How We Built a 7-Figure "OnlyFans" Agency (Without Adult Content)

Sean Weisbrot: Welcome back to another episode of the We Live To Build podcast. This is episode one 19 with Chris Wong. Chris Wong is the co-founder of Scarlet International, a marketing and PR firm that specializes in helping key online influencers based in Asia. We call them KOLs. So why don't you tell everyone a little bit about it?

Sean Weisbrot: The mission for Scarlet and, the different ways in which you help your clients, and we can go from there.

Chris Wong: Hi Sean. Pleasure to be on your podcast, with Scarlet International. As you've mentioned before, we work with key online influencers, KOLs per, per se. And what we typically do is take them global.

Chris Wong: We operate their personal subscription platforms for them. We devised media strategies for them to create fundamental ways on how they can initially go global and actually earn global revenue that makes them a full-time professional. KOL.

Sean Weisbrot: When I was first doing my research into you, so basically I had posted something on helper reporter, which is how I normally find great people like you.

Sean Weisbrot: And one of the first things I do before I decide whether or not to reach out to someone to talk about a potential podcast episode is I'll look at their LinkedIn, I'll look at their website, I'll get a feel for, is this someone who's really generating seven figures a year? And is this a topic? Is this something that they're doing that we could talk about?

Sean Weisbrot: No joke. I went to your website, Scarlet dot VV ip. I saw the OnlyFans logo and I was like, I don't know if I want to touch this thing because I, for people who've been following my content for a while, you would know that I've never really touched anything that is risque or. just something that isn't family friendly, and I know from talking with you that that's not what you guys do.

Sean Weisbrot: so I wanted to give you a chance to really quickly just explain kind of the focus and, and how you look at it and, and why you look at it that way.

Chris Wong: Sure. That's absolutely, I think a very great topic to go on because, first and foremost, a lot of people look at our website or hear about us or look at our services and like you said, the first thing that they see is the OnlyFans logo or fans or any other platform that may be somewhat associated with.

Chris Wong: Adult content. And what I'm very proud to say is that at Scarlet, nobody that works with us does adult content, not just because of regulation, but actually within our contracts itself. We definitely don't allow any sort of this kind of behavior and when we work with these content creators. Right. if you're on OnlyFans and you're posting sexualized content.

Chris Wong: Everybody knows you can make a ton of money, but then that's not really content per se. There is a lot of negative stigma in regards to this aspect. And when we typically find content creators in Asia, especially in Taiwan, Malaysia, or even Korea, a lot of these KOLs, you know, what we typically see is that their fans are more than willing to pay for their content.

Chris Wong: And this, this kind of content is typically what's already seen on their Instagrams. And so with that being said, what we have done is been able to monetize this for them and we've been able to create substantial revenue this way overall. And speaking about, you know, working with content creators who may be, you know, doing all the content, we typically don't accept that whatsoever.

Chris Wong: However, the content creators we typically choose to work with. We have a very rigorous selection process. And this process does narrow down, you know, whether they have done adult content in the past. Are they inclined to do so? Typically one of the key indicators we look at when we work with A KOL is we see what kind of content potential they have, not just how much revenue potential they have, we really care about them being able to create content per se, and actually generate revenue based on these contents.

Chris Wong: A particular case study I could potentially give you here is that one of our content creators that we worked with, her previous agency, was trying to market her as a sexy KOL. But we thought we looked more in depth into her interests and what she typically posts on Instagram. And we saw that she loves anime figurines.

Chris Wong: So right now she actually does operate a pretty popular channel on YouTube, and she's been able to spin that off into a completely different career, which has nothing to do with OnlyFans, but more to do with Patreon. And we are able to create content that's both meaningful and. For the sake of it. Actual content.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, it's important. No, I didn't get a chance to look at this specific person's YouTube channel or anything like that. Some of the pictures on your website do show some attractive women there. What would you say your breakdown is from, male

Sean Weisbrot: KOLs and female KOLs? Currently our company at this very moment has 118 KLL signed with us, and roughly 90 of them are female.

Chris Wong: And so when you're talking about the remainder, let's say 20 or 25, typically they are males. We have people who identify as transgender.

Chris Wong: We also work with people who are L-G-B-T-Q, so. Having said that, it's not necessarily only females that we're able to work with. and right now we're actually trying very hard to do a lot of investment into the MALE and L-G-B-T-Q Fields as well.

Sean Weisbrot: Would you say there's a difference in how you can work with them based on that, those differences and, and who they are? You know, are there any differences in their audiences and how you can promote them and what brands are willing to pay BA based on if there's something different in gender? Because I don't really, I don't really know Asia.

Sean Weisbrot: I mean, I know Asia, but. I don't know, Asia For KOLs, my assumption is that male, you know, males will get paid better just because they're males. But maybe I'm wrong.

Chris Wong: I think this is actually a very interesting concept in Taiwan. I think Taiwan was one of the very first Asian countries to legalize, gay marriage.

Chris Wong: So at this moment, I would say this anyway. Content creators who identify themselves as L-G-B-T-Q are an extremely hot commodity.

Chris Wong: It doesn't matter if they're male, it doesn't matter if they're female, as long as they're able to connect and actually promote a really good social image. Typically, a lot of brands love to work with them, and we've seen, you know, brands such as that co collaborate with us like Citibank, and they specifically choose and look for content creators who.

Chris Wong: You know, in the past it has been very clear and straightforward that, you know, I'm L-G-B-T-Q, something like that. Specifically, if we talk about the females that work with us, if we're talking about the bulk portion, I think they're TAs and what kind of products they would be able to market is relatively straightforward, I think.

Chris Wong: Most people will, with an imagination, will be able to understand what kind of content that they'll be able to promote, or brands that they'll be able to promote. But typically we do see that corporations really want to, especially in Asia, they wanna work with a brand name content creator, not necessarily caring about their target audience, not necessarily caring about the male female share, or what kind of industries that.

