, of what. We need more of in this gen Z generation of like, how do we, how do we create these, these, uh, entrepreneurial mindsets and the enablement to do what you're doing, Christian. This is not something most kids do. And so even though everyone's aware of the industry, you're building right now. You are actually doing it. And so kudos to you and your partner. And I just, I just want to give you a pat on the back of like, dude, I love this. And for those listening, if you're not just aggressively going after a skill set or a thing that you know how to do and put a package on it, figure it out and do it. So Christian, keep going, man. I love, I love where you're going with this, dude. I just wanted to give you some kudos there. 

10:05 Thank you very much, Todd. Very well said. And I think actually this is a good time. So I'm going to actually wrap where we're at in the story into what you said. So you mentioned the dot com era, right? Which I've studied extensively. And with that, people had to look at it and say, do we need a webpage? And I think that, like you mentioned, I was 1999. Um, if this makes you feel any better, I was 1-year-old. Um, and so  now it makes me feel worse. I got a baby one year younger than you. So when we look at like the timeline of what happened in the.com era, right? We think back to 2004, 2006, when Facebook was started, 2008 to 12, when the Facebook ad library came out. Then came YouTube. YouTube, yeah. or no, then yeah, in the Google YouTube era, right? And like then the conglomerate started, and then social media as an entity really. grew and began, um, we had the fall offs. Like we had Tumblr that came and went a lot of the blog era that kind of got outdated, then came Instagram and then Facebook bought them for a billion dollars right now is Snapchat, all those, but like when we think about it, right. And how myself as like a GenZ native, when I think about a brand or a business. Right back in the dot com era, people would say, do we need a website? And then eventually everyone needs a website, right? It's, it's a, it's an afterthought. You need it right now for a Gen Z consumer like myself and hundreds of millions of others, everyone goes first and foremost to social media. And so social media. All of the social media pages, a brand or a business's Instagram page, they're now TikTok, right? And how it's linked to their brand. All of that needs to be cohesive with the brand, the brand identity, the messaging framework, et cetera. Um, and so now that everyone is very. Acknowledging of the social media, the necessity of social, I should say. Now people are really kind of waking up to the idea of what we need to have this social media presence. We need influencers behind it to really amplify it, to add fuel to the fire. And we need a strategy around it. Um, and so years ago we really sat down and said, We know that every brand is going to need influencer marketing. And then we looked at the marketing, the true concept of like the pieces of the pie in marketing. There's out of home, there's traditional, there's digital. Within digital, there's meta ads, there's search ads, there's however you want to slice it. If you want to pay for newsletters, you want to be placed here, do that. We looked at that and we said, we are confident, and this is when we were 22 and 21 years old, we are confident that in years time, in a couple years, Everyone will be looking at the marketing mix and the digital marketing channels and having influence marketing in there. Fast forward a couple of years, 26 billion industry as it stands right now, and only set to grow exponentially.And so going back to where we were starting is we looked at that and said, we want a platform that is made for the SMB, that small to mid sized brand that's coming out of their startup era. Not Coca Cola, right? Coca Cola is a true enterprise company. And they know what they're doing. They do. Right. And they can build a team up that is going to power this on their own. We want the company three tiers down that aspires to be like Coca-Cola. We want to empower them with the ability to, for a reasonable price, right. And with good technology, find the right influencers to reach an audience, the size of a Coca Cola post. But an influencer and that's where, you know, that's where it really began is, is empowering others through the technology to do that.And over the course of the last few years, we've been able to do it. Um, and you know, as I say, 

13:28 I love it. 

13:29 Sometimes it's almost frightening to think back on that, but you know, we've been able to do that in full force in our marketplace that we've created. Uh, it's incredible. And then it's, it's truly a machine. And we talk about it like a flywheel, right? The more brands, the more campaigns, which means the more influencers, which means the more social media posts. And as that flywheel rotates, you know, 360 degrees, it's up to us as the operators of the business to scale that up and continue to ensure that this marketplace is working. Around the clock, which you know, that's, that's our goal. 