Chris Wong: Their fans care about them. However, that being said, we typically advise corporations when they do work with us is to find someone who may cost less but has a more specific target audience that fulfills a brand's image

Sean Weisbrot: because it's known that brands are willing and desire to work with people who identify as not straight. Have you had anyone come to you that is clearly pretending to be. In order to command a higher number of brands that wanna work with them,

Chris Wong: I wouldn't. Put it so much as if people are disingenuous about their sexual orientation. I think that's a very straightforward thing and people on the internet are very easy.

Chris Wong: You know, it's, it's, it's very easy to play detective on the internet these days. So having said that, we do have, let's say, for example, male content creators who don't pretend. That they're gay or bisexual or any, in any other way? essentially non-straight. We don't force them to pretend they're, they're not straight.

Chris Wong: We actually advise them against it. However, that being said, the people who potentially pay for their content, like their posts on Instagram or, you know, share their videos on TikTok. It doesn't matter what kind of content they put out, as long as it's friendly enough for all audiences. So typically we ask them to engage with their fans and follow in a very genuine manner.

Chris Wong: And what, what we've typically seen is that fans don't typically care. They, if they really like a particular male, you know, they, it, they don't identify whether that person is gay or straight. And then we also don't force them to pretend that they are either.

Chris Wong: Fans and the KL by themselves will be able to have a very genuine interaction.

Chris Wong: And I think from the information statistics that we've gathered so far is that when the KOLs are very genuine about their sexual orientation and not, you know, put on a face or just pretend and all that kind of stuff, typically they see a far higher, far higher fan engagement than if they tried something that was a little bit more shady per se.

Sean Weisbrot: You mentioned data. We will get into data and trends and all of that. in a little bit. I just have some other questions that are kind of coming into my mind that I'm really curious about. Sure. What. Do you think the biggest difference between KOLs in Asia and like the US slash Canada, how, how is it different?

Chris Wong: I grew up in North America, so I, I know, and I've seen and have followed a lot of KOLs in North America and I, I fondly remember one joke, and this might come across as offensive to some people, but the joke was, do you want your daughter to be selling protein powders on Instagram? And I saw that it was very funny because.

Chris Wong: That actually was what was happening. You know, a lot of the famous KOLs, they were selling protein powders or even like, let's go straight back into the most traditional KLL. Let's say for example, Kim Kardashian, back when she started, she was selling that weight loss supplement. And you can tell that that's what KOLs are more centered around in the us.

Chris Wong: However, if we're talking about. how the US has transformed in the past few years is that we're starting to see more micro influencers or influencers who pop up and really care about their own personal brand image, whereas they will reject certain brand collaborations if it doesn't fit their brand image or their social message.

Chris Wong: So I think that's actually something very cool and I really full heartedly support that in North America. However, in Asia, that is a completely different ballpark. From what just we're looking at the landscape, right? There is a joke about protein powder. In Asia, it would be gambling websites.

Chris Wong: And that's just terrible because gambling websites overall in Asia are largely banned. and so it really hurts their image and they just care about the initial short-term gains of the financial aspect. And they don't care about how to, how will they position themselves as a social media influencer in the long term.

Chris Wong: And I think it is due in part because there are a lot of people in Asia. Everyone can be a KL these days. You know, you can just start up a TikTok account, you can start up an Instagram account and you can do some crazy things and you'll get a following. But a lot of people definitely are just waiting around for that day when someone offers them a bit of cash to promote content or promote a brand or even just, you know, become a streamer or something like that.

Chris Wong: And people are not that picky here, and that's a very big issue. The, because they're not picky. The corporations are also not picky. And that creates a very, very hazardous cycle. Whereas the corporations don't care about the results. They just care about who has promoted it. What kind of, you know, image are we looking at?

Chris Wong: And the KLL KOLs themselves, they only care about how much money did I earn, which overall, this is just a nasty business.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. When I was in Vietnam, I saw that, so this was 20, 17 to 2021. I saw that KOL mindset starting. I saw people starting to get on TikTok. I had even encouraged my ex-wife to try and figure out, 'cause she, was a gym trainer and not just a gym trainer, but a damn good gym trainer who really cared about her clients and personally studied anatomy and physiology and physical therapy so that she could add so many other dimensions of value to our customers.

Sean Weisbrot: and I thought that she could. Build a massive following online. And she tried, she didn't really understand what she was doing, and I didn't know what she was doing. But, but she, she was, but she was Vietnamese. We were in Vietnam. She was targeting a Vietnamese clientele and she was already training an upper class clientele of Vietnamese people and expats in Saigon at, at the, at a physical gym that she worked at.

Sean Weisbrot: So, but I also saw there were a lot of other people that were trying to do exactly the same thing as her. The biggest difference is she had all that extra knowledge and experience and she could speak English fluently on top of it, whereas the others, they didn't have pretty much any of it, but just a good body.

Sean Weisbrot: And it's like, oh, watch me, watch me do my biceps right now. Watch me do my, you know, my, my squat this time. Right? So like there, it was quite basic, but the demand was massive. Do you have any? KOLs that are based in Asia but are not Asian. Someone like myself, white, for example.

Chris Wong: So we've expanded past Taiwan into Malaysia, Korea, et cetera. And one of the best use cases I have thus far, and I think probably the fewer use cases seen is, actually I have two, the first one is in Taiwan. She is an expat from the us. She was born and raised in the US and she came to Taiwan, I think, to finish her education.

Chris Wong: And she stayed in Taiwan for quite some time. I'm not gonna name her, for privacy's sake. At the time when we first met her, she was working at Hooters in Taipei and when we looked at her, we saw a tremendous potential. You know, we saw that, you know, she was, you know, young, bubbly, and all that, and she was able to talk on a lot of topics. So we worked on her brand imaging for a little bit.

Chris Wong: And lo and behold, within two months after, you know, we convinced her to stop working at Hooters. She was picked up to be a regular cast member for a TV show. So that's one of the, one of the proudest accomplishments we've had with, you know, foreigners in Asia overall. And we also do work with, I think in Thailand, a couple of content creators who are half Thai or, and I think there's one particular one who's half Danish too.

Chris Wong: And what we've seen is that. Because they have been in Asia for quite some time, or they were born there or something like that. They, it's, it's, it's no difference. I mean, even if they speak perfect English, there's no difference from them, from a local KLL. They, they're just so engrossed in the local culture or the current KLL landscape in Asia.

Chris Wong: So I think that's something that, you know, speaking of working with foreigners in terms of, you know, full English speakers or predominantly Caucasian, content creators, that's actually some of the things that we are working on right now.

Sean Weisbrot: So if I moved back to Asia you could set me up in Taiwan.

Chris Wong: I could set you up with business collaborations. These KOLs that we work with, they're always very interested in business collaborations. And, you know, I think just to be in full disclosure, and I think your listeners would actually care about this question as well, is that,

Chris Wong: Do we do any kind of trafficking related stuff with our content creators? as per our content, our contract state is that we do not allow them to do any sort of this behavior. We do not allow them to meet their fans offline because of security sake. And we also care about, you know, what potentially may happen.

Chris Wong: You know, it's very straightforward in Asia where, oh, you know, people are saying, oh, if you're KL I'll pay for your dinner. Come have dinner with me. In some countries that's considered illegal, so we don't want to ever be part of that at all. And the fact is that we already work with them on a platform such as OnlyFans.

Chris Wong: I'm not taking that risk to worsen or negatively impact the brand image that way.

Sean Weisbrot: I wasn't talking about putting myself on OnlyFans.

Chris Wong: I don't know if you, if you wanted to be on OnlyFans, I could find ways for you to be on OnlyFans. No, I,

Sean Weisbrot: I was, I, I wasn't talking about OnlyFans. No, I was just talking about how like I, I know that my content is good.

Sean Weisbrot: I know that there's a number of people in Asia that actually listen to my content, so mm-hmm. But I, I'm, I'm just messing around. But, but in, in case I ever decide to go back to Asia, we'll talk about it.

Sean Weisbrot: yeah. So what made you want to get into building this kind of an agency?

Chris Wong: The girl I was dating at that time, it's always a girl when I, sorry. Yeah, it's always about a girl.

Chris Wong: It's always, it's always, it's always the girl. And I was hearing about how, you know, she was working with some agents, she was talking, in some cases, she was being a streamer and I thought a lot about, you know, in terms of job security and, you know, their image overall. It occurred to me something that didn't make any sense because I come from a Western country.

Chris Wong: in Taiwan. Especially in Taiwan actually, I think a lot of these KOLs have so and so called agents, and the reason why it's plural is because there is not one single agent that binds them. And these agents are essentially just job referrers. And these job referers don't do anything. Aside from saying, Hey, I have a job, show up, and you get paid.

Chris Wong: That kind of stuff. And it's funnybecause for example, if there is a corporation that goes to this agent to find a particular KL, they'll say, let's say my budget is a thousand us. But then because the agent knows the actual price range that the KL will accept, he might say to the KLL oh 200 bucks.

Chris Wong: The KOL typically will be, you know, nonchalantly say, okay, sure, why not 200? But then that so and so-called Agent Pockets, $800 of the lion's share without doing anything. And so I found out that there was, you know, one. Biggest mistake here is that there's no revenue transparency. People don't know what they should be getting paid.

Chris Wong: And so having said that, the market, all the ranges for, you know, collaborating with KOLs is just all over the place. Some cases may be worth a thousand, some cases may be worth 10,000. It's just so opaque. So there was an issue there. And at the same time, okay, so if these so-called agents are. Able to take the money that they earn and invest it back into the KOL to generate more earnings.

Chris Wong: I think a lot of people would think, okay, that's, that's fair, because they have to put in the time and effort to develop the KOLs and work on their business development. But no, no one in Taiwan at this time, or even till today, aside from us, really do work with KOLs. And the main goal of it is to bring them global.

Chris Wong: We've seen so many platforms, so many agencies in Taiwan that love to say we're Asia number one, and that's the funniest part is. You're not even number one in Taiwan. How can you claim to be Asia number one?

Sean Weisbrot: I'll share a real quick story, from my own experience. So when I was living in Wuhan, many, many, many years ago, I was an English teacher before I got involved in business, I. And there was this guy who I knew, a Chinese guy who I knew through the first job I ever had, and he would throw me, you know, private students once in a while. And there was this one time where I was like, yeah, I'll work for 150 r and b an hour. It's like, mm-hmm. $23, something like that. Which, you know, most people go, wow, that's really good money being a teacher in China.

Sean Weisbrot: Whatever. Not the point. The point is I somehow discovered from the mother or the kid that he was charging them 450 in. So he was literally taking twice what I was earning and I was doing all of the work.

Chris Wong: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: And, and that was the day that I never talked to him again. I never took work from him again. Mm-hmm. Because I didn't like it. The feeling of being taken advantage of. Yeah. Now if you say, if you said to me, Hey, I found someone and I can get them to pay four 50, I'll give you half. Yeah, fine. Take the other half. No big deal. Like often transparency. Right. I often do business deals where I tell the person, this is the total commission.

Sean Weisbrot: I'm giving you half. Mm-hmm. That's it. No discussion. You're getting half, whether you just introduce me to the end person and you never do anything else again. After that, you get half because you know the person. This is your relationship. You're allowing them to trust me through the trust they have in you. I'm paying for that trust, right? This is the price. No problems there. Nobody can complain. But when you say, this is how much I'm gonna give you, but then secretly I'm keeping most of it to myself. I don't like that. So that rubbed me quite wrong. this is, you know, a mainland Chinese guy who, as you mentioned earlier, Asians are really good at just thinking about short term gain, which mm-hmm is a massive, massive cultural difference between like.