13:58 captainscouncil.com

15:36 You know, a big deal to me as a, as a Gen X or we kind of grew up with this stage of like really building the, the, uh, statistics and the numbers around like, okay, every click does a what sense to call to action, which does a what it triggers that they landed on the offer page, which then triggers that they purchased or they left or they did whatever, right? Like, like, we have this whole, like, we were kind of the, the, the generation that developed that whole reporting. Uh, sequence,  how do you report? Like, what is the, what is the process behind, like, I get that you're building this whole contractual relationship, you're getting people to mention, you're getting people to post, like, how does the, is it still kind of the same using the same metrics? Are you converting, are you tracking like clickthroughs? Are you tracking, like, what can you do to track those metrics? And how do you measure a successful campaign with a social media influencer versus say. An email campaign. 

16:33 Yeah. A brilliant question. So when we think about social, right, it is a funnel, like everything. Um, social media and influencer marketing is a new form of a funnel. And so traditionally we have TikTok at the top of the funnel and then, then. Middle of the funnel is more Instagram. And then the bottom of the funnel is where you're getting people's email. You're doing newsletter, really that own channel. So when we think about it, um, we think about it like a brand awareness machine. And so when we use influencers on TikTok, let's say we do a larger scale campaign or a brand comes on and do it. What first and foremost, we look at the brand awareness level and we say, what did we do from an impression, a likes, a comments and a share portion. So we collect all that data per post. It's updated every hour. It's shown on our dashboard. And then the idea is to get that content out in the world. Now, a good campaign, right? Typically in the e com space is one that has true goals. Like you just mentioned, a lot of times it's to drive the sale. So what we do is we actually partner with Shopify. So we have an integration with Shopify. So any brand built on Shopify, what we're able to do. Is allow for the brands to sync their Shopify e-commerce store. Okay. Now, through our platform, when they work with, let's say I'm working with you, Todd, I can through the platform, give you Todd 10, Todd 20, whatever it is, a discount. Now, when you're creating that content and posting it, let's say you get a hundred thousand impressions, all that data on our dashboard. But what we're looking for is the ROI element. 'cause I know that I paid you $250 for the post. Now, all the ROI and the sales generated from those discount codes via the post, those are all generated on the platform as well. And so not only are we able to boost this brand awareness machine, that's part one, part two, we're able to drive sales and track those and part three, what we have, which Very much differentiates us is we have, what's called our, our content licensing rights. So when a brand and an influencer work together and the influencer makes content for the brand, all that content is submitted through our platform and approved through our platform. Once that content is approved, think a 15 second ad or a 30 second video. The content is going on the creator's social media page, but with our platform, we actually manage the licensing rights of that content and we give that to the brand. So every piece of content that's created by the influencers is owned in perpetuity by the brands. And then what we do is we actually are training a lot of the brands up to teach them, Hey, you just got 10 pieces of content from these influencers. Let's use some of those in your paid ads. Let's put them on your website. Let's put them in your social media. Let's start to integrate. 

19:07 Because if they do a story and, and it's, it's gone in 24 hours, right? I mean, that, that's a. Yeah. That's beautiful. Okay. I love that. 

19:18 Yeah. And so what we do really is a lot of businesses will come to us and say, we need new ads. And then the ads that the influencer is creating, what is called UGC, which is an acronym for user generated content. Those ads it shows real people like you and I using real products those perform three to four hundred percent better than any static Static or animation ad so we have companies that will come to us They're able to drop their cost per acquisition on their ads by hundreds of percents within a day because they're using real people Talking about real brands and real products. And so there's a lot of layers to the influencer marketing onion, you could say. Um, and you know, we, as a team and as a platform are doing everything we can to not only peel them back, but to educate. New brands, existing brands and future brands on how to best do this. 