Sean Weisbrot: Americans and Chinese, where Americans will think about, as you said, how can I build on this? So for example, if I were this guy, right, this Chinese guy, I would've said, you know, I found you this client. You do well with this client. I'll find you more clients, right? So let's build on this relationship.

Sean Weisbrot: I'll do the work. You find me, the clients, you get half the, I don't care, you know? But he chose to. Take the bulk of it now and hide that from me and act like everything's okay and we're best friends and you know, then he lost out on a cash cow, right? Yeah, because I found out, just like this happened to me with another guy in China where I had raised $150,000 for a seed round for his business.

Sean Weisbrot: Mm-hmm. And I got 5%, it's like $7,500. And in the, it wasn't in the contract, but we shook on it and he was American. In China. We shook on the fact that if this investor brought in more money, either through his own pocket or someone else, I would get a follow on 5%. Mm-hmm. He shook my hand, looked me in the eye and said, yes, no problem.

Sean Weisbrot: Two months later I found out that the investor, the original investor that I brought in, gave him another 150,000. I wasn't told that there was $7,500 coming my way. Mm-hmm. I confronted him about it. He told me, basically he didn't owe me anything and I walked away. Mm-hmm. I could have brought him more money. He had already hired me to provide industry analysis reports and to do other sorts of consulting for him. Mm-hmm. He lost me as a consultant. He lost me as an industry analyst. He lost me as a fundraiser because he was so. Like intent on keeping that $7,500,

Chris Wong: which is pennies on the dollar for the amount he raised.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. You know, I, I, I directly brought in through the fundraising $300,000 and at least another half a million dollars worth of value through the reports I was creating for him on a weekly basis at his whim. Mm-hmm. He lost all of itand I took everything with me. When I found out, he told me to basically, you know, go away and, and I went and built another business on it that generated eight figures.

Sean Weisbrot: The guy, so, you know, the guy, the guy screwed himself, right? So I, I, I've con, you know, I, I could tell you many more of these where in Asia where people are too busy thinking about themselves and short term gain, where. I have always been about letting everyone equally share, let everyone prosper, and we'll all just keep making money together. And everyone says, let's do that. But in practice, especially in Asia, it's never the case.

Chris Wong: I just, just, you know, I, you know, I was laughing at the, the, the statement you just said about, you know, everybody join in on the prophet. I think you've been in China for too long, man. Sounds like you're spouting some communist stuff.

Sean Weisbrot: That is the line that was sold to me. Mm-hmm. Many times over. And the reality was like never that, yeah. It was always somebody trying to profit off of me. I would always find out and I'd go, you idiot. You just lost out. Like, like people don't realize, you know, you can get caught when people have a brain, so don't mess with me. Don't try to screw me over. 'cause my parents didn't raise me to screw people over. They raised me to be bluntly honest and extremely transparent because that's how you do business. I

Chris Wong: Mean, that's how people should do business from the get go. I mean, I mean, just look at FTX lately, you know, transparency or you know, the inability to be transparent, across so many industries can be seen. And this is the reason why companies fail or people get replaced or I. Business deals fall through. And I think, you know, just transparency alone is one of the aspects about why our company has been able to grow so fast and gain the trust of so many KOLs. I mean, I mean, I'm, I'm not boasting or tuning my own horn.

Chris Wong: We do everything for these Ks to the point where not only are their social media accounts, you know, directly managed by us as well, but. Even their finances generated by us are also managed too. So it, it's all that level of trust and it's all that transparency. Whereas every single deal we have with a corporation that we pass down to a potential ka, we tell them, this is what we take. This is our cut. There's a reason why we take this cut. We protect you the entire way. We follow through with it the entire way as well. You're paying for the trust. I mean, I don't have to give you the trust. I could, I could, I could be that guy and say, oh yeah, you know, a thousand dollars, you get to only pocket 200 and I'll pocket 800. But that's not sustainable. The reason why it's not sustainable is evidently we've been able to displace so many industry incumbents in such a quick amount of, in such a short amount of time, purely because we have changed the business model or how people deal with business in Asia, especially in regards to kls.

Sean Weisbrot: And if I had felt. That way, I wouldn't be interviewing you now.

Chris Wong: I appreciate your candor.

Sean Weisbrot: I could be wrong, but I think it's the fact that you were raised in the West that you can bring that clarity and honesty to Asia.

Chris Wong: I would definitely attest to a large portion of my current thought process or the ways that I fulfill my business promises because of my education abroad. but it's also, I think from the standpoint, whereas I see how my parents do business as well, I've observed how they deal. I have been doing business since I was a child. And you know, my parents operated I think in the same way, and it was, at least for them, I could see it was very frustrating to see that in Asia, despite doing like, you know, eight figure businesses every month.

Chris Wong: You know, they were still facing people who would short them on certain things or be disingenuous. So even just outright dishonest about some certain aspects about the business. And to me at this stage, I think since globalization really took over in the last two decades, I believe that a lot of the concepts are brought over from the west, and this is starting to become more and more apparent.

Chris Wong: And a lot of the traditional businesses in Asia are being turned over because of that aspect alone. And it's not necessarily saying, oh, it's a revolutionary business model, or it's something that's so special. No, this actually should have been what you were doing since day one. But because people were taken advantage of, they're so ready to switch over to something new. And they know they've been taken advantage of.

Sean Weisbrot: I think that's a problem in Asia. It's just so easy to manipulate and take advantage of people. And so people do, especially when a lot of people grew up in villages in Asia still, where they don't really have that street smarts or they don't really have that formal education experience that helps them to realize they're being taken advantage of.

Sean Weisbrot: And, and that's not to say that people don't get taken advantage of in the US for example, either. 'cause they. They do. I think it might just be more prevalent in Asia.

Chris Wong: It's prevalent in Asia because like I said before, it's a, it's a cycle almost. Now at this point, you can observe some cycles where people get taken advantage of when they were earlier, when they're young, you know, when they're straight out of college where they don't really have.

Chris Wong: Street smarts or book smarts and because they were taken advantage of, you know, they hold that spite and hate and they feel like I can do the same to other people. So I have seen other people do the exact same. They're still trying to repeat it, and these are people that are younger than me and I'm just like, why are you doing these things?

Chris Wong: Why can't you? Honor these contracts. It's legal, it's a legal binding document. You screw someone, you screw over the wrong person Once, you might never be able to do business again. You could end up in jail. What are you doing? So it is, it's very surprising and. At least from a standpoint, I think with our business model, especially with Scarlet overall, we've helped out a lot of people that have been taking advantage of us in the past, and I've been proud to say that that's also why we have the trust and loyalty of our clients at this time.

Sean Weisbrot: So I wanna switch focus to the data. I know I mentioned earlier we're gonna talk about that, and that was one of the reasons why I liked your profile to begin with. Was because I was asking people like yourself to talk about how you discover new trends and your response. I don't know exactly what you said, 'cause I got like 30 or 40 responses.

Sean Weisbrot: But you, you went pretty deep into, oh, we use data for this and this is, so talk about how you do. Collate the data so that you can then start to make decisions from that for your business.

Chris Wong: We call ourselves a MarTech company, not just a marketing agency or marketing company for a wide variety of reasons. You know, we have in-house tech teams that provide these tech solutions for us. And part of it's automation I, I'll have to be completely honest, it's some of it's automation and some of it is market analysis. So if we're specifically talking about market analysis is that we have an in-house product that is, as I told you before, it's very similar to Link tre, but we keep this service completely free to all users and there's a specific reason why,

Chris Wong: The reason why Ree, we don't want to use Ree is based on how many KOLs we work with. If we wanted to really see the backend data, it would cost me a lot of money every month, and that's not a financially feasible way, especially since Linke has it. A very low technological barrier to entry. I mean, you can see tons of Asian knockoffs even till today, every single region has some, somehow their own version.

Chris Wong: So we started off with Link Me as kind of just a basic Multilink service, URL service for their Instagram bios, for their Facebooks and whatnot. And it came to the point where we realized that it wasn't just. A link service, we were able to see like heat maps as to words which particular links were clicked the most.

Chris Wong: We were able to see which platforms were able to have the most sway, dis, regardless of the order of the links that were put. And even then, we were able to see certain trends as in, say, for example, a particular product being pushed by a. We were able to see whether this product was able to generate interest by itself, or if this product itself needed additional push or comparative to an older product, how did that perform?

Chris Wong: So we're able to see based off of Linked Me's traffic data alone, we can tell right away. Which products are doing well? What kind of trends are doing well? Is LG Bt L-L-G-B-T-Q picking up or is this format of KOL currently the hottest right now, because traditionally in Asia we saw a big boom for a while, and I, I think I have to be very straightforward here, is that, in the past decade, it was very straightforward.

Chris Wong: You could see. Say, for example, a KOL who has had extensive plastic surgery, typically they were able to command a lot of attention. However, one of the trends that we were able to observe is that people that were, you know, more natural looking per se, they were able to get a lot more fan engagement and traffic without.

Chris Wong: Posting any kind of explicit content and they were just, you know, it was very natural engagement. It didn't matter what their following was. So we saw that, and being able to see that makes it very transparent in terms of how we're looking at our data. And at the same time, this is also part of the way we've been able to analyze which Ks we wanna work with because we're able to see if they inherently have any value beyond.

Chris Wong: The kind of, you know, Instagram risky, sexy content that they post, do they offer something else that we cannot see from the naked eye? And so that's actually what's so special about Link Me in itself. And then the other thing is that because we work directly with OnlyFans and fans Lee, we're able to pull the data from each content creator so we can see immediately what kind of content sells better, which dates sell better, and what kind of events that we do not want to clash with.

Chris Wong: This makes a very, very big difference towards our business strategies and marketing plans for these particular KOLs and see particularly. What kind of content at this time is the hottest on the market? And similarly, you know, we look at Twitter, hash, Twitter, hashtag hashtags. We observe the trends.

Chris Wong: I mean, it's not, it's not difficult to tell that FIFA is going to be the hottest topic within the next month. It's not, it's absolutely not an issue. I mean. It's four years, once every four years. So you can tell that once it does come, come around, it's going to be talked about quite often. However, how are you manipulating the data behind fifa?

Chris Wong: What is so special about FIFA that makes a difference? So we actually use a lot of internal tools to look at what kind of hashtags, what kind of posts are being put on either Instagram or Twitter. And we look directly to see, okay. So about fifa, which teams are actually the ones that are discussed the most?

Chris Wong: Is it because people care about Ronaldo being messy? You know, this kind of data actually creates an opportunity, whereas when we look at our marketing strategies, we know specifically, which. Topics, very, very well-defined topics are what our KOL should be focusing on. You can't just hashtag FIFA and take a picture with a soccer ball and people are gonna care.

Chris Wong: No, not at all. You need to be able to find whether it's the right channel to watch, the right time to watch, or which teams you should be supporting, and what kind of specific topics you need to be talking about. So this is the data portion of what we analyze, and that actually creates a very unprecedented tool to see are we driving campaigns because.

Chris Wong: We think we need to drive them or are we driving campaigns that are very targeted because I know it's not going to fail. And so that's one of our special edges compared to other so and so called agencies or tech startups in in Asia right now,

Sean Weisbrot: when you are collecting that data and discovering that this trend is about to come. Do you say to all of the people that you're managing, Hey, you need to get ready for this thing, or do you only go to the ones that are, that it's relevant for?