20:05 I love it. Now, this is really, really cool stuff. And for those listening, if you haven't dabbled or haven't made the move to jump into an influencer marketing campaign, now is the time. I mean, this really is, it's an established thing now. It's not this, uh, go out and figure it out on your own type thing. Uh, companies like Glewee and I, I highly recommend you talk to Christian about using Glewee for your marketing campaign. I, I know I'm preparing. Both myself and for two clients of mine, I'm trying to prepare some campaigns to test with. And it's fascinating. Like this is a, this is a world that a traditional marketer like myself have known that we need to do it, but we haven't engaged yet because it was just too loosey goosey. And so what you're doing with Glewee is, is connecting those dots and making it feel like it's a legit marketing campaign instead of just some, Hey dude, you want to say my name and I'll send you 20 bucks or I'll, you know, whatever, like on a conversion. This is legit. So, so looking back at the growth of Glewee, like,  like you, you now are several years into the business, at least five years officially, you know, three years prior to that kind of figuring it out. But now that you've been officially operating as a business, what would you say, looking back has been one of your key, uh, decisions that you've made to kind of get you to where you're at today. Yeah. And where do you see it taking you moving forward?  

21:28 So I'd say from, right. Like, cause we have our brands and our influencer side. And with that different messaging, different marketing, different placements, the whole marketing mix is changing. So when we focus on brand, like, and we look back, uh, I think what really worked for us was our.  Punch to go towards the SMBs. So when you think about like originally, right. When you sit back and think who, as we were building this, who wants to do influence the marketing, you think about your Cokes, your Pepsi, your Sephora, these big companies that have all the budget. And then we looked back at ourselves. We took a moment to look in the mirror and we said. But we are not the agencies that can get in front of them. We, we want to create something for, like I mentioned, those companies that are calibers below them that aspire to be like them. And I think for us, we took an avenue that we wanted to go for the SMB, the small business, and we wanted to give them those tools. And so what we did is we created our messaging framework, right? Because at our core, like a mission internally and externally is we want to make  The marketplace that is fast, easy, and affordable for influencer marketing. That's what it is. So being able to go after the small businesses really shift how our platform looks and how it works and how it feels and all our messaging and marketing, positioning it towards the small businesses, we are one of them. We are a small business, we are a platform, we are growing, we are doing this for the other small businesses that want to do it. And I think it was an incredible  moment of growth for us because when it really started to work, we saw over 5,500 small businesses join our platform last year. And just being able to position ourselves as the go to for small businesses. It really worked. Um, and it was,  it was incredible. I mean, we were over the moon. We still are. Uh, and like, as we scale that up, we are going for the enterprise client because. That's not who we are, right? We want to build small businesses and then we want to go middle market and we want to serve the enterprise client. But first and foremost, we want to empower those that know they're not at that level with the tools they need to build their brand to that level. 

23:35 Very cool. Very cool. Okay. So, so for you looking at enterprise, you're like, yeah, it would be cool, but we're not quite there yet ourselves. So how can we really speak their language? You're looking at the small startups thinking, okay, like a lot of small startups are thinking though. Okay. Wait a second though. I'm, I'm a, I'm a small town company. How would social media influencing work for me  versus someone that's got a national brand or can operate in 50 States or can do these types of things? Like how do you, how do you sell that to someone who's a plumber? Who's a. He's an independent coffee shop owner. Who's a whatever, like how does that work on a local geographic targeting level? 

24:16  So what we like to do primarily is we like to go for products. So e-commerce is really like a space that, that we based on the tracking we talked about earlier. So I like to kind of gear that towards the e commerce brand owner. Um, so let's say that you've built a product and it's a product you're very passionate about. And let's say you're getting into distribution, you're in one store, you're in a couple of stores, you have your online store, you have your social medias. What we like to do with them is, you know, we're able to say to them, well, our platform starts at 99 a month to access the platform, the 15, 000 influencers, the infrastructure, et cetera. And marketing with us starts at a hundred dollars per post. So instead of going out and spending thousands and thousands of dollars on a marketing agency that is going to create meta ads for you, that are going to be 110 per thousand views, right? A CPM. We say, well, why don't we start. by getting a few influencers for a hundred, 250, $300 each. Let's get that content for you. Yeah, and let's use it everywhere. Like I talked about earlier, that  UGC, 

25:17 I love this. Yeah, 

25:18 put the content on your website. Let's have those influencers write you reviews. Let's start to build your brand and show real people using it. And the small businesses, they come back to us and they say. We are able to elevate our brand tenfold because now people come to our website, our landing pages, our checkout pages, and they see people like them using the product. And so,  you know, where that, that's really where we start is there, um, going to exactly your question, the smaller, more experience based, um, or service based companies, we really look for. Those that have the ability to scale national, just because influencer marketing, it's very national based just because like the echo chamber is huge. Um, yeah. So, I mean, there are ways on TikTok that you can geofence and hyperlocate based on like micro influencers and their niche locational following. But we really like to operate. We like to work best with brands. It makes sense. That have the scale. 