Chris Wong: This goes back directly to what we talked about, what I earlier just discussed, what their Instagram target audience is like. So. Frankly put, if you ask me this question as a very blatant answer, I would say yes.

Chris Wong: We target particular KOLs to work on certain topics. One such previous case was L-G-B-T-Q. Last month was the L-G-B-T-Q Annual Parade. We didn't want to make this a big event. We. Selected very, very key content creators that worked with us. And so, say for example, one of the content creators that we really wanted to, you know, attend this event, be part of this parade and be part of our PR team on this kind of topic, was, he's actually a fitness gym owner and we looked more in depth.

Chris Wong: We actually have his Google Analytics to his, you know, his, what's it called? His location on Google. And we could see Google actually. Captures this kind of data. We look at it and see that, yeah, most of the people who go to your gym are not straight. You should probably come to this event. You should most.

Chris Wong: You should bring your entire team, because this will affect your business greatly. This is a great time to promote. Hold on. How does Google know that those people aren't straight? I mean, look at it this way. You click on all these cookies, right? You look at certain things on Amazon. I mean, even if today, you know, we're just talking about one particular subject.

Chris Wong: All these websites, even TikTok, I mean, this is actually the creepiest part. TikTok drains your battery. Even when the app is closed, there's a reason why it's collecting your user data. It's collecting what your specific habits are. I mean, do you really think, a straight male would be looking at, let's say, rainbow TU twos?

Chris Wong: It'd be someone who's extremely flamboyant. Google makes these specific guesses and how you interpret their guesses actually makes a very big difference. And it's not just we rely on Google, like I said before, linked me, I can see very clearly what kind of links are being clicked on, what kind of hashtags that they have recently posted.

Chris Wong: Are the ones that are most talked about, the ones that they get the highest fan engagement. So I know straight away what kind of target audience they have. I don't, I take the guesswork out of looking at who their target audience is because the, one of the questions we were looking at is, say for example a KOL who you typically post sexy content, you would assume her TA is largely male.

Chris Wong: Guys who would be very happy to subscribe to her OnlyFans. But then how would this person promote her corporation, you know, her brands, how, what kind of brands could she be promoting? And this is actually one of the biggest takeaways that we've actually seen is that, I think you know what Shopee is, right?

Chris Wong: Have you heard about Shopee?

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I just read today they, they think they fired like 7,000 employees.

Chris Wong: Well, I mean, a lot of companies are doing big layoffs at this time, but in any case, going back to Shopee, we saw one content creator. We really pulled her data from her Shopee usage to see what actually her TA was.

Chris Wong: And interestingly enough, on Shoppy, this girl was doing about 10,000 US in sales for her clothing line. It was amazing that she was doing $10,000, per month, and this was US dollars. And then we looked at her Instagram, the, the, the kind of stats and the numbers n her TAs does not match up. So we actually tried working with her to say, Hey, if you tried to push, let's say, a women 's based product, what kind of results would you be able to get?

Chris Wong: Because she was so adamant that her Instagram was purely male followers. And we're like, okay, if you're able to do this kind of business on Shope. There must be something else to it. And it turns out she was able to have, she actually hashtag a lot of her clothes. She, you know, her link was also one of the most clicked links on the heat map for her linked meet.

Chris Wong: So we knew right away, yes, you have sexy content. Yes you have a lot of guys falling, but because of the way you wear your particular clothes and your particular way, how they look, actually your TA is, a lot of them are female and they're straight females who want to look just as good as you. Which is very counterintuitive.

Chris Wong: You would think so, but you're not a woman, so, oh,'m not a woman. That's fine.

Sean Weisbrot: So you, so you look at it from the point of view of a male, however, women. Oftentimes they get dressed up when they go out not to attract men.

Chris Wong: Yeah. They do it just because they wanna feel beautiful. There's nothing wrong with that.

Sean Weisbrot: Well, it's not about attracting men. It's more about like, they want the attention from other women to know that they look good. Yes. They want to feel good, and for some reason they get more. Psychologists benefit more from women than men, even if they're attracted to men and not women. And so it co completely makes sense to me psychologically why that plays out.

Chris Wong: I am one of the few males in my company, everyone on our marketing team to our data analytics team, they're all female. There's a reason why they're female, because a large portion of our client base is female. We wanna be able to connect with them better to see some insights that a traditional Asian businessman, such as myself, cannot. C directly. And so I think that's one of the ways we've been able to navigate around this and actually be able to back up directly what our data represents.

Sean Weisbrot: So you had said this a little bit earlier and I didn't follow through on it and I want to know, when I had asked about collating the data and all of that, do you have a data dashboard for global trends? Or for each of the KOLs or both?

Chris Wong: We have an independent dashboard for each independent KOL. We have an independent dashboard for their Linked Me and their Instagram and their Twitters. We also have one for their TikTok. We also have one for their subscription based platforms as well. So we keep a lot of these things separate.

Chris Wong: And the reason why we keep them separate is because our company actually has a lot of departments, and if you manage a particular aspect, we wanna keep it very straightforward for that aspect or that platform by itself. However, if we're generally looking at marketing, the marketing team does oversee at least three different dashboards. Reports to see what kind of data is being presented and by keeping them separate, I think this is how we are able to get down into specifics. We, I don't want to collate all the data into one compressed dashboard because the data would be skewed. It would be biased in a particular way. And so what we typically do is we look at it separately.

Chris Wong: We analyze the conclusion from each particular dashboard to come to a conclusion, and then we cross-reference it with whatever else is present at the time.

Sean Weisbrot: So in what ways could the data be skewed or biased? Because in, in my mind, I, when, when I hear that, I hear. There's a massive potential to see all of the data from all of the sources come together into a giant kind of God-like platform where you can just see everything that's happening across all of your people. I mean, it's a lot of data to ingest. Is there not like a massive benefit to having that?