26:15  It makes sense. All right. So, so the key decisions that you made was to a really understand your avatar, right? I mean, is that, is that kind of what we're saying here is that you've really kind of come to know that like. Okay. We're looking for these growth stage. We're looking for these people that are really want to become what we want to become. We want to grow with them. Uh, is that, is that kind of one of your key decision that you feel like you can, uh, attribute to the growth so far? 

26:37 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, understanding our customer and building something for them. I think that, that, you know, that made us who we are, not only as people, as a team, but also as a business. 

26:49 Right. So 5,500 acquisitions last year. What do you, what do you envision being able to do this year in 2025?  And what are you changing? Are you changing anything? 

27:00 Yeah. So, I mean, we've even, we've reshifted our like internally, like our rep models or acquisition strats, um, the entirety of our onboarding flows and everything. So we're actually looking to go  to be more hyper focused on the brands and the industries that we know best. Right. And I'll just fire them off lifestyle, health and wellness, beauty, cosmetics, um, fitness.. Supplements, right? Those are kind of top six that we specialize in. So we want to look for brands that are hyper focused in those industries and we want to scale up. We want  2000 or so really, really, really scalable brands that are going to be able to use influencer marketing in an amazing way this year. We want them to be not only on our platform, but active on our platform, using the platform daily, engaging in influencer marketing, definitely weekly slash monthly and scale with them.  

27:50 Cool. Very cool. All right. This is really, really awesome. So, so how, how does this relate to YouTube? Just for the, the ones that want to know, like. I know that you talked about, which I thought was interesting at top of funnel being a ticktock and middle funnel being more of an Instagram, uh, influencer.  It's so funny because my whole, like, ever since social came out, top of funnel was always just social. And now you're, now you're like digressing into like, okay, let's dive a little deeper. Actually, Instagram, you know, this is really cool conversation for me as a marketer, but as a business owner. You know, for years, we've always kind of understood that social is there and it's like a post today gone tomorrow, you know, because it is generally like it disappears, whereas YouTube is more of a, a platform where it's a searchable, like it's the second largest search engine in the world,  uh, owned by the largest. And, and now you've got this searchable content piece that is. Always there.  Are you, are you working with companies and brands to take the content produced for these top of funnel applications and trying to kind of keyword them into something that can be more searchable, findable on YouTube, or is that even part of the strategy or is that something you're expecting them to do on their own? Or have you thought about that far ahead just to say, Hey, it would be smart YouTube piece.  

29:12 So, there's a bunch of ways like we could go at this one. I'd say that I do want to challenge your original statement. So yes, YouTube run by Google is one of the, it's probably the second largest search engine owned by the number one, completely correct. But as we look at how social is changing and evolving, TikTok is actually number three right now in the true ranking. Is that right? For a Gen Z audience data will show GenZ and millennials are going to TikTok to search for a product or service before they're going to YouTube in 20, at the end of 2024, this report came out. So that will only become more amplified in 2025. So,

29:50  I believe that I believe that I was on a trip with my, with my 18 year old last summer, and we were looking up things to do in the place we were at. And she went to TikTok for anything else. So I,  I, I validate that as a GenX.