Chris Wong: This goes back into Asian KLL culture and this is not a very healthy one. It's just going down brass tacks and being completely honest with you here is that we know a lot of our KOLs, for the sake of appearance. I think, you know, face saving, face, you know how Asian, you know Chinese people say that, right? A lot of them boost particular posts that they have. Not in the traditional sense of Instagram or Facebook posting their posts. I think that's the biggest issue here. They purchase likes. They purchase comments.

Chris Wong: They purchase followers. Oh yeah, I've heard of that. So if I look at their data from Instagram and then I look at their natural data from, let's say Facebook, it will not add up. There are just so many holes, which doesn't make any sense. I've actually spent quite a bit of time getting really frustrated about this because initially we wanted to do what you said, a collated platform where we can see all sorts of data, but it just doesn't add up.

Chris Wong: And then to make matters worse is I. A lot of Asian kills. They understand how Instagram works, they understand how Facebook works because these platforms have been around for quite some time. But then we look at TikTok. For TikTok, we have a lot of use cases where certain videos get, let's say 2000 views, 3000 views, and all of a sudden one has a hundred million views.

Chris Wong: It doesn't make any sense. And to them it doesn't make sense. And then they try to replicate it in all sorts of weird ways, and we see them copy each other too. But this, it's the same kind of concept where if this thing is popular, there is a specific reason. For example, like I said, in this particular use case, there was a KOL who was on average getting around two to 3000 views. This was a guy, this is a guy, KOL, and he's a dad too. He picked up his daughter in one of his TikTok videos and in, you know, in Western culture in North America. You know, parents pick up their kids from school and they get embarrassed when, you know, parents pick them up or drop them off. So he had a hashtag about parenting, et cetera, and that's how that blew up.

Chris Wong: But that didn't add up to whatever kind of data that was seen. We didn't see any spikes that could have, you know, indicated that that one video was going to do well. It was just kind of like a Hail Mary kind of situation. So with TikTok, there's that kind of issue where the data will not be something that's consistent.

Chris Wong: If we're looking at consistency, we also need to look at are they following the trends that we are telling them to follow. If they don't do it, then the data is more or less hard to gauge. And building on this is also hard to gauge is Twitter in North America, you know, people use Twitter for kind of like a daily status update.

Chris Wong: You know, they talk about some of the problems or their feelings or thoughts, and they wanna share it on Twitter, which I think is actually how Twitter should be used. I've been using Twitter for a long time too. I've had four accounts overall, and they're all for different purposes. And when I see how Asian kale uses Twitter, it is. Just horrid, like absolutely horrid. They might have, let's say, oh, on Instagram, 500,000 followers. On Twitter, they'll have maybe 200,000, but then why do they have 200,000 followers on Twitter? Yet? Their posts barely get any likes, or they barely get retweeted. There's a specific reason. It's because all they do, not the followers, actually, no, no, no.

Chris Wong: The buying, the followers part is probably Instagram and Facebook, but then for Twitter they're doing Twitter completely wrong. Twitter for them. Is just promoting whatever they're selling. So every damn tweet that they do is telling fans to buy something and your engagement numbers are just gonna look horrid.

Chris Wong: It feels like, wait, what are you doing on Twitter? And we've, we, we've talked a lot about our K Ls, about this, and some of them even try to say, oh, I wanna post sexy content on Twitter. And we tell them not to because we've actually analyzed the Twitter landscape in Taiwan. If you look up Twitter in Taiwan. And you start this kind of thing. Just go down that rabbit hole. You'll get to porn in about three or four clicks in the recommendations. It's awful. It really is awful. So that's why we don't collate our data because I know specific ecosystems, they are just definitely not suitable to be combined together to look at it inherently.

Chris Wong: As such, if you told me that we're working with a North American content creator who has statistics on, let's say Twitch. On Twitter and YouTube, I think, yeah, that should be collated because all of those three platforms can be directly linked together to look at certain trends. But in Taiwan, or actually most of Asia that we're seeing, none of it adds up. It just does not add up, and that's why we have to look at it separately.

Sean Weisbrot: That explanation is a really good example of the depth. The breadth of the data you have access to and the care you take to analyze that. And I think that was a really important part of what I wanted to explore in this episode was most business owners I come across don't even know that there's data that can be, you know, grabbed and ingested, let alone how to analyze them.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. And. To be fair, it's something that I'm learning more about. Mm-hmm. you know, as I am running my company, you know, I, I, I do have people that kind of take care of those things. And so I am generally, you know, an arm's length away from it. But the older I get, the more I go. Yeah, you can do that job, but I still wanna understand what you're doing. For my own personal curiosity,

Sean Weisbrot: And so I, I am trying to learn about these things and, and one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is to promote that, especially going into 2023, like if you wanna survive what the ridiculous, greatest depression that's about to happen, like you need to make sure that the data you have is right, and the analysis you're putting into it is right, because if not, your chances of staying alive are not great.

Chris Wong: Yeah, I can second that because we felt the effects of this potential recession pretty early on. You know, in Taiwan we were looking at. A steep ar monthly revenue drop, and this steep drop was like 20%. It was bad. But then because of the data gathering that we've been able to enact on and, you know, translate into, you know, plans that we'reenacting now.

Chris Wong: So in September, from August to September, we had a 20% revenue drop. This was very severe for us because we weren't doing anything wrong. We weren't doing anything. Different or negatively impacting our company. There's no reason why we're seeing this drop. You know, it's not like, you know, we lost a major client or anything like that.

Chris Wong: No, it's none of it. And then, we saw the trends in September. It was clear that people were, at least in Taiwan, because in September a lot of people who have been locked up in COVID, COVID laws were a little bit more, you know, lax now. And so they were going out, people were going out and spending their money elsewhere.