30:05  I think what we need to talk about here is like the idea of content and these two forms of content. There's long form content and there's short form content. Long form content is anything over three minutes, primarily on YouTube, right? Where people are sharing vlogs or sharing experiences. They're teaching you something, right? It's a very one to one experience how you and I are talking one to one.  Something like a TikTok or an Instagram reels. They're traditionally. Sub 60 seconds, but it's really categorized as zero seconds or like one second to three minutes. That's like short content. Short form content is where people are searching because they want these quick hits, right? It's kind of like when you're eating and you're really hungry. You want something quick, right? They want that quickly digestible bite sized piece of content on either Instagram or on TikTok. And YouTube is going to do this with YouTube Shorts as well. I have short shorts, but people, yeah, people are really quick, searchable things. And so all the social media platforms are these new engines of search within the platform themselves that all connect back to Google. So I think that, to answer your question, people need to not only be focusing their SEO and how their brand is positioned and marketable through social on just YouTube. I think YouTube is for sure the strongest because of their Google and their 99 percent domain authority, but on TikTok, on Facebook, on Instagram, making sure that your brand appears everywhere. So all of your social media accounts having the same at name, having very similar bios, having your Business in your description of your bio, having a link in your bio to your landing page, making sure all these are like interconnected and linked will allow you to exist not only on social, but on search for social. And these are great ways. If you're a new company or you're a local company, get out there. Get your social media set up because from an SEO perspective, Google is looking for authority. And if all five of the big social medias are pointing your name back to your socials, your brand starts to become more authoritative because Google started to rank it. It's free backer. It's, it's, it's an incredible way to exist in a whole new paradigm of search. Within the layer of search.

32:14 Christian, I love this conversation and I feel bad that I haven't, I haven't taken this down the normal path because I'm so curious about the product and the service you guys providing. And I apologize because I, I really wanted to tell your story. I mean, 5, 6 years in business as a 26 year old is a fun story to tell. And, uh, and I've been, I've just been diving into the product because I think so much of, of what you're doing is so misunderstood by, by people of the older generations. And, and so I appreciate this. I hope I haven't like ruined the format here in any way. And for those of you listening, I hope you do check out Glewee because it really is, uh, as I'm starting to learn more about it, I'm very, uh, you know, intentional about how I market. And I really want to delve into this a lot more for me personally and my brands and things I'm doing, uh, and for clients. And so. So I apologize, but this is fantastic, really good content, but I do want to touch on that a little bit, uh, Christian, because you, you are, um, you are young and there's a lot of young people who are very hesitant to feel like they can start a business or they don't feel like they can. Like move into being an employer and having employees and building teams and stuff like that  Where where are you at in that and how do you feel like you've you've grown over the last five years of operationally? Building and establishing a footprint as a business owner as opposed to just an idea on social.

33:44 Yeah, uh, oh, I mean, wow. I could walk you down. I say memory lane, but it really isn't memory lane because I feel like, you know, 

33:48 You're actively in it. 

33:49 Yeah. Yeah. So I,  my life is really broken down into two years of four. So like the best year, the most important years of my life for high school, right? It was the most foundational. It was the most. Uh, changing it, it may be who I was, maybe the learner and the educator and et cetera, who I am. Then I went over to college, right. Where's where I was very challenged academically, where like, it was very rigorous. It was very, it was all advertising, all marketing. And then after that, this four year period, and I always call this my, my real life MBA. And so we are all getting our MBA because we're learning. 

34:21 For sure, I felt that way on my first business outta college too. It was just so much learning

34:26 not, not only from our advisors and the senior leaders we have around us, but also from each other and as people and interpersonally and building teams. Like we've gone through the highs and the lows and we for sure jumped up in the air. You know, I've sat with my hands in my face crying at my desk, right? Like we've done it all and I, I think you don't really get that like a. You know, a very standard job where you have like a beautiful salary and everything else. Um, but I think that as a person, right. And as a team, we've grown tenfold over this experience. If I went back in time and spoke to who we were years ago, I would, I'd say the same thing, right. I'd say like, just keep going, right. Just keep building and have, you know, it's going to be really fun, but yeah, there's highs, there's low. I mean, we've stepped up our organization North of 30 people. We've cut that back down. We've gone through. Um, scale, we've gone through the fights, we've gone through acquisition being great and not great. And like moments in time that I remember wanting to pull my hair out, um, and like, I was just so stressed. Right. But like that all makes us who we are. And I think that that journey and that ride, right, it has matured us, um, and myself. I've just become a better person. I've become like a better leader to myself, intrinsically, extrinsically. I've been able to really just identify, you know, goals in life and know what it's like to reach them, because it's not like we have a big company around us that if we personally don't reach the goals, the goals are still met. It's up to us. It's led by us. It's driven by us. And, and the idea of collaboration and teamwork, like if you don't pull your weight. The weight doesn't get pulled and we have a lot of weight on that wagon to pull. So we all work around the clock to, to bring it to life. And you know, it really boils down to, it's the same spark and dedication and energy we had from day one. Like that hasn't gone out one bit amongst any of us.  Right, right. Well, this has been refreshing, you know, in all honesty, I love this conversation.