Chris Wong: So it was clear that we were entering a kind of economic downturn that we really couldn't do anything about. But then came closer to the end of September, we saw certain other, competitor platforms pop up, and we, initially we thought, okay, you know, if our Patreon was impacted by a platform in Taiwan called vme.

Chris Wong: Was this actually something of a significant change? And then we kind of took a deeper look into it and through various methods and asking around et cetera, we came to a conclusion, no, it was just a recession at that time. And so even with the recession, we're still observing that, you know, other companies, competitor ones or platforms themselves, they're not just doing, they're not, they're, they're not doing well at all actually.

Chris Wong: Conversely, in November, our MRR was back up to around 250 K US per month. So that was, that was a pretty good breath of relief saying that despite the recession coming, we have the right tools to gauge how the market is shifting. And we actually not only just have the right tools, we're actually ex executing the right plans to make that kind of adjustment.

Sean Weisbrot: Well, I'm glad you're able to see that increase again. 'cause yeah, 20% drop at that. Size is definitely really important, but thankfully you're also in Asia, so the cost of operations wouldn't be terribly negatively affected in that way.So is there anything that we haven't talked about that you'd like to include as we get closer to the end of the conversation?

Chris Wong: Well, I think one of the things that, you know, in our past conversation, you know, the preface before, you know, our, our podcast here is that we talked a lot about fundraising and et cetera. So, one of the first things that I, I wanted to, you know, at least let you know, is that, we had two separate products that we, they're not products, they weren't products when we developed, they were internal use only solutions.

Chris Wong: We've from, you know, both investors and they were very ready to spin that concept off and run those as independent projects. And we've, just based on our concept about Link linked Me versus Link Tre, at this point, we have a commitment for about. 400,000 of us. So I, it was actually pretty cool to hear about that and seeing that, you know, even despite the recession downturn, if you have an execution model or business model that is so inherently different from how everybody else is doing it, you're still able to succeed and thrive.

Chris Wong: And so far, even with Link Me, we haven't, you know, spun that off as a separate entity. We're actually still seeing. Significant revenue streams coming in from that aspect as well. So, you know, in the future we're not actually just working with KOLs that we are assigned with or you know, that are pre existing clients.

Chris Wong: You know, we could be working with kls that have nothing to do with us and they would be able to engage in profit share models from just using Linked Me. So I'm actually very excited to see that come to fruition. As soon as I think about second quarter of 2023,

Sean Weisbrot: I recently spoke with a guy who's Asian Australian, and he has a business in real estate that does like 10-20 million a year. Wow. And he's, he's in the process of developing a product that he needed for his own company, and he's now talking about spinning out that product. And the goal is to provide the same service that he provides to his individual clients that are buying properties through him and the education that he provides to them, which is a separate service as well to other companies so that they can basically use his model to grow their own businesses and he's, he's going to make money off of helping them to grow their own businesses.

Sean Weisbrot: And so. maybe instead of you targeting KOLs individually, you can target your competitors and go, Hey, instead of you being ridiculous and making bad decisions, why don't you just copy my model and we all make money together.

Chris Wong: That's one of our inherent models right now is we, the only difference is that we're not spending that one off for growth.

Chris Wong: We, what we've actually done is we've approached certain companies who could use our data collection system, but you know. If you want the data collection system, of course it's a simple fee, right? You know, you're able to grow. How you interpret that data, however, is completely up to your staff. I can only help you so much.

Chris Wong: Otherwise I would be giving up one of the strongest core competencies that our company has or our company has over other competitors, you know? So it's important to spin off certain aspects. Can disrupt your industry, but you don't want to hurt yourself in that process. And at the same time, certain products or services that you feel like could potentially be spun off to help others.

Chris Wong: I think there needs to be a lot of thought on, are you helping the industry overall or are you taking away your company's core competency? And I think that's a question that I have been looking at. More specifically in probably the past two months, because we're starting to diversify our funds, we're starting to diversify our products and solutions to either see if they're entities or if we can sell out, sell. Well not sell out, sell off these solutions to other companies as well. So we've been taking that kind of consideration in stride as well.

Sean Weisbrot: I actually just posted a question on Help a Reporter, which is, what are the most important skills an entrepreneur, you know, needs to know running into 2023? And I think you're working on that right now?

Chris Wong: Yeah. I still take business school. I mean, my background is in science. You know, I'm very well versed in the scientific method. I was accepted into medical school and whatnot. I didn't complete it. but I was able to publish quite a few, you know, academic papers on my scientific findings, and I was very proud of that.

Chris Wong: But. I never took any business courses, before getting into startups or entrepreneurship. You know, everything I've learned was along the way and even till today, I think I can attest to this. I've never stopped learning. I signed myself up for, I think it was Harvard Business School online or something like that.

Chris Wong: And I've actually been able to take what I learned from those courses and immediately implement it towards the companies that I'm helping with. And I've been able to see the effects quite positively. But I think one of the things that you mentioned about going to 2023 is what kind of skills you need.

Chris Wong: And from everything that I see, especially on Twitter, it's about what VCs tweet about. I know about your disdain for VCs and whatnot, but. For VCs, they always talk about speed, and I think speed is actually going to be the critical downfall in 2023 because with money so tight everywhere, fundraising clients, et cetera, you don't have that luxury to say, oh, VC daddy, I ran outta money. Can I have more? You can't say that anymore. And even to private investors, it'll be difficult. So a lot of the time, and I think I see a lot of the companies that I may potentially consult on or you know, have an advisory role for, they don't take the time to review. If you have the time to be quick, you need to review.

Chris Wong: And I think just even, you know, going into 2023 now, one of the most critical things that I've done is review, review and streamline. 'cause if you're not running a lean operation, if you don't review yourself, you are going to run outta money really quick. In 2023, even. You might not even survive till the end of the year.