36:13  I love, I love, I love what your business is doing and I love how you've built your business. And I will say it's refreshing in that. You know, a lot of Gen Xers will joke because, you know, we grew up drinking out of, out of hoses and we, we did, you know, stupid stuff. We, we were the last pre internet people that existed on the earth. And, uh, and so we, we joke a lot that, you know, millennials were just kind of like this pampered handheld device holding generation and they were, but they, they've gotten stronger as they've gotten older. I feel like Gen Z, uh, to me  has a lot of unique people like you. And I would say most of my kids fall into the same bucket where they really want to explore the, the world that Gen X was in and they want to just explode with stuff the same way. They have a different energy than some, some different peoples. And so I love what you're doing. I love the energy you bring. And I think it's so cool to listen to you describe your journey. And, uh, I hope it impacts some of the listeners here, because there's a lot of people in your, in your age group, in your generation who are trying to figure out what am I going to be when I grow up and, and it's not the way it used to be you don't even, you know, I'm guessing none of what you're doing and learning right now in the last 4 year segment you referred to. Is anything you learned about in college because they don't teach you that in college,  but it is stuff that you got to learn in life. And so I, I'm fascinated. I enjoy this conversation. And, and honestly, um, again, one more plug. I mean, I'm going to use Glewee for a campaign that I'm already thinking of right now. And I, I'm, I've just been in the back of my head thinking about the whole conversation for those of you that are thinking about in the back of your head to make sure you reach out, give it a shot. And, and let's see where we can go with this, because. It is the next internet. It is the next www. Like, what do I do? Um, social influencer marketing is dominant. And if we learn anything from the 2024 election, it is more powerful than media. It is more powerful than TV. It is more powerful than Facebook. It is this next egg that we need to land in to really propel our brands forward.

38:34 I love it. I couldn't have said that better. And just to close out, right, if anyone's listening, in order to join our platform, you can go to gluee. com that's G L E W E E. com and you can sign up for a free trial of our platform where you will enter, you'll have full access to the platform. You're able to launch campaigns, find influencers you want to work with. You will be Tom time bound.  We'll onboard you. We'll teach you how to do it. And we will hold your hand every step of the way to find the right influencer for your brand. And you can start doing influencer marketing at just a hundred dollars per campaign and collaboration, all the way up to 10,000, a hundred thousand dollars. We will work with any budget possible, because what we want to do is bring influencer marketing to that next wave of businesses and really allow for it to scale and grow exponentially. Cause Todd, like you said, it is the new era of social media and it's the new way people discover products, services, ideas. Emotions and have fun. 

39:27 And you're not held back by stupid algorithms. You are tapping into someone else's algorithm. 

39:34 You're using someone else's algorithm who at the end of the day is still subject to the algorithm. So I'm not, yes.

39:39  Right, right, right. But I mean, your, your ad is not suppressed because he didn't add the right keyword. Like it, you're being, you're being, you're being influenced by people who know the algorithm, know their audience and know how to get to them. Whereas you like me, who the Gen Xers who don't understand how to do that the right way. These guys do. And they, they're already there. And so they're just bringing your brand into the spotlight that they're already basking in. So, I love it. 

40:04 Reaching a million eyeballs, quite literally, has never been easier.  

40:07 Ah, love it. Okay, Christian, thank you for taking the time to do this and for those listening, honestly, this has been so educational for me. I know it is for a lot of you listening. So tap in, buckle up and, and test some campaigns out. This is so easy. Thanks so much, Christian. 

40:22 Todd, thank you very much